Ep 050 - Molly Cantillon, Founder at NOX

Molly Cantillon (0:00)

That summer, I lived in a hacker house in San Francisco. We were living on mattresses on the floor, like 12 of us piled into a four-bedroom house. I mean, me and my friend, we didn't even have a mattress. We bought a mattress topper. I told them at my high school graduation, this is probably the last graduation they're going to attend for me. The word I would use to describe this is whimsicality. It's someone who has so much fun with technology. Every other kid maybe didn't even know that you had this interest, or you just had to do it, and you were this just insatiably curious person.

Taiki Chung (0:31)

Hi everyone, I'm Taiki, and you're listening to New to Venture. It's the show that uncovers the secret world of startups and venture capital, from the multi-billion dollar exits to the biggest company blowups. So if you don't know that much about venture and startups, you've come to the right place. And now it is time to get hype because the one and only Molly Cantillon has joined us on the show today. And so Molly has an awesome story to tell and an even more awesome product that she's building. I am so excited to have you on the show, Molly. Welcome to New to Venture.

Molly Cantillon (1:05)

Thanks for having me. Yeah, excited to chat.

Taiki Chung (1:08)

So before we dive head into startups and venture capital, I want to talk about the really unique moment that is dropping out of one of the best universities in the entire world in Stanford. I don't even know where to begin. My parents would kill me. Let me hear about this dropout story, Molly.

Molly Cantillon (1:29)

Yeah. So, I mean, it definitely wasn't an easy experience. I relate to your parents wanting to kill you because my parents are very much education-centric and have always cared a lot about making sure I went to the best education and always threw the right curriculum. And I think it was a long time coming in an honest and just transparent way. I told them my, actually, I told them at my high school graduation, this is probably the last graduation you're going to attend for me. And that was cocky and they didn't like it, but funny. And but they also didn't think it was funny, but they were sort of angry. Then the first year of Stanford happened and you could see that I went from being really interested in quantitative things. So I was doing a lot of math classes, a lot of CS classes thinking I would pursue some sort of quant finance and making my way through different interview rounds to realizing that my passions really lied in building things and doing things on weekends and attending hackathons and posting things for my friends online and on GitHub. And I just thought the funness of building was just the most motivating thing. And then I remember coming back sophomore year in Thanksgiving time. Around that time was when ChatGPT had this huge inflection moment. And I was like, oh gosh, this is changing everything. And I'm going to renege my quant thing. I'm going to go heads in, heads down and just completely grind away and build everything possible. And for the first time, it felt like it was a complete level playing field. And the amount of like the person who had the most amount of time to spend with these models, and you would be able to uncover the biggest secrets and the biggest applications. And so that's where it started.

My sophomore summer, I spent a lot of time building projects and helping different companies and trying to just build as much agents and knowledge in that space as possible. And then coming back my junior year for that first quarter, I already knew that I was on the way out. Like I was, you know, taping info, taking tennis and golf and all the fun things and treating it really as just like residential social spot. But then, yeah, during Christmas, my junior year was when everything materialized. A few investors, you know, had presented me with opportunities to leave, and it became pretty clear the opportunity cost of not leaving at that moment. And yeah, there's, I mean, a bunch of fun stories I could tell you about, like that summer, I lived in a hacker house in San Francisco. We were living on mattresses on the floor, like 12 of us piled into a four-bedroom house. I mean, me and my friend, we didn't even have a mattress. We bought a mattress topper, and I became obsessed with the idea of this building mentality. And so once I left Stanford, I was like, the one thing that I need to make sure I have in place is a house and a hacker house. And so it was great because it was in Palo Alto with all of my best friends, who I convinced to also leave school with me, because socially nothing changed. Academically, the thing that was always considered a distraction for our lives was suddenly the keystone centerpiece of everything that we could actually pursue and do. And yeah, everything just worked out super well. So yeah, then I left, and January 2024 was when the ride began.