The Fursuit of Happiness with Kiko Zang

On the latest Founder Mode episode, Jason Shafton and I talk with Kiko, founder of Chomp, about something most founders don't say out loud: how much of building a company is really about figuring out who you actually are.

Kiko grew up moving between China, New Zealand, and the US, and spent years adapting her personality to fit whatever room she was in. She built her first crypto company, Orca, while staying anonymous for a year and a half. Later, she spent days walking around in a full mascot costume just so people would stop assuming she couldn't be the founder.

Her new company, Chomp, is built around a simple but strange gap: what people say in public and what they actually believe in private are often very different things. Chomp asks users questions twice, once for themselves and once for what they think everyone else would answer, and the difference between those two answers turns out to be genuinely interesting data. Kiko's bet is that as AI takes over facts and trivia, honest human opinion becomes one of the few things left that's actually valuable.

🎧 Listen to Founder Mode Episode 74 here:

The Fursuit of Happiness wit... Sep 17 · Founder Mode 31:51   ​

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I closed the episode with five takeaways, straight from the show:

1. Pretending is a survival skill, but it has a ceiling.
2. A costume can reset other people's assumptions about you faster than anything you say.
3. The gap between what people say and what they privately think can be the product itself.
4. There's no permanent moat in consumer. Being top 10 percent at three different things is what makes you top 1 percent overall.
5. Most of your fears feel true only because you're acting like they are. It's mostly in your head.

Pretty Good AI Episode 4: Front Desk Burnout Is Real

My guest this episode is Mark Llorente, a healthcare executive who's spent his career running hospital strategy, population health, and value-based care programs across dozens of clinics and multiple markets.

Mark's biggest concern with the wave of healthcare consolidation is what he calls over-optimization. When a private equity roll-up cuts front desk staff down to the bare minimum, the human connection patients relied on disappears with it. He's also blunt about why so many acquisitions fail: not bad luck, but unrealistic goalposts and a leadership team, board, and sponsors who were never aligned on what could actually be achieved.

🎧 Listen to Pretty Good AI Episode 4 here:

Front Desk Burnout Is Real w... Sep 15 · Pretty Good AI Podcast 20:43   ​

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On turnarounds, Mark's approach starts with people, not systems. He believes most struggling teams aren't lacking talent, they're lacking morale and a clear vision to rally around. Fix that first, and the technology decisions get much easier.

Mark is also skeptical of vendors who lead with hype. His rule: start small, prove the outcome works, and avoid locking into multi-year contracts before the results are real. He's noticed that patients engage with AI far more easily on inbound requests, when they're the ones reaching out, than on outbound outreach they didn't ask for.

Here's how I summed up the conversation:

Final Thoughts

Both conversations end up in the same place: the gap between the version of yourself (or your business) that looks good on paper and the one that's actually real and working. Kiko built a company around the idea that people's private beliefs are more valuable than their public performance. Mark's entire philosophy of healthcare operations comes down to protecting the human trust that gets lost when organizations over-optimize for efficiency. Neither one is chasing perfect. Both are chasing real.

Watch the new Founder Mode episode, then listen to episode four of the Pretty Good AI Podcast. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

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-kevin

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