Ep #48 Pegasus - The Horse Show Software

Ep #48 Pegasus - The horse show software for all horse shows and horse business everywhere. Sam Baynes- CEO and master mind behind this great global product shares his pain, vision, pressure points, and now service to the horse industry. Join us for an outstanding conversation as we traverse the industry and discuss inflection points discovered.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Cowboy Office Show where you'll experience
expert analysis and epic discussion on key pillars of the
equine industry including sports, business, hobby and the
horse lifestyle. Your Co hosts are Jodi Brainerd
and Brian Dyker, industry veterans with over 120 years
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(00:20):
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(00:41):
Well, hello, horse world. As Teddy Roosevelt said, the man
that gets the credits, a man in the arena whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood, strives valiantly.
Heirs who come short again and again, but because there is no
effort without error and shortcoming.
But who does actually strive to do the deeds?

(01:03):
Who knows? Great enthusiasms, great
devotions, who spends himself ina worthy cause?
We have the man in the arena getting dirty right now, so we
want to welcome him. Jody, I'll take care of it in a
minute. But we have the folks that are
here that have developed the software management system for
the entire horse show industry. Going to be a fascinating

(01:26):
conversation in the world of wanting digital instant service,
which every one of us wants. The horse industry continues to
lag behind, so we're going to have a fascinating conversation
about what these folks have beendiscovering.
Go to cowboyoffice.com. Put your e-mail in.
Don't forget to click on the subscribe button.

(01:47):
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Polylast
Global. The bio secure footing built for
champions and made the last. Find them at polylastglobal.com.
Welcome to Cowboy office. I'm Brian.
And I'm Jody, we got a great guest today, Sam Baines.
Obviously Jen, the the woman behind this guy right here is

(02:08):
not is not able to be with us because she's tending to a new
young son that these two have had.
So congratulations, the people who are behind the software for
the show, folks. Pegasus good horse shows are
built from good people doing really hard work.
And this digital software hardware should be making our
wives way better. I promise you that it will.
And we want to welcome Sam. He's the innovator and the mover
behind Pegasus, the software local bass horse show industry

(02:32):
for both it's the Western and English disciplines, which I
think it's fascinating in itself.
So anyway, Sam, welcome. So happy to have you come back
of office. It's good to see you again.
So tell us you're 2 years into launching a software program
that nobody in the horse world has been able to solve yet.

(02:52):
I guess the big question is, areyou solving it?
And then we want to know all about.
The answer is yes, we're solvingit.
The long answer is it's been so far today, two years of pain.
Because when you try to build the piece of software that every
single horse show and every single discipline can use, you

(03:15):
inevitably run into so many challenges and issues.
And as a result, you're constantly just rushing to build
that one feature that that one horse show that signed up that's
in a discipline you haven't supported before needs that
feature. And 300 horses are arriving
tomorrow and we need it overnight.
And so inevitably puts you in a position where for the last two

(03:38):
years we've been very much running around with our pants on
fire, scrambling to basically serve our customers and given
the best experience we can. But the reason we're kind of
work here today is that those two years was basically our R&D
period. And we've just launched a
complete new rebuild of our software that took that two

(03:59):
years of pain, took that wisdom and then went into all the
design of the new software. And we've just released a new
software, which we're calling Pegasus OS, which hopefully
solves all those problems that for the last two years we've
been managing. And we've been doing this in
more than one country. Yeah.
So the goal, the mission statement of the company

(04:20):
Pegasus, is that we want to build the operating system for
horse shows all around the world.
So the idea is that if you run an equestrian business and a
core part of that equestrian business is running horse shows,
running boarding operations, running an equestrian club, that
you can basically build your business on top of Pegasus and

(04:43):
know that everything will work. All of the integrations that you
need will be there. It's just seamless.
For so long in the equestrian industry, people go and create
software in the space. It's, for lack of a better term,
half assed. There's always like the call,
the call you have with the horseshoe software's always do
you do this, We don't do that, but here's a work around and

(05:05):
you're always compromising in some capacity.
And so as a result, I feel like we've been burned a lot of times
in using software to run horse shows and it's never been a
seamless perfect experience. So with Pegasus as an operating
system with all of that two years of experience built into
it, now we're hoping to create the first seamless experience

(05:26):
for horse shows, equestrian facilities, etcetera, so that
they can run their business withconfidence and at scale.
I hear you. The big question is the industry
is a significant good sized industry.
We know that, but we also know through history all of the
breeds and all the disciplines have gone down their own paths.

(05:48):
Every one of them has gone down,which is what you've now found
yourself in that network of mess.
And so the big question is how much pushback and how much
difficulty are you finding with all the regulatory functions?
Because from a horse, from a business standpoint, the issue
is regulators want to fine you and spank you every time.

(06:11):
Whatever it is, a three is A5 and A2 is a 7 and a whatever the
mistake is. And it used to be on paper,
which a lot of it still is, but we're working our way through
that. How much of the regulatory are
you hitting into? We basically launched the first
version of our software about two years ago today.

(06:33):
It took us two years to build that first piece of software.
Originally this is pre AI, right?
So coding was a lot slower back then.
Before we started building it, we spent a year doing R&D.
So we've basically been at this for five years to get to this
point today. Now over those five years, and
this is a long way of answering your question, over those five

(06:54):
years across the United States but also around the world, we've
put a lot of effort into meetingwith and working closely with a
lot of the regulatory bodies. So, you know, we now, me and
Jen, we live in Essex, CT, but we've just moved here from
Austin. The reason we lived in Austin
and we lived in Austin for the last few years was because we

(07:16):
wanted to be close to Fort Worthso that we had access to the
western regulatory bodies, right?
So we lived in Austin where we had access to tech talent and we
had access to venture capital tobasically build the company.
But we went up to Fort Worth once every one to two months and
we met with the different regulators up there.
And it wasn't because we were trying to like do a deal or

(07:37):
anything. It was because ultimately, no
matter how well we build this software.
And to your point, Brian, the top of the funnel is always
going to be, do my results go upto the regulatory body in a way
in which they're willing to accept it.
And if it doesn't, then everything else is moon.
Because as much as we can talk about this as being a horse show

(08:00):
business, at the end of the day,at the core of this entire
business is the horse. And for most, the horse is a
financial asset, and the value of that asset is determined by
the points that it gets. And the regulatory bodies are
the ones that basically officiate those points.
And so if your software does notcreate a system in which those

(08:23):
points are true and accurate in a way in which the governing
bodies will accept them and officiate them, then you are
doing everyone who competes in the horse shows a major
disservice by robbing them potentially of the opportunity
to peg the correct value to their animals in this sport.
So for that reason, we worked very closely with all of the

(08:44):
Western horse show associations to really understand, OK, why do
you guys do what you do? Why do you ask for these
details? Why have you set up the form
like this? What is your process from
transferring a horse from one person to another person?
What is the difference between abreed registry and a sport
affiliate association? What is the difference in how

(09:07):
you guys make your money in terms of membership dues versus,
you know, paying to basically transfer a horse from one person
to another? What is the software you're
using? What is the software you're
using to run the breed registry on the back end?
You've got to understand all of that so that you don't build a
piece of software that creates more problems than it solves,

(09:30):
right? Because ultimately, at the end
of the day, right, we're coming into this space and we're
saying, hey, we want to create apiece of software that
everyone's going to use. But by coming into the space, we
are absolutely without doubt, atsome point, we're going to
disrupt how some things are currently done.
And the moment you disrupt the way things are currently done,

(09:51):
someone's losing money because their business model might
disrupt it. The way that the regulatory
bodies ingest data might be disrupted.
And so if you don't understand all of that, you don't
understand the politics, you don't understand how the money
flows through the ecosystem, then you're inevitably going to
find yourself creating more enemies and allies.
And then ultimately you can havethe best intentions and the best

(10:13):
software in the world, but it it'll fail on launch because
there's people in the market whodon't want you to succeed.
So we to answer, it's a long wayof answering your question
saying we've done a lot of work with the regulators to make sure
that we understand it intimately.
I knew that there wasn't going to be a short answer, so that's
not a problem. I was, I was looking forward to
that, but I got one more big onethat goes with it because why go
global? It is because FEI is significant

(10:37):
in the upper level disciplines that you're, you got to service
them anyways. So then it's not that big a deal
to go global or why global as opposed?
To just in North America, we've been able to lose money for five
years because we have private investors like let's get down to
the raw tax of it. We've lost money for five years.
We've spent money for five years.
We've told investors this is going to be a very successful

(11:00):
company and we're going to basically give you outsized
returns over the long time horizon of the company.
And that requires going global. So coming back to the building
and designing software that works for every horse show.
If you build it to work for the US ecosystem and then you decide

(11:21):
to go global, you're going to run into all of these problems
that you didn't foresee because you didn't understand the
differences between the Americanmarket and the global market
from day one. And so by going global early in
the same way in which we ran varied disciplines to
understand, OK, where do they overlap, Where are they
different, We went international, national,

(11:43):
regional, club, club to club across the different nations so
that we could be like, OK, if you're going to design the one
piece of software that really works for every single horse
show around the world, this is how you need to design it.
And that's how we need to build it so that we could fulfill in
our promise to our investors, which was that we're going to go
global and we're going to be a very successful company at

(12:05):
scale. And so now so Pegasus OS.
Is correct. Yeah.
So the version one of our software which we've been
basically running for the last two years, it was very much like
this is AUSD currency product. Like when you sign up, all of
the prices were in USD. For example, with version two of

(12:26):
the software, when you go through and you create your
event, you select your currency.And so that means that a horse
show in Australia can sign up, they can select AUD,
everything's charged in AUD, allthe prices display in AUD and
they can go through and run the horse show.
A second part of it, which is like really the the massive
innovation in the new operating system is that we've built what

(12:48):
we call a scoring engine. And that scoring engine, which
hasn't been done anywhere in theEquestria industry before,
basically gives all of the horseshows, all of the configurations
they need to set up the scoring the way they want to set it up
rather than hard coding how thatscoring is going to work.
And say here is the NRHA reigning patent 7 like load

(13:12):
that, go for gold, right? The problem with that system, if
you want to deliver on the ambition of doing every horse
show and going global, is that now I'm in Australia and we have
an Australian Reigning Association and our pattern is a
little bit different Then now I as a company need to pay

(13:34):
engineers to go and code a scoring module for the
Australian Reigning Association.And inevitably, as every
equestrian association does, they change their patterns all
the time. And they changed their rules
because someone voted in a weirdrule at the annual general
meeting because they were upset about something that happened to

(13:54):
a show sort of in a show that year.
It becomes a completely untenable problem for me as a
company, which is the patterns are changing all around the
world at the different levels. And the clubs are like, yeah, we
do it that way, but we take these points and we make it 5432
points as opposed to, you know, 10864, right?
And so you create this untenableproblem, which is I have to

(14:17):
maintain an impossibly large library of scoring modules.
So with the scoring engine, we basically give you all of the
settings so that you can figure it to work the way you want it
to work. And then you can save those
settings as your scoring templates and then you can even
go as far as making them public.So what that means is, is we

(14:38):
might not have a scoring module for Reigning Pattern 7 with the
Australian Reigning Association,but someone in Australia created
it, saved it, made it public, named it as the National
Reigning Horse Association Pattern 7 and all the other
reigning shows in Australia can use it.
So it basically creates this like global scalable ecosystem

(14:59):
of systems that horse shows around the world can use to
basically run their horse shows exactly as they need to as per
their association's rules or their clubs desires essentially.
Yeah, it's good. For you guys.
It's been a, it's been a journey.
Yeah, and both Brian and I-1, we're we're chuckling, we're not

(15:20):
laughing at you. We're laughing with you because
we've been exposed to exactly that same set of problems for 40
years. So yeah, we, we, we totally get
it. The same brilliant solution.
It's, it's just been hard work that's made it happen, Sam.
So the horse show world's reasonably sized for a niche
industry, but if you put it all together, it's fragmented just

(15:40):
like you were talking about in today's market.
And it's fragmented anymore because of because of the club
level. Personally from a guy that's
grown up at club level and helped club level shows a lot of
times and there's still places for it.
I think you're liking it to kidsplaying T-ball or Little League
baseball and the the parents arecoaching because they can't

(16:00):
afford to go to a big horse show.
But Pegasus has that can help the club level shows also.
Is that what I'm understanding from you too?
I mean, yeah. Absolutely.
So the reason we call the operating system and I touched
on this at the start, which was that version one of our software
was event management software. Pegasus V2 or Pegasus OS is

(16:23):
designed for equestrian businesses and clubs to operate
as businesses and clubs. So for example, the difference
is, is that when you log into Pegasus OS, you basically have
your holding company and then underneath your holding company,
you have your three sub businessunits, right?
And it's very much designed to be built for business owners and

(16:44):
people with the end of the day, right?
You can run horse shows because you're passionate about the
community. You can run horse shows because
you're passionate about the business.
But if the numbers don't add up,you're not going to last very
long. And so at the end of the day,
someone has to be responsible for the money and the numbers
need to make sense. And so the way that we build
this is very much from the perspective of how do we help

(17:06):
entrepreneurs and business owners succeed in running horse
shows that they're sustainable so that they can increase their
net profits as a show, rather than just if you break even,
you're doing well as the as the mantra goes, right?
So coming back to your, coming back to your.
Which is 90% to go back to. Your question on the clouds,

(17:27):
right? So the way Pegasus OS is set up
is that when you set up sign up,you basically create your
holding company and underneath the holding company you have
three business units. You have your event management
business unit, you have your club membership business unit
and then you have your boarding operation business unit.
The idea being that if you are aclub, you might only use the
club and the events. If you are an equestrian

(17:49):
facility, you would use all three.
If you are just a boarding operation, you might just use
the boarding operation and use the event component for running
clinics on the side, etcetera. But between the three, three
business units, they share resources between them.
So if you have a boarding operation and that boarding
operation has your fixed store map that you use to rent out to

(18:11):
borders on a monthly basis, but only 50% of those stalls are
rented out at one point in time.When you go into your create
event form and you basically create your event and you build
out your store map for the show,you can act.
You can see that 50% of your inventory is available for rent
during the course of the show. And then you know you need to
sell and erect, erect and sell some temporary stalls to

(18:33):
basically fill out the demand. So the club memberships come
back to your question, Judy of clubs works the same.
So when you are a club, you basically create your club
profile. You can create your memberships
in there. So as a club, you might have an
annual membership and that can come with a membership number.
And then when you go create the events, you can basically add

(18:54):
that club membership as a required membership number to
participate in the event. And if someone doesn't have it,
then they can basically purchasethat membership as they go
through checkout to register forthe show.
So it becomes a really easy way for the clubs to sell their
memberships and sell those membership fees because it's
part of the registration processfor the show.

(19:15):
Taking that one step further, once you get into the clubhouse,
you build out your leaderboards so you might track into
viewpoints over the course of the season.
And at the end of the year you're going to have an awards
night and give away a prize money to the Champions, for
example, from the club. Well, all of the people who have
one of your memberships that you've sold, or you can give it

(19:36):
free but sell it. All of them who have competed in
your events or any horse show out there that has used your
same membership as part of theirshows.
Those results are pulled into your clubhouse and into your
leaderboards so that you can then track those results and
build those leaderboards across the course of the year.
And the reason that's really valuable besides just the

(19:58):
leaderboard component is if you are a club and you have, let's
say for example, you're a club and you run 2 shows a year
yourself, but you have three other show management
organizations that want to run shows and contribute the results
from those shows to your club leaderboard.
Well, rather than having to juste-mail you an export of the

(20:20):
results, and then you take thoseresults and then you manually
update your Excel spreadsheet totrack points over the year, when
they create their event on Pegasus, they just find your
membership, make it a requirement for people
registering for their show, and then when people go through and
register, those results will automatically feed into your
clubhouse and your leaderboards because it's part of your
membership. So it's, it does require the

(20:43):
ecosystem to get on board, but once the ecosystem is on board,
it just creates this really efficient way for all the
different stakeholders to work together and cross sell things
so that everyone succeeds. And then for the riders and the
trainers and the owners, all of a sudden all of the data, all of
the event history, all of their payments, all of their

(21:04):
paperwork, it's all in one placeand they don't need to go to a
million different places to findall the events they want to
participate in. Right and or and or process it.
So yeah, it sounds like you right on.
So what's the hurdle with you'rethere, you're there, you figured

(21:24):
out the hard stuff, you're there.
Now you got to get it out to thehorse show world and that's a
whole different story because all those wheels.
Yeah. Well, I mean, so a couple
different things. So getting it out, how do we do
sales and how do we get people to know about it?
There's many different ways you can tackle this.

(21:44):
One is we work hard to essentially make sure that we
rank on Google and rank on LLM. So when people type in new horse
show software, we come up as a suggestion.
So we work hard to optimize for that.
We work with, we cold call and e-mail, you know, equestrian
shows and facilities and just reach out to them being like,

(22:05):
hey, are you interested in joining here?
Do you want to do a demo, etcetera.
We also partner with facilities.So a question of facilities if
you're listening to this. So one of the key parts of our
platform that hasn't existed in the horseshoe world before, it's
quite it's quite typical featurein a lot of other software out
there that we use on a daily basis, but it basically has like

(22:26):
full permissions built into it. So if you are, if you're a
holding company, you can basically invite staff members,
they create their Pegasus account and they can join your
business account and they can log in and help you run shows,
they can run the club, all that sort of stuff.
And you can basically segment them out to be like this
person's part of my boarding operations business, this
person's part of my events business, this person's part of

(22:48):
the parent company, so they haveaccess to everything, etcetera.
The real value in that is if youif you basically step back and
Brian, I learned this and this is something we've developed as
a result of your invitation to join the league.
When I went to the league symposium in this year, I
basically I was there for one purpose, one purpose only.
That was just to sit back and belike, I want to learn about how

(23:11):
the equestrian facilities are thinking about their
relationship with horse shows because their customers also my
customer. That's right.
And what are the problems yet sets the facilities have?
And one of the key things that came out of it was that for
facilities, if I rent my show, my facility out to a show
producer and then that show producer hires a secretary as a

(23:35):
contractor and then that secretary goes and uses whatever
software they want to use to runthat horse show.
And a lot and less of the time in the Western world, you know,
that's Windows for horses and that software has to be
downloaded onto APC and that is owned by the secretary.

(23:55):
Then me as the facility, I'm twopeople removed from the person
who knows how many entries you have, how many horses are
coming, how many bags of feed, how many bags of shavings do I
need to have on property. And so the facilities often find
themselves beg borrowing and stealing, trying to get live
data so that they can plan theirlogistics to support the show,

(24:15):
right. Well, with our system, because
of the permission structure, they can basically just create
their accounts. The show producer can just add
them to the event. And then the facility staff can
just log in, see all the real time data.
They can see the stalls come in,they can see the feed, the
bedding, the etcetera. And so all of a sudden they can
plan everything up-to-the-minutewith real time accuracy and

(24:37):
coordinate without having to bother the show producer and
bother the thing and it doesn't cost them anything to do it.
And so to answer your question of like how we're getting out
there, we're also partnering with facilities and we're
saying, hey, like if your shows use Pegasus, then you're going
to get all of this value and it doesn't cost you anything.
So, you know, are you open to recommending us to some of your

(24:58):
show producers is another way that we've been reaching out to
shows. Good, good.
Yes, I hear you loud and clear. That disconnect, that disconnect
in the digital world between thefacility and show management
huge. And if, if Pegasus can help with
that one, because anyways, yes, you you've already learned those

(25:20):
lessons. But I would bring in one more
piece because bio security is got the the more mobile this
industry continues to get, the more we're going to have to be
responsible because of equine disease.
And so being able to track wherewe are and who's where and when
and all that kind of stuff, I think is going to be even more

(25:40):
important, which you're then going to be right on the front
line of being able to. Yeah, absolutely.
And what are the new features ofPegasus OS is that I mentioned
it briefly earlier, but we have a full stable management
component, right? Where you can basically build
out your store maps and your facility maps and you can click

(26:01):
and drag horses to different stalls.
You can build out your RV maps and assign people to RV spots on
property and all that sort of stuff.
Anyway, the reason I bring that up is as part of that system is
that when people go to register for the show and they buy a
store, they can basically say I'm buying the store for the
full show. I'm buying a store for these two

(26:22):
of the three days and they literally pick the dates, right?
As opposed to just basically saying 2 stalls.
And then someone with a spreadsheet figures out how
we're going to have this horse is in these stalls for these
first two days and then they move out and then this horse
moves in, right? And So what that means is that
when you go to the interface to look at the stalls, you can see

(26:43):
that this horse is in this stallthat checks out at midday.
Then this horse is basically moving in which gives you a live
activity feed of which horses were interacting, which horses
were on the property on the samedays versus which horses weren't
on the same properties at the same days.
So it goes a long way to providing the insights as to

(27:04):
which horses have been contaminated, if there's like a
herpes outbreak, which horses were there, which horses weren't
there, which horses would need to track down, were they in the
same stables, were they not in the same stables, etcetera.
So it's not a perfect system, but it gives you all the data
you need. That if you then went and
basically exported that data into a spreadsheet and dropped
it in like quote or ChatGPT and said, build out a model that

(27:27):
tells me which horses interactedand which horses didn't.
And you could also take the scheduling data, show me which
horses were scheduled in rings on the same days or nearby rings
on the same days and the same stalls, et cetera.
And then the AI could go throughand basically map out, these are
the horses that overlapped, these are the horses that
didn't, these are the high valuetargets we need to track down

(27:49):
immediately, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Which I was gonna that when you were talking about coding and
that whole thing and having the engineers, I'm assuming that AI
is helping you out quite a bit is that?
Yes and no. So do my do my engineers all use
AI to improve their coding ability and for me as a business

(28:12):
owner to get more blood out of the stone for lack of a better
term, like absolutely. But at the end of the day, and
this comes back to what I said earlier, which is that at the
end of the day, horses are for many financial assets and the
scores are tandemount to the value of the asset and you can't

(28:33):
screw that up exactly. So we're very mindful of that.
So it's like, yes, we will use AI to increase our ability to
code, but we definitely will notvibe code any of our scoring or
any of our modules because what's going to what's
inevitably going to happen, right is like I, and I said this
over the last kind of, so we started rebuilding our software

(28:53):
12 months ago and we've just released the new version.
And I knew I was said it at the time, I was like, I'm the last
idiot who's going to pay full price for software because I was
building, I had to rebuild it. I had to start.
Then the AI coding wasn't up to scratch yet, right?
Because it just wasn't reliable enough for coding.
It's only really become really good at coding in probably the

(29:15):
last 4-5 months. So I knew I was going to pay
full price for software, whereasnow, you know, every kid who's
there's going to be a 15 year old kid whose dad does raining
and goes, oh, I can build something for you.
And he's going to vibe code something up from on like one of
these AI coding platforms and deploy it.
And so inevitably what's going to happen is, is we're going to,

(29:37):
but as a company, we're going tobutt up against this problem,
which is like people saying, well, my son can just vibe code
something and we're going to usethat.
The danger in that is that yes, but does do they know how it's
calculating the results? Do they have belief that there's
integrity in the records and that is where the risk is?

(29:59):
So there is going to be, I thinkwe'll ultimately see a lot more
vibe coded apps coming into the market.
I would just say, and you know, obviously I'm biased saying this
because I'm in this market, but what I would say when it comes
to event management software specifically, I'd be very wary
of it because you need that integrity of data to make sure

(30:19):
it goes true. Yeah, the integrity to records
is the key to the whole thing, which is why the regulatory
associations are as anal as theyget.
Because in in in the records is one piece because that's coming
from competition. But before we could verify DNA,
it was parentage. So that lineage and that

(30:41):
verification. But again, it comes back to that
same denominator which is integrity to records, which is
what it's. All And you and, you know,
ultimately it is all about the horse.
And you know, we all do for the horse.
Yeah, but the horses cost money and people train horses and sell
horses and it's part of a business at the end of the day.

(31:01):
Like there is a huge business element to this.
And a horse's result equal to a horse's value, if you're trying
to resell it or you're trying tobreed it.
And if you don't protect, if youdon't do everything you can to
make sure those results are trueand valid, then you are messing
with a lot of people's livelihood.
And this is tale as old as time.There are lawsuits all the time

(31:24):
over these sorts of things because of that exact reason,
right? I I got you right on.
Absolutely, Yeah. You have put so much thought
into this. It's crazy.
I I have a million, I have a million questions already and
I'm like one of my one of my bigones now.
It's like Brian is like I'm thinking that there's a spot
here to use in our officiating, in the score keeping, you know

(31:48):
what I mean? Even though it has nothing, you
know, with the with the horse show, with our our judges,
right, yes, because all the record keeping that you're
doing, I mean, you know what thescores that come in over and
over and over again. It's like, I think that's a good
help, right. So anyway, Sam, you'd be the one
to answer that question. Is there?
Is there absolutely for? That so the so with version one

(32:11):
of our software, one of the major pain points that we had
was that from the very beginningwe were like every single
person, whether you are a a guardian, a miner, a rider, a
trainer, an owner, a volunteer show secretary, a judge, you all

(32:31):
need to have a profile you need to have a human profile and then
same for the horses every singlehorse needs to have a profile.
Now that created a world of painfor us because the way horse
shows are run, they're so chaotic and there's so many last
minute changes. And to participate in a

(32:54):
competition is also to be attached to your bill, right?
I'm competing in a class. If I scratch this class, then
I'm also theoretically like applying for a refund on my bill
for that product that I purchased, that item that I
purchased. And so if I scratch your class,

(33:14):
do I automatically apply a refund?
If I refund your your line item,do you automatically get
scratched from the class? If I, if I do that and I scratch
you from the class, does my scheduling just go to ship?
Because now you've been scratched out of the schedule
and everyone's times have automatically updated And like
does the announcer? No.
And it's just like it's so interconnected that typically

(33:38):
what you find is the majority ofpeople who build horseshoe
software, they keep entries and they keep show management as two
separate pieces of software. So you'll basically enter, they
will take that entry data, they'll export it into a
spreadsheet, and they'll import that spreadsheet into a
management system. And what that technically does
is, is it means that my horse's name and my name aren't tied to

(34:01):
a profile. Now I'm just empty text in a
text field, right? I guess the person's name.
Now that makes it really, reallyeasy to run a horse show because
oh, this person's scratched likehighlight name, delete, right?
Like it's like, great, there's no ramifications.
It's not like delete now bills being triggered, which means
refunds being triggered, which means schedule's being updated.
Like it doesn't have all those second, third, 4th order

(34:24):
ramifications. And so they typically keep it
separate. But we were like, no, from the
very beginning we were like, we need to figure out how do we do
this with profiles and how do wefigure out how to put up gates
for all those automations in a way that works?
What that allows us to do is it means that a horse's profile can

(34:45):
enrich over time. So if I am a horse and I
basically have a profile built on Pegasus when I'm two years of
age or one year of age in my first schooling show, right then
someone sells me in our software.
You can go into the horse's profile, you can click transfer
profile and that'll transfer that horse from 1 profile to the

(35:07):
next profile. So when the next person who
imports, who gets that horse, they don't go in and go create
new horse profile, start again. Instead that horse transfers to
the next person. It's already here.
So the entire competition here, the entire veterinary history
goes with them and it continues to enrich and enrich and enrich
over time. What that basically does is, and

(35:28):
the reason that's so powerful besides the obvious, is that if
you go look at all of the data out there on competitions that
you get from the different breedregistries and you get from the
regulatory bodies, they typically only record license
competition data, which means all of the schooling data for
all the shows as they come up through the ranks exists on

(35:51):
spreadsheets saved on desktops or laptops, right somewhere
else. Somewhere else or it's hearsay
or it's or it's hearsay. It's extracurricular activity.
Nobody's got X, Nobody's got allthe activity.
That's what you. Yeah.
So because our software runs allhorse shows from clinics through
to backyard rodeos to licensed and unlicensed and schooling

(36:12):
shows and that horse's profile can transfer from user to user
and enrich over time. Now you can see that entire that
horse's entire competition history, even in the non
licensed events where that data isn't captured.
And that can unlocks a whole world of opportunity and value.
If you are a horse agent and you're like, I'm trying to find

(36:33):
horses that are absolutely killing it, that haven't been
discovered yet. They haven't broken through at
the license competition level. I can go through Pegasus and I
can find horses that have only participated in schooling shows
but have got great results and great veterinary records.
And now you can find diamonds inthe rough before the market
discovers them. Stuff like that Which?
The answer to that, Jody is that's what he's talking about

(36:55):
when he talks about what we're collecting on data, which is on
scoring because if does anybody have that the answer to no, but
he does and if I'm is doing that.
If I'm a show manager, one of the first things that I'm going
to look at is my officials profile.
That's what I would be interested in because that's as

(37:16):
important as anything in the world because my officiating
crew needs to be as good as I can possibly hire.
And if I have profile of officials, which we do not have
anywhere, it it would it would benefit me as a show manager.
So I don't want to throw a chainon the car picker, but I mean.
That's a. That's something else to think
about. Well, he does contracts.

(37:38):
Right. So I mean, if I'm a show
manager, can I do a? Contract for us, I mean, you
guys mentioned earlier at the start of the show, like what's
our business model? So in full transparency, the way
we make money as a company is that we take a transaction fee
and all the transactions that come through the platform.
So we don't have any upfront cost.
There's no subscription fees, there's no download fees,

(37:58):
there's no customer support fees.
Basically we facilitate A transaction, we take a
percentage of that transaction, right.
What that means is that we have financially incentivized as a
company to bring as much of the horse show economy onto our
software and to basically help facilitate as many of those
transactions and make them as seamless as possible.

(38:18):
So one of the ideas that we wantto pursue in the not too distant
future, and I was at, where was,I was at the USDF United States
Massage Federation conference and I was at the AQHA
conference. And at those conferences I was
talking to judges and I was like, talk me through your

(38:38):
capacity as a judge. So how many shows are you
judging a year? Do you wish you had more jobs?
Are you judging as much as you could judge?
Or do you wish there was more jobs available?
And the, the, the, the grand majority of them were like, I'm
not getting as enough, enough jobs as I want.
Part of that is I just don't know.

(38:59):
People don't know about me. The other part of it, there's
stupid regulations in place, which means I can't judge this,
this and this competition. Therefore I'm very limited to
the amount of competitions I'm able to judge right?
Yeah, the key was stupid regulations.
And so, so yeah. And so if you are a judge and
you basically have your profile on Pegasus, one of the features

(39:19):
we want to move towards, and again, this comes into how we as
a company make money is we want to build the staff marketplace.
So if I'm running a show, I can say, search all the profiles
that are within a 250 mile radius, that is a judge with
this judging license, show me all of them.
And then you can basically see who those people are.

(39:42):
And you can basically DM them and be like, hey, I've got to
show, do you, are you available these dates?
Maybe you go one step further and the judges set their
available dates and you can see,are they available?
Are they not available? And then you can basically pay
them. We automate all the 1099
contract paperwork that goes through it in the back end.
And then you can basically hire that judge, add them to your

(40:02):
staff because of the permissionsthing.
They can log into your event, they can help judge the event
and all that sort of stuff. So that's that comes into the
staffing marketplace. But also the idea of I want to
see this judge's history. What other shows has this person
judged blah blah blah blah blah?But wouldn't the same be true

(40:24):
for the rest of show staff, whether you're a ring steward, a
barn manager or whatever, that that same?
If you don't know people, it'd be hard to.
Find it's a, it's, yeah, I mean it's for us.
And I, I talk about this a lot on LinkedIn, which is one of
the, so one of the big problems that we have in the equestrian
industry, and it's the same across English and Western

(40:46):
disciplines here in the US, is that because of regulatory
changes that have come in over time, a lot of the big shows are
gobbling up all the entries. And the smaller regional shows
are struggling to basically put on a show properly in a way that
they can sustain it. There's multiple problems. 1 is
they don't get enough entries. Another problem is they can't

(41:08):
find the staff, all that sort ofstuff.
So a big part of our, again, from a selfish perspective, if
the horse shows go away, we go away.
That's our business. So we have to find a way to
basically secure the ecosystem because like of any population
pyramid, if the small, the regional shows disappeared, then
the entry point into the sport disappears at the entry sport

(41:29):
and the entry point to the sportdisappears.
Then the talent funneling up to the big license events
disappears and the and the pyramid collapses like any
population pyramid. And so we have to basically
figure out how to secure the regional shows, make them more
affordable to run, make it easier for them to find staff.
And a large part of that is can you have a staff marketplace

(41:52):
where a young budding equestrianwho's like, never run a horse
show, don't know anyone in the area, but I know I can jump on
Pegasus. I know I can publish the event.
I know I can run it to spec. I know I can get all my
payments. I know I can check all my
coggins. And I know that I can find staff
and I can hire them and use them.

(42:13):
And all of a sudden regional shows up and running with no
experience, no operating costs, and and now you have an access
point for the local people in the area where typically you
wouldn't. Have and so how talk to me real
quick about change because you got a good I hear you on all
those points. But even from the local level to

(42:33):
the national level, they're doing things the way they're
doing it today, and they've got to be motivated to do it better,
more efficiently, more cost effective, which I hear
everything you're saying, but they got to get motivated
mentally to make that change. How much of what?
Do you say change? Do you mean like the big shows

(42:55):
changing or just like the industry changing?
Do it no doing it different I could take to it doesn't matter.
Pick a breed, pick a discipline and the heart of what any of
them are doing. You know, hundreds of horse
shows are happening, but they'rethey figured out all their
little Mickey Mouse ways of doing it and they've got to now

(43:17):
be educated that there is a better way to do it, which is
Pegasus. And so they've got to get
convinced. That's a better way.
There's two things. One is I think we're at an
inflection point in time, which is that there we are

(43:37):
increasingly seeing younger people start to come in and take
over from the old God. So a lot of people writing, a
lot of the secretaries, a lot ofthe show producers, they're over
the age of 606570, right? And they've been doing it for a
long period of time and they're getting to a point.

(43:58):
Exactly, you're looking. Exactly.
You're looking and so you're. Getting to a point where a lot
of them, even if they wanted to keep going, a lot of them are
like, I'm over this. Like I, I, I spent all day,
every day speaking to show managers and secretaries. 50% of
the secretaries I speak to have say to me.
I've been retrying. I've been trying to retire for

(44:18):
five years and they won't let me.
Every time I say, this is my final year, a horse show down
the road goes, oh, no, please come on, just just do one more
year. Just do my show.
Like I haven't got anyone else. Like, please do it.
And so they find themselves continuing to do this thing and,
and deal with all the pain. But my point is, is that like,
those people are finally at a point where they're like, no,

(44:39):
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm moving on. And when they move on,
typically, because it is a lot of work, the person who steps
into their shoes is usually a younger naive person who doesn't
understand what they're getting themselves into.
Because I'll have a crack. I can do it.
And then what happens is they go, they get handed like, here's
your here's your box of goodies to run this show.

(45:01):
And it's a piece of software from the 90s.
And young people like, I don't even know how to use this.
Like one, it only runs on APCI. Don't have APC like I have a Mac
and I have a tablet and I have asmartphone.
I don't want to go to Best Buy to buy a $250 PC just to use

(45:21):
this piece of software that I don't like and I don't know how
to use now I have to pay to keepusing this piece of software,
right. So the younger generation are
naturally, I think, encouraging that change because and I get, I
speak to them every day because they see they get, they're given
the package to run the show and no, no, no, no, no, I there's
got to be something better. And they get on Google and they

(45:43):
type in like new horseshoe software and they're desperate
to find something that one worksin the cloud 2, they can use
their Mac and three, just like has just like you, like they're
getting too technical, but like UX patents that makes sense to
them. Like the older software is
designed like software from the 90s, the 25, the 30 year old

(46:04):
today didn't learn to use that software.
So when they go to use it, they don't even know how to navigate
it because they've never seen software like that before,
right? And so they're just like from
the very beginning, there's all this friction and they're like,
no, I don't want to do that. And they start looking for
something new. So that's like .1 which is the
inflection point in the generation.
So it's the turn of the generation that's part of that.

(46:25):
So I'm going to ask you another big question, which is how can
we help you? Everything that you've just
alluded to on the power of what you've learned and now what
you've developed in a software Ithink is phenomenal.
So how? Can we help you?
Very simply, we've got one goal,one goal, right?
One goal, one goal only right now.
And that is just get show producers and people run clinics
to basically sign up and start running their horse shows in

(46:47):
Pegasus. I think this really is going to
be a case of just a snowball. Like you go to a horse show and
you're like, oh, that was like areally good experience.
What were you guys using? We were using Pegasus.
Oh, they check it out. The other thing is the the thing
about our software, which is relatively unique in the horse
show world too, is that it literally is like Facebook or

(47:09):
Airbnb. Like you go to the website, you
click sign up, you create your account, you click create event,
you publish the event and you'reoff to the races.
Because our business model is that transaction fee only and
there's no starting costs. That means that you don't need
to speak to us. You don't need to have a demo,
you don't need to be sign a contract.

(47:30):
Like you can literally just create an account, create an
event, publish it and get going.And so for us, it's just about
getting the word out and gettingpeople to know like, hey, there
is a new generation of software here.
You can sign up, you can start using it, and it'll just be a
better experience right now. That's great.
So so say I'm still the old fashioned way of thinking
because you get 2 old guys a lotof times if I'm helping a show

(47:53):
and I'm saying the Oklahoma Raining Horse Association or a
state association, a tri-state association, whatever.
And I say, you know what, we dida podcast with guys genius, and
this thing is so good and they're going to go oh it.
Who can they contact? Sure.
So one they can contact me. I'm happy for you guys.
Put my contact details out there.

(48:15):
I'll take the positive leads andI'll just deal with the bad, the
bad abuse that comes with it. That's OK.
Yeah, I'll take the bad. Absolute.
But I'm I'm just telling you, I mean, word of mouth is
everything still and but, but I mean, your enthusiasm speaks for
itself. I mean, after beating yourself
up for five years and especiallythe last two years to maintain
the level of enthusiasm that youhave and have created something

(48:37):
that's just good, people need totalk directly to you.
I mean, they'll watch this podcast, but if somebody wants
to sign up for a horse show, yeah, you're the guy.
I I mean, that's what is it. Optimism.
Or is it delirium? I don't know.
It might be a. Well, yeah, I don't know what
it. Is but it's working the one last

(48:57):
thing I want to circle back to with Brian was asking how do you
get people to change right. First and foremost, I'm a
business owner and I believe that at the core of horse shows
you need the finances need to make sense.
The thing that while the inflection point in the
generation is a big driving force.
The ultimate change here is if our software can cut your

(49:21):
operating costs in bringing new revenue streams and thus
increase your net profits as a horse show, which is what we aim
to do, all in a way that doesn'tprice gouge the riders by
increasing entry fees. That creates a financial
incentive for people to change. It doesn't matter if you're a
big show that's owned by privateequity and the private equity

(49:43):
firms squeezing you to increase the margins or whether you're a
small show that is like we run one, we run 2 shows a year.
We just need to figure out how to make enough money to make
this all worth it so we don't lose money and go into debt.
If you can achieve that, then you can get people to change.
And that's kind of how we approach it.
So everything we do is how do webring in new revenue streams and

(50:06):
how do we cut, cut operating costs so that horse shows can be
profitable. And once horse shows are
profitable, like this is Americaright where it's, it's always a
capitalist country in the world where there's a, if there's an
opportunity for the very middleman.
There are 20 middle men. That's that's what I've heard
about America. So if you can, if you can figure
out a way to make horse shows profitable in a way that don't

(50:28):
price gauge the riders, I have no doubt that there'll be a
whole new generation of equestrians coming into the
market who are like, I'm going to start my own show management
business as a 25 year old because I can make really good
money out of it. And especially in a time where
AI is destroying the job market and no one knows what careers
are safe, like being a horse show manager is a pretty

(50:50):
insulated career from the AI world.
And but there's an opportunity. I think that that one is a
that's a phenomenal statement. And the point is, if you study
history, is AI doing anything any different?
They said that when we, when a man went to the moon.
So I, I, I hear you. And we don't have to go down
that political path. It's an interesting thing that
when culture looks at things, AIis disrupting and it's making

(51:14):
and mandating change. That's the way I see it.
And it's, it's really up to how do we as people embrace it and
make our lives better. The point to I think that one of
the big things that the horse world misses is the lifestyle.
It's not just a job. If you want a career that you
can make money with and enjoy your life, I think that's where

(51:38):
horses as a huge thing and we can play with that in a zillion
ways. The big one that you're saying
though, and Jody and I have beenon this our entire life, the
horse industry has been very much known for spending wealth.
It has a hard time creating wealth and we could be right at
that inflection point. Not only are we turning a

(52:00):
generation, that's 100% true, but having an industry that
truly starts to generate positive net wealth as opposed
to just spending it, to me, that's one of the keys for
whatever the future is going to unfold.
Because instead of doing fewer, we would see more.

(52:21):
And we're seeing more in the economics, but we aren't seeing
more in the numbers yet. You're bringing high hope to an
old guy. Yeah, but we're talking the.
Same thing. I mean, yeah, too old, I think.
I mean, I'm talking my own book because Pegasus is our software
and it's a tool we've created todo this.
But I do genuinely believe that if you make it really, really

(52:42):
easy for young for not even not even young.
Honestly, a lot of the people I encourage to do this or older.
But a new people to basically start a horse show in the local
area to serve the local community in a way that keeps
their operating costs low and allows them to add new revenue
streams in a way that makes themsome net profit even if they

(53:03):
make like $2000. But if you're making $2000 and
your monthly income is 3 1/2 thousand dollars and you're
doing $2000 every second week, and you get to serve the local
community, that's good money. And that is that changes the
dynamics of your family's economic position substantially,
while also creating a feedback loop that allows the shows to

(53:26):
persist and continue and an entry point into the market for
new riders and all that sort of stuff.
To your point, like the thing I came into the equestrian
industry as an outsider and the thing that to this day continues
to baffle me. Yeah, I'm married.
I'm married. There's another guy who met a
horse girl. Now my whole life is horses.
I'm a I'm a victim. But the point is that baffles me

(53:46):
about the equation industry. It both baffles me and like,
amazes me is that the fact that this industry continues because
in most parts of it, everyone just seems to be losing money.
Like, like logic would tell you that this business should have
gone out of business decades if not centuries ago.

(54:07):
But it persists because of the soul of the sport, because of
the soul of the animal, because the pure love of the horse.
It's it's a primitive connectionthat can't be explained.
And because of that, everyone finds a way to just make it
happen. And it just persists on its own
volition, which is amazing. But I'm hoping that with our
software that we can get to a point that we can give that some

(54:29):
extra help and be like, and let's make sure that we create
affordable events that the show managers can use to make money
so that you've got that economicfeedback loop that allows more
regional shows to run and support the entire sport.
Think you just nailed it, yes. Yeah.
Absolutely. Such good stuff.

(54:53):
Well, Sam, we wish you the very best.
We've Jody and I have crossed paths with you now a couple
years ago when you started on this venture.
We are overly impressed that you're this far, very impressed
on everything that you've learned, but even more so on the
fact that you stuck with it and have a product that is now going
to serve the entire industry. I think that that's phenomenal

(55:16):
and not only here but you know, global, I think that that's very
cool and you might be a first when you get to that level.
So we wish you the very best. We're going to stay in touch
without a doubt. You got to let us know anytime
that we can be of any help, including things like the league

(55:36):
between us. We've been around for a while.
So remember to go to cowboyoffice.com, drop your
e-mail in. We want to thank Polylast
Global. That is an international bio
secure footing material for commercial facilities.
And so we'll talk about the two of you because you're both doing
some innovative stuff. But I think a big piece that you

(55:57):
just said, horses are good for people.
And in my view, we need an industry that does create
positive net worth, not just spend it.
And I think we might be on the precipitous of that.
And everybody talks about the American Horse Council's
economic impact study, but then it's just kind of left out
there. You're, you know, the horse show

(56:18):
industry is finally surpassed racing horses.
So we are significant and I I think you're on it.
We appreciate your time. Till the next time, enjoy the
ride. Sam, hey, thank you so much and
give our best to Jen and and that new one that you have too.
And we so appreciate it and genius.

(56:39):
I'm impressed and that takes a little something to do.
Thank you so much. And we're looking forward to see
you and talking to you again. You know, All right.
So appreciate it. Until the next time, stay in the
middle. Today's episode is brought to
you by 40 productions in cooperation with the Consultant
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thinking equine brands into the 21st century using digital

(57:00):
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