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JC: Welcome, everyone to another episode of The Future of Biz Tech. I’m your host, JC Grainger, I have another fantastic guest with us on the show today. And listen, if you end up loving this episode, please show your love and appreciation, go follow the podcast, wherever you’re listening to it, show that love, and give a five-star review and some nice comments. Because that is how other techies like you and I find pretty cool podcasts like this, although I am a little biased. Today I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Brett Martin, the founder, and president of Kumopace. Brett, thank you so much for joining us today. Tell the audience a bit about yourself. And what is it that Kumopace does?

Brett: JC thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and excited to get connected with your audience. So Kumopace builds virtual offices, where teams show up to remote and distribute teams, they show up to work every day. So what that means is basically you know, instead of sitting in your apartment alone working from home on Zoom, wondering what the rest of your team is doing. In Kumopace, you sign in my office, we have 30 people that start trickling in around 10 am. And then you can see throughout the day, your whole team working, having different conversations, giving presentations, having external meetings, you can just tap people on the shoulder. If you need some help getting unblocked, you can play a game of chess, if you will, time to unwind. Just sounds like a real office place to connect and get work done.

JC: Yeah, see now it’s so the honestly, you guys can’t see this right now. But it’s something you really have to see. This is probably one of the more unique software’s I’ve experienced in a long time. And it’s my job to know these things like so I go through a lot. Kumo space is really cool, it kind of reminded me almost of playing an old-school Nintendo game, like Zelda. Remember Zelda, like, man, we are aging ourselves. Okay, for all of you, not Boomer or Gen Z, or Gen X, or whatever people listening, you know, this 2d kind of video style games are, you’re kind of navigating around this, you know, top-down view, kind of, you know, board, right. And I thought that was really interesting of yours. And I remember when I was scrolling through it, it was like, there was a conference room over here to the left. And then I could have there were other meeting rooms was like a coffee area, but like, I can kind of move my little avatar essentially, where I want it. And there’ll be other people there get, I mean, talk about how did you come up with this idea? And then how are, how have people, how have people responded to it, because it’s such a unique play on this remote work, but somehow, quote, unquote, in an office idea?

Brett: 100%. I mean, some people might say, Kumospace, video chat meets video games. And you know, as you said, your video is your avatar. So you’re not a cartoon you are, you are yourself and then you are in our office, but it’s virtual. And so you know, you can close the door to your office, have a private conversation with someone, or you can, you know, wander around and have an all-hands meeting and see everyone there at the same time. We came up with it. It’s a pandemic baby. You know,  my other job is I run charge ventures to New York-based precede venture capital fund, we used to throw a monthly networking event. And I would get all the old farts like myself and we would come together and have some wine cheese shared deals. And when the pandemic kit, people said, well, you know, you should bring that online. And I said, Well, I don’t really want to give a zoom PowerPoint presentation to 50 of my friends every month, there’s not really a good video, chit-chat platform to have multiple conversations in the same virtual place, at the same time. And I shared that with my co-founder, Yang Mao, who’s an old friend of mine, we built three companies together. And two weeks later, he came back with a prototype. And we were like, wow, there’s something here. So that’s the origin story. And people do use it for tons of things. You know, we focus on the virtual office use case, our users use it six hours a day, and we have 10s of 1000s of teams in their millions of users, but people do use it for other things. We’ve had weddings and conversations. We’ve had funerals and Kuhmo space, we’ve had graduations and Kumopace. And so, you know, the platform is used for a lot of things. However, we focus on the office use case.

JC: So how customizable is it? Right? Like I get I know, it’s hard for people to kind of see. So in using your most graphic terms, essentially, how can someone make the most space, their own space? What are the options they have? And how do they sell that as a transition for their people?

Brett: Well, so that’s like, if you think about the core problems that Kumospace solves, right, it’s three things. We solve connections, and you know, the problem is isolation and miscommunication. We saw collaboration, right? The ability to allocate aligned and work and then we also saw sort of visibility and support the ability to know where your team is and be able to help them and provide support and get support when you need it. And so, you know, it’s a different way of working like people are, you know, it’s actually a lot of the same things that people are used to in the office. So, you know, it’s actually like we’ve done remote work, we use Zoom and Slack, we got a lot done, but we know something’s missing, right?

Brett: We were, you know, building, we were sort of draining down social equity that we’ve created from yours. You particularly saw that in the first time, you know, young employees, right, young employees were really left out to dry, they’re kind of like stunted a couple of years because they haven’t learned, you know, social skills. They haven’t learned the soft skills of collaborative people, they’ve been sitting at their desks by themselves. And so we saw the cracks emerging. And you know, we’re trying to show people, Hey, there’s a new way of working right, you don’t have to commute. You don’t have to pay, you know, millions of dollars for expensive rent, but you still can get that same connection, that same human interaction, that same collaboration, and that same, you know, ability to, like know, awareness and presence around your team, you just do it virtually instead of in a physical office. So it’s a new way of working. But we think it’s pretty effective and so do some of our customers.

JC: So you said it’s not an avatar, you said, it’s a video. So am I to understand that, let’s say the little square that is you are not just a static picture, but a live feed from your cam is almost like, almost like you’re constantly in some sort of web meeting? Is that how it works?

Brett: Yeah, so you know, Zoom is episodic, it’s for scheduled meetings, right? Like we’ve had this meeting scheduled on the calendar for a month, we emailed about it, we set a time, we maybe use Calendly, and set aside an hour. Kumospace is persistent. It’s always on. It’s like Slack in that sense. And it’s for just the way work works in an office. It’s ad hoc, right? You tap someone on the shoulder, you say, Hey, check this out. What do you think about this? Or, hey, I need some help on this, or, Oh, I just kind of listened in on a meeting if I want to, or drop in and say, Hey, marketing team, this is engineering here. Just want to let you know those things you asked for last week, they’re gonna be done on Tuesdays at work. Yes, okay, cool. I’m out. I don’t have to spend 20 minutes scheduling, I don’t have to sit there and stare at you for an hour, if I don’t need to, I can get you now, I increase iteration speed, I actually have less meeting. And so you know, you can have your video on you can have video off. Both worked for us, you know, but the idea is that it’s more persistent. It’s always on. It’s synchronous interactions. It’s lower friction and self-expression. You know, like in a zoom, I see you got a really nice background, you got some whiteboards, this looks like it’s a picture, you know, of your office that you know, you’re working in front of, you tried to add a little character here, right. And we’re trying to do the same thing, except for it’s fully customizable. So if you came to our Kumospace office, I’m a big surfer. I’m in Costa Rica right now. In my virtual office, I’ve got sand and I’ve got the ocean, I’ve got a beach chair, I’ve got a beach umbrella, and the sound of ocean waves. And that’s my way of bringing a little of my personality. People mess with me. They’re always bringing in penguins, ghosts and bats, and things in my office. And you know, I don’t know who left them kind of like putting a whoopee cushion in someone’s chair. Other people have, you know, a DJ booth, or, you know, a castle, or they kind of make their office throne. And it’s a way of showing off your personality, because that’s a big part of building culture is letting people express themselves and also kind of assimilate to a broader company culture.

JC: Yeah, so I can definitely see how the culture part comes in here. And that’s something that’s really hard for companies right now, to kind of assimilate with when they have a remote. Because there’s no such thing as a remote culture –technically speaking, I feel like you’ve kind of tried to solve that problem, which is interesting. What about so that culture part we get? What about from, let’s say, a more corporate bottom line standpoint, where they say, let’s say accountability, do you find and are there any stats you have? Or just feedback? Where companies do you feel like they’re getting that they’re that the remote workers are more accountable? And here’s why I’m framing this question this way. Obviously, with Elon Musk, for example, taking over Twitter, his big thing, he’s a big proponent, and very on one extreme end of the get back in the office, practically live there, full accountability, things like that. And again, regardless of where anyone falls on that opinion, isn’t really the question as much as since it’s in people’s minds, especially in larger corporations. They want to be able to attract better talent by allowing remote, but they also understand that there’s a certain level of accountability and work ethic that goes with being a little more present in real-time. Your system, which I find very interesting, could be a hybrid that allows that, but my question is, what kind of feedback or what kind of stats have you come across that have.. has it helped any accountability for the companies that have used it when they’re coming from that standpoint of like, we got to make sure people We’re really working.

Brett: I mean, it’s funny, you’re framing this very diplomatically. And

JC: I’m riding the fence a little bit on it…

Brett: I really appreciate that. We could talk about, and we get talking about the return to the office or working from home. We say work from anywhere. I mean, fundamentally, we believe that anything that can be done over the internet will be done over the internet, and started with websites, then we started selling things over the internet and doing e-commerce. Now you can buy a car and a house over the internet, you can get married over the internet, and you can sign contracts, right? And so we think a lot of work ultimately is going to be done over the internet, we don’t see any reason not to, for all the advantages you just described, it’s cheaper to get talent from all over the world who don’t have to commute for multiple hours a day. Does that mean that we don’t think that some Face time or in person interaction is valuable? Of course it is. We have quarterly offsites build relationships, close deals, there’s great reasons to be in person sometimes. But I think the way we had it before it was flipped, right? People will say, Oh, you’re in the office five days a week, and then you have one week of vacation was like, No, we think you know, you’re mostly remote doing work. And then you are a special occasions, you come together in person. So I think a lot of the return to office stuff is honestly anxiety about managers who don’t know how to manage remotely and don’t know the right tools to do it. And people that have really expensive offices that you know, want to find some use for them. And it’s an excuse if you want to cut 90% of your headcount. Oh, saying you have to go back to the office is a great way to scare people away.

JC: Okay, I can see that. So let me ask you..

Brett: No no, after you.

JC: If you’re still continuing on that, then I want to hear it..

Brett: Oh, yeah, I just you know, and so what I think is that, to your point, you can have the what people love what people truly care about is flexibility. Right? People love flexibility, they want to be able to get their work done and live their life, whether that’s living in Costa Rica and surfing every morning, or it’s actually just spending some more time with your kids, right. And so, you know, we’ve shown that remote work is incredibly productive. But what’s missing is all that software stuff, it is the visibility, knowing where your team is, knowing what they’re working on, not just to keep track of them, but also so that you can help them if you see they need help, you can get in there, you can mentor younger people, if you see someone doing something wrong, you can stop them halfway through and say, Hey, wait, this is actually how to do it. You don’t have to wait till the end of month, you know, to manage my outputs, you can actually get in there and help them upfront. And so we think that you can get most of those benefits in a hybrid virtual situation, you know, and at a 10th of the cost.

JC: That’s awesome. Now, like I said, I got to play around with it before and it was pretty interesting fact, I think, now I’ve had this conversation, I’ll probably go and play a little bit more after this. But how are you getting the word out there for it? I mean, I’m a marketing guy by trade. So what kind of marketing? Are you doing PR, right? We know that you’re on this show, you said you have another one later. So you got the PR part down? What about digital marketing of any kind? What, are you guys investing a lot into content or paid ads? Or outbound or inbound? I mean, just what is it that helps drive that engine for awareness?

Brett: Yeah, I mean, we’re pretty lucky in the sense that we have a viral product, like you have to, you know, there’s the single player mode in Kumopace and is for connecting people, you could, you could create a virtual castle for yourself, but it wouldn’t be very interesting. So people are inviting people to Kumospace, you know, bringing their friends, if they get value out of it, they share it, so that we’re lucky in that sense. But the second place where we get the word out is, you know, content marketing, people are like, trying to figure it out, this is not a big problem, right? Everyone’s heard about remote work. And we’re trying to figure out how to manage remote teams, how to keep up morale, how to build culture, how to instill accountability, for teams that are distributed all over the world, right. And so we’ve spent a lot of time putting together our thought, you know, we have the little we’re fortunate to have the experience of working with, you know, 1000s of remote teams, learning their best practices, you know, bringing them together, distilling them and then sharing them with the product community. So, you know, check out our blog, we got a lot of great stuff there about how to run a remote team. And then finally, you know, it’s about finding the influencers, you know, like yourself who have an audience who people respect and trust and look to for answers and, and get in touch with you and you know, hopefully you see the value in the product and share with your flock.

JC: It’s not a bad strategy. That’s good. Let’s talk and again I don’t want to focus on specific price points. The reason being is you know, this podcast can age you can come up with a whole thing later someone’s listening to it a year from now we don’t want to be locked in but my question is, do you have price points that are for small like by person businesses? Or is this more enterprise level where it usually only works for, you know, 100? and above? Where do you guys typically fall when it comes to who you’re going after? Like, who’s your perfect client for this?

Brett: Yeah I mean, look, our sort of perfect client or, you know, series, the ABC companies that are, you know, they want to grow fast, they know that they need to collaborate in real-time there and things are changing, they, you know, they’re not just like a big company that’s trying to offshore and put someone in a box and have them a cog in a wheel. No, like, you need synchronous communication wet, to connect and move quickly and deal with ambiguity and changes, right. So small, you know, medium-sized, fast-growing startups, that’s our bread and butter, people that run, you know, contact centers, though, there are people that are Digital Agency Marketing, you know, if you run a digital agency, you got a lot of new clients, you got to get aligned around a new project really quickly. Anything like that works really well. And, yeah, I mean, those are that like anyone that’s trying to run a move fast. And while running a remote team, that’s our ideal customer.

JC: Do you typically charge like per seat? Or do you charge like per company is like a flat monthly rate? 

Brett: Oh, yeah, in terms of pricing, you know, it’s just, it’s $10 per month per seat, a dollars if you know, book annually. It’s not expensive for the gift of an office, if you compare it to, you know, physical office, and you know, you can replace your Zoom, you can replace your Google meets, and, you know, someday you’re going to be able to replace their Slack. So we think it’s going to be, you know, a ton of value, you know, for folks, and we have teams as small as five, using it, you can actually sign up, get your Office for free. You know, you can get the free version have 10 people in there no problem. And you know, we’re happy if you have a larger team, you can set it up yourself, or we’re happy to help you move in and customize it for your company.

JC: That’s cool. Okay, well, you did mention about like, in the future might replace slack for someone. So let’s talk about the future, right future big tech. So let’s, we’ll start actually, I’m gonna go on that note, I usually ask about the big picture for the industry. But I’m gonna ask about your company first, since you’re going that direction, do you have a roadmap? I mean, for this plan of having more of like, again, like replacing slack or an internal communication that has the same familiarity or ease of use as slack? And if so, how far out is that for you guys?

Brett: Look, Slack is an amazing product, we use Slack. But we don’t think it’s the future, we don’t think it’s the end state of work, right? Like, we don’t think being a little green dot, you know, is the future head like that’s a bleak future of zoom and slack or the future of remote work, and everyone’s just sitting in their box, completely unaware of whatever anyone else is doing. And the best thing you can do is a custom, you know, custom emoji comment. That’s the best way you can express yourself. Like, that’s a bleak future for humanity and, you know, desk workers. So we, we think that, you know, we can give people a place to connect and express themselves, to their co-workers and build real relationships and you know, have more authentic human connection, we’re just at the start of that, you know, at the beginning, it’s just making it work, making the video consistent, and reliable. Make it so you can customize your office make it so it’s easy to share links, you know, I built three companies, I know that it’s not the fancy stuff, it’s the little stuff that just makes it work. And so, exactly the details. And so make it easy to, you know, be in Kumospace, our users are actually in there six plus hours a day, right? So make it easier to make that so they have a desktop app, get them a nice mobile app, right? Like we can work across platforms.

Brett: So you know, simple stuff, but done right, make it integrate with your calendar. I mean, there’s, you know, it’s not rocket science, we like to think of, we want to move space to be this thing you turn on the beginning of your day. And then it’s like a little conveyor belt, it just pings you when you need to be in this meeting. It’s like having an assistant right at your office. It’s like, you know, hey, JC needs you in the marketing meeting. Now, hey, five minutes from now, let’s walk you over to the engineering meeting. That’s, that’s how we envision the future of our product.

JC: Awesome. All right. Now let’s talk about the future of the industry. I gotta tell you, I haven’t heard of any other companies that are like yours. Do you have competitors out there? And if not, do you have ones that maybe could swoop in fast? And you know, where do you kind of just see the next five to 10 years of that? So we already talked about how you know if the future was zoom and slack could be pretty bleak. So let’s talk about everyone’s remote future, you know, you plus your competitors. I’m just curious. Is there anyone out there like you and whether it is or if they’re ours or not, you know, where do you see the industry as a whole going?

Brett: Look, I think during the pandemic, there were a bunch of companies that were kind of experimenting with this idea of like, they call it spatial audio kind of video spaces, a lot of those were kind of proof of concepts didn’t really go anywhere, you know, take off.

Brett: But that said, you know, the future of remote work is the future of work. So it’s obviously a big market. And, you know, some of the big Silicon Valley species, you know, we have Lightspeed and that they’re not, you know, are placing bets because the, the TAM, total addressable market is just so big, you know if everyone’s spending, we people are actually spending 10s of millions of hours and Kumospace, every month. And so, you know, VCs hear numbers like that, and they say, okay, you know, there’s something valuable to build here. So there’s definitely gonna be competition, whether it’s from slack, or from zoom or from other other startups. But the lucky part is that there’s so it’s such a big space, that we just think about making our customers happy, you know, doing a good job. And then if we do a good job for them, they’ll send us more customers like, it’s such a big TAM, we don’t really have to think about competition too much.

JC: All right. Well, that’s a personal question. Now. I mean, you obviously had a pretty cool. Yeah, I just want to let you know, you said you started three companies and whatnot, and you got the VC fund, you’ve got Kumospace, and you’re obviously a very creative person. My question is, wouldn’t like when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? And is this it? And if not, like, how did it get here?

Brett: Yeah, you know, I have sort of got bit by the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship bug, pretty early, I was selling seashells by the seashore. When I was a kid, and, and had a little money box. And, you know, that ended, I was I eventually, at some point, got my sister on payroll. And I was paying my younger sister hourly and taking the profits at my parents sort of came in and regulated that business out and sort of made a profit share, which, you know, to this day, I still feel guilty about my sister was one of the kindest people I know. So I’ve always been an entrepreneur, you know, interested in entrepreneurship, one, that business plan competition, at college.

Brett: And so I just can’t think of any other way of doing it, like, the freedom to be running my own companies, while in Costa Rica and surfing in the morning, I just, I can’t think of anything, anything better. So and that’s, that’s, you know, that’s actually a big part of the driving ethos behind Kumospace is like, this idea that you can live your best life you can, you can be productive and work, you can have connections, your co-workers, you can do really collaborative and creative things. And then you can also have your free time, you can work from anywhere, you know, you can spend more time with your kids, you can, you know, travel the world like and that is like, I don’t know, that’s my personal goal in life, is to have my cake and eat it too. And, you know, I think Kumosspace is really just an extension of, you know, that it’s like me and Yang trying to productize that idea and share with the world as a product.

JC: That’s awesome. That is the dream, right? I mean, that’s who could argue with that being able to have the freedom is really where it’s at more than anything, right? You know, the money can come and go, but if you got the freedom of movement and experience, that’s really what helps make life really fulfilling. So that I agree with. So, to wrap up here, Brett, how can how can people for one find through MySpace, right? And then also, how can they reach out to you? Specifically, if maybe it’s a big company listening and they they have a big deal they want to talk about?

Brett: Yeah, so it’s, we’re just KUMOSPACE.com. And you come and check it out, grab your office, set it up for totally free. And, you know, if you want to get in touch, you know, feel free to ping me. I’m on Twitter, Brett1211. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Just mention this podcast and you know, we’d love to have you talk about the future of biz tech, or I’d love to connect with you.

JC: Awesome. And listen for everyone listening out there again. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to subscribe the podcast give it that five-star rating we talked about? Write some cool comments behind it. So other techies like us can find it and enjoy learning about all these amazing and helpful b2b software’s on the market today. Brett, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I’ll talk to you soon here after as well.

Brett: Absolute pleasure, JC thanks for having me. And best of the best.

JC: Welcome, everybody to another episode of The Future of this tech. I’m your host, JC Granger. And I have another fantastic guest on the show with us today. And listen, if you end up loving this episode, please show your love and appreciation by following this podcast, wherever you’re listening and, you know, get a five star review, put some nice comments in there, because that is how other techies like you and I find cool podcasts like this. And today I have the pleasure of interviewing James Malley, the founder and CEO of Paccurate. James, thank you so much for being on the show. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what it is that Paccurate does.

James: Sure. Hi, Hello, thank you for having me. Like you said, I’m the Co-Founder over at Paccurate. We are a carbonization software provider, which is kind of a mouthful, but it basically just means that the packages that show up on your doorstep, we help retailers and other shippers. Make sure those boxes are as efficiently packed as possible so they can save money and reduce their carbon footprint.

JC: That’s actually not a small thing. Right? I mean, here’s the I Am One those habitual, like every two days is Christmas for me, because my Amazon packages come now obviously Amazon does their own. But I also some of the best things I ever buy are from Instagram ads, right Shopify stores, essentially. Right? So do you work with more Shopify companies? Or is it individual wholesale retailers? Like, who’s your kind of your perfect client that uses Paccurate?

James: It’s kind of all across the board, honestly. And in terms of size as well. So we have some customers that ship, you know, 4 or 5000 packages, you know, a month, and others that do that every half hour, so it’s kind of all over the place.

JC: Now, okay, so then you guys are outsourced or you outsourced? I mean, like, for example, if someone is selling on Amazon, and they’re not using FBA, right, Fulfillment by Amazon, they’re selling it, but the packages could be packaged from you guys still. Is that an option they have?

James: Yes. So we’re pure software. So we don’t actually do any of the packing?

JC: I’m sorry. I meant can they use your software? Oh, yes. Initiate that. My apologies. Phrased that incorrectly.

James: Well, I only mentioned it because we do get that, that question sometimes. But pretty much wherever this shipment originates, is where our software runs, and it looks at what’s being shipped out and looks at, you know, the cost implications of picking this box, these boxes, etc. And then it shows packing instructions with a 3D visual on a screen typically at that pack station, so the operator can put it together.

JC: That’s awesome. Well, what motivated you to start the company? Did you work in an industry and you’re like, This is crap, this could be done better? Or was it just an idea you had over beers with a friend like, you know, just what’s that origin story. And it’s

James: kind of like all of the above. My Co-Founder, who’s our CTO now and kind of the architect of our core tech. We have been freelancing in the space for a while. So we would help shippers get their shipping systems set up and like integrate it into their other systems. And it was around that time that FedEx and UPS started penalizing poor packing more. So this was like 2017-2018, where we had some of these clients that we had had would say, Well, I’m getting absolutely hammered with these fees, you know, the features in my warehouse management system, etc, that are supposed to handle this are just like not working. What do we do? And Pat and I kind of at that point, we had been doing the freelancing thing for long enough that we were like, Let’s, we want to make something we own. We’re kind of tired of running around putting out other people’s fires all the time. And so we gave it a shot. And yeah, that’s kind of the origin story there. We didn’t get hit in the head by an apple or anything, it was more just listening to what our existing kind of customer or client base was telling us.

JC: I mean, that’s, that is more than one of the more common ways of course, right? I mean, a lot of people try to push something onto an audience or an industry, and they find it just falls flat. And they invest all this time and money. And the smart ones, like you were saying, you know, you listen first and see what people are asking for. Because they’ll tell you, right, you know, and you say, oh, okay, cool, I’ll just go build that thing. And then like, Great, thanks, you know,

James: we had, you know, kind of a few startup ideas in a prior part of our life. And, you know, they ended up being like, really kind of aspirational. And like, nobody asked for it. But we wanted to build something cool. This was very much the excitement kind of all came after once we actually got started to get data to start to get big users and see what the actual impact was of the thing we had made out of curiosity. So it was kind of a, you know, instead of like you said, sort of the eureka moment that kind of came later. 

JC: So, you know, I would imagine that someone listening to this podcast might be someone who’s thinking about getting into, you know, eat commerce and selling things online and stuff. You brought up something that I never thought about, that I hadn’t heard of before, which was that these major shipment carriers are penalizing for poor packaging. Can you clarify a little more about like, what does poor packaging look like? And how much does that cost companies? Right? Like, I mean, you’re helping solve a problem that some companies came across, I’m curious from the point of view of someone who’s about to get into it, so they don’t have that problem to begin with.

James: Sure, sure. So when you’re just starting out as an E-commerce seller, if you’re doing your own fulfillment, most of spent time starting out, you use a 3PL while you get things off the ground. But if you’re doing your own fulfillment..

JC: repeat for the audience who doesn’t know 3PL..

James: Third-party logistics company, like stored is a good example. There’s, you know, hundreds of these companies that you send them all your product, and they’ll pack it up and ship it based on the orders that you get. So pretty, like low startup costs, because you’re tapping into an existing network. And they’re a great option. But whether you want to try fulfilling yourself out of your garage, or, or maybe you’re coming out with like a big, huge overnight success product and you start opening warehouses, you might initially have the time on each shipment to like, be thoughtful about how you put it all together. But hopefully, you very soon hit a volume of orders, where there’s no time to really do these things carefully. And I think one of the things we’ve found is, it’s not really fair to put packing mistakes on the actual packing, the people doing the packing, because 99% of the time, their prime directive is to get all the orders out the door. That’s, you know, that’s really the most important thing these things have to get on a truck, especially because e-commerce customers expect speed now, thanks, Amazon. So having something in place that can provide a little instruction there takes the burden away from the people in the warehouse who would otherwise be responsible. Especially for a problem like this, which is so foundational to your kind of supply chain, it can be really important.

JC: So with somebody using your software be also be able to use and work with stored because you are saying that it provides instructions. So if someone was sending all their product to another company at 3PL, and they said, but hey, and then we run your software to say this is how to do it right so that we don’t have issues? Or do you find that there are barriers or walls in between that overlap?

James: We do partner with three peels and there are a couple of different ways three peels work, often you know, an e-commerce brand will pay for the shipping. And so there’s definitely more incentive for the brand to tell the 3PL like, look, I’m looking for any and all ways to lower my fulfillment costs here, you need to pack these things better, or in, you know, kind of the old school parlance. They might give them like a scorecard to say, you know, your average air per box is like 80%, you’re gonna need to get that down, or we’re looking for a new three PL. So it really depends on kind of the relationship and the deal you have with the three PL but we can you know, get plugged in pretty much anywhere.

JC: Do you have general average stats of you know, kind of like that one-liner, the elevator pitch of, you know, Paccurate saves on average x amount of cents or dollars per package sent with its efficiency and instruction?

James: Sure. 15% is the average saved on shipping costs, which is pretty good. And I don’t think we’ve ever saved any less than 6%, which is still you know, for a lot of our customers, that’s many millions of dollars, because transportation is incredibly expensive. For retailers so that’s kind of the headline number. But I think what we get more excited about is the material savings like other things that have more to do with scope three emissions reduction, I think our average cardboard saved is around a square foot per Carton, just by on average choosing smaller cartons. And you know, that can equal hundreds of acres of cardboard acres is sort of our favorite measuring stick for Material savings across you know, in the course of a month. So those are the fun numbers anyway. 

JC: So yeah talk about that then. So it sounds like you guys have an altruistic nature, obviously, as well, to your business. How much of that is a driver of the business? And is there any other than this being something that makes you happy? Is there anything that’s passed on to maybe not necessarily money-wise, right, cuz we already figured out the savings on the economic side. But I guess how important is the business on the environmental side? And are there any other benefits to focusing on that as a business?

James: Yeah, I mean, I would say our team is incredibly idealistic, and a lot of our kind of momentum. And energy is basically from those numbers looking at like, you know, pounds of co2 saved and all these things in terms of passing on, I mean, the emissions we reduce, would you say your audience is familiar with scope three emissions versus scope one and two?

JC: If any audience is going to know about it, it’d be mind because we’re all tech nerds. But maybe break it down a little bit more for the newer followers?

James: Sure, yeah. So there are different kinds of emissions that companies are responsible for. And scope one and two can happen inside your four walls. So if you’re, I don’t know, melting plastic and you’re in your office or something that’s probably one or two, as one does a scope three emissions are things that you do that cause outside of your four walls, there to be some sort of carbon impact. So yeah, exactly. So in shipping, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s, because I caused FedEx to use 100 trucks over this past year, which is still my scope, with three emissions. And that sounds, you know, like something, you know, we’re doing the best we can, we really are relying on our partnership with you know, FedEx in this case, to minimize those emissions. Legislation has come down in Europe, and that is coming here. And there’s actually a lot of momentum behind it to hold companies accountable for scope three emissions. So this is, you know, something that we’ve noticed, even in just the past few months, a lot of retailers looking for supply chain ESG initiatives, because that’s a supply chain is a huge source of social scope three emissions.

JC: Yeah, it’s interesting I look at it because like, you know, like when I’m buying an airplane ticket, right, I now see that though, there’s a line item for how much emissions now, I like transparency, just generally speaking, right? Regardless of the industry. I think the problem is that I think most people don’t look at that number, and that doesn’t mean anything to them. They don’t know, they’re maybe they’re happy to say okay, like, cool, but like there’s no real like, yet anyway, we’re not taught at an educational level, typically, by standard or even societally, you know, what is too much, you know, it’s this line on for carbon emission versus the other one, like, Okay, I know higher one is worse. Right. But if you just show me one, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But I, I feel like with, with what you’re saying if the legislation is coming this way, whether people agree with it or not, it’s still going to create attention to it. And I look at it as a parallel to when nutrition facts came on to the food. Right? Yeah. People forget, like, I mean, I grew up with nutrition facts on food, you know, I’m 40 years old, but my parents probably didn’t, right? There was a time when it was just, here’s your food. And people had no idea. And even then, when those nutrition facts came out, there was probably a certain amount of time before people, they didn’t know what that meant, like, is that good? Is that bad? And over time, you start to get an idea, how long do you think it’ll be? Before an average person can look at a line item that is presented to them on something they purchase, where it shows carbon footprint, where they might actually understand how much of an effect that has, or how much it’s saved, or much better or worse.

James: I think that consumers that are already kind of sustainability-minded, probably within the next two years, will have a mechanism and might be, you know, regulated, like nutrition facts, where you know, not too long ago, or like 2%, zinc would, you know, or, you know, not understanding what that meant. I think, in general, the average person probably within the next five to seven years, will be able to tell anytime they order something, what the impact of that is going to be?

JC: Does your software, pass the positive impact stat to the seller, so that they can pass it on a receipt of some sort to the buyer?

James: Yes. And really, you know, what we do is twofold. So we do this real-time instruction. So you can think of this as like operational efficiency. The other side is analysis and simulation. So it allows our customers to, you know, select a big chunk of their shipping history, and then run simulations and say, Okay, what would it do to my, you know, cardboard, corrugated cardboard usage? If my flagship product was a quarter of an inch smaller? Or if I switched to these three PL or this carrier? How would my packing and emissions change?

So there’s, there’s like a planning element, but there’s like, here’s what is actually happening today. And all those stats, we, you know, make very visible and we’ll kind of actively point out, because, you know, if you care about sustainability, but you have, you know, bosses who are more about the bottom line, that’s what makes packing just like the great place to start because you are paying to pollute, like every cost associated with parcel fulfillment is also almost one to one associated with emissions. So you can keep it quiet that your motivation is, you know, being greener, and just highlight the dollar savings to your, your bosses or whoever it may be, or vice versa. You know, we have a few larger customers where we came in as part of an ESG initiative. And the dollar savings was kind of incidental. So yeah, that’s, that’s kind of why we nerd out about this specific problem.

JC: I think you bring up a good point about where, like, where people’s motivation lies, right? Like, I think a lot of companies are trying to go green, as a money-saving thing. See, at first Going Green was more expensive. So like, I have this, I have this opinion that, like oil companies will have no problem going green, when the numbers benefit their bottom line. Right? And other any other, you know, take any other type of industry, chemical plants, whatever. I think once the technology makes the numbers go in their favor, they’re following the numbers because not the the ultras depart or, you know, the forward thinking. And again, we can all have our opinions on that. What I’m saying is that what’s interesting, and what’s what’s nice to hear is that technology is advancing in that direction, there will be a tipping point soon, and it has hit in certain industries, where it actually is more beneficial to go into “green route” financially. But that’s just what, especially in America, right, that that is a large motivator for how our infrastructure is set up. You know, we are the, you know, there are other countries that maybe look, that’s why we didn’t start the legislation starts in Europe, right? And then they’re gonna test it out there, and then somebody will bring it here. But here’s what I think is interesting. Your company, your software, specifically, I think, will absolutely blow up here pretty in a good way, very soon, if what you’re saying about the legislation is true. And it comes here, because what I’ve seen as a pattern in our government, regardless of the party, is that tax incentives come with certain legislations. And if this one in particular, you’re talking about from Europe comes over here, there will probably be some sort of corporate tax incentive to adopt greener ideas. And your software is something that’s already available to procure that, right?

So I think that’s good for him. It’s great position for your company. It also has the benefit of being good for the planet, obviously. And, you know, we’re not perfect. You know, a lot of people talk about, like electric cars, and I’m like, Well, look, you stopped in mind for the batteries like, Yeah, but that’s not great. But it’s still better than our current one. Like, like, no one’s saying it’s great. No one said, Absolutely. There’s there’s no harm to the planet by creating that lien or going and mining the nickel or whatever lithium ion, you know, whatnot. No one disagrees that the process sucks, right? Well, if you just put them side by side, one has a higher chart, you know, number than the other. And it’s just, if we keep going that direction, then eventually maybe we get to something that can be a zeroed out, right? And that’s the goal, right? A net zero for that. Right? Cool. Okay, so let me ask you, how are you getting the word out? Like, how old is your company first? And then what are you doing? I’m a marketing guy, as you know, listen to my podcast, I always have to ask this question. So beyond first, how old are you? And then also, what are you guys doing to tell companies that you exist?

James: Sure. So we’re about five years old, my co founder, and I were noodling on it for a couple years before that. The pandemic is when we started to get big brands using our technology. And we kind of leveraged the success there to raise a seed round almost exactly a year ago. And that allowed us to grow the team and, you know, get some more marketing funding together. So we have kind of a multi prong approach. We do some digital marketing, and I would say it’s okay. It brings in folks like when they’re specifically looking for what we have..

JC: More inbound.

James: Yeah. And, you know, it’s a fairly niche, you know, make right sizing boxes is not a massively booming industry yet. So people are usually looking for something like what we have, I would say, the most successful marketing initiatives are also always things we do with our partners. So shipping software companies, packaging distributors, and corrugate. Manufacturers send us a ton of leads, because they, you know, they care about their customers being efficient. This has been more of a recent discovery and kind of interesting revelation, but we reduce the amount of material that shippers use that has not stopped materials vendors from sending their customers to us. You think there there would be kind of some friction there. But it’s actually you know, some of these companies are serious about sustainability. A lot of my A lot of the pessimism that I used to hold in my heart has kind of been vanquished over the past six months or so, which is I’m happy to report. 

JC: That is good. That’s awesome. All right. Well, let’s let’s talk about, you see the last six months. Let’s talk about the future a little bit here. Right, future biz tech. So we always ask this question. First off, I’m gonna It’s a two part question. The first part is this. Where do you see the industry you’re in? So we’ll call it let’s say, you know, supply chain or packing software? And I don’t know how many competitors you have. But let’s just say your your, your general industry, where do you see going in the next five to 10 years, whether it be through technology, or legislation, like we talked about, or culture or anything like that? What’s the big picture that you see happening?

James: Yeah, definitely more. I mean, we’ve talked about it a lot, but definitely more emphasis on ESG. And I think, you know, you you mentioned, you know, trade offs. And I think that’s probably what the bulk of green solutions we’ll have attached to them. But, you know, packing, it’s one of those things where there’s not many trade offs, because it’s part of the maybe least sexy are of the three R’s, the reduce, and I think the more technology comes out that doesn’t have trade offs, that is just we just found a way to use less of this thing. That’s, that’s really what’s exciting to me reusable things, I guess that’s, that’s another art. But using less material using less space, we talk a lot about bandwidth and taking up less space in the supply chain network. I think that’s going to be a major focus.

JC: All right, and where do you see your company? I mean, you got to seed round a year ago, the obviously been cleared and using the money well, which is good. Where do you see your your company in the next six months to a year like you got a cool roadmap stuff that you can give us a preview on like what’s coming here?

James: Some of the the kind of alliances that we’re working on at the moment I’m really excited about because, you know, we used to be just with the API is what we started with were the real time packing instructions. And so our, you know, a lot of our partnerships were pure, you know, operational software. Now that we’ve got this, you know, simulation capability, we’re suddenly got like a tow in the packaging space. So I’m really excited about making our platform kind of a little bit more involved in the way that packaging is procured in terms of like, what’s imminent, actually, this morning, cube scan, which is a, you know, one of the most successful companies that makes dimensioning equipment that actually can capture dimensions and understand what objects look like. They just sent out a press release about our partnership with them. So you heard it, you heard it here first. Yeah, that was the big thing that happened.

JC: That’s exciting. That’s awesome. Okay. I was like to ask a personal question. So I’m gonna ask you what you told me in the pre show that you’re, you’re a new father. Correct? Okay, you’re, you know, I’m a father as well. And it’s been a while since I’ve been a new father. But when I think about my daughter and my business, right, as far as a long term, like, what am I do? Is this something I want to hand down to her? Is it something that I want to sell and then move on to something new? So I guess my question for you as a new dad, have you thought long term? Is this a company that you or an industry that you want to stay in? And maybe have something to pass down? Or is it something that you want to eventually exit? And then take those resources? And is there an like, is there a next thing like what’s Is there a bigger picture that we don’t know about? I’m just curious.

James: Well, it’s only this is our second kid, and she’s only six days old. So Wow. Yeah, so you know, I had her on my chest sleeping during my last call today. But kind of when I’m looking at her, I’m not really envisioning, you know, pushing her towards supply chain in particular. But I do, you know, I do feel incredibly fortunate to be working on a problem, that it’s not going to solve climate change. But it might have a measurable impact on something related to a missions of supply chain, which is actually, you know, pretty impactful. So, I do think that, you know, the joy that I get from that I’m hoping that she find something that she loves, that is also satisfying in that way. And that helps me kind of with the fear of what, you know, climate will be like when she is at the point where she can start making those decisions.

JC: I think that’s a good word to fear. Because I think for any non parents that are taught to, you know, they was like, you know, what’s it like, I’m like, it’s fear all the time, but you still do it. Like, you’re not you’re not crumbled in a bowl in the corner, you know, in a cold shower, like anxiety and depression, but it really is, it’s fear and hope at the same time, which is interesting. It’s like this complete dichotomy of like, write down In the middle, like this extreme hope and happiness, on the other side is extreme fear. And like paranoia, like, you know, because you just, you can’t afford for anything to go wrong, you know. And so I think it’s an interesting place to come from. But I think what you’re doing is really great. As far as when it comes to legacy, I think that’s really cool. And not just legacy of reputation or name, but specifically, and like you said, you’re not going to solve the whole problem. But the whole problem is so complex that it takes a million small solutions to do and go in the right direction, you know, and I would imagine that feels really good being a part of that. And it’s an I enjoy interviewing you for it. Given the industry you’re in, there’s been a lot of material that has been written and created. If there was one movie or book or podcast, something educational, that ties into whether it be climate change, or, you know, is there anything that inspired you more that you could pass on to the audience, for any kind of intellectual purposes?

James: Oh, man, now that this is the spot.

JC: If you don’t have if you don’t have if you don’t have a book, or so if there’s a person too, I’m just curious, like, you know, where would someone find a little more inspiration other than just Googling, you know, stuff? Well,

James: I think, you know, I used to be fairly pessimistic, in general, you know, just kind of cynical, politically, you know, about the world, all these things. And over the course of, you know, starting this business and growing it, and talking to companies, even big companies that I, you know, and when I was a teenager, and in my 20s, I was like, you know, corporate, whatever, you know, I’ve just been so inspired by the earnestness that some of these folks have for being less wasteful, that there’s not a, you know, there’s rarely a huge marketing campaign associated with these things like they actually care. And I hope that doesn’t insult.. 

JC: Like it’s not all it’s you’re not seeing like, everyone’s they’re not adopting it for a PR stunt is what you’re saying? Yeah, like, although there might be some PR, you’re not seeing what you would expect, that they’re just doing it for the good look.

James: Right? Yeah. And I think that, so I guess my advice would be to just keep talking to, to people, if you’re, if you’re feeling like there might not be a market for your sustainability solution, you might be surprised if you’re able to keep talking to people. And the other thing, and the, the name escapes me, but I did read a book a while back about optimism, hope, maybe we can put it in the show notes, if I can’t remember later. But optimism is far more useful, particularly for entrepreneurs than is pessimism. And so one of our kind of company values is micro pessimism, macro optimism. And I think we stole that from stripe or some other corporate, some other startup page, but we talk about it a lot. Because, you know, when we’re when we’re solving a problem, we’re like how, you know, this won’t work. Because of this, this won’t. But the grander kind of vision of what we’re trying to do, it has to be optimistic, you have to have a belief that what you’re doing can be achieved. That would be my parting thought, with no specific book attached to it.

JC: I like that, you know, I’m going to put you in contact with. So she’s a client of mine, actually. And I liked her a lot. Her name is Lisa Foster, she is the author of a book called the bag lady. And you never heard like the term like with a crazy bag lady or whatever, you know. And so she turned that into a book. And what it was, is she was one of the first ones to actually convince corporations to get away from plastic bags. Like she was one of the starting people like, and a lot of these companies started doing it. And then it became this big thing. And obviously, you know, I mean, whether again, whether whether some people listening, agree with it or not, it doesn’t matter. She had a big impact. I’m gonna put you in touch with her, I think because she does. She does coaching and consulting for big companies when it comes to a more green initiative. And I feel like if she knows about your software, that could be something maybe she even talks about, with when she comes across the right client.

James: That’d be amazing.

JC: Yeah, I’ll put you guys in touch. She’s really cool. You’ll like her a lot. How can people who are listening if they want to reach out and either use your software or any other kind of, you know, bigger deals, how can they get a hold of you in particular? And then also, how do they get a hold of the company in general?

James: Me in particular, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. So just look for me on there. James Malley talk mostly about putting things in boxes. So as long as you’re willing to have that in your feed, we should connect and Paccurate.io is our website. If you’re technical, you can sign up and start using it really quickly. We haven’t talked to maybe a quarter of our customers because they just came on board and started using it and there’s Some cool ROI calculators and stuff there as well.

JC: You know one question I didn’t get to ask, I want to make sure I squeeze in before we go. Who is this software for? And who is it not for as in, let’s say size of company or where they’re at, or, you know, if they’re starting up versus they’ve got 10,000 packages a month? Is there any range where it’s probably not a good fit, and you specialize in a certain size or type of company?

James: Yeah, I would say our sweet spot is, you know, between 100,000 and a million shipments per month. So..

JC: enterprise level, big stuff?

James: That’s pretty large, but we priced it in such a way that, you know, if you’re only doing five to 10,000 a month, you will get, you know, even a higher percentage ROI, than some of those larger customers. You can absolutely use it I mean, the API, all the documentation is there, it’s pretty much good to go. If you’re small, like if you’re an Etsy store, probably not a good fit, if you’re packing things yourself. And just, if that’s the case, just you know, be mindful about the materials you’re using and, and try to pack each shipment with care.

JC: Awesome. Well, listen, I appreciate it. And for everyone listening out there. Again, if you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe to this podcast give it that five star rating with a little bit of kind words behind it. So other techies like us can find it and enjoy learning about all these other amazing and helpful. b2b software’s on the market today, just like Paccurate. James, thank you so much for being on the show. And like I said, after we get off your all I’ll give you a shout and intro to Lisa.

James: Awesome. Thanks, JC. Thanks a lot.

JC: Welcome, everyone to another episode of The Future of Biz Tech, I’m your host, JC Granger. And I have another fantastic guest on the show today. And listen, if you end up loving this episode, show your love and appreciation for the podcast, wherever you’re listening to it, be sure to give it that five-star review preferably with some nice comments, because that is how other techies like you and I find cool podcasts like this. And today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing Matt Swalley, who’s the Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Omneky, Matt, tell the audience a bit about yourself and what is it that you guys do?

Matt: First of all, JC, we say thank you so much for having me today. Love your show, and say hi to the audience out there. So I’m the Chief Business Officer of Omneky and the Co-Founder we are an artificial intelligence-powered marketing platform that uses real-time performance data across Meta, Google, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, Twitter, uses computer vision to help quantify what’s leading to performance. And then we use the latest generative AI tools plus what we’re building in-house to make really quick, efficient and more effective digital advertising campaigns and creatives. And a little bit about me is I have a different path than most, I spent 13 years at a Fortune 10 company 250,000 people working at AT&T. So yeah, and then transition to an early-stage startup. It’s hyper-growth. But I got to I got lots of iterations of leading teams like leading seven different teams over a period of a couple of years moving all around the country and meeting with 1000s of customers. And then one big career-defining moment that carries the Omneky was I set a goal to get into corporate strategy after I got my MBA, and I got some really big picture, go to market deep data analysis, where I was digging in data for weeks and then telling the story. And then as joining the most exciting generative AI companies advertising Omneky, that’s what we do we tell stories with data. So it was a perfect fit and love, love the ride.

JC: That’s awesome. That’s very technical background. And it is I mean, coming from a Fortune 10 company. I mean, literally, that doesn’t get much higher than that. Right? Also, I’d like to say I love your fashion style. I think I just noticed that we’re basically wearing the same thing here. So good for you. Imagine, for people listening, you can’t see it, but we’re matching and it was not planned. So tell me what motivated you to start. Well, did you you’re a co-founder. So you did start the company with someone else? What motivated you to leave? I mean, obviously a great career in is about as high corporate as you can get. Right. You know, what was that defining moment? What pain point did you say? Dammit, we got to fix this or you know, what, what was it that led you to co-found the company?

Matt: Yeah, so our founder Hikari Senju is a Harvard computer science grad. He founded it back in like the late 2010s. And he had this idea way ahead of time that data and analytics would be the key to using artificial intelligence and generative AI. It wasn’t yet at the point of this today, where it’s at this Cambrian explosion where it’s getting better every day. And you can actually create things with it. But he had the vision. And he founded it. And I was actually employee number three. So at the time, Hikari who was running, all of the engineering, all of the sales, was the most driven person I’ve ever met, he brought me in as the business leader of the company as employee number three, taking over all revenue-generating activities. So that was the entry point. And how I got decided to join was, I was doing corporate strategy and looking into all these emerging companies. It was the bull market after COVID 2020 and 2021 when the markets on fire. And I was looking at all these emerging startups and reading a book called Clayton Christensen’s innovators dilemma. Are you familiar with it?

JC: I’ve heard it, but I have not read it.

Matt: Basically, it’s it talks about how large companies get disrupted by these small companies, because they can’t place big bets, because they often are billion-dollar revenue streams. And it just really excited me to join a tech company. And I met Hikari, who I knew would help lead us to, like Initial Public Offering as our goal. And that book, though, opened my eyes and was like, I want to join a company like that, that is going to disrupt the incumbents and be that publicly traded company in the next 5 to 10 years.

JC: That’s awesome. But so let’s do this. You give a very technical explanation of what the company does. And beginning now let’s do more layman’s terms. So give an example of what it’s like, because I watched some videos on your website. So I have a good understanding. But for people listening here, give an example of who would use your system and what it would do for them in just real terms.

Matt: Sure. So we have multiple ideal customer profiles. So I’ll give you I’ll give you two major ones here. One is we partner with growth-stage startups where we’re partnering with the CEO or founder and we’re a direct plugin to their marketing team. And so what we do is, let’s just say let’s talk about meta and Google they own historically 60% of the digital advertising market. But it’s slightly declining right now, we would plug into those channels, we would look at historical advertising data in real-time. So you can look at, you can plug in through API integrations, and pull in data for why people are clicking, or buying things, lower funnel conversions. And then we have our own computer vision there that automatically tags things like color, length of the video, and text in the different dynamic sections of the ad. And with that, you can run regression and start to pull out insights into what are commonalities for different audiences that should be used in the next set of ads.

JC: So basically, it’s a massive split testing platform. And in one way, I’m sure it does other things, but I’m a marketer. Right? So I look at it from the point of view, like you’re saying that I can, I can, I can run some ads, and then based on their performance, your AI can actually pick out the why, and not just the what?

Matt: That’s exactly right.

JC: That’s impressive. Can it also analyze other ads? So let’s say, you know, does it have a competitor analysis? Can I see, can I analyze other successful campaigns of other companies, and then figure out why those work and play off of that

Matt: We cannot analyze, we can only analyze the data that we have access to. So the customer data that we have pulled in directly from the platform. Now we can make more macro views into verticals and everything. We can’t share data. But we can definitely look at verticals and performance and make assumptions that can be used for customers.

JC: So for example, if I start off with three different versions of an ad, and then I plug your software into it, how many more versions can your software create for me based off just before I’ve even run the ads?

Matt: We can. So first we need that historical data to get data. But what we use is the latest generative AI tools plus, plus our own proprietary technology. And we look at the data. And we can generate tons and tons of ads for multivariate testing. We’re talking anywhere from at the minimum 30 a month to hundreds for our largest customers. And they’re a combination of.

JC: Compounding as more data comes in. Right? That’s right. 

Matt: Yeah. And depends on how big the advertising budget is. And like, one of the biggest things in the future is micro-segmentation, or being able to really do targeted campaigns more personalized. So what you do is you can be really agile with the data and target different segments of your customers instead of more general very quick. And what we’ve got the time value down or the time we can launch a campaign is down to like, like three business days right now where we can have an initial onboarding, connect with the data, and then turn around a first set of ad creative for a company with either little to no brand assets are quite a few brand assets in three days. And then they’re fully launched within a week. So where can that’s like one of our major key KPIs is lowering that time as we build on the key.

JC: Very cool. Okay, so now let’s talk platforms, what platforms does your system work on right now?

Matt: Right now we have integrations with Meta, which includes Instagram, Google, which includes YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit. And then we’re building out connected television and some of the other mediums like gaming, which is going to be an emerging vertical.

JC: Cool. Cool. All right. I have a question about LinkedIn, because I’m a b2b guy. Yeah. So LinkedIn has mostly I don’t know this, I’ve decided to get the audience per second. LinkedIn has regular ads, like you see on anything else, right. You can do those, but they also have inbox like in mail style, like, ads, where it goes, it sends a message right into the inbox. Does your system yet? And if not, when? does it deal with that? Where it can take let’s say, I write a sales message and I use the paid version to drop it into inboxes? Can your system right now create different versions based on the feedback have it in that in that kind of text? Because it’s longer? It’s much more text than it would be for like a small ad. Do you guys work within the paid version of the messaging?

Matt: We have not expanded the messaging yet. And that’s something I’ll definitely definitely

JC: Feature request right now. Like, I’ll use it tomorrow if you do, because we love those. We love the direct pay that so features requests? You heard it here on the podcast,.. Okay.

Matt: That’s great, yeah.

JC: I mean, so um, what type of it’s funny I was usually asked what type of marketing early doing but obviously you’re probably using paid ads in your own system. Why not turn the turn the guns in but let’s say outside of that, obviously, using your own system to promote yourself. What are types of marketing? Are you guys doing? You’re doing PR, you’re on a podcast, so that one’s checked off. Okay. What else are you doing to get the word out? And how long have you guys been around?

Matt: We, our first revenue month was in March 2020. So we’ve been around since then,

JC: That was a great time to start a business, wasn’t it? What happened in March of 2020? I can’t remember I think my mind has blocked out the trauma.

Matt: The world is shut down, the market circuit breaker was pulled multiple times in a day at one point around that

JC: You picked a hell of a time. But hey, here you are, though you made it.

Matt: Yeah, we do really well, with a number of different ways for generating business one is in, they all complement each other. That’s what’s so exciting about marketing, right? They’re all a different complementary strategies. And then you can target and retarget at different areas of the funnel. But digital ads is really our main major business development. And then we have a team that sends out targeted emails, and then the goal is to set up a demo or we retarget. Those, those people, once they visit our website, or landing page or social page with our ads is the second one. And then we get tons of word-of-mouth referrals from current customers, and then building out partnerships in an agency arm as well. So those are our major channels.

JC: You’ve got it down that I mean, that’s you definitely we’re using all the angles, which is good. Let me ask you a question for your, your optimal client, I’m sure you can take on a broad range of industries and company sizes. But let’s talk optimally speaking. What size of budgets monthly budget, do you find that is kind of the minimum where you see the most effectiveness of your system playing into just so the listeners have an idea of like, who they should refer this to? Or should they’re referring it to mom and pops, you only spend 500 bucks a month? Or should they be only referring it to enterprise level that are spending 50,000 a month? Like where is that sweet spot? That you advise that like, Listen, this systems really going to help you more? If your budgets at least x?

Matt: Our sweet spot is between $10,000 in ad spend to Oh, half a million to a million dollars is our sweet spot, but 10,000 and up essentially per month? Yeah, yeah, our smallest customers that are testing and learning concepts, you need to get enough data, you need to spend about $3,000 a month in ad spend. So that’s just from learning from data, testing your value prop product, we can help customers find product-market fit with that kind of data, bringing initial customers on, but really, the greater than 10,000 is really the sweet spot.

JC: Perfect. Now, question just about your company as well. Obviously, your your SaaS platform, people go in there. And they use that? Do you have an add-on service by any chance where you guys have offered to manage certain ones that people want to use your system? But then they’re like, listen, can you just do this? Like, do you have an add-on to that?

Matt: We sure do. So with about 50% of our customers, we offer the full management through our customer success team. So we do a campaign strategy, go to market, how we’re going to you know, go after different audiences, then we segment each one with a different type of creative or multiple different types of creative that then we go multivariate test against each one of those types of platforms or mediums.

JC: Awesome. Okay. Well get into the main question, of course, my two-part question do for every episode for anyone who always listens, a future biz tech. So let’s let’s talk about the future. The first question is about the industry. So not you guys in particular, but kind of the industry you’re in? Where do you see these kind of multivariate testing AI-driven marketing platforms in general, going in the next three, five or 10 years? Whether it be from legislation, you know, because a lot of privacy stuff out there too, for targeting? Whether it be culturally, technologically just where do you see the industry going? Is there anything that excites you, or worries you coming up in the future?

Matt: Well, it’s a really exciting time, since it just hit this commercialization. It’s crazy, the multiplier effect of all these people learning how to use it, and then telling people, one of the most interesting things I will say, like in the short term, and I’ll give you a long term here, is that everyone, people aren’t going to lose their jobs, they’re gonna have to evolve how they think and how they in how they upskill like, using AI is such a different brain power than the past where you actually have to write something down and think it through or design it on a you know, on a canvas or on a computer. Now you have to understand how to tell the AI what you want it to do. It’s a completely different thought process. So

JC: not as easy as people think to like they’re like, oh, just ask you something. And it’s like, I’ve never asked this isn’t saying go ask that brick wall something like where do I even start? Like I don’t like even know, like, I start with small stuff like have a Chat GPT. I’ll be like, Oh, tell me this. But then I see examples of other people. And they’ve asked it, something’s super complex I never would have thought of it. I’m like, Oh, okay. I didn’t know it could do that. I guess I’ll you know, so we learn on how to even talk to it, just like you’re saying just as much as it’s learning how to give answers.

Matt: Right, right. And then you have to learn how to get really specific on what type of camera lens you want. Do you want a drawing or crazy color picture. There’s all these different things the way you tell it to do to get what you want. So the more you can figure out those different models and different ways to explain something the more successful you have in the near term video is going to be there very soon, in the next year or two. So you’re gonna be able to tell AI to completely put together a video for you. And I can actually see within the next five to 10 Here’s where you can, it’s going to have some sort of neural thing where it can tell what you’re thinking and then start to create it from there, which is mine.

JC: Now we’re gonna, now we’re getting to the scary black mirror stuff here, right? This is Yeah, but it is coming it is it does a thing like, like, you just look at the science, there’s no opinion here I will agree with or not, or if you like it or not, it’s not the issue, it’s going to happen. You know, there’ll be, there’ll be plenty of people, they’ll be more than willing to adopt certain things that other people will not be willing to. But it doesn’t make it any less real. So I just think it’s fascinating to see. And it’s gonna be an exponential curve. I mean, we’re not even be able to keep up pretty soon, too, you know, all the manual stuff for even like space launches. Right? Now, there’s pilots, yeah, there won’t be because eventually AI and computers will be able to take off a jet and fly it in space and come back better than humans can just like how we have, you know, auto driving cars that are coming out. I mean, the technology, the ability is one thing now the social acceptability, that’s a little slower, right? Where do you see, let me ask you that? Where do you see the the dissonance between the technical realities versus the social acceptability? And how much do you think that’ll hold back the industry because at some point, it gets scary people just, they don’t either know what to do with it, or they’re afraid of where it’ll go, you know, just do you see a big lag between our implementation versus our actual ability?

Matt: Well still, you’re still seeing with like, certain open models that are creating things only in certain ways, because it’s learning from out there, what’s already out there. So it’s creating. It’s almost picking out how something should look. And it’s showing it over and over again, instead of giving you a more diverse view of what all the different things are. The second one I think is most interesting that just is happening now is I have two little kids, learning is changing so much, right? Like when we were there, we had to write it on paper, we had to go read a book. I think we’re probably around the same age, you know, like was so exciting for you. And then now that Google search was last they were searching Google now kids are starting to write out everything on chat GPT. So schools are already going back to writing with a pencil and paper again, right now, like..

JC: When we were kids, it’s when those those those new advanced calculators were coming out. Remember what they it was the graphing calculators that came out, and that technology advanced so fast, and then we’re sitting there and like, you know, algebra, or calculus or trigonometry. And they were like, Okay, great. What do we do with this? Because these kids are figuring out how to do the whole equation just by typing it in, and we can’t actually prove that they know what they’re talking about. Right? So for us, it was the graphing calculators. And for kids now, it’s Chat GPT. And there’s this, you know, massive struggle and almost chaotic type of, like, what do we do? Like? How do we like, how do we get them to not like, how do we tell the difference, but you know, it’ll create another industry, now, you’re gonna have an industry, which is already probably going to pop up of someone’s gonna write software in AI that can track other AI so that teachers can tell if it’s plagiarized through AI, rather than just plagiarized from different sources on its own. Right. So like, there is a cat and mouse game with technology, which I think is really, really interesting.

Matt: The other interesting thing, too, is all these technologies are getting built upon these technologies that are getting built today. Like I saw it. I saw this week, someone already built a citing company. So it goes in and it can cite the things that Chat GPT is writing on top of, because a lot of times when you go you go get Chat GPT to write something like, where did this come from? And you can’t track it back. So now they’re building apps on top of that all in real time. And it’s just, it’s moving so fast. And it’s it’s great to be part of it.

JC: Apps on apps on apps. I like it. All right. So let’s talk about your company. Okay, I’d like to know, where’s the future of Omneky going right. And let’s talk about, you know, maybe in the next six months to to a year, and if you got any cool things coming down the pipeline that my audience gets to hear first, you know, we’d like the inside scoop. What do you got? 

Matt: So the other side of our business, we talked about how the data and analytics is an input, you can pull out different value props, images, texts, the things that should be included in the ads. Well, we have a generative capability where we have our own technology plus the open source ones, where we take that data directly feed it into a generative tool, and then it gives you prompts on what to create. So that’s really we’re combining it right so we’re taking the data and moving it right to helping the machine tell us potentially what, what you should make for a customer. So that’s one of our favorites. And then that’s, of course, the copywriting on top of that, in the future. We want to continue to do this of course with video and then for like E commerce, you can instantly take a product and you can put it in different backgrounds for production with a click of a button. That’s one of our favorite use cases for AR right now. You don’t have to go film things all over the place. You can take a product photo, you can go put it in all these different scenarios and then you can go take it to market within hours instead of weeks and a lot more money in the future. Omni key wants to go from just digital ads to landing pages to chat bots and key I’m expanding to improve conversions down the funnel. Because that’s next.

JC: Yeah. And I like because the funnels that have more pieces, just the ads, right. And like a lot of people, myself included, you know, we’ve been forced to Frankenstein’s to certain things, you know, you have an end goal. But once you start putting money into the top of that funnel, it’s got to go different places. So a company can add more things on so they can control that. And it works seamlessly. I mean, even better, right? Like one of my favorite examples is click funnels, for example, right click funnels as a software was way before its time. And it just started adding in so many pieces of the puzzle, so that it made it easy for people to go in there and drop things into the top of it. Whereas yours now with the AI into it, and the ads, if you start adding on that’s even higher in the funnel, and drops in. So that even does better than Click Funnels right, you know, in the future. So I think that’s really cool. Okay, so you had told me, you like to read or you’re a big reader, you’re saying, as a kid and whatnot, what is your favorite book you’ve ever read? It could be anything it doesn’t. We could talk business, it’d be business book, but just more or less like, what book is one of your favorites that you would even recommend to the audience, based on kind of maybe how you got to where you’re going or something that inspired you?

Matt: Sure. So one, I got a couple here. So the first one was innovators dilemma, I already talked about earlier about how you distribute..

JC: I’m gonna add that to my reading list now too.

Matt: How you keep making marginal improvements and eventually it gets good enough for commercialization. And then it hits a tipping point, and it takes out the incumbents. So that’s, that’s a fun one. A second one is 4 Disciplines of Execution, which this is a basic business book that helps you set lead and lag measures. Lag measures are like revenue. It’s like creating a scorecard for your business where you’re figuring out all the activities you have to do to get to those goals. It’s a very strategic approach that simplifies the entire process. And then the last one, which I’m sure you’ve read is Malcolm Gladwell is the tipping point.

JC: Oh, yeah. I’ve read every one of his books. Absolutely. Look, I like outliers, too. Because I liked outliers. a tipping point was a classic. I liked outliers. Also, because it, it helps you understand that just what you see is not necessarily the full picture of the average of like, what’s plausible, it tells you what’s possible. And you know, in so many people, we live in a world of plausible, but we think in a world of possible. And that’s not always a good thing, right? Because it can be don’t get me wrong, right like that the real innovators and creators, they don’t know how to live in plausible they only live in possible. But if everyone does that, a lot of people are gonna be disappointed. Right. So I thought it was interesting how he captured how certain stats, you know, or certain people show you be like, Oh, look at that. But then you start doing the reverse math. You’re like, oh, well, that’s how they got there.

JC: The Canadian hockey league, right? 

JC: Yeah, like the birthday. I was blown away. If you guys if you haven’t read Outliers, you gotta read Outliers, and anything from Malcolm Gladwell will reach a tipping point. First, it’s a good foundational book, and then and then read his other ones I’d recommend

Matt: I love I love outliers. I mean, just the fact that for the audience out there, if you’re a little bit older, and you start a sport, and you’re older than the people in the same team as you, then you have a much greater success of making it farther along and up into the pros. It’s pretty good. 

JC: And you know, and actually, since we’re on a tech podcast, one of the examples he given there was actually Bill Gates, it’s like, well, you know, was was Bill Gates his big genius? Or was he in the right place at the right time and also smart. And so when you break that down, it helps you understand that certain people you may admire are still great, but they are not this insurmountable example that you couldn’t actually produce sometimes it’s just a matter of where you are when you are like what you’re you were born literally right yeah, you know, right time Right place, right situation. And then of course your intelligence has to play into that your motivation and things like that. You have to have them all but I thought that was super fascinating. So yeah, good one good and tipping point. Again, classic, it gives you the whole foundation everything you need to know for that. Let me ask question how can people watching I’m gonna ask you one more personal question Sure. Because you I like to hear I want to see I want to know a little bit about your childhood side here. You know, what is it that you wanted to be when you grew up like when you were a kid and then is this it and if not, how did you get to here from there.

Matt: Great question JC you know, I don’t think you can ever predict what’s going to happen like you look at Steve Jobs say you connect the dots looking back you know, it’s it’s famous. But when I was a kid, my dad was a salesperson, by the way he went to IU, I went to Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, I really looked up to him he’s the most humble follow through person ever like never forget to face and I was like, I want to do what he wants to do. So that’s how I initially got into sales when I when I graduated. And then I think every decade of our lives, your whole everything changes like what you’re going to do next. Right. So like that first 10 years versus the second 10 years. I wanted to get a big strategic mindset get into corporate strategy, start learning how to tell stories with Data and financial outlook and then now as Chief Business Officer, trying to figure out how to put the pieces together to build a billion dollar business. So I can’t say it’s exactly the way I figured it out. But it’s all exciting. And every 10 years, you feel like, you look ahead and you can’t be sure what’s going to happen in 10 years, you can plan for it. But it could be completely different.

JC: Yeah. And Omneky you guys, I think in the pre-show, you mentioned something about a round of funding. Did you guys explain that – did you guys get funded? Are you working on it? Sure. We

Matt: Just closed out a fundraising round in November. So we are hiring through our next stage of growth and bring on some amazing leaders and some of the best engineering and AI scientists across the world right now. So they’re all joining the team, and they’re going to help us build everything we’re talking about, to help our customers grow faster.

JC: Wonderful, wonderful. Congrats, by the way. I mean, that’s, that’s a big deal.

Matt: Thank you.

JC: How can people listening a reach get to the company site? And then be how can they reach out to you personally if they have more higher level bigger deals to propose?

Matt: Sure. So you can reach out to me at Matt at Omni key.com au mneky.com, or Matt Squale, on LinkedIn. And you could also just go directly to our website and schedule a demo and then put in the notes there that you heard us on The Future of Biztech.

JC: Cool, yeah, let me know if anybody comes out there. I will. Awesome. So for everyone listening out there. Again, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, give it that five star rating with a little bit of comments on it, so that other techies like us can find it and enjoy hearing all about these new amazing and helpful. b2b software’s like Omneky. Matt, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I look forward to talking to you off here too.

Matt: Thank you so much, JC it’s such a pleasure. Bye bye.

Find Andrew Forman on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-givz/

JC: Welcome, everyone to another episode of The Future of Biz Tech. I’m your host, JC Granger. And I have another fantastic guest with me on the show today. And listen, if you end up loving this episode, please show your love and appreciation by following this podcast wherever you’re listening, and give it a five-star review, put some nice comments behind it because that is other techies like you and I find cool podcasts like this. And today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing the founder and CEO of Givz.com with a Z at the end. Andrew Forman. Andrew, thank you so much for being on the show. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself. And what is it that Givz does?

Andrew Forman: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on JC, this is exciting. And yeah, to give you a bit of background, what about me, and about what does Givz do? So on my end, let’s see where to even start. I did six years of investment banking, give you the real quick rundown six years investment banking also founded a nonprofit during that time. So kind of separated, they pay the bills and have some sort of impact type of deal, went back to business school, attended HBS for two years, and came out of Boston basically saying, okay, I want to start my own company that’s going to have a boat, this double bottom line type of type of activity, right, where it’s like, hey, this is good for the world. But it’s also good for the investors and shareholders in the company. And so how do you make that happen? And so Givz is doing that on a couple of different levels. And so the first thing that we do is we allow brands to run donation-based incentives. So the hypothesis is that brands are trying to get away from discounts as much as possible, the consumers really wising up and at the end of the day discounts, while they still drive short-term sales, people know that they’re just, they’re not like getting this amazing deal, they’re actually just paying for a lower quality product, and that, you know, something that’s $200, discounted to $100 really should just cost $100 in the first place. Of course, they’d rather pay $100 than $200. But if they if they will definitely pay $200 for an item that should be worth $200. And so that is kind of the rub, that brands are kind of running up against discounting here, where they’re like, hey, like, we can’t just mark it up and knock down the knockdown a discount piece, because then we’re gonna have to do that for the rest of time. And so why don’t we just sell our goods at full price for what they actually should be worth and the quality that they’re manufactured at? And then how do we incentivize people if we’re not going to use discounts? How do we incentivize people to actually care and buy right now, and that’s starting to come across as pay social impact is extremely important here. But everybody cares about different things. So how do you do it, you use donation incentives, you say, Hey, by today, you’re gonna get $10 to give to any charity you want, if you buy right now. And we make that really easy for any brand to be able to do that.

JC: So that’s cool. I mean, that’s one thing that I took a lot of interest in this when I heard about your company kind of coming through the pipeline, so to speak here, but tell us how, like E-commerce right, like, how does it work for them when they are plugging into your system? Like, like, what does that look like? In its real nature, right? So what, so they have a product? It’s $100. And they say, what? If you know, $20 of that is going to go to a charity, you pick? Like, how does it look in real-time? How is the user experience even understanding or knowing that they’re giving while buying?

Andrew Forman: Yeah so it manifests itself anywhere that you and the reason I always draw the comparison discount, because anywhere you would find out about a discount code is the same way that you’d find out that you’re going to get money to give to a charity when you buy this product, right? So the banner on top of this site, spend $300 or more on our site will give you $30 to give to a charity, which always comes in a banner, you can we’ve had companies do a bunch of social posts around this, we’ve had companies talk about it in their emails in the footer of every email, don’t forget, when you spend over $200, you get $20 to give to a charity of your choice,

JC: Does it allow the user to pick the charity does it like take them to another screen and say like now pick the charity, you want to send that $30 to or whatever?

Andrew Forman: Yes, that’s actually embedded to our tech guts embedded in the thank you confirmation page. So after somebody makes a purchase, so very importantly, you don’t want you know, from a user experience standpoint, you don’t want to take people away or make people think about what charity they want to support individually just yet until they’ve made the purchase, make the purchase know that you’re gonna get, you know, all that upfront stuff, know that you’re gonna get money to give to a charity of your choice. And that actually we’ve shown enhance, enhances their ability to say, yes, I want to buy this right now, do I really need another pair of $400 shoes? I don’t know, but I’m gonna get $40 to get the charity boom, I do it. Right. And so that is that that psychology piece up front is what we’re focused on. But in terms of what you’re asking, Okay, how does it actually work? Right after you make the purchase embedded on the thank you confirmation page, you now have $40 to get to whatever charity you care about, and you’ll see highlighted charities that the brand and cares about that you can easily choose, or you can go in and search and we have over 174,000 different charities that people can choose from.

JC: That’s really cool. Okay, see that that like that? Because it’s very engaging with the user experience? And you know, you got Yeah, what was the name of the company? Was it? Was it Tom’s what what was the one where it was like buy a pair? Give a pair? Like who started that?

Andrew Forman: Toms? Yeah, so it was, it was so thick, you know, they kind of broke the mold, you know, or created, I should say, more or less on, on that giving aspect. And we all saw the results of that, right? It was really good. But this is interesting, because it allows a little more user engagement, other than just knowing that it’s going to go somewhere, you get to actually decide and pick, which is pretty quick..

JC: Well, that’s pretty cool. So I’m a marketing guy. So I always like to ask them how are you getting the word out about Givz? I mean, you’re on the podcast. Okay, so PR check, right? What else do you are you guys doing internally to go after? And what brands? Specifically going after big, big giant ones are going after mom and pop like, you know, yeah, what’s the target and how you get in there?

Andrew Forman: Yeah, part of the issue, I think on our marketing side is that we’ve had success across the board, right? We’ve had success across the board. And so toning in on that, like who is the exact perfect customer for us has been very difficult. We’ve got h&m as our as a large largest client, we’ve got a ton of brands that you’ve never heard of as small clients, right? And so how do you focus like, well, if we get a bunch more h&m, we should really focus there. But those are hard, long enterprise sales cycles. How do you do that? For us, we started to we really invest in the Shopify ecosystem. And we recognize pretty quickly that while we could get a ton of these longtail Shopify stores, but larger Shopify stores are really ones where we wanted to focus Shopify Plus. And we’re actually now about to roll out a Shopify POS integration that is going to be really interesting for in-store shopping. So being able to allow people in the store, you know, the store can put up a sign saying, hey, when you spend over $50, today, you get $5, to give to a charity of your choice, you know,

JC: Like the little logos will pop up on the screen or something, you could just tap it kind of thing?

Andrew Forman: Exactly, exactly. So that’s, that’s something that we’re really excited about also, because it is hopefully going to get us exposure to some larger Shopify brands that already are gonna have store presence, etc, etc. So that type of you knows, physical retail presence. So that’s, that’s one thing that we’re excited about. There are a bunch of different conferences that we think about and try to and try to attend. And then it’s really been the way we’ve grown to date is really word of mouth. It’s hard to describe what it is that we do. So from a marketing perspective, I wish I would have invested in brand marketing a bit more earlier. We it is hard to I mean, not only brand marketing, but also product, product marketing, like what is it that we do and people are like, Oh, you guys do like Roundup stuff. It’s like no, we don’t do..

JC: Anybody would think it’s Roundup, because that’s another model that’s pretty popular, right?

Andrew Forman: That’s, it’s much it’s even more popular, I’d say Right. But I’d say it’s way less effective. So it’s killer on two fronts. People are like, Oh, I tried that roundup stuff. It doesn’t work. I’m like, that makes sense. Roundup doesn’t have it doesn’t make sense Roundup. Did you think about it, right? Like somebody goes into I use the instore example of CVS here and here in New York. Somebody says, oh, like I wanted to go buy toothpaste that CVS and so you’re gonna go and you’re gonna spend whatever it is five bucks and 27 cents on toothpaste. Okay, great. So you go in, you’re gonna buy toothpaste, you go to checkout, they’re like, Hey, do you want to donate an extra 73 cents to this charity that we’ve chosen for you that you probably don’t really care about? But don’t hate. I mean, it’s probably like, Okay, I don’t know, like, how many people are looking at me in line? Like, do I really? Do I really want to do this. They’re asking you for me for my own money now. And I’m like, Sure, or no. And either way, if I say yes, like, Man, I should have just like, went on Amazon and used Amazon smile or something. And like, it didn’t wouldn’t cost me anything. Or if I said, No, now I’m like, walk around feeling bad. No, I should have done it. 

JC: Yeah you can’t you can’t tell me hey, puppies, right? Like..

Andrew Forman:  Yeah, so like, that does not have good business implications for CVS. What I like about is that a lot of people end up saying Yes, for just I don’t know, for different reasons. But it gets a lot of money to that one charity, but, they certainly don’t have a better relationship with CVA. Because of it. Nobody’s like, oh, like,

JC: It inspires guilt, rather than a positive emotion where you felt like you’ve done something good, because you have choice is really the foundation of any positive emotion after the fact. Right? It’s like, knowing that you got to do it, right. And they just had, it’s like, they hand you a 20 and said, Where do you want that? 20 to go? No, oh, I’m gonna go there. And it’s not my 22 You’re 20? You know, so yeah.

Andrew Forman: Exactly, so you get the point. So it’s, you’re building that up. So So for me, the flip side of that would be the gives version of that, as CBS says, you walk into CVS, you see a sign that says, Hey, spent $50 or more today, and CVS will give you five bucks, we’ll hand you $5 to give to whatever charity you want. So now you go into the store, you’re like, Oh, I was gonna buy toothpaste. All right, I’m $5.27 all the way there. But you know what, I actually needed all this stuff. And this stuff, all of a sudden, I spent 70 bucks. And I go check out and I’m like, Okay, I spent 70 bucks, like, okay, great, here’s $5 to give to whatever charity you want, they flip the screen around, and you like, choose a charity. And now you feel great. Maybe you just, you know, last night had a charity event that you were like, add to or something, you have friends that have charities, you have family members that have charities, whatever it may be, you’re gonna give it to their charity, you’re like, This is what I truly care about. And now CVS has that information as well. So the next time they go to email you, they’re gonna say, hey, we know you care about this particular charity, come back, spend $100 This time, and we’ll give you 10 more dollars to give to that charity. Okay, so that is what we’re trying to build.

JC: So I know you touched on a little bit when we first started, but you know, what inspired you to create this, right? I mean, like, I get the idea of saying, I want to create something that can also help give back. But why Right? Like, I mean, and I don’t mean that in some nihilistic way, like, Why Does anyone care? I just mean, is that something happened? Did you go through something? Or, you know, or did you see things in the industry that you hated? And you’re like, This is bullshit, we need to, you know, make this better? I mean, what was that moment where you’re like, This is the idea. I’m not just going to make e-commerce, you know, SAS platform, I’m going to make one that does this in particular.

Andrew Forman: Yeah, I for me, so I was the treasurer of a nonprofit. And I had friends who were working at retail companies, and we were trying to make this partnership work. And it was just so much harder than it should have been so much red tape, so much internal bureaucracy on top of illegal bureaucracy that I was like, Man, this is nuts. There has to be a better way. And like our industry must be shifting towards how do you how do nonprofits and corporations work together. Because they each have something that that that the other wants, right? Like, there’s a symbiotic relationship to be struck there. And for me, I just felt, if I could build a really big business around that hypothesis, that would be the home run. And so I spent, you know, my time in business school trying to figure out where that intersection makes sense. And that’s ultimately where we should go. It was a long road to get here. My first idea was a Venmo for charitable giving. And it was a direct-to-consumer, you know, everybody downloading an app to donate to a charity of your choice that didn’t work out. And we pivoted into this, and I think this is what we should have been doing the whole time. Obviously, I wish I had known. But this is, this is where it was meant to be. And now, you know, as we think about that second piece, not only so there’s an increase in average order value or an increased conversion rate, increase in sales, however way you want to sell So when you use gifts now as an e-commerce store, but I’m already getting pressure from both the stores as well as the charities to be more connected. So you know, when somebody, when you spend that $50 or more at CVS, for example, and they spend it around which charities show up well, there should be a marketplace there where the charities that show up are actually posting about people like posting to people, Hey, go shop at CVS, spend $50 or more, get the $5. And give it to us, because they’re your you have a choice, you have an agency, you have agency, you in this model, as the end consumer, you have the power to donate to whatever charity you want. And so charity should be talking about the fact that that’s out there, and the brands would obviously love that. And there, there’s your flywheel. 

JC: Got it. If I knew then what I know now kind of like we all wish we had a time machine, right? So but this is where you’re at, you’re here now and that’s what matters. Alright, so speaking of time machine, let’s pivot towards the future. Right, the future biz Tech, we got to talk about the future. So first question is where do you see your industry going? So you know, kind of maybe the, I guess, for that you’re kind of in the middle of two industries, right? You’re in the, in kind of the nonprofit giving platform industry, but then you’re also an E-commerce, SAS industry, you know, where do you see these industries going in the next maybe five or 10 years? Whether it be through technology, legislation, culture, you know, just where you place your competitors, like, where’s this heading?

Andrew Forman: I mean, I’ve, the hypothesis for me has always been that these two worlds are going to collide, right like commerce and social impact are going in the in this in the same direction. And on a crash course in terms of people caring about what’s behind their purchase these days, it did not use to be the case. My parents did not care, right like that. They really didn’t. They’re like whatever is the lowest price for the best quality stuff. Like that’s it. I think there’s still a little bit of that. But there’s definitely like, hey, like, how did the How did this gets made now, right? Like is was it ethically sourced? Was it you know, is this going to hurt the environment if people keep buying it this way? These are real questions now that people and companies have to answer and the younger generations especially are starting to say no, we’re not going to buy something that is unethically sourced, we’re not going to do something that’s bad for the environment over and over again. So we need to start listening to this type of thing, right? And so for me, it’s they are going together culturally, it’s going to be you buy whatever you’re buying any physical and goods that you’re buying, and even virtual goods. If you’re talking about, you know, the metaverse and everything like that. Why are people buying skins in the metaverse? Why are people buying sweatshirts in real life that have particular sayings on them or particular designs is it because they want a signal? It’s all about signaling who you are as a person. And more and more people want to signal? Hey, I care about this world that we all live in together. And I think that’s where it is heading. So as much as I’d like to as much as I like to say, Yeah, I do this because we’ve sent $2 million to charity, and we’re wanting to send a billion dollars to charity. We do. And we will. But I also think this is where the world is actually moving. And therefore this is where the money is going to be.

JC: Perfect. Yeah. And that I can see that I can agree with. Now, let’s talk about your company. Right? My audience likes to get the inside track on some new stuff. So what do you got coming down the pipeline here? I mean, where’s Givz going? Specifically, maybe roadmap style features or just any general shifts or direction?

Andrew Forman: So two big things that we have in common one is that POS piece that we’re looking at. So the point of sale, for Shopify, we’re excited on that front, something that’s even more maybe techie and consumer and a bit more of a shift that we’re excited about is we’re in building out our offering and our platform, we had the Shopify integration, and then we wanted to build like a platform agnostic API so that any company could use us, right. And then as we built this out, and we were just, we’re going through the final touches of like, Hey, here’s the full platform, it’s beautiful. You can you know, any brand can now say, alright, here, I want to create a $10 to give to charity link, boom, go. We have a jewelry store that wants to create $100 links because if people spend over $1,200 at their store, they’re gonna get $100 to give to charity. Great, you can log in and create those links, no problem. And one of our engineers added a Share button on there, right? And he was like, you know, maybe, and I was like, Dude, what are you doing? That doesn’t make any sense like a jewelry store creates $100 link. They don’t want to share that all over the place. As I’m on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, because then people are going to be donating without having made the purchase that needs to be guarded, you know. But then I took a step back, and I was like, Wait a second, that’s actually interesting if we open it up back to individuals, so I do get this from my friends all the time, where they’re like, hey, like I want to donate, I want to donate 100 bucks, I don’t know where to donate that. And so if we actually open that up, that feature up to everybody, and we’re about to do this, you know, in the coming months, where we open up to everybody and put that share button on there, so I’m really glad he did this. Now you set a limit, you say, hey, I want to donate $100, I want to donate it in $5 increments. And my friends, or followers or whatever, maybe tell me where this should go. And so create, you know, a link that says the first 20 people that click on this link, allocate $5, to the charity that you care about most. And I want to support my friends. And so that’s a feature that we’re rolling out here in relatively short order that we are excited about.

JC: Very cool. Awesome. All right. Well, let me ask you, I want to switch to a personal question. So I asked this to some of my guests. What did you want to do when you like, when you were a kid? What did you want to be when you grew up? And then is this it? Or if not, how did it get here? You know?

Andrew Forman: Yeah, I mean, so when I was a kid growing up, I wanted to play football professionally, obviously, right? Like that was that was, that was a childhood dream. And then I as I got older and realize that that was not going to happen, I thought about you know, alright, what is it that you want to be when you grow up? I love math and numbers. So I was like, Alright, I could be a math teacher was like, you know, kind of the next leg and I was like, okay, but I don’t know, I don’t know that I want to make retirement plans. Still, once I’m, you know, once I’m unable to be running around and pounding the pavement all day, every day, I will retire and become a math teacher. That is something that I want to do at some point. But I think, at the end of the day, I Yeah, once I gave up on the football dream, I really didn’t know. And so I went into investment banking because that was the, you know, opportunity to in my mind that opened the most amount of doors, you could kind of do anything from there, and had a good bass of salary. 

JC: Nice. Well, listen, since you’re, you know, a young entrepreneur, if you what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given on your journey through all this? or what have you learned that you think would be the best piece of advice you could give?

Andrew Forman: Yeah, I mean, I think for best piece of advice I’ve been given, man, there’s been so much, it’s so hard to so much good advice, so much bad advice. But I think the most important piece is if you’re an entrepreneur, then your business revolves around you, you can’t separate it in the beginning, you can’t separate out, you know, oh, I think I in the beginning, I was really trying to be like, super objective and analytical about everything. And there’s just nothing to analyze in the beginning. And people are betting on you, as the CEO, as the founder, to make this thing go. So you have to bet on you and trust yourself. And make split-second decisions. And just go and run with them understanding, you know, that some of them are going to be wrong, some of them are going to be right, you’ll adjust as you go along. But you have to just put one foot in front of the other and sprint, and you have to go as fast as you can. And just and just trust yourself. And don’t hold yourself to too high of a standard. Just trust yourself that you’re not sure what the right decision is. You’re gonna make this decision. You’re gonna make the right decision. 70% of the time, great, perfect. Let’s go do it.

JC: Just launch right? You don’t have to be perfect. You’ll figure it out.

Andrew Forman: Oh, definitely. You don’t have to be perfect.  Perfection is the enemy of progress. Right? Like that is Yeah

JC: How can people reach your company? You know, like what sites now? And then also, how could they reach you individually if they have maybe some bigger deals..

Andrew Forman: Yeah, so the website is Givz.com. You can chat with me remember the team there, you can also book my calendar there. And then online, you know, I’m on LinkedIn. Always. I do get a ton of whatever stuff there. So if you have something just put a message in there and I’m happy to chat just say that you heard on me on this podcast and I will immediately accept and chat. But also on Twitter, a forum, not super active these days. But just kind of monitoring what’s going on.

JC: Perfect. And listen for everyone out there. Again, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and give it a five star rating, preferably with some writing behind it. So other techies like us can find, enjoy learning about all these amazing and helpful b2b software is on the market today. Just like givz.com Andrew, thank you so much again for being on the show. And I really appreciate you coming on and I think what you’re doing out there is great and I wish you the best of luck with it.

Andrew Forman: Thanks so much. Appreciate it. All right, bye bye.

JC: Welcome, everyone to another episode of The Future ofBizTech. I’m your host, JC Grainger, I have another fantastic guest with us on the show today. And listen to me and I’m loving this episode, please show your love and appreciation by following this podcast, wherever you’re listening, be sure to give it a five star review, preferably with some nice comments because that is how other techies like you and I find cool podcasts like this. So today, I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing Matheus Riolfi, who is the co founder and CEO of tint.ai. Matheus, thank you so much for being on the show. I want you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself, and and what is it you guys do?

Matheus: Hi, JC, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I’m the co founder and CEO of Tint, we help tech platforms embed insurance into their products. So think about the last time you use Airbnb or Uber, you don’t even think about it. But there’s actually the insurance being transacted with your service. And that’s a little bit of what helps like no, we will make easy for any tech platform to make insurance as part of their product and services. So they can sell more, they can get more profitability out of it.

JC: So let’s talk about that. I found this very fascinating, because I haven’t seen anything like this, right. And I’m a tech guy, I see a lot of stuff. And I thought this was interesting. I want to dive a little deeper into that. So give me an example. So and here’s, here’s the way I see it. But I want to I don’t know if I’m wrong here. So when you’re saying that a company can offer insurance to its customers, for the use of their platform, is that like saying, If I’m using an email marketing software, and it accidentally sends out the email with the token of first name, instead of the actual name, I say, Well, what the hell? And there’s an insert, like I guess, you know, give me an example of where the insurance comes in and what types of platforms people typically would want to see this on.

Matheus: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s get an example of a real customer that is public, there’s a company called “Neighbor”, which is like, think about Airbnb for storage. So you can rent out your garage space for somebody else. And they can leave their things, their car, boxes, whatever it is. And we help “Neighbor” create a kind of protection product that, you know, if you leave your things in storage, something happens, it’s broken, there’s water damage, whatever may happen, you get paid, right? So the idea is that of all the companies we will work with, by making insurance a feature of their products, they actually kind of the value of the product and service increases to the customers right so at the beginning of the show, I thought about our mentioned Airbnb idea. So if there’s damage now you can rent out your place on Airbnb, there is damage as the host you get paid because Airbnb got some insurance in place. So imagine Airbnb now have to go and convince people to let strangers come to their house, we know assurance and saying, by the way, if something wrong happens, and it will happen, it’s your problem. Like if you are by yourself, so like obviously, the service wouldn’t work without that protection.

JC: Okay, now that makes sense. That again, I was thinking Airbnb when you were saying like that, maybe were one. What about other digital types of like, what about software platforms of use for b2b Right, because those are more b2c? So I understand a consumer need for insurance. Can you give us an example of a b2b style one?

Matheus: Absolutely. So we see a huge trend in a lot of different vertical SaaS platforms. So vertical SaaS B– those companies were businesses can run their operations. So again, one of our customers called guest T, they help property managers rent out their spaces in our Airbnb verbal are many different channels. So they can run their calendars they can run their cleaning, like all those kinds of services that you need to do to manage the property on guests, your guests is the fact of the operating system. So what we do we work with those kinds of companies to help them protection as one part of the stack that they offer, because now they’re covering one more necessity that the business will have and the beauty like that we’ve seen with this vertical SaaS and others is that they know the customer very well they have a great relationship so they already paid to acquire that customer. So it’s literally the insurance distribution insurance or the the protection product comes as a net profit that kind of center to to those companies.

JC: That’s cool. So I was I was looking at your website, which like I have over here to my other screen there wasn’t sees me going. Oh, yeah, I was I was looking at some other stuff here to tell me about how your system decides how the insurance let’s say numbers work. I mean, it’s Tint.ai, right? So there’s an artificial intelligence somewhere in here. Let’s talk about the tech like the fun stuff, the tech stuff, like how is it deciding and figuring out what to charge what to cover things like that? Sure. So

Matheus: We the way we work because that we do three main things to those companies right as a way to provide this end to end solution to help them create their own embedded protection products. So we help them with all the technology. So as you mentioned, all the court systems that need that run in the background, from who sees what price, what price they cease? Who do we keep track of who purchase? What if there is a damage, like how does this person get paid? Like all those things, these were kind of our software stack. And then we also help those companies with now the back office and compliance. Now insurance is a highly regulated space. So there are a lot that goes behind the scenes to make that happens in the right way. And then we also help those companies can transfer the risk. So getting some insurance or reinsurance partners that would actually take the risk of those companies work. Now, if we double click on the softer part, which is more and more the AIP is that we can support any pricing logic. And we work with actuaries we work with some of the kind of data and actuary folks to come up with like, what’s the right price that should be charged for the users and we have everything from the same price for everybody very simple, all the way through using machine learning some sophisticated algorithms to try to come up with this pricing.

JC: Can people set their own pricing? Or is it just based off the model from your, your software?

Matheus: It’s a combination of both, we typically can provide some expertise in some guidance, but we we have a partnership with our customers where they eventually control the customer, they control the user expertise. So they are welcome to tweak some of those kind of pricing suggestions that we can may come up with.

JC: Nice. Okay, so what motivated you to start this company? I mean, like, what kind of history do you have? Were you working for some insurance company and you’re like, This is crap, and I need to I need to make the system better. I mean, like, just what was your motivation for even creating this?

Matheus: And I think you’re right, so that was a little bit of motivation. So I mean, as most people work in insurance, I didn’t, I came to this path a little bit by accident. So I joined I am originally from Brazil, graduated from business school. And I joined a company called Turo, a peer to peer car sharing marketplace. Now, it’s up to the moment. Yeah, it’s a multi billion dollar business now. But when I joined the was not 15 People startup. And a turns out like I was leading international expansion.

JC: I hope you kept your stock options, by the way.

Matheus: I did. It I did exercise them. Then also there were I spent four years with the company. But yeah, my job was to launch the business abroad. And 80% of my time was spent understanding insurance of the city how things were working in Canada and the UK, a friends in many other countries. And you know, in parallel, my co founder, who was also an early employee at Turo was the head of data science. So he was coming up with the models, this pricing logics that you did you ask for the data talked about. And we realize the same problem and opportunity right there put the problem that the opportunity was that Turo was no coming, launching and processing hundreds of millions of dollars of insurance premiums or protection fees, as they call it. So we’re seeing the clear benefit. And the business really couldn’t exist without this, this this insurance protection. But we also saw how hard it was for a company that is not in the core business of insurance. That doesn’t happen software engineers that are dedicated to this piece of the business, like how hard it was for them to actually make things work. So that’s really what inspired us to start tends to make ease, you know, really at the product that we wish existed when we were working into and creating similar products for them.

JC: Very cool. Does this apply to any kind of service based, right? Because I’ve so far what I’m hearing, it’s more about when there’s products or something at risk, which makes sense for insurance. But let’s say for example, like I’m dating girl who owns a talent agency right now, so every now and then something can happen in a client can, let’s say pay to have talent show up for a certain gig. But something could happen and that talent either doesn’t make it or they maybe they break something while they’re there. Who knows. Right? Yeah, yeah. Would your insurance work for a business like that? Or a business like mine, like marketing? Right? If marketing goes bad, like if an advertising agency puts out something that is false advertising, for example, by accident or on purpose? Who knows? Can that be covered through what you’re doing? So how about service based industries?

Matheus: Absolutely. So there were for example, we have one of our customers, it’s called “deal”. So they help companies hire contractors abroad and they provide all the contracts, the payments, like all everything you need to have a contract are working for you in a country outside the US. And we worked with them to create what is called misclassification guarantee. So basically, if deal tells you it’s okay to hire this person, say in Italy as a contractor, and it turns out, they’re wrong. And then this person is suing you fall misclassification, like, I was saying that they actually he or she was an employee, not a contractor, this coverage is protection from deal will pay the legal fees up to a certain amount. So this is an example of the appears service where it can the protection can work in your example of the of the talent, and then when we are thinking is like, as a business, what are the risks that your customer has, when they are contracting you that if you were to get those risks to go away, you would sell more, that is the mostly the ultimate way of thinking about embedded insurance and better protection. Because there’s, there’s a clear risk in this case, the risk is like your talent, breaking something, can’t lay down your structure product and saying, by the way, you can have a pre premium tier of my service that if that were to happen, then you know, you, you are covered up to X amount and..

JC: And if they deny the coverage, and in a way that can also maybe protect the business from lawsuits like, hey, we gave them a chance to cover this. And they did. And now that may not work in every state, but I could see a legal argument. If you offer insurance, if something goes wrong, it might help you in a lawsuit. If you’re sued for the thing that went wrong, that they denied that they declined the coverage for.

Matheus: Yeah, I think, you know, we the way we work normally with those things like we have a compliance department and with the legal team that will kind of go to the bottom of this and know the exact use case know exactly what’s happening to just confirm, like what or not say, well, you’re saying it’s right. But the principle seems to apply, right, which is the you you’re naming that risk. And then in a way, you’re kind of offering the ability to go away. So that’s a good, okay, it’s a good way of being transparent. And the reality is like your customers, if the risk is real, your customers are already thinking about it. And in our case, like a lot of our prospects that when they come to us, they’re already hearing from their customers, that there is a pain point. So those are the kind of the best use cases for us when he’s like, No, you’re already hearing, you’re already dealing with that pain. So we help you transform that pain into a profit center, or it’s something that not only protects your customer, but also can accelerate your growth and your profitability.

JC: Very cool. So I’m a marketing guy by by trade. Right. So my next question is, how are you guys getting the word out there about? I mean, you’re on a podcast, that’s one thing, right? You got a PR angle, right? But beyond that, are you guys doing like paid ads, social media, SEO? I mean, what kind of things do you use to get out into the market,

Matheus: We do have, like some PR related efforts or thought leadership efforts, I think it’s a very nascent industry. So there’s quite a bit of education that we do. And I think that we see that as a way to just kind of put the message, the message out there, we do have a lot of content creation. So now not necessarily talking to the ship directly, but blogs, and constantly in other channels as well, because again, relates to the education piece. We also have a direct sales force or outbound channel where we can reach out to companies and like create so we use a combination of both we don’t do a lot of pay just Yeah, we didn’t do a lot of pay in 2022, I think is absolutely in our plan for 2023 to be more aggressive on pay. But our know our hypothesis is that paid is we’re not as the plant is an industry or the vertical been such a nascent, it’s not the point yet we’re paid will be the most scale a scalable, kind of higher ROI channel, but we will start making a lot more experiments with that next year.

JC: Yeah, you have a lot to choose from, right. I mean, I just I like what you’re doing, because it’s fairly unique. I’m sure you have competitors. Everyone does, right. But I can guarantee it’s, it’s small, right? Because this this type of thing, especially with the way you do it, I think is very cool and very unique. The Future of Biz Tech Podcast, I got to ask the question, the future questions, right?  First one is, where do you see the industry of this type of insurance and going right, so you and your competitors, and just in general? I mean, you know, this is something I think is going to evolve, just given where things are going. So where do you see that next five to 10 years, whether it be because of regulation or legislation, or technology or just economy? You know, where do you see the overall industry of where you’re at the evolving to.

Matheus: Yeah, we are in my point of your most exciting time in the insurance industry, since it was created hundreds of years ago, right? I know that exciting and insurance are not necessarily requirements that go together.

JC: I didn’t want to I didn’t want to say I kind of want to say it. But I was like that is like you heard it here first guys. Exciting and insurance using the same sentence. But I agree with you this because this stuff fascinates me. I like the tech side of it.,

Matheus: Yeah, no, absolutely. So what what’s happening here, right, the bigger trend of like every talking about here is that insurance is becoming a feature, not a product, right? You have now all those tech platforms. And again, we use Airbnb and Uber as examples, but those now came or 10-15 years ago, and obviously they are at scale now. But there are many examples like no Apple,  Flexport, Tesla, like everywhere you look, you see known insurance companies launching their own insurance embedded insurance products, because they realize that that makes their core business better. So in a way, like think about insurance, right is this product that was created 300 years ago, that kind of looks and feels the same. And even with the Internet of like now the the beginning to the 2000s in the mobile app, in the 2010 or so it wasn’t the same product, it’s just instead of be sold by an agent on the street, it was sold by via mobile app or via website. But fundamentally the same product, same everything with embedded that changes, right? Because again, the companies are going to be the ones driving it. It’s like Apple Care is branded by Apple, it’s run by Apple, where it’s part of apple stack when you buy an iPhone, and it is a protection product, right. And in this new world, it everything changes the unit economics change, because now guy calls and progresses, the world spend 25% of the dollar that premium that you pay in premiums in advertising. So every time you have your car insurance, then you spend $10,000 a year, 250 to 300 of that go to that guy on TV that you know on the radio that you see over and over. So in this world where the customer has already been acquired, that expense is gone. Apple already paid for the iPhone advertising. So the Apple Care distribution costs is virtually all the technology like all the things that happened behind the scenes. So in 10 years, a lot of insurance products won’t be standalone anymore, there will be features of brands that people love.

JC: I liked that idea that that feature instead of a product. That’s interesting. Okay, so let’s dial down a little bit more. Now. Let’s talk about your content. Where do you see you guys in the next six to 12 months? And if you have any, like cool roadmap features, like my audience loves to hear the new stuff for us. What What can you give us? What kind of preview? Can we extract out of you today?

Matheus: Is a great question. So we know being the last few months, really laser focused on or like launching new products in the shipping vertical. Like we had a over 10 different use cases on our platform already. But we think shipping is one that was getting a lot of traction. So you’ll see a lot of our kind of next kind of rollouts coming in the shipping and shipping protection industry. And in six to 12 months, I think you should expect to see a lot on the vacation rental as well. So again, supporting the property owners who are putting their properties out for short term rentals, and making sure that when things that go wrong, and they will in a certain percentage of times they get paid and then we can keep making money with their product.

JC: That’s awesome. So thank you for those two because I I always need that in the podcast, but we got it we always got to look ahead and not just what’s what’s right here. I want to ask you a personal question. We’re gonna switch gears a little bit here. What did you want to do when you were a kid? Like what do you want to be when you grew up when you were a kid? And then is this it? Did you want to be like a tech, you know, CEO, or it wasn’t a firefighter? And then how to how did you get to here from there kind of thing.

Matheus: So I want it to be two things right? So I’m lucky that I ended up and one of the two options. I think, I wanted to be like athlete. I always love sports in general. I play again from Brazil. I played soccer from a very early age. I played tennis from early age as well. Unfortunately, it was never really good to pursue that professionally. So that was that that route was off the table. But the other route was to be a founder so I was one of those kind of kids were had the lemon stand type of things. Doing things and creating things on the side trying to monetize a few ideas here and there. So I always enjoy that. So I mean, luckily, I ended up really in one of the two options that really wanted for me in the future.

JC: So that’s great, because you know, we’d love people, some people nail it, right? And other people, like just life kind of pulls them in different directions. And you should, we should, we would adapt to, you know, changing circumstances and things like that. So that’s cool, though. I like that. I love that you’re from Brazil, my first international trip I ever did. First time I ever used my passport, I went to Rio for carnival 10 days solo. And it was wild. Oh, man, that was my first trip, like talking about diving headfirst into an empty pool, right? Like, it was nice.

Matheus: It’s probably the most intense time you can come to Brazil. So you went from zero to 1000. Right away.

JC: Yeah. And I was staying in Ipanema, right. And like right there on board, it was fantastic. So love your country, although I will say this is a warning to anyone. They have this thing out there called the Black Sun. And I’d never heard of this term, the Black Sun and I was like, what’s the black sun and I found out the hard way because I was sitting on the beach under this like abandoned thing, right? Like an umbrella cabana thing. And half of my foot was outside of the shade. Just half, maybe sitting there for 15 minutes talking to someone looked down my foot. And it is, I mean, beat red. Beat that fact that I want to have and I was like, how is that possible to get that burnt that fast? And apparently, just the humidity in the haze that’s up near, you know, when the sun’s out. They call it the black sun because you can basically burn so fast. And I was completely unprepared for that. I was like, Whoa, so so anyone listening, just make sure that you wear your sunscreen and have a lot of shade if you’re going to be out there when the Haze is out. So yeah. How can people reach you? Well, first, how can they reach the company if they want to just take out the website, whatnot? And then how can they reach you personally if they have some bigger prospect of higher end deals for you.

Matheus: So if the company came go through our website, we have many kind of forms and different ways there we do check all of them, we guarantee that you’re gonna get an answer. So that’s definitely a good place to start. If you want to reach out..

JC: It’s TINT.Ai

Matheus: Exactly, TINT.Ai. And if you want to talk with me personally, good channel can be my LinkedIn. So you can just probably search my name, you will find me and I’m also very active on LinkedIn. So be happy to chat mine.

JC: And if anyone listening has Matheus. MATHEUS, and then RIOLFI, RIOLFI correct?

Matheus: That is right.

JC: Perfect this way to try to find it on LinkedIn and make sure they don’t end up with someone else. Right?

Matheus: Yeah, yeah. The good news is that I do believe there’s only one Matheus Riolfi in the world so I think you probably not gonna get if you spell it right.

JC: Hear that ladies? He’s one of a kind. For everyone listening out there. Again, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and a five star rating. Put some cool comments behind it so others, like other techies like us can find it and enjoy learning about all the really cool b2b tech software on the market today. Matheus thank you so much for being on the show. And I actually look forward to talking to you after this because I have a lot of interest in your in your feature type product here soon. So thank you for coming on.

Matheus: Thank you so much JC It was a pleasure. Bye bye