Cream City Calculation

Empower Your Startup

• Cream City Calculations

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Sal Fadel, Colleen Hayes, and Frankie Chalupsky interview Naveen Lalit Kankate about his success in using data in entrepreneurship. 

Interview References:

Naveen's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveenkankate/

StayThanks websites: https://www.staythanks.com/luvmke?target=e4ee6751719d49f482a4b9a6639cd71b&params=%7B%7D

Data Pulse Sources:

https://news.microsoft.com/2024/05/08/microsoft-announces-3-3-billion-investment-in-wisconsin-to-spur-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-economic-growth/
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-deepseek-sets-off-ai-market-rout-2025-01-27/ 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-deepseek-ai-china-stock-nvidia-nvda-asml/
https://blog.heim.xyz/deepseek-what-the-headlines-miss/

Welcome to the Cream City Calculations Podcast. We're three colleagues and friends that love data and to talk about how data is impacting our lives. I'm Colleen. I'm Frankie. And I'm Sal. Welcome to the Data Pulse, your quick hit source for this month's most impactful data news. So one of the items of breaking news today, at least for us Wisconsin folks, is that Microsoft announced a 3. 3 billion investment in Wisconsin to add another data center. And, Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin is where they're going to be putting that, and it's kind of a hot area for data centers I think there's multiple there and I know they're not all Microsoft, but. Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a hot spot cause it'll, easy access to water. you need a lot of water to cool. A lot of water. And also easy access to the freeway. And easy access to the freeway. Yeah, that's interesting cause I know the data centers, they've talked about how, They run extremely hot because they're just,, it's 240 acres that they just invested in. And that 240 acres is going to house, so much cloud computing. And so these computers are running non stop and they run really hot. Like just think about your laptop and how, if you're sometimes working on it. Right. And doing something, I don't know, something small like writing on a Word document. Right. It'll warm up and get super hot and I've even had laptops before in the past that have like Kind of been like almost like a burn. Yeah. Yeah, where they've shut themselves down because they get too hot. Yeah, exactly So imagine just an entire building that just houses all of these computers it has to be hot It's gonna be so warm and I saw a video one time of another storage facility down in South Carolina or North Carolina one of those areas and they were showing the fans that they had running in there. I mean, you couldn't hear anybody. It was just so loud. It's just like a sound machine. Exactly. All the time. super loud. Yeah. I wonder if the neighbors can hear it. that's a good question. I know that area, Mount Pleasant, there's a lot of farmland down in that area. And for people who aren't familiar with the area, Well, Pleasant is, I don't know, half hour south of Milwaukee, maybe 40 minutes. Racine ish area, right? Yeah. It's very rural down in that area. I know that there's like city center areas and stuff where there's like, you can find your regular fast food joints and retail places, but, it's still, it's for the most part pretty rural. So, I guess the question is like, is this a good use of the land there? I mean, it's available. Yeah. It's good for all the reasons that. for this business that we already listed. I think it's interesting this press release from Microsoft notes that they'll be working with the local tech college to train and certify 3, 000 local AI software developers and provide opportunities for 1, 000 local businesses, which is cool. Yeah. That is pretty cool. Yeah. They're also partnering with the Racine Unified School District for the girls in STEM to help expand their program, which is awesome. Yeah. I think though environmental concerns, maybe need some flushing out yet. Um, absolutely. I think, it's gonna be a major energy and utility strain. Yeah. Especially'cause there's so many plants in that area already and different factories. I mean there's an Amazon warehouse not far from there. was there another company that came here a while back that failed or something? Foxconn. Foxconn, yeah. That used that whole thing. This is probably the land. Yeah. It probably is. Honestly, it might be that land. But yeah, just the concerning on that. How much drain it will have, but hopefully it brings in a ton of business to Wisconsin. It could be really positive, right? I mean, that could be really amazing for this area. Yeah, the only thing I'd say is we can't afford to have rolling blackouts, not in our winters. Right, right, right. I don't want to be that cold. Yeah, I mean, for real, people will really, will freeze to death. Yeah, so I think there was something in this too about how much power. Will be needed for this. It says the additional solar power, that they're talking about putting in as part of this project means that by 2027, Microsoft will exceed 4, 000 megawatts, of power flowing into the local grid and amount of power equivalent to what's needed to power more than 3 million homes. What they don't say though, is like how much of that will be needed for by this data center? Yeah. Most of it, most of it. I would imagine most of it. It feels like a lot. It feels like a lot of, a lot of money, a lot of megawatts. I don't know for sure, but, it does seem like a lot. Yeah. I want to know how, efficient it is. it's amazing that this stuff is, It just seems so unfathomable how much energy it takes. Yeah. three million homes is more homes than there are in Milwaukee. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So another really interesting thing that's going on today actually is, we're hearing a lot more about DeepSeek and NVIDIA. And I don't know if you're a market follower, NVIDIA's stock completely slumped, after the announcement of DeepSeek and their model. So what it sounds like is that this Chinese artificial intelligence company, DeepSeek, they're creating their own model and they're using way less resources than companies, in the U. S. have used. And so everybody's kind of wondering and questioning whether, they're doing it right, kind of? Yeah, what they said is they're training on a smaller set of models and then they're using other models to help feed in this information or make it a better model. And I guess initial results show that it was going to be Cheaper, faster, and better than, OpenAI's, O4 one. But, I think you've, we've, there's a couple articles saying, Hey, we haven't fully tested this out. It might not actually be as capable as we thought. It might be a good substitute for smaller jobs and smaller things, but it might not be a replacement of OpenAI and all that. Right. Right. NVIDIA did call it like a breakthrough in AI advancement. So, I mean, I imagine that they're Probably not liking their stock price, but they actually are probably leaning into Another model doing it better faster means that they're probably to get more money at some point it's very interesting and maybe even a little confusing. I would say trying to understand the differences in, how this new model really sets itself apart. And it was announced, what, yesterday? Yeah. So we're going to need some time to figure that one out. But to give you a comparison, it took billions of dollars and a lot of Even, they're estimating billions and billions to keep improving AI for OpenAI and all these other ones. And this took six million dollars to build. And what, two months? And two months. There's growth in this industry and then there's that, where you're like, that's a leap years ahead. So it's either like revolutionary or it's crap. Or it's crap. So be determined. I won't put And you buy a Sunny, yeah. No, no, no comment. Yeah..

Colleen:

We are at Wantable Cafe in Milwaukee's Walker Point neighborhood this morning. Just off Greenfield Avenue. And we're here this morning with Naveen Kankante to interview him about his entrepreneurship. I was going to say about your app, but you really have multiple businesses, don't you?

Naveen:

Yes.

Colleen:

But thank you, first of all, for coming on the show with us. I've known Naveen for a few years now, I believe. We met through some local user groups in the area. And Naveen is just a super interesting guy. I don't think I've ever gotten together with Naveen and not had something to talk about. The conversation just sort of flows, and he just, he does a lot of really interesting things, and we thought it'd be cool to interview him this morning about some of his, business adventures and the ways in which he uses data with those. So how are you this morning?

Naveen:

I'm doing, great. It's cold. It's very cold. It's super cold for those listeners who are not able to feel the bite of the cold. But, yeah, I'm doing great. But let me start off by saying Colleen and Sal and Frankie, thank you so much for having me here. It's my pleasure. I have had the, unique privilege of knowing you for, a few years and, just always been inspired by your story, which we covered on my podcast and then, knowing, all of you through the events, that you host, in the community. So thank you so much for having me.

Colleen:

Yeah, absolutely. So do you want to start by telling us a little bit about your background?

Naveen:

Well, my background is beautiful here. This is actually a really nice building. It is a very

Colleen:

nice, very pretty coffee shop.

Naveen:

Jokes aside. So, I grew up in Mumbai, India, beautiful city of Mumbai. And I did most of my education there. So right up till undergrad from Mumbai University. And then for my masters, I moved to the United States. That's about, 2015. So I went to UIC, which is University of Illinois, Chicago, to do my masters in management and information systems. And that's where really, that's where I came from. The deepening of the love for technology and building cool stuff came about. From there I moved to Milwaukee for my first job there. Which was with a company, right here not too far away from here on Florida Street, for a healthcare analytics firm. Worked there for four and a half years. In the meanwhile, I fell in love, with someone here, my wife, Nicole. Nice. Got married. And after that, I've worked with Northwestern Mutual and then currently, owning my own business with, Staythanks and yeah, that's about it from a background perspective.

Colleen:

That's awesome. So you mentioned your startup, Staythanks, right? Yes,

Naveen:

yep.

Colleen:

How did you get the idea for that?

Naveen:

Good question. The short answer for how I got the idea was. Two things. Number one, I've always had the love for small local businesses. Growing up in India, just to give you a little bit of context everybody is entrepreneurial in a way, if you look at it, whether it's from the vendors or small shops, small grocery stores and stuff. So the culture was already there. And I have a huge love. For small local businesses.'cause they have a unique character to it. Yeah. Like even where we are sitting here in Ville. Yeah. Like this table. I know the guy who has made these tables. Oh, very cool. I know how he print 3D printed these separators over here for the audience. That cat cannot listen. There's like a separate between the table uhhuh. So those kinds of unique things I would always had a love for. Cut two. As I was in my undergrad and masters globally, I've seen a lot of local small businesses just struggle.

Yeah.

Naveen:

Right. They struggle with, a lot of things and a lot of them close. Particularly. I want to tell the story of, one of my friends, cafe here in Milwaukee called hangout, Milwaukee. And, it went down and it was one of my favorite cafes. And one of the problems I identified there that A lot of small local business owners are great at what they do in terms of like the food, the ambience and stuff. But there were two areas that they lacked in or could use a lot of help in, which is marketing and tech.

Frankie:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Naveen:

Yeah.

Frankie:

I actually have some experience with that too, because I'm in my MBA program right now. One of the things that we're doing is for my marketing classes, we're drawing up marketing plans for local businesses because so many of them, they don't have the time. and resources to be able to dedicate to marketing. I work with a business, Club 400 in Waukesha. And so they're kind of a college bar but, they're trying to change that and make it into more of a family friendly atmosphere, but they both have full time jobs and then they own the bar as like a part time thing. So, I think that's the area that they struggled in is marketing and trying to get out. Out there that like the hey, they've got good food and it's not just this college bar anymore. It's much more than that

Naveen:

no, I absolutely and Do your point over there like just putting those marketing plans together and the time aspect, right? That was another thing because It's so difficult. Just keeping the operations and the lights on that there was a big gap Combined with that was another problem where they don't have huge budget to do it Correct. And from there, the genesis of the idea came about. You need something at an affordable cost marketing and tech solutions for affordable cost for these small local businesses.

Yeah.

Naveen:

So I thought, all the things that I've learned, in my education and then working a decade for these big companies, Fortune, hundred companies, startups that have exited for millions of dollars, can we Take those learnings and, apply it to this space. With whatever I have what can I offer? And it's also a way to connect back to the community, that I enjoy and love so much. So that's where, the idea for StayThanks came in. So we decided, okay, how do we get, people here? So the easiest way I thought would be Who are the people who will be looking for an experience like this? We started out with local residents. I knocked on almost every landlord's door. And those were not pretty conversations. They wanted to do nothing with us. Are you going to pay rent? Are you going to pay money, or otherwise get out?

Colleen:

That was the whole conversation, huh? Yeah,

Naveen:

it was pretty. Some of them were even really rude. We don't have to get into that. But, then we pivoted and found out tourists are a thing, and if you go directly to the people who are coming, into the city and that's where our partnerships with Airbnbs and hotels came in. So the people who come to the city, let's show you some of the hidden local gems and what kind of unique experiences are there in some of the cool businesses like, you know, at the Time Mob Craft, but Wonderbill Cafe, Fresh Fin. Transfer Pizza, Collective Flow Yoga. Those are all kinds of businesses that we, Said we'll put an experience together.

Yeah,

Naveen:

and a great incentive for you to come into them So the way it worked was the idea was like we'll give a thousand points To people who come into the city and tell them like hey, thank you for staying in the city Enjoy the city on us. So you get a free drink or a free coffee Yeah, and stuff like that and that's where the name comes in which is stay. Thanks, which is thank you for staying That's great.

Frankie:

I love that Question for all of you. What is your favorite Milwaukee area local business?

Sal:

Oh boy. Good question. Way to put us in the spot. I know.

Colleen:

Way to talk about that. I feel like there's a lot of really good ones here. I feel like we're really lucky, given the size of the city. Milwaukee's not a super big city. And I feel like we've got a lot of really great establishments here. I don't know. Does anything come to mind, Sal?

Sal:

So for me, one is a brewery because it's my cousin's brewery, but it's component brewing, which is right down the street here. So we're recording there next. Yeah, we can always have that space. So I had to give him a little credit, but yeah, I love the different startups from breweries all the way to coffee shops, I feel like we have a ton of coffee shops. We do, yeah, it's great. Everyone looks like there's coffee. They're thriving, they're doing really well, or a lot of them are.

Colleen:

Yeah, I guess I'll give a shout out to Vendetta Coffee, that's another small one. I think they've got two locations in the Milwaukee area, one downtown here somewhere, and then another one in the Tulsa area.

Yeah.

Colleen:

And so I know a woman whose husband owns those, and they're great, and they kind of are one of those spaces that goes from serving coffee drinks in the morning to cocktails in the afternoon, so.

Sal (2):

Yeah.

Colleen:

So it's just a really pretty, cool space.

Sal (2):

Can I get right into the, oh sorry, go ahead, you go. I didn't let Frankie answer her own question. You asked the question, so I was like, yeah, it was my fault.

Rude.

Frankie:

No, I'm kidding. I think my favorite is a recent one that I went to was Sweet Diner. Oh, yeah. That one's great. Yeah. So good. They have amazing food. Great service. I just felt like

everything was

Frankie:

like healthy, maybe not healthy, but well, yeah, it was like farm fresh, but I got the egg white omelet and, it was really good. I've never gone there and gotten something bad. Right?

Naveen:

Yeah. Me too. It's a beautiful place, especially for like a weekend brunch.

Colleen:

Yeah. I've

Naveen:

taken my wife there multiple times. Yeah.

Yeah.

Naveen:

One just on that note, one other thing. I can't play favorites, but this place is really special. I think all of you should check out Honey Bee Sage also.

Colleen:

Honey Bee Sage. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's

Naveen:

on MLK Drive.

Colleen:

Okay.

Naveen:

It's an apothecary and just great tea and anything which is like non alcoholic.

Colleen:

Cool. Great spot. If

Naveen:

we do a part two, it should be there.

Colleen:

Perfect. I'll make a note of it. Are you going to ask?

Sal:

To get back to data and how you use it, When you started identifying some of your potential customers or people that you wanted to link up, from local restaurants and local businesses, did you use analytics or data to target them in any way, or was it really just knocking on every door and like, please?

Naveen:

Just so that I understand your question, right? You're saying at the start of it to get your initial traction? Yeah, to try to get going. Okay, so data doesn't play a huge role there. It plays a role in terms of your market research. In terms of identifying your total addressable market. How big is your market that you can serve? Simply put, Let's say you're making a shampoo bottle for a certain type of dog. Yeah. And if there are only 300 of those dogs, then that's it. Yeah. Your maximum potential is 300 that you can set. So for those calculations, yes, there's a lot of like data and number crunching that we see in terms of, hey, how many local businesses are available in a particular region that we can, target. And then there are geolocation calculations. So if we have a lot of tourists coming into a certain. Cluster of let's say hotels and Airbnbs. Is it in walkable distance for a good experience? So those kinds, yes. The second part, which you mentioned about, that initial traction, it's so hard when you're trying to do something new and you don't have an established product or a name at that point, it's essentially like, who will be willing to talk to you? We will not slam the door. But we'll be kind enough to just have a conversation about the problems. So your initial is all about having conversations and not really selling anything.

Sal:

Wow. That's really interesting. From there, now that you've built the traction or a lot of traction, have you started using it more now within that aspect?

Naveen:

Yes, as we go along, data is important for everything. We can touch on so many different facets of it. So number one, which we like to at least do it at state times is data driven product management, setting up metrics at the earliest stages. Now I've been at companies before where we've taken a product from scratch to like, For a five year period where you have advanced analytics in terms of where to put a button. But now specifically for a startup, it's primarily your first is how many people are signing up on your page? So let's say we, I'll give you an example. We partner with 500 plus Airbnb units. If there are in a solid weekend with people, 65, 70 percent occupancy of that. You have 350 people, during a day that received that message, like, Hey, thank you for staying in the city. How many of them actually sign up? Yeah. Correct. So that's the first simplest way of using data that we started with. Okay. So now from there, that's a starting point. Where do we go from that? Okay. Do we need to change the message of how the text is in the welcome package to change that? Yeah. So that's where we kind of one way that we use data and we saw like, okay, we need to change our narrative in terms of, these are not coupons. This is a way for you to explore the city. Yeah. We saw a surge in that. But having those benchmarks is what helps. Really looking

Sal:

at it. I think they call it a click to acquisition kind of method, right? Yeah, in a way,

Frankie:

yes. Are those virtual things or digital things? Yeah, digital,

yes. Okay,

Frankie:

because I always look through, if they have a binder at an Airbnb, maybe I'm a little old school, but I'll look through the binder of all their recommendations.

Naveen:

So that's one of the additional things that we didn't know we were solving for, but a lot of the Airbnb partners are interested in. Yeah, I have to keep maintaining this, binder a lot of the times because sometimes the businesses go out, so we've made it like a digital option also. So

Colleen:

just so that I'm clear on how Staythanks works, you are partnering with the Airbnbs and hotels to offer up when guests check in, here's a little QR code or whatever that guests can scan, get the app, and then they get a thousand points to put toward free, like you said, a coffee or something to use while they're in the city to say thanks for staying in Milwaukee.

Naveen:

Exactly. Thank you for staying in Milwaukee and here are local businesses. So we do not partner with the Airbnbs. Some of those big chains. Sure. But only with, small, local businesses.

Colleen:

That's great.

Naveen:

Yeah. And for those who are listening, it's at ww Www.staythanks.com/. L-U-V-M-K-E four.

Colleen:

That's very cool. So I understand, I saw you actually in the news. I like to scroll the news in the morning and so one morning I'm in my home office and I'm scrolling through, I think it was TMJ four, and I was like, oh, I know this guy. And Naveen was, profiled on TMJ four, a local news station for a grant that he received. Is that right?

Naveen:

Yes. Yeah. For your business. For stay. Thanks. Yeah.

Colleen:

Can, do you wanna just tell us a little bit about that and how you came to Okay. Get this brand

Naveen:

In terms of the grants, let's break down how, grants and stuff kinda work. Yeah, please. And then that kind of, so for running any business, you need capital.

Yeah.

Naveen:

Now that capital or finance or money simply put is available, in different formats. So the first one is, like simple loans, you take a loan and you have to pay an additional and give out. The other is when you give away a stake in your company.

So

Naveen:

there's a portion of your pie you give away. That's called as dilutive funding. You basically dilute your stake in a company and then you give. The third one, which, what you kind of heard was like grants. I advocate a lot for these because Grants are non dilutive financial instruments. Non dilutive means, they are given to you essentially by a state or federal governments or various organizations to boost the economic activity in a region. So grants are great. We received a couple of them, from some great, accelerators that we were part of. So stay. Thanks. And I have been fortunate. To have been selected and fortunate to be in a place that has so many of these good resources available. So I'll name a few, which is, first starting with, 4M, that is with the Milwaukee Tech Hub. Then, Milky Way Tech Hub, Accelerator, then This one is the Young E Society, which has a market validation and idea validation program. So these are like anywhere between 6 to 16 week accelerators that you get to be a part of. You're selected, you have to apply, and you get selected, and then you go through the curriculum. Kind of like a school, mini school. And then on, Graduation in a way, you are adjudicated in terms of, how much do you win?

Colleen:

Yeah. So we want those

Naveen:

grants, as a part of, these accelerators. So we've been through G beta, Yungee society, Milky Way tech hub, for M grant, and, also the global entrepreneur in residence program at Michigan. So. A huge shout out to all those, support systems. That is

Colleen:

extremely impressive. I just, I'm in awe of all of that. That's amazing. Oh, Congratulations. I should have started with that first. Thank you.

Naveen:

We've had a lot of help and a lot of support, so it's not just like, I can't take it all myself.

Colleen:

Well, but still, I think that it says something about your character, that you wanted this to succeed, and you went about finding all these different avenues that would help you to succeed. I think some people want to just be like, oh, I'm a small business, I'm going to do this thing, and I'm going to crank it out, and I'm really good at writing code, I'm going to make this app. I think you had the foresight to see all the other elements that need to go into, you know. The small business, which is the state things app and like sort of partnered in a way with these different accelerator hubs to have some of those, some of that feedback and some of that, those other resources, where you had strengths, other people may not and vice versa. And so I think that you probably gained a lot of experience

Sal:

yeah. To be an entrepreneur, my father is one, I tried to be one, it is really difficult and you really have to be persistent. I would love, to know how did you develop that persistency and kind of overall just drive to go out and literally knock on doors and literally go out and ask for money from grants and do these accelerators. I would love to know your background in that aspect. I think we stumped him.

To be honest, I

Naveen:

don't know, man. In hindsight, I know you used the word foresight.

Colleen:

Yeah.

Naveen:

Honestly, I don't think it was like foresight. It's just doing and feeling and learning. Yeah. I didn't know, I'll be honest, I don't know a lot of stuff. When I started out, it was like, It, you should see the first prototypes of what, I didn't know anything about branding. It's just a lot of ignorance. So I was, or I am still. Continuing to pay my ignorance debt. That's what all that is. Simply put. It sounds great and stuff. And look, Easy to sit and say, It's entrepreneurship and good And It looks great with those Websites and The articles And the media coverage and everything But At the end of the day, it's the bottom line and like what kind of impact that you're creating and you're constantly in that race to keep it, going. So, to answer your question, a lot of it is just the grit to stay, alive. That's number one. And then the second is fun. It's a lot of fun because you get to learn so much. I feel that. Life learnings have accelerated so much during this process. And I have had the opportunity to meet so many people. So that kind of helps. Yeah. In a way. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of answering your question. No, I

Colleen:

think you are very much so. I liked when you said it, that I had used the word foresight and maybe that's not true in your case. And you kind of, I think you used the word like dumb luck maybe. And maybe there's like a combination of that. I think you're a very intelligent person. individual. And I think that other people may not have stuck with it as long as you did to get to the point where it's successful. But I think that's the breaking point, right? I think there's a lot of people who have great ideas, but either don't have the tenacity or the, stick to itiveness to, to do what it actually takes. Because success isn't overnight, right? you don't just do one thing and be like, Oh, I'm making a million dollars. Sometimes it's really just plugging along and going, Okay, well, it's Sort of successful and to have that determination, to kind of keep moving forward

a

Colleen:

little bit at a time. And to be, I think too, being able to accept assistance from other people is the, deciding factor sometimes in a business, the fact that you, like I said, reached out to some of these accelerator hubs. I think, there's a lot of people who may have thought, well, I'll just do it on my own. It's fine. That's a really big, hard process to apply for this thing and then stick with this six week or 14 week program. Especially if you

Sal:

do multiple like you did. Yeah. Yeah that, I've done two of them and they're Intense. They're intense. Yeah.

Naveen:

In this part, I'll agree with because this is something I had in my control.

Yeah.

Naveen:

And what I worked on, which I think is helping even now, A lot is ability to tolerate rejection.

Colleen:

Yeah. Yeah.

Naveen:

Let me give an anecdote here. So to get in one of those accelerators, I had applied, I think seven times and failed. I got it on my seventh. G beta I got on my fourth or fifth. Milky way also had applied for years, but kept on persisting with each application. I tried to make things like Yeah. In terms of, can we get the traction better? What can we learn? So, rejection absorption ratio. Yeah. R A R. Let's do that. That's a new thing. Fancy stat.

Colleen:

Yeah, another acronym that we can use. No, that's Yeah,

Naveen:

that can be learned, I feel. Yeah. That can be learned.

Frankie:

That's like another, data point, right? Like when you're really thinking about that, it's your trial and error. And you're just testing out, you're collecting information about what's success look like and what does failure look like. And I think that the people who have such good success in achieving their goals, and not just with running a business, but goal setting in general are the people who can capture why they failed and then turn that into steps to make it. So I think that's a lot of credit to you for doing that, being able to have that skill set.

Sal:

That's going to lead to my next question. For young professionals that are trying to start up, to have a startup or build their own business, that want to join these accelerators, you said you got rejected seven times before you got in, what advice did you learn from that? I'd love to just share with them.

Naveen:

Number one thing, anybody trying to do, trying to build a business or even within organizations, correct? You call them as intrapreneurs trying to build anything. My learning has been focusing on the problem. That's why when you asked, where did you get the idea from? Yeah. I was also very much an idea person generating ideas. And over the last few years, I've kind of shifted that focus away from being an entrepreneur. like ideas to go into identifying real problems. So if you have a good set of problems, because ideas are like dime a dozen, but the execution on those ideas. matter and how people, use your solution and get value out of it. So my number one advice would be just focus on problems. And this is something I tell myself. So I'm in the boat. So there's not an advice. It's just like a note. Yeah. Everyone like, Hey that's one. The other thing, which I'm also guilty of a lot of individuals who start out, doing entrepreneurship or building anything. The first thing that people build is a pitch deck. Okay. And I think that's the wrong way to go about it. Cause then you're optimizing the pitch deck and then you're getting good at selling to investors. Give me money for this idea. Give me money for this. And which is true in certain cases, like if you're getting your series. And if you're building like a super hardcore hardware product and you've come from like Boeing and trying to do something, Some,

You know,

Naveen:

aircraft. Yeah, it makes sense. But anyone who's starting out for like a small, like an app, or you have an idea for a website, start with mock pages, start with a white paper, just write something around, show it to a prospective customer that has more value. And then I say this on every platform, but I stick to it. It's like, find three people that will benefit from your solution or find three people that will pay you. For what that idea or what your solution is, and those will take care of all the other things because once you have that validation, once you have a great business, then you have a great pitch and then going into all these accelerators or investors becomes much more easier.

Colleen:

I like that you say you can are starting from like what the problem is because if you can solve a problem for people. I think that's going to be successful, right? Like, it's going to drive your success. Versus just a thing that's kind of cool, because it, has AI built in or whatever. Yeah, I mean,

Sal:

just coming from a consulting background and kind of going into clients, I think that's one thing that we've learned as well, is like, coming in and learning, it's not coming in with ideas, it's coming in to solve problems. With solutions, yeah. And helping identify those problems. Our clients could understand that. It's really interesting from a startup perspective. You're switching that into that. It's not just an idea. I think it's awesome.

Colleen:

So can we talk more about data? I hear about this app. I think it's such a cool concept. Do you have any sort of Reports for the businesses who are incorporated in your app. Do they receive any sort of reports to say, out of X people who downloaded the app, Y number of people came and took advantage of your offer?

Naveen:

Great question. Love that question because Yes. 100%. That's a small answer to your question. I know

Colleen:

where your background is, so I figured I knew the answer, but

Naveen:

Right. And I'll tell you from Multiple angles. Number one for customer, let's go in the discovery process. Whenever you're pitching someone, you get into a conversation. One of the questions that always comes in, can you show me some data, that of someone who's similar to me, how they have fared

in

Naveen:

the initial stages? It's very difficult, because you don't have anything, right? You're starting new. That's where I knew the value of just data points. This would be huge. And this is not like privacy or personal, anything personal, it's just aggregate data will be useful in the long run. So when we were giving out our free beta trials and stuff, we just made sure that we could keep a good eye on what those metrics were. So just collecting and being aware of those. So when it came time, for them to pitch other customers, we have those case studies, data case studies kind of built in terms of how many customers did this reach, how many signed up, how many redeemed. And even the data point in terms of. What does not work because we are very attuned to what is working, but sometimes even what is not working For example, we did a big collaboration with this brewery There are three rewards on our platform One was a free drink, which is a free beer. Everybody loved that. Yeah, it's huge The other was a free brewery tour, which never got any clicks because the operations to Book the tour get there with like it was just look. Yeah. So they knew, they got this data for the first time because they were running these promotions on multiple other platforms that nobody really gave them or they didn't look. But we proactively sent them and said, look, from the data set that we are seeing in our user base, the free drink obviously is a huge hit. Yeah. The brewery tour, although you're pushing and putting a lot of dollars out on its promotion, we don't see it. Yeah. And they kind of corroborated in that conversation. Yeah. We didn't really see anyone come through and redeem that. So then, we pivoted to a lunch special. So that data definitely helps. So this is in terms of sales, converting your clients, but also to keep your clients Retention. Customer retention ratios. A lot of those conversations. We do a annual or a six month review with clients proactively, where we walk through a synergy report, which is basically an accountability, a scorecard of what happened. And that really helps for people to understand. Because a lot of times they don't know that these things are happening.

Sal:

I think it's really interesting. One thing you said right away is like you came in with the perspective of using data, like having some stuff. I think a lot of businesses sometimes fail because they were like, Oh, that was an afterthought. We don't actually know our customers as well as we did. And I think you coming in and saying, Alright, part of my growth is going to be my data side.

Colleen:

Yeah, like if they're not collecting their own internal data, and they don't know how many people have redeemed the free beer, they may have no concept of, hey, we got 90 people through the door last month that we might not have otherwise, because of that offer.

Sal:

They might be spending more than they have to, right? Absolutely.

Naveen:

100%. And, we've converted that into a product of its own, where we have, now launched, something for the businesses to come in. It's in beta, but they have the control to see all the data, dashboards. A lot of them don't have the time.

Colleen:

Yeah.

Naveen:

To be logging in. Or they

Colleen:

don't have even a person who fills that role within their organization. Exactly. I think that could be a really big, sister program to what you're already running, is to go in and say, I can give you statistics from stay. Thanks. As far as how many people redeemed this out of all the people who downloaded the app? Correct. But also like of those people, again, let's just use this fictitious number of 90. How many of those people spent more money and how much else did they spend when they were in that establishment? I think that's maybe a another missing link there that a lot of these small businesses probably don't have a person that can do that analytics or even collect that data for them. Yeah. Would be interesting to find out.

Naveen:

I feel that too, because we see that, and just right now we're trying to see how we can connect with all the POS systems and then, see what kind of data analytics can we provide. Again, it's just going back to that strain of thought.

Yeah,

Naveen:

I know your backgrounds. Yeah, we've done like the data with Tableau It's over engineered and it's there. How do you take a piece of that and bring it to the target audience who is not tech savvy or is super busy or is so away from the world. Right,

yeah.

Naveen:

But how do we kind of bring that sophistication, a part of that, that can help smaller establishments.

Colleen:

Help them work smarter and not harder. Yeah,

Sal:

absolutely. From that aspect, I know you've done a marketing campaigns and kind of understood Lyft on different campaigns and whether or not they should change. How have you felt your clients have taken that information? Has it been really positive? Has it been more of a challenge? Cause they're like, okay.

Naveen:

Again, this is in the context of, your user base or the customer that you're talking to the person that you're talking to. Some of them do have an appetite to ask the questions, not necessarily like data questions, but then generally curious. So with those, you just have a good conversation and show that data. I like to go in with those reports and just give it to them because sometimes. People can't add the things in terms and see the cumulative effect. And as business owners or solution providers, you need to educate your users and your clients that this is the impact that we've kind of created and tie that story all together in a good package and a summary. How

Frankie:

has your education changed over time? what have you learned from when you started to now that you're changing the way that you're educating customers?

Naveen:

that's a good question. So when it's prospective customers, I have found in my experience is you don't really try and educate them because what happens is if you're trying to educate them for, They need to have the appetite. Yeah. We try to seek fit rather than to sell. Okay. Certain times, like, even if you need the solution, I'll Our outlooks and what we want to do might not match. So it's not a fit.

Frankie:

Sure, that's a really good point.

Naveen:

Yeah, so you kind of, discard that to avoid future problems. So that's, that's I think one in terms of, like, perspective. Yeah, for, the current clients, yes, to your question, I think just tying that thing up annually, what we have done, or for example, just quantifying that, because of us or because of the service, you've had 400, 500, 5, 000 of additional revenue coming through. A lot of those times like, nah, what do you mean? I'm like, no, I can show you these are the transactions that we are seeing for sure. That are folks. Yeah. So this is the ROI. Tying that in for the customer, to see the value. Sometimes it's the data and going to the detail. Transparency is useful.

Frankie:

Sure. Yeah, I could just see that being really difficult. part of your job, educating the customer because they're all different. They all have different levels of knowledge when it comes to data and analytics. And I just was just curious to see

Colleen:

how I'm sure they're very good at whatever business they went into. But not everybody is a data person.

Sal:

Even they might be really technical on, let's say, making beer, right? They might want to make the best beer, but if they don't know their customers and how the customers come in and how to cool customers, You can make as much beer as you want, but you're not going to sell any beer. You gotta, you have that other side of it. You bring in that other side of like, hey, this is, you're identifying that problem for them. It's sort of like a,

Colleen:

a, a two win solution for them. I mean, they're going to get these additional customers, but then they also sort of get this additional knowledge from you, and the app that says, hey, you're on the right track, or you're offering the right promos, or you're doing the right things. That's very cool. Analytics. Analytics, exactly. Do you do anything with data, between your clients that are in the same industries? Like, would you ever say, go to a bookshop and say, Hey, you know, of the other bookshops that are listed on state banks, these types of promos worked really well. Do you ever share that type of knowledge in, intra industry?

Naveen:

We're getting into benchmarking. Yeah. I love that. Sneaking it in there? Yes. I've done it in the past with my other, solution and, and customers, right now at StayThanks also, we do that, but, because we are expanding still, like the data sets are not huge. The last big data set that I worked with was 35 million records. Clearly, we don't have that with the startup yet, hopefully in the in the future, you know, but, yes, in in the future. The details that we have, we try to provide, context, but never in terms of like individual clients. No, but aggregate. Yes.

Cool.

Sal:

To subsidize like some of the data that you don't have yet, have you used like third party data or any external data to facilitate some of the questions that you might have? Have more clients or have, or that they might have to help them out. You said like total addressable market is one of the things. Doing that analysis for a client going in and saying, Hey, your total addressable market, you only have this amount of share of that. This is how we see we can grow this amount for you by doing this. Are you bringing in a bunch of other data right now? Or is that kind of planned in the

Naveen:

future at all? So this is a plan for the future. Yeah. Where we want to bring more channels. So, StayThanks is one channel. Local businesses have multiple channels. They're constantly being hit by services and stuff. There's so many, different POS systems. So, yeah, I do definitely see a potential for an aggregate system to kind of look at it. I couldn't find anything in my research to indicate, Complete data set that would provide all, but we'd like to build that, for the future for sure. That's great.

Frankie:

So when you have people signing up, what kind of information are you gathering around that clientele?

Naveen:

You know what? I'll answer that question too. You have your phone, correct? Yeah. So if you type your, type the URL right now, you'll see what I, you know. That's also my way to get autosigned. That's way, yeah. Absolutely. I love it. Awesome. Dope. But, yeah, it's huge. We do not track, to be honest with you, even with the big data background, and I love data. Actually, we collect very few things, because Number one people are coming here to have a good time. They're not coming out to have a big form. The first thing that they want to do is, like, fill out a big form. So we actually just take in the email ID and the name, that's it.

Okay.

Naveen:

And then the sign up process, we've worked really hard to reduce barriers to the sign up so that people can come to the local business.

Colleen:

My first thought there is, you could add one more data point that I think would be really interesting, is just to ask the user what their home zip code is. I think you could then track to see how many people are coming to Milwaukee from other areas. I think that could lead to partnerships. And you can tell me to go fly a kite because this is like, as a data person, that my brain just starts going, I want to make a note of that.

Naveen:

That's good.

Colleen:

But like, you know, zip code and then you can tell, okay, Hey, there's a lot of people coming to Milwaukee from Cleveland or whatever the city is. And that might be a future like expansion city or stay things to roll out to. But also you could imagine partnerships with like those visit Milwaukee type of organizations. In other

Naveen:

cities, yeah. In other

Colleen:

cities. So I had a really interesting conversation on a plane one time, I sat next to some guys that were from California, but were working with some, Visit Wisconsin, campaign. Yeah. They just, they didn't realize it, but they had all sorts of, information about data. It was just super interesting in how they used that data to reach different people both within the state and outside of the state.

Yeah.

Colleen:

So anyway, it just, yeah. That's where my brain went when you said that. I thought, man, if you looked at zip code, you could tell how many people were coming from different places. That's a good

Naveen:

idea. I have noted that stolen that for the product. Yeah,

Frankie:

I love that idea because the first thing that came to my mind was age because I wanted to know like, you know, is it a younger population that's using the app versus the older population, right? Yeah, but We're all consultants and here we got our brains going.

Colleen:

Do you have a future vision for StayThanks? What are your next goals?

Naveen:

Future vision for StayThanks? It's such a loaded question.

Colleen:

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Naveen:

No, look, Corrine, Sal, Frankie, and all the listeners who are watching him, I can get like lofty and say, oh, this is the vision or that is the vision, but the course will, is shaped by the team. And our customers and our partners and we kind of chart this together. So we don't know where it leads, but what we know for sure is what I have known for a long time is we want to support local businesses and solve their problems. That's the space. Now what problems they have, it'll morph and will change. Correct. And stay thanks is might morph into something else or cause from where we started it. Finding as we learned about different problems and different, things that are user base needed, trying to follow that. So the core of it will always remain like, how can we support small local businesses? Even if you go back to my 2017, when I graduated from my college, I said that, when I was graduating and on the stadium, I said I would love to do something for small local businesses and I stick with that. So, the solution or, what those apps or the features may look like, that remains to be seen. But at the core of it will always be, fighting for the underdogs, fighting for the people who do not have those sophisticated resources.

Frankie:

That's very cool. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And local businesses are never going away. they're always going to have problems and there's always going to be a solution. that you

Colleen:

can put together for them. I love that. And I think that's a really smart tack to take with it, too. at its heart, it's always going to be about local businesses. Whatever forms that takes on are to be decided.

Sal:

I hope you stay to that core. That's great. That's awesome. And you keep me accountable. Yeah, I will.

Naveen:

Not saying that you won't. I've said it on record. Yeah, I love it.

Colleen:

Very cool. Do you have anything else you want to mention while you're here? I know you've got another business. I don't know if you wanted to talk about that at all.

Naveen:

Yeah. The other business is just basically part of it is, it just came out in terms of just helping other friends of mine. Like I have made a little more mistakes, I feel, and learned. So at my stage I'm not again, saying that at my stage, There are varying stages and varying journey points, but just helping out other, entrepreneurs and, companies with their, data stuff. What we have learned, a lot of those learnings from state science and building all these solutions. So yeah, I would like to mention, our the podcast that we do. It's called Data Product with Naveen. And We talk with amazing folks here, in the city. So just a shout out for that. And we had Colleen on it as well. So, we'll be going out with that soon. And Yeah I was just curious in the last few minutes, like, just to know your story a little bit, in terms of, like, how you, game together and how the podcast kind of, you know, that is like the

Colleen:

best segue. If we would have planned that couldn't have gone better. Yeah. We actually decided recently that we were going to interview each other so that there could be an episode about each of us in our backgrounds. And so we recorded one about Sal. Was it last week or the week before? And so we'll be rolling them out when it kind of interspersed with some of our other episodes. So our

Sal:

viewers will have to wait. Yeah, well. Oh, wow. Okay. I feel like,

Colleen:

you know, when we're asked those questions, whether it's a part of this podcast or in a professional setting, you sort of have that elevator pitch. That 30 second thing that you say. Because it's short and succinct and it gets the point across. But we really thought it might be interesting to say like, Hey, Excel, did you always want to work with data? When you were a little kid, did you like, I want to work in Excel? Or you know, like, in what ways, how did we all get to where we are? Because it's not usually a straight line, right? So we thought we'd kind of do a deeper dive on that. And I think it's going to be an interesting series.

Sal:

But to answer your question, mine is, I'm a problem solver. Data kind of fulfills that, that need, right? Helping out,, really identifying the problem and bringing data and analytics and the skill sets there to get that Helped out.

Frankie:

Yeah, I fell into data and it found me. Yeah Because I was going to school for math and I was actually thinking about going to med school Oh, wow, and I got an internship and I really liked it and I just was rolling with it You Here I am, still rolling.

Colleen:

Yeah, I guess I fell into it also, but in a completely different way. I worked while I was going to doing my undergrad and I worked for a tech company in the late nineties in 1999. We were just talking about Y2K and how that was 25 years ago just recently. But I worked for this tech company and I wasn't like a super technical person. I was an inside sales rep, but when I finished my degree and got a job in alignment with that degree of a public relations degree, I started working with this law firm. And here it's like 2002 they're starting to put everything online. And they're like, it was kind of like that. Hey Mikey, he likes it thing. Like Colleen will do it. She's techie. I really wasn't by any stretch of the imagination, but everybody thought I was because at that point in time, That's all you needed was to work for a tech company. So I got unbelievable opportunities to work on projects I would have never had a chance to work on otherwise. And throughout the course of my career, when I was offered an option, do you want to go up this route or that route, I always chose the technical and the data route. For the same reason sales states. I really like the problem solving aspect of it.

Naveen:

Yeah.

Colleen:

And it just was something I was good at.

Naveen:

That's super cool. I listened to your, episodes also and, I love the chemistry that all the three of you have. Oh,

Colleen:

thank you.

Naveen:

Yeah.

Sal:

That's actually, like, so, one of the things we were doing, we were just sitting around talking. We were like, why don't we just, like, start recording this? I don't. And then, like, having that moment and then it became a real lesson. That's how

Colleen:

that came up.

Naveen:

That's super cool.

Colleen:

Cool. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate the conversation, as always. Like I said, you're just a super interesting guy. You're really intelligent, and I think all your businesses, really, are, I think, going to continue to be successful, because of your mindset, and just the energy and the knowledge that you bring to all these situations.

Naveen:

Thank you. I had a good time here.

Colleen:

Good, good. Very cool.

Frankie:

well that's a wrap on today's episode if you loved today's episode, make sure to subscribe and stay up to date on other topics related to data. Thanks for listening to Cream City Calculations, and until next time, keep calculating!