Welcome to Tectastic, where we navigate the intersection of technology and business, uncovering innovations that redefine our world. Josh, welcome to it's techtastic. It is lovely to have you here. Thank you. Appreciate it. So you've got an interesting background that I think in some ways, you and I have a lot in common. So a long time ago, I started adventure studio also. Yeah. We're fractional CFO, CTO, CEO, for a bunch of fledgling startups we helped out.
And part of, of course, that is helping them raise money. We weren't the ones putting money in. Now that's the big difference. We were more of an incubator in less your studio. Right? But, did that in 99 to 2001 after a couple good returns on some effort I put in my life, but then 2001. Yes. Then 2001. Yeah. And, you know, the rest is history. Actually, everything we had put money into was history. That was the more truth of it. Right? Most people.
Yes. But, I I was also young and dumb and didn't really know what I was doing, but thought I did. So there was not a hubris involved. But I'm curious about how you got there. How did you get to the point where creating adventure studio was what you had to do next? By accident. That is totally my response. By accident. And I was dumb and young in that same type of thing. My background is an engineer.
Started programming on my dad's atari, like, way back in the day, aware that he was just like, I don't know what my son's doing in the basement, but, he's doing something. So I was down there hacking away at stuff and He thought I'd never leave the basement, but I did. Probably can say I did. But what ended up happening was over that career and that trajectory of engineering, I found myself at at a point in my career where I was at KPMG. It was a director of innovation there.
And, my buddy called me up out of the blue, and he was like, Josh, I just went out to breakfast. This accredited investor. He had moved out to Silicon Valley a couple of years prior. And he said, he just wrote me a check for a $150,000 at breakfast. And I was like, What? And so he started talking to me, and he was like, well, can you come out to Silicon Valley and, like, come and help me do this? And I was like, well, I know that sounds like a tremendous amount of money. But it's not.
But I will help you figure out how to use that money. And so, thus, began kind of a little bit of a journey and started off kind of in a part time, you know, after 1st moonlighting fashion. And then quickly, he called me back in a couple months later, and he just said, hey. I've raised over a 1,000,000 in seed funding. Is that enough? And I was like, Okay. Yeah. I think we can start talking about some realistic possibilities here. That that kinda started the journey.
I quit KPMG went out to Silicon Valley with Hammer. And, it was a wild ride. We were out there for 3 years, and I always tell people I was the absolute dumbest person in the room. And that's that's the right room to be Right? You're you know, it's the right room. So out there, I I tell people too. I learned the difference between my background being an engineer. You're taught how to build the thing right. You can pop up in the hood.
You make it run fast, but you're not really taught how to build the right thing, which is like selling the car if you're popping in the hood, making it run So it's like there's a huge difference and they're two sides of an important coin. And if you're not concentrating on that, you get this as an engineer I don't know if you're background. You've got some engineering blood. Yeah. I started when I was very, very young, and it was before Atari's.
So you you, yeah, you know that, like, I always tell people engineers have this, like, god combo, you know, where they can, like, create something. Whether or not they should, that's a different question. They could you can create it. And so that's dangerous because you you go, I can create that. And that's that's part of the entry.
And so, you know, out there, what I learned when I first got out there, we had this vision And what ended up happening was and we can get into the details of the store if you're interested of, like, what we built other things, but high level, We took 6 months to build our first version of a SaaS product and got it in the hands of users and realized we built the wrong thing. And then built another thing, but this time we built it in 3 months, and then one and a Hammer.
And we kept shrinking that time frame to learn what the wrong thing is to build. And we did that over 3 years. We built, I think, 12 or 13 different apps, wildly different value propositions. Same trying to trying to solve similar problems. Different angles, and we just learned lean startup. That's really what it was.
It's like learning lean startup tactics of market validation, market experimentation and figuring out what to build and how quickly to find desirability and market desirability and it was a wild ride. I've never heard anybody talk about it as how to build things right, but not the right thing. I've always talked about it as the build it right versus build it right now. Right? For me, it was always the mistake we would make is being careful. Instead of being like, yes. Screw careful.
Get it out the door. Right? Get in customer hands. By the way, I've done this for a long time. Right? I just made that mistake again. And it was because our product is trying to do something that is kind of one of those, like, every software engineer wants to scratch that itch. Yes. And it was one of those. And so we're like, oh, man. All my engineers are volunteering to work for us, right, because they just wanna scratch that itch, but it's like, man, we can infinitely scale this thing up.
We can run it on pennies. It's super efficient. All that. But what does it fix exactly? Like, what's the m awkward opportunity to hear? Right. Right. Not so much. Yes. Close. Yeah. Not close enough. Common mistake. Yep. And even, like I said, repeat founders will make it over and over again, especially if you have that god complex, wanna build the right way. And and if you make the mistake of getting into a product that is scratching a niche.
Those are the worst because it's a rabbit hole you go all the way to the ground floor. Right? Yes. That Hammer gotta be the, you know, I speak to probably 5 to 10 founders a week. And that is probably the most common thing we hear as we go, I have an idea. I need to go build it. And then you you ask, what market validation do you have? Because that's what an investor wants. They want Christian, right, is, like, what traction market traction do you have? And it's like, Well, none.
I we don't have it because we have to build it. And you're like, no. No. I don't think you understand what we're talking about. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the the funny part for me, though, is I got into development because I had ideas, and I needed to get them out. And it wasn't so much the technology itself. It was much for the I've always had entrepreneurial mindset. Like, I always, like, there's an opportunity. I can wrap that up in a bow. I know I need to build Let's go validate it first.
Yes. Then let's build it, then let's go. And, this one, though, has been a 30 year bane of my Christian, and so it's one of those ones is, like, now, fuck. We know what we have to build. Let's go build the damn thing. As I said, it, you know, was one of those boats where it's like, yep. Plastic error, like, all across the board. Right? Exactly. Exactly. We've all made it, and it's, you know, in my background, I've built 13 different failed startups So I could say the scars are there.
And almost every single time, there is a story of, like, I remember this one time So the the space we were trying to solve, the problem we were trying to solve is 66% of gym memberships going used, which is to us, is disgusting, right, because his gyms are making profit on people not using the product that they're charging for. So guilt tax for, and the the gym knows they're doing it. Yeah. They know.
And so we were like, we wanna solve this, and I will never forget one of the pivots that in our journey, talking about me building as I I learned this lean startup skill, but I still ended up, you know, so we wanted to gamify it. And so I was like, you know, what we could do is you create this choose your own adventure story. And then, like, you go down this path, and it's a really elaborate story, and you could choose, and you have to get to do jumping jacks in the other story.
And then I've created I mean, I wrote 30 pages of this freaking autobiography. I feel like of a story that's just huge, and I could've I could've wrote a page of it and just tested it and been like, do you want this? And clearly, within two minutes of users looking at it, they're like, I don't want this. I'm I've got my exercise gear on. I'm ready to go, and now I have to read a book. What are you talking about? And so I'm like, oh my gosh. I did it again.
Know, you you do those things over and over. So That and it doesn't matter how painful it was. You you will make the mistake again. It's just Yes. Right? Hubris, excitement. Like, the things that make you a good entrepreneur are also the risks that you face. Right? Overly optimistic. I know the right answer. I've got my Christian. Right? All great things.
What's what's so funny is I don't know if you experienced this too because you said you had a a stint at doing your own venture studio is with my own ideas, those are the ones that I have the rose colored glasses on. Then when I hear other people's ideas, I can poke every hole and every idea. Right? And I'm like, I don't know, man. If you consider this, this, this, this, this, if you this. And so but it's with my ideas. I just get blind. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Because you've already convinced yourself. Right? You don't You convinced yourself. Yes. I'm always the most interested in things that have proven me wrong, like Wayfair. I I was at Wayfair. I've spent a lot of time there. The founders friends. In 1994, we wrote a here's how the web will transform the world. And we talked about it in five stages. And the last stage was all things you would never actually buy online. Live animals, a home, your car, and furniture. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, nope.
That's bullshit. There's no possible way that that's working. And so I had to go there. I had to learn, like, why did this work? How did you how did you make a business out of this terrible idea? It's it's those terrible ideas. Yeah. You and, like, even, like, someone like Uber. Right? I talked to people about Uber or Airbnb. If you're staying in a freaking stranger's home, it's like think that, like, if that didn't exist before, you're like, this is I got an idea.
I'm gonna stay in a stranger's home in their spare bedroom, and everyone's like, this I don't know what you're okay. Because that's a horrible idea. Well, yeah, you said Uber, and I was I was reminded before Uber, there was the car sharing. Christian at least that was like a rental car. It was like, oh, I kinda get it. Yes. It's a dumb idea because you've got the full capital outlay upfront and, right, and they're Yes. It's just silly from the economics of it.
When they started doing Uber, I'm like, I'm not this is I don't hitch hike. I'm not getting in some Rando's car. Right? But they did catch on to a a market dynamic that I didn't recognize was there, and that's the part that they derisked it. They made it like a taxi that the payment was happening through their they were giving you rates. All that kind of stuff, they derisked it for you. And I was like, oh, I get it now. But I I would have poked a thousand holes in it.
There's no way I would have invested in it. No way. No way. And there's, you know, if you remember, do you remember, I think it was 2000. It's a company called Web Van. Do you remember Web Van? That's 1,000,000. So they they were the 1st grocery store delivery. Like, they were, like, trying to do delivery. And so western webbank. Story will always what's so fascinating is you have all these Uber Eats.
You've got all these delivery services now that are super hot, especially post pandemic, you know, right, and, like, that that was the the peak. But, like, in webvan days, they just scaled and did the wrong playbook too quickly because they just dumped all this VC money in. They grabbed all these huge warehouses and you're like, man, you're just scaling wrong. But the funny thing is years later, we have online grocery Right? I can go and get my groceries delivered.
So Well, that's an interesting, point. And, actually, most of the big changes do come as the second attempt, not the first. Yes. I need to remember that. I know. Exactly. They it's good to remember from the past, all the mistakes. You know, I always tell I tell all their entrepreneurs all the time You know, the first thing you could do that's super easy that not very many entrepreneurs do is go and see if someone's tried this in the past even if it doesn't exist today.
And literally, we've I I can't tell you the number of entrepreneurs. I've helped reach out to someone who's done it and reached out on LinkedIn and had a conversation with someone who tried it. And I was like, that is such an unlock to all of these learnings that you can just be like, skip way far ahead fast. Yeah. Yeah. That is a tremendously good advice. And, I will take note of that myself because I you know, I tend to look at the failures as a warning sign rather than as an opportunity.
Yeah. And they gained a lot of dollars. They spent a lot of money to get there. Spent a lot of blood and sweat and tears to get there. Wanna show the knowledge, man. Like, he helped me out. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's so many, and they you know, usually you when you get them talking, they they won't stop talking number 1, which is great. And number 2 is, like, you'll notice the always say the phrase. If I could do it all over again, here's what I would do.
And then that's when you sharpen your pencil and you go, okay. Tell me. Since say. Like, how would you do this over again? Right? And you're just really into how you would figure it out today. I I as I'm sitting here thinking about it, like, I tend to get a little gun shy. Right? You you try something. You're like, wow. Painful. Ouch. I don't wanna get back into that meat grinder and take a big step back and you look for something else that's shiny.
And we have this is another problem entrepreneurs have. Right? Where is the next shiny thing? Where's the best thing you actually could do is to do exactly what you just said to yourself. What would I do this time if I was to start from the ground up and try again? Yeah. Because you've already got the scars, man. Like, go win the battle now. You got yourself halfway there. That's right.
I'm really, really, really into you, and I current entrepreneur especially, like, if there's a digital idea is too often we discount the idea of cobbling together. I call them low fidelity, high manual touch. Like, too many people go, no. I need it perfect, especially engineers. Right? Yeah. I can design this. I can build this, and you're like, no. Run the whole dad gum thing over tech. Like, you look at Uber, that's how they started. They started as a texting service.
And so you're like, people are, like, text this number if you need a ride, and people are like, they did? And you're like, yeah. Like, that that's the easiest way. You don't have to build an app. Just go and figure out existing mediums. One of my good friends. He has a startup in the AI space around property management, and he and I worked together at Wayfair, and he just had a spreadsheet. Yes. And he got such high confidence from it.
In fact, his initial customers were like, just give me the spreadsheet. You solved the problem for me. Right? Well, he had no trouble raising money because he was able to say, like, look. All the customers already have, and that was just a spreadsheet. Those are the ones that I get super excited about.
Like, the funny thing is as an engineer, and I don't know how much your audience is technical, but, like, I won't get technical jargon, but I will say engineers tend to scoff at companies and and brands and things that are like, man, this whole company has run off a spreadsheet I can't believe, you know, right. It's like, it's gotta be better technology to do this. But I look at that now, and I go, that's beautiful. Oh, yeah. Because you started super simple. You figured out what you should do.
Now you've got a scale problem, rather than too often we have an over optimization problem as an engineer. Hammer, man, brother, like, that's a big one for me too. I I I walked people through, like, do you know how many of the biggest deals I've been a part of that happened, first of all, that happened over spray sheets. It wasn't the contracts that were the problem. It was, like, the details in the numbers and spreadsheets. Right?
And the biggest companies I've ever been at the vast majority of their operations are in spreadsheets. Nice. You know, Mersk doesn't run off of giant well, they do have giant ERPs and all that, but the vast majority of the real decisions are handled in spreadsheets. And that's the reality of the world. Well, if they can run a $100,000,000,000 a year company with spreadsheets, What are you doing? That's right. That's such a good early market signal.
When people are trying to do things in a low fidelity way, like, one of the one of the startups we've been working with, they identified there was behavior happening in Facebook Messenger in these groups. And so they were like, I think there's something here because I'm seeing all these Facebook groups doing these very specific things. They're and this was in the fitness space. They're releasing these challenges in this very specific way.
I bet you if I could get if I could get them using this app and I could make an app out of it and sure enough, like, they were able to kind of move a lot of those people over because they're they found something that people were manually first. And they're like, now there's a more automated way. They're like, this is awesome. So yeah. Josh, man, I've loved this conversation. Wanna keep it going, but we're out of time. Alright.
I would love to consider this conversation having you on again if you're up for Yeah. Happy to do that. Let's do it. Awesome. Josh, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. Appreciate it. And that's a wrap for this episode of Tectastic. Wanna thank you personally for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Until then, keep exploring, and stay curious. Thank you for listening. If you are new here and enjoyed the content, please subscribe. It really helps us out.
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