Eugene Seagriff and Gary Ricci's Symphony of Disruption: Orchestrating Tech Breakthroughs and Venture Victories

Ever wondered if the audacious tales of tech trailblazers could ignite your entrepreneurial spirit? Listen closely as we sit with Eugene Seagriff and Gary Ricci, the mavericks behind seismic shifts in technology and venture capital. Eugene, a former engineer turned marketer, unveils the narrative of his transformative noise-canceling technology that's poised to revolutionize our sonic space. Gary, with his savvy seed-stage investment acumen, champions the 'seize the day' ethos at the vanguard of market upheaval and progress. Together, they share the rollercoaster of setbacks and victories inherent to the entrepreneur's journey.

This episode is more than just stories; it's a treasure trove of hard-earned wisdom. As Eugene articulates the paramount importance of impeccable execution in tech ventures, Gary reflects with sage advice on asset retention and its enduring value. Their insights provide a blueprint for navigating the choppy waters of innovation. We wrap up with a glimpse into the future Eugene's company envisions—one where "silence or devices" is not just a catchy phrase but a real-world possibility. Join us and maybe, just maybe, you'll catch the spark to kindle your big idea.

About Eugene Seagriff:
Eugene Seagriff is an engineer turned product marketer who has helped deliver over $22 billion in fast, profitable growth for a variety of companies. He is currently the CEO and primary inventor of Silencer Devices' patented Noise Cancelling Technology, which is effective across 10 times the frequency range of the commonly used technology they intend to replace in the market.

Connect with Eugene:
Website silencerdevices.com
LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/silencer-devices
linkedin.com/in/eugeneseagriff

About Gary Ricci:
Gary Ricci is the Co-Founder, Co-Managing Member and Investor in Silencer Devices, and part of Accendo Equities, primarily a seed-stage to growth-stage venture capital fund. Investing in top entrepreneurial teams with great concepts and ideas with a need for strategic advisory services and seed capital. The core is creating and leveraging emerging/disruptive technologies and solutions to change existing markets. Connect; Collaborate; Scale.

Connect with Gary: 
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/gricc

This episode is brought to you by Silencer Devices, Radically Better Noise Cancelling Technology.  Go to SilencerDevices.com to learn mor

Be sure to click "+ Follow" at the top of the page, new episodes every Wednesday! Thanks for listening!

Follow Marc Bernstein on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook!

And follow Ang Onorato on LinkedIn and Instagram!

Are you a visionary founder with a compelling success story that deserves to be shared with our audience? We're on the lookout for accomplished business leaders like you to be featured on the Founders' Forum Radio Show and Podcast. If you've surmounted challenges, reached significant milestones, or have an exciting vision for the future, we'd be honored to have you as a guest on our show. Your experiences and insights can inspire and enlighten others in the business world. If you're eager to share your journey and the invaluable lessons you've learned along the way, we invite you to apply here.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:35

Good morning America. How are you? We're here on Founders Forum today. I'm here with my co-host, Ang Onorato, my co-host Ang Onorato, and our guests today are Eugene Seagriff and Gary Ricci, and I'm not going to. I'll introduce them in a couple minutes and give you their backgrounds. It's a wonderful day here in Philadelphia. We hope you're having a great day, and Ang has a quote of the day that we're going to use as our opening remarks.

Ang Onorato: 1:03

Yeah, not only is it a quote of the day, it's fitting from the sort of innovative tech that we're going to use as our opening remarks. Yeah, not only is it a quote of the day, it's fitting from the sort of innovative tech conversation we're going to have today. Quick backstory Marc and I were chatting this morning prepping, and I was in a different part of the house and we talked about a quote and 30 minutes later I'm in my kitchen getting coffee and my Alexa screen just popped up and said here's a quote for the day and I never asked it to do that, so it heard me in a whole different part of the house, which is terrifying.

Marc Bernstein: 1:26

But we should talk about AI a little bit.

Ang Onorato: 1:29

Yeah, it was a little.

Marc Bernstein: 1:30

I mean, we've been talking to Alexa for a while but we've been talking a lot of AI on this show.

Ang Onorato: 1:34

Yeah, it was a little bit too. I felt like it was in my head, not just any event. Fun, fun. Quote today from our favorite Steve Jobs Remembering that you're going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You're already naked. There's no reason not to follow your dreams. So my initial take on that is one of just pure excitement, because I can't wait to hear the stories of how our two guests today have jumped in and kind of followed this dream. So what do you think about that, Marc? I know you have thoughts.

Marc Bernstein: 2:05

Well, I take that. So we're recording the show. We did a live show just before this, as we often do with Dr Bruce Grossinger, and we were talking about audacity and to me there's some overlap with that. To me I hear in that you know you're going to die, so go for the gusto, you know, do everything you can do. And I know that I talked a little bit on that show. I won't go into today how that's impacted me in terms of my view of my own business, but a lot of the entrepreneurs I know it's just people that you know it's like there's nothing to be embarrassed about, there's nothing to slow you down, just like go for it, whatever it is.

Marc Bernstein: 2:50

You don't need the safety net truly, and that applies to what we're talking about here today. So let me introduce the gentleman really quick and then I'm going to ask you your thoughts on that quote and then we're going to get into your story. So Gary Ricci is co-managing member and investor in Ascendo Equities, which is primarily a seed stage to growth stage venture capital fund. They invest in top entrepreneurial teams with great concepts and ideas, with a need for strategic advisory services and seed capital. Their core is creating leveraging emerging disruptive technologies and solutions to change existing markets, and they say connect. Leveraging emerging disruptive technologies and solutions to change existing markets. And they say connect, collaborate and scale. And you'll see why in a minute.

Marc Bernstein: 3:32

Gary is a perfect fit for Eugene, who I met first, and Eugene is co-founder and CEO of Silencer Devices. What, may you ask, is that? Well, he'll tell you in a few minutes. But Eugene is an engineer turned product marketer who has helped deliver over $22 billion in fast, profitable growth for a variety of companies. He's got quite a successful corporate career, has patented noise-canceling technology which I'm very excited about personally which is effective across 10 times the frequency range of the commonly used technology that they intend to replace in the market. It's something that's going to affect the way we hear everything. It's very interesting today. So you two got together because of this idea that Eugene had and Gary, I know you found Eugene and you'll tell that story but the quote, the Steve Jobs quote what do you guys see in that?

Gary Ricci: 4:34

Well, excuse me, I always follow the carpe diem seize the day.

Marc Bernstein: 4:39

Right.

Gary Ricci: 4:40

Actually, I have a quote in my email signature Think you can, think you can't. Either way, you'll be right.

Marc Bernstein: 4:46

Right.

Gary Ricci: 4:47

Failure is good. I teach my kids Failure is the best schooling in life and, like you said earlier, you live once.

Marc Bernstein: 4:55

You're repeating the entrepreneurial mantras, which are great.

Gary Ricci: 4:58

Go, follow your passion. You live once, love it, and if you follow your passion, the rest will follow.

Marc Bernstein: 5:04

Excellent, Eugene. What do you have to say about that?

Eugene Seagriff: 5:08

Yeah, I completely agree, and I always think about Michael Jordan saying you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Take a shot. What else are you going to do, right? Yep? And to go back to Steve Jobs, we're intending to make a dent in the universe ourselves.

Marc Bernstein: 5:24

Love it. So let's get into your story. So, gary, I know you chased Eugene down In a good way, in a good way.

Gary Ricci: 5:32

He wasn't like trying to run me over, he wasn't stalking you. Who's in the bush?

Marc Bernstein: 5:38

So tell us that quick story and then Eugene will get into how you developed the idea that you two are working on.

Gary Ricci: 5:45

Yeah, a while back, actually a decade ago when, I had brown hair. I was actually at the time working on a media project Myself and a bunch of partners were producing it.

Marc Bernstein: 5:57

You've got a wonderful shade of salt and pepper, though I have to say yeah, tell my wife that I was working on a media project.

Gary Ricci: 6:06

We were excited about it. We were actually syndicating it on an international basis and we were finishing up in the editing room and we were doing some live shots. But we were looking for sponsors specifically to place within the content and it was a television show. So I, being the aggressor that I am, I went through LinkedIn. I was looking for an electronics-type sponsor brander. So I was looking up all the typical Googles, apple, samsungs of the world and there was Eugene's face popped up and, forgive me, I forget the title at the time Director of Product marketing.

Eugene Seagriff: 6:46

Product Marketing I was a product guy for years.

Gary Ricci: 6:51

Of Product Marketing. So I sent him a DM and after one, twice, three times of not responding, I think after my 12th time, I poked him. He decided okay, who is this guy, I'm down the road, let's meet for lunch. And then Eugene and I met up for lunch at a little Chinese restaurant in Teaneck, new Jersey, and we hit it off, obviously with my entrepreneurial spirit and Eugene had it in his blood.

Eugene Seagriff: 7:14

He talked about his thoughts and ideas outside of the corporate world and we discussed the long list, the long list of many ideas Eugene had that we'd like long list.

Gary Ricci: 7:25

The long list of many ideas Eugene had that would like to pursue, and may I say one of them was based on his experience. He wanted to or find a way, or there was a need to quiet vacuum cleaners. And now, actually, what I'm talking to you and I think about it, believe it or not that excited me. I don't know why. It's a great idea, because they're annoying.

Marc Bernstein: 7:48

I would love to I have to work at home these days. My office is under construction. That idea would come in very handy. The noise goes through the wall.

Gary Ricci: 7:58

So we stayed in touch, we went back and forth. Nothing came out of Samsung, by the way, for my show, but the idea of quieting in the vacuum. I like the fact that it's never been done before and through my course of my careers and my life, believe it or not I like creating things. That's where I get my juices flowing and my excitement. Once it's created, I kind of lose focus and I'm on to the next thing, which sometimes is good and sometimes is bad. You know it's a roller coaster ride.

Marc Bernstein: 8:29

Serial entrepreneur.

Gary Ricci: 8:31

I don't mind it. I love the ups and downs.

Marc Bernstein: 8:36

So what happened to the vacuum cleaner idea before we move on to the big idea?

Eugene Seagriff: 8:40

Well, I guess at first we tried to do what everybody does right. We tried to use existing chipsets and technology and realized that no one's using this for reasons that make sense. It's not capable, right, it can't change fast enough in real time, it can't do the frequency range, and from there I got the bright idea oh well, maybe I can make a better version of that. And that was another fail Failure is essential.

Ang Onorato: 9:09

It's failing forward, it's just the one. It's building the steps to the next thing.

Eugene Seagriff: 9:13

Yeah, and that's a great way to look at it, but it certainly didn't feel that way at the time and in fact, we were thinking of packing it in at that point and one of our early non-founding investors asked me a question. I gave him a status update and he's like yeah, no, no, no, no. I didn't ask you how it's going. I asked you what do you need? And I'm like, wow, tomas has a much better question. I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. And that's what led to this paradigm shift and approach to the problem of noise canceling, which fortunately is bearing fruit.

Gary Ricci: 9:50

Yeah, just a quick tidbit. I mean time, tenacity and the belief. Trust me, we failed many times, but for something don't tell me what in our head a little it was true belief that this is going to work.

Marc Bernstein: 10:06

Hey, I just thought of something. Weren't you from Edison, new Jersey, or around there?

Eugene Seagriff: 10:09

I live in Edison. Edison, yeah, there you go. Thomas said there's your legacy right there. I went to the museum last summer.

Marc Bernstein: 10:14

Look at how many failures he had before he hit on Only 10,000,. Right what he says is, I didn't fail. I think it was actually three.

Eugene Seagriff: 10:22

I didn't fail 3,000 times. I found 3,000 ways that, so that brings me closer to the one that does right and that some days, is very encouraging.

Marc Bernstein: 10:32

Right, I can't imagine.

Gary Ricci: 10:33

Well, when we started this is a quick tidbit my son was five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and now we're applying to colleges from his father.

Ang Onorato: 10:40

There you go. Rome wasn't built in a day either, right, it felt like yesterday.

Marc Bernstein: 10:45

But I know you're far enough along that Eugene has left his corporate job. This is, you're doing a full-time, and I think you have another employee, yeah, and you guys are on your way.

Eugene Seagriff: 10:54

So let's talk about how you got from the vacuum cleaner to where where it is today, and then we'll talk about what happens next sure, well, as I mentioned, you know, the the paradigm shift was was a better question than I was asking myself, right which led me to reconsider the problem and solving the problem from first principles, and it sounds pompous to say but like six months of thought experiments about how sound moves and exists in space and led to this approach.

Eugene Seagriff: 11:26

And I had to do it unconstrained. I had to pretend cost didn't matter, I had all the processing power in the world and all these things. And that's what led to this different approach, which our technical advisor hates, because I can't do the mathematical proof. But I'm like yeah, well, it works. If you want to do the math, go ahead.

Gary Ricci: 11:48

What do you call that? It's Moore's Law, because when we started yeah, that's fact we actually couldn't do what we like. When we started the concept of the strategy of putting together silencer and what we thought we could do. We actually couldn't do until today, but we that. The reason is that of moore's law reference to where technology is as advanced and this, the chips, and how fast things work, right, right. So it worked in our favor, yeah that's helped us in the.

Eugene Seagriff: 12:14

You know you need to be nearly real time right. Like high frequencies have changed in 10,000, 20,000 times a second right, that's pretty quick and you have to do all your processing. Sound travels at 650 miles an hour, right, right. Meters per second I would say 350 meters per hour, right, right. Meters per second I would say 350 meters per second right, and that's really fast, right? So if you've got the thickness of a phone that's a quarter inch or less, right, you've got to do your magic in essentially no time.

Marc Bernstein: 12:44

So that leads me to, before we get too much into the technical aspect of it, and maybe we won't, and maybe we won't, and maybe we shouldn't.

Eugene Seagriff: 12:52

Yeah, yeah, let's keep it entertaining to non-geeks.

Marc Bernstein: 12:57

I just said a sentence about what it does and I understand it, but for our listeners, why don't you tell the practical applications of what you're doing?

Eugene Seagriff: 13:04

Yeah, so you know, for example, there's lots of applications, right, but the you know right now. Mobile phone right, but the you know right now, mobile phone, right. Look at mobile phone ads. It's about the camera. Wouldn't it be great if they could market it as a better phone?

Marc Bernstein: 13:19

Right, right. I always think about that. What are you going to do about the phone?

Eugene Seagriff: 13:22

Yeah, exactly right, if you. You know who wouldn't you know. You do it all the time, right, you're in your business, you're out in the street, you're in a restaurant, an important call comes in. You don't have the confidence to take the call. That's a wonderful example. And how much smarter would Siri or BART or Google Assistant seem to be if they can hear you better? And especially now with natural language programming ascending, this is getting more and more critical. So that's just the tip of the iceberg. Or work from home, right, how do you keep your home life out of your work life? Well, and a great example. You need what we do.

Marc Bernstein: 14:00

Look, if you guys hadn't come down to Philadelphia today from central Jersey, we'd be on Zoom and in our homes. And how many times do you hear background noises and interference?

Ang Onorato: 14:11

Or just even not clarity either, like a clear voice like we have here in the studio because of the soundproofing and all of that.

Marc Bernstein: 14:18

Well, that's a great question.

Eugene Seagriff: 14:19

You hear you're on Zoom and then your neighbor's landscaper shows up and there's a leaf blower going right.

Gary Ricci: 14:23

Yeah, the timing for that leaf blower is always spot on.

Eugene Seagriff: 14:27

We can take care of the leaf blower, the barking dog, the baby crying, all that stuff.

Marc Bernstein: 14:32

The wife in the back, but to Dan's point, because I was thinking this is a question, but in addition to that, would it give more clarity of sound as well? So the words aren't cut off as much and all that kind of thing as well In terms of how some current canceling works.

Eugene Seagriff: 14:49

yes, Because some things are cutting things out that they shouldn't.

Ang Onorato: 14:53

Right.

Eugene Seagriff: 14:55

Because they're canceling the wrong stuff. It's because of the current technology.

Marc Bernstein: 14:57

Right, right, right. So with that, guys, I think we're almost at the halfway point, which means time's for a commercial. So that's unbelievable Time flies when you're here. Time flies on this show, there's no question about it. So we will be back in a moment, back with Eugene and with Gary, and see you then.

Announcer: 15:18

Silencer devices has created a radically better noise-canceling technology. Unlike the commonly used technology which was introduced to the market over 40 years ago, silencer devices can suppress both repetitive cyclical sounds like engine noise, and dynamic sounds like horns beeping or even music playing. As importantly, silencer devices technology is effective across the entire audio spectrum and beyond. That means their noise-canceling technology can help with both the plane engine noise and the crying baby sitting behind you to street noise and more. In addition, it has extremely low latency and requires very little runtime, memory or computing power, which makes it suitable for portable devices like earbuds and mobile phones. The time is now to be among the first to bring this globally patented technology to market and take the market share you deserve. Visit silencerdevicescom to learn more about the future of noise canceling.

Marc Bernstein: 16:16

So we're back here at Founders Forum and we have Eugene Seagriff and Gary Ritchie and we were just talking about the concept of the idea behind silencer devices. And so what's next, guys? So you're in. I know that you have a lot of US patents, so we can talk freely about this and international patents. What comes next?

Eugene Seagriff: 16:40

Yeah, well, the patent portfolio is growing tremendously, which is exciting and good, and what we tried to do there is, you know, approach patenting the way a large company would they want to protect globally. We're targeting 80% of the global GDP and we have at least one patent in almost every country we've targeted so far EU. We have two. We have them in Russia, china, japan, israel.

Marc Bernstein: 17:09

Some of the toughest countries you have.

Eugene Seagriff: 17:11

Yes, remarkably so. So very exciting the patent portfolio, and we think that'll help build our value. Our goal, our wish, our dream is acquisition by a larger, better-resourced organization, because we think they can do more with the technology faster and better than we can.

Marc Bernstein: 17:30

Such as a Samsung or something like that.

Eugene Seagriff: 17:31

Yeah, many, many opportunities. And we have one global brand already interested in at least licensing in one or more categories, and we're now just beginning to go public. We stayed in stealth mode intentionally because we felt we were underfunded to be able to survive multiple attacks from patent trolls or whatever. And we're just now getting public about what we're up to and approaching companies and so far the responses are very positive.

Eugene Seagriff: 18:05

And, like I said, we have one company that's already interested in licensing and we're intending to. If we need to, we'll become a licensed organization for a few years, but we suspect that along the way someone's going to say gosh, I'd rather have control of this and let my competitors have control of this.

Gary Ricci: 18:22

And a little competitive sustainable advantage for the purchaser.

Marc Bernstein: 18:25

So start by being licensors, and then, when you eventually sell it, you'll be selling the license agreements as well along with it.

Eugene Seagriff: 18:35

Along with the patent portfolio, the technology and the know-how. Yes, yes, yes.

Marc Bernstein: 18:39

What kind of challenges stand in your way right now? I mean, obviously there's a lot.

Eugene Seagriff: 18:44

Well, you know where we're at. Is you know, a little early. We have a great proof of concept of our technology working and being able to cancel a broad range of sounds, including music, babies crying, dogs barking.

Eugene Seagriff: 19:03

We can cancel anything dramatically, suppress it and next we need to migrate that to a headphone demo and a voice assistant demo, right, like if you ever use you were mentioning it before we started about you know Alexa and Google Home, those kinds of things you know. Right now they have two problems. One is if they play a commercial that says hey Alexa or hey Google, it wakes the device up. Right, and we could solve that by inserting our technology between the speaker and the mics. And similarly, if you tell it to play music, you've got to scream at it to make it stop. Or if in your car, if you're going to use voice assistant, it turns the radio off. No need for that if you apply our technology in the manner which we've designed. So we think that's fantastic and we'd like to get that demo done. So with those two demos, we can get more aggressively engaged with more companies and we've already taken the next step towards putting it all into a chip. So that's one step from a chip so to be a licensing organization.

Marc Bernstein: 20:10

So you're almost past the technological challenges, exactly right, gotcha, exactly right.

Eugene Seagriff: 20:16

So we're talking to some companies about becoming a chip partner and we suspect they may choose to acquire instead, and that will be fine with us. We're painfully aware of our limitations, or my limitations.

Marc Bernstein: 20:31

Very exciting. Listen, it's exciting for us to be in the midst of you know, you hear these kind of life-changing inventions that people have. That impacts people every day. Sometimes you don't hear about the event, or sometimes you do, but all of a sudden they just appear, especially at the pace of technology we're living in today.

Eugene Seagriff: 20:48

And the remarkable thing is the legacy technology that everyone's using is 40 years old, like our business advisor, commercialized those patents back in the 80s and took a company. Public you know, but it was that long ago, right, and shockingly, no one's come up with a better mousetrap, you know.

Eugene Seagriff: 21:08

That really is amazing, right, and you don't know of anyone else that's working on it or has done it as well, I guess no, and we think part of the reason is that you know our approach is extremely unorthodox and any expert like our Technical advisor will hate it. Right? Oh, that's not possible. You don't do that, right. There's no math supporting this idea.

Marc Bernstein: 21:33

It can't be done, so why are you wasting your time?

Ang Onorato: 21:35

Right it's all the things that all the quotes we've been talking about today and earlier that go against right Saying you have a safety net. It can't be done. You're not being audacious and bold, and at full. Why not?

Eugene Seagriff: 21:49

Right, old and at full. Why not Right? Cell phones are only 20 years old, really, so fortunately I wasn't encumbered by expertise, had enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Ang Onorato: 21:56

That's what it takes. Every disruptor is that.

Gary Ricci: 21:59

Well, what he says? It doesn't make sense, but it works.

Announcer: 22:04

Exactly it was an intuitive leap.

Eugene Seagriff: 22:05

It was an intuitive leap that. It was intuitively that in every way doesn't make sense based on theory Right.

Marc Bernstein: 22:15

So, gentlemen, believe it or not, we have less than four minutes left. Wow, so we got a few closing round questions for you. Sure, first is what we love to talk about is future vision. So when we ask for your choice, eugene, you chose three years and Gary chose one. Who wants to go first?

Gary Ricci: 22:34

Well, actually it's flipped.

Marc Bernstein: 22:36

Eugene picked one and I picked three. Oh, you're right, I'm sorry.

Ang Onorato: 22:41

You're right. I switched my paper around. You're absolutely right. That might be a good test to see how aligned I was thinking that it didn't add up.

Gary Ricci: 22:48

Actually to go back. I'm going to hold to one.

Marc Bernstein: 22:51

I prefer the one. So what do you see happening in a year?

Gary Ricci: 22:54

Actually, as Eugene said earlier, there was a couple delays. Obviously there's always delays in whatever you're doing and expectations. But we are now just going into market. We're getting a great response, we're starting to engage and what I'd like to see by the end of 2024, we're aggressively licensing the software and most likely we're going to be acquired Right, because someone's going to look at us and they're going to want to take us and control it in the market.

Marc Bernstein: 23:29

So I'm guessing your vision is the same but different time frame, because Well, no, actually we aligned in the car. Okay.

Eugene Seagriff: 23:40

You got that all straightened out. Three years is too long.

Marc Bernstein: 23:43

Eric One year.

Gary Ricci: 23:45

By the way, I'm holding you to a year. There you go, man.

Ang Onorato: 23:48

It's a good thing you had an hour ride at least. Right, it is exactly.

Marc Bernstein: 23:50

All right, we can move on, then that's great.

Eugene Seagriff: 23:54

It's been 12 years already.

Marc Bernstein: 23:55

What's one more?

Eugene Seagriff: 23:56

Yeah, one more is enough.

Marc Bernstein: 23:58

So more questions. So I will start with Eugene on this one. What are?

Eugene Seagriff: 24:03

your favorite books, you know. One of them is called the Art of Impossible by Stephen Kotler. It's about maximizing the persistence and utilization of flow state based on neuroscience. Actually, that was a subject on one of your podcasts not too long ago, if I remember right. That's a big one for me Then all the classics, right, tony Robbins, the Waking the Giant Within. I read that at least once a year to try to keep improving, getting better at optimizing my strengths and then finding other resources to fill in.

Marc Bernstein: 24:45

You're a very dynamic guy for a tech nerd. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Eugene Seagriff: 24:49

I don't fit the profile. You're a very dynamic guy for a tech nerd.

Ang Onorato: 24:52

Yeah, I don't fit the profile. You're a true entrepreneur.

Eugene Seagriff: 24:54

I've learned to adapt to social interface.

Marc Bernstein: 24:59

Back to Gary for a minute. Gary, if you could speak to your younger self, what advice would you give you?

Gary Ricci: 25:05

Well, I told Eugene on the way down I would have kept my 1997 Z28. Haven't heard that one before.

Marc Bernstein: 25:16

As every New Jersey boy should have.

Ang Onorato: 25:17

Yeah.

Gary Ricci: 25:21

To skip off of the technology point, I would have invested and held on to more real estate. I hate to be more blunt, but that's the lane I understand.

Marc Bernstein: 25:33

I'd love to pursue that conversation with you later, it's an interesting observation. And then, Eugene, you have, I think, last question what advice do you have for fellow tech entrepreneurs who are coming up?

Eugene Seagriff: 25:47

Well, I think the opening quote was a good one, right? You know ideas are a dime a dozen. You got to execute and you got to. You know, make things happen. If you're going to, you know you can think about it all day long, you can talk about all day long, but if you don't go out there and do it, it's not going to happen.

Marc Bernstein: 26:06

Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure having you here. Best of luck, silence or devices I don't know if we'll hear it by that name, but hopefully we'll be using the technology in the not too distant future. And, uh, it's been a pleasure, it's been. It's a great story. Wish you all the best thanks for being bold thanks for having us.

Gary Ricci: 26:22

Thank you so much our pleasure. Thank you.