#10 - Derek Andersen, CEO Bevy/StartupGrind, The Future of Community Engagement

Get ready for an inspiring episode featuring Derek Andersen, the dynamic co-founder and CEO of Bevy, a platform transforming community-building and events. With a career that spans over 15 years, Derek has played key roles at companies like Salesforce and Google, and he co-founded Startup Grind, a global entrepreneurial network with over 600 chapters worldwide. Derek’s journey is one of resilience and innovation, driven by his passion for creating community-driven growth.

In this episode, Derek opens up about his entrepreneurial path, sharing how his early ventures shaped his approach to leadership and community building. He dives into the challenges of scaling businesses, the evolving role of AI in managing communities, and why listening to customers is at the core of his success. Derek also provides a glimpse into the future of community management, where AI plays an essential role in enhancing events and fostering meaningful connections.

What You’ll Learn:

•Derek’s leadership philosophy: Why customer feedback is the ultimate guide to success 📈🗣️

•Building global communities: How Derek scaled Startup Grind into a worldwide movement 🌍🚀

•The role of AI in events: How Bevy is leveraging AI to streamline community management 🤖💡

•Overcoming challenges: Lessons from Derek’s early ventures and the path to building Bevy 💪🔥

•Future of community-building: Predictions on how AI will continue to shape the future of events 🧠✨

•Entrepreneurial advice: Derek’s thoughts on creativity, hard work, and embracing the grind 🏋️‍♂️💼

Don’t miss this engaging conversation filled with Derek’s practical insights into entrepreneurship, community building, and the future of AI in events. Tune in, subscribe, and discover how Derek is shaping the future of global communities through innovation and perseverance.

#Entrepreneurship #DerekAndersen #Bevy #Leadership #AI #CommunityBuilding #Innovation #TechFuture #StartupGrind

Transcript

All right, today, I'm thrilled to welcome Derek Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Bevy.  For over 15 years, Derek has been a leader in building communities,  working with companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, and Google.  He also co-founded Startup Grind, a global network spanning 600 chapters in 125 countries,  and previously co-founded CommonRed, later acquired by Income.com.  In addition to all of his professional success, Derek is a family man.  He lives in Palo Alto with his wife and four kids.  So, Derek, it's awesome to be talking with you today.  I'm really excited to be here with you, Scott.  Me too.  Well, one of the things that I wanted to bring up is that, and, you know, I've been curious about when, you know, you started building your business for many, many years now.  I've been curious about it because I think the first time I met you was at a startup event.  It was Startup Grind.  I was working as a young sales rep at Dine.  And we actually started.  We sponsored the event.  Thank you.  2012.  2012, yeah.  And I didn't know anything about startups and building.  I just knew how to, you know, sell a software product.  So, you've been doing this for a while.  So, I'm excited to ask you some questions about, you know, building businesses, your startup experience.  So, let's start off by talking about the grind.  I love the name Startup Grind.  And I'd love to hear about your first startup experience.  Was it cool?  I feel like building a startup for a while was, like, really sexy.  Instead of going to get an MBA, people wanted to go build a startup.  So, what was your first one?  What was it like?  I was working for Electronic Arts.  And I started to get these ideas in my head.  And I felt like I was staying up late at night thinking about it.  I just felt like I needed to get it out.  And so, for a while, I would just go to Starbucks.  That was, like, right across the street from EA.  And I'd go at 730.  What I realized, I realized something kind of twisted.  And that is that...  You know, when I worked 110%, that's kind of the only speed I know.  And so, when I worked 110% at EA, I was in the top 2% of employees.  But if I worked 70% or 80%, I was like in the top 10%.  So I just took that extra 30% or 35% of my energy, and I started putting it towards my own stuff.  And eventually I quit in 2009, and I started an outdoor advertising company, of all things.  And it was not something I had any passion towards, but one of my best friends, he was in the industry.  And this was the guy I was going to start something with, and it was really his idea, and I got behind it.  And I ended up quitting doing that like two months later, but it got me to quit my job.  So it was not a good idea.  I couldn't beg somebody to buy our products.  I tried so hard to sell it.  Not even one person would buy it.  But it got me to quit my job, so it kind of survived.  Just to clarify, outdoor advertising, are we talking about like billboards?  Is it like in the woods?  Trucks.  Trucks.  Okay.  All right.  Very cool.  Super cool.  So you've built a few of these startups now.  You've got Common Red, Bevy, Startup Grind.  You worked on this outdoor.  Did the outdoor advertising one have a name?  I'm not even going to say it.  Okay.  All right.  It's so embarrassing.  Sometimes my wife says it, and she doesn't.  She makes fun of me.  Yeah, but that's what they're supposed to do.  I mean, I'll tell you, the name was OutGawk, as in like outdoor advertising and gawking at it.  It's so bad.  Wow.  Okay.  All right.  We'll just keep moving past that one.  It was the early days.  Turning red, thinking about it.  Why do you keep, you know, we'll go in a little bit more.  Why do I harbor the guilt about my advertising company?  Is that what you're saying?  No, no, no, no.  The failure.  No, I'm more curious, like to know, you know, we'll talk about Startup Grind specifically and then Bevy in a little bit, but like.  Like you, you kind of, it sounds like you, you come up with these ideas and you have to chase them.  Like what, what is it about that, that you have to do that, you know, causes you to quit your job?  I think a lot of people don't do that.  So what is it for you that keeps, keeps, you know, bringing these new ideas, creating this chase?  What is it?  I don't know where the ideas come from.  Everybody has ideas.  But, you know, sometimes you just, I think, you know, a good idea sticks with you for a while, or at least something that you need to move on.  I mean, lots of things pass through your mind, like, oh, I should do that.  And you don't do anything about it.  You see somebody else like launch that thing later.  And you're like, ah, I should have done that.  But, you know, things that really start to stick with you.  And they don't go away over a long period of time.  I had this experience recently, where I was thinking about this thing about a year ago.  And then pretty recently, I like woke up in the middle of the night.  And I was like, wide awake.  And I just had this, like, thought, and it was like, I need to tell these people, my company about this idea.  And then it was like, so random, and weird.  But, you know, it's something I've been thinking about a long time.  And, you know, that kind of is push compelling me to move on that thing, you know, so I don't know, you know, for me, like, I thought about it for a long time, I put a lot of energy into it.  And, you know, my son was being born, at the time when I ended up quitting my job.  And that, which seems like a crazy time to quit.  But in hindsight, but it was like a deadline.  And I was like, I'm quit, I have to quit at this time, like, my son's gonna be born, I'm gonna make sure he's safe and okay.  And I can live without, you know, amazing corporate insurance.  And then I'm leaving.  And once I got that, I  convinced my wife, that that was acceptable.  You know, it was like, there's no turning back.  That's beautiful.  So like, one of the things that's really cool about what you've done is, you know, building startup grind, which it almost like creates this community and fosters this environment where people like you who have decided to quit their jobs and get started can kind of come together.  So there's 600 chapters, it's helped 200, excuse me, 2 million entrepreneurs.  I've, I've been a part of that community for a long time.  I've learned about entrepreneurship and I've met tons of people through it.  And you've gotten to not only lead and then build that, but you've also talked to all these incredible entrepreneurs and brought them together, learned their experiences.  I'd love to know a little bit about, if you can, have you been able to distill some of the things that either the best entrepreneurs or at least most entrepreneurs need to have to succeed, or is it pretty different for each of them?  I mean, there are definitely some key patterns with everyone that's successful, but the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship and also the tricky thing is there is no one path.  So anybody that says, if you do this, you'll be successful as an entrepreneur in a startup is lying because there's so many other factors.  They are totally out of your execution control.  So look, I think the biggest, the most impactful thing for me that you hear a lot of really  successful people talk about is just customer feedback.  Like what do the customers say?  I think for a long time, I thought my ideas were really awesome.  And then once those kind of fall on their face enough, you start to finally get humble and then you realize actually the only thing that matters is what's going on.  And that's what the customers think.  And not only customers, but customers that will pay.  So it's very different to have somebody give you feedback like your friend or your college roommate or your sister and then to tell you they think it's so great what you're doing.  It's so different to then go to like an actual customer and then to look them in the eyes and even for them to say, hey, this is cool.  I like it.  And then for you to say, well, how much will you pay?  And then they say, oh, I think I pay, you know, 20 bucks a month.  Like, okay, write me a check.  And as soon as it's...  This is like Steve Blank, you know, lean startup, four steps to the epiphany kind of methodology, product market fit.  That's when you get real feedback.  You look them in the eyes.  Don't even worry about the money.  It's what they say next.  That comes with a lot of, I think, experience of making mistakes and not doing it.  And then you realize the only thing that matters is what your customers say.  Everything else is kind of a waste of time.  Yep.  That absolutely makes sense.  I was talking with a startup founder recently who he presented his idea to me, and I said, oh, this seems great.  And he was like, cool, can I sign you up today?  And I was like, oh, he got me.  It was pretty interesting.  I said no in the nicest possible way, and then I gave reasons why, rather than just run away and be afraid to sort of engage with him.  Did he try to reposition it at different costs?  Yeah.  We ultimately went through a couple of different steps there.  Still said no?  Still said no.  Yeah.  Okay.  I mean, that's super helpful, actually.  Right?  Yeah, that's right.  With Startup Grind, was this another, you know, you were building, like, were you building your outdoor advertising company while also building Startup Grind?  Or like, what was the timing like for that, and why did you ultimately do Startup Grind?  I couldn't sell any ads.  And then I had somebody come to me and say, hey, I want to pay you to be a consultant.  I was like, no, I'm focused on my startup.  I can't do that.  I can't.  I got 100%.  You know, I've read Inc.  Magazine.  I know what to do.  He's like, well, just, like, how about, like, 20 hours a week?  So I started doing that, and then that became, like, I quit the other thing.  I started doing some consulting for people.  Just basically doing my job at EA, but with other people, other brands.  And then still trying to build my own products.  And then, yeah, a friend and I talked about it.  It was like, hey, like, I'd been to a bunch of events.  They weren't good.  You know, they were low quality.  There wasn't a feeling in the audience that the people in the audience had real value to give.  That really frustrated me, because I felt like I had something to give people, even though I didn't have a startup career yet.  And so we started hosting this basically like a salon or a forum.  So it was just a few friends and just like brainstorming.  And then it was good enough the first time that we did it again and again.  And startup grind was just this like hashtag I would use in some tweets to just like describe what it felt like as an entrepreneur.  And I love that you love it.  I think people that are builders and that are in it, they get it and they do love it.  And then people that are not, a lot of times they don't get it.  They're like, oh, that sounds bad.  It's like, no, like listen to athletes, listen to high performers.  Like they'll talk to you about like grinding through stuff.  It's not a negative, it's a positive actually.  It just means working hard and like being creative and setting your own routine and just going for it.  And so like it turned into one event and a few events and then I was building another product, this Common Room thing and or Common Red, Common Room, that's somebody else's product.  And this guy, I'm speaking with a mentor and he's like, hey, like, you know, this product you're building, it's like, okay, but it's not great.  But like the start grind thing seems to have all like a lot of organic energy and momentum.  Why don't you just like, how much time do you spend on that?  I was like, I don't know, like 5%.  He's like, why don't you increase that to 10 or 20 and see what happens.  And so that's, that's what we did.  And then it like, it kind of like took off.  And, you know, it's where like, if you have a good idea, it should have unnatural organic energy.  And then it like, if you have a good idea, it should have unnatural organic momentum.  Because it's so hard.  And what I found, I've never, I've always worked the same amount of time and energy on everything I've ever done.  And just some things, like the ball rolled downhill and others like we just, you know, endlessly try to push the ball uphill and you and it doesn't work.  And so, so yeah, so, you know, start grinding kind of went from there and it started, people started attending said, Hey, can I just my city and so we had chapters popping up all over the world.  And, you know, one thing led to another.  And, you know, a few years of really hard work.  And we kind of we had this community of like minded, like similar valued people who the values are give more than you take help others and make friends.  And, you know, we kind of started gathering those kind of people around the world.  And it's, it's, you know, kept kept the momentum ever since.  Do you find, you know, when you talk to folks who go to your events, wherever they are, do they have this sense of like a community?  Do they go to sell, you know, like, for example, when I was when I was when I went to your events, it was like, I'm going to find some founders to sell to.  But, you know, you were sponsored, though.  I mean, you were like, you know, you probably kept it alive at that point.  Yeah, I mean, might have.  Yeah.  But but also I think like when I go to your events, one of the things that is especially cool is like I'm I'm always, I don't know, really impressed with the quality of the speakers that you talk to and you interview.  And I have to admit, like even, you know, I mentioned this when we were talking at the beginning, but right before we started recording, but I was like a little nervous because you've talked to everybody and you're like an expert now.  I would I would call you an expert at, you know, preparing for these interviews.  And having great conversations and pulling great answers to those questions out.  Like, have you figured out a technique or like an approach?  Is it a huge amount of preparation?  Is it just kind of like moving like water after they answer?  Like, what are you doing?  If I'm doing it right, it is a huge amount of preparation and huge amount of work.  And I would say I'd probably cut some corners these days more than I used to when I'm doing interviews.  I did one this morning with.  Someone and yeah, I probably cut a few corners to do it, but but look like I just try to I try to do what I think is interesting and like I'm trying to learn.  So I just assume like the things that I want to learn and know are probably 80 percent, 70 percent what everyone else wants to know and learn.  And maybe there's some stuff I have to, you know, unique insight on and and that draws something out.  But yeah, I mean, it is honestly like the interviews I've probably done one hundred sort of VC founder interviews over the years.  It's it's it's I'm generally pretty selfish.  It's like it's sort of about me.  It's sort of about me getting the insights I need.  And on the journey that I'm on.  And that's where even still, like I did an interview for Startgrind this week  with an angel investor that's one of the top investors in the world.  I'm not raising angel funding, but I learned so much just sitting with them for an hour.  And, you know, in Startgrind, and I say this to people who want to do chapters in their cities,  it's like there's no better way to network.  There's no better way to get to know important people, have an excuse to talk to somebody who's really successful and build a relationship with them.  Because you're not really, you're like, hey, I'll get a room with 50 or 100 people to see you speak.  Almost anybody universally will agree to do it.  If you can get 100 people in a room, there's this weird thing I've read, people have written about it, like almost anyone in the world will like drop everything if you get a crowd to listen to them.  And it doesn't have to be a big crowd.  Like 100 people is not a big crowd.  Like, you'd think it was like a thousand people, but like it's not.  And so if you ask and do it in the right way and, you know, then you can get almost anybody to come speak.  And then selfishly, like I get to meet somebody that would never take a meeting with me.  It's essentially like a meeting with me, for me, in front of 100 people.  And like, and usually the feedback's good.  Like, oh, these were good questions.  Like, well, cool.  That's like, that's what I wanted to know.  So, you know, but.  Yeah, I think if you just be authentic and real, then, you know, people can see it.  Yeah, I definitely resonate with that.  I think that's the thing that when I watch you talking to one of the, you know, the people that you're interviewing,  it does feel like.  You watch me a lot, Scott?  A fair amount.  Yeah, I think.  Very weird.  I try to watch as often as much as possible.  But, you know, like, you know, you're doing, you look good.  You're asking the right questions.  I can't rewatch any of my interviews.  So do you, do you hate how you look or how you talk?  I just can't.  I don't know.  I can't.  But I can't do any of it.  I can't do any of it.  So I have to get everything I get out of it in the moment.  And then, you know, sometimes I'll watch a clip of somebody or a funny interaction or something.  But, you know, other than that, I can't, I can't watch any of it.  That's probably good.  Otherwise, it would be like a little bit concerning, you know, like, that's fair.  That's okay.  So like you built Startup Grind and you have these chapters, entrepreneurs, you've got product market fit there.  It's growing organically.  And then from what I understand of Bevy, you built this really cool community product, basically like an entire business to help you manage Startup Grind.  And then you commercialized it.  You made it available to other companies.  Is that right?  Is that kind of the origin?  Yeah.  Okay.  And what's that like to, I mean, are you able to then use these events to go out and say like, hey, we're going to, you know, do an event.  And maybe you should consider it like while you're talking to, I don't know, some of these investors, entrepreneurs or smart folks that you're talking to, does it become like a natural next step to introduce them to Bevy or not really?  I mean, I probably are like customer acquisition is not through Startup Grind events.  It's really because we built it for Startup Grind when it was 100, 200 chapters.  We were already at some level of scale.  We didn't build it as like a, you know, free.  We didn't build it as like a premium, try it, build a community and then go.  And maybe, you know, maybe that made it harder for us, but it enabled us like our, one of our first customers was Atlassian.  And so, and one of our first 10 customers was Salesforce.  So it really was like a enterprise sales sort of game.  And, you know, those people aren't really attending Startup Grind, but the events do, I mean, these are public programs and events.  So like if you go and look.  At Google's, Google Developer Group's community, it's all running on Bevy.  You'll see that it's, you know, Bevy's there and that, you know, does create really powerful awareness.  I was talking to one of Google's competitors today and like, they see it and they're like, oh, we want what they have.  And, you know, I mean.  And I'm not going to tell them anything proprietary, but they can see what's public.  And, you know, and so I think like having a sort of, you know, versus like an infrastructure tool is hidden in the back end of, you know, of the of the tech stack somewhere.  It's like so it's a little bit that that makes it a little bit easier to sell and and promote and and get people to sort of have a conversation with you about it.  Yeah.  And are you like one of these crazy CEOs like Elon and Jack Dorsey who run and manage two different companies at the same time?  I am.  I'm a very poor man's Jack Dorsey.  Hey, it's cool to be in that category, though.  The comparison, but I do run both StartupGrain and Bevy.  StartupGrain is a pretty small company.  It's bootstrapped 10 people.  Super proud of it.  Actually made payroll for 13 years.  Maybe more proud of that.  Than raising funding for a venture backed business, because I think it's much harder to bootstrap than than it is to raise money and spend someone else's money.  But and Bevy's, you know, it's not a huge company either.  It's about 50 people and we're just trying to solve customer problems.  And luckily, the two things like, you know, like, you know, Elon and Rockets and Satellites, like they're connected.  It's the same, you know, events and communities exactly the same.  But, you know, StartupGrain is one of.  Bevy's biggest customers by usage, and it's one of the most active communities in the world.  So the fact that, like, I'm hearing about those problems and experience that every day keeps me sort of grounded and what software I need.  And I an hour ago was with the product team.  They mentioned an issue somebody had and I was like, I had literally the same issue this week, like 10 times.  And I've been waiting to tell you about it.  I don't want to write it up.  This is going to be a big pain.  So here we are.  Let me tell you why I'm frustrated by this, too.  And, you know, it it's good.  It keeps a lot of the product people up that.  But, you know, I'm I'm I'm a hardcore user of the product.  So, you know, and I'm also head of the product.  So it those two things, I think, and create a better end result.  So I really love when I get a feature that I've wanted for a while that like, you know, the amount of feature requests or whatever doesn't quite justify it.  Yeah.  And then I'm kind of like, hey, oh, that's what I wanted.  And, you know, I got to stay quiet.  Yeah, yeah, exactly.  So were you guys at Startup Crime, were you like one of the, I don't know, it almost sounds like one of the first companies who would have had a big remote, you know, I mean, not one of the first, but like you were certainly managing a remote team, basically building and leading that.  Like, did you have to travel a lot?  Did you, you know, was it like a big Zoom kind of thing?  Like, you know, were you like GitLab and all these other companies building remotely?  Yeah, we've been remote because my co-founder was in Portugal and now he's in Canada.  And I have another co-founder with Bevy in Seattle.  So we kind of always had to figure it out since like 2012 or maybe I met my co-founder in 2009.  So, I mean, I guess we've been working.  We just had to do it out of necessity because he couldn't get a visa.  He would have happily moved here.  But, you know, that's just how it worked for us.  And then we did have small offices here right before the pandemic.  And then, but most of the company was remote.  So it's really hard.  I think working remotely is not for everyone.  I mean, yeah, I've been doing it 12 years, maybe longer than that, 14 years.  It's hard.  So I think, you know, I know it's probably.  A challenge for some people, you have to after you've been home a lot, you have to kind of rearrange your life to then go be back in the office all day long or maybe you have to move.  In some cases, I saw Amazon this week saying everyone's going to be back in the office by January.  It's clearly better productivity wise.  I mean, I'd be the first to say that.  But if you get people, you know, there's a way to economically make it make sense if you're getting people at maybe you're getting 70 percent productivity, maybe because of the different markets.  People are in you're paying at 50 percent Silicon Valley rate.  So you end up getting some gains for sort of what you're paying for.  But yeah, we do have to meet in person and we get.  Way more done in person than we ever do virtually and you have to have really mature thoughtful people that you know don't need to be babysat by anyone they're basically everyone's their own boss and you know everyone's you know responsible to ship things and you know just it's too hard to it's it's it's too hard to keep track what everyone's doing all day long unless they're you know self motivated.  Yep yep I I'm a believer in exactly what you described one thing that I talked with the president of one password earlier this week and one thing that he mentioned was that the money that they save in offices and you know normal travel or office whatever they use to just meet up with their team so it almost ends up balancing out which I thought was pretty interesting.  That is one thing I was going to ask you about you know you mentioned earlier you have sort of like an approach to work which is you put all your.  Energy into it no matter what.  So I heard this great talk by Scott O'Neill who was a Madison Square Garden president for a while CEO he basically talked about how like work and life is like a teeter-totter seesaw where you're always out of balance you're never managing and balancing the work and life you know beautifully and elegantly you seem like you know you've mentioned it yourself too but like how do you figure out the right amount of time to put into stuff like you've got a family you've got four kids is it just.  All right I'm going to be there for the schedule and then go back to work and coach baseball and play golf and you know how do you make it all work or how do you attempt to try to make it work the only way I can make my professional personal life work is because I'm a.  Hardcore user of site that's that's the only reason any of this makes any sense I require everyone I know and my team all to use the product we've been a longtime user many years and it's it's.  Simply because of that.  Cool that I'm able to keep track of everything and have to write everything out I can videos I did it today of some issue I could just send the video it's right on my desktop it's so easy.  And that's how I do it, Scott.  Oh, I love it.  I think we just wrap up the podcast right now.  Thank you.  Well, I do.  Also, we should talk about Zyke because all of those things are true.  It is an amazing product and we are huge fans of it.  And I've used so many tools like it over the years and nothing really ever came close to  doing what you all are doing.  So thank you for building such a great product.  Oh, thanks, man.  Well, I think building something that people love is incredibly hard and I never feel like it's, you know, probably like you.  There's so much left to do.  One of the questions I wanted to ask you about was AI specifically in Startup Grind, Bevy.  I've talked to a lot of different CEOs, whether it's public market CEOs, everyone's sort of talking about how amazing it is and it's revolutionizing everything.  I get excited using it personally in a lot of different ways.  I would love to know, like for you guys, have you seen an impact yet?  Are you thinking about ways to use it?  Or since it's such a personal, you know, sort of personal product where people actually like meet up,  it's less impactful for you because there's that community element.  I think the thing that kind of woke me up is seeing some of the smartest people in technology  really speaking.  And I think that's what's unique about it with almost reverence to the impact that it's going to have when you see people like Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, or Sam Altman or Marc Andreessen, Vinod Khosla, who was a seed investor in OpenAI in like 2018.  I mean, just to see them the way they talk about the shift that's coming, Satya Nadella, like all these people, to see that.  The Google co-founders get back into coding for like the first time in like 10 years, 15 years.  They're like, you know, they're like.  Notoriously, not even in the office ever.  They're just in Fiji windsurfing, allegedly.  That's what I've read.  I was never invited.  But to see the shift, I think that's what really woke me up.  And then basically we're like, okay, we have this problem that we solve.  What are real ways that we can make the problems disappear faster?  And cheaper?  And so we've started building solutions around that.  Anything from helping you create an online discussion really quickly.  With prompting you based off of the things that we see you're doing.  Of things that may be interesting discussions.  Helping you create events really easily.  I've been hosting events for 15 years.  And it comes up with suggestions that I'm like, wow.  I kind of laugh sometimes.  Like, wow, that's such a cool idea.  It's so easy.  I should do that.  Sometimes you just need a little bit of spark.  To like get things going.  And the AI, at least for community managers, I think is really good at that.  The other thing is around content.  We're creating so much content.  These interviews that you're doing.  Or the webinars that Zyde hosts that are really good that I've attended.  Or the help center.  There's all this content.  How do we surface that in a really interesting, smart way that gets me to the answer that I'm looking for as quickly as possible?  That's all.  That's all community content, community-created content, or, you know, it's for the community.  So this is sort of tip of the iceberg.  But I think, you know, we as business owners and it can be, I mean, that is like if you own a group or if you have any responsibility at all, like you need to be thinking about how you can maximize your team's time and energy to and using AI to support what you're doing.  And if you're not, then you're behind.  You're not like the boat hasn't left completely, but.  Like, things are moving so fast.  Like, I used ChatGPT like five times today for five different things.  Like, that's the minimum thing that you can do as, you know, and are engineers using it to code better?  Are, you know, are you just, are you using it to find better deals, to negotiate better?  Like, I don't know.  There's so many things you can use it for.  Like, you need to, you know, thoughtfully think through what some of the best applications are for your users and then for yourself to be more productive.  I totally agree.  I think it doesn't feel like it's quite left yet.  But I know, for example, I read this quote recently.  I think it was Larry at Google.  He basically said he's willing to burn down the business or bankrupt.  I think he said, sorry, I think he said bankrupt the business in the pursuit of building a digital god.  And I thought, whoa, if this guy is saying that, like, I got to make sure I'm really focused there.  Like, yeah.  And the actions reflect it, right?  And yeah, I mean, you know, some of these things, like, it feels like some of these trends, they're money grabs, they're quick.  You know, it's like, I remember in 2011-ish, I want to say, 2012, like, everybody had a Groupon startup.  Everybody.  And then, like, two years later, like, everybody had an Uber clone.  And so, you know.  And then for a while, it was crypto and Web3.  And, like, the interesting thing about that is, like, many, many, many of the highest quality people in tech didn't get in that at all.  So, I don't know.  I'm not, like, I'm not a complete hater on crypto and tech and Web3.  Like, I'm not an expert, but I think that gave me a lot of pause.  And now you see a lot of tech people jumping in full board into this.  It's, like, really the highest tier of people.  Like, that's, I don't know, that's saying something to me.  Yeah, absolutely.  And I think just to wrap up on that comment, if you look at who was willing to put not only money in, like investors, but then pay for the product, obviously there are some standout Web3 crypto products, but AI is where the money is going.  Absolutely.  And yeah, and to some degree, like and crypto is having a great renaissance right now.  And actually, like, I'm pretty bullish on where it's going to be.  But there's so many strands of it that like just such a huge waste of time and people grifting and AI.  I'm sure there is the same.  There's definitely opportunists in AI, but it feels like it's a much more solid part of every product moving forward.  So if you haven't started, start today.  Beautiful.  Well, Derek, it's been awesome talking with you.  And thanks for everything you've done for both Startup Grind and Bevy and the outdoor advertising business.  Thanks for building a great product.  We love that.  All right, man.  Oh, thanks so much.  See you, man.