Hey guys , ryan DeMett from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast . Hope you guys are having a great day . Today on the podcast , we have David Van Beekum . David is a co-founder , inventor , author , tech enthusiast and patent holder , but this is a pretty cool thing that he's working on .
He's the co-founder of Tweva , the world's first social TV network for small businesses and influencers , so we're gonna talk about that , sir . Welcome to the show .
Hey , ryan , thanks for having me on the show . Very excited , very excited .
You're more than welcome . I know it was a little bit of a wait , but we'll get this sucker turned around for you quickly and get it out . Before we get started in talking about what you're doing , can you give the listeners a little bit of your background and who you are ?
Sure , so my name is David Van Beekum . I grew up around electronics from a very young age . I had a video mixer underneath my bunk bed when I was probably eight years old . I had a 32 channel mixing board when I was about 10 or 12 . I had reel-to-reels , vcrs and computers galore .
So I grew up around technology and I've always been fascinated with computers , technology and not physical labor . I will say that my dad was a electrical contractor and he did a lot of the physical labor . I , whenever I went to it , I'm like , yeah , I like sitting there and just figuring things out and building things .
So it's been quite a while since then , of course . So it's been quite a while since then , of course , but recently , with Tweva and bringing the TV idea to market , has been sole focus pretty much in getting this thing launched .
How long has it taken you to get from conception to where you're at today with Tweva ?
We started I believe it was 2019 with the idea , maybe it was 2018 towards the end , and we were sitting down with a few of our investors beginning ideas and saying , like , how do we create something for small businesses that they could control in their establishment ? And you go through a couple of revisions , right . You say , hey , let's make a slideshow TV .
And then you go , okay , that's cool , but that's not the coolest thing . And there's some other people that that's cool , but that's not the coolest thing . And there's some other people that were actually doing something like that . But it's always in revision , right .
You always come up with new ideas and building things , but it's been a couple of years now since about 2019 , 2020 .
So can you describe Tweva and what it does ? So some people that are listening are not techie , so we'll have to give them a little bit more of a run , but can you describe what it does ? Sure .
So I always tell people it's the first world's first TV social network . But essentially what it is , it's giving the TV the first ability to have two-way communication with everybody in the room , right ?
So if you are at a bar and you're sitting there and you're like , hey , I want to show you these awesome pictures where I was just on vacation , you're showing that maybe to one person . But if you were to be able to share that onto the TV , that would be an established two-way connection .
Or maybe you'd be able to play a game with the TV and that would also be a two-way connection Scavenger hunts or something like that . But essentially it's a social network , right ? So you can interact with it and others can interact with it influencers and content creators .
Even this podcast , you could show a clip of it at different locations at different times . I don't know about you , I'm not crazy about sports , I'm a nerd . There's others have shared the same . My wife loves football . I'm like , okay , how do you play it ? And I've been watching it 10 years At a bar .
My head or my eyes would tend to go to other TVs , other TV screens . And if there was a podcast , or if there was something about business or something about technology . Most likely my eyes would be there and I think a lot of us tend to watch influencers and content creators . It's up and coming . It's not filtered by big media companies .
Right , it's some of the latest cutting edge technology , but it's not really being shared publicly . You have to go on YouTube , you have to go somewhere else , and Tweva allows all of us to be able to create content and share it publicly to create content and share it publicly .
So how does one ? If you were wanting to put your social media out on Tweeva or you're an influencer , how does one get on it ?
So you have to go through a small approval process and then you'd also have to get approved by those specific locations , right , so that we can look through that content . But you join the network and you'd create content and share it on a first few TVs in specific locations . It's really from a hey , there's a lot of content creators out there .
Can they share the picture of a croissant and coffee ? They're sharing it on their Instagram , their digital . But if you were sitting next to that person , you wouldn't know if they had 500,000 followers . You might think , oh , okay , somebody's taking a picture of some food .
This way , it allows that person to become an expert or a person of influence to that local community also , just besides online . And that kind of happened from when we were putting in one of the TVs in one of my government buildings in my city and I was talking with the lady and she goes oh , did you know that my daughter has 500,000 followers ?
And I'm like , no , I would have never known . I don't know what she looks like . If she walked in I wouldn't even know . And that was another piece that would be really neat for influencers to create .
So how do small businesses benefit from this ?
so small businesses probably 98 of them have never been on tv right , when is the last time you saw your little pizza shop at any tv location ? If you're sitting at the chiropractors or sitting at any other location , we're not going to advertise a food to a food business , but , let's say , a different type of location .
You've never seen them and most likely it's because it's $5,000 , $3,000 , $10,000 , depending on the reach to get on TV and most small businesses are not going to do that . So we really wanted a way to leverage technology and to help those small businesses , especially after COVID , as we go through all of that craziness .
How do they get shown in their community again as having the best pizza or the best chocolate cake or a bakery ? Even so , they would leverage it by putting a little money into the account or paying a subscription and they would get shown on different TVs around in the community . But it also shows as a digital display too for them .
If they put a Tweeba TV in their location , it would be a few other commercials , but also their food , the weather , their social media . So people are looking at that one , some people watching TV , some people saying , oh , that's the weather and oh , there's a live band here on Friday night .
I'll stop by again and so it's just rotating through little community events that are going on . Maybe it was a 4th of July parade and somebody wanted to share a little clip of the parade going by . Those are the kind of small town community things that can be shown with Tweeba how does the advertiser , the small business or the influencer get our obtain ROI ?
They get that by . This is a little bit different than a pay-per-click right . This is more about per thousand views , but they're going to pay based upon if they want to track it . There's QR codes , right . So if someone sees an ad , they can click a QR code .
You got to have a good hook for that , but they're building that community audience and awareness with this . Now you have your passive advertising and then you have your direct advertising . This leans more on the passive . Most likely , you're not going to research nice watch and Rolex will be . Hey , we have to sell you on this , right ?
Rolex and other big companies are just saying this is the best quality watch , and in driving by a billboard , it's passive advertising , and this is something that most businesses don't . Really they can't achieve because it's expensive , and it's one of the things that we wanted to help businesses .
Let's say it's a chiropractor and instead of the chiropractor saying call me , I'm the best chiropractor , and instead of the chiropractor saying call me , I'm the best chiropractor , do you have back pain ? Do you have this ? Do you have that pain ? Instead , he uses Tweva to educate his clients in that city , right ?
So instead of he's the best , tell people how to sit in their car when they're driving Don't lean over . Your spine is sitting like this . Even when you're bumping , make sure you sit up straight and they can educate .
The way they do is infotainment with TikTok , right , but we're doing this on a TV , so it's not vertical , it would be horizontal , and there's a different strategy , because you just want to be the person that is the expert in that community , which they can't do with TV unless you have that high budget .
Even if you did , though , would you say I'm going to spend $10,000 and just educate them in sitting in a how to sit in a car . Right it's , they wouldn't do that . It would be high paced , fast , 30 second commercial .
So this uses a little bit different of a strategy , mixing both TV and what influencers are doing today with digital content and saying , hey guys , this is something that's untapped right now , it's unheard of , it's still being created , just like the influencer market is , and it's a little bit different of a twist , but it's the best of both worlds .
I like the educational piece because that's how I started out on social is you can't sell everybody on your products and services . So if you educate them on what you do , you're going to bring more people into the fold , which will tend to interact with your product more or your services more , but then you also be able to bring more eyeballs in .
So I like that Typical . You're saying these are small businesses , these are going to be like pizza shops and stuff like that that you've put in TVs in and so forth .
Yeah , it could be anybody . Really it was coffee shops , it's pizza shops , it's a city hall that wants to put their local menu not menus but local schedules right what's going to happen this week . And they thought it was a great idea to also put in small business advertising to help the local plumber right .
And so , as that content goes through , we might have a seniors event on this day . Soccer for the kids is this day , and when people are walking in and out , it's almost I wouldn't say it's exactly like a TV channel , but it's something that's different . It's dynamic .
It's not just a digital display , but it opens that up for others to interact with it , so it could be really anything , anybody anywhere . There's even some public outdoor displays again at local public parks . This is what's going on in the community .
You might be looking at it saying , oh , there's a car show at this park on Saturday , those big digital LED signs . Similar , it's just a smaller , uses a TV , things like that , so it could be anywhere .
Are the ? What markets are you serving now ? Is it just Florida ?
Yeah , it's just central Florida right now and we are . It's the beta test , the build test , but it's a scalable product . So if somebody wanted to open up anywhere , they could fire up a TV and show local content if that content was available . So they could do their weather , they could connect their social media .
But it would need probably most likely a couple people to be adding content . That's really what it is right most likely a couple people to be adding content . That's really what it is right . A TV station may have eight hours of content 24 hours of content based upon what that viewership is of the channel .
We have 24 hours available , right , minus the rotation of the food items and things like that . So we may have 12 hours available on each display until someone says hey , I was at a parade , let me share this content into the network . Hey , there was a beautiful picture of the sun was right , it was the morning .
There was dew on the flowers and the American flag at City Hall . That's a neat picture . Ok , that exists somewhere online or maybe on that person's phone , but can we give them a public place to share that ? Or someone created a piece of artwork and they wanted to share that to the community .
Now that content is being semi moderated through either the person at the city or and or AI , but the idea is to have that kind of a community billboard slash TV channel to allow us all to interact with it . Otherwise it's someone deciding what we should be watching , right ?
Who would be and I know you talk about influencers and small businesses are there individuals or potential ? Who's your ideal avatar for this , for your product , for this service ?
I should say there's a few different ones . So the person putting in the TV is obviously someone with high traffic , and then the advertiser piece would be anybody that would want to gain influences influence within the community and then you have your creator , which is somebody that knows how to use a camera .
We don't wanna have bad , bad quality content , but it's weird somewhere right now . Isn't it weird how the shaky phone I wasn't the office show that brought out the shaky camera . Yeah , that seems to pull a little bit better sometimes , even online .
The forward facing camera a little bit blurry , not the perfect lighting , but that seems to spark some attention with people . And I wonder if it's because the cycle of , like big corporate branding and mistrust is on its way down and we're going back to community .
I wonder how many people a hundred years ago or 150 years ago , before the industrial complex was building out , did you go to somebody for bread ? Did you go to somebody for milk ? Did you go to somebody for water ? Did you go to somebody for your shoes ? Did you go to somebody for your suit ? Was there about 20 people ? How many do you go to now ?
Target , walmart , right , you pick four or five , but that person is not really a person . So when does that come back to ? I had 20 relationships , but because it's skipping the generations , you don't really say your grandfather would say I miss talking to those 20 different people .
Right , it happens in a slow cycle , but I think it feels like we're doing that we rather would watch somebody talk about a product or a service at a personal level and how it's affected them than to watch a $10,000 commercial .
So Tweva is positioned for that next move where people will sit down and say I just want to hear somebody from my community talk about their plumber or their chiropractor , or a testimony of someone . Again , most businesses are not going to put $10,000 on . Can you have Aunt Sally make a video about her experience with a small business ?
We're going to put 10 grand on that one . Hopefully it'll . Oh , can't test that . So Tweva allows us to do that at a very local level .
What type of costs and you don't have to share ? I'm just curious someone wants to be an influencer or somebody wants to come in ? What type of costs are they looking at ?
We're looking to make this incredibly affordable . So you would put in five or $10 into your account and you would start um advertising with a bid strategy . So you say , hey , I want to put five or 10 cents per commercial between these hours at this bar and that bar or this section of restaurants , because each one is so different .
Right , so it's a very affordable product . Now , obviously , if you bring out per location , it sounds cheap . But if you added a hundred locations , a thousand locations , it could get expensive . But that's why it's based with AI and with a bid strategy . So you're going to say , hey , I'm looking for this customer . Is someone ?
Is a mother with a child going to be at the bar at 1130 at night ? Are we going to be really showing baby toys or a gift shop at 11 o'clock at night ? I don't know . Maybe that might be motorcycle equipment or sports shoes . It might be something different . Equipment or sports shoes , it might be something different .
So if we can figure out where people are at certain locations , we can really hone down on that . We don't have to do that broad pay all the TVs , like the bigger companies do right All day long to hopefully find that . We will include that into the strategy .
But also we'll have customers using the Tweva app , which , if they choose to , they will have GPS turned on in their phone and it will follow them around . So the ads on the TVs are changing with the customers that are walking in and out of the building .
So we'll be able to build out a longer term strategy based upon customers that visit certain places at certain times .
I'm presuming you guys will help with placement also . So if you have somebody that's a chiropractor , you're more likely not going to have that chiropractor in . I don't know , I'm trying to think of something that'd be off the beaten path . I don't know a computer shop .
It could be right , because if it's a TV , yeah , it can be , maybe chiropractor is not a good idea .
Maybe it's an Italian joint and you're not gonna an Italian restaurant and you're not gonna go ahead and put it into a burger restaurant , correct ?
correct . So there are 178 different types of categories of companies and but if you base that down , there's less per category . But we just said why don't we not do food to food Most of the restaurants that we talked to ? I said would you have a problem , if you're Italian , to show on a Chinese food or a ?
And they would say I don't know if I would want them showing in mine , right , because you want to promote your restaurant and your business when you're in the Italian . Oh , that looks good . Maybe I'll try that next time .
Might not want to pull somebody out of that , that to say there's plenty of locations , right , there's the chiropractor shops and there's computer shops and computer stores , and they can just cross that way , not show on the same . So we're strong on the no . No compete against each other .
We want to build a strong network where the business owners are also contributing . So if the business owner may have a 50th birthday party , right , somebody comes in . Why not show that on the TV , right ? Why not show the fun that you could have at this place ?
Oh , I can have a birthday party here for my wife or my mother or father that's a great idea or my grandma or grandpa . So we want them to love the TV .
We want them to love this as part of who they are in the business and also help them drive traffic to the TV , right , because if you walk in and say , hey , let's say I was at the beach this weekend . So you walk into a shop , oh , let's see what's going on . Is there any things ? Oh , where's the Tweeva TV ? How would we do that ?
Right now You're going to have to go on Facebook . You're going to find the town . You have to join the group . Oh , there's three questions to join the group . Never mind , that's it right . And then the admins are going to approve you three days from now .
Now , if there was a local TV channel that was running and you could look at what's happening that day , that week , maybe there was a lunch offer on the pier . Yeah , I'm not on the pier , how would you know that ? So this is a way for the community to build traffic in that local foot traffic themselves without being competitive .
So you're not going to see that in another food shop . Maybe coffee shops will say yeah , you know what , I just serve coffee . Give me a percentage of the ads . You can show those . You can show those food ads in my building but , that's opposite , so they're going to share , right .
Is there a ? And I'm not trying to get into your numbers , I'm just curious . There's a way to make money off of the ads , but then also the TVs , the TVs are actually compatible with most .
We'd love to put in our own TVs , but we're just using the TVs that are there . So we are charging for advertising and then also a subscription to access the network from the professional side . So we can do content creation , graphics , media , commercials , things like that . We don't want to do that long term right .
Facebook doesn't create content for you the most . Twitter doesn't either . I think that's really the influencer's job . Personally , the influencer that lives in that town is going to talk better and speak the language of the town better . I don't want nothing against vegan or vegetarianism , but you have a social media writer writing about hot wings or barbecue wings .
They're not going to do the same language . They're not going to do the same , and I can say this because my family's were split . It's just the way that we perceive a product is so different and the influencer does such a great job with that .
They look at the lighting , they look at the language , the hashtags and I really think bringing out or giving them a platform to bring out that customer to the public , they're going to do it best and they can see the reactions . They could be sitting in the restaurant at the times . There's the ad . Let's see how many people watch it .
How many people here are actually paying attention to that burger with a pound of cheese melted pouring on it . Have you seen some of these like weird , let's make it go . Viral commercials , a huge cookies , right ? And you're going like , okay , does that work ? Yeah , maybe for the AI .
I have an idea , that theory that the AI doesn't know what those things are , so they send it to trending , they send it to a million people and that's why these things happen . The second burger doesn't get so much . The third burger doesn't get .
The fourth burger you pour cheese on it , like the AI is like yeah , guys , we know what that is , but what actually works , what works in a community , of that community is completely different . One of the tests that we had was we got a old version .
Like we talked with one of the food companies from one of the restaurants and we said , hey , you got that chocolate cake . We got chocolate cakes on the shelf . Send me some video . Oh , we don't know if we have video , just send us what you got . So we got this like 1998 720p cake , a fork cutting it , with cheesy music in the background .
So I strip out the music , strip everything out . Let's put a couple new fades in there and we'll run it . This was towards the beginning , it was a little bit early , we didn't ton of content , so maybe ran every 10 minutes or something like that . That restaurant sold three , three hundred percent more cake just because it was showing .
Just because it was showing . And I would ask I would say what , as a computer programmer , as a background what are you sure this is this ? And the restaurant said , yes , people eat with their eyes . They have to see what they want first . And they see it a couple of times and they go . I do just want that chocolate cake , I want to try it .
Yeah , so it works . But again , you would have never been able to run that on their local TV if it was another TV channel . So it gives them the ability to show what they're doing , what they're like , what they're doing on Friday night , and it helps . So the influencers are the same .
They're going to see what works and what doesn't work and they'll be able to work at a local level could they tie back in that 300% increase in sales to the actual whatever you want to call it the ad ?
Yeah , absolutely . I think if they put ask for a coupon code or when your server comes over , say a secret word chocolate cake , three layer you'd have to track it somehow there , unless they did it through online ordering . We want to keep that personality ordering . We want to keep that personality .
We want to keep the personal relationship between the server and the customer . We had ideas and we've tested this also of what does the server do outside of work . So it's for tracking reasons , right . So I don't know if it would be a digital tracking or a verbal track , but what does the server do ? Does the server have a dog ?
Do they ride a motorcycle on the weekends ? What do they do other than that ? Because most of the time you've seen it at restaurants , you'll be sitting there and I'll have this , thank you , and they're back . Then you have people that will talk .
If we made a little connection of I ride , read it , or my son just bought a harley and you have a harley too , bam . Now we have this connection of I know who sally is , I know who joey is , and if you think about that over four or five or six times , where do you want to go friday night ? Seriously , if pizza is pizza . Do you want to go talk to ?
So ? And they were . Maybe their son or daughter or significant other knows something about a college . And we're trying to build the relationship using the bigger screen . Again , you're not going to look up your server on your phone . It's nobody's going to really do that .
They're not going to facebook them and be like oh , I see that you , it's just a quick something on the tv . Hey , this is so , is so-and-so , this is what they do , building that relationship . So we might back to your tracking . We would probably have to track that somehow through the server or something like that .
Nice . You say Central Florida . Are you taking clients on that if they're in the Central Florida area or no ?
Yes , absolutely . Every new screen is a new opportunity for someone to join the network . So pretty much wherever you are , you could it's going to use your digital display , but , yeah , anywhere that you are , if you're an influencer , same , we're interested in chatting with you , because each person has their own group .
When you say central Florida , do we need to be specific to cities ?
No , no , it could be anywhere . Okay , we were in seven or eight different cities , and it's just . Whoever wants to create content , whoever wants to share and create that , join that network . So for the business owners , we also have a reward system . So once ads are being shown , they receive Tweva coins and those Tweva coins rise in value .
It's crypto , but not it's not Bitcoin crypto . It's a token that rises in value with how many screens are put in , so it's a beginning investment . So every time an ad gets shown , they get a certain amount of tokens and if they keep the tokens as the screens build out , the tokens rise in value .
They can exchange them for advertising or we were going to offer maybe gift cards , things like that but it's a way for that business owner to get paid for commercials , which is something that businesses don't have right now , that's great .
Coming to the bottom of the hour , wrapping this up , the other question is if someone wanted to reach out to you and discuss more about what you guys are doing , where's the best place they can contact you at ?
So yeah , if you want to contact us , it's at twivacom T-W-E-V-Acom . Also , my email is dave , at twivacom and anywhere . Just search Twiva and you'll find all of our social media , our website , and you can contact us at any of those .
That is awesome . I will make sure we put that in the show notes and make sure people can reach out to you , sir . Thank you for coming on , love , what you're doing it's different , but I think you're onto something . It's pretty cool that you could actually localize it , but then , as you guys grow , you can , guys could scale it something .
It's pretty cool that you could actually localize it , but then , as you guys grow , you guys could scale it , and that's pretty cool .
Yeah , that's what we started with from the beginning is like the Tweva name is something that doesn't exist and we want this to be worldwide . We want this to be the TV network . So thanks for having me on the show Love talking about Tweva and enjoyed the time . You're more than welcome .