The Founder Formula
Every passing moment, a tech startup disrupts life as it was. In humanity’s pursuit of faster, better, and higher capacity, fresh companies are tackling old problems and modern complexities, all while pushing the bounds of the future.
The Founder Formula brings you in—behind the curtains and inside the minds of executives at Start-ups that have traditionally only been found in Silicon Valley—and the Venture Capital Firms that fund them.
The Founder Formula
Brian Wheeler - Co-founder of Morpheus Data
Why would you launch a company when you’re already working at your dream job?
If you’re Brian Wheeler, the answer is simple: you can stay a partner at your dream job, while also able to branch out and launch a new company. It was a win/win.
In this episode of The Founder Formula, we talk to Brian, who is a partner at Bertram Capital, and the cofounder of Morpheus Data, a cloud application management platform company.
Listen to this and all of The Founder Formula episodes through your favorite podcast platform or Trace3.com.
I would just say what I've learned over the time is the further you can get on your own, the better. And you have to put yourself in somebody's position. If they've got a pile of money, they don't want to gamble it. They want to make sure bets, right? So if you wouldn't spend your own money on something, somebody else isn't going to spend money on it.
SPEAKER_03:The Founder Formula brings you in behind the curtains and inside the minds of today's brave executives at the most future-leaning startups. Each interview will feature a transformative leader who's behind the wheel at a fast-paced and innovative tech firm. They'll give you an insider's look at how companies are envisioned, created, and scaled. We hope you're ready. Let's get into the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Founder Formula. We're excited to have you here. My name is Todd Galena and with me is Tony Olzak. He's the Chief Technical Officer here at Trace3. Tony, how's it
SPEAKER_04:going? Hey Todd, doing great. Good afternoon. So Tony, big exciting news. We are so deprived from exciting sports stuff that there was the NFL Draft and the Cleveland Browns, your favorite team, looking
SPEAKER_02:pretty good. What did you think of the draft? Oh, I loved it. I thought Cleveland showed really well. on television. It looked great. They did a great job with the event as a total. And then the moves that the Browns made, you couldn't have asked for a better offseason. Between free agency and then the talent they added in the draft, being able to pick up Newsome where they did. And then I thought JOK, the linebacker from Notre Dame they picked up in the second round, I swore that was their first round target. And the fact they picked him up in the second round, I mean, just... We were dancing in happiness over here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's funny. I know that one of the people that actually you recommend to speak at one of our conferences, and we ultimately did,
SPEAKER_04:we brought him in, a gentleman named Paul DePodesta, who was basically the book Moneyball was based on him. He did the whole thing with... baseball, but then moved over to football. And it's now with the Browns. And when he spoke at our conference, the Browns were, they were pretty bad, pretty
SPEAKER_02:horrible. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So that was kind of the beginning of them starting to amass all these draft picks and take us to just a couple of days ago. Here they are kind of taking advantage of those picks. And it sounds like you're pretty thrilled with what they've
SPEAKER_02:done with them. Well, it's, you know, just goes to show when you, Take an approach to say, look, we keep doing what we've always been doing and what everyone else is doing, and it's obviously not working. And Cleveland went through arguably probably the worst stretch of football in history for about three seasons there, including an 0-16 season. But even prior to that, it was just a couple decades of struggle. And how do you try something new? They took a path where they tried to move away from pure lifer football guys and went a different direction. Went for an all Ivy League front office, brought in a lot of different kinds of strategic approaches to just asking questions around disrupting yourself, trying to figure out, are there different ways that we should be thinking about this? Are there different ways we should be thinking about our strategy, different ways that we think about player evaluation and amassing talents and on and on and on. And, you know, Paul actually gave a great talk with how they transformed the Oakland A's and all the things that was in front of them and where they landed up in the end. I feel like you've seen that whole journey happen with the Browns as well. And what's crazy is now on the backside of the strategy at work, they're being talked about as Super Bowl contenders.
SPEAKER_03:It is amazing what they've done. And he was completely copied when he went through this in baseball, as everyone knows, probably, that they
SPEAKER_04:just relied heavily on analytics. They had no budget. And so they just took players and composed a a team, everyone having a certain job. And statistics showed that the people that they had on their team were the best at that job. And so they did great. And now they've done this with the Browns. And it kind of seems like they're the first team that has assembled a front office that is, I don't know, based on statistics. And it just seems like, you know, once they, like you said, get to the Super Bowl, you know, maybe others will adopt it. But I haven't quite seen anybody in the NFL adjust their front office the
SPEAKER_02:way the Browns
SPEAKER_04:have.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know what people are struggling with is the same thing that we see in enterprises every day, which is there can be a reaction where you become too data-driven and you lose the human element of what's really going on. And just the same way as in football, we see it in client struggles on a daily basis, which is if you become too data-driven in the absence of the human lens that also must be put over top of this, especially when you have expertise in a space, finding the right balance of being data-driven, but also augmenting with all the things that a human brings to the equation is where you'll start to see the success. And you can see that even with the Browns when they try to go really heavy, on the analytics-driven side. They still went, I think, three and they only won like three games over three seasons with one of those seasons winning none. And they were amassing tons of draft picks and kind of transforming the organization. But it wasn't until they found a perfect balance and alignment across all their front office team, like all the senior executives from ownership all down, alignment there, alignment on their strategy, alignment with how they would use data to help with decision-making and create the strategy that you saw this thing really begin to flourish. And we see that in every day, just in the future of how we think about data all in, in enterprises as well. We'll need to find that balance. Data is incredibly valuable, but on its own can be dangerous if interpreted in the wrong ways or not augmented in ways to where you've got that human element to really help you figure out what are you really trying to do here and what should you do with that set of insights. Well said. Way to take you know, an NFL conversation and bring it right into the enterprise, Tony. I love it. Well, I want to make sure the Browns make our show. So you just
SPEAKER_04:created the connective tissue. No, but it is funny because the baseball seems like it is a sport that you can just say these statistics over the last three years are going to be the same statistics over the next year. You can grab a player and matter what shape or size and leverage that and i think you can do it successfully whereas in football what you're talking about absolutely size speed intelligence you know intelligence how do you create data around intelligence
SPEAKER_03:you know heart football is a super demanding
SPEAKER_04:brutal sport you get hit constantly how many times is that guy going to get up do you know what i mean so i think there is much more of a balance as you described in that sport and Gosh darn it, hopefully the Browns will be the poster child for this.
SPEAKER_02:Well, sometimes you have to roll the dice, no matter what the stats say. You know, there is that gut reaction. And then there's also what's happening even that we're seeing in baseball, which is it became so driven by statistics that now if you understand what the statistics are telling the opposition to do, you can blatantly go against whatever they're about to try and win that way as well. We're seeing the Padres are actually having a lot of success right now. It brings us all the way back around to another conversation that we had. The Padres won the game the next night. against the Dodgers, arguably because they were battling the shift and understood what the Dodgers were trying to do and then were able to go against it because they understand the stats just as well as the Dodgers do.
SPEAKER_04:Yes. I hate the shift, Tony.
SPEAKER_02:We should play all games with five infielders all shifted to the right.
SPEAKER_03:Why don't dudes butt?
SPEAKER_02:I don't
SPEAKER_04:care.
UNKNOWN:Sorry.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, perfect. All right, so great. We covered a lot of things here. You ready to bring on our guest?
SPEAKER_02:I am
SPEAKER_04:ready.
SPEAKER_02:Let's
SPEAKER_04:do this. Okay, everybody, our guest is an entrepreneur and engineer with over 20 years of coding experience. He's a co-founder of Morpheus Data, a cloud application management platform company based in San Mateo, California. In addition to overseeing the technology team at Morpheus, he's a partner at private equity firm Bertram Capital. Prior to Morpheus, he founded a software development consulting firm, which designed and developed solutions for a variety of industries, including power grid management, ticketing systems, online trading, social networking and gaming, SOX compliance, and e-commerce. And if that wasn't enough, our guest graduated from Pomona College with a degree in both chemistry and math. Oh my gosh. Hey, help me welcome to the show, Brian Wheeler. Welcome, Brian. Hi, well, thanks. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, Brian, everybody needs a good hype man, and Todd is the best. Loved hearing about all the awesome things that you've done.
SPEAKER_04:Todd would just follow me around all the time, make me feel good about myself.
SPEAKER_02:He loves carrying around those little boom boxes on your shoulder, like back in the 80s, and follow you around with your theme music playing the whole deal.
SPEAKER_04:I am a child of the 80s, so...
SPEAKER_02:Hype
SPEAKER_04:man is never a singer. Oh, my gosh. So, Brian, again, thanks so much for hopping on with Tony and myself. Can you tell us a little bit about Morpheus and why you started it? Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, Morpheus really grew out of my day job, so to say. It's, you know, we've got a group of guys at Bertram that are working on technology projects all the time where you run and workloads and e-commerce sites and whatnot. And when you deal with a diverse set of companies, you end up with a very diverse set of technology. And we have a very small lean team. And, you know, our goal was to build a platform that let us move with the pace we needed to move to keep up with the times and to grow these companies inside their investment horizon and, you know, kind of break away from traditional IT paradigms, you know. So it was focused around self-service and developers being able to build and deploy and run and operate applications, you know, on premise or in the cloud as fast and agile as they can and get rid of all the bottlenecks and the silos between groups. And really, it grew out of that. And one day we looked down and said that, you know, this actually kind of makes sense as a product for everybody, not just ourselves. So we kind of spun it out of Gertrum at that time and And it's been growing ever since.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's great. We've watched you guys grow up. We've been tracking you for years. I think we were one of the early stage exposure to you guys as you exited Bertram and we're starting to get exposure across the country. And it's been really exciting to see your guys' journey.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah, you guys have been there since the start. Definitely. Great partnership. Learned a lot from all of your people and they continue to help us make the product better every day.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, so you know, it's unique. So what you just described, you know, slightly different than some of the other guests we've had, you know, you guys working inside a private equity company seeking to do something unique. Did you actually have to pitch this idea or how does that work? Like, how did you guys actually decide to begin this body of work and that it was something actually worthwhile?
SPEAKER_04:You know, in a way, I guess you can imagine you have 20, 30 people working on technology projects for low-tech, no-tech companies. You know, we own a bunch of plastic companies in Wisconsin. And I tell the joke that we bought a company called WebEx that It's not the WebEx that we all know because 100 years ago or whenever, they didn't ever think to buy a domain name. Otherwise, Cisco's product might not be called WebEx. Oh, my gosh. You could have made a ton of money just from the domain name. Right? No, they made plastic extrusion dieheads that make scotch tape and saran wrap. But when you're doing that kind of work, we're doing a lot of e-commerce, ERP, digital marketing. You kind of see repetitive trends and needs. So we shifted, you know, I've been doing this for about 10 years and it kind of dawned on us that we could think of a lot of these things that we're doing for these companies more from a product perspective. And so we did make a push to start productizing some of the things we do and treating it as maybe a SaaS platform that we run for the companies where it makes sense. And so Morpheus, yeah, it was one of those. And to pitch it though, yeah, I mean, we definitely internally pitched it. similar to maybe a traditional money race in terms of all the partners agreeing, is this something we want to pursue and are we going to spend the money on it?
SPEAKER_02:Maybe for the listeners, we could back up for a second because you work in a lab team inside a private equity firm. How would you describe the difference between private equity and venture capital?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think they're similar in nature. For the most part, you know, They're investment firms that are raising money, be it their own money or institutional money or private investors. But they're going out and securing a big pile of money and then investing it. I think typically VCs are much earlier stage with a much higher risk reward profile. And private equity typically is later stage or mid-stage depending on the firm and their investment focus. You know, VCs deal in startups and we are looking at companies that are, you know, established, you know, viable companies that are looking to grow.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thanks for that. I think it's really interesting, the angle that you guys have taken as well, which is that you've got basically a labs team that is looking to bring digital transformation or digital solutions to the companies that you're investing in to help them propel themselves towards the next area of growth. I mean, what's a day in a life like for someone working in a lab where you're just being presented with these opportunities to go create things?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's evolved over time, but I feel like we've gotten really good at what we do. When I started, it was myself and added a couple of software engineers and we're really... looking at where we can make an impact in terms of solidifying technology we also had some early investments that were very tech heavy and as you can imagine when you buy companies and stuff sometimes the people that invented the technology are on a beach sipping a mai tai somewhere now so um you know a lot of times we're inheriting things that not a lot of people inside the company knew how it worked or or how to maintain it or how to enhance it so But over time, we realized that we can make a big impact with digital marketing, software, ERP, automation, etc. And I think our lab, Bertram Labs, became a real part of our differentiation and our story. So over time, it's kind of shifted to a bunch of us are constantly working with our investment teams to... to figure out, you know, the potential of growth for a company by applying, you know, our skill sets. And, and then after that day to day, we usually have, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20 projects going at various companies with, um, we run really lean with a small it and small project management group. And it really kind of follows the model of, uh, a consulting firm, if you will. We look at ourselves like an embedded internal consulting firm that's got a whole lot of projects going on. And, you know, we treat the customers, we treat the companies like our customers and hope to do good things and grow the value. And hopefully the PE firm wants to keep us around.
SPEAKER_02:Keep inventing things like Morpheus. I'm sure it'll be a slam dunk. Your Mai Tai is on the way.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Tony and I were talking before we got you on the phone here, and we think that a lot of people would envy your job. It sounds pretty cool. I mean, you're basically leading an incubator lab for the most part. I mean, do you ever say to yourself, like, wow, this is pretty cool? I do. I mean, I did software for a long time before that. I started at a startup company. shortly after school and it got bought and just kind of started doing outsourced dev work for startups. And I've seen a lot along the way. And then when I got the call, I thought, worst case, I'll go back to doing what I was doing, but I figured I'd learn a lot about business and maybe be able to apply that to what I was doing. And I guess I haven't left yet because it kind of ended up working out the best that I could have imagined. I mean, it's like I still get to build stuff all the time. We get to dream up how we can create and grow companies. We get to... see new stuff all the time. I think as a software guy, a lot of times getting stuck at a company, just maintaining something gets a little old. So new challenges, new industries. I know way more about the plastics industry than anyone probably ever wanted to. I know way more about really weird things, but medical billing and whatnot. But anyway, no, I think it's turned into a dream job and Honestly, I feel like I have the perfect job, best job in the world.
SPEAKER_03:It sure
SPEAKER_04:sounds like it. It sounds super cool. So, Brian, it's one thing to incubate a technology that becomes a company like Morpheus. It's completely something different to manage a mature enterprise technology team. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. I think... you hit it on the head and not just different, but I mean, it's really hard to go from an idea to an actual viable business. And that's probably why a lot of startups fail. So thinking of something, creating something, finding use of something and delivering on that, but then taking it and marketing it and finding customers and working through you know, the growing pains and support and just turning something into a real company. It's a battle. You learn a lot along the way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So how did that work? Once you guys decided to take this idea, turn it into a real company and then, you know, go to market, did Bertram just assemble a business team around you, like an executive team or what, what happened next?
SPEAKER_04:You know, I think, I mean, a lot of credit to, you know, Bertram's managing partner, Jeff, he, is my partner, Morpheus. And he spent 22 years as a VC before founding Bertram Capital Private Equity. And his working knowledge of startups and VCs over the years was just invaluable. I mean, it's like a cheat code, right? You know, said from day one, like you can go raise a bunch of money, but really the industry kind of lives off the fact that it takes a lot of money to find your way. And, you know, The leaner and the more efficient that you can do it, the better off you end up. And so we've really run it like a success-based model. We got the product to a point where we had engineers trying to get somebody to agree to beta our software. We hired one salesperson to try and prove out if we could sell it. We hired one support person after we made our first sale. And then we've constantly set a success-based budget and grown and added. And really, we kind of run break-even hiring as we sell. And I think we're now at a point where we have a much more mature sales staff and marketing staff and support and product. And he's right. We probably spent a whole lot less money along the way than if we would have just taken a bunch of money, got a big office and hired a bunch of people and gave it a go. So it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, like being able to go out there and not have to burn through cash because you guys had already proven an idea. Now it's more of, you know, would people actually pay for it? Could you prove the market? I mean, it's a great approach if you can make it work. And especially with the kind of team you guys are able to assemble with the business experience that you had. For sure. Yeah. So what's, what's next beyond that then? So you guys are, you know, reaching, are you reaching like a critical point to where you think that you will have to raise? Like, how do you guys think about scale next? If you've been operating in a more lean model, does it, does there come a time to where you really put your foot on the gas or do you feel like the market will, will tell you on their own and, you know, kind of facilitate what comes next?
SPEAKER_04:I think, yeah, it's really good questions. You're constantly figuring out what if we had, this much money, what would we do with it? What would the returns be? I think a big part is getting the right metrics and data in your business so that things and decisions, business decisions are less of a guess, is a huge part. So we are right in that phase where we get knocked on, the door's knocked on quite frequently with offers of money. And if the right deal came along and we saw the path to accelerate growth, we'd definitely be interested. right now we're focused a lot on expanding the market that our product fits in um i think when we started we were perhaps a little early for multi-cloud hybrid cloud management and the market has been kind of heading our ways but at the same time you know kubernetes and i feel like we're in a we're in a once in a generation type shift you know that maybe i lived through at the start of my career from you know servers to to virtualization and now it's It's kind of a format and a location change with on-premise to cloud and hybrid and virtual machines to containers and function-based applications. And so it's a really unique, exciting time with a lot of different market opportunities that are being stirred up by the shift.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so true. I mean, we're seeing that. just everywhere and with you know the pandemic last year the explosion of cloud adoption i gotta imagine you guys are in a great position right now because you know what comes next is everyone moves so quickly they created so much technical debt and risk debt that you know how do you know optimize and start figuring out how to operate differently i
SPEAKER_04:think that's the thing is uh I guess thermodynamics, the chaos, you know, we, we get better at stuff, but the chaos still exists. Like, uh, you know, we were just shifting problems from place to place and we, we still all have an explosion of data and explosion of applications. Um, they're getting more complex, not less and, uh, you know, harder to, to find your stuff and harder to operate your stuff. And there's tons of great tooling out there to make parts of it easy, but, but overall, we're still making big messes everywhere that, are hard to get your head around.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, to misquote Jeff Goldblum, technology will find a way.
SPEAKER_04:There you go. Yup.
SPEAKER_02:Entropy. It's true. So how does this work now? So you, you guys have, you work in Bertram labs and, You guys have spun off this idea. This company is growing and still doing its thing. You know, does there come a point to where you have to, like, which one becomes your day job or how does your role evolve over time?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I love both jobs. I spent, I look at it like, you know, when in our PE firm, our partners have areas of focus and they're looking for companies and buying them and working with management until they're, you know, preparing for an exit. And, you know, I look at it like Morpheus is kind of like my company, even though we didn't buy it, we just, you know, founded it. So, I mean, I'm still doing a lot of work on Bertram, but I treat Morpheus like my day-to-day portfolio company, if you will. And I don't know what will happen when we reach a point where we, you know, I don't know. I think... we've always chugged along with the thought of you know you got to always be building and growing a sustainable real business and not building something preparing it for you know acquisition or or ipo or whatever but usually if you have a good good solid foundational business that's self-sustaining and and growing that puts you in the best position Always. Do
SPEAKER_02:you feel like you've got a different angle on what an exit means? And as far as your planning around that, being at a private equity firm versus a VC-backed company?
SPEAKER_04:I think probably. I mean, I think the decision's entirely in our hands, which is unique. I mean, we obviously talk and plan about things. And I think the decision probably comes to a point where I mean, we all love this technology. We all want to see it grow and live on. And if that means that we, you know, get to the size where we go public and we are one of those means mainstay, you know, 500 pound gorilla companies out there. Great. If, if it means that we need to, you know, be acquired by one of the big players so that we can grow faster with their scale and, and customer base, you know, that's a possibility, but we're just focused on the business, but you know, paying attention to what's out there. Yeah. Hey, Brian, let me ask you a little bit about the business and your primary role, which is leading technology over at Morpheus, the company you started, your company. We're all in this business to help customers, help technology leaders at Trace3. We solve business problems with technology. Can you share maybe a gratifying moment with you when related to Morpheus? Like, have you had a chance to really kind of connect with customers, you know, post? Yeah, absolutely. I think along the way, I won't name names, but I had the opportunity to have breakfast with somebody that we probably all know and jokingly asked him what the secret of success was and figured I'd get a cheesy answer, right? But he said, you really want to know? My philosophy was always that every morning at 7 a.m., we had a meeting with all of our department heads. And the meeting was to list out all unhappy customers, what was wrong and what we were going to do to fix it. That was every day for, you know, 20 plus years. And he said, you take care of the customers and the rest takes care of itself. And so that just really hit home and has struck with me ever since. And I feel like, you know, obviously we want to make a sale so that we have money so we can keep doing what we're doing. But, you know, the right path is to be providing a product and a service and an experience to the customer that makes them want to be a part of what you're doing, right? So our focus is 100% around that. And so we all stay very close to the customers. We care very much about, you know, the survey results we send out and our net promoter scores and whatnot. And if we get dinged by somebody, I really want to know why and what we can do to fix it so that it doesn't happen again. So very close to the customers. I'm kind of forgetting what your original question
SPEAKER_01:was.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It sounds like you, let's say you have a customer that's, that's red and you reach out to them to, to make sure that problem solved, you know, afterwards, you know, reconnecting with them. Hey, did we get it right? Have you had any gratifying feedback on how you started? Oh, definitely. I think, you know, I'd say one in terms of, you know, really gratifying on the product is we had a customer that, you know, was doing on-premise cloud. They kind of bought us as a band-aid as they envisioned shifting entirely to one of the, you know, public clouds and felt like, you know, the tooling's probably not needed if you get to the public cloud because they solve everything, right? Which we all know there's still holes to solve. But they made one last hardware purchase and, to tide them over for their two-year transition. And once we got our product implemented, about three months later, they had consumed all of their hardware that they bought for their final push. And they needed more hardware because the internal development team loved using our product on their hardware better than the cloud. And so it just completely shifted their they're thinking to maybe we should stay on premise because if given the choice, the users are choosing Morpheus on our Cisco gear, then why should we waste all the time, spend all the time transitioning to somewhere where they're less happy? So that was really satisfying. That's a good one. Wait, so Tony, before we ask the next question, Brian mentioned he had breakfast with somebody who's super famous that we would know. And so, Brian, I'm going to, listen, if you can indulge us, Tony and I are each going to take a guess, a wild guess at who the person was. And if we get it right, will you give us a thumbs up? I don't think you're going to know, but go ahead. Okay, my guess is Elon Musk. Nope. Jeff Bezos. No, no. Yeah, see, I'm aging myself. You guys are probably younger than me, right? Bill Gates! No, no.
SPEAKER_02:Now, we do know Steve Wozniak. He was at our Evolve conference one year.
SPEAKER_04:It's definitely someone that you would say, like, oh, yeah, but it's not a famous, like, modern... social media platform person. He's an older guy. We'll continue to put some guesses together. We'll send those to you after the podcast. I'll tell you on the side. I just didn't want to name drop on that. I didn't want to end up in a search somewhere. Yeah, no worries. In fact, I'm sure I'm going to get a call from the compliance department after this for mentioning Bertram Capital. The best podcast episodes always end with a call
SPEAKER_02:from compliance. Yes. Obviously, this space is changing very quickly. To your point, you just described a client who you decided that after using your products that they are your solution, that they were having a great experience and maybe cloud wasn't the answer. Who do you actually think of as competition for you guys today? And do you guys track them at all? Is that a concern at all? Or are you pretty much just heads down, you know, trying to make the best platform possible?
SPEAKER_04:It's both. I mean, it'd be probably silly not to pay attention to the competition, but that said, I mean, you can't, you can't operate out of fear. of the competition. I do feel like we've got an amazing team and amazing culture on the, you know, on the engineering side. I've got, you know, teammates that I've been building with for 20 years. And so I think one of them we were talking today, it's our 25th anniversary of coding together. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Are you guys going to go out and do something special to celebrate?
SPEAKER_04:Well, he's in California and I'm in Colorado, so we'll get there someday. We're both... You know, we're both geeks. We don't travel. So I think it's just, you know, our team is a group of just some of the brightest, best people that I've encountered over 20 years that I begged to do a project with me or something and ended up doing. know sticking and we've had essentially no turnover on our on our labs team since we started 10 years ago and and so a lot of really great people heads down knowing exactly what what their mission is i like our odds you know against anybody that said we definitely keep track of of competition um and we've got competition and in some ways we've got competition i think one of the issues is our you know our product's pretty broad so A lot of companies say they do what we do or a lot of, you know, larger enterprise competitors say they have what we have. So we're really, you know, we're not trying to battle against a lot of these companies. We feel like what we are doing is gluing together and enhancing a lot of what's out there, you know, but we are definitely a threat to some people and, and they treat us that way. So keeping an eye on that and, and, And some of the other startups and where they're taking funding and where we're seeing them in the market, you know, we certainly track that. And I think the best we can do is pay attention to them. And if we lose a deal, lose the customer to a competitor is to, you know, find out why and what we could have done better. That's great. So, Brian, a lot of people, when they create a technology, and they're trying to get it in the hands of customers, they look for some outside validation. And sometimes that comes through, you know, Gartner or another analyst firm, 451, or maybe the press like Forbes. Can you tell us the importance of outside validation? And if you have engaged with a research firm, what that's like? Yeah, I think outside validation, even if it's, you know, a research firm like Gartner or just, you know, peer to peer. I mean, a lot of tech guys, changing jobs, shifting, you see the same faces over and over making the same decisions. So word of mouth is huge. Your reputation is huge. The analysts though, I think, you know, it's a, it's really important part of the ecosystem. I'd say having those trusted sources, spend the time with you to, to understand what you're doing and why and where you're going and to give their feedback has been invaluable. And we do work with Gartner, Forrester, 451. That said, I think they're very expensive and so it's very hard for startups to get that kind of relationship and exposure. We definitely have to start small and try and find the free ways to play and get into the thoughts and mindsets. But now we have some great relationships and dialogues quarterly or annually with different ones that have provided invaluable feedback on what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and we've seen them track you guys as well as our own research firms and seeing you guys grow up and probably helps that everybody has such a great viewpoint on how capable and how much they believe in your guys' vision.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, honestly, the fact that Gardner put us into a magic quadrant and put us in the top right when we had 30 employees and put us ahead of some of perceived competition like that, That was... game changer for us, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You almost want to like put it on a t-shirt and print it for everybody.
UNKNOWN:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, I can only imagine like when you get that release and then you see where you guys are placed and you get the phone call and you see it like that, that amount of excitement that you guys have. And that, I mean, just to share like the validation of like, yes, you, we see you guys doing the right things. You're doing amazing work and we've put you in the far upper right quadrant. Yeah. You hit it.
SPEAKER_04:It was awesome. It's still a remains awesome. And now we put a lot of effort into making sure that if there's a firm looking at an area that we might fit into, that we definitely want to get into their thoughts around that so that we can be included.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sure as somebody who is constantly tinkering and you're being presented with different problems and you kind of have the dual roles that you're fulfilling right now, Anything out there in the world or in technology or in problem spaces that you find really interesting right now?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, well, I think you can find interesting stuff all over. I think you always look for, I mean, anything that bothers you probably bothers other people and probably is an opportunity to make something less annoying and help out. But on the tech side, I mean, security has always been really interesting to me. I feel like it's a... you know, never ending battle. So, you know, I think we talk a lot about where do we fit into the security landscape and if we were to do something after Morpheus, you know, that's something I'm very interested in. Like I always joke that this world and our jobs would be so much easier without bad people, right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
UNKNOWN:For sure.
SPEAKER_02:You know, what's interesting about that too is, so we obviously have conversations with people all the time on the security front and, obviously everyone saw the news with the oil pipeline and all the systems being taken down. What's astounding though is people, you get the news outlets and people are talking about this like this is such a shocker. But I think all of us who are in technology and we see what's happening in security, it's surprising actually that that doesn't happen more often with how poor things are out there.
SPEAKER_04:It's true. It really is. And it's really scary. I don't know about about you guys but you know we've had to start you know doing security training every month and and whatnot and it's just uh it just makes you realize like things are so vulnerable and you're right it's gonna happen when all the power lines are out for a month you know
SPEAKER_02:yeah but So if you're out there listening right now and your dream is to also start a security company, you know, go pitch Brian. Do it.
SPEAKER_04:Or if there's something out there that you know annoys everybody, you know, put it on paper, your solution. Yeah. Or if you're a bad person hacking people, please stop. Hey, Brian. This has been great. I think I mentioned this has been one of my favorite conversations that we've had on the show. You've been a blast. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to share with potential entrepreneurs? Yeah, I'd say, I was talking about it a little bit before, but I've had so many friends hear you're in a VC firm or a PE firm and they're like, I have this idea. Like, what do you think? And I've had people take me out to lunch just to tell me their idea. And then like, what do you think? Let's start a company. And it's like, you know, I would just say what I've learned over the time is the further you can get on your own, the better. And, you know, you have to put yourself in somebody's position. If they've got a pile of money there, they don't want to gamble it. They want to make sure bets. Right. So if you wouldn't spend your own money on something, somebody else is going to spend money on it.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So I think I, I just give everybody the same advice, like go start your company, go do whatever you can scrounge up, whatever you can build something, you know, you're going to come out in way better shape the further you get on your own. And that said, you know, there is definitely a place for money and, and, you know, VC and PE, they, they serve their purpose and they, they, You can miss out on opportunities if you don't put the foot on the pedal at the right time, like you said before. But entrepreneurs and startups and VCs, it's not a lottery ticket magical thing where you just come up with something good and poof, you're rich a year later. It's hard work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's great advice. We frequently find situations where And I'm sure you've seen this where you have someone has an idea and everyone on your network will tell you that it's a good idea. But the second you go to actually get them to open their wallet, you find out just how good of an idea it is or
SPEAKER_04:not. Yep. When they pull out the change purse, you know where
SPEAKER_01:you stand.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I think the other thing, too, is, you know, even if you take money like it's it's essentially coming out of your pocket because you're you're giving up ownership of your stuff, you know, proportional. You're giving up little bits of ownership along the way to get that money. So it's really your own money coming out of your own pocket. So the more efficient and better you are with capital, you know, the more you're going to own in the end. And that's the more you'll control your own destiny. Right. Yeah, I have a bonus question. I don't know if I want to... Okay, I'm just going to throw in my bonus question. Don't leave us in suspense, Todd. Okay, so what is the deal with Colorado? I know so many smart people that were in California. Two of them are on the phone right now, and they now live in Colorado. Is this becoming the new smart person hub? I mean, what... I mean, maybe it's my fault. No, I was born and raised and lived my entire life here. I actually moved out to San Fran for a year to work on Bertram and then quickly realized that I spend most of my time out with the companies we work with and with our labs team. So I moved back to Colorado because it's where I'm from and where I grew up and where I love and Maybe I've been telling people how awesome it is too much and they're all coming here. But I think, you know, it's growing. Boulder is a great city and there's a lot of investment and startup activity there. But really, I think a big part is just, you know, people can live and work a lot more where they want to now than, you know, especially after the pandemic. So I know a couple of people from our firm moved you know, to Colorado or to Florida or, or, you know, they have tons of money. They're probably moving to Florida or Texas, so they don't have to pay taxes, but, uh, Colorado is a good spot. Obviously we got our good hockey here. So yeah. Yep. Avalanche middle of a good playoff run. So that's where I'll be for the next month.
SPEAKER_02:Nice. Brian, it's been great to have you. Amazing guest. It's a Todd's point. One of the best conversations that we've had thus far. Really appreciate you taking the time to come in and share your story with us. Oh, thanks, Tony.
SPEAKER_04:That was really fun. I had no idea what to expect and it was super fun.
SPEAKER_00:Trace3 is hyper-focused on helping IT leaders deliver business outcomes by providing a wide variety of data center solutions and consulting services. If you're looking for emerging technology to solve tried and true business problems, Trace3 is here to help. We believe all possibilities live in technology. You can learn more at trace3.com slash podcast. That's trace the number three dot com slash podcast.
SPEAKER_03:Until next time.