Jeremiah Smith And Ed Carroll With Edison Marks

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest Updates in software, Web3, healthcare, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week's guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Speaker A: Lee Kanter here. Another episode of Startup Showdown podcast and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it's important to recognize our sponsor, Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn't be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Jeremiah Smith and Ed Carroll with Edison Marks. Welcome, gentlemen.

Speaker C: Appreciate you having us today, Lee. Looking forward to, uh, talking with you.

Speaker A: Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about Edison Marks. How are you serving, folks?

Speaker C: Uh, Edison Marks is a platform, um, that's built on the premise that, uh, a small and medium business operator should be able to manage their cybersecurity risk as easily as, you know, the average consumer manages their credit score. That's just not the way the world works today. So Ed, Nick and myself set out to, uh, to change that to help them reduce their overall vulnerability as an operator and put them in a better position.

Speaker A: Now if they don't work with you, what are they doing? Or are they doing anything?

Speaker C: In this regard, the overwhelming majority of small and medium enterprises are ignoring the problem, right? About 42% of all cyber attacks are focused on the small and medium business, but about 14% are prepared, which means the overwhelming majority, again, are just not doing anything. It's mostly because the problem is hard to understand. Uh, the solutions are mostly built for the enterprise, which means they're pretty complex or pretty pricey for a small and medium business operator. So it just makes it easier to just sort of put your head in the sand and pretend it won't happen to you.

Speaker A: And then what are some of the, uh, cybersecurity issues that a small to mid sized business would be dealing with?

Speaker D: Yeah, you'll see things from. We actually still see quite a bit of phishing attempts. So most of the breaches are still coming through email. They're looking for credentials, uh, your username and password, that type of information. And once they get those types of things, they're looking to do malware or things to, um, inflict viruses on systems and looking for ransom in a lot of cases. So different hackers, different cyber criminals are going to, are going to attempt different types of things. But, uh, for small businesses, we're going to see mostly things that result in them looking for ransomware, looking for money to encrypt their systems, which sucks.

Speaker A: Yeah, it can ruin your day, it could ruin your business. You could be out of business if you don't take uh, this seriously. Are you seeing um, are you, are you selling the service as kind of software, as a service where this is a subscription, I pay a fee and then I get kind of access to this on an ongoing uh, basis that it's working in the background.

Speaker C: Well, currently we're working through what we would best describe as trusted uh, business partners or providers for small and medium businesses today. Right. These are the folks that have already been working with small and medium businesses. So they're trusted partners to them. They have you know, uh, the ear of the owner or operator, um, which allows us the opportunity to do what we do best. But through that partner, uh, so today the platform is going through managed services providers, managed security services providers, white labeled for them. They pay a subscription fee to us and then provide it uh, to their client base, um, as you know a supporting tool, uh, in their toolbox to their range of solutions that they're providing already today.

Speaker A: So then you're going through this intermediary that already has access to the client base.

Speaker C: Right. And I mean you know going door to door with and selling a small and medium business operator is both slow and hard. Right. And um, and so we thought this is the best way to find traction and scalability is again work through these partners who have um, who have already established themselves in that arena. And that intermediary has proven pretty successful for us thus far.

Speaker A: And then um, what kind of services are these intermediaries providing to the small and mid sized business owner?

Speaker C: Again most of them today, those who are going through to start with are think of them as sort of an outsourced IT provider. Um, so lots of small and medium business operators supplement their IT department or have the entirety of their IT department outsourced, uh, to what we call a managed services provider, managed security services provider, that's the group we're going with. So we're going through these uh, sort of outsourced IT providers, um, and you know I'm working uh, our way into um, you know, the trusted conversation with the owner.

Speaker A: And those folks don't have a cybersecurity solution right now or theirs isn't as good as yours.

Speaker C: No, funny story is that they have solutions. Their problem is selling those solutions. And our solution uh, supports them in that for the managed services provider this is a great utility for them to uh, to highlight, uh, in a really simplistic and easy to understand manner, the concerns that they are trying to sell additional services to support. Um, but today they have. That's their number one problem is customer, uh, acquisition. And so for us, we support that customer acquisition effort without them having to change their operation or their process. And uh, so they get that value added benefit, but then they get to have this really simple, straightforward conversation with a small and medium business owner that they can then upsell. Right. They can then provide their additional services that we are not by design providing, uh, to close the gap, uh, with that customer.

Speaker A: So what was the, uh, kind of genesis of the idea, uh, how did you get involved in this line of work?

Speaker D: Yeah, I'd say both of us have been in and around cybersecurity for the last 15, 20 years, Lee. And we were starting to realize a lot of the time we're focused on enterprise and we've got friends, we got family. We both, Jeremiah and myself have fathers that were small business owners. And we started to see these trends starting to happen. So we had a passion about trying to find solutions and being in an enterprise space and talking bits and bytes. We've realized that when we talked to our friends that are small business owners that they would just retreat if we started talking about cybersecurity to them, it was, you know, they'd crawl into their shell and say, I'm not interested in hearing any of this. And so we had some experience in the past working for a company that leverages behavioral science to help folks, uh, reduce their energy spend. And we thought, why don't we look to apply something similar to this problem that we're both passionate about, that we both want to help these small businesses with. And so Jeremiah and I have known each other for over 30 years. We grew up playing baseball on the fields of East Asheville and always, uh, spitballing ideas with each other. And so it just organically came out on like a Thursday afternoon. I still remember the day now.

Speaker A: Um, was this the first time that you worked together on a project like this?

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, uh, interestingly enough, you know, having done all of, having spent all of that time together as we grew up, went through high school, went to college, um, both Ed and I, you know, having spent time in startups and cybersecurity, like you mentioned, this is the first project we've really been able to dig into to together. Um, and that's been an interesting sort of wrinkle in our relationship. For sure.

Speaker A: Now, you also have a third co founder that is not in Asheville. That's, you know, another country. How did that come about?

Speaker C: Nick, uh, Wristoff is our cto, um, and I met him through Ed. Ed, why don't you talk about Nick?

Speaker D: Yeah, so I've known Nick for a number of years. We both worked at an email security company, uh, a number of years ago, and he ran product for us. And interestingly, like, he was right under our nose this whole time. As Jeremiah and I were coming together on this, we looked at, hey, how do we get our MVP out? How do we get this minimal viable product out? Do we go low code, no code? Do we try this approach to go test the waters on some of these things? And Nick's been a buddy that we've worked with in the past, and it kind of dawned on us one day because we've talked about doing this type of stuff with Nick before, um, and we brought it up, and he's like, oh, I'm in. I'm in. Because he gets it. He also has a passion for what we're doing here, too. And it was just one of these weird things where it was like, keep your eyes open. You just don't know where that next co founder or next strategic relationship's going to be. Uh, keep your seats warm with folks.

Speaker A: Now, a lot of folks, um, start, uh, a company with two co founders, and that has its own challenges. But to have three and have this kind of triangulated, uh, possibility happening. How are you guys managing that?

Speaker D: I'd say pretty easily. I mean, I think we've, um. What's the old adage on you need the hipster? Um, I'm not going to remember. Maybe Jeremiah will remember that. But, um, I think we all have our roles. Jeremiah has been fantastic as our CEO to make sure I'm a maverick. If you look at my personality test, I'm a maverick. I need to be reined in. You know, I'll go off and try to pursue, you know, interesting strategic things, and Jeremiah's the perfect person to rein me in. And Nick, from a, from a, um, from a CTO perspective and a tech perspective, he's the perfect guy. We know and trust him. Um, we've known him for years, and so it's been a little easier than one would think. You know, we've got three strong personalities, but I think we all know our roles and where our strengths and weaknesses. Knowing Jeremiah for the last 30 years, he. He knows my weaknesses. He knows my strengths, and he makes sure he puts me in position to, to uh, take advantage of my strengths.

Speaker A: And then you don't have any of those you know um, kind of flashbacks to when you were 10 and then the you know, the, that history, those relationship history little pokes that can come about when you're dealing with an old friend.

Speaker C: I think that that's actually played uh, to our advantage. Um, you know we, we still have arguments about uh, you know, whether or not Dale Murphy's the greatest baseball player of all time but he's not. But the ability to be able to sort of break uh, tense business oriented conversation with um, you know, with a flashback to um, you know the uh, beatings that he ed used to get on the baseball field. Our team versus his are actually nice break points from uh, from what would just be otherwise a business relationship. I think that's created this situation where we're able to work together and understand when it's time to relax and how to communicate in both those situations pretty effectively.

Speaker A: And then um, you were able to kind of convey this mission and the values uh, with Nick as well. Which I mean you have to think a little bit that that's a tough needle to thread to get three people all aligned with this kind of. This is our true north. These are our values. This is the mission. This is the hill we're trying to climb.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think for me uh, you're absolutely right. I don't think that's something that every team thinks is ideal. Come together. Let's put three heads on the founding team and just assume we can make it all uh, go successfully. Um, I've had some experience across 15 years. Teams like PlanGrid, that was four co founders right out of the gate, uh as they graduated Y Combinator, um and being an active participant of very very early days with teams like that and how they worked and operated uh, and communicated internally to the success uh, of their near term and long term goals I think really, really helped us in this situation. I think we're all pretty sensitive to um, each other's unique needs and uh, we've been around the block enough uh, to know that to take care of them as they arise. And so I think uh, experience has helped us in that respect.

Speaker D: Now speaking well maybe add Lee dad also, I mean look at the missions altruistic in its nature and I think when you look at cybersecurity and it comes from that background too, um it's easy to get aligned when you're doing good important things. You know, uh, now we get lost maybe Sometimes in making some of these business decisions, but the overall mission is so altruistic that, so we're able to quickly align on that.

Speaker A: Now, um, when you are attacking kind of, um, something like this, I would think that it's kind of easy to get behind look because the mission is so kind of pure in the sense of you're trying to help small to mid sized businesses deal with something that's, that they're kind of in denial about. So I get that completely. But do you think that you guys are kind of uniquely qualified because you have kind of been around the block a bit and you have a bunch of failures uh, that are part of everybody, I mean not just your resume, but everybody's resume and you've kind of lived through that. And I think that when you've gone through some of that and you have that skin knee, it's easier kind of to attack things and easier to kind of bring people together that have all shared those experiences 100%.

Speaker C: And well said. Uh, the skinned knee analogy there is perfect. Uh, it gives us uh, the opportunity to not get too caught up in whatever it is in the moment. Right. Um, you know, we can all stay focused. Whether it's good news or bad news or otherwise. Uh, that experience has, yes, put us in a unique position to take on what is a challenge that candidly most cybersecurity startups flat out will not, uh, you know, go after because it is such a challenge. So yeah, I think you're right. Well said. Uh, it puts us in a unique position and we're taking advantage of that now.

Speaker A: Um, when you are, I mean, I think this is one of the advantages of having people have gone through the process, uh, several times where, you know, that one big issue isn't necessarily a death blow. You know, you're like, look, we've been through worse than this. This looks hard and it's a setback. But I mean we're gonna, we can figure this out. Like you, you have the confidence and because of the experience and I think that uh, that probably helps you um, kind of reach ul your goals.

Speaker C: Yeah, look, it's the old like, I uh, mean you can make uh, sort of analogies on this all day long, but for us it's, it's, we uh, just want to get 1% better every day. We know that's going to come with some, some setbacks. Um, but the experience again of, of having been through startups from zero to one, one to a million, $150 million flame outs and sort of everything in between has definitely put us, uh, in this position where, um, you know, where we neither get too excited or too high or too low. Right. Um, I think actually that may have created a weakness that we kind of laugh about. We don't celebrate enough because we're like, let's keep trucking. We've got work to do. But, um, we don't celebrate enough in that respect is probably the weakness that all that experience and all those skin knees that created.

Speaker A: Right. It's funny you bring that up. Um, in my business, my wife worked in corporate for a long time and now she's part of on my small business. And we ring a bell when something good happens and she's so ready to ring the bell. And I'm like, look, not yet. We're not ready yet. You know, like, and it's important to ring the bell. You know, you gotta, that the, the mouse has to get the cheese because that helps everybody kind of, you know, stay motivated and feel like you are making that 1% progress each day.

Speaker C: Well said.

Speaker A: Now, um, so what is next for you all? What do you need more of? How can we help?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think what's been interesting and Lee, you're probably hearing this from other founders and folks that are on, is what we're staring at is this economic downturn that we should probably expect the next 12, 24 months. And so we know with that experience we have to be nimble and adjust and adapt. And so we've started looking at a few different things. We've recently were accepted into a highly, uh, competitive accelerator with a cybersecurity focus. Um, very interesting thing that we'll be doing. It's international based and we have very specific reasons for wanting to do that and some of the relationships that we'll have. And we're kind of shifting a little bit from, you know, we were pursuing a lot of institutional funding and we're saying, hey, let's, we were thinking about it. Now we're gonna, we're gonna peel back and really fine tune our program and, and uh, our platform these next six months. We've got a transformative type of opportunity since the startup showdown, uh, that we're working on right now. Um, so we'll spend some time really doing that well so that we can replicate and reproduce it. And then we'll probably look at a different type of fundraise. We might look more towards angels for a period of time, uh, and then going into 2023, really throwing gas on it. So, um, I think that's an important Thing for us to be thinking about right, is what we're seeing from an economic downturn, being able to be nimble and adjust.

Speaker A: So how did you hear about Startup Showdown and Panoramic Ventures?

Speaker C: Look, if you look into, we're very specific about who we wanted to talk to really early and if you look into the world of institutional funding, uh, particularly in the Southeast, uh, and then you um, sort of cross that with against, you know, cybersecurity, um, you know, players, Paul Judge's name rises right to the top. Ah. And so really early, uh, before we were you know, ready in any way, shape or form to begin really talking to institutional investors like Panoramic, um, we knew we wanted to talk to Paul, we knew we wanted to talk to Baraj and you know, get feedback because I think feedback is something we've learned really, really early on in our startup careers, is what's going to propel you further faster. So um, being specific in who we wanted to talk to and knowing that at the intersection of cybersecurity, Paul Judge is somebody who's well respected. Panoramic's extremely busy in terms of their volume. Uh, it was an easy one for us to find and surface as a, um, as a sort of must have conversation really early on. Startup Showdown came as a result of us chasing in Buckhead, um, and getting a 15 minute meeting with him over coffee. He uh, presented Startup Showdown as an opportunity for us to go test our value proposition, um, in front of a, a really good group of judges. And um, you know, we were just absolutely going to jump on that for the experience if nothing else.

Speaker A: So what, um, how'd you benefit from going through the process?

Speaker D: Yeah, I'd say that there's a number of things that we took from it. It's the amazing mentors that they put in place that were super helpful with feedback on our pitch. Uh, that and along with working with Dustin, the team at Panoramic, like they really helped us fine tune and customize our pitch a little bit more. Um, so those things were super helpful for us. It's always good to be doing these pitches in a vacuum with each other, but to get that type of feedback from the type of people that Panoramic puts in place is priceless.

Speaker A: So now, um, having gone through the process and having kind of um, made some adjustments and you know, which is just part of the, you know, part of the experience as you move forward. Is there any advice for other founders when you're. And let's talk about advice because I love to ask the advice question, but in your case, I think I'd like to be specific in terms of giving advice to folks that are. That their ideal prospect is not necessarily the end user, but is an intermediary. So how would you recommend founders who are, you know, taking on the same strategy, the go to market strategy as you are, go about finding those first, uh, partners and kind of customizing the offering so it helps them sell to the end user?

Speaker C: I'll jump on that by just simply saying, in my personal opinion, and Ed may have something to add here. In my personal opinion, my advice would be, uh, to get out early and often. Um, you know, we've benefited from having done so get out talking about what we're doing really early and often. I mean, it wasn't. Forget about it being baked, right? The oven wasn't even really warm yet. And we were out just conversing because we, we felt like we were really onto something. Um, and so getting out early and often gave us an opportunity to both spread the word in terms of who we are, uh, get introduced to people who seemed like they might be, um, you know, a proxy value add to sort of what we're presenting and then continue to tweak our focus and orientation in our go to market strategy. It gave us the opportunity to do all those things. Getting out early, right? Um, it's really helped us hone in on the crowd that understands what we're doing. But we wouldn't have had the opportunity to even get there in such a short period of time if we hadn't started before we were ever ready. So I'd say don't be shy.

Speaker A: Get out there and just start kind of learning and having conversations with people that are in the space just to see what their needs are and how you can fit your solution in there.

Speaker C: Right? If you're really going out and having these conversations from the perspective of curiosity, um, and adding value, not selling, or, um, you know, trying to assume, um, that everybody's a buyer. Right? Don't present yourself in that conversation that way, but really get out, get curious, have a conversation, build a relationship, uh, and understand that it may not go anywhere, um, but it also may, um, if you're really doing that and you're really being honest with yourself about how you're approaching that, then getting out early and often you'll find people will reciprocate, right? They'll respond in kind and it'll lead you down a path you didn't even know was in existence. Right?

Speaker A: Which sounds a little counterintuitive. To maybe a new startup person because it requires you to be humble and vulnerable and curious and ask a lot more questions than, you know, kind of showing how smart you are.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's well said. Well said. We, we were, we were all of those things in many conversation. Right. Humbled, left vulnerable, questioning ourselves in a lot of really early conversations. But again, that it's such priceless conversation, uh, to have had and, uh, has really taken us, um, leaps and bounds beyond where we would have gotten without it.

Speaker A: Well, congratulations on all the success thus far and the momentum. If somebody wants to learn more and have a more, uh, substantive conversation with you or, um, anybody on the team. What's the website? What's the best way to connect websites?

Speaker C: Edisonmarks.com. uh, and, you know, we're happy to connect. You can chat with us there. You can send us an email. Um, you know, in our emails, we're, we're an open book. Whether it's just to talk about starting, uh, a venture early and the things that we've learned, or if it's about managing, you know, your cybersecurity vulnerabilities, pointing you in the right direction, we're happy to have any and all those conversations. And you can get us at Edison Carroll@edisonmarks.com, uh, and jeremiahedison marks.com. you know, we'd love to talk.

Speaker A: Well, thank you both for sharing your story. You're doing important work and we appreciate you.

Speaker C: Thanks for having us, Lee. Really appreciate it.

Speaker A: All right, this is Lee Kanter. We'll see you all next time on Startup Showdown.

Speaker B: As always, thanks for joining us. And don't forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast so you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more and apply to our next Startup Showdown pitch competition, visit Showdown vc. That's Showdown vc. All right, that's all for this week. Goodbye for now.