Long Run with SLAM Co-Founder: Declan Gessel

Strava PR time!

I had the chance to run with the enigmatic Declan Gessel last week—and I almost blew it. This was our first run together– we planned 15 miles as the target distance. I was nervous, almost like it was a job interview or a first date.

One would think a good night’s rest would be the best preparation for the afternoon I had planned, but the degenerate side of me started to emerge the night before our run. Long story short I stayed out too late and woke up hungover, dehydrated, and sleep-deprived.

I begrudgingly threw the covers over, put on my running shorts, and let Declan into my house.

“Gimme a sec dawg “, I croaked, fumbling to fasten the silicone straps on my running watch and slip on my cushy long-run shoes.

Declan looked well-rested and happy, “This is gonna be ugly”, I muttered.

We head out the door, hitting 7:30 min/mile. I dunno if we have any Eliud Kipchoge’s in the audience but that pace is too fast for me. My ego was strong, so I didn’t ask Declan to slow, and let my heart rate rise as we slipped into conversation.

I explained away my raspy voice from earlier as the consequence of a failed night out. The girl I was trying to charm at the bar started flirting with a guy who had a British accent; the night only went downhill from there. Declan then told me about his love life and how a girl randomly recognized him at the track in Berkeley.

“OMG are you Declan”, were supposedly her first words.

“How did she recognize you?”, I interjected. “Did she have an essay due at midnight– .com”, I joked.

We eventually got the horseplay out of our system and started talking about SLAM– fitting during this activity as SLAM stands for Sprint Like a Marathon. As a writer I think a lot and do a little; I was slapped in the face by Declan’s insights and struck by his bias for action.

We ran up a brutal hill on the intersection of Page and Divisadero Street in San Francisco, and I finally gave up on trying to breathe quietly.

As we entered Golden Gate Park, Declan took over the conversation and updated me on the day to day at SLAM Ventures. The team is working on maintaining our flagship app: Minutes AI, while simultaneously developing Entries AI our new AI journaling product.

I’ve always wondered how many resources the SLAM team dedicates to building business and brand "moats" around their consumer apps. Declan explained that the team doesn’t focus on moats—they focus on building great products with low churn. Which is hilarious, because low churn is a moat—essentially, their moat is trying to build the best possible product.

He goes on to explain that during the product development phase, he deliberately avoids MBA jargon words like moats, brand value, ROIC, and CAC. While these concepts are important, he argues that it’s much simpler to focus on building a product people want—everything else can come later.

When advising other builders, Declan’s tone is encouraging. He believes most founders overthink the market, their potential users, and the economics of consumer businesses. In his view, once an entrepreneur starts building something useful, the economics, business, and brand can be developed around it. His advice is simple: just start. Every step forward makes the path ahead clearer.

On the JFK Promenade Drive, we deeply inhaled the Eucalyptus smell that lingers in the park.

Declan told me about his dialed-in Reddit research, and how he uses it to generate ideas and save money. He scoured the depths of the /deals subreddit to find the promo code “GoBruins” for a vacation rental; he saved hundreds of dollars but brought shame to his UC Berkeley roots.

All this storytelling on his end allowed me to get my heart rate under control; on the down side there wasn’t much breathing room for clarifying questions.

He uses Reddit for more than just discounts. According to him, these threads are gold mines for uncovering user behaviors that can spark new product ideas. During one deep dive on addiction recovery, he came across an intriguing method to break the cycle: a handwritten note from a close family member expressing care and encouraging the person to quit..

Declan took this idea and built an experimental app where you convey your goals to an AI agent, and the agent spits back a letter from your future self similar to the one described on Reddit. Functionally serving as a letter from your future self telling your present self how glad it is that you followed your plan and stuck to the systems that are going to allow you to reach your goal.

I found it interesting that when building a product or trying to solve a problem, he goes back to the principles of human psychology.

We’re now on the Great Highway, battling the wind to make it back down to MLK Jr Road.

On MLK Jr Road we talk more about lifestyle, managing risk, and doing things that make us happy. Declan and I both love putting out our creations into the world. For me, it’s writing, for him it’s his products. The problem that I particularly struggle with is monetizing my passion. Can we build great things, charge people a fair price for them, and live a good life?

According to Declan, yes. He walked me through how scary it can be to go all in on your creative thing, but how having delusional self-belief is a powerful tool (or defense mechanism). Declan explained to me that through all the financial thick and thins he had this firm belief in himself and that he would sort of just… figure it out.

Back on Page Street, running down the hill on Divisadero, my legs started to give out.

Just pure pain, lactic acid seeping through my calves as Declan tells me about how I should get carbon-plated shoes for my upcoming race. I stopped talking during this last portion of the run, just grunts of pain as I finished up the final two miles and hit our goal of 15.

Back at my apartment, Declan and I rehydrate on my kitchen table. Sipping on the glass of water in front of me is more euphoric than anything I’ve ever experienced; I’m dizzy, drenched in sweat, and am having a hard time saying more than a few words at a time. Declan looks the same as when he arrived. Goddamn endurance athletes.

I’m bullish on Declan, and on any products that he has his hands on.

-Rajveer