Summary: In this episode of CIO Playbook with Jeffrey Hurley I have the opportunity to interview Francis Pedraza Everest CEO. Francis Pedraza is CEO and co-founder of Everest, a technology start-up helping people reach personal goals and live their dreams. He previously founded DoBand and dreams to one day to run all of England’s National Trails. The definition of Everest from their website is: “Founded on the belief that there is no separation between creating a better self and a better world, Everest exists to unlock human potential. Whether people dream to run a marathon, travel the world, learn how to DJ, or read more nonfiction, Everest helps them keep taking the next step. Everest helps you live your dreams and achieve personal goals. From traveling the world to getting in shape to learning Italian—Everest is a place to capture all your dreams, big and small, and focus on a few. Break goals into small steps, learn from others, and beautifully capture your journey.” Francis did you start Everest? I did. After graduating from Cornell I came out to silicon valley. Had a vision for using technology to unlock human potential. I was able to meet victor. Both he and I had done a project in college and had a similar vision for the product. We were then introduced to Katherine by an investor. How did you come up with the idea for the product. Where did the idea come from? I want it. Richard Branson has a famous line, “I am the market”. I feel the same way about this. All of us at the company are building the product that we want. Everything that is driving us forward comes from us being users and wanting more from it. That desire came from a desire to live life to the fullest. To be a human being in this world is such a blessing and opportunity. The adventures you can go on and the skills you can create. There is so much potential in each of us and there is so much potential in the world. I wanted to lead a full life yet I lacked organization or support. There was so many things that I wanted to do and felt stuck. I realized that a lot of people felt the same way. Technology should be able to help us with the things we are bad at. There was nothing out there to really help me with this part of my life, my desires. Everyone has things they want to do and that they don’t do. Things that are part of their identity they are part of what would make them fulfilled and there is frustration. People lack organization; don’t right down the things they want to do and they don’t have a process to figure out what steps they need to take or to figure out how to fit those steps into their busy lifestyle. So they need a tool to help with the lack of organization. People lack support; they don’t share what they want to do with their friends. They don’t share the progress they make. So they don’t benefit from encouragement and suggestions, accountability, companionship, learning, or inspiration. Tools plus community equals Everest. How do you go about figuring out the process and the steps of accomplishing a dream? Part of it is realizing that you can’t possibly have all of the answers. We have a feature that allows you to ask for suggestions. We also have a feature that allows you to search and then copy others steps onto your dream. If steps are working for others they will probably work for you. And when you do copy a step the person whose step you copied is notified that they inspired you. We also have an algorithm that will offer steps based upon demographics. We are also working with brands. For example, Nike knows a lot about running. We will have an area that will allow brands to provide guides and challenges and steps that will help you accomplish your goals. We are approaching this from various directions. Tell me about dream storming and how that contributes to building a plan in the Everest application. A dream storm is kind of like a brainstorm. For example,
