 Happy holidays, and welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Deyla Nyanagita, and we're broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we're at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and you can subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of successful business by local people. Our guests share with us their stories, their trials, their tribulations about their journey. In the ThinkTech studio today is Brian Samson, co-founder of True North and three-time startup pioneer. So, we're excited to hear about that. Brian, welcome to the ThinkTech studios today and the Business in Hawaii show. How are you? Excellent. Thank you so much for having me today. Oh, I've been looking forward to this interview for a long time. Tell us your background and how you got to Hawaii. Sure. It's a little bit of a story, which is great. So born in Chicago, and that's where I was there until my 20s. And then I started to migrate slowly to the West Coast. I was in Southern California for a couple of years, and then eventually made it up to San Francisco. And that's where the origination of this current company I'm co-founding, True North. And that led me to Argentina. And then eventually here to Hawaii. And there's probably all kinds of threads we can pull there, but that's kind of the high level. That's right. And so now, you've settled down in Hawaii, in fact, congratulations because you're expecting your first. That's right. Thank you. Homegrown in Hawaii, we're so proud of that. Thank you so much. Yeah, my wife and I are just absolutely thrilled to have a baby boy on the way. Oh, very exciting time. Someone to carry on the True North legacy, right? The True North tradition, yes, yes, absolutely. So tell me about starting up True North in Hawaii. How did that come about? How do you pick Hawaii? Yeah, so very interesting story. So we, as I mentioned, we were in San Francisco, Argentina, and Hawaii, three places that actually couldn't be more different from each other. So I had been in San Francisco for quite some time, probably about five or six years and just super immersed in the startup scene there. Worked for some really interesting companies, some that did quite well and some that really didn't do quite well. And that's really what's fun about the startup world. You're kind of making a bet on the roulette table to see which one pays off. So I was there and that's where I met my co-founder. His name is Alex. And we both worked at the same, it was actually a fintech company. Both worked at the same fintech company in San Francisco. And we started to kind of see some interesting opportunities that we wanted to poke some holes in and see if we had a real business there. So it's really a global story. We ended up trying to seek funding from somebody we also knew from that fintech company who happened to be in China. So we raised our angel round and then decided that the best place to put our sales team was going to be San Francisco. The best place to put our engineering team would be Argentina. And actually my wife, I convinced my wife to go to Argentina with me for a little while. And we established our company there or at least the major development office there. So that was really interesting anyway, you know, living abroad in a different country, getting that going. But we had a calling that was pulling us to Hawaii. So my wife was born on Guam and actually spent most of her childhood living in Asia as an expat daughter. So she lived in Seoul, South Korea, lived in Tokyo for a long time. She speaks Japanese. And her entire family just kind of one by one like Domino's started to end up in Oahu. So aunties, uncles, grandparents, parents, siblings. So as we knew we were looking to start our family and, you know, thanks, we're so blessed to have one on the way. We knew that that would eventually draw us to Oahu. And having a company like ours where a laptop and an internet connection can make a lot possible. So that brought us to Oahu about two and a half years ago. And we've been so thrilled to be here ever since and have started to really build a little bit more of a business out here too. So for those of us non-tech savvy, what is fintech? Sure. That's a great question. So fintech is a little bit of a buzzword today, right? Now fintech is what it stands for is financial technology. And that's really where True North specializes in. Now fintech, although it's getting a lot of airtime and play nowadays, it's actually been around for a little while. PayPal was kind of the first fintech company. So PayPal, as most people know, it's in the payments business. But fintech has really taken off over the last 10 years. So let me maybe start defining it a little bit and then what's really driven this revolution. So fintech in a nutshell is this next generation of software that has to do with money, right? And almost everyone on the planet has some sort of connection with money, right? Now the old-school generation, it was really about the banking industry. The banks were the place that you got your money. And there's really two things that happen. The global recession of 2008 and 2009, now thankfully Hawaii was really not very impacted by that, especially compared to the mainland. And that's some really smart decision-making by the leadership here. And that was amazing. But what happened on the mainland is a lot of distrust over these financial institutions. A lot of credibility was really lost on Wall Street and some of these other major financial centers. So that really created this environment of what if we had a new start-up that could do all these things that, especially this millennial generation, is more open to doing things online, doing their banking and payments and managing their money, their investments, getting a mortgage. They'll do all those things online instead of going to a bank branch. So you have this comfort with technology and this loss of credibility. And the third thing that's really driving this is banks were doing everything. So you would go to your bank for your mortgage, your auto loan to manage your retirement accounts, pay people, wire money, and so forth. Now one of my favorite sayings, I guess, is if you have 10 priorities, you have zero priorities. And where banks I think kind of struggled is they were trying to do 10 things. And these little pesky start-ups decided they wanted to do one thing and only one thing and do it incredibly well. So they would take payments, for example, and do payments better than anybody because they were laser focused or do mortgages and only mortgages and just do that better than anybody. So there's a real opening there. And just being in the fintech space, you can see all this venture capital just flowing. So not even counting the bigger companies that are getting into fintech like a JP Morgan or Bank of America, just the little start-up companies, in the U.S. alone, you're seeing on average about $20 billion spent as investment into fintech companies. And that's where we're typically playing is those venture funded, the next generation, the new ideas in fintech. Wow. So Hawaii, we're so proud of being ingrained in our culture and supporting our legacy businesses. I mean, I can tell you that my grandparents insisted on banking with the same bank, the same banker. Sure. Yeah. It's very much a relationship environment. It's very relationship driven. Tell me how you started talking about moving to a higher or a more advanced technology platform, Hawaii, to a newer technology platform, knowing that we were this culture. Yeah, yeah, sure. So Hawaii is a really interesting place. So there's some great benefits to being a little more risk adverse, right? As in Hawaii really survived the Great Recession or a lot of these other urban tech centers got hit. But since I've been here for about two and a half years, I've been really inquisitive to the fintech appetite and I've been pleasantly surprised. There's some serious interest, a lot of enthusiasm. I have some colleagues that are executives at banks here and they're starting to think about blockchain and different things that they can move to really interesting, powerful platforms and applications. So I see Hawaii in this really great middle ground of not overdoing it with the risk, so they're still being a little more comfortable for your average citizen. But they're testing the waters enough and starting to push some boundaries and I think that's going to be a great intersection. Hawaii is really in a good spot. Fantastic. I know that you've been very thoughtful and very strategic about how you introduce Hawaii to this new type of technology. We see our banks changing platforms, right? Banking's completely different now, right, where now it's an experience, it's a customer experience going into our banks. But I do know that you wanted to make sure that what you brought and what True North brought to Hawaii was aligned with Hawaii's goals, our leadership goals. I want to put up a picture of you and your lovely wife and Governor Ige. I think we have that picture here. Yeah, thank you. Tell us about your meeting with Governor Ige and how that conversation sparked. Yeah, sure. It was such an honor for my wife to have a chance to meet with the Governor. That's actually at Aloha beer right here in Kakaako and we had a chance to talk about tech and the future and really some things that are coming to Hawaii. I love that he has an engineer background, so very pragmatic, like a real problem solver. I love that he was very straightforward and had some great ideas on how to tackle that, so it was such an honor to meet with him and talk more about the ideas for FinTech. Fantastic. So, Hawaii has an appetite for the old, but we also have an appetite for the new. Tell me what you think Hawaii is ready for, where we're going to go with the FinTech movement. Yeah, sure. So, when you talk to people, what drives their banking decision? And to your point earlier, it can vary a little bit by demographics and age, but would you see some of the newer generation, what drives their decision? It's actually no longer about that relationship, it's actually about convenience, so convenience isn't just having an ATM on every corner, but it's also, can I do this without having to leave my couch? Can I pay my friend back for that pizza last week with my mobile app? Can I search for and maybe secure a loan from the comfort of my couch and my laptop, or even my mobile phone? Can I check the balances or trade stocks from, so I see that really interesting and Hawaii has a very enthusiastic generation of people that have a big appetite for this kind of movement, so I see some real exciting times ahead in the state. I know that you have a team here locally that's really excited about what FinTech is going to bring to Hawaii. We've got a photo of your team here and maybe you can introduce them so that we notice and recognize them on the street, and that's your, you have a team of three? So there's three others locally, yeah, so Hawaii has been an amazing place for us to find great talent, and a lot of my colleagues talk about the 2% unemployment, but I've just been blessed and fortunate to find three amazing people and hopefully more to come, so there's Stacey who does operations a lot of our contracts, and we've got a busy sales pipeline, so Stacey's working on that. We have Patrick who came on board as our chief financial officer, and Patrick has a ton of experience in private equity and raising capital and things like that, and there's Ivy who's really been a lot of our backbone in supporting us on all kinds of projects, and she's often the face to invoices and so forth with our customers, so our customers are all over the world, Asia and the states and mainland, but they all know our Hawaii team quite well. Fantastic. We are going to take a short break, but when we come back, Shugunar has wide wings, and I'd love to hear more about your operations and different parts of the world, different parts of the United States, I think that'll be really exciting. We are going to take a short break. This is Business in Hawaii, and we'll see you back here shortly. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About, where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in, and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there, and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. Today, joining us is Brian Samson, co-founder of True North and true startup, entrepreneur, and local boy, because now you're going to raise your family here, and I'll tell you, your family's not going to let you leave. So you can bet on planting some roots here. I think that would be great. When we left, we were talking about True North. It's entering into Hawaii and how you're aligning with Hawaii's leadership and bringing tech and fintech to Hawaii. But we also know that you expanded across the water even further from Hawaii, but into Argentina. Tell me, what led you to Argentina? What is business? What is it like doing business in Argentina and how the connections come together? How do you connect San Francisco, Argentina, Hawaii, and make your team feel the culture of all of those places? Sure. Great question. Thank you. So when my co-founder, Alex, and I were looking at, and we had, the world was our oyster. We could have gone anywhere, and software development centers have been all across the world. They've been in India and China for a long time. Eastern Europe is becoming more popular as well, but we saw this hidden gem in South America, and in particular Argentina. And there were a couple of really interesting reasons kind of on the surface, and then one in particular that as you really scratched into it, it was like, wow. So on the surface, you look at the time zone. So if you're a Hawaii business and maybe you're offshoring to Asia or offshoring to even like New York or Eastern Europe, that time zone can get a little tough. But if you're a company in, say, Texas or California and you're outsourcing, you want to work with a company or engineers that are on your time zone. So just the way the map works, you've got a big overlap. And what actually helps that is Argentina has a very strong Spanish and Italian and also German influence. So they eat dinner very late. So I learned the hard way a couple of times, you know, I'll go out looking for a restaurant around 7 o'clock for dinner, and nothing's even open. So we're starving a couple of times. But around 10, 11 p.m., that's when the restaurants really start going, and it blew my mind. You'll see families with young kids come in around midnight just to start their dinner. But where that actually helps is you have almost this entire day of overlap, right? And then a couple other things that we really like, you know, number one, outside of Brazil, it's the largest country in Latin America. Both by size and population. So we've got some room to grow there, and in Brazil, of course, they speak Portuguese. But Argentina has been rated as the highest English fluency country in all of Latin America. So we have, you know, very easy conversations, and it's actually very conversational. You know, our employees often watch American Netflix shows, you know, so they're watching, you know, the latest episodes of House of Cards or whatever, you know, and they know, you know, U.S. slang and U.S. culture, so it's really interesting. But education is subsidized by the government, healthcare, so quality of life is really good. Engineering talent is spectacular. But my favorite reason for Argentina, besides all that, and like the amazing food and culture and cuisine, is the country, to no fault of the population, but the country's experienced a very volatile economy for decade after decade after decade. Now, what happens in that is if you're just a regular person, right? You know, a regular citizen of the country, you're experiencing, you know, this up and down inflation and impact your life. So this has created just a, you know, your average citizen of Argentina is very resilient, very adaptable, very flexible. They just know how to solve problems in a way that I think it would make me like my head spin, right? But they just, you know, it's a regular Tuesday for them, and our customers love their problem-solving skills. They sound agile, and in fact, we have a photo of your Argentina team. Big team. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that actually might be a little outdated. We're scratching about 80 today. So, yeah, in about three years, we're about 80 people now, and with the majority in the Buenos Aires office. So not only are you contributing to Hawaii's economy and our community by bringing jobs and efficiencies, technology efficiencies, you're doing that in other countries as well. And I think that's so commendable. When we spoke before the interview, we talked about leveraging a distributed team. Talk to me about the concept of distributed team. What does that mean? Sure. So, you know, I think there's still, there's a lot to be said for, you know, being in the same office and so forth, and that really, you know, drives your culture. But I think when you look at, like, your access to talent, and talent is everywhere today, right? When you look at your access to talent, you know, you start with this giant funnel, right, if you consider the world. But then if you decide they only have to be in my city, you've cut that down dramatically. And then they have to be in my city and meet my bar. They have to, you know, meet my culture. They have to be available and looking. So now you've got this, what started with a really giant pool, this very, very tiny group to pull from, right? So we decided to look at that from an inverse direction, right? Our Hawaii team actually all works remotely, right? We still get together, you know, over, you know, for poke and, you know, in the latest iced coffee and stuff. But we, you know, we really found that, you know, people, they want to be trusted. They want to be treated like adults. They don't want to have somebody watching over the, you know, 905. You're five minutes late. They just want to get their work done, be treated like adults. And same thing in San Francisco. We do have an office there, but there's a lot of flexibility. And same thing in Argentina. There's a lot of flexibility for the team. It's really a results-driven environment. So if you can treat people like adults there, you can really widen your access to amazing talent. Now I won't say that it's easy, but we have used a lot of technology, especially we're a tech company. We've used a lot of technology to help us get there. So we have different software to track our project statuses. We tag each other. There's constant updates and email. You've got all these things that I'm sure our audience is aware of like Skype and Slack and Zoom and Monday.com and JIRA, you know, all these different tools that we're putting our notes and so forth. But there's also no substitute for a video conference, right? So we really try to take advantage of that, especially when you recognize how important nonverbal communication is. Especially when you're not in the same, you know, the same proximity. So again, it wasn't easy, but I think our team, as long as they're challenged, as long as they're working on projects that they like, it's really helped us get some of the best people out there. What I admire about you and the business that you're building is, because I have an HR background and I know you do as well, that what you've done with True North is really built company culture. Even if you are thousands of miles away, we have another picture of part of your Argentina team with some gifts from Hawaii. So maybe you're bringing some Hawaii into their lives and I think that's amazing, right? To be able to build a company with culture, even if you are thousands of miles away. Sure, yeah, we've really tried to bring a little ohana to Argentina, right? And they are three totally different places, but I think our Argentina team really appreciates the Hawaii spirit. Our Hawaii team really appreciates the San Francisco and the Argentina spirit. So there's a lot of passion in all three places and we've just really tried to prioritize teamwork and accountability and, you know, just a fun work environment and it's worked out really well so far. In the short time we have left, I think we have about a minute to go. Tell our viewers about startup businesses in Hawaii. What's the temperature for that? Yeah, sure. So I spent a long time with all these startups in San Francisco and as I come out here and I've spent time at the Blue Startups office and just talking to other entrepreneurs, it's really exciting. And with the way that the world has kind of democratized the ability for defined information, right? There's a good chance that whatever problem you're dealing with, someone somewhere in the world has not only dealt with it, but they've documented it. So all that is kind of wide open and then as you start to see more risk taking, you know, in Hawaii and then more access to capital and especially I've seen a bigger drive on that seed stage and angel stage of capital that can really get off the ground. So if I could leave any, you know, kind of last minute tips for entrepreneurs. Please do. The pitch, pitching investors is so excruciatingly difficult and, you know, brings up nerves and anxiety. But I would encourage them to try to push towards a definitive decision. A lot of times you'll hear a maybe and a maybe is kind of the worst thing that you want. You either want a yes or a no. So make sure that your assumptions are clear and what you're trying to do and how you think it will play out and then try to get that yes or no and you'll be on a really good track. Brian, I would love to have you back and, you know, we've run across entrepreneurs just like yourself to talk about those exciting tips for folks who are willing to venture into startup. We are out of time and I could go forever on this conversation but I really wanted to thank you for joining us. So excited to watch True North take off and watch your team grow and all the wonderful things that you're doing aligning with our leadership here. So thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure. We are out of time but thanks again to Brian and True North for joining us and a huge thank you to the production staff. Happy holiday to our viewers. If you would like to be a guest on our show, please email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at two o'clock and we look forward to seeing you here next week.