University Place

Building Technology Startups in Wisconsin

– So our next guest this evening is Brian Wiegand, and Brian has been quietly building and selling companies in Madison, Wisconsin for about 20 years. He has a phenomenal track record. Like I mentioned before, he sold a company to Microsoft, right here, out of Madison. And he also, at one point along the way, was apparently the 107th best poker player in the world. Pretty smart person. So please join me in welcoming Brian to the stage. (applause)

– Thanks, John.
– Thank you. What do you think so far?
– Pretty good. Pretty good turnout. Absolutely.
– So, how did you become started as an entrepreneur?

– I really had, I’m from Rhinelander originally, up in northern Wisconsin, and in Rhinelander there’s not very tall buildings up there so I had some big dreams to get out of Wisconsin, head to New York, New York City. I wanted to get into investment banking. I had all these big dreams, and that was where I was going. I was heading down that path, and after I went to school here at the UW, I went out to New York City and took a job for a PiPO company. And it was going really well, right? I mean, it’s exciting, a PiPO company. I’m right outside New York City. It’s in the finance area. I was really excited. I was so excited that I, you know, I kind of noticed I had, like, a real desire to just kind of be an entrepreneur, even inside this small company.

So I just kept pushing this new department, this new idea inside this company. And just like one of the previous speakers, she got fired, I got fired as well, pushing a little too hard. And after that, you know, kind of collecting unemployment, sitting outside New York City, getting fired off my career path was really a big step for me to really try something different. And that’s when I decided to kind of start a company. It put me on that track.

– And this company, Edine, am I correct?
– Yeah.
– How’d you come up with the idea for this?

– So, remember, I’m an old man now, and Edine was like I think the same year that Amazon was founded, and the domain name Amazon.com was registered right at this time. So the Internet is really in its infancy here. And so I was outside of New York City, I thought back in, I think this is 1997 or 1998, I thought I’m going to put every restaurant in New York City on the Internet. That was a cool idea in ’98 or ’99. And so I went door to door to restaurants, and I thought this is a lot of work. And so I needed to incorporate this business called Edine, and so I contacted a lawyer. God, $2,000 to incorporate, there’s got to be a lot of companies starting up right now in the Internet. And so I thought it would be better to sit behind a desk or a computer than going door to door in restaurants. So I created a company to help business incorporate. And so that was BizFilings. And that was kind of one of those classic bootstrap, no money in, sitting at your desk, and so we grew that. We were incorporating about 100 companies a day and grew it pretty quickly.

– And you’re in New York at the time?
– In New York, yes.
– So how do we get back in Madison?

– You can’t do this kind of thing now, but this kind of shows you how far we’ve come in terms of a technology perspective. So I literally, you know– Today you kind of have a cloud-based computing or whatever. So my server was my computer at the time, and so I was hosting a website right out of my computer and I did all that. Kind of HTML was just real cool back then, the Internet was just starting. So I’m in New York, my family wanted to move back to Madison. I was excited but since I have this website, it’s on my computer, there’s no cloud computing back then, so I literally said, all right, let’s do this. Let’s unplug the computer, we’ll hop in my car, drive to Madison, and plug it back in as fast as I could so we don’t lose much business on the website. You just don’t do it that way anymore, but that’s how I got back to Madison. And we didn’t lose too much. (laughter)

– Was that sort of a hectic drive back?
– It was. I got a speeding ticket as well. (laughter)
– And so you’re back in Madison and what happens next?

– So, loving being back in Madison obviously. Just being back in Wisconsin is great. Business Filings was growing. And then, you know, I decided to start another business while Business Filings was going on. Business Filings sold. So I kind of like started out with nothing and sell it for around $13 or $14 million was a big change in my life. And then, like I said, I started another one, partnered with some other people, Mark McGuire, started NameProtect, which is a company to police the Internet and try to find abuses or trademark infringements on the Internet. And then sold that. And I can keep going if you’d like. We started another company, Jellyfish.

So those first two, if you think about BizFilings and NameProtect, were very B to B businesses. Right? So my client was another business. And so I was a little– You’re seeing all these cool companies, all these neat, new companies that are more B to C businesses where you could do a lot of scaling with individual users. And so I thought let me jump over to that arena. And so we started Jellyfish.com, and that was scary because I wrote a $25,000 check for the domain name Jellyfish.com, and that was my wife– I thought that was going to be a divorce situation. So I went with that. It really turned out well and sold that to Microsoft. It was more of a direct to consumer model, more of a shopping search engine at the time. So that worked out pretty well.

– So these first three companies, the idea for the first one kind of came out of a situation where you had the problem, tried to solve it, and realized that there was potentially a business opportunity, right?
– Yes.
– How about the other two?
– So, in terms of trying to solve an individual problem versus–
– How’d you come up with the idea for the other two?

– Oh, the other ones, yeah. Again, coming off of selling Business Filings and then selling NameProtect, each one was getting a little bigger. So like a $14 million sale, a $22 million sale, and then Jellyfish was a $50 million sale. And you’re feeling really good at that point, right? As an entrepreneur, you’re going this is great. And so, admittedly, I’ll get to the answer, admittedly I was really cocky, right? I mean, oh, yeah, let’s just start these things up and sell them; this is really easy. And so you get a little sloppy, you have a little bit more money, and so when I was coming up with the idea for the next one, which was my biggest failure, actually, after that, was Alice.com, the idea was more through less discipline than I’d say I had in other startups. And so the other one was more of going through a more traditional investment process with the start.

The first one, of course, I just stumbled upon, but the other ones were more disciplined and approaching just as an investor because I’m investing my life, I’m investing my own money, as opposed to I just have this idea, I’m going to do it, I’m going to make it happen, whatever happens. It’s more of just you’re investing in it so you take more of a disciplined approach. So Alice was more out of the need of trying to bring consumer packaged goods. I mean this was, again, a little early. Jet sold for billions of dollars. Alice was a very similar model where trying to take the center store or CPG, consumer goods, and put them online. Toilet paper and toothpaste delivered free shipping. Did that before it was all the big money, and all the good successes. So I failed to raise the most money. That was my first failure after three successes.
– The fourth one is the first failure?
– The fourth one.

– Okay. And let’s back up a step, though, and talk about the Jellyfish sale. So I’ve got in my mind my vision of what it’s like to sell a company to Microsoft. I imagine they’re kind of showing up there, like a bunch of suits or something like that, and they’re reaching out to you and then trying to buy this company. What did the process look like?

– It’s funny, first of all, everyone at Microsoft I met is unbelievably super smart, really well accomplished, but they all look the same. They all had the same look. Every one of them. And about nine of them came to the office. And… it was exciting, obviously. When Microsoft calls you think it’s a joke or a spam email or something. And someone from M&A, Microsoft, (inaudible) and I’m interested in buying your company. So you don’t really believe that at first.

We were only 18 months in from the start, when we got that email. So it was a little surreal, but the process was, you know, I learned a ton selling other companies and going through that due diligence process, of the process of selling the company. So you really set the company up in a way in the hope of getting liquidity and selling. So by doing that, it’s a lot smoother. So Microsoft was actually really impressed. I think we were pretty organized through that process. But then working at Microsoft was awful. You know, as an entrepreneur then going to a company with 80,000 people, that was a depressing time.
– Okay.
– (inaudible)
– Okay. And now we’re on to Hopster.

– Yep. Well, no. Yeah, so after Alice failed, so again BizFilings success, NameProtect success, Jellyfish success, and then Alice was a failure. And then, coming out of Alice was– So there you’re really down, and so that re-leveled me in terms of the approach at this point. So I stared Hopster, which was a company to bring coupons onto the Internet, the Sunday paper and get rid of the Sunday circular and started that business.

– Okay. So let’s go back to Alice for a moment. You said that one didn’t go so well. Can you kind of talk us through like what that was like and how you kind of navigated that process when you realized things weren’t going well. You said before that you felt like– In retrospect, you got a little sloppy, but can you talk us through that?

– Yeah, I mean, just being cocky, that discipline I had in the other businesses, the approach of really treating it from an investment perspective. You know, check off the 10 boxes. If I was going to write a big check into this company, what things do I look at? And I think that’s what I think some entrepreneurs don’t go do that approach. As an investor, they’re looking at it through a passion. You got to have the passion, but I got a little sloppy on that. I didn’t check all 10 boxes that I like to check before I start a business. And so we ended up just, it was all passion and admittedly some cockiness, like I said, plowed ahead, and I actually ended up raising the most amount of capital. We raised almost $30 million, and that failed. And so a lot of learnings there, a lot of humbling learnings, but I really feel there was a lack of discipline. It was fun. It was an exciting ride, but it was so close though. I don’t know if you know this but, actually, Target put an offer in right before for $50 million to buy it right before we shut down, and the deal did not go through. It’s very hard to raise money after a deal doesn’t go through like that.

– And like we talked about this earlier, one of the things you shared with me is that it wasn’t the most easy thing to do to kind of bounce back from that. But one of the things you shared with me is that you said a quote that really resonated with me was that you said, “Fear of failure is the death now for an entrepreneur.” So how did you go from that company that didn’t do so well to then getting yourself back in the game where you were kind of able to shed the fear of failure?

– Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, when you go forward and if you’re thinking about failure, failure is part of the process. That’s part of being an entrepreneur and part of being a startup. And when that creeps into your head, I wonder if this is going to work? Is this going to really– Sure, you have your doubts and one minute you think you’re a billionaire and one minute you think you’re bankrupt. That kind of feeling is still there always, but there’s a difference between that feeling, that could shift on second by second basis, to feeling that you’re going to fail.

And after raising $30 million and I made all this money for all these different investors, and then to take $30 million and not return anything back, you just question yourself. You question everything. We’ve all had failures, right? But then to come back from that, to your point, and to kind of go back to my roots from an entrepreneur perspective and go back up and still continue to move forward without that failure in your head is tough. So it took a little time, but, I mean, you know, getting back to what I originally was doing with the first company has really helped, getting back to discipline (inaudible) .

– So it sounds like to me in your head you kind of sort of have this kind of checklist. You kind of mentioned it before where, “When I started “that one company, I didn’t do so well.” There was this checklist and maybe in retrospect I look at it and maybe I didn’t check all the boxes. So what are some of the things you’re looking for when you’re vetting an idea for yourself that makes our kind of conclude that this is one that’s going to be worth my time and maybe this one is not?

– These are very clich. I think if you talked to a venture capitalist or investor you’d hear some similar things. But for me, you know, particularly, we have to realize we’re in Wisconsin so is this a business that I can grow and build in Wisconsin? That’s an early quick one. Two, what’s your competitive advantage? That’s a basic, solid business school term, but it’s really important. And, again, when I say competitive advantage, I’m really passionate about this because every business I’ve ever done you could copy in two weeks with five developers. So competitive advantage doesn’t mean I have a super cool vitamin D compound and I got 10 patents. That’s obviously an unbelievable competitive advantage, but, I mean, a marketplace execution competitive advantage in the Internet, I mean I bet we could get five people in here and we could whip up Twitter in a few minutes. So, what’s Twitter’s competitive advantage?

So, to me, I have to look at that and what is that competitive advantage, not from the traditional: I have a patent of defensibility. In the Internet space it’s a little bit different. It’s an execution competitive advantage. So can I raise the money? Do we have the talent? Can I get a management team together to be able to do this type of business? Is it a heavy tech business? You know, depending on what it is. So you’re going through all those check boxes, very similar to what an investor would do. And then, what are the milestones? Can we do this? Can we do this? Can we do this? We study those metrics and feeling really good about it. And then, finally, after all of that, are you really passionate about it, to go to war and just battle this out to get to the end? And that, if you have that, plus those boxes, it’s a go for me.

– So, like, many entrepreneurs go down this path where they might have like one exit or, surprisingly, maybe even two, which is very rare, and then they kind of shift gears. They become, like, an investor or whatever, kind of more an adviser, and they’re kind of knocked back in the weeds again. And you kind of keep going back, right? You come up with another idea and then you pursue it. Why are you doing that?

– Yeah, I mean, so Hopster sold, so I had a success after the failure. And now I’m onto another one, Gravy. And I looked, I really tried after doing this and having four successful exits and one failure and getting older. I really thought, I really took a reflection. Why not move more into the investor’s seat? Why not take some other type of– Maybe a mentoring or other type of job? And every time I went down that path, I just ended up back with just the roots of being able to take an idea from zero and manufacture market cap and create value by a disruptive concept or idea. That’s me, it just feeds me. And so I kept coming back. It was magnetic back to that, so I tried everything I could to not do a startup for number five. But I just love it. I’m glad I’m back. But it’s also harder as a 25-year-old now. (laughter)

– So, you’ve got a fantastic record building companies here in Wisconsin, in the Madison area. Can you talk about some of the pros, like why this is a great place to do business and why you’re still here, and then maybe some of the challenges you faced as an entrepreneur operating in this environment?

– Yeah, I mean, I love the area. I think it’s a great place from a family and lifestyle standpoint. And I remember, again this is a kind of story I remembered just a quick thought that deviated in my head. I remember early days back when I started, I would be on my back deck and I never liked to go out my back deck. It was a tighter neighborhood. And back then I’d come out, maybe do a little grilling, and that person and another one over there: “That’s that dot com guy!” You know? That was how startups were viewed back then. And so it was very challenging to try to convince someone to leave an American Family or a Lands End to come on board to a startup. That’s, like, crazy. And so, one, that’s really changed in a really, really, really positive way. Now it’s almost everyone you know has done, related, invested in part or something with a startup, so. And that transition has really helped in terms of recruiting, getting talent, and the tech talent is really much better than it was back then.

It’s still really hard to get some areas. And the market’s so great here, it’s so hard– You have to really pry someone out of another opportunity. And so what I like about it, though, realistically, if you think about it compared to Silicon Valley, in terms of rent, pay, and all those types of things, it’s really great to be able to put a company here. The investment side I feel like there’s a tremendous amount of seed capital. I’ve raised over $100 million of largely seed capital, a few professional investors along the way. And so I think Madison is really good for that. There’s tons of money, tons of seed money, tons of funds. The problem I have and I feel, and I know I’m jumping a little off-topic, but in terms of starting a business here, the challenge is I think we are starting to get better from that next level, that A round investment, the growth round.

There’s not a lot of capital here for businesses like the ones I’ve started. The investors that I talk to in this area, of the one or two that might have a fund that can fund a business like this, it’s an Internet business, this type of business, not in Madison. It’s hard to raise that money. You have to go east and west to do that. So that’s a challenge still here in the town. But in terms of finding employees, finding tech people, in terms of cost, you can really do a lot with a company here, and there’s so many resources.

– So some terminology in what you’re talking. You mentioned seed investment and you mentioned, like, A round, I believe. Can you talk us through what those things are?

– Yeah, so that’s a good point. So seed investment is that first money, that friends and family money, to slightly into a professional fund that might be that first money that comes in. Seeding the company. And then after you do that, then you typically get into the more professional venture capital rounds. I think those are– Private equity… Zamp obviously has private equity funding. I have not, I have always sold before I get to those levels. I’d love to have 650 employees. That’s impressive. But I always sell before that. – So the students here in the room are sitting here saying, like, “Hey, I want to learn what it’s like to be more like Brian?” You were an economics major when you were here and then you went on and moved to New York and started these different companies, what does a typical day look like for you now?

– So I’m, you know, I’m a bit of a strange person from some different philosophies I have, the way I run my day. I don’t believe in meetings. There’s no calendar in our office for any of our people, that’s for external. Obviously if one of you wanted to meet with me, I’d put that on a calendar. But in the office I never, I don’t believe in meetings. And it started from being in Microsoft and it was like, you know, it was blocks of every day. It was just– so, really, as soon as I got rid of meetings it really opened up our productivity. When you have something you need to do, you meet on it. When there’s not something to do, you don’t meet. And it really works. Obviously that breaks down when you get over 40-50 employees. So that’s one philosophy.

Really, another thing that I do is it’s clearly, and one of the things if you’re thinking about starting a business, the key thing is founders or partners, it’s so critical. I really don’t do anything in these companies. All I do is build the team and help them be successful. So I don’t really sit in my office or do much. I just walk around. I literally, my day is I walk around from the person that runs that department. How’s it going? Need any help? Answer any questions. Help on vision. And by talking to everyone and walking around, it’s not literally I walk around in circles, but you just walk and make sure that that person is able to execute their job. And it’s amazing how everyone stays on point from a vision of no meetings, and I walk around and talk. So it’s little strange types of philosophies that I’ve built up over time that have been really good for my system. So good co-founders is critical, especially if you’re not a tech person. You need to have a good, solid tech co-founder in a business like the stuff that I do. So those are some of the things that I think are interesting about my day that are a little bit odd or strange that are interesting.

– And when you’re walking around and tapping on these shoulders, what are you looking for? Are you looking to kind of coach people? Trying to detect where the problems are? Like, what’s going on in your head as you’re doing this?

– Yeah, so if you’re talking to, let’s say it’s your CTO, “Hey, I need a decision on this,” and you help them really quick with that decision. And so I’m owning the vision. I’m the expert on the market, the competitors and where we want to go and make sure we’re on point to that. You’re getting all this data in. It’s a two-way street. I’m helping them but they’re also giving me data back so customers and other types of constituents it affects. And it’s really me collecting data that adjusts the vision, but then it’s making sure that any decision that they need to make quickly they don’t have to wait for tomorrow’s meeting at 10 o’clock. They get an answer right there. And by continuing to do that, it’s amazing how productive everyone is in being able to solve their problems very quickly on the fly.

And so I’m collecting data, though, because I would say, and I’m sorry this is so long-winded but now you got me fired up here, it’s that one of the things that’s so cool about a startup, that I love, is the nimbleness of the early days. So think about it. You start with an idea, and every idea I’ve started with has turned about 500% different from what it is by the time you get to the exit. And so I think one of the keys is that you have millions of points of data coming in every single day. So does Facebook and Google and everything else, but they’re not nimble enough to take that data to move their giant machine.

So as a startup, you’re hearing something, you see a competitor, you talk to a customer, all this data is coming in at millions of data points every day, and the ability to change very quickly every single day to adjust that vision. I’m not talking solid right turns. I mean, pivots like that would be a little aggressive. But taking that data and adjusting and moving that vision is an advantage that a startup has. If you don’t do that, if you’re stuck just on your vision and don’t listen to that data, you’re not taking advantage of that nimbleness of the startup. And it’s been really key, just in Gravy. Six months old, the pivots and the changes and the things that happened just through that path. It’s amazing seeing how fast it happens. And I think that’s key for a startup to be successful.

– So how do you not bounce around too much? Or is this not the right way to think about it? Like, often students come into my office and it’s like one week they’re doing one thing and the next week they’re doing another. It’s just like they’re never zeroing down in a particular thing.

– Yeah, the vision, usually you’re trying to make a difference in the world with a solid vision statement that you’re trying to do. I would say it’s more, these pivots are more tactical than they are strategic, so it’s not massive changes. And so I’m probably overplaying that a bit, but I just think it’s important to be able to listen to the market and react quickly. And so I don’t, I mean if you were a company that’s changing and one minute we’re doing this and one minute we’re doing, it’d be very tough to keep everyone aligned and excited about it. So it’s adjusting very quickly to react to that. It’s not major right turns.

– Okay. Let’s talk about the students for a little bit. So one thing I see them grapple with a lot is this decision when they’re about to graduate. And they’ve got this venture or this idea that they worked on a little bit, maybe a lot. And they also have this job that’s like staring them in the face. It has all these wonderful benefits and everything else. How would you advise them to think through like which path to take?

– So, I mean, this is another area that I feel pretty strongly about is I talk to so many people that get enamored with a startup or the entrepreneur and they have an idea and they’re 40 or 45, they have kids and a mortgage. And from a student perspective, if you’re out there right now and you are thinking about, and, again, I’m not trying to be anti-go-and-take-a-great-job, but if you do have anything you want to do from an entrepreneur’s perspective, don’t do it when you have 17 kids and 15 mortgages. It’s not the time to do it. It’s so hard. It’s so risky. It’s so difficult. And so at this time you don’t have to be afraid to fail. Who cares? Go for it. Try it. You don’t have a mortgage. You don’t have 99 things that are weighing you down. Now is the time to go for it. Or try something– Get fired like I did. I mean, whatever. I’m not saying get fired. Please don’t do that. But, I mean, no, this is the time now. This is the time to take the risks. This is the time to take the chances. And I just, I can’t say it enough. You’ll regret it if you don’t go after it. This is the time. And there’s so many resources. So many things available that allow you to get mentored, and do these things to be successful.

– And to your mindset, like your story was you had this job, you got fired, then you started a company and the first one didn’t go so well, the Edine, and then you found the next one. So you had to go through two basically, you know, rough events before you got going on the track. What about looking for ideas? Like, what advice do you have for the students about how they should think about ideas and what they should be working on?

– So, and I’m curious your thoughts too, because you may disagree with me on things actually, I feel like ideas are a dime a dozen. I bet we could brainstorm right now, if we did this, we could come up with 15 good ideas, a hundred good ideas. I just think– So I did a business on incorporating businesses, that’s a very heavily legal– I mean, I probably would never ever say this, but I formed this business on incorporating businesses, I’d never ever incorporated a business, I never knew how to incorporate a business when the first order came in. I didn’t know a thing about it. But I’m starting a business, a heavy legal business, I’m exaggerating a little bit. I actually, because I was freaking out, I partnered with a law student that was graduating here to be a co-founder because I liked the domain expertise. But my point is I didn’t have any knowledge or skills of that at all.

And so I think that expertise, if you have that– So in creating an idea there’s a lot of them. So having the ability– I guess I’m not being that articulate. I apologize. Ideas are a dime a dozen. You can do anything. It’s the execution that’s good. You can learn anything very quickly. As long as it’s not a very scientific, like my vitamin D compound joke, that would take some very serious domain expertise. But on these other ones, you can acquire this knowledge very quickly. So I just think ideas, we can come up with a lot of them. It’s really how you’re going to execute and approach that. There’s better ideas that work, of course. – So you’re sort of the mindset more of choose something you enjoy working on, pursue that, see how it goes, it if doesn’t work out, then maybe try something else again. But definitely do, like, something.

– Got to have the passion. And if our have some, and there’s the way to find ideas, obviously, is just look at where your passions are, where your excitements are, what you like to do, and ideas come out of that. That’s always better because you can get that passion around it and pick up that. You already have excitement around that area, it’s a great place to get ideas. But you don’t have to, you can come up with something and acquire the knowledge pretty quickly. I didn’t know a thing about poker. I read 15 books, and then I really wanted to be good at poker. And so I think you can do the same thing with businesses.

– So let’s talk about financing for a minute. So Zach Halmstad did an amazing job of getting his company very far bootstrapping before he raised funding, but what advice do you have for students that are trying to build a company, have a high growth trajectory, and they’re trying to go out and raise money to do that? What thoughts do you have?

– The model is changing, right? You can do so much more with so little now. You know, a server cost $30,000 when I first started. Now you can take $30,000 and go a long ways with that. So the key is to move, validate the idea as fast as possible with a little amount of money. So the bootstrapping, the means startup concept is all great. I completely understand how that works. So it’s clearly not starting out with a giant, I need $2 million. You probably need $2 million for your business, but you don’t have to start with that.

Don’t be worried about that. Worry about what I need to do to move this to the next level, so I can get to that next level, and that helps financing as well. So the least amount of money that gets you the furthest amount that you can is really a key discipline. So even myself, I could raise $30 million in one business. In Gravy we started with just a few hundred thousand dollars even though we could have raised millions. Why raise millions when you want to make sure you’re moving the business along and can validate at a few different steps. It’s really important to not over-fund, don’t worry about the big checks right now. Worry about moving this thing forward and gaining some momentum.

– In terms of the specific, like, way to approach, who to approach in Madison to ask, what thoughts do you have on that as far as where good sources of financing might be for student startups?

– So, I mean, I think there’s so many more resources now than there ever was. Obviously, there’s some really great programs, WARF and the other types of programs at the university. There’s so many different seed funds that are coming around, with the government putting out the Badger Fund of Funds and deploying that out all around the state. There’s a dozen seed funds around. And then there’s also, and, again, even if you want to take one step before thinking about taking on investment, you’re just starting, getting $5,000 or $10,000 either from yourself or friend or family is really good too. I mean, start off small, move it forward, make sure you’re fully committed, and then go for it, put the plow down from there.

– All right, so tell us what Gravy is. What’s the vision behind it, and what are you trying to do? – I didn’t want to promote it at all today. No, I’m just kidding. Gravy is, the idea is, just quickly, it’s a new live streaming platform. It’s for YouTube, Instagram creators, or B level celebrities or any celebrity that would have an opportunity to use the Internet as a live show. So it’s a live streaming platform for you to have. Actually, everyone knows what podcasting is. We’re a live video podcast. An interactive live video podcast. So a podcast, you listen when you want, it’s not live. This is live, with video, interactive, the audience participates, can interact back and forth, and the people that lead these shows are creators that generally have an audience. Like I said, we have someone that was on “The Bachelor,” someone on “Housewives of New York,” they host a show. Or just a big-time YouTuber or someone that has a big audience on Instagram. We give them a platform to go live, but very interactive.

– So when I’ve been on the platform, I see these folks that are making these shows and they are very excited about doing it, and they’re very engaging also on the camera. How did you get them to come and work with you in the beginning when you just had, like, basically nothing?

– So, I mean, I just think there’s a giant amount of white space between: I want to have the Kardashian show on E! or whatever channel that is, there’s only a few people that win that type of a situation, right, so. And then, all the way over here, you can have an Instagram page, a YouTube page, and maybe make a little money with my YouTube videos that I put on a channel on YouTube. And so in between there there’s a lot of room. And so what we did is we are giving a platform for people that want to have a show like the Kardashians, but let’s do it on the Internet and make it interactive and be able to participate and get a little bit more intimate. So if I have a YouTube channel, I just put out videos. I don’t know who’s viewing it. I don’t get to interact with them. There’s a little comment box underneath.

But imagine now if you pick whoever you think that you would really love to meet or talk to, imagine being able to interact on the web back and forth, almost like a real-time video chat but in a real show format. That’s what we’re doing. And these people are really getting excited about where to get all this talent by getting a product that really played to their needs. They wanted to be able to get closer to their fans and be able to make money. We really built a lot of cool monetization features to allow brands to come in. Instead of doing interruptive pre-roll, commercials, that interrupt you, why not make content that’s actually branded content in these shows and allow the users to get involved in the show and help monetize as well.

– Fantastic. Do you have any, like, final parting thoughts for the audience, the students here that are thinking about entrepreneurship?

– I thank you, John. This has been excellent. Thank you for inviting me. Obviously, you are a tremendous resource. I wish I would have known you when I was in school here. I think using people that understand this area, I think getting a mentor and talking, asking questions I think is key. And don’t be afraid to fail. That’s part of the whole process. It’s funny because, you know, I was really, it was amazing trying to raise capital. I’ll just wrap up with this. After I failed, it was different in different cultures, right? In Silicon Valley, it’s like I failed here, I failed here, I failed here, I failed here. And you’re just like, ah! And here, I went out and I was failing, it was like a scarlet letter. “You failed last time, I don’t want to invest in you.” Even though I had all these others, it was very negative. The culture here is very different where failure is just not– I think we’ve got to shake that. That’s part of the entrepreneur is try, fail, try again. So go for it. Just go for it. Right now. Do it. Tonight. Get these ideas cooked up and attack. (laughter)

– Brian, thank you very much. (applause)