April 2, 2025 • 42 mins
Serial entrepreneur Dmitri Love takes us behind the curtain of building three different tech companies, sharing both the triumphs and failures that have shaped his entrepreneurial journey.
From creating a marketplace that connected 60,000 off-duty firefighters with paying gigs (Hydrant) to developing a crypto investment platform that ultimately collapsed after the FTX scandal (Bundle), Dmitri doesn't hold back on the realities of startup life. His current venture, Peas, tackles the growing trend of couples managing finances separately while still needing tools to collaborate effectively – already attracting 14,000 users with its conversational AI approach.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dmitri reveals what really happens on Shark Tank. His two-and-a-half-hour pitch was condensed to just minutes for television, with producers crafting storylines that might differ from reality while maintaining the genuine interactions between entrepreneurs and sharks. As he puts it, "what happened while I was there is not what was portrayed on the show."
Most compelling is Dmitri's perspective on the venture capital landscape in America's Heartland versus coastal tech hubs. Despite building cutting-edge technology companies, he notes that "100% of my investors have come from higher density areas" – not his home region of Northwest Arkansas. He articulates a crucial distinction: Silicon Valley investors back founders more than specific business models, understanding that even if a venture fails, talented entrepreneurs will build again. This mindset shift could transform regions looking to foster innovation ecosystems.
Whether you're a founder seeking investment, curious about AI applications for small business, or interested in the real story behind reality TV pitching, this episode delivers honest insights from someone who's lived the full spectrum of entrepreneurial experiences. Ready to learn how wolves and horses think differently about business? Listen now and share your questions for future episodes at bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome everybody to another episode of Big Talk
About that Small Business.
It's actually Big Talk AboutSmall Business.
I just threw in a that, tryingto be super hip and cool,
Missing my co-host today, MarkZweig.
He's actually out doing boardmeetings or something like that,
taking care of that businesselsewhere.
But that's okay, because I havea fantastic guest for us today,
(00:31):
Mr Dimitri.
Love Dimitri, welcome to theshow, man.
Thanks, man, Thanks for havingme.
You got it.
So Dimitri and I go way back ina very small little bit.
We were both young scrappingentrepreneurs.
Way back in the day you werejust getting your thing kicked
off, I had white spider it'sprobably early on the days into
I was.
I was young back then.
(00:51):
Yeah, there was a point in mylife I was young, Uh, but but
man, then we we just recently,because of actually the show we
were somehow we got reconnectedon LinkedIn and, man, it was.
It's really awesome to getreconnected with you and to
bring you in and tell you about,tell the world about your story
, because you have actually areally fantastic entrepreneurial
(01:12):
journey and so really excitedfor the listeners to hear that.
You know, why don't you tell usa little bit about your
entrepreneurial career, how yougot started and get us set up on
that.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, man, yeah.
So I have built three companiesso ended up building kind of
the thumbtack for firefightersso you could hire an off duty
firefighter to do handyman typework for residents or businesses
.
So if really, yeah, if you'reat your home and you needed to
clean out your gutters, we hadan army of like 60,000
firefighters you could employ todo that.
(01:47):
Or if you're a business and youneeded to do demolition or
literally anything, you couldhire off-duty firefighters to do
it.
Off-duty firefighters, fourhours on, 48 hours off, yeah.
So they have like a reallypredictably unpredictable
schedule so they have a lot ofopportunity to do, you know, gig
(02:09):
type work.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And you know my co-founder, dave, and I we just
saw an opportunity there and thefirefighters like that too, I
guess right, because they kindof they would like to, yeah,
make some extra money.
Yeah, keep busy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And they're also highly qualified individuals
qualified, trustworthy ifanything goes wrong in your life
like firefighter's going to bethere.
That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, that's really cool.
So you guys built a tech stackthat kind of brokered that right
.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, so it was a marketplace.
So we ended up partnering withthe International Association
for Firefighters, so weonboarded them.
And then there were two partsof the business.
If you were a business, youcome on board and search for
(02:52):
firefighters to do you know agig.
You would post a job and say Ineed 10, 15, 5, 2 firefighters.
If you're a consumer, you woulddetail the job similar to like
thumbtack or task rabbit andinstead of like a contractor
showing up, a firefighter wouldshow up.
So that's really cool, yeah,man.
So what was the next one?
Uh, the next one?
Uh, it's tattooed on my arm ifyou could see that but it's
called Bundle.
So Bundle was the acorns forcrypto, so you could invest your
spare change from debit andcredit card purchases into
(03:14):
cryptocurrency.
So if you had, when did youlaunch that?
So that was 2018.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, so you launched the Firefighter.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Firefighter was 2017.
2017.
Okay, funny story about that.
So ended up meeting myco-founder, dave.
This was at a venture studiocalled Capital Factory down in
Texas, and what I wanted to dois just like kind of break into
the startup ecosystem.
And Dave had no idea how tobuild software or experiences
and I did so we partnered up,ended up building that startup
ecosystem, and dave had no ideahow to build software or
(03:45):
experiences and I did so wepartnered up, ended up building
that.
And then I saw this opportunityfor bundle and I was like, hey,
man, we got our thing going,it's running.
I'm gonna go build this andI'll be here to help, with hydra
on the side, and ended upstarting them basically around
the same time nice, did you haveexperience with crypto and all
that before?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
no, no bro, no bro.
No it was.
That's a complicated space man.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It was.
It was crazy.
Yeah, I wish I could go throughthe entire story, but that was
a high learning curve for me.
We were breaking into a spacethat hadn't even been formed yet
.
We were building identityproducts that hadn't even been
conceived yet.
Now if, like identity productsthat hadn't even been conceived
yet, like now, if you go to anyfinancial app you have to do
(04:28):
something called KYC, which is,you know, verifying your
identity, your address, your ID,take a selfie, all that good
stuff and we had to build thatbefore it existed, so it was a
whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
A lot of security and stuff in there, right, security
compliance, and you're veryvulnerable.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's high risk, security, fraud prevention.
It was cool.
I learned a lot.
That's kind of why I focus onfinancial services now.
So you know, was able to learna ton about.
You know how to structureFinTech and how to structure
really good financialexperiences, how to stay safe
(05:07):
doing that and what type of datato show users and what type of
data to protect, uh, what typeof data to avoid all that good
stuff.
But, yeah, bundle was great, um, so just to tell you, the end
of uh, both of them, so hydrantwe sold in December of 2023 and
Bundle actually died.
So Bundle are you familiar with?
(05:29):
Ftx?
Like Sam Bankman, freed, longstory short, big fraud in the
crypto space, like $16 billionworth.
He's in jail and he took a lotof companies with him.
So our liquidity provider hadabout 60% of their allocation
tied up.
So at the time, we had about ahundred thousand actives.
(05:49):
We're doing $10 million a yearor so in transaction volume and
we got cooked and yeah, whichdidn't have the balance sheet to
recover, and that also taughtme the other side of the
business, which is failure.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, yeah, yeah, man, yeah, yeah, but the but, which
is failure.
Yeah, yeah man, yeah, butHodgson, it's called Hodgson,
right, it sold, had a good exitthen.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, mid seven figures.
It was good for me when I wasyoung.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, no, that's great, and then okay.
So after Bundle, then what doyou have going on?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So I'm now building Peace, peace.
Yeah, so we're building aconversational AI for couples
actually to learn how to dotheir money better, to get the
power of a joint bank accountwithout actually having one.
So, for example, if you haveChase and your partner has Bank
of America, you can come to usand split expenses like rent,
you can ask anything about yourmoney, you can budget together,
(06:43):
all while keeping your separatebanks.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Really ask anything about your money.
You can budget together allwhile keeping your separate
banks, and so this is kind oflike a precursor to, maybe,
somebody that's wanting to getmarried but they're not married
yet, but they're living togetheror they're starting to tie in.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, so we learned that the new generation, like
Gen Z, they have a deep desireto keep their money separate and
you know I come from a verytraditional background.
My wife and I share financesand all that good stuff and you
know we wanted to buildsomething to kind of be the
stepping stone to that.
So these joint moneyrelationships, they're coming
more prevalent as the world getsmore expensive and people
(07:18):
cohabitate longer and longer anddivorce rates are up 60% Insane
.
Yeah, so we wanted to buildsomething to actually funny.
You mentioned divorce.
60% of divorces cite financialdisagreements.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's like huge.
Yeah, it's huge.
And so I think that's probablythe thought process there is is
that you don't intertwinecompletely.
That way, if the break happens,then there's not so much to
untwine, I guess, in a way ifthat's the right word, right,
and so they're kind of almostself-protecting, but at the same
(07:53):
time they're joining forces tohelp with overall expenses of
life.
Yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, and we've learned so much.
You know, we learned that, like, like, how different couples
think about running together.
Some of them really requirethat privacy, as I mentioned,
and then some of them reallyhave like different types of
considerations, like you know,being able to automatically
split bills together.
That was really important andinformed by our user base.
(08:19):
So it's been great.
We're up to 14,000 users so farGreat, man.
When did you start this?
So we incorporated October of24.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, we're young.
Yeah, so we've raised justunder a million Nice and yeah,
we're just getting off theground building and you already
got 14,000 subscribers basically.
(08:42):
Yeah.
So what happened is we wentviral on tiktok so posted some
ugc content as you know, onedoes in this age, yeah, and uh,
a few of them went viral, so wegot a great wait list, started
onboarding them and startedlearning a ton.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, do you find that the?
So?
Was there a beta period withthis, I mean?
Or or did they log in, startsubscribing and then you're
learning?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, that's a funny question, because I still feel
like we're in the beta period.
Yeah, right, right, you knowit's a-.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But to your users it's like man this software's
working or not working right.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah.
So what really took off is webuilt this conversational AI.
We call her Penelope, it'scalled Pease Everything's Pease,
themed like two peas in a pod.
Gotcha, it's cool, yeah, andPenelope is an insane piece of
software.
So we basically took the ideaof Mint, so the budgeting tool,
(09:35):
mint and chat GPT and put themtogether so you can ask anything
about your money.
You can ask how much you spenton DoorDash the past three weeks
.
You can ask to help you plan avacation.
You can ask what your net worthis, anything you can think of
that you would want to ask yourmoney or learn about your money.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You can ask have you had to learn like the?
I mean?
So there's another layer ofprotection in here too, right?
You've got AI, large languagemodel messing with somebody's
financials, so imagine thatthere's a box around that.
That's got to be super secure.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, I can tell you how we thought about it.
Yeah, I mean it's interesting,yeah, so one of the things that
we wanted to do is that was oneof the first considerations when
trying to send financial datato an LLM.
So, without going too technical, there's kind of three big
buckets of ways that you canbuild AI.
So the first one is you haveyour own model.
(10:28):
So this would be like an openAI or an anthropic who you know.
Their whole job is just tobuild an LLM right.
The other bucket, on like thefurther side, would be prompt
engineering.
So you just send, you know, astructured piece of text through
an LLM, like open AI, and youget a response back and you have
to send all of your data, allof everything, in with it.
(10:50):
Yeah, there's a middle groundthat we found out where you can
use something called embeddingsand you can embed specific types
of anonymized data into thetransaction.
So, from the LLMs perspective,it only sees you know numbers,
or it doesn't see PII, like itdoesn't know who this is for
their name.
Um, you know where they're at,what their bank account balance
(11:12):
is.
It only sees number that'srelevant to the query.
So we only use the LLMspecifically to answer a
question Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So it's basically all encrypted and to some fashion.
So it's basically all encryptedin some fashion.
So it's not their information'snot getting pulled into like an
open AI's LLL Nope.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
What's in there, like most of the tools that we have
in terms of you know, likecalculating net worth, or like
some of the more sensitivethings, are internal tools, the
LLM's really for naturallanguage processing.
So like being able tounderstand what the user is
actually asking and then givingthem a contextual answer
afterwards.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So does it kind of lives in that natural language
processing, then it kicks over,probably into the encrypted side
, pulls the information, then itspits it back out to basically
how that's working?
You know, I didn't reallyintend to get into this
conversation, but I think it'shighly relevant as far as, like,
I mean, I think something thatour listeners would really
(12:09):
appreciate is about AI and whatit's doing for business in
general.
Right, I mean, I know there's alot of dialogue about it, but I
mean for our startup listeners,right, somebody that's starting
up a business owns a businesstoday, a small business.
I mean, what's your perspectiveon what AI is doing in business
(12:32):
in general, and then, howshould one really be using it
right now?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, I know it's a big question.
It's a big question.
I could talk about it for hours.
Yeah, it's a big question.
I could talk about it for hours.
Yeah, I think the first thingis that if you're an SME, if
you're an enterprise, if you'rea mom and pop shop, you should
be utilizing AI tools or AI insome way, shape or form.
All it does is just help speedup execution, speed up your
(13:01):
efficacy as a business.
It just helps Right.
In terms of how you should useit, I think you know there's a
lot of research, like some teams.
In my opinion, enterprise teamsare going a little too far.
They're trying to build, youknow, their own model and manage
their own LLM, and it's just,yeah, it's too much, it's.
You know, instead of relying onthe tech that's being built,
(13:22):
they kind of want to keep it inhouse, which I understand.
Enterprises have the balancesheet to do that.
But just use the tools that areavailable to you because
they're really really good Interms of how.
When it comes to, I mean, I cananswer this in terms of B2B or
B2C or brick and mortar, but ifI were to just pick a few things
(13:46):
, you know, lead gen is a bigway to use AI, um and the
automation that comes with it,um so how does that, how does
that work practically speaking?
Yeah.
So if you're um, if you're alaw firm, you have to find
clients right, you have toprospect for clients and some of
the bigger firms.
Instead of going off of kind ofword of mouth and relationships
, they start running ads, theystart doing kind of like reach
(14:07):
out.
They have their paralegalsreach out to specific people and
companies and you can automateall of that with AI tools.
You can set up a farm to sendout your offer or send how you
can help and once a qualifiedlead comes in, you can automate
the conversation with them allthe way to where they book a
meeting with you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Until it gets to that qualified level and you enter a
human then for a humanconversation, exactly, yeah, I
think that you know, like, mythought process on it is pretty
similar.
It's like what can a smallbusiness do?
That's just really practicaland tactical, right, you know?
I think that one like, ifyou're starting out, I mean, it
can be overwhelming and it's alittle bit scary.
(14:44):
You get little analysis,paralysis.
There's so many tools, you knowI mean, but you know I mean in
all from all uh purposes,getting my team to adopt ai as a
as just you think about it inline with how you'd normally do
in business, right?
And so, instead of you know,you get a PDF document or
(15:06):
whatever, and it's this longdocument and your typical
natural behavior is just startreading that and you immediately
think, oh, this is going totake me 30 minutes, when do I
have the time?
You know, and it causes thosetypical stressors.
What AI is really great at isit can actually reduce a lot of
that traditional behavior andsave you a tremendous amount of
time by just running it through.
(15:26):
You know a processor, and thenyou get the summary, bullet
points, and then now you got thegist and you move on.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, so it's funny.
You mentioned that.
I know we're being recorded.
So I have this little thing.
It's called a plaud.
I know the founder of this.
How do you spell that?
P-l-a-u-d.
Okay, and it's an AI voicerecorder.
So there's a million voicerecorders that have been built
ever.
It's super thick.
Check it out.
Yeah, you stick that on theback of your phone.
(15:54):
Yeah, you stick it on the backof your phone, and I'm not
sponsored by them.
This is just a product Iabsolutely adore.
You turn it on and record aconversation, whether it's a
phone call or a conversationlike this, and once you're done,
you can run it through an LLMand it starts giving you things
like a mind map whatconversational points there were
, any follow-ups you need tomake?
(16:15):
So for me, busy entrepreneur,where I can't remember anything
or take notes like I properly,should I just turn this on, let
me ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Could you turn?
I mean, you could turn it onjust for yourself and record
thoughts and it organizes it foryou.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
All right, man.
So where do you get that thingat?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, so you can get it on Amazon.
You can get it on their website.
It's $100.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
$100.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Does it come with a case?
I bought a stronger one becausethat case kind of sucked.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, it was unideal.
That's got you and so youbought a different.
Is it a plug case?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, you can find them on Amazon, so you can buy
this and then just look up likeleather case for the plug order
on Amazon and they also make onethat's.
It's like a necklace, so it'slike a you can just put it
around your neck.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I like that idea, man , so it's always with you, yeah,
is it waterproof, so in myshower I can be talking.
So that would be slick.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I that's hilarious.
You mentioned that.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
So I put my phone.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
on top of like I have a little like sill, but I don't
know if I'd get it wet.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
They should make a waterproofversion.
They should, yeah, but okay.
So how does that attach intoyour phone though?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, magsafe, so you get an iPhone, right?
No, no, I just say I'm sorry.
So most iPhones have.
They come with a ring, so ring.
So if you don't have an iphone,you put this ring on your case
and it'll just attach to it.
I did this for extra adhesion,I guess, but most iphones have a
mag safe so you can just clickand just clicks on there and
stays on there.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
that's really cool, glad you brought that.
But so that's a good exampleright of like the reality is is,
if you think about it correctlyas an entrepreneur or business
person, ai is like your gift ofall gifts from all eternity,
past Prime example, so much thatbounces in our head.
Right, there's so many thingswe're dealing with, a hundred
(18:12):
different things that are neverin a single zone, yeah, and so
the ability to spit back out anddepend on some sort of
technology to organize thosethoughts to help you get your
to-do tasks done, or evenvisionary thinking A lot of my
stuff happens with when I'm justthinking of these ideas or
directions we need to go, or newmarkets to hit, and there's all
this different stuff to have aplace to put that, because I
(18:36):
learned a long time ago there'slike this, you know, an
organizational theory of mine.
Practice has always been a stuffbook, right?
So if you think of your brainas like a computer, you only
have so much RAM and if I justkeep that clogged up and I don't
get that somewhere and I knowthat it's safe, then it just
stays bottled up.
That's where the stress comesin.
(18:56):
But if I can at least get itout.
And you know, historically itwas just writing it down that it
would be taking notes on thephone.
But this is under the level ofa faster stuff book, that where
it's going somewhere beingstored and now I'm free to think
and operate.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Right, I'll show you something hilarious.
I literally so.
One of the reasons why I boughtthis plot is I have an entire
list of like all my ideas andthings I want to explore in my
notes and I just got to be somuch.
I needed.
I needed something.
I need something to organize it.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I love it.
Man, I'm going to check thatout.
I'm glad we actually we hadthat combo.
But so I think, as a smallbusiness person, if you're
listening to this right, likeyou need to just start embracing
it, Like you don't need to needto understand generative AI and
video AI and all this kind ofstuff and create things or
whatever it might be thesehighly sophisticated programs.
There's actually really simplethings that you can do that are
(19:49):
going to immediately make yourlife a little bit easier as an
entrepreneur, so I highlyencourage that.
And then the more you do it,the more it becomes a habit, and
then you're in the game.
The worst thing you could do isignore it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Agreed.
Yeah, I mean the best thing,like if you can reduce your
margins or improve efficacy orimprove reach or automate some
portion that you're strugglingto fill a role, for it's just
better for your business, so.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
So let's talk about something else that's really
interesting I'm kind of excitedfor our listeners to hear about,
is your Shark Tank experience.
You've had some Shark Tankexperience, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh, oh, yes, uh, two of them.
So both hydrant and bundle wereon shark, oh, really, okay,
yeah, so I was the one actuallyon the show, season 10, episode
3 for bundle, and so we can gowatch you.
You can go watch me, okay,apple or google play if you want
to go find it.
And what episodes were thoseagain?
So I was season 10, episode 3,and then hydrant was I hope I'm
(20:43):
getting this right it was season13, episode five.
Ok, but you should be able tofind it.
Ok, super easy, cool.
But yeah, what do you want toknow it was?
I mean, yeah, tell us about theexperience.
I mean, I was young, so I was ababy, I was 22.
It was wild.
So I'll start sort of from thebeginning real quick.
(21:05):
The way you get on Shark Tank.
There's kind of a few paths,one of which I didn't know about
.
You go to casting calls.
That's like the normal one.
So, like there's been a castingcall here, I actually know the
casting director now and youknow she runs these little kind
of just meetups across thenation.
They have them at CES, theyhave, yeah, like a lot of
(21:27):
conferences and stuff, andthat's the first way to get
discovered.
The second way is they haveproducers that scout for
specific types of businesses,talent, and that's how we got
discovered so nice.
We launched our product.
Are you familiar with producthunt?
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we launched on product hunt,got number three the day that
we launched and so product hunt,though isn't that like a?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
that's kind of a pay-as-you-play, right?
We didn't pay, okay, yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
we didn't pay, cool that's good to know.
Maybe it is now but we didn'tpay.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Well, yeah, I was advised differently here
recently that it's basicallypay-to-play.
Maybe there's an organic.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
But on product hunt, your your technology, which one?
Uh, bundle, bundle.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, so, for those that arelistening, product hunt is a
basically a resource of new techstacks that are that are
entering the market.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yep, yeah like a directory exactly.
Yeah, there's a kind of aranking list per day and the
best products get upvoted, verysimilar to like a reddit thread,
and you're able to see.
You know who's crushing it withsome type of software.
So we were one of thosecompanies that was crushing it
and a producer reached out to meon LinkedIn and was like, hey,
(22:32):
have you considered going on theTV show Shark Tank?
And at first I thought it waskind of a scam, because who's
going to reach out to you andsay, hey, I can get you on Shark
Tank?
And I was like sure, send methe application, I'm interested,
I can get you on Shark Tank,right.
And I was like sure, like, sendme the application, I'm
interested.
And he sent over this like veryofficial, like ABC, sony
letterhead application and waslike, hey, you need to fill out
(22:53):
these disclosures and then applyhere.
And I had a whole list ofthings I had to do, like I had
to record.
It was like a nine minute videoto see like how personable I am
on camera, because that's yeah,because they like a nine minute
video to see like howpersonable I am on camera, cause
that's yeah, cause they, theywant to know that you know if
they're going to bring somebodyin and put the resources in and
they're going to crack Exactlyand apparently a lot of people
do that.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I bet, yeah, man, I mean for sure, and especially
when you walk in that room andit's go time, yeah, it's yeah,
I'll tell you about the future.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Um, so yeah, and I had to fill out.
You know, sign my life away alittle bit, yeah, I'll tell them
.
You know, hey, here's likebackground check information and
all that Cause you make sureyou're a good person.
And then, uh, it was sentstraight to ABC and Sony and
they made the decision and thenthey bring out about 150 people
to film, or 150 companies Iguess could be a little bit more
(23:45):
in terms of people if they havea co-founder and they select
120.
So we went out to la.
It was very kind of annoyinglysecretive.
They like we got in this bus,like on the way to the set.
That was like super tented,like we couldn't see outside, so
we can't see where the studiois, which was weird.
Um, I don't know if I'msupposed to say this, but I'm
(24:07):
going to.
Anyway, we were on the set ofone of the Avengers movies back
then.
Yeah, it was really cool,that's cool.
I have some illegal picturesbefore they took my phone.
But yeah, once you get in there, just things that people don't
know, I guess you know when yousee the episode you're up there
for you know three to fiveminutes, you know pitching and
(24:27):
then you get a deal or you don't.
A lot of those pitches arereally long.
Mine was like two and a halfhours, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's like a real like .
So was this the real like?
You had the sharks in thereduring your pitch.
Yeah, that's where you went.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That's the 120 people , that or 120 companies that
went there and these sharks arelistening to these 120 companies
.
Yeah, so they do it over the,they film in bursts, so they do
it over, uh, the course of aweek.
Okay, so you know, we had Ithink there was maybe like 10 or
15 per day or something likethat.
They work really hard for thatweek and then, yeah, sure, but,
um, yeah, when you walk in there, big old set, big old room, as
it looks like on tv, and theydon't know anything about you,
(25:12):
when you walk in, which, isreally cool.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So they really don't.
They haven't seen all thepre-casting information or
anything.
It's just like raw pitchesheavily scripted.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Uh, also, everything's pretty heavily
edited as well, but you, theinteractions from you and the
sharks are extremely genuine andthat's how they get so much
content and they can build somany different types of stories.
Yeah, because it's.
It's real conversations.
We talked about every part ofbundles business so, so, but
darren you're.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
when you went in there though there it was you
said there's like two and a halfhour conversation between you
and the Sharks.
It was like a real VC pitch,real VC pitch.
And then they just obviouslyedited it down to the five
minutes for the show or whateverit might be, and they tell the
story they want to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
yeah, yeah, they do the highlight reel, basically
yeah, I don't want to ruin itfor you, but our whole episode
was riddled with emotion, really, yeah.
So riddled with emotion, reallyyeah.
So there's a little bit ofstorytelling.
I wish I could tell you exactlywhat happened, but what
happened while I was there isnot what was portrayed on the
show, because they were able togenerate more views by telling a
(26:15):
different story.
It was really cool how they didit.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Oh, so they kind of just edited it up to tell a
different story.
Oh yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Outcome's the same Like we.
So, yeah, interesting Outcomesthe same Like we got to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they'lltell like a little bit of a
different story.
Showbiz man, yep.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So so on that experience though, uh, I mean,
do you?
So let's back up to thepracticality of it.
You're say you're anentrepreneur, build a business,
right?
Sure, Going to Shark Tank's oneof them, yeah, Going to VC's
away, right.
I mean a whole lot of differentthings In your experience with
(26:51):
that experience.
Was that a good move, you think, to get that kind of VC early
on in the business?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah.
So this is you're opening up aloaded question.
Yeah, it's actually one of thereasons why I moved back to
Arkansas.
So my opinion on venturecapital and investors it can be
the right decision for yourbusiness.
I think it just depends on howyou think about building a
business.
Like there's a lot of wayswhere you can build like a micro
(27:23):
SaaS or a SaaS that makes 20 to50K a month and you're good,
you know low overhead, you'remaking good money and you know
it's something that you can keepsustainable right.
Building a venture scalebusiness comes with its own
considerations, because now youhave to think about getting your
investors a return.
So you know for P's like wedidn't just get this million
dollars just to, you know raisefor fun and to build.
(27:46):
You know we have to say like,hey, we're going to try to sell
this thing for you know, 50million one day, yeah.
So a lot of considerationsthere and I just think you know
in the heartland, where there'sso much opportunity and so much
you know capital here and a lotof innovation that's happening,
(28:08):
I think a lot more people shouldexplore venture scale
businesses here.
I've been forced to go out tothe coasts and go compete with.
You know the open AIs andbasically every incumbent that's
worked at every major techcompany in the world who has all
the friends who can just raise$10 million in two minutes.
So you know there's thosechallenges.
(28:29):
You know coming from, you knowthe Midwest and the heartland.
So I don't know.
I think it's very valuable.
Something like shark tank wouldbe more of what I would
consider distribution.
So it's less about theinvestment that we got, it's
more about the eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, yeah.
So you know, in terms ofinvestment, though I just I
think that's again that's one ofthe reasons why I moved back,
Like I think that there's a lotof opportunity to build some
really incredible things, tobuild an ecosystem where people
actually want to come here andgo to school, like that's why
everybody's going to Stanfordbecause of its proximity to
(29:08):
Silicon Valley.
So, yeah, I think it's anopportunity if it's done right,
if the capital's put there.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, and I think on the I mean we could talk forever
about the area too it's verymuch in its infancy.
I'm excited to see the progressthat we've been making.
I'm excited to see the progressthat we've been making, but I
mean as a tech startup myselfand I have another company that
I'm So- you just launched one.
Yeah, we just launched one.
This area is not ready for that.
(29:35):
Right, it's just not ready forit.
Now, I know, and the solve thatI'm seeing that's happening
right now is they're bringingoutside investors as guests.
I'm seeing that's happeningright now is they're bringing
outside investors as guests.
But then again my thing is islike that's not helping
Northwest Arkansas necessarilybecause, like it might help,
longtail as an ex, you know, asa founder exits, assuming that
(29:57):
they exit well and they have astill a good portion of the
equity.
Yep, that makes sense rightafter the rigmarole in the
series.
Then they may become aninvestor.
But that could be a 10-year,20-year cycle.
I mean my first company, I meanmy company that I exited out on
like Spider.
I mean it was a 12-yearbusiness man, I mean it wasn't
like it happened in a year and ayear and a half and so it took
(30:17):
a while.
But I mean I think that westill have a lot of growth in
this area and I think it's aboutit's about a trend, it's about
a transitional reality of ourarea and our population
understand that there issomething to be said about be
being more of a tech, forwardthinking company and taking a
(30:38):
more of a vc mindset.
You know vcs are get like ifthey get a home run out of 10
deals, then that that's good VCbusiness.
Sure Right.
And that is a mentalitydifference between where we're
at in Heartland and what Eastand West and Coast are doing
down in Austin.
They get the one home run outof 10.
Around here it needs to be nineout of 10 of base hits.
(31:00):
Yeah, and that transition'shard culturally speaking.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
So it's funny you say thatthere's something that I think
that would really help kind ofopen up some people's minds.
The VCs and the investors youknow out in these kind of higher
density areas, you know NewYork and Silicon Valley.
Not only have they kind ofmathematically decided like, hey
, if we make enough investmentswe'll get a home run, yeah,
(31:26):
return the fund plus some rightSure For that 5, 10, 15 year
period.
I mean another thing that Ithink is really important that
they do they're willing to putthe capital in to have failures,
because that's just going todrive an entrepreneur, one of
the builders of that software,to go build something else.
That's right.
So they're investing in notonly the business to be built
(31:48):
there, but they're alsoinvesting in people and they're
investing in the ecosystem.
Dude, you're getting me excited.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Because one of our big problems is that we're
thinking about in a businessscenario.
You've got two folks in this VCor the investor scenario.
You have the founderentrepreneur scenario.
You have the founderentrepreneur, then you have the
investor and this is one of myfavorite quotes of all time and
this has made so much sense tome.
It actually helped me not thinkI was crazy a long time ago,
(32:15):
which was really important.
I didn't even know what I wasfor many years until I realized
one day oh, I am an entrepreneur.
Somebody told me I was one andI was like I don't know what
that word means and this is likefive years after I had my
business, you know.
But then I went on anothercrazy speed for another 10, five
years, not understanding whatyou know why I think the way I
do and realizing it's differentthan a lot of anyway.
(32:38):
Investors are like horses, witheyes on both sides of their head
looking for somebody tobasically take from them.
Entrepreneurs are like wolves,eyes on the front, going out and
hunting.
There is a definitive tension,clash between those two people,
or those two parties.
Right?
What we're doing in our arearight now is we're really
focused on the horses, theinvestors, you know.
(32:59):
And so to your point, if you'refocused on all the horses and
trying to build a horsingcommunity with a bunch of folks
that are afraid to lose money,afraid to take risks in general,
but nobody's really helping.
They're trying to help, butthey're not really helping.
Identifying, building up,encouraging these founders there
(33:21):
is a disconnect.
Where are the founders?
I'm not talking about thefounders that are already in the
game, trying to raise capital.
I'm talking about thesefounders that have ideas.
They don't know they'reentrepreneurs, but they are
entrepreneurs.
They have it.
They have it.
They have it.
It's in the blood.
You know, because you can, youknow.
So, anyway, I love thatstatement about that because I
(33:41):
feel like that in our area we'renot investing in the founders,
we're not willing to takesomebody like if I looked at you
and I'd say, okay, demetri, ifI talk to you for a little bit
and you're telling me aboutPease and you're passionate and
you're willing to do everything,you're like, dude, I'll die for
this business.
If it's not successful, yeah,exactly, I mean like anything
(34:01):
and everything, I'll sacrificeit.
That is what I'm looking for.
That's worth investing in thatperson, you.
And even if your businessdoesn't work.
You're going to do it again andagain.
That's what they figured out.
That is really goldmineinformation for this community
to understand.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, because you're right, one of the things that I
was honestly shocked at, so alot of my like, like bundle was
like my first like really bigfailure.
I've had kind of some smallones, like, hey, I want to try,
this thing doesn't work.
Yeah, whatever bundle was bigone, right, yeah, and yeah, yeah
it was.
Yeah, it did.
And I couldn't believe it.
(34:41):
But, like most of my investorsbacked me a second time, they
were like, hey, when you startsomething else, call me.
And I just it was like a family, like I was just like you're
telling me I just lost yourmoney.
We raised like 1.2 million orwhatever it was.
I just lost all your money andyou're willing to do it again.
And then that's when I startedunderstanding like they're not
(35:01):
investing in the business atthis stage, at the early stages.
Right, they're investing in meto provide value because, like
all the things that I didn'treally think about, like
secondary and tertiary impacts,you know one of my engineers.
He went on to go to Google andthen he went to Citadel and now
he's like some famous engineerbuilding amazing products.
I've had tons of interns whonow have like there's one intern
(35:25):
who came to us and she has apromising VC career.
Not even promising, she's likefamous in the VC ecosystem now
because she became a VC afterworking with Bundle.
So like those like littleimpacts just create big, big
ripples in the space over time.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Well, I mean, I couldn't be more happy about
these statements.
I mean, it's probably one of myfavorite episodes because I'm
so eager for the heartland area,specifically northwest arkansas
, to get past their own mentalbarrier about what the heck is
really happening.
We want to be the.
(36:03):
We must be a partner with andI'll just say it, with Walmart,
who needs help in innovation andentrepreneurship.
I'm not saying that they'veever said that.
I can just see it as anentrepreneur.
They might be the biggestcompany in the world, but they
have serious threats, seriousthreats.
(36:23):
They're doing an excellent jobat being a big battleship that
can turn a corner like they have, and they have done.
Threats, serious threats.
They're doing an excellent joband being a big battleship that
can turn a corner like they have, and they have done.
They've proven it.
They're working their rears off.
They do, and, but they'redepending on everyone outside
the area to help that innovationgo through.
We've got to show up at nwa.
We have an opportunity for it.
The problem, though, is isexactly what you're saying the
(36:44):
there and there's so much moneyper capita here.
It makes me want to vomit, likeit's.
Actually we're self-destructingright now in real estate
because there's so much moneyaround here, I agree, and
everybody's pouring it back in,when all the while, there are
students at that university,nmwac, jbu, university of
Arkansas there are students inhigh school at Ignite,
(37:05):
everywhere people like you, me,other folks that have started it
and done it again there is.
There is not one person I cango to in this area and
confidently say they're going toinvest in me, dude, and that's.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That's a problem it is.
Yeah, that's one of the reasonswhy I came back, because you
know I love it here.
This is my family here, grew uphere, and you know I wanted to
prove like, hey, I can build abusiness that's not logistics or
CPG or you know anything inthat retail space and make it
(37:43):
work.
Well, I'm building.
You know both, literally bothmy last companies are at the
cutting edge of tech.
That I didn't understand at thetime I started it.
It's great, dude, and you'rejust what you do.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Here's what I love about the brain that's inside
your head.
Right, you see opportunity, yousee market need and you jump in
100% Right, it's not aboutbuilding financial performance
that are risk-free and haveprofitability and an EBITDA
calculation.
If you were to do that, spendthat time, you wouldn't be able
(38:16):
to do any of the businesses thatyou do, and so you're jumping
in.
You see the op, you're anentrepreneur, you're going to
fill market need and then youput your time and your energy
and you invest yourself behindit and you're a successful,
fortunate testament to our area,which is unfortunate that
they're not here, but that thereare investors out there that
(38:37):
are looking to invest in you andwhat you can do, not
necessarily the business model.
I think that's an extremelyrefreshing message.
Yeah, I mean, it is for me,because I I haven't found them.
You know they're not herethey're, they're not here, and
damn it, that's our problem.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here it is.
Yeah, it's, a hundred percentof my investors have come from
one of those like higher densityareas, whether it's um, texas
or silicon valley or New York,and you know, I don't want that
to happen.
Like I want to be here, likeI've even talked to my wife and
was like hey, like there may bea time where I have to move out
to the valley because that'swhere my network is Right,
(39:17):
whereas here I've got a greatnetwork of people, I've got
incredible people here, butthey're all kind of going in one
particular direction.
They're horses.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's.
It's something I love to talkabout because the only way to
change it is you know, there's aquote I heard the only way to
solve a problem is recognizing.
There is one yep, and we got totalk about it.
(39:39):
Like we have to say like hey,look, let's like turn this
ecosystem into something that'svaluable.
Like why is aust Austin thestartup hub of the Midwest?
Why not Arkansas?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I hope that we hit on some things that you wanted to
discuss.
I know I took a conversation,some different directions, but I
feel like that it was the youknow, the things that you said
and that you were talking aboutwere like really important
things, and I hope that ourlisteners can kind of see that
if you're, if you're here, localNorthwest Arkansas, or if
you're in the Heartland region,which is a big area of the
(40:11):
country, or if you're on theWest coast and you're like man,
there's so much opportunity here, too.
You know to, to, to participate, but nonetheless, wherever you
are as an entrepreneur andstarting up a business, there
(40:32):
are many paths toentrepreneurship.
You've talked about a couple ofdifferent, very dynamically
different paths that you'vetaken.
You talked about having abusiness that was a big flop, in
a way right, and then you hadother businesses that were small
ones that nobody noticed, butthat's okay too, and I mean, I
think it's encouraging for ourlisteners to hear somebody like
yourself and a tenuredentrepreneur that's still
(40:54):
getting at it.
And now you got a new FinTech.
It's super cool.
Man Like you just keep marchingon and I applaud you for it,
support you on it.
We're going to have you back in.
There's so many moreconversations and if you're our
listener, shoot us a question onthe website.
Like, I'm not gonna ask you tosubscribe, I don't need your
money but what I do want aremore of your questions and, like
(41:15):
ask us questions.
What can dimitri help you withon the next time he's on the
show?
Uh, we'll be sure to bring himback in.
Um been a pleasure having youon, man.
Yeah, yeah, pleasure being here.
Thanks for having me, man.
It's good to spend some timetogether.
Yes, sir, this is what I loveabout video podcasting or, you
know, just this type of stuff ingeneral is that it gives.
(41:35):
It forces me to have this timeand have these kinds of
conversations, but most of thetimes we're doing sales, we're
doing something else.
Right, it's all this, but theseare why we do the things that
we do.
It's fun to share, it'sconfidence building for me.
I'm walking out on a lot highercloud than I was when I walked
in here because of this kind ofthing.
I'm glad yeah, man, we did ourjob, bro, we did our job, and I
(41:59):
hope that somebody that'slistening actually feels the
same way.
It feels the same way.
So thanks, dimitri, of courseand you got to say this with me
you got to say another episodeof Big Talk About Small Business
, nice.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk
About Small Business.
If you have any questions orideas for upcoming shows, be
sure to head over to our website.
Questions or ideas for upcomingshows be sure to head over to
our website,wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom
and click on the ask the hostbutton for the chance to have
your questions answered on theshow.
Stay connected with us onLinkedIn at Big Talk About Small
(42:37):
Business and be sure to headover to our website to read
articles, browse episodes andask questions about upcoming
shows.
Welcome everybody to another episode of Big Talk
About that Small Business.
It's actually Big Talk AboutSmall Business.
I just threw in a that, tryingto be super hip and cool,
Missing my co-host today, MarkZweig.
He's actually out doing boardmeetings or something like that,
taking care of that businesselsewhere.
But that's okay, because I havea fantastic guest for us today,
(00:31):
Mr Dimitri.
Love Dimitri, welcome to theshow, man.
Thanks, man, Thanks for havingme.
You got it.
So Dimitri and I go way back ina very small little bit.
We were both young scrappingentrepreneurs.
Way back in the day you werejust getting your thing kicked
off, I had white spider it'sprobably early on the days into
I was.
I was young back then.
(00:51):
Yeah, there was a point in mylife I was young, Uh, but but
man, then we we just recently,because of actually the show we
were somehow we got reconnectedon LinkedIn and, man, it was.
It's really awesome to getreconnected with you and to
bring you in and tell you about,tell the world about your story
, because you have actually areally fantastic entrepreneurial
(01:12):
journey and so really excitedfor the listeners to hear that.
You know, why don't you tell usa little bit about your
entrepreneurial career, how yougot started and get us set up on
that.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, man, yeah.
So I have built three companiesso ended up building kind of
the thumbtack for firefightersso you could hire an off duty
firefighter to do handyman typework for residents or businesses
.
So if really, yeah, if you'reat your home and you needed to
clean out your gutters, we hadan army of like 60,000
firefighters you could employ todo that.
(01:47):
Or if you're a business and youneeded to do demolition or
literally anything, you couldhire off-duty firefighters to do
it.
Off-duty firefighters, fourhours on, 48 hours off, yeah.
So they have like a reallypredictably unpredictable
schedule so they have a lot ofopportunity to do, you know, gig
(02:09):
type work.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And you know my co-founder, dave, and I we just
saw an opportunity there and thefirefighters like that too, I
guess right, because they kindof they would like to, yeah,
make some extra money.
Yeah, keep busy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And they're also highly qualified individuals
qualified, trustworthy ifanything goes wrong in your life
like firefighter's going to bethere.
That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, that's really cool.
So you guys built a tech stackthat kind of brokered that right
.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, so it was a marketplace.
So we ended up partnering withthe International Association
for Firefighters, so weonboarded them.
And then there were two partsof the business.
If you were a business, youcome on board and search for
(02:52):
firefighters to do you know agig.
You would post a job and say Ineed 10, 15, 5, 2 firefighters.
If you're a consumer, you woulddetail the job similar to like
thumbtack or task rabbit andinstead of like a contractor
showing up, a firefighter wouldshow up.
So that's really cool, yeah,man.
So what was the next one?
Uh, the next one?
Uh, it's tattooed on my arm ifyou could see that but it's
called Bundle.
So Bundle was the acorns forcrypto, so you could invest your
spare change from debit andcredit card purchases into
(03:14):
cryptocurrency.
So if you had, when did youlaunch that?
So that was 2018.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, so you launched the Firefighter.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Firefighter was 2017.
2017.
Okay, funny story about that.
So ended up meeting myco-founder, dave.
This was at a venture studiocalled Capital Factory down in
Texas, and what I wanted to dois just like kind of break into
the startup ecosystem.
And Dave had no idea how tobuild software or experiences
and I did so we partnered up,ended up building that startup
ecosystem, and dave had no ideahow to build software or
(03:45):
experiences and I did so wepartnered up, ended up building
that.
And then I saw this opportunityfor bundle and I was like, hey,
man, we got our thing going,it's running.
I'm gonna go build this andI'll be here to help, with hydra
on the side, and ended upstarting them basically around
the same time nice, did you haveexperience with crypto and all
that before?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
no, no bro, no bro.
No it was.
That's a complicated space man.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It was.
It was crazy.
Yeah, I wish I could go throughthe entire story, but that was
a high learning curve for me.
We were breaking into a spacethat hadn't even been formed yet
.
We were building identityproducts that hadn't even been
conceived yet.
Now if, like identity productsthat hadn't even been conceived
yet, like now, if you go to anyfinancial app you have to do
(04:28):
something called KYC, which is,you know, verifying your
identity, your address, your ID,take a selfie, all that good
stuff and we had to build thatbefore it existed, so it was a
whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
A lot of security and stuff in there, right, security
compliance, and you're veryvulnerable.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's high risk, security, fraud prevention.
It was cool.
I learned a lot.
That's kind of why I focus onfinancial services now.
So you know, was able to learna ton about.
You know how to structureFinTech and how to structure
really good financialexperiences, how to stay safe
(05:07):
doing that and what type of datato show users and what type of
data to protect, uh, what typeof data to avoid all that good
stuff.
But, yeah, bundle was great, um, so just to tell you, the end
of uh, both of them, so hydrantwe sold in December of 2023 and
Bundle actually died.
So Bundle are you familiar with?
(05:29):
Ftx?
Like Sam Bankman, freed, longstory short, big fraud in the
crypto space, like $16 billionworth.
He's in jail and he took a lotof companies with him.
So our liquidity provider hadabout 60% of their allocation
tied up.
So at the time, we had about ahundred thousand actives.
(05:49):
We're doing $10 million a yearor so in transaction volume and
we got cooked and yeah, whichdidn't have the balance sheet to
recover, and that also taughtme the other side of the
business, which is failure.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, yeah, yeah, man, yeah, yeah, but the but, which
is failure.
Yeah, yeah man, yeah, butHodgson, it's called Hodgson,
right, it sold, had a good exitthen.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, mid seven figures.
It was good for me when I wasyoung.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, no, that's great, and then okay.
So after Bundle, then what doyou have going on?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So I'm now building Peace, peace.
Yeah, so we're building aconversational AI for couples
actually to learn how to dotheir money better, to get the
power of a joint bank accountwithout actually having one.
So, for example, if you haveChase and your partner has Bank
of America, you can come to usand split expenses like rent,
you can ask anything about yourmoney, you can budget together,
(06:43):
all while keeping your separatebanks.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Really ask anything about your money.
You can budget together allwhile keeping your separate
banks, and so this is kind oflike a precursor to, maybe,
somebody that's wanting to getmarried but they're not married
yet, but they're living togetheror they're starting to tie in.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, so we learned that the new generation, like
Gen Z, they have a deep desireto keep their money separate and
you know I come from a verytraditional background.
My wife and I share financesand all that good stuff and you
know we wanted to buildsomething to kind of be the
stepping stone to that.
So these joint moneyrelationships, they're coming
more prevalent as the world getsmore expensive and people
(07:18):
cohabitate longer and longer anddivorce rates are up 60% Insane
.
Yeah, so we wanted to buildsomething to actually funny.
You mentioned divorce.
60% of divorces cite financialdisagreements.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's like huge.
Yeah, it's huge.
And so I think that's probablythe thought process there is is
that you don't intertwinecompletely.
That way, if the break happens,then there's not so much to
untwine, I guess, in a way ifthat's the right word, right,
and so they're kind of almostself-protecting, but at the same
(07:53):
time they're joining forces tohelp with overall expenses of
life.
Yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, and we've learned so much.
You know, we learned that, like, like, how different couples
think about running together.
Some of them really requirethat privacy, as I mentioned,
and then some of them reallyhave like different types of
considerations, like you know,being able to automatically
split bills together.
That was really important andinformed by our user base.
(08:19):
So it's been great.
We're up to 14,000 users so farGreat, man.
When did you start this?
So we incorporated October of24.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, we're young.
Yeah, so we've raised justunder a million Nice and yeah,
we're just getting off theground building and you already
got 14,000 subscribers basically.
(08:42):
Yeah.
So what happened is we wentviral on tiktok so posted some
ugc content as you know, onedoes in this age, yeah, and uh,
a few of them went viral, so wegot a great wait list, started
onboarding them and startedlearning a ton.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, do you find that the?
So?
Was there a beta period withthis, I mean?
Or or did they log in, startsubscribing and then you're
learning?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, that's a funny question, because I still feel
like we're in the beta period.
Yeah, right, right, you knowit's a-.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But to your users it's like man this software's
working or not working right.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah.
So what really took off is webuilt this conversational AI.
We call her Penelope, it'scalled Pease Everything's Pease,
themed like two peas in a pod.
Gotcha, it's cool, yeah, andPenelope is an insane piece of
software.
So we basically took the ideaof Mint, so the budgeting tool,
(09:35):
mint and chat GPT and put themtogether so you can ask anything
about your money.
You can ask how much you spenton DoorDash the past three weeks
.
You can ask to help you plan avacation.
You can ask what your net worthis, anything you can think of
that you would want to ask yourmoney or learn about your money.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You can ask have you had to learn like the?
I mean?
So there's another layer ofprotection in here too, right?
You've got AI, large languagemodel messing with somebody's
financials, so imagine thatthere's a box around that.
That's got to be super secure.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, I can tell you how we thought about it.
Yeah, I mean it's interesting,yeah, so one of the things that
we wanted to do is that was oneof the first considerations when
trying to send financial datato an LLM.
So, without going too technical, there's kind of three big
buckets of ways that you canbuild AI.
So the first one is you haveyour own model.
(10:28):
So this would be like an openAI or an anthropic who you know.
Their whole job is just tobuild an LLM right.
The other bucket, on like thefurther side, would be prompt
engineering.
So you just send, you know, astructured piece of text through
an LLM, like open AI, and youget a response back and you have
to send all of your data, allof everything, in with it.
(10:50):
Yeah, there's a middle groundthat we found out where you can
use something called embeddingsand you can embed specific types
of anonymized data into thetransaction.
So, from the LLMs perspective,it only sees you know numbers,
or it doesn't see PII, like itdoesn't know who this is for
their name.
Um, you know where they're at,what their bank account balance
(11:12):
is.
It only sees number that'srelevant to the query.
So we only use the LLMspecifically to answer a
question Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So it's basically all encrypted and to some fashion.
So it's basically all encryptedin some fashion.
So it's not their information'snot getting pulled into like an
open AI's LLL Nope.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
What's in there, like most of the tools that we have
in terms of you know, likecalculating net worth, or like
some of the more sensitivethings, are internal tools, the
LLM's really for naturallanguage processing.
So like being able tounderstand what the user is
actually asking and then givingthem a contextual answer
afterwards.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So does it kind of lives in that natural language
processing, then it kicks over,probably into the encrypted side
, pulls the information, then itspits it back out to basically
how that's working?
You know, I didn't reallyintend to get into this
conversation, but I think it'shighly relevant as far as, like,
I mean, I think something thatour listeners would really
(12:09):
appreciate is about AI and whatit's doing for business in
general.
Right, I mean, I know there's alot of dialogue about it, but I
mean for our startup listeners,right, somebody that's starting
up a business owns a businesstoday, a small business.
I mean, what's your perspectiveon what AI is doing in business
(12:32):
in general, and then, howshould one really be using it
right now?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, I know it's a big question.
It's a big question.
I could talk about it for hours.
Yeah, it's a big question.
I could talk about it for hours.
Yeah, I think the first thingis that if you're an SME, if
you're an enterprise, if you'rea mom and pop shop, you should
be utilizing AI tools or AI insome way, shape or form.
All it does is just help speedup execution, speed up your
(13:01):
efficacy as a business.
It just helps Right.
In terms of how you should useit, I think you know there's a
lot of research, like some teams.
In my opinion, enterprise teamsare going a little too far.
They're trying to build, youknow, their own model and manage
their own LLM, and it's just,yeah, it's too much, it's.
You know, instead of relying onthe tech that's being built,
(13:22):
they kind of want to keep it inhouse, which I understand.
Enterprises have the balancesheet to do that.
But just use the tools that areavailable to you because
they're really really good Interms of how.
When it comes to, I mean, I cananswer this in terms of B2B or
B2C or brick and mortar, but ifI were to just pick a few things
(13:46):
, you know, lead gen is a bigway to use AI, um and the
automation that comes with it,um so how does that, how does
that work practically speaking?
Yeah.
So if you're um, if you're alaw firm, you have to find
clients right, you have toprospect for clients and some of
the bigger firms.
Instead of going off of kind ofword of mouth and relationships
, they start running ads, theystart doing kind of like reach
(14:07):
out.
They have their paralegalsreach out to specific people and
companies and you can automateall of that with AI tools.
You can set up a farm to sendout your offer or send how you
can help and once a qualifiedlead comes in, you can automate
the conversation with them allthe way to where they book a
meeting with you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Until it gets to that qualified level and you enter a
human then for a humanconversation, exactly, yeah, I
think that you know, like, mythought process on it is pretty
similar.
It's like what can a smallbusiness do?
That's just really practicaland tactical, right, you know?
I think that one like, ifyou're starting out, I mean, it
can be overwhelming and it's alittle bit scary.
(14:44):
You get little analysis,paralysis.
There's so many tools, you knowI mean, but you know I mean in
all from all uh purposes,getting my team to adopt ai as a
as just you think about it inline with how you'd normally do
in business, right?
And so, instead of you know,you get a PDF document or
(15:06):
whatever, and it's this longdocument and your typical
natural behavior is just startreading that and you immediately
think, oh, this is going totake me 30 minutes, when do I
have the time?
You know, and it causes thosetypical stressors.
What AI is really great at isit can actually reduce a lot of
that traditional behavior andsave you a tremendous amount of
time by just running it through.
(15:26):
You know a processor, and thenyou get the summary, bullet
points, and then now you got thegist and you move on.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, so it's funny.
You mentioned that.
I know we're being recorded.
So I have this little thing.
It's called a plaud.
I know the founder of this.
How do you spell that?
P-l-a-u-d.
Okay, and it's an AI voicerecorder.
So there's a million voicerecorders that have been built
ever.
It's super thick.
Check it out.
Yeah, you stick that on theback of your phone.
(15:54):
Yeah, you stick it on the backof your phone, and I'm not
sponsored by them.
This is just a product Iabsolutely adore.
You turn it on and record aconversation, whether it's a
phone call or a conversationlike this, and once you're done,
you can run it through an LLMand it starts giving you things
like a mind map whatconversational points there were
, any follow-ups you need tomake?
(16:15):
So for me, busy entrepreneur,where I can't remember anything
or take notes like I properly,should I just turn this on, let
me ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Could you turn?
I mean, you could turn it onjust for yourself and record
thoughts and it organizes it foryou.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
All right, man.
So where do you get that thingat?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, so you can get it on Amazon.
You can get it on their website.
It's $100.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
$100.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Does it come with a case?
I bought a stronger one becausethat case kind of sucked.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, it was unideal.
That's got you and so youbought a different.
Is it a plug case?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, you can find them on Amazon, so you can buy
this and then just look up likeleather case for the plug order
on Amazon and they also make onethat's.
It's like a necklace, so it'slike a you can just put it
around your neck.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I like that idea, man , so it's always with you, yeah,
is it waterproof, so in myshower I can be talking.
So that would be slick.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I that's hilarious.
You mentioned that.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
So I put my phone.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
on top of like I have a little like sill, but I don't
know if I'd get it wet.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
They should make a waterproofversion.
They should, yeah, but okay.
So how does that attach intoyour phone though?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, magsafe, so you get an iPhone, right?
No, no, I just say I'm sorry.
So most iPhones have.
They come with a ring, so ring.
So if you don't have an iphone,you put this ring on your case
and it'll just attach to it.
I did this for extra adhesion,I guess, but most iphones have a
mag safe so you can just clickand just clicks on there and
stays on there.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
that's really cool, glad you brought that.
But so that's a good exampleright of like the reality is is,
if you think about it correctlyas an entrepreneur or business
person, ai is like your gift ofall gifts from all eternity,
past Prime example, so much thatbounces in our head.
Right, there's so many thingswe're dealing with, a hundred
(18:12):
different things that are neverin a single zone, yeah, and so
the ability to spit back out anddepend on some sort of
technology to organize thosethoughts to help you get your
to-do tasks done, or evenvisionary thinking A lot of my
stuff happens with when I'm justthinking of these ideas or
directions we need to go, or newmarkets to hit, and there's all
this different stuff to have aplace to put that, because I
(18:36):
learned a long time ago there'slike this, you know, an
organizational theory of mine.
Practice has always been a stuffbook, right?
So if you think of your brainas like a computer, you only
have so much RAM and if I justkeep that clogged up and I don't
get that somewhere and I knowthat it's safe, then it just
stays bottled up.
That's where the stress comesin.
(18:56):
But if I can at least get itout.
And you know, historically itwas just writing it down that it
would be taking notes on thephone.
But this is under the level ofa faster stuff book, that where
it's going somewhere beingstored and now I'm free to think
and operate.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Right, I'll show you something hilarious.
I literally so.
One of the reasons why I boughtthis plot is I have an entire
list of like all my ideas andthings I want to explore in my
notes and I just got to be somuch.
I needed.
I needed something.
I need something to organize it.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I love it.
Man, I'm going to check thatout.
I'm glad we actually we hadthat combo.
But so I think, as a smallbusiness person, if you're
listening to this right, likeyou need to just start embracing
it, Like you don't need to needto understand generative AI and
video AI and all this kind ofstuff and create things or
whatever it might be thesehighly sophisticated programs.
There's actually really simplethings that you can do that are
(19:49):
going to immediately make yourlife a little bit easier as an
entrepreneur, so I highlyencourage that.
And then the more you do it,the more it becomes a habit, and
then you're in the game.
The worst thing you could do isignore it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Agreed.
Yeah, I mean the best thing,like if you can reduce your
margins or improve efficacy orimprove reach or automate some
portion that you're strugglingto fill a role, for it's just
better for your business, so.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
So let's talk about something else that's really
interesting I'm kind of excitedfor our listeners to hear about,
is your Shark Tank experience.
You've had some Shark Tankexperience, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh, oh, yes, uh, two of them.
So both hydrant and bundle wereon shark, oh, really, okay,
yeah, so I was the one actuallyon the show, season 10, episode
3 for bundle, and so we can gowatch you.
You can go watch me, okay,apple or google play if you want
to go find it.
And what episodes were thoseagain?
So I was season 10, episode 3,and then hydrant was I hope I'm
(20:43):
getting this right it was season13, episode five.
Ok, but you should be able tofind it.
Ok, super easy, cool.
But yeah, what do you want toknow it was?
I mean, yeah, tell us about theexperience.
I mean, I was young, so I was ababy, I was 22.
It was wild.
So I'll start sort of from thebeginning real quick.
(21:05):
The way you get on Shark Tank.
There's kind of a few paths,one of which I didn't know about
.
You go to casting calls.
That's like the normal one.
So, like there's been a castingcall here, I actually know the
casting director now and youknow she runs these little kind
of just meetups across thenation.
They have them at CES, theyhave, yeah, like a lot of
(21:27):
conferences and stuff, andthat's the first way to get
discovered.
The second way is they haveproducers that scout for
specific types of businesses,talent, and that's how we got
discovered so nice.
We launched our product.
Are you familiar with producthunt?
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we launched on product hunt,got number three the day that
we launched and so product hunt,though isn't that like a?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
that's kind of a pay-as-you-play, right?
We didn't pay, okay, yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
we didn't pay, cool that's good to know.
Maybe it is now but we didn'tpay.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Well, yeah, I was advised differently here
recently that it's basicallypay-to-play.
Maybe there's an organic.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
But on product hunt, your your technology, which one?
Uh, bundle, bundle.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, so, for those that arelistening, product hunt is a
basically a resource of new techstacks that are that are
entering the market.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yep, yeah like a directory exactly.
Yeah, there's a kind of aranking list per day and the
best products get upvoted, verysimilar to like a reddit thread,
and you're able to see.
You know who's crushing it withsome type of software.
So we were one of thosecompanies that was crushing it
and a producer reached out to meon LinkedIn and was like, hey,
(22:32):
have you considered going on theTV show Shark Tank?
And at first I thought it waskind of a scam, because who's
going to reach out to you andsay, hey, I can get you on Shark
Tank?
And I was like sure, send methe application, I'm interested,
I can get you on Shark Tank,right.
And I was like sure, like, sendme the application, I'm
interested.
And he sent over this like veryofficial, like ABC, sony
letterhead application and waslike, hey, you need to fill out
(22:53):
these disclosures and then applyhere.
And I had a whole list ofthings I had to do, like I had
to record.
It was like a nine minute videoto see like how personable I am
on camera, because that's yeah,because they like a nine minute
video to see like howpersonable I am on camera, cause
that's yeah, cause they, theywant to know that you know if
they're going to bring somebodyin and put the resources in and
they're going to crack Exactlyand apparently a lot of people
do that.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I bet, yeah, man, I mean for sure, and especially
when you walk in that room andit's go time, yeah, it's yeah,
I'll tell you about the future.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Um, so yeah, and I had to fill out.
You know, sign my life away alittle bit, yeah, I'll tell them
.
You know, hey, here's likebackground check information and
all that Cause you make sureyou're a good person.
And then, uh, it was sentstraight to ABC and Sony and
they made the decision and thenthey bring out about 150 people
to film, or 150 companies Iguess could be a little bit more
(23:45):
in terms of people if they havea co-founder and they select
120.
So we went out to la.
It was very kind of annoyinglysecretive.
They like we got in this bus,like on the way to the set.
That was like super tented,like we couldn't see outside, so
we can't see where the studiois, which was weird.
Um, I don't know if I'msupposed to say this, but I'm
(24:07):
going to.
Anyway, we were on the set ofone of the Avengers movies back
then.
Yeah, it was really cool,that's cool.
I have some illegal picturesbefore they took my phone.
But yeah, once you get in there, just things that people don't
know, I guess you know when yousee the episode you're up there
for you know three to fiveminutes, you know pitching and
(24:27):
then you get a deal or you don't.
A lot of those pitches arereally long.
Mine was like two and a halfhours, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's like a real like .
So was this the real like?
You had the sharks in thereduring your pitch.
Yeah, that's where you went.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That's the 120 people , that or 120 companies that
went there and these sharks arelistening to these 120 companies
.
Yeah, so they do it over the,they film in bursts, so they do
it over, uh, the course of aweek.
Okay, so you know, we had Ithink there was maybe like 10 or
15 per day or something likethat.
They work really hard for thatweek and then, yeah, sure, but,
um, yeah, when you walk in there, big old set, big old room, as
it looks like on tv, and theydon't know anything about you,
(25:12):
when you walk in, which, isreally cool.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So they really don't.
They haven't seen all thepre-casting information or
anything.
It's just like raw pitchesheavily scripted.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Uh, also, everything's pretty heavily
edited as well, but you, theinteractions from you and the
sharks are extremely genuine andthat's how they get so much
content and they can build somany different types of stories.
Yeah, because it's.
It's real conversations.
We talked about every part ofbundles business so, so, but
darren you're.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
when you went in there though there it was you
said there's like two and a halfhour conversation between you
and the Sharks.
It was like a real VC pitch,real VC pitch.
And then they just obviouslyedited it down to the five
minutes for the show or whateverit might be, and they tell the
story they want to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
yeah, yeah, they do the highlight reel, basically
yeah, I don't want to ruin itfor you, but our whole episode
was riddled with emotion, really, yeah.
So riddled with emotion, reallyyeah.
So there's a little bit ofstorytelling.
I wish I could tell you exactlywhat happened, but what
happened while I was there isnot what was portrayed on the
show, because they were able togenerate more views by telling a
(26:15):
different story.
It was really cool how they didit.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Oh, so they kind of just edited it up to tell a
different story.
Oh yeah, Interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Outcome's the same Like we.
So, yeah, interesting Outcomesthe same Like we got to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they'lltell like a little bit of a
different story.
Showbiz man, yep.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So so on that experience though, uh, I mean,
do you?
So let's back up to thepracticality of it.
You're say you're anentrepreneur, build a business,
right?
Sure, Going to Shark Tank's oneof them, yeah, Going to VC's
away, right.
I mean a whole lot of differentthings In your experience with
(26:51):
that experience.
Was that a good move, you think, to get that kind of VC early
on in the business?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah.
So this is you're opening up aloaded question.
Yeah, it's actually one of thereasons why I moved back to
Arkansas.
So my opinion on venturecapital and investors it can be
the right decision for yourbusiness.
I think it just depends on howyou think about building a
business.
Like there's a lot of wayswhere you can build like a micro
(27:23):
SaaS or a SaaS that makes 20 to50K a month and you're good,
you know low overhead, you'remaking good money and you know
it's something that you can keepsustainable right.
Building a venture scalebusiness comes with its own
considerations, because now youhave to think about getting your
investors a return.
So you know for P's like wedidn't just get this million
dollars just to, you know raisefor fun and to build.
(27:46):
You know we have to say like,hey, we're going to try to sell
this thing for you know, 50million one day, yeah.
So a lot of considerationsthere and I just think you know
in the heartland, where there'sso much opportunity and so much
you know capital here and a lotof innovation that's happening,
(28:08):
I think a lot more people shouldexplore venture scale
businesses here.
I've been forced to go out tothe coasts and go compete with.
You know the open AIs andbasically every incumbent that's
worked at every major techcompany in the world who has all
the friends who can just raise$10 million in two minutes.
So you know there's thosechallenges.
(28:29):
You know coming from, you knowthe Midwest and the heartland.
So I don't know.
I think it's very valuable.
Something like shark tank wouldbe more of what I would
consider distribution.
So it's less about theinvestment that we got, it's
more about the eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, yeah.
So you know, in terms ofinvestment, though I just I
think that's again that's one ofthe reasons why I moved back,
Like I think that there's a lotof opportunity to build some
really incredible things, tobuild an ecosystem where people
actually want to come here andgo to school, like that's why
everybody's going to Stanfordbecause of its proximity to
(29:08):
Silicon Valley.
So, yeah, I think it's anopportunity if it's done right,
if the capital's put there.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, and I think on the I mean we could talk forever
about the area too it's verymuch in its infancy.
I'm excited to see the progressthat we've been making.
I'm excited to see the progressthat we've been making, but I
mean as a tech startup myselfand I have another company that
I'm So- you just launched one.
Yeah, we just launched one.
This area is not ready for that.
(29:35):
Right, it's just not ready forit.
Now, I know, and the solve thatI'm seeing that's happening
right now is they're bringingoutside investors as guests.
I'm seeing that's happeningright now is they're bringing
outside investors as guests.
But then again my thing is islike that's not helping
Northwest Arkansas necessarilybecause, like it might help,
longtail as an ex, you know, asa founder exits, assuming that
(29:57):
they exit well and they have astill a good portion of the
equity.
Yep, that makes sense rightafter the rigmarole in the
series.
Then they may become aninvestor.
But that could be a 10-year,20-year cycle.
I mean my first company, I meanmy company that I exited out on
like Spider.
I mean it was a 12-yearbusiness man, I mean it wasn't
like it happened in a year and ayear and a half and so it took
(30:17):
a while.
But I mean I think that westill have a lot of growth in
this area and I think it's aboutit's about a trend, it's about
a transitional reality of ourarea and our population
understand that there issomething to be said about be
being more of a tech, forwardthinking company and taking a
(30:38):
more of a vc mindset.
You know vcs are get like ifthey get a home run out of 10
deals, then that that's good VCbusiness.
Sure Right.
And that is a mentalitydifference between where we're
at in Heartland and what Eastand West and Coast are doing
down in Austin.
They get the one home run outof 10.
Around here it needs to be nineout of 10 of base hits.
(31:00):
Yeah, and that transition'shard culturally speaking.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
So it's funny you say thatthere's something that I think
that would really help kind ofopen up some people's minds.
The VCs and the investors youknow out in these kind of higher
density areas, you know NewYork and Silicon Valley.
Not only have they kind ofmathematically decided like, hey
, if we make enough investmentswe'll get a home run, yeah,
(31:26):
return the fund plus some rightSure For that 5, 10, 15 year
period.
I mean another thing that Ithink is really important that
they do they're willing to putthe capital in to have failures,
because that's just going todrive an entrepreneur, one of
the builders of that software,to go build something else.
That's right.
So they're investing in notonly the business to be built
(31:48):
there, but they're alsoinvesting in people and they're
investing in the ecosystem.
Dude, you're getting me excited.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Because one of our big problems is that we're
thinking about in a businessscenario.
You've got two folks in this VCor the investor scenario.
You have the founderentrepreneur scenario.
You have the founderentrepreneur, then you have the
investor and this is one of myfavorite quotes of all time and
this has made so much sense tome.
It actually helped me not thinkI was crazy a long time ago,
(32:15):
which was really important.
I didn't even know what I wasfor many years until I realized
one day oh, I am an entrepreneur.
Somebody told me I was one andI was like I don't know what
that word means and this is likefive years after I had my
business, you know.
But then I went on anothercrazy speed for another 10, five
years, not understanding whatyou know why I think the way I
do and realizing it's differentthan a lot of anyway.
(32:38):
Investors are like horses, witheyes on both sides of their head
looking for somebody tobasically take from them.
Entrepreneurs are like wolves,eyes on the front, going out and
hunting.
There is a definitive tension,clash between those two people,
or those two parties.
Right?
What we're doing in our arearight now is we're really
focused on the horses, theinvestors, you know.
(32:59):
And so to your point, if you'refocused on all the horses and
trying to build a horsingcommunity with a bunch of folks
that are afraid to lose money,afraid to take risks in general,
but nobody's really helping.
They're trying to help, butthey're not really helping.
Identifying, building up,encouraging these founders there
(33:21):
is a disconnect.
Where are the founders?
I'm not talking about thefounders that are already in the
game, trying to raise capital.
I'm talking about thesefounders that have ideas.
They don't know they'reentrepreneurs, but they are
entrepreneurs.
They have it.
They have it.
They have it.
It's in the blood.
You know, because you can, youknow.
So, anyway, I love thatstatement about that because I
(33:41):
feel like that in our area we'renot investing in the founders,
we're not willing to takesomebody like if I looked at you
and I'd say, okay, demetri, ifI talk to you for a little bit
and you're telling me aboutPease and you're passionate and
you're willing to do everything,you're like, dude, I'll die for
this business.
If it's not successful, yeah,exactly, I mean like anything
(34:01):
and everything, I'll sacrificeit.
That is what I'm looking for.
That's worth investing in thatperson, you.
And even if your businessdoesn't work.
You're going to do it again andagain.
That's what they figured out.
That is really goldmineinformation for this community
to understand.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, because you're right, one of the things that I
was honestly shocked at, so alot of my like, like bundle was
like my first like really bigfailure.
I've had kind of some smallones, like, hey, I want to try,
this thing doesn't work.
Yeah, whatever bundle was bigone, right, yeah, and yeah, yeah
it was.
Yeah, it did.
And I couldn't believe it.
(34:41):
But, like most of my investorsbacked me a second time, they
were like, hey, when you startsomething else, call me.
And I just it was like a family, like I was just like you're
telling me I just lost yourmoney.
We raised like 1.2 million orwhatever it was.
I just lost all your money andyou're willing to do it again.
And then that's when I startedunderstanding like they're not
(35:01):
investing in the business atthis stage, at the early stages.
Right, they're investing in meto provide value because, like
all the things that I didn'treally think about, like
secondary and tertiary impacts,you know one of my engineers.
He went on to go to Google andthen he went to Citadel and now
he's like some famous engineerbuilding amazing products.
I've had tons of interns whonow have like there's one intern
(35:25):
who came to us and she has apromising VC career.
Not even promising, she's likefamous in the VC ecosystem now
because she became a VC afterworking with Bundle.
So like those like littleimpacts just create big, big
ripples in the space over time.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Well, I mean, I couldn't be more happy about
these statements.
I mean, it's probably one of myfavorite episodes because I'm
so eager for the heartland area,specifically northwest arkansas
, to get past their own mentalbarrier about what the heck is
really happening.
We want to be the.
(36:03):
We must be a partner with andI'll just say it, with Walmart,
who needs help in innovation andentrepreneurship.
I'm not saying that they'veever said that.
I can just see it as anentrepreneur.
They might be the biggestcompany in the world, but they
have serious threats, seriousthreats.
(36:23):
They're doing an excellent jobat being a big battleship that
can turn a corner like they have, and they have done.
Threats, serious threats.
They're doing an excellent joband being a big battleship that
can turn a corner like they have, and they have done.
They've proven it.
They're working their rears off.
They do, and, but they'redepending on everyone outside
the area to help that innovationgo through.
We've got to show up at nwa.
We have an opportunity for it.
The problem, though, is isexactly what you're saying the
(36:44):
there and there's so much moneyper capita here.
It makes me want to vomit, likeit's.
Actually we're self-destructingright now in real estate
because there's so much moneyaround here, I agree, and
everybody's pouring it back in,when all the while, there are
students at that university,nmwac, jbu, university of
Arkansas there are students inhigh school at Ignite,
(37:05):
everywhere people like you, me,other folks that have started it
and done it again there is.
There is not one person I cango to in this area and
confidently say they're going toinvest in me, dude, and that's.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That's a problem it is.
Yeah, that's one of the reasonswhy I came back, because you
know I love it here.
This is my family here, grew uphere, and you know I wanted to
prove like, hey, I can build abusiness that's not logistics or
CPG or you know anything inthat retail space and make it
(37:43):
work.
Well, I'm building.
You know both, literally bothmy last companies are at the
cutting edge of tech.
That I didn't understand at thetime I started it.
It's great, dude, and you'rejust what you do.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Here's what I love about the brain that's inside
your head.
Right, you see opportunity, yousee market need and you jump in
100% Right, it's not aboutbuilding financial performance
that are risk-free and haveprofitability and an EBITDA
calculation.
If you were to do that, spendthat time, you wouldn't be able
(38:16):
to do any of the businesses thatyou do, and so you're jumping
in.
You see the op, you're anentrepreneur, you're going to
fill market need and then youput your time and your energy
and you invest yourself behindit and you're a successful,
fortunate testament to our area,which is unfortunate that
they're not here, but that thereare investors out there that
(38:37):
are looking to invest in you andwhat you can do, not
necessarily the business model.
I think that's an extremelyrefreshing message.
Yeah, I mean, it is for me,because I I haven't found them.
You know they're not herethey're, they're not here, and
damn it, that's our problem.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here it is.
Yeah, it's, a hundred percentof my investors have come from
one of those like higher densityareas, whether it's um, texas
or silicon valley or New York,and you know, I don't want that
to happen.
Like I want to be here, likeI've even talked to my wife and
was like hey, like there may bea time where I have to move out
to the valley because that'swhere my network is Right,
(39:17):
whereas here I've got a greatnetwork of people, I've got
incredible people here, butthey're all kind of going in one
particular direction.
They're horses.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's.
It's something I love to talkabout because the only way to
change it is you know, there's aquote I heard the only way to
solve a problem is recognizing.
There is one yep, and we got totalk about it.
(39:39):
Like we have to say like hey,look, let's like turn this
ecosystem into something that'svaluable.
Like why is aust Austin thestartup hub of the Midwest?
Why not Arkansas?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I hope that we hit on some things that you wanted to
discuss.
I know I took a conversation,some different directions, but I
feel like that it was the youknow, the things that you said
and that you were talking aboutwere like really important
things, and I hope that ourlisteners can kind of see that
if you're, if you're here, localNorthwest Arkansas, or if
you're in the Heartland region,which is a big area of the
(40:11):
country, or if you're on theWest coast and you're like man,
there's so much opportunity here, too.
You know to, to, to participate, but nonetheless, wherever you
are as an entrepreneur andstarting up a business, there
(40:32):
are many paths toentrepreneurship.
You've talked about a couple ofdifferent, very dynamically
different paths that you'vetaken.
You talked about having abusiness that was a big flop, in
a way right, and then you hadother businesses that were small
ones that nobody noticed, butthat's okay too, and I mean, I
think it's encouraging for ourlisteners to hear somebody like
yourself and a tenuredentrepreneur that's still
(40:54):
getting at it.
And now you got a new FinTech.
It's super cool.
Man Like you just keep marchingon and I applaud you for it,
support you on it.
We're going to have you back in.
There's so many moreconversations and if you're our
listener, shoot us a question onthe website.
Like, I'm not gonna ask you tosubscribe, I don't need your
money but what I do want aremore of your questions and, like
(41:15):
ask us questions.
What can dimitri help you withon the next time he's on the
show?
Uh, we'll be sure to bring himback in.
Um been a pleasure having youon, man.
Yeah, yeah, pleasure being here.
Thanks for having me, man.
It's good to spend some timetogether.
Yes, sir, this is what I loveabout video podcasting or, you
know, just this type of stuff ingeneral is that it gives.
(41:35):
It forces me to have this timeand have these kinds of
conversations, but most of thetimes we're doing sales, we're
doing something else.
Right, it's all this, but theseare why we do the things that
we do.
It's fun to share, it'sconfidence building for me.
I'm walking out on a lot highercloud than I was when I walked
in here because of this kind ofthing.
I'm glad yeah, man, we did ourjob, bro, we did our job, and I
(41:59):
hope that somebody that'slistening actually feels the
same way.
It feels the same way.
So thanks, dimitri, of courseand you got to say this with me
you got to say another episodeof Big Talk About Small Business
, nice.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk
About Small Business.
If you have any questions orideas for upcoming shows, be
sure to head over to our website.
Questions or ideas for upcomingshows be sure to head over to
our website,wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom
and click on the ask the hostbutton for the chance to have
your questions answered on theshow.
Stay connected with us onLinkedIn at Big Talk About Small
(42:37):
Business and be sure to headover to our website to read
articles, browse episodes andask questions about upcoming
shows.
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