April 15, 2025 • 40 mins
Meet Brandon Davis, the college senior who's turning the collections industry on its head with his AI startup, Interval. While most of his classmates are polishing resumes and stressing over job applications, Brandon is running a growing tech company with multiple employees—all before graduation day.
Brandon's entrepreneurial journey began early, watching Shark Tank with his father and seeing ordinary people building extraordinary businesses. From selling fidget spinners to classmates to running a landscaping service as a teenager, his path to founding Interval was paved with the hustle that defines true entrepreneurs. After cycling through nearly 20 different startup ideas during a university incubator program, Brandon and his co-founder landed on a solution that businesses were actually willing to pay for: automated collections.
What makes Interval AI fascinating isn't just the technology—it's the problem it solves. Every business struggles with accounts receivable at some point, whether it's from expired credit cards, forgetful customers, or those deliberately avoiding payment. Traditional collection methods are expensive, inefficient, and frankly, nobody wants to make those awkward calls. Interval's AI automation tackles this universal pain point, delivering results at a fraction of the cost of human collection efforts.
Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Brandon's story is his perspective on risk. While conventional wisdom paints entrepreneurship as the risky path and traditional employment as secure, Brandon argues the opposite. In an economy where recent graduates might submit hundreds of job applications before landing a position, building your own business offers a different kind of security—one where you control your destiny rather than hoping to survive the next round of corporate layoffs.
Whether you're a seasoned business owner looking to improve cash flow or an aspiring entrepreneur searching for inspiration, Brandon's journey demonstrates that success comes to those willing to persist through failures and pivot until they find what works. Check out interval-ai.com to learn how AI might transform your collections process, or connect with Brandon through his podcast "Get Over Yourself" to follow his entrepreneurial journey.
How to connect with Brandon?
Website: https://getoveryourselfpodcast.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-over-yourself/id1586568369
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC03QFF2URssz6Q1awVk1FhQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dodgerdavis16/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-davis-bba062223/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getoveryourself_podcast/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast,
where we dive deep into theworld of entrepreneurship,
e-commerce and everything inbetween.
Today, we have a guest who'srevolutionizing the way
businesses harness AI to drivegrowth and efficiency.
Brandon Davis is the founder ofInterval AI, a company at the
(00:46):
cutting edge of artificialintelligence solutions designed
to help businesses make smarterdata-driven decisions.
With a background in machinelearning, automation and
analytics, brandon and his teamare helping companies unlock the
power of AI to optimize theiroperations, boost profitability
and stay ahead in anever-changing market.
(01:07):
In this episode, we'll breakdown how AI is transforming
e-commerce, what every businessowner should know about
integrating AI tools and howinterval AI is helping brands
scale like never before.
Whether you're an AI skeptic ora tech enthusiast, this is a
conversation packed withinsights you will not want to
(01:28):
miss.
So sit back, grab your coffeeand let's get into it.
Welcome to the show, brandon.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Hey, david, thanks for having me Very excited.
Podcast host to podcast, thisis going to be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Absolutely yeah, this is going to be great.
So, to get things started, canyou share with the audience a
little bit about your path inthe entrepreneurial world?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, so as I was thinking about hopping on
today's episode, I was likegetting a little preparation
done, thinking about where I cankind of steer the conversation,
Because you know somebody cantell their life story for,
hopefully, if you've lived asolid life for weeks and weeks
and weeks upon end.
So what I hope to share to allof you and the listeners out
(02:11):
there today is just very simpleinsights on how they could take
action and grow their business,even even in a minuscule way,
for the next 30 to 45 minuteshere.
So a little bit about mybackground.
I am a very young entrepreneur.
If you are watching today'sepisode on YouTube or Spotify or
anywhere else that you get yourepisodes, you can probably tell
(02:31):
I'm a lot younger than some ofthe guests that David has on
quite frequently.
So I am currently a senior,actually in college.
I've been working on Intervalfor the past two years now.
I've been working on intervalfor the past two years now, but
before we jumped into what we'redoing at interval, my entire
background was entrepreneurship.
I remember at a very, veryyoung age and once again
(02:54):
hindsight a lot of times when Imentioned that people go.
You still are young and I goabsolutely, but at a younger age
.
For myself here, my biggest wayI connected with my father
growing up.
If we weren't watching baseball, we were watching ABC Shark
Tank, and my dad was a superbusy guy but he instilled some
pretty solid values into myself,me and my siblings and one of
(03:16):
those values was always makingsure you got time with your
family members.
So despite how busy he mighthave been or how crazy sports in
school were for me back in theday, we always set aside time to
hang out with each other andone of those ways was watching
ABC Shark Tank.
So as we grew up, that was justmy absolute favorite show.
I had some family members whodabbled in entrepreneurship.
(03:40):
I had some sort of anassemblance of what it was, but
I loved that show because youget on and you'd see these
everyday citizens.
You could pass them in thegrocery store, you could see
them in your local churchcongregation what have you?
They seem just like everyday,ordinary people, but their
businesses were doingextraordinary things.
(04:00):
They were selling some sort ofproduct or service that was
actually resonating and helpingpeople in their lives.
Now, obviously, some businesseson Shark Tank are a little bit
more serious than others.
You have anything from softwarecompanies to toy companies, to
the next revolutionary pancakeand everything in between.
But I just remember at thatyoung age I would watch that
(04:21):
show and I'd look over my dadand I'd say I want to be just
like these guys.
And then he'd look over me andgo yeah, right, Go to law school
.
That was the path for me, Supersupportive, though, as I grew
up and kept watching ABC SharkTank, I knew that was my journey
, laid out in front of me from avery, very young age.
I didn't know what businessjourney was going to be yet, but
(04:41):
I knew I wanted to.
I wanted to take that, and sofast forward a couple of years.
Um, we started getting intothat maybe when I was in fifth
or sixth grade, so I'm fairlyyoung.
Um, fast forward a couple ofyears.
I hopped into every single funlittle widget you could possibly
sell to kids at school.
The fidget spinner era is whenI would go.
I had bulk order them on placeslike Alibaba or um at the time
(05:05):
Temu didn't exist.
But but products like that, um,I would bulk order them, go and
sell them at my local school,for when kids were supposed to
get lunch money from theirparents, they would end up using
it on on the dumb products thatI'd buy overseas.
Um, I'd been turned a little bitof a profit and it just kept
slowly ramping up to larger,bigger things until finally, my
(05:31):
junior year of high school, Ihad an old, beat up pickup truck
I'd saved up for and I had afriend with some landscaping
equipment.
So we decided in my small townof Hemet, California, we were
going to go door to door andstart selling our landscaping
services.
So we'd knock on a door, givethem the worst sales pitch
you've ever heard in your lifeway, undervalue our services.
But then we go cut their grass,edge their lawn, things like
that.
And even though we probablywere spending more money and
(05:52):
time on the gas powering thetruck and the vehicles to
actually cut the lawns, that wasthe moment that I truly
understood that I wanted to workfor my own dollar and not
necessarily have to rely onsomebody else to provide my
income.
And the rest is sort of history, up until where we're at today.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That's outstanding.
That's outstanding and I thinkit's really neat that you are a
student right now.
One thing that you know.
I look back on my collegeexperience and you'd sit in the
classroom and learn, but you hadto wait to apply it until you
may have internshipopportunities.
But I think the retention ratemust be a lot higher when you're
(06:34):
learning in the classroom andthen applying it.
Can you speak to that a littlebit?
What's it been like running abusiness when you're a student?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So I can go on a rant on this.
So you'll have to tell me herewhen you're a student, I, so I
can go on a rant on this.
So you'll have to tell me herewhen you're, when you're tired
of hearing it.
But I am a firm believer thatcolleges we typically know it is
going to be different in thenext 20 to 30 years.
And with most, most industries,they don't grow that quick and
in 20 or 30 years there isn't awhole lot of change.
When, when you have these forlack of a better term
(07:05):
bureaucracies, when you havethese organizations that have
been around for years and yearsand years, they are very, very
slow changing.
Same as, in business terms,when you have a company that's a
startup and they're moving very, very quickly.
There's constant changes,there's constant churn, there's
a million different things goingon, but as they get bigger and
more established, that's whenyou don't see change quite as
often and it's a lot more slowmoving.
(07:26):
In my opinion, college is goingto look different in the next
20 or 30 years, just with how,if you look at the trends, a lot
less young adults my age areactually going to college
because at the end of it, yousee so many people and I have
friends in this exact boat rightnow that are struggling finding
jobs.
I was recently talking with mywife, her cousin's husband.
(07:50):
We were at a family party andso we were going and he's
graduating from the sameuniversity as myself and I was
asking him what's your plan?
We graduate here in April, sowe're what?
Four weeks out from finishingup.
And I asked him what's yourplan after graduation?
And he had finally landed a jobfor Bank of America and I was
beyond excited for him.
(08:11):
He finally landed this and Iasked him how long did it take
you?
He's been applying to softwareengineering jobs for over a year
and a half now and he hasracked up over 500 different
applications that he did he putout into the world for trying to
land a job.
And I'll be at.
Software engineering right nowis a little bit more of a tough
industry to get a job in,especially entry-level software
(08:33):
engineering.
But moral of the story is it isvery difficult right now to put
your college degree worse orsomething, and I see that
firsthand as I'm working on mybusiness.
It's very interesting People.
People always assume oh, you'reworking on a startup.
That's a lot riskier than goingand taking that secure job.
But in my eyes, if I havefriends and people struggling to
(08:55):
go out and actually find theirquote unquote dream job
post-college, it makes me wonderwhat college is even providing
at that point where.
Going back to your point, david, you sit down in the classroom.
You learn lessons that yes,I've had amazing professors who
have taught me a lot, butthey're not always directly
applicable to what you're goingto go do in your actual life or
(09:16):
for career purposes, and so Ithink there's got to be some
sort of shift or, in thesemi-near future, as mentioned,
there's going to be quite ashift of what college is
actually providing for you.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I definitely agree with that.
I was actually just having aconversation with my wife.
There's a college savings plancalled the 529.
And we've been making regularcontributions for our kids my
oldest is five and so we've gotsome time but I really do think
that is going to change and it'sgoing to be interesting to see
(09:50):
how that pans out.
So final question on youreducation and your path what are
you doing following graduation?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, great question.
So this is one that at first,when people would ask me that
and say, where are you going towork after college, oh my
goodness, it drove me absolutelybonkers because, just like this
podcast promotes, everyoneexpected me to go and quote
unquote work for the man.
And and not too long ago Irealized no one was coming from
a place of malice.
(10:21):
That's the traditional paththat most people take
post-college.
It's all right, you go, yougive your four years, you go and
chase that degree, you work ashard as you can in school to get
those good grades and itliterally is just a game.
And you're applying.
What professors can I take thatare going to give me an easier
opportunity to get an A?
Who has the least amount oftests?
(10:41):
Is attendance required in theseclasses?
You're not playing the game of,hey, I'm coming to school to go
and learn.
You're playing the game of howcan I do this in the quickest,
cheapest and easiest waypossible, which is another rant.
I could go on for hours andhours on why I think college
needs to change, but on thatpoint, like most people do,
after you graduate, everyone Iknow in my, in my close family
(11:02):
or friends they say, all right,what's the plan after graduation
?
And these are people, onceagain, no malice, coming towards
them.
They know I've been working oninterval, they know interval is
going very well, but they stillexpect you to go and chase kind
of that quote, unquote, normal,normal route.
And when I tell them, oh,intervals, the plan where, we're
sticking with it, it's goinggreat.
There's always that littleglimmer in their eye where they
(11:22):
go I don't know what you'resigning up for.
And once again it goes back tothe principle that they feel
like the traditional job is asafer route.
And in my eyes, in today's world, with how fast things are
changing in the world of AI andhow crazy the atmosphere of
getting a job is right now.
I look at them and I don't saythis necessarily every single
(11:43):
time, depending on myrelationship with whoever is
asking, but I do tell them Itruly believe what I'm doing is
less risky than any of myfriends or anybody I know at
school right now who's going andgetting another job.
I know my path is secure for,let's say, absolutely Interval
fails.
We lost every single one of ourcustomers and we weren't able
(12:04):
to grow anymore for the nextthree and a half years.
I know that we're completelysafe and we can figure something
out, whereas you go and work anentry-level job.
You can go work for six months,company has some kind of
downsizing and you're goneimmediately.
So it really just depends oneveryone's situation.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But as for me, that's kind of the path, so it really
just depends on everyone'ssituation, but, as for me,
that's kind of the path.
You know.
It's interesting that you'retalking about risk.
I am a very risk-averseindividual and I went into
accounting a very risk-averseprofession and I went to work at
a CPA firm, traditionally veryrisk-averse All of these things
(12:39):
lined up with minimizing risk.
All of these things lined upwith minimizing risk, and during
(13:04):
the pandemic, some of mymentors, some of the managers,
people I looked up to, gotfurloughed or laid off and I had
an aha moment that, yes, it mayseem like a risk-averse
profession, but it is notwithout risk.
And and that was something thatprobably was one of the things
that led to firing man podcaststarting back in 2016 was, was
you know?
Thinking, oh, I, I'm safe, I'man accountant Like, and I've got
nothing to worry about, and soI think you've got a lot of
really really good thoughtsthere.
(13:26):
And your comments on the peoplenot having malice I think that
you're spot on there.
It's an unfamiliar territory.
Not many people go the routethat you're going.
However, I don't necessarilythink that means that you are
going a more risky route, and soyou're certainly in an industry
(13:48):
and this is I'm really excitedto talk to you about this.
That's booming with that beingAI, and so let's talk about you
know, from the inception, fromthe idea of interval AI to where
you're at today, what, what areyou doing with the company and
and where do you hope to take it?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Absolutely Um.
So it's kind of funny that youyou mentioned AI is kind of the
boom right now and it is every,every major company.
Anytime you watch a sportingevent, what are the?
What are the commercials thatare being shown?
Now it's either pharmaceuticalcommercials or, uh ai, these
massive companies are even evenadopting it fairly quickly,
which is quite unique, as, goingback to my, my recent point of,
(14:29):
usually these kind ofbusinesses move very slow but
they want to even jump on thistrain and I do find it
interesting.
Growing up I was, I was justpost the when I was watching
shark tank, as I mentioned.
I was just post the when I waswatching Shark Tank, as I
mentioned, I was just post thedot com bubble bursting and it
was very interesting, becausenow I kind of see some
similarities with AI, where it'salmost as as hype worthy or
(14:50):
buzz worthy and um, totallydifferent context in my opinion.
But it is interesting to seeand I understand it's kind of a
new fear that a lot of businessowners have.
But, um, in the-com burst, whenit burst, there was all
different types of businesseswho thought, just because you
were quote-unquote online, thatyou were going to make it and
that clearly was not the case.
(15:10):
We had plenty of businesses whoabsolutely crushed it,
succeeded or still around today,but at the same time, you have
plenty of businesses who, justbecause they were an online
business, everyone thought thatthey were going to be the next
billion dollar company.
And looking around, since AI isthe flashy words these days, I
find it pretty common, for youcan have the most simple product
(15:32):
on earth and throw AI at theend, and some people love it,
some people hate it.
That's not the true pointbehind it.
A true point behind it WithInterval specifically for anyone
out there listening who isn'tfamiliar with us basically what
we do is automate collections,first-party collections for
businesses.
So our goal is hey, if you havecustomers who are delinquent on
their payments, be that theircredit card expired, they forgot
(15:55):
, they didn't have the funds atthe time to pay, they're
outright trying to ghost you,whatever preface that would be,
we work with businesses to goand capture those funds back,
and so, when we were lookinginto getting Interval started,
as I mentioned, we're about twoyears old now and we saw this
opportunity within the AI spaceto build something.
(16:16):
But, as you probably see, onthese commercials and things
that pop up on LinkedIn andsocial media all the time.
There's pretty, fairly simplebusinesses.
You can build that with AIthese days, coding platforms
like Replet or Lovable or Boltor any of these ones where you
can get an early MVP out therevery, very quickly.
But that also means you couldhave a lot of competitors jump
in very quickly.
(16:36):
So our goal with Interval wasto make something that number
one businesses needed, like anybusiness, should focus on your
customers.
Number two, one that wasn'teasily replicable, even in this
age of AI.
And then number three, solvingsome sort of task that, yes, can
be done by a human to go outand figure out whatever it is,
but it can be done either Acheaper, b more efficiently or C
(16:59):
humans just don't like doing it.
And in our case, we hit allthree of those categories.
For an example, if you um in thee-commerce space, it's not
quite as common.
We work with some e-commercebrands and I know that's the
majority of podcast listenershere on this show um, we work
with some e-commerce brands whoalso work in wholesale um and
your reis, your dick sportinggoods, things like that, or your
(17:22):
local Ma and Pa surf shops,where they send out bulk orders
of their product to thesedifferent companies and those
people have typically like net30 or net 60 day terms to pay up
for whatever bulk products theyimported from your business,
and sometimes even those Ma andPa shops or these larger chains
don't pay on time.
So that's when people implementour software.
But on the case of collections,it's very common where, number
(17:45):
one, your employees don't wantto do it because, let's face it,
who wants to be the personhandling your customers to try
and get them to pay?
Number two, it costs a ton ofmoney to go out and collect from
these customers because, let'ssay, on the low end, you're
paying an employee $20 an hourthat's $20.
You're paying somebody everyhour to sit on the phone dialing
up a number, sending an emailthat has zero guarantee of
return, nor zero guarantee thatthe customer is even going to
(18:07):
reply, and then finally, onceagain, it's just something that
is very time consuming overalland so it could be improved on
the efficiency side.
So once we hit those 3 metricsand we started selling it to
different businesses, werecognized there was a huge need
for it.
At first we were trying to bevery industry focused.
Okay, what industry struggleswith accounts receivable the
(18:29):
most.
And when we first jumped in,that was our main focus.
What industry are we focusingon?
And as we got going a littlebit farther along the journey,
we recognized no, practicallyany business at some point in
their life if it gonna have acustomer profession.
And so now, to sum up, what I'mtrying to say here is, um, with
(18:51):
interval, we, we kind of workacross the industry with various
different companies, um, all inan effort once again just to
collect, uh, their past duebalances.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Outstanding, Outstanding.
I love that and it's veryspecific.
I like how you've defined yourniche and in terms of being in
collections.
Where did the idea come from?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah, this is the jankiest way.
Anyone who's listening who isworking on their next project.
I semi-recommend this idea.
It worked for us.
I haven't met anyone who'stried it, so if somebody does,
please email me and tell me ifit worked or not For us.
We were going and battlingthrough a couple different ideas
that we were working with.
There's this amazing program atmy university called Sandbox and
(19:38):
, as I mentioned a minute ago,I'm not the biggest believer in
college, but I am the mostabsolute stan of Sandbox.
Sandbox is basically thisincubator amongst various
universities across the US whereyou get college credit to work
on a tech startup.
So at the time, I went incompletely by myself, didn't
know my co-founder or anyoneelse who is now part of the
(19:59):
Interval team, and we gotcollege credit where I didn't
have to go to regular classesfor an entire year and I could
just work on my business.
Our professors were localbusiness owners, so they bring
in professionals of alldifferent kinds to come and
basically just give us lectureson how to grow a startup, and
that was our job.
We were expected to work 50 to60 hours a week on this startup,
(20:20):
not focus on your typical mathor science classes and just
grind it out.
So in this program, as you canexpect, it's a really
interesting concept because youhave these young college
students like myself going andtrying to solve pains for the
world.
And when you're starting abusiness, where's the first
place you always look, unlessyou had something kind of fall
into your lap, you're alwaysgoing to try and solve your own
(20:41):
pains first.
So we started with very, verysimple ideas.
I started working with my nowco-founder, um we, we went
through 20 something odd ideasbefore we landed on where we're
at today.
That actually obviously startedworking, um, but most of them
were focused around the collegestudent.
Right, we, uh we.
We built a platform we calledlecture fi at the time.
(21:02):
Very simple concept You'd getyour phone when you went into
your college lectures or anykind of meeting.
You'd press start recording andit would transcribe your
college lectures from what yourprofessor was saying so you
could pay attention in class andthen it would take notes for
you.
It creates study guides, makelittle practice quizzes.
Pretty, fairly simple concept.
We had a bunch of users on it.
(21:22):
But early on we learned crap.
College students aren't willingto pay anything, and so we made
the pivot and then we jumpedinto a platform we called Venue.
It was basically the Airbnb ofwedding venues.
And then we found out nobodywants to book a venue in the
middle of a weekday and liquorlicensing is very, very hard to
get across these.
So we jumped into a new one and, long story short, like I said,
(21:46):
we had 20 something odd ideasthat we had practiced for some
time until we eventually landedon interval.
We got our early customers very, very quickly, way easier than
it had to we had with otherideas that we were working on.
We got paying users quickerthan we ever had.
Our product was very janky whenit first was created, but
people were still willing to payfor it because the need was so
grand, and that's when we knewall right, this is the one, this
(22:09):
is what we've been waiting for,and that was, as mentioned,
about two years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
That's an outstanding story, and one of the things
that I love about that story isyou had a lot of things that you
tried first, and one of thethings that I love about that
story is you had a lot of thingsthat you tried first and,
instead of considering thosefailures, you pivoted, you took
what you learned from that andapplied it to the next one and
you said 20 ideas.
I think that's outstanding andreally a solid mindset for
(22:39):
entrepreneurship really a solidmindset for entrepreneurship.
And so now, as we sit here andrecord this, in March of 2025,
ai is a hot topic.
I mean, it's hard to talk to abusiness owner without AI coming
up in some form or fashion.
However, two years ago Iremember, probably about two
years ago I heard Lex Friedmantalk about it on a podcast and I
(23:02):
just I remember thinking likeand I love Lex Friedman, but I
remember thinking like he's kindof a nerd like this.
I don't know what artificialintelligence is, and so were you
guys.
You were early on the scenewith AI.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Somewhat early.
So if, if you look in, theselarge language models have been
around since the eighties,nineties, um, obviously back
then you didn't call it AI orartificial intelligence.
It was large language models.
At the end of the day, all itis is just algorithms.
It's it's math functions thatare determining what is the next
step on this prompt that I wasgiven on how to determine the
best outcome for for the answerUm, in some form or fashion,
(23:43):
that's obviously summed down ina very, very simple way.
But, um, the concept ofartificial intelligence has been
around for 30, 40 years now.
The real application where weknow it today maybe back around
2016,.
2017 is when companies startedunderstanding it a little bit
more, applying it into theirbusinesses, and then, I would
(24:05):
say, realistically, around 2020,maybe a little bit after the
pandemic, is where peoplestarted hearing about companies
like OpenAI, and there'sobviously other competitors that
people recognize.
But personally, I think thefirst time I had ever tried to
chat GBT was back in late 2020,during the pandemic time, or
2021, or right when it was kindof released to the public
(24:27):
whatever time frame that was.
So, relatively speaking, no, weweren't new into the AI space,
these large language models, weweren't new, but on the grander
scale we were in terms like youwere mentioning, where it was
still a newer concept.
It wasn't the buzzword.
But obviously nowadays, as Imentioned earlier, everyone
talks about AI in their businessin some form or fashion.
(24:47):
Heck, I know business ownersthat I've connected with that.
Their business has relativelynothing to do with AI, but they
throw a chatbot on their websitejust so they could say all
right, we're a company named AI.
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I have seen those and interacted with those
business owners and, yeah, it'scertainly a hot topic.
Now, were you learning about AIin school or was this kind of
something you were interested onthe side?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So this is another dish I have to college.
I'm very pro-college in someways, very anti-college in other
ways.
If you haven't learned by now,College is not the best
environment to learn softwareengineering or coding.
There's a few classes that havebeen very helpful for my
business partner and myself, acouple of machine learning
(25:36):
classes specifically but at theend of the day, if you want to
get into this realm, college isnot the place to go and learn it
.
Most of our hands-on applicationhas taught us more than sitting
in the classroom doingassignments or taking tests Just
because, once again,universities they're super large
.
Their curriculum was very, veryslowly.
We're learning some thingsright now, as I'm graduating
(26:00):
here pretty soon.
That was very, very applicablefor 10 years ago, but in the
digital world, everything movesa million times faster than
college universities, and so thecurriculum doesn't stay on top
of it.
So everything that we'velearned inside of interval we
always joke about thisinternally with our team but
maybe 5% of it has come fromknowledge from actual school and
(26:22):
the rest has come from justhands-on trying to figure it out
.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, it almost seems like AI is in competition with
how colleges function.
My wife is a professor and AIwritten papers is like super
common, I assume it's huge.
Yeah, and you know I, my wife,would tell you that.
You know we're trying to prepthese, these students, for the
(26:49):
real world and when they go outthere they're going to have AI
in their pocket.
It's just kind of like learninglong division and the teacher
says well, in the future you'renot going to have a calculator
in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, yes, we do.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And so their stance, at least like this year, has
been like anti-AI.
If we find you using AI towrite your papers, then you're
in trouble, and I don't thinkthat that is congruent with
prepping people for the realworld.
Can I ask you a question onthat?
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Absolutely and hopefully this you're allowed to
say and this doesn't get yourwife in trouble here or anything
Does she agree with thepolicies that no AI or what's
her take on it?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
No, no, she doesn't.
And and it it seemed this is mytake on it.
Uh, so I'm, these are my, myopinions and not hers.
It seems like the unituniversities.
All of a sudden, it needed tohave an AI policy and they
weren't prepared for it.
They didn't.
The people making the policiesand procedures weren't
(27:56):
necessarily prepared to dealwith it and all of a sudden, you
know, for the last hundredyears we've been having students
write papers.
Well, now there's this tool outthere that does that for you.
And you know, my opinion onthat is you need to change the
way you engage students and youneed to change the way you're
(28:17):
teaching and not encouragingthem to use one of the most
powerful tools available.
I don't think does the studentsany justice.
I don't think that is in linewith what college is meant to be
, and so I you know I I share alot of those sentiments with you
and, uh, it'll be interestingto see how, how that plays out.
(28:40):
I think we're kind of in aweird trying to figure it out
space.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
And I agree with you on that.
I think I to not totally bashon college universities.
I think they are in thatawkward stage of trying to
figure it out.
They obviously the entirereason they exist is to provide
you the higher education andhopefully, at the end of the day
, place you into a good careerso you could be that model
citizen and go to exactly whatyou're supposed to be trained to
(29:07):
do since you were in the firstgrade.
So I think they are trying insome fashions.
I have some classes currently asan active student that say
these are the parameters onusing AI for this assignment and
they'll give you kind oflayouts you can use it for
research, just cite your sources, things like that.
Those ones make a lot moresense to me because they're
practical.
Those professors recognize likeall right, let's not beat
(29:29):
around the bush, these studentsare probably going to use it
regardless of what we say.
And then, secondly, let'sactually teach them a tool
that's going to be impactful andnot just something they're
going to forget.
And this is another issue I havewith a lot of my college
classes I've taken the past fouryears.
It's you go in, you study forthe test, you go in for that
midterm and then you immediatelyforget the material two weeks
later and I hate to admit it,but I'm the stereotypical
(29:51):
student with that.
I'll grind out, I'll study fora little bit, I'll make sure I
get that test pass.
I've stopped caring a littlebit more ever since.
Intervals been going good forthe past two years, but my first
two years of college I was thetotal pencil pusher.
I was trying anything andeverything to get those good
grades and I learned thematerial and then immediately
forget it after.
So I think the professors thatI currently have as I'm exiting
(30:14):
that over the past two, threeyears, have said all right,
don't necessarily take thenon-AI approach, but at least
keep it reasonable.
Do your own work.
Tell us what portions of AIhelped you out with.
Those ones have left a longerlasting impact on myself,
because I feel like I'm learningmore.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
What are your goals withInterval AI?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah.
So it's still something as ayoung founder I'm trying to
figure out and I guess it's kindof a joke because any business
owner is always trying to figureit out.
You're playing fake until youmake it every single day and
when employees ask questions,you put on a smile and you
answer as best you can, butevery day looks totally
different.
In all my different funentrepreneurial ventures this is
(31:00):
obviously more of the big boyjob, for lack of a better term.
We recently brought on fourdifferent employees besides my
co-founder and myself.
So I've never managed a groupthat large.
I've never paid somebody'ssalary Heck.
I had to go and ask a businessowner, a guy I knew growing up,
who was who's.
(31:23):
I used to be a boy scout and soan old scout master of mine who
who's ran a business for youknow 30, 40 years now.
I had to go ask him.
I'm like, hey, I've never hadto pay an employee's part of an
employee's health insurance.
Like, tell me, who should Icontact about this?
What do I go and do?
And and so there's a lot ofthings that I'm still learning
and I'm very blatant andtransparent with with all of our
employees now on.
There's a lot that I don't knowhelp me is, as the quote
(31:45):
unquote boss to to figure thisout.
And so I just I just lay outour expectations with everyone
on staff now very, very simplyand say hey, me and my
co-founder's name is Connor, meand Connor are really trying to
figure this out.
You, you be honest and you workwith us, and we'll be honest
and work with you and come to amiddle ground.
It's been interesting.
There's, there's definitelydays where I'm banging my head
(32:06):
against the wall, thinking Ihave no idea how I'm supposed to
do X, y or Z, but you figure itout, just like any entrepreneur
does, any business owner does.
You figure it out every day.
So our goal for the next phaseof interval is we're yes, we're
still in the startup phase, Ithink just under 2 years old.
It's not like anythingabsolutely out of the ordinary
(32:28):
there.
Our goal is probably work on itfor the next six or so years
and then try and sell it off andkind of start a new venture
from there.
But that's another thing thatwe we debate back and forth
every single day, because we'venever.
We've never gone to that phase.
So we kind of just take it oneday at a time and see what
happens.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I'll tell you what, and I'm not just saying this to
to flatter you, but if I'mBrandon Davis, my goal would be
and I love this idea it solves apain point and that's huge, and
it deals with cashflow, whichis that's business I mean a lot
(33:06):
of businesses that's your world,that's your world.
Yeah, I'm a retired CPA and,yeah, cashflow is king and man,
if I'm Brandon Davis, I'd buildthis thing for the next five or
six years and then I think youcould exit this for mid eight
figures or nine figures toIntuit or a huge company like
that, and I really like this andI'm going to.
(33:28):
I want to follow your storybecause it's the origin story of
probably started out of a dormroom or college apartment and
and I love it, I love this ideaand it's outstanding.
It's been fun learning about itand and learning about your
journey and, yeah, so glad tohave you on the Firing man
(33:49):
podcast.
So, thanks, david.
Yeah, before we wrap things up,we have the fire round.
It's four questions.
We ask every single guest Areyou ready?
Let's do it.
I'm ready, all right.
What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
My favorite book to date.
I'm a big David Goggins fan.
I'm a big guy.
It's kind of your own mentalityYou're great, Nobody else is
coming to save you, I'm kind ofguy, so I like.
I like his book never finishedand can't hurt me.
He has both those.
I also love shoe dog, the PhilKnight story of creating Nike I
think that's just like my go-to.
That or I made in America bySam Walton, founder of Walmart.
(34:27):
Those are like my two businessbooks.
And then the David Goggin onesare like the get off your butt
and go work.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, those are all outstanding reads.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Outside of actually working, which I know is the
cliche answer Probably everyonesays when they come on the show.
I love hanging out with my wifejust doing stupid things like
watching TV with her, I don'tknow, going to the gym with her.
We're massive baseball fans.
So I'm from Southern California, grew up a Dodger fan, so we
actually just had opening dayyesterday and today they're
playing the Chicago Cubs inJapan.
(34:59):
So I was up yesterday and thismorning at 4 am to cheer on my
Dodgers.
So that's some of my hobbiesthere.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's outstanding.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Now the next question is one that we ask everybody,
but I'm not sure if it's.
We went door to door Um, I wasa lifeguard at the time, and so
that was like, whenever I wasn'tgetting um shifts as lifeguard,
that's when my friend and Iwould go um knock on people's
doors and cut their grass.
And I just remember from dayone of when somebody um paid us
(35:56):
in cash for our services doingthe landscaping.
Once again, we stillundervalued our services, but I
looked at it and I don'tremember if it's like 50 bucks
or 100 bucks or whatever it is.
It's like holy crap, this ishow much.
I would have had to work forlike seven hours doing my
lifeguard job or whatever theprice was.
It was probably even more timethan that, but that was my aha
moment of saying wait, I don'thave to wait every two weeks for
an employer to pay me out.
I can, I can I get this all setup and uh and and do this in
(36:16):
kind of my way, in fashion.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I like it, I like it.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
And final question what do you think sets apart
successful entrepreneurs fromthose who give up, fail or never
get started, and that's a toughone to ask a young entrepreneur
.
Here I could speak just onceagain on on my experience and
and other business owners thatI've seen.
Um, I think it really justcomes down to if they're
actually willing to put in thetime to make it succeed.
And I say that purely becausemy co-founder and myself we went
(36:50):
through the struggles of tryinga thousand different dumb ideas
and there was other people inthat program with us that they
also had horrible ideas and Isaw some of them fall off a
little bit early and notcontinue until they found the
one that was actually working.
But then I saw a couple otherslike ourselves who kept working,
kept grinding it out until theyfound the one that stuck and
(37:11):
heck, there's even some thathave gone on out until they
found the one that stuck andheck, there's even some that
have gone on.
They worked on the one for thepast year and a half or two
years now and they've madeanother pivot.
But I know for a fact whateverthey end up staying, and
whenever they find that onebusiness that they're actually
interested in, I know they'regoing to succeed, because I've
seen them work hard enough onthe crappier businesses to know
(37:33):
that they are the type of personwho are going to figure it out
and make it work.
And then, on the contrary, Isaw the people who faced
rejection two, three times andsaid all right, this isn't for
me and I'm done, and to eachtheir own.
I mean, this entrepreneurialworld is a crappy one in many
different ways, so it's not madefor everyone.
But, um, that, that'd be myanswer to that.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Absolutely Well, uh, if, if people are interested in
getting in touch with you, whatis the best way?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, so uh, as David mentioned at the beginning, I
run my own podcast.
It's it's for kind of youngfounders getting started on
their journey.
It's a way I kind of document alittle bit of my, my journey
and interval, and I host otherfun entrepreneurs who are
typically a little bit younger,who are trying to figure it out
themselves and to share ourstrategies.
It's called Get Over Yourself.
So if anyone wants to checkthat out and then you could also
(38:20):
email me at LOCgetoveryourselfat gmailcom and find me on
social media LinkedIn, brandonDavis is my name.
I'm usually pretty responsive.
If there's anything I can do tohelp out, I'd be more than
happy to.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Outstanding and to our listeners definitely check
out the podcast I have.
It's outstanding.
If you are a business owner andhave accounts receivable issues
, go check out interval-aicom.
I'll post that in the shownotes.
Brandon, this has been anoutstanding interview.
Best of luck on yourentrepreneurial journey and
(38:53):
looking forward to staying intouch.
Thanks, david, for having me.
It was a pleasure.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast,
where we dive deep into theworld of entrepreneurship,
e-commerce and everything inbetween.
Today, we have a guest who'srevolutionizing the way
businesses harness AI to drivegrowth and efficiency.
Brandon Davis is the founder ofInterval AI, a company at the
(00:46):
cutting edge of artificialintelligence solutions designed
to help businesses make smarterdata-driven decisions.
With a background in machinelearning, automation and
analytics, brandon and his teamare helping companies unlock the
power of AI to optimize theiroperations, boost profitability
and stay ahead in anever-changing market.
(01:07):
In this episode, we'll breakdown how AI is transforming
e-commerce, what every businessowner should know about
integrating AI tools and howinterval AI is helping brands
scale like never before.
Whether you're an AI skeptic ora tech enthusiast, this is a
conversation packed withinsights you will not want to
(01:28):
miss.
So sit back, grab your coffeeand let's get into it.
Welcome to the show, brandon.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Hey, david, thanks for having me Very excited.
Podcast host to podcast, thisis going to be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Absolutely yeah, this is going to be great.
So, to get things started, canyou share with the audience a
little bit about your path inthe entrepreneurial world?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, so as I was thinking about hopping on
today's episode, I was likegetting a little preparation
done, thinking about where I cankind of steer the conversation,
Because you know somebody cantell their life story for,
hopefully, if you've lived asolid life for weeks and weeks
and weeks upon end.
So what I hope to share to allof you and the listeners out
(02:11):
there today is just very simpleinsights on how they could take
action and grow their business,even even in a minuscule way,
for the next 30 to 45 minuteshere.
So a little bit about mybackground.
I am a very young entrepreneur.
If you are watching today'sepisode on YouTube or Spotify or
anywhere else that you get yourepisodes, you can probably tell
(02:31):
I'm a lot younger than some ofthe guests that David has on
quite frequently.
So I am currently a senior,actually in college.
I've been working on Intervalfor the past two years now.
I've been working on intervalfor the past two years now, but
before we jumped into what we'redoing at interval, my entire
background was entrepreneurship.
I remember at a very, veryyoung age and once again
(02:54):
hindsight a lot of times when Imentioned that people go.
You still are young and I goabsolutely, but at a younger age
.
For myself here, my biggest wayI connected with my father
growing up.
If we weren't watching baseball, we were watching ABC Shark
Tank, and my dad was a superbusy guy but he instilled some
pretty solid values into myself,me and my siblings and one of
(03:16):
those values was always makingsure you got time with your
family members.
So despite how busy he mighthave been or how crazy sports in
school were for me back in theday, we always set aside time to
hang out with each other andone of those ways was watching
ABC Shark Tank.
So as we grew up, that was justmy absolute favorite show.
I had some family members whodabbled in entrepreneurship.
(03:40):
I had some sort of anassemblance of what it was, but
I loved that show because youget on and you'd see these
everyday citizens.
You could pass them in thegrocery store, you could see
them in your local churchcongregation what have you?
They seem just like everyday,ordinary people, but their
businesses were doingextraordinary things.
(04:00):
They were selling some sort ofproduct or service that was
actually resonating and helpingpeople in their lives.
Now, obviously, some businesseson Shark Tank are a little bit
more serious than others.
You have anything from softwarecompanies to toy companies, to
the next revolutionary pancakeand everything in between.
But I just remember at thatyoung age I would watch that
(04:21):
show and I'd look over my dadand I'd say I want to be just
like these guys.
And then he'd look over me andgo yeah, right, Go to law school
.
That was the path for me, Supersupportive, though, as I grew
up and kept watching ABC SharkTank, I knew that was my journey
, laid out in front of me from avery, very young age.
I didn't know what businessjourney was going to be yet, but
(04:41):
I knew I wanted to.
I wanted to take that, and sofast forward a couple of years.
Um, we started getting intothat maybe when I was in fifth
or sixth grade, so I'm fairlyyoung.
Um, fast forward a couple ofyears.
I hopped into every single funlittle widget you could possibly
sell to kids at school.
The fidget spinner era is whenI would go.
I had bulk order them on placeslike Alibaba or um at the time
(05:05):
Temu didn't exist.
But but products like that, um,I would bulk order them, go and
sell them at my local school,for when kids were supposed to
get lunch money from theirparents, they would end up using
it on on the dumb products thatI'd buy overseas.
Um, I'd been turned a little bitof a profit and it just kept
slowly ramping up to larger,bigger things until finally, my
(05:31):
junior year of high school, Ihad an old, beat up pickup truck
I'd saved up for and I had afriend with some landscaping
equipment.
So we decided in my small townof Hemet, California, we were
going to go door to door andstart selling our landscaping
services.
So we'd knock on a door, givethem the worst sales pitch
you've ever heard in your lifeway, undervalue our services.
But then we go cut their grass,edge their lawn, things like
that.
And even though we probablywere spending more money and
(05:52):
time on the gas powering thetruck and the vehicles to
actually cut the lawns, that wasthe moment that I truly
understood that I wanted to workfor my own dollar and not
necessarily have to rely onsomebody else to provide my
income.
And the rest is sort of history, up until where we're at today.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That's outstanding.
That's outstanding and I thinkit's really neat that you are a
student right now.
One thing that you know.
I look back on my collegeexperience and you'd sit in the
classroom and learn, but you hadto wait to apply it until you
may have internshipopportunities.
But I think the retention ratemust be a lot higher when you're
(06:34):
learning in the classroom andthen applying it.
Can you speak to that a littlebit?
What's it been like running abusiness when you're a student?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So I can go on a rant on this.
So you'll have to tell me herewhen you're a student, I, so I
can go on a rant on this.
So you'll have to tell me herewhen you're, when you're tired
of hearing it.
But I am a firm believer thatcolleges we typically know it is
going to be different in thenext 20 to 30 years.
And with most, most industries,they don't grow that quick and
in 20 or 30 years there isn't awhole lot of change.
When, when you have these forlack of a better term
(07:05):
bureaucracies, when you havethese organizations that have
been around for years and yearsand years, they are very, very
slow changing.
Same as, in business terms,when you have a company that's a
startup and they're moving very, very quickly.
There's constant changes,there's constant churn, there's
a million different things goingon, but as they get bigger and
more established, that's whenyou don't see change quite as
often and it's a lot more slowmoving.
(07:26):
In my opinion, college is goingto look different in the next
20 or 30 years, just with how,if you look at the trends, a lot
less young adults my age areactually going to college
because at the end of it, yousee so many people and I have
friends in this exact boat rightnow that are struggling finding
jobs.
I was recently talking with mywife, her cousin's husband.
(07:50):
We were at a family party andso we were going and he's
graduating from the sameuniversity as myself and I was
asking him what's your plan?
We graduate here in April, sowe're what?
Four weeks out from finishingup.
And I asked him what's yourplan after graduation?
And he had finally landed a jobfor Bank of America and I was
beyond excited for him.
(08:11):
He finally landed this and Iasked him how long did it take
you?
He's been applying to softwareengineering jobs for over a year
and a half now and he hasracked up over 500 different
applications that he did he putout into the world for trying to
land a job.
And I'll be at.
Software engineering right nowis a little bit more of a tough
industry to get a job in,especially entry-level software
(08:33):
engineering.
But moral of the story is it isvery difficult right now to put
your college degree worse orsomething, and I see that
firsthand as I'm working on mybusiness.
It's very interesting People.
People always assume oh, you'reworking on a startup.
That's a lot riskier than goingand taking that secure job.
But in my eyes, if I havefriends and people struggling to
(08:55):
go out and actually find theirquote unquote dream job
post-college, it makes me wonderwhat college is even providing
at that point where.
Going back to your point, david, you sit down in the classroom.
You learn lessons that yes,I've had amazing professors who
have taught me a lot, butthey're not always directly
applicable to what you're goingto go do in your actual life or
(09:16):
for career purposes, and so Ithink there's got to be some
sort of shift or, in thesemi-near future, as mentioned,
there's going to be quite ashift of what college is
actually providing for you.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I definitely agree with that.
I was actually just having aconversation with my wife.
There's a college savings plancalled the 529.
And we've been making regularcontributions for our kids my
oldest is five and so we've gotsome time but I really do think
that is going to change and it'sgoing to be interesting to see
(09:50):
how that pans out.
So final question on youreducation and your path what are
you doing following graduation?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, great question.
So this is one that at first,when people would ask me that
and say, where are you going towork after college, oh my
goodness, it drove me absolutelybonkers because, just like this
podcast promotes, everyoneexpected me to go and quote
unquote work for the man.
And and not too long ago Irealized no one was coming from
a place of malice.
(10:21):
That's the traditional paththat most people take
post-college.
It's all right, you go, yougive your four years, you go and
chase that degree, you work ashard as you can in school to get
those good grades and itliterally is just a game.
And you're applying.
What professors can I take thatare going to give me an easier
opportunity to get an A?
Who has the least amount oftests?
(10:41):
Is attendance required in theseclasses?
You're not playing the game of,hey, I'm coming to school to go
and learn.
You're playing the game of howcan I do this in the quickest,
cheapest and easiest waypossible, which is another rant.
I could go on for hours andhours on why I think college
needs to change, but on thatpoint, like most people do,
after you graduate, everyone Iknow in my, in my close family
(11:02):
or friends they say, all right,what's the plan after graduation
?
And these are people, onceagain, no malice, coming towards
them.
They know I've been working oninterval, they know interval is
going very well, but they stillexpect you to go and chase kind
of that quote, unquote, normal,normal route.
And when I tell them, oh,intervals, the plan where, we're
sticking with it, it's goinggreat.
There's always that littleglimmer in their eye where they
(11:22):
go I don't know what you'resigning up for.
And once again it goes back tothe principle that they feel
like the traditional job is asafer route.
And in my eyes, in today's world, with how fast things are
changing in the world of AI andhow crazy the atmosphere of
getting a job is right now.
I look at them and I don't saythis necessarily every single
(11:43):
time, depending on myrelationship with whoever is
asking, but I do tell them Itruly believe what I'm doing is
less risky than any of myfriends or anybody I know at
school right now who's going andgetting another job.
I know my path is secure for,let's say, absolutely Interval
fails.
We lost every single one of ourcustomers and we weren't able
(12:04):
to grow anymore for the nextthree and a half years.
I know that we're completelysafe and we can figure something
out, whereas you go and work anentry-level job.
You can go work for six months,company has some kind of
downsizing and you're goneimmediately.
So it really just depends oneveryone's situation.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But as for me, that's kind of the path, so it really
just depends on everyone'ssituation, but, as for me,
that's kind of the path.
You know.
It's interesting that you'retalking about risk.
I am a very risk-averseindividual and I went into
accounting a very risk-averseprofession and I went to work at
a CPA firm, traditionally veryrisk-averse All of these things
(12:39):
lined up with minimizing risk.
All of these things lined upwith minimizing risk, and during
(13:04):
the pandemic, some of mymentors, some of the managers,
people I looked up to, gotfurloughed or laid off and I had
an aha moment that, yes, it mayseem like a risk-averse
profession, but it is notwithout risk.
And and that was something thatprobably was one of the things
that led to firing man podcaststarting back in 2016 was, was
you know?
Thinking, oh, I, I'm safe, I'man accountant Like, and I've got
nothing to worry about, and soI think you've got a lot of
really really good thoughtsthere.
(13:26):
And your comments on the peoplenot having malice I think that
you're spot on there.
It's an unfamiliar territory.
Not many people go the routethat you're going.
However, I don't necessarilythink that means that you are
going a more risky route, and soyou're certainly in an industry
(13:48):
and this is I'm really excitedto talk to you about this.
That's booming with that beingAI, and so let's talk about you
know, from the inception, fromthe idea of interval AI to where
you're at today, what, what areyou doing with the company and
and where do you hope to take it?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Absolutely Um.
So it's kind of funny that youyou mentioned AI is kind of the
boom right now and it is every,every major company.
Anytime you watch a sportingevent, what are the?
What are the commercials thatare being shown?
Now it's either pharmaceuticalcommercials or, uh ai, these
massive companies are even evenadopting it fairly quickly,
which is quite unique, as, goingback to my, my recent point of,
(14:29):
usually these kind ofbusinesses move very slow but
they want to even jump on thistrain and I do find it
interesting.
Growing up I was, I was justpost the when I was watching
shark tank, as I mentioned.
I was just post the when I waswatching Shark Tank, as I
mentioned, I was just post thedot com bubble bursting and it
was very interesting, becausenow I kind of see some
similarities with AI, where it'salmost as as hype worthy or
(14:50):
buzz worthy and um, totallydifferent context in my opinion.
But it is interesting to seeand I understand it's kind of a
new fear that a lot of businessowners have.
But, um, in the-com burst, whenit burst, there was all
different types of businesseswho thought, just because you
were quote-unquote online, thatyou were going to make it and
that clearly was not the case.
(15:10):
We had plenty of businesses whoabsolutely crushed it,
succeeded or still around today,but at the same time, you have
plenty of businesses who, justbecause they were an online
business, everyone thought thatthey were going to be the next
billion dollar company.
And looking around, since AI isthe flashy words these days, I
find it pretty common, for youcan have the most simple product
(15:32):
on earth and throw AI at theend, and some people love it,
some people hate it.
That's not the true pointbehind it.
A true point behind it WithInterval specifically for anyone
out there listening who isn'tfamiliar with us basically what
we do is automate collections,first-party collections for
businesses.
So our goal is hey, if you havecustomers who are delinquent on
their payments, be that theircredit card expired, they forgot
(15:55):
, they didn't have the funds atthe time to pay, they're
outright trying to ghost you,whatever preface that would be,
we work with businesses to goand capture those funds back,
and so, when we were lookinginto getting Interval started,
as I mentioned, we're about twoyears old now and we saw this
opportunity within the AI spaceto build something.
(16:16):
But, as you probably see, onthese commercials and things
that pop up on LinkedIn andsocial media all the time.
There's pretty, fairly simplebusinesses.
You can build that with AIthese days, coding platforms
like Replet or Lovable or Boltor any of these ones where you
can get an early MVP out therevery, very quickly.
But that also means you couldhave a lot of competitors jump
in very quickly.
(16:36):
So our goal with Interval wasto make something that number
one businesses needed, like anybusiness, should focus on your
customers.
Number two, one that wasn'teasily replicable, even in this
age of AI.
And then number three, solvingsome sort of task that, yes, can
be done by a human to go outand figure out whatever it is,
but it can be done either Acheaper, b more efficiently or C
(16:59):
humans just don't like doing it.
And in our case, we hit allthree of those categories.
For an example, if you um in thee-commerce space, it's not
quite as common.
We work with some e-commercebrands and I know that's the
majority of podcast listenershere on this show um, we work
with some e-commerce brands whoalso work in wholesale um and
your reis, your dick sportinggoods, things like that, or your
(17:22):
local Ma and Pa surf shops,where they send out bulk orders
of their product to thesedifferent companies and those
people have typically like net30 or net 60 day terms to pay up
for whatever bulk products theyimported from your business,
and sometimes even those Ma andPa shops or these larger chains
don't pay on time.
So that's when people implementour software.
But on the case of collections,it's very common where, number
(17:45):
one, your employees don't wantto do it because, let's face it,
who wants to be the personhandling your customers to try
and get them to pay?
Number two, it costs a ton ofmoney to go out and collect from
these customers because, let'ssay, on the low end, you're
paying an employee $20 an hourthat's $20.
You're paying somebody everyhour to sit on the phone dialing
up a number, sending an emailthat has zero guarantee of
return, nor zero guarantee thatthe customer is even going to
(18:07):
reply, and then finally, onceagain, it's just something that
is very time consuming overalland so it could be improved on
the efficiency side.
So once we hit those 3 metricsand we started selling it to
different businesses, werecognized there was a huge need
for it.
At first we were trying to bevery industry focused.
Okay, what industry struggleswith accounts receivable the
(18:29):
most.
And when we first jumped in,that was our main focus.
What industry are we focusingon?
And as we got going a littlebit farther along the journey,
we recognized no, practicallyany business at some point in
their life if it gonna have acustomer profession.
And so now, to sum up, what I'mtrying to say here is, um, with
(18:51):
interval, we, we kind of workacross the industry with various
different companies, um, all inan effort once again just to
collect, uh, their past duebalances.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Outstanding, Outstanding.
I love that and it's veryspecific.
I like how you've defined yourniche and in terms of being in
collections.
Where did the idea come from?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah, this is the jankiest way.
Anyone who's listening who isworking on their next project.
I semi-recommend this idea.
It worked for us.
I haven't met anyone who'stried it, so if somebody does,
please email me and tell me ifit worked or not For us.
We were going and battlingthrough a couple different ideas
that we were working with.
There's this amazing program atmy university called Sandbox and
(19:38):
, as I mentioned a minute ago,I'm not the biggest believer in
college, but I am the mostabsolute stan of Sandbox.
Sandbox is basically thisincubator amongst various
universities across the US whereyou get college credit to work
on a tech startup.
So at the time, I went incompletely by myself, didn't
know my co-founder or anyoneelse who is now part of the
(19:59):
Interval team, and we gotcollege credit where I didn't
have to go to regular classesfor an entire year and I could
just work on my business.
Our professors were localbusiness owners, so they bring
in professionals of alldifferent kinds to come and
basically just give us lectureson how to grow a startup, and
that was our job.
We were expected to work 50 to60 hours a week on this startup,
(20:20):
not focus on your typical mathor science classes and just
grind it out.
So in this program, as you canexpect, it's a really
interesting concept because youhave these young college
students like myself going andtrying to solve pains for the
world.
And when you're starting abusiness, where's the first
place you always look, unlessyou had something kind of fall
into your lap, you're alwaysgoing to try and solve your own
(20:41):
pains first.
So we started with very, verysimple ideas.
I started working with my nowco-founder, um we, we went
through 20 something odd ideasbefore we landed on where we're
at today.
That actually obviously startedworking, um, but most of them
were focused around the collegestudent.
Right, we, uh we.
We built a platform we calledlecture fi at the time.
(21:02):
Very simple concept You'd getyour phone when you went into
your college lectures or anykind of meeting.
You'd press start recording andit would transcribe your
college lectures from what yourprofessor was saying so you
could pay attention in class andthen it would take notes for
you.
It creates study guides, makelittle practice quizzes.
Pretty, fairly simple concept.
We had a bunch of users on it.
(21:22):
But early on we learned crap.
College students aren't willingto pay anything, and so we made
the pivot and then we jumpedinto a platform we called Venue.
It was basically the Airbnb ofwedding venues.
And then we found out nobodywants to book a venue in the
middle of a weekday and liquorlicensing is very, very hard to
get across these.
So we jumped into a new one and, long story short, like I said,
(21:46):
we had 20 something odd ideasthat we had practiced for some
time until we eventually landedon interval.
We got our early customers very, very quickly, way easier than
it had to we had with otherideas that we were working on.
We got paying users quickerthan we ever had.
Our product was very janky whenit first was created, but
people were still willing to payfor it because the need was so
grand, and that's when we knewall right, this is the one, this
(22:09):
is what we've been waiting for,and that was, as mentioned,
about two years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
That's an outstanding story, and one of the things
that I love about that story isyou had a lot of things that you
tried first, and one of thethings that I love about that
story is you had a lot of thingsthat you tried first and,
instead of considering thosefailures, you pivoted, you took
what you learned from that andapplied it to the next one and
you said 20 ideas.
I think that's outstanding andreally a solid mindset for
(22:39):
entrepreneurship really a solidmindset for entrepreneurship.
And so now, as we sit here andrecord this, in March of 2025,
ai is a hot topic.
I mean, it's hard to talk to abusiness owner without AI coming
up in some form or fashion.
However, two years ago Iremember, probably about two
years ago I heard Lex Friedmantalk about it on a podcast and I
(23:02):
just I remember thinking likeand I love Lex Friedman, but I
remember thinking like he's kindof a nerd like this.
I don't know what artificialintelligence is, and so were you
guys.
You were early on the scenewith AI.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Somewhat early.
So if, if you look in, theselarge language models have been
around since the eighties,nineties, um, obviously back
then you didn't call it AI orartificial intelligence.
It was large language models.
At the end of the day, all itis is just algorithms.
It's it's math functions thatare determining what is the next
step on this prompt that I wasgiven on how to determine the
best outcome for for the answerUm, in some form or fashion,
(23:43):
that's obviously summed down ina very, very simple way.
But, um, the concept ofartificial intelligence has been
around for 30, 40 years now.
The real application where weknow it today maybe back around
2016,.
2017 is when companies startedunderstanding it a little bit
more, applying it into theirbusinesses, and then, I would
(24:05):
say, realistically, around 2020,maybe a little bit after the
pandemic, is where peoplestarted hearing about companies
like OpenAI, and there'sobviously other competitors that
people recognize.
But personally, I think thefirst time I had ever tried to
chat GBT was back in late 2020,during the pandemic time, or
2021, or right when it was kindof released to the public
(24:27):
whatever time frame that was.
So, relatively speaking, no, weweren't new into the AI space,
these large language models, weweren't new, but on the grander
scale we were in terms like youwere mentioning, where it was
still a newer concept.
It wasn't the buzzword.
But obviously nowadays, as Imentioned earlier, everyone
talks about AI in their businessin some form or fashion.
(24:47):
Heck, I know business ownersthat I've connected with that.
Their business has relativelynothing to do with AI, but they
throw a chatbot on their websitejust so they could say all
right, we're a company named AI.
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I have seen those and interacted with those
business owners and, yeah, it'scertainly a hot topic.
Now, were you learning about AIin school or was this kind of
something you were interested onthe side?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So this is another dish I have to college.
I'm very pro-college in someways, very anti-college in other
ways.
If you haven't learned by now,College is not the best
environment to learn softwareengineering or coding.
There's a few classes that havebeen very helpful for my
business partner and myself, acouple of machine learning
(25:36):
classes specifically but at theend of the day, if you want to
get into this realm, college isnot the place to go and learn it
.
Most of our hands-on applicationhas taught us more than sitting
in the classroom doingassignments or taking tests Just
because, once again,universities they're super large
.
Their curriculum was very, veryslowly.
We're learning some thingsright now, as I'm graduating
(26:00):
here pretty soon.
That was very, very applicablefor 10 years ago, but in the
digital world, everything movesa million times faster than
college universities, and so thecurriculum doesn't stay on top
of it.
So everything that we'velearned inside of interval we
always joke about thisinternally with our team but
maybe 5% of it has come fromknowledge from actual school and
(26:22):
the rest has come from justhands-on trying to figure it out
.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, it almost seems like AI is in competition with
how colleges function.
My wife is a professor and AIwritten papers is like super
common, I assume it's huge.
Yeah, and you know I, my wife,would tell you that.
You know we're trying to prepthese, these students, for the
(26:49):
real world and when they go outthere they're going to have AI
in their pocket.
It's just kind of like learninglong division and the teacher
says well, in the future you'renot going to have a calculator
in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, yes, we do.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And so their stance, at least like this year, has
been like anti-AI.
If we find you using AI towrite your papers, then you're
in trouble, and I don't thinkthat that is congruent with
prepping people for the realworld.
Can I ask you a question onthat?
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Absolutely and hopefully this you're allowed to
say and this doesn't get yourwife in trouble here or anything
Does she agree with thepolicies that no AI or what's
her take on it?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
No, no, she doesn't.
And and it it seemed this is mytake on it.
Uh, so I'm, these are my, myopinions and not hers.
It seems like the unituniversities.
All of a sudden, it needed tohave an AI policy and they
weren't prepared for it.
They didn't.
The people making the policiesand procedures weren't
(27:56):
necessarily prepared to dealwith it and all of a sudden, you
know, for the last hundredyears we've been having students
write papers.
Well, now there's this tool outthere that does that for you.
And you know, my opinion onthat is you need to change the
way you engage students and youneed to change the way you're
(28:17):
teaching and not encouragingthem to use one of the most
powerful tools available.
I don't think does the studentsany justice.
I don't think that is in linewith what college is meant to be
, and so I you know I I share alot of those sentiments with you
and, uh, it'll be interestingto see how, how that plays out.
(28:40):
I think we're kind of in aweird trying to figure it out
space.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
And I agree with you on that.
I think I to not totally bashon college universities.
I think they are in thatawkward stage of trying to
figure it out.
They obviously the entirereason they exist is to provide
you the higher education andhopefully, at the end of the day
, place you into a good careerso you could be that model
citizen and go to exactly whatyou're supposed to be trained to
(29:07):
do since you were in the firstgrade.
So I think they are trying insome fashions.
I have some classes currently asan active student that say
these are the parameters onusing AI for this assignment and
they'll give you kind oflayouts you can use it for
research, just cite your sources, things like that.
Those ones make a lot moresense to me because they're
practical.
Those professors recognize likeall right, let's not beat
(29:29):
around the bush, these studentsare probably going to use it
regardless of what we say.
And then, secondly, let'sactually teach them a tool
that's going to be impactful andnot just something they're
going to forget.
And this is another issue I havewith a lot of my college
classes I've taken the past fouryears.
It's you go in, you study forthe test, you go in for that
midterm and then you immediatelyforget the material two weeks
later and I hate to admit it,but I'm the stereotypical
(29:51):
student with that.
I'll grind out, I'll study fora little bit, I'll make sure I
get that test pass.
I've stopped caring a littlebit more ever since.
Intervals been going good forthe past two years, but my first
two years of college I was thetotal pencil pusher.
I was trying anything andeverything to get those good
grades and I learned thematerial and then immediately
forget it after.
So I think the professors thatI currently have as I'm exiting
(30:14):
that over the past two, threeyears, have said all right,
don't necessarily take thenon-AI approach, but at least
keep it reasonable.
Do your own work.
Tell us what portions of AIhelped you out with.
Those ones have left a longerlasting impact on myself,
because I feel like I'm learningmore.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
What are your goals withInterval AI?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah.
So it's still something as ayoung founder I'm trying to
figure out and I guess it's kindof a joke because any business
owner is always trying to figureit out.
You're playing fake until youmake it every single day and
when employees ask questions,you put on a smile and you
answer as best you can, butevery day looks totally
different.
In all my different funentrepreneurial ventures this is
(31:00):
obviously more of the big boyjob, for lack of a better term.
We recently brought on fourdifferent employees besides my
co-founder and myself.
So I've never managed a groupthat large.
I've never paid somebody'ssalary Heck.
I had to go and ask a businessowner, a guy I knew growing up,
who was who's.
(31:23):
I used to be a boy scout and soan old scout master of mine who
who's ran a business for youknow 30, 40 years now.
I had to go ask him.
I'm like, hey, I've never hadto pay an employee's part of an
employee's health insurance.
Like, tell me, who should Icontact about this?
What do I go and do?
And and so there's a lot ofthings that I'm still learning
and I'm very blatant andtransparent with with all of our
employees now on.
There's a lot that I don't knowhelp me is, as the quote
(31:45):
unquote boss to to figure thisout.
And so I just I just lay outour expectations with everyone
on staff now very, very simplyand say hey, me and my
co-founder's name is Connor, meand Connor are really trying to
figure this out.
You, you be honest and you workwith us, and we'll be honest
and work with you and come to amiddle ground.
It's been interesting.
There's, there's definitelydays where I'm banging my head
(32:06):
against the wall, thinking Ihave no idea how I'm supposed to
do X, y or Z, but you figure itout, just like any entrepreneur
does, any business owner does.
You figure it out every day.
So our goal for the next phaseof interval is we're yes, we're
still in the startup phase, Ithink just under 2 years old.
It's not like anythingabsolutely out of the ordinary
(32:28):
there.
Our goal is probably work on itfor the next six or so years
and then try and sell it off andkind of start a new venture
from there.
But that's another thing thatwe we debate back and forth
every single day, because we'venever.
We've never gone to that phase.
So we kind of just take it oneday at a time and see what
happens.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I'll tell you what, and I'm not just saying this to
to flatter you, but if I'mBrandon Davis, my goal would be
and I love this idea it solves apain point and that's huge, and
it deals with cashflow, whichis that's business I mean a lot
(33:06):
of businesses that's your world,that's your world.
Yeah, I'm a retired CPA and,yeah, cashflow is king and man,
if I'm Brandon Davis, I'd buildthis thing for the next five or
six years and then I think youcould exit this for mid eight
figures or nine figures toIntuit or a huge company like
that, and I really like this andI'm going to.
(33:28):
I want to follow your storybecause it's the origin story of
probably started out of a dormroom or college apartment and
and I love it, I love this ideaand it's outstanding.
It's been fun learning about itand and learning about your
journey and, yeah, so glad tohave you on the Firing man
(33:49):
podcast.
So, thanks, david.
Yeah, before we wrap things up,we have the fire round.
It's four questions.
We ask every single guest Areyou ready?
Let's do it.
I'm ready, all right.
What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
My favorite book to date.
I'm a big David Goggins fan.
I'm a big guy.
It's kind of your own mentalityYou're great, Nobody else is
coming to save you, I'm kind ofguy, so I like.
I like his book never finishedand can't hurt me.
He has both those.
I also love shoe dog, the PhilKnight story of creating Nike I
think that's just like my go-to.
That or I made in America bySam Walton, founder of Walmart.
(34:27):
Those are like my two businessbooks.
And then the David Goggin onesare like the get off your butt
and go work.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, those are all outstanding reads.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Outside of actually working, which I know is the
cliche answer Probably everyonesays when they come on the show.
I love hanging out with my wifejust doing stupid things like
watching TV with her, I don'tknow, going to the gym with her.
We're massive baseball fans.
So I'm from Southern California, grew up a Dodger fan, so we
actually just had opening dayyesterday and today they're
playing the Chicago Cubs inJapan.
(34:59):
So I was up yesterday and thismorning at 4 am to cheer on my
Dodgers.
So that's some of my hobbiesthere.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's outstanding.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Now the next question is one that we ask everybody,
but I'm not sure if it's.
We went door to door Um, I wasa lifeguard at the time, and so
that was like, whenever I wasn'tgetting um shifts as lifeguard,
that's when my friend and Iwould go um knock on people's
doors and cut their grass.
And I just remember from dayone of when somebody um paid us
(35:56):
in cash for our services doingthe landscaping.
Once again, we stillundervalued our services, but I
looked at it and I don'tremember if it's like 50 bucks
or 100 bucks or whatever it is.
It's like holy crap, this ishow much.
I would have had to work forlike seven hours doing my
lifeguard job or whatever theprice was.
It was probably even more timethan that, but that was my aha
moment of saying wait, I don'thave to wait every two weeks for
an employer to pay me out.
I can, I can I get this all setup and uh and and do this in
(36:16):
kind of my way, in fashion.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I like it, I like it.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
And final question what do you think sets apart
successful entrepreneurs fromthose who give up, fail or never
get started, and that's a toughone to ask a young entrepreneur
.
Here I could speak just onceagain on on my experience and
and other business owners thatI've seen.
Um, I think it really justcomes down to if they're
actually willing to put in thetime to make it succeed.
And I say that purely becausemy co-founder and myself we went
(36:50):
through the struggles of tryinga thousand different dumb ideas
and there was other people inthat program with us that they
also had horrible ideas and Isaw some of them fall off a
little bit early and notcontinue until they found the
one that was actually working.
But then I saw a couple otherslike ourselves who kept working,
kept grinding it out until theyfound the one that stuck and
(37:11):
heck, there's even some thathave gone on out until they
found the one that stuck andheck, there's even some that
have gone on.
They worked on the one for thepast year and a half or two
years now and they've madeanother pivot.
But I know for a fact whateverthey end up staying, and
whenever they find that onebusiness that they're actually
interested in, I know they'regoing to succeed, because I've
seen them work hard enough onthe crappier businesses to know
(37:33):
that they are the type of personwho are going to figure it out
and make it work.
And then, on the contrary, Isaw the people who faced
rejection two, three times andsaid all right, this isn't for
me and I'm done, and to eachtheir own.
I mean, this entrepreneurialworld is a crappy one in many
different ways, so it's not madefor everyone.
But, um, that, that'd be myanswer to that.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Absolutely Well, uh, if, if people are interested in
getting in touch with you, whatis the best way?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, so uh, as David mentioned at the beginning, I
run my own podcast.
It's it's for kind of youngfounders getting started on
their journey.
It's a way I kind of document alittle bit of my, my journey
and interval, and I host otherfun entrepreneurs who are
typically a little bit younger,who are trying to figure it out
themselves and to share ourstrategies.
It's called Get Over Yourself.
So if anyone wants to checkthat out and then you could also
(38:20):
email me at LOCgetoveryourselfat gmailcom and find me on
social media LinkedIn, brandonDavis is my name.
I'm usually pretty responsive.
If there's anything I can do tohelp out, I'd be more than
happy to.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Outstanding and to our listeners definitely check
out the podcast I have.
It's outstanding.
If you are a business owner andhave accounts receivable issues
, go check out interval-aicom.
I'll post that in the shownotes.
Brandon, this has been anoutstanding interview.
Best of luck on yourentrepreneurial journey and
(38:53):
looking forward to staying intouch.
Thanks, david, for having me.
It was a pleasure.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!