Morgan Lynch: Pioneering the Gig Economy, LogoWorks, HP Exit, Needle, Build Angel, Startups

[00:00:00 -> 00:00:03] and this is a really important point i think for entrepreneurs too if you go into a company [00:00:03 -> 00:00:08] and you treat it like your own the executives and people that you're working with notice and this is [00:00:08 -> 00:00:13] really important because that's where i got my funding you're basically saying exactly what i [00:00:13 -> 00:00:18] like to say to people if you don't have a killer idea that really is validated as a great idea to [00:00:18 -> 00:00:25] just go launch going to work for a 20 person startup emerging company is the perfect thing [00:00:25 -> 00:00:53] yeah welcome back to the startup ignition podcast thank you so much for watching the last [00:00:53 -> 00:00:57] episode we've are we are having so much fun doing these we have amazing guests and we have another [00:00:57 -> 00:01:03] banger for you today we have morgan lynch live in the studio thank you for coming morgan and making [00:01:03 -> 00:01:08] time for this podcast he called me yesterday he's like it's not today right i can't make today i'm [00:01:08 -> 00:01:14] like morgan is tomorrow he's like perfect and morgan's one of the first entrepreneurs i met [00:01:14 -> 00:01:20] 24 years ago when i came from seattle to utah really yeah we did i don't want to date you guys [00:01:20 -> 00:01:27] but how long ago was that 24 years i just said that's 2002 yeah wow i was doing logo works yeah [00:01:27 -> 00:01:33] yeah yeah we'll talk all about that when we get to it so morgan thank you so much for coming this [00:01:33 -> 00:01:40] podcast is for entrepreneurs startup founders um those interested in fundraising and financing those [00:01:40 -> 00:01:45] interested in building anything so you are like the perfect candidate to come on this because you [00:01:45 -> 00:01:50] wear all the hats and so i'm excited to dive into every angle with you and so i have a full show [00:01:50 -> 00:01:55] agenda and i have a bio for you so and i think people need to know who we're dealing with here so [00:01:55 -> 00:02:01] if the bio is incorrect correct me on the fly but this is what i put together so morgan lynch [00:02:01 -> 00:02:08] is a repeat founder best known for logo works and needle um he started in in marketing then [00:02:08 -> 00:02:13] co-founded logo works in 2001 after getting fed up with the traditional logo and agency processes [00:02:13 -> 00:02:22] um logo works grew quickly landing at number 66 on the 2006 inc 500 which is huge with a thousand [00:02:22 -> 00:02:28] and fifty three percent three-year growth and later sold to hp through acquisition hewlett packard yeah [00:02:28 -> 00:02:33] legendary company yeah i guess i gotta say hewlett packard even though i feel like i my generation [00:02:33 -> 00:02:39] and younger and even kind of yeah all know what hp is right a few a few years later morgan founded [00:02:39 -> 00:02:44] needle built around helping online shoppers get advice from real product enthusiasts instead of [00:02:44 -> 00:02:48] generic customer service reps what makes morgan especially interested is that his companies were [00:02:48 -> 00:02:54] not built from abstract theory they were literally built from frustration and pain and pattern recognition [00:02:54 -> 00:02:59] and the willingness to rethink how things are done so i'm super excited to have you morgan [00:02:59 -> 00:03:05] i know you're building something new and i hope to talk about that today with build angel um we met [00:03:05 -> 00:03:11] about it probably was that about six months to a year ago that we all met about build angel late last [00:03:11 -> 00:03:16] year maybe yeah and build angel for those who don't know um helps in the custom home building process to [00:03:16 -> 00:03:22] keep costs down and get more quotes and bids for the builder and for the homeowner as well yeah bring [00:03:22 -> 00:03:27] bring in the power of ai into the construction industry which is sorely needed yes sorely needed yeah [00:03:27 -> 00:03:33] now we're excited about that yeah so um uh one of the things you just said about him from pain it just [00:03:33 -> 00:03:40] reminded me of what i teach sometimes the boot camp how two entrepreneurs um the uh founder of jet blue [00:03:40 -> 00:03:48] and then also steve jobs they're marked with that same talent that morgan has which is they find pain [00:03:48 -> 00:03:52] that they've actually experienced and seen and turn into a great entrepreneur which you're doing again [00:03:52 -> 00:03:57] with build angel yeah which is really cool and that's and that's that's literally taught as one [00:03:57 -> 00:04:06] of the brain aspect uh aspects of top entrepreneurs they just think of there's this problem i gotta fix it [00:04:06 -> 00:04:12] yeah yeah so was that all correct was your bio correct that's pretty good yeah pretty good okay that's [00:04:12 -> 00:04:18] great accurate ai did it for me but it was pretty good no surprise there yeah um i think that's one of [00:04:18 -> 00:04:23] the good things that ai is actually really good and tasked with is like putting data together online [00:04:23 -> 00:04:27] and creating all the information across the web okay before we kick off the episode and before we [00:04:27 -> 00:04:31] get into your history and where you began and how you became an entrepreneur i do have an icebreaker [00:04:31 -> 00:04:36] every episode we do an icebreaker and we're going to play a quick game of this or that i'm going to say [00:04:36 -> 00:04:41] two things and you tell me which out of the two things you prefer this one or that one is it just [00:04:41 -> 00:04:45] for him nope you're going to participate too i want to hear both of your guys's takes on both of these [00:04:45 -> 00:04:50] things okay you ready these will be entrepreneurial-esque but also just kind of pop culture and [00:04:50 -> 00:04:57] just fun i'm ready all right big market or painful niche what are you choosing what's more important [00:04:57 -> 00:05:01] to you when you have an idea when you want to execute on something a big market or a very painful [00:05:01 -> 00:05:07] niche painful niche painful niche why is that well i think the pain is what generates the idea i mean [00:05:07 -> 00:05:12] obviously creating a business in a small market it's terrible yeah idea generally speaking yeah but [00:05:12 -> 00:05:17] it's the painful niche that kind of at least wakes me up and gets me excited about you know solving a [00:05:17 -> 00:05:21] problem yeah how about how about you absolutely and i've even morphed on this even more in my older [00:05:21 -> 00:05:29] years painful niche because i'm getting wary in the ai age of horizontal plays and broad plays and you [00:05:29 -> 00:05:36] know we use the boiling the ocean analogy right and then hair on fire use case that you can get in a [00:05:36 -> 00:05:40] niche so definitely the painful niche is the wedge to get into the market you may be something [00:05:40 -> 00:05:45] different three five seven years from now but you won't survive the first 18 months if you don't [00:05:45 -> 00:05:49] have a painful yeah there's got to be a pain there that's how i'm solving okay next one's easy [00:05:49 -> 00:05:56] mountains or beach what do you prefer beach beach yeah i'm a beach too beach over mountains yeah [00:05:56 -> 00:06:01] hiking you never do hiking do you how about you do you are you a hiker not well i am a hiker i [00:06:01 -> 00:06:06] do paragliding and speed flying so oh damn really really like mountains so you really like mountains [00:06:06 -> 00:06:10] but you like beach that much more i like hiking up them i don't like hiking down so it's a really [00:06:10 -> 00:06:14] great sport can i ask you a question because in utah last week i heard somebody died what was that [00:06:14 -> 00:06:20] was that paragliding or was it a different type uh from what i hear about it yes of course um it was [00:06:20 -> 00:06:29] in uh up in draper yeah and he was speed flying uh it's a little bit it's a different kind of sport [00:06:29 -> 00:06:33] uh it's not the squirrel suits it's not it's not base jumping and squirrel suits it's [00:06:33 -> 00:06:36] basically paragliding but with smaller wings so a little bit faster [00:06:36 -> 00:06:43] and um is it more dangerous uh can be was it just windy or something i don't know the details [00:06:43 -> 00:06:47] either you know i never i haven't even heard it can be a safe sport but you know you have to [00:06:47 -> 00:06:51] he fell from a pretty high it something happened he fell from a high thing and died so sorry to [00:06:51 -> 00:06:55] hear that yeah it was oh i've seen i've seen those people going on the freeway when you pass draper [00:06:55 -> 00:07:00] lehigh air you can always see him kind of jumping off those that kind of really steep drop off there [00:07:00 -> 00:07:06] so yeah it's actually we actually fly off we don't jump base jumping's where you jump okay and i do [00:07:06 -> 00:07:12] think that sport is a little crazy yes um paragliding's much safer and by the way and just [00:07:12 -> 00:07:18] a little promotion here for utah we have probably one of the top five spots in the world so these [00:07:18 -> 00:07:23] people you see um half the time as you're driving up the freeway a lot of them come from all over the [00:07:23 -> 00:07:28] world to actually learn to paraglide here this is kind of like the waikiki you know of surfing but [00:07:28 -> 00:07:33] really paragliding yeah why but it's just the combination we're super fortunate here in utah [00:07:33 -> 00:07:39] we have this condition where the wind is the perfect speed almost every morning coming from the south [00:07:39 -> 00:07:44] hits that slope which happens to be like a perfect slope shaped by nature i think i don't think that [00:07:44 -> 00:07:50] was man-made uh from the bonneville shoreline days yeah and it just creates a really great opportunity [00:07:50 -> 00:07:56] it's really a utah treasure people come from all over the world to actually fly here oh yeah probably [00:07:56 -> 00:08:02] at any given time i would guess maybe 30 of the people up there are from out of town or even [00:08:02 -> 00:08:06] international coming here to learn paragliding that's crazy no learn something new every day i [00:08:06 -> 00:08:11] had no idea one time i i don't know i scared the heck out of me i bought something or won something [00:08:11 -> 00:08:18] and i went up there and so there was a guy that i rode with like i just rode with a guy doing it [00:08:18 -> 00:08:23] scared the heck out of me so like it's like you know when you jump out of an airplane and you jump [00:08:23 -> 00:08:27] with somebody it was the same thing is that how they teach you you can do a tandem flight up there [00:08:27 -> 00:08:30] and tandem flight something like that i tell everybody you should try it it's actually a quite [00:08:30 -> 00:08:36] a safe sport especially what goes on there at the point of the mountain that's paragliding yeah and [00:08:36 -> 00:08:42] it's not base jumping yeah so yeah there you go well all of that i say you like mountains a lot but you [00:08:42 -> 00:08:48] like beach more yeah i do i like surfing and fishing that's great okay text or call what are you doing [00:08:48 -> 00:08:54] what do you prefer text text or call yeah text i mean yeah text is taking i mean when there's [00:08:54 -> 00:09:00] something really serious and there's a point of conflict or something you gotta do a voice or video [00:09:00 -> 00:09:03] call or something but how rare is it that you're actually making calls throughout the day nowadays [00:09:03 -> 00:09:07] it's more like hey i'm just gonna text this guy yeah yeah it's crazy yeah i text mostly because i [00:09:07 -> 00:09:12] think most people like to receive it yeah it's more convenient i actually do like to talk yeah i think [00:09:12 -> 00:09:19] the under 35 or so crowd is just they prefer texting yeah here we go here's the gen z and us [00:09:19 -> 00:09:27] tiktok youtube or instagram what do you like more youtube youtube youtube yeah i i actually like [00:09:27 -> 00:09:33] instagram still more so i i do like youtube but i'm still not a fan of like the just scrolling on [00:09:33 -> 00:09:37] youtube i only go to youtube when i specifically want to look up something or watch something it's [00:09:37 -> 00:09:42] even increased for me in the last year or two because i pay for premium now i was so tired of [00:09:42 -> 00:09:49] the ads i i held off for so long and i go why am my time's valuable why am i wasting it on these ads [00:09:49 -> 00:09:54] so i paid the premium i've been paying premium for years probably since they offered it really oh yeah [00:09:54 -> 00:10:00] i was like i can't stand these ads but i i'm a di wire so you do everything on there i literally pull [00:10:00 -> 00:10:05] up youtube it seems like twice three times a day i do it for that too i'm looking for someone to show [00:10:05 -> 00:10:10] me how to do something it's so incredible for that but it's also just i i can go get news current [00:10:10 -> 00:10:15] events or something interesting way faster than anywhere else if i want to see like 10 minutes [00:10:15 -> 00:10:20] of what's happening in this part of the world and i see three different things and get some idea faster [00:10:20 -> 00:10:25] than trying to hunt for it elsewhere it's kind of crazy okay easy one pizza or tacos or neither [00:10:25 -> 00:10:32] i'll give you the neither well if it's a you know true italian pizza than pizza okay it's like you [00:10:32 -> 00:10:38] know american garbage like domino's yeah no so tacos over that but if it's true italian pizza you're [00:10:38 -> 00:10:44] you're choosing pizza so what was it italian no i said pizza or tacos pizza pizza me too actually [00:10:44 -> 00:10:50] um press attention when you're building something or launching something or quietly building what are [00:10:50 -> 00:10:56] you doing do you like to stir up attention or do you like to just quietly build in your corner [00:10:56 -> 00:11:03] i usually quietly build for a while but then i love press later yeah when i'm ready yeah so when [00:11:03 -> 00:11:06] you're ready to launch or you're getting some traction or you're you know this is go time you're [00:11:06 -> 00:11:11] you're going to stir up some pr yeah the timing is important early on too much hype and buzz [00:11:11 -> 00:11:17] sounds like it could be fake or fluffy yeah right but after it's production ready then you want the [00:11:17 -> 00:11:25] hype okay um podcast or music if you're at the gym or you got some time to listen to something or [00:11:25 -> 00:11:30] you're driving what are you doing podcast or music always music music and i'm podcast yeah yeah i know [00:11:30 -> 00:11:38] you were podcast music huh that's interesting um netflix night or dinner with the wife dinner with [00:11:38 -> 00:11:45] the wife dinner with the wife dinner with the partner or are you netflix probably we like to watch [00:11:45 -> 00:11:52] stuff together yeah netflix okay but we we cancel netflix we have other choices okay last one here we [00:11:52 -> 00:12:05] go build a company people really respect or build a company people fear respect respect okay yeah respect [00:12:05 -> 00:12:10] respect i don't know i thought fear could have been maybe one to to switch it up there because you know [00:12:10 -> 00:12:15] if people don't want to go against you or they're scared of you you know you can defend self-mote [00:12:15 -> 00:12:20] yourself i don't know i respect is in between fear and being a milk toast so i like respect it's the [00:12:20 -> 00:12:26] perfect medal yeah okay well hey got to know morgan yeah quickly there we understand that you now know [00:12:26 -> 00:12:34] that utah is what top five place in the world for not base jumping but paragliding yeah and i didn't [00:12:34 -> 00:12:39] know the one that you do uh speed flying speed flying just a little faster version of paragliding you do [00:12:39 -> 00:12:44] speed flying yes oh wow that's the one that that happened wow i didn't know that okay so you know [00:12:44 -> 00:12:49] utah just to throw it out there 10 minutes from where i live is the provo river and i think of that as [00:12:49 -> 00:12:55] just the provo river it ends up being one of the top fly fishing rivers in the world and you people [00:12:55 -> 00:12:59] pay thousands and thousand dollars for a trip out to the provo river to do fly fish yeah that's crazy [00:12:59 -> 00:13:04] too i know we're so lucky we have so much here in utah yeah we really do and we need to protect some [00:13:04 -> 00:13:08] of these things too as with growth and all that yeah we have some real treasures here all the data [00:13:08 -> 00:13:13] center stuff going on right now you've seen all that too i've seen it i i haven't studied a lot and [00:13:13 -> 00:13:17] yeah all the all the growth is right i mean i can't believe the utah county projections [00:13:17 -> 00:13:22] of the growth that's happening in this county it's great what's happened last 10 years what's [00:13:22 -> 00:13:30] going to happen no they know from i just read a stat that by 2050 the wasatch front from ogden to [00:13:30 -> 00:13:35] like nephi yeah ogden to nephi will double well it's going to be one big city they're saying yeah [00:13:35 -> 00:13:43] but they're saying that 15 to 20 miles wide for like 150 miles long one big city yeah they project [00:13:43 -> 00:13:49] by 2055 or 54 something like that it will double from like it's crazy 2020 or something like that [00:13:49 -> 00:13:55] yep anyways all right morgan let's get into you now now we're done with the icebreaker thanks for [00:13:55 -> 00:14:00] playing that this or that game it was great but we want to go all the way back so take us back as [00:14:00 -> 00:14:03] far as you want to go where did you grow up and go to high school yeah where'd you grow up so i grew up [00:14:03 -> 00:14:10] in the bay area oh and uh when i was growing up there the excitement around technology was [00:14:10 -> 00:14:17] well known even what city specifically south south san jose almenden valley white and san jose wow yeah [00:14:17 -> 00:14:23] so it was that i tell everybody it was probably one of the best places like ever to grow up i mean [00:14:23 -> 00:14:27] that's at the center of the universe for technology was of course there was semiconductor and yeah and [00:14:27 -> 00:14:34] apple was just basically starting out you know with the personal computer in fact i tell the story [00:14:34 -> 00:14:42] sometimes steve wozniak lived down the street uh in basically almenden valley and i remember uh he rolled [00:14:42 -> 00:14:51] into my friend's court where a cul-de-sac there and in a brand new shiny red accurate nsx and i [00:14:51 -> 00:14:58] remember thinking well i don't know what he does but it probably is a pretty good business yeah this [00:14:58 -> 00:15:04] was uh steve wozniak right yeah it was and it was great it was uh obviously he was with apple [00:15:04 -> 00:15:09] and uh those were exciting times so yeah it was a really really great place to grow up wow and i [00:15:09 -> 00:15:14] you know probably got the bug a little bit just you can't everyone's talking about technology when i [00:15:14 -> 00:15:18] was growing up so this was normal what was the high school you went to what's the name of it i went to [00:15:18 -> 00:15:23] leland high school okay in almenden valley and it was a communications magnet we actually had our own [00:15:23 -> 00:15:31] radio station there okay and i did not um dj or all right uh but i i i loved the i loved high school [00:15:31 -> 00:15:37] yeah in california it was fantastic i loved everything about it and then where'd you go from [00:15:37 -> 00:15:42] high school where'd you do so i came to byu here okay and uh that's the connection to utah was [00:15:42 -> 00:15:48] university came to brigham young and there i studied international relations okay i don't know what [00:15:48 -> 00:15:55] they call it now it might be called area studies or something now and i was thinking well i remember [00:15:55 -> 00:16:01] uh talking to a counselor they're thinking what am i gonna do and i don't know what fits me and this [00:16:01 -> 00:16:06] is i think a lot of students and a lot of young people i did that when you're at school and you're [00:16:06 -> 00:16:10] like surveys yeah yeah and you're like what am i gonna do i don't know what i'm capable of and [00:16:10 -> 00:16:17] and it's funny i never really decided right and i didn't have to i was really lucky had a friend [00:16:17 -> 00:16:24] uh that i was working with and he said hey i'm at this uh technology company we're at the in the [00:16:24 -> 00:16:29] basement of doctor's park in provo i don't know if you know where that is it's off like 800 north and [00:16:29 -> 00:16:35] like 500 west yes i i have it was called recently it was called it was still there you know i think so [00:16:35 -> 00:16:40] yeah i drive by it sometimes i think i worked in the basement oral surgeon yeah so this was a company [00:16:40 -> 00:16:45] called insure quote and there were about 20 people there it was kind of dungeony kind of damp down [00:16:45 -> 00:16:52] there in the basement and they said we need a salesperson and we do software for for insurance [00:16:52 -> 00:16:58] agents and insurance companies i thought well okay i'll i'll give it a shot and so yeah i started [00:16:58 -> 00:17:03] doing sales for this software company called insure quote again there were like 20 people there [00:17:03 -> 00:17:07] and a lot of people drinking mountain dews all day if you know i'm saying it was a really heavy [00:17:07 -> 00:17:14] programming culture and yeah and there are a few few like one marketing guy and sell and me and a [00:17:14 -> 00:17:19] sales guy and that was about it and i mean if you started logo works in 2002 this had to be late 90s [00:17:19 -> 00:17:26] early 2000s was yeah and so they were uh we were venture backed i think it was even wasatch ventures [00:17:26 -> 00:17:31] back then if i'm right that had backed insure quote and we grew that and that was a really good [00:17:31 -> 00:17:36] opportunity because we went from like the 24 people to like 500 and we bought a company in cleveland [00:17:36 -> 00:17:41] and i kind of grew with that company so actually graduating from byu was an afterthought in fact i [00:17:41 -> 00:17:47] already had my job before i finished byu yeah and i was already almost working full-time by the time [00:17:47 -> 00:17:53] i graduated at that software company was growing fast wow so you did sales there i did uh i'm not sure [00:17:53 -> 00:18:00] how good i was at sales what happened was i mean i was okay obviously they kept me but by the time as [00:18:00 -> 00:18:05] we were growing it was the whole marketing thing that was actually fascinating to me we didn't have [00:18:05 -> 00:18:10] and back then if you remember we're talking like if you had you needed materials you had to actually [00:18:10 -> 00:18:14] create a cd rom to distribute to people you know with like electronic copies that's how things are [00:18:14 -> 00:18:21] done they didn't download software from the internet yeah no not yet um and so we didn't really have some [00:18:21 -> 00:18:25] of the marketing collateral that we needed so i volunteered to do that and that experience [00:18:25 -> 00:18:30] really led me to logo works right because then i was going to ad agencies to rebrand insure quote [00:18:30 -> 00:18:36] and that's how i figured out this whole design thing was really messed up and i ended up you know [00:18:36 -> 00:18:44] going to a design firm here uh locally and here in utah county and that really led to the whole logo [00:18:44 -> 00:18:49] works experience so what were you over the rebranding of insure quote i was yeah so i kind of grew with [00:18:49 -> 00:18:54] the company and then took on more of a marketing role and kind of moved out of sales because we [00:18:54 -> 00:18:58] didn't have anything we had no sales materials we had we just didn't have a presence we didn't have a [00:18:58 -> 00:19:05] brand and so i i took that on and and developed that so in sure with a company called studio by the [00:19:05 -> 00:19:11] way studio interactive it's uh was the agency yeah the agents that you used the agency that i used [00:19:11 -> 00:19:17] they were down in provo in the river bottoms down there so insure quote bought a 500 person company [00:19:17 -> 00:19:22] or vice versa i was like i think 250 at the time of people we already had by then i think 200 we were [00:19:22 -> 00:19:28] about 500 combined from 40 when you joined yeah or 20 when you joined or whatever to 250 something [00:19:28 -> 00:19:32] like that acquired another company in another state land yes okay something similar and put those [00:19:32 -> 00:19:38] together and then you became like 500 or something yes okay got it okay and then you discovered this [00:19:38 -> 00:19:44] problem with branding creating logos marketing collateral and where did how long were you there [00:19:44 -> 00:19:50] what month and year did you leave insure quote and man dates are a little fuzzy now but i it was [00:19:50 -> 00:19:56] probably around 2006 ish maybe i left insure quote but then so you were doing working on logo [00:19:56 -> 00:20:02] works before that is that right yeah i mean i i think so because i came down in 2002 within the [00:20:02 -> 00:20:07] first year i met you okay so that i actually that was probably about the time maybe 2003 2004 that [00:20:07 -> 00:20:10] i really started on logo works somewhere in there it's probably that i met you then you're probably [00:20:10 -> 00:20:16] right yeah so i think the learning maybe for some you know entrepreneurs out there that are thinking [00:20:16 -> 00:20:21] hey i really want to do something there's no shame in going to work for an you know not doing it [00:20:21 -> 00:20:24] right out of college necessarily i tell people all the time hey if you can go get your [00:20:24 -> 00:20:29] feet wet and go work at another tech company and really put your heart and soul into it and treat [00:20:29 -> 00:20:34] it like you were the owner and i really did that i mean i was so excited about what we were doing and [00:20:34 -> 00:20:38] it was insurance software yeah it's not like you know you can imagine these conventions people make [00:20:38 -> 00:20:42] fun of insurance agent conventions i went to them yes like every year in scottsdale you know i'm [00:20:42 -> 00:20:47] saying yeah this was but i was still excited because i liked what we were doing i liked the momentum [00:20:47 -> 00:20:53] i could i felt like this was a really great place for me and i felt like i was getting all the lessons [00:20:53 -> 00:20:58] without necessarily spending all the money let's double down on that advice you're basically saying [00:20:58 -> 00:21:03] exactly what i like to say to people if you don't have a killer idea that really is validated as a [00:21:03 -> 00:21:10] great idea to just go launch going to work for a 20 person startup emerging company is the perfect [00:21:10 -> 00:21:16] thing to do yeah absolutely absolutely i mean it taught me so many things there and i was able to [00:21:16 -> 00:21:26] to grow and to learn things about myself basically you know with the expense i don't think joining a 500 [00:21:26 -> 00:21:31] person or a 2 000 person company is quite as good because you get pigeonholed into a very you had [00:21:31 -> 00:21:36] the opportunity probably with 20 people the ceo can come to you and talk to you and say hey why don't you [00:21:36 -> 00:21:42] take this on no no it's actually better than that is nobody's doing something i think i'll step into [00:21:42 -> 00:21:47] this role and do it that's the opportunity happens when you're in like a like even like a 20 20 20 [00:21:47 -> 00:21:52] person company you just see a need you go fill it yeah and you learn a lot and then you grow you get [00:21:52 -> 00:21:58] close to sales customers operations absolutely and i think the biggest thing is you see how money is [00:21:58 -> 00:22:03] made like you you see how oh the things you have to do to actually make money i like a thousand [00:22:03 -> 00:22:08] person company or like a law firm that's huge or like google or some of these fortune 500 companies [00:22:08 -> 00:22:12] if you go to one of those companies and just take a role you're not close enough to the customer you're [00:22:12 -> 00:22:18] not close enough to revenue generation you know what i mean so how did you um it's great point there and [00:22:18 -> 00:22:22] you can comment on that i'm just curious i'd like to hear based on what you've just we've been talking [00:22:22 -> 00:22:28] about your transition how you went from ensure quote and then all of a sudden logo works you said i'm [00:22:28 -> 00:22:33] going to do it what was in between there how did was that a gradual metamorphosis or was it an [00:22:33 -> 00:22:42] overnight decision it was somewhat gradual i think we you know we grew and we were we this is during [00:22:42 -> 00:22:47] the internet heyday if you remember most people don't remember but pets.

com and all this kind of [00:22:47 -> 00:22:51] craziness well there was this company called channel point you can go look in the archives the internet [00:22:51 -> 00:22:55] and find this one but they were a high flyer backed by insurance companies had tons of money [00:22:55 -> 00:23:02] uh we were bought by them and i remember going out to meet some of the team out in alameda [00:23:02 -> 00:23:06] you know they all had air on chairs all these led light displays and they were just blowing money [00:23:06 -> 00:23:12] everywhere i thought oh my gosh this is totally the opposite of what i'm used to like insure quote [00:23:12 -> 00:23:16] was practically a bootstrap company compared to that and they're just throwing millions of dollars [00:23:16 -> 00:23:21] all over the place and i remember seeing their team there thinking geez they have like 20 people [00:23:21 -> 00:23:27] to do what three of us do i don't like this i'm out and i went to the co so that was after [00:23:27 -> 00:23:32] insure quote and the cleveland company got together you were bought by channel point correct got it and [00:23:32 -> 00:23:41] so after that uh merger i didn't stay too too long you know i was like this is crazy i uh i just didn't i [00:23:41 -> 00:23:44] kind of felt like a fish out of water the culture was and i'll say this is really funny so they came [00:23:44 -> 00:23:52] in like the first day and they said okay you're you're making i think it was maybe 60 000 a year [00:23:52 -> 00:23:59] that's crazy and i think they gave me 120 or 100 just like that and i'm like wait what you don't [00:23:59 -> 00:24:03] even know why you should yeah i'm probably worth that especially after having seen what you guys are [00:24:03 -> 00:24:08] blowing money on yeah but it really angered me actually because i'm like if this is happening like [00:24:08 -> 00:24:14] this is crazy you don't even know why i'm good yeah i am good but you don't know that and so i these [00:24:14 -> 00:24:20] kind of things um really annoyed me and i went went into the co and said hey i'm out i got this [00:24:20 -> 00:24:25] idea and it had been kind of percolating in my head about the whole logo design design experience [00:24:25 -> 00:24:30] where we just spent tons of money and i wanted to fix that whole process and this is a really [00:24:30 -> 00:24:34] important point i think for entrepreneurs too if you go into a company and you treat it like your own [00:24:34 -> 00:24:39] the executives and people that you're working with notice and this is really important because [00:24:39 -> 00:24:49] that's where i got my funding so the ceo bill won um he of insure quote said hey okay cool well first [00:24:49 -> 00:24:53] of all can you stay for like six months you can keep your office work on your new idea and i'll give [00:24:53 -> 00:24:59] you funding so i was like okay i was like what that sounds great like are you kidding me and i think some [00:24:59 -> 00:25:05] of that came just because you know i worked hard yeah and uh he knew my capabilities he believed in [00:25:05 -> 00:25:11] you yeah and i think what a perfect setup yeah it is but i think this is available to you know [00:25:11 -> 00:25:15] budding entrepreneurs out there if you go and you work hard people notice and they'll want to back you [00:25:15 -> 00:25:20] that's important it's relationship driven too you have to have a good relationship right i mean he [00:25:20 -> 00:25:27] obviously you trusted him and he trusted you and he believed in you so what so for all the viewers and [00:25:27 -> 00:25:33] listeners um watching or listening right now tell them what the first idea of logo works was like [00:25:33 -> 00:25:42] what was that initial idea that logo works went and executed on so we the i actually remember i was [00:25:42 -> 00:25:46] sitting on a plane when the idea struck in my head you know it was like wait a second this whole process [00:25:46 -> 00:25:52] was really bad i think i could fix this and this is you know obviously the early days of the internet [00:25:52 -> 00:25:56] and connectivity was process tell about the process of a logo before because i think that's important for [00:25:56 -> 00:26:00] people to understand and what you transform because you were big and transforming it in industry [00:26:00 -> 00:26:07] yeah so the idea was in a creative process and by the way this isn't necessarily too far-fetched from [00:26:07 -> 00:26:13] what we're doing now at build angel we'll get there later but the in a creative process where you're [00:26:13 -> 00:26:18] building something sometimes you just need multiple ideas to find the one that the person's actually [00:26:18 -> 00:26:25] after and so in the redoing the logo for and sure quote you know we had basically one designer [00:26:25 -> 00:26:30] at this company studio doing the work and he's really good but whatever concepts he was doing [00:26:30 -> 00:26:37] initially weren't hitting the mark with us good design just not hitting the nail on the head right [00:26:37 -> 00:26:44] it wasn't resonating with us and so the thought was wait a second what i really need and what i can do [00:26:44 -> 00:26:50] as a kind of creative manager myself at the company i need multiple ideas from different people at the [00:26:50 -> 00:26:55] same time different graphic artists and designers yeah hopefully all good but doing completely [00:26:55 -> 00:27:00] different ideas based on the same creative coming at it from a different angle yes and so that was [00:27:00 -> 00:27:06] the whole idea and theory and even having one of these persons do it though from a marketing agency or [00:27:06 -> 00:27:11] brand agency very expensive too at the time super expensive yeah we're talking five ten grand yeah [00:27:11 -> 00:27:17] yeah like back in the day would be five ten fifteen twenty thousand just to get a logo proposal from a [00:27:17 -> 00:27:22] marketing so then what what was logo works and it was like hey come to logo works and we'll give you [00:27:22 -> 00:27:29] 20 different designs by 20 different artists and you yeah go ahead how did that how did that come to [00:27:29 -> 00:27:34] your mind then yeah so knowing that we had the connectivity now with the internet i knew we could [00:27:34 -> 00:27:39] get to designers pretty quickly so we created a crowdsourcing back end right it was before the [00:27:39 -> 00:27:46] the the word crowdsourcing had even you know yeah been invented yeah we we just outsourced it to [00:27:46 -> 00:27:51] designers you know via the internet we presented them with the creative brief and let them do their [00:27:51 -> 00:27:56] design and we streamlined the whole process with a software platform so really instead of doing the [00:27:56 -> 00:28:00] whole thing where you know you had to go out and find a client meet with them do the creative brief [00:28:00 -> 00:28:05] and then do designs that sometimes the client didn't like and go through that whole painful process in [00:28:05 -> 00:28:09] the end sometimes you didn't even get paid that it was a very inefficient process designers could do [00:28:09 -> 00:28:15] what they actually like to do they look at information get into illustrator and design do design and then [00:28:15 -> 00:28:19] create and then create the output and put the output in right and so it's super fast for them and so we [00:28:19 -> 00:28:25] could pay them you know it seemed like very little but it added up very quickly and per hour they were [00:28:25 -> 00:28:29] actually making really good money so it worked it worked really well and for the client who got [00:28:29 -> 00:28:34] multiple designers and multiple ideas we hit the nail on the head like 95 percent of the time meaning [00:28:34 -> 00:28:40] there was one design out of those 10 or 12 or 15 that really resonated with the customer and they're [00:28:40 -> 00:28:44] like that's the one i love it yeah yeah so would you still charge them that five to ten thousand [00:28:44 -> 00:28:49] dollar price and then you would just basically divvy out to all the different designers say hey you're [00:28:49 -> 00:28:56] getting 100 bucks 200 bucks no look logo works was selling logo design for 250 to 500 dollars yeah so [00:28:56 -> 00:29:02] let's back up and show how that worked because this is this taught me this you taught me a whole new [00:29:02 -> 00:29:07] word in the entrepreneurial realm which to me was i called it a distributed workforce so in other words [00:29:07 -> 00:29:14] you had a software platform on the internet you invited people that just wanted to ideate and [00:29:14 -> 00:29:19] create but didn't want to run their own agency didn't want to run a business didn't want to have [00:29:19 -> 00:29:23] to go get their own clients all the stuff of having to be a business owner but they could just sit and [00:29:23 -> 00:29:29] create but they didn't have to go work at one agency they could work from home and create that's [00:29:29 -> 00:29:34] kind of you were offering them like it was it was the gig it was the gig economy yeah before it was [00:29:34 -> 00:29:41] you were one of the first gig economy companies i would say and so what happened was right is that [00:29:41 -> 00:29:46] what he did and so you had you basically promoted the offer so all across the country in the world [00:29:46 -> 00:29:51] designers could come on your website register designer and then businesses that wanted a logo [00:29:51 -> 00:29:56] instead of going to a local agency and spending ten thousand dollars they could for a few hundred [00:29:56 -> 00:30:01] dollars go on your site put in their information you got it out to all these designers and they made [00:30:01 -> 00:30:06] lots of designs is it keep going with the story that that's kind of the core right there isn't it [00:30:06 -> 00:30:11] yeah so you know originally and this is interesting you know maybe from you know entrepreneurs that are [00:30:11 -> 00:30:17] listening you know originally we were going to fix the ad agency space right that was my experience [00:30:17 -> 00:30:24] i had been buying from ad agencies but what we realized was our offering was so efficient that we [00:30:24 -> 00:30:30] could offer a price point around 250 and 500 still have some margin and it opened up a whole new [00:30:30 -> 00:30:35] market for us and these were all the small business owners you know and there's like what 20 million of [00:30:35 -> 00:30:40] these uh small business owners in the united states and of those you know they need a lot of logos and a lot [00:30:40 -> 00:30:46] of design of course now it's totally different with ai and um all the options you have you can create a [00:30:46 -> 00:30:51] logo in 10 seconds in ai and it wasn't that way before it wasn't and so this offering was really [00:30:51 -> 00:30:57] powerful because they had you could really bring high quality design to a business that normally [00:30:57 -> 00:31:02] couldn't afford it right so what it actually did was opened a whole new market for us so in fact [00:31:02 -> 00:31:05] originally the name of the company wasn't logo works it was called artis and we were going to be [00:31:05 -> 00:31:12] competing with ad agencies but we quickly realized we we were better off opening a whole new market [00:31:12 -> 00:31:18] of underserved people and it was way bigger yeah so a big corporation still goes to an engine that [00:31:18 -> 00:31:22] pays twenty thousand dollars gets a logo design sure i didn't see this today just like the local [00:31:22 -> 00:31:28] plumber can't do that he's the local plumber wants a good logo for his plumbing company and he goes to [00:31:28 -> 00:31:35] you yeah yeah so it obviously went well because i mean you got acquired i mean tell us okay you when [00:31:35 -> 00:31:41] you came up with the idea named it give us the first year what was like oh the first two years i mean [00:31:41 -> 00:31:48] so we uh my co-founder joey dempster he and i ideated on it for a long time in fact he lived in [00:31:48 -> 00:31:54] an abandoned house called the spider house up by y mountain i think it's since been destroyed hopefully [00:31:54 -> 00:31:58] literally he lived in this basement the ceilings were falling down it had been condemned actually [00:31:58 -> 00:32:05] but he lived there and we would full of spiders apparently completely it was really bad but that was [00:32:05 -> 00:32:11] our basically corporate we called it the world you know corporate world headquarters and yeah and so [00:32:11 -> 00:32:17] we we really thought about the process a lot and worked on it he was great and he's he really brought [00:32:17 -> 00:32:22] between us we we really thought deeply about it and came up with you know i think a really good [00:32:22 -> 00:32:29] solution that then scaled and you know from there it took a while you know so it wasn't like an [00:32:29 -> 00:32:32] overnight success like we had to go through this process we're like oh we're competing with [00:32:32 -> 00:32:37] ad agencies and then realized no wait a second we can do this and and then we had to go find [00:32:37 -> 00:32:45] the the original the the first projects that we we were doing we would put up billboards we did mailers [00:32:45 -> 00:32:50] we did all kinds of stuff to find these small businesses this is before you really could do even [00:32:50 -> 00:32:55] i mean you could do google ads i can't remember how early you know and of course we did those things [00:32:55 -> 00:32:59] but we had to get small businesses to buy the logos online that was asking them a lot back then [00:32:59 -> 00:33:07] to put your credit card in online for 250 bucks back in like 2002 that was a big ask yeah now it's [00:33:07 -> 00:33:11] like no big deal we all buy cars online and stuff but back then people weren't buying that kind of [00:33:11 -> 00:33:15] stuff big ticket items online and this felt like a big ticket item so we had challenges took a while [00:33:15 -> 00:33:21] to get this going and you know i had to do the friends and family funding thing i think i even asked [00:33:21 -> 00:33:28] you to invest maybe yeah pf change you remember the lunch he said no i do just for the record but i was [00:33:28 -> 00:33:36] pretty new you know i had to bring that up yeah but yeah that should have done it yeah i know he's [00:33:36 -> 00:33:42] got a lot of those ones no i got a lot of stories hey we all do i hit some lose some yeah so and i'm [00:33:42 -> 00:33:45] sure we weren't that great at explaining it then and it took a while that's the thing some some of [00:33:45 -> 00:33:51] these processes when you're going after a process that's complicated and hard you might have to spend [00:33:51 -> 00:33:56] a year or two and everyone loves to just jump in and talk about you know especially now you know [00:33:56 -> 00:34:00] these companies and i like them too and i'd love to invest in them you know that jump from like you [00:34:00 -> 00:34:06] know a million to 10 million arr in like three months that's awesome i love that yeah um but there [00:34:06 -> 00:34:10] are not that easy but no but there are also plenty of good businesses that will take blood sweat and [00:34:10 -> 00:34:14] tears for a year or two where you have to figure things out there's no shame in that either i'd say [00:34:14 -> 00:34:20] that's the norm how did you so this is a two-sided market here right you've got to you're bringing [00:34:20 -> 00:34:24] together designers and you're bringing together small business and medium business people needing [00:34:24 -> 00:34:30] a logo that's the core of the business how did you attract them to register on your website so this is [00:34:30 -> 00:34:36] the uh yeah the the balancing act that you have to do right so i remember we first got some projects [00:34:36 -> 00:34:41] we actually had people put their credit card in online like oh my gosh this person bought a logo [00:34:41 -> 00:34:46] and i'm like now we got to deliver like how you gotta get some designers to do this and i remember [00:34:46 -> 00:34:49] and i'm sure there's a bunch of designers that they're listening to this podcast they just start [00:34:49 -> 00:34:53] laughing because they're the first ones i called the ones that well a lot of them worked at studio [00:34:53 -> 00:35:00] um and guys like rob kirby and jared fish and uh oh man there's so many you're just like hey can [00:35:00 -> 00:35:04] you make me a logo literally i was like okay it's like the man behind the curtain you know [00:35:04 -> 00:35:09] because they said yeah give me give me you know three designers and all the logos i'm like okay [00:35:09 -> 00:35:15] and so we didn't have our platform then so we were uh joey and i would sit there and we had like a [00:35:15 -> 00:35:18] little thing up on the wall and we'd be like okay who are we gonna assign to this one and this one and [00:35:18 -> 00:35:23] this one and it's eerily similar frankly to what we're doing right now build a build angel too by [00:35:23 -> 00:35:29] the way when we go get subcontractors to help on projects it's similar at some point though it will [00:35:29 -> 00:35:37] scale and as you go so as we acquired the work meaning the jobs then it became self-service at [00:35:37 -> 00:35:42] some point because designers get used to the fact that hey i can log in i can see projects in fact [00:35:42 -> 00:35:45] it will notify me and tell me there's a project here and they will start taking them self-service so [00:35:45 -> 00:35:51] it's a given now everyone understands crowdsourcing and get work if you have work there will be people [00:35:51 -> 00:35:56] that will want to come do it you were super innovative and cutting edge at the time you did [00:35:56 -> 00:36:01] all of these functions that now people accept as accommodate i did the same thing five ten years [00:36:01 -> 00:36:07] before you with co-branding websites you know ever it's obviously common now to co-brand a website like [00:36:07 -> 00:36:11] put you know and we did co-brand websites before we called them co-branded websites it was really [00:36:11 -> 00:36:17] popular and now of course it's just standard right and that's and now what you've done is standard but [00:36:17 -> 00:36:26] back then it was cutting edge yeah so okay so you get it rolling you actually create the software you [00:36:26 -> 00:36:30] have the platform now you start seeing probably some kind of tipping point where it's like okay [00:36:30 -> 00:36:36] this is actually working what what was that moment yeah my question back to that was how did you get [00:36:36 -> 00:36:41] enough two-sided market because you got to have enough demand for logos and enough designers right [00:36:41 -> 00:36:47] how did how did you get that all happening it was i mean it took you it took a couple years [00:36:47 -> 00:36:51] was there more demand at first or was it harder to get demand it's always it's always harder to get [00:36:51 -> 00:36:57] the demand it's always harder to get more designers at first than logos that wanted to be created [00:36:57 -> 00:37:04] yes the it's always hard to get the work yes well once you have the work there are people that will [00:37:04 -> 00:37:09] want to do it if their conditions are right right and you're paying fairly and you're paying on time [00:37:09 -> 00:37:13] that was i honestly that was probably the the thing that designers love the most was that right when [00:37:13 -> 00:37:20] they uploaded their stuff we would within hours uh yeah pay them how would how do you make sure [00:37:20 -> 00:37:23] in fact we were the one that i can make this claim to fame we were one of the largest [00:37:23 -> 00:37:28] paypal users they used to have this thing called mass payments and you would literally send like a [00:37:28 -> 00:37:33] spreadsheet of the payment csv file or something yes and it would it would literally fire off like [00:37:33 -> 00:37:40] a hundred payments like 35 50 75 bucks or whatever it was and we would do that but we would do it [00:37:40 -> 00:37:43] instantly no questions asked so they upload something we pay them how did you know that they [00:37:43 -> 00:37:48] weren't like scribbling on microsoft paint or something well i mean did you verify the yeah so there [00:37:48 -> 00:37:54] was a whole reputation system and gaming system in there where you know your peers would review your [00:37:54 -> 00:37:59] work as well which they love to do review and and rate work and so if you were if you if you did that [00:37:59 -> 00:38:02] even once you'd be kicked out of the system and nobody wanted to do that because it became something [00:38:02 -> 00:38:08] that was really important because they for a you know gig economy for a side hustle this was a great [00:38:08 -> 00:38:13] income yeah and so you wouldn't want to mess that up and people generally take pride in their work [00:38:13 -> 00:38:18] too you know most people do great work and want to do good work so very few bad actors ever came [00:38:18 -> 00:38:25] through yeah yeah so in other words the customer the business comes in pays up front on a credit card [00:38:25 -> 00:38:32] to get a logo made and to get several designs so that they can choose a logo and then you issue that [00:38:32 -> 00:38:38] out and 10 people or five or whatever respond and make a logo and then what happens from there for [00:38:38 -> 00:38:42] the system for people that aren't familiar with it how the business owner then chooses one of the [00:38:42 -> 00:38:48] logos does everybody of the 10 get paid that made a logo yeah so we paid that work so in our system [00:38:48 -> 00:38:53] we paid everyone every time they did something now granted it might have been twenty dollars or [00:38:53 -> 00:38:56] thirty dollars or forty dollars for that initial set of comps which probably only took them about [00:38:56 -> 00:39:02] an hour yeah so at your minimum you're probably making 20 30 bucks not bad back then yeah but if [00:39:02 -> 00:39:08] you got picked by the customer if yours won then you got an extra 50 okay so now you know oh so you [00:39:08 -> 00:39:13] kind of like made it a competition wasn't that what i mean we just aligned we just so their pages tripled [00:39:13 -> 00:39:21] hourly rate yes i mean we aligned the payments so that you would you know hopefully read the creative [00:39:21 -> 00:39:25] brief and design something that the client wanted that's that's what we're trying to do is make the [00:39:25 -> 00:39:29] client happy and get them something that's professional and good for their business how did [00:39:29 -> 00:39:35] this grow then after the first year or two then what happened well you know we we just started [00:39:35 -> 00:39:41] investing more into domains back then you could domain you know games where you know we did white [00:39:41 -> 00:39:47] hat i wouldn't say we did too much black hat stuff but we did a little you know with uh sub domains and [00:39:47 -> 00:39:52] things so we had seo strategies that were you know don't work today of course but back then they did [00:39:52 -> 00:39:58] so we bought domains and sub domains and and and really did a ton of seo that was huge you know the [00:39:58 -> 00:40:03] thing though that actually grew our business that was unexpected more than anything else were two things [00:40:03 -> 00:40:10] uh and i didn't anticipate this and frankly saved our business and made it work because we if we just [00:40:10 -> 00:40:15] had to spin always to get new clients it probably wouldn't have scaled as well and that was word of [00:40:15 -> 00:40:23] mouth so uh people came in of course to get a logo and then we had this thing called the ask a friend [00:40:23 -> 00:40:28] feature this was so critical so everyone wants to get their friends opinions on their new logo and so they [00:40:28 -> 00:40:32] put the emails of their friends in there and say vote on these and we'd have them come in so we [00:40:32 -> 00:40:37] expose like we expose like six ten people to every single you know to logo works on every single [00:40:37 -> 00:40:44] project and business people typically have their business friends and so that was like 20 of our [00:40:44 -> 00:40:52] business freaking genius and then um yeah so there was the ask a friend feature and then the repeat [00:40:52 -> 00:40:58] business was a shocker so these people starting small businesses they would either fail and start [00:40:58 -> 00:41:04] another one or they just start another one right if it was going wild wildly successful and the first [00:41:04 -> 00:41:09] thing you need when you start a company is a logo yeah so i would say i seem like almost 40 of our [00:41:09 -> 00:41:15] business at any given time was either word or mouth or repeat customers which was huge so yes we could [00:41:15 -> 00:41:20] spend money to acquire new people and then with the word of mouth before that grew our business so at [00:41:20 -> 00:41:25] the height of logo works when hp comes in probably around that time yeah how many years till [00:41:25 -> 00:41:31] i mean it was like seven years or something but like give us an idea like what was revenues on [00:41:31 -> 00:41:35] this like how many logos were you if you were charging 250 500 bucks a logo you were doing i think [00:41:35 -> 00:41:40] our run rate was up around 15 million i think that's insane but we were just doing logos by then we were [00:41:40 -> 00:41:44] also doing of course websites and brochures any kind of design promotional products all kinds of [00:41:44 -> 00:41:50] things and we had a great team i mean i don't want to also leave out in this whole story the [00:41:50 -> 00:41:57] importance of getting uh really great board members and then just the team that we had was [00:41:57 -> 00:42:02] incredible i look now the things they've gone and done and it's like yeah i was like so lucky to get [00:42:02 -> 00:42:07] some of these people involved with logo works is crazy now at one point i remember and you can correct me [00:42:07 -> 00:42:14] if uh if i'm wrong here but i remember at some point you had so many logos to be done and this [00:42:14 -> 00:42:21] distributed network out in the internet ether that you also had to meet demand sometimes had to have [00:42:21 -> 00:42:27] your own people here locally and get more producers to keep up with the demand you know did you hire your [00:42:27 -> 00:42:32] own designers even yes it's funny we started as a completely outsourced company yes but then at some [00:42:32 -> 00:42:38] point we also realized it's nice to have a release valve inside in case someone didn't show up or we [00:42:38 -> 00:42:44] need someone to pinch hit yeah and so yes we did have uh i think we got up to maybe 20 or 30 in-house [00:42:44 -> 00:42:51] designers here uh in you know right in uh linden at our office there and we did that for a couple [00:42:51 -> 00:42:55] reasons one it was a little bit more profitable but even then that wasn't a really great reason for [00:42:55 -> 00:43:02] for doing that it was more about having a safety net and ability ability to pinch hit in the 20 plus [00:43:02 -> 00:43:07] years i've been mentoring and talking to thousand thousands of businesses i've come across [00:43:07 -> 00:43:14] different manifestations of your model in different industries and all of them have to do that to keep [00:43:14 -> 00:43:21] a baseline so that they can never be without that you know if they're using a distributed workforce [00:43:21 -> 00:43:27] sometimes they have this demand and that distributed forks not taken care of they needed the people in [00:43:27 -> 00:43:31] their office and i think tyler and you might have just interviewed somebody that told us about that [00:43:31 -> 00:43:37] and that's just a common thing so that's you you can't just leave it out to this distributed workforce [00:43:37 -> 00:43:41] all the time because you might fall short of getting things done on time so i don't know maybe [00:43:41 -> 00:43:46] i mean now to be honest i think you probably could at least in what we were doing there because it's [00:43:46 -> 00:43:51] such a given yeah so many people are doing gig work yeah but back yeah i mean the gig economy [00:43:51 -> 00:43:57] hadn't even been coined as a term right and when you were doing the gig economy right that's right [00:43:57 -> 00:44:02] yeah so pretty fascinating pretty cool so i joke around with everybody and say you know the next one [00:44:02 -> 00:44:08] why didn't i pick transportation you know yeah like the cars i look at uber and i'm like why didn't i [00:44:08 -> 00:44:13] pick that i think i picked logo design i mean it's still it was still went still went well but you know [00:44:13 -> 00:44:19] what even what what what was a hp's reasoning for acquiring and coming in and buying you guys up so [00:44:19 -> 00:44:26] about seven years in you got acquired yeah yeah so they uh they had a whole uh division up in idaho [00:44:26 -> 00:44:32] the printing division that serviced small businesses and their business was selling ink [00:44:32 -> 00:44:39] ink's very expensive and if you want to consume lots of ink you need to have cool things to print [00:44:39 -> 00:44:45] that's the quick version right so they were they were building up some services for small businesses [00:44:45 -> 00:44:52] to help them use more ink and they're like what logo works well fun fact back in the day i don't know [00:44:52 -> 00:44:58] if this is true with today's prices but i think it's pretty close the hp toner little cartridges [00:44:58 -> 00:45:02] that you pay 50 bucks for a little cartridge on for your hp printers and they want to set the [00:45:02 -> 00:45:08] printers were sold at below cost because the toner was where the money was and i uh once talked to the [00:45:08 -> 00:45:14] guy at dell of course kevin rollins who taught me this and he said if you took those cartridges start [00:45:14 -> 00:45:20] emptying them put them in an average toyota camry gas tank to fill up that gas tank with that toner [00:45:20 -> 00:45:28] 250 000 yeah so i think i mean think about that i mean yes the ink was important to sell but they [00:45:28 -> 00:45:32] were building out services they were just trying to get into software and services and other products [00:45:32 -> 00:45:36] more offerings for small printing and ours is really cool offering for small businesses in fact we went [00:45:36 -> 00:45:43] and did some joint uh you know uh meetings with them out when they were talking to investors and all [00:45:43 -> 00:45:48] that and we were kind of like a kind of the sexy cool you know a new small business service that [00:45:48 -> 00:45:52] they could add look at logo works we just acquired them yeah the irony is in the first 20 30 years [00:45:52 -> 00:45:58] of the digital age or the computer age that was supposedly supposed to get rid of paper and [00:45:58 -> 00:46:03] printing so much stuff out it actually generated for about 20 years way more paper printing and so that [00:46:03 -> 00:46:08] was in hp's favor right because they were the leaders and those printers kind of fascinating so [00:46:08 -> 00:46:12] let's just spend a second on the exit because founders and entrepreneurs love to talk about [00:46:12 -> 00:46:17] acquisitions and exits you know what's something you learned or something that was like [00:46:17 -> 00:46:25] a new learning moment for you how did it happen who contacted whom so jeff curl was definitely [00:46:25 -> 00:46:31] instrumental in this he had been doing some investor conferences and things and i think he initially made [00:46:31 -> 00:46:38] the first contact with hp where they uh learned about it the you know by then we had raised money [00:46:38 -> 00:46:45] from high profile silicon valley vcs oh you went outside of utah there wasn't anything in utah really oh no [00:46:45 -> 00:46:50] there was stuff in utah we didn't get money from them okay um i'm not bitter about it or anything [00:46:50 -> 00:46:58] yeah yeah nobody no no no it's fine by the time common yeah no in this case we one of our board [00:46:58 -> 00:47:03] members kathy schlein who was just so helpful you know she she's just knew everybody out in the [00:47:03 -> 00:47:09] barrier so she made some introductions which were obviously invaluable by then though we were pretty [00:47:09 -> 00:47:13] much self-funding now i look back at it and think well who wouldn't have funded us you know we were [00:47:13 -> 00:47:18] basically self-funding the company yeah growing and had a great team and momentum and we went out [00:47:18 -> 00:47:24] there to sand hill road and you know basically got term sheets from everyone we pitched to yeah and it [00:47:24 -> 00:47:29] was it was really great that we got benchmarks so i think we were benchmarks first deal in the state of [00:47:29 -> 00:47:37] utah wow and that's a big deal fame yeah yeah so bob cagle did our deal he was e-boys and uh you know [00:47:37 -> 00:47:42] the book e-boys written about him ebay paypal and that and he was fantastic as a board member by the [00:47:42 -> 00:47:48] way i nothing but really positive things there were a couple you know hard emails i got from him but [00:47:48 -> 00:47:53] otherwise he was helpful and this is also i would point out you know venture capitalists that are [00:47:53 -> 00:48:01] really great and one of their biggest contributions can obviously be in the op you know the the details of [00:48:01 -> 00:48:09] running a company but in this case uh benchmark was certainly helpful on the exit hp uh their name [00:48:09 -> 00:48:15] alone yeah meant meant that it was a stamp of approval that brings value like hey we invested [00:48:15 -> 00:48:21] in this company we did our due diligence and we think they're they're worth a lot and so on the exit [00:48:21 -> 00:48:29] value there's no doubt that both shasta ventures and uh benchmark brought an incredible amount of value [00:48:29 -> 00:48:34] viewers and listeners that don't know benchmark capital which still exists today is very uh [00:48:34 -> 00:48:41] influential at the time was definitely in the top three vcs in the world yeah yeah so we were lucky to [00:48:41 -> 00:48:46] have their their money but also you know we had a we had money from a fund called shasta ventures [00:48:46 -> 00:48:53] and we were there kind of one of their first deals todd francis a board member and that did our deal [00:48:53 -> 00:48:59] was so helpful i mean i can't stress this enough to entrepreneurs like if you have the opportunity [00:48:59 -> 00:49:05] to get a world-class investor involved in your company and todd francis just a great human being [00:49:05 -> 00:49:11] but also had the time and energy to help us took us all over the place introduced us to people was [00:49:11 -> 00:49:15] really active super helpful bob kegel didn't have as much time because he was doing a lot of big [00:49:15 -> 00:49:20] deals but you know between those two we had like big air cover and then we had a hands-on [00:49:20 -> 00:49:25] venture capitalist that was super helpful that if you can get that as an entrepreneur it was [00:49:25 -> 00:49:32] incredibly helpful yeah so our last episode which will have aired by the time this episode airs [00:49:32 -> 00:49:40] uh they talked about like being the founder going through m&a a bigger company like that acquiring you [00:49:40 -> 00:49:45] that it becomes like a second job and it's kind of stressful and all-consuming tell about your [00:49:45 -> 00:49:51] experience with a company like hewlett-packard uh sniffing around your company wanting to do due [00:49:51 -> 00:49:55] diligence than acquiring you how was that how long did it take what was the experience like [00:49:55 -> 00:50:01] so i'm probably the opposite case from this is i'm an outlier yeah and that's that i had jeff curl [00:50:01 -> 00:50:07] yeah and paul brockbank both kind of running the deal so to speak okay yes i had some conversations [00:50:07 -> 00:50:12] with jeff curl and paul brockbank very noted in utah well jeff curl's been on the podcast yes exactly [00:50:12 -> 00:50:19] yeah so uh when you have guys like that you know i kind of just stepped aside almost yes i'm the ceo and [00:50:19 -> 00:50:24] yes i'm i have to sign off on things so they kind of took that and you were able to keep operating the [00:50:24 -> 00:50:30] company absolutely i was um yeah i mean and frankly i didn't i didn't i knew they had the experience too [00:50:30 -> 00:50:36] so i'm like of course i'm gonna let them mostly run this deal because uh i knew that i didn't know [00:50:36 -> 00:50:41] enough probably to be dangerous and only that but you know with a company like hp i recognized really [00:50:41 -> 00:50:46] quickly that i'm the crazy entrepreneur in the room and what they want a big company like 100 at the [00:50:46 -> 00:50:51] time was like 106 billion dollar company yeah right yeah so they want a stable business-like [00:50:51 -> 00:50:57] atmosphere yeah they love paul brockbank and they like jeff curl but me not so much right like who [00:50:57 -> 00:51:01] is this guy and it's interesting because i didn't actually stay at the company after they bought us [00:51:01 -> 00:51:05] yeah and because i'd done my homework they just acquired snapfish and i remember meeting with [00:51:05 -> 00:51:12] the entrepreneurs there and i forget the name of the guy who was still at hp was at snapfish he's like [00:51:12 -> 00:51:19] morgan you're not gonna like this yeah no 99 of 100 times the founder is not gonna stay with the [00:51:19 -> 00:51:22] company that acquires them very long and it's not gonna be a fun well there's just no more upside for [00:51:22 -> 00:51:27] anybody right yeah it's just it's just that what's the way it is i sold my first company i lasted a [00:51:27 -> 00:51:33] week if the company well honestly if it if it had been a more aggressive probably smaller company i [00:51:33 -> 00:51:37] think you know i would have loved to have actually grown it and kept it going yeah and like [00:51:37 -> 00:51:42] kind of seen it off into the you know it's in the future it's hard this was a really big company [00:51:42 -> 00:51:49] very bureaucratic and i was like even when it's not that big it's just very the number of of [00:51:49 -> 00:51:54] entrepreneurs that have sold their company that i've had knowledge of and been involved with is a [00:51:54 -> 00:52:00] great number and i can't think of i can think of less than five that stayed longer than six months [00:52:00 -> 00:52:08] yeah and so i don't i don't want to rush beyond the next one which was needle i don't know how many [00:52:08 -> 00:52:12] how much time you had between logo works and needle so you sold logo yeah what year was that you sold [00:52:12 -> 00:52:19] about oh man late 2000s i think it was 2007 2008 okay got me okay something like that then go ahead [00:52:19 -> 00:52:25] and then and then from logo works was needle the next move was that the next it was i actually did an [00:52:25 -> 00:52:30] mba program in between oh where uh in lausanne switzerland i've had a number of friends that have [00:52:30 -> 00:52:39] gone and done that yeah yeah how was that well okay um and why did you feel you need to do that [00:52:39 -> 00:52:45] but i i felt i need to do it after i had my exits and then i had a friend of mine tell me [00:52:45 -> 00:52:51] john you've already earned your mb you don't need to go do that so i i wouldn't have done it in the [00:52:51 -> 00:52:57] united states i really picked it because of europe yeah i i like europe i served an lds mission in [00:52:57 -> 00:53:02] italy and and have just liked a lot of things in europe so i'm like i want to go have an experience [00:53:02 -> 00:53:08] there and meet some meet kind of meet people and i married and how many kids at the time i think three [00:53:08 -> 00:53:18] at the time maybe by then and so i i chose to do that and i kind of regret the mba part of it let me [00:53:18 -> 00:53:26] say so i'll say this first imd is a fantastic school and it i the people part was just like [00:53:26 -> 00:53:31] i'd hoped i have the best friends all over europe and they are really great people i was a little [00:53:31 -> 00:53:34] bit of a fish out of water out there because a lot of these people are coming from big corporations [00:53:34 -> 00:53:40] and i just sold my company to big corporation which i didn't like necessarily but yet i'm [00:53:40 -> 00:53:45] kind of doing a school that's geared for people that are going to end up in big corporations [00:53:45 -> 00:53:51] and so i did fine you know i i got all the coursework done and all that and i kind of thought [00:53:51 -> 00:53:59] maybe i needed it but i didn't and i will say this as directly as i can i think it kind of ruined me [00:53:59 -> 00:54:06] for a little bit yeah meaning you know it's a different type of education it probably did it [00:54:06 -> 00:54:12] jack up your risk tolerance or something or like i don't know i can't explain it of you know obviously [00:54:12 -> 00:54:19] all education is good um i the things that were taught there are good principles that work in big [00:54:19 -> 00:54:28] companies but as much as they want to try to study and teach entrepreneurial things sometimes [00:54:28 -> 00:54:34] in an mba program they just can't do it it's just not i mean you're kind of preaching my gospel you're [00:54:34 -> 00:54:38] kind of born you're kind of born with it or you're not a little bit to some degree i don't know if it's [00:54:38 -> 00:54:45] born with it it's just that those teachings have now been proven through academic scientific [00:54:45 -> 00:54:52] research that big company tactics and strategies kill startups they don't just hurt them they kill [00:54:52 -> 00:54:58] startups yeah you cannot act like a big company with strategy and tactics and survive the startup [00:54:58 -> 00:55:03] what you're saying is startups are not just mini corporations they're a whole different beast [00:55:03 -> 00:55:07] right exactly yeah if you're if you're really into startups and i just skip the mba thing [00:55:07 -> 00:55:13] completely yeah yeah i want to tell everybody a little stat because this is relevant i spent 12 [00:55:13 -> 00:55:18] years teaching at a major university brigham university which went from nowhere ranked when [00:55:18 -> 00:55:23] i started to number two in the country or the world in entrepreneurship programs really strong [00:55:23 -> 00:55:33] i taught countless undergraduate classes and two or no two mb daytime mba classes one executive mba class [00:55:33 -> 00:55:43] the undergraduate students would get taught and they'd go oh he says i can do it i'm gonna go do it [00:55:43 -> 00:55:50] and they created countless successful companies that went crazy in the mba class they did better work [00:55:50 -> 00:55:56] better research better powerpoint presentations better oral skills everything was smarter better [00:55:56 -> 00:56:03] higher quality but very few of them after actually come up with great ideas and companies that could [00:56:03 -> 00:56:08] make it would ever launch their companies they went and got their jobs or they just somehow it didn't [00:56:08 -> 00:56:14] happen nothing really came out of the mba students that i had the experience of seeing in my entire 12 [00:56:14 -> 00:56:20] years there all these incredible companies like divvy and podium and everything coming out of [00:56:20 -> 00:56:25] undergraduate students and a countless others and mba not so much and i what it is to me is that [00:56:25 -> 00:56:30] the mba kind of beats the entrepreneur out of you and that's what you're kind of saying you just kind [00:56:30 -> 00:56:37] of ruined you for a couple years that's that's so funny not the school is great no i learned a lot [00:56:37 -> 00:56:41] of great information this has not to do with the school it's just that if you learn big company [00:56:41 -> 00:56:46] strategy and tactics and then try to apply them to a startup it's not going to work i would agree with [00:56:46 -> 00:56:52] that yeah okay so i was trying to not glaze over needle but i do want to get to what you're doing right [00:56:52 -> 00:56:58] now but to say a little bit about where you went to after mba then was it needle then at that point [00:56:58 -> 00:57:02] so tell the viewers and listeners a little bit about what needle was what happened to it and what [00:57:02 -> 00:57:07] you're doing today i don't want to go too quick but we are kind of getting to the hour mark wow [00:57:07 -> 00:57:16] i know it's been 58 minutes oh so needle was again a distributed workforce as you called it or a [00:57:16 -> 00:57:23] crowdsourced application for online sales right where we wanted to bring advocates people that [00:57:23 -> 00:57:29] you and i would actually like to talk to about buying a high ticket item or considered purchase [00:57:29 -> 00:57:34] right so if i want some skis or i want to do a cruise and spend five grand on a cruise who do you [00:57:34 -> 00:57:39] want to talk to you want to talk to people that have actually been on that ship and can tell you [00:57:39 -> 00:57:43] about it and that's the people that we would bring into the equation and they would be at home or [00:57:43 -> 00:57:48] wherever they were on the road and on their laptops and they would field these conversations live with [00:57:48 -> 00:57:52] people about ready to you know buy a considered purchase online and that was the whole model [00:57:52 -> 00:58:00] of needle and i started with miko valamacki and joey dempster uh who knows with me at logo works [00:58:00 -> 00:58:06] and they were great and we started scaling that business so you got a lot of the same team members [00:58:06 -> 00:58:12] back no i wouldn't say a lot some just one or two yeah no there's more than a handful yeah yeah and [00:58:12 -> 00:58:16] you're just like hey let's do this thing again but now we're going to go attack consumer products [00:58:16 -> 00:58:22] basically or consumer experiences or anything any consumer no it was it was literally chat so we [00:58:22 -> 00:58:29] weren't even doing voice we were just doing chat online so it was very targeted i want to buy this [00:58:29 -> 00:58:34] grill okay someone who bought this grill talk to this person who wants to buy that yeah and now we're [00:58:34 -> 00:58:38] all used to ai the little button you push it there and you'll be talking to an ai agent you know or [00:58:38 -> 00:58:44] something online and it's it's pretty good now but before that you remember your options were talking [00:58:44 -> 00:58:48] to a customer service rep who literally couldn't afford to buy half these products that you were [00:58:48 -> 00:58:53] about to buy right so if you ask them any questions about it on a sales side not like hey where's my [00:58:53 -> 00:58:58] product it hasn't arrived at my house we're not talking about customer service we're talking about [00:58:58 -> 00:59:05] sales right like hey i want to buy this it's like five grand or it's even just something like [00:59:05 -> 00:59:11] nike shoes or adidas shoes adidas was a big client of ours and i play soccer and i want the best pair [00:59:11 -> 00:59:16] but i play on really hard dirt you know which ones do i need and all of a sudden soccer pro pops up [00:59:16 -> 00:59:20] the picture of them it's like yeah i actually play in the third league in spain let me tell you this is [00:59:20 -> 00:59:25] the one you're like what like i'm talking to this person yeah that's that was the whole manito [00:59:25 -> 00:59:29] model it was really cool it worked yeah because the trust factors really what eventually happened [00:59:29 -> 00:59:36] with the company it failed um you know for a variety of reasons the um the biggest i mean [00:59:36 -> 00:59:42] probably was that and i made a ton of mistakes and these were you know it's kind of clear now [00:59:42 -> 00:59:49] right you look back i think i was focused you know we had a really cool niche product but we didn't [00:59:49 -> 00:59:54] integrate well with the systems of record and crms of the time and this is a really good learning [00:59:54 -> 00:59:59] i think for everyone right you know it's nice when you have something really cool and innovative and [00:59:59 -> 01:00:07] disruptive even but you got to play nice in the sandbox and i was probably a little high on my [01:00:07 -> 01:00:11] success maybe at logo works or something thinking we can just force this into the market and it's so [01:00:11 -> 01:00:17] good and it really was a good product people that know needle like we killed it we sold a lot of stuff [01:00:17 -> 01:00:21] and we were we had the best people talking to people the customer experiences were off the chart [01:00:21 -> 01:00:29] like and so i think we kind of believe that and we spent less time integrating with like the crms of [01:00:29 -> 01:00:33] the day that actual customer service people were using in companies and so we became this kind of [01:00:33 -> 01:00:38] standalone product and that's dangerous when you're kind of this one-off thing so you're saying [01:00:38 -> 01:00:42] like you should have been a bolt on to sales force or something absolutely we should focus on that [01:00:42 -> 01:00:46] right away this is i'd love to point this out because you're teaching such an important principle [01:00:46 -> 01:00:53] your go-to-market strategy is very important so you can be a 10x disruptor that's so valuable [01:00:53 -> 01:00:59] that you can be standalone but some companies need to be a bolt-on product to an existing product [01:00:59 -> 01:01:04] for market entry their market entry strategy there's several different strategies to take [01:01:04 -> 01:01:08] it's not always i'm going to be the coolest thing in the world so i you know i just have to build [01:01:08 -> 01:01:14] it and they will come no it's going to fail if you choose this strategy versus this strategy does [01:01:14 -> 01:01:19] that make sense yeah no and frankly we picked the wrong strategy and that we were so high on what [01:01:19 -> 01:01:25] we were doing and it was cool but we didn't play nice in the sandbox we didn't put the and say hey [01:01:25 -> 01:01:31] listen we're just right now we're too standalone and we need to be integrated with what they're using [01:01:31 -> 01:01:35] whether we like it or not or whether we think it's dumb or not and by the way i did think most of [01:01:35 -> 01:01:39] the stuff big companies were doing was completely dumb having these call center people that were [01:01:39 -> 01:01:45] just totally irrelevant and it just seems so obvious we had a better product right and so [01:01:45 -> 01:01:50] they should just buy it and they did and we were successful at that but then it was also easy to [01:01:50 -> 01:01:55] turn off because we weren't we didn't have the hooks into the company yeah and so when that first customer [01:01:55 -> 01:02:01] cut us just some guy came in i remember it was adidas from north america uh from in europe and some [01:02:01 -> 01:02:06] guy from oracle or came in and had used oracle he said oracle has chat why do we need this needle [01:02:06 -> 01:02:11] thing kill it it was a million dollar revenue stream for us yeah and he just killed it and that [01:02:11 -> 01:02:16] started the whole vortex of pain and you know had we been integrated tightly in there it had been [01:02:16 -> 01:02:21] really hard to rip out but it wasn't and so i made that mistake and that mistake really not just [01:02:21 -> 01:02:26] enough to be the a great widget you have to be an entrepreneur that understands it's not just about [01:02:26 -> 01:02:34] product it's also about strategy go to market channel partners those are very important too to [01:02:34 -> 01:02:38] success yeah i mean we weren't sticky yeah but this is why i love your story because we go from [01:02:38 -> 01:02:43] logo where it's complete and utter success to needle because i i remember morgan when you were doing [01:02:43 -> 01:02:47] needle and kind of probably i i remember hearing about the fundraising rounds around needle because [01:02:47 -> 01:02:51] that was right around the time i was doing dev mountain i remember you guys hired a lot of dev [01:02:51 -> 01:02:57] mountain grads from what i was doing over at the school and didn't how much didn't you raise a lot i'm [01:02:57 -> 01:03:02] just for learning purposes only didn't you raise a decent amount of money on needle i remember we did i [01:03:02 -> 01:03:06] don't remember exactly amount probably around 20 million he had 20 i remember there was like a 10 [01:03:06 -> 01:03:10] million dollar round or something that and i remember going like oh we need to get some [01:03:10 -> 01:03:17] graduates at needle because they just raised a lot of money and um so yeah i i money doesn't solve all [01:03:17 -> 01:03:22] the problems in the world right even if you go and raise massive amounts of fundraising and financing [01:03:22 -> 01:03:26] i think a lot of entrepreneurs need to know that they think fundraising is the end goal where [01:03:26 -> 01:03:30] fundraising and financing is not the end goal you still have to make a validated business [01:03:30 -> 01:03:35] it's actually when some of the problems start yeah so so what's after okay post needle now so [01:03:35 -> 01:03:42] when needle what year are we at the late 2010s or something 2014 2014 i don't know and then what [01:03:42 -> 01:03:47] have you done by the way that was like uh you know it failed yes and you know i stayed with it pretty [01:03:47 -> 01:03:53] much till the end um it eventually got sold you know for for less and all that and i mean i just made [01:03:53 -> 01:03:59] i made so many mistakes there yeah so everybody but i stuck with it at least you know i didn't bail [01:03:59 -> 01:04:04] no yeah when things and i wrote checks in every round and it was a considerable amount i mean i [01:04:04 -> 01:04:09] so it was but at least i'm proud of the fact that you know stuck with it enough to like see it then [01:04:09 -> 01:04:13] it was painful i remember i was this is maybe helpful to your viewers i remember the board at one [01:04:13 -> 01:04:18] point sitting around saying hey you've tried everything like we we don't have any more ideas [01:04:18 -> 01:04:22] like it sometimes things just fail and i'm like wait you can't say that you're my board [01:04:22 -> 01:04:27] and they're like so keep going you can't just yeah you're doing the right thing we don't know [01:04:27 -> 01:04:31] what to tell you yeah and i was like what kind of board meeting is this they basically just told me [01:04:31 -> 01:04:34] you're working hard but we're not sure you're gonna save it literally it's like the plane is [01:04:34 -> 01:04:39] gonna crash and we've seen this movie we don't know if you we don't think you can save it yeah but [01:04:39 -> 01:04:44] you got to keep trying i'm like yeah i'm going to but just interesting so um the last 10 years then [01:04:44 -> 01:04:50] bring us forward up to build angel and tell us about build angel so the last 10 years what did you do [01:04:50 -> 01:04:54] and build angel so i took a little bit of break kind of after that i mean i honestly i was [01:04:54 -> 01:04:59] mentally almost incapacitated to some degree not a lot of people know this but it was rough after [01:04:59 -> 01:05:03] that failure of needle i mean like the just being a part of that and having watching your team leave [01:05:03 -> 01:05:08] and having people just up and leave and i get it because it was failing they need to go provide [01:05:08 -> 01:05:13] for their families and stuff but man i just felt like i couldn't call anybody you know you're in [01:05:13 -> 01:05:19] that dark hole and if entrepreneurs have been there they know what i'm talking about if you haven't [01:05:19 -> 01:05:23] the first time you have to lay we know what you're talking about yeah yeah no it's it's so bad every [01:05:23 -> 01:05:29] company has the ups and downs and when the downs come and you have this like this feeling of i have [01:05:29 -> 01:05:34] to save everything and you're just you can't save anything well i always thought every entrepreneur [01:05:34 -> 01:05:38] has ups and downs yeah i thought if i you know if i just work really really hard and work harder [01:05:38 -> 01:05:43] i can save it like i did really until the end i believe i could do that yeah and it didn't happen and [01:05:43 -> 01:05:49] i i i tell people this you know so if you're thinking of doing you know a business and i know [01:05:49 -> 01:05:54] you entrepreneurs always think it's going to work out but if it doesn't you know there was times when [01:05:54 -> 01:05:57] i would literally go out to my car and i would just sit there and scream in my car by myself [01:05:57 -> 01:06:01] i'm like i can't do this in the company they would all be like what the heck is going on but i just sit [01:06:01 -> 01:06:06] there and be like oh like what am i going to do josh james told me flat out and he tells others [01:06:06 -> 01:06:12] five different times at omniature which was a wild successor gave birth to a lot of what we see in utah [01:06:12 -> 01:06:19] five times he came home told his wife i can't go back and he was in a ball on the floor crying [01:06:19 -> 01:06:25] and his wife had to kick him say you're going back tomorrow there you go right good wives are key [01:06:25 -> 01:06:30] by the way yeah yeah yeah yeah and i've been lucky that way what's so funny is blake the managing [01:06:30 -> 01:06:36] partner of pelion ventures blake mondorzitsky came on the podcast and i said hey blake what's the one [01:06:36 -> 01:06:41] thing you look for in an investment that's what he said he said who the partner of the founder [01:06:41 -> 01:06:47] the founding ceo is about the spouse he said he said whoever that spouse partner person that they [01:06:47 -> 01:06:51] have in their life that's the number one thing i look at we also look at that as with our venture [01:06:51 -> 01:06:57] fund we want to know like and and often it's especially the cto's spouse we want to know [01:06:57 -> 01:07:02] the technical founder's not going to leave because he's got to have his family aboard for it too [01:07:02 -> 01:07:08] so kind of cool um so so finally yeah so finally i mean after some years of doing other things and [01:07:08 -> 01:07:12] um it was really great because i was there for the years of my kids all in high school and i had a [01:07:12 -> 01:07:18] little extra time with them so it was great yeah so then we started uh almost a year ago build angel [01:07:18 -> 01:07:24] right and build angel we're about protecting homeowners that are building custom homes right [01:07:24 -> 01:07:31] it's like you know zillow came online and brought transparency and pricing to home buying and [01:07:31 -> 01:07:39] we're doing the same with pricing information and bid comparison competition uh to bring transparency [01:07:39 -> 01:07:47] to the custom home building process all the detailed line item estimating bill s i mean lumber [01:07:47 -> 01:07:57] concrete excavation you're trying to bring to the surface these pricing how things are priced regionally [01:07:57 -> 01:08:02] locally all that and you're trying to yeah so if you're going to go build a custom home yeah the [01:08:02 -> 01:08:06] biggest obstacle you face is that you don't know how much stuff costs and so you rely on other people [01:08:06 -> 01:08:12] exclusively now luckily with ai you can get some information but it's really hard to evaluate that [01:08:12 -> 01:08:17] because we don't build homes right we you probably do it once in your life maybe twice [01:08:17 -> 01:08:22] and you just don't know the cost and price information so we're going to and have been [01:08:22 -> 01:08:27] putting that information out there so these people understand really well how much things should cost [01:08:27 -> 01:08:34] that's the first part and then the biggest thing that actually helps owners save money is just a [01:08:34 -> 01:08:40] simple concept bids you need to get everyone knows in their head they should be getting three bids [01:08:40 -> 01:08:44] four bids five bids and that actually doesn't happen most of the time in the custom home [01:08:44 -> 01:08:50] they go with the first bid well you know so a lot of contractors will and for good reasons use their [01:08:50 -> 01:08:56] guys yeah right but the then there's price you know kind of creep that comes up and so build angel [01:08:56 -> 01:09:03] is really about being the builder's rep for the homeowner and you think that that's your general [01:09:03 -> 01:09:07] contractor and generally speaking they are trying to help build you a house and building house is hard [01:09:07 -> 01:09:13] so i don't i tell people uh they should they should use a general contract most people are not equipped [01:09:13 -> 01:09:17] to build their own home right but that said there's some there's some interesting things in the industry [01:09:17 -> 01:09:23] like cost plus pricing we were talking about this earlier the fact that every time you spend more [01:09:23 -> 01:09:27] your general contractor makes more on your house that's kind of bad alignment we don't we don't love [01:09:27 -> 01:09:34] that uh but but that's the way the industry works and so what you can do with that is if you use the [01:09:34 -> 01:09:39] right tools now and we use a lot of ai to help people understand costs and then to to make sure [01:09:39 -> 01:09:44] they have competitive bids on all the trades in the house and that literally saves 20 to 30 percent [01:09:44 -> 01:09:50] on average on a house that's big money most people are spending a million dollar custom home [01:09:50 -> 01:09:57] you're saying i could maybe get done for 750 to 800 easy like i that's a guarantee that's not hard [01:09:57 -> 01:10:03] um it can be more so and there's just so much inefficiency in the system there's everything from just [01:10:03 -> 01:10:10] inefficiency to kickbacks and straight fraud and that's happening and it's rampant and mistakes [01:10:10 -> 01:10:16] and mistakes billionaires yeah so uh there's just a lot of opportunity and here of course in utah we [01:10:16 -> 01:10:21] have a really great market because there's so much custom home building going on but people now have [01:10:21 -> 01:10:27] tools including ours that they should be using and if they do you know they're going to have a lot of [01:10:27 -> 01:10:32] equity in their home by the time they actually build it and or get more things for their money right so [01:10:32 -> 01:10:36] if you're building a two million dollar home someone like build angel comes in and you're like [01:10:36 -> 01:10:40] well i'm gonna my budget's two million most people are still gonna spend the two million the difference [01:10:40 -> 01:10:44] is you might get that sport court underneath your garage with the suspended slab or something like [01:10:44 -> 01:10:51] that and we literally do this all the time we get people more for their money yes yeah so if to our [01:10:51 -> 01:10:58] viewers and listeners if you're building in kind of any capacity just check out build angel at [01:10:58 -> 01:11:03] build angel dot ai this is not a commercial but i'm just yeah you're kind of come on here i think [01:11:03 -> 01:11:08] this is disruptive and i i really want to encourage you yeah i mean we want to see it happen i've talked [01:11:08 -> 01:11:12] to you about this before a year ago or more that i just came went through the whole custom home [01:11:12 -> 01:11:17] building process it was insane i mean shout out to my builder he was great and he did a great and [01:11:17 -> 01:11:22] phenomenal job and luckily we timed the market perfectly so that the price of my home has gone just up [01:11:22 -> 01:11:27] and up and up but at the same time the process to do it it was pretty crazy it is always insane [01:11:27 -> 01:11:35] it's it i've been my own general one time it was a nightmare yeah so we bring you know a lot of this [01:11:35 -> 01:11:39] experience that we talked about today so my experience with marketplaces in particular so we [01:11:39 -> 01:11:45] were creating a marketplace of really good subs yeah especially and contractors so we help people [01:11:45 -> 01:11:50] pick their contractor and their subs that will give them a fair price and then also use all the [01:11:50 -> 01:11:54] methodologies to keep their costs reasonable we're not talking about a race to the bottom here we're not [01:11:54 -> 01:11:59] talking about crappy work we're talking about the same quality or higher work for a fair competitive [01:11:59 -> 01:12:05] price like this also there's just mounds of data a real custom home bid is going to be thick it's [01:12:05 -> 01:12:10] going to be mounds of data pricing volume if it's done right and sometimes it's done schlocky sometimes [01:12:10 -> 01:12:16] it's done really like professionally but there's so much data the average home buyer or homeowner that's [01:12:16 -> 01:12:21] having that built doesn't have the capacity time or inclination to go through all that and check prices [01:12:21 -> 01:12:29] your your service is going to use the power of ai to do that grunt work but still the contractor build angel [01:12:29 -> 01:12:34] and the homeowner building the home are going to be partners in using human judgment at the end of the [01:12:34 -> 01:12:41] day to do the right thing but having that foundation of knowing oh this bid for cabinets is 40 percent [01:12:41 -> 01:12:46] more than i can get from other people in my market let's take a look at that is that kind of the [01:12:46 -> 01:12:52] what we're looking at absolutely and yeah the the comparison of bids is really important and we [01:12:52 -> 01:12:57] with you know our ai and systems now are trying to make those bits apples to apples so you can [01:12:57 -> 01:13:00] understand them yes there's a lot of differences in materials and workmanship and all of that [01:13:00 -> 01:13:06] and so yes we try to make it easy why is this 30 percent cheaper oh it's inferior material yeah yeah [01:13:06 -> 01:13:11] it's plastic but oh this one's 20 percent less than the other bid but it's the same material [01:13:11 -> 01:13:17] that's the kind of thing yeah so this is awesome we encourage i just want to say please go make it [01:13:17 -> 01:13:21] happen and be successful this would be awesome it's it's kind of funny all of your stuff has [01:13:21 -> 01:13:28] a very similar vein theme throughout your whole career why why is that you just feel like like [01:13:28 -> 01:13:33] this distributed way he wants to fix big problems yeah i like i do get irritated when i see [01:13:33 -> 01:13:40] inefficiencies or um things that are in a market that don't seem fair yeah you know like so i you know [01:13:40 -> 01:13:45] i'm up in alpine we got a lot of houses going in up there and all my neighbors were complaining for [01:13:45 -> 01:13:49] years they're like oh yeah i did my did this house i spent like four million i thought i was [01:13:49 -> 01:13:52] gonna spend three million and it's 18 months instead of 12 months and when you give your example two [01:13:52 -> 01:13:57] million i was going i thought you were gonna say yeah my budget was two million but it mushroomed to [01:13:57 -> 01:14:04] 2.