 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to adventures in commercialization. I'm Zoe Heaney and today we're going to be talking with Vince Kavan. Good friend of mine. We've had the pleasure of working together on several different projects. He is a product and operations leader with over 25 years of experience building teams and the startup community so thanks for joining us today event. Thank you Zoe happy to be here. Yeah, so it's always fun to hear the new exciting things you're up to so we'll get to speaking about that but first I'd like to talk a little bit about your journey to where you, you know, got into today. And what made you want to work with startup. Hi, I started out in the startup 25 years ago or so maybe a little longer now 27 worked at Epic Games. It's pretty famous video game company now we're just a few people back in the day and started out doing some technical recruiting. Got into some video game design and that kind of launched my tech career my interest in tech was always a gamer but just went on that path. And through a series of circumstances just fast forward to probably about 10 years ago, I got my sort of big break and started a company called one spark I was on the founding team, met up with some great founders who just taught me the I wrote about scaling up really quick and all the language around startups like what is it what is involved in scaling up a company getting something going how do we find customers really quickly how do we iterate, how do we make something really fast and impactful. So learned all that language in about a year about 10 years ago. And from there just accelerated my career started learning about pitching started learning about getting investor intention. And did a lot of all kinds of cool stuff in Jacksonville. And one of the things I will say is starting out in a small city like Jacksonville is really helpful for people looking to start their career. There's not a whole lot of people doing what you're doing, typically. So it's easy to be that sort of shining light in the hill and people will notice city like Seattle which I eventually moved to about seven years ago there's just so much activity going on it's harder to get and get the traction that you want to get. So anyway, fast forward through my early years there. I ended up doing some work in Seattle once I moved there. We met through some investor groups correct you for example, and just started seeing ways I can implement that sort of community crowdfunding space for people are generating ideas, and trying to make raise money for their startups. Myself and a friend started to something called activate, which was a entrepreneurial community designed to bring different people together so as the artists musicians and techies and and people from the different creative communities, sort of bumping into each other creating meaningful connections. I've always been interested in that and getting people together in different ways. And once I had that going I ended up having to come back to Jacksonville to be with family and that's where I landed into perspective. It's so great to hear your journey and what you're up to now. So as, as Vince mentioned him and I did have the pleasure of working with each other. I was the director of events for currency forum. Vince was working actively in the marketing sector of that company. We facilitated the meetup between entrepreneurs and investors. We saw many of pitches, anything from kitty litter to cancer research is what we would say. Definitely many pitches came through the door. And I can as a test to what you were saying is being in a more active city. It's more active but I would say that the city overall did have that little bit of Seattle freeze in it. So on a rainy day, it was very difficult as the director of events to try to build the room with investors to try to get those companies recognized. There was so many companies coming to us for getting just recognized that wouldn't even get to the pitching or to our monthly tour. So it was definitely very full market. Would you say so, Vince. It was significant trade offs right and when I got to Seattle it was really clear. And I had lived in DC in San Francisco, but I wasn't really connecting and networking really deliberately with the startup scene and like the sort of frenzy around, you know, what are we building who's raising money who needs to talk to who. And so when I got from Jacksonville, which was very casual about things and still is, which is a nice aspect of it. But when I got to, when I got to Seattle, it just seemed like everybody's busy. There's always something going on. And I think the sort of Seattle freeze is that, for me, it was a lot of great acquaintances people seem like they want to hang out with you and do cool stuff together but the deep meaningful connections really come easily. I think just because there's always something interesting going on and those people might cancel on you for a coffee or to do something because they find a better opportunity or they're they're working on their company to or their startup or whatever venture they have so Yeah, in a city like that when I come to find it's just, you know those people that you really resonate with and can work with and want to work with you just just hold on to them tightly figure out cool things that you can do together. You know the advantages is that there are so many skilled people who really know what it takes to do those great things. You know the Amazon some Microsoft's in the world of the world are in a place like Seattle people come from there people learn the culture people know how to scale and build cool things. You don't really find that too much in Jacksonville I mean we're still looking for like our billion dollar startup right we still don't have something like that here. In Seattle you have that in spades just tons of people know how to do that stuff but it's really hard to get that attention because there's so many people in demand, you know being pulled in so many directions when they have those kind of skills. So I say it would say you know, if you're looking at different opportunities, you know, you have tons of access and a way to get to people much easier in a place like Jacksonville, maybe even Orlando still. I'm talking about Hasse Gainesville and I'm talking about Florida. Very easy to get to the right decision makers and right leaders get a lot of their time and a lot of their advice. But you don't have that sort of ecosystem that can really help scale and build your startup and connect you with the right people right away. That's much harder to find. We did have a somebody in the audience asking about the definition of a sleepy city so would we say that that Seattle would be a more sleepy city. Just for you know, they sleep on on these ideas and kind of don't really reconnect with you or what would you define that as. Well, I mean, Jacksonville is probably more like the sleepy city. The lower pace, you know, I kind of joke like it kind of with the Seattle freeze thing I was telling people that, you know, you can make a lot of great connections in one night, and it's really hard to find that one person that wants to have a coffee with you you know, or they'll set up like maybe a coffee meeting maybe 10 minutes or whatever but it's not really like a long sustained thing where they become like a, you know, real friend and advisor easily. But in Jacksonville I kind of joke that you know you can meet somebody in the morning and by the afternoon you're having sweet tea on the porch with them and you're, you know, good friends already. So, yeah, those those kind of relationships I think are much easier to come by in a so called sleepy city like this, especially in the south I mean there is there is something to Southern hospitality and that whole like, you know, attitude of conviviality and no graciousness that comes with it. I think it is very true one of the reasons that I've also headed towards the East Coast that Southern just smile when you walk past somebody and you just have that like, just say hi when you make eye contact. We don't feel that as much in Seattle or on the West Coast overall. It may just be cultural may just be the sunshine who knows. I think it's some of the sunshine, you know it's just like getting people to sort of brighten up and smile and, you know, not be so tight. That's another than black or gray or or color being more than exactly I mean Seattle's kind of you know dreary a lot of the time you know it can be beautiful to be in that drizzle but not for 300 days in a row. Yeah. So let's kind of rewind a little bit and talk a little bit about one of the things that we've had across the board with a lot of our episodes is discussing how, you know, our audience could be these entrepreneurs or people who are locked down during coven and had due to, you know, getting a little aid from the government or just really having that little bit of leg up to have some more time to focus on their hobbies or passions, and now really turning that into their full time career and wondering when the time to switch over to that is. That this whole going virtual. I mean I mentioned to you before if I would have been doing my road tour virtually, you know, five cities in five days with hundreds of investors and trying to get these entrepreneurs, the recognition that they deserve and the time and the spotlight. It would have been a lot easier I think just as a management standpoint, doing it virtually than in person. It did go a lot of work went into that. But do you think that it is giving them a leg up or is it a little bit harder to do those networking session. Yeah, I think we all adapted to it right we just had to be figured out how to make it work. So, you know, scaled meetings for me, I was able to meet a lot more people and reach out to a lot more interested parties that I would hope would talk, you know, in person but hey I just had to email them or create a zoom link and we were off to the races. I think that everybody adapted to that and expected that once covid started so we just kind of assume that was a way networking was going to be for a while. I remember coming up with some ideas to move back to Jack I was in Seattle, when when covid started, and I knew I had to come back to Jacksonville so I just started networking to my people on Jacksonville, looking for cool startup opportunities and that's when I found someone is like, yeah, I need someone to help me scale help me, you know, structure a lot of things around the pitch and the business. So, within a week, I had an opportunity move out to Jacksonville was really easy to set up. I don't know if it would have been that easy. Otherwise, for me personally that worked really well I mean I think for most companies, and most people they were able to do a lot more networking and setting up of meetings, especially as we sort of got accustomed to that being the primary group we were going to connect. Yeah, well, COVID has to be a blessing in disguise for a lot of us, you know, working from home and having a little bit more of a work life balance. I think has also added to us being more successful in the work that we are doing. So happy to see that you're closer to family, which I think just helps everybody focus a little bit harder. So, I've also had the absolute pleasure of helping set up some of the activate events that Vince was mentioning earlier. These events were amazing again bringing in people from completely different sectors of business tech art and really just showing them, you know, how to pitch and how to get a voice for their company. What are some of the things that you think a pitch must have. Yeah, you know, got you got to have a good clear this clear way to describe what the problem is and how you're going to solve it. Right. It's got to be something that people are going to care about, and you've seen the problem happen over over again you really know what it is you know what the customers are experiencing you're able to say okay here's our solution. Here's how we're going to deliver it like the go to market strategy here's how we're going to scale up and get that traction. So if you don't have that story figured out work on that first figure out who the customers are that you're going to be helping with this problem that you figured out needs to be solved. Knowing your numbers. I mean I've certainly had my chair of experiences where an investor or some sort of stakeholder wants to know specific numbers and like, how are you getting to those assumptions. You've got to know your stuff. You just got to be able to nail it down say, here's why year one looks this way here's why your three looks this way we're building on these different things. I think it's tempting to just focus on. I think this is the some of what I've seen some first from some of these great entrepreneurs are great storytellers, especially early on in their career. They get so focused on explaining how they came to the solution and being the storyteller around, you know, the cool thing that they're going to create that they just don't know a lot of the mechanics about how the business is going to be built. So, knowing that is pretty integral. If you can't do that, definitely have someone there is going to help you with that you know if it's like a CFO type or some sort of operational person to help the sort of lead visionary get through that but they should definitely have that figured out as well. It would be to know how to explain to the investor what's in it for them. You know what are they getting out of this. Maybe they obviously would probably want to return on their money. But you know people are more than numbers maybe it's here how here's how you specifically can be a strategic advisor, figure out who you're talking to and like how is this person. How are we going to tap into their skill set and the things that they can do best to help our company, you know really show that you've done your research on them and you see how they can really add the value to the company. And that's how they're going to get rewarded, you know this through different kinds of equity or, you know connections that you can help make for them as well. So if you're pitching for purpose is typically to get investors or maybe even other employees, you know know what is in it for the employee to most people work for more than just money some are mercenary and will but you want to have some value in there beyond just the dollar I think. I've seen a lot of pitches and during this time, there have been some big no knows like you have your own skin in the game like an investor doesn't want to invest in you unless you've invested in Europe and yourself. And that seems to be more than just not taking a salary for a certain period of time you know they really want to know that you are invested for the future. I've heard that other investors want the CEO to be up at front and really speak to that person, even if they're, you know, maybe an introvert and not very good at pitching that's still something that they would like to see, or at least have them up side by side with the person that's trying to market it. Do you think that a CEO is the right person to be pitching these or are there other big no knows that you you could let us know about. Typically, yeah, typically, CEO, especially early on should be pitching it I mean they're typically the CEO or some sort of co founder that's really has been there from the beginning or you know deeply embedded into it. And there might be situations where they can't pitch because there's maybe, you know, to two kinds of pitch events that are happening or something in different parts of the country. But it should typically be a co founder or CEO I think they want to see the person who started it want to know that that's, you know, running in their blood, when they've they've got it down. I have a question from Mark. Love, and it asked. And is change always good, or would it be better to try to incorporate past values into current situation and who may. And I think personally when I read this message once this question I think that there are some everybody's looking for something really great and innovative we want your business to be something completely different than anything we've seen before that's really going to catch the eye. However, there are certain milestones and, you know, things that your pitch must have that are proven to be success. And, you know, how do we measure success I guess is another question he has what. How do we determine what success is. So what do you think Ben. Yeah, you know, I think we focus often too much on novelty, and it can get into like trivia or just like little tweaks on, you know, some interesting concept that's not really going to be like a business and that compelling. I mean, there's a big question right so you go back to like, what are some core things that people need to hold on to you know I think it's stuff that like Henry Ford power we thought was a great idea you know cut obsession with the customer right which Amazon's taken on like full force is a really well known value of theirs probably the core tenant of the company. And that for business has been tried and true for so long. But people do want to see like some some what we might call like the secret sauce right like what is that component of what you're delivering that's has that magical piece to it that no one else is doing or hasn't been quite delivered in that way it's really going to capture people's attention. But I've definitely all seen things that seem, you know, they're just like made for novelty sake and don't really have like, or like lasting value you know because I'm not speaking to the customer maybe just like some piece of trivia and I was going to really care about the future. Yeah, I have always measured success. Whenever it's been asked me in any interview I've ever been in is like what, how do you measure success and for me I think customer satisfaction is what I personally measure success with and any of the businesses or endeavors that I have been involved with. When your customer is happy and they walked out of the door not seeing any of the fires that were being put out or you know that everything ran smoothly at the end of the day. And that's really what we're seeking and and what's going to bring them coming back wanting more as when wheels are turning their grace and oil, it looks great and flawless from the outside, even if you're you know ripping your hair out behind the screen. When you really listen to the customer and they can see that you've made changes based on what they got. Yeah, the customer tends to be the customer feedback tends to be very similar and in a lot of different cases. Yeah, definitely and you know one of the first things I do if I'm, you know, shopping for a book if I'm looking for anything I want to see I want to read what the customer says right we're looking at reviews. If anything's like three stars or less I'm like God do I really want to go and check that out I mean is this worth my time you know as an experience going to be good as a book going to be junk. It's like one of the first things I typically look at it look at I think a lot of people do you know you're looking at Neil, you're looking on Amazon you're looking at Google reviews. If you're seeing like, you know, junk output from the reviews show like man I should stay away from this place. Yeah. You know, like the greatest product in the world and it doesn't always transcribe like that if the customer is not happy so cool well fast forwarding now. I really want to hear what you have going on this perspective company, your new endeavor just sounds really awesome the product and the market fit just tell us about it and how how it's going to revolutionize our communications here. So perspective is a social media platform that will allow people to post long form content that is typically going to be political nature we're going to allow people to post anything they want, but so the container that we're creating is this is a way for you to share your thoughts around a many different topics, and you'll be able to find ideas like yours but our algorithms going to show a angle on different ideas that you might not have considered interesting or like you wouldn't normally resonate with so for example. Let's say you're interested in presidential politics, and you've identified as a liberal, and you have been, you know, your whole life you've been thinking about liberal ideas you're interested in liberal news liberal political discussions. Well, you see something come up on your feed that is presidential politics, so to speak, but it's showing you this because someone from a conservative bent wrote something and a lot of people said it with thoughtful, they might not have agreed with it. But they've said it they've tagged it as thoughtful, and then it's going to post it to you and we'll do this through a variety of ways. One of them will be those people like you, who've identified as liberal read the article, said it was thoughtful, and they can agree disagree. So your algorithm will be able to show that content to you, and you'll be able to go and do a deep dive. So, setting it up the first phase will be. I'm signing up. I'm doing a little survey to sort of identifies your different political interests and persuasion so we've got some some algorithmic magic happening there. And then as you start to read content and post on it will also be able to calculate sort of what that might be interesting to you in the future. The reason we created this is because we've seen so many, you know, friends families, getting to disagreements, especially as our in our hyper politicized atmosphere that we have or everybody's like a political junkie and those was going on, you know, and in politics that everybody's got these really strong political opinions probably more so than they ever have we're all super hyper informed we can find like anything we want to form these really concrete ideas, and we've seen it devolve into this really chaotic mess like on Twitter and on Facebook. So we're going to try to create essentially the anti echo chamber algorithm that allow people to thoughtfully consider different ideas that aren't typically their own. I love that. I love it. I think it's great I think it's very well needed for the market right now. I know that there's been a lot of discussion around Twitter and the new purchases of Twitter and what that's going to look like and I know that Instagram specifically with a lot of people who are creating content. People have now taken over so it's like, is that a tick tock thing is that an Instagram thing now are you getting more views if you're making videos on a photo platform. I know that they're talking about your main feed on Instagram showing you only things that they want you to see in a lot more ads are coming out and now you have to specifically go on and click following just to be able to see the people that you actually chose to follow you have to further into seeing the things that you wanted to see so they're very in there. Amongst things that they want you to see or the people have paid for you to see so this is great. I think it's great that it's kind of giving you that other perspective of like, you know, when you sit down and have conversations with people if you're open minded and listen to what they have to say then you might you might be swayed but if a lot of people these days or in general are just don't really want to hear the other side. Yeah. That's that's our that's our test our hypothesis might be broken, you know, once people start wanting to beat each other over the head virtually. You said social media and I did have a chance to look a little bit at the website. Can you post anonymously or is it going to be like it had the first name last initial how how is this how user names how does that look. In this phase we're going to let people when we're not doing like the, I think I had to do something see on Facebook to verify my identity, but we're not going to make people do that at first I mean you could be a troll and like start posting random stuff you know just to get excitement, but we encourage people to be their authentic selves, say who they really are, you know poster real thoughts I think that's where the engagement is going to be valuable. We're looking at moderated content to so all this conversation about you know what's allowed and what's censored was not censored. We're going to definitely go into the, you know, the box that says you know low censorship, you know, high transparency, etc. But we think there's probably a need for some sort of guidance or guidelines on how to post and how to represent your ideas. So you can't just have people, you know, trolling in this endlessly and making content that really isn't coming from a place of, essentially. So we're still trying to figure that out right this is this can lead in the product market fit conversation like how do we make it so we do serve that customer need to have so those transparent honest conversations and not go into something that they've already seen before you know like a Facebook tirade or something like that so we're trying to figure that out so like how about we'll actually play out. And now we're just looking for users to, you know, start using the site post, you know, hopefully they're using their real names. Right now it looks like it's all, you know, all good we don't have anybody named you know exclamation point star 62 or anything. And so it's, it's turning out pretty well we were in our third week of our beta test. Well, we are running out of time, I would love to bring you back on the show so we can talk a little bit more about your upcoming milestones for perspective and how you're working on your marketing strategies and networking here in our day and age with virtual communications. But I would really like to ask you if you had one advice for entrepreneurs right now today what would you give them. Yeah, focus on the product market fit, get those customers using their product know what they want. You know right now we're running some really primitive ads on Facebook just to see what messages resonate with the customer that that's the best thing you can do just figure out what the customer wants. Thank you so much Vince it's always such a pleasure to speak with you. I'm hoping to bring you back on the show a little later so we can dive deeper into you know what you're working on right now. Thank you audience for joining us for another great week of adventures and commercialization. If you would like to learn more about ways to make some more money in your life and turn your hobby into your career then join us every other week at 1pm on Wednesday. Thanks so much. Mahalo.