Jay: Hi everyone, my name is Jay Aigner. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. Today I'm lucky enough to have Patrick Faga with me. Hey Patrick, how's it going buddy?
Patrick: Hey, Jay, how are you?
Jay: I am good. I'm good. it's hot. It's summertime here. is it hot down there in Virginia?
Patrick: Oh, yeah. And the, the smoke just cleared out. We had a few days of that Canadian wildfire haze down here, and it was, it's pretty bad. We had our
air quality index up to 170. I think so. nice to be able to see the blue sky again
Jay: To go outside, right? It's nice. a couple, a few weeks ago we were at 500, like the
highest it could go. It was crazy.
and I was in Buffalo last week and it was just like, you couldn't see. It was wild. But, we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about, First Work, which, helps kids learn their first words.
You're the founder and CEO. you know, I have five kids, so obviously... that stuck out to me as something our little guy, one of them had, like speech therapy when he was little. So that actually both of them, I think two of my boys had speech therapy at some point. So, definitely, you know, kind of rings true to home for me.
So let's start from the beginning though. where'd you grow up?
Patrick: So I grew up just outside of Washington, D. C. on the Virginia side. My whole family's around here. So grew up in the Arlington area. If anyone's familiar with, That area of town. But, yeah, DC born and raised and, went out to school in San Diego and then in Philadelphia and, found my way back here.
So that's where I am now.
Jay: So did anything, did that have any impact on your entrepreneurial kind of journey along the way? Was there anything that in your childhood or, you know, your family that led to that?
Patrick: That's a great question. Yeah, there's, a little bit, I mean, nobody in my family is directly in entrepreneurial work, but DC is a very productivity focused place. A lot of people working on a lot of really interesting projects. And so. Got to meet a bunch of folks who are, you know, sort of in all of the different areas that, are relevant to entrepreneurship, but, there wasn't any direct family ties to entrepreneurship in my life.
Jay: Okay, and you went to the University of San Diego, and then you penned, and you were kind of doing the behavioral neuroscience, like, what put you on that track? Like, what got you going in that area?
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. So I came to college with very little idea of what I was going to study. I know a lot of folks come in, you know, with their focus on science or, you know, the social sciences or whatever it might be. But for me, I really had almost no plans when I started. And so like, like many curious and, sort of naive people, I got into philosophy to start with actually.
So I also have a major in philosophy. so I spent my first few years, studying philosophy and. I was interested in all of the big questions, you know, sort of primarily revolving around why do people do the things that they do and how might we, you know, be able to change those sorts of things so that people can do better things for themselves.
and I fairly quickly realized it was not super quick. It was two years, that, a, the answers to the questions that I had weren't, weren't necessarily in philosophy, you know, in the philosophy canon, there was some. You know, kind of great direction there and some really wonderful theories, but it's not the applied kind of, the applied kind of field that really is required to make an impact in the real world.
and while I was in philosophy, I was studying a class, taking a class on neuroethics, actually. and in that class, I kind of got really fascinated by the brain and the brain's impact on behavior. That was sort of my jumping off point into the sciences. So got into behavioral neuroscience, really asking some of the same questions.
How can we, you know, understand people's behavior? How can we change that behavior so that it can be a little bit more productive to everybody, which sort of set me off on the path that, that I'm on today, where I'm behavioral scientist, really focused on those big behavioral questions and how we can design the environment so that people can, end up behaving in a way that's a little bit more in line with their best interests, as opposed to sort of falling victim to some of the traps that we see in the environment that, can end up dictating our behavior.
Jay: is that the class you would take to figure out, like, why people become serial killers and stuff like that? Like, it's always, it sounded like, I've always wondered, like, you know, what is, you know, what the brain part is that makes you go down some crazy path, but is that the kind of stuff you would learn in a class like that?
Patrick: So in that class, we didn't quite learn that specifically, you know, we did sort of touch on that in the behavioral neuroscience curriculum a little bit, but the sort of interesting question related to that is answered in that class is, or at least addressed in that class is how do you think about, you know, the ethics of actions perpetrated by people who do have those sort of different neural structures that maybe lead them to
maybe not have a choice or be really highly prone to doing things that are destructive to others.
and so that was sort of the type of thing we were thinking about there, where, you know, if you have a person with, you know, with some sort of interesting neural profile that's leading them to do things that are unconventional, you know, how do you judge that person? Is it the same as somebody who, you know, is operating on a more traditional basis or do we treat them differently?
Jay: it. Okay. So that makes sense. so you left there and did you go straight into founding your own business? What did you, where did you go after college?
Patrick: So after college, I graduated in 2020, which, as we all know, is an interesting year to be graduating from school. So, at the time I was interested in doing some lab work or further exploring behavioral sciences. Those are my two areas of interest. And I ended up getting a job in an applied behavioral analysis clinic, which is really where the whole first word story actually starts.
So, applied behavioral analysis is a really interesting field of behavioral psychology that aims to apply behavioral principles to change environments so that kids can develop skills. More efficiently. so it's something that there's, I think, you know, 50, 50 plus years of research on. It's a relatively new field, but it's something that sort of grew out of the work of B.
F. Skinner and other folks in the behavioral sciences, and it's something that's incredibly impactful for the autism community because the approaches that are used to apply behavioral analysis. work so well with the needs of the kids. So I was working in an applied behavioral analysis clinic for a while.
and then I went to grad school. So my initial exposure to autism and the approaches that are successful for that. And really a lot of the core ideas behind First Work,were things that I picked up while I was working in the supply behavioral analysis clinic. So did that for a better part of the year during my, year between undergraduate and grad school.
And then I went off to the university of Pennsylvania where. I, continue grappling with some of the ideas and the concepts from applied behavioral analysis and, and then ended up creating first work as a result of that.
Jay: Wow. You definitely, I think you might be the most recent grad that I've ever interviewed. I didn't realize I saw that you were fresh outta school, but I didn't realize that fresh outta school, that's cool. So you, but you didn't go. So you went right after that, you kind of learned something that triggered something.
What was that trigger that you were like, oh, this is a problem I can solve with a solution?
Patrick: Yeah, so the thing which I saw when I was in applied behavioral analysis is this really stark discrepancy between the tech availability and the tech applicability in the traditional education space and in special education and kind of, you know, sort of non typical educational spaces. So. you know, we got the notice in, I believe, February or March that we were going to be moving offline.
We were offline for about a week on COVID cation and then next thing you know, there's zoom, there's, you know, protocols for tests. There's all these things that enable everyone to essentially continue what they're doing without very much interruption. and then while I was in the applied behavioral analysis space, I realized that, you know, it was sort of a world of like 1997 tech.
There was, you know. not only was there not technology to, you know, deal with these recent emerging changes, but there really wasn't even great technology to deal with core issues that have been around for the entire time that the field had. So seeing this huge discrepancy between, you know, the amount of tech availability in the traditional education space and in this space was one of those big sort of opening my eyes moments to thinking about, you know, well, what could tech look like in the space?
And how could it help these kids? and the other sort of complimentary insight that I have is that. Kids with autism and kids in general are, you know, incredibly into their technology. you know, screen time is a huge part of all of these kids lives, you know, with almost, with very few exceptions.
And it really fit into the broader framework of applied behavioral analysis. So a little bit of context, in applied behavioral analysis, what typically you're doing is applying a pedagogy. So a teaching style that works very well with these kids. But you're also applying this kind of secret sauce, the behavioral side of it.
And what that is providing motivation for kids to do the work that you're asking them to do. So, you know, even if you have the greatest approach of all time for teaching something, if the child isn't really paying attention, doesn't care about what you're doing, obviously you're not going to be seeing great results.
And so that's really the magic and the power of applied behavioral analysis is both the approach, but combining it with really potent motivation to, to promote this learning. Something that we would see very commonly is that if you do a preference assessment of what kids are interested in, screen time is going to come right at the top of the list for almost all kids.
And it was something that was being implemented casually as a reinforcer and a motivator to help kids learn, but it wasn't something that was really systematically being applied to help kids build skills. so there's two insights that there wasn't really any great tech and the kids were incredibly motivated by tech and really like tech based approaches were the two things that were really swirling around in the insights from that period of time that.
Had me thinking that if there was a way to essentially replicate some of the processes that were really high fidelity inside of the therapy context, in a digital context, there would be huge potential benefits to the whole ecosystem because kids are already on their devices, they're already motivated by devices, and you know, kids really benefit from extra learning opportunities.
So if there was a way to essentially combine all of these things at the same time, you know, we could have a solution that would allow for parents to help their kids work on skills more efficiently while they're at home and not just when they're in therapy, which is That's really what FirstWork is all about.
Jay: And is that the gamification of some of those things? Is that making, is that kind of how you approached it?
Patrick: Yeah, so essentially, in grad school I was studying a lot of gamification and that was the, you know, it's a great interlude there because thinking about gamification was actually how I started, I came up with the idea behind FirstWork. So, in gamification we're looking for different ways to make an application more interesting by sort of adding those game like elements.
and something that was, you know, something that I felt like was missing from gamification was really being truly, actually interesting to the people who are doing it. So if you think about a typical gamified experience, something like a Duolingo, that works great if you care about being better than your friends, or if you care about high scores, but a lot of the gamification techniques really aren't intrinsically motivating in their own right, unless you already have some sort of other interests that are often a competitive nature.
And in this context, it really wasn't something that was present. and so what I was thinking about was how can you take a step further? How can you provide something that really is truly ubiquitous and motivating for just about everybody? and that's when I realized that screen time itself, you know, having access to your device or free access is the thing that people care about, not the specific experiences that have been gamified inside of these applications.
So essentially the core concept behind FirstWork is that it's an app that enables you to earn screen time on your favorite applications by doing a little bit of learning work. So instead of having the gamification engine be inside of the learning experience. The gamification engine is essentially gating access to the things that you already care about.
So you have that, you know, sort of perfect motivational structure of doing exactly the thing that you want it to do. Not, you know, not some sort of, derivative of that or, something related to it. But, you know, you're rewarded with, you know, time on YouTube kids or whatever it is that you actually really wanted to do, as opposed to something that's a little bit more contrived.
and so that's essentially the core idea behind First Work that Instead of using gamification techniques that are inside of the application, we use access to all the fun things that you already like to do on your device as the motivation to get kids to do learning lessons inside of our app.
Jay: That's brilliant. I love it. Yeah, I went to school to make video games. I realized that industry sucks. and went and did some other things. But, I think you're dead on, that most implementations of gamification are off.
And they're like, let's just add like a, like you said, like a leaderboard, or add like a leveling system, or add a whatever.
And it's like, like you don't really care. Like, you know,
you see so many apps that you're like, you don't even know what the hell's going on. You're like, I guess I'm a level 6 of whatever
now, and you're like, you don't even, it's like because I was, I think Google has it for their reviews thing, like I left a review somewhere and like a bunch of people like liked it and they're like you're a level six review I'm like, I don't care like who
cares about that.
It's like so stupid. So it's certainly You know miss Diagnosed from a design perspective a lot of the time. So how the hell did a guy That's very smart and you know philosophy and neuroscience and all how did you? Start to make an app that seems like a herculean Task for a lot of people, especially that have, I mean, maybe you have a tech background that you haven't talked about, but like, just from your schooling background, you didn't go to, you know, you didn't learn about that stuff, how did you even, what was your first step in even attacking this problem?
Patrick: Yeah, so that's a fantastic question. I don't really have much of a tech background. I took CS100, so I know a little bit more than nothing. When I was a kid, I was really interested in tech, so I you know, I'm sort of naturally techie in terms of just like using tech all the time, but yeah, I don't have that technical background.
so I went about it was the kind of traditional student founder route. so while I was at Penn, I became aware of These incubators and accelerators that they had, where essentially professors from Wharton and other places would come together and provide, you know, these sessions basically to teach aspiring entrepreneurs about all of the core concepts of entrepreneurship.
and then also. You how you can attack these problems sort of irrespective of what's your specific problem were. So I got started in an incubator called the Venture Initiation Program over at the Venture Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, which really I give kind of full credit to for, for helping make this a reality.
They have really wonderful programming for people to start thinking about how you can run a business, sort of how you put a team together, how you, you assess your market and. You know, kind of craft a strategy to, you know, start getting feedback, figure out something worth doing, and then start moving down the line as you, you know, kind of continue progressing with the idea.
So, you know, huge shout out to everybody in the venture lab. If you're listening, I love you. they, they were a huge help. so on the sort of, you know, business side of things, how do you go from an idea to, something that you can test to something that you can build? That was something that, you know, full credit to them.
and then in terms of actually getting it done, full credit has to go to my co founder Thaddeus. so Thaddeus is a dear friend of mine from undergraduate at the University of San Diego. He is a computer scientist, and has a lot of connection to the autism space. So I was chatting with him about, you know, is this possible?
How can you do X, Y, or Z? and his, his ears peaked up a little bit more than I had expected. And, next thing you knew, a few months later, he was, he was on the team and, working full time on, on making it a reality. So. It was a combination of, the school-based resources, including a little bit of funding from the university, as well as, a great network of friends and advisors who I built over time that helped with, you know, both the product conceptualization, and then also creating a product.
and then of course, you know, huge amounts of feedback from the applied behavioral analysis community, which helped us really build all of the features of the app and understand how exactly it needed to be built to work within the confines of their businesses and their clinical practice.
Jay: Get a co founder. Such a cheat code answer.
get a smart co founder who does the tech stuff. That's a very, smart approach as well, so, I'm sensing a theme here. So, you seem like you've, you know, you've hit a lot of the right gears so far, and you're heading in the right direction. what, you know, if you had to start over tomorrow, and everything was clean slated with all the progress you've made so far, what would be step one for you?
Patrick: So I think step one, which, you know, in terms of the actual approach, I don't think I would change the approach to too much. the approach we sort of took was, inspired by again, the venture lab, the common knowledge that a lot of early startup founders here is to build, measure, sell. So, you know, go build something, get some feedback, figure out, you know, what's good and what's not fix it and then try to sell that.
the approach that we were taught, which I think is really wonderful is to try to sell measured build. So go out and talk to people, pitch an idea until people are like, we're really interested in this. We'll use this, we'll buy this, you know, this makes sense and then start to measure and then start to build.
and so we did take that approach, but I think that if I could do it again, I would do that even more aggressively,and be much, much more. Scrupulous about, you know, that initial conversation. So, you know, the way that we started out was reaching out to a lot of BCBAs who are clinicians in the supply behavioral analysis space and asking them about the product, asking about their problems and getting feedback.
and initially it was sort of a casual process. It was very conversational and, you know, kind of just asking around. but as time went on, I really figured out how to refine that process and, you know, kind of get to the core of the questions that you're trying to ask, you know, ask those questions that people really can say no to, you know, so that.
You're getting that quick, immediate feedback, you know, about directional things and, the needs of the businesses. So I think if I were to do it again, I would really focus on getting an initial mock up, which was something that took us a little while to get done. that's high fidelity enough that people can really give meaningful feedback.
and then, you know, take that to really everybody as quickly as possible and to, you know, not to, not that we under emphasize that step in the first place, but I think it's impossible to overemphasize that step. So I think that if I were to do anything differently, it would be. Spending even more time, and more energy just talking to, you know, really, everybody,and also being focused on all the different levels of the business and the clinical practice where, you know, there's, and I think this is true in every space there's stakeholders at so many different levels and you can talk to one group of stakeholders and hear one thing, and then there might be some, you know, some issue that you didn't know about that is only relevant in other levels of the hierarchy.
and so just making sure that you're talking to everybody in the space, so that you have that, Holistic viewpoint, and you're not kind of overly biased towards one level of the operation over another, would be my kind of general approach.
Jay: And how did you, that's an awesome answer. how did you find... How did you identify the right group? Or the group that you wanted to go after? Like, what was your criteria? Like, what did you, how did you even start to like, say, Okay, we want to sell this thing, we think we have the solution, now here's group X that we need to talk to.
Was that just from past experience? Did you guys have to go find it? Like, what was the process of identifying the group to go after?
Patrick: Yeah, so fortunately, I did have experience in the space, having worked in these clinics, so I sort of knew who the different key stakeholders were and who you needed to, you know, to have buy in from, you know, for any sort of product to get off the ground. So, in our case, it's parents have to be interested in the solution, clinicians who are day to day on the ground going to be implementing this and sort of mediating the process need to be interested.
and then finally, the, you know, sort of, business side of things also needs to be aligned. So those are really our three stakeholder groups. and fortunately I was able to, I was aware of them to start with. So, we started off with the clinical folks because we figured that they would have a lot of really deep insights into the product.
and that turned out to be correct that, you know, those conversations with clinicians were really invaluable for improving the product and, you know, figuring out what features we needed and how it needed to link up with everything else that was. Already going on. So that was the group of stakeholders that we really needed to understand the best and really deeply dig through their experience and their needs.
and then, you know, the other groups as well,we're critically important to understand, you know, how everything was implemented. So, you know, essentially we already knew who to talk to, and then not an advertisement for LinkedIn, but, LinkedIn is an amazing platform. it's, you know, you can go search those keywords and, especially if you have the paid versions, you can, you know, really go find just about anybody you'd like to talk to.
So. At that point sort of just, you know, hit the hit, hit the, the traditional, you know, sort of sales style engine of just reaching out to lots and lots of people and, you know, starting those conversations. And, that was essentially how we did it.
Jay: LinkedIn, I mean, I, when I was like, working a 9 to 5, I was like, I never got LinkedIn. I was like, Oh, it's just like Facebook for business. Like, I'll just have like a profile and it's like, but now that I, you know, I mean, I've been running a business for almost a decade, like it is hands down.
Patrick: It's incredible,
Jay: Then not, I mean, the free, you know, quote unquote free.
I mean, a lot of people have premium and do sales navigator and all this other stuff, but like the free information and access you have to people and the automation tools you can use to reach out. It is like. Unbelievable. And like, people talk about how important it is. It is just, you know, ridiculous, the amount that you can get.
Like, you could run just about any business,
ever.
Patrick: Yeah. Almost
Jay: It's all right there.
Patrick: you know. Yeah. I think that's the thing that, that's most incredible about it too, where there's, I can't even really think of another route that's comparable to what you can, you know, you can do on LinkedIn. Like you can go on Facebook and other platforms where people are, but.
it's just so well designed for that purpose.
Jay: Well, people are annoyed, too,
if you like, if you go in the wrong channel. But like, if you go through LinkedIn and you get them,
then like, everybody's okay, we're here for the same thing.
And it's like, it's a very, casual conversation at that point. Because you're not interrupting somebody's day. You know, I do whatever suits it. Like I said, I think, you know, as with everything, there's cycles, and there'll be something else that comes along,
but right now, you know, it's King. I don't normally ask this question, but as a young guy, I do want to ask this question. what, you know, look, I talk to a lot of people that want to start their own business.
I talk to a lot of people who don't start their own business. What do you think? You have, in you, that kind of drove you or made you different, that made you go do this. I mean, you have, it looks like you, you saw something, you went after it, and you just kept going. what is it about you, that maybe differentiates you from somebody who thought about doing an idea and just kind of sat on the shelf?
Like, what made you, what gives you that drive and that energy and that motivation to be an entrepreneur?
Patrick: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. so I think it's 2 things. And I think that 1 of these answers are going to be less what you're looking for. And the other will be
Jay: I want both of them, man. I have no, I don't even, I've never asked this question before, so it will, none of it will be a disappointment. Go
Patrick: yeah. so on 1 side, and I think this is something that is really important for all entrepreneurs, but especially young entrepreneurs who are taking a often a big, you know, big risk and sort of, you know, taking their career in a different direction than they would if they had kind of gone a more standard route.
is opportunity where I think that. You know, it's a fantastic idea to explore entrepreneurial ideas and go through that process of customer discovery and talking to people. But if you don't have the support ecosystem, if you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the co founders, and you don't have the interest in your product, then, you know, it's not something that I think people should do.
and so in my case, I was incredibly fortunate to be at the University of Pennsylvania where they have these wonderful resources, and had, you know, people in my network who helped me with all of this. And so. I think that the sort of non glamorous answer is that, you know, I think that the opportunity really presented itself in a very salient way for me and I knew that there was some, you know, there was something here and that I had a route to pursue it, which I think is, you know, the secondary component that often people don't consider heavily enough where, you know, is this something that, you know, you think you could really pull off with your resources and network.
So I think that's one component of it, which, I think. Yeah. Rightfully stops a lot of people, which is that, even if you do have a wonderful idea and maybe there are people interested in something, if you don't have, you know, the time or, you know, the expertise or any of really the components that have to go into it, I think often it's actually a good idea for people to, you know, take some time and, you know, set everything up and then go do it, if the opportunity is still there.
So, so that's one side of it. and the other side of it is I really enjoy working. I, you know, I think a lot of younger folks have different priorities than I do. I, you know, but for me, I'm, you know, I've always been very passionate about, about projects and work and in that side of my life.
and so it's something where I think where a lot of people see sacrifice and, you know, a change in what they typically do, you know, like, not going out on the weekends and drinking or whatever it might be. you know, to me, that sort of fits a little bit more into my natural life. So it was something that, didn't, you know, it didn't have that element of, day to day sacrifice that some people, you know, kind of have to experience in order to make these things work where, you know, for me, it was kind of just, you know, what I like to do.
Like, if I wasn't doing this and working more than a lot more than a nine to five, I'd be. Doing a nine five and working on a podcast or, you know, something like that. So I think a lot of it also is just like, are you that kind of person who likes to, you know, stay busy and work on kind of hairy projects and figure stuff out and, you know, comfortable with ambiguity and risk and things like that.
and in my case, I've always really liked a big ambiguous project where you're turning over the rocks and figuring out what worms are underneath and things like that. So. I think a lot of it is just kind of personality and interests as well, where, you know, some people are, you know, people just have different priorities and, and interests and, fortunately, you know, in my case, there's kind of a lane for people who, Like to spend their time the way that I do.
Jay: I love both answers. I mean, the opportunity thing is an interesting one because you have to, number one, you have to, you know, be lucky enough to have an opportunity, but, you know, to your other point, like, you have to, you know, Be ready for it, and you have to spend the time and put the effort in and like, take advantage of that opportunity when it comes to it.
It's like, it's pretty straightforward stuff, but like, I would argue, You know, there's a lot of opportunities that pass people by.
And they could, you know, and another thing you said too, though, is, Passion about what you're doing, right? Like, I love running a business. Like, I love it you do, where it's like, I would be doing this, If I'm not with my kids, or, you know, I'm going to say that and then I'm going to list off my 15 different hobbies instead of doing work.
But like, if it wasn't a NASA photography or being a pilot or doing all these different things, like then, yes, I would be, I'd work 24 hours a day because I love the running of the business part. It's a very, it's fun for me. It's rewarding. I deliver good service. Like I help, you know, software company, like I do this, so I get it.
and I wish I had dedicated myself. Earlier than I did but I mean sounds like you did that early on so You may have a different answer for this next one, which I'm interested to hear again, you're a younger guy I'm gonna keep saying that because you're the probably the freshest out of the you know, the pond that we have but What are three things you do health wise to kind of keep yourself tuned up Mentally physically emotion, whatever it is Like what are your top kind of three things you do you know where you want to do on a daily basis?
Patrick: Yeah. No, that I love that you asked this question. I've heard some really interesting ones from folks. so I've always been into weightlifting. That's, something I, you know, kind of picked up from my family when I was young. And so that's something which I think is, you know, really phenomenal for kind of just keeping you, you sort of tuned up.
And also, you know, it's nice to have a project, especially in the startup life where, you know, you can see that incremental, you know, you, it's out inputs and outputs are directly correlated in that space. So, you know, if you eat right and you do your thing,you'll be seeing that progress.
So it's nice to have something like that kind of, I think it has mental health benefits as well, you know, on, on top of the actual mental health benefits, but just, you know, in conjunction with something startupy, it's nice to have a project, which is sort of, you know, very clearly input output oriented.
recently I picked up running. I never ran when I was, when I was younger, I used to play sports. And so that was always, it always kind of conflated with punishment, but, I heard a really, or had a really interesting conversation with, one of the clinicians who's using first work and, they were talking about their training for a triathlon and how they use the behavioral techniques to work on, you know, essentially increasing their long distance range by keeping their aerobic threshold, you know, kind of keeping in their aerobic threshold while they're running.
and it was just a really interesting, you know, approach to exercise where it had this sort of internal biofeedback component. And I was really interested in because I never really enjoyed running. So. that's been something I've been finding really amazing, just like running at a slow pace where you're not really exerting yourself.
So if you don't, you know, you can go for a long distance and it, you know, it almost feels uncomfortably slow where you're like, I, you know, I should be going a little bit faster, but that's been something that's been great just for kind of improving that cardio health and, you know, kind of exploring another element of physicality that I'd never really, you know, tried out very much.
and then I like intermittent fasting. that's something else that I don't know if, if you're familiar with, but,
Jay: Big fan.
Patrick: Yeah, big fan. I think it's, I started doing that during college when I sort of had odd schedules with classes and things like that. And, I never really stopped. And so I don't,I wouldn't necessarily advise anyone to do that or not do that.
It's not, it's definitely a personal decision. You should talk to a doctor or what have
Jay: Yeah, no, Patrick said to do it and I died.
my friend died and it's
Patrick's fault. no, that's a good one. I like that one too.
All yours are great, dude. Those are all three rock solid answers. I, the only thing I struggle with intermittent fasting is like the, is strength training and intermittent fasting.
Like,
I don't, I never know if I like should, you know what I mean? Cause you're like.
You're
supposed to, uh, protein intake,
Patrick: but I don't know if it's true, but I read somewhere that, that if you know, that you're, you can get good lists in while you're, while you're, you know, fasting, but I personally feel that I do it after I eat where, you know, it's, it doesn't feel like a good idea to not eat for
Jay: Right,or, I eat after. I always think, like, you work out and then, like, if you're still in your fast for, like, six hours, like, aren't you supposed to, like, get
some sort of protein intake to feed, yeah, to feed your muscles, like, as you're work, like, I've, there's some,
Patrick: wrong
Jay: I'm sure somebody has an answer for this.
Like,
I've go I've tried chat chatgbt, I've tried Google, I can't find any, like, definitive answers on it. It's probably because nobody knows
anything. It's all just we're all just making this shit up as we go along. Like, nobody has an answer. alright. Well, not a mystery question, because you've listened to the podcast before, so you know this you know the answers to these questions.
You're gonna probably have a great one. I hope you do. I give no excuse if you don't. what would you do, non business related? That's been my new that's been my new one. non business related, what would you do if you couldn't fail?
Patrick: So I love that you asked this question. I have given this some thought and, I, it's funny, I was hoping I would have a more amazing answer, but I have two actually, which I think are big problems that I'd like to solve. one is I think that small modular nuclear reactors are incredible. they're pretty much available already.
And, so it's even something that's, you know, kind of more feasible than, you know, if you could do anything. But I think that. You know, properly disseminating these small modular nuclear reactors that have, you know, pretty low risk of failure, a lot of energy benefits for everyone, and it just seems like a no brainer to me where, you know, burning fossil fuels is just not great for us, and so, if we could transition to something where we had all the energy that we needed, but, you know, we had de risked the nuclear catastrophe side of things, I think that would just have massive benefits for everybody.
and the other is that, would be really interested in solving the food distribution problem where, you know, we produce plenty of food for, I'm not sure about the statistics, so I can't speak to it with any certainty, but I'm fairly confident that we produce about enough food to feed everyone pretty comfortably, throughout the world, but it's not getting to all the people who need it.
there's huge amounts of food waste in the U. S. and other places. And so. if there was a way to, you know, essentially distribute that, those food resources a little bit more efficiently so that, you know, we weren't wasting all of it and hunger wasn't as much of an issue, that would be something that, you know, I would definitely want to pursue if I couldn't fail.
Jay: Two rock solid answers from somebody who had time to think about it. See, there's no pause there. There's no awkward silence. Well, I appreciate the fact that, you know, you're the first one to be ready for it. I've always been fascinated by nuclear power. It's such a weird thing too, right?
Because like... The fact that, like, all we're doing still is heating water up to turn, like, to spin turbines is still, like, mind blowing to me. I'm
like, I feel like we're still not doing it right. Like, we're still, like, we're not tapping into something because we're still just doing the same stuff. We're just, like, using a different thing to heat the water.
It's like,
how are we not, how is there not a better form of electricity at this point than just, like, spinning a turbine as fast as possible by any means? But, you know, it's like, I,
so anyway, yeah, I love nuclear power. That was the first, That was my first technology thing I ever did.
Patrick: Oh, really?
Jay: yeah, like everybody had a, their poster and like all this stuff, like second, like fifth or sixth grade, like, and I made a website on GeoCities, which I'm sure you have no idea what that is, but it's like the original, free website host, like everybody on, like, like it was on the web and like the early nineties, mid nineties.
It was Geocities websites with these like 45 page long URL that you had to type in. But, I did my presentation as a website to my 6th grade teacher on nuclear power.
And it was like 4 or 5, you know, pages, you clicked, it had like this, you know, of course like animated background. It was like every 90s website you could
probably ever imagine. So, I love nuclear power, I think it's a super cool thing, so I love that was your answer. Although I don't know where we put this stuff, like do we just like keep burying it in the ground? That seems like not a great idea
Patrick: So that's the,I actually worked on a documentary, on these small nuclear, small modular nuclear reactors. And one of the really cool things with them is that they can actually use spent uranium as fuel. So we can go, you know, dig up those, you know, big piles of uranium that we have and like reuse those.
And then they're largely neutralized, through the process. So one of the cool things with it is that it doesn't really have the same waste profile as your kind of traditional. You know, rod based nuclear reactors where, you have these, you know, just kind of, which is admittedly a huge problem, you know, where you essentially just like bury them in a concrete thing and, you know, hope that nobody digs it
Jay: Yeah, don't
Patrick: yeah, but, it is, that is one of the cool things with these reactors is they've actually designed around that reality where you can, you know, you can reuse the spent rods and things like that. So
it isn't totally perfect, but I do think that it's, it's pretty incredible what's already out there and that, it's not, you know, being proliferated yet, so.
Hopefully, fingers crossed, that will be something we'll be hearing
Jay: Well, now, you know, you've set it into existence. So now you can go make it happen. Patrick, an awesome time, brother. Let's wrap it there. This was a lot of fun. I knew it would be. where can people find you? Where can people find First Work? Like, how do they get in touch?
Patrick: Yeah, so, you can find me, on LinkedIn. LinkedIn slash Patrick Faga, if you'd like to find me, or you can just search my name. It's fairly unique, so I think I'll come up. our website for First Work is, www. firstworkapp. com. If you're interested in, our learning solution, please feel free to reach out, as we discussed before.
It's essentially an app that allows you to earn screen time by doing a little bit of learning work. so really great approach for those of us who have kids who are really motivated by device bank. particularly if you have a child, on the autism spectrum, which is really what our technology is tailored towards.
So, please come check us out, on our website or on LinkedIn. And, yeah, we'd love to chat with you.
Jay: Beautiful. Alright, well, I'm sure people will reach out. Patrick, you're awesome. you're... You're inspirational, for a bunch of reasons, but I'm gonna lean on the youth aspect. I mean you didn't wait You jumped in and now you're you got a cool Solution to a real problem and I salute you brother.
Patrick: Keep up the good work and next time you're in philly please stop by and i'll do the same thing when i'm down your way. We'll grab lunch. Yeah. Oh, that sounds fantastic.
Jay: buddy. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. I'll talk to you man. See you patrick. thanks
man