[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, our episode is sponsored by JDAQA Software Testing. We are your manual automated performance and security testing resource. I'm lucky enough to have Jeremy Gordon on today. He's a CPO and CTO of Startup Science. He's a founder of a few companies, just an all around awesome guy.
He was in the air force, flew F 16s and a bunch of other stuff that he probably can't talk about. Jeremy, hello, my friend. How are you, buddy?
[00:00:53] Jeremy: I'm great. How are you doing, Jay?
[00:00:54] Jay: I'm good. And you have some birds in your background, because you have a bunch of rescue animals in your house. Tell me, let's just start with that. Why do you have so many, dogs, birds and fish in your house right now?
[00:01:06] Jeremy: Because the kids left for college and it was too quiet. So my wife and I have difficulty sitting still. That's the quick answer. We've had dogs. My wife and I've been married almost 25 years and we've always had dogs. So rescuing dogs has kind of just been a thing. The bird started just before COVID and just kind of kept going.
once you learn how birds have personalities and you can interact with them, it, yeah, become came kind of a, An addiction?
[00:01:34] Jay: I love that. All right. Well, tell me your background. you were in the Air Force and then you kind of got into the tech world and the startup world and a bunch of other stuff. you know, tell me about the Air Force and tell me early days. did you have anybody? Did you grow up around entrepreneurship in your early days to kind of fostered some of this stuff later in life?
how did that kick off?
[00:01:53] Jeremy: Not, not necessarily that I was aware of. my grandpa on my mother's side was, had an entrepreneurial itch. he was a mechanical and electrical engineer for the in lived in Britain. and I believe he started his own company there. We have some jewelers who started Gordon's jewelry on our side of the family, from what I'm told, I haven't done all the research.
So I think there's some of that there, but I learned about that later in life. And I don't know that any of that necessarily, informed me in my decisions. I just, it may,post hoc, make me understand why I can't sit still, and need to pursue things like that.
[00:02:32] Jay: And talking about the Air Force, what made you go in and what's the kind of elevator version of your time there?
[00:02:39] Jeremy: the elevator went up 23 years worth of floors. it was, I think from my dad was in the army during Vietnam, got into the air force. So I grew up around the air force. he was a reservist and, I was always intrigued by aviation aircraft. And I think I visited the aircraft or air force Academy with my family when I was six years old, I think somewhere between six and eight. And at that point made the statement, I'm going to go here and I'm going to fly that jet that's down there on the Toronto, the F 16. Yeah. And I, that everything in my life was kind of structured around that. I get what I call single target track. I get focused pretty, intensely on something and have difficulty pulling away from it. So I went to the Air Force Academy after high school, went to pilot training and all the other associated training, flew F 16s for about seven years. And then, went through their weapon school. That's the Air Force's top gun. It's like top gun, but it's actually hard. and that's a six month school.
And then went to the F 22 after a tour in Korea, spent about a decade in the F 22 active duty national guard, and then, moved out to Colorado at the Air Force Academy and did a bunch of jobs there. And that's where I retired shortly after COVID had started, I ended up retiring.
[00:03:58] Jay: Is everything slow and do you find yourself like wanting to be back in the cockpit after that kind of? Long tenure of constant adrenaline rushes.
[00:04:09] Jeremy: Yeah, once you get used to flying, just the generic takeoff landing in between stuff is kind of like driving a car. I got my private pilot's license before I got my driver's license as a kid.
So I've been flying. I worked at a local airport. I've been flying longer than I've been driving about 35 years. So it's the, from a military aspect, it's the long durations of boredom interspersed with short periods of stark terror and I would say excitement. So yeah,you get used to the generic flow of stuff. I still fly now. So I work at the Air Force Academy towing their gliders part time.
So it just keeps me off the streets at night. keeps me semi sane. I don't think my wife, Nicole, who's an absolute incredible person, someone else you should speak with,appreciates that I can get out of the house away from my day job and go fly a little bit.
[00:05:01] Jay: That's beautiful. I am, a student pilot. So I, like, you know, tiny little piece of your, story there. And I, yeah, you know, take off in the landing and then it's just kind of a bunch of. Flying in between, but, I can't imagine doing that at, you know, whatever, 600 miles an hour, like you were doing, but, it seems a little safer maybe now to do it just towing gliders, but, very cool.
So tell me about, kinetic coach and, you know, you had a gym that you exited with your wife. I mean, what was, how did you go from air force pilot to entrepreneur? I mean, was there kind of a instant switch? Was it over time? Like tell me what was the process there?
[00:05:38] Jeremy: It was one of those, How did I find myself waist deep in water kind of things, right? I did
it slowly. The pot was boiling and I didn't realize it the whole time. So I, living in Virginia, actually my first exposure to fitness, which is, was what led me into,developing the app and starting the gym to structured fitness programs.
Aside from just doing triathlons and running was a program called CrossFit. I will not make this a fanboy marketing ad for CrossFit, anything like that. But, I was exposed to CrossFit while living in Korea. I was assigned in Korea remote, so the family couldn't be there. So a group of us just started doing CrossFit back in 2004. And that scratched an itch that needed scratching for me.got my wife doing CrossFit as well. She had just given birth to our second, to our daughter, our second child. And, between my wife and I, we started accumulating, sorry, that's Toby. That's our great Dane, started accumulating fitness equipment, outfitting our gym and developed a passion for it. And people started asking my wife if she could train them, but she was not a personal trainer. So we got our CrossFit certificates, just our initial, what we call level one, and started coaching people in our garage until we got, noise complaints. Luckily, our second customer was a state trooper. So he would come there at 5 30 in the morning, his cop car, state trooper car, and be out front on our driveway, dropping weights and everyone's yelling motivation and stuff.
But that convinced us to move into a strip mall. And eight years later, we had two facilities, 20 employees. About 300 members, and we still had two kids under the age of seven. So we were a little overwhelmed, but, that was our path into that. In that time living in Virginia, flying the F 22, with a couple other guys who had an interest in fitness as well.
One of them ended up working for me, being a coach at our gym. And, we flew with a lot of guys who were airline pilots on the side. Or their airline pilots who flew military jets on the side, who would take pictures of their hotel gym and text it to us and say, Hey, give me a workout because they knew, Brent, one of my, co founders and I were, both coaches. And we were like, you know, there's gotta be an app for that. And there are a lot of fitness apps at the time, not nearly as many as there are now, but we couldn't find something that answered that specific question for that population who may have just landed from a red eye. And they need to do something, but they need to control the intensity or whatever, based on the time of night, how they're feeling, what their goals are, their experience level, and what equipment and time they have available to them. So that's what we built our app around. It was a solid year of research, a solid 18 months of actual coding development, recording tons of videos. building a backlog of about a thousand workouts and then developing, an algorithm that would deliver the right workout to the right person at the right time based on their needs.
[00:08:38] Jay: how did you handle the development of that as a non developer?
[00:08:41] Jeremy: we outsource. So we, I'm trying to remember the name. It is a marketplace for development firms. And I can't remember the name of it now. but we found this small firm called Guarana Tech and they're still around today up in Montreal. a little bit, I have a high school and college level, understanding of the French language, and they are primarily a French company. So, they, luckily they spoke English better than I spoke French, but we could bridge some gaps and that's how we started our development. They were, I think, a younger company. And I think we got way more for our money than we would have anywhere else by, by more than an order of magnitude. So it was an efficient way. There's always risk with outsourcing coding. Especially if you plan on hiring your own in house devs who long term may have a desire to use a different coding base. And you know, if you may anchor yourself into being stuck with whatever back end and stack you're you outsource to another company to build,
it's a risk.
[00:09:47] Jay: I love that story because, there's lots of horror stories of outsourcing development. And that sounds like you guys, you know, maybe by luck and by, you know, some good due diligence, you know, got a good firm to do that. So you exited the gym. So what is the timing with the kinetic coach in the gym and the air force?
Like, what was it all kind of at the same time? Did you, what was the
[00:10:09] Jeremy: everything was at the same time. Before we move off the developers, I do want to highlight that we did switch from them from Guarana. And we actually brought on a firm in Denver called Epic Business Apps,
who's phenomenal. And they are partners in our company now.
So in essence, we have in house developers who converted code, did everything they wanted.
They are the ones who brought us onto Android. So, we did go with someone closer to what you consider a full time employee. It's more of a partnership, but yeah.
timeline. So yeah, everything happened at the same time. And, you know, on top of the gym. The app, full time in the military. My wife got hired by CrossFit and for, more than a decade, she traveled literally the world. there are interesting stories about places I. dropped bombs on in Iraq, where she ended up going there to train U. S. troops, in the same area where I was dropping bombs just two, two or three years later. So, so all that was happening the same time while we're raising the two kids. And if that was the one deal my wife and I made with each other is that the kids are always the priority.
So regardless of what we had going on, she as my traveling tapered off in the military, her traveling picked up with CrossFit and we always ensured one of us was there with the kids to pick them up from school, to take them to school, to take care of them. So, we never did the nanny thing. That's, there's no shaming for those that do, but from our family dynamic standpoint, that's, what worked for us.
So, every, to answer your question, everything was happening at the same time.
wild, man. And you know, you kept your sanity and your marriage through all that. That's pretty impressive. Well, one out of two ain't bad. We kept our marriage. There were times when my sanity, both our sanity was wavering, but, yeah. I, our foundation, my wife and I is extremely strong.
[00:12:03] Jay: That's beautiful. all right, let's go back real quick. So kinetic coach and the gym, who was your first customer at both of those and how did you get them?
[00:12:12] Jeremy: First customer for the gym, cause that occurred first, was the mother of a fellow student in my son's school. So he must've been in like kindergarten or first grade ish. Range. And she had approached my wife about training in our garage. So that's how that happened. Just kind of. Hey, do you work out?
Would you mind helping me? That kind of a conversation. Kinetic Coach, Kinetic Coach was my first foray into product development. And, at that point, I would just do internet searches for, you know, how do I test out software? And, you know, with my current job at Startup Science, we, you know, we have a robust academy of courses for new founders, vision phase founders to understand how to do things. Whether I knew it or not, I was building. A customer advisory board by doing beta testing. So we go into forums for airline pilots and say, Hey, we're building a new app focused just on airline pilots. Anyone want to help us test? We'll give you a year free kind of a thing. And so we built an advisory board of about 80. Users, I would say 30 of those became paying customers in the long run, and we have, maybe 20 percent are still using the app today. Regularly, keep in mind this started. We started this back in 2016,
so it's been,on the market for a while. We have retention with the people who really like it.
So that's the, that's how we got our 1st customers.
[00:13:44] Jay: Love that. All right. So tell me about Startup Science. you know, obviously we're talking about Greg before the show and, you know, you were kind enough to introduce me to, just, an incredible human being, who also had in the podcast, which was an awesome episode. Talk about Startup Science.
What do you, how did you get there? How'd you meet Greg? What do you do there? Like, what is your mission? And just kind of tell me about the company.
[00:14:06] Jeremy: Got it. You like the rapid fire questions. I'm going to
[00:14:08] Jay: I love, I mean, you know, look, I gotta ask, I gotta keep, I gotta keep a guy who flew or, you know, jet airplanes, rapid firing.
[00:14:15] Jeremy: Keep me on my toes here. first of all, how I met Greg, Greg's first wife remarried and the person she married was an F 16 pilot. I flew F 16s as well. He ended up. Flying at the Air Force Academy. He was a squadron commander at a squad squadron. I ended up flying with as an instructor pilot at the Air Force Academy. He approached me and said, Hey, my wife's ex husband is doing this project about entrepreneurs. He's doing research and he wants to speak with fire fighter pilots. And I think,I won't use his name on a podcast, but he was a little concerned that he'd be a little bit biased, you know, cause he's still friends with Greg.
So he asked, me. And two other guys I flew with to, who are fighter pilots to, to come sit down and chat with Greg. So Greg flew from San Diego out to Colorado Springs, and we met in a hotel, conference room for about three or four hours. And he just wanted to learn how fighter pilots problem solved. He ended up doing the same thing with, Woodland firefighters and hotshot firefighters with Navy SEALs, out in dam neck, or he probably went, sorry, Coronado.
And, just to understand how people problem solve in high stress situations, how do they structure their organizations? That's how I met Greg during that process, he asked how he, if he could help any of us, if any of us were entrepreneurs, I showed him my app.
He was interested. and he, we kept a conversation. And from that point forward, that was probably in 2018. Greg became a mentor to myself and my partners. And how we, the path we took with our app.and we just stayed in touch since then when he found out I was getting out of the air force. we had a discussion about whether there's a role for me with his project and he brought me on more of just a open source kind of, let's just see what interests you and where you fit. And,the operational side of things is given my background is kind of always where I've been, boots on the ground, I enjoy speaking. with people on my terms. I'm an introvert, so I have a limited social battery. So I'm definitely not on the marketing and sales side. but, dealing and solving customer problems and interacting that way towards a, you know, a specific outcome with an objective other than sell this person, solve their problem. I fit into well, so I started doing product stuff. our previous CTO departed the company. So I filled that role and then I'd say I'm right at this point, 60 percent CTO, 40%. Product as far as my time is,
[00:16:49] Jay: And just a, quick description on Startup Science and, you know, I mean, I, I know of it briefly, but what is the, you know, You know, the bumper sticker version of what it does. I'm
[00:17:02] Jeremy: wide bodied vehicle cause it's going to be, this is going to be a long bumper sticker. I think how you introduce Greg is a great human being is the place to start in describing Startup Science, by all intents and purposes. Greg, as he says, one capitalism. He had, he built and scaled several companies in his lifetime, but by far his most successful was called Affiliate Traction, now called Pepper Jam. He exited that as part of a roll up. there were like eight other different types of,liquidity events in that. We'll just call it a roll up to eBay. and has won four private equity awards for, high value sales in the 250 million plus range. and has, scaled and exited 12 companies, started his own venture capital firm.
He entered into politics, as a kind of a campaign advisor, with the hopes of helping. He has,he has a book coming out that everyone should preorder right now. and Jay will put the link in the podcast notes.
[00:17:59] Jay: sure I
[00:17:59] Jeremy: the book details his background being raised in extreme poverty, one of many kids,and, A neurodiverse individual who overcame a lot.
I know this podcast isn't about Greg, but I'm getting to where you wanted me to go. so he wanted to give back to people who struggled the same way he did. Marginalized communities who didn't have access to the startup ecosystem that he had to. Claw his way into that was the impetus behind his project initially called boss, the business operating support system and, turned into Startup Science.
So he found the reasons that most early stage startups fail and 90 percent fail within the first 5 years. And there, he found the most common reasons and then basically wanted to build software around those reasons to solve those problems. That's what Startup Science is. It takes, you know, we primarily are marketing and focusing on marginalized communities, but it's open and accessible to anyone. And we have startup assistance programs like universities. We're a partner with the Fulbright, Canada entrepreneur initiative, entrepreneurship initiative,with, a lot of different universities across the world. As well as accelerators, incubators, nonprofits in Africa, in, urban communities, in, the Southern states in the U S and in inner cities. And we aggregate their founders in there. We educate them using an interface that accommodates people who may not be able to read, people who are blind, people who have learning disabilities like Greg. And then we take the learning. That experience they have and apply that directly to their vision.
They may not have a company, they don't have a company. We teach them how to get a company. And then we give them automated tools to do these things for them. If they don't have the ability capacity or resources to do them. So do by themselves, everything from sizing their market, building a pitch deck, building a, an investor communication platform that we call the startup profile.
And we present all this information. In basically a straightforward navigable UI and user experience that lets anyone regardless of their background, hop right in and get the education as they're applying it to their startup.
[00:20:15] Jay: you're not wrong that would have been a very wide vehicle to fit that bumper sticker on. and you know, this isn't about Greg, but it's hard to not kind of meander into his past and just how, you know, cool of a guy is. And just, like I said, a great. A great human being. so, what's next for Jeremy?
are you planning on, you know, just continuing kinetic coach? Do you have any, you know, kind of, other ideas that you're chasing after? Are you set where you are as CPO and CTO of kind of this very influential, almost humanitarian, platform you're part of, or, you know, is there other itches you need to scratch as far as creating new companies and new ideas?
[00:20:57] Jeremy: for the last part of that in no particular order, I'll start at the end. right now I do not have an itch to start another company. I would say, about three to four times per month. I will see something happen or I'll have an experience where I'm like, Oh man, I could start a company based on that.
Right. Right. I,
[00:21:15] Jay: today, so just today, you don't have that itch, but maybe in a week or so,
[00:21:19] Jeremy: yeah, well, I always have the ideas. It's whether I actually want to pursue them.
That's the, whether I have the bandwidth, the time and the itch to do it, you're correct. I'm extremely happy with Startup Science. I lead an extremely talented team of engineers. who just overcame an incredibly challenging problem.
So I'm really proud of them. and the company as a whole working through that. I, Kinetic Coach, my partners and I both have full time jobs for doing other things, right? So this Kinetic Coach has extremely high ratings. on primarily, the Apple store. We went to, Google play, went to Android device much later.
So we don't have as many reviews there, but people who find our app because we don't market the app, really enjoy it. And so it's a matter of, we make enough to cover our overhead costs. Do we just keep letting it ride? Because at this point we consider a service to the people who access it, really don't charge that much at all.
And most of it's free. free access. So kind of a freemium model. So,I think if we had the right person come along and say we want to buy that software, we would sell it like that,
Right.
But we're not actively pursuing investments. We're not actively pursuing acquirers, which because we don't have the time, but we could. so I think that's where we sit with kinetic coach every once in a while. If I get that itch, it's to go in and improve kinetic coach. but then that's bootstrap and there's the, discussion with the wife about, can we spend that money to, upgrade a product that we don't really make much money off.
[00:22:49] Jay: Right. Well, that's, I mean, it's cool to have that side project that you can dip your toes in whenever, you know, you kind of feel that urge. So that is, that's a unique situation. all right. So last question. and I always, I'm very curious what the answer is going to be with somebody who travels a lot and has seen a lot of things and done a lot of things such as yourself.
so non business related, if you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:23:22] Jeremy: Anything on earth. Ooh, I wouldn't fail. Man, you're going to have to edit out some dead air
[00:23:33] Jay: No, I love the dead air. This is my favorite part of the whole show is the, you know, the pondering of such a deep question.
[00:23:40] Jeremy: Build my own house.
[00:23:42] Jay: Build my own house. That is a great, I've never heard. That's the first time I've heard that. That's beautiful. Why would you build your own house?
[00:23:50] Jeremy: It's like you, sometime when the lottery gets super big, I never play the lottery. I was a math minor. So I don't play the lottery. Right. It's unblogical. But when the lottery gets super big, it's fun to say, what if,
we're in our retirement home and we, this was a multifamily home with the wife's side of my family, several of them living here as well for a while. So we had a very full home and then everyone went to college, moved back to where they're from, and now it's my wife and I. And a lot of animalsin a house that is bigger than what we need. So we dream of moving and we dream of designing a house and we'll like talk about what it would be. And if I had the resources, the skill, the time, the ability. I would love to build that house for us.
[00:24:35] Jay: That is a beautiful answer. what a great answer and a great end to a great episode. Jeremy, if people were inspired by something you said, or just want to reach out to you directly, how do they do that?
[00:24:48] Jeremy: the introvert side of me says they
go through
[00:24:51] Jay: all doors. It's closing all doors right now. By the way, you do a great job as an introvert. I also am an introvert, believe it or not. and, I, you play it well, my friend.
[00:25:00] Jeremy: I appreciate it. I'm going to go nap for about three hours after this, but, so I do have a LinkedIn account, It's Jeremy Mount Gordon, so the slash Jeremy Mount M O U N T. That was my fighter pilot call sign.and I think that's the best way to shoot me a message or a friend invite there. I think I have, like my email address is probably on the Startup Science website under the team
[00:25:24] Jay: Okay.
[00:25:25] Jeremy: So yeah, happy
[00:25:26] Jay: we won't give out a phone number and, you know, a personal address or anything, so don't worry about that. And if they want to learn more about Startup Science, where do they find that?
[00:25:34] Jeremy: io.
[00:25:36] Jay: beautiful. Well, Jeremy, you are an impressive guy. I love your story. I appreciate your service to the country and I appreciate your service to the startup and entrepreneurship community.
there's a theme here somewhere about just Constantly giving back and, you know, you exemplify that my friend. So thank you for your time today and give me some of it. And, you know, I hope you have a good rest of your week. All right.
[00:25:58] Jeremy: Thank you, Jay. Likewise.
[00:25:59] Jay: All right, buddy. See you, man. Later.