Podcasts about startup san diego

  Brand new podcast interview with Cheryl Goodman, CEO of FindGood.Tech and author of How To Win Friends and Influence Robots: An AI Guide for Non-Tech Brilliants Minds.   Listen & subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, and other platforms. We are excited to have Cheryl Goodman on the latest episode of the Tacos and Tech podcast. As a long time friend, we reminisce about all the ways we've collaborated in the tech community and Cheryl has been a tech leader going back to the MP3.com days through now as Vice Chair of Startup San Diego and CEO of FindGood.tech, which is an AI-forward, Go-to-Market consulting agency. It's through her thought leadership, including at Interlock Summit, Startup San Diego 1st Mondays, TechCon SoCal, Dev & Data Night, and as a writer for Forbes, that's she's heard the repeated ask for breaking down the AI advances into common terms to bring enterprises up to speed for AI's potential. Listen in to hear more about her book, the upcoming launch party, and her favorite taco spot! Follow Cheryl at her FindGood.Tech website and on LinkedIn. Buy her book directly here. Join the book launch party on July 26 at 3pm. Details here.

D'ontra Hughes is the Founder and CEO of Spare, which uses tech to solve cash management problems for unbanked small businesses and enterprises. D'ontra shares his entrepreneurship journey, driven by realizing the financial industry's impact on less privileged individuals. D'ontra highlights a significant issue in the banking sector where the poorest people are often charged the most in fees, perpetuating poverty. Spare addresses the high fees unbanked individuals face when accessing their money. D'ontra's entrepreneurial journey involved various challenges, including learning from customer feedback, understanding the importance of data-driven decisions, and navigating the competitive startup environment. The conversation also covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Spare, leading to a strategic shift and a focus on regions with high cash circulation. D'ontra emphasizes the importance of strategic planning, data analysis, and a systematic approach to business growth. He also discusses the personal aspects of being a CEO, stressing the importance of maintaining personal relationships and self-care. Spare (https://www.gotspare.com/) Follow Spare on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/spare-cs/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SPAREapp/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/gotspare/), or X (https://twitter.com/gotSPARE). Follow D'ontra Hughes on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontrahughes/) or X (https://twitter.com/dontrahughes). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is D'ontra Hughes, Founder and CEO of Spare, which uses tech to solve cash management problems for the unbanked small businesses and enterprise. D'ontra, thank you for joining us. D'ONTRA: Well, thank you for having me. VICTORIA: Well, wonderful. So, we met at San Diego Startup Week a few weeks ago. So, I'm excited to have you on the podcast today. Why don't you tell me what was your experience of San Diego Startup Week? And how did you come to be one of the speakers on a panel there? D'ONTRA: Yeah, well, it's always a really nice thing to take part in, you know, kind of those innovative startup week events because you get to see a lot of what people are working on or what they're doing. So, we've been working very closely with the County of San Diego, especially with the city of Oceanside with our latest technology. And, you know, there came this opportunity where I could get on the stage and kind of tell people about our journey a little bit, I think because we're becoming a little bit more successful or something [laughs]; I don't know what to say. We're getting better at what we're doing, apparently, and so folks wanted to hear what I had to say. VICTORIA: I was able to catch your talk, and I thought what was really inspiring about it was that you came from the background of working in the financial industry and saw an opportunity to solve a problem that was common for other people and to be more fulfilled by the work you were doing. So, can you share a little bit about that? D'ONTRA: I came out of a background in finance, as you said. I used to work for JPMorgan. It feels like a long, long time ago. And that was my last corporate job until I became an entrepreneur. You know, one of the things that I learned at that time...and not that the bank was doing anything wrong, but in the nature of finance, it's a business, right? It's got customers. It's got clients. It's got shareholders. And the most important thing is it's designed to make money. There's always someone that loses, right? And sometimes you could say that that's the nature of business. But in this regard, it was a lot of people who lost that couldn't recover or wouldn't be able to recover from the financial waste that was left. You know, I went on my entrepreneurial journey wanting to learn how to build a business and, you know, try to solve problems for myself or for other people. And specifically for this endeavor with Spare, which we launched back in 2015, we looked at the subset of the population, roughly about 25% of the U.S. population, 90-something million households of folks that were basically spending about 7% of their own income every year just accessing their own money. And, like, that's wild, right? Because if I came to you and I said, "Hey, if you got 100 bucks in your pocket, in order to pull that money out of your pocket, you got to give me $7," you'd be furious. And so, the unfortunate thing is that this kind of tax on the poor was being facilitated by the ATM industry. At the time when we began the company, you had consumers out there going to an ATM roughly about seven times per month, withdrawing roughly about $60 per transaction. And the average fee at that time was $4.09. And today, the average fee is just about $4.80, something cents, depending on where you're at in the country. And so, it's unfortunate the difference in these fees for these folks. It might sound absurd to say this, but it makes a difference between eating and not eating for some of these folks. And anyone who's a struggling college student or lives on the low end of the economic spectrum they understand what I mean by that, where the extra $30 or $40 in their pocket per month actually matters. It's an extra tank of gas or two tanks of gas, depending on what kind of car you're driving. And so, it matters. We wanted to really take a really clean look, an assertive look at the relationship that, not just the ATM, but just cash management services or cash management on a local level the impact that it actually has. VICTORIA: Yeah. And to kind of play that back a little bit, let's say you have a bank or you're not able even to get an account in a traditional bank. Maybe your bank doesn't have an ATM in your neighborhood, and you need to always go to a different ATM to get money out of your bank. And you're just constantly paying those fees. You're more likely taking out smaller sums of money, and then you have to do that over and over again. And it becomes a really high percentage of your income that goes just towards getting money out of the ATM. D'ONTRA: Yeah, absolutely. So, when you consider even during the pandemic, right? Everyone's at home, but businesses were trying to figure out how to cut costs. And banks, just like any other business, when they have a retail bank branch that's in a neighborhood that's perhaps low income, they may not keep that bank branch around. And that's unfortunate because it creates an additional hurdle for folks to be able to become banked. You may hear this term of banking deserts, and that's partially because folks have to travel too far, which is an external cost of time, and money, and resources, just to be able to put their money inside of a bank. Now, the additional cost for this particular demographic is that fees tend to add up. And we all know that the bank says, "Hey, as long as you keep $1,200 in your bank account, we're not going to charge you any fees." Well, that's really great, except for the person who is living paycheck to paycheck, right? And so, this fee tax that's placed on them simply because they don't have enough money when you look at it, it's actually pretty rough [laughs]. I look at it, and sometimes I kind of laugh because it's absolutely absurd when you actually look at it on its face where the poorest people you're generating the most profits from. And unfortunately, those fees keep them in the cycle of being poor. And so, it's been really great. Over the past few years, you've seen really great applications or neobanks come up that have acted as, you know, somewhat shields against all of these arbitrary fees, like, hey, no overdraft fees, and no account fees, ever, no monthly fees, and things of that nature, right? But they still aren't solving the other issues, some of the major issues. So, it's really great that I have your debit card. But if you're a neobank, that means I either have to use your co-op ATM network, which is only going to allow me to withdraw cash so many times per month for free, or I have to use some other third-party ATM network. The unfortunate thing about that is they're still paying that fee [laughs]. At some point, they're still going to pay that fee, and when that money is better in their pockets, it's just a little rough. It's a little hard to digest. And so, we wanted to make sure we were doing something about it. VICTORIA: Right. It reminds me of a phrase I come back to sometimes is that being poor is actually very expensive [laughs]. D'ONTRA: It is. VICTORIA: There's a lot of fees, a lot of extra stuff you have to pay for that other people don't. I'm curious: how did you narrow in on this problem? Was it through doing some market research? Was it a personal experience that led you to wanting to work for these types of users? D'ONTRA: Even though JPMorgan was my last, like, corporate job, I went out into the world to be an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is expensive because you got to figure out how to pay bills. And so, one of the side gigs I had is I worked for a hotel in Santa Monica by the name of the Fairmont, and I was managing valet. For anyone who's been to the Fairmont in Santa Monica, it's not for the cheap folks, right? But what would happen is, you know, patrons would show up, and they'd say, "Hey, I'm going to valet my car. I'm going to come back and pick it up." I'm going to go ahead and settle this up. But, you know, where's the nearest ATM so I can give the valet person cash?" And the most often answer was, "Well, there's one inside the lobby of the hotel, and then there's one across this very busy street." Both of these ATMs had a fee of...the one across the street was about $3.75 if you weren't a bank customer, and, of course, it wasn't a national bank. And then the one in the lobby was about $4.75, I think is what the fee was. And so, here's the person who doesn't really carry cash that often being told that they have to pay a premium just to help this person out. And you could almost guess what the most likely outcome was is, unfortunately, that valet person just didn't get tipped. But the thing is, is there was actually a third source of cash, and it was actually in the valet's pocket or at the valet stand. So, there was money there in closer proximity. There just wasn't a mechanism of extracting it. And so, our first look was, well, hey, can we monetize a transaction between, say, the valet stand and this consumer where, basically, the valet stand is selling these folks their cash for much cheaper than the ATM? So, it's going to save everyone time, energy, money, and it ensures that the valet folks get cash in their pocket. I can remember when we initially launched this; I thought it was such a brilliant idea. We created an app in which we would populate a map with all the people around you that had cash on them. So, when you say it out loud, -- VICTORIA: [laughs] Yeah. I could see how that might be problematic. [laughter] D'ONTRA: So, we're super stoked. We're, like, "Hey, we got this app, and it's really great. And, you know, look at all the people here that have money on them." So, we go to submit this thing to the App Store, and the legal team's like, "Absolutely not [laughs]." So, we spent about six months working back and forth with their legal team to come up with a model. And it's somewhat similar to what you see today, where we're sending consumers to regular brick-and-mortar businesses that have spare cash on hand. That's it. Nothing glamorous about that. But the mechanism and the usefulness does some real overall good, not just for the consumers but for the businesses and for the local economy. VICTORIA: Right. So, I was going to ask you, like, what surprised you in the early phases: the discovery process? It sounds like you had at least [laughs] at least one big strategic turn. But I'm curious if there was anything else that came up in your early-stage journey where you realized you had to make a pivot and change up what you were doing based on the feedback you got from users. D'ONTRA: I'd love to be able to tell the story that we got it all right the first time around, but we didn't. I think we almost hit the checklist of things that you should not do. So, like [laughs], one example is you actually really truly shouldn't listen to your customer to some degree, right? So, you have the vision for this thing, but every customer has their idea of how your app should be better or something you should add. And we went through phases where we were adding features then that people just weren't using. You know, it might have worked for, you know, 10% of the user base, but we had spent two or three weeks with the dev team putting in this new feature. And it was somewhat of a departure from the core. It's adjacent, and so we could justify it. So, we did it, but we shouldn't have. So [laughs], then we had to, like, backtrack on that. We had lots of these moments. But I would say one of the most defining moments, and it was actually one of the first ones that came, was this moment in which one of early entrepreneurs' fear is that someone is going to steal your idea. So, we try to, you know, wrap folks up in NDAs, and secrecy, and things of that nature. You know, if you have a really solid idea, like, we all know that it has major potential to change your life. And so, I can remember, you know, we went out, and we pitched this business to a venture capital company. It was very early on. That was my first lesson: people don't steal things that are worthless. And the second being that just because they steal, it doesn't mean they can build it. I can remember, you know, it took us six and a half months to get Spare in the App Store the first time around. And during that time, we had met with this venture capital company looking for investors, angel investors. And it happened to be that this company gave us an offer to buy the company, and we said "No." But then were like, "Hey, why don't you come in and consult us, and let's see if we can work together to do a deal?" And me being super naive at that time, went in, and I said, "Hey, yeah. Like, this is how we would change the app, and this is what we would do." And after two or three hours chatting with them, I had designed my competitor. And I didn't know that until a week later where they made their announcement, and, you know, I had Google Alerts on. And so, this app comes out and, you know, they're posting to see what people think about it. And they had gotten their app in the App Store, same business model, mind you. And I was just blown away [laughs]. Like, I think, at that time, I think I lost all composure. I was, like, sick to my stomach. I was furious. When you asked about, like, the major pivot, it would have been in, like, my mindset because I went in thinking that we have this really great idea and how could anyone want to take something from an entrepreneur because starting is tough enough, especially the people that fund this stuff, right? And [laughs] I learned that, no, opportunities are opportunities, and people take them when they can. And the bigger you become or depending on where your industry is, people are just looking for a shot. They're looking for an opportunity. No one really cares whether or not they're copying someone else's tech, right? If you were destined to do it, you would do it, and you would do it well, and you'd be one of the top ones to do it, right? That was a major change in how I saw this journey, which allowed me to kind of reframe what we were doing and how I was approaching the market, how we collected data, how we dealt with our consumers, and how we ran our business in general. And then, we had to go in and pivot back to the conversation around the customer. So, we go back, and we're going back to build this thing. And so, at that time, I'm feeling, okay, I have to, like, do any and everything I can once we're in the App Store to get users and retain them. And that's when I learned the lesson of, like, don't listen to all of your users. Like, know what your thing is, and do that thing really, really well. And try not to build features that aren't central to your core because, honestly, that can just get you in a lot of trouble. And you can waste a lot of time for no reason. But I think the most important thing out of that is listen to the data, the information, and what I mean by that is where people go on a webpage, or where they go in your app, where they spend the most time. Listen to those things, and pay attention to the data, and somewhat become obsessed about utilizing the data to make your decisions. I think that'll save everyone a bit of heartache and, you know, pain as they go down that journey. VICTORIA: Yeah, I really love that. There's a couple of, like, interesting points. I feel like when you said it can be daunting, like, oh, there's a million apps in there that already do this or, like, somebody else has already started this. Like, sometimes that means, well, it's a good idea because clearly somebody was willing to try and put it together, and they found a market. But you can always do it better, and you can always have a unique angle and try if you think there's a strong enough idea. And I'm curious to, like, get more into, like, the data question and understand what do you use to understand how people are behaving in your app? And kind of metrics you look at to see how you're tracking and whether those are, like, key success measures or other ways that you think about that data. D'ONTRA: For our application, you know, our KPIs were pretty simple very early on. It was like, do we have, like, the keywords that people respond to to find the application? And is it cash? Is cash the keyword? Is ATM the keyword? How do people find us, ultimately, at the end of the day? Because if you can solve that, solving what keywords are most attractive to your company, then what you're going to be able to do is organic traffic is going to be a lot easier to come by. So, you don't have to spend a whole lot of money trying to get advertisements. There's going to be natural search traffic that drive people toward your platform. In addition to that, it was really paying attention to where the customer complaints were coming from because that told us a lot about the application. Even still, today, we have one very consistent customer complaint that, like, the unfortunate thing is, like, it's really difficult for us to solve this thing because it's actually more in the hands of the business than it is us. And that major customer complaint is when I went into this active location, the person at the cash register didn't necessarily know what I was talking about, and there's a myriad of different reasons for that. But the primary one is that these locations typically have high turnover for the person that's working at the counter. And so Spare has to be an integral part of their onboarding this person so that when someone walks off the street, they can get the service that they need. To some degree, listening or paying attention to the feedback that you're getting about the effectiveness of the service or being able to deliver the technology is actually a very useful data point. In addition to that, looking at where your app is available in cross-section with where the people are that are going to use your app. And this is one of the lessons, I think, we learned the hard way, where, you know, we came out the gate and said, "Hey, anybody and everybody can use this app. It doesn't matter if you're in New York, if you're in Texas, Midwest. It doesn't make a difference, right? Any and everyone can use it." And the unfortunate thing is, when you do that, like, you're going to new users, which is really fun. It starts off that way. So, you go out, and you get merchants and things of that nature. And the mentality that we used was, well, we'll build it. The users will come, and the users will tell us where the businesses are or where we need to place businesses. So, we had a new person or a group of individuals show up in downtown Los Angeles. It was like, okay, cool, there's a concentration of people in Downtown LA. Let's go make sure we put businesses there. Well, that's faulty thinking in and of itself. Even though you're getting the data points and the useful bits of data, you're actually doing it in pretty much, like, the wrong order [laughs]. We didn't really realize that, and Spare was my first tech company. And so, you know, when you think about things like that, like, you think, oh, users, they're important. But how you get them, and how you service them, and when you service them must be a strategic plan. You have to have that process thought out so that the user audience follows your plan, not you responding to them or following their informal plan. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes sense. And I love that, you know, focusing on the users and really focusing, like, on all of their unique needs like location [laughs] and other things like that. And I talk about that, you know, in my role as managing director at thoughtbot, I work on our DevOps and platform engineering team. I often talk about it in terms of, you know, very early in the process; you know enough about your user to tell you a lot about what their needs are going to be like on the infrastructure side, like their regional location, the sensitivity of the data, you know, that can tell you a lot about what you need to build [laughs]. So, I'm curious, you know, you're working on a financial app here. Have you also had to consider that from a regional perspective and from an infrastructure perspective how that affects your users? D'ONTRA: Going into COVID and how we got there, was that we thought we were actually doing really well, right? So, we officially launched our platform to the marketplace in Q4 of 2018. And we did well for the initial launch without any marketing. And then a year later, we had done 3x the volume and had a strategic partner in place that would have grown our network by 30 times by the end of the next year, you know, we were moving. And then COVID came along, right? In which, you know, huge event that no one planned for. It kind of put the company on halt while businesses were shut down, and we lost about 98% of our network at that time. So, we had to go back to the drawing board and kind of, like, figure out, well, one, if this company is really truly something that we know that there's a thing, we're going to continue to build it, but let's do it better this time around, like, what did we miss the first time? And the first place that we went when we were trying to make this decision is we went to look up, like, cash effectively, like cash in circulation. And to our surprise, actually, there was more cash put into [laughs] circulation during COVID than there was at any other time in the past, like, decade, and so that was shocking. And so, we said, okay, cool. We know that cash is in circulation, perfect. Where is cash in circulation? And in addition to that, where should we start with the base of our technology? And how do we want to reconfigure this? And to be honest, we need help. So, you know, we applied to Techstars, and we were super fortunate that we got into the Techstars Anywhere program. I think it was a lifesaver and a reboot for us and the company primarily because, you know, during the pandemic, we had lost, you know, over 70% of the folks that worked for the company at that time. So, going through that program helped us rethink a lot about strategy infrastructurel...how exactly we need to rebuild and reconfigure the company for success this next time around. I think very early on, you know, we were just trying to do the business. We were just doing it rather than actually strategically building it. You know, that's the major difference between where we were versus where we are now is that everything that we do now is more methodical. When we look at, okay, where do we build merchant networks? Well, we're building them in a very strategic location. That particular location has this value to not only us as a company, the merchants in that area, but also the user base. When we were able to take this more strategic position around, you know, how exactly we're building this business, we were actually able to see much larger opportunities that have always been there, but we just didn't see them. And so [laughs], I'm super grateful for, like, us kind of doing that recalibration because we were able to build a business that is ten times bigger than we initially thought that we were building. VICTORIA: That's super interesting. So, yeah, like, pre-COVID, you're like, we'll get users, and then we'll figure out where to build. And then you had to, like, go through this full recalibration and focus on strategic regions, and that really opened up more opportunities and more growth than you had expected. Mid-Roll Ad: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what's important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at tbot.io/acceleration, or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: What does success look like for you six months from now or five years from now? D'ONTRA: So, six months from now. We're hitting this hot streak with new clients and things of that nature. And we're going out, and we're pitching contracts that are bigger than I ever thought we would be able to pitch, honestly. And sometimes when I see the zeros on the proposals that we're sending out, there's part [laughs] of me that's like, oh, they're never going to say yes to this thing, but, one, they are, which is still shocking, even though we've gotten a few of these in. And six months from now, I just want us to be doing it right. I know that sounds so arbitrary, and it sounds, like, so whimsical. But there are so many things that we're adjusting to in the marketplace and with our tech. Some of this is kind of new frontier for us. But what I would like to have happen is for the results in the next six months to indicate that we're doing it the right way and meaning that we have clients sticking around, we're still getting contracts signed, the network is growing, consumers are actually getting their needs met by our technology, and the company is growing at a rapid pace. That's what I'd like to see. And granted, you know, we've, in the past, you know, few weeks here, we've doubled the size of the team, which is something that feels really great. But I want us to not lose sight of making sure that the team itself always has a common goal in mind, even as we're growing. And whether that's six months from now, 2, 5, 10 years from now, I want that to kind of be the core of the expectations of what I want this company to be able to do and to deliver. VICTORIA: That's exactly the right attitude to have [laughs], right? It's like I want it to work. I want us [laughs] to, yeah, be successful. I think it all makes sense. You know, it's easy to come on a podcast, like, you know, you're eight years into the startup now, and you're starting to see some success. And it's like, here's how I did it. Everything sounds great. So, I'm glad you've also shared some mistakes or some things that you maybe would have reconsidered or done [laughs] differently before. I'm curious: if you could travel back in time to when you first started, what advice would you give yourself, now that you've had this experience, to set your mind right from the very beginning? D'ONTRA: Oh God, there's so much. There's so [laughs] much. One of the major things that I would do differently is I would read more. And what I mean by that is there are lots of lots of people that have been here in this position and done that thing already. I think in the past year, I would say probably one of the most influential books that I've read is Zero to IPO by Frederic Kerrest. And I happened to listen to it in Audible. But when you talk about, like, just things being pivotal, or like [laughs], going, "Oh, that makes sense," yeah, you get that because being an entrepreneur isn't new. And there are folks that have already kind of cracked the code in some regards. So, if you don't have the existing network around you already, go get the materials. Go read the books or listen to the audios of people who have been there, done that. It's going to save you so much time. So, that would be the number one thing that I would change is I would really truly read more and ingest other people's experiences more, and reach out and get mentors and advisors as you're going down this journey. The second thing that I would do is–it's important to move fast when you're building a company. It's important to respond to the market and all that stuff. That's all super important. That's how you live or die, right? You treat it like there's a fire behind you, and you have to lead it. You have this really hot thing. You've got to be in front of it always, or you'll lose it. And sometimes what we miss is we miss the opportunity to do it faster or better by just slowing down just a little bit. And what I mean by that is, like, I mentioned earlier about looking at the data and things of that nature. There may be things in the data that are making suggestions that you should go a different direction. But because of how you've built this thing, you and your co-founders, and how you guys have built these things in your head, that piece of data may not seem like it's very relevant. Sometimes, it's good to take a breath and take an assessment of where you're at. So, when you're with your team, whether you're setting this up monthly, quarterly, whatever it is, make sure that you're taking some time to make sure that you guys are aligned around where your company is, the industry is, and the signs that you're getting inside the space that you're operating in. It's going to save you a lot of time. And I think the last thing that is probably the most important is for those out there who are listening to this that are CEOs, one of my board members/life mentors/ CEO mentors, a friend, and almost like a father figure to me at this point, one of the things that he said to me and that I've never gotten out of my mind is that the CEO position is the loneliest position inside of an organization. And the reason why is even though you may start a business with your friends or people who aren't your friends, whatever it might be, whatever those relationships might be, those folks will never quite understand what it's like to sit in your seat because everything must end with you. It has to. Every successful organization is going to rise or fall by the person that sits at the top. And because that burden is so heavy, oftentimes, we don't want to go and talk to people when things are going bad. We don't want to admit when, like, hey [laughs], this thing that we've sunk all these resources into isn't really working. And just the sheer pressure of being that person sucks sometimes. With that being said, take care of yourself and your key relationships. And I'm not talking about key as in, like, strategic. I'm talking about the people that love you. Make sure even though you're going down this journey, you're making time for your friends, your family, your significant others, your kids, whatever it might be. Because business stuff aside, and we're all chasing the–Man, this is going to be really successful one day, and I'll be able to change everyone's life. Sure, we're all chasing that. But there is a now moment. There is a person right now that might want your love or your attention, and do not rob them of that. Make sure that you're still making time for those things that are important. Because you could very easily start building a business and five years later, look up and go, oh, this thing didn't work. And then turn around, and there's a wasteland of relationships that you just didn't pay attention to. That's not worth it. So, make sure that you're not only showing, you know, the folks that support you some love but show yourself love by still nurturing those relationships. VICTORIA: That reminds me I heard something about like, your rest ethic should be as good as your work ethic. And your rest ethic includes that time that you spend with family, or whether it's your religion, or your hobbies, or anything like that that makes you feel whole and like yourself, which I know can be a difficult thing to do when you're balancing starting a new business and thinking about the growth and the future all the time. So, I really appreciate that. You know, you mentioned mentorship and these networking and relationships. Bringing it all the way back to Start Up San Diego Week, I'm curious if you have thoughts on how founders could get the most out of those types of events. And what draws you back to Startup San Diego or startup weeks in general? D'ONTRA: Just as a caveat to all this, even though I'm on the podcast and stuff like that, and I'm sure if you Googled my name, you'll see that I've been on TV and stuff, I generally don't like networking [laughs]. I'm a major introvert. So, like, when you put me in an event like that, it's very hard for me to talk to people. Like, when we met, it seems that would be contrary to what I'm saying because we were strangers, and I came over, and we started chatting and stuff like that. And by and large, like, that's not always, like, an easy thing for me to do. The reason why I'm saying that is that if you're that kind of person, do what you have to do to be more extroverted because sometimes that extroverted or that more open or welcoming side of you will allow for spontaneous interactions to occur. And so, when we think about events like, you know, Innovation Week or something like that, there's a lot of opportunity for you to either meet people that are on your journey or a similar journey like you who've been there done that, or even just to offer a different perspective. And if you're in a place where you're open and constantly seeking, amazing things can happen, right? You could end up with your next co-founder. You could end up, you know, with your next investor. Or you could end up talking on a podcast with a stranger that you met just a few weeks ago, right? So, anything can happen. Keeping yourself open to the opportunity and the ability to extract as much value as you can out of those events. It's really interesting to kind of have your pulse on what's going on, even if it's outside your industry. We're a FinTech, but I go, and I pay attention to things that are going on in aerospace or in health because it's always good to, one, not completely have yourself submerged in just your industry, even though that might sound really great. People like folks that can talk about a myriad of different topics [laughs]. So, it might be useful if you can go and have a chat with a stranger about, you know, what's the latest in aerospace, right? It gets you out of the brain drain of what it is that you do on a daily basis. But also, you get to learn some new things and cultivate some new relationships. VICTORIA: I love that. Yeah, I listened to...I think it's Happiness Lab episode where they talk about random conversations with people those, like, sparks of innovation or things like ideas you never would have thought of if you hadn't run into this random person [laughs] and talked to them for five minutes about, you know, what they do in health tech, or what they do for their consumer product that they're building. So yeah, I think that's great. And I've been excited to be here in Southern California for the last three years and starting to grow that network and meet people like yourself who are doing really interesting things. I'm curious if you have any questions for myself or about thoughtbot, or the podcast, or anything. D'ONTRA: Yeah. So, you say that you've been here for three years. Tell me a little bit about your journey, how'd you get here, and why you chose the podcast life, right? As one of your many things. VICTORIA: That is one of my many things, right? So, I grew up in Washington, D.C., And my career was in tech and civic tech. I was working for big three-letter agencies and some pseudo-federal banks like FDIC, and Fannie Mae, and PBGC, all the acronyms all the time. And we got an opportunity in early 2020 to move here for my husband's job. And we moved out here, and I decided to take a switch out of the federal space and get into more commercial consulting. And I was lucky enough to find thoughtbot; they had a position that just looked great for me. And when I joined, you know, we have an internal collaboration thing called Hub that I think our CEO wrote and writes with the other people. All the developers on our team all contribute to it. But he posted a message about this Giant Robots podcast and if anybody wanted to be a new co-host. And I was like, "Sure, I've done a little podcasting here and there, and I have a microphone, so I'm ready to go." And little did I realize just how popular the [chuckles] podcast was. And it ended up being a really great avenue for me to meet people and, learn more about their stories, and build relationships in a way that has been really impactful and meaningful. And like I said, you know, you never know how someone you meet might help you [laughs]. So, sometimes I'll interview people, and I'll get an idea about something that is, like, exactly relevant to the work that I am doing that week, just total kismet however it came about. So, that's how I got into podcasting and how I'm in thoughtbot and here in Southern California. And so, I'm super lucky that I live in a place where there's lots of events going on all the time and lots of great people to meet. Between LA and San Diego, you could go to a different event every single day, probably [laughs], and meet people who are working on cool stuff. So, my background was really in operations and maintenance and taking federal agencies into more modern practices with digital services, and agile development, and DevOps. And now I'm taking kind of a similar lens but to commercial partners who are much faster and can make change quicker. And, in some cases, are doing things in even cooler ways than I could have thought and trying to think about how to move them forward with their infrastructure and how they deploy software. D'ONTRA: That's fascinating. And, you know, it's difficult to be in Southern California, right? New events every day. VICTORIA: And then yeah, I'll go walk my dog in the morning-- D'ONTRA: [laughs] VICTORIA: And people are out there surfing. And I'm like, I could surf all day. I don't have to work [laughs]. D'ONTRA: Right? VICTORIA: But I do. I got to work. D'ONTRA: It feels like the world of limitless possibility, right? [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah. You almost feel, like, a pressure. Like, everyone else is starting their own company. Why am I not starting my company? Everyone's doing cool stuff all the time. So, you get motivated that way by being around a great group of people who are...everyone is very happy and sunny and [laughs] for the most part, the people are so nice. D'ONTRA: Definitely a departure from the East Coast, right? And, like, I'm sure you came here with, like, that hustle mindset, where you're like, got to get it done, which is probably why you do, like, a million things. But then also, you have all of these people [laughs] that, like, I don't know, like, cares to the wind when they need to, right? Although you've got lots of successful people. But, sure, like, more or less down here, it's like, hey, you know, like, let's live life first and [laughs] make the dollars second. VICTORIA: It's very casual. I got rid of all of my blazers. There's no more of that anymore [laughs]. People when they found out that I was moving to California, they were like, "That makes sense for you [laughs]," like, just the general, like, vibe. D'ONTRA: [laughs] VICTORIA: And I'm a rock climber. So, they're like, of course, you're going to go somewhere where the outdoors is prioritized, yeah. Versus when you live in D.C., it's like the news is happening to you. D'ONTRA: Yes [laughs]. VICTORIA: And it's very, very close. So yeah, it's interesting. I love it, though. And it's cool to take experience from that and then apply it to this world and how people might think about stuff. So, I was worried that, like, my experience might not translate, but it has. It's been very helpful [laughs] in some cases, right? Is there anything else that you would like to promote today? D'ONTRA: Yeah, so, you know, maybe for a future conversation, but in line with, you know, your background and what you're talking about, I would love to have a discussion around CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act, for those who don't understand the lingo, right? Because Spare's latest, like, golden nugget that we've really been just, like, kind of moving on and we're talking to federal regulators about is actually our impact on banks and the Community Reinvestment Act. For those who follow the news and know, you know, the time and space that we're in right now, there are some changes that are taking place inside of CRA. And it's very fascinating because when you say about your background of helping agencies kind of modernize things with digital, that's effectively what we're doing with our tech, and we're getting a lot of support from the government. And so, you know, I think that we're really doing some very interesting things that are starting to get some really great attention. We recently partnered with Visa on one of our initiatives, and we're talking to a few other really large organizations and government organizations so that this technology can really be used at a scale, honestly, far beyond what I ever imagined. But when we talk about, like, actually helping people, we're doing it [laughs]. We're doing it in this very unique way, which I'm super stoked about. But maybe we'll have a chat about that in the future. But I think, you know, for those of you that are listening to this and you're curious, you know, what it is that we're working on, feel free to reach out. It's gotspare.com. Feel free to email me: ceo@gotspare.com. I'm generally in that email box every day. Or even just checking out our service, you know, searching Spare on the App Store or Google Play, and just going in and giving it a test drive. And, you know, we're happy to hear your thoughts. And for those of you who are out there that may be looking for a new experience, we are definitely growing this team, and we want to expand as quickly as we can. We have some really aggressive initiatives for the organization over the next 12-18 months. And so, we're not going to do it on our own. I'm super stoked to where we're, like, we're at a place where we're like, we're actively building [laughs]. We're actively moving. And so, if there was a [inaudible 38:44] for us, whether it's supporting us as someone who uses the application or supporting us as a merchant who's in our community. There's lots of value that we're adding that we're turning back around to reach all small businesses. We're really working on combating inflation with our tech. And we've been able to do that, which is one of those really, like, refreshing byproducts of a tech company, or at least of our services. Like, we're actually adding real, true value to folks, and I'm super stoked about that. VICTORIA: That's wonderful, and it's really close to my heart as someone who wants to see tech with purpose and who loves tech solving problems for people, especially groups of people that usually aren't the focus of founders who are trying to turn a quick buck, right [laughs]? The people who have real problems there's a real market there. It is a business, and it makes sense to start solving those problems. So, I'm really happy that you're working on it. Thank you so much for coming in today and being a guest on the show. We will include all those links and wonderful ways to reach out and get connected with you in the show notes. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guest: D'ontra Hughes.

Neal Bloom is a Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts. Victoria talks to Neal about what he finds attractive about startups and companies he's excited about, out of all the pitches he receives, how many he gets to say yes to, and when working with a team, what he uses to manage information and contacts for investors. Interlock Capital (https://interlock.capital/) Follow Interlock Capital on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/interlock-capital/), or Twitter (https://twitter.com/InterlockCap). Follow Neal Bloom on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealbbloom/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/NealBloom). Check out his website (https://withkoji.com/@Nealbloom) and blog (https://freshbrewedtech.com/)! Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Neal Bloom, Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts. Neal, thank you for joining us. NEAL: Hey, thanks for having me. It's so great to be here with you. VICTORIA: Fantastic. I'm excited to finally get a chance to talk with you. I met you at an investor hike that you organize once a month. NEAL: A founders' hike, yeah. I get up nice and early on the first Wednesday of each month in Torrey Pines in San Diego. And we hike up and down the hill with ocean views. It's not a bad day. VICTORIA: It's a great way to start the morning, I think, and to meet other people, other builders of products in technology. So tell me more about your work at Interlock Capital. NEAL: Sure. It really kind of organically happened that I became an investor, but not planned at all. I have an aerospace background then built my own edtech and talent tech marketplace. I call it the LinkedIn for students is really what we built as our first startup called Portfolium. We sold it, and I got really into startup communities, especially because of some people who helped me with my first startup. I want to be a part of building an even better ecosystem for others. And that turned into a podcast, a blog, an event series. And once I had the capital from my exit, turned into angel investing as well, too, and really just found that as I got to know people over time, the more and more I got to know them, the more certain ones stood out that said, wow, I don't just want to help them for the good of it. I also just want to be along for the ride. And I started writing checks to other founders. So that was the beginning of my investor journey about five years ago. And over COVID, a whole bunch of other later-stage experience operators, either founder-level or executives at tech companies, said, "I want to learn to do this. Can I do it alongside you?" And we created Interlock Capital as an investment syndicate. A group of us can share and utilize our brainpower, our time, and our capital to help companies. It's kind of our focus. So that's why we call it a community because it's not just kind of a one-way pitch us, and we'll write you a check. It's very much get to know the people, find the exact right domain experts who have subject matter expertise, who've been there and done that before. If they like the company and they want to personally invest, then we go to the greater group and say, "Hey, everyone, who wants to join this deal specifically?" So 18 investments later from Interlock Capital, we now also have an investment fund. So now we write two checks into every company. We do our syndicated style, pass the hat, if you will, "Hey, everyone, anyone want to invest in just this deal?" And then match it from our fund. And we're writing between $300,000 to $500,000 checks into early-stage software or/and software plus hardware companies. VICTORIA: What an incredible journey. And I love that it's led you to creating a community as part of what you do as an investment capital group. What do you find interesting about these startups and these companies that you want to be interested in? NEAL: Part of it is how much you learn about yourself, to be honest. I get to meet three to five new founders a day in a variety of ways, whether it's straight Zoom and pitch, or grab a coffee, or see them on a hike. We're kind of constantly introducing ourselves to each other. There's a bit of learning about how to size someone up to a certain regard. So you're kind of building this inner algorithm of how to top-prank people and their ideas. That's one interesting way that I never thought I would be doing professionally. There's a lot that we say versus what we do, and that's a data point that I have to keep track of because I get pitched amazing ideas that will literally change the world for so much better. And you get really excited about it, and you get invested in it. And I call it founder love. You fall in love with these founders specifically and almost say, "I don't even care what you're working on. I just want to work more with you. How do we do it?" So there's a lot of that. So there are some dating aspects [laughs] in terms of founder dating, like getting to know people. There's the determining how do we date towards marriage? Meaning, I'll write you a check, and I'm along for the ride for the next ten years. And then there's the kind of relationship maintenance which is okay; I wrote the check, now what? Where can I be helpful to the company? How can I anticipate their needs so that they have to think one more thing of how to satisfy me? It's quite the opposite way around. I'm trying not to be a barrier. I'm trying to work for them while they're sleeping. So yeah, it's really interesting the kind of the relationship aspect that goes into getting to know and helping founders take their ideas and turn it into reality. VICTORIA: That's very cool. And I have talked to people who have met you and talked to your company and just how supportive and helpful you all are even if you choose not to invest. So I think that's a really valuable resource for people. And I wonder, do you think it's something unique about the San Diego community in particular that is exciting right now? NEAL: I think so. I think San Diego specifically has always had this culture of give-before-you-get mentality, and so we kind of lead with that. There are a lot of people moving here. And you could choose many places that could be great, like LA versus San Diego, and there's a certain kind of person that chooses here versus somewhere else. And what I have found is there's a certain kind of give-before-you-get cultural mentality here that somehow people register pretty quickly and come with. And so that's an underlying greatness about us here. There's also because of the great environment we live in, by the beach, healthy lifestyle. I think we choose to work on things that maybe are also satisfying, just like our personal lives, meaning we work on things that matter, that are going to change the world, that are life-changing. That's not to say that we don't need certain other kinds of technology. I'm sure at some point, we felt we needed Twitter, and maybe we don't feel like that now. [laughs] But here, it feels like everyone's working on very impactful things, and I think that's really special to think about. Some examples of that is we've got an interesting subset of the SaaS world in nonprofit tech. So GoFundMe was founded in San Diego. They have since acquired three other nonprofit tech SaaS companies in San Diego, like Classy. So that's kind of interesting. You've got people who want to build a business that services nonprofits, and now they're all under one roof. So yeah, I think there is something special. We can dive deeper into some of the other sub-industries or categories that are interesting here, too, if you're interested. VICTORIA: Well, I could talk about San Diego all day. NEAL: [laughs] VICTORIA: Because I'm a fairly new resident, and I'm in love with it, obviously. [laughs] But let's talk more about products that can change the world. Like, what's one that you're really excited about that you've heard recently? NEAL: Ooh. I would start a little high level in certain categories that I'm really liking. I like things I'm seeing in the infrastructure space right now, meaning, you know, whether it's pipes and our water utilities, and I would include that in energy and EV, you know, kind of a mobility piece. There's even the commercial side of mobility, so trucking and freight. That whole infrastructure layer is really interesting to me right now. A certain company that, full disclosure, we invested in recently is a company called EarthGrid. They have a product that is boring holes tunnel-wise underground, but they're using just electricity and air, so plasma. And it's fascinating. They can bore holes 100 times the norm right now. They don't need to potentially trench, meaning they don't need to cut above the surface. They can just dig for miles straight underneath the ground, so they can go under things with that. And really a lot of the expensive pieces, closing lanes on freeways or highways to put fiber in or plumbing and all that. So it's really interesting to see that. Now, one element is the technology is interesting. But they have a plan to actually own their own tunnels that go across the entire United States. So they don't just want to be a device that they're going to sell to everyone. They want to actually own their own utility that has major tunnels across the United States. So that's fascinating to me because that's like think big, think exponential around that. So that's one area that's kind of fascinating to me. VICTORIA: That's super interesting, and thinking about the impact it can have on making power more secure for more people, things like that. There are just so many problems to solve, and so many are people trying to solve them. [laughs] - NEAL: Yeah, exactly. And they have a clean tech angle in that there are a lot of different ways to dig and tunnel that includes chemicals, and so their big thing is to not do that. Some of their background is installing these kinds of lines in the EV space for solar panels. So they have a big kind of clean and sustainability focus there. And our infrastructure is aging big time. We've got 100-year-old bridges and pipes and other things that it's really interesting to see the government put money into. And so that is another aspect, a business model, per se of infrastructure. You have the government putting billions, if not trillions, into upgrading our infrastructure, which as an investor, I like to hear that there's free capital out there in forms of non-dilutive funding to help these along, and that's existed for hundreds of years. Cars and oil industry got these kinds of subsidies, and then the EV and solar panels. So that's a good area that I like to look in as well is where is there additional large-scale funding to help these products really get to market? VICTORIA: That makes sense. And so you're meeting three to five founders a day, and you're watching where the funding is available. And out of all the pitches that you receive, how many do you really get to say yes to? NEAL: Oh, it's small, I mean, one to two a month if that would be a lot, and those could take a few months to work through. The best way for us to invest is to get to know the people for as long as possible. So I kind of mentioned that relationship aspect. I want to see how people operate. I want to see how they build product. I want to see how they get to know their customer and iterate and bring that back into design thinking. And so that's a big piece is getting to know and see the people do the things that they're saying. Man, there are so many companies that I like on paper, whether it's oh my God, amazing team, or, oh, cool, the product. Yes, love that idea. And then you have to look at everything together, the timing, the valuation that they want, the team. Has this team been there, done that before? So there are a lot of elements that go into it. Like I mentioned, you have this founder love where you fall in love with the people, and maybe the rest doesn't work out or vice versa. But yeah, I think each investor comes at it differently. So my area because I built two tech companies that were talent tech-related, meaning connecting people for opportunities; my investing style is very team and talent and recruitment-focused, meaning what are the superpowers of the founders? Are they aware of their weaknesses and their strengths? Have they filled in those gaps by finding co-founders that are complementary and opposites? And then my partner, Al Bsharah, he is a super product guy, and he wants to break the product and see, how can you break it? What are they thinking product roadmap-wise? That's his first go-to. And so, for us, we're super complementary in that regard. So we will assess the same company in very different ways and then come together and say, "Let's share our scores, share our rank. Where do you think this company sits at in all these different areas and boxes?" And so that's a great way, that complementary skill sets as investors. We utilize those strengths together. So yeah, it's hard for a founder to know that. A founder who's building a product, the person on the other side of the screen, they're meeting me. They're not going to know my algorithm. They're not going to know what I value more than something else. So there's this whole dance. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but it is a dance. It's a negotiation. And that's why I build a community because I'd really rather take the gloves off and get to know people when they're not raising capital, when they really are just inspired by innovation and by customers, and they're just excited, and they're building product. That's the time I want to get to know them and see how they iterate before the capital question comes in. Because when it's capital, it tends to feel a little transactional, and that's just not the name of the game per se. VICTORIA: It makes sense. And I'm curious, working with your partner who has a specialty in product, has there ever been a big surprise that he presented with you that you would never have thought of without that product perspective? NEAL: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think there are many times now where either the company is really touting a specific piece of their product, whether it's a certain kind of technology that as a non-product builder either I think, wow, that's unique. That's special; that's novel. And I go to my partner, who really is an automation expert in terms of product building, and boom, can whip it out in a second and say, "I could that with Zapier," or now ChatGPT. So I think there are those elements that are good checkpoints of putting too much...maybe I get too excited about uniqueness or a novelty of a product. And then there's the opposite. There's the team undersells their product, and really they're touting, hey, we have a background in this industry. So we're going to go build because we know how to get into that industry. Our uniqueness is go-to-market, so they think. And it turns out, hey, you're really underselling the product here. There's something special about your vision system here or your data set that you're using to build your ML model. So I've seen a variety of both of those. I think we're going to see more and more right now where ChatGPT and other AI models are going to show that maybe the tech exactly like AI isn't the specialty. That's going to be a democratization across the board. We're just going to expect that everyone can build a baseline product. So how are people going to differentiate on the product? That's where I'm really excited to see where product stands out now that more and more people have more tools at their disposal to build a good product. VICTORIA: Yeah, I'm excited for that too and to see which experiments with AI really pan out to be something useful that becomes part of everyday life. Do you have any instincts on where you think you're going to see the most out of AI innovation in tech? NEAL: AI is such a big word, and it feels so buzzwordy right now. But actually, in San Diego, we have a deep history in the high-level AI, and it starts with analytics. We have a deep, deep bench of analytics talent here. In fact, Google Analytics was founded in San Diego under the name Urchin Analytics and acquired by Google in 2004. VICTORIA: Oh. NEAL: And so you have these big analytic models and builders here that is interesting to tap into. I kind of bucket it in a few areas. I look at the vision aspect, so motion capture, motion classification, image classification. That's really interesting that I think we'll see a lot of that that applied to blank. I'm seeing that applied to life sciences, so cancer detection through some sort of imaging. Obviously, the mobility aspect, whether it's self-driving or driver assisted for blank, whether that's drones, self-driving trucks, all those areas. That's one area interesting from the AI piece. Natural language processing which there's a piece of ChatGPT to that regard. I think it is really interesting from what is your dataset? What are you tapping into? I'm also seeing that applied to digital health, whether it's clinical trials bringing AI models there, whether it's taking genomic data and saying, let's build better clinical trial classes. Maybe we don't need 500 patients when we can build the best 30 patients to enter a trial because we've got genomic data on our side. So yeah, I think I'm more looking at certain industries and saying, what is the right AI model for it? And I think that's pretty exciting. MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you're tight on time and investment, which is why we've created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product's next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. VICTORIA: So tell me, you know, at Interlock Capital, when you're working with a team, what do you use to really manage all of this information and these contacts for your investors? NEAL: Yeah, it's a great question. We decided to build our own products in-house thanks to my partner Al who's a great product builder. At the end of the day, there are a few different funnels we are managing within Interlock Capital. We're managing our customer, which really is the startup. We want to make sure we're keeping track of them on whatever timeline. And so we use CRMs, basically, to manage funnels per se. So that's startups. Then there's the deal flow sharing, so these are other VC firms, maybe other service providers, where we're sharing companies with each other. And then we have investors, so we're using CRM for managing our investors, like our limited partners, our LPs. So that's basic CRM. Luckily, we were able to use an off-the-shelf product called Streak for that. But what we do uniquely is we want to engage in two directions our investment community, meaning we want to get to know them, get to know everyone's expertise so we know when to tap them to say, "Hey, can you help on this deal?" And help is very broad, meaning it could be to give it a quick look before I've even met them to say, "Is this something I should even be looking at?" Or I've already met the team, maybe spent a few hours with them. And I'm asking for a deep dive with an expert to say, "Join a call with me after you've reviewed a deck and help me ask harder questions." So there's that aspect of we wanted to figure out how do we get to know our people in our group? Because we're hundreds now. So we decided to build a platform off Bubble.io and Airtable basic no-code where we could build a light profile of everyone. So everyone self-selects a number of profile aspects about themselves. It's also where we're starting to keep data and documents for them as well too. So whether it's tax documents or other forms, we can have it all in one spot. And then lastly, when we do decide to make an investment in a company, we write a very detailed memo that starts in Google Docs but then gets built into our product, the Interlock platform. And so in that memo which could honestly be 10 to 20 pages of diligence, in our language only, what are the pros, cons, and risks? We also showcase who is on the diligence team, what their specific expertise is to this investment, if they're personally investing or not. We really want to show conviction from the diligence team. And then we've built in some really cool features where you've got a Q&A board that you can upvote other people's questions about that investment. You can watch a video right there and then about the company, and then you can commit to the investment itself on our platform, saying, "I'm interested in this deal specifically. Here's the amount." And boom, we take you over to a third-party platform to just sign in and wire. So that's current day the product that we decided to build. We've got this whole product roadmap that we've built out that we want to build out more. We would love to automate a little bit more of our deal funnel so that a certain company that we meet maybe they get to a certain stage that we know we're ready for diligence. We can auto-ping the ten people that have that specific domain expertise. So luckily, we built out the profiles about everyone. Now we need to start building some automation in there so that maybe I'm not the bottleneck. I'm going to meet three to five companies a day, I mentioned. That's three to five follow-ups that I need to do. I'm never going to be as fast as the founder wants me to be on getting back to them and saying, "Here's our next steps." So if we can utilize the greater body of people that are in our investment community, that's where we'd love to build out some of the pieces next as well. So automation is kind of the hope there. VICTORIA: That's great. And I love that you're able to take advantage of these low-code tools to build something that worked for you. What was your initial approach to figuring out how to build this in a way that worked for your user group? NEAL: Well, we looked at a lot of existing products first, and there are. There are these angel syndicate websites like AngelList is a big one, you know, a consumer-facing platform where if you're interested in investing, you can join a group, or you can join a dozen groups and just get an email when they have a new investment opportunity. And so we looked at...first, it was survey what's existing out there already. Start building a product feature must-have or is nice to have list for us to get off the ground within Interlock. And then determine the pros and cons of building off the shelf, the time and cost, and maintenance versus using something that already exists. So that was a big piece, just assessment upfront before we do anything. And I think learning the landscape was big for us. I find that building tools for startups there's a lot, but there are also not a lot of mature ones because there's just not a lot of money out there to be made. There's not a billion-dollar industry of making a website to invest in startups per se yet. So that was another thing as well. It's just understanding will the companies that we choose off-the-shelf products-wise will they still be there a year or two or three from now? And ultimately, we decided, you know what? We got to build it ourselves if we really want the two-way communication, not just one-way. We didn't see everything out there. And I think the piece you always underestimate is the maintenance over time as well as all the third-party tools and apps and services that you end up needing and using and how do they play into the maintenance role as well too. We've definitely had elements of our product break because they're no longer supporting that tool anymore. So those are all aspects that you can do as much as you can self-assessment upfront. There's obviously the maintenance piece that goes into it down the road as well too. VICTORIA: That makes sense. And then, in this way, you have control over it, and you can change it as often as you want. NEAL: Totally. VICTORIA: And as much as you like, if you have the time. [laughs] NEAL: One piece that I think we have never planned or expected is that because we built it and it's super unique, there are many other angel groups who have come to us and said, "Can we use your tool? Like, yours is better than anything that exists." And we did not build ours with a commercial aspect in mind at first. We can't just clone an Airtable and be like, "Here we go. Here's your product. It's Bubble and Airtable," because if it breaks for them, we're on the hook for that [laughs] as well too. So I don't think we thought through too much around a commercialized product when we built out our own. But because we've been pinged so many times about, can people use it? It's on our mind now. Like, it literally is on our list of priorities of hiring either part-time or full-time a product builder to go back in and commercialize aspects so that we could actually maybe turn this into a product one day, this whole investment community manager software. VICTORIA: That's really cool. And it's funny, talking to founders, there's always a story about how you set out to do one thing, which was build a community around startups and founders in San Diego, and then you end up building a product, [laughs] right? NEAL: Yup. VICTORIA: And getting something marketable later that you never even intended. NEAL: Yeah, I mean, I think the big learning there is, one, listen to your customer first, then go build products. And so yes, you said it exactly; we wanted to build a community where we could be more engaged with our customer. And as we heard more and more from our customer, it told us what to build. And I always find that from other startups, that's a great model to follow as opposed to build and then go determine if there's a market out there for it. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So it's interesting that you've had this experience of building tech startups from scratch and then now investing, and then now you're back [laughs], and you have a product again. NEAL: [laughs] VICTORIA: So I wonder, if you could go back in time starting Interlock Capital or when you started your companies, like, what advice would you give yourself if you could travel back in time and talk to your past self? NEAL: Oof, so much. Spend a lot of time getting to know yourself, not just what you're good at but what you like to do business-wise. And I actually see those are two different things. Sometimes the things we like to do we're not as good at, but yet we want to spend more of our time on it, and maybe it takes us longer to do it. So do some self-assessment. I would have done that more on myself. And I'll give you an example, I, for whatever reason, like to brute force certain things like our email outreach, whereas my partner loves to build automation campaigns for it because he built a software in the email space. I know I could learn a quick automation route [laughs] to do certain things, but for whatever reason, I love sometimes the analog version of things. And that's good sometimes, and sometimes there's no time for that. So learn a lot more about myself, what I like, and what I'm good at. And then the opposite, what I don't like doing, what could I shed as quickly as possible and could hire for in some way or another, trade my time or capital for time. And then, only then, once I know myself better, then go find the perfect partner that complements everything. It's the opposite of me in that regard, opposite in network, opposite in skill sets, and in that regard too. And so I think my first startup, we were carbon copies of each other. We were both aerospace engineers who kind of wanted to do the same thing who lacked emotional intelligence at the time. So yeah, that's a big learning. But I didn't know enough about myself at the time. And it took hardship to learn the hard things. Honestly, entrepreneurs seem to learn by doing more than anything. So you can only tell an entrepreneur so much. Sometimes they're just going to have to go and figure it out by running through a wall. That's one thing I would have changed about myself in that regard. I also probably would have, even earlier during college, gotten more internships to just test myself professionally and know what environments I do well in, meaning big companies, small company, or hands-on mentorship and management or hands-off certain kinds of skill sets. How could I be presenting more often versus just kind of behind-the-scenes doing? All of those I probably could have learned quicker about myself the earlier I would have put myself in those situations as opposed to getting my first job and working at one place for five years. That's a long time to dedicate to learning one culture about that I thrive in. But you live, and you learn. VICTORIA: I love the drive to keep learning and to be like, you know, don't expect to be good at everything [laughs] that you want to do. I think that's fantastic. And what do you see success really looking like for yourself in the next six months or in the next five years? NEAL: This year, this calendar year is really about getting the fund up and running. So we've raised an initial tranche of capital and got through this calendar year to get the full capital we want for the fund in. And we're being really picky about that. We really want operators, so that just takes time to go and meet the right people that maybe have recently exited, so have a little bit of time and have a little capital and now want to spend time with earlier stage companies. So that's a big piece of this year. I also, on the community side, want to scale it a little bit. I've found recurring...like the founders' hike is a really consistent and easy way to build community, just meet new people, get to meet 30 people at once instead of maybe 30 coffee meetings to meet those people and just kind of selectively choose who is good to follow up with. So building and scaling, thinking about how to scale community growth is another area, and hiring a little bit around that. So hiring either a community manager and understanding what does that role even mean? Because it's vague in a variety of scenarios. I think we as a company could utilize it. But I think even San Diego could really benefit from someone professionally community-managing all of us. I don't even know what that means yet. And I'd actually push that back on you. Like, you're recent to town. You've started to meet people in a variety of venues. What's the community management void that you see that exists locally? VICTORIA: Oh, great question. I'm actually going to the Annual March Mingle tonight. This episode will come out a little bit later. NEAL: I'll be there too. VICTORIA: Oh, I was like, I'm going to interview you and probably see you later. [laughs] NEAL: Awesome. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think what's interesting about what I've experienced so far is that there is a thriving community. People show up to events. There are a lot of different focuses and specialties. Like, there's the San Diego Design and Accessibility meetup, which had over 30 people over and has a lot of great content. The tech coffees usually have your standard crew who comes. I'm in North County in Encinitas, and then there's Downtown San Diego. And I think you and I have talked about this, that there isn't as much of a major hub. And people are kind of spread out and don't really like to travel outside of their little bubble, which isn't necessarily unique to San Diego. [laughs] I think we've seen this in other areas too. So I think deciding where and how and maybe just building that group of community organizers too. One thing we had in DC was we would have a meetup of all the meetup organizers. [laughs] NEAL: Ooh. VICTORIA: They were just the people who are running events would get together and meet each other and talk and get ideas and bounce off, and maybe that exists in San Diego, but I just haven't tapped into it yet. NEAL: Well, that's a great, great, great, great point because, yeah, learning from others. Everyone is out there doing. Let's learn what's working and what's not. I do that actually from community to community. I do compare...I'll pop into a city on personal travel, but I'll look for, say, the Neal Bloom of Phoenix or something [laughter] and share quick notes. Something Startup San Diego started... when Startup San Diego started ten years ago and became a nonprofit shortly thereafter, it wanted to be the convener of all the organizations that help startups. And so there became kind of the startup alliance, I think, where it was all people who run different startup orgs, mostly nonprofits or just meetups getting together. And that hasn't come back since COVID, and I don't know if anyone's thought to bring it back. So this is a great time to think about that. Let's do it. Let's absolutely get the startup community alliance back together and sharing what's working and what's not. Something else that I think matters as we're coming out of COVID and really matters also for product is it feels like curation matters way more than anything before. Like, we value our time more. We want to be home a bit more. And so we're only going to go to the things that we know there's some value out of it as opposed to, oh, I'll show up to that thing. It sounds cool. I get free pizza. So the curation piece, I think, is interesting to think about, like, how do you scale curation? Because if you make smaller groups and make it more valuable, you still can't make a group for everyone. Someone's always going to be missing out. That's a piece when I think of how has product worked really well for that? Obviously, product has done amazing things on curation with using filters and ranking and other things. How do you do that in real-time for community? VICTORIA: Yeah, that's a really cool idea. And it's interesting talking with organizers from Women Who Code DC who are still there and coming back from COVID. They were all virtual events, and now they're having part virtual and part in-person. And it's interesting where some people really want to get back to the in person and see people in real life. The virtual is also still a very good option for people altogether across the board. So, yeah, I think you're 100% right on the event has to be kind of worth it. [laughs] And how do we make that real? But we still have all these other options for connecting with each other too, and we should take advantage of this. I love that here if we're going out in person, you're on a patio. [laughs] You're outside. Even though it's pouring down rain right now so we're probably going to get rained out a little bit. NEAL: I don't think I realized how outdoorsy we already were until this recent rain, one, because COVID forced everyone outdoors already. So for the last three years, we've only been going to places that have been outdoors. But then I realized, wait, every coffee shop I go to already is just open air. Every brewery, every restaurant is open-air. We've got it pretty good here. March Mingle, as big as it is, which it's like you're 17, 18, maybe 20, it's always an amazingly cool crowd and a crowd that I don't always see at every event. It's not the same, same people. It's a crowd that just comes to March Mingle. VICTORIA: That's super cool. I'm excited to see you there later. And maybe by the time we've aired this episode, I'll have actually posted about it, so it won't be a surprise [laughs] for anybody. But I love that. Okay, so, wait, that was...did we talk about six months and five years into the future of success? NEAL: We didn't. We just talked this calendar year. Five years out, professionally, I think a well-oiled community, multiple funds under management that maybe have realized, like, let's have one with different focus. Maybe there's an infrastructure tech fund, maybe there's a diabetes tech fund. I'd love to explore the curated focused thesis aspects because it's easy to be pretty general when I'm meeting so many interesting companies, and I have so many experts at my disposal. Maybe it makes sense to have multiple smaller focused funds in that regard. I think five years out; also, we will have probably weathered some financial storms, probably be on the upswing of that, and therefore maybe there are some exits that would have happened in town. There's certainly a number of late-stage tech companies that have been at it 10, 15 years that a lot of early investors and employees with stock are just kind of waiting for a liquidity event, and I really think by then we will have seen that. And that will be really interesting to see if and how people recycle their capital back into the community, both from investing, from giving philanthropically, and then their time as well. Sometimes when you have really big success, it's easy to check out and leave, and I'm hoping we're getting ahead of that cycle now. We're getting people to put some skin in the game now so that when the exits happen, they stay connected because they're got some investments in the community. So I'm really hoping that we've closed the wheel on the flywheel of capital, recyclable capital here in San Diego five years out from now. VICTORIA: Oh, I really like that. And I think it makes sense from that idea of if you've benefited from being able to run your own company and to work with all these people in San Diego that when you exit, you invest that back into the community and grow future companies with it. NEAL: Exactly. I mean, someone helped you, all of us, and they're just ahead of us. It kind of behooves all of us; then, to each stage and phase we go forward, we should look back and say, "How can we help someone behind us?" And we started this conversation that is a very San Diego culture thing. And so I'm really excited to see when that line bends back on itself, that flywheel closes. So the other aspects of that is we're starting to build some crossroads with Tijuana. We tried before COVID, and we're trying again now. And I'm really excited to see the long-term effect of connecting these cross-border communities. And then we talked about some technology, five years out, man, if GPT is updating so quickly now, I can't even imagine what AI is building product by itself five years from now. And where do the humans play a role in that? People love the splashy headline articles of here's where AI is going to replace your jobs. I'm thinking quite the opposite. I'm so excited for the new jobs to emerge that don't exist right now, for us to complement technology, that, you know, we'll be doing things that are better than humans. So that's a whole piece of technology and product that I'm excited to see play out. VICTORIA: I agree. I think that it's humans plus machines make the most impact, right? [laughs] NEAL: Exactly. VICTORIA: It by itself won't do it. But I think that's fantastic. What a great note to kind of end on. But is there anything else that you want as a final takeaway for our listeners? NEAL: One, I'd love to meet you if you're building an interesting product. I'd love to connect you into our community, so that's a self-serving ask. Find me on LinkedIn or Twitter; probably, Twitter's easier. Write me that you heard me on Giant Robots Smashing Into Others. Absolutely would love to hear that feedback loop. Also, come check out San Diego sometime. Come join our founders' hike. If you're listening to this, pretty much we have it on every first Wednesday of each month. We'd love to welcome you into the community here. And if you have an idea for a startup but haven't started yet, that's a great time to be talking and thinking how could I iterate way sooner than you would have thought. So don't wait to get started on something; just start talking to people about it. Don't be afraid to share your product ideas. No one's going to steal it. So I would just tell people to get started sooner than you think. And the world will benefit from you putting that out into the universe. VICTORIA: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing and for being a guest on our show today, Neal. We'll have links for how to get connected with you in our show notes. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Neal Bloom.

Today, David is talking to Neal Bloom. Neal Bloom is the CEO ofhttps://www.risingtidepartners.co/ ( Rising Tide Partners), a communications firm, and the co-founder & Managing Director ofhttps://interlock.capital/ ( Interlock Capital), a venture investment firm. He is Chair Emeritus of Startup San Diego. Neal graduated with an undergraduate engineering degree from UCSD and went to work on NASA's Space Shuttle program, launching astronauts to the Space Station. He has since obtained an M.B.A. with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and marketing. Neal later co-founded Portfolium to help new grads brand themselves with existing classwork as work experience in a visual format. Portfolium was acquired by Instructure ($INST) in 2019. He then went to work building an investment community of domain expert operators to close the gap between capital and subject matter experts. This group, Interlock Capital, has deployed $3.6M into 17 companies in 17 months. Mr. Bloom has focused on a variety of ·   Build a multi-cityhttps://freshbrewedtech.com/ ( media company) and a marketing agency that focuses on economic development, sustainability, and evangelism of the SoCal tech ecosystem, winning multiple awards along the way ·   Amplify the story of dozens of local governments and special districts in connecting with their communities ·   Interviewed hundreds of leaders for tens of thousands of downloads throughhttp://tacosandtechpodcast.com/ ( his podcast) ·   Helping create anhttp://sandiegostartupweek.com/ ( annual conference) to inspire entrepreneurship ·   Mentor dozens of founders to either leap and/or to keep building quality businesses ·   Advising stakeholders in multiple regions on the changing needs for talent and capital in the technology space ·   Angel investing into 50+ early-stage companies while inspiring more entrepreneurs to become investors as well ·   Recruit 250+ operators to begin their angel investing journey with Interlock Capital ·   Raising a venture fund to double down early-stage investing in dynamic technology leaders   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealbbloom/ ( /in/nealbbloom) TWITTER:https://twitter.com/NealBloom ( @NealBloom) What You'll Learn: Angel Investing to Raising Fund I Understanding of the marketplace model Building community prospective How to educate the community to get out of their bubble as a company The necessity of a founder to be a talent scout Importance of being active in sharing an opinion  Community understanding that everyone is after the same thing  Importance of connecting talent to talent Fund structure  Social media presence growth Favorite Quote: “Show up! And do not wait to start!” --  The Capital Stack All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:   Twitter -https://twitter.com/davidpaulvc ( CLICK HERE) Substack -http://davidpaul.substack.com/ ( CLICK HERE) LinkedIn -http://linkedin.com/in/Davidpaulvc ( CLICK HERE) IG -https://www.instagram.com/davidpaulvc/ ( CLICK HERE)     DISCLAIMER: David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Running an e-commerce store or SaaS business requires robust accounting software because of all the transactions and taxes that you have to pay in each country, state or province you have customers. If the software doesn't synch easily with your Shopify store, Woo Commerce or other software you'll be stuck in Excel spreadsheets, manual entry and more headaches than you can imagine. Tax rates vary by country and each state or province in that country. Miss paying taxes where you have customers and you can be in big trouble. We talk with Polly and Melissa from Synder about how to make sure you are tax and accounting compliant. About Synder Synder is a robust accounting platform that automates a significant part of finance management, providing accurate fast bookkeeping and reporting for e-commerce and SaaS businesses. About Polly Sidoruk Polly is the Product Manager at Synder. She is a knowledgeable bookkeeping automation consultant who has helped more than 4,000 businesses of different sizes around the globe automate their bookkeeping and back-office processes bringing efficiency into the flow, and this way, reducing the operational costs faced every day. S he is skilled in international accounting and eCommerce back-office automation, product, and team management. In addition, she is also proficient in the ins and outs of QuickBooks and Xero. About Melissa Williams Melissa is the Head of Content at Synder, a robust accounting platform that automates a significant part of finance management, providing accurate, fast bookkeeping and reporting for businesses. She used to run her own content design and strategy business, helping startups define their brand voice and tone as well as create content strategies in addition to UX content for in-app messaging. Melissa also served as a speaker at Geek Girl Tech Conference and Startup San Diego. She has also spoken at several online conferences/webinars about copywriting, brand voice/tone, blogging, and social media. Having worked as a content strategist, content designer, and content manager for 15+ years, she knows the ins and outs of all things content. EDGE's Weekly NewsletterJoin over 17,000 others and sign up to receive bonus content. It's free sign up here >>> EPISODE LINKS: Synder Accounting Software PODCAST INFO: Apple Podcasts: EDGE on Apple Podcasts  Spotify: EDGE on Spotify  RSS Feed: EDGE's RSS Feed SUPPORT & CONNECT EDGE's Weekly NewsletterJoin over 17,000 others and sign up to receive bonus content. It's free sign up here >>> Twitter: Follow Brandon on Twitter Instagram: Follow Brandon on Instagram LinkedIn: Follow Brandon on LinkedIn Please Support this Podcast by checking out our Sponsors: Mad River Botanicals 100% certified organic CBD products. The product is controlled from seed to end product by it's owners. Use code: EDGE22 to get 10% off all your orders. Shop here>>> *We respect your privacy and hate spam. We will not sell your information to others.

In today's episode, we are talking to Neal Bloom who describes himself as a serial entrepreneur and investor. Neal is the CEO of Rising Tide Partners, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Interlock Capital, and Chair Emeritus at Startup San Diego.  Come join us for this real, authentic, and honest conversation about what it looks like to be an activist in 2022. In this episode, we answer questions like:  >Are inclusion and accessibility the same thing?  >How does having diversity on your team create better company outcomes? >Should you create processes for managing diversity in your company?  Do you have a question that you want to be answered on a future episode of The Inclusion 1st Podcast? Submit your question here to be featured on a future episode:  https://www.inclusion1stproject.org/ask-a-question You can find more information about Neal using the links below:  Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/NealBloom  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealbbloom/ Interlock Capital: https://interlock.capital/ Fresh Brewed Tech: https://freshbrewedtech.com/ Startup San Diego: https://startupsd.org/ Slack: http://sandiegostartups.herokuapp.com/  Podcast: https://apple.co/3fsMxhl  . . . Ready to dive in further? Check out all the places you can find us below:  Social Justice Superhero Academy: https://sjsacademy.samcart.com/products/social-justice-superhero-academy-/  Top 5 Most Asked Questions On Anti-Racism: https://www.inclusion1stproject.org/top5  Ask a question on anti-racism: https://www.inclusion1stproject.org/ask-a-question Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inclusion1stproject/  Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Inclusion1stProject 

Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify, and other platforms.  Brant Cooper, CEO/Founder of Moves the Needle and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur, teaches leaders how to improve their businesses to remain agile and resilient in the Digital Age in his latest book, DISRUPTION PROOF. Host Neal Bloom and Brant discuss the importance of decentralizing decision making in companies and being able to dynamically adjust to disrupting factors or situations.  Brant graduated from UC Davis with an Economics degree. He lived in the Bay Area for 17 years, following the trajectory of regular business. It wasn't until he joined his first startup that he understood the difference between entrepreneurial mindset versus a typical business. After coming down to San Diego, he observed the region and their small presence in the tech scene, with few successful startups and venture capital at the tail-end of funds. Since he was familiar with startup culture from the Bay Area, he brought that to San Diego, changing the culture from business professional and formal expectations to casual yet efficient meetups that were modernized to meet the rising digital age.  As his organized meetups grew in popularity, many people became involved and grew interest in the entrepreneurial scene. With more help, he put on the first Startup Week and co-founded Startup San Diego. Eventually, he passed on the organization to new leadership, and watched it go through successful transitions with competent leaders keeping the core fundamental aspects and attributes. He currently travels the world as a keynote speaker on how to discover and create new value and empower change through design thinking and lean methodologies.  Listen to Brant Cooper share his expertise in igniting entrepreneurial action within large organizations through disrupting our current way of thinking in order to find personal and economic growth. His favorite local tacos: Roberto's Mexican Food in Del Mar   Connect with Brant: Brant Cooper   Learn more about Moves the Needle: Website: https://movestheneedle.com/  Facebook: @movestheneedle Twitter: @MovesTheNeedle LinkedIn   Check out his newest book, DISRUPTION PROOF: https://brantcooper.com/tacosandtech/      Thanks to our partners at Cox Business & Cox Edge for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.

A VCFamilia member, Leandro Bedolla is a VC at M25 in Chicago, the most active Pre-Seed and Seed stage firm investing in Midwest-based startups across most industries (14 states, 117 companies). He sources and meets with founders, conducts analysis and due diligence, supports portfolio companies and firm operations, and initiatives including MidwestStartups.com and the Midwest Startup City Rankings. Additionally, Leandro volunteers with LatinxVC co-leading the Breaking into VC Fellowship, VCFamilia, mentors for Techstars and NVCA/Venture Forward's VC University, and was recognized by HBCUvc as a 2021 Emerging Venture Leader. Previously, Leandro was an associate for the Techstars Anywhere accelerator, Tech Coast Angels' volunteer analyst program, and built up Startup San Diego's ecosystem as MD of sponsorships and a lead organizer for San Diego Startup Week. He graduated from Valparaiso University, grew up in Illinois, and is originally from Central Mexico.

Welcome to She Invests, where you’ll hear from existing female angel investors, venture capitalists and fund managers on their investment thesis. From deal flow to exits, they will share the best practices that contribute to their success. In this episode, Dr. Silvia Mah welcomes to the podcast leader, connector and mentor of startup founders, Oralia Alvarez. Oralia currently serves as a director of business development for Founders First Capital Partners, a fund committed to growing and funding small businesses led by diverse and inclusive founders. With over ten years of experience in distressed real estate investments and business strategy, Oralia works exclusively with cash investors in the acquisition of off-market properties. As an angel investor, Oralia is extensively involved in San Diego’s startup ecosystem by serving as a connector and mentor to entrepreneurs and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors at Startup San Diego. Dr. Silvia and Oralia talk about the daring journey of being an entrepreneur, why women of color make some of the most efficient founders and the importance of being bold and confident. 04:19 – Dr. Silvia Mah introduces today’s guest, Oralia Alvarez who speaks to her involvement in San Diego Angel Conference, her entrepreneurial origin story and her involvement in animal philanthropy 10:31 – Oralia provides her thoughts on why women of color are some of the best and most efficient entrepreneurs 14:13 – Oralia speaks to the brilliant work the winning founders at San Diego Angel Conference are currently doing and what impressed her the most by these founders 21:28 – The importance of communication and coachability when it comes to investing in founders 25:46 – Dr. Silvia and Oralia talk about their excitement for SDAC Fund III 31:16 – Oralia talks about her bold, confident nature and how she maintains balanced confidence  34:30 – Oralia shares what having an abundance mindset means to her Full show notes: http://www.sheinvests.com/34

Not only is it the 1st of October, it's also the start of SD Startup Month! To celebrate this occasion we are dropping a bonus episode featuring Alexa-Rae Navarro, the Executive Director of Startup San Diego.Alexa-Rae has had the opportunity to work with various companies of all backgrounds. She doesn't believe that there is a lack of diverse talented people to fill tech roles and there is a misconception that top talent only comes from ivy leagues. There are many tech roles that should only require a certificate or certain hard skills that do not necessarily come from a four-year degree. In her previous position, Alexa-Rae observed how an apprenticeship model can provide candidates with career exposure and increase their chance to find new career opportunities. From her experience, companies who retain diverse talent have provided internal resources dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion for all their employees. Alexa-Rae is the Executive Director of Start Up San Diego, a California non-profit 501(c)(3) entity that supports individuals building startups in San Diego. She has a deep passion for building and developing teams and ensuring that their work experience serves to facilitate both professional and programmatic growth. For the last eight years, Alexa has been working at the intersection of tech, corporate, education, non-profit, and public sectors focused on building and scaling entrepreneurship, talent development, and sustainability programming.Alexa-Rae Navarro: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexarae-navarroSan Diego Start-Up Month: https://www.sandiegostartupweek.comStartup SD: https://startupsd.orgMore episodes of the SnackWalls Podcast: http://podcast.snackwalls.comSnackWalls is powered by San Diego Code School: https://sdcs.ioPlease share like and subscribe for more reach

San Diego Startup Month is only a week away, and to kick off the excitement, we connected with members from the San Diego Innovation Council, Tech Coast Angels - San Diego, Connect w/ SDVG, and Startup San Diego to talk about the upcoming Inventors & Investors Pitch Competition on October 9, during SD Startup Month. They further discuss the jam-packed month of October and what our listeners can do to prepare for an event filled with engaging workshops, interactive experiences, and career building opportunities from the comfort of their own homes.  Guests include: Tari Suprapto and Ruben Flores from San Diego Innovation Council, Caitlin Wege and Ashok Kamal from Tech Coast Angels (TCA - San Diego), and Alexa-Rae Navarro from Startup San Diego. Listen in as the group discusses entrepreneurial diversity and opportunities in SD Startup Month with local investors and entrepreneurs.  7:50 President of the San Diego Innovation Council, Ruben Flores, starts by explaining how events in the San Diego Innovation Council take place. Each year, the organization holds an Innovation Showcase with about thirty companies at varying stages of development to celebrate previous entrepreneurial successes and introduce a streamline of up-and-coming innovations in San Diego. While the event is directly open to anyone in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Irvine, and Arizona, investors from all around the world are invited to engage in investments and tech communities in the San Diego area. VP of San Diego Innovation Council, Tari Suprapto looks forward to watching it grow in the following years and excited for how this first time event, Inventors and Investors Pitch Competition, came to fruition 12:10 Quick Pitch competitions have paved the way for young entrepreneurs to engage with over 300 companies and investors to pitch their businesses and gain insight into the industry. However, this year with COVID-19, TCA - San Diego Executive Director Ashok Kamal details the lengths TCA and other organizations involved had to go to to ensure a successful virtual event with the Inventors & Investors Pitch Competition. Through TCA and sponsorships, he’s looking to expand and improve future events by ramping up the production, the quality, the audience, the cash prize, and much more. These competitions are about more than the pitches and companies; they’re about the collaboration and connections made by entrepreneurs, pitch coaches, judges, audience members, and the startup community.  14:52 Startup San Diego Executive Director Alexa-Rae Navarro takes us through the process of pivoting from the traditional SD Startup Week event to the first-of-its-kind SD Startup Month event, just months after being onboarded. Alexa-Rae and her team started planning for the transition process in December, having to temporarily pause when news of the pandemic surfaced. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, she took the circumstances as an opportunity to pivot and embrace the situation.  25:30 Alexa-Rae continues with Startup San Diego’s principal mission in launching the Startup Month experience: to connect, educate, and inspire local founders. At Startup Month, there is something for everyone. Whether someone is a founder, investor, tech worker, or a government representative, there are eight different tracks designed specifically for those with varying interests, skill sets, and backgrounds. To see what’s right for you, check out the schedule at https://www.sandiegostartupweek.com/schedule and apply the discount code TACOPOD30 for $30 off your tickets! 23:41 TCA - San Diego President Caitlin Wege, who advises student entrepreneurs at local universities, shares how SD Startup Month helps students gain access to resources and connections. There are dozens of student entrepreneurs in the San Diego area who have yet to be recognized since many of them are too busy with school or jobs to apply to pitch competitions and alumni events. So, with TCA - San Diego’s partnership with SDIC, they are able to directly focus on student innovations and partner with Startup San Diego to secure a platform and expand globally. In addition to workshops and competitions, Ashok discusses coaching, which aims to help entrepreneurs refine their pitches; this program helps frame a relationship between coaches and entrepreneurs. 37:07 As for judges, Ruben explains how he and his team choose the right people to judge these types of competitions. Firstly, they gather experts who have extensive experience in investing. They aim to garner people from varying industries to create a more diverse panel with a multitude of ideas, both judges and entrepreneurs. From there, they decide who would be the most willing and able to form connections with the entrepreneurs to build a greater tech community. These showcases are very beneficial for entrepreneurs, as they tend to gain partnerships, connections with different startups, and in some cases, investments.  43:30 Alexa-Rae offers tips on making the most out of the virtual Startup Month experience. Starting October 1, there will be a plethora of events available to those who participate, so she advises them to start with the schedule and plan out the entire month so no important event goes unseen.  Sign up for a month of interactive and groundbreaking experiences with discount code TACOPOD30 at SanDiegoStartupWeek.com, and engage with startups and tech workers from all over the San Diego tech community.    Favorite local tacos:  Tari: Mi Ranchito in Rancho Penasquitos Ashok: Blue Water Seafood in Little Italy Alexa: Pete’s Camp at San Felipe, Baja California Caitlin: The Taco Stand in La Jolla and Puesto at the Headquarters Ruben: Cotijas in Encinitas   Connect with: Tari Suprapto on Linkedin Ashok Kamal on Linkedin Alexa-Rae on Linkedin Caitlin Wege on Linkedin Ruben Flores on Linkedin   Keep up with San Diego Innovation Council, San Diego Tech Coast Angels, and Startup San Diego: Innovation council website: https://sdic.org/#home LinkedIn San Diego Tech Coast Angels website: https://www.techcoastangels.com/ Linkedin Startup San Diego website: https://startupsd.org/ Linkedin   Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

How is COVID-19 affecting the startup ecosystem? Alexa Rae Navarro, executive director of Startup San Diego, joins Phil Blair to discuss pandemic resources for startups and how entrepreneurs can find their path. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 36135]

Melani Gordon is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor; she is currently the CEO of TapHunter, in the process of launching her third company, and working to open her own coaching business.  After graduating from San Diego State University, Melani got the entrepreneurship bug from one of her professors who let her work on his MBA internet marketing projects. During her time in college, she got a job at the startup Z57 where she met her husband Flash and learned the basics of startups and sales. They went on to start multiple businesses together. The first company Melani opened was gWave Consulting which specialized in marketing consultations for large corporations. The idea of subscription based models interested her, leading her to open TapHunter, a software startup in the beer industry in 2009. They were admitted to the EvoNexus startup incubator in 2012 where mentors and advisors convinced her to turn TapHunter into a B2B company.  While at EvoNexus, she began external mentoring and advising programs about entrepreneurship which ultimately transformed into the nonprofit known today as Startup San Diego.  Recognizing potential for burnout and experiencing a sudden death in her family, Melani realized she needed to change things up: she chose to use her life experience and skills to help other founders and provide support to the San Diego startup community. Check out her current blog and podcast! Tune in as Melani joins host Neal Bloom to discuss her journey as an entrepreneur in the San Diego tech scene. Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem. Melani’s favorite local tacos: La Fachada Tacos El Paisa Connect with Melani:  LinkedIn Keep up with TapHunter:  https://www.taphunter.com/ LinkedIn

Listen in as Startup San Diego Executive Director Alexa-Rae Navarro joins host Neal Bloom and guest co-host Amy Chang, entrepreneur and angel investor, to discuss the latest tech news in San Diego. The episode kicks off with Alexa-Rae providing updates on Startup San Diego events and then goes into a discussion about local tech news. 5:00 In collaboration with the Downtown San Diego Partnership and Mission Edge, Startup San Diego recently launched Startup Series: Covid Edition, which has two workshops coming up in its five-part series. 8:22 Alexa-Rae and Neal share insight about founders dealing with heightened anxiety amid the pandemic 12:09 Startup Week 2020 updates. The event is postponed until fall and is going virtual, which will allow greater attendance than previous years, including attendees outside of San Diego. 18:54 There’s a new venture fund in town. Section 32 is raising $350M for its third fund. It has already invested in five San Diego companies, including Cue Health, Aspen Neuroscience, XOKind, Cradle Genomics, and Medcrypt. 21:04 Recent fundings: Erasca $200m - Brain Corp $36M - Plantible Foods - $4.6M - Trovata $4.3M 24:08 Who's hiring - San. Diego. Life Changing, Startup San Diego, and Connect have launched a live job board that lists San Diego County companies that are still hiring amid the pandemic. 27:06 Local companies pivoting amid the pandemic. Banker Hills-based CloudBeds connecting hotel beds to those in need of hospitalization. Read about all the local companies joining the fight against COVID-19 on FreshBrewedTech.com. 28:03 Upcoming virtual events:  Meta by Acai: Startup Community Virtual Networking - May 28  Startup Series: Unique Value Proposition & Storytelling (Workshop 4 of 5), May 15 Startup Series: Distilling Chaos & Taking Action (Workshop 5 of 5), May 22 Nominate your top tech leaders at TopTechAwards.com. The event will take place this fall and is held by Cox Business. Listen to a previous podcast episode, where Alexa-Rae takes us through her career leading up to her current role at Startup San Diego (Episode #36) Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego startup and tech ecosystem.   Keep up with Alexa-Rae: Twitter: @lexaRaeN LinkedIn   Keep up with Startup San Diego  Twitter: @StartupSanDiego Facebook: @StartupSD startupsd.org/

Darin and Mike check in with previous guest and friend of the show, Neal Bloom. Neal shares his personal experience of adjusting to social distancing, both personally and professionally. They also discuss how entrepreneurs are rising to these new challenges and the role they can play in providing solutions to this crisis. To hear more about the state of startups and entrepreneurship in San Diego, be sure to check out Neal's own podcast Tacos and Tech or sign up for his newsletter at www.freshbrewedtech.com.

Alexa-Rae Navarro is the new Executive Director of Startup San Diego, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurs and startups in the local ecosystem.  Alexa-Rae was born and raised in Riverside and went to college at UC San Diego, where she studied urban planning. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles to work at the mayor’s office but knew she wanted to learn more and went on to earn a master’s degree in urban planning at UCLA. Her studies coincided with a graduate internship at the LA Chamber of Commerce. After finishing up her studies, Alexa-Rae continued working with the LA Chamber of Commerce, where she eventually became a senior managing director of the organization’s center for innovation and tech. Listen in to hear all about her journey to becoming Startup San Diego’s new Executive Director and send her your best taco recommendation! Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.   Keep up with Alexa-Raei:  Twitter: @lexaRaeN   Keep up with Startup San Diego:  Twitter: @StartupSanDiego Facebook: @StartupSD https://startupsd.org/

Ashok Kamal is the Executive Director of Tech Coast Angels (TCA) San Diego, one of the largest and most active angel investment groups in the country. Originally from the east coast, Ashok grew up in Boston, where he later attended Boston University. At 21 years old, Ashok moved to New York City to pursue entrepreneurship. Hw founded businesses there and immersed himself in the local startup scene. In 2015, after spending 15 years in the big apple, he finally made his way out to the west coast. A visit to his friend in San Diego is what sparked his idea to move to the sunny city, and he’s never looked back. Ashok’s first taste of the San Diego startup scene was at Startup San Diego’s Convergence event, which happens to be where he first met our host, Neal. This is a special episode because School of Rap, which was co-founded by Ashok, helped us come up with a new Tacos & Tech theme song that encompasses all we love about San Diego and the local startup scene. Give it a listen and let us know what you think! http://theschoolofrap.com/  Listen in to hear all about his experience transitioning from being an entrepreneur to becoming an investor, and get the scoop on his favorite local tacos. Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem. Ashok’s local favorites: Tacos: Fish tacos at Blue Water Seafood in Little Italy Keep up with Ashok:  Twitter: @AK_LaunchLeader Ashok’s LinkedIn Keep up with Tech Coast Angels:  Facebook: @TCASanDiego Twitter: @TCASanDiego Instagram: @TCASanDiego https://tcasandiego.com/

Interview starts: 5:50Debrief starts: 47:39Neal Bloom is the founder of Fresh Brewed Tech and the host of the podcast, Tacos & Tech.Fresh Brewed Tech is a media company dedicated to raising awareness of local tech ecosystems in local areas through storytelling. Having started as a way to connect tech-focused San Diegans, Fresh Brewed Tech is currently expanding and starting to aid other regions by creating local unified tech ecosystems. His podcast, Tacos & Tech, has the same goal as the Fresh Brewed Tech brand.Neal began his entrepreneurial work with Portfolium. He also currently serves that a chair for Startup San Diego.We discuss: Ad: Finding experienced employees for your new business with Integrity Power Search (4:25) Neal's story: from aerospace engineering to HR technology and Portfolium (6:00) Los Angeles vs. San Diego ecosystems, needs, and assets (10:42) San Diego's aggregation of defense, telecom, cyber security, and biotech companies (14:48) Fresh Brewed Tech synopsis, highlights, and changes since its beginnings (16:40) San Diegans (22:03) How Fresh Brewed Tech has become a full-time effort (22:20) Storytelling as a way to strengthen and empower startup communities (24:01) Fresh Brewed Tech's audience (29:27) Learning to run a media company (30:50) Startup San Diego. Finding funding, motivation, volunteers, and an executive director (33:35) Learn more about Fresh Brewed Tech: https://freshbrewedtech.com/Subscribe to Tacos & Tech: https://plinkhq.com/i/1374814595?to=pageFollow Neal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NealBloomFollow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefmAdvertise with an upside classified: https://upside.fm/classifieds--This episode is sponsored by Integrity Power Search, the #1 full stack high growth startup recruiting firm between the coasts. They partner with venture capitalists, private equity groups and CEOs to build amazing teams for the world's most disrupting companies.Learn more about or get in touch with Integrity Power Search: https://upside.fm/integrity

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]

Building a successful start up requires more than just capital. Investment in ideas, building collaborative relationships, and forming a diverse network can often be the pivotal factors in your success. Jarrod Russell, Executive Director of Startup San Diego, shares how to go from curious to committed to crushing it in your entrepreneurial journey. Series: "Career Channel" [Business] [Show ID: 34155]