 What's been your biggest investment to date? Biggest investment to date has been my family. Like, I always put that number one, and I'm really glad I did it. Tim Armstrong, founder and CEO of Flow Code. Are you ready to answer some questions? Anything for you, Ian. So you're the former CEO of AOL. What was your screen name? Camel25 1993. Do you still have an AOL email address? I do. Care to share? Tim Armstrong at AOL.com. What's the Flow Code elevator pitch? So we have Flow Codes, which are really the next generation QR codes. Humans can scan them without an app, and when you scan a Flow Code, it will take you directly to the experience of a brand or an influencer, a musician, anything you want to have as an experience. It takes you directly there, with no stopping off at any large internet companies. Why did you create Flow Code? Flow Code was created for changing the ecosystem. I felt like brands and fans should be closer together and not have to go through walled gardens. So it's really a platform to bring brands and fans as close as they can be. So when you say walled gardens in the industry term, what do you mean by that? So basically, most of the internet today and most of mobile goes through other people's platforms. And as a brand and a fan, you are basically rerouted from a value proposition, not to the brand itself, but to what somebody else wants you to see. And our platform allows you to go direct from being a fan, direct to the brand, with no interference in between. How is Flow Code different from a QR code? A few things. One is Flow Code comes with privacy. So we have privacy built in both for Europe and the United States. Two is it has special design behind it. And we have patented designs, which work on different environments, better than QR's work. And the third thing is an investment in data science and analytics. We are, I think, the most advanced data science and analytics company in the QR space. And so when you say privacy, I mean, what are the nuances of privacy? Really, what privacy is, the trust that you, as an end user, are using a product and that data is only going to get used for specifically that interaction with that product. How'd you come up with the name? Flow Code is built on two things. One is Flow State. A lot of our product is built for creators. And a lot of creators focus on Flow State. The second is the code DNA, you as a human, is what are the things that you intentionally wanted to connect with? What are you about as a person? So Flow State and code, both the DNA of who you are and the DNA of using software to connect, that's how we came up with Flow Code. Does brand really matter in the B2B tech space? Would you be in the same place if your name was Scan Strong? We always talk about it at our company. The product is the brand and the brand is the product. And I think having those two things interlinked, you can have great tech. But what you really want to have is great tech plus a great brand. And brand is the great differentiator in the world and I think that's the highest compliment to any business is to become a brand. It seems that many people have tried to create a new technology and hope that theirs becomes somewhat of a standard in the world. How do you go about that? I think one, you have to know the human use case and I don't think you can go deep enough to figure out what humans want to connect with and what technology they need to make their connections easier and faster. Two is making as frictionless as possible. I think the combination of the human need plus taking the least amount of steps you need to take to connect with something is a winning formula. When did you have your aha moment? New retail in China was one of those areas that I really kind of had an aha moment that the US might be five to 10 years behind where other countries are and that was probably a big opportunity in the US. Okay, so now we are at our flow code, flow card. Normally we don't have the founder of the company here with us today. You've done an amazing job explaining it. The viewers are gonna have a big flow code up on the screen right now. Obviously you know what to do with it. So what would you love for people to go to when they scan? One is I hope everyone scans it and comes to see the inside of our company and understand why directly connecting with things matter. The second thing is I hope they see it and recognize it in other things. I hope it goes on three wishes serial eventually, eventually which I love. My family loves three wishes. So I hope people see it, scan it, put it on their own products and start directly connecting with their fans. What keeps you up at night and what time do you wake up in the morning? Thinking about how to correctly tweak our business as we go through our opportunities that we've been growing really quickly. So constantly the need to change and think about what the next generation is keeps me up. I get up around 5 a.m. in the morning every day. What's the biggest difference between running a startup and the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world? At a large company your job is resource deployment and in many cases making very few decisions a year that have a big potential impact. And at a startup I would say that it's more of a micro situation where a lot of the micro things you do end up building the culture and the principles behind the company. So I've really enjoyed it. I think that being back at a startup I really like the basic premise of building something from the ground up. Anything you miss? The only thing I would say that I miss are the teams but one of my other sayings in life is no regrets. So I don't really miss anything. I love those experiences and I love those people but I'm on to my next thing. By most people's definition you've made it. Do you feel that way? I never think about life in those terms about whether you've made it or not and in my viewpoint you have one spin around the earth so I wouldn't worry about being successful. I'd worry about having your spin. Have you always kind of been this way or were you like crazy intense dude and then you found like yoga? No I've always been fairly spiritual in nature. Like I've always thought deeply about like how you live your life and how you spend your time and I'm big into outdoor stuff. I spend a lot of time outdoors and so I think that if you want to have a longevity approach to business you kind of have to have a longevity approach to spirituality and how you build your company and values and things like that. What's the key to your business? Fast connections between consumers and brands. Who do you consider your competitors? I'm into zero Peter Teal's zero competition so I don't think about it. What's been the best day in company history? What's been the worst? Best day is when we launched our platform and after six months of work worst day we haven't had one yet actually. If you had one dollar to spend in a business sense where would you invest it? I would invest it in our talent. Work from home or office? We have two rules, work where you're most productive come to the office if you want and the third rule attached to the first two is if you get confused go back and read rule number one or rule number two. What acquisition channel is the most successful for you? Right now we do a lot through search. What's your kryptonite? Chocolate chip cookies. What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far? Take everything in life with a smooth handle and most things in life are able to be solved where all parties come away with the same feeling about something you don't have to don't fight things you don't need to fight. What's been your biggest investment to date? Biggest investment to date has been my family. Like I always put that number one and I'm really glad I did it. How do you make sure your brand resonates and doesn't just check boxes? Talking to our customers directly I think they basically you can sit around inside and think about anything you want but when you talk to customers you get your answer. What's the best part of the job? Freedom to innovate. Besides sales what metrics do you look at to determine the health of your brand? We meet every day at 10 a.m. We look at the whole company and look at all the killer metrics across our company so we probably have five of them and I look at them every day and sort of as everyone else. What do you worry about? I don't really worry about much. I'm like very forward thinking so I don't spend a lot of time worrying. Who's your target audience? Anyone who considers themselves a brand and wants more fans. Who do you aspire to be? I aspire to be a better version of myself and I have a bunch of people that I look up to but pretty much I think it's a full-time job trying to be the person you're supposed to be. I'm Armstrong co-founder and CEO of Flow Code. Thank you so much for coming on here answering some questions and sponsoring this season. Thanks for having me and good to see you again. I'm Ian Wishengrad and we'll see you next time on I'm With The Brand.