Billion Dollar Tech

"You've got to be willing to swing, which means, by definition, sometimes you're going to miss," Brendan says on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech, as he takes us step by step through the set of criteria he used to evaluate his first venture investment. Determining the risk versus reward ratio of a company is one important factor in any investment decision. Another major factor was that the company (which he won't name, but you might certainly recognize) had an impressive network. As Brendan often reminds us, "Your network is your net worth."

Don't be afraid to ask why you are the one being given this opportunity. Decide what's more important to you: valuation or potential. The idea is important but above all, look at the company's ability to execute. Be sure to look at the whole team when deciding if these are people you want to work with.

With this advice, Brendan hopes you can find something useful for your own investments, and welcomes your feedback and reactions. Perhaps you have advice of your own to give!

Quotes:

"Why am I the one they want to get money from versus all of the opportunities and sources for capital out there?" (3:03-3:09 | Brendan)

"The execution matters more than anything else. Yes, the idea is important, but I've seen a lot of great ideas that have just fizzled because people just can't execute." (4:10-4:17 | Brendan)

"Can another big player just come in and do this? This is something that I hear a lot in businesses." (6:53-6:58 | Brendan)

"You have to look at these things and say, 'Am I OK with this going to zero?' (9:20-9:24 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"Once people form an opinion it's almost impossible to change their minds even in the face of overwhelming evidence," Brendan explains. That's why it's so important to establish your brand's identity and make your market truly care about it. This is especially important in today's overcrowded space, and so Brendan presents the key takeaways from his interview with Matt Kerbel, marketing leader for superstar brands like MeUndies and Lyft.

As cliche as it might be, it's as true as ever: speak to one specific audience. What is meant for someone will inevitably fail to meet for someone else. Even more helpful is to choose a small group of aspirational people who will then influence others. Once you choose a specific market, stick to it consistently. Brendan explains where to find real people and their true pain points.

Your message is only as effective as your company's belief in it, and it must walk the walk from the top down. You must also spread your message so relentlessly that you become sick of hearing it yourself. That's when people begin to listen.

Quotes:

"You need to speak to someone; you can't speak to everyone. This is a marketing cliche at this point but it's becoming more and more important in a world where there's so much fragmentation and there's so much out there that's trying to go to the masses." (1:14-1:29 | Brendan)

"If you think about the brands that break through in the most compelling way, they have a strong point of view." (2:29-2:36 | Brendan)

"Something I say to folks all the time is that your biggest risk these days is not that half the people love you and half the people hate you. It's that nobody has an opinion at all. People just don't care." (2:54-3:07 | Brendan)

"Just about the time that you're sick to death of hearing yourself talk about the same thing is just about the time the audience, or your market is going to start to remember." (5:05-5:14 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Matt:LinkedIn: @Matt Kerbel

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"The purpose of marketing is to find that intersection between what's important to people, what they're looking to do and solve for in their lives, and how your company can uniquely help them achieve that," says Matt Kerbel, Director of Strategic Brand Planning at Turo. According to Matt, the three main things to avoid are what he refers to as the three Ps: perfectionism, pandering, and plagiarism.

Essentially, you're marketing to people, not just businesses, and influencing a small group of passionate people who will help spread your message is more effective than trying to please everyone (and as a result, pleasing no one). Matt and Brendan discuss the importance of early discovery as well as the way that the unprecedented events of the last few years have affected the relationship between marketer and consumer.

At the heart of Matt's success in marketing is a desire to do good in the world. He says that the upcoming generation is more interested in affecting change than any generation before, and that they are the most tuned in to sincere messages. Therefore, brands should go beyond storytelling and engage in what he calls story living, in which actions speak louder than words.

Quotes:

"Marketing is really trying to uncover those human truths, and determining whether your company is uniquely qualified to help them either solve their problems or achieve a quality of life that they may not have been able to if your company didn't exist." (6:20-6:40 | Matt)

"One thing we did well was we really wanted to ensure is we did the opposite of what I think is crappy marketing, which are the three Ps: perfectionism, pandering, and plagiarism." (14:23-14:37 | Matt)

"There's a lot to be said for progress over perfection." (26:18-26:21 | Matt)

"To avoid plagiarism, to avoid pandering, to avoid perfectionism, you need to have that upfront strategy tight and aligned. And if you do that, you can move fast, you can point and shoot, you can ship it, and you just know that you can continue to share story after story, initiative after initiative, product after product, that is going to be something that your audience absolutely loves, eats up, shares, evangelizes." (31:23-31:55 | Matt)

"If you target a small group that can have influence and be extremely passionate and evangelize, that's actually much more important than trying to be everything to everyone." (39:33-39:46 | Matt)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Matt:LinkedIn: @Matt KerbelCheck out Matt recommended books:

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780066620992

Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250103505

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781451686586

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"Patience is just so overrated," Brendan says on this episode of the Billion Dollar Breakdown, where he comments on the key takeaways from his interview with SoftLedger co-founder Ben Taylor. Patience is a virtue that runs through much of Ben's founding story and Brendan's resulting advice, the first being to learn to solve your own problem. This is where it helps to have some time and experience in the field in which you're trying to innovate, rather than starting a business when you're very young.

You must have patience when people are telling you that there is no need for your product in an already full market, as well as the conviction that eventually people will see the need for it that you see. You must be willing to hear "no" a thousand times before you receive a single yes. This is just how the process works.

Still, one thing that is important to do as early as possible is to provide potential buyers with a working model of your product that they can see and derive value from. This will help you better understand what people actually want, beyond your own blind spots. Brendan also offers advice on deciding when to bootstrap and when to raise capital.

Quotes:

"There's been a lot of pressure for people to start businesses when they're very, very young. Most of that's changing now. Most of the founders that I speak with are folks that have had some experience in the area in which they're trying to innovate." (2:05-2:18 | Brendan)

"Ben had enough conviction, even when everyone around him was saying his product was dumb." (2:51-2:54 | Brendan)

"I still believe that the earlier you can get out there and start putting it in front of people…all of our own biases and what other people see." (4:03-4:29 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Ben:Softledger.com

[email protected]

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"Making things quicker is the theme for what we're working on," says Ben Taylor, founder of SoftLedger, accounting software that's disrupting the software space. After working in accounting for a number of years, Ben saw a need to eliminate the time-consuming and tedious tasks involved in keeping the financial records of his company, such as having to repeat things, go back and fix things manually.

Not everyone saw this need right away, though, and were happy to continue using Excel because it was 'good enough.' His idea for SoftLedger was rejected, thousands of times more than he expected, but he maintained his patience and conviction and he persevered.

After a few years of working on the business on nights and weekends, people finally started recognizing the need for time saving and efficiency in their accounting processes. Now, Softledger is a platform that mid sized businesses will never outgrow.

Quotes:

"What really made this possible was I had a really deep understanding of what the problem was and how I thought I could solve it. I had input from others about how to bring it all together, but I had a pretty strong opinion on how it should all be put together." (7:54-8:14 | Ben)

"I didn't realize how much of starting a business would come down to selling." (23:53-24:00 | Ben)

"It's really hard to do, especially early on when you don't have any traction and prove points. I was expecting 100 'nos' before the first guest. I wasn't expecting a ten thousand. (24:54-25:08 | Ben)

"It's really about solving problems for people. When you go through, make sure you ask the next question, and the next question. Really drill into what the problem is. That discovery call is so important for that." (28:00-28:18 | Ben)

"If there are three customers who are getting value, odds are there are 20 more out there that you can find the exact same way, and 100 more behind that." (42:43-42:52 | Ben)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Ben:Softledger.com

[email protected]

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"We're going to have a number of paradigm shifts in the next five years, so it should be a fun time," says Michael Shuffett, co-founder and CEO of Compose.ai. "There's going to be a new way of creating all of that." This paradigm shift includes a major disruption across all content creation including writing, images, video and audio, and Compose.ai is poised to be a big part of that in the timesaving space with things like autocompletion, rephrasing writing, and generating full content. Basically, Michael asks you to imagine having a full time assistant who knows you inside and out at your disposal.

Unlike other AI companies who take a more vertical approach, Compose.ai has a broader mission to aid humanity by making AI an extension of the human. It hopes to achieve this by placing a layer of intelligence in the gap that lies between human and computer.

The conversation also covers the ethics of AI. Michael and Compose.ai hope to find a way for technology to make life easier without buying and selling users' attention. Michael and Brendan also discuss the pitfalls of becoming an entrepreneur only for financial gain.

Quotes:

"I was replying to an email and I think it was the tenth email I wrote in a row. It was just the same repetitive response and it hit me that we have all this crazy technology, but people are still typing every word of every sentence. It just seemed very obvious that even five years from now, that's not going to be the case." (4:23-4:46 | Michael)

"Yes, there's a ton of value that can be created by bringing AI or machine learning into businesses. That field is still early. Most large companies have huge untapped potential there. But, really this was largely about creating a bigger global impact for humanity, essentially." (7:09-7:31 | Michael)

"We are a mission-driven company and we have a pretty broad mission, and that is to make AI an extension of the human." (14:29-14:37 | Michael)

"Really what we need is more of a ubiquitous layer that sits between all interactions between a human and a computer and allows us to layer on intelligence to that surface area." (14:55-15:12 | Michael)

"If you look at the typical Big Tech companies, they're all essentially buying and selling your attention. They more or less want to addict you to the technology. I'm not judging it, but they want to addict you to the technology, sell your attention for ads, and really we need the opposite of that at this point. That's where Compose.ai comes in. We're trying to get you to an outcome in technology with as little effort as possible, ideally zero effort. I see it as being on the other side of this attention economy." (27:13-27:57 | Michael)

"Think about what it would be like to have a really trusted assistant that knew everything about you." (28:29-28:36 | Michael)

"We're poised for all types of content creation to be majorly disrupted across writing, images, video, audio. There's going to be a new way of creating all of that." (33:54-34:07 | Michael)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Michael Shuffett:Twitter: @mshuffett; c_omposeaiCheck out Michael's recommended books:

The Feeling Good Handbook: The Groundbreaking Program with Powerful New Techniques and Step-By-Step Exercises to Overcome Depression, Conquer Anxiety, and Enjoy Greater Intimacy by David D. Burns

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593189788

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780198788607

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It by Chris Voss; Tahl Raz

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062407801

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"You almost can't be too narrow at the beginning," Brendan says to succinctly summarize one of the many important lessons extracted from his interview with Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro. Narrowing your focus is the main theme that ran through Adam's most useful advice, which Brendan expands upon in this episode of Billion Dollar Breakdown. As Brendan says, a lack of focus is a major mistake that new entrepreneurs make time and again. Though it's easy to be overwhelmed by opportunities, and to be tempted not to limit yourself, it's crucial to select your focus, and just as crucial to shut everything else down once you decide. Here Brendan explains how to choose your focus and what to base that choice on.

It's also important to identify the empty space and go there rather than where the market is full, and Brendan takes an example from Arnold Shwartzeneger's autobiography to make this point. Every position, whether you're a CEO or a new hire, has its own narrow set of rules that you must understand, and play by, in order to avoid major losses.

Every successful company identifies their "villain," a problem that needs to be gotten rid of, that stands in the way of their buyers. Identifying this and focusing on how your company works to eliminate it is another crucial element of Adam's advice, and Brendan provides more explanation here.

Quotes:

"Most of the companies that we see go broad, were narrow at the beginning." (3:40-3:45 | Brendan)

"There's this broader theme, in entrepreneurship and as an employee, of understanding the agreements you're making and the game you're playing. The game an early stage employee is playing is a very different game than an executive at a large company is playing. A venture back CEO is playing a very different game than a bootstrap CEO. A consultant, or an advisor, or an investor is playing a different game altogether. It can cost you if you do not understand those rules." (6:56-7:44 | Brendan)

"Adam chose a villain, and you should, too." (10:20-10:21 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Master Class: https://www.brendandell.com/masterclass Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Adam Honig and Spiro:LinkedIn: @ Adam HonigTwitter: @adamhonig

www.spiro.ai

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"We're going to build Scarlett Johansonn for Salesforce!" Adam Honig declared to his business partner after watching the Spike Jonez movie Her, starring the actress. Frustrated with Salesforce and other CRM services, he thought, why not have a virtual assistant, like the one voiced by Johansonn, to replace all of that extra work employees are tasked with. This led to founding Spiro, which, among other things, listens to phone calls and reads emails, to deal with those tasks not only faster but more efficiently. Ultimately, Spiro hopes to "kill CRM" and replace it with a new application theory it calls "proactive relationship management."

This technology upgrade only works because it recognizes a pain point and offers a better solution to those currently available. In fact, a major problem with sales across the board, Adam insists, is that people constantly want a technological solution that is neither innovative nor efficient. More focus needs to be returned to good old-fashioned problem solving, and segmenting, to make sure the right message, and the right solution, are getting to the right person.

Serving your customer in need, not the one your ego is drawn to, should always be paramount. Hear who Adam's biggest competitor is, why he compares the art of sales to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and which feature of LinkedIn might be making you look like a real ass.

Quotes:

"A lot of the new technology gets in the way. The emails, the subject, the body content, the calls to action, gloss over the most important thing that salespeople can be doing, which is really striving to understand the needs and desires of their prospects, to help them."(4:13-4:33 | Adam)

"So you need to really understand the pain, and you need to be able to help people articulate that pain in a way that's going to get the organization to take action." (9:43-9:53 | Adam)

"I love LinkedIn, it's a great platform, but it kills me. The number of terrible pitches I get every day, I cannot believe. Everybody talks about, 'Me, me me. Here's my thing, in your face.' And if I don't respond, 'Let me send you fifteen automated followups to that thing." (14:53-15:16 | Adam)

"My big competitor is Bill Gates with Microsoft Excel." (25:01-25:05 | Adam)

"You've got to know your segment. That's the whole thing." (40:00-40:02 | Adam)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39

Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Adam Honig and Spiro:LinkedIn: @ Adam HonigTwitter: @adamhonig

www.spiro.ai

Check out Adam Honig's recommended reads:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780671027032

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781936661831

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780544273443

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"Block chains are basically an attempt to do a more efficient transaction by replacing trust with proof," explains Sam Bizri, founder and CEO of Zeconomy. Until recently, transactions were committed via a trust-based bureaucratic system where watchdogs like banks and accountants acted as witnesses, providing a system of checks and balances in case anything fails. A blockchain, instead, is a ledger. It works on proof, using data that is 99.99% incapable of being corrupted, and giving millions of witnesses copies of the transaction, making it easier, cleaner, and able to better solve potential disputes.

The problem, explains Sam, is that people are using the blockchain to make off-chain real-world transactions while still using the trust model, devaluing blockchain's efficiency of proof. Cryptocurrency answers this problem by doing on-chain business, but it has its own set of problems most notably stability, universally accepted legality, and intrinsic value.

It seems blockchain value will increase when everyday people learn to value it, and when the trust system begins to trust blockchains to work the way they're meant to. Sam discusses the many solutions being developed to allow blockchains and cryptocurrency, including blockchain natives, and commercial paper, and what this all looks like in the real world at the consumer level.

Quotes:

"The idea is that if we can replace a lot of the trust mechanisms that we use in everyday commerce with proof mechanisms giving absolute proof of the data of transactions as much as we can obtain them, we can make things a lot easier to handle, a lot easier to process. (7:08-7:28 | Sam)

"So now, I don't need five or six steps to do something. I can do it in one step. That's the promise of blockchains." (8:21-8:29 | Sam)

"Block chains are basically an attempt to do a more efficient transaction by replacing trust with proof." (13:12-13:22 | Sam)

"Depending on what your investment is, I think adding speed and efficiency on small transactions makes perfect sense. Adding more proof and immutability and focusing on that on large transactions is a must." (43:52-44:09 | Sam)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Sam Bizri and Zeconomy:www.zeconomy.com

Check out Sam's recommended learning:

Sam very much recommends people read more in the genres of economics, statistics, and current events in geopolitics and the global economy. Start with watching videos by trusted experts on Youtube as a preparation before diving in.

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

"If you cannot clearly articulate the vision of the future that you are trying to create to your people and the market in a way that they care, you have a problem," Brendan says. Hersh Tapadia, co-founder of Allstacks and recent guest on the Billion Dollar Tech podcast, is an example of someone who has done this successfully. On the campus of IBM where Hersh began his career, he went around asking the fundamental question of what the engineers in the company were doing and why it mattered. When no one could answer, he quit. This ultimately led to his co-founding Allstacks, which recognizes the contributions of engineers to their company via deliverable metrics, which then helps the engineers affect change in their company and yield their power.

Key components of Hersh's success have included, again, asking as many people as possible what was and wasn't working at the moment and then taking that feedback data, and not only providing solutions but one that hadn't been done before, thus differentiating his company in the process.

Hear Brendan expand on highlights from his conversation with Hersh, including how many people you should really talk to and how to avoid getting tossed in the wrong bucket.

Quotes:

"Hersh went around IBM trying to understand what the fuck they were doing. What are we actually doing here, and how does what we're doing contribute to the broader goals of the company?"(1:58-2:06 | Brendan)

"I have almost never seen someone build in private and then say, 'I'm glad we took so long to wait to get feedback because it would have gotten stolen from us. I have very frequently seen people build things that no one ended up caring about."(4:06-4:21 | Brendan)

The companies that really go big fast are the ones that have some kind of lightbulb that is a dramatic improvement over what other people are doing in this space." (4:56-5:02 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39

Master Class: brendandell.com/masterclassBuy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926 Connect with Hersh Tapadia and Allstacks:LinkedIn: @hershtapadiaTwitter: @hershtapadiaFacebook: @hershtapadiaInstagram: @hershtapadiaTikTok: @:hershtpadiaWebsite: www.allstacks.com

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm