Rob Taylor Has Fabulous Hair & Epic Bike Trips BUT This Serial Entrepreneur & VC Keeps Ego Low

To help spread the word about the show, my friend Rey Madolora put me on an email with a bunch of Austin cyclists that are also notable in the business community. One by one I was able to meet most of them, but Rob Taylor was elusive. When I followed his Strava I noticed that he was regularly climbing mountains in Europe…like really frequently and his trips had names like, “Epic Three Nations.” Needless to say this piqued my interest but he’s not on the group ride scene here so I wasn’t going to just run into him. I did run into his brother, Chris, at The Red Fridge Society, which he opened as a membership club and event space for founders. When I told Chris that we had started promoting live events, he said, “you should interview my brother, here.” And that’s how you stalk a podcast guest.

Rob’s ride through the dot com bubble and bust got him started in triathlon as an outlet to channel frustration - not exactly a joyful pursuit. Gradually, during his high flying career taking companies public, reaching a 9 figure exit and becoming a VC, Rob discovered a passion for European bike trips HEAVY on the climbing because the experience distills his complicated life down to basic pleasures: fitness, suffering, outdoors, local cuisine and companionship. We had a blast at the Red Fridge exploring Rob’s leadership insights as far as team building, communicating, and relishing the adventure as opposed to coveting the outcome. No topic was off limits for the audience Q&A, including Rob’s glorious hair. Now, enjoy the show.

Hill Climbers is more than just a podcast, it's a growing business network for cyclists. You can tap into our event by following our Linkedin and Instagram, and subscribing to our newsletter.

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Theme Music: Summer Vibes by Rizik

Transcript

Speaker 4 (00:00)
yeah, we're gonna do all sorts of introductions, man, guys, thank you so much for turning out. we're two for two. The first event was fantastic. The second one, you guys filled this room. So I don't know what to say. I'm humbled. Chris is the owner, proprietor. Want him to do the first intro. So Chris, take a.

Speaker 2 (00:21)
We have some nested intros here. So hi everybody. Welcome to the Red Fridge Society. So this place, I ran a startup out of here called Square Root. I bought it in 09. I grew that. We actually had six of these houses on this street. It was kind of our little campus in 1920s houses. Unfortunately, I only rented the rest of them. I only own this one. And sold in 21, got this back in 22. Had kind of my cool company culture.

I didn't know what to do with the space and so I turned it into a founders club. So we're basically kind of part co-working part social club 24 seven includes a bar for bookable conference rooms and floating desks and a bunch of kind of experienced founders that just hang out here all day. So that's my little retirement project. But what most people know before is I'm Rob Taylor's brother, the shorter Taylor as we like to say so. So when they were talking about doing this podcast, I was like, well, what better place to do it than here. So

Welcome, enjoy, we're 24-7, feel free to hang out afterwards. now I'll turn it over to John Davison, who's a member here. We call them fridge magnates. We have a lot of very cheeky fridge humor here. And tell us a little bit about Startplandy and what you're doing,

Speaker 4 (01:25)
Awesome. Thank you, Chris. Great to see everybody. This is an unscripted talk, so I'm just going to try to be very quick. I came to the event at the Meteor. I thought it was great. My background with cycling and entrepreneurship goes back to when I lived in Italy. I joined a triathlon team when I was in the Navy, and I rode all over Italy and Naples, open water swimming, and just developed a real affinity for endurance culture, and it has stuck with me my entire life. I now have

two Surleys, a Mazzi and a Cannondale, so I ride like the whole spectrum of stuff, though I don't wear a lot of Spandex bibs anymore. Sam and I met, we have great connection, we're collaborating on a lot of stuff. My business startup, Landia, is a product development agency that lives a bit in between a Thoughtbot and an angel investor, if that makes sense to anybody. I've been doing a lot of zero to one engineering in the Bay Area, in Bend, Oregon, and recently here in Austin. My team has about

30,000 hours of service and previous to that I worked at like probably 10 or 11 Bay Area centric startups, very full stack stuff. People come to me to ask the questions that are like, what of these things that we wanna build is gonna be the most expensive and the most high value return to our customer? So if any of that is interesting to anybody, please get with me after. I'm really happy to be sponsoring the podcast tonight.

and we're excited to have Rob Taylor here. He has written in France, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Slovenia, Switzerland, the Canary Islands, Colorado. He's been all over the place. He is operating partner with Silverton Partners. He works alongside his portfolio CEOs in an advisory role. He also makes investments and then sits on boards.

he was the CEO of Convay, a pioneer in logistics and supply chain visibility software space, who was acquired by the Home Depot. Prior to that, he was the EVP and GM of TrueCar. TrueCar completed its IPO in 2014, and he lives here in Austin, has two sons. He's a huge cyclist. He very much a man of our community, and I think that Sam's interview tonight should be awesome. So thank you very much for being with us tonight.

Thanks, John.

All right, mic'd up.

So before we interview Rob, I've got one more introduction, the Hill Climbers story. I think a lot of you at this point have listened to podcast and that's great. I'm interviewing cycling-centric founders just like Rob. I also wanted to shout out Allison here, Morrison from Rally, and Mikey Thompson from Finding Good.

And where is Caitlin Cash? There she is in the middle. These are all founders that have been on the show with me. And here they are in real life. So I really did want to highlight the in real life aspect of what we're doing because as cyclists, a lot of you know, you show up in a group ride and you ride next to someone you sort of know with Lycra on wearing sunglasses, you can.

You kind of know what their face looks like, but you kind of don't. And my experience has been that developing relationships beyond the bike is really meaningful. So my story is I've ridden bikes in Philadelphia, LA, and now Austin. And I just met a lot of really interesting people in each of those cities. And I had this urge as a business development guy, executive.

to build relationships with them and eventually tell their stories. that's the podcast. Again, I really want to nurture our community here, a business-minded people that can show up and either build on relationships with people they know or meet someone entirely new. So thank you guys so much for doing just that. And again, this is only our second event and you guys packed the room, so we're doing something right.

Real quick housekeeping, next event is gonna be March 15th at the Meteor with Chris Talley and the two gentlemen right here, Elliot from People's Endurance and Chaz at night.co. We're gonna focus on the creator economy. Chaz is a talent agent.

Elliot has just launched a kit company and Tali is Tali. So he's the Influencer of the end. got some some chuckles. So we you know what that means

Last thing is we have swag to give away. We have sponsors here, Saps, Jordan is in the audience. Pretty amazing electrolyte beverage that he can tell you about if you say hello to him. So we'll give some of that away and some People's Endurance, Elliot's company.

So yeah, first time we're doing trivia. I forgot, thank yous. Thank you so much to Chris Taylor for hosting us. Thank you, John from Startuplandia for basically John's helping us put this thing online and get content solids. Sugar daddy over there. All right, so Rob, thanks again for being with us. A lot of people are really excited to hear about what

what you have to say, you've had quite the career and I think a good place to start is probably West Virginia. So you and your brother, yeah, guess grew up in a pretty rural area, right? Can you tell us a bit about that, about what that was like?

Speaker 2 (06:53)
Yeah, absolutely. Well first, thank you for having me. Honored to be here and really admire what you're doing with the group. As an introvert, doing something like this would be very difficult.

Speaker 4 (06:55)
You're very welcome.

well i'm you brought that up to ask about it

Speaker 2 (07:05)
Yeah, but I admired it and I think this is a great way for like-minded people to build great bonds. I appreciate what you're doing. Yeah, so grew up in a small community outside of Charleston, West Virginia called Elk View, which is right between Pinch and Big Chimney. I'm not kidding. And yeah, it was an interesting upbringing, know, solid kind of middle class family. I think, you know, one of the seminal

Speaker 1 (07:22)
you

Speaker 2 (07:33)
events in my life was the death of my father when I was eight years old. So Chris was four, I was eight, and he died in a boating accident. He was sort of near professional kayaker and had basically a freak accident. And, you know, I think what was interesting about that moment in time is that is when sort of my foundation of needing and wanting to be a leader was really solidified. You know, I was all of a sudden felt like I was the man of the house.

Speaker 4 (08:03)
At eight years old.

Speaker 2 (08:04)
Eight

years old, yeah. And that, I think, just sort of builds a sense of responsibility, of accountability. It's a lot of pressure as well. But I think it was sort of that event that I think really set the foundation for what was to come.

Speaker 4 (08:24)
And, you know, setting the stage here in West Virginia, how did you end up getting into engineering and, yeah, was there a story behind the path that led you into that study?

Speaker 2 (08:39)
Yeah, it's really interesting. I I would consider myself today to be an entrepreneur, right? I I'm a recent investor, but I spent 30 years building companies. But that is not how I started. think I took a very traditional path really from the beginning. So was again, sort of have to be the leader, know, went to college, got a degree in engineering.

Speaker 4 (09:05)
Sports, where are you playing? it as a kid?

Speaker 2 (09:07)
So I did, I was an athlete for sure, a lot of sports, basketball, tennis, certainly not at the collegiate level, but these were passions of mine and played sort of through high school.

Speaker 4 (09:18)
And leadership on those teams. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:22)
Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, what's interesting is I was not the entrepreneur as a child. Chris was the one who showed all the entrepreneurial signs as a child. mean, here's a, you know, I was more the capitalist. So we tell the story often where I would trade him, you know, nickels for dimes because I convinced him that nickels were bigger and so that they were worth more. yeah, whereas,

Speaker 4 (09:48)
Savage older brother.

Speaker 2 (09:51)
Whereas Chris, he had a turtle farm in our yard where he went out, got five or six turtles, painted their names on the shelves, put them in a pen, and then charged all the neighborhood kids to come over and handle the turtles. So it was really a complete reversal for me from how I started in the very traditional path all the way through college and even my first work experiences from engineering degree to going into engineering in a heavy manufacturing environment.

going back to get my MBA, traditional path, going to management consulting. And it was really an opportunistic change that drove more of the entrepreneurship. Yeah, so looking around the room and realizing I'm probably the oldest person here, I'm not sure if many of you lived through this, through that period of time where first job.

Speaker 4 (10:31)
And can you elaborate?

Speaker 2 (10:46)
back to business school, management consulting, we're sort of in 1999 time period now. So those of you who live through this period, was the, the internet was born basically. And so, you know, it was at this time where I think startups really began to come into favor in sort of massive ways. The internet just spawned so much opportunity. And so that's what I did. I jumped into something.

that was opportunistic. was no purpose earlier in my career that I was gonna be an entrepreneur later in life. I probably would have predicted more that I would have been an executive in a large company because that was kind of the pedigree and the path that I chose. But that moment of making that decision to jump into something in 1999 really forged everything that was to come.

Speaker 4 (11:35)
And that was kind of a heady time. And can you lay out, I guess, what your first entrepreneurial endeavor was?

Speaker 2 (11:45)
Yeah, so I would say, you know, the period between, you know, 1999 and sort of 2004, you know, was both some of the most joyous times of my life and also some of the most difficult and to kind of dive into that. the first opportunity was essentially an Internet portal, very similar to like a Yahoo. But it was focused on the Hispanic Latino community in the U.S., so bilingual English, Spanish, Spanish speakers.

And you know, this, you know, again, rewind yourself. We had our we built our own email service. We had a newsfeed. We built our own chat service. You had there were no third parties of all of these things. You just built everything yourself. And just given all the attention the Internet was getting then, we literally raised a very small amount of money for this company. And then within six months did an IPO. Like we literally took this company public with no business.

with an email that was clunky, a news feed that really wasn't that fresh, and a chat service that frankly didn't work. And so it was, you know, all of a sudden found ourselves in the public markets as a turnaround, right? And with analyst calls every three months where we had to talk about progress. And so just an incredible sort of acceleration of the entire business life cycle in four years, which is what that was for me. And we...

know, rapid growth grew to 150 employees, spent a ton of money, just like we said we would in our prospectus that basically didn't do much in terms of producing results for the company. We did a couple of acquisitions during that time. And then in 2000, all of this blew up. Most of the companies that look like us sort of immediately went out of business. We had enough capital left on the balance sheet that we were able to kind of keep going, but it was downsizing from 150 to 10.

And so you really saw the entire business life cycle in three or four years. Amazing experience. You know, but you have moments going through that and I'll talk more about kind of the emotional roller coaster of being a founder, but like, you know, there was a period in time there where, you know, my paper net worth was $100 million and this is how much I took out of that company.

Speaker 4 (14:05)
And that was a five year, five year run for you.

Speaker 2 (14:07)
About four years. Yeah. you know, for me, you know, luckily I never changed any of my behavior based on that paper net worth, but I saw a lot of tragic things where people leaned into that net worth without having it. And it really created some tragedy around it. And so lots of life and sort of professional lessons learned during that very, very short, short period of time. Yeah. And so

Speaker 4 (14:35)
Sorry to date you a little bit. Are we talking like late 20s? How old were you? A lot of lessons in a short short amount of time.

Speaker 2 (14:40)
Yeah, late 20s.

20s, early 30s. Yeah, it was. you know, I think but but overall, like, you know, going through that journey was incredibly rewarding. Right. And and this is something I'll talk that'll be a theme, too, which is like, you got to find joy in the journey. Right. Like if you are obsessed with the destination and, know, all of the wealth that you that you think you need and that you need to go create as your measure of success, you will literally drive yourself crazy.

as an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur's emotions go like this and this wave is in one day. It can do that. And so you have to gain perspective, step back from it, and find that place of joy and the things that you're learning even though it may be painful.

Speaker 4 (15:31)
Was there anything you did deliberately that helped you learn the lessons of managing the ups and downs and valuing the process over the

Speaker 2 (15:41)
Well, no, because for that experience, was focused on the destination and not the journey. And so I think that was a lot of the learning that came after that. It was after that, yeah, for sure. And so I look back on that time while it was stressful overall, that was an exciting time to be working and alive, right? mean, the internet was just...

Starting we we were at the forefront of all that and while it didn't work out it was it was an amazing experience, right? it was after that where it got hard and You know, so imagine we're sort of in the 2003 time period now internet bubble burst there are now thousands if not tens of thousands of Talented people that looked a lot like me that were out of work and There was just nothing to do. I mean back then

it was actually quite expensive to start a new company, right? There was no cloud services, there was no tech stars or other incubators and accelerators, mentorship didn't really exist. so you kind of had to, so prototyping and hacking things up and getting them in front of customers was very difficult back then. And so you had to

Speaker 4 (16:56)
landscape was probably way different.

Speaker 2 (16:58)
Yeah, I

mean at that point it was really just completely shut down. And we've gone through these macro events since then, right? The financial crisis 2008, I obviously the COVID stuff that we've been dealing with. But like I don't think any of that, and while companies may struggle during those periods, I don't think we've seen anything like we saw in early 2000s in terms of talent available in the market that struggled to find something meaningful to them.

Speaker 4 (17:25)
long would you say you and your colleagues were sidelined during that?

Speaker 2 (17:29)
Well, I mean it was hard for me for three, four years. Yeah. this was trying a lot of different things. mean, you know, obviously difficult on personal relationships. You get into a lot of self doubt, self worth, depression, like all of these things were real. It's a long time and you know, you're coming from a place of being at the cutting edge and at the forefront.

Speaker 4 (17:37)
Good segue.

That's a long time.

Speaker 2 (17:58)
executive in a public company and trying to work through all these challenges to halting. And so, yeah, that was a difficult period.

Speaker 4 (18:08)
And then you discovered triathlon, right?

Speaker 2 (18:11)
Yeah, so it was interesting how I dealt with the depression, the self-worth challenges, the lack of confidence, because I couldn't control any of that. My decision was like, okay, let me go do something that's even harder than dealing with all the shit I'm dealing with emotionally and in my personal and professional life.

Speaker 4 (18:32)
And

is there a memorable anecdote about someone that got you into triathlon? Is there a story there?

Speaker 2 (18:39)
Nope, nobody got me into it. I'm like, okay, this is bananas. Like to some somebody you mean I've got to train and be good at three different things. And, and so I just, I just felt like this, this sounds really hard to me. And I'm the type of person that's kind of going to go all in and be the best that I can. So it wasn't just a matter of finishing a triathlon. It was really trying to be, to be good. Sort of as, as I defined it, never, never sort of worldly competitive, but, but

but I'm going to push myself. And so that was the one thing in my life I could control. I could control how much energy, how much effort I could suffer and be completely distracted from everything else that was negative.

Speaker 4 (19:22)
capitalist and you probably like some of the metrics involved right is that

Speaker 2 (19:26)
Dared a junkie at the core, yeah, in every way, even today. Yeah, mean, all of that was amazing, working on transition times, like the whole thing. then I just went deep. So I did a bunch of kind of regular distance triathlons, and then I'm like, okay, well, what's the pinnacle of this sport? It's Ironman, right? So, okay, well, let's go do a couple of those. And so...

And so yeah, I completed a few Ironmans kind of in the 2006, 2005, 2006 time frame. And you know, at that point, after kind of completing the second one, beginning to come out of the professional trough a bit and in fact, my brother connected me with my next entrepreneurial opportunity. And

You know, I think if I look back on the triathlon thing, really was just, it was suffering. To not have to think about the other suffering, probably didn't get a lot of joy out of doing it, to be honest. Other than the fact that I could be distracted and feel the sense of accomplishment, right? Especially when you cross the line in Ironman Triathlon, there's nothing that quite feels like that.

Speaker 4 (20:39)
themes of the show is the seasons of life and you know what what riding with the bike or triathlon means for you at different times of life yeah so yeah hearing hearing what what you know why you were doing it back then is so different from what you're up to now and we'll we'll get into

Speaker 2 (20:57)
Yeah, I mean certainly my relationship with cycling has evolved 180 degrees really if you think about it. mean because then it really wasn't about joy. It wasn't about it was about it was about suffering and distraction really and today it's obviously much different. It's where I find a lot of joy. Yeah, because now I'm choosing to do it for different different

Speaker 4 (21:07)
burners

so things thought thaw out a little bit and Chris puts you on to the next opportunity can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2 (21:24)
Yeah,

so then so the next meaningful opportunity was another startup called TrueCar and This is not a business that I founded I I Chris connected me with the original founder of that business Joined him and then spun out a business that that I was basically a co-founder and ran the culture It was true car comm so is the direct consumer business of a previous kind of b2b play

And it was essentially and is essentially an auto buying platform for all of us. So if you want to buy a car in Austin, the value prop is very different now, but back then it was if you want to buy a car in Austin, you go to truecar.com. We show you a normalized distribution of all the prices that everybody else paid for that car in Austin and the variance of those prices. And so we show you what a good or great price is relative to what other people paid.

And there's just no transparency like that in the auto industry. There's more now, for sure, but back then there was none. And if you want to buy that car, then you give us your information, your name, phone number, and tell you where to go to buy that car. Today, how it works is you fill in a form if you want to buy a car, and then nine Toyota dealerships in the Austin area call you because that information is sold.

So we took a different sort of consumer centric approach to it. That business grew really quickly. mean, we were doing 100 million in net revenue to the business, which is not the car transaction, it's just our take of it within a few years. And so we merged those two businesses back together and took it public. And I left just before that.

Speaker 4 (23:11)
Okay, and is there a for...

Speaker 2 (23:14)
Yeah,

mean, it was becoming a larger organization, especially when we merged them back together. It was just a different business then, much larger, scaled business. I was ready to build again. I just had my first child living in Los Angeles and knew that that was not long term for me. And so I was beginning to think about, okay, what are other geographies at this time that I'm making a career transition to?

Speaker 4 (23:43)
Right. And this might be a good time to ask you. you first two companies founded a company, took it public. Second company were very instrumental in growing it to really substantial revenue. Do you and you can talk about other companies that you founded and work for. Do you have a favorite phase of the business lifecycle? You know, earlier, more mature. What's like most exciting to you?

Speaker 2 (24:11)
Yeah, mean, you know, it's probably changed over time. mean, I think when you're a little bit younger and have a lot of energy, those zero to one very, very early days. Yeah. And they're incredibly energizing because it's you and two other people sitting in a room and you're just doing, you're doing all the work, right. And you're, you're having conversations every day that impact the business and are like literally making decisions every day as to the direction. And so those are really energetic, but that is a very exhausting period of time too.

For me, think what I find the most joy in are the later stages. So this is kind of scaling the business where you are building a leadership team, a high functioning, culturally congruent leadership team, which is very hard to do, but when you get that right, goodness just happens because you hire amazing people who are not only the best at what they do from a skill standpoint, but you also have to

know, architect and Rubik's Cube, the personalities of the various leaders that you hire onto your team to make sure that they can function together as a high functioning unit. And if you get that right, in some ways you sit back and watch it happen. mean, is, you're in an enabler role at that point.

Speaker 4 (25:29)
Do you have any processes or tips for other people that are hiring and building teams? you think about it scientifically? Was it a gut thing? Was it in between?

Speaker 2 (25:43)
Yeah, mean, think recruiting is, it's a little of both. I mean, you should definitely not dismiss the science on recruiting, but there's also a certain amount of, you know, it's the lunch test, right? Is this a person that I would be comfortable going to an hour lunch with and having a great conversation? But yeah, think it's, you know, taking a scientific approach to recruiting is, it's skills testing, right? you know, everybody at, you know, we'll just take my last company example, everybody at the company.

did a presentation, like a report out or presentation to a panel of people so that we could mutually understand how we communicate, right? You this person is communicating their ideas and their presentation. We are asking questions that they can then evaluate us as well. And so you're really getting a really good understanding in an exercise like that of somebody's, how they think, level of intellect, sort of the culture and values by how they communicate. And so like that is something that was

you know, just a foundation for how we were.

Speaker 4 (26:45)
It was great to hear you mention culture and I think most of us can probably agree that's that's one of the most important factors for anywhere you're going to work. Well, and by the way, if you want to do a deep dive on Rob, he's got a blog that is still live that you started what probably. Yeah, it's still and do you know the URL? I'm drawn a blank. Okay, you can.

Speaker 2 (27:04)
I haven't touched it in 15 years.

I have no idea.

Speaker 4 (27:12)
You can Google it. So I was able to read Rob's blog from like 10, 15 years ago. And what I gathered was that you really value proactive communication and kind of a level of transparency about what was going on with you and your personal life too. And obviously what was going on with your businesses and what you were excited about. And it was clear that...

that was kind of a tool that you used for leadership and to nurture culture, which I thought was also very interesting because one of the first things you mentioned to me is you're a self-professed introvert. yeah, I'm just curious, how do you go about nurturing a great culture? What do you do?

Speaker 2 (27:56)
Yeah, mean, lots of opinions on this. I mean, I would say culture definitely begins and ends at the top, right? Like as a CEO founder, your behavior and your actions drive the culture throughout the entire organization, right? Because your leadership team will take on some of those things. You will tend to hire people that behave and act a lot like you. And so I think with that premise, for me,

some of the qualities that were most important for me and things that we look for in our entrepreneurs now. know, low ego, ability to be unafraid to hire people that are way smarter and way more accomplished and good at the function that you're hiring them for. I think those are two really important things. And then the other thing you mentioned was transparency. So transparency,

is an overused word, for sure. I think a lot of people talk about transparency. My observation is very few leaders and founders actually practice kind of radical transparency. And what I mean by that is, in fact, it convey the last business when we were coming up with our values, we knew that this was an important value for us, but we didn't create a value at the beginning.

we said we'll add it later if we've earned the right to create this as a value. And when we got customer feedback and employee feedback that that's how we operated, then we added it as a So anyways, think it's an important, it's an important, it is an or strong, so much goodness comes from being transparent. And this is where I think a lot of people don't understand. Like there's sort of this perception that

Speaker 4 (29:40)
Kind like a North Star almost. Feedback coming in.

Speaker 2 (29:52)
You have to protect people, right? Like you have to protect your employees from bad news. You have to protect your employees from the limited cash runway. You have to protect your investors from challenges that you're facing because it sort of promotes weakness, right, or vulnerability, and I shouldn't be that way. It is the complete opposite. I mean, I've just seen this over and over again. When you are open and honest,

about the things that keep you up at night and the challenges that you're having as a business, that's when your employees go to war for you, right? Because now it's, my CEO is being honest with me, right? Like there's nothing to hide here. And so I've just seen that over and over. if you want to talk about culture, that's where it starts for me, right? It is around transparency, it's building that trust in an authentic way.

And the same holds true for the investor founder relationship, which we can talk about at the right time. yeah, transparency is absolute.

Speaker 4 (30:56)
uncertainty is terrifying as a employee. It's not a good look. So I think let's, can you share with folks kind of where your career path led up until present day where, so if for context, just to reiterate Rob's an operating partner at Silverton. So he's on the other side of the table now and is coaching entrepreneurs on all this stuff. So yeah, that overview would be awesome.

Speaker 2 (31:25)
Right, so after True Car is when I moved to Austin. So this is 2011. And started a company here with a few other entrepreneurs. And Silverton, this was a B2B SaaS software business. We were selling into large retailers like Home Depot and Costco and others. And we were helping them with pricing. so again, back in 2011, you have to think Amazon was...

just crushing everybody back then because they were the lowest cost provider. And how they would do that is in categories where they wanted to win, they were scouring the web and creating a database in real time of what everybody else was charging for that same product. And they would just lower their price by a few pennies and always come up number one in search results. Boom, that's what you buy because it's the cheapest thing.

They don't win like that today. There's lots of other reasons to use Amazon, but back then, that's how they were gaining so much share. They were the cheapest. And other retailers didn't have any ability to combat this. mean, merchants were going to Shopzilla and Price Grabber one product at a time to see what other people were charging for it across the web. Well, if you have a million products, you can't do that, and you certainly can't do it in real time. So we basically built some technology

that helped those other large retailers compete in the categories that were really important to them. so Silverton, a venture capital firm here in town, and I'll talk briefly about kind of what we do, invested in that business. So they led our seed round and we raised about $5 million for that business and had a really quick exit, unanticipated actually. was less than two years.

and one of our customers was Home Depot. We were moving the needle so much on their revenue and share that they didn't want anybody else to have this technology and so they just took us out. And so they acquired the business in 2012 and then I spent two years with Home Depot building their innovation lab here in Austin. So this was essentially a group of people mostly focused on pricing but we did get exposure to

other parts of the business. And that was when the next company was born out of sort of some of that experience. the next company, Convey, which was my last business, a much longer journey, eight year journey, was a supply chain visibility company. Again, targeting retail. So think about all the packages that show up at your door every day, the non-Amazon ones. There's just hundreds of millions of them out at any given time.

And many of them are in distress, meaning the retailer doesn't know where it is. It's going to miss a promise date to us as consumers. The data that they get from their carriers who actually deliver these goods is very poor. And so we built a platform basically that connected all of the carriers that are delivering these shipments to our home with the retailer data.

And we could show in real time where everything is. We could predict when things were in distress. We could trigger notifications to consumers. And it was all about a better customer experience. so we raised more money for that business. Over the eight years, we raised $25 million. Silverton also invested in the seed round, and that led three more rounds of financing in that business.

Yeah, just an incredible experience. mean, that was probably the hardest company to build because it didn't, nothing existed like that when we started. There was no sort of visibility for Last Mile Shipments. And so we were creating a category around that. There was no budget. We didn't know the buyer was. And so there was, it was just a very long cycle, four years legitimately to figure that business out and then grew really quickly over the second four years. And it was strategically acquired by

another company sort of adjacent to our space.

Speaker 4 (35:37)
So Harkin back we talked about Rob and Chris's childhood and Rob Rob was the capitalist and Chris was you know, maybe more creative with his with his business building and entrepreneurship And then fast forward and Chris has exited his company entirely bootstrapped. I think he was doing it for 15 or 17 years, right? Yeah And you have have more or less always gone the the venture out

Is there something that you like or that's exciting about going to raise capital and kind of growing a business that way and chasing the next round of capital?

Speaker 2 (36:16)
Well, so I don't know, because I haven't done it the other way. You know, I'd say, again, let's go back to my career has largely been opportunistic, right? And that first opportunity was a go big, go fast type opportunity. And so, you know, I got the bug and there's a there's a lot of benefits to do that, right? To be able to invest in growth ahead of revenue.

Speaker 4 (36:34)
You got the bug.

Speaker 2 (36:43)
go into sort of a negative burn situation for a while to capture share. There's a lot of good that comes from that, but it's risky too, right? If you don't capture the share and you're not meeting this top line, you're just burning cash and then you have a problem. But yes, Chris bootstrapped his business, ran it for really long time and had a great exit at a much smaller.

valuation than my business, but I owned a fraction of it relative because we had investors, right? And so it's just different math, different pros and cons, but speed matters, and so that's what drew me to it.

Speaker 4 (37:22)
And there's a fantastic podcast on YouTube in which you guys are interviewed talking about the different experiences, know, bootstrapping versus racing VC. Okay. So, so that exiting convey brings you brings you full circle to, to Silverton. that?

Speaker 2 (37:39)
It does, yeah. And so, yeah, little bit about that transition. It's interesting. mean, you for 30 years I was grinding, right? Like, one company to the next never really took a break to speak of. You know, as I was wrapping up one, I'd have a lot of, you know, identity crisis and anxiety about what was next and felt the need and compelled to jump into the next thing. So that's what I did from company to company company. After we sold Convay, it also coincided with my divorce.

unfortunately. And so what was interesting is I found myself like literally overnight with nothing to do professionally, divorced, 50 % primary parent. I have two young kids and I have them now 50 % of the time. And so the other 50 % of the time I have nothing, literally nothing to do. I can't see my kids and I don't have any work to do. And so I was, it was the first time I was really forced

to kind of take a break. the reason I didn't, I think the real reason I didn't jump into the next thing was because of the divorce and the need to be there for my kids that 50 % of the time. I can imagine running Convey and being a primary parent 50 % of the time. It's inconceivable, I don't know how people do it. Just given the nature of how all in a startup is. And so I was tragically forced

to take a break, and I did. I traveled all over the place.

Speaker 4 (39:13)
Did you sort of discover anything about yourself when you were forced to spend that extra time not having your plate entirely full?

Speaker 2 (39:22)
Yeah,

I realized how amazing it was like to actually have some balance right and and also sort of shifting my my identity in solely being in my professional career to to being a good dad right like you know and again I it's not like I was a bad dad but but but now I like it's my duty to be here for the kids

Speaker 4 (39:46)
Yeah, priority.

Speaker 2 (39:48)
And so yeah, and it was I just had this amazing sort of year where I literally I went the first eight months and I looked back at my calendar and realized I did one week on one week off with my ex-wife with the kids Realized that when I didn't have my children, I had not spent a single week in Austin I was literally for eight months gone on the weeks I didn't have them and so I think some of that was you know, some wanderlust that was always there never really

had to travel much. My career opportunities never really had to travel much of a travel component. And so I got to experience some things and build some perspective and lean into my kids. like, don't, while there are certainly things I miss about being a CEO and a founder, at this moment, it's not something that I'm missing or have anxiety about.

Speaker 4 (40:43)
And you take some pretty cool trips.

Which we can talk about. So we didn't, I guess, talk about your cycling kind of after the triathlon days and Rob leaned into the bike a whole lot and what's the story of like how you began taking these awesome trips?

Speaker 2 (41:03)
Yeah, well I mean, you know, I'd say like as I said my early my early kind of time on the bike was less about joy and more about you distraction You know that began to shift. I I absolutely hated the swimming The laps back and forth, especially at Ironman distance really was soul-crushing So didn't really have any desire to do that anymore Running interestingly enough. I've had both of my hips replaced

genetic, genetic arthritis, no joint issues anywhere else in my body. And so running is kind of off the table now, or least I shouldn't do it. And so the bike really became, you know, sort of what was left. And, you know, I, yeah, it definitely shifted to joy because it was now about, you know, my time, right? It was time, it was my time away.

to actually be productive in how I thought as a founder and CEO, your days are very busy and jam packed, you have little time to think, that was my time to think. And then I did my first European trip in 2008. And that really changed everything. It's just, for those of you, it was the French Pyrenees. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:12)
And do you remember which-

Speaker 2 (42:21)
You know, you know, for the, many of you have done a European cycling trip like for a week or so? Okay. Yeah. So it's a, can count. Yeah, sure. Okay. All right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:32)
They're not mountains, but roll in, countryside, we'll take it.

Speaker 2 (42:35)
But hopefully this will resonate with you. mean, the thing about these trips is you go to a place that is very different than the place you live, both in terms of scenery, culture, language. And you get to do things because you're having an intensive sort of cardio experience over seven days. You eat and drink differently.

when you go on these trips than you would ever do here, like all the stuff in the Starbucks cabinet that you would never think about eating, you eat all of that for breakfast, like every single day, and it's guilt free. And so your purpose in life is you get up in the morning, you have a massive breakfast of things you'd never eat here, you get on your bike, you ride all day, you come back, you maybe go into town, because it's a cool little village that you're staying in, you have a beer and a pizza, and then you go straight back to the hotel to have dinner.

Speaker 4 (43:14)
you

Speaker 2 (43:25)
and drink some wine, and then you go to sleep. And like you just, that is your purpose, is to get up and ride your bike. And everything else around you falls to the side, and it's just this immersive experience in a beautiful place with amazing food, you're with like-minded people who you bond with because most people that aren't in that group cannot comprehend what you're actually doing.

Speaker 4 (43:47)
So can you give the crowd an example of the amount of climbing that you're doing on one of these?

Speaker 2 (43:55)
Yeah, so the trips have evolved. I started doing kind of structured seven day tours, Thompson Tour bike tours, an outfit I've used now for 10 years. And they do these week long trips across different regions in the world. And my trips have evolved now, so I do custom trips now. So these are 12 to 15 days riding every day. It's about,

It's a little over a thousand miles probably total over the 12 to 15 days, but it's 150,000 feet of elevation gain over the 12 to 15 days. So it's, it's averaging roughly 10,000 or more feet a day. And so you have some days that are 16 to 18, you have a couple of recovery days in there that are three to four. And so like it's, it's hard, right? It's hard. It's immersive.

And you do develop a special bond with these, with the folks that you're with because like, like Chris can't even comprehend. Most people can't comprehend that. Right. And they don't fully understand what you're talking about and what you're doing. And most

Speaker 4 (45:05)
And you're doing these like three, four, five times a year, right?

Speaker 2 (45:09)
Yeah, I mean it's three to four. It's in a good year I can get four in.

Speaker 4 (45:14)
Yeah. do you just show up and kind of, you're accustomed to that kind of endurance or do you have to train up for them?

Speaker 2 (45:22)
So that's a good question. I would say, you know, I have enough base miles under me now that I can show up. But it's a matter of how pleasurable you want that experience to be when you show up. yes, can go tomorrow and I have one coming up in six weeks. I'm going to to Canary Islands. So this is a trip I do every year. I've done this will be year four. It's the only place I go back to every year. It is the most amazing place to ride a bike. It's incredibly hard. The weather is

Speaker 4 (45:27)
smile

Speaker 2 (45:52)
100 % reliable, but it's not an easy place to get to.

Speaker 4 (46:00)
Amazing. All right, well, I think we can open it up for some Q &A. Thank you so much for laying it all out for us. All right, Mikey Thompson. You know what I'm asking. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:15)
But, you know, the cycling metaphor, you've started companies, you've had companies get acquired, you're 56, you don't look like it at all, you've got a lot of energy left. Have you even thought about when you're going to retire and just do bike trips and no longer do Silberton Partners or start companies or advise and just continue to explore the world? Because it seems like you've worked nonstop.

since you've become an adult and that capitalistic nature, I think, to Chris's point of being the dreamer, you've always been the capitalist, what does retirement look like for you when it's time to finally just focus on you?

Speaker 2 (46:57)
Yeah, I mean, that's it's a really interesting. I get this question a lot. mean, you know, I sort of feel like I'm in retirement, even though I'm working pretty hard. I think again, it goes back to the balance, right? Like, if I wasn't doing something intellectually that was stimulating that I was that I was enjoying, it would feel like there would be something missing from the balance. Right. And so and you know, I've got

I've got such a great relationship with the partners at Silverton. mean, I've been working with these folks for 13 years. And so it was a very easy slide in for me. The chemistry is great. We share the same philosophy on how we want to work with our founders. So it's not, that's not really work and it affords me the flexibility to do all these other things. mean, four trips a year is enough, honestly. Like I don't, can't ride my bike all the time and I want to spend that time with my, with my kids. I've got seven more years before the youngest one is out.

So maybe we'll think about retirement when he's gone. Then maybe I'll spend a little time in Europe.

Speaker 4 (47:52)
And is there anything you like most about working at Silverton and advising entrepreneurs?

Speaker 2 (47:59)
Yeah, I mean so so let me just give you a quick blurb on the firm So Silverton is a is an early stage venture capital firm here in Austin. We've been Investing here for over 20 years. So the most long-standing VC in Texas for sure. We are Texas centric So about 70 % of our portfolio is in Texas based companies of the 30 % various places across the country And by early stage we're sort of seed in a stage investors and what that means for us is we like to be the first institutional

money in. So a lot of the companies we invest in, they've raised, you know, some friends and family, maybe half a million dollars. They've got some product market fit where there's some pull in the market, maybe there's 100 or 200 K in revenue. And they're really looking now for that first institutional investor to help them further product market fit and begin to put some gas on the business. Like that's a perfect fit for us. We will do earlier. So I invested in the company last summer.

Two very experienced multi serial founders had an interesting idea, very experienced, had no revenue and we made a small investment in that business. So there are things on the edges that we'll do, but I'd say at our core, we're investing in early stages. Now, how that translates into what I do, I would say we have a lot of first time founders in our portfolio and we have seven funds now.

We're investing out of our seventh fund, but we have like 65 active portfolio companies across all of our funds right now in various stages. But many of them are first time founders and entrepreneurs who are facing all the challenges that I've made all the mistakes in already. And so I really enjoy when founders raise their hand, hey, Rob, we're hiring a CRO. Can you get involved in the recruiting process? Or, you know, we've got to do our budget for next year.

struggling with how to think about whatever. Those are projects that I really enjoy. So that's one part of my role is to kind of be the operator in the room and partner with our entrepreneurs to help guide them. But I'm also just a venture capital partner, which is I also have accountability for finding new opportunities and nurturing relationships with founders, making investments, taking those board seats and working with those entrepreneurs on their journey. That takes a long time.

to ramp. mean, I've been there two years and I'm on two boards and we just don't do a lot of deals. We have five partners and we do eight to 12 new deals a year. And so, you know, full boat for our partners, one to two, maybe three deals a year. And so it just takes time. So I'm thankful that I can do both of these things, right? I spend probably the majority of my time helping out founders.

Speaker 4 (50:46)
Nick Declan in the back has a question.

Thanks so much for doing this and thanks to Sam for allowing this forum to grow and grow. So you were in a quite structured environment post your MBA, you were in management consulting. What was the catalyst from working with Fortune 500 companies to starting and working at a Latin American social media network?

Speaker 2 (51:13)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this goes back to seizing opportunity, I think more than anything. mean, yes, if I had mapped out my career, it wouldn't have been to make a change like that. It would have been probably to be in a much larger company. But there was so much energy and promise around the internet back in 1998, 1999. And there was a lot of opportunity and I

was connected by a friend to somebody else, got into a really interesting conversation, one thing led to another, and I took that risk. And I think for me, my view was like, hey, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't preclude me from going back and picking up where I left off. I think this is where a lot of people get sort of mixed up in where the real risk is.

And because you're likely no safer in a larger company than you are in a smaller one in many cases. anyways, for me, it was just that desire to take a little bit of risk and give it a shot and never look back.

Speaker 4 (52:21)
Thank you. I'm just gonna go down the line here. Tyler.

Hi, so you talked a little bit about growth mindset, composure, and grit. What are other mental traits that you look for in founders?

Speaker 2 (52:38)
Yeah, the other one I said was low ego, low ego, lack of hubris. I one of the questions I all of my founders and entrepreneurs that I've either met or advised is, do you feel like you need to be the CEO of this business long term? And I would tell you with pretty much 100 % correlation, those that have said yes to that question have not been as successful as the ones that have said no.

And it just is this, it's this self-awareness and this commitment to the company and the business, not commitment to one's own self and advancement, right? Because while I love to see founders who scale with their businesses, like I think that's what you shoot for and strive for in every case. The truth is not many can. It is the anomalous case. And so you want a founder who

can be self-aware and at the right time recognizes the signals that you need to maybe bring in somebody else. But that also translates into hiring and recruiting your leadership team. A lot of the founders that have the ego want to be the smartest person in the room and you should never be the smartest person in the room. Outside of your vision and inspiring others around the vision, you have to be the best at that. You shouldn't be the best at anything else, literally.

And I think the founders that embrace that mindset, that's what I look for.

Speaker 4 (54:13)
Wow, that's a great insight. Yeah, I just have a quick follow up to that, because I've also founded a couple of companies, but one of the things that struck me about that last comment was having good founders, you can kind of have that wherewithal to know when's the right time and when's not the right time. When you have a co-founder, how does that, in my situation, both times that we've been faced with an exit,

It was like me that was like, got it. We got to go, man. And they both the other times were the founders were like, nah, we can't, this is not the right time. How, I mean, some of it's like intuition, but also some of it's just like wherewithal and like smarts. And I think it comes back to just like choosing the right founder or co-founder, but like, you have any advice for people who are like looking to start a company and choosing the right founder?

Speaker 2 (54:53)
Yeah.

choosing the right partner. So choosing the right founder is really, really important, but that's hard to do. You have to debug your personalities and your values and what you're good at relative to the other person or persons. I think a lot of this, and the other thing is expectation setting. We should be having these conversations as founders at the outset, the what ifs.

Like how do you feel about this? Like what is the outcome you're solving for here? You know, is this a, I here for three years and a $50 million exit or am I here all in no matter what this has to be a billion dollar company? Which those two answers tell you a lot about the individual, not just about their aspirations around their own personal ambition around the exit, but it's all the,

ego, it's all that stuff. So I think a lot of this is you have to debug it as much as you can up front instead of waiting for those things to happen. But co-founder relationships are hard. I've had co-founders in every one of mine in multiple, so there have been no less than three. And they can be a challenge, and that's why.

Speaker 4 (56:18)
I

Speaker 2 (56:28)
being open and transparent on us, having the expectations setting up front, what do we want out of this, super important.

Speaker 1 (56:34)
All right, thanks so much for your time, Rob. I'm geeking out a little bit. do recruiting consulting for early stage companies. And so I partner with a ton of founders on growing their companies. And I feel like every single founder is so different in the way that they want to build their company. So I'd love to hear just like the biggest piece of advice that you feel like you pass along to your founders of.

This is the one thing that you have to be doing. Anything, everything else, you can kind of choose your own adventure.

Speaker 2 (57:04)
Yeah, oof, tearing it down to one, that's tough. I would say, again, you don't wanna be the smartest person, right? So you have to be open and committed to this idea of finding the best. There are no compromises when you're hiring your leadership team in particular. They have to be the best at what they do, but that's not enough. They also have to be values congruent, right? And you have to be able to architect

the first leader and then how the second leader is gonna work with the first leader that you got because every single person you hire is now setting the culture. So your first leader and the CEO are defining the culture of the leadership team. And so the third person has to fit into that in a productive way. It doesn't mean everybody should be in agreement but productive. So I think, I don't know, the advice would be hire the best that are also values congruent and be thinking about how you architect the team beyond your next hire.

Speaker 4 (58:05)
Cool, thank you. John. I will take us in a slightly different direction on the questions. Can you describe some of the interesting personality types who sign up for 150,000 feet of climbing? Are there people who come back? How do you find them? What is that process like?

Maybe how have those people changed you? What are some of the things if you're having that moment in life and you look back at all the experiences, what are some of the things that flash through your mind about that crew of people?

Speaker 2 (58:41)
Yeah, yeah, I would say to describe the group it is there are lots of people that have come in and out and there are probably 10 of us that go on every single one, right? And so there's Canadian there, but all American, but all from, yeah. No, I mean, in fact, most of the people

Speaker 4 (59:04)
lot of them were European, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 (59:09)
on these guided European tours, most of them are from the US. It's by far the biggest market for European cycling. Everybody wants to go to Italy, France, and Spain to ride the mountains. You'll see a lot of custom trips where there'll be a group of Italians that are like a cycling club or something that are doing a trip, but it's for the most part, these are US riders. Yeah, and so in terms of the makeup,

I'd say there's the combination of retired, I would say skews older. So most of these people who have the flexibility and the means to do three or four cycling trips a year are doctors, and doctors in practices where they can set their own schedule and get away. Lawyers, retired folks. I'd say those are the three main categories. And yeah,

also what sort of comes together is like skill level. It's probably the word, not the right way to say it, but like these mountains that you're climbing, you're doing 10,000 feet a day. They're the great equalizer. It's the great equalizer. Like you tend to ride with the same people the entire time because you have the same speed, you know, going up these mountains. And so the other folks you don't see for a while. And I would say the core group that we have, we're pretty,

We're pretty close, right? You're never waiting more than 10, 20 minutes anywhere for anybody. But yeah, mean, the skills are pretty close.

Speaker 4 (1:00:42)
We got Michael.

Speaker 2 (1:00:44)
Hey, thank you for this talk. This is amazing. I have three questions now. I had two now I have three okay We're roughly about the same age The cycling trips you're taking are these something you organized or you just going there and paying a tour to take you Through the Alps and the Pyrenees and all that or so. So there's a tour operator that I've used for ten years I started jumping in on their structured organized tour so I would be a participant

with 20 other people that I didn't know. And I did that for years. And along the way, met a lot of people. Different people who were similarly skilled as me, were similarly crazy as me, that wanted to do something different. so transitioned into custom trips. I used the same operator and have become very close with the person there who's basically a pro in Spain. He does all their guiding trips, creates the routes.

and he runs that team. And so I work with him on creating these itineraries in various places that we want to go. And then he comes as the ride lead. So they're supported by Thompson. We'll have one, two or three vans depending on how many people we have. And most of the time we're staying two to three nights in each hotel. So we're going from point A to point B. We fly in one place, fly out another.

So they're trans trip and you just get to see so much. You're staying in smaller places. You're really, it's immersive in that way. Well, I was just curious if that's something you invested in. I, like you, love to go there and just climb for weeks on end. And I also need to find another passive source of income at my age to keep up with that. So maybe if I could pick your brain afterwards about something like that.

Third question and young people might want to pay attention to this. You don't know the struggle yet, but you have great hair. Do you have a secret? Is there something you do? Is there a product? I I'm dying here. I couldn't, the first 10 minutes I'm going, what do I need to do? Yeah. So I actually don't do anything for my hair. I literally do not own a blow dryer. I don't own a comb. I'll put some product in it.

But nothing for my hair now all the other anti aging stuff I do all of it like the biohacking the anti aging the content I listen to the supplements I take a lot of that stuff but nothing for the hair interestingly wonderful that good for you man that's amazing maybe the other stuff is having positive it's the cycling

Speaker 4 (1:03:24)
Andy's got the last question. Thank you very much. Deeply appreciated. Solo founder here, seven years in. Been above 10 million revenue for the last few years. I'm not saying that I don't have the hubris, but after three years of trying to break through the next version of the ceiling, I can't figure out what next to do. And I came to the conclusion, I need to find somebody that know aspersions with gray hair.

Speaker 2 (1:03:51)
There's plenty of gray here, it's the lighting.

Speaker 4 (1:03:54)
And so I'm in position, actually wrote my detailed kind of wish list for this person over the last few months. Coincidentally, I actually finalized it last night and I'm disseminating it. But I found myself in a kind of midway position where without investors, that version of the network is more relationships and friends.

And I kind of, I'm almost at the, do I go on an executive network search? And I'm so concerned with the culture and the composition of, of who I then entrust things to. So I wonder if you have any advice.

Speaker 2 (1:04:27)
Yeah, I I'm happy to talk offline about this in a deeper way. It's kind of tough for me to give you any sort of prescriptive advice, not knowing in detail, but I think it just depends on what you're solving for. Do you think you need a CEO? Or maybe there's just a gap here that you're not breaking through and you can bring in a go-to-market leader or something that can help who's smarter than you around that function that you can partner with.

and can really break through. that way, and you control the culture, you control who comes and sits in that seat. And so by testing the right way and asking the right questions, recruiting the right way, you can find a partner to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (1:05:15)
Great, so yeah, talk to Rob after the show. We are gonna wrap up shortly. I didn't wanna skip the lightning round. What's that? Here we go.

What book are you reading now?

Speaker 2 (1:05:28)
So, interestingly, I'm not reading a book right now. I would say I've never been a prolific reader. Chris got that gene for sure. I have read a lot and there are some recommendations I would give on books to read. I am sort of in high learn mode right now and I do a lot more long form podcasts. Listen.

Speaker 4 (1:05:50)
Have a podcast recommendation.

Thank you, Steve.

Speaker 2 (1:05:55)
You know for me it's the usual suspects it's it's a lot of the sort of longevity stuff like Huberman and Peter Atiya You know, I think Rogan's got some interesting characters the all-in podcast, I mean I have not not not regularly I just think there's so much happening in the world right now Like it's almost impossible to stay on top of it and I'm I'm really Yeah, and I'm and it's less for me about

Speaker 4 (1:06:09)
Do you listen to acquired? That's a long format one.

Okay.

exhausting.

Speaker 2 (1:06:26)
you know, an opinion and going to places that sort of validate that opinion, it's more perspective for me. And so lots of things to kind of give me as much perspective as possible. so no time for books right now.

Speaker 4 (1:06:39)
Lot a lot of resources. Yeah, what we talked about your bike trips. Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 2 (1:06:45)
Well, of the trips I've done or location? Well, mean, the Canaries have to, they sort of by default have to be that one because I go there every year. It's the only trip that I've redone. But there are some just absolutely amazing places to ride.

Speaker 4 (1:07:01)
Okay, noted. At some point we will all ride our bikes in the Canary Islands like you do every single year. The one person you would want to meet dead or alive. Have a beer with, have lunch with. Alright. Yes, answer.

Speaker 2 (1:07:14)
Donald Trump. That's just off the top.

Interesting and polarizing human.

Speaker 4 (1:07:22)
All right, last lightning round question, very important for Elliot here at People's Endurance. Favorite kit maker for 15,000 feet of climbing over the course of a day.

Speaker 2 (1:07:33)
Well, so we do we actually do custom kits for this one trip I do in the summer every year. It's called the Epic Three Nations trip. So this is a three countries and it follows the metrics that I gave you before. So I have an answer for non-custom and answer for custom. So my favorite non-custom is ASOS and my favorite custom of the ones I've used is Elial or Elial, however you pronounce it.

Speaker 4 (1:08:00)
So I interviewed the founder.

Speaker 2 (1:08:02)
Yeah, they have a good product and we did our kit with them this past year and we're going to do it again.

Speaker 4 (1:08:07)
Alright, well we're gonna add a Hill Climbers jersey. nice. we've got the the Franxx owner back there alternative nut milk, Hill Climbers back. Thank you. Medium will that do or? Alright give it a shot and let me know.

Speaker 2 (1:08:11)
Excellent.

on the back. awesome. you. Probably large but I'll give it a shot. Yeah.

Awesome, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (1:08:28)
And folks, we are not done. We will let you go in a minute. We've got some trivia for swag that we're handing out and we'll start with saps. if you know the answer, just raise your hand and I'll call on you. Name the five monuments. right, Steve.

Speaker 2 (1:08:50)
Go ahead.

Speaker 4 (1:09:00)
You'll get it. Wow. Which half would you like? The grey or the blue? Alright.

Speaker 2 (1:09:08)
That's amazing.

Speaker 4 (1:09:15)
Alright, Kristen Falker won gold in the road race at Paris. Which other event at the Paris Olympics did you win? Golden. No? Time travel. Belgium? None of these are accurate enough.

Speaker 2 (1:09:37)
team.

They seem like guesses. Come on, the long jump.

Speaker 1 (1:09:46)
Team Chomp Truck.

Speaker 4 (1:09:48)
her Instagram handles Arctic Fox cheese okay this might this might be a long shot then what's the hill climbers logo inspired by this is gonna hurt the skate shop Chaz Chaz Lack-a-Lay

Speaker 2 (1:09:54)
There's no events left.

What was the answer? Gate Shop in Philly. Thank

you. Okay. Cool.

Speaker 4 (1:10:15)
Alright.

Lance's Road World Championship. What year? I one. Nope. I need three. We'll give it to him. Alright.

Speaker 3 (1:10:25)
Yeah

Speaker 4 (1:10:31)
But everyone, that is a wrap. Can we get a round of applause for Rob?

And the last thing I'll say is thank you so much, Chris, at the Redford Society for hosting us. Thank you, John Davison with Startuplandia for sponsoring us and helping us get our content online. And thank you to the audience, too.

Speaker 2 (1:11:01)
Yeah, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (1:11:02)
That was fun.