Jacob Bank - founder and CEO of Relay

Jon Cheney, founder and CEO of Velocity Access, discussed how he is building an enhanced ticketing platform by improving the overall experience of the patrons.

Show Notes

[01:12]  Jon gave the audience a brief overview of his background.  He has lived in different countries and started selling products door to door when he was 8.  Before Velocity Access, he started a company called Okavu in 2016.

[04:06]  Jon discussed why he was attracted to entrepreneurship.  It is not about money.  It is more about the process of creation (music, arts and business).

[07:45]  The market potential of Velocity Access was discussed. Jon believes the market is quite recession proof and the incumbents are charging exorbitant fees on ticket processing, presenting an opportunity for potential disruption.

[09:25]  The revenue model of Velocity Access was discussed.

[14:05]  Jon shared his view on Velocity Access's key differentiation.  He believes that there is a lot more value on both sides of the equation (venue and customers) if we can develop a longer-term relationship between the two parties.  Jon gave an example on how the venue can enhanced the user experience by understanding customers' preferences.

[22:33]  Jon touched on the potential of using AI to enhance venue's revenue.

[22:57]  Jon shared with the audience his experience in fundraising.  He believes that fundraising is a difficult (and big) part of his job (as a company founder).  He also discussed his approach in handling difficult questions from investors.

[37:29]  Jon discussed how he balanced growth and profitability at Velocity Access.  He shared with the audience the approach of profit sharing.

[48:14]  The most challenging aspects of growing Velocity Access was discussed.

Book Mentioned in this episode

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones Hardcover by James Clear

https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299

Resources:

https://www.velocityaccess.io/

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Mike Starr, founder and CEO of Trackd, discussed how he and his team help customers minimize vulnerabilities.

Show Notes

[01:20]  Mike provided a brief overview of his background.  Before launching trackd, Mike worked at the homeland security department and another startup. Most of the groups he worked in the government were mission focus (i.e. not bureaucratic in terms of execution and operation).

[04:00]  Mike discussed how he got the idea for trackd.  Mike believes that there is better way to deal with updating routers and firewalls.  Trackd is in the vulnerability and patch management space and focuses on the human condition of fear.

[07:51]  Mike took a deeper dive on the vulnerability management and the market opportunity.  There are typically 2 teams in organizations dealing with vulnerabilities.  One of trackd's goals is to bring these 2 teams together.  The market size is estimated to be $15 billion (vulnerabilities remediation, not including post breach spending).

[09:09]  Mike continued on the market opportunity.  There has been no real innovation in the space since the nineties when scanners came out.  The assumption is that lack of the technology is the reason that people don’t patch (averaging 200+ days for patch) which is not true.

[12:28]  Trackd's mission is to make patch quicker.  Trackd's team found that less than 2% of patches are ever rolled back.  Trackd will help customers determine what is safe and how to auto patch based on customers’ level of risk tolerance.

[17:07]  Mike shared his experience on fund raising which he believes is similar to dating.  Mike advised other founders to focus on warm intros.

[32:44]  Mike discussed his current area of focus: how to fundraise successfully, how to tell a story successfully and build a sales process that is repeatable successfully.

Book mentioned on the show

The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765326353?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_0&storeType=ebooks

Resources:

https://trackd.com/

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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Kunal Agarwal discussed how he and his team makes cyber security a first class experience for his customers.

Show Notes

[02:19]  Kunal shared with the audience his interest and passion in hacking, including an incident when he was in high school.

[04:43]  Kunal discussed the genesis of Dope Security and meaning behind the company name.  In his view, it is critically important to build the most amazing product somebody could ever use. (UX has to be absolutely beautiful, easy to use, easy to click.  No user manual required.)

[07:26]  The market segmentation of Dope was discussed.  It comes down to the go-to-market strategy. The company provides basically the equivalent of parental controls for the employees.  It's preventing someone from having wide open access to the Internet.

[08:58]  Kunal shared the key differentiation of Dope versus the bigger competitors such as Symantec etc. Dope's clients do not need a data center, instead the defense mechanism is done at the users' devices (e.g. laptops). The model of rerouting Internet traffic is old.

[13:45]  Kunal went deeper into the product philosophy at Dope.  It is an amazing product that just works for the customers: it does that by eliminating the headaches of the customers.

[15:24]  Kunal shared with the audience his fundraising journey.   As far as raising goes, he thinks it is a relationships game.  Ultimately, you (the founder) needs to be introduced to the right people, and somebody has to do that for you.   He touched on couple pivotable introductions made by his network which led to the funding at GV.

[20:37]  Dope's team composition and value driving mentality was discussed. Although the company is a startup, the team has the process and mentality to manage tightly from a P&L and budget perspective.

[21:58]  Kunal took a deeper dive on the team culture on value creation.  Both he (who worked at PE backed companies before) and Amar have similar value-oriented philosophy which is trickled down to the whole team forming a critical part of the team culture.

[31:23]  Kunal closed the discussion by sharing the challenges he sees as a startup founder.

Resources:

https://dope.security/

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Show Notes

[01:18]  Scot gave a brief outline of his background.  Scot has a technology background and two career journeys: a serial entrepreneur and investor/enthusiast/mentor of entrepreneurship.

[03:29]  Scot provided a high level overview of Spiffy, a mobile car care company which is nationwide.  The team is trying to build Starbucks for car care.

[05:03]  Scot took a deeper dive into where he got the idea of Spiffy from.  Spiffy follows two important themes: services are going digital and customers want fast and seamless experience (control through an app).

[08:09]  Scot shared the key market segment of Spiffy (e.g. rental car companies, fleet).  They value time and convenience as they use the time saved to generate revenue.

[10:29]  Scot discussed the genesis of Triangle Tweener Fund.  He started the Tweeter List in 2015 (50 companies).  He ended up drawing a line from a million annualized run rate to 80 million. He did this every year.

[14:49]  Scot discussed why the concept of Triangle Tweener fund can be applicable/relevant in other local markets.

[18:04]  The return distribution of typical VC fund was discussed.  Scot shared with the audience why the Triangle Tweener fund may work well by not missing any long-tail big winners.

[22:10]  The current investment algorithm of the Triangle Tweener Fund was discussed.

[24:16]  Scot shared the approach of light touch due diligence used at the Triangle Tweener Fund.

[26:35]  Scot highlighted some of the key elements of funding success.  He believes that one of the most important factors is whether the founder has the “twinkles” in his/her eyes (passion and greed).

[29:57]  The funding trend and entrepreneur climate at the RTP area was discussed.

[32:29]  Scot shared with the audience how he balances growth and profitability of Spiffy by using a bottom-up and top-down approach.

The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects by Andrew Chen

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Start-Problem-Andrew-Chen/dp/0062969749

Resources:

https://www.getspiffy.com/

Stay Updated:

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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Show Notes

[01:36]  Palash discussed his background and the genesis of Goldcast.  He came to business school with the specific intent of starting a company.  The timing was right (Covid) and the market opportunity is at a point where he wanted to launch the company rather than waiting for the completion of his MBA.

[05:23]  Palash walked us through the market opportunity of Goldcast.  If we look at digital events as a market, it is part of both events and the content world, or the content world where B2B market operates. Three main product/market opportunities for Goldcast: i) digital events ii) content hosting iii) video editing and content repurposing market

[07:29]  Palash took a deeper dive into Goldcast's differentation: the seamless experience, the ability to  measure the end-to-end impact of  events campaign.

[08:25]  Palash discussed the target customers of Goldcast: i) companies with more than 500 employees and ii) companies with 200 to employees.  The product works well with several industries: tech, financial services, insurance, legal, accounting, etc.

[10:05]  The go-to-market strategy of Goldcast is discussed. The biggest source of customer pipeline is  Goldcast's own events. (which also have a lot of virality)

[13:37]  Palash shared his fundraising experience.  (3 rounds) The key question was how Goldcast is going to differentiate in the long term and how the company will compete with all the other funded players in the market (challenging to articulate, especially in the early days the fault lines in the market were not clear.)

[16:42]  Palash shared couple lessons from his fundraising experience.  If an investor is not convinced about the market, then it doesn't matter what you do and how you say it or how you tell the story. (low roi effort) If an investor is to write a check, he/she has to be convinced about the market from the get go.  It is next to impossible for a founder to change it.

[19:16]  Palash discussed how he balances growth and profitability.  The company was anchored on the burn multiple early on.   It now focuses  a lot on CAC payback and customer pipeline (leading indicator).

[23:33]  Palash shared his approach to align and motivate the management team towards the company target and goal.  He tries to make it very clear to the team the long term vision. From there it cascades into the annual operating plan which would get approved by the board. (with quarter by quarter targets) He also works hard to make sure the management team understand the variables in the operation plan and how the decision made by the team can impact the outcome.

[27:56]  Palash shared with the audience his current reading and podcast listening recommendation.

The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Animal-Science-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996

Acquired (Podcast)

https://www.acquired.fm/

Link to Goldcast's website: 

https://www.goldcast.io/

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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Show Notes

[01:17]  Adam provided the genesis of Thatch. Paying for healthcare is really painful and complex.  It is painful for the business. It's painful for the employees.  Thatch is founded to alleviate the pains for employees and employers.

[05:17]  Adam took a deeper dive on how Thatch can help employers and employees. They set a budget, use a bunch of data and visualizations to make it easy for them to know how much to budget, and then everybody on their team gets a debit card that they can use to pay for healthcare the way that they want. They can also pick the health dental and vision insurance that they want directly through Thatch.

[07:43]  Discussion on why Thatch may be able to save money for employers/employee healthcare costs.

[08:28]  Adam discussed the type of companies that can benefit from Thatch.  He believes that the range of companies can vary from startups to mid-size companies.

[10:15]  Discussion on how Adam and his team tailors the product by listening to customer needs

[12:26]  Adam shared with the audience the current the go-to-market approach of Thatch which is primarily through word of mouth by delighting customers.

[15:20]  Economics/revenue model of Thatch is discussed.

[16:44]  Adam discussed his fundraising experience and lessons learnt.

[20:49]  Adam shared with the audience how he handled difficult investor questions.

[21:57]  Thatch's capital allocation priority is discussed.

[23:33]  Thatch's management process is discussed.

[25:30]  Continued discussion on Adam's management philosophy

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

https://www.amazon.com/Future-Faster-Than-You-Think/dp/1982109661

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis

https://www.amazon.com/Going-Infinite-Rise-Fall-Tycoon/dp/1324074337/

Stay Updated:
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https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Elaheh Ahmadi, founder of Themis AI, discusses how she and her team plans to empower the world to create and deploy trustworthy AI.

Show Notes

[01:15]  Elaheh provided an overview of Themis AI and the genesis of the research.

[03:34]  Discussion on recent developments of OpenAI and how Themis AI's product may be relevant to the industry.  There's the anxiety in the AI community about the power of these applications.  Themis AI may be able to help alleviate some of them.

[06:14]  Elaheh provided an overview of the how a machine learning may fail.  The vulnerability may be bucketed into 3 main categories: 1) model uncertainty 2) label uncertainty and 3) representation bias

[10:46]  Elaheh took a deeper dive in the core of Themis AI’s technology.  When we have a data set for AI, what could potentially go wrong?  Themis AI aims to solve the problem in a general sense, instead of only solving it for a specific domain/case.

[11:41]  A critical component of a good AI model should be able to tell you that if the machine doesn’t know the answer, it should tell you directly rather than making something up (hallucination). As such, there is a need for having a systematic solution to addressing these type of failures/vulnerabilities.

[16:29]  What are the reasons or sources of failures of the model? That's basically Themis AI’s approach of bringing different diagnostic tools to the end users who are machine learning engineers and scientists and helping them diagnose their models and pinpoint what is causing the model failure so that they can then further improve it.

[20:41]   The company is industry agnostic because its technology is agnostic to model and data. And the profile of the target customers are basically any companies who are building their own models for different applications. Themis AI is bringing them state of the arts technology and research, the only place they can find an automated solution to make the models uncertainty aware. This saves companies a lot of time and R&D effort.

[22:55]   Elaheh discussed how Themis AI could be a useful tool for companies (such as OpenAI) who focus on LLM.

[23:37]   Conversation on fund raising and lessons learnt.

[30:26]   Elaheh discussed the company’s beta release over the summer.  It selected about 5 customers from the wait list for priority access. Now it is moving beyond those beta customers and accepting new clients and talking to many companies in different industries.

Book Mentioned in this episode

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution by Uri Levine

https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Love-Problem-Solution-Entrepreneurs/dp/1637741987

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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A guy) discusses current trends, challenges and opportunities of FP&A professionals.

Show Notes

Books mentioned in this episode

Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management by Jack Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Planning-Analysis-Performance-Management/dp/1119491487

All About FP&A by CA ASIF MASANI

https://www.amazon.com/All-About-FP-ASIF-MASANI-ebook/dp/B0BPZN4P2B

Resources:

Link to Paul's website

https://www.thefpandaguy.com/

Stay Updated:
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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Thomas Kunjappu, founder and CEO of Cleary, discusses how Cleary can help companies improve internal communication and build organization culture.

Show Notes

[01:30]  Thomas provided the backstory of the founding of Cleary.  His background has mostly been in product management throughout the career. Typically, when someone is building products, it is built for customers.  In the case of Thomas, the product was initially built for internal customers (at Twitter). The mission of Cleary is to build connected company culture and being the central hub for companies. With the rise of remote and distributed work, the purpose and mission of Cleary becomes more important and urgent.

[04:25]  Thomas explained the sweet spot of Cleary's products.  Originally, the sweet spot was for pre-IPO or public companies with some scale and reach. With the prevalence of remote work, more companies (i.e. smaller) can benefit from Cleary's product because of the nature of distributed teams.

[07:02]  The use cases of Cleary are discussed.  One key hypothesis of a great company is to treat the employees the way you treat your customers if you want to retain them and build a great workplace of the future. There are 3 main areas/benefits of Cleary. First one is around communications  (e.g. the executives sending internal emails, having an all hands meeting, ensuring that everyone's in sync internally.) The second layer is about company culture.(e.g. Cleary has a badging system to incentivize the desirable employee behavior). The third pillar of Cleary is about search and productivity. 

[11:01]  Thomas discussed Cleary's differentiation. Cleary aims to disrupt the legacy Intranet market. (the repository to hold information but the market is very fragmented) For mid-market companies, Cleary is competing with is a dozen different tools. Cleary is not built to be a point solution, rather, it aims  to operate as a central hub.

[14:23]  Cleary's go to market strategy is discussed.  In its early stages, the company relies mostly on customer referral.  Recently, it has built up a sales and marketing organization.

[16:33]  Thomas shared Cleary's fundraising journey.  While the raise was successful, the company faced this dichotomy between revenue growth and customer stickiness on one side, just when the investor sentiment started to become more cautious.

[18:35]  Thomas discussed how he handled difficult investor questions. An entrepreneur should be able to predict 90% of questions from investors. Always answer questions honestly. If you don't know something you say so, but then be sure to do 2 things: follow up with the answer and writing in short order, and then ensure you're adding that answer to your repertoire of internal FAQ.  It's not just for investors, but you're becoming a better CEO for the company because you develope a better handle on all aspects of company’s operations.

[20:26]  Continued discussion on handling investor questions.  A fundraising event is a sales function, not a finance function.  A CRM can be used to manage the investor pitch pipeline. How do you know if your sales notion is working, the entrepreneur can analyze the pipeline, having a feedback loop.  Obviously, the entreperenur needs a high energy level to be successful as you're not going through numbers. You're going through a vision.

[25:09]  Thomas shared how he uses KPIs to steer the team towards the overall company mission. 

[27:47]  Thomas shared his perspectives on current developments of X (Twitter)

[35:40]  Challenge and Opportunities are discussed (unlocking the community, creating the movement and creating that community that would be behind the movement of a great work community; balancing uncertainty with demand that you might see in the market).

Book Mentioned on the Show

The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp

https://www.amazon.com/15-Commitments-Conscious-Leadership-Sustainable-ebook/dp/B00R3MHWUE

Stay Updated:
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https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Nicholas Longano, founder and CEO of Scuti, discussed the market potential of G-commerce and Scuti's business model.  Nick also shared with the audience his fundraising experience and his approach to align and inspire the team to reach the company's goal.  Nick is an entrepreneur and thought leader with decades of experience in launching successful companies and brands in diverse industries such as video games, cosmetic and beverages.

Show Notes

[01:20]  Nicholas provided an overview of Scuti. First, there was brick and mortar, followed by e-commerce and now Scut created G-commerce, which is commerce through games.

[06:21]  Scut's revenue model is discussed. There are couple main revenue streams: advertising and revenue share from the transaction of the product gamer purchase on the platform. Scuti uses artificial intelligence to present to the players products that they want to buy.  It's also a discovery platform for shoppers. Real world products  are shipped directly from the vendors. They come directly from the vendors who guarantees the best price that they control.

[09:53]  Nicholas discussed the market opportunity. Gaming is around 200 billion dollars a year in terms of  total addressable market. (Bigger than the entire movie and music industries combined) The G-commerce market is estimated to be ~$70bn.

[23:28]  Nicholas contrasted his corporate experience vs. running a startup such as Scuti. As a startup operator, every decision the entrepreneur makes is key and instrumental. (You can't afford to make mistakes as there are limited redundancies and support infrastructure.)

[29:41]  Scuti's fundraising process is discussed.  Nicholas believed that it is critical to know your audience. Finding the right investors is a needle in a haystack.  You're not going to just send out or present a pitch deck and expect investors handing you a check.  Significant work/diligence to find the right fit between the investors and your business is essential.

[37:56]  Nicholas shared his approach in handling difficult questions from investors.

[41:40]  The management approach of Scuti is discussed.  Every company needs to be aligned in terms of its employees, its team, and in terms of what the goals of the organization. Every team member should be able to tell over-arching goals of the company, and the metrics beneath the goals.

Book mentioned on the show

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145

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Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.