From Pain Point to Passion to Thriving Startup

Intro 00:01
Welcome to Startup Success, the podcast for startup founders and investors. Here you’ll find stories of success from others in the trenches as they work to scale some of the fastest growing startups in the world, stories that will help you in your own journey. Startup Success starts now.

Kate 00:17
Welcome to Startup Success today. We have Daniel Loreto, the founder of Jetify in studio. Welcome Daniel.

Daniel Loreto 00:26
Thank you, Kate, thank you for having me here.

Kate 00:29
I’m thrilled to have you here. I’m looking forward to our conversation. I think what would be most helpful to start if we just got an overview of your background and that can lead us to the founding of Jetify.

Daniel Loreto 00:42
Yeah, happy to talk about it. So I’m originally from Latin America. That’s the accent you hear from me. But anyways, I came to the states for college, so I went to MIT in Boston, and since then, I’ve always been working in tech. I worked at big companies, little companies, startups, like you name it, all the different sizes. So for example, after college, I worked at Google in the search quality team for four years. Then I did a startup. This is back in the day when social media was like the hottest thing happening on the web, and so we built a recommendation engine for social media content, and then that was acquired by Twitter. So through that, I joined Twitter, and we actually got to open their engineering office in New York. And then later, moved to the Bay Area, joined Airbnb. Spent four years there. In the early days, I actually got to work with Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders. That was super fun. And then later on, worked on the host team, which is kind of everything related to the supply side of Airbnb. And after Airbnb, I went to a startup called Virta Health, which I joined as the head of engineering. Virta is a company that focuses on reversing diabetes. So they have a platform to help with telemedicine and to help with coaching people that have diabetes. And so I ran engineering, data science, IT, and InfoSec there. And then after Virta, is when I started Jetify.

Kate 02:14
Okay, what a background you really have done a lot. And a lot of like, fun roles and great companies. Really excellent experience. Really built a good foundation. So tell us then about Jetify, like, what was the inspiration? What caused you to go out on your own? Give us the full scoop.

Daniel Loreto 02:35
Yeah, and I’ll include a little bit of how things have changed from the beginning as well, because, you know, you started the company, you know, focus on one thing, and sometimes things evolve. But yeah, look at a very high level Jetify has always been about wanting to accelerate the speed at which developers can turn ideas into working software. So our whole kind of reason for existence is that we feel like development has gotten pretty complicated, and we want to kind of continue simplifying and making it faster and kind of empowering more and more people to turn their ideas into software. But when we first started, we were kind of very focused on developer environments and how to make those easier to create, make them more reproducible, and then create them on the cloud. And we still have some open source products that help with that. But of course, in the time since we started the company and today, the whole AI wave happened, and we started thinking, Wait, AI is something that can also help accelerate the way people turn their ideas into code. We’ve more recently started focusing on AI agents that help with the software development life cycle. And in particular, our first AI agent that we have out is called Test Pilot, and it’s essentially a QA engineer that is completely AI, and it does end-to- end testing. And so you can give it a website, a web app, and it will click through the application, it will type, and it will try to find all the bugs for you so that you can have high quality software.

Kate 04:17
That is so cool. What an incredible Yeah. I mean, yeah. And what an incredible pivot, right, that you kind of took what was happening in the world around you and use that to kind of change fine tune what you were doing.

Daniel Loreto 04:34
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it was a big decision, yeah, we discussed it internally. I think ultimately, we felt this AI wave is just something that kind of happens every once, I don’t know, 30 years, right? Like, it’s like the internet wave, the mobile wave, the AI wave. It doesn’t happen every year. It doesn’t happen even every decade. And so we thought, we have to, we have to participate. We have to, you know, take advantage of what AI enables. And yeah, that’s how we decided to focus on it.

Kate 05:08
That’s great. Walk us back a little earlier, because I think for a lot of people listening, you might be able to talk to this for them, you had these incredible roles. How did you get the courage to branch out and start your own thing right, to leave the security of a paycheck and benefits, and there’s a lot security of working for someone else?

Daniel Loreto 05:33
Yes, that is a great question, and it’s definitely something I thought about a lot like at the time. I guess for me, the answer is you need to find, like an idea or a problem space that you’re very passionate about. So in my case, yeah, when I was a Virta, I had to start like a platform engineering team to help the rest of the engineering team, like, use the cloud more effectively. And so we ended up building a lot of kind of infrastructure to help accelerate development for the rest of the team, right? And I was feeling a little like, Hey, how come we need to be spending all these resources doing that, if the mission of the company is all about diabetes. Like, I wish my entire team was focused just on diabetes. But here I am, you know, investing, you know, a chunk of the team in that type of effort. And so that just stuck with me. Like, every other day I was like, what? How come we need to keep doing that? Like, can we accelerate, you know, software development in some way. Can we simplify the process? I was thinking about it all the time, and it wouldn’t leave me. And even when I was like, Ah, come on, like, let’s think about other stuff, it kept coming back. So anyways, I guess all I’m trying to say is, I think you need to find a space that you’re so passionate about that even if people tell you to drop it, you keep thinking about it. Even if you run into challenges, you’re like, Ah, I’m still gonna do it. And I think if you find something like that, then that can give you that confidence to take that jump, because you’ll be able to, despite the many challenges that come with starting a startup, you’ll be able to continue and push to make it successful, right?

Kate 07:24
Your answer really resonated with me, because we’ve been doing this show for a long time, and the founders that seem to be the most successful, talk about that. They are so close to a pain point, and it became a passion for them to solve it. Like a true passion, and that’s what you described.

Daniel Loreto 07:46
Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s like, again, you could be doing this for a long time, right? Like, if the company’s successful, maybe you’re working on this for the next 10 years, next 20 years, I don’t know. So, yeah, I think if you pick a space where you are, like, Ah, I’m not that interested, but I think it’s a good business opportunity. You will run into challenges, and I think you will kind of then say, Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.

Kate 08:10
Right. It would be probably more difficult to persevere to, you know, have the passion to get through those tough days and roadblocks and whatnot. And I think also, that’s true, is if you are really close to the problem, you have a real clear idea of what you’re solving for. And that’s what it sounds like you had,

Daniel Loreto 08:32
Yes, yes, yeah. I totally agree with that.

Kate 08:35
So you gave us an example of this AI agent doing all the testing for a website. I mean, that’s incredible. Someone just in my background, I know like that, QA typically is super expensive and time consuming. Can you delve into a little bit more about Jetify and what you’re solving for?

Daniel Loreto 09:01
Yeah. So like I was saying, you know, we want to create tools for software developers and for anybody creating software to accelerate the velocity at which ideas get translated into software. And so now, with our focus on AI and agents, we just kind of been asking ourselves, What are all those things that people need to do to produce high quality software that AI can start helping with? And so, Test Pilot, what I mentioned the QA engineer, that’s our first agent. That’s what we’re currently focused on. But we think the same idea applies to other pieces of the software development life cycle. So for example, security. Much like you test a website by clicking through it, you might have somebody acting as a pen tester who’s then trying to hack that website and it’s trying to maybe extract data from it. And so you could imagine having a security focused agent. Which, you know, if we got to it, we would call it Security Test Pilot, essentially a pen tester that is kind of trying to hack your website all the time and finding security vulnerabilities, right? There could be something about helping engineering teams deal with incidents and keeping stuff up in production. There could be things around helping internationalize a website, right? And so like translating it automatically and making sure that it works well for all different sorts of languages. So anyways, we think there’s plenty of areas where agents can help. Now, of course, we’re a startup, and so we need to focus on one first. And so that’s why we’re starting with Test Pilot. And it’s, I mean, it’s entirely possible, but that, by the time I want to do the next one, then there’s already another company doing it. Because, you know, everybody’s going towards AI. But yeah, in general, we feel like there’s plenty of areas in software development that AI can help with and should help.

Kate 10:55
I love it, and I agree with where you focused first Test Pilot. I mean that the use case for that. I mean, just personally, like I said, there’s such a need for it. So you had a successful seed round raise. Congratulations. How did that process go for you know, founders listening any advice you can offer there?

Daniel Loreto 11:17
Yeah, well, there’s this old adage. I don’t know if you heard it. There’s this old adage in Silicon Valley, like, you ask for funding, and you’ll get advice, and ask for advice and then you’ll get funding. But really, I mean, I don’t know. I guess the way we approached it was, we at first wanted to understand the fundraising market. We wanted to understand interest. And so the reason I bring up this adage is because, like, the first thing I did was actually to try to get advice, feedback, thoughts from from different investors on the direction we were going, whether they thought it was promising, whether they were seeing any other trends in the market, you know, stuff like that. And as we started defining more and more of that idea, and we were having some of those conversations, we started feeling all of a sudden that, hey, they weren’t just giving advice, like they were kind of asking, so do you plan to fundraise? Do you like, kind of, what are the next steps? While we were doing that, of course, we’re trying to create as much traction as possible, which I guess is another piece of advice I would give to people on fundraising. So that might be kind of quickly building a high quality team. It might be releasing software at a high velocity or showing some traction with customers. But like, the more of those signals that you have, I think the better. And I think it’s not just having the one signal, but showing that it’s more like the trajectory, right? So it’s not just like, oh, I have this one data point, but, and since we talked six months ago, and now, like all of this has happened, like, you can see the trajectory going like this, right? So anyways, those conversations, plus kind of creating some fast initial traction, I think, is what helps us kind of raise that around.

Kate 13:09
That’s excellent advice. And you talked about your team. That’s one of the things I’ve heard that you do really well, that you’ve built a very strong team and attracted some excellent talent. (Oh, thank you.) Talk, talk to us about that.

Daniel Loreto 13:27
Yes, well, I can go over so many things. I guess first, let me touch on the types of people I look for, and then, and then maybe I can touch on how, how I recruited the team we have today. (That would be great.) But yeah, I mean, I think that the early people in a company really helped define its culture. I think culture for a company is very important. So I think each founder should think about what type of team they’re trying to build and what characteristics they value. I think for me, what I was looking for was one, particularly for the initial team, like a high level of trust, a high level of proactiveness or agency. So if they see a problem, it’s not like, you know, sitting idle, waiting for somebody to suggest how to fix that problem, but rather the opposite. Like they’re kind of actively looking for solutions and and suggesting them. I think a collaborative type of culture is what I was going for. And so anyways, kind of focused on those types of people. People that are comfortable with ambiguity too, right? I think in a startup, sometimes the path is unclear, and so you need people that are comfortable dealing with that. And I think people that are passionate about the space and the problem. And I guess I say more more the problem than the particular solution. Because again, in a startup, you might have to shift exactly what you’re doing. And so if people are passionate about the problem, then that passion continues as you shift your solutions. But if they’re passionate about just one particular solution, and then you need to shift, then that becomes harder. And I think early on, I think it helps to have generalists as well. Again, for that reason that you have a small team, and you might need them to do many different things. At a startup sometimes you’re wearing multiple hats all at once. And so if you have somebody that is super specialized, and then all of a sudden you need help in this other area, (you’re out of luck) And yes, it’s like, how do you get that done? Right? I mean, that’s not, by the way, that’s not to say that, in some cases you’re building some very specific type of technology you might need that expertise, but definitely, overall, the team needs to be able to kind of handle all the different types of problems that you’re gonna face, right? So, yeah, anyways, that’s kind of what I look for for that initial team. And yeah, yeah. I mean my case to form the initial team kind of started by talking to people in my network. In fact, three of the people in that initial team came from Airbnb, and, you know, two of them I had worked directly with before. So, yeah, I, you know, I would say, start with your network. Start with people you work with. Or, you know, if it’s not them directly, like maybe they have a friend, you know that they know that it’s looking to start something, and so try to kind of really focus on that network at first, to find your initial team, would be my suggestion.

Kate 16:49
I really liked your answer. First of all, I like how you describe what you look for, because I think it’s so spot on for working for a startup, right? Especially, you know, it’s not perfectly clear and laid out. And, you know, I have friends that have joined startups and they couldn’t handle it. I remember a friend of mine trying to do sales, and she said, You know, there’s no process in place. There’s, you know, the territories aren’t really well laid out. And some people, they need that structure that a bigger company provides, right? And the process is and this is your world, and you stay in your world. And people that join startups, you have to be able to be flexible, like you said, and adaptive, and wear many hats, and things change. Your product focus changes. I mean, everything can change. So I think you described that really well. And I agree on the power of your own network. And we’ve talked about this on the show a lot. I mean, some of the best hires I’ve made are people I worked with before.

Daniel Loreto 17:57
Yes, yeah. So I think if you have that network use, that’s definitely the right place to start.

Kate 18:02
And how are you, I mean, with this successful raise, are you pretty cautious on scaling and spending money? I mean, is that an area that you’re careful?

Daniel Loreto 18:14
Yeah, I generally, I think when you raise a bunch of money, it’s easy, or sometimes you get the even pressure or advice to, like, increase the spend. To me, how much you spend should be tied to kind of clear business achievements. And I guess in my case, I’ve always thought I want to feel like I’m drowning a bit. So, okay, so you need the initial investment to, like, create the product, right? So you need some initial team to create the product. So definitely, you need to do that. But from there to, like, growing much faster. I’ve always thought it’s like you want to feel that, you know, product-market- fit. You want to feel like you’re drowning a little bit in the number of users coming in, or the interest from a sales pipeline, some indication like that, where you’re like, Oh my god, I can’t handle it. And then, to me, that’s the indication of, okay, now, now it’s time to kind of accelerate. So yeah, I mean, if you think of the money as, like, rocket fuel. You want to make sure you’re pointed in the right direction first before you Yeah, blast the rocket right, because otherwise you might just, like, crash into a wall.

Kate 19:30
I agree. And we all have seen those startups right? Huge funding rounds, and then they’re out of business, and you just think about all that money. So I agree. I think that disciplined approach throughout your scaling journey is important. You’ve shared a lot with us just to wrap up any final advice for startup founders listening?

Daniel Loreto 19:53
Yeah, I guess one more piece of advice I have is kind of, it might sound like a platitude, because I think a lot of people say it, but, you know, it’s like really listen to your users and customers. But I guess I want to expand on that so that it’s not just okay, a platitude. I think depending on the company that you’re building, you can think of different ways to approach your go to market, so that that user feedback becomes central to the way you build your company. And so for example, for us, I think different companies may have different journeys, but for us, when we first started, we were very like, Oh, we’re just building proprietary software. There’s no open source at all. Like, that’s a distraction. But actually what we found is like we weren’t having that many conversations with the users that we wanted to have. And so we decided to actually start open sourcing more things. And we realized that strategically okay, what are the things that make sense to open source and what are the things that make sense to keep more proprietary? But by open sourcing, we created a little bit of a developer community. And so then we created a Discord server where those people can join. And so all of a sudden, it felt like night and day. We could talk to our customers all the time, right? And kind of the people trying the tools, the software we were providing and giving feedback and suggestions and that, I think, is invaluable, right? And so it’s not just like, oh yeah, I gotta remember to listen to my customers, because I know everybody says that, but can you set your process or your go-to-market, or kind of like, the way the company runs or interacts with users, so that that feedback is a core part of that loop.

Kate 21:44
I’m really glad you brought that up, because that is another thing we hear again and again from successful founders. A really robust like some kind of customer feedback loop engine where it’s just continuous, and there’s such a commitment to, you know, customer feedback. And I love how you walked us through what you’ve kind of created at Jetify to get that customer feedback. And it’s really great to hear another example of where it’s been so important and helpful in your scaling journey.

Daniel Loreto 22:22
Yeah, agreed, yeah. It’s funny. I feel like, yeah. It sounds like a lot of other founders you talk to agree with many of the points that I’m making.

Kate 22:33
Well, you know, those two always seem to stand out from successful founders. And the other one is culture, and you tapped into that too. Like really kind of building in a culture. And it sounds like you do that through your hiring by the type of people you look for. (Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.) That’s great. I appreciate you coming on and being so candid about your experiences and Jetify. For those listening, where can they go to find more information about Test Pilot, about Jetify?

Daniel Loreto 23:08
The best place to do that is on our website. So that’s jetify.com. And, yeah, Test Pilot is our most recent product and our current focus. So right now. It’s just front and center on the homepage. You can’t miss it. And if, if you’re interested, there’s a way to contact us and get a demo, and we can talk about your testing needs and see if we can help you.

Kate 23:30
Excellent. Thank you so much, Daniel, for your time today. It was a super insightful and helpful conversation.

Daniel Loreto 23:38
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Intro 23:42
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