You're tuned in to the MBIT podcast led by Seamus Madan, Economic, and financial updates broken down. Educating you on your financial journey. Welcome everyone to the Embit podcast. I'm your host, Shamsmedan. And today, we have a special guest, Michael Silverman, CEO of Flip. I appreciate you taking time to be on the pod. How are you today, Michael? I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Yep. First off, quick disclaimer the podcast is not financial advice since end is for informational purposes only. So, Michael, would you mind introducing yourself to the audience? Sure. My consultant, you know, born and raised New Yorker, lifelong New Yorker no matter where I am.
And I currently reside in Toronto and run a business called flip FLIPP, which is a savings and deal app that is, you know, we're on a mission to essentially help shoppers live life more affordably by connecting them with the local field. Awesome. And what is your role as CEO? So, hopefully, I'm describing this well. And, obviously, you just would agree.
But, as the leader of an institution, I think you're ultimately responsible for the, strategy and direction of the business, you know, for ensuring the well-being of the employees and making sure that the company grows and then also managing the direction of the business for the sake of the chair. Awesome. Yeah. Especially as businesses get bigger, you have more and more employees and it's definitely harder, to manage it. So you're doing an awesome job. Thank you.
So, what is Flip and its business model? Sure. So, b the flip is effectively a fee to b to c business. Which, effectively means that we work we we offer a product to retailers and CPG Companies. To help them distribute savings and deal content to high intent pet of household shoppers. And we also have the distribution tool so we effectively then subsequently help the shoppers connect with that local savings and deal content. And and what does that mean?
So local savings and deal content is what is on sale nearby you for whatever respective shopping mission you have. Maybe you need to go to the grocery store to stock up on you know, meal prep, goods for the week for your family. Maybe you're buying back to school items. Maybe you need a new television or a new computer.
Whatever your respective mission is, you would go on to flip in order to peruse what deals the various retailers have available for the week or search for specific items that you're looking to save money on. So if you are purchasing. You're making chicken cachatore in this week for your family, and you need to buy a whole bunch of chicken breasts. You would go on to flip search for chicken breasts, find which retailers nearby you are offering chicken breasts on sale.
And then subsequently, you would probably end up going to that retailer you purchased chicken breast and then maybe many other things. And so the end benefit is to the user, the shopper, to be able to find savings, for which we charge nothing. You're a free service to our shopper. But then it's also for the CPG and the retailer, there is an end benefit of connecting with a shopper who is about to go shopping and then maybe incentivize that shopper to end up at your store over another store.
It's effectively marketing. And as a result, the retailers and CPGs pay us money to help them digitally merchandise and distribute that digital merchandize. Awesome. So, yeah, my dad also has a B2B2C company. It's like a Junction Educationist And Education Business. You'll basically go out to other businesses. One of them was with the street and Jim Kramer. We worked on courses for them on personal finance and investing. And basically, they would would make the courses.
We'd work with them as not as another business, and then they would sell it, to the consumer. A very similar concept there. So how does how does flip helping people, helping save people money nowadays? Yeah. So so similar to what I I just spoke about is, So we save our shoppers an average of $45 a week, because if you are, a mom of two boys and and you have you're managing a household all day. It's never fun to spend endless hours trying to figure out how to save money to to budget.
And so flip is sort of that, like, one stop shop where if you're trying to make shopping decisions for the respective week, you can find all of your savings, influence those decisions, by searching for products or perusing savings, on our browse feature, on Flippend. It's really anything you can envision, but largely around high frequency retail, you know, weekly savings content.
So items that are on sale in store, coupons that are available against a a product in any store, you know, the best retailers to go shop and find savings high low retailers, everyday low price retailers. So we work with the I think we work with a little over 95 plus percent of major retailers in North America. And we offer them a tool to help them both distribute the savings and deal content to their own shoppers and then to the shoppers that we aggregated call. That's awesome.
Yeah. A lot of people don't actually recognize, but $45 a week, it's a lot of money. If you're saving a dollar or $2 here and there, that adds up and it that's into assuming you're doing $45 a week, that's 2160 or $2160 a year. And that really adds up over time, especially if you consider where else you could have put that money like, if you invested or do whatever. So that's a lot. That's pretty awesome. So what, what sectors do you see flip could possibly expand into? Great question.
So we, you know, like, one of the things I think is really important about running a business is maintaining discipline. And focusing on what you're great at and being even better at it and making sure that you maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace by being exceptional of something. So while I think we could do a 1000 things, we work very hard to do what we do better than anyone else. So, you know, they the caveat to this is I don't know that we will do many of these things.
But I definitely believe that there would be opportunity for us to play a sizable role in a, you know, sort of more regular fintech product in the form of credit. So, you know, there are other tools that our shoppers use to save money in the form of receiving rewards, digital rewards or digital activity. And there are even some of our, you know, partners or some competitors that work in the space of providing digital rewards for physical activity.
So I believe the, you know, there would be room for us to play in the reward space. But I think, you know, probably a good distance out because what we want to master and ensure that nobody competes with us on, is distributing local savings and yield content. You know, there's probably a handful of other categories we can go into, but, you know, more frequent, high frequency savings and rewards in the FinTech basis probably a likely tangent. Yeah. Completely see that.
Vertical growth is one of those things where it's really you gotta really nail it down. And once you have it, that's awesome because, YETI also did something similar. They stuck with, like, 1 or 2 products. They stayed there for a while, and then they started expanding horizontally.
So, yeah, so if you I know you'd never confirmed this, but if you ever did, like, fintech stuff, that would be great because if you take, what people are saving and incentivize them to do something else, like, for their own personal benefit for finance wise, that would be really helpful, especially for the amount of millennials nowadays who actually aren't saving that much money. So that would be very great. What is the impact of COVID 19 on your business?
Let me let me go back for one second because I want I wanna dream a little bit with there? So, I think that, you know, fintech in in its evolution is that, like, the earliest stages of being a a nascent business, because the the integration of the internet and financial products is is is really young. And, you're tapping into something that I think is pretty important.
Which is that what what, finance and what consumerism and what The internet are really good at getting you to do is spend a lot of money. I think that the the the Confluence of all these things hasn't been particularly great at helping you save a lot of money.
Recently, they've been getting better and better at helping you invest some of your money But there are very few tools out there in the space that focus on real life applications of saving money And one of the things that I love about what we do and one of the reasons I took the job is that I like waking up in the morning and looking myself in the mirror and realizing that I'm actually contributing value back to the world.
And what I'd love to do if in fact we were to find an opportunity to get into more of a, fintech like space is build a product around helping people save money and to your point from before helping them subsequently generate income off of saving that money. And so I believe that the opportunities are ample and the space is relatively white space. So I I believe that there's huge, huge opportunities.
But to your other point from before, we're gonna say pretty YETI esque focused on being really exceptional at our 1 to 2 products before we do any horizontal the the US generally right now is in a consumerism society where everybody's just consuming stuff. And the fact of saving more is starting to grow that sector is starting to grow a lot. So if you ever got into that, into investing or fintech or whatever, that would be a great sector to get into to expand. And, yeah.
To your question about COVID, What was the impact of COVID on our business? So we initially, like anyone else you know, in March of last year. I think everybody was sort of perplexed about what was going to happen. And we're in we're in 2 weird worlds. We're in one world where retailers and CPGs are spending marketing dollars with us, which in any recession or any terrible scenario, is pretty a pretty scary area to be in because, revenues can drop off a cliff.
And I think for the sake of good conservative planning, we assumed the worst case scenario and then acted accordingly. And then the second, you know, weird place that we're in, which is in direct contrast to that, is we're in the savings and deal space. And so when the world is insecure and shoppers are struggle to figure out how they're spending their money, saving money becomes more important. So what oddly happened for our business or not so oddly is we're sort of recession proof.
In a weird way, when things get really bad, people need to save more money. And so whatever marketing dollars do get spent, usually gets spent on distributing savings and deal content because it's the largest leverage point you have in a downturn to continue to influence shopper demand. So, if you are a large retailer, I won't give a name, but if you're a large retailer and the economy is falling out from underneath you and people are spending less money than they were a a month ago.
Would you spend an enormous marketing budget on an amazing brand initiative, talking all about and extolling the values of why your retail brand is the best retail brand, or would you invest more in ensuring you maintain foot traffic by offering those shoppers deals. And the answer is the latter. That was a rhetorical question. The answer is the latter.
And so despite the fact that COVID was scary for all of our partners, it actually helped them figure out that they needed to invest more with us and not less, and we saw that in our numbers. So our business did pretty well. You know, like any business, the 1st 3 months were hairy for everyone and uncertain. But our bounce back was sizable. So we we grew a a good amount this year. We're a profitable business so things are are, you know, looking rosy for our business.
From a shopper perspective, I think one of the things that I love about what happened for our business is that we became more of a necessity, and it gave us, more leverage in working with our content partners to find ways to give more content to our shoppers so as to help them save more money when they're shopping. And, that has been a boon for the shopper in using our tool. That's awesome.
Yeah. Being able to take a bad turn of events and turn it into a benefit, for the company is, is fantastic. So is there anything else you would like to say to the audience before the show wraps up? No. Do you mind if I turn this around and ask you a question? Yeah. Sure. Go ahead. So I've been an entrepreneur for a long time, and I worked in finance before that.
And I think the one thing that I've come to appreciate over that period of time is that there's no substitute for somebody who knows how to hustle and hustle Madan I am, in deep admiration and respect, of you that you are working this hard where you are in life and that you are hustling so hard. And I think, at the very least, I I I applaud you in doing that. And not to spend too much time kissing your butt, but my next question for you is, like, what what inspires you?
Like, why why do you get psyched about doing this every Madan, and why are you, you know, like, what has led you to hustle so hard? Yeah. First of all, I just wanna say thank you. I appreciate that. And, in terms of the hustling and what's incentivizing me, so January, I've actually I've seen so many people make mistakes in the markets, and I've actually been investing since I was in 7th grade.
So I've been in the markets for years now, and I've taken multiple lessons, like, not timing the markets and etcetera. And it's just a topic of that I'm extremely interested in. And I think a lot and and because there's so few people investing nowadays, I think a lot more people could start getting into the markets. And those that do, I think I have a opportunity to help them out. And that's why, I'm very incentivized about helping others. No. That's great.
And I think, they're despite the fact that the markets are supposed to be efficient, there is a sizable information asymmetry. So, I I respect the the objective here. I think, ensuring that the average retail investor has, more information and more knowledge to work with so as to compete with the, juggern ops in the market is, a valuable objective. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Education is extremely important, especially in this modern digital age. So, thank you, and I appreciate that.
And, alright, that wraps it up for today's episode. Thanks for joining us on the Embit pod. And, thank you, Michael, for taking some time to be on a pod. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Emerson. You're good. So follow the pod so you don't miss out on future episodes. And if you're on Apple Podcasts, drop a 5 star review down below, and I will see you in the next episode. I will also have a link to flip and it's app down below if you wanna check that out.
Disclaimer, the MBIT podcast is reflecting the opinion of only the host. The podcast is for informational purposes only. The podcast is also not a research report. It is not a recommendation to purchase or sell any stocks, holdings, or securities. The podcast is also not meant to serve as a basis of any investment decision.