1_2 Raad Ahmed: Art, Rebellion, and Resolve in Building a Tech Startup

Raad Seraj: [00:00:00] Hello friends. Welcome to minority trip report. MTR is a podcast for underrepresented views and life journeys with mental health, psychedelics and consciousness. I'm your host Raad Seraj. 

Raad Seraj: Today. My guest is Raad Ahmed. He is the founder and CEO of Lawtrades, angel investor, writer and musician. In 2011 while attending law school Raad started myfbcoverphoto, one of the first apps in the Facebook app store that grew to over 30 million hits per month. In 2015, he got into the 500 global flagship accelerator program and launched law trades. One of the first marketplaces for legal services that made it easy for big companies to hire legal freelancers. The company's gone to raise 9.7 million in total funding and freelancers earn millions on the platform.

Raad Seraj: Every year in 2019, he started publishing a newsletter called space. Call. Rod is originally from Queens New York and is a graduate from the university at Buffalo law school. Rod. Welcome. 

Raad Ahmed: Thank you. Thank you. Super excited [00:01:00] to be here. 

Raad Seraj: Well, obviously I have to start at the most obvious place, which is you're also Raad and I was making this joke when we first opened up... it's like this the Spider-Man meme where like one Spiderman responding the other. So this is gotta be an interesting sort of take as we figure out how to refer to each other. Raad is also good. 

Raad Ahmed: I know... 

Raad Seraj: Let's confuse the audience a little bit. 

Raad Ahmed: No, it's great. I've never met another Raad before and especially spelled in the way that most people mispronounce it and just say rod, so super rad to be here and meet another Raad. And and yeah, it's, it's pretty hilarious. 

Raad Seraj: It's funny because I know you were also in a band and you still play music. Back in the day when I was in Bangladesh and I had my first real band, it wasn't like one of those joke bands. We spent like years looking for a second guitarist, right?

Raad Seraj: Somebody who's actually better than I was, cuz I wasn't very good. And then we landed up on the guy. I remember like the front man came to my house and go, like I found the person I found exactly the person reading. I'm like, all right, dope. That's fucking awesome. Yeah. And of course he goes yeah, he guess what his [00:02:00] name is?

Raad Seraj: It's like rod, no way. I'm like another rod. Yeah. Not joking that his name was Raad Hussein. 

Raad Ahmed: That is so weird.

Raad Seraj: Not only that he had the same guitar, the same, the digital processor that we used back in the day. 

Raad Ahmed: Oh my God. 

Raad Seraj: The only difference was he had a head full of hair and it seems to be the pattern here

Raad Ahmed: I do have longish...... 

Raad Seraj: Cause you have a wonderful ...yes. 

Raad Ahmed: A head of hair while it's still there. Well, it was funny because I think like on Twitter you tweeted at one of our investors and then, and then he tweeted something back like. I, I, I back every rod, like, or something like that. And then there were like three other rods tagged to it.

Raad Ahmed: I'm just like, oh my God. Like I went from like spending the first 34 years of my life, not meeting another rod. And then all of a sudden it's just like, all these Raads are out there. So it's pretty cool. Like, we should definitely start like a, that funny, a discord channel, a for Raads or something. Yeah. 

Raad Seraj: bring all the weirdo in. It's so funny cuz every one of those [00:03:00] rod actually DM me later on and we of connected. I'm like, oh, that's actually you and you, can't not only got a weird thing that happens on Twitter. Exactly. 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah. It's like 23 and me, but just names like weird names and you just can all just connect and see them on a map and.

Raad Seraj: yeah. Find your fifth cousin also named rod probably named Estonia or something. yeah. That's awesome, rod. I really appreciate you hopping on. Obviously we have lots of talk about, I think there's a couple of reasons why I was really particularly excited about this episode.

Raad Seraj: Good place to start is maybe where we got both of our names. So I'd love to know a little bit about how you grew up. What was that like for you having that name particularly around the time you grew up? So let's start there and go from there.

Raad Ahmed: Yeah, sure. So I was born in 1987 in Queens, New York in Elmers hospital. And my parents immigrated around that time to New York city in Queens and had me there. We grew up in a, like a two bedroom house [00:04:00] with like seven other family members. And my dad ended up leaving his job in Bangladesh to follow the American dream give me, and eventually my sister a sort of better life.

Raad Ahmed: He used to work as an airline stewardist for Biman airlines. That's where he met my mom. And I think at that time, like, Flight attendants made a boatload of money or just like a, a good chunk for somebody that didn't really graduate high school. And he, he, he left that job to move to the us and started from scratch and ended up doing a lot of different odd jobs to make ends meet delivered newspapers late at night.

Raad Ahmed: My mom stayed home with us, me and my younger sister. And there, it was a bit of a struggle for him to just leave, everything behind and start again from scratch and come to this country without really a formal education or clear path to how he's gonna earn an income.

Raad Ahmed: So he ended up starting a moving company, so like literally moving people's furniture across across New York and eventually across the [00:05:00] us. Predominantly within the bond Ashi community. He ran some ads in like the, the, the local newspaper there. But you know, it was, it was grueling. It was really hard work.

Raad Ahmed: It didn't pay that much. But you know, he, he, he would work 12, 13 hour days, moving his no joke. I remember, I mean, even even reason I moved like, just like a year ago. And I was just like, I kind of did it myself with some help. I was just like, I never wanna, like, I, I purposely don't want to move because of the process of moving.

Raad Ahmed: So, I have so much respect for him because for somebody to do that day in and day out it's, it's kind of insane. So at a very early age, I, I witnessed a lot, of my father doing that and it was ingrained in me to get a good education.

Raad Ahmed: Don't do manual work, like have a stable income and all that stuff. So, it was it was a struggle, but Eventually, we moved out of that house and we got a bigger house and we moved around a lot. I think that was like one thing every two, three years we bounced from place to place.

Raad Ahmed: I can't really remember exactly why, but it was always eventually [00:06:00] like something related to either his job or something else. So a lot of starting over as a, as a kid, like being the new kid every two to three years. So I never had really too many roots or stable place growing up. I was always a little bit of like an outsider coming in.

Raad Ahmed: But eventually we, my dad saved up enough money and moved this to long island when I was in middle school. And that's where I probably spent the most amount of time before going off to college. 

Raad Seraj: Did you move house to house in the same neighborhood? 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah, it was, it was predominantly around Queens that we, that we moved around and I think it was like, okay, we, we started in this like two bedroom house with another family, and then we got like, like a one bedroom house for ourselves and then eventually a second bedroom apartment, so that me and my sister could have our own room.

Raad Ahmed: And then just worked our way up really, I think that's why we bounced around a lot. But you [00:07:00] know, in that process, I remember I remember from kindergarten to second grade, I went to a Catholic school, private Catholic school, even though I was, I was raised to be Muslim, but my parents didn't want to send me to the public school cuz they were just like, oh my God, like, he's gonna just like, do a bunch of drugs and get tattoos and vandalize things.

Raad Ahmed: So, I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to second grade and then third grade to fourth grade, I went to a private Muslim school. So very confused. And then like fifth grade, I then ended up finally going back to public school, but it was a good one. I think it was like in somewhere in like two gardens.

Raad Ahmed: And then sixth grade onward till till high school graduation. I moved to long island, so away from away from Queens. And that was, to, to my dad, that was like the ultimate, like, we've made it we got the house we're in suburbia and then that's when all the teenage angst came out, like all the pop talk songs about like getting away from suburbia.

Raad Ahmed: I was just like, I was living it. I was just like, Screw the white picket fence, like started writing a bunch of songs [00:08:00] and skateboarded a lot and just kind of fell into that culture a little bit. But I don't know. I was always... 

Raad Seraj: it so funny cuz initially they're oh, he's gonna go to public Catholic school because we don't want Raad to get in trouble. And then they went to the suburbia and you're like, fuck this. Why am I here? 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah. Yeah. I, I was always just finding like, it was almost just kind of like anything that remotely felt like the normal path quote, unquote that everyone else was doing. I would just always just bounce the other way. And it's I think luckily society almost rewards you for doing those opposite sort of things.

Raad Ahmed: Cuz a lot of people don't go down that path, but it was always like a rebellious thing in me. I mean that mixed with just a super strict religious Muslim household where. I wasn't allowed to really use the internet growing up, even though like now, like my life's work is basically on the internet.

Raad Ahmed: I found my wife on a dating app. I like use the internet almost every single day to communicate with all of our workers and everyone on the team. But there was just a lot of like restraint and it's under understandably so. Right. Like when you're coming into [00:09:00] this country around the time period of like when broadband internet came out and like, just the culture and cable TV and like pornography and magazines and like all of this, just, probably just overwhelmed the crap out of my dad and, and, and my mom.

Raad Ahmed: And I understand why, like, the reaction was just like, okay, we must protect him and like, keep him away from all these things. But it was almost kind of like the more, like the more they kept me away from something, the more I did it. Right. I wasn't allowed to, we had a computer obviously for school and all that stuff, but it was like, Locked up in the basement.

Raad Ahmed: So like I would growing up, this is like in long island. I would like wake up in the middle of the night, like sneak downstairs, like go on the computer, use aim, chat with a bunch of people. Like think of some business ideas, help create websites for other people. And then like go back to sleep at like two or three o'clock in the morning.

Raad Ahmed: And I mean, even to this day, I don't know. Maybe that made me like a night WL cuz I sleep pretty late, but it was interesting. that was 

Raad Ahmed: interesting. So [00:10:00] what was it like, until you hit suburbia and you hit your sort of as you said, angsty stage, how did you identify and define yourself at that time?

Raad Ahmed: Did you feel like you were an American, a Muslim like somewhere in between didn't even care? What was it? 

Raad Ahmed: I definitely identified more as an American. I don't know. I, I, I. Like music to me is a very spiritual thing. I mean, even, even now like the, I, I pretty much listen to the same albums and same songs.

Raad Ahmed: Bad religion and no effects that I listened to when I was in like high school. And I do that, like when I go for a run today. So I didn't really identify a lot with like other people, like family. And, I didn't have too many friends even in high school and middle school. So it was like, It was songs and music and bands and and, and, and, and skateboarders and things that I consumed that I really resonated with, cuz they were also like a little bit of the outsiders and they were doing their own thing and they were, they were having [00:11:00] fun and there was tons of freedom and there was a creation, creativity process mixed into that.

Raad Ahmed: So I just absorbed myself in all of that. And again, like when I couldn't really use the internet and I wasn't really allowed to watch TV, one of the only things I could do is like listen to the radio and listen to, like, I remember like K rock was like the, the main radio station back then that used to play a lot of the alternative rock music.

Raad Ahmed: So I would just go in my room and quietly just listen to those songs eventually, my dad did get me a guitar, electric guitar, so I would. listen to all these songs and I would try to play it. And, and, and, and I spent a lot of my adolescent years around that sort of age period when I was like in middle school and high school, just like listening to songs and playing it on guitar and writing lots of music and, and, kind of in isolation a little bit, cuz I wasn't able to really go out.

Raad Ahmed: I didn't, I didn't drink because for other reasons like along with not being able to go out at night, I had. Neurological issue growing up where I would get like seizures. And then it was just kind of told that like, if I, [00:12:00] if I drank a lot, I would get it. So I freaked out my parents that they would never, like, it was always just like, you can't ever have a sip of beer.

Raad Ahmed: Like now it's not true. I drink and everything is fine, but like just lots of it was fear. Right. So I don't know whenever whenever it's like sometimes when I find myself kind of contained like that, a lot of beautiful, amazing things come out of that, but, it's, it's mixed with a lot of like angst and and, and anger and, and certain energies that are bottled up.

Raad Ahmed: And I'm able to channel it through other things, which, whether it was like skateboarding or writing punk rock songs, or playing, playing, playing, playing the drums or whatever. I, I mainly played guitar. There was always an outlet. There was always a channel, which I was really grateful for.

Raad Ahmed: And I think even to this day, I kind of carry some of that with me in whatever I do. It's like, it's a different medium. It's like a, it's, it's a startup, but it's still very similar in many ways to like creating something that I thought of creating when I was like 16, 17, it's just a different [00:13:00] platform to do it.

Raad Ahmed: I'm still telling my story. I'm still, breaking down walls. But it's just done in a different way. 

Raad Seraj: There's so much of what you said, really resonates with me regarding startups. I tweeted a couple of weeks ago, I think all startups and founders start off as artists because you are wrestling with Ambi.

Raad Seraj: Creation is all about how do you wrestle with ambiguity? The self-doubt and all the stuff that comes with building, creating anything, you become a scientist later on, because once a startup matures, you have a reputability you like product market fit. But until then, you're just like, it's all uncertain.

Raad Seraj: You don't know, you can like tweak and find your ways. But the other thing that I wanted to reflect on really quickly is, so I grew up in Saudi Arabia actually. So I born in Bangladesh. I grew up in Saudi Arabia for 14 years till I was about 16 years old. In 2000 we went back to Bangladesh and then nine 11 happened, of course.

Raad Seraj: And in Saudi, you, obviously at that time, like if you and my parents were migrant workers, so we didn't really have much money to go around with very like lower middle class upbringing. [00:14:00] You find your little joys, but like no drugs. I know there's drugs behind closed doors, if you're a rich person, but like none of the stuff that were like, if you find rebellion, you're gonna channel it through.

Raad Seraj: And music ended up being the only souls that I had for my anger and stuff like that. And when I moved back to Bangladesh at 16, all of a sudden, not even smoking to having this entire world of insanity, like hard drugs, music, like I remember going to the first time into a music store and bang, it was like kid in the candy store.

Raad Seraj: Everything was pirated of course. And the cover was pin with a jet printer dot printer that, you know yeah. But I remember first time seeing like this CD and I picked it up and it's like this, writing, it looked like calligraphy. It was laterals by tool. Yeah. First time I heard that album and it changed my life forever.

Raad Seraj: I think that was, if I was gonna say that one of the seminal moments that like saved me was finding that album. And so when you're talking about like you [00:15:00] spend hours and hours with music, because it's, you can't go out. So you go inwards. Yeah. And I think that's sort a profound effect on how I see the world now and learning how to go inwards.

Raad Seraj: And we're gonna, I'm really curious to hear about that journey. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit, but yeah I think relationship of music is something that I stayed, probably the only thing that I've done consistently my entire life, which is have some relationship to art. 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a form of meditation, I didn't, I, I didn't really look at that as, as meditation.

Raad Ahmed: I think now, like people view it as like, it needs to be this thing on the com app and there's, peaceful waterfall music playing in the background. You sit still for 10 minutes and you me, it's like, that's not, that's not exactly what meditation is. Meditation is just, it can be anything, it can be drawing something, it can be listening to music.

Raad Ahmed: It can be going for a walk, like as long as you're able to like remove, yourself, your thoughts from the moment you're experiencing. You're meditating, right? That's [00:16:00] that's ultimately like, I mean, even, even, even for you, like similar, like nine 11 was absolutely horrible for me. I was already like this outsider punk rock kid in high school that like didn't have that many friends and was always kind of like a little bit of like a weirdo doing weird things.

Raad Ahmed: And then when that happened, it was almost just kind of like, okay, this spotlight was like on me and I mean, just, just people just said some awful things. And I don't, I don't hold it to them today. I mean, it's just, I think like being a, being a Muslim American in high school, when that happens with how high schoolers are.

Raad Ahmed: That was just a crappy, crappy time. And, and again, I, when I, when I would skateboard, when I would listen to music, when I would make art or whatever, I was able to find that separation between this self, this ego, this constant thinking, the thoughts that the repetition of what someone said, and I was able to turn it off.

Raad Ahmed: And and I love that feeling. And I wanna stay in that feeling, as long as [00:17:00] possible on, on most days even today. But you know, I, I, I, I don't, I don't have any regrets to it. I don't like hold anything against anybody. I think that it's made me, the person that I am today.

Raad Ahmed: And there's a lot of, I think, I think just growing up as like a first gen immigrant, I, I, I did have this like sort of attitude where I just like blamed my parents for so many things blamed, like. Like, like, like, like just all the rules and, and, and and, and strictness in the household growing up and all these, like, like kids that were just like assholes.

Raad Ahmed: And I'm just kind of like, at some point I just let all that go. Right. All of that baggage is like, it's, it's, it's just memories. It's just thoughts. It's it's, it's it's, it's just, it's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. So it was interesting. Yes. Nine 11 was a very interesting time period to be brown in America.

Raad Ahmed: I mean, not even Muslim, it's just like anyone that's brown. I like, if you had to freaking turban, you were like, I think even [00:18:00] targeted even more. But which absolutely makes no sense that we do that now, but makes no sense now. 

Raad Seraj: Well, it's interesting Because, I also was 16. I remember distinctly and I'm sure it's for the same for a lot of people. It's I remember distinctly the moment where I walked into my apartment, my dad and mom were glued to the TV and nine 11 happened. And you saw, I saw the second bill, plane go in. But that sort of like feeling reverberated even, even though I was in the us, I decided actually not to go to the us for school because of that moment.

Raad Seraj: My brother and sister went to the US got awesome scholarships are doing really well. Yeah. But I said, fuck that. Cause my actual, my legal first name is actually hue. And I'm like, alright guy with my name, my color, my religion that's I don't want to go there. So it's really interesting.

Raad Seraj: The effect is had, but I wanna switch gears a little bit because, I think so there was a comment and I forgot, but it's on your blog. Let me just pull that up really quickly, cuz I found really interesting as a segue to the next part of the conversation, which is. Passionately [00:19:00] curious, compulsively, minimalist.

Raad Seraj: I, I like making all things easier and new things possible. When did, and how did like your first venture come around? myfbcoverphoto or FB cover photo. 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah, yeah. So, that was in my second year of law school. So again, I, I got into law school and I finished my first year. I did really well.

Raad Ahmed: And then again, had that, had that that gut feeling like, oh my God, it's happening again? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm back in the, I'm back in the, in the line doing the same thing as everybody else. And and I remember around that time, this is gonna sound kind of cheesy, but like I watched the movie, the social network and it just blew my mind.

Raad Ahmed: Like I remember I watched it with like my ex-girlfriend at the time. And we both got out the movie theater and I was just like, oh my God. Like I was, I was literally like, I, I was, I was literally almost like shaking in, in terms of like the impact that, that, that it had on me, that, that, that was actually possible.

Raad Ahmed: And to her it was [00:20:00] just like, yeah, it was all right. I thought it was like a bunch of dialogue. I was like, did you not see the same movie that I saw? Like, like it was, it, it was, it was, it was just, it, it just, it just, I've always thought about it, but to actually be able to kind of like, see the Facebook story unfold in the way that they did, even though, obviously some parts they exaggerated and it was like it, it was a movie, it was dramatized, but the essence, the core of it, that somebody with a laptop in an internet connection can like build something awesome on the internet and like affect so many lives and, and, and, and you can create an impact and you don't need permission to do that.

Raad Ahmed: And I just, I just just went home that day and was just like, I'm gonna build something. It just happened to be an app in the Facebook app store. I wasn't, I wasn't that wasn't that clear to me at that time. I knew I wanted to build something. So after of watching that movie and I, and I read a bunch of books on not a bunch, there was actually one book in particular, another cheesy title.

Raad Ahmed: It was called millionaire Fastline, but it was one of the few books that actually broke down how wealthy people actually get wealthy. And it's not by renting out your time. It's [00:21:00] by creating something once and being able to like distribute that in an unlimited amount of ways with a zero cost of replication and also yes, owning assets.

Raad Ahmed: So it can be something like a music CD where you record an album, you make it once. And then the MP3s of the CDs can just be duplicated for like two pennies or whatever it costs for the bandwidth to be accessible to everybody. But you can still charge that like 9 99 for it. And I, I kind of understood that concept for how internet companies work and building this website once build writing this code once and having the entire world that has internet connection to access this, whatever this store almost that's open 24 7 that can have as many people as possible in it.

Raad Ahmed: That is that, that, that can, that can just grow and scale. So, the idea for the Facebook app store, after I had that experience with the movie and read these books and I was just like, okay, I need to, I need to do something. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I don't know, like, it's almost like the, the universe just did its own [00:22:00] thing.

Raad Ahmed: And, and, and I ended up watching this video on F eight that's I think Facebook's annual like developer conference and they were at the time, this was like, 20, I forgot like 2010 or 2011 or something like that. They were just like, Hey, we're gonna completely revamp the Facebook profile and we're gonna put this gigantic cover photo.

Raad Ahmed: On, on top of now, every social network has like a cover photo. By that time, Facebook was one of the first ones to do it. And I was like, huh, like, that's a cool idea. Like, I could probably see some people like changing that up or customizing it and, adding it, like I viewed it like, kind of like a desktop wallpaper kind of thing.

Raad Ahmed: And I was like, okay, like, wouldn't it be kind of neat to have like an app where you can browse through all these different cover photos, perfectly sized to that whatever banner image and some of them, be like inspirational quotes or like Justin Bieber, cover photos or like food photos or whatever.

Raad Ahmed: And you can with one click automatically change it on your Facebook profile and, and, and express yourself in, in a certain way. So I did that. I basically found this [00:23:00] developer based in China, paid him like 300 bucks to write like the source code submitted it to the Facebook app store, which at the time was like super new.

Raad Ahmed: Like, I think we were like one of the first ones even live in the Facebook app store. I don't think it exists anymore because of all this stuff that happened where people took advantage of the platform. But I spent pretty much, most of my second and third year of law school, literally downloading images off the internet, cropping them to be the banner size and uploading it on my site.

Raad Ahmed: And just during class, after class, early in the mornings, just like how many photos can I, can I, can I basically upload? And it was. It was just, I mean, it, it was like a, like a digital sweat shop factory of one person trying to upload these things. But eventually I had like, like thousands of them up there and people accessed them.

Raad Ahmed: And as soon as they were able to click a button, it would change it. And then it, the viral component was they would post it on their Facebook profile that you used this app for it. So all of their friends then saw it. So eventually it snowball to this, the, at its peak, it was getting about 30 million hits a month.

Raad Ahmed: [00:24:00] And I read, I read a book on ad senses or some article on it of how ad senses and banner ads work. So I threw a banner ad on there and to my surprise, it was, it was, I think at its peak was making like, like two 50 K a year through ad clicks while I was in law school still and had that second epiphany or just like, all right, like.

Raad Ahmed: This is what the fuck I'm doing. You know what I mean? Like I am like, I, I am not interviewing for anymore law firms. Like the people that were interviewing me were literally making less money. Like they were gonna offer me less money and ask me to work more hours than just like, kind of waking up and uploading a couple of images.

Raad Ahmed: So, that was the, that was the, the other sort of profound epiphany experience. And, and, and, and I wanted to do it bigger and that eventually segued into, into law trades. 

Raad Seraj: That's fucking insane, man. Like your first one, you came outta watching a movie you're like, all right, time to pay attention to Facebook and you did this thing. That's insane. How did your parents feel about that? 

Raad Ahmed: My mom loved it. I told them I, I told my mom she just couldn't believe [00:25:00] like she, I had to open up the laptop and show her like the AdWord dashboard and was like, this was how much money I made in one day.

Raad Ahmed: And she just. I think her first reaction was just like, how is that possible? Did you not have to go somewhere to do that? Like that happened while you slept? And I was just like, yeah, it happened while I was sleeping, like I've just made like $7,000. And at first she didn't get it, but my mom was definitely more of the artistic supportive person that was just like, go do your music, go do your art.

Raad Ahmed: And my dad was like the, like the pragmatic, get the degree, get the salary sort of thing. So I told my mom about it. My dad I actually, I can't remember, honestly, I don't think so. So I think I was just like still in this weird state with him, cuz this kind of led into me not taking the bar.

Raad Ahmed: The bar examination. I think I remember telling him that in like my, my third year. And he got really upset about that. So. I think that if I piled on this like Facebook app website thing, that would've probably made the situation a lot worse. But I, [00:26:00] he knows about it now. And, but like, it was, it was, it, it just didn't make sense to him.

Raad Ahmed: It was, it was very hard to comprehend that this was actually possible and that this could be actually sustainable. In the end there was a bunch of other competitors that came out and like completely destroyed me and like outranked me on SEO and built a better app. And, and, and that was a little bit of like the learning lesson with that, where it's just like, you can't just expect to build something and leave it as it is.

Raad Ahmed: You need to constantly tinker with it. You need to constantly make it better. You need to hire team around it. I didn't do any of that. So, but I made, I made enough money to save up to eventually pursue other things. And so, it played its part well... 

Raad Seraj: As a life lesson. I mean, that's pretty incredible, right? I mean, I can only imagine, have you said this is what I'm fucking gonna do with my life, right. I want, talk about law trades, how you came across that what this company is to you. Tell us a little bit about what law trades is, and then more interestingly, this wild sort of fundraising journey that you've spoken about on Twitter.

Raad Seraj: It's I really enjoyed reading that thread, [00:27:00] particularly around like coming back from the absolute brink of death and not being on your way like launching, like you guys are doing really well on an mr. Basis. So yeah, what was, what is Lawtrades? What's, what has it been last few years?

Raad Ahmed: Yeah. So Lawtrades is essentially a marketplace for legal services. So we connect companies to a network of vet. Legal freelancers and we enable them to work together, pay each other and just have a collaborative relationship on the internet.

Raad Ahmed: The way that it started is I got the idea from it, unsurprisingly while I was in law school. And I wanted to start my own practice. I didn't want to go and work for somebody else. And when I looked around for any sort of platform, remotely close to like what Shopify did for e-commerce sellers, I couldn't find anything that did what they did, but for delivering professional services online, there were other marketplaces at the time, like Upwork and [00:28:00] fiber.

Raad Ahmed: But they catered more towards like one off projects and designers and developers, but not like legal services, which I knew from like interning at different. Law firms prior to law school and during law school and just being in this space, I knew it needed to be something super nuanced for that industry.

Raad Ahmed: So, I set out to build it as like a side project. The initial idea for law trades was like find a local lawyer in your neighborhood using an appointment booking tool. So very influenced by, I don't know if you guys you're familiar with the with the website Z doc, but it allows you to book appointments with doctors and dentists online.

Raad Ahmed: And there were at the time, like one of the big breakout startups out of, out in New York city. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna build a Zoc for lawyers. And you go onto this website, you punch in your zip code and you see a list of available lawyers. The lawyers will sync their calendar, so you can see their real time availabilities, you click a button and the lawyer will call you at that time.

Raad Ahmed: Very simple. And that was like worst [00:29:00] case. If, if I don't get any users off of this, I'll just use it myself and be the futuristic law firm of one or whatever. Just doing something like that was already so far beyond every other like legal website. If you actually go to most big law firm, I said, there's not even a way to contact them and all the smaller ones, like there's interface.

Raad Seraj: You started dog fooding your service before anybody else basically. 

Raad Ahmed: Yeah. Yeah. I it's what would I want it's like at, at the base level, an easier way to capture clients in order for, for me to convert them. So we ended up U starting off as like a subscription based services and went basically door to door literally door to door with a square reader, convincing lawyers that we found on Yelp to sign up for $300 a year.

Raad Ahmed: I have no idea why we set the price to $300 a year. It seemed like a decent amount of money. At that time I eventually recruited my co-founder like maybe like. A year after I tinkered with this as a side project. And some lawyers were kind of interested in signing up. We went to we went to undergrad together and he [00:30:00] was in law school at the time.

Raad Ahmed: He was one year behind from me. So like around the time when I was graduating, he was still in law school, but you know, he had a car. So I thought like, okay, well, if you have a car, then we can expand our target audience, our target market. We can drive to long island and convince people there that they should use our services.

Raad Ahmed: And it, it, it literally was that we would meet lawyers in coffee shops. We would go into their office. We'd do all this convincing to just be like, Hey sign up for the service. And a lot of them did a lot of them did. And I think in those early days, it really taught us. How important it is to just kind of like go the extra mile for your customers to really stand out, even though we had like a subpar product and it, it didn't do a lot of the promises.

Raad Ahmed: We said that it would do, like, they loved the, they loved the appointment booking tool function, but really what they wanted was like customer demand. They wanted leads. And as like a tiny company that didn't have really an advertising budget or had the, the runway to do like SEO, which takes like months and months, because [00:31:00] we were late to the game that modeled didn't really work out.

Raad Ahmed: So, and on top of that, we were targeting every single type of lawyer. So divorce lawyers, personal injury lawyers, business lawyers, it was just too much for us to handle. So we eventually then pivoted the business to being more of a B2B marketplace focused on small businesses and startups. We're like, okay, That's more refined.

Raad Ahmed: We're gonna only be working with business lawyers. It's gonna be corporate work. So they're transactional. We can turn them into like flat fee projects and we're gonna create this Amazon like experience of buying legal services, where you go in, you say what you want, you purchase it for 500 bucks. The lawyer does the work and you get it delivered like easy, seamless, whatever the time sounded like.

Raad Ahmed: An, an amazing idea. We got some traction off of it that eventually allowed us to get into 500 startups. That was the accelerator program. They put like 125 K I think, into the company. Prior to that, I convinced my college friends to put in a little bit of money, like my college roommate and, and two other folks that.

Raad Ahmed: Was like [00:32:00] Pree before that at an insanely low, I think like 2.7, 5 million valuation or something like that. Now it's like the Y seat floor price is like 30 million cap with like a, with like a deck and a landing page or whatever. But we, we raised, we raised from family and friends and then we got into 500 startups and then we eventually raised the proper seed round with VCs.

Raad Ahmed: So, Draper associates led our seed round to Tim Draper. Really great investors invested in Tesla, SpaceX, Robin hood. And we were just like, we were over the moon. We was like, oh my God, like we fucking did it. We made it. We were done. The hard work is done. Little, do we know about this little thing called the unit economics and financial statements and profitability?

Raad Ahmed: We had a good market segment, but the problem was our users were startups that used this on a very one off way and 90% of startups or something like that go out of business after their first. So it was like, it was like building a sandcastle by the shore every single month. We'd build it up, build it up, [00:33:00] build it up and then the wave would come and just wash it all over.

Raad Ahmed: Then we had to start our revenue from scratch from zero. So it was insanely insanely difficult business to profitably grow. So on top of that, this kind of ties into fundraisers. Very competitor came out, raised 75 million bucks, every single investor we were talking with for our series a pretty much like ghosted us.

Raad Ahmed: And we had no choice, but to make like a major pivot to the business if we wanted to survive. Right. And and, and we know we were, I wasn't ready to give up. I was just like, there has to be another way, even though, like our bank account was getting low, our customers were churning. We weren't, we, we, we raised the bridge around but our backs were really against the wall.

Raad Ahmed: And around that time, we, we figured out that we there was a better customer segment out there, particularly high. Tech companies that had an actual legal department because as these tech companies grew and scale like crazy pre I P O and recently gone public, every single department was growing like crazy, except for their legal department [00:34:00] that still remained like a couple of people trying to handle everything.

Raad Ahmed: So we found one of those users using the app every single day and we gave him a call and we're just like, Hey, like, what do you do? Why are you using the app so much? And he was like, well, I'm a general counsel. And I like this lawyer that I'm working with, like get rid of the, create a project button and let me hire them, every month.

Raad Ahmed: And I'll pay you a subscription for that. And like, our minds were blown. We're just like, what the hell is a general counsel? And why is he using us? Like, why is he just like using us like so regularly? So, that was, again, another sort of light bulb moment went off that like, okay, like that's the, that's the sustainable profitable, repeatable customer segment that like, we need to go after.

Raad Ahmed: And We again, had to start from scratch, rebuilt the platform from the ground up started with like literally a Google spreadsheet built out a new sort of network of lawyers that were more attuned to that customer base. And and, and grew the company from, I think, literally on the brink of bankruptcy just a couple of years ago to, I think this month we did around like $850K and monthly revenues and eventually led to [00:35:00] our series a, that was a couple of months ago.

Raad Seraj: That just absolutely incredible. It reminds me of your first experience and how you brought it all back and to see your success right. As truly inspirational. I am curious about what was the, how did you going back to how we started the conversation, like being able to go inwards, listen to that voice and understand separate yourself from the ego and the persona of a successful entrepreneur to going inside and understanding navigating the challenging. journey that I imagine you had right. During the worst times, and now like you're past that value of death and like you're on your way, hopefully.

Raad Seraj: And then of course you, and I talked a little bit about your mental health journey your work with ketamine, particularly in the last year or so. I'm not, I don't remember when you started, but how did that sort of, that thread of your life come about? Was it around the same time? How do you reflect on that now?

Raad Seraj: And what's been your mental health journey in that way with ketamine? 

Raad Ahmed: So I started experimenting with ketamine. I wanna say, I think like around [00:36:00] like 20, 20 or so I've been doing therapy before that. And I think during like the startup pivot that we went through and that whole sort of experience I knew that I needed to be mentally resilient.

Raad Ahmed: I just needed to find the tools for how that was possible. So I got deep into some of the spiritual books at the time around what mindfulness was, what is ego, what is self? So I had a baseline understanding that I'm just like, honestly, we're going through a tough time, but I am my worst enemy right now.

Raad Ahmed: My mind is my worst enemy right now. Like I'm fighting not only for my company, but I'm also fighting myself. So. What I could control was certain parts of the company, through pivots and, and different product iterations. But what was a hundred percent in my control was my mind myself, my thoughts.

Raad Ahmed: So I had that early sort of insight. And and I remember even, even the, in the early days of law trades, like me and my co-founder, we would go outside and we would smoke a cigarette and he would just be panicking, freaking out. [00:37:00] And I'm just like, dude, don't worry. It's gonna be fine. It's all gonna be good.

Raad Ahmed: Even if I didn't like totally believe that at that time, I was just like, if I can just speak these words and change this person's mind. Like maybe I could just change my mind too. It was like really weird, like that, like it, it wasn't like super scientific or anything. I was just like, I'm just going to choose to think that everything will be okay.

Raad Ahmed: Just like how I can choose to think that everything's gonna go to shit. So. I did therapy. I thought that was a really good sort of first step. I, I, I, but what prompted me to that was actually less about the startup that I was going through a bad breakup with my ex-girlfriend at the time. And, it just, just spending so much time at the startup and not really contributing much to the relationship.

Raad Ahmed: And she actually prompted me to go see a therapist. And and, and this was like, I think in 29 no, even before that, I wanna say like 2017 ish. So I've still see the same person for a couple of years. And I think that's been like a really beautiful relationship because she's seen all the [00:38:00] ups and downs and to just have that relationship compound over the years and for someone to really get to know me, that's like an invaluable.

Raad Ahmed: Relationship and and then thing that I picked up on the ketamine I started I think around 2020 or so I was looking for, I was looking for something more. I think I had like a basic understanding of cognitive behavior therapy and, and why that works. And I just wanted to go deeper in my mind or lack of mind for that matter.

Raad Ahmed: And in 2020 is when I actually experienced two really important deaths in my life. So, the first one was my mom passing away suddenly unexpectedly. And the second one was one of my close friends. His name was FAHE Sal, who was another Bangladeshi entrepreneur who kind of like, yeah, go Jack.

Raad Ahmed: He did Prankd. So, he lived in New York city, so we would. Back in the day we would, we would hang out a lot. We would party a lot. And he, at that time he's kind of had already, he's made it at that point. Like, and, and, and I would just be like, all right, wherever you go out, [00:39:00] I'm, I'm coming with you.

Raad Ahmed: Like you're bottles on you. Pretty much. And, but I learned a lot from him, like, in, in, in, in a lot of the early days when I had the idea for like the Facebook app store and all of that he had started this website called prank dial and he would always, like, whenever I'd ask him questions, he would always show me like, what was happening behind the scenes.

Raad Ahmed: So when both of them passed away I knew that I needed to try something else. Because I was in a really, really dark place at that time. And ironically, my startup was actually going through the upward trajectory around 2020. Like we, we doubled our revenues during COVID and we're finally making this turn to to getting out of the rut that we were in, but my personal life was pretty much falling apart.

Raad Ahmed: I was really, really close to my mom. I wasn't that close to my dad, but I was really, really close to her. And she just basically went on this trip to Bangladesh for like a family reunion and pretty much had this like aneurysm and, and just died, like, just like that. So. Around this time. I'm there was actually, and this is how it's [00:40:00] weird, how all this is connected.

Raad Ahmed: I was, I was writing this newsletter that I think you briefly brought up called space cult, where I was just like, I'm just gonna write about random shit that like is non-marketing or startup related. It's just like things that I just want to just kind of get out there for my mind into the world, whoever subscribe can subscribe, whoever doesn't, I don't really care.

Raad Ahmed: But there was a founder friend in there and he started this company called mind bloom which does these ketamine therapy things and it's a service and you can basically go onto their website, take an assessment, and then they have like a guided therapist, person. They send you dosages and it's a really cool sort of experience.

Raad Ahmed: You get like headphones and get to zone out and all of. He did a legal tech startup before that. So like, we kind of like connected that way and I was like, all right, this sounds cool. Like, I trust this guy. I didn't really know too much about ketamine before it's legal, so that's good. And I just like, I, I tried it out and I thought that it was I thought that it, it, it gave me what I was looking for at that time, which is creating some space between my, my, my mind and my [00:41:00] body and what I was thinking.

Raad Ahmed: And it was very, it wasn't like, like a crazy long multi-hour trip or anything. It, I think it lasts usually like 45 minutes to an hour or something, but just that hour was like sometimes, I've done a couple of sessions, just the perspective that I needed when I was reaching that boiling point of like my mind, just constantly just going, on its own and running and running and running and running.

Raad Ahmed: So I found those sessions profoundly helpful to giving me that space, to actually understand what was happening without the emotional element attached to it. And it's a super cool, cool service because they, they, you, you like journal afterwards you write your thoughts. There's like an integration person that you can like chat through.

Raad Ahmed: So, it was, it was it was profound to say the least that I've never really experienced something like that before. And I feel like I got what I needed from it. 

Raad Seraj: Do you feel like it's something you're gonna try again? Or do you feel like it's, that was [00:42:00] a chapter you learned what you wanted from it? And so you're moving on. 

Raad Ahmed: So, I've done, I've done quite a few sessions of it over the years and I think. For where I am now, I've got what I needed from it. Where, what I'm of focusing more on now is how can I replicate almost like the feeling that I got from ketamine on my own.

Raad Ahmed: I, it, again comes back to a little bit of the beginning of the story where I don't ever wanna be dependent on any one thing. I think that I think that it's a profound way to give you that peak into what is possible. And I think that's super powerful.

Raad Ahmed: I think that in society we live in today, it's really hard to find any kind of resource that lets you truly unplug in that way and get some mental clarity for yourself to think for yourself. Who knows if I'm I, I treat it as something that like, if there is another catastrophic event where I need to like.

Raad Ahmed: It's it's [00:43:00] like that break in case of emergency thing for me where like it's there when I if I do ever need it it's not, as far as I know, it's not really, it's not addictive. It's actually quite a can be quite an exhaustive experience. So it's, it's not like really a recreational sort of thing you do put in the work, you do have to allocate a couple of hours of your day to do it.

Raad Ahmed: But I knew that it's something that I needed to work on, and this is kind of part of that obsessive personality bit where I was just like, I need to reprogram my brain almost. And and I treated it in that way. So yeah, I thought it was thought it was great. I still have like my journals of that, that I write.

Raad Ahmed: And sometimes I'll like, just read it, check it out, see the Headspace that I was in at the time. And that's pretty cool as well. Yeah. It was cool. 

Raad Seraj: I, I definitely agree that what you were saying. And I think the framing is definitely is one that I can, I really resonate with, working pretty cause I'm in this weird world of SAS psychedelics culture and it's like perhaps reflecting it, it's refusing to [00:44:00] not let any of these things go, cuz you know, you grew up, you're like, okay, pick a side, pick a lane, whatever.

Raad Seraj: Right. Or I'm like, no fuck that science and art to me makes sense. And psychotics to me is like the, like the convergence point of that. But the reason I bring that up is that, we frequently speak about it in the space where George Harrison had a really good saying about this. Receive the message, hang up.

Raad Seraj: These are tools. These are, unless you come from cultures and with deep indigenous sort of like heritage where, you know, even within them, the tool, these, the plant medicines, these tools were used in a context. It wasn't just the world we live in now, it's very you want something, you get access to it, you use it and abuse it, it no longer serves as the tool.

Raad Seraj: It becomes the thing. Becomes the crutch. And I think to your point is like, how do you use it go inwards, but then try to replicate and go through that, walk through that door without it afterwards. To me, psychedelics is the key, not the door itself. The door is the consciousness and the way to walk inwards you spiral in to spiral out.

Raad Seraj: So I really like [00:45:00] the way you framed that. One last thing I wanna touch on. And I, we almost had time here is you've had this very adventurous life with his ups and downs with his pleasures and pain, right? You are also a tech entrepreneur. And I find that. Why do you think tech entrepreneur?

Raad Seraj: And at least from the world I'm seeing, we don't talk about mental health often enough. It's very challenging. It's challenging as it is, but it feels there's this, all this little layers of baggage, right? Of course, for people like you and me, immigrant families growing a person of color, all the politics that comes with that mixed identities, but in technology itself, it Hass own baggage.

Raad Seraj: It feels like this sort of like very pernicious, image of success that gets portrayed where like being an entrepreneur, isn't enough being Uber successful. It's if you are not a billionaire nowadays or your company's not making, unicorn, it's not worth doing right. So where do you think that comes from?

Raad Seraj: Mm-hmm 

Raad Ahmed: I think there's a couple of couple of things that play there. [00:46:00] I think number one, people probably, most people probably just view emotions as a sign of weakness and talking about it openly. Might make you be perceived as a weaker CEO or a weaker founder. And part of the actor you have to play is a strong, successful person.

Raad Ahmed: And I totally get that. You need to be strong for your employees. You need to be strong to and confident to raise money. You need to be confident to attract customers like, but I think that sometimes we get lost in in, in, in that character and overdo it and don't know when to turn that off.

Raad Ahmed: And we become inauthentic. I think partly Twitter is a little bit to blame Twitter, Facebook, social media where you perceive someone's world through just like the 280 characters or whatever. And you form a basis of who they are. Based off of that, even though, like whatever you're tweeting is gonna be the best stuff in your life.

Raad Ahmed: So I think it gives a very warped reality of what a [00:47:00] human being actually is and what they experience. And then you then take that perception and embody that for your self yourself, which isn't really totally natural. It's actually quite artificial, but you convince yourself of that. And then I think the other piece of it is, yeah, like you said, right?

Raad Ahmed: It's like a lot of people are chasing that valuation or that whatever that net worth or that press article. And I'm not gonna lie. I played that game before at a certain point. I refuse to play that game now. I think I've learned enough over the years and which only I could have learned through the direct experience of truly how meaningless and pointless that is and how miserable it can, like actually make you and how it can basically it'll make you lose focus of the goal at hand, which is like helping people. That's why you start a company, you start a company to help people not to get a billion dollar valuation. That's like a byproduct of that, [00:48:00] but we sometimes jump the gun a little bit and try to get to that part first and then think about helping people.

Raad Ahmed: But if you genuinely in your heart, just wanna help people, you view software and tools in the internet as just the way to help more people at scale, instead of just, doing it on a one to one basis on a street corner or something like that. So I think that Yeah. I, I think that it is that bit of a of this character that we have to, that we have to play.

Raad Ahmed: And I think that people don't really spend enough time by themselves or in isolation, or like actually analyze those thoughts and just ask, do I really want to be chasing after that valuation? Do I really want to be raising more money right now? Or am I doing it because I saw somebody else do it.

Raad Ahmed: And it's like the idea of the of memetic theory, right? We want what other people want or do we just copy each other? We just look left and right. And if you and me could be like walking into a restaurant and I might, want to, you might [00:49:00] go in wanting to order a glass of wine, but then I order a glass of martini first, and then maybe you'll order that martini because you saw me ordering it, even though you wanted a glass of wine, when you.

Raad Ahmed: First walked in and, and it's like, and that happens at a scale that's way beyond what you drink. It becomes that your life decisions, it becomes how you pick your partner. It becomes like where you live and what you do. Right? So like, so much of my life is sort of like, I get drawn into that. I immediately like stop.

Raad Ahmed: And I think I did startups because it had this rebellious spirit to it. That was very punk rock. That was very like, I'm doing my own thing. And no one can tell me what to do. But at some point, I think now as the startup industry has matured, it became back to this sort of institutionally like vibe, like where, like you have to raise from Andreesen Horowitz, and you have to do a series a in this way and you have to be valued at this amount.

Raad Ahmed: You have to write a Twitter thread. It's just like, no, you don't have to do anything [00:50:00] at all. Not even a start to begin with, but if you do do a startup. Do it in your own way, do it from a place of purity, from a place of ultimate freedom, from a place of creativity view it as like a, like, a blank canvas that you can paint over the years and leave that behind.

Raad Ahmed: And I think that's that that idea I think gets lost. And, and then we start forming a lot of this, like dense egoic sort of perspectives into why we do certain things. And, I'm the first to admit I can get lost into that. But I think I, I think I I'm, I'm back at this place where, like, it feels like just day one, even though it's been like a couple of years where I'm gonna do what I wanna do when I wanna do, and however way I wanna do it in my own terms, and nobody's gonna fucking stop me, like that's, that's, that's just the attitude that, that, that I have.

Raad Ahmed: And I'm gonna keep it real. And I'm gonna talk about whatever I want to talk about and not to sound too crazy, but like [00:51:00] not be controlled by anyone or anything. So... 

Raad Seraj: Fuck yea, brother. I was gonna make a funny reference to a scene from Silicon Valley, but I think this is a good place to end it cuz I think that was really powerful. And I learned a lot, man. And your, your story is certainly inspirational. Like I said, for me, it's got a different kind of resonance to it, but all the best to you, man, like I'm really, really happy hearing the journey you've gone through and the success you're finally finding. And whatever this takes you, I wish you all the best. And I really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about this. 

Raad Ahmed: Thanks man. Super fun. Thanks for having me. 

Raad Seraj: This podcast was brought to life with the help of Carolyn Tripp on art and design, Misha Ras on sound design, and Wilson Lin on editing. Thanks so much for listening to minority trip report. I'm your host Raad Seraj.