I borrowed $10,000 for my mom, and then community college professor gave me the basement of his house and 20 grand.

So I went from my childhood bedroom to a teacher's basement.

I think I paid myself $700 a month for like two years in a row.

And then I just started hustling, just showing up everywhere.

Welcome to the Peel.

I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of opening a capital. Today's guest is Chris Halls, co-founder and CEO of Life 360, which at the time of recording is the 15th largest app in the U.S. with over $330 million annual revenue and valued at over $3 million in the public markets. We go inside his two-decade journey building the company and all the

contrarian things they did along the way. We did the opposite of prevailing startup advice.

If we were to kind of air quotes like trust the data, we would have shut down so many times.

But I'm extremely happy we didn't take that advice because it was like probably seven years of barely

making it. Fundraising lessons and benefits of building in an unsexy market.

That first couple of years, it was just showing up, taking every meeting I could.

Like to me it was like a big deal to meet a single VC because I didn't have any network at all.

The time to beat a patent troll, bankrupted their law firm.

We had written so many small, 10, 20, $30,000 checks like enough was enough. A crash course on preference tax and going public in both Australia and the US. Ironically, from a CEO standpoint, the NASDAX is much easier than the SX. You want a few hedge funds that are probably going to be trading you in that very first day. The long only guys, you actually don't want to get in the full allocation.

So if the IPO trades down, they're going to be there supporting you. Lessons acquiring tile, launching a hardware product, and when U.S. teens almost canceled him on TikTok. I was at a friend's house and his teenage kids are like, are you the TikTok guys? No, never used TikTok. No, you're the TikTok guy. and they pulled the phone and there was like a meme going around.

I didn't even know how TikTok work.

Before we talk to Chris, I publish an episodes of appeal every week exploring the world's greatest startup stories. Check the show notes for more on the topics we discussed, explore the back analog for almost 100 episodes, comment on Spotify and YouTube, share the friend, and subscribe wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Let's talk to Chris. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So we were just talking, you feel like we're kind of at this era in just like, I don't know, corporate business world where we're kind of moving past the PR fluff and we're getting into more of just, I don't know, real talk,

if that's a good way to describe it?

Yeah, I'd say, it's bigger.

I think we were in this period of the ZERP interest rates and honestly a bit of coddle culture

and it was all about day in the life videos at Google and Twitter and it was really hard to be a CEO where you were kind of a no name and your employees

could, if they didn't like what you were giving them, they could quit and work half as

...