Matheus (00:00:03) - I try to strike a balance when there are obvious landmines. You should address them to the extent possible. But I like to be biased towards action. And even if it means that you might trip. You're going to make some mistakes. I'm going to learn some things along side the way.

Ariana (00:00:19) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast. I'm covering the world of operations one episode at a time. I'm your host, Ariana Cofone, and today's guest is Matheus Riolfi, co-founder and CEO at Tint. Now, We covered so many different topics on this episode because Matheus has so much experience across the industry and a lot of different roles and in a lot of different lenses. So we're going to go off our normal format a little bit, which is always fun, but I think it's because you're going to learn a ton because I know I did. Alright, let's jump in. Well, Matheus thank you so much for coming on to Secret Ops. We were just having a chat, and then I was like, we gotta stop talking and start recording.

Ariana (00:01:03) - This is too good. So welcome. Thanks for being here.

Matheus (00:01:06) - Thank you so much for having me. I think it's going to be a good conversation.

Ariana (00:01:10) - I think so too, because we've got so many things to talk about. Like I said, I was looking at your background and just to give the audience some context, because we can't put you in a bucket, is what I've learned. Um, you have broken all sorts of buckets. So a couple of things. You're a seasoned startup founder. You've been doing this for over a decade, starting and funding and scaling technical startups. So lots of good stuff to chat about there. You're also a YCombinator Alum and you hold an MBA from Harvard Business School, which is all delicious. But then this is what struck me. So you are actually a licensed insurance broker in all 50 states of the US, and and for operators in the audience…So you were the director of international expansion at Turo, and you essentially pioneered the global expansion of their operations, designing all the risk management at the different stages of the business.

Ariana (00:02:10) - Am I missing anything in that?

Matheus (00:02:12) - The only thing that's right is the only thing I would add, like I'm Brazilian, born and raised, I came to the US, what, 12 or 13 years ago now. And as we were talking, like, on the side, I, I didn't leave Brazil or until I was really 18, but after that I might be traveling the world, moving to different places, working different places, and definitely had a global background.

Ariana (00:02:39) - Well, you currently have, I mean, an insane wealth of experience. So I guess the one thing I wanted to start with is, what do you think motivates you to follow all of these different paths?

Matheus (00:02:50) - That's a great question, and I'd say a hard one, but to me is like really doing something and having an impact like, I was a consultant for three and a half years, saw that as a way to get a toolkit and learn about business in different industries. And while I don't regret it was definitely a work that didn't fulfill me. Like as a consultant, you're not building, you're advising you or helping others think through things and actually build. So I just want to build. There are many problems in the world. There are many opportunities, right? The problems can be opportunities if you do the right things. And I just like to execute and do that.

Ariana (00:03:30) - So you're a problem-driven person, meaning you want to solve these problems. You want to get in. You want to create things. How has that tied to the operational work that you've done? Because I know I love solving problems all day long. Clearly there's a connection there, I guess. How do you think that problem first mentality ties to operations?

Matheus (00:03:51) - The way I see it, it starts with the problem. It starts with like, what are you trying to do? Like the why matters. Why do you want to not do something? And then the next step is like, you know, going back to the YCombinator that you mentioned, like, why are you like, why are you qualified? Or the best person should be tackling this specific problem.

Matheus (00:04:10) - So you definitely need to match both. You need to match something that you saw as an opportunity, something that you think is a change that is necessary in the world with what you like and therefore, what you can do.

Ariana (00:04:25) - When it comes to YCombinator, this is just mostly Ariana being curious, what was that process like? Where do you think that sort of fit within your career journey? What did you take from the beginning of that, and what did you take away from that journey?

Matheus (00:04:42) - Yeah, we got into YCombinator. We were about three years into Tint, so the start of Tint. I was one of the early employees of Turo, as you mentioned, running the international expansion. My co-founder was running all the data science and all the data side of the business. And we saw this opportunity and the company was offering insurance products to their customers very successfully. But we also saw how hard it was for them to figure out without help.

Matheus (00:05:11) - And that was really the inspiration for us to start Tint. It is really the company we wish existed when we were building those things at Turo. So we started Tint in 2018 and we got into YC in the winter of 21. So really about three years into the journey and YC was really an acceleration for us. Like we have been doing that for a while, being, you know, as, as any founder, experimenting, trial and error. And around the time we got to YC was really when the inflection point had happened. We were growing super fast, much, much faster than we were in the last three years. So YC was really two things. It was a stage so it gave us a lot of visibility, both with potential customers and potential investors. And it was also a learning experience of, like, how to do 0 to 1 startups. So I saw a lot of the 1 to 10 at Turo or whatever, 1 to 30, because by the time I left Turo or when I joined Turo, we had about 15 employees.

Matheus (00:06:17) - By the time I left, they had over 400. So I saw how a company can go from a 1 or 5 to 30. But the 0 to 1 is a very different world. And the YC gave us a crash course on how to be better in that kind of inception and first steps, and towards the 1 to 10 journey.

Ariana (00:06:37) - Do you find also…because I feel like YCombinator is this…if you haven't been in it, you're like, “oh, what's this all about?” And if you have been in it, it seems like a tight knit community. Was part of that also, having that community of different people who have been through it, different expertises, like how does that peace fit into that?

Matheus (00:06:55) - The community is huge. So I would say a YC network is as strong, if not stronger than an alumni network is for college or for like, you know, and universities. That level of collaboration and they were able to build something very special there.

Matheus (00:07:12) - So then a community again, for us, we benefited a lot from a customer perspective. So out of our first ten customers, I would say half of them were YCombinator companies. So it's really helped us in getting traction on the sales perspective. We had a lot of investors that kind of came to us through YCombinator as well. And then just being around other founders and having side conversations like sharing battle stories it's all very good as well. Like, I still keep in touch with a few founders from my batch. Our batch was relatively large. We were like 360 companies. So obviously the same way that in undergrad or in business school, you don't become friends with everyone in your class, but there's always that group of like, you know, 5 to 10 that you really click. And then will continue with you. And you have regular conversations going forward.

Ariana (00:08:06) - Yeah, I totally felt that during code school, too.

Ariana (00:08:08) - Like, you've got this whole group of people you're learning the skill with, and then you sort of bond with those core people that then become, weirdly enough, lifelong friends. Uh, luckily. Also, it's interesting, you know, my husband owns a business. I own a business now. It can be a very, like, lonely journey, even if you have a co-founder involved, because sometimes you're just doing something for the first time, so it's quite humbling. How has it been having that support with you and your co-founder and, and starting this business? How have you been able to, I guess, navigate the changes in doing things for the first time?

Matheus (00:08:45) - I definitely agree with the fact that it's a lonely journey. But I also agree with the fact that, like the co-founder, it's very important. I do believe that a co-founding relationship is a very important relationship.

Matheus (00:09:05) - And a lot of the early stage startups, the reason why they die is because the co-founders fight and then they're so disruptive to the business that it's really hard to recover. I’m lucky that Jerome, my cofounder, is amazing. Not only we worked together for about four years, so we already knew each other, even if we never worked directly. We knew each other. We knew roughly what to expect. And that translated very well to doing something for the first time for both of us, which then started this company in insurance, which is something that we didn't have a very deep background on, other than our experience at Turo. So it was very good through the ups and downs against Tint when, as I mentioned, when we got to YC in the third year. So it means that the first three years were a lot of trial and error and false steps and, and learning experiences. So the fact that throughout this entire process, we stayed together, we stayed having a great relationship, like we help each other when one is up, the other things down, that we can kind of balance each other, even emotionally.

Matheus (00:10:10) - I think that support and that kind of partnership, it's, you know, it was mission critical for us and I believe is mission critical for every startup.

Ariana (00:10:19) - We're in an interesting position here because I've got someone that is a seasoned founder, who also is an operator in their own right. And I have a particular question for you, for the operators listening, which is..at what point should you be seriously considering bringing in an operations person within the business? So I often get that question like, yeah, when should I bring a COO? When should I bring an operations director? Having seen it multiple times and doing it yourself and being an operator, when do you think that piece fits in or that role really becomes evident?

Matheus (00:10:55) - I'd say it is a very hard question to answer, and it's a very hard question to know the timing right. I think about what I learned and…we had about 50 people.

Matheus (00:11:09) - So it's a very different world from now. It was when we were like, again, by the time we went to YC we were four. So we had a long time of, you know, a very small team. And then we quickly ramp from 4 to 50 over the course of, let's say, 14 months or so. And it’s a materially different company than it was before. And it's something I learned in this journey is that the CEO hat and the co-founder hat are completely different. They work well together. Obviously, a lot of the CEOs are co-founders and COOs that can have other exact roles. But the skill set and interests are very different. And I think in the early days, I'd say the weight is 99% of the co-founder hat. And as you start growing it starts to migrate more to the CEO. As another CEO hat becomes more important, which is not, to your point, is the operator part. And I think what I see in many, with many co-founders and coaches and other things like that is that some people, they just don't like the operator.

Matheus (00:12:18) - They are great as founders that get things started, they get excited with innovation, but they just don't want to run a business. They don't want to do planning, they don't want to go through the process. So I think the best I'll try to answer your question is whenever the operator is feeling that what they are doing and is required for the business, it's no longer energizing them or is outside their skill sets, like they're just bad at planning. They are great creative types. They are not good at planning. They cannot be organized. Those are the things that are symptoms of, you know, like, “okay, this is either getting out of my comfort zone” or not comfort zone because founders will always be outside the comfort zone. But it's getting out of my skill set and I don't want to learn. It's something that doesn't energize me, that can really drag me down. That's a good time to bring somebody to start to specialize, bringing people that have that expertise and let them go and empower them to just make sure that the company is covered, but you don't have to do it.

Ariana (00:13:18) - But that is such a beautiful answer because I've been asked that so many times. And you're right, it is so specific based on the business, what the goals are short term, mid-term, long term, when you really sort of can take that risk, and bringing in other senior leaders or other roles or specializations. But I do find that a key motivator with founders in the business is if they aren't energized by it, it just sort of falls to the wayside. And so then you kind of get into these pits of I guess the “oh shit” pits where it's like, “oh no, we didn't like doing this. So we didn't really think about this, and now we're at risk because we just didn't want to put energy toward it.” Whereas somebody like myself, like I, you know, I'm not a marketing person, but man, I could totally geek out on automations and data cleanliness and all these sort of things like that energizes me. So that's what you're talking about, finding those people that are energized by the things that you are not, and then having them complement your skill set so you can put your time towards something that energizes you and moves the business forward.

Matheus (00:14:19) - Yeah. And this is not only important for the business, because then I think you're gonna have better skills doing what is required. But it's very important for you as a founder personally, because it's a hard job. Right? So if you are not finding or spending a decent amount of your time on something that is energizing, it's just kind of hard to keep going. The journey is already hard enough. You'll have enough problems in front of you. They will drag you down, you know? Then you gotta keep finding and keep making sure that you are getting the energy back at all times.

Ariana (00:14:54) - Definitely. And we can't understate that, actually. It's so important because you're in a marathon, you're not in a sprint. So this is multiple years of doing this. And if you aren't continuously energized by what you're doing, that's going to feel just so daunting. It's going to feel impossible..

Matheus (00:15:13) - And now what I like to say is that you are in a marathon, but you're gonna run as fast as the best in the world, right? So I even brought that to the team, like, the winner of the marathon is going to run twice as fast as the average. So for startups you are running a marathon, but you have to run twice as fast as the average. If you just run the average, you're not going to do anything. Because as a startup, by definition, you are starting very small. So you are behind incumbents, you're behind like you know, all the work you need to do. So you have to go very fast. But it is your marathon, so you cannot go as fast as a boat or like somebody that runs a 100 meter sprint because you're gonna run out of energy, but you got to go a lot faster than the average. And I think that's something like, I hear the marathon analogy all the time, and it is true. But it hides the fact that you have to run like the first prize in the marathon, not only as whoever is going to finish in their weekend hobby. Right?

Ariana (00:16:23) - Totally. You're balancing two really important things simultaneously, which I don't think most people, when they jump into founding a business, quite get. Where you have to have the longevity and the energy to keep going the distance, but also work your tail off in the mid-term or the short term to be able to get to where your competitors are or ahead of where your competitors are, even being so much smaller. That's not an easy thing to figure out, especially if it's your first time. I'm sure the more times you do it, the more muscle that you have with it. Now, okay, if we talk about Tint and just you being a registered broker, I, I when it comes to operations, none of the people and businesses I work with like to talk about insurance. Somehow you have found yourself in this part of the world and in the business industry. So why insurance? Like what is it about insurance that you saw that needed to be addressed within the market?

Matheus (00:17:20) - Yeah. So I got to train while I was working at Turo. So by accident. Right. Like I never knew that when I joined Turo, a tech company in San Francisco, I will be spending any second, in insurance. And, you know, as a consumer, as everybody else, I find it incredibly hard and confusing and all those things.

Matheus (00:17:46) - And then something you mentioned before as an afterthought. And then I think about the insight we had, which I found very…and I can talk about the data part and being a data geek and how insurance is all about data. So all those like personal sides I’m finding intellectually, uh, very stimulating, but the consumer part and the most important “why” is that insurance is a very important product. Like you don't want to think about it. And frankly, you shouldn't think about it. But it's very important that you have it. Because if something goes wrong with your car or like when you are transporting an expensive good, whatever it can be, there's a serious financial loss on the other side, and depending on who you are, how much savings you have, like you can have a catastrophic effect in your life. So it is this kind of combination of you don't care and shouldn't care, but you must have it, it is mission critical for you. So that gets us excited.

Matheus (00:18:48) - And that's what we saw about what is called “embedded insurance” or what we did at Turo, is that insurance would be a feature and not a product. Right. So the way you solve this conundrum is that if now insurance becomes part of something, a product and service you're using and already comes with, or you can easily purchase as part of that package, then you don't have to think about it as much. Then you don't have to go download an app and interact with a brand you don't want. It's just again, going back to the Turo example, you're renting a Porsche for the weekend. You go to Chicago to celebrate with your husband. You just see a little button to say you want to add protection. Like if anything goes wrong, you pay $30 more. Done. Imagine if now you had to call your broker and say, “Hey Mary, I need insurance for two days for this Porsche”, but you don't have to. It's not part of the the the right solution.

Matheus (00:19:46) - So what gets us very excited is that the way we are helping companies create their own insurance products as part of the product services. It's a much better solution for consumers and as a consequence, more people will be covered when they need it and the companies on their side, it's very profitable. The core business becomes better. So it's really a win-win solution.

Ariana (00:20:07) - Totally. It's interesting to me too, because car renting is such a clear example, right? Like you need the car insurance when you rent a car, if you don't…I didn't have a car when I lived in New York. So what do you do in that situation? You don't have inherent coverage, right? And just baking it into the product makes it easy. Where do you see that going in the future? Because car is very clear. Maybe like renting potentially is clear. Like where do you see that feature being used in the future and maybe ways that we aren't seeing today.

Matheus (00:20:42) - Yeah. So the beauty is that it's going to happen everywhere.

Matheus (00:20:45) - So, despite being a relatively young company, we already have 12 or 13 different use cases running on our platform from everything from things like you mentioned on car sharing, motorcycle sharing, to shipping to vacation rental. So Airbnb use cases like you don't think about it, but Airbnb has 300 people that all they do is work with insurance. So you have a cover in case, you know, you rent a place, the place burns out or whatever you break the TV there is insurance that goes with that. So like every time, you know, you're transporting something, you're renting something, you are using some assets of different kinds. But we've seen use cases like legal liability, we've seen crypto, we've seen a company called Citizen Shipper which transport dogs. So if you buy a dog from a breeder in New York and you want to transfer to Chicago, you can get protection for, you know, if the dog gets sick and needs a vet that is covered.

Matheus (00:21:46) - So like again, we've seen that that is happening everywhere around insurance. So we believe that, you know, in ten years or so, if you fast forward the way the consumers and companies interact and consume insurance is going to be materially different. And Tint does, we're building the infrastructure that lets this happen, like all the software, the services, or what we call capacity or like the money that, that, that makes it all work because it's incredibly hard. Like you do this very simple thing that is making insurance a feature of a bigger product. It is incredibly, incredibly hard to execute. And that's kind of what we are creating.

Ariana (00:22:28) - What do you think is the…I mean, I'm sure there's a gazillion things that are hard about this. Just having a taste of it in what I do. But what would you say is the biggest hurdle that you're trying to overcome in what you're building?

Matheus (00:22:42) - In terms of what we're building again, is to redesign the insurance, rethink the insurance experience and insurance product.

Matheus (00:22:51) - We again, with this idea that it's going to be a feature in mind, because really in the last whatever, 400 years, everything around insurance was designed as a standalone product. So how do we support that as a standalone product? So when we flip the logic and say, okay, now it's just a feature of what say you ship one of our customers, sell. You have to redo a lot of things from scratch. And I think that to me is what's hard in it from the systems that you need to run that and keep track of who purchased what, keep track of all the money that is flowing to pay people, to pay people when the claim happens and they file and make sure that they get paid quickly.

Ariana (00:23:33) - Yeah.

Matheus (00:23:34) - Getting the insurers excited and understanding how to operate in this new world is its whole challenge. So it's really like, you know, it's a combination of a lot of smaller pieces. And, you know, as a startup, we're building them bit by bit.

Matheus (00:23:49) - So there's something I think we did well is to try to break it up into almost 20 pieces and start building one by one. And today we have most of them already built or in the process of being built. But that's, again, going back to the advice for founders is that like, you know, it's okay to have this very big vision and it's great. You can see the 20 pieces that need to be built, but try to get traction and try to get, you know, figure out, like, what is the one that I can try to build and sell already because you then build the other 19 based on that momentum. If you need to have all the 20 working well from the get go, it's a lot harder to get started.

Ariana (00:24:35) - It's a lot of whiplash for the team, right? It's like, where did they prioritize their time? Where do they prioritize their efforts? Each of those pieces that you're building is going to require a lot of different research and testing and prototyping and all of that to go into it.

Ariana (00:24:50) - So how do you sort of direct not just yourself, but the whole team in one direction to sort of get the momentum moving and continue it throughout the years of building the business in your products?

Matheus (00:25:02) - Yeah. No, absolutely and that's a hard skill because breaking something…and founders typically are gonna know if they see an opportunity. They're visionaries. They get excited about higher level concepts or like big changes in the world, things like that. But then getting in, breaking that into smaller pieces that can be built is definitely a skill that I think I learned a lot in my journey. But I mean, I'm pretty sure I need to be a lot better at it.

Ariana (00:25:34) - Don't we all? My family jokes that I have to always learn things the hard way, meaning I have to fall on my face. And then I learned the thing. Did you find that most lessons that you've learned in starting businesses and doing what you've done, is it because you sort of did the research ahead of time and you prevented a misstep? Or is it because you pulled, I guess, an Ariana and, you know, you tripped and you tried something and it didn't work.

Ariana (00:25:59) - And so then you're on to the next thing, I guess, how much of it is reactively understanding and knowing and how much of it is preemptively getting that information?

Matheus (00:26:07) - Okay, I'm probably more in the middle in a sense that we're more towards you, in a sense like, you know, I believe, again, as Founders…being a job, being like, you know, going out there and trying things, it's very important because if you do say market research and like your angle that you mentioned, you're going to get to a lot of hypotheses like, okay, this is probably going to become a problem if I don't do something about it, but you really don't know if it becomes a problem. And oftentimes companies do build a lot to prevent this problem that never happened. Like you were just wrong. There was not a problem. And by the way, there was another problem that you didn't anticipate that is actually important and you have to go fix.

Matheus (00:26:54) - So in the startup journey, there's so much you can’t predict, because if it was very easy to predict, like, you know, anybody would do it, big companies would do it. Or if it was very easy to look at something and say like, yeah, that's absolutely going to be a $10 billion opportunity. Like most $10 billion opportunities don't look like that at the get go. So I believe that as founders we have to get started. We have to jump. And then, you know, having that sometimes naivete can be beneficial because if you contrast an expert, right? Like you work for 40 years in this industry. You've seen everything. You just believe that nothing will work. Like you're just getting there. Like, you know, academic studies around that is like the way the experts think is not conducive to innovation just because for the most part, they know too much of what can go wrong. So they don't even start so it’s the long way of saying that I try to strike a balance when you know the obvious landmines, you should address them to the extent possible. But I like to be biased towards action. And even if it means that you might trip. You're going to make some mistakes. I'm going to learn some things along the way.

Ariana (00:28:10) - It's so funny when you mention that, because the first thing that came to my mind was like, that's exactly how I felt about getting a dog when he was a puppy was like, we didn't know. Like we'd never raised a dog. Like, we got this, no problem. And then the first six months are just complete chaos, and it's just a complete madness. And they're biting everything and chewing everything, and you're like, oh my God, what did I get myself into? And then you get through that crazy phase and you start to get, you know, like a callus for how to have a dog and how to do all those things. But it's kind of the same thing.

Ariana (00:28:39) - Anytime you're jumping into something new it's going to feel chaotic. You can only prep so much. You know, I did all the research and then you just have to try it and you've got to see what's going on and you've got to be open to trying new things. And then through that process you learn it. It's so funny how your personal life and the business world really can mimic each other, even though it feels quite different. The first year of having a puppy was especially intense. Is there a certain window, having starred in many businesses that you're like, “if I can get past this time frame, I think we're going to be okay?” Is there anything consistent within the startup world, would you say, like, “hey, if we can make it past the first year, we're going to be okay?” Or is it just dependent on the business and the team and all those pieces?

Matheus (00:29:27) - Yeah, I think I wish there was, but I don't think there is.

Matheus (00:29:31) - I think the reality is that the startup is always going to be like a battle. There is always going to be existential things at each stage or they change like it's a little bit like a video game. When you finish the first phase, you beat the boss of that level. You go to the next one which is a different game, harder, different challenges. And I think startups kind of keep going. We raised a very large series A $25 million like a year and a half ago. And, you know, part of us thought like, “oh, great. So the hardest part is behind us.” It's not really true because we have today definitely different challenges there now, arguably more exciting because they are related to growth. And we have more customers. We have a lot more data, more, more things to do than in the old days, when a lot of it was in our heads.

Matheus (00:30:30) - But we if you look at now, Wework. Look at a company in logistics called Convoy that raised 200 plus million dollars…vanished like in a few weeks. Think about Silicon Valley Bank, which is something that a lot of founders had to deal with afew months ago. Silicon Valley Bank is a public company, a public bank, can you imagine if you're the CEO of that company, you think you made it, you're just happy and collecting your profits and not really. Like there's some changes in the market that can come in. You didn't plan for it and you are out of business. You're bankrupt. So I think that I no longer tell myself that story that, yeah, it's going to be easy from here because it's not true. And personally that's what makes it exciting, right? I'll probably be bored if it becomes too easy.

Ariana (00:31:18) - That's true. That's true. So when it comes to fundraising, I guess I want to put myself in the role of an operator.

Ariana (00:31:26) - So in preparation to raise, you know, the series A, what do you think the role is of the operator within that? Because I think that sometimes, you know, people listening who are operations people, I've had different experiences, right? Like get your ducks in a row, prepare for the fundraise, get the infrastructure together, get the data together. Like what would you say are the top, you know, 2 or 3 things that an operator can contribute to making that fundraising process easier or faster?

Matheus (00:31:57) - I think definitely showing that you understand your business and you are in control of it. So I think about getting all the data ready or like knowing important metrics. I think that's the piece that comes from the bottom up that is very important. Right. You're going through due diligence. So making sure that you have all the documents and the t’s are crossed like they're not like nothing I imagine would be more annoying and frustrating than you found a great investor, you can't convince the mission vision or the top-down part. It's going to be a huge market. This is our plan and get everybody excited just to then like, you know, fail on the due diligence because your stock documents are not in order or there's a major liability of whatever kind that you didn't disclose or you didn't know about or was not anticipated. So I think like, yeah, getting I think almost like a top-down versus bottom-up, the bottom-up, which the operator parts…like make sure you're in control, make sure that things are clean and organized. And then the top-down is selling the dream. Selling the potential and things related to that.

Ariana (00:33:14) - That does make me think about when I'm helping businesses sort of stabilize their operations. I'm like, we've got to centralize all of your founding documents, all of your insurance. Like, we have to centralize all these things. And there's usually resistance there. I think it's just because it's annoying and they don't see it as valuable.

Ariana (00:33:32) - But like you said, you don't want to get to, you know, the finish line and not have all your p's and q's together. Like that should be the simplest part of the process, because you've been mentally preparing and, you know, preparing your operations for that. So as much of a pain or maybe it doesn't seem valuable at the time to do and to dig up. It's like the simplest thing that you can do to actually really contribute something big at the end of the day.

Matheus (00:33:57) - Yeah, definitely empathize with the feeling that like, yeah, that doesn't seem fun and doesn't seem to be important until it is. So that's why I think that, I think they're like, you know, the operators and the founders, like, they should have the minimum bar, like, you know, and make sure that they always comply with that. I mean, of course, you shouldn't spend time like as a series A company and things like “we need that when I go public”, like, cool, there is a problem you do down the road by like having your founding documents, your stock documents, the things like your insurance, the things like that.

Matheus (00:34:36) - Yeah, that you probably need today already. And it's no, it's not that hard, but it's, to your point. People don't want to deal with that.

Ariana (00:34:45) - Because when you started, your company was maybe two people. Three people. So you have it on your drive or you have it on your file and it's under this name that maybe you couldn't find. Right? It's not a big deal. We can find it when we need it. That's the kind of mentality we have to switch and say, all right, let me just take a half day, put a podcast in, find all these things, give it to my operator to zhuzh and rename and make it really nice and centralize all these things. Because whenever we need it, I don't want to have to think about it or yeah, what I like to call like if I get hit by a bus thing, if I get hit by a bus, you got everything you need to keep it rolling while I recover in the hospital like you’ve got it going. That's a good little pro tip for the operators out there.

Matheus (00:35:25) - Yeah, I agree.

Ariana (00:35:26) - This has been so wonderful. I want to wrap up with some rapid fire questions about you as a human, just to bring you to light a little bit more. So I'm gonna shoot them your way, and then you just knock them down as they come. You ready? Okay, first of all, what is your favorite part of the day?

Matheus (00:35:45) - Mornings. I'm a morning person, so I'm up and running at, like, six, 6 a.m.. And that's I don't know, it feels good to wake up, start a new day. So that's my favorite part.

Ariana (00:35:56) - What book or audiobook are you currently listening to?

Matheus (00:36:01) - I'm finishing the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson and it has been very interesting. I love biographies, I read all the books by Walter Isaacson and yeah, it's been a pretty nice book.

Ariana (00:36:16) - What is the best purchase that you have made under $50?

Matheus (00:36:21) - I want to say tennis balls.

Matheus (00:36:24) - I love to play tennis and I don't purchase a lot of things, so that's why purchasing is not top of mind. And when I do it is probably above $50. So that's why I'd say, yeah, that's obvious to me.

Ariana (00:36:41) - As an avid tennis player, is there a certain type of tennis ball brand that you would recommend?

Matheus (00:36:48) - I do use Penn Championship. The one that you buy at Costco in bulk. That's the one I get.

Ariana (00:36:58) - Good to know when I get my Costco card. What is your favorite quote?

Matheus (00:37:03) - I have a few, but I would say “fortune favors the prepared mind”. So I do think the concept of luck, it's not really luck. Like, there are many things happening to people all the time. It's just being prepared. Something that seems to be like luck is just alignment of different things.

Ariana (00:37:28) - So I like that flip on that quote too.

Ariana (00:37:32) - I'm going to take that one. Next one is what is something that makes you little-kid happy?

Matheus (00:37:38) - Llittle-kid happy playing games, playing video games. I still do it and did a lot of it growing up. And that brings the kid back in me.

Ariana (00:37:50) - What's your go to game right now?

Matheus (00:37:53) - Right now? I mean, I have not had a lot of time to play games lately, but I've been playing this game called Polly Topia, which is a phone game, so it's easy. I saw that in the Elon Musk book. Apparently he's crazy about it and I had never heard of it. I play games of the same type. I love strategy type games, so this is the one I spend probably 20 minutes a day playing when I'm tired. WHen I should be doing other things. Yeah.

Ariana (00:38:21) - Yeah, now I'm going to spend time doing that.

Ariana (00:38:25) - Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self in starting their career?

Matheus (00:38:33) - Take more risks.

Matheus (00:38:35) - Be more aggressive, do things faster. I definitely took an…even though it doesn't sound like it I took a very kind of risk averse path. I was a consultant, I went to business school. So I put myself in a position that is kind of very de-risked. But in hindsight, I would have started doing startups at the age of 18 and kept a lot of other things.

Ariana (00:39:03) - That's good advice.

Ariana (00:39:05) - Last one, which is what would you like to be when you grow up?

Matheus (00:39:09) - I would like to be a founder who had an impact in the world. And, you know, I can look at whatever I spend now 16 hours a day working and say that helped others succeed. It had an impact on the world.

Ariana (00:39:22) - So if people are listening to this interview and you're like, oh my gosh, I want to stay in touch with what Matheus is doing, what Tint is up to. Where can people find you and follow your journey?

Matheus (00:39:34) - LinkedIn is the easiest place.

Matheus (00:39:36) - Again, if you want to talk with TInt, there's a website: Tint.ai. One way or the other is going to get to me, but if it's more like the first time, LinkedIn because I’m very active. So it's a good place. And as far as I know, there's only one Matheus Riolfi out there, so it should be easy to find me there.

Ariana (00:39:55) - We'll make sure to put it in the description as well so people can find you easily. Thank you so much. I feel like we did gymnastics through a million topics, which is my favorite. So I really appreciate your knowledge and being so generous with your experience.

Matheus (00:40:10) - Thank you so much Ariana it was a pleasure speaking with you and Secret Ops listeners.

Ariana (00:40:14) - As always, thank you so much for listening, and please make sure to follow us wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. We are also on YouTube now, so if you are a visual learner like me, you can watch our conversation there.

Ariana (00:40:27) - See you next time!