Most CEOs eventually meet a market that loves the product and will not pay for it. The meetings go well. The demos land. Prospects ask for another walkthrough and introduce colleagues. The team reads all of it as momentum and keeps building for that segment.
The harder decision comes when real buying intent shows up somewhere else, attached to a part of the business the CEO considers a component rather than the company. Committing to it means admitting that the original thesis has stalled. Ignoring it means spending more time on a market that has not yet shown it will pay.
Shaun Jafarian, founder and CEO of Counter Drone, faced that decision in 2020. His team was building a drone-based security company. Security buyers loved the demonstrations and did not buy. Meanwhile, unsolicited requests for quotes were arriving for the drone docking station his team had built only because the security product required one. How Shaun read those signals, staged the pivot, and then committed to it gives scaling CEOs a practical model for a question they will face more than once: is the product pulling demand a side project, or is it the business?
The Counter Drone that exists today is a different business from the one that first carried the name. The original company, founded in 2013, was a defense contractor that built technology to defeat hostile drones. Its engineering work contributed to the first counter-drone systems fielded overseas in 2016. Technically, the work was strong. As a business, Shaun came to see it as a cul-de-sac. It had one customer, the US military. Much of the technology was classified and could not be offered to anyone else. And the specific technique had a limited shelf life, because drones would eventually be engineered to resist it.
There was also a difference in outlook. Many people around that work, he said, seemed to dislike drones as a category. "I didn't feel that way. Like I saw usefulness," Shaun recalled. In early 2019 he set out to use drones for productive work instead of defeating them.
The first idea was drone-based security. The team wrote software to integrate drones into the video management systems security companies already used, such as Milestone and Genetec. Drones would patrol on a schedule and launch automatically when a camera detected motion or a fence or door sensor tripped. The team had relevant experience. Its military work had required building drones that flew autonomously as early as 2016, to serve as surrogates for hostile ones.
The software quickly exposed a hardware dependency. An autonomous drone has to live outside, charged and ready to launch. If a person has to carry it out, fly it, and plug it back in, the system is no longer autonomous. In 2019 nobody was making drone docking stations, so the team designed its own. Two early choices shaped everything that followed. The dock would be drone-agnostic, able to house and charge drones from other manufacturers. And the first units, clamshell domes modeled on telescope observatories, were built by hand in fiberglass.
The team behind this was small and stretched. Five people, all technical, worked on the new business part-time while still servicing Pentagon contracts. By 2020 the team had grown to seven, with two full-time on the new project. The fiberglass approach was never going to scale, and learning it consumed attention the team would rather have spent elsewhere.
The drone-agnostic decision turned out to matter more than it first appeared. The team had built its own drone prototype, but when it came time to demonstrate the system, it used DJI drones because they performed better. "Everybody wants to be vertically integrated until they realize what it actually takes," Shaun said. Letting go of the drone made the dock the center of the system. By mid-2020 the team had recognized that a drone ready to launch from anywhere had uses well beyond security: crop yield analysis, pipeline inspection, and drone as first responder programs for police and fire departments.
Shaun did not abandon the security thesis in one move. He described the first step as "kind of a toe dip." He proposed to the team that they sell docks to whoever wanted them, as a way to fund development of the drone-based security company. The dock would earn its keep while the original plan continued.
The staged approach had a clear advantage. It let the team test demand for the dock without writing off the work already done on security. The risk was that it could become permanent. A funding vehicle that never gets reassessed can keep a company split between two strategies for years, with a small team carrying both.
In Shaun's case the staging lasted about six months. The signal that ended it was simple. Security buyers were not spending money. "They want to see this, they love the demos, all the things, but freedom isn't free and they're not paying the bills," he said. Other mission sets were moving at the same time. Drone as first responder programs were gaining ground, and agriculture and inspection were starting to take notice. By late 2020 the decision was made: Counter Drone was a docking station company, and customers would integrate the docks into their own missions.
The positive signal came from outside the target market. While the docks were still made of fiberglass, the team began receiving real requests for quotes from companies that were not in security. The first quote Counter Drone ever issued went to a fishing company in Japan that wanted docks for a maritime inspection use. Nobody on the team had gone looking for that buyer. "They found us," Shaun said.
The distinction between enthusiasm and demand is the analytical center of this decision. Security prospects offered attention, interest, and repeat demos. The unsolicited quote requests offered something narrower and more useful: a stated intent to buy, with a price attached. Shaun's own standard for early validation, voiced elsewhere in the conversation, applies directly. Don't build, he said, "before you have evidence, empirical, repeatable evidence that somebody wants it." The security market produced feedback. The inbound requests produced evidence.
Even so, the commitment was made largely on speculation. Shaun acknowledged that the dock side was still mostly a bet when the decision was made. Counter Drone did not record its first sales until the summer of 2023. Part of that gap was deliberate. The team could have sold some of the fiberglass units and chose not to, because the design could not be manufactured at scale. By 2022 it had a prototype ready to scale, and the first units that shipped were molded ABS built through real manufacturing.
The pivot also exposed a capability gap. Counter Drone's team was entirely technical, and it had no sales or marketing function. "Me, the founder, is the main sales guy, and I don't think I'm all that good at it, to be honest," Shaun said.
Instead of building that function, the company formed early partnerships that covered what it was not good at. The first partners were software companies building autonomous drone platforms. They saw the value of docking stations early because their own customers were already asking for them. Much of Counter Drone's early marketing, and much of how customers found the company, ran through that channel.
Shaun called these partnerships a mixed bag, and the tradeoff is real. A partner channel gives up control over the customer relationship and depends on someone else's priorities. In exchange, a small technical team gains access to buyers who already want the product, without diverting engineers into a sales role they are not suited for. For a bootstrapped company with a five-to-seven person team, that exchange was the practical choice.
The gap between the late 2020 decision and the first sales in 2023 reflects a constraint that CEOs outside aviation often underestimate. When Counter Drone committed to docks, the market for them was, in Shaun's words, non-existent. The broader drone industry was still in its infancy, and he argues it still is.
Shaun calls the constraint the Z-axis tax. Anything that leaves the ground is a subset of aviation, and aviation takes longer and costs more than founders expect. Regulation is part of it, but so are engineering difficulty, manufacturing cost, and human caution. "Anytime you're dealing in three dimensions, humans are gonna get squeamish," he said. "When you add the z-axis to things, everything takes longer." The practical consequence is that a common software playbook does not transfer. Spending heavily to accelerate growth does not remove the barriers.
For a CEO deciding when to commit, this changes the cost of waiting. In a market with a heavy time tax, every month spent on a segment that is not buying is a month the slow, expensive work of hardening the real product is not happening.
That hardening turned out to be essential. Once docks were deployed in the field, failures appeared that demos had never surfaced. "The first thing is that you realize how hardware is hard and things break," Shaun said. The team used those early deployments to make the system more robust.
The results showed about a year later. Two docks in Houston went through a hurricane, survived, and were used after the storm by the two police departments that owned them for relief missions. Shaun doubts the very first units would have come through. The difference was a year of changes driven by field data.
The customer base that formed looked different from the original plan. More than half of Counter Drone's first customers were public safety agencies, which had a regulatory fast track to operating docked drones and an obvious need for them. The remaining 40 percent or so were a mix of security and agriculture. This year, about 15 percent of sales have gone to construction companies that use docked drones to produce scheduled progress video of job sites without anyone on site having to fly them. The dock designed for fast security response turned out to fit the drone as first responder mission naturally, and the drone-agnostic design let it serve markets the team had never targeted.
Shaun describes the move from engineering services to aerospace hardware as the hardest thing he has done. His original company sold expertise, not a physical product. Building a hardware product that had never existed, he said, "is like playing the video game on tutorial mode and then going immediately to God mode with no transition in the middle."
The years of difficulty built confidence and what he calls scar tissue. He is also candid that hardship can bring out traits a leader has to keep in check, and that he has had to govern some of his own. The clearest lesson he drew was about identity rather than method. "What it's made me realize the most is that I am a founder," he said. "On paper I refer to myself as a founder and CEO, but I'm not so sure about that CEO part."
Fundraising sharpened that view. Counter Drone ran a couple of brief raises that were mostly experiments, undertaken because Shaun felt a tech founder was expected to raise money rather than because the company needed it. He disliked the work intensely, and it clarified that the parts of the CEO role he does not want are a large share of what many tech CEOs spend their time on.
That realization has not changed how he runs the team. Asked whether he would do anything differently, he said he would not and that the approach has been right. What it shapes is where the company goes next. Shaun wants Counter Drone to remain a highly technical team, with a product he places at a technology readiness level of seven to eight. He expects strategic partners to take it to scale, especially as the US drone industry consolidates.
His advice to other founders follows from the same experience. Seek counsel, but recognize its limits. "If you've got twelve people you're getting advice from, that's too many people," he said, because their views eventually cancel out. Building something that did not exist requires trusting your own read. "The thing about intuition is there's a reason that it's there," Shaun said. It will not always be right, in his view, but it is likely to be right more often than wrong.
Counter Drone's pivot came down to a judgment about which signals counted. The security market offered the signals that feel like progress: strong demos, engaged prospects, continued interest. The dock market offered fewer signals, but they were the ones that predict revenue. Companies outside the target segment found the product on their own and asked what it would cost.
For CEOs facing a similar split, the decision logic in Shaun's experience is specific. Judge a market by who pays, not by who loves the demo. Treat unsolicited quote requests from a segment you are not pitching as evidence, not noise. If you stage a pivot to preserve optionality, set a point at which you will decide, as Shaun did within about six months. If the founder is the main salesperson and selling is not a strength, look for partners whose customers already want the product. And in physical or regulated markets, assume the timeline will run longer and cost more than the plan, which raises the price of every month spent on the wrong segment.
The hardest part of this decision is rarely the analysis. It is accepting that the component you built to serve your original idea may be the company. Shaun's team reached that conclusion in 2020. The years that followed tested whether the conclusion was right, and the field results suggest it was.
Shaun Jafarian is the founder and CEO of Counter Drone, which builds drone-agnostic docking stations for autonomous drone operations in public safety, agriculture, construction, and inspection. He previously led a defense contracting business whose engineering contributed to the first counter-drone systems fielded overseas. He has been building technology since age 13. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaun-jafarian-2084931b8/
__________
Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
__________
The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
__________
Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:
00:00 The Cost of Innovation
01:24 What Counter Drone Builds
06:27 Turning Drones Toward Good
09:41 Building Autonomous Drone Docks
15:20 Escaping Vertical Integration
23:58 Validate Before You Build
27:49 Becoming a Docking Company
34:44 Understanding the Z-Axis Tax
39:08 Building a Drone Network
43:22 Hardware Meets the Real World
50:02 Strategic Partnerships Drive Growth
52:24 Trusting Your Founder Intuition
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Shaun Jafarian (00:00)
They love the demos, all the thing, but freedom isn't free. Everybody wants to be vertically integrated until they realize what it actually takes. Don't just start building something before you have evidence, empirical, repeatable evidence that somebody wants it. And if you've got 12 people you're getting advice from, that's too many people.
Jeff Holman (00:20)
Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, with Intellectual Strategies. We're we're a small law firm that brings a fractional legal team to startups and scaling businesses. And we work with a lot of cool companies and very successful CEOs on the helping out with the legal aspects of their business. We can't tell you their stories, but but we know that you want to hear what other CEOs are doing and how they're thinking. So we bring you these CEO episodes on the Breakout CEO so that you can hear behind the scenes moments with
people who are doing cool things. And today we've got somebody doing really cool things, Sean Jafarian with Counter Drone. Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff.
Shaun Jafarian (00:56)
Appreciate it.
Jeff Holman (00:57)
Yeah, I'm I'm really glad to chat about some of the stuff you're working on. I I know a little bit about behind the scenes because we've worked together in some capacities. but for our listeners who haven't haven't got the context and they hear the they hear that your company is called Counter Drone, I I imagine a lot of different things come to mind. They're probably picturing
several different potential business models behind that. But let's orient them. What what does Counter Drone do?
Shaun Jafarian (01:24)
so a counter drone builds drone docking stations for autonomous drone operations. And the name is certainly confusing to people. And so it's probably worth starting there. Yeah. so this is
Jeff Holman (01:41)
You have background from before this, right?
Shaun Jafarian (01:43)
Yes, yeah. This is my third business. and we'll skip the first for now, that was a long time ago. But the original counter drone was actually founded in twenty thirteen and its purpose was to develop technologies to literally counter drones. And in twenty thirteen nobody really knew that countering drones was gonna be a thing.
Jeff Holman (02:09)
What do you by what do you mean by countering drones? Because you know, the thing that comes to my mind, just from the recent news as you hear about, you know, these these warfare tactics essentially, sending drones in, dropping bombs, people are trying to stop them. Recently I've heard people say, Well, you know, we're we're using Ferraris to to take down I don't remember what they said. You know, it's the the million dollar counter counter tactics to the to the to the a hundred thousand or I don't know, ten thousand dollar
drone. So very, very out of balance in terms of the costs that are going into it. Is is that what we're talking about?
Shaun Jafarian (02:46)
It is, yeah. And and that that kind of leads us to the next point as to, well, why I don't do that anymore. And the term itself, like, you know, countering drums. I I don't know exactly how people referred to countering airplanes in World War One. I doubt that it was that language. but it's literally the same thing.
I mean, it is an air defense problem. And so countering drones is just tr is just defending airspace. That's what it is. Okay. and and so I I did that right for a while for the US military as a as a contractor. and at that time, our expertise was in a very niche area of this, a highly technical area of of countering drones that we were particularly good at.
That resulted in the fielding of the first systems overseas to counter drones. and that was in 2016. So 10 years ago, we contributed in an engineering capacity to those first systems that got deployed, you know, to other other places to counter drones. but what I realized after several years of of countering drones was that from a business standpoint, it's kind of a call-de-sac.
You know, in fact, I even in the early days of it, I felt there was a certain Luddite thing going on. Like the people I was around, I I felt like you people just genuinely hate drones. All drones. And and I didn't feel that way. Like I saw usefulness. And and so while it's certainly important to be able to defend airspace.
Countering drones is just that. It is an airspace defense problem. And separating it out into well, they're drones. they're not airplanes. It doesn't matter. There are these things in the air that we don't want to be over our heads.
Jeff Holman (04:58)
Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (04:59)
humans have been knocking things out of the air for a long time, starting with birds. And and so countering drones is just a subset of air defense. And
The niche area that we were providing services in, I would say the the analogy is we were filling the drones with self-doubt as to whether or not they had made the right life choices. Okay. That's what we're we're hacking navigation systems.
Jeff Holman (05:27)
Got it. So they they weren't sure if they were in the right spot or something like that.
Shaun Jafarian (05:31)
Yeah.
And it was cool technology, and I was excited to be a part of it. And we got to do some very interesting things. But I always knew even then, you know, this has a limited shelf life. Because, you know, the drones are just gonna they're gonna be engineered in a way that makes this not work anymore soon. And we're gonna get back to the point of if you want to stop something, you hit it on the head with a stick. You know, and that's where we're at now, right? So
The systems that actually work now when it comes to countering drones are kinetic. In some cases, you know, high powered lasers and high powered microwaves still have a place. And I think lasers will continue to get better. But, you know, the is all the stuff you see coming out of Eastern Europe, they're shooting down. Just like they shot down the first airplanes of World War I.
Jeff Holman (06:23)
You blow up, you you hit hit out of the air. Okay. Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (06:27)
Yeah, and that's that's where this technology has has evolved to. So, but you know, back to the whole business cul-de-sac thing, I I just saw it as, you know, the technology that we were involved in, we couldn't offer it to anybody outside the US military. You know, large portions of it remain classified today. And so it just felt like, well, okay, we've got a customer, and that's a big customer.
But it just seemed like sort of a dead end to me. and so around nineteen, early twenty nineteen, I decided I wanted to come up with a way to use drones to do good work as opposed to just trying to kill drones.
Jeff Holman (07:15)
This and this is both government and and, you know, civilian, this is I what types of drones are we talking about when you're saying do good with drones?
Shaun Jafarian (07:23)
the intent of this time was was to do primarily private sector work. the the original idea was to integrate drones into security systems to to use drones to do patrols as well as to do response to intrusion autonomously. So the idea was well let's let's build a company that uses drones.
To secure things. You know, that was
Jeff Holman (07:56)
mm monitoring building space perhaps or or taking footage of accidents or freeways or I mean things like that.
Shaun Jafarian (08:06)
Yes.
Yeah. So originally the idea was, well, this could augment manned security, right? By having drones that could autonomously go out and do patrols on schedules, but at the same time have the ability to respond to some triggering event on site. Like let's say a fixed camera on site, a security camera detects motion. Well, we can then trigger
a drone launch to go investigate further that site where that event happened or a a fence intrusion sensor, a door sensor, whatever.
Jeff Holman (08:47)
Or fi fire f smoke smoke on the horizon of an agricultural facility or w whatever it might be. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Shaun Jafarian (08:55)
So we we had all this knowledge about drones from countering them, right? We
Jeff Holman (09:03)
Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (09:03)
had to build drones as part of our work with the military to be surrogates for hostile drones, if you will, right? So we we knew how to build drones, we knew how to make them fly autonomously. So this was all pretty early in the drone, you know, scene. we were we were building drones.
drones in twenty sixteen that needed to be able to fly autonomously. So that's you know, that's kind of the where the the tech background came from f for the new business. So originally
Jeff Holman (09:38)
What does your team look like at this point, Sean?
Shaun Jafarian (09:41)
So at that time we had a total of five of us. And everything that we were doing on the new business was part time because we were still servicing these these Pentagon contracts. so by twenty twenty we'd gotten up to seven people and at that and then two of them became full time.
On the new project to integrate drones into security systems. So we started with software to integrate drones into existing security suites such as milestone and genitech, these are video management systems that security companies use. So we started with the software, but then what we very quickly realized was that in order for this idea to come to fruition, be useful in any way.
The drones would have to live outside. They would have to be ready to go all the time in a house, if you will, for drones. So they needed a drone docking station. That's what any type of autonomous drone that is going to be used to do patrols or be available for response type missions. It's got to be ready. It's got to be outside, ready to go.
Jeff Holman (11:05)
Because if it's because if it's not on site and it's gotta kinda be be managed by a person, then it it loses its autonomy, right? Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But clients' stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments.
Of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible. Now let's get back to the show.
Shaun Jafarian (11:46)
It's yeah, it's not autonomous at that point, right? If
Jeff Holman (11:48)
Okay.
Shaun Jafarian (11:49)
if a human has to take the drone out of the case and take it outside and place it down and and fly it with with the remote, and then when it comes home, bring it back in and charge the battery, it's not autonomous. It's it's work, right? It's you have to have somebody who knows how to do all the things, and so it's just not it's not useful. So for for our vision, we had to have a drone docking station. And 2019, no one
was making drone DockyStation. DJI, the world's largest drone manufacturer by far, hadn't even filed the first patents on their what they would eventually release at DockyStation. So no one was making them. Yeah. so we set out to design our own. And and what we decided early on was well, this needs to be drone agnostic. This needs to be able to accommodate different drones. At that time we were going to build our own drone. And we in fact we did.
to go in this dock, but we still wanted the dock to be able to accept and charge and house other people's drones. That was always in the spec. Because we didn't know if it was going to work out. I mean, we we knew how hard it was to scale the building of drones. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (13:01)
Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (13:01)
And so we wanted a technology demonstrator that included a dock and a drone and a software. We wanted to show all this can work together.
Jeff Holman (13:10)
Even if even if it wasn't all yours. So it might be might be your station, a DJI DJI drone, run on software that you didn't necessarily write. Is that what I'm is that what I'm understanding?
Shaun Jafarian (13:22)
Yeah, that yeah, we we wanted the the the dock to be able to accept DJI drones, our drones, other people's drone. And so we didn't know what the future was gonna hold with respect to drones, so but we tried to make this agnostic dock. So we went with a clamshell dome design. that I I will admit was somewhat inspired by telescope observatory domes. Because
They have to be out in the wild. They have to protect this expensive instrument that doesn't like high winds and and moisture and ice and snow and things. And so we figured, hey, this seems to work, you know. So we that that was the genesis of what would become the Omni-Doc, as we call it. we started with a clamshell dome. We built the first ones ourselves out of fiberglass.
And it became very obvious that that was never going to scale. but we did it. So yeah, it was our design and our very first actual, you know, production was was in-house with fiberglass. And we didn't know anything about fiberglass, and a whole lot of brain bites got spent learning this thing that we didn't want to learn.
Jeff Holman (14:40)
Is it but wasn't the eventual path. So so but just just so I'm so so you guys said to yourselves, Okay, we're we're like early on we're doing software for the government to, you know, help with with this counter drone these counter drone initiatives. And then you said, Well, let's go into the private sector, let's build our own drones, make them autonomous, do what we need to do so they can, you know, do some good around the world. and then you said, Well, and so you but you it sounds like a a f was this a full shift away from
Building your own drones into building drone docking stations and and the you're still doing hardware, you're still doing software, but it's all going into the docking stations, it sounds like, instead of into the drones. Or were you doing both?
Shaun Jafarian (15:20)
So in the beginning, we you know, we did want to build everything ourselves, right? Everybody wants to be vertically integrated until they realize what it actually takes. Right. So we did have our own drone prototype. But when it came time to actually start doing demos for customers and things, we were using DJI drones. because they're just the best by far. And so, but what we realized by about the middle of 2020.
Was that what we were building on the dock side was going to be useful for far more than just security? Because having a drone available anywhere that can just launch and go and get eyes on things, the use cases are far beyond just security. There's agricultural missions, crop yield analysis, pipeline inspection.
one of the biggest use cases in in the U.S. right now is drone as a first responder, as they call it, DFR, police and fire departments using drones to get eyes on a scene before actual humans arrive. Well,
Jeff Holman (16:34)
Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (16:35)
that requires having drones prepositioned, ready to go, which means docking stations.
Jeff Holman (16:42)
So this means like a city if you were thinking of, you know, I'm in I'm in the Salt Lake City area, we're in the Salt Lake City area. If if Salt Lake City were to adopt this, th there would be some number of a network of drone docking stations and and drones housed around the city so that they could, you know, when when an emergency call comes in, someone could say, Okay or I guess you could you could, you know, complete the autonomous loop and you could say, Well, when this stuff comes in, it it triggers a drone to go out and and survey the area and
report back and, you know, give everybody the information that they need to to kind of initially understand what's going on. That's right.
Shaun Jafarian (17:21)
And and and there are cities that are further along than others in this regard, right? yeah. all over China, this is already a thing, right? There's already drones living in docking stations all over the place. And it's and it's definitely growing rapidly around the US, particularly when it comes to first responders. departments of transportation around around the US are starting to implement docked drones now.
to be able to launch and quickly get eyes on accident scenes or traffic, etc. but you the use cases are just growing, right? So about 15% of our sales this year have been for construction companies. So that drones get positioned out on a site where apartments are being built, and they just go out autonomously every couple of days and and produce
Progress reports, if you will, in the form of of video of here's where the site was on this day, here's where the site is today. Yeah. And and this happens without anyone having to do anything, right? It's set up on a schedule, the drone launches, gets a video, comes home, and then the the key players and the stakeholders can download the video and observe it. So that's another use case. So you got security, agriculture, construction, oil and gas, public safety.
The list keeps growing for use cases of prepositioned docked drones for the purpose of autonomy.
Jeff Holman (18:56)
It seems appropriate. Maybe it's a maybe these are tangents, so so don't let me get too far astray here. But number one, AI is gonna is gonna continue to, you know, be a huge influence in this as to the the capabilities of the drone of of the drones, the drone docking stations. Like that's that's gotta be on your mind as to where this is going with AI, right?
Shaun Jafarian (19:16)
Absolutely. That's a huge part of it because you know the the the drones are a source of data. Yeah. And what is done with that data, the the the tools that are are are being developed now AI wise are going to make this incredibly valuable across all those industries that I've mentioned.
Jeff Holman (19:36)
And and there's gotta be some feedback into into how the drone is controlled or maybe controls itself at some point, autonomously, right? To to make decisions on its flight paths and, you know, image capture and whatever decisions are being made in that realm. That kind of leads into the my next question, which maybe is just something to to acknowledge here, and that is there's been recent what do we call it? You know, unfavorable news about flock
cameras and things like that and and this seems like I don't know if it's part of what what's been going on, but it seems like a natural extension to the fact that in the you know, China may not have all the same all the same rules that we do here in the US, but in the US we've got all these privacy rules. And, you know, how does how does something like that play into w your your approach to thinking about drones and and and your drone docking station business?
Shaun Jafarian (20:31)
Yeah, it it complicates things. because like any other type of technology, it can be used for good or bad. Right. And there are certainly very useful missions that drones can be used for when it comes to police and drone as a first responder, particularly when it comes to firefighting. But to your point about about flock, there's also cases that we should
be very careful about when it comes to surveillance of of of Americans and improper use of of this technology. Right. Yeah. my position on it is the market to do good work with drones it is so much bigger than surveilling people and and even than providing security. I mean the agriculture missions are are
extremely important, crop yield analysis. there's there's all kinds of of drones are on the rise across farming in general. but also like I mentioned construction and safety of of infrastructure, things like the monitoring and inspection of wind turbines, solar farms, power lines.
You know, there's all kinds of of ways that drones can enhance public safety without spying on everybody. Okay. Yeah. So I, you know, I I do kind of I do want to distance us from the surveillance state. I don't want to be part of that. and I think that the market is so much bigger than the surveillance state that that flock safety is building.
Jeff Holman (22:28)
And we're we're likely early enough on in this kind of in this cycle for the drone industry that there are probably some ways now that even Flock or other other players would build their controls with more sophistication than what they might have had at the time that the current the current renditions were released, right? So I I imagine AI is also gonna be a be a big participant in how controls are managed.
for yeah to to to kind of counteract or I don't I don't know, counter drone might not be the right word there, but counteract some of the misuses that could could otherwise happen.
Shaun Jafarian (23:08)
Yeah, appropriate guardrails are are a good starting point, you know. Not not giving everybody on the network free access to every single camera might be a starting point. Just saying, right? but yeah, you know, we don't need to to completely dig into the the flock situation, but but yeah, I mean they've they've brought all this on themselves by by simply not having appropriate guardrails.
Jeff Holman (23:35)
Yeah, makes sense. Well let's let's get into your business because I know you've you've mentioned you've got maybe a couple of different breakout moments that we could could dive into. so we've we've kind of talked about what led up to building the business that you're at. W what were you doing initially with you know, either the business, your customers, your team? Wha how were you building momentum in this in this new drone docking station business?
Shaun Jafarian (23:58)
So we we did in very early days, we went out to find potential customers. Yeah. You know, you just have to do that, right? And it it gets foot stomped a lot in in tech. You know, don't just start building something before you have evidence, empirical, repeatable evidence that somebody wants it. Yeah. Right. So we we did go out and and have early conversations.
And it it started with security providers. Stone Security was an early partner of ours that that helped us out with our our first software integrations to to integrate drones and docking stations into existing security systems. so we we got some validation early on that people thought that this was a good idea. And I think that's you gotta do that, right? Because
I think engineers in particular have a tendency to to start to build things without necessarily knowing that somebody wants it. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (25:00)
Sure, that's their passion, right? Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so you're out out there going, getting customer input, starting to build your prototypes or starting to maybe sell a few units here and there. what was the outlook early on? How how'd the team feel if things were going?
Shaun Jafarian (25:17)
So we were extremely optimistic when we saw this uptick when it came to public safety in particular. So public safety were the first adopters of autonomous drones in in docking stations in any meaningful numbers. There's several reasons for that here in the US, and a lot of them are regulatory in nature, that
the government entities have a sort of fast track to getting approval to operate drones in this way. I think that helped. but at the same time, there's just an obvious, you know, usefulness in having a docked drone for for public safety purposes. So our first customers, more than half were in the public safety space. the other, you know, 40% or so are a combination of of
security and agriculture in those early days. So I skipped over a few steps, but but you know, but the point we we made this pivot to just making docking stations, right? Once we determined that, well, yeah, security is is a great use case, but it didn't feel like the security space, the market, was ready for this. and so we decided, well,
We know we have to have the dock to do the security thing, anyways. Let's just double down on the dock and and see what other industries wanted. And then it turned out that our first customers weren't even in private security. That took a little a little bit longer. Our first customers were public safety. But we we stopped with all the security-centric stuff, except to say that the original dock design.
had all that in mind and so it was designed to get drones in the air very quickly, to to to be responsive. Well that naturally aligned with the drone as a first responder mission for police and fire.
Jeff Holman (27:20)
wasn't exclusive to public safety but it wa but it was but it was already there and and and a good tool for it. So so just to just to focus on this pivot moment for a minute, are you are you saying that the that you guys that you and your team felt like it was it was a formal pivot in the business model to say we're gonna go from the things we've been doing into a a more focused effort on docking stations themselves or was the pivot in the market that you were looking to pursue?
Shaun Jafarian (27:49)
So the pivot was was a little weak at first because it was kind of a toe dip. It was what happened was I said to the team, why don't we produce these dogs for whoever wants them as a way of funding the larger development of a drone-based security company?
Jeff Holman (28:15)
Okay. Okay. So
Shaun Jafarian (28:16)
So,
because we, you know, obviously the value was there. I saw that that we could make money selling these things, but I hadn't completely abandoned the original notion of building a drone-based security company. Yeah. It took about six months. And I saw, hey, these security cats, they're not ready. You know, they they want to see this, they love the demos, all the things, but freedom isn't free and they're not paying the bills. Yeah. And so then it changed to.
We're just gonna make docking stations. And whoever wants to buy them and put them, integrate them in their their own missions can do so. And then so by late 2020, the decision was made that we were a docking station company.
Jeff Holman (29:03)
What were the what were the signals that you were seeing? Just is it just that the adoption was slower because, you know, the market wasn't ready for the type of tech that you were presenting to them? Or is that is that the signal or were there other signals that you saw?
Shaun Jafarian (29:16)
That was primary, right? The fact that they weren't actually buying anything, but it was also what we were seeing happening with respect to drone as a first responder and other mission sets, agriculture and inspection were starting to take notice at that point. Okay. So it was a combination of things. But but yeah, it was mostly the fact that the security industry wasn't spending money on it.
Jeff Holman (29:42)
Did you see did you see better signals, if I can call it that, in the docking station side of the business, the product line? Or was that or was that more of like, Hey, let's w we we're we were doing this already, let's just put more effort into it?
Shaun Jafarian (29:55)
I think more the latter. This was still this was still mostly on speculation. Yeah. Right. I mean, we didn't get our first sales until the summer of 2023. Okay. Now, we weren't ready to sell either, right? I mean, we were building these things out of fiberglass that was never going to work, super expensive, took forever. by 22, we had a
We had a prototype that we were ready to scale with. and so, you know, there was we could have sold some of those fiberglass units. I'm glad we didn't. the first units that were actually went out the door were were made out of out of AVS, they're, you know, plastic. They were we had molds made. We were, you know, we were had moved on to actual manufacturing that was real, as opposed to a small team.
Fumbling about with fiberglass.
Jeff Holman (30:55)
But you were in the but you were you were you were, you know, very much in the in the startup zero to one phase of the business, saying, Hey, yes, let's try this, let's sell to these guys, let's try this, let's sell to these guys, let's so you're you're trying you're trying you're trying hardware, you're trying software, probably, you're trying different market, you know, customer segments, and and so and so that's where you landed. How did you know when so you sold your first units in 2023? Did you have signals prior to that that were encouraging
saying, hey, w this was the right pivot to go from, you know, these these kind of full fully designed security systems into docking stations, agnostic d docking stations themselves. What were the earliest signals you saw that said the this is the right move?
Shaun Jafarian (31:39)
When we were starting to get requests for quotes from folks, companies that were not doing security. You know. like actual quotes. What, you know, saying we would like to buy one of these, what does it cost? Kind of thing, while we were still making about fiberglap. those were coming for well, the very first one came out of Japan from a fishing company that wanted to use them for some kind of maritime.
inspection of things. I I don't recall all the details, but that was the first time we issued a quote to a potential customer. Yeah. It was not security related.
Jeff Holman (32:19)
W was this a push or a pull for you guys? What I mean, were you guys having to go out and find these Japanese fishing companies that might be interested or or or were they coming to find you?
Shaun Jafarian (32:28)
No, they found us. and that's another thing that we did not follow the playbook on tech startups when it comes to marketing and finding customers and things. our whole team is technical. We don't, I mean, to this day, me, the founder, is the main sales guy. And I don't think I'm all that good at it, to be honest. but we made early partnerships that offloaded a lot of the stuff that we were not good at.
And that's a mixed bag, those kind of partnerships, right? But but the very first ones were software companies that were building autonomous drone software. Those companies saw the value early in docking stations. They had customers that were already asking for. So much of our early marketing and customers finding us was through that channel, was through these partnerships with.
drone software companies.
Jeff Holman (33:30)
So you're saying, hey, we went out, we we found partners, the partners then did some of the some of the push for us and and people started finding us, you started selling these. during this time I would expect that there were a lot of factors, you know, there's a lot of movement externally from the comp you know, from the company where you're where you're saying, Hey, FAA rules are probably changing over time and, you know, different drone market segments are popping up.
or or maybe maybe declining. What what what was the overall market like that you had to navigate?
Shaun Jafarian (34:07)
non existent.
Jeff Holman (34:09)
Meaning
nobody was buying drone docking stations at this point. Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (34:12)
That's right.
Jeff Holman (34:13)
But the but the overall drone industry was probably pretty lively, I would I would guess.
Shaun Jafarian (34:20)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (34:21)
No?
Shaun Jafarian (34:21)
It was getting started. I mean, it was it was in its infancy. It's still in its infancy. It really is. And I think one of the things that's not well understood about drones in particular is a lot of the the tech models don't apply to drones. You
Jeff Holman (34:43)
in what way?
Shaun Jafarian (34:44)
can't just throw a ton of money at this and then make a ton of money.
Because there's other barriers in the way that it's not just regulations. It's well, I call it the Z-axis tax. Okay. Anytime you're dealing in three dimensions, yeah, humans are gonna get s squeamish. This is a subset of aviation. Aviation takes longer than you want. It is more expensive than anybody thinks when they first set out to do it. Drones.
Our aviation. The Z-axis tax applies. Everything is harder, it is more expensive, has regulatory issues. It's just more expensive every anytime you have to deal with height. And people are weird about it. People operate in a two-dimensional world for the most part. And and so when you add the z-axis to things, everything takes longer. So we're still in the infancy stage of drones. And
Jeff Holman (35:48)
Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (35:48)
And the
US in particular is so far behind China that China's probably not in the infancy stage anymore, honestly. I haven't actually seen firsthand exactly how much they're using drones over there, but from I understand, it is a lot more than here. Yeah. and that's changing. But this has taken way longer than we thought it was going to when we first set out, right?
And that's that's typical of of of many startups, but I think that the the Z axis tax is a big contributor to it.
Jeff Holman (36:23)
I I've got to ask, 'cause now I'm trying to picture in my mind. What w what would you say are the X and Y axis labels that that are kind of the more are they are they the same across industries? Or are you just saying there's there's just this basic two-dimensional, easy to navigate environment for a lot of a a lot of companies who are building tech? But once you get off axis out of that out of that major plane, now you're in the Z axis tax. Is it is there
Is there more detail to the X and Y access or is it really the concept of being off plane?
Shaun Jafarian (36:58)
No, it's simpler than that. It's it's XY is the ground. Self driving cars don't care about the Z axis.
Jeff Holman (37:05)
okay. Z axis. We're talking we're talking height in the air. Like literally height in the air. So when so when Tesla, who recently announced that their cars are gonna fly in some fashion, you know, they're in the Z axis. Like literally
Shaun Jafarian (37:21)
Well they are, yes. You you found the example to disprove what I said.
Jeff Holman (37:25)
Well, I don't know. Does it disprove? It it's it's Elon Musk. He's a he's he he he navigates his the axis differently than most people, I think, right? Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (37:33)
You know, come on. They're not they're not selling that thing to the public. Nobody's buying a car with with rocket thrusters on it. Okay. It was cute. Not yet. It was cute in the same way that putting a roadster in in orbit of Mars is cute. but but the Teslas that are driving around right now, they they don't do anything in the Z-axis. And so that's that's what I mean by that. Is that and that Z axis that it applies to under C as well. I'll say that. That same thing, it's hard.
Bad things can happen, right? the Z-axis means that you are now dealing with gravity in a way that you're not when you don't have a big Z-axis. Z-axis
Jeff Holman (38:13)
Gravity, atmosphere.
Shaun Jafarian (38:15)
is what makes everything harder from engineering, cost of manufacturing regulations, all of it.
Jeff Holman (38:22)
Well, I'm curious, do you think that having a player like Tesla enter, at least, you know, with prototypes and and the showiness, are are they gonna help accelerate some of the some of the developments and acceptance and rules around that that might simplify Z axis strategies?
Shaun Jafarian (38:43)
Well, I I would argue Tesla and SpaceX have both done that, you know, with the innovations. And and I'll admit that our inspiration for much of our network model for drone docky stations is inspired by the Tesla charging network. Right. That as far as I'm concerned, that's the biggest contribution Tesla has really made is their charging network.
Jeff Holman (39:07)
The infrastructure.
Shaun Jafarian (39:08)
Yes. Yes. Because every every
Auto manufacturer that makes an electric car is using the Tesla charging network. You know, they enabled that. And I do think they they are getting there on the self-driving thing. I think Waymo's probably a little further along, but nonetheless, their real contribution is that charging network. And that's something that we are are emulating in so far as we see a future where drones are going to need a network where they can travel from charging station to charging station.
And that's part of our business model is is Omnidocs strategically deployed to allow autonomous drones to go from one place to another and charge on the way. So yeah, Tesla has absolutely paved the way in you know many reports.
Jeff Holman (39:59)
I I I did not realize the the the strength of the analogy until you're just describing that. But you know, autonomous driving cars going from charging station to charging station, autonomous drones flying from docking station to docking station. Sounds to me like like you gotta figure out a way to put some some drone docking stations at all of the Tesla charging stations and now we've got now we got a partnership going. man.
The infrastructure's there, right?
Shaun Jafarian (40:30)
Yeah. I mean that's that's the key is where where do you put them? And yeah you know our next product is is going to be a much larger drone docking station for much larger drones, what we call VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing drone drones that take off vertically but have wings and fly around like an airplane. these need docking stations too. And the question is, how do you place these in such a way that these autonomous drones can ferry themselves?
from site to site. Yeah. Yeah. And and charge along the way. and so, you know, I don't know that co locating them, you know, with with car chargers is the answer or not. I mean it may very well be, but it d it depends on the missions. But all I know is that that that it's needed.
Jeff Holman (41:18)
Now you're talking about more than just individual hardware devices. You're you're now talking network and infrastructure at at some level. That's that's right. That's right.
Shaun Jafarian (41:30)
And so we've already got deployments now where a drone can launch from one dock and land in another dock that's several kilometers away. that's that's a proven concept now. Yeah. And so it's in its its early days, but the what it's showing us is that this network effect is going to be very real, like every other network. The larger it gets, the more useful it becomes. Yeah. And
so that's our our long range vision is to have drone docking stations that are that are strategically located that allow drones to go and do autonomous jobs.
Jeff Holman (42:12)
And the docking stations themselves might be mobile mobile at some point, right? Like these are these this is different from the charging size side of things. So
Shaun Jafarian (42:20)
I
mean, we we omnidocs can operate from the back of a truck. we we don't currently have them flying and landing on the move, like at you know, but you can have a dock in the back of a truck launch the drone from a stopped truck, have the truck move several kilometers away, and have the drone come back and land on you know on the truck. Yeah. we are we are starting work on launch and recovery in motion.
But that's not a current feature, but it's coming soon. But today there are omnidocs being used in the back of of trucks.
Jeff Holman (43:00)
Well, as you've got as you've navigated all of this and and I and I I j I'm I I love the concept of the Z axis because you've as you've navigated what might be some of the normal constraints in business on the X and Y axis and you and you add in the Z axis, where do you think your your biggest breakthroughs have have come from?
Shaun Jafarian (43:22)
Well, the the most important thing was getting these in the wild, right? Mm-hmm. Because that's the only way to know all the things. I mean, it's it's great when you have a something you can do demos with, but that's, you know, immeasurably different than what you actually deploy into the real world.
Jeff Holman (43:44)
W once you got once you got these into the wild, did did that did you see, you know, measurable results in in sales or usage or or or, you know, tra some type of traction or other other indicators?
Shaun Jafarian (43:57)
The first thing is that you realize how hardware is hard and things break, you know. And so the things that are are learned from those first early deployments allow you to make the systems more robust, you know. And and so that was one of the first things was well, this has to be absolutely reliable. And you know, there were just things we hadn't thought of. and so
About one year after the first deployments, so the first deployments were the summer of twenty-three. we had a couple of docks go through a hurricane in Houston Hurricane Barrel in Houston. Wow. and they survived and were actually used after the storm passed to do relief effort missions for for the two police departments that had them. Wow. But
I don't know that that would have been the case had those been the very first units, right? That was one year into actually building these things. And so we had made changes based on the initial deployments. and that just that can't be emphasized enough. Hardware is brutally hard. it wouldn't necessarily be that way had the the US not offloaded.
manufacturing going back to the nineteen sixties. it hardware's always hard, but but it's particularly hard for a a bootstrapped startup inventing something that never existed.
Jeff Holman (45:41)
Yeah. And something that, you know, in some in some circ circumstances might be subjected to technology export controls and things like that. So offshoring manufacturing has its own complications beyond just the manufacturing, right?
Shaun Jafarian (45:55)
Yes. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (45:57)
It makes sense. That makes sense. How how do you think, Sean that this has contributed to your abilities and capabilities as a leader?
Shaun Jafarian (46:07)
Yeah, it definitely is a confidence booster, but in a way that isn't naturally obvious. I I it's I don't know, you get beat up so long you you you develop scar tissue and you develop ways to flinch in just the right way and you and it so i I don't know, it's cliche, but hardship builds character. Yeah.
To a point, to a point. I think it can go too far too. I think that hardship can bring out things you don't want to come out too. And I've had to try to govern a lot of that. you know, but hardware is hard. And and I know that in the in the US, particularly with respect to like the venture capital scene and investment, all the software has taken the center stage. that is rapidly changing.
but this has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life by far. Okay. going from being a defense contractor, where we were not building a physical product, right? Our product of the original counter drone was engineering services. That's what we were providing. doing that to building a physical hardware product in the aerospace industry that never existed before.
Is like playing the video game on tutorial mode and then going immediately to God mode with no transition in the middle. That's what I apparently decided to do. And so yeah, I've gotten beat up a lot building this this new version of counter drone. and I'd like to think that that has built you know my capacity.
for for dealing with people and for leading people and all that. But
I what it what it's made me realize the most is that I I I am a founder. I I on paper I refer to myself as a founder and CEO. Yeah. But I'm not so sure about that CEO part. All right. I I'm a founder, is what I am.
Jeff Holman (48:28)
What do you you you mean you're you're here you're here to start things, you're here to build things out of nothing, you're here to you're here to br bring the hardware into life of is that what you mean?
Shaun Jafarian (48:38)
Yes. Yes.
Jeff Holman (48:40)
And what do you mean by the CEO side of it?
Shaun Jafarian (48:42)
Yeah, I don't much care for all that, to be honest.
Jeff Holman (48:45)
The the bi the building the business is.
Shaun Jafarian (48:48)
I
mean things that come along with it, right? it's just not something that I I enjoy doing. I mean, you know, we had a a couple brief little fundraiser things that we did that were mostly experiments, right? Yeah. We didn't really need to do it at the time, but I felt like, well, I'm a I'm a tech founder. I have to go out and raise money. it was it was awful. I hated it. Every second of it. And everybody says that, right? But nah, it's different for me. I really hate it. I
I find it repulsive. I find it distasteful. I did not like it. And the fact is, all these tech CEOs, that's all they are. They're fundraisers. That's what they do. That's their job to go out and raise money.
Jeff Holman (49:34)
Is
there is there something you'd something different you'd do on your team, knowing you know, kind of knowing your inclinations toward founder mode and CEO mode?
Shaun Jafarian (49:47)
I don't think so. I don't think so. I I maintain that this has been the right approach, you know? Well
Jeff Holman (49:57)
Well where do you see where do you see things going in the future for Counter Drone and for you?
Shaun Jafarian (50:02)
So I I I think that there's real potential in the fairly short term for very important strategic partnerships coming our way. And that's I think what we need. I think we're at the right stage where we we've built a product that that has a you know a a tech readiness level, you know, in the in the seven, eight range, I think. we got stuff that works in the field. but we are a highly technical team.
And that's where I want us to stay. And so we need the the right strategic partners to come in and take this and run with it. And I and I think that's where this is headed. And and again, that kind of goes back to my reference of me being more of a founder than a CEO.
Jeff Holman (50:51)
And so you're you're seeing that the market, although it's still in its in its infancy, more there's market readiness for this type of technology, for the strategic partnerships to form, for capital you know, infusion capital partnerships to to come about. So is that what you're saying? You're you're is the market starting to catch up to maybe the technology level that you guys have built?
Shaun Jafarian (51:12)
Yes. So yes. And we are seeing of of substantial consolidation starting to happen in the US realm space. And teams are being formed rapidly, and and there's acquisitions on a weekly basis that some of them surprising, some of them predictable, but they're happening. and and it's not just just the US, it's it's happening everywhere.
So th they're we are at an inflection point with respect to drones globally.
Jeff Holman (51:48)
Well that's fascinating. fascinating to hear how you've been building the technology. You're you're kind of ahead of the curve on the technology curve. The market's not there. The market's starting to catch up. And it it'll be interesting to see where all this where all this lands. pun intended there, I guess. So Sean, it's been fantastic having you having you on the show, sharing, sharing insights about yourself as a leader, about your company and the things that you've done, the pivots you've gone through, the market shifts that you've that you've navigated. anything that you would leave others
scaling CEOs with as words of words of wisdom or advice as they're in the same journey as you?
Shaun Jafarian (52:24)
It just that you've you really do have to figure this out yourself. while you should certainly look to others for advice and and strategies, and you should bounce ideas off of folks that you trust and and that you look up to. but there are as many ways to do this as there are.
ideas for you know to how to how to form a company. And and I think that in many cases we we look to our mentors in such a way that we're really just asking them how they came up with the numbers they picked on the lottery ticket.
Jeff Holman (53:12)
Yeah. And so as though that's something we can replicate.
Shaun Jafarian (53:15)
Yeah. Yeah. And and it doesn't work that way. you you definitely have to be, well, you have to be willing to break some rules. That's it. And and and therefore, there is no recipe. you're gonna have to figure it out yourself. And for me, that has meant trusting instinct, maybe a little bit more than I even want to. It is what it is. I mean,
And maybe instinct is the right word, but the maybe intuition is a better is actually a better term. and y you you just have to trust it. That that's that's very that's been very critical for me is yes, I I like to talk to people that are far more successful than I am and get their ideas, but at the end of the day, it's my own intuition that I have to trust.
And that's part of being an entrepreneur though, right? Is that being an entrepreneur means that you've you have convinced yourself that you can do this better.
Jeff Holman (54:15)
Well, that's what I was gonna ask because maybe the answer is the same as what you've already said, but but for someone who's who's sitting there at this at this moment in their, you know, in their founder mode building stage, saying to themselves, Well, Sean, I like I I I got twelve people telling me what to do. How do I how do I have the confidence to step away from all twelve of those things and do something completely different? Like, is is that a
Is that a factor they should be thinking about? just just do it and you'll gain the confidence or is confidence part of the part of the recipe here?
Shaun Jafarian (54:51)
Yeah, absolutely. It it it has to be. It absolutely has to be. There's no other way, you're right, because to create something that didn't exist beforehand means that you have to believe that it it can be done. And if you've got twelve people you're getting advice from, that's too many people, first of all.
Jeff Holman (55:09)
That was a number I just threw out.
Shaun Jafarian (55:11)
But eventually they all start canceling out. You know? And and so i it's important to gather information. but if you've gone down this path, it means that you you have to have a certain rebel thing going on in the first place. You have to. Yeah. You know, and and every starter has a different degree of it, but but you have to have that to some degree, I think, to even get started. So if you've got that, then
For me, anyways, I you I've doubled down on it and and and tried to listen to the intuition. And the thing about intuition is there's a reason that it's there. Okay, you may not know what that is, but it is there. and and this is something that I've learned even you know throughout my education in in studying math and science and and engineering is there's times in even the most technical difficult problems that you know something.
And you don't know why you know it, but you know it. it's there's a reason for that. And you don't necessarily need to know what the reason is, but you have to understand that it's there. And so you gotta trust it. It's not always gonna be right, but I think it's likely to be more right than wrong.
Jeff Holman (56:35)
Get you get you one step closer to that truth that you mentioned seeking out before. So well, Sean, on that note, let's let's call it a a podcast. it's been fantastic having you on the show. Appreciate your insights. I appreciate you sharing your experiences. if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, I mean, could they reach out on LinkedIn or anything like that?
Shaun Jafarian (56:55)
sure. Yep. I can definitely be found on LinkedIn. and yeah, I'll I'll leave it up to you how how else you you know distribute you know content.
Jeff Holman (57:09)
I won't I won't be I won't be sharing your your direct information, but if somebody wants to reach out, Sean Javerian at at on LinkedIn. Yeah.
Shaun Jafarian (57:15)
I'm the only one with that name on LinkedIn's.
Jeff Holman (57:17)
It makes sense. Awesome. Well, it's great to have you and thanks to everyone who joined us on another episode of the Breakout CEO.
Shaun Jafarian (57:24)
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, Jeff. This has been great.
Jeff Holman (57:27)
Been fantastic.
Shaun Jafarian (57:29)
Alright, I'll see you later.
Jeff Holman (57:31)
Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies. To equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.
