 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, welcome back here to Think Tech Hawaii, which is great to host Prince Dykes, the Prince of Investing, coming to you guys and girls live from a beautiful state of HALALULU, Hawaii, by the way, of Denver, Colorado. But as you guys and girls can see in the description box, we got somebody here, an entrepreneur. We want to shift gears a little bit on how we used to talk about finances on the show, but we want to shift the gears of an entrepreneur who has changed the way, changed his industry, re-innovated his industry that I think is very cool that the way that celebrities and fans interact with each other. And guess what? It's coronavirus-proof business here. So what I had to do right now is, but the company is called Fan Gauge, right? Fan Page. Fan Gauge. I'm sorry if I'm butchering the name, but it's Fan Gauge. And essentially, I'm going to bring in the CEO. He's coming all the way from the beautiful city and state of Detroit, Michigan right now. So first off, let me introduce my guest, Mr. Josh Brown. How you doing today, sir? What's up, Perrin? Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you shifting gears. I know you're always deep into the finances, but I appreciate you having the entrepreneurs on here so we can tell our stories, but also talk a little bit about the struggles. Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. I'm right there with you, you know, at heart. I'm an entrepreneur myself. So anything I can do to help, especially with your product, I actually used it. So I get a lot of emails. I get a lot of phone calls of people that want to come on to the show. But when I first heard your product, I used it on the low. I didn't tell anybody. Let me see how this product worked. And I seen it come back and I was like, oh, wow, this is for real. And I thought it was pretty cool, especially since COVID-19 is going on. So I want to talk to you first. Tell everybody what is your company and how did you come up with this idea? The name of the company is Fangage. And our website is TheFangage.com. And what our platform does is it allows fans to upload pictures to celebrities. And the celebrities have an iPad app where they can receive those photos, sign those photos and send them back to the fans in real time. And the concept came up a little over three years ago. My co-founder and I, my co-founder is Emmanuel Sanders. He's going in his 11th year in the NFL. But him and I were at the Denver airport together. And a teenage kid came up to him, asked him to take a selfie. So the teenager opened up Snapchat, they took the selfie together. And then he asked Emmanuel to sign that picture with his finger. And both of us, you know, looked at each other and we were like, whoa, that's, that was really dope. Like, do you think people would want autographs on the photos that they took themselves as opposed to paying for an autograph on a photo that somebody else took? And that was the original concept. And when we launched version one, we thought people were going to upload photos that they took of or with Emmanuel, but the opposite happened. People uploaded photos that meant a lot to them. And then that's when we realized that our idea was a lot more robust than we originally thought. And then at that moment, we said, we got to shift our gears from just having a good idea to creating a really solid company. Okay. Now, so the high, how you're, you know, you've grown this platform to 70,000 users into 20 different countries, correct? So now we've got a lot of success. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm going to cut you off. We've had a lot of success. You know, we've had, you know, all pro football players from George Kittle to Jamal Adams to, you know, World Series champion Tony Kim from the Houston Astros all the way down to professional video gamers who, you know, are from South Korea. They moved to the United States to chase their gaming dreams, but all their fans are still in South Korea. So we send, we send autographs to South Korea. We send autographs to, you know, South Africa all over the world. And over these past three years, you know, we've had over 70,000 people sign up for our platform and send in pictures to get signed by the celebrities they admire. Nice, nice. Now, one of the things I want to ask you, how did you get the money to do tonight? I know you said your co-founder is Emmanuel Sanders. I know he's in the NFL. Just got signed to the New Orleans Saints. How did you get the money to be to create this? Did you have investors? Did you have to raise money? Or did you just pull out of your bag pocket? So when we started, it was a lot of calls. You know, I called, I probably had a conversation with a dozen developers. You know, I called them, reached out to them. I didn't have any money at the time. And, you know, 11 of them said no. And on the 12th call, I ended up reaching out to my, my CTO, Fernando Cardenas, who's in Boulder, Colorado. I told him my story. I told him what I was hoping to do. And, you know, he told me, he said, Josh, to be honest, the idea is good. You know, the concept is good. I don't think it's great. I don't like I'm not too sure it's going to scale. But I can hear the passion in your voice. I can I can feel it in my gut that you're not going to let this fail. And because of that, I will build this platform for you. And like, I will be part of this journey with you. And so, you know, right off the bat, I found a developer to build a platform, which was the bulk of the cost. And then Emmanuel, once I told him that I had a developer that that would build it, he said, All right, I know you've been making a lot of cold calls. I know you've been getting rejected a lot. But now that you found somebody that believes in you, I believe in you too. And so he gave me that first little bit of cash to really just get things off the ground to where I wasn't clearing out my savings account. Nice, nice. Great. Okay. Well, that's great way how you put a little sweat equity into there. He saw you put in the work and shout out to Emmanuel Sanders for looking out for you to get behind your product. Because I know I've seen it on Yahoo Sports. I've seen it recently on ESPN with first take, right? So that was great exposure that you're gaining. But how do you like, you know, have you ever ran into the issue or not the issue, but how do you like learning to brand your company? Any branding issues? What are lessons are you learning? Or what lessons do you like to give to people out there with branding this product? Yeah, we weren't the first ones to try digital autographs, you know, there was somebody before us, and there was somebody before them, you know, it the concept started back in about 2011. And, you know, there's a couple companies that launched it, you know, had great concepts where they but it didn't work. And what really set us apart was we were the first ones to start signing people's personal photos. So our brand and what this brand that we've created is we're saying, we're not a memorabilia company. When we first launched this company, we said, we're the new age memorabilia, we're going to change the memorabilia market, you know, and, you know, we're the new memorabilia. But we're people aren't purchasing our product or participating in our product with the intent that it's going to raise in value. So we had to shift our thinking because we want a memorabilia company memorabilia is something like an autograph ball or an autograph bat, a football, like you're hoping that it raises in value one day. Our products not like that. We signed photos that are really, really personal. So our brand needs to be really, really personal. So so we really push the we really push that, you know, these are your photos. These are the memories that you care about the most. So we got trademarked autograph memories, because we're not autograph memorabilia, we're autograph memories company. So that's the brand that we said that we were going to wrap our arms around this unique feature that we have celebrities signing photos that are really, really intimate, really, really intimate for the fans, you know, kids who were, you know, in, you know, in Children's Hospital, not able to to go to games or go to autograph signings because they're sick. We're signing photos of them and their jerseys in their in their beds. And that's a memory that they will always hold on to. And we're making it just a little bit more special for them. So, you know, it took us about a year to really find out our identity. And, you know, it a lot of mistakes, you know, we tried some things that didn't work. And but, you know, it took us, we, you know, we went through an accelerator program in Boulder, in the fall of 2018. And that accelerator program, the first two weeks of the program, they forced us to reach out to all of our registered users and talk to them about why they chose to use our product. And through those, that interview process, we learned really quickly that it's that personal touch. It's that customization that really separated us. So that's when we said, Oh, we're not a memorabilia company. We're, you know, we're signing memories. We're in art, we're autographing memories. That's when we created this brand around autograph memories. Got it. So, so people out there who may have missed it and whatnot. When I had my son, Wesley, he took a picture, he had Emmanuel Sanders jersey on, he was from Emmanuel Sanders posting. And I went to Fan Gauge. I went to the website. I uploaded the picture. And I want to say probably like a month later, Emmanuel Sanders, not only did he sign it, he signed it live. So I got a live little video, a click of him, actually signing the photo, propping the photo up or whatnot. And it was personalized. He wrote it to Wesley and things like that. So in the in the era of coronavirus and the pandemic, you're spreading around the country and the globe, people are now looking for ways to engage with fans without being physical. So I think this is a great, great way of a new, innovative way. But one of the questions I want to ask you, profitability, how do you think you would make money from his app? Because it didn't charge me. How do you pay the athletes? How did we get the fee structure? What are you going to do to make this thing profitable? So our original revenue model was B to C. So we were charging the fans every time a photo was signed. So you upload your photo and there would be a fee associated. So say, for instance, we were charging $10 for sign, for every signed photo. It went well, but we never maximize our earning potential. Say Emmanuel was doing a signing on Saturday and 5000 people uploaded photos and he signed 300 of those. We only made money on 300 photos. So we always left way more money on the table than we made. But the thing that we gathered a lot of was data. We gather a lot of emails, you know, they say a picture, you know, a picture is worth, you know, a thousand words. Well, it's worth a million data points. So we realized that we have, we have a product that brands are looking to purchase. You know, they're looking for engaging experiences that not only, you know, create engagement, but it also, you know, brings in data and it also, it also makes lasting impressions to their customer base. So over the past six months, we shift our business model to B to B where now, say for instance, you have a company like Dick's Sporting Goods where they tend to do in-person appearances where they all have a celebrity or an athlete coming to the store, sit down for two hours, sign photos, take pictures and do things like that. Now we're going to those brands and we're saying we have an experience that could be completely customized. You put your logo on the bottom of every signed photo. So when it's shared on social media, it's your likeness that's going to get that positive association. Now we have this experience where kids are excited and people are in homes and they're getting excited to participate in our product because it brings them joy. And so we're now we're going to the brands and we're saying we have an experimental, experiential product that's better than an in-person event. So now our business model is going to those brands and we've seen business increase a hundred folds over the past over the past month due to all the canceled events that are going on and you know it's we're enjoying this ride right now. We're you know you know how you know I say there's some rainy seasons and entrepreneurship right now it's you know it's raining and we're you know we're playing in the rain. Oh yeah definitely I noticed and you know especially when the coronavirus picked up I had used it before already. I think it was earlier this year last year when I got the email and the photo and things like that. So especially with the coronavirus where everybody's looking for new ways to they're looking for new ways to be engaged or accustomed without physically being there and you're right on the money where people can get autographs from some of their favorite athletes. Now what is your you you spoke about your business model for profitability what about how do you get new celebrities maybe is it just sports or is it just any celebrity anybody how do you what's the model behind that. Yeah we usually you know deal a lot with their marketing agents and talent agents. We also depend heavily on our co-founder who's you know professional athlete you know you know part of his duties is to bring on you know new celebrities as well but we believe that wherever people pull out cameras there's a market so we started in sports because that's where our connections are the strongest but we're hoping to get into more entertainment where if you go to a concert for instance and you take a selfie with you and your your friend and you have the musician in the background while they're on stage we want to go to the ticket masters of the world and you know the record labels and say while that artist gets on the tour bus and they drive to the next city let him let them sign pictures for 30 40 minutes like VIP access because we're about to enter a new norm where we don't know when the autograph appearances are going to come back you know we don't know when that VIP meet and greet type engagement will be back you know it could be six months you know they might not come back because when we built this product we said we're providing something for what for the celebrities so they don't have to shake a thousand random hands and you know even though they they you know it's good for the brand we talked to a lot of celebrities and they said days after doing autograph signings I always I usually always get some kind of cold or some kind of sickness because they shake a lot of random hands and they meet a lot of a lot of strangers and especially how we are now I don't know if that type if that type engagement is coming back so we really want to get to you know the music industry the you know Hollywood the movie and entertainment industry where you know if there's a release coming out or album release when those meet and greet type things disappear we want them to plug in fan gauge and say we're not going to do the personal meet and greets but but we'll go live and we'll sign the photo that you care about to just show to give you things and you know provide that that two-way communication to show that we really appreciate your support so right now we're you know we're in the ground running and we're trying to cross over to as many industries as possible because we know that there's some competition coming we don't know where it's going to come from but we know it's coming and you know and you know how we're going to combat that is to put our you know make sure that we put our foot in every single industry so when they do come they look up and they say damn fan gauge is already there and they already got this many celebrities and they've already you know they've already locked this industry down so so we're starting to cross over and you know that's really important for our growth right now okay now one of the questions I got for you as well is what incentive do you have for the celebrity to say or the talent agency to say you know what you want to be involved we will do this it's a couple things you know the first is you know we pay appearance fees to you know if the celebrity has an appearance fee you know you know we'll pay we'll pay that and you know especially if you know if it's an instance where um you know you know early on when we were you know testing out the platform you know not only did we pay those appearance fees but you know we told them that this is this is gonna be good for their brand you know we've had we've had athletes tell us that they they receive more social goodwill from doing our event than they did when they were sitting out in the cold handing out coats at a coat drive you know people were thanking them and praising them and you know and you know thank you so much for doing this for my son or my grandmother you know so the social good will is huge especially right now where you know a lot of the celebrities are starting to turn to live live feeds um but they're only sending out messages they're not receiving anything back and the live feed can be extremely awkward you know a lot of you know athletes and their and the marketing agents they know that they need to use these live feeds because it's great for engagement but it's extremely awkward you know it's like you hold up this camera in front of your face and you look down there's only two or three people watching you like man I don't know about this I'm not you know I'm good on that I'm not doing that it's a really awkward space so by providing them with our you know our platform now they're giving the viewers a reason to watch now now the viewers tuning in like man I sure hope my photo gets signed and I'm going to sit here and watch this whole time to make sure that you know I don't miss that moment when my photo gets signed so now we're we're taking that awkwardness away from live video and we're saying let us help you get into this you know phenomenon that is live video you don't have to do it alone will help you you know give you this resource so now people are leaving your live feed and thanking you for doing it instead of leaving it and saying oh well you know all he did was talk you know that's it man now what are some of the challenges you face as an entrepreneur on your path man it's uh chill but where do I start you know where do I start where do I start you know I would say you know by far the biggest is you know I wasn't a business major you know you know no one in my family were entrepreneurs no one owned businesses so I didn't know what a business model was I didn't know what an assumption was you know a profit law statement to me was just like over my head you know and you know that's such an important part of the business but if you don't immerse yourself in it if you don't make yourself vulnerable to it and you know send it out to people that have to critique your financial model and you know sometimes make fun of your financial model you're not going to learn and for me that was probably the biggest hurdle was figuring out what a financial model needs to look like because I'm expecting to go to investors and you know you know get investments but if you don't know what a financial model is how do you expect to tell your story through the numbers and you know so that was something that I had to you know swallow my pride and really just go back to school you know that's why you know I decided to put the company through an accelerator program was because we needed to become more financial illiterate like we we didn't know enough about what it took to build a company through numbers and that was something that you know we had to learn so you know I would say that definitely that was the first you know big obstacle you know I would say a second one is you know checking your ego at the door you know it's a very humbling experience I've probably you know I've been told no or no thank you a couple thousand times man like and you can't have an ego like you literally every day you got to check it at the door because you got to get ready to be told no and then no again and then no again but you know I was you know for instance I was told no by a company I met with them once a year for the past four years every single year I met with the same company to give them an update on on what Fangage is doing and every single time they said you're not ready yet we want to see your scale better you're just not ready yet last two weeks ago they reached out to me and they said okay we see you now you're ready and we want to run with you so you know it's just it's just persistence man and like I said you know checking your ego at the door because truth be told you're probably gonna fail and you got and you have to be able to you know make yourself vulnerable to that a lot of people have great ideas they have great concepts you know they're great workers but they're scared to make themselves vulnerable to failure and if you're not if you're not willing to put yourself out there to fail then it you know it starts trying to start a business not for you and I'm you know you know and that's probably been one of the toughest things I'm I'm so super competitive I hate to lose you know I you know I be told no just rose me the wrong way but that's just part of the journey and it took me a little while to realize that you know they're not doing it in a to hurt me or in a harmful way you know they're doing it to help me grow they're telling me no not because I didn't like what I'm trying to do or like me it just wasn't ready yet and they're telling me no because I need to go get ready okay now you spoke about you know the financial literacy piece and having your struggles and things like that and whatnot this is my say you tell me if I'm crazy about this but I think competition in your space would actually help you let's say if some I don't know some big I don't know company or celebrity got behind the exact same thing you were doing not behind you so they created their own version and they started to run with it right yes they're gonna have momentum but I think that it would probably create a little momentum for your company as well you get what I'm saying does that make sense it makes a lot of sense and you know you hit it you hit it right on the head man you hit it right on the head you know for instance now we're starting to see you know you know a couple major league baseball teams a couple of NASCAR drivers what they're doing is they're going on Twitter and they're telling their Twitter base you know comment on this Twitter post a photo that you want me to sign and I'll sign it and then you know the the race car driver will save the photo sign the photo save it again and then reply to reply to that fan via Twitter and you know it's a long way to do what we're trying to do but it just confirms that what we're doing has legs and so more and more people are seeing what they're doing and they're saying oh well fan gauge is doing it too and but they've figured out a way to do it a lot a lot easier make it a lot easier for the celebrity where they don't have to save all these photos in their phone just to sign them and so we've seen a lot of people come to us you know potential investors brands who you know they're recognizing that other people are starting to get into this digital autograph space so they'll send us an article or they'll send us something to say hey you know this made me think of you guys you know I would love to touch base so you hit it right on the head man now that you know like I said earlier we know that the competition is going to come you know people are sitting at home and they're trying to think of ways to engage and you have different brands and you know and teams are trying to figure out you know how we're going to weather this storm so we know competition is going to come and we welcome it because just like you said it's going to be good for business because everybody wants the easier way and right now I truly believe we have the easiest way to get this done oh yeah you know I think they're going to bring light to your market to where they're like oh well this person said this person started speaking about it so now that talk like I said we and we weren't the first ones and we're not the first ones do digital autographs you know it you know from 2010 through 2014 there was a couple companies who tried it and they you know it didn't work you know they were trying to sign stock photos so you go to a website you choose from you know a set of stock photos that you can get those signed but what they struggled with was the the repeat customers those daily active users was low because once you got a stock photo signed it's like well what am I going to come back for but the fact that we started signing people's personal photos you know now it's like well I got thousands of pictures that I would want to get signed you know if I don't get this one signed I'm going to come back and upload three more and so you know our you know way of signing personal photos as opposed to stock photos was our competitive edge and you know we'll see what the competition comes with but you know we're ready for we got some things in the pipeline that that I'm really really excited about and uh you know you know yeah now actually this question would you be interested in a collab like I know I've seen companies that are kind of doing the personalized videos and things like that would you be interested in what collaborating with a company like that yeah I mean I would you know I consider cameo who you know they do the 10 second video shout outs I consider them you know not only a competitor but you know shoot and we talk about exit strategies and things like that you know I you know they're on our list you know they they have a product that is similar to ours you know we feel like ours has a little bit more scalability in the B2B industry but we're you know we're starting to do a lot of collaborations man we just finished up a week long collaboration with a company called pro camps pro camps what they do is they put on professional kid camps for professional athletes and now that you know this COVID-19 has pretty much wiped out all kind of camps you know so their business as you know has been devastated because they can't put on these camps for the kids so they transitioned and they said okay well we have these athletes under agreement to put on camps but now that they can't we want to do you know virtual Q&A virtual talk type engagement so the kids can still engage with the with the athletes so they reached out to us and they said can we use fan gauge during our live interviews and I was like hell yeah this let's go because it makes perfect sense because you guys have the athletes under contract so we're not having to pay them and then we have a resource that can you know help you provide an experience for the kids that they you know that they will remember forever so you know that's one partnership and then you know we have we have a few in the works that you know everybody will be seeing the press releases over you know in the next 48 hours that that's really gonna put us on the map you know we got a lot of a lot of the sports leagues are having virtual drafts this year that couldn't be any more tailor made for fan gauge like we could not have written a better script for us right now are you serious the WNBA the NFL all their drafts are virtual so we have a platform where that athlete has an iPad this is a way where you can introduce your new player to the fan base and they can upload photos for them to sign and you know you can you know it could be a live Q&A and say you know this is our newest newest member of our team upload photos to get signed by them and so you know with the with the virtual drafts coming up we're really excited about some of the things we got in the pipeline and that's just a little hint but yeah things things are about to really speed up for us nice I saw that I thought that was a very very good resource that you had there when I saw the pandemic breakout I said hold up and then you know actually you know what fan games in the right spot but one thing I want to do we got to get out of here of course you know I loved it but what do you want to leave people with and also tell people how they can follow you catch up all over this stuff yeah you know again Prince thank you you know thank you for having me on you know I think at the core fan gauge you know a lot of people get caught up with the financial models and the scalability and you know the revenue models you know we we all built this platform for the kids and us you know I used to write Kobe Bryant fan mail every single week you know not because I wanted anything in return but because I just wanted him to know I existed you know I just wanted him to know like I was his biggest fan and you know and I and I just wanted to thank him for for giving me that you know we shared the same last name but I just wanted to thank him for for giving me that inspiration to to be great and so you know you know we we we all built we built this platform for the kids who will never be able to afford to go to a game you know we built this platform for you know the the grandma who can't go to a game but she never misses one you know and she wears the same jersey and she sits in the same chair you know we built this platform for those who don't have the financial means to you know spend 200 dollars to go to an autograph signing you know so you know at the core of it you know that's what this is all about man and and you know you know if you know if you if you you know support that mission if if you have any great ideas or if you have a relationship with a children's hospital or you know anything like that where we can partner with you you know don't hesitate to reach out you know the website is thefangage.com my email is joshatthefangage.com you know don't hesitate to reach out because at a time like we are right now we truly believe that we have a platform that can bring joy to millions of people without anybody being in harm's way and right now it's so little to be excited about it's so little to find you know it's so hard to find joy with everybody getting sick and you know the staggering death numbers but you know we truly believe that we have a we have a platform that one can make a difference and bring joy in people's lives and then after that you know the financial stuff all that's going to come but you know why we built this platform is because we're a bunch of kids at heart and we want to build something for those kids who are less fortunate who won't ever have that opportunity to you know to to meet their their favorite athlete and so every every morning I wake up I think about Kobe you know Rest in Peace Black Mamba but I think about those letters and my mom she you know she sent me a picture one of those letters that she saved because eventually she stopped sending them because I was blowing through all the stamps so she started to stash them away so you know you know when I'm feeling down and then you know this entrepreneurship just you know got me down you know she'll send me a little reminder that you know this is why you're doing it you know you're doing it for the 11 year old you who couldn't who couldn't you know have that two-way communication so you know if you you know if you want to reach out partner that'd be great reach out to us but if you already have like you Prince you know you want about early adopters I really appreciate you getting on to the platform and uploading the photo of your son I know I know exactly which photo you're talking about so I appreciate you being an early adopter in our product because you know it's it's folks like you who have helped us grow and so you know I really appreciate that all right all right now one last thing for we head out of your guys and girls and children of our ages you saw the Super Bowl you saw Emmanuel Sanders playing the Super Bowl I got one question for you was it Emmanuel Sanders too slow or did Jimmy Garoppolo overthrow him which one was it I almost say I almost say it probably wouldn't have mattered I think Patrick Mahomes would have came back either way so so that play it probably wouldn't have mattered you know for my for my brother I wish you would I wish they would have completed that pass because that's a legendary a legendary you know you know moment but yeah I don't think it would have mattered that boy Patty Mahomes was he was on fire and I don't think I don't think the 49ers had she would have taken a thousand fire extinguishers to get him off his rocker he was he was lighting up the scoreboard that second half so I don't really think it would have mattered all right well guys political politically correct answer I know that was very political well well everybody thank you for tuning in and to the next video podcast cartoon book or whatever else crazy you see me do around the globe peace be safe I'm out and thank you