February 11, 2025 ⢠45 mins
Justin Samuels didn’t wait for Silicon Valley to bring tech opportunities to Atlanta—he built them himself. In this episode, we dive into how he turned RenderATL into one of the most exciting and culture-driven tech conferences in the country. From bootstrapping to booking A-list talent, Justin breaks down the strategy, the challenges, and the big vision behind Atlanta’s growing tech scene. If you care about tech, culture, and making big moves, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So honestly just comes down to not being full of yourself.
Comprehend that you're a complete idiot and there are smarter
people doing you out there, and you should be knowledgeable
that you have a blind spot. Yes I'm great in engineering,
I'm horrible, and other things like a marketing I need
to hire somebody that's great at that. I neither hire
(00:22):
a person that's great as a finance xyz, so I
can then focus on the overall a big vision of
just growing the company.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of button Nomics. I'm
your host, Brandan Butler, founder CEO of Butter atl and
today we got a special guest in the studio. I mean,
we always had special guests in the studio, but this
is a special this guest right here, man, even though
he gets on my last dagon nerves last, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
A guest that's close to my heart, man, I gotta
be honest, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It's a friend the homie mister Justin Saniels, founder of
render aka Renderfest.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Justin, how you doing, man?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I would just say that is probably the best guest
a pastor introduction I've ever had in my life. Like
when you're at church and you got a guest pastor
up there, and they come in and they're just going
down on the resume. I thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You know, look man, absolutely, man. Look I've been there,
been there with you, watching you built this whole render
thing out. You know what I'm saying, Seeing how you're
making an impact. It's good to see the stuff you've
been doing around Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
You can hijack the name. You try to change our
name twice now, you know, to render Fest. But it's okay, though,
it's okay, I'm gonna let that go, even though the
people seem to kind of gravitate towards it.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I mean, I'm two. I'm two for.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Two, man, render Fest Silicon South like hit. I'm saying
on two.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
For two, bro, I'll know two for two. I would
say you're one for two, but I'm gona let the
other one go, the other one?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Which one? Which one was a miss?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm just saying, render has not taken hold in my heart. Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I mean, that don't matter that people love it. It's
the people out here all the time when it's Renderfest happening.
So well, you know what for right now, We're not
gonna call it render Fest. We're gonna refer to it
by its business name, which is Render one of the
largest software engineering conferences in the country. There we go,
now justin tell us, man, how do you define Render?
(02:18):
Like when people ask you what render is, how do
you define it?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean, are we going for the a pr answer
or are we going for.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
The like for the culture man, culture for culture man?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Right? Great? So Render is probably the best tech conference
you will ever go to, not just only because it's
like a black folks everywhere, but because we are unapologetic
about the culture happening at the conference. You could learn
from people from all walks of life at the conference
doing the latest, greatest thing in their respective job. Where
(02:51):
we've even had people dressed in a full shaistison giving
crazy lectures that you're like, wait, I'm learning from the
guy dressed in a mask right now? That is pretty
a dope, right. And we do an entire music festival,
we do an entire food truck parking lot, We do
stuff all around a city. Because it's a I t
(03:11):
at tech Week and it's just a great time. You're
around other people who I know a bullshit, they're just
there to have a great time, learn and then just
honestly go to hell home after it.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Now, for full disclosure, I have been an advisory on Render,
so I got a little bit of inside information. I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna share anything too crazy right now.
But again, some of the questions I'm gonna ask just
want to help t that up because I want to
make sure people fully understand the Render story, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And add a virus that he means he comes to
the meetings twice a year.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, I mean that's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Man, I'm making an impact. I show up, I making
an impact, and I get the hell on. Just like
you said, come do what you got to do and leave, right,
you can leave. Come do what you got to do
and leave, you know. But no, man, I remember, man,
you started this during the pandemic and it's kind of
grown a lot since then. What made you start this
whole idea behind Render?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Man? I was honestly just tired of going into the
West Coast all the time. Like are you come from
a come computer science a background? When you graduated here,
They're like, yo, if you're trying to get a cool job,
you gotta go to Cali, you gotta go to Silicono
a valley. But folks like us are like, eh, screw that,
I'm gonna try to blaze my own a path here, right,
(04:22):
And what you come to find out is, while you're
talking about screw that, I'm gonna blame my own path,
it's actually much harder here to accomplish that. So I
started to fall into the trap of like, well, I'm
gonna have ATLS my home base, but I'm gonna go
out to Cali and go to conferences. I'm gonna go
out to Cali and go meet great and dope people.
(04:44):
But after you start doing that week to week back
to back, you're like, yo, Like I'm spending four hours
on a plane each way. I'm not making a lot
of money at the time. So I'm in economy. I mean, like,
scratch that. I'm not even an economy. I'm not even
on a delta. I'm on like a frontier going across
the country week after week. That shit gets old quickly, right,
(05:08):
So I said, all right, if atl has a global
airport and we have all these different neighborhoods, why the
hell don't we just have this huge conference here that
could do the same exact thing that you see everybody
else doing in a Silicon valley. And that right there
was the overall genesis of it was I was just
tired of having to constantly travel across the country, so
(05:30):
I said, let's just a build it here.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I mean it always seems like, you know, Atlanta's
right for a lot of those big cultural conferences and festivals.
I mean, yeah, man, I remember again like back in
the day. When I say back in the day, you know,
ten fifteen years ago, back in the days, it's like
it's like pre COVID and post COVID, right, yes, because
even you think about it, right before COVID, like people
didn't even want to do zoom meetings and virtual meetings
(05:52):
and stuff. It was like they it almost was like disrespectful. Yes,
if you ask somebody like hey can we jump on
a Google call, They're like what wow, Now it's like
disrespectful for you want me to come somewhere a person
half the time, you know. But it was even worse,
especially if you're in tech and you're in some of
these industries to where yeah, like if you were in Atlanta,
even with all the great you know, schools like Georgia
Tech and all the places we have out here. Like,
(06:13):
you weren't considered serious about a startup in a lot
of areas unless you went to the West coast, right,
and it was like that's where all the opportunity and
money was. People were just playing around out here in Atlanta.
But like if you really were serious about going to
the next level, you had to go out west. And
first it was first it was you know, San fran
Then it kind of became Austin in that whole area.
But like you've really kind of like opened up the
East coast now to a lot of these opportunities.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Absolutely, absolutely, and it's beginning to get easier but also
getting harder because they keep moving the carrot of like, well,
if you only have a fifteen hundred of people, then
we could do more in Atlanta. Then the conference achize
fifteen hundred. You were there, you had fifteen hundred people
packed out a TGS. I don't know a house of
(06:55):
this day.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
That was crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I don't know how thoughts a terrible packed out TGS.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It was a great time. And then I'm like, all right,
y'all approved of y'all that we have technical people here.
We could do greatness. They're like, uh, not yet. Then
a Microsoft moved here, then SAP moved here, then a
Cisco moved here. All these companies kept on moving here,
even when Milchim got acquired by in to it. We're like, yo,
(07:25):
we have technology here, but why do y'all keep on
skipping over us? And the answer is people are just like, well,
it'll just take more work to have to move to
the South. But it's crazy to me that they don't
kind of consider a Miami the South because everybody moved
down there. And I'm like, yo, like, Miami's cool, but
(07:46):
it only has a beach. That's all Miami got. Goes
down there, and I don't know about you, but there's
only so many days I could just go hang out
at the beach. And then you're like, Okay, where's the
culture at, where there's the people at? And you learn
really quickly that it's a place that if you are
not making a copious amount of money, you're gonna be like, yo,
I got shit to do that. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's also I mean even too, it's also interested about Miami.
I remember, even with Miami, it really impacted the trajectory
of what Butter became. I remember that we did the
Butter we launched Butter was at like twenty eighteen, I think.
And I remember I had to go down to Miami
literally the day after our launch party. Really, I had
to go down there for some family stuff, and I
(08:28):
was walking around and I remember looking around and saying, Man,
I don't think that Butter would work in Miami. And
the reason why is because Miami won. If it's not
you know, seventy five percent Spanish, it's instantly not gonna work.
But even beyond that, Miami has like so many types
of cultures. It does in so many types of like
(08:48):
areas and neighborhoods, right Like I noticed then, I was like,
you know, it's gonna be very hard to create a
definitive kind of like culture channel for Miami because you
have to speak to so many different areas. I felt
the same thing about La even about New York. Last means,
I said, you know that I feel like it worked
really well in Atlanta because Atlanta's a little bit more
binary that folks want to admit.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, Hell, let's just be real. In atl your out
there all right, or you are black? Right now, and
you got everything else in between. Like I think I
had already report the other day that the Asian population
is the fastest growing population here. And I don't know
about you, but I've been down abut for the Highway
within the last couple of months, and I see Asian
(09:28):
restaurants popping up everywhere, and I enjoy the food. It's amazing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
But outside of that, to your point, atl is still
very You throw right, or you are black, and you
could choose what side you want to play on. And
really the cool thing about what a Butter and what
a render has done is we kind of play with
everybody side, Like, Okay, you can be right over here,
(09:57):
you could be a black over here, you could be
anything else, I mean, tween over here. Right. We don't
like really care. All we care about is your support
at the end.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Of the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Now, I remember again besides that gathering spot time and
everything was super crowded. Wow, you crowd It was crowded, man. Look,
I remember standing the line trying to get some food
and stuff like that. But you know, I also remember
like that was when that was the year we had
Big Boy and some other folks, right I think I
think I made that phone call. But anyway, besides that, though, man,
like the bigger point is that to me, that's when
(10:26):
you kind of started really adding more of the culture
elements to Render, right, which again started to grow. And
again big Boy was just a speaker on a panel.
He wasn't performing. But then you know you started then
adding in the performances. You started adding in the event
with Kate Trenada, right, you know he had Anderson Pac
last year. You know what I'm saying, Like, like what
made you want to kind of add that element on
to the festival so that it just wasn't just a
(10:48):
straight up conference but kind of had that cultural fun
element to it.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Also, Yeah, and like I just want to touch on
what you just I said too, which is you're the
one that made that call happen. And I always tell
people that's the magical thinking about ATL is you don't
know who you're sitting next to you at any given
moment that could actually open the doors up for you quickly.
If I didn't come to the bar at TGS that
(11:11):
day pissed off, if like you remember, I pissed off
because I forget who we were about to book but
they had pulled out, and I was like, man, I
got cash, I got people coming, Why the hell can
I get anybody? And then you looked at me and
said you want to get a big boy? And I said, okay,
(11:31):
man cool. And then like you just walked off and
you came back in and said, all right, it's now happening.
I said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Shit, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And I think about could that same thing happen in
any other other place you'd call it? Couldn't happen in La?
Can it happen in NYC?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
A flute?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, I can. But I think that the density here
of people that you're just connected to is so tight
that you have a higher likelihood of it happening here
than any a place south.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You know, yeah, it kind of reminds me of that
moment specifically, kind of reminds me of when I used
to go to south By Southwest all the time, right,
and you know, it was it was very similar right
where there were just there's just certain areas to where
I always tell people when you're at south By, I
don't know how much it is now like it used
to be, but I would always say, yeah, no, I
mean went, we went, you know, it's definitely a lot
different now. But I used to tell people, like, when
(12:22):
you go to south By, you need to talk to
every single person with a badge on. Yes, because the
sheer amount of investment that's needed to even go.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
To that conference. Oh god, And this was you know, yeah, five.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Six, seven, almost ten years ago, right, like you're still
in you know, two three grand for a ticket, easy,
you're still in, you know, another five hundred thousand bucks
for a plane ticket.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember I stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I think they charged me like seven hundred dollars a
night racking up, right, So like just me going alone
probably costs damn near ten grand. And so I always
tell people like, you know, but at the same time,
any person you see with a badge on, you got
to understand there there's somewhere in that same range too, right,
So it just makes sense you never know who you're
talking to. To your point, you know, Atlanta kind of
has that density. We were specifically at the gathering spot
(13:07):
where again you even kind of double down a little
bit more, and there's just so many people here at
opportunity to kind of make things happen. Would have been
some other kind of like you know, inflection points or
like serendipitous moments that you think of kind of like
you know, always say like when you look back, there's
just moments where you're like, all right, that's a moment
where when that happened, it took us to the next level.
Like what are some other moments that have happened with
render as you look back that have kind of like
(13:28):
taken y'all from what's this spot's kind of the next spot?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I think it's such as on your question too,
of like the culture piece, which was I was at
a TGS and I was thinking out at the bar
and one of the folks asked me a question which
was like, hey, have you met Jordan A. Gibbs? And
I was like, no, who is Jordan's Like, oh, Jordan
knows this a festival. It's called a milk and cookies.
(13:52):
They haven't came around in a while. I think y'all
both should like work to gather because I could I
see the cultural element of the conference coming to a
life and these are my homies over here, and I
think y'all both can do a greatness well to a
flash forward. Now we had to work with them in
(14:12):
twenty twenty two to do the A Block A party
first pulled that off. That was a great time. And
then we tripled down in twenty twenty three and we
had the entire belt Line Park and had a kitchenada
out there with over eight thousand people. It was just
a nuts And if I wasn't at TGS at that
particular date and time, sitting in that particular seat, I
(14:36):
would have never been introduced to a Jordan and then
everything else. Yes, over time would have had a concert. Yes,
over time would have added more culture. But knowing the
right people like that opened it up much quicker, you know.
Being able to only do that in the first a
year and a half of us having a conference, I mean,
(14:56):
I don't know about y'all at home, but try and
do a festival and conferences. That shit is capital intensive,
extremely capital intensive, you know, and most people don't get
to that point where they're having a headline artist like
k Trnado or having someone like an innocent a Pod
until like eight years in, ten years in and we
pulled it off in a year two and a half.
That was just craziness, you know. So that's a big
(15:18):
inflection point of our success right here. I think another
inflection point is just sitting at TGS at the bar
and watching people just gravitate towards me to say, hey,
you're the guy building that cool thing that Brandon tells
me is called a render Fest. And I'm like, yes,
(15:41):
it's called render ATL, not render Fest, but rend the
ATL And They're like, yeah, how can I be down
and learning to just hear people's thoughts on it help
shape my own thoughts on what it should become because
it's not all about me. It's a ode to the culture.
So the culture feels included in a tech overall.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I mean, I'll give it to you know, y'all have scaled.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know, you have an amazing team, Like roughly how
many people when Render kind of like ramps up. I
remember talking to Jay Carter and he was talking about,
you know, they have hundreds of people, you know, when
it comes to time for one music fest, right then
you know they obviously ramped down to kind of the
core team. But like when Render is ready to ramp up,
like how many people are actually working, you know, under
the Render flag.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So everybody that is internal to the company And when
we get to a full on ramp, which is usually
in April, it's about a forty okay, But then if
you count all the external agencies and contractors and people
that just helping from third parties, we're probably closer to
a double dat if not at one hundred.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, Yeah, it's dope, man.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And so with all those people, I mean, obviously you
got to come up with systems and processes. I think
that's the part, right, Like everybody talks about how hard
it is to get the right team in.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Place, it's very hard. How hard is to scale certain things.
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Again, I've seen the way y'all use I mean obviously,
you know, being on the team in the past, I've
seen the way we use you know, technology to communicate,
but all just also different tools like how is your
tech background you know, really kind of helped you create
some of those systems and processes. It's going to help
you scale the company to where it's gotten so far.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Oh man. I think that's the best part of our journey,
is that I'm an engineer by trade. But it's also
the hardest part because we like to be over in
analytical of everything. I mean, once again, you're an engineer
by trade too, and we like to have a processes.
We like to look at data, we like to see
how are you doing particular actions. But you know what,
(17:47):
engineer is a horrible at. We're a horrible at actual
user feedback. You know, we're terrible at that. So, like
currently we do all of our password sharing through an
application called a one password for everybody at home. If
you do not share passwords using either like one password
(18:10):
or a last password, I highly recommend you take it
out of a damn a Google doc just called passwords.
And it's crazy to me when I hire people and
their mind is blown because they will tell me like, yeah,
I came from a blankly blank company and we shared
everything and a Google doc. So they're struggling to learn
(18:34):
how to use things like one password to access particular
critical data points. Right. The cool thing is that we
as engineers know how to put the processes in place,
and it helps you scale much quicker because you comprehend
that your time is more valuable. But the upfront cost
(18:54):
of that is exponential though, meaning you got to know
how to have a code half of the things that
you want I want to do, or you got to
know what particular systems can talk to other particular systems too,
which is very time and labor and intensive. But once
that shit starts to work, oh man, like people, I
(19:15):
think that a render is like over one hundred people
are deep and we all work a full time and
I'm like dog like at any given time, like currently
as we're recording this in January, there's probably only eight
of us on the team right now. But we moved
like a huge fortune ten company because of the fact
that we got so much automation in place. We have
(19:37):
been on the automation AI wave prior to the coolness.
It was like back in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
I was like, yo, I only got X amount of dollars,
How can I do more with less? And I had
a foundancy, Bro, you're an engineer. You could just code
everything up and get the job done as easy And
(19:58):
I highly encourage folks. And we talked about this off
offline that you still stuff like Sappier. We use the
hell out of that. Hey, it automates everything you know,
or use things like chat to GBT to write your
PR real at least like you and I. When we
were going to announce at the conference with going up
(20:19):
back and forth in the group chat like I like
my PR, I released more than your PR release, asking
chat GBT to tweak each of them to get it
to work, you know what I mean? Versus having to
hire a person that you really can afford so highly
encourage companies to invest in AI and automation it up
(20:40):
change your lives quickly.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, and and and as you built that too, again,
like as a person that's been working on the inside
also works as an advisor. Yeah, I know, it's like
mentors have been kind of a big part that successful.
How was you know again having because I think I
think a lot of times, you know again, people try
to build stuff and they kind of act like they
have to go to loan, have to figure it out,
Like you're not you're not.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
You're not the first person ever done a conference.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yea, the first person's ever built a company, right, So, like,
how did you find you know, mentors to help you
and kind of support you in building this?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I comprehend a old Zelda quote. Yeah, okay, the old one,
the old one.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
What's older?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
You you mean you mean like the legend of Zela
like links to eat my like Superintendo or Nintendo.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Okay, all right, that's cool. Telling about the cartridge go
When you go with a link in the cave the
first time, there's a question that pops up about would
you like to go alone? And then it says it
is dangerous to go alone. Take a disc where you
(21:44):
could choose like what you need, which is the sword? Right?
And I internalize that quote because I comprehend, like, yo,
like you will get your block knocked off out here
very quickly. If you think you could solve everything. It's impossible. Yes,
you could do war with a less but it's also
very helpful to comprehend that you do not know everything.
(22:06):
I tell people all the time that the president of
the country, and I'm gonna just say, oh Obama for
all intensive purposes right now, because that's my main guiding light.
Oh Obama was a very great president. But the president
isn't the smartest person in the room. It's the people
that he hires right to help add advise him. Because
(22:28):
it's impossible to be a subject matter expert in every
single thing. He hires a person to help with the
Apartment of Agriculture, Department of whatever. And that's because he
cannot know everything about agriculture. He can't know everything about
f DA regulations like whatnot. But he could hire that
key person to help advise him, and he could then
(22:50):
formulate it and say, Okay, I think we should do X,
y Z next based upon what my ad advisor. But
also getting your advisors to talk to other ada is
on the team helps a ton too. So it's honestly
just comes down to not being full of yourself. Comprehend
that you're a complete idiot and there are smarter people
(23:13):
doing you out there, and you should be knowledgeable that
you have blind spots. Yes, I'm great in engineering, I'm
horrible in other things like marketing. All right, I need
to hire somebody that's created at that. I neither hire
a person as great as a finance it's a YZ.
So I can then focus on the overall a big vision,
a picture of just growing the company.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, now, how do you do that though while building
a business, because again to your point, like we have
a lot of people that are in place to help
support these things, but obviously you got to build a
business around this thing too to make sense. You know,
how did you approach getting people involved and kind of
coming up with like different structures, right, Like there are
some people that are you know they they they probably
have like a profit sharing element. There are other people
(23:55):
that you know they work and invest and I think
that's something I've also noticed.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It's like really interesting. And how you built the business yeah, is.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You know what I mean? You kind of have different
situations set up with different people to say, you know what,
like I want you to be a part of this,
but like we're going to compensate you like this, so
we can still get your talent, but we're gonna make
it move differently, Like how did you come up with
those kind of models?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Talking to a lot of folks. So all I did
was I looked at different companies and I said I
would ask them like how do you pay your employees?
How do you pay your folks? And that was like,
oh okay, there is more than one answer here. I
think we get into the trap of like you gotta
do just cash or you just got to do equity.
(24:35):
I got put on a game a long time ago
that was like hello, like equity being handed out as
a pretty new con accept around the late nineties early
to a thousands, which was actually brought on by a
tech folks said, Oh, I'm gonna work at this tech company.
They're going to give me x amount of the company,
and I'm happy, all right. But prior to that, it
(24:58):
was only a cash So once I learned that, I said, oh,
there's other compensation models out here. Let me learn them
all and let me go talk to other founders. And
the biggest piece of this equation was just being inspirational
EI enough that people want to follow you and they'll say, yo, like,
(25:18):
I like what you are doing, even though you can't
afford me. I am down to a ride for the cause.
But also as a founder, comprehending that when you get
to a point that you want to uplift them to
One of the things I'm extremely proud about is that
we always I figure out ways on how to subport
(25:41):
each other in the company, you know, like we worked
with Italian Twine right now, the co founder of Italian
Twine came on as our COO. When we got to
a point where we can afford a custom watch order,
what do we do? We've turned around and spent a
lot of money out a bunch of custom watches from
(26:03):
Italian Twine, which our audience loved, and that is just
one example of like, this is a person who we
couldn't afford, so we had to get inspirational. Yes we
still pay to them, but not at a market rate.
But then we made the sure when we got to
a place that we can send the money back down
(26:24):
or like they say, send the elevator back down. Said,
I had great hopping down.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You know, no, that's dope, man.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Now again you kind of touch on things like equity,
like it's understanding you're you're.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The bootstrap this business, so you strap baby.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
And that's that's that's another accomplishment too, because again I
think a lot of times we you know, glorify going
out and raising money.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I'm sure to come out and we do.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But obviously, you know you've retained that because you have
a bigger idea and a bigger vision in mind.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. And I like to give credit to
my uh I CEO at the time of a Melchum.
He was a founder and CEO, which is a ben
a chestnut. He's a close mentor of a minds. It's
I joke all the time. It helps when you know
you got a close mentor who is worth twenty plus
(27:16):
a billion. You're like hey, man, like, what would you
do right now? You know, because you've obviously been there
and you're a multi a billionaire, right, but he always
showed that, hey, you don't got a handout equity, but
you do got to understand how to be inspirational towards
other folks and help them along the way too, same
(27:40):
way he's helping me now.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, now, and as your growth again, you talk about
bootstrapping and growing a business. Obviously you can't do this
without money. One of the things is always amazing you
know that I've always see advendor is you know, not
only do y'all have the conference, but you're kind of
have like this whole kind of like talent and trade
show element on top of like the music element too, right,
Like how did y'all go about finding you know, brands
(28:03):
and sponsors that want to actually you know, partner with
render in the early days.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, so in the early days, we were all thinking
about how do we do heavy talent of recruiting and whatnot?
Not until I talk to are you actually and you
were like, yo, trade show, that's what we need to
do next? I said, interesting, actually three, but yeah, like
(28:29):
we had maybe a one or two, a minute convo
about trade shows, and I was like, damn, that's a
good point. I never even I thought about trade shows.
And that's when things change from just being a talent
acquisition conference. So like you could come here a demo
what's happening at your company and do a b to
(28:52):
be a sales at the conference now, which is a
huge a portion of our business now of a growing
the company, is that be to be a element. How
were going about getting those partners, honestly, is just hand
to hand to combat. I tell you all the time.
It was me in the early days waking up at
(29:14):
a four am sending out emails coldly saying, hey, come
to my conference. I want you to give me five
a thousand, ten a thousand at the time, right, and
I guarantee you this is what's going to happen. The
great thing is that when you do a good business
(29:35):
like that, people go and tell others, hey, you should
go check this out. And that's honestly what happened was
we just made sure we did a right by everybody
early on, and we currently do too. Just to be clear,
like our number one mission here is all about customer
status faction, both for partners and attendees, but make sure
(30:00):
that people, whether you're an attendee or a partner, have
a good time and you get the ROI too, which
and now will justify you coming back a year over
a year.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
One of the things that y'all do is also I've
noticed it's also you know, like interesting and I'm sure
it's helpful. Is you also take all that information, all
that data, all the insights and people that have come out,
and you all put together like a what you kind
of call like an economic impact report? Yes, like what
kind of gave you that inspiration? And also how has
that helped y'all grow the business?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Oh man, that's a great question. So I was on
Instagram on one day and on ig they had an
impact report from a non profit and completely for I
get the name right now right, And I was like,
this is really cool. I'm not a non a profit though,
but it gives you a lot of sights into what
(31:01):
the company has are done and with the company is going.
And it kind of evinced me that I should probably donate, right,
I said, if that thing could get their point in
their vision across to me that quickly, why the hell
can I do this too? I don't. I think there's
some a law out there that claims economic impact report
(31:22):
can only be made for non profits. That's a great
thing that you learn becoming a entre repreneur that this
whole concept of rules really doesn't exist. I mean, we
can even talk about how Trump is in the White
House right now as a feeling, you know, like we
(31:42):
could go down this road that once you open your
eyes to this whole concept of rules doesn't exist, You're like, oh,
we could get a money all day, every single day.
It's just all about what innovative way can you go
about doing it right? So the Economic Impact a Report
came from that concept of like, yo, it works for others,
(32:06):
I'm gonna apply it here and we're gonna see what happened.
We caught lightning in a damn bottle because we were
the first a tech conference to actually do that, and
other people now copy that. I mean it's crazy just
to like watch them copy it, just to be real,
but yeah, we were the first ones, and it gave
(32:27):
a partner's confidence of like, Wow, this is what they're
trying to do. Isn't just about aligning their own pockets.
It's about atl growing as a whole and my an
investment into a render is gonna help that. You know,
anytime a person partners, we don't call them a partner,
(32:48):
We call them a a family, a member, And when
we take their money, we say thank you for your investment.
So now it makes them feel like, wow, like I
really invested in this thing beyond just the conference.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, I mean and again at the end of the
day two.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It also helps make their job easier because those people
internally have to go in and justify like why they're
spending money and why they're doing things, especially if things
get tight the economy gets tighter, right, So to even
just have an asset, you know, on top of whatever
reporting that they get back, but an additional asset that says, long,
here's an actual report that it shows the impact. It
(33:26):
makes that person's job easier to help, you know, clear
clear things out, to get funds allocated and open up
new opportunities. So strategically that probably helps, you know, check
a lot of boxes, you know, and also too, like
as you all have grown, like you know, another thing
that y'all do a lot of is events outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
We do a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
What's the reasy what's the reason behind that?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Man, again, you want the real answer or the a
PR answer.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know, let's do both. How about that, let's do
both well.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
The a PR answer is that we wanted to spread
technology to the entire world and just we want people
everywhere to feel the impact of our growing brand. The
actual answer was, we just made a boatload of money
in twenty twenty one. A boatload is kind of a
relative just get clear, right, And I was like, wow, hey, y'all,
(34:15):
what should we do next? And folks were like, I
don't know, And I said, what's coming up around the
country And they said, oh, it is this ear event
called a Miami Art Aboso. And I said, let's just
go try it out. And that's how we ended up
doing our first off site activation was at the Aboso
(34:37):
and I said, this is pretty cool. Let's just keep
it like a going, and then we went from Aboso,
then we did south By, and then we just kept
doing more and more things, like we did a Miami
Tech Week or two, and people just enjoyed it. And
the reason why people enjoyed it was because at the time,
COVID just got done and there wasn't a lot of
(35:00):
groups outside. Yet thankfully Georgia never closed if you remember,
and wide open, We're wide open, so all of us
here we're like, yo, it is a prime time. Let's
go outside and let other people have a good time.
And that's honestly all it became as was like, let's
have a good time with the ego a system, and
(35:21):
I think that was what was the needed at the time. Honestly,
it was if I was at home for the last month,
the last month and a half, and now you're giving
me an outlet to come meet new folks, dance, have
a great time, that's all I need. Once we got
the people's attention, it then became into like a strategic
(35:42):
mission of like, Okay, we got their attention, now let's
add some education on top of it. Because at the
end of the day, Render likes to have a good time,
but I am dead serious about the educational value that
we want to add too. So that's when we started
doing things like come have a good time, but we're
gonna do is educational workshop, or were going to do
just educational a seminar, or we're gonna do this hardcore
(36:04):
hands on technical training at that same time, so it
just kind of morphed over time into what the people need.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I mean then again you also launch things like Atlanta
Tech Week, right, So like there's all these kind of
different extensions of the brand and different elements, right, and
partnerships y'all have done strategically to kind of just help,
you know, extend it out. I almost kind of think
about it like similar to how we do four L
four day, right, Like the start off as like a day,
but now it's kind of become a weekend and a
whole week to we kind of expand this thing and
(36:31):
make it more you know, make it again more year round,
and then even now to the point of, you know,
similar to how you all do events year round from
a four or four element, we have now the four
or four fund, yes, which allows us to now do
donations and activations and events kind of year round. So
it kind of comes that natural extension to keep it
top of mind for folks, because again, there's a moment
in time, but then there's you know, three hundred and
(36:51):
sixty other plus days of the year that you've got
to figure out how to keep people engaged.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Which is hard, which is really hard, right, Yeah, very hard.
I will never forget when I've felt a very down
on myself. I was like, yo, like, I don't think
I'm doing a good job. I don't think i'm building
the ecosystem well, not just here, but like everywhere or
there were at and I had one a person like
(37:14):
it's crazy how timing works right, And he was like, hey, man,
how are you? And I'm like, man, I'm doing good,
but here's how I feel. And he was like, I'm
gonna tell you, building a come up immunity is probably
the hardest thing to do because it's easy to build
a product, like you got the thing that you got
to build, and then you're done technically right, But building
(37:39):
a come immunity takes a lot of work because you
got to actually, like to your point, keep them constantly
engaged and there is no room for failure. If you
take off a month or two, they're gonna go gravitate elsewhere.
It's kind of like a sheep. You got to continuously
hurt them constantly. And if you're like, all right, I'm
(38:01):
gonna go on a PTO over here, they're like, well,
what about nothing else to do? We're just going to
gravitate over there now. And then you come back from
a paid time off and you're like, where the hell
am I sheep at? And you're like, oh, I can't leave.
Well that's crazy, you know what I mean? So yeah,
it's easily the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I think, all.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Right, where do you see render going? Like what's I
want to say the end game? Because I again, I
think this is something that's going to be around for
a while, but like over the next five to ten years,
Like how do you see render evolving as a conference
and even bigger than that?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
So our ultimate goal is to build a entire and
I hate to call it a tech week because if
we're already doing that, but truly build an entire tech
week out the entire city is thriving, the entire city
is active on it, and it becomes like a south
By almost where it's infused with that ato culture that
(38:57):
atl eqo, a system of we're all coming to gather here,
and I want it to be a destination that folks
are now lining up on their calendar every single year
like yo, I gotta go in June. Like I could
ask you right now, do you know what the dates
are for us to south By and your vibly, Like
(39:17):
I don't know, but you do know it's in a march.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
March.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, it's in the March. That's all you need to know.
And if anybody asks to hop on your calendar in March,
wait a minute, I gotta check to see and when
that's south by? Is I need that same exact headroom
for a render where it's like, yo, can we do
aning in June? Like, oh, I don't know our renders
happening in June. Let me see what's happening, or can
(39:42):
we do anyting in June? A whole atl technik is
happening in June. Let me see first, right, That's what
we owes we want to do is become that destination
that a brands people in the entire world wants to
come to you because obviously our airport can handle it.
She just fine, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Cool man, cool man. Well look man, this has been
a great conversation. Before we get out of here, one
thing I love to ask people is what's one piece
of advice, one lesson that you've learned that you would
share with somebody that wants to, you know, build a
conference or an experience.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Get don't build no competition.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Now, you know, if y'all want to play I'm telling
you right now, just don't play fair.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
So just be careful. Wow, you know, but just I
mean that's business man, yes there.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
But what piece of advice would give to somebody that
wanted to build a community, an experience a conference based
on what you've learned building render?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Well, there is a quote that I keep on talking about,
which is cowards. I had never start and a week
die along the away. And yes, that sounds a brutal,
but it's true though that if you have a dream,
if you have a vision, the hardest thing, like eighty
(40:57):
to ninety percent the hard work, just even trying. Yeah,
and not just that one time, like you and I
I've been on calls around like y'all, I have a
dream of doing blah blah blah something else crazy and
half y'all like, hell no, that sounds crazy. And then
I got like, all right, cool, we're gonna do it.
And that takes a guts, that takes a curt So
(41:20):
cowards I never even try. In along though, away you'll
encounter people who just quit, you know, and they're like yo,
like you can't quit just because it's not a going
You're away, right, now it's it's sometimes you just gotta
a pivot or you gotta just open your eyes and see, Okay,
I tried x y Z. Let me go try QRS next. Right,
So internalize that quote, but also understand like what Nelson
(41:42):
Mandella said it, which is everything seems impossible until it's finished,
you know, and think back to the time that you
were in a college and you're like, man, I'm never
gonna graduate, Like I'm trying to take this class. This
is one thing done and you're like graduation. They come,
You're like, whoa, I'm here. You're having like an out
(42:04):
of a body ex periods of the time you're like,
I actually I finished it. And that goes back to
the quote that everything seems impossible until it's actually I've finished,
and you at home can also do it too. It's
a long win. They answer to say, you just gotta
do the damn a thing and learn learn why you
(42:24):
are doing it. Why I began a render has transformed
many different ways, you know, in terms of like my
why along the way it changes, you know, which is okay.
I think people think that it got to be the
same thing constantly. Know. Only thing that's ever guaranteed in
life is a change changes, it's guarantee, and be okay
(42:47):
with that, you know, learn from those at home that
you're trying.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
To serve absolutely absolutely Before we got out of here,
justin where can people, you know get more information about render? Know,
y'all it's not renderfested com. I'll not talk.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Actually we should have owned that. We own that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Well, get I'm four for four okay, so but but again,
give them the official website.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
How can they officially buy tickets? If not going to
renderfest dot com?
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Where can they get take some information about render or
get involved as a volunteer and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So d o official website is a render at L
dot com r E N d E R a t
L dot com. You can also go to a render
fess dot com and it will also take you there too.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are on all social platforms. Render
at L on all social platforms, including a blue sky
(43:41):
if I call that out. If you want to learn
more about a t L a techweek, just go to
a t L dot tech. Yes, that is the entire
website a t L dot tech Use that website. I
pay a lot of money for that website. You know
how domains work, You're like, whoa you you own a
three her name? Yeah, spend a lot of money on there.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Put some dollars behind that ape.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
So yeah. If you want to learn more about atl
Tech Week, atl dot tech or at the Atlanta Tech
Week is on all our social platforms, including a blue
Sky again.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
For sure, Man, well justin Man, appreciate you coming out.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Glad you got a chance to talk on the pod,
share a background, and also glad for you to document
that I'm four for four because I try to tell
y'all I know.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
What I'm talking about. And with that said, we out.
That's the pod.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You've been listening to buttteron Nomics and no im your
hosts Brandon Butler, got comments, feedback? Want to be on
the show, send us an email today at hello at
butternomics dot com. Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia
at iHeartMedia by Ksey Pegram with marketing support fro Queen
and Nikki music provided by mister Hanky. If you haven't
already hit that subscribe button, then never missed an episode
and be sure to follow us on all our social
(44:52):
platforms at butter dot ATL. Listen to Better Nomics on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Out out
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Thump
So honestly just comes down to not being full of yourself.
Comprehend that you're a complete idiot and there are smarter
people doing you out there, and you should be knowledgeable
that you have a blind spot. Yes I'm great in engineering,
I'm horrible, and other things like a marketing I need
to hire somebody that's great at that. I neither hire
(00:22):
a person that's great as a finance xyz, so I
can then focus on the overall a big vision of
just growing the company.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of button Nomics. I'm
your host, Brandan Butler, founder CEO of Butter atl and
today we got a special guest in the studio. I mean,
we always had special guests in the studio, but this
is a special this guest right here, man, even though
he gets on my last dagon nerves last, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
A guest that's close to my heart, man, I gotta
be honest, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It's a friend the homie mister Justin Saniels, founder of
render aka Renderfest.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Justin, how you doing, man?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I would just say that is probably the best guest
a pastor introduction I've ever had in my life. Like
when you're at church and you got a guest pastor
up there, and they come in and they're just going
down on the resume. I thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You know, look man, absolutely, man. Look I've been there,
been there with you, watching you built this whole render
thing out. You know what I'm saying, Seeing how you're
making an impact. It's good to see the stuff you've
been doing around Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
You can hijack the name. You try to change our
name twice now, you know, to render Fest. But it's okay, though,
it's okay, I'm gonna let that go, even though the
people seem to kind of gravitate towards it.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I mean, I'm two. I'm two for.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Two, man, render Fest Silicon South like hit. I'm saying
on two.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
For two, bro, I'll know two for two. I would
say you're one for two, but I'm gona let the
other one go, the other one?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Which one? Which one was a miss?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm just saying, render has not taken hold in my heart. Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I mean, that don't matter that people love it. It's
the people out here all the time when it's Renderfest happening.
So well, you know what for right now, We're not
gonna call it render Fest. We're gonna refer to it
by its business name, which is Render one of the
largest software engineering conferences in the country. There we go,
now justin tell us, man, how do you define Render?
(02:18):
Like when people ask you what render is, how do
you define it?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean, are we going for the a pr answer
or are we going for.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
The like for the culture man, culture for culture man?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Right? Great? So Render is probably the best tech conference
you will ever go to, not just only because it's
like a black folks everywhere, but because we are unapologetic
about the culture happening at the conference. You could learn
from people from all walks of life at the conference
doing the latest, greatest thing in their respective job. Where
(02:51):
we've even had people dressed in a full shaistison giving
crazy lectures that you're like, wait, I'm learning from the
guy dressed in a mask right now? That is pretty
a dope, right. And we do an entire music festival,
we do an entire food truck parking lot, We do
stuff all around a city. Because it's a I t
(03:11):
at tech Week and it's just a great time. You're
around other people who I know a bullshit, they're just
there to have a great time, learn and then just
honestly go to hell home after it.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Now, for full disclosure, I have been an advisory on Render,
so I got a little bit of inside information. I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna share anything too crazy right now.
But again, some of the questions I'm gonna ask just
want to help t that up because I want to
make sure people fully understand the Render story, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And add a virus that he means he comes to
the meetings twice a year.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, I mean that's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Man, I'm making an impact. I show up, I making
an impact, and I get the hell on. Just like
you said, come do what you got to do and leave, right,
you can leave. Come do what you got to do
and leave, you know. But no, man, I remember, man,
you started this during the pandemic and it's kind of
grown a lot since then. What made you start this
whole idea behind Render?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Man? I was honestly just tired of going into the
West Coast all the time. Like are you come from
a come computer science a background? When you graduated here,
They're like, yo, if you're trying to get a cool job,
you gotta go to Cali, you gotta go to Silicono
a valley. But folks like us are like, eh, screw that,
I'm gonna try to blaze my own a path here, right,
(04:22):
And what you come to find out is, while you're
talking about screw that, I'm gonna blame my own path,
it's actually much harder here to accomplish that. So I
started to fall into the trap of like, well, I'm
gonna have ATLS my home base, but I'm gonna go
out to Cali and go to conferences. I'm gonna go
out to Cali and go meet great and dope people.
(04:44):
But after you start doing that week to week back
to back, you're like, yo, Like I'm spending four hours
on a plane each way. I'm not making a lot
of money at the time. So I'm in economy. I mean, like,
scratch that. I'm not even an economy. I'm not even
on a delta. I'm on like a frontier going across
the country week after week. That shit gets old quickly, right,
(05:08):
So I said, all right, if atl has a global
airport and we have all these different neighborhoods, why the
hell don't we just have this huge conference here that
could do the same exact thing that you see everybody
else doing in a Silicon valley. And that right there
was the overall genesis of it was I was just
tired of having to constantly travel across the country, so
(05:30):
I said, let's just a build it here.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I mean it always seems like, you know, Atlanta's
right for a lot of those big cultural conferences and festivals.
I mean, yeah, man, I remember again like back in
the day. When I say back in the day, you know,
ten fifteen years ago, back in the days, it's like
it's like pre COVID and post COVID, right, yes, because
even you think about it, right before COVID, like people
didn't even want to do zoom meetings and virtual meetings
(05:52):
and stuff. It was like they it almost was like disrespectful. Yes,
if you ask somebody like hey can we jump on
a Google call, They're like what wow, Now it's like
disrespectful for you want me to come somewhere a person
half the time, you know. But it was even worse,
especially if you're in tech and you're in some of
these industries to where yeah, like if you were in Atlanta,
even with all the great you know, schools like Georgia
Tech and all the places we have out here. Like,
(06:13):
you weren't considered serious about a startup in a lot
of areas unless you went to the West coast, right,
and it was like that's where all the opportunity and
money was. People were just playing around out here in Atlanta.
But like if you really were serious about going to
the next level, you had to go out west. And
first it was first it was you know, San fran
Then it kind of became Austin in that whole area.
But like you've really kind of like opened up the
East coast now to a lot of these opportunities.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Absolutely, absolutely, and it's beginning to get easier but also
getting harder because they keep moving the carrot of like, well,
if you only have a fifteen hundred of people, then
we could do more in Atlanta. Then the conference achize
fifteen hundred. You were there, you had fifteen hundred people
packed out a TGS. I don't know a house of
(06:55):
this day.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
That was crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I don't know how thoughts a terrible packed out TGS.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It was a great time. And then I'm like, all right,
y'all approved of y'all that we have technical people here.
We could do greatness. They're like, uh, not yet. Then
a Microsoft moved here, then SAP moved here, then a
Cisco moved here. All these companies kept on moving here,
even when Milchim got acquired by in to it. We're like, yo,
(07:25):
we have technology here, but why do y'all keep on
skipping over us? And the answer is people are just like, well,
it'll just take more work to have to move to
the South. But it's crazy to me that they don't
kind of consider a Miami the South because everybody moved
down there. And I'm like, yo, like, Miami's cool, but
(07:46):
it only has a beach. That's all Miami got. Goes
down there, and I don't know about you, but there's
only so many days I could just go hang out
at the beach. And then you're like, Okay, where's the
culture at, where there's the people at? And you learn
really quickly that it's a place that if you are
not making a copious amount of money, you're gonna be like, yo,
I got shit to do that. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's also I mean even too, it's also interested about Miami.
I remember, even with Miami, it really impacted the trajectory
of what Butter became. I remember that we did the
Butter we launched Butter was at like twenty eighteen, I think.
And I remember I had to go down to Miami
literally the day after our launch party. Really, I had
to go down there for some family stuff, and I
(08:28):
was walking around and I remember looking around and saying, Man,
I don't think that Butter would work in Miami. And
the reason why is because Miami won. If it's not
you know, seventy five percent Spanish, it's instantly not gonna work.
But even beyond that, Miami has like so many types
of cultures. It does in so many types of like
(08:48):
areas and neighborhoods, right Like I noticed then, I was like,
you know, it's gonna be very hard to create a
definitive kind of like culture channel for Miami because you
have to speak to so many different areas. I felt
the same thing about La even about New York. Last means,
I said, you know that I feel like it worked
really well in Atlanta because Atlanta's a little bit more
binary that folks want to admit.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, Hell, let's just be real. In atl your out
there all right, or you are black? Right now, and
you got everything else in between. Like I think I
had already report the other day that the Asian population
is the fastest growing population here. And I don't know
about you, but I've been down abut for the Highway
within the last couple of months, and I see Asian
(09:28):
restaurants popping up everywhere, and I enjoy the food. It's amazing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
But outside of that, to your point, atl is still
very You throw right, or you are black, and you
could choose what side you want to play on. And
really the cool thing about what a Butter and what
a render has done is we kind of play with
everybody side, Like, Okay, you can be right over here,
(09:57):
you could be a black over here, you could be
anything else, I mean, tween over here. Right. We don't
like really care. All we care about is your support
at the end.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Of the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Now, I remember again besides that gathering spot time and
everything was super crowded. Wow, you crowd It was crowded, man. Look,
I remember standing the line trying to get some food
and stuff like that. But you know, I also remember
like that was when that was the year we had
Big Boy and some other folks, right I think I
think I made that phone call. But anyway, besides that, though, man,
like the bigger point is that to me, that's when
(10:26):
you kind of started really adding more of the culture
elements to Render, right, which again started to grow. And
again big Boy was just a speaker on a panel.
He wasn't performing. But then you know you started then
adding in the performances. You started adding in the event
with Kate Trenada, right, you know he had Anderson Pac
last year. You know what I'm saying, Like, like what
made you want to kind of add that element on
to the festival so that it just wasn't just a
(10:48):
straight up conference but kind of had that cultural fun
element to it.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Also, Yeah, and like I just want to touch on
what you just I said too, which is you're the
one that made that call happen. And I always tell
people that's the magical thinking about ATL is you don't
know who you're sitting next to you at any given
moment that could actually open the doors up for you quickly.
If I didn't come to the bar at TGS that
(11:11):
day pissed off, if like you remember, I pissed off
because I forget who we were about to book but
they had pulled out, and I was like, man, I
got cash, I got people coming, Why the hell can
I get anybody? And then you looked at me and
said you want to get a big boy? And I said, okay,
(11:31):
man cool. And then like you just walked off and
you came back in and said, all right, it's now happening.
I said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Shit, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And I think about could that same thing happen in
any other other place you'd call it? Couldn't happen in La?
Can it happen in NYC?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
A flute?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, I can. But I think that the density here
of people that you're just connected to is so tight
that you have a higher likelihood of it happening here
than any a place south.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You know, yeah, it kind of reminds me of that
moment specifically, kind of reminds me of when I used
to go to south By Southwest all the time, right,
and you know, it was it was very similar right
where there were just there's just certain areas to where
I always tell people when you're at south By, I
don't know how much it is now like it used
to be, but I would always say, yeah, no, I
mean went, we went, you know, it's definitely a lot
different now. But I used to tell people, like, when
(12:22):
you go to south By, you need to talk to
every single person with a badge on. Yes, because the
sheer amount of investment that's needed to even go.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
To that conference. Oh god, And this was you know, yeah, five.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Six, seven, almost ten years ago, right, like you're still
in you know, two three grand for a ticket, easy,
you're still in, you know, another five hundred thousand bucks
for a plane ticket.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember I stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I think they charged me like seven hundred dollars a
night racking up, right, So like just me going alone
probably costs damn near ten grand. And so I always
tell people like, you know, but at the same time,
any person you see with a badge on, you got
to understand there there's somewhere in that same range too, right,
So it just makes sense you never know who you're
talking to. To your point, you know, Atlanta kind of
has that density. We were specifically at the gathering spot
(13:07):
where again you even kind of double down a little
bit more, and there's just so many people here at
opportunity to kind of make things happen. Would have been
some other kind of like you know, inflection points or
like serendipitous moments that you think of kind of like
you know, always say like when you look back, there's
just moments where you're like, all right, that's a moment
where when that happened, it took us to the next level.
Like what are some other moments that have happened with
render as you look back that have kind of like
(13:28):
taken y'all from what's this spot's kind of the next spot?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I think it's such as on your question too,
of like the culture piece, which was I was at
a TGS and I was thinking out at the bar
and one of the folks asked me a question which
was like, hey, have you met Jordan A. Gibbs? And
I was like, no, who is Jordan's Like, oh, Jordan
knows this a festival. It's called a milk and cookies.
(13:52):
They haven't came around in a while. I think y'all
both should like work to gather because I could I
see the cultural element of the conference coming to a
life and these are my homies over here, and I
think y'all both can do a greatness well to a
flash forward. Now we had to work with them in
(14:12):
twenty twenty two to do the A Block A party
first pulled that off. That was a great time. And
then we tripled down in twenty twenty three and we
had the entire belt Line Park and had a kitchenada
out there with over eight thousand people. It was just
a nuts And if I wasn't at TGS at that
particular date and time, sitting in that particular seat, I
(14:36):
would have never been introduced to a Jordan and then
everything else. Yes, over time would have had a concert. Yes,
over time would have added more culture. But knowing the
right people like that opened it up much quicker, you know.
Being able to only do that in the first a
year and a half of us having a conference, I mean,
(14:56):
I don't know about y'all at home, but try and
do a festival and conferences. That shit is capital intensive,
extremely capital intensive, you know, and most people don't get
to that point where they're having a headline artist like
k Trnado or having someone like an innocent a Pod
until like eight years in, ten years in and we
pulled it off in a year two and a half.
That was just craziness, you know. So that's a big
(15:18):
inflection point of our success right here. I think another
inflection point is just sitting at TGS at the bar
and watching people just gravitate towards me to say, hey,
you're the guy building that cool thing that Brandon tells
me is called a render Fest. And I'm like, yes,
(15:41):
it's called render ATL, not render Fest, but rend the
ATL And They're like, yeah, how can I be down
and learning to just hear people's thoughts on it help
shape my own thoughts on what it should become because
it's not all about me. It's a ode to the culture.
So the culture feels included in a tech overall.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I mean, I'll give it to you know, y'all have scaled.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know, you have an amazing team, Like roughly how
many people when Render kind of like ramps up. I
remember talking to Jay Carter and he was talking about,
you know, they have hundreds of people, you know, when
it comes to time for one music fest, right then
you know they obviously ramped down to kind of the
core team. But like when Render is ready to ramp up,
like how many people are actually working, you know, under
the Render flag.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So everybody that is internal to the company And when
we get to a full on ramp, which is usually
in April, it's about a forty okay, But then if
you count all the external agencies and contractors and people
that just helping from third parties, we're probably closer to
a double dat if not at one hundred.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, Yeah, it's dope, man.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And so with all those people, I mean, obviously you
got to come up with systems and processes. I think
that's the part, right, Like everybody talks about how hard
it is to get the right team in.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Place, it's very hard. How hard is to scale certain things.
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Again, I've seen the way y'all use I mean obviously,
you know, being on the team in the past, I've
seen the way we use you know, technology to communicate,
but all just also different tools like how is your
tech background you know, really kind of helped you create
some of those systems and processes. It's going to help
you scale the company to where it's gotten so far.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Oh man. I think that's the best part of our journey,
is that I'm an engineer by trade. But it's also
the hardest part because we like to be over in
analytical of everything. I mean, once again, you're an engineer
by trade too, and we like to have a processes.
We like to look at data, we like to see
how are you doing particular actions. But you know what,
(17:47):
engineer is a horrible at. We're a horrible at actual
user feedback. You know, we're terrible at that. So, like
currently we do all of our password sharing through an
application called a one password for everybody at home. If
you do not share passwords using either like one password
(18:10):
or a last password, I highly recommend you take it
out of a damn a Google doc just called passwords.
And it's crazy to me when I hire people and
their mind is blown because they will tell me like, yeah,
I came from a blankly blank company and we shared
everything and a Google doc. So they're struggling to learn
(18:34):
how to use things like one password to access particular
critical data points. Right. The cool thing is that we
as engineers know how to put the processes in place,
and it helps you scale much quicker because you comprehend
that your time is more valuable. But the upfront cost
(18:54):
of that is exponential though, meaning you got to know
how to have a code half of the things that
you want I want to do, or you got to
know what particular systems can talk to other particular systems too,
which is very time and labor and intensive. But once
that shit starts to work, oh man, like people, I
(19:15):
think that a render is like over one hundred people
are deep and we all work a full time and
I'm like dog like at any given time, like currently
as we're recording this in January, there's probably only eight
of us on the team right now. But we moved
like a huge fortune ten company because of the fact
that we got so much automation in place. We have
(19:37):
been on the automation AI wave prior to the coolness.
It was like back in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
I was like, yo, I only got X amount of dollars,
How can I do more with less? And I had
a foundancy, Bro, you're an engineer. You could just code
everything up and get the job done as easy And
(19:58):
I highly encourage folks. And we talked about this off
offline that you still stuff like Sappier. We use the
hell out of that. Hey, it automates everything you know,
or use things like chat to GBT to write your
PR real at least like you and I. When we
were going to announce at the conference with going up
(20:19):
back and forth in the group chat like I like
my PR, I released more than your PR release, asking
chat GBT to tweak each of them to get it
to work, you know what I mean? Versus having to
hire a person that you really can afford so highly
encourage companies to invest in AI and automation it up
(20:40):
change your lives quickly.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, and and and as you built that too, again,
like as a person that's been working on the inside
also works as an advisor. Yeah, I know, it's like
mentors have been kind of a big part that successful.
How was you know again having because I think I
think a lot of times, you know again, people try
to build stuff and they kind of act like they
have to go to loan, have to figure it out,
Like you're not you're not.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
You're not the first person ever done a conference.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yea, the first person's ever built a company, right, So, like,
how did you find you know, mentors to help you
and kind of support you in building this?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I comprehend a old Zelda quote. Yeah, okay, the old one,
the old one.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
What's older?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
You you mean you mean like the legend of Zela
like links to eat my like Superintendo or Nintendo.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Okay, all right, that's cool. Telling about the cartridge go
When you go with a link in the cave the
first time, there's a question that pops up about would
you like to go alone? And then it says it
is dangerous to go alone. Take a disc where you
(21:44):
could choose like what you need, which is the sword? Right?
And I internalize that quote because I comprehend, like, yo,
like you will get your block knocked off out here
very quickly. If you think you could solve everything. It's impossible. Yes,
you could do war with a less but it's also
very helpful to comprehend that you do not know everything.
(22:06):
I tell people all the time that the president of
the country, and I'm gonna just say, oh Obama for
all intensive purposes right now, because that's my main guiding light.
Oh Obama was a very great president. But the president
isn't the smartest person in the room. It's the people
that he hires right to help add advise him. Because
(22:28):
it's impossible to be a subject matter expert in every
single thing. He hires a person to help with the
Apartment of Agriculture, Department of whatever. And that's because he
cannot know everything about agriculture. He can't know everything about
f DA regulations like whatnot. But he could hire that
key person to help advise him, and he could then
(22:50):
formulate it and say, Okay, I think we should do X,
y Z next based upon what my ad advisor. But
also getting your advisors to talk to other ada is
on the team helps a ton too. So it's honestly
just comes down to not being full of yourself. Comprehend
that you're a complete idiot and there are smarter people
(23:13):
doing you out there, and you should be knowledgeable that
you have blind spots. Yes, I'm great in engineering, I'm
horrible in other things like marketing. All right, I need
to hire somebody that's created at that. I neither hire
a person as great as a finance it's a YZ.
So I can then focus on the overall a big vision,
a picture of just growing the company.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, now, how do you do that though while building
a business, because again to your point, like we have
a lot of people that are in place to help
support these things, but obviously you got to build a
business around this thing too to make sense. You know,
how did you approach getting people involved and kind of
coming up with like different structures, right, Like there are
some people that are you know they they they probably
have like a profit sharing element. There are other people
(23:55):
that you know they work and invest and I think
that's something I've also noticed.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It's like really interesting. And how you built the business yeah, is.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You know what I mean? You kind of have different
situations set up with different people to say, you know what,
like I want you to be a part of this,
but like we're going to compensate you like this, so
we can still get your talent, but we're gonna make
it move differently, Like how did you come up with
those kind of models?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Talking to a lot of folks. So all I did
was I looked at different companies and I said I
would ask them like how do you pay your employees?
How do you pay your folks? And that was like,
oh okay, there is more than one answer here. I
think we get into the trap of like you gotta
do just cash or you just got to do equity.
(24:35):
I got put on a game a long time ago
that was like hello, like equity being handed out as
a pretty new con accept around the late nineties early
to a thousands, which was actually brought on by a
tech folks said, Oh, I'm gonna work at this tech company.
They're going to give me x amount of the company,
and I'm happy, all right. But prior to that, it
(24:58):
was only a cash So once I learned that, I said, oh,
there's other compensation models out here. Let me learn them
all and let me go talk to other founders. And
the biggest piece of this equation was just being inspirational
EI enough that people want to follow you and they'll say, yo, like,
(25:18):
I like what you are doing, even though you can't
afford me. I am down to a ride for the cause.
But also as a founder, comprehending that when you get
to a point that you want to uplift them to
One of the things I'm extremely proud about is that
we always I figure out ways on how to subport
(25:41):
each other in the company, you know, like we worked
with Italian Twine right now, the co founder of Italian
Twine came on as our COO. When we got to
a point where we can afford a custom watch order,
what do we do? We've turned around and spent a
lot of money out a bunch of custom watches from
(26:03):
Italian Twine, which our audience loved, and that is just
one example of like, this is a person who we
couldn't afford, so we had to get inspirational. Yes we
still pay to them, but not at a market rate.
But then we made the sure when we got to
a place that we can send the money back down
(26:24):
or like they say, send the elevator back down. Said,
I had great hopping down.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You know, no, that's dope, man.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Now again you kind of touch on things like equity,
like it's understanding you're you're.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The bootstrap this business, so you strap baby.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
And that's that's that's another accomplishment too, because again I
think a lot of times we you know, glorify going
out and raising money.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I'm sure to come out and we do.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But obviously, you know you've retained that because you have
a bigger idea and a bigger vision in mind.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. And I like to give credit to
my uh I CEO at the time of a Melchum.
He was a founder and CEO, which is a ben
a chestnut. He's a close mentor of a minds. It's
I joke all the time. It helps when you know
you got a close mentor who is worth twenty plus
(27:16):
a billion. You're like hey, man, like, what would you
do right now? You know, because you've obviously been there
and you're a multi a billionaire, right, but he always
showed that, hey, you don't got a handout equity, but
you do got to understand how to be inspirational towards
other folks and help them along the way too, same
(27:40):
way he's helping me now.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, now, and as your growth again, you talk about
bootstrapping and growing a business. Obviously you can't do this
without money. One of the things is always amazing you
know that I've always see advendor is you know, not
only do y'all have the conference, but you're kind of
have like this whole kind of like talent and trade
show element on top of like the music element too, right,
Like how did y'all go about finding you know, brands
(28:03):
and sponsors that want to actually you know, partner with
render in the early days.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, so in the early days, we were all thinking
about how do we do heavy talent of recruiting and whatnot?
Not until I talk to are you actually and you
were like, yo, trade show, that's what we need to
do next? I said, interesting, actually three, but yeah, like
(28:29):
we had maybe a one or two, a minute convo
about trade shows, and I was like, damn, that's a
good point. I never even I thought about trade shows.
And that's when things change from just being a talent
acquisition conference. So like you could come here a demo
what's happening at your company and do a b to
(28:52):
be a sales at the conference now, which is a
huge a portion of our business now of a growing
the company, is that be to be a element. How
were going about getting those partners, honestly, is just hand
to hand to combat. I tell you all the time.
It was me in the early days waking up at
(29:14):
a four am sending out emails coldly saying, hey, come
to my conference. I want you to give me five
a thousand, ten a thousand at the time, right, and
I guarantee you this is what's going to happen. The
great thing is that when you do a good business
(29:35):
like that, people go and tell others, hey, you should
go check this out. And that's honestly what happened was
we just made sure we did a right by everybody
early on, and we currently do too. Just to be clear,
like our number one mission here is all about customer
status faction, both for partners and attendees, but make sure
(30:00):
that people, whether you're an attendee or a partner, have
a good time and you get the ROI too, which
and now will justify you coming back a year over
a year.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
One of the things that y'all do is also I've
noticed it's also you know, like interesting and I'm sure
it's helpful. Is you also take all that information, all
that data, all the insights and people that have come out,
and you all put together like a what you kind
of call like an economic impact report? Yes, like what
kind of gave you that inspiration? And also how has
that helped y'all grow the business?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Oh man, that's a great question. So I was on
Instagram on one day and on ig they had an
impact report from a non profit and completely for I
get the name right now right, And I was like,
this is really cool. I'm not a non a profit though,
but it gives you a lot of sights into what
(31:01):
the company has are done and with the company is going.
And it kind of evinced me that I should probably donate, right,
I said, if that thing could get their point in
their vision across to me that quickly, why the hell
can I do this too? I don't. I think there's
some a law out there that claims economic impact report
(31:22):
can only be made for non profits. That's a great
thing that you learn becoming a entre repreneur that this
whole concept of rules really doesn't exist. I mean, we
can even talk about how Trump is in the White
House right now as a feeling, you know, like we
(31:42):
could go down this road that once you open your
eyes to this whole concept of rules doesn't exist, You're like, oh,
we could get a money all day, every single day.
It's just all about what innovative way can you go
about doing it right? So the Economic Impact a Report
came from that concept of like, yo, it works for others,
(32:06):
I'm gonna apply it here and we're gonna see what happened.
We caught lightning in a damn bottle because we were
the first a tech conference to actually do that, and
other people now copy that. I mean it's crazy just
to like watch them copy it, just to be real,
but yeah, we were the first ones, and it gave
(32:27):
a partner's confidence of like, Wow, this is what they're
trying to do. Isn't just about aligning their own pockets.
It's about atl growing as a whole and my an
investment into a render is gonna help that. You know,
anytime a person partners, we don't call them a partner,
(32:48):
We call them a a family, a member, And when
we take their money, we say thank you for your investment.
So now it makes them feel like, wow, like I
really invested in this thing beyond just the conference.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, I mean and again at the end of the
day two.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It also helps make their job easier because those people
internally have to go in and justify like why they're
spending money and why they're doing things, especially if things
get tight the economy gets tighter, right, So to even
just have an asset, you know, on top of whatever
reporting that they get back, but an additional asset that says, long,
here's an actual report that it shows the impact. It
(33:26):
makes that person's job easier to help, you know, clear
clear things out, to get funds allocated and open up
new opportunities. So strategically that probably helps, you know, check
a lot of boxes, you know, and also too, like
as you all have grown, like you know, another thing
that y'all do a lot of is events outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
We do a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
What's the reasy what's the reason behind that?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Man, again, you want the real answer or the a
PR answer.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know, let's do both. How about that, let's do
both well.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
The a PR answer is that we wanted to spread
technology to the entire world and just we want people
everywhere to feel the impact of our growing brand. The
actual answer was, we just made a boatload of money
in twenty twenty one. A boatload is kind of a
relative just get clear, right, And I was like, wow, hey, y'all,
(34:15):
what should we do next? And folks were like, I
don't know, And I said, what's coming up around the
country And they said, oh, it is this ear event
called a Miami Art Aboso. And I said, let's just
go try it out. And that's how we ended up
doing our first off site activation was at the Aboso
(34:37):
and I said, this is pretty cool. Let's just keep
it like a going, and then we went from Aboso,
then we did south By, and then we just kept
doing more and more things, like we did a Miami
Tech Week or two, and people just enjoyed it. And
the reason why people enjoyed it was because at the time,
COVID just got done and there wasn't a lot of
(35:00):
groups outside. Yet thankfully Georgia never closed if you remember,
and wide open, We're wide open, so all of us
here we're like, yo, it is a prime time. Let's
go outside and let other people have a good time.
And that's honestly all it became as was like, let's
have a good time with the ego a system, and
(35:21):
I think that was what was the needed at the time. Honestly,
it was if I was at home for the last month,
the last month and a half, and now you're giving
me an outlet to come meet new folks, dance, have
a great time, that's all I need. Once we got
the people's attention, it then became into like a strategic
(35:42):
mission of like, Okay, we got their attention, now let's
add some education on top of it. Because at the
end of the day, Render likes to have a good time,
but I am dead serious about the educational value that
we want to add too. So that's when we started
doing things like come have a good time, but we're
gonna do is educational workshop, or were going to do
just educational a seminar, or we're gonna do this hardcore
(36:04):
hands on technical training at that same time, so it
just kind of morphed over time into what the people need.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I mean then again you also launch things like Atlanta
Tech Week, right, So like there's all these kind of
different extensions of the brand and different elements, right, and
partnerships y'all have done strategically to kind of just help,
you know, extend it out. I almost kind of think
about it like similar to how we do four L
four day, right, Like the start off as like a day,
but now it's kind of become a weekend and a
whole week to we kind of expand this thing and
(36:31):
make it more you know, make it again more year round,
and then even now to the point of, you know,
similar to how you all do events year round from
a four or four element, we have now the four
or four fund, yes, which allows us to now do
donations and activations and events kind of year round. So
it kind of comes that natural extension to keep it
top of mind for folks, because again, there's a moment
in time, but then there's you know, three hundred and
(36:51):
sixty other plus days of the year that you've got
to figure out how to keep people engaged.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Which is hard, which is really hard, right, Yeah, very hard.
I will never forget when I've felt a very down
on myself. I was like, yo, like, I don't think
I'm doing a good job. I don't think i'm building
the ecosystem well, not just here, but like everywhere or
there were at and I had one a person like
(37:14):
it's crazy how timing works right, And he was like, hey, man,
how are you? And I'm like, man, I'm doing good,
but here's how I feel. And he was like, I'm
gonna tell you, building a come up immunity is probably
the hardest thing to do because it's easy to build
a product, like you got the thing that you got
to build, and then you're done technically right, But building
(37:39):
a come immunity takes a lot of work because you
got to actually, like to your point, keep them constantly
engaged and there is no room for failure. If you
take off a month or two, they're gonna go gravitate elsewhere.
It's kind of like a sheep. You got to continuously
hurt them constantly. And if you're like, all right, I'm
(38:01):
gonna go on a PTO over here, they're like, well,
what about nothing else to do? We're just going to
gravitate over there now. And then you come back from
a paid time off and you're like, where the hell
am I sheep at? And you're like, oh, I can't leave.
Well that's crazy, you know what I mean? So yeah,
it's easily the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I think, all.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Right, where do you see render going? Like what's I
want to say the end game? Because I again, I
think this is something that's going to be around for
a while, but like over the next five to ten years,
Like how do you see render evolving as a conference
and even bigger than that?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
So our ultimate goal is to build a entire and
I hate to call it a tech week because if
we're already doing that, but truly build an entire tech
week out the entire city is thriving, the entire city
is active on it, and it becomes like a south
By almost where it's infused with that ato culture that
(38:57):
atl eqo, a system of we're all coming to gather here,
and I want it to be a destination that folks
are now lining up on their calendar every single year
like yo, I gotta go in June. Like I could
ask you right now, do you know what the dates
are for us to south By and your vibly, Like
(39:17):
I don't know, but you do know it's in a march.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
March.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, it's in the March. That's all you need to know.
And if anybody asks to hop on your calendar in March,
wait a minute, I gotta check to see and when
that's south by? Is I need that same exact headroom
for a render where it's like, yo, can we do
aning in June? Like, oh, I don't know our renders
happening in June. Let me see what's happening, or can
(39:42):
we do anyting in June? A whole atl technik is
happening in June. Let me see first, right, That's what
we owes we want to do is become that destination
that a brands people in the entire world wants to
come to you because obviously our airport can handle it.
She just fine, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Cool man, cool man. Well look man, this has been
a great conversation. Before we get out of here, one
thing I love to ask people is what's one piece
of advice, one lesson that you've learned that you would
share with somebody that wants to, you know, build a
conference or an experience.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Get don't build no competition.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Now, you know, if y'all want to play I'm telling
you right now, just don't play fair.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
So just be careful. Wow, you know, but just I
mean that's business man, yes there.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
But what piece of advice would give to somebody that
wanted to build a community, an experience a conference based
on what you've learned building render?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Well, there is a quote that I keep on talking about,
which is cowards. I had never start and a week
die along the away. And yes, that sounds a brutal,
but it's true though that if you have a dream,
if you have a vision, the hardest thing, like eighty
(40:57):
to ninety percent the hard work, just even trying. Yeah,
and not just that one time, like you and I
I've been on calls around like y'all, I have a
dream of doing blah blah blah something else crazy and
half y'all like, hell no, that sounds crazy. And then
I got like, all right, cool, we're gonna do it.
And that takes a guts, that takes a curt So
(41:20):
cowards I never even try. In along though, away you'll
encounter people who just quit, you know, and they're like yo,
like you can't quit just because it's not a going
You're away, right, now it's it's sometimes you just gotta
a pivot or you gotta just open your eyes and see, Okay,
I tried x y Z. Let me go try QRS next. Right,
So internalize that quote, but also understand like what Nelson
(41:42):
Mandella said it, which is everything seems impossible until it's finished,
you know, and think back to the time that you
were in a college and you're like, man, I'm never
gonna graduate, Like I'm trying to take this class. This
is one thing done and you're like graduation. They come,
You're like, whoa, I'm here. You're having like an out
(42:04):
of a body ex periods of the time you're like,
I actually I finished it. And that goes back to
the quote that everything seems impossible until it's actually I've finished,
and you at home can also do it too. It's
a long win. They answer to say, you just gotta
do the damn a thing and learn learn why you
(42:24):
are doing it. Why I began a render has transformed
many different ways, you know, in terms of like my
why along the way it changes, you know, which is okay.
I think people think that it got to be the
same thing constantly. Know. Only thing that's ever guaranteed in
life is a change changes, it's guarantee, and be okay
(42:47):
with that, you know, learn from those at home that
you're trying.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
To serve absolutely absolutely Before we got out of here,
justin where can people, you know get more information about render? Know,
y'all it's not renderfested com. I'll not talk.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Actually we should have owned that. We own that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Well, get I'm four for four okay, so but but again,
give them the official website.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
How can they officially buy tickets? If not going to
renderfest dot com?
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Where can they get take some information about render or
get involved as a volunteer and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So d o official website is a render at L
dot com r E N d E R a t
L dot com. You can also go to a render
fess dot com and it will also take you there too.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are on all social platforms. Render
at L on all social platforms, including a blue sky
(43:41):
if I call that out. If you want to learn
more about a t L a techweek, just go to
a t L dot tech. Yes, that is the entire
website a t L dot tech Use that website. I
pay a lot of money for that website. You know
how domains work, You're like, whoa you you own a
three her name? Yeah, spend a lot of money on there.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Put some dollars behind that ape.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
So yeah. If you want to learn more about atl
Tech Week, atl dot tech or at the Atlanta Tech
Week is on all our social platforms, including a blue
Sky again.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
For sure, Man, well justin Man, appreciate you coming out.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Glad you got a chance to talk on the pod,
share a background, and also glad for you to document
that I'm four for four because I try to tell
y'all I know.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
What I'm talking about. And with that said, we out.
That's the pod.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You've been listening to buttteron Nomics and no im your
hosts Brandon Butler, got comments, feedback? Want to be on
the show, send us an email today at hello at
butternomics dot com. Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia
at iHeartMedia by Ksey Pegram with marketing support fro Queen
and Nikki music provided by mister Hanky. If you haven't
already hit that subscribe button, then never missed an episode
and be sure to follow us on all our social
(44:52):
platforms at butter dot ATL. Listen to Better Nomics on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Out out
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Thump
Host
Brandon Butler
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