$0 to $750M - From Starting Hotel Empire at 11 to Biggest Raise in Legal Tech - Dan Mishin

At 11 years old, Dan Mishin convinced his grandmother to move in with his parents so he could turn her apartment into a backpacker hostel. The idea came to him in Berlin, where his mom's wallet had just been stolen and they were stranded overnight in a hostel full of laughing 20-year-olds speaking a language he didn't understand. He made two decisions on the train ride home: learn English, and open a place just like it. That summer project became the largest hostel chain in Eastern Europe — 13 countries, 3,500 guests a night — and the start of one of the most unlikely founder journeys you'll hear this year. In this episode, Dan sits down with Jessica Neal to walk through all of it. Starting a company at 11 in post-Soviet Ukraine, a place he describes as the Wild West, with no functioning law enforcement and entire generations of savings wiped out overnight by government decisions. Sleeping in his car for six months when the business almost went bankrupt. Signing 100-year leases with personal guarantees at 18 because Ukrainian law had no concept of bankruptcy protection. Raising a $100M term sheet that same year. Buying a yellow Porsche he now calls a total douchebag move. Ballooning to 280 pounds on a diet of Snickers and Red Bull. And eventually getting on a flight to the US with a single phone number — only to walk away from a 10-minute call with a $100K check at a $5M valuation. After building Joon Homes to $300M and 250 employees, Dan hit a wall most founders don't talk about: he was building something valuable, but he didn't believe in it anymore. So he walked away to start Manifest — an AI-native legal company that's raised $60M to fix one of the most broken industries in America. The US has 1.3 million lawyers, ten times more per capita than most countries in the world, yet 80% of Americans can't afford one. Dan thinks he knows why, and he's rebuilding the entire system starting with immigration. The conversation also goes deep on what it actually means to run an AI-native company — how Dan hires, why he believes generalists are winning, the applied AI engineers he embeds in every team, and the one-year severance policy he introduced to take the fear out of automating yourself out of a job. A conversation about volatility, reinvention, and what it actually takes to build something that matters. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 TOPICS COVERED ▸ Growing up in post-Soviet Crimea and the night in Berlin that started it all ▸ Convincing his grandmother to give up her apartment so he could open a hostel at 11 ▸ Building the largest hostel chain in Eastern Europe as a teenager ▸ What it's like to sign 100-year leases at 18 with no bankruptcy protection ▸ Sleeping in his car for 6 months before raising $100M ▸ The yellow Porsche, 280 pounds, and the Snickers-and-Red-Bull years ▸ Landing in the US with one phone number and walking away with a $100K check ▸ Scaling Joon Homes to $300M and 250 employees ▸ Why he walked away from a high-growth business to start Manifest ▸ Why the US has 1.3M lawyers but 80% of Americans can't afford one ▸ How Manifest is rebuilding immigration law with AI from the ground up ▸ Why immigration is a hiring and retention lever most companies underuse ▸ Running an AI-native company: hiring, autonomy, applied AI engineers ▸ Why generalists are beating specialists in the AI era ▸ The 1-year severance policy that made AI adoption psychologically safe ▸ What to do when senior leaders refuse to adapt to AI ▸ His advice to over-thinking founders who won't take real risk ▸ Why this is the most exciting time in history to be building