Big Talk About Small Business
Hosted by Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Our Mission is to inspire, empower, and equip entrepreneurs with the knowledge and insights they need to succeed in their ventures. Through engaging conversations with industry experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, and thought leaders, we aim to provide valuable strategies, actionable advice, and real-world experiences that will enable our listeners to navigate the challenges, seize the opportunities, and build thriving businesses.
Big Talk About Small Business
Ep. 80 - Tech Entrepreneurship: From Firefighting to Fintech
Serial entrepreneur Dmitri Love takes us behind the curtain of building three different tech companies, sharing both the triumphs and failures that have shaped his entrepreneurial journey.
From creating a marketplace that connected 60,000 off-duty firefighters with paying gigs (Hydrant) to developing a crypto investment platform that ultimately collapsed after the FTX scandal (Bundle), Dmitri doesn't hold back on the realities of startup life. His current venture, Peas, tackles the growing trend of couples managing finances separately while still needing tools to collaborate effectively – already attracting 14,000 users with its conversational AI approach.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dmitri reveals what really happens on Shark Tank. His two-and-a-half-hour pitch was condensed to just minutes for television, with producers crafting storylines that might differ from reality while maintaining the genuine interactions between entrepreneurs and sharks. As he puts it, "what happened while I was there is not what was portrayed on the show."
Most compelling is Dmitri's perspective on the venture capital landscape in America's Heartland versus coastal tech hubs. Despite building cutting-edge technology companies, he notes that "100% of my investors have come from higher density areas" – not his home region of Northwest Arkansas. He articulates a crucial distinction: Silicon Valley investors back founders more than specific business models, understanding that even if a venture fails, talented entrepreneurs will build again. This mindset shift could transform regions looking to foster innovation ecosystems.
Whether you're a founder seeking investment, curious about AI applications for small business, or interested in the real story behind reality TV pitching, this episode delivers honest insights from someone who's lived the full spectrum of entrepreneurial experiences. Ready to learn how wolves and horses think differently about business? Listen now and share your questions for future episodes at bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com.
Welcome everybody to another episode of Big Talk About that Small Business. It's actually Big Talk About Small Business. I just threw in a that, trying to be super hip and cool, Missing my co-host today, Mark Zweig. He's actually out doing board meetings or something like that, taking care of that business elsewhere. But that's okay, because I have a fantastic guest for us today, Mr Dimitri. Love Dimitri, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, man, Thanks for having me. You got it.
Speaker 1:So Dimitri and I go way back in a very small little bit. We were both young scrapping entrepreneurs. Way back in the day you were just getting your thing kicked off, I had white spider it's probably early on the days into I was. I was young back then. Yeah, there was a point in my life I was young, Uh, but but man, then we we just recently, because of actually the show we were somehow we got reconnected on LinkedIn and, man, it was. It's really awesome to get reconnected with you and to bring you in and tell you about, tell the world about your story, because you have actually a really fantastic entrepreneurial journey and so really excited for the listeners to hear that. You know, why don't you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial career, how you got started and get us set up on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, yeah. So I have built three companies so ended up building kind of the thumbtack for firefighters so you could hire an off duty firefighter to do handyman type work for residents or businesses. So if really, yeah, if you're at your home and you needed to clean out your gutters, we had an army of like 60,000 firefighters you could employ to do that. Or if you're a business and you needed to do demolition or literally anything, you could hire off-duty firefighters to do it. Off-duty firefighters, four hours on, 48 hours off, yeah. So they have like a really predictably unpredictable schedule so they have a lot of opportunity to do, you know, gig type work.
Speaker 1:And you know my co-founder, dave, and I we just saw an opportunity there and the firefighters like that too, I guess right, because they kind of they would like to, yeah, make some extra money. Yeah, keep busy.
Speaker 2:And they're also highly qualified individuals qualified, trustworthy if anything goes wrong in your life like firefighter's going to be there. That's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool. So you guys built a tech stack that kind of brokered that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was a marketplace. So we ended up partnering with the International Association for Firefighters, so we onboarded them. And then there were two parts of the business. If you were a business, you come on board and search for firefighters to do you know a gig. You would post a job and say I need 10, 15, 5, 2 firefighters. If you're a consumer, you would detail the job similar to like thumbtack or task rabbit and instead of like a contractor showing up, a firefighter would show up. So that's really cool, yeah, man. So what was the next one? Uh, the next one? Uh, it's tattooed on my arm if you could see that but it's called Bundle. So Bundle was the acorns for crypto, so you could invest your spare change from debit and credit card purchases into cryptocurrency. So if you had, when did you launch that? So that was 2018.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you launched the Firefighter.
Speaker 2:Firefighter was 2017. 2017. Okay, funny story about that. So ended up meeting my co-founder, dave. This was at a venture studio called Capital Factory down in Texas, and what I wanted to do is just like kind of break into the startup ecosystem. And Dave had no idea how to build software or experiences and I did so we partnered up, ended up building that startup ecosystem, and dave had no idea how to build software or experiences and I did so we partnered up, ended up building that. And then I saw this opportunity for bundle and I was like, hey, man, we got our thing going, it's running. I'm gonna go build this and I'll be here to help, with hydra on the side, and ended up starting them basically around the same time nice, did you have experience with crypto and all that before?
Speaker 1:no, no bro, no bro. No it was. That's a complicated space man.
Speaker 2:It was. It was crazy. Yeah, I wish I could go through the entire story, but that was a high learning curve for me.
Speaker 2:We were breaking into a space that hadn't even been formed yet. We were building identity products that hadn't even been conceived yet. Now if, like identity products that hadn't even been conceived yet, like now, if you go to any financial app you have to do something called KYC, which is, you know, verifying your identity, your address, your ID, take a selfie, all that good stuff and we had to build that before it existed, so it was a whole thing.
Speaker 1:A lot of security and stuff in there, right, security compliance, and you're very vulnerable.
Speaker 2:It's high risk, security, fraud prevention. It was cool. I learned a lot. That's kind of why I focus on financial services now. So you know, was able to learn a ton about. You know how to structure FinTech and how to structure really good financial experiences, how to stay safe doing that and what type of data to show users and what type of data to protect, uh, what type of data to avoid all that good stuff. But, yeah, bundle was great, um, so just to tell you, the end of uh, both of them, so hydrant we sold in December of 2023 and Bundle actually died.
Speaker 2:So Bundle are you familiar with? Ftx? Like Sam Bankman, freed, long story short, big fraud in the crypto space, like $16 billion worth. He's in jail and he took a lot of companies with him. So our liquidity provider had about 60% of their allocation tied up. So at the time, we had about a hundred thousand actives. We're doing $10 million a year or so in transaction volume and we got cooked and yeah, which didn't have the balance sheet to recover, and that also taught me the other side of the business, which is failure.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, man, yeah, yeah, but the but, which is failure. Yeah, yeah man, yeah, but Hodgson, it's called Hodgson, right, it sold, had a good exit then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mid seven figures. It was good for me when I was young.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great, and then okay. So after Bundle, then what do you have going on?
Speaker 2:So I'm now building Peace, peace. Yeah, so we're building a conversational AI for couples actually to learn how to do their money better, to get the power of a joint bank account without actually having one. So, for example, if you have Chase and your partner has Bank of America, you can come to us and split expenses like rent, you can ask anything about your money, you can budget together, all while keeping your separate banks.
Speaker 1:Really ask anything about your money. You can budget together all while keeping your separate banks, and so this is kind of like a precursor to, maybe, somebody that's wanting to get married but they're not married yet, but they're living together or they're starting to tie in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we learned that the new generation, like Gen Z, they have a deep desire to keep their money separate and you know I come from a very traditional background. My wife and I share finances and all that good stuff and you know we wanted to build something to kind of be the stepping stone to that. So these joint money relationships, they're coming more prevalent as the world gets more expensive and people cohabitate longer and longer and divorce rates are up 60% Insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we wanted to build something to actually funny. You mentioned divorce. 60% of divorces cite financial disagreements. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like huge. Yeah, it's huge. And so I think that's probably the thought process there is is that you don't intertwine completely. That way, if the break happens, then there's not so much to untwine, I guess, in a way if that's the right word, right, and so they're kind of almost self-protecting, but at the same time they're joining forces to help with overall expenses of life. Yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've learned so much. You know, we learned that, like, like, how different couples think about running together. Some of them really require that privacy, as I mentioned, and then some of them really have like different types of considerations, like you know, being able to automatically split bills together. That was really important and informed by our user base. So it's been great. We're up to 14,000 users so far Great, man. When did you start this? So we incorporated October of 24. Are you kidding me? Yeah, we're young. Yeah, so we've raised just under a million Nice and yeah, we're just getting off the ground building and you already got 14,000 subscribers basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what happened is we went viral on tiktok so posted some ugc content as you know, one does in this age, yeah, and uh, a few of them went viral, so we got a great wait list, started onboarding them and started learning a ton.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you find that the? So? Was there a beta period with this, I mean? Or or did they log in, start subscribing and then you're learning?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a funny question, because I still feel like we're in the beta period. Yeah, right, right, you know it's a-.
Speaker 1:But to your users it's like man this software's working or not working right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what really took off is we built this conversational AI. We call her Penelope, it's called Pease Everything's Pease, themed like two peas in a pod. Gotcha, it's cool, yeah, and Penelope is an insane piece of software. So we basically took the idea of Mint, so the budgeting tool, mint and chat GPT and put them together so you can ask anything about your money. You can ask how much you spent on DoorDash the past three weeks. You can ask to help you plan a vacation. You can ask what your net worth is, anything you can think of that you would want to ask your money or learn about your money.
Speaker 1:You can ask have you had to learn like the? I mean? So there's another layer of protection in here too, right? You've got AI, large language model messing with somebody's financials, so imagine that there's a box around that. That's got to be super secure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can tell you how we thought about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's interesting, yeah, so one of the things that we wanted to do is that was one of the first considerations when trying to send financial data to an LLM. So, without going too technical, there's kind of three big buckets of ways that you can build AI. So the first one is you have your own model. So this would be like an open AI or an anthropic who you know. Their whole job is just to build an LLM right. The other bucket, on like the further side, would be prompt engineering. So you just send, you know, a structured piece of text through an LLM, like open AI, and you get a response back and you have to send all of your data, all of everything, in with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a middle ground that we found out where you can use something called embeddings and you can embed specific types of anonymized data into the transaction. So, from the LLMs perspective, it only sees you know numbers, or it doesn't see PII, like it doesn't know who this is for their name. Um, you know where they're at, what their bank account balance is. It only sees number that's relevant to the query. So we only use the LLM specifically to answer a question Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1:So it's basically all encrypted and to some fashion. So it's basically all encrypted in some fashion. So it's not their information's not getting pulled into like an open AI's LLL Nope.
Speaker 2:What's in there, like most of the tools that we have in terms of you know, like calculating net worth, or like some of the more sensitive things, are internal tools, the LLM's really for natural language processing. So like being able to understand what the user is actually asking and then giving them a contextual answer afterwards.
Speaker 1:So does it kind of lives in that natural language processing, then it kicks over, probably into the encrypted side, pulls the information, then it spits it back out to basically how that's working? You know, I didn't really intend to get into this conversation, but I think it's highly relevant as far as, like, I mean, I think something that our listeners would really appreciate is about AI and what it's doing for business in general. Right, I mean, I know there's a lot of dialogue about it, but I mean for our startup listeners, right, somebody that's starting up a business owns a business today, a small business. I mean, what's your perspective on what AI is doing in business in general, and then, how should one really be using it right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know it's a big question. It's a big question. I could talk about it for hours. Yeah, it's a big question. I could talk about it for hours. Yeah, I think the first thing is that if you're an SME, if you're an enterprise, if you're a mom and pop shop, you should be utilizing AI tools or AI in some way, shape or form. All it does is just help speed up execution, speed up your efficacy as a business. It just helps Right.
Speaker 2:In terms of how you should use it, I think you know there's a lot of research, like some teams. In my opinion, enterprise teams are going a little too far. They're trying to build, you know, their own model and manage their own LLM, and it's just, yeah, it's too much, it's. You know, instead of relying on the tech that's being built, they kind of want to keep it in house, which I understand. Enterprises have the balance sheet to do that. But just use the tools that are available to you because they're really really good In terms of how. When it comes to, I mean, I can answer this in terms of B2B or B2C or brick and mortar, but if I were to just pick a few things, you know, lead gen is a big way to use AI, um and the automation that comes with it, um so how does that, how does that work practically speaking?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're um, if you're a law firm, you have to find clients right, you have to prospect for clients and some of the bigger firms. Instead of going off of kind of word of mouth and relationships, they start running ads, they start doing kind of like reach out. They have their paralegals reach out to specific people and companies and you can automate all of that with AI tools. You can set up a farm to send out your offer or send how you can help and once a qualified lead comes in, you can automate the conversation with them all the way to where they book a meeting with you.
Speaker 1:Until it gets to that qualified level and you enter a human then for a human conversation, exactly, yeah, I think that you know, like, my thought process on it is pretty similar. It's like what can a small business do? That's just really practical and tactical, right, you know? I think that one like, if you're starting out, I mean, it can be overwhelming and it's a little bit scary. You get little analysis, paralysis.
Speaker 1:There's so many tools, you know I mean, but you know I mean in all from all uh purposes, getting my team to adopt ai as a as just you think about it in line with how you'd normally do in business, right? And so, instead of you know, you get a PDF document or whatever, and it's this long document and your typical natural behavior is just start reading that and you immediately think, oh, this is going to take me 30 minutes, when do I have the time? You know, and it causes those typical stressors. What AI is really great at is it can actually reduce a lot of that traditional behavior and save you a tremendous amount of time by just running it through. You know a processor, and then you get the summary, bullet points, and then now you got the gist and you move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's funny. You mentioned that. I know we're being recorded. So I have this little thing. It's called a plaud. I know the founder of this. How do you spell that? P-l-a-u-d. Okay, and it's an AI voice recorder. So there's a million voice recorders that have been built ever. It's super thick. Check it out. Yeah, you stick that on the back of your phone. Yeah, you stick it on the back of your phone, and I'm not sponsored by them. This is just a product I absolutely adore. You turn it on and record a conversation, whether it's a phone call or a conversation like this, and once you're done, you can run it through an LLM and it starts giving you things like a mind map what conversational points there were, any follow-ups you need to make? So for me, busy entrepreneur, where I can't remember anything or take notes like I properly, should I just turn this on, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1:Could you turn? I mean, you could turn it on just for yourself and record thoughts and it organizes it for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, man. So where do you get that thing at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can get it on Amazon. You can get it on their website. It's $100.
Speaker 1:$100.
Speaker 2:Does it come with a case? I bought a stronger one because that case kind of sucked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was unideal. That's got you and so you bought a different. Is it a plug case?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find them on Amazon, so you can buy this and then just look up like leather case for the plug order on Amazon and they also make one that's. It's like a necklace, so it's like a you can just put it around your neck.
Speaker 1:I like that idea, man, so it's always with you, yeah, is it waterproof, so in my shower I can be talking. So that would be slick.
Speaker 2:I that's hilarious. You mentioned that.
Speaker 3:So I put my phone.
Speaker 2:on top of like I have a little like sill, but I don't know if I'd get it wet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. They should make a waterproof version. They should, yeah, but okay. So how does that attach into your phone though?
Speaker 2:Yeah, magsafe, so you get an iPhone, right? No, no, I just say I'm sorry. So most iPhones have. They come with a ring, so ring. So if you don't have an iphone, you put this ring on your case and it'll just attach to it. I did this for extra adhesion, I guess, but most iphones have a mag safe so you can just click and just clicks on there and stays on there.
Speaker 1:that's really cool, glad you brought that. But so that's a good example right of like the reality is is, if you think about it correctly as an entrepreneur or business person, ai is like your gift of all gifts from all eternity, past Prime example, so much that bounces in our head. Right, there's so many things we're dealing with, a hundred different things that are never in a single zone, yeah, and so the ability to spit back out and depend on some sort of technology to organize those thoughts to help you get your to-do tasks done, or even visionary thinking A lot of my stuff happens with when I'm just thinking of these ideas or directions we need to go, or new markets to hit, and there's all this different stuff to have a place to put that, because I learned a long time ago there's like this, you know, an organizational theory of mine.
Speaker 1:Practice has always been a stuff book, right? So if you think of your brain as like a computer, you only have so much RAM and if I just keep that clogged up and I don't get that somewhere and I know that it's safe, then it just stays bottled up. That's where the stress comes in. But if I can at least get it out. And you know, historically it was just writing it down that it would be taking notes on the phone. But this is under the level of a faster stuff book, that where it's going somewhere being stored and now I'm free to think and operate.
Speaker 2:Right, I'll show you something hilarious. I literally so. One of the reasons why I bought this plot is I have an entire list of like all my ideas and things I want to explore in my notes and I just got to be so much. I needed. I needed something. I need something to organize it.
Speaker 1:I love it. Man, I'm going to check that out. I'm glad we actually we had that combo. But so I think, as a small business person, if you're listening to this right, like you need to just start embracing it, Like you don't need to need to understand generative AI and video AI and all this kind of stuff and create things or whatever it might be these highly sophisticated programs. There's actually really simple things that you can do that are going to immediately make your life a little bit easier as an entrepreneur, so I highly encourage that. And then the more you do it, the more it becomes a habit, and then you're in the game. The worst thing you could do is ignore it.
Speaker 2:Agreed. Yeah, I mean the best thing, like if you can reduce your margins or improve efficacy or improve reach or automate some portion that you're struggling to fill a role, for it's just better for your business, so.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about something else that's really interesting I'm kind of excited for our listeners to hear about, is your Shark Tank experience. You've had some Shark Tank experience, right.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, yes, uh, two of them. So both hydrant and bundle were on shark, oh, really, okay, yeah, so I was the one actually on the show, season 10, episode 3 for bundle, and so we can go watch you. You can go watch me, okay, apple or google play if you want to go find it. And what episodes were those again? So I was season 10, episode 3, and then hydrant was I hope I'm getting this right it was season 13, episode five. Ok, but you should be able to find it. Ok, super easy, cool. But yeah, what do you want to know it was? I mean, yeah, tell us about the experience. I mean, I was young, so I was a baby, I was 22. It was wild. So I'll start sort of from the beginning real quick.
Speaker 2:The way you get on Shark Tank. There's kind of a few paths, one of which I didn't know about. You go to casting calls. That's like the normal one. So, like there's been a casting call here, I actually know the casting director now and you know she runs these little kind of just meetups across the nation. They have them at CES, they have, yeah, like a lot of conferences and stuff, and that's the first way to get discovered. The second way is they have producers that scout for specific types of businesses, talent, and that's how we got discovered so nice. We launched our product. Are you familiar with product hunt? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we launched on product hunt, got number three the day that we launched and so product hunt, though isn't that like a?
Speaker 1:that's kind of a pay-as-you-play, right? We didn't pay, okay, yeah?
Speaker 2:we didn't pay, cool that's good to know. Maybe it is now but we didn't pay.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I was advised differently here recently that it's basically pay-to-play. Maybe there's an organic. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But on product hunt, your your technology, which one? Uh, bundle, bundle. Okay, got it. Yeah, so, for those that are listening, product hunt is a basically a resource of new tech stacks that are that are entering the market.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah like a directory exactly. Yeah, there's a kind of a ranking list per day and the best products get upvoted, very similar to like a reddit thread, and you're able to see. You know who's crushing it with some type of software. So we were one of those companies that was crushing it and a producer reached out to me on LinkedIn and was like, hey, have you considered going on the TV show Shark Tank? And at first I thought it was kind of a scam, because who's going to reach out to you and say, hey, I can get you on Shark Tank? And I was like sure, send me the application, I'm interested, I can get you on Shark Tank, right. And I was like sure, like, send me the application, I'm interested.
Speaker 2:And he sent over this like very official, like ABC, sony letterhead application and was like, hey, you need to fill out these disclosures and then apply here. And I had a whole list of things I had to do, like I had to record. It was like a nine minute video to see like how personable I am on camera, because that's yeah, because they like a nine minute video to see like how personable I am on camera, cause that's yeah, cause they, they want to know that you know if they're going to bring somebody in and put the resources in and they're going to crack Exactly and apparently a lot of people do that.
Speaker 1:I bet, yeah, man, I mean for sure, and especially when you walk in that room and it's go time, yeah, it's yeah, I'll tell you about the future.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, and I had to fill out. You know, sign my life away a little bit, yeah, I'll tell them. You know, hey, here's like background check information and all that Cause you make sure you're a good person. And then, uh, it was sent straight to ABC and Sony and they made the decision and then they bring out about 150 people to film, or 150 companies I guess could be a little bit more in terms of people if they have a co-founder and they select 120. So we went out to la.
Speaker 2:It was very kind of annoyingly secretive. They like we got in this bus, like on the way to the set. That was like super tented, like we couldn't see outside, so we can't see where the studio is, which was weird. Um, I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but I'm going to. Anyway, we were on the set of one of the Avengers movies back then. Yeah, it was really cool, that's cool. I have some illegal pictures before they took my phone. But yeah, once you get in there, just things that people don't know, I guess you know when you see the episode you're up there for you know three to five minutes, you know pitching and then you get a deal or you don't. A lot of those pitches are really long. Mine was like two and a half hours, so yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like a real like. So was this the real like? You had the sharks in there during your pitch. Yeah, that's where you went.
Speaker 2:That's the 120 people, that or 120 companies that went there and these sharks are listening to these 120 companies. Yeah, so they do it over the, they film in bursts, so they do it over, uh, the course of a week. Okay, so you know, we had I think there was maybe like 10 or 15 per day or something like that. They work really hard for that week and then, yeah, sure, but, um, yeah, when you walk in there, big old set, big old room, as it looks like on tv, and they don't know anything about you, when you walk in, which, is really cool.
Speaker 1:So they really don't. They haven't seen all the pre-casting information or anything. It's just like raw pitches heavily scripted.
Speaker 2:Uh, also, everything's pretty heavily edited as well, but you, the interactions from you and the sharks are extremely genuine and that's how they get so much content and they can build so many different types of stories. Yeah, because it's. It's real conversations. We talked about every part of bundles business so, so, but darren you're.
Speaker 1:when you went in there though there it was you said there's like two and a half hour conversation between you and the Sharks. It was like a real VC pitch, real VC pitch. And then they just obviously edited it down to the five minutes for the show or whatever it might be, and they tell the story they want to tell.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, they do the highlight reel, basically yeah, I don't want to ruin it for you, but our whole episode was riddled with emotion, really, yeah. So riddled with emotion, really yeah. So there's a little bit of storytelling. I wish I could tell you exactly what happened, but what happened while I was there is not what was portrayed on the show, because they were able to generate more views by telling a different story. It was really cool how they did it.
Speaker 1:Oh, so they kind of just edited it up to tell a different story. Oh yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2:Outcome's the same Like we. So, yeah, interesting Outcomes the same Like we got to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll tell like a little bit of a different story. Showbiz man, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So so on that experience though, uh, I mean, do you? So let's back up to the practicality of it. You're say you're an entrepreneur, build a business, right? Sure, Going to Shark Tank's one of them, yeah, Going to VC's away, right. I mean a whole lot of different things In your experience with that experience. Was that a good move, you think, to get that kind of VC early on in the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is you're opening up a loaded question. Yeah, it's actually one of the reasons why I moved back to Arkansas. So my opinion on venture capital and investors it can be the right decision for your business. I think it just depends on how you think about building a business. Like there's a lot of ways where you can build like a micro SaaS or a SaaS that makes 20 to 50K a month and you're good, you know low overhead, you're making good money and you know it's something that you can keep sustainable right.
Speaker 2:Building a venture scale business comes with its own considerations, because now you have to think about getting your investors a return. So you know for P's like we didn't just get this million dollars just to, you know raise for fun and to build. You know we have to say like, hey, we're going to try to sell this thing for you know, 50 million one day, yeah. So a lot of considerations there and I just think you know in the heartland, where there's so much opportunity and so much you know capital here and a lot of innovation that's happening, I think a lot more people should explore venture scale businesses here.
Speaker 2:I've been forced to go out to the coasts and go compete with. You know the open AIs and basically every incumbent that's worked at every major tech company in the world who has all the friends who can just raise $10 million in two minutes. So you know there's those challenges. You know coming from, you know the Midwest and the heartland. So I don't know. I think it's very valuable. Something like shark tank would be more of what I would consider distribution. So it's less about the investment that we got, it's more about the eyeballs.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah. So you know, in terms of investment, though I just I think that's again that's one of the reasons why I moved back, Like I think that there's a lot of opportunity to build some really incredible things, to build an ecosystem where people actually want to come here and go to school, like that's why everybody's going to Stanford because of its proximity to Silicon Valley. So, yeah, I think it's an opportunity if it's done right, if the capital's put there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think on the I mean we could talk forever about the area too it's very much in its infancy. I'm excited to see the progress that we've been making. I'm excited to see the progress that we've been making, but I mean as a tech startup myself and I have another company that I'm So- you just launched one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just launched one. This area is not ready for that. Right, it's just not ready for it. Now, I know, and the solve that I'm seeing that's happening right now is they're bringing outside investors as guests. I'm seeing that's happening right now is they're bringing outside investors as guests. But then again my thing is is like that's not helping Northwest Arkansas necessarily because, like it might help, longtail as an ex, you know, as a founder exits, assuming that they exit well and they have a still a good portion of the equity. Yep, that makes sense right after the rigmarole in the series. Then they may become an investor. But that could be a 10-year, 20-year cycle.
Speaker 1:I mean my first company, I mean my company that I exited out on like Spider. I mean it was a 12-year business man, I mean it wasn't like it happened in a year and a year and a half and so it took a while. But I mean I think that we still have a lot of growth in this area and I think it's about it's about a trend, it's about a transitional reality of our area and our population understand that there is something to be said about be being more of a tech, forward thinking company and taking a more of a vc mindset. You know vcs are get like if they get a home run out of 10 deals, then that that's good VC business. Sure Right. And that is a mentality difference between where we're at in Heartland and what East and West and Coast are doing down in Austin. They get the one home run out of 10. Around here it needs to be nine out of 10 of base hits. Yeah, and that transition's hard culturally speaking.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's funny you say that there's something that I think that would really help kind of open up some people's minds. The VCs and the investors you know out in these kind of higher density areas, you know New York and Silicon Valley. Not only have they kind of mathematically decided like, hey, if we make enough investments we'll get a home run, yeah, return the fund plus some right Sure For that 5, 10, 15 year period. I mean another thing that I think is really important that they do they're willing to put the capital in to have failures, because that's just going to drive an entrepreneur, one of the builders of that software, to go build something else. That's right. So they're investing in not only the business to be built there, but they're also investing in people and they're investing in the ecosystem. Dude, you're getting me excited.
Speaker 1:Because one of our big problems is that we're thinking about in a business scenario. You've got two folks in this VC or the investor scenario. You have the founder entrepreneur scenario. You have the founder entrepreneur, then you have the investor and this is one of my favorite quotes of all time and this has made so much sense to me. It actually helped me not think I was crazy a long time ago, which was really important. I didn't even know what I was for many years until I realized one day oh, I am an entrepreneur. Somebody told me I was one and I was like I don't know what that word means and this is like five years after I had my business, you know. But then I went on another crazy speed for another 10, five years, not understanding what you know why I think the way I do and realizing it's different than a lot of anyway.
Speaker 1:Investors are like horses, with eyes on both sides of their head looking for somebody to basically take from them. Entrepreneurs are like wolves, eyes on the front, going out and hunting. There is a definitive tension, clash between those two people, or those two parties. Right? What we're doing in our area right now is we're really focused on the horses, the investors, you know. And so to your point, if you're focused on all the horses and trying to build a horsing community with a bunch of folks that are afraid to lose money, afraid to take risks in general, but nobody's really helping. They're trying to help, but they're not really helping.
Speaker 1:Identifying, building up, encouraging these founders there is a disconnect. Where are the founders? I'm not talking about the founders that are already in the game, trying to raise capital. I'm talking about these founders that have ideas. They don't know they're entrepreneurs, but they are entrepreneurs. They have it. They have it. They have it. It's in the blood. You know, because you can, you know. So, anyway, I love that statement about that because I feel like that in our area we're not investing in the founders, we're not willing to take somebody like if I looked at you and I'd say, okay, demetri, if I talk to you for a little bit and you're telling me about Pease and you're passionate and you're willing to do everything, you're like, dude, I'll die for this business. If it's not successful, yeah, exactly, I mean like anything and everything, I'll sacrifice it. That is what I'm looking for. That's worth investing in that person, you. And even if your business doesn't work. You're going to do it again and again. That's what they figured out. That is really goldmine information for this community to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're right, one of the things that I was honestly shocked at, so a lot of my like, like bundle was like my first like really big failure. I've had kind of some small ones, like, hey, I want to try, this thing doesn't work. Yeah, whatever bundle was big one, right, yeah, and yeah, yeah it was. Yeah, it did. And I couldn't believe it. But, like most of my investors backed me a second time, they were like, hey, when you start something else, call me. And I just it was like a family, like I was just like you're telling me I just lost your money. We raised like 1.2 million or whatever it was. I just lost all your money and you're willing to do it again.
Speaker 2:And then that's when I started understanding like they're not investing in the business at this stage, at the early stages. Right, they're investing in me to provide value because, like all the things that I didn't really think about, like secondary and tertiary impacts, you know one of my engineers. He went on to go to Google and then he went to Citadel and now he's like some famous engineer building amazing products. I've had tons of interns who now have like there's one intern who came to us and she has a promising VC career. Not even promising, she's like famous in the VC ecosystem now because she became a VC after working with Bundle. So like those like little impacts just create big, big ripples in the space over time.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I couldn't be more happy about these statements. I mean, it's probably one of my favorite episodes because I'm so eager for the heartland area, specifically northwest arkansas, to get past their own mental barrier about what the heck is really happening. We want to be the. We must be a partner with and I'll just say it, with Walmart, who needs help in innovation and entrepreneurship. I'm not saying that they've ever said that. I can just see it as an entrepreneur. They might be the biggest company in the world, but they have serious threats, serious threats. They're doing an excellent job at being a big battleship that can turn a corner like they have, and they have done. Threats, serious threats. They're doing an excellent job and being a big battleship that can turn a corner like they have, and they have done. They've proven it. They're working their rears off. They do, and, but they're depending on everyone outside the area to help that innovation go through. We've got to show up at nwa. We have an opportunity for it.
Speaker 1:The problem, though, is is exactly what you're saying the there and there's so much money per capita here. It makes me want to vomit, like it's. Actually we're self-destructing right now in real estate because there's so much money around here, I agree, and everybody's pouring it back in, when all the while, there are students at that university, nmwac, jbu, university of Arkansas there are students in high school at Ignite, everywhere people like you, me, other folks that have started it and done it again there is. There is not one person I can go to in this area and confidently say they're going to invest in me, dude, and that's.
Speaker 2:That's a problem it is. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I came back, because you know I love it here. This is my family here, grew up here, and you know I wanted to prove like, hey, I can build a business that's not logistics or CPG or you know anything in that retail space and make it work. Well, I'm building. You know both, literally both my last companies are at the cutting edge of tech. That I didn't understand at the time I started it. It's great, dude, and you're just what you do.
Speaker 1:Here's what I love about the brain that's inside your head. Right, you see opportunity, you see market need and you jump in 100% Right, it's not about building financial performance that are risk-free and have profitability and an EBITDA calculation. If you were to do that, spend that time, you wouldn't be able to do any of the businesses that you do, and so you're jumping in. You see the op, you're an entrepreneur, you're going to fill market need and then you put your time and your energy and you invest yourself behind it and you're a successful, fortunate testament to our area, which is unfortunate that they're not here, but that there are investors out there that are looking to invest in you and what you can do, not necessarily the business model. I think that's an extremely refreshing message. Yeah, I mean, it is for me, because I I haven't found them.
Speaker 1:You know they're not here they're, they're not here, and damn it, that's our problem.
Speaker 2:Here it is. Yeah, it's, a hundred percent of my investors have come from one of those like higher density areas, whether it's um, texas or silicon valley or New York, and you know, I don't want that to happen. Like I want to be here, like I've even talked to my wife and was like hey, like there may be a time where I have to move out to the valley because that's where my network is Right, whereas here I've got a great network of people, I've got incredible people here, but they're all kind of going in one particular direction. They're horses. Yeah, yeah, no, it's. It's something I love to talk about because the only way to change it is you know, there's a quote I heard the only way to solve a problem is recognizing. There is one yep, and we got to talk about it. Like we have to say like hey, look, let's like turn this ecosystem into something that's valuable. Like why is aust Austin the startup hub of the Midwest? Why not Arkansas?
Speaker 1:I hope that we hit on some things that you wanted to discuss. I know I took a conversation, some different directions, but I feel like that it was the you know, the things that you said and that you were talking about were like really important things, and I hope that our listeners can kind of see that if you're, if you're here, local Northwest Arkansas, or if you're in the Heartland region, which is a big area of the country, or if you're on the West coast and you're like man, there's so much opportunity here, too. You know to, to, to participate, but nonetheless, wherever you are as an entrepreneur and starting up a business, there are many paths to entrepreneurship. You've talked about a couple of different, very dynamically different paths that you've taken. You talked about having a business that was a big flop, in a way right, and then you had other businesses that were small ones that nobody noticed, but that's okay too, and I mean, I think it's encouraging for our listeners to hear somebody like yourself and a tenured entrepreneur that's still getting at it. And now you got a new FinTech. It's super cool.
Speaker 1:Man Like you just keep marching on and I applaud you for it, support you on it. We're going to have you back in. There's so many more conversations and if you're our listener, shoot us a question on the website. Like, I'm not gonna ask you to subscribe, I don't need your money but what I do want are more of your questions and, like ask us questions. What can dimitri help you with on the next time he's on the show? Uh, we'll be sure to bring him back in. Um been a pleasure having you on, man. Yeah, yeah, pleasure being here. Thanks for having me, man. It's good to spend some time together. Yes, sir, this is what I love about video podcasting or, you know, just this type of stuff in general is that it gives.
Speaker 1:It forces me to have this time and have these kinds of conversations, but most of the times we're doing sales, we're doing something else. Right, it's all this, but these are why we do the things that we do. It's fun to share, it's confidence building for me. I'm walking out on a lot higher cloud than I was when I walked in here because of this kind of thing. I'm glad yeah, man, we did our job, bro, we did our job, and I hope that somebody that's listening actually feels the same way. It feels the same way. So thanks, dimitri, of course and you got to say this with me you got to say another episode of Big Talk About Small Business, nice.
Speaker 3:Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website. Questions or ideas for upcoming shows be sure to head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the ask the host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business and be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes and ask questions about upcoming shows.