Embark on an enlightening journey with US Air Force Veteran John Conafay of Integrate.co, as he shares the exhilarating transition from aerospace to tech entrepreneurship amidst an unpredictable economy.
Previously he was an early employee at three space unicorns – Head of BD at ABL Space Systems, was one of the first ten employees at Astranis, and Interned at Spire Global early on. He also worked at the Office of the CFO NASA Headquarters while at BryceTech and was a Director of Business Development at Spaceflight.
Our conversation uncovers the grit and determination required to pivot a startup's focus, revealing how Integrate's shift from space-industry reliance to creating project management software became a tactical move for survival and growth. John's tales from his Air Force days to launching satellites out of a garage paint a vivid picture of innovation born from necessity.
This episode is more than a look into the high-stakes world of startups; it's a masterclass in resilience and the art of the strategic pivot. John dives into the nuances of user experience design, the importance of balancing a founding team, and the vital role of social skills, listening, and a relentless 'get it done' attitude. With the aerospace industry flourishing in Cincinnati, we explore how structural changes in companies like GE are unlocking fresh opportunities, hinting at the potential for tech advancements to propel this sector further.
Wrapping up, we tackle the intricate dance of raising funds through investor networks, emphasizing the potency of personal connections and the vibrancy of startup ecosystems beyond the coastal hubs. John's experiences illustrate the power of geographical influence, demonstrating how cities like Cincinnati are emerging as fertile ground for innovation and growth. Join us as we navigate the twists and turns of startup success, where adaptability, trust, and the right partnerships can lead to uncharted territories of achievement.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Special guest today JohnConnofay.
John, thanks for joining us,man.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thanks so much for having me Definitely feeling the
energy right now.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, talking a little bit before the
show about our poor accountantsand the struggles that they have
dealing with our taxes and allof our startups and everything
else we probably got going onstocks, rental properties.
I got all kinds of craphappening.
But, john, you're joining usfrom a company called
Integrateco is the domain name.
(00:56):
It's a software company.
You've been in a bunch ofstartups in the past and a lot
of people, especially here inCincinnati.
I'm in touch with a lot of theVCs and stuff around here and I
go and I talk to the startuppeople and I try to consult with
folks and it just seems likethe startup side a startup as a
(01:17):
side hustle has kind of beenmaybe losing some of its steam
since money's gotten expensive.
Are you guys having that?
Where are you located?
Are you guys having that samefeeling?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We uh so, um, we're based inSeattle, uh, headquarters in
Seattle, uh just got, just gotnew offices.
We're seed stage company uhwith, with a team in Arizona,
some in California and oneperson in Texas.
And, yeah, the crunch was real.
I left my last job, which Iloved very much, selling rockets
(01:51):
for ABL Space Systems in Marchof 2022.
And then I believe it was thenext day that the market ordered
, and then within another month,the next day that the market
ordered, and then was in anothermonth, the market halved.
So you know, everything I,everything I anticipated uh or
(02:12):
dreamed of living off of for thefirst six months of the company
, uh disappeared real quickly orlocked itself up real quickly.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Oh the struggle, bus, yeah that sucks man.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah and uh.
And then, um, yeah, so we wereable to raise money.
Uh, we went out to raise moneypretty quickly and says like,
okay, this became more of a needand the market's changing
really quickly.
Uh, from the boom cycle in 2021, or the spacketing is, as I
call it, uh, with all thecompanies go in public respects,
(02:46):
um and uh.
And so we, so we raised somemoney and I think it was still
okay in 2022.
And then 2023, when we weregoing out to raise our seed fund
, uh, you know, you just saw thecarta graphs, just do, I think
it was something 30% or or 80from the previous year.
(03:07):
Uh, funding, seed funding wasdown 80 from the previous year,
which, you know 2021 waspsychotic.
So can't really, uh, can'treally bear much credence for
that.
But, um, and then in 2023 itwas down 30% after being down
80%, and it was.
I mean, everybody was justholding onto their money for
(03:29):
dear life, no more, no more Zerpera.
And uh, and you know, we reallyreally had to make sure we had
a rock solid plan moving forward.
But we, we made it out, um, by,by expanding our market from
just the space industry, which,honestly, was inspired by some
technical program managers thatwe met from Google and Apple,
(03:52):
saying why are you focusing onthe space industry with this
software?
This is like the technicalprogram management software
we've always dreamed of havingour entire careers, oh, wow.
So we were like, awesome, okay,great.
And we went out and interviewedsomething like 50 to 75 more
customers while we're in themiddle of the raise and uh, uh,
(04:13):
and they were like yes, likethis, this is necessary.
Uh, all the software that we'reworking with now has been built
specifically for software andjust doesn't have context, for
you know, admob is prettydifficult when you have an 18
months lead time item thatbreaks on.
Yet, you know, oh, yeah, yeah,so, uh.
(04:34):
So we, we expanded our scopeand then met some really, really
spectacular investors.
Uh, who, who uh got in, uh, atthe seed round in Q2 of 2023, we
were feeling it.
I mean, the crunch is not.
Crunch is absolutely real well,and it's in.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's interesting when I read your stuff.
Usually you think of softwareand hardware is two different
things.
Right, it's two differentcompanies.
But you're actually not.
Let me get this straight.
Are you doing projectmanagement for hardware
developers?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
yes, yes.
So project and programming yeahfor, yeah, for hardware
specifically.
So yeah, worked in fourhardware companies, uh, um,
specifically.
Uh.
Non-technical backgroundoutside of the air force where I
was working in communicationnavigation mission systems on
awacs uh needed a, a swift kickin the ass to get some
(05:26):
discipline.
So joined and for all intentsand purposes it worked.
And so just you got enoughtechnical knowledge just to be
dangerous, but formal educationsin economics and design and
then fell in love with the spaceindustry from students for the
exploration and development ofspace.
Had always been a nerd when itcame to hardware and technology
(05:47):
and all these things um and uh.
And then worked at, interned ataspired global um, which is an
awesome, now multinationalcompany.
It was 40 people, I think, whenI interned there and they just
sent up their first twosatellites and went uh
consulting into consulting atBryce space technology out of DC
(06:08):
.
Um wrote some papers on closingdigital divide before uh got
picked up by Astronis when therewere five people out of an
apartment uh in San Franciscobuilding satellites.
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, I slept out of theapartment that they built the
first satellite out of for thefirst like two months I was
there trying to find a place inSF and and then went on to moved
(06:34):
up to Seattle to work for acompany that was bought by
another launch company recentlycalled Spaceflight, and we're
just starting to build orbitaltransfer vehicles with some
crazy fun sci-fi stuff, um anduh.
And then my last job wasselling rockets at abl space
systems and I just kind of sawthis, this thread of okay, we
(06:57):
don't have any context, we startwith tasks instead of uh,
starting with actual hardwaresystems, diagrams and things for
all of our program and projectmanagement.
How do we match the mentalmodel of hardware companies much
better than you know, a projector smart sheet or anything?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
That's wild.
So a guy with an economicsdegree figures out how to create
a project management system tohelp people that are much more
sophisticated at hardware buildhardware in a more efficient way
using his software.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, that's, that's, that's the uh, the hope.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Wow.
So I mean, are you just, areyou you know, your personality
type?
Are you just the kind of thetype of person that can kind of
pick up on things like userexperience design and I mean, do
you just build mental maps andbe able to like figure out what
the next feature is you need toadd, like I mean, is that just
kind of the way your brain works?
I mean, I know a lot of us wekind of take a step back
(07:54):
sometimes and think you knowwhat makes me good at what I do,
right, like, is that just youknow?
Is it the military stuff?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Like what do you attribute it to?
Um, I think a lot ofperspective uh I've been able to
benefit from.
Uh, because I am about associal as they come you know
from from the age of 14 through21,.
I was at a.
I went to hardcore and punkshows five days a week.
Okay, um, and you know, had neweverybody in the in the
ecosystem that I was in andwould always talk people's ear,
(08:32):
ear off, but also listen andjust ingest.
You know what are the problemsgoing on, uh, when I first got
to inspire I, you know, everytime somebody was like, okay,
happy hour time, I'd be therejust to talk to the engineers
and learn from them and becamereally great friends with them.
And same thing at Astronis andother places.
You know, go out for beers,listen to people that are expert
(08:55):
in their craft and doing really, really spectacular things and
how to move fast, how to youknow how to get the job done.
Complaints hearing a lot ofcomplaints helped give me
perspective on that's hard to do.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's hard to do, listening to people complain
about your stuff and not getdistracted or distraught.
That you know these people are,you know, taking a crap on your
stuff, and I mean people intech can be really hard on you.
The personality types in techare not they're not nice people,
especially when they have egos.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
yeah, yeah, it's uh.
Luckily, the space industry is,is a pretty kind, kind place.
Uh, I think, because thetechnology is so relentless, um,
you know, you only get one shot, maybe two, maybe three,
potentially four, which might beyour last shot, which is the.
You know the story of spacex,um, uh, and the.
(09:49):
The hardware is sofundamentally brutal that people
tend to be nicer.
I like to say it came for thetechnology and stayed for the
people, um and uh, you know, somaybe a benefit from that
significantly, uh, where, whereegos can get shattered pretty
quickly and pretty spectacularly.
So you just got to pickyourself up and uh and dust
(10:10):
yourself off, um, uh, but theyeah, just the just the real get
shit done attitude.
You know, people have said fordecades you can't build
satellites in our apartment andthings like this.
And then companies like Spireand Planet Labs literally
started in the garage andstarted building these highly
capable spacecraft andsatellites that are imaging the
(10:31):
earth every day or trackingships and and planes.
You know it's really incredible.
So I think I just benefit fromreally spectacular people around
me.
They are out there, believe itor not.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah.
And in SF you can't afford anoffice and an apartment.
So you have to you have tofigure it out, right, like I
mean it just is what it is.
So, yeah, I mean I have a kindof a soft spot for for Seattle
because I mean we were, we soldour company back in 15 to Zillow
and they took over our officehere and then all of a sudden,
(11:04):
all of our poor employees, whowe were, you know, barely being
able to pay, all of a suddenthey had free Starbucks.
They had free, you know, it waslike a market.
All of a sudden Zillow openedup inside our office and
everybody got pay raises andthey started donating money to
the homeless shelters aroundhere.
It was like it was like a wholenew thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
You hear that, stephen, he has his headphones
on.
Yeah, few people are at lunchright now, but I'm just going to
take that clip for as amotivator.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh they got all kinds of stuff.
I would go up there.
So I, you know, I, myco-founders all went full time
with it.
I owned an advertising agencybut I was downstairs from them
and they'd always come down andbug me for like marketing stuff
and design stuff and everything.
But then every once in a whileI just sneak up there, hey
what's going on, guys, and justlike kind of grab a couple of
things you know and just youknow.
But but yeah, man, so you knowI'm here in Cincinnati.
(11:56):
Well, I'm actually sitting innorthern Kentucky right now, but
since I ride across the riverthere and I've, you know, we've
got somebody once told me fromEastern Kentucky University all
the way up to Dayton OhioWright-Patterson Air Force Base
you're probably familiar with.
That is everything you need tobuild a plane.
Ge, as you know, is breaking upinto I think, three companies.
(12:19):
Ge Aircraft has always beenhere, but now GE Aircraft is
their biggest division and theyare going to branch off.
They're going to be their ownFortune 500 company and based
here in Cincinnati, and youcould tell you know Boeing's
having some issues and thingslike that.
So now you know GE is going tobe like the thing and there's a
bunch of other companies in theaerospace world, universities, a
(12:43):
lot of stuff kind of happeningaround that you know.
So you've got a lot of roboticstuff happening here.
You've got a lot of 3d printingthat's being revolutionized in
the aircraft industry.
You've got a lot of stuff justhappening around that you know.
So explain to people who may belistening here and in aerospace
actually being a pretty bigindustry here kind of how you
(13:03):
guys help with your softwarewith your software.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, yeah, um.
So I'm still kind of reelingfrom the thought that that G can
split into three companies andone at least one of them still
be a fortune 500.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Is it a wild?
Isn't it wild, yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, that's the my uh.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
AT&T all over again.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, one of my colleagues, yeah, yeah, one of
my colleagues in Texas is goingto hate that I'm saying this,
but I lived in Alaska for theAir Force and it just reminds me
very much of the.
If you were to split Alaska intwo, it would still be, you know
, the number one and two largeststates in the country.
That's right.
We have, from an aerospaceperspective, what we you know,
(13:44):
what we, what we help with isthere are a lot of terms thrown
around about innovation, theateror collaborative theater as
something what we, what we helpwith, is uh, there are a lot of
terms thrown around aboutinnovation theater or
collaborative theater assomething that we, uh, that we
talk about a lot.
Um, you know, people didn'treally fundamentally understand
what collaboration on uh, onworksheets or documents or
(14:04):
anything was until Google, um,googleets and all this came out.
You can actually work togetherin the same document, side by
side, and all this.
It gets a little bit morecomplex with project and program
management because you haveyour production schedule and
then you have your BD peoplethat need to sell whatever's
(14:26):
being produced, and then youhave your customers.
That's a grossly oversimplifiedway of saying it, but you have
some subsection of these threesectors and you don't want to
show your entire productionschedule to your customers, but
they need to see the highlightsand there's some input from your
customers that you need forwhat's going to be produced.
(14:49):
And then, bd, sitting in themiddle, was your statement of
work for all the deliverablesnecessary from the company to
the customer and the customer'spayments to the company.
So you have hundreds ofschedules, especially at these
large production suites, thatthat are being passed back and
forth via Excel spreadsheets andyou're just getting snapshots
(15:09):
that are being passed back andforth via Excel spreadsheets.
Oh rough, and you're justgetting snapshots.
So what we say is it's akin totrying to conduct an orchestra
by telling all the musicians togo to separate rooms and then
texting them snapshots of themusic every two weeks.
Oh God, yeah, it's not going tosound great.
I get it, and that's how we'vebeen working for decades and it
(15:31):
absolutely.
You know it works.
But also you know NASA sentpeople to the moon using slide
rules, but not exactly how wewant to do it anymore and not
the most efficient process.
So our software allows you tobuild an entire source of truth
across your entire companyInternal collaboration is super
(15:52):
key and then be able to parseout pieces of that uh, of that
schedule to your BD team, toyour, to your external customers
, to a supply chain, can feed intheir lead times directly into
your schedule.
So it's not just wow.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, it's not just external partners too.
Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's not just yeah, it's not just external partners
too, exactly.
Yeah, it's not just creatingwhile keeping everything
firewalled from each other.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So you don't give you know you don't give up your
entire schedule.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They just see pieces.
Everything's permissioned.
Yeah, exactly yeah To the, tothe subtask level.
It's pretty intense Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Wow.
Are you utilizing any uh likeinnovative technologies?
Are you using any kind of likeblockchain stuff for some of the
supply chain management?
Are you using any AI?
Yeah, Because nowadays it'slike so hard to raise money
unless you've got like AIintegrated into your stuff
somehow.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
right, yeah, it's, it's oh, how do I, how do I
navigate this one withoutpissing anybody?
Oh yeah, without overcommitting your development team
.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
When did we talk about AI?
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
yeah, exactly.
So we have not once publicly orin investor pitches said AI,
and I think it comes from beingway.
Oh, we haven't once said AI,despite our chief architect and
co-founder, our technicalco-founder, having two degrees
in machine learning.
(17:16):
Oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
God, how do you even get that?
How did he already get donewith degrees in machine learning
?
I feel like those just came out.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's been around for decades, you know, and it's just
the new hot thing.
And don't get me wrong, ai isgigantic, like it is absolutely
spectacular for a lot of uses,but you got to have the right
data infrastructure and you haveto have everything actually
built to be useful to peoplebefore just slapping AI into it
(17:47):
or onto it.
So we had some fundamentaltechnology issues that we needed
to overcome before we evenapproach what we do.
You know, with risk management,ai could be really spectacular,
but we have to have the data inplace for people to for AI or
machine learning algorithms tobe utilized, to then pull out
(18:10):
and say, hey, this schedule riskis very, very real, so we'll
get there.
But this collaborative aspect,like the deep customer need,
didn't lay in AI or blockchainor anything, and I think I'm
just wagering a guess that it'sa little bit too much.
My own practical BS coming fromthe hardware world, um, and
(18:31):
then entering the software worldwhere, uh, you know I, I had to
have a bit of an attitudeadjustment as well, because in
hardware, you know, you havethese giant mechanisms that are
moving and you say, hey, stopimmediately to somebody, very,
very directly, or, you know,with a few expletives in there
and they know it's for theirsafety and it's like, oh God, ok
(18:54):
, and it's just.
It's just a part of it.
People talk to each other thatway all the time and whatnot.
It's not necessarily the casewith software.
So I think, yeah, the, so thesofter touch and the, the the
lower tolerance for hype is, iskind of deeply ingrained in this
company.
So we want to be very practicaland make sure we're servicing
(19:16):
customers.
Long way of saying that.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
No, no, no, no.
That's great.
I mean, you guys aren't justlike slapping a chatbot on your
thing and saying hey look,there's AI here.
Now we have a chatbot pluginthat we just added into our
software.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
here we have a chat bot plugin that we just added
into our software here.
So yeah, we'll use it when itis practical and like a leap
ahead for our customers For sure.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I like it.
Yeah, you got to think aboutthe right way to do things and I
you know a lot of folks try tooverdo it or they they follow
that hype train to their owndestruction.
So you got to stay on task.
You got to know what you'regood at, what you can actually
accomplish.
The fact that you have somebodyon staff with two degrees in
machine learning is amazing.
(19:58):
So I mean, if you guys neededto pivot, I mean if you guys
needed a pivot or you guysneeded to do something a little
bit different, I mean you havethat talent in house and you
could say, look, investors, wegot the guy, we're thinking
about it, but we're not ready toimplement that just yet.
Which if, as an investor, I'dbe like, okay, yeah, I get it.
That makes sense.
(20:19):
They're being responsible withwhat they're building and the
customers are into what you'vegot.
Now Talk a little bit about andthis is a big problem, I think,
for a lot of people outside ofraising money.
I think preparing to raisemoney is the thing and it's
gotten, like we said.
It's gotten a lot harderbecause money has gotten more
(20:39):
expensive.
People are a little bit morecautious about what they throw
money at.
I got a friend.
He was raising.
He was raising a hundred.
He raised 175 million, I thinkin 2021, at a 1.6 billion dollar
valuation for his new realestate company and it was around
six months.
So there were some crazy, crazythings happening and people
(21:03):
were just dumping money intoanything.
You know, money was so cheap,they were borrowing it or
whatever.
Uh, now it's very much harderand people are going to be a lot
more skeptical.
They're going to look for afinished product.
Uh, before they invest even inthat like angel round or the
seed round.
Uh, you know, do you havecustomers, do you have a product
?
When you guys started raising,maybe outside of friends and
(21:27):
family, where were you at withthe product?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
yeah, that's uh.
So when I left uh, abl, itwasn't um, you know, I had an
idea of what I wanted to buildand I really honed in on it and
I was building.
Essentially I was building itout of on bubble I think it was
on a no code platform oh, yeah,yeah On a bubble.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, right, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So it was essentially like how to move satellites
around on a launch manifest ormultiple launch fan of manifest,
or really really zoomed in andI had built this and a buddy and
co-founder, paul, looked overmy shoulder and I was like,
cause he was over for we.
And it was like, uh, because hewas over for we're about to go
get beers, and he was like man,that looks like shit.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Can I just build this for you.
Dude.
It's always like the ideas Iwant to do, I I'm always like
there's no way I could do thison no code, like there's no way
this would work, like I can, thesystem just cannot do what I
want it to do.
And then the integrations youstart having problems with that
and and yeah, yeah, oh, Itotally get it.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
But you got a, you got a proof of concept kind of
out there, right, absolutely,and I think we might have raised
on that proof of concept, ifnot wireframes initially.
You know the pre-seed level.
It's definitely a team in thedream.
It's who you know.
Who do you know?
Who do you have, do you havethe capability of kind of the
hacker, uh, hipster, hustlercombination, which, which is
(22:53):
very important very importantpretty spectacularly.
andrew sloan, our, our otherco-founder ran a digital brand
agents or a brand agency for thespace industry for for seven,
seven years or so, uh, and had10 years prior to that in
software.
This was, this was his thirdstartup, um, and then, uh, uh,
(23:14):
all our technical co-founder, asI said, two degrees in machine
learning and all this and thenwhatever I do now, but I had all
the startup experience andexperience.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I was one of you.
I was the, the, the guy whothinks about the new stuff that
I wanted to build and like theoriginal ideas and like how do
we, what's the next thing?
What's going to happen likefive years from now?
You know that's.
And then going out and sellingit, right that's.
You know, developers aren'tnecessarily the best people at
selling stuff, so they'reintroverts, things that I I am,
(23:46):
I am not good at.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I want a super introverted developer.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I want a dude who's just like.
All I want to do is sit hereand write code all day.
Great, okay, then you're not.
We're not going to have toworry about you.
You can just complain when wetell you we got this new feature
and that's fine.
But yeah, yeah.
So how do you see yourself?
What do you see yourself as?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, so you know I worked both the supply chain
procurement.
I was early on at the majorityof these startups, so largely I
did everything that a firstnon-technical hire would do at
these.
So it was business operations.
So you know, I'm by no meansgoing to say that I did
accounting, but keeping an eyeon cost and schedule and things
(24:26):
like that Procurement supplychain, actually negotiating
hardware deals and on top of itbusiness, commercial and federal
business development because,no matter what anybody says,
space industry is still prettydependent on federal business.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, and so.
So I just kind of did all ofthose things all at once, all
the time, much to the detrimentof my, of my health and sanity
sometimes, but but I'm here, so,um, so, a lot of experience in
sales, a lot of experience innavigating, uh, the government,
um, you know, once you I guessit's same with everything Once
(25:08):
you actually know, uh, how thegovernment works, that
government or people too is uh,um, it's, uh, it's a lot easier,
less scary to navigate, um, andthen, uh, and then, knowing the
deep, the deep problem thatwe're trying to solve, for this
is, you know, we're building anapplication again that I wish I
had had at every hardwarestartup I worked at, or larger
(25:29):
company as well, um, so, sodefinitely not.
Um, yeah, definitely in tunewith with the core problem that
we're we're trying to solve andthe ability to sell it.
Um, but sass is a completelydifferent game than hardware.
You know, 100 oh've sold reallycomplex, crazy types of
hardware, uh, before, and then Igot to sass and I was like holy
(25:52):
shnikes, the bar is is superhigh, um and uh, on the
commercial side and andgovernment side, and uh, and
people want a lot of bells andwhistles and a lot, of, a lot,
of, a lot of parody, and it'sperfectly reasonable.
You know, we we go in justabout every week or every month
and test our own things out,putting ourselves in the mindset
(26:14):
of a new customer, and yeah,that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Well, that's a skill too, being able to do that and
being in a place like Seattle,which is well known for startups
.
I mean, you got Microsoft there, you got Zillow there.
There's a bunch of you know,really popular, uh startups that
have have kind of grown out ofthere.
Did Slack?
Was Slack out of there too, oris that a San Francisco thing?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Uh, I think that San Francisco one of the greatest
pivots of all time.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Seriously, yeah, that's a great story, but uh,
but you got a lot, of, a lot ofmoney there, also because of the
tech industry being so strongthere in eyes on startups.
But what is your feeling?
Non-tech people what is thevalue in a place, in a startup
for folks that aren't writingcode?
(27:01):
What skills do you have to haveas somebody like you, who you
know maybe can distillcomplicated things for investors
or for salespeople, or you knowwhat's what?
What are the skills that youhave to have to be a non tech
person in a place like that?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think top outside of grit and perseverance is
constantly identified as thenumber one uh skill.
And you know grit doesn't meanbeing pissed off and then keep
going one day.
It means over over years.
But outside of that, theability to deal with ambiguity
is gigantic, because you'regoing to be thrown a million
(27:43):
scenarios that you could havenever imagined.
You're gonna have great days,you're have terrible days, you
can't ride the wave every singleday, but the ability to deal
with and be comfortable inambiguity and practice that
every single day run towardevery fearful decision you make
every day, and make a decision,because the only dead squirrel
or the only flat squirrel is onethat couldn't make a decision.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You know, yeah, it's true, there you go.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I'm going, you know, yeah, it's true, there you go,
I'm gonna start using that, yeah, yeah, um, so the the ability
to deal with ambiguity and it'sa learning curve.
Um, it's all the the will andwant to learn, um in excess
amounts, like the after hoursgoing to bars, and we would just
get into.
You don't have to go to a barcoffee shop, you know.
Just a long walk is great, um,but, uh, but something that you
(28:36):
can just constantly be learningfrom other people or learning on
your own.
When I was uh at the consultingcompany, I worked at nasa office
, the chief financial officerand I think, um, you not to toot
my own horn I didn't realize itat the at the time.
I was kind of scared, shitlessat the time, and I was just
trying to figure out how I couldlevel myself up to get to the
(28:58):
level of all these incrediblybrilliant people that I was
working with.
But it was.
I was in Udacity all the time,learning how to code, script or
learning how to script.
I will not say that I'm asoftware engineer, but learning
how to script.
I will not say that I'm asoftware engineer, but learning
how to script so that I canwrangle data better so that I
can put reports together fasterand all these things, and it's
that after hours work startupsdon't really have hours, uh, and
(29:19):
I know that sounds yeah, yeah,but it's.
It's a learning curve for a lotof people.
They're like cool, nine to five, I'll get everything I need to
get done and all the learning ontop of it done that's necessary
to to level up just isn't um,you know, can we can all look at
that bosses and in siliconvalley and be like they're
(29:40):
assholes for driving people, butit's just a fact of life.
It's what it is, man apple.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I mean, who's better than that, than Steve Jobs, at
pushing people?
My co-founder.
It was his idea, our company.
He knew how to get the most outof people.
He's calling me at 11, 12o'clock at night asking for
stuff like hey, I think we'regoing to go to this thing
tomorrow, can you whip up aone-page flyer for the company
and then I'll send it over andthen one o'clock in the morning
(30:07):
he's doing copy changes andstuff to it.
It's just like that's the kindof team you have to have.
And you know me being like anENTP extroverted, you know,
debater type person.
You know, with someone who'smore introverted I think there's
a there's actually a startupcompany here or there's a
there's a VC here you can'treach out to them, you can only
(30:31):
fill out this form that theyhave and they will filter out
everybody who doesn't have likefour or five different kinds of
personality types, likeMyers-Briggs They've got their
own right, but it's kind ofloosely based on Myers-Briggs.
But the I think the INTJ or theINFJ was like the number one.
I don't know how much you areinto myers-briggs and stuff like
that, but it's kind of like theasshole personality type they
(30:54):
are.
They're the one, the relentlessasshole like they are.
They're the founder type, right, yeah, and I'm kind of like
third or fourth or whatever, butit's good to have like me on
the team, kind of like you knowyou would be hard to replace
because you're extroverted,you're, you're good at taking
this complicated information,distilling it down.
You're a constant learner.
(31:17):
But I mean, you mentioned alittle bit, you led into it a
little bit with team.
Explain a little bit of thedifferent types of personalities
.
I think that you because it wasvery important to us I could
tell you right now the differenttypes of personalities really
matter.
But explain to me what youthink is important.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Trust.
Um, uh, that sounds like a copout, but it's, it's true.
Uh, I don't think.
You know, there, there've beenplenty of times and Paul's
sitting right over here, so heknows all this but, um, there
there were plenty of times wherewe, you know, we went at it,
but I always knew I could trusthim so we could, you know we
could, we could make it through.
(31:56):
You know, once trust is broken,it's pretty hard to recover.
Same with Andrew, other otherco-founder.
I just knew that I know thatshit's going to get done when it
says it's going to get done,and if it doesn't, there's a
good reason for it, or we're sooverloaded that we're like, okay
, we're running the red andrunning so hot, so that's huge.
(32:20):
Uh, also, what comes along withthat trust is the ability to,
to give and receive feedback.
You know, I think at this pointthey, they trust that they can
give me feedback and they know,you know, if I'm being, if I'm
just outright being an asshole,they can tell me, you know, and
vice versa, um and uh, and so mebeing able to learn and grow
(32:44):
and and all of us being able tolearn and grow together and, uh,
not just say screw you whenit's like, hey, you're coming in
really hot, what, what else isgoing on?
Um?
So I think that emotionalsensitivity is really important,
uh, but it can be adouble-edged sword, I get, you
know, I some of the times that Iget most worked up is when I
(33:04):
perceive a slowdown or I'mworried about somebody and I
didn't have the toolsnecessarily to to explicitly
call that out or point at it andsay this is why I'm actually
pissed off.
Let me take a step back, let mego for a walk, let me breathe
out.
You know what it actually, whatthe core problem is and it
(33:26):
usually comes out of caring,distrust or um or uh, being left
in the dark, uh, anduncertainty, um, but being able
to really really dig into thatand be like what's the core
emotion here that has me so, sofrustrated, so lit up, so fired
up, and then being able to bringit down and be like, okay, cool
(33:46):
, you know, get to the root ofwhat somebody actually meant,
because the vast majority ofpeople have good intentions, but
if they, if they don't, youalso have to or if they've shown
you know my Angelo quotebelieve people when they tell
you who they are, that's right,no, that's the first time.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
That's right, man.
I just watched a video onYouTube last night about a lady
who won the lottery.
She won that like $1.6 billiona while back and the type of
people that were scamming thatwere coming out, that were
knocking on her neighbor's doorstrying to find out where she
lived Like it's crazy.
People can be freaking crazy,and sometimes what you've got to
do to the people in your life,I mean if crazy.
And sometimes what you've gotto do to the people in your life
(34:27):
, I mean if you're not in astable relationship, if you're
dating, you're running arounddoing whatever that can, kind of
.
I mean I had, you know, I wasdating a girl at the time that
told me the idea that we did wasstupid and that I should just
spend the weekends with herinstead.
And uh, you know, and then wesold for nine figures and it's
like good thing I didn't listento her Right.
But you know, it's just crazythings like that, that people
(34:48):
that just kind of get in yourway they don't necessarily want
to see you do.
Well, how much do you guys justtune out?
It just become hermits sitting,just work and just sit in there
and ignore what's going on withpolitics, ignore what's going
on with you know, the homelessguy outside sleeping in front of
your door.
Like how much of that do youtune out and how much of that do
(35:08):
you actually need to kind ofbreak away sometimes?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, we were pretty empathetic bunch, which, again,
you know, double edged sword, soit's pretty impossible for us
to tune out humanity.
Possible for us to tune outhumanity, um, it, uh, it can be
distracting and there's a lot of, you know, focused thinking
about it.
Getting rid of a lot of socialmedia has helped, andrew.
You know there there's been alot of stuff over the past three
years to get really, or twoyears that we had this company
(35:41):
to get really pissed off aboutUm, and there there's some
things that affected me so muchthat it was it was hard to
concentrate and uh, and Andrewwas like dude, delete this, the,
the social apps, like get offof the.
You shouldn't even know thatthis, this part of the thing
exists.
It's one thing to be in tune andknow what's going on in the
(36:03):
world and be intelligent aboutit and and care and deeply feel
it's.
It's another thing to justinundate yourself with all of
these crazy opinions in so manydifferent ways.
So block that out.
So that's something.
That was one of the best piecesof advice I got as far as
(36:25):
people saying you know this ordon't, don't do this, um, I
always look to what they'vebuilt.
Oh, and you know, and and 98 ofthe people that are like why
would you ever do that?
That's, that's impossible.
Don't do that.
I've never built a single thing.
You know, and, and that sounds,sounds like a big kind of
(36:47):
asshole way to think, but it's,it's true.
These things are hard and andthe people that say you know you
can do something generally havehave fought odds and won the.
(37:08):
The filter is pretty clear whenit's when you look back and and
you're like okay, what is thisperson built?
How well do they know what ittakes?
What kind of pain, uh,unwilling to endure, what kind
of background and history dothey have that actually supports
their?
No, you know, um, and I don'tmean to get dark or morbid, but
it also comes from a little bitof pain.
I think people that haveexperienced deaths close to them
(37:31):
have a different outlook and adifferent drive and a different
mentality about a lot of things.
You don't have a lot of time,but you might as well swing for
the fences.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Or if you grow up in a like I mean I grew up in a
really bad neighborhood inCincinnati and it's Rust Belt,
you know it's.
It can be real violent and the.
You got to be careful too notto dehumanize yourself because
you see so much of it and youalmost kind of tune it out.
It's almost like you play warvideo games.
You don't think about all these.
You know video game charactersyou're shooting all day.
(38:04):
You know it's just like oh,it's just a video game, right?
that happens in like real life,like you start not even caring
you.
You know somebody got shot.
Uh, you know, somehow I hearanother story about this or that
or whatever and you don't know,I mean it could be affecting
you in a different way.
You think you're justdesensitized and it doesn't
bother you anymore.
But the shit will add up andit's.
(38:26):
It can be, it can be a hot mess.
And you know, I mean you're aneconomics guy.
You hear the.
You know you hear the sayingnever take financial advice from
somebody broker than you.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And it's kind of like you know you've got the same
thing going on with, with whatyou kind of said and it's, but
at some point you just kind ofyou know you desensitize
yourself to everybody who who'snot on the same page or doesn't
have the same trajectory in lifethat you have.
And you know, I think once youmake it though, like once you
get that thing going, like onceyou guys sell, you got your
thing happening, you're doing itThen you go back and be
(39:02):
altruistic, then you go back andyou help.
Right, don't, don't stressyourself out, worrying about all
these things.
Stay in tune to what's going onin your industry and everything
.
But.
But there's another sayingdon't set yourself on fire to
keep everybody else warm.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yep, and that's sometimes you want to do that,
you want to help and you seethings happening and stuff, but
it's like you can't.
You got to make sure you'regood first before you go help
another people making commentson social media.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you can go help another people
making comments on social media.
Yeah, not, yeah.
Yeah, so that's coming before.
Before assisting others, yeahthat's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
There's a bunch of them, right, you can, yeah, you
go on and on.
Well, you mentioned somethingabout the government too, in in
your industry.
I just had a lady in here uhtalking about grants, uh, in our
co-working space here, and youknow she was telling us about
samgov, grantsgov.
Do you, do you play in thatspace at all?
Are you a startup that can alsogo after grant money?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Oh yeah, so we are our biggest customer and I think
biggest customer in the world Idon't like it's terrible to say
is the US government right now.
So we won a $1.25 million SBIRsmall business innovation
research grant from the SpaceForce specifically that we're
(40:17):
working, you know, working tomake into a.
The dream is always to convertit into an actual funded program
and so we're working very hardto that, to that end, and we
have some really, reallyspectacular government sponsors.
Um, I, uh, I served one of our,one of my co-founders served.
So we've never shied away from,uh, from you know, service, uh,
(40:40):
service to the country and andthe, the um, the drive there is
strong.
Uh, when I got to Silicon Valley, this attitude and sort of
saber rattling around defensewas quite the opposite.
It was one company I had to nothide but be discreet about the
(41:02):
defense work that I was doing,one out of the four hardware
companies, uh, because peoplehated it so much and hated the
idea of ever doing anything withthe government.
Um, so so, yeah, we, weabsolutely are our dual use, um,
defense and and commercial useand in the space industry and
(41:23):
hardware generally, uh is theyou don't have to be but a lot
um, it's a lot better to be.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
So, wow, and now.
So you got these platforms thatI found out that you can if you
have anything to do withgovernment or you want to try to
get some work from thegovernment.
There's this one, uh, thiswoman showed me called
instrumental and it's TL at theend.
I don't know if you've everused that, but it costs money,
but you can go in there and itjust you could set up filters,
(41:52):
you could set up alerts, allkinds of stuff for the types of
grants that you want, and thiswoman, she writes grants for a
living.
So she was telling me about that, I said hey look, I'm a white
dude, I'm a middle-aged guy.
You know, I'm a littleAppalachian, so like maybe
there's some Appalachian stuffout there, I might have some,
you know.
I'm trying to find anything.
You know it's just like yougotta start digging around and
(42:13):
trying to find what you can get.
But I mean that could be apotential for you guys.
And have you ever used any, anyplatforms for raising uh, for
raising money?
Have you Uh?
no, no, we haven't um thethere's like that top doll, top
tal freelance consulting or uh,they're freelance um uh uh
(42:35):
consultants for raising money oh, oh yeah, no, we we we never um
went that way.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
um, uh, we we have some.
Some investors are early andand I mean our current investors
are still early investors Uh,we had.
I'm just constantly blown awayby, by the luck we've had with
the, with the investors that wehave, um, and how hard they work
for us.
Specifically, you always hearthese horror stories of
(43:06):
non-value-add investors andwe're, I mean, I just feel,
lucky every day for our team andour investors.
Frankly and it might sound likelip service, whatever, I think
the impression is probably thatI'm not that way.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
No, no, no, Are they mostly Seattle guys or West
Coast?
Yeah, west Coast say, are they?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
mostly seattle guys, or west coast or, uh, yeah, west
coast.
So our earliest village global,um la and, and san francisco,
uh.
And then the two, the, the leadin our seed round, hyperplanes,
actually out of boston, so theyreally understand the robotic
space as well and have seen theproblem that we're trying to
solve firsthand.
And then then uh, in that roundas well, riots uh capital out
(43:56):
of out of arrive, ventures outof uh out of LA, really really
knows the software for hardwareand the hardware space Uh.
And then the guy that put inthe first check from village
global, uh, lucas, um, uh,started, started his own, his
own firm called raveling capital, and he, he invested in the
seed round as a follow-on aswell and has just worked
(44:18):
relentlessly for us as well.
So we've just gotten uhinsanely lucky with the, with
the investors we have on board.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
They're, they're, they seem very specific to what
you do, like how do you put theword out that this is what we do
and how do they find you in thefirst place?
Like how did you guys get thatinitial kind of how'd you get
the ball rolling?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, the initial bit came from my network in the
space industry and reaching outto a bunch of space investors
and even if they turned down, aslong as you know, I hope I'm
not not too much of an asshole,but as long as you're not too
much of an asshole, they'llgenerally be willing to say you
(44:58):
know, this isn't a fit for us,but you should talk to these,
these people, and that's sort ofgot the, the, everything in
motion.
And then, well, we got our firstuh, our first check came from
dear friend named kiri, uh, andso she put out a lot of uh you
know she's an angel and she putuh, put out a lot of feelers, a
(45:19):
lot of introductions for us.
And then our angels really,really helped get the get the
word out and make introductions.
And then when we got villageglobal on, they just kind of get
the word out and makeintroductions.
And then when we got VillageGlobal on, they just kind of
blew the doors open, changed thegame.
Yeah, they know every singleinvestor out there and just were
spectacular and helping usraise our seed round.
And then same, well, you knowwe haven't had to raise from
(45:42):
Hyperplane and after Hyperplane,ravelin and John Cavalupo, but
I'm sure they'll be the sameonce we go out to raise again.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Well, and there's a lot of people who would love to
be in the startup space.
Like you, they'd love to go outand raise money, break away
from that nine-to-five lifestyle.
How important is it, do youthink, to be on the West Coast
or East Coast, where most of themoney is?
On the West coast or East coast, uh, where?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
most of the money is yeah, um, you know when, if we
we raised next, I'll be, I'll besitting in San Francisco for a
month and a half, for sure.
I think it just in person.
We actually had one investorjust be like, yeah, you're okay,
uh, on zoom, and I was likethat doesn't sound right.
And they were like you're okayon Zoom.
And I was like that doesn'tsound right.
And they were like you're awfulon Zoom.
Oh no you're great man.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I'm sitting here listening to you, you're doing
great, yeah, this is different.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
I mean you know, it's not a pitch.
You're kind of pitching, I meanyeah, yeah, fair, but I was
probably over it by the time Igot to these interviews oh yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And they were like no, we metyou in person, we just we loved
it, and so I think being inperson is great if you have the
ability to be.
(46:55):
I don't think you have to livethere or be based there, but the
talent pool definitely affectsdecisions.
But you know, there'sspectacular talent everywhere
there's.
You just mentioned fivecompanies and everything you
need to build.
Build an airplane between twocities in the Midwest and
(47:16):
Midwest yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, cincinnati, northern Kentucky, kind of.
Well, the thing is aboutCincinnati is it's a, it's very
much becoming a logistics supplychain logistics city.
The second biggest freightbroker in the country is here,
tql.
We have the largest Amazon hubin the world.
I believe we have the largestDHL hub in America.
We have the largest Wayfairoutlet here, our hub here.
(47:38):
It's got rail transport, youknow, I mean it's established
rail for a hundred somethingyears, 140 years.
You've got an airport which isnot even really a passenger
airport, it's mostly a logisticsairport.
And, uh, you've got, yeah, likeI said, ge's here, procter and
gamble's, the biggest consumerpackage goods company in the
world.
They're based here.
The largest grocery chain inthe world's here kroger, uh,
(47:59):
centos, which is a big supplierof like things to offices and
all that.
I mean dude, it's crazy, like Imean, the number of businesses
and everything that are here.
And you've got three large,relatively large, universities.
I mean it's you're, you're,yeah, it's nuts.
You're an hour and a half fromIndianapolis, from Louisville.
You're an hour from Lexington.
You're an hour and a half fromColumbus, ohio.
You have three hours ofCleveland, five hours of
(48:20):
Pittsburgh, four hours and fourand a half hours of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
St Louis is four and a half hours.
I mean you're a third, you're aday's drive from a third of the
U?
S population.
So and then, um, it's not ananecdote uh, uh, related to that
is one of the most successfulspace companies in the world
right now rocket lab uh buildstheir, they, they build and fly
their rockets out of New Zealand, which did not have a space or
rocket industry before, and theypulled from boating and all of
these different engineeringdisciplines.
(48:56):
They might have moved to LA foraerospace initially, but you
can build with enough grit,determination and, honestly, a
healthy dose of naivety on howhard these things are I mean
think about it.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I mean we're not very far from purdue, which is
probably one of the topengineering schools in the
entire country.
University cincinnati's got agreat engineering school.
Uh, I mean it's, it's.
I mean you're so close to somany universities and see,
that's one thing that kills usin, uh, college basketball and
football and all that is.
You know, everybody wants tosend their talent.
Like, we got tons of highschool talent here, but they can
go to, they can go to Indiana,they can go to Purdue, they can
(49:32):
go to Butler, they can go to,you know, university of Kentucky
, louisville, ohio state, likeDayton, I mean it's all like an
hour and a half away.
So there's no consensus here onon who you should root for, like
there is in some cities.
But yeah, but, man, john, thishas been awesome man and I
really appreciate your time andsharing some of these insights
(49:53):
of, like what it's like to be ina young startup.
You know, still raising money,still getting out there.
Tell people how they can findout about you.
Are you guys, are you raisingaround right now?
Where can they access that ifthey are interested in investing
or becoming a customer?
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, yeah, we're heads down onboarding customers,
uh, left and right right now,um and uh, you know, working
working with government, uh, sonot raising around right now,
but uh, I think if you go tointegrateco, uh, you're in for
hopefully a hopefullya pleasantsurprise.
But we've gotten to get a 50-50split on whether people love or
(50:29):
hate the website.
So come check out the websiteand learn about what we do and
tell us what you think, becausewe have a bit of a pool going on
on who's gonna love it andwho's not.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
And I'm guessing people can find you on LinkedIn
John Conafay, c-o-n-a-f-a-y.
Is there a bunch of JohnConafays on there, or are you?
There's one.
Oh well, congratulations, sir.
My name's kind of weird too,but for some reason there's a
whole bunch of us on there, andI don't know why, but most of us
are in Ohio too, so it sucksfor me.
(51:01):
Awesome, so many German peoplehere.
Anyway, well, john, thanks somuch for your time, sir, and I
really appreciate everythingyou've given our audience, and
I'm sure they do too.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Cool.
Thanks, so much, adam, allright.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
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(51:36):
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Special guest today JohnConnofay.
John, thanks for joining us,man.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thanks so much for having me Definitely feeling the
energy right now.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, talking a little bit before the
show about our poor accountantsand the struggles that they have
dealing with our taxes and allof our startups and everything
else we probably got going onstocks, rental properties.
I got all kinds of craphappening.
But, john, you're joining usfrom a company called
Integrateco is the domain name.
(00:56):
It's a software company.
You've been in a bunch ofstartups in the past and a lot
of people, especially here inCincinnati.
I'm in touch with a lot of theVCs and stuff around here and I
go and I talk to the startuppeople and I try to consult with
folks and it just seems likethe startup side a startup as a
(01:17):
side hustle has kind of beenmaybe losing some of its steam
since money's gotten expensive.
Are you guys having that?
Where are you located?
Are you guys having that samefeeling?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We uh so, um, we're based inSeattle, uh, headquarters in
Seattle, uh just got, just gotnew offices.
We're seed stage company uhwith, with a team in Arizona,
some in California and oneperson in Texas.
And, yeah, the crunch was real.
I left my last job, which Iloved very much, selling rockets
(01:51):
for ABL Space Systems in Marchof 2022.
And then I believe it was thenext day that the market ordered
, and then within another month,the next day that the market
ordered, and then was in anothermonth, the market halved.
So you know, everything I,everything I anticipated uh or
(02:12):
dreamed of living off of for thefirst six months of the company
, uh disappeared real quickly orlocked itself up real quickly.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Oh the struggle, bus, yeah that sucks man.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah and uh.
And then, um, yeah, so we wereable to raise money.
Uh, we went out to raise moneypretty quickly and says like,
okay, this became more of a needand the market's changing
really quickly.
Uh, from the boom cycle in 2021, or the spacketing is, as I
call it, uh, with all thecompanies go in public respects,
(02:46):
um and uh.
And so we, so we raised somemoney and I think it was still
okay in 2022.
And then 2023, when we weregoing out to raise our seed fund
, uh, you know, you just saw thecarta graphs, just do, I think
it was something 30% or or 80from the previous year.
(03:07):
Uh, funding, seed funding wasdown 80 from the previous year,
which, you know 2021 waspsychotic.
So can't really, uh, can'treally bear much credence for
that.
But, um, and then in 2023 itwas down 30% after being down
80%, and it was.
I mean, everybody was justholding onto their money for
(03:29):
dear life, no more, no more Zerpera.
And uh, and you know, we reallyreally had to make sure we had
a rock solid plan moving forward.
But we, we made it out, um, by,by expanding our market from
just the space industry, which,honestly, was inspired by some
technical program managers thatwe met from Google and Apple,
(03:52):
saying why are you focusing onthe space industry with this
software?
This is like the technicalprogram management software
we've always dreamed of havingour entire careers, oh, wow.
So we were like, awesome, okay,great.
And we went out and interviewedsomething like 50 to 75 more
customers while we're in themiddle of the raise and uh, uh,
(04:13):
and they were like yes, likethis, this is necessary.
Uh, all the software that we'reworking with now has been built
specifically for software andjust doesn't have context, for
you know, admob is prettydifficult when you have an 18
months lead time item thatbreaks on.
Yet, you know, oh, yeah, yeah,so, uh.
(04:34):
So we, we expanded our scopeand then met some really, really
spectacular investors.
Uh, who, who uh got in, uh, atthe seed round in Q2 of 2023, we
were feeling it.
I mean, the crunch is not.
Crunch is absolutely real well,and it's in.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's interesting when I read your stuff.
Usually you think of softwareand hardware is two different
things.
Right, it's two differentcompanies.
But you're actually not.
Let me get this straight.
Are you doing projectmanagement for hardware
developers?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
yes, yes.
So project and programming yeahfor, yeah, for hardware
specifically.
So yeah, worked in fourhardware companies, uh, um,
specifically.
Uh.
Non-technical backgroundoutside of the air force where I
was working in communicationnavigation mission systems on
awacs uh needed a, a swift kickin the ass to get some
(05:26):
discipline.
So joined and for all intentsand purposes it worked.
And so just you got enoughtechnical knowledge just to be
dangerous, but formal educationsin economics and design and
then fell in love with the spaceindustry from students for the
exploration and development ofspace.
Had always been a nerd when itcame to hardware and technology
(05:47):
and all these things um and uh.
And then worked at, interned ataspired global um, which is an
awesome, now multinationalcompany.
It was 40 people, I think, whenI interned there and they just
sent up their first twosatellites and went uh
consulting into consulting atBryce space technology out of DC
(06:08):
.
Um wrote some papers on closingdigital divide before uh got
picked up by Astronis when therewere five people out of an
apartment uh in San Franciscobuilding satellites.
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, I slept out of theapartment that they built the
first satellite out of for thefirst like two months I was
there trying to find a place inSF and and then went on to moved
(06:34):
up to Seattle to work for acompany that was bought by
another launch company recentlycalled Spaceflight, and we're
just starting to build orbitaltransfer vehicles with some
crazy fun sci-fi stuff, um anduh.
And then my last job wasselling rockets at abl space
systems and I just kind of sawthis, this thread of okay, we
(06:57):
don't have any context, we startwith tasks instead of uh,
starting with actual hardwaresystems, diagrams and things for
all of our program and projectmanagement.
How do we match the mentalmodel of hardware companies much
better than you know, a projector smart sheet or anything?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
That's wild.
So a guy with an economicsdegree figures out how to create
a project management system tohelp people that are much more
sophisticated at hardware buildhardware in a more efficient way
using his software.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, that's, that's, that's the uh, the hope.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Wow.
So I mean, are you just, areyou you know, your personality
type?
Are you just the kind of thetype of person that can kind of
pick up on things like userexperience design and I mean, do
you just build mental maps andbe able to like figure out what
the next feature is you need toadd, like I mean, is that just
kind of the way your brain works?
I mean, I know a lot of us wekind of take a step back
(07:54):
sometimes and think you knowwhat makes me good at what I do,
right, like, is that just youknow?
Is it the military stuff?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Like what do you attribute it to?
Um, I think a lot ofperspective uh I've been able to
benefit from.
Uh, because I am about associal as they come you know
from from the age of 14 through21,.
I was at a.
I went to hardcore and punkshows five days a week.
Okay, um, and you know, had neweverybody in the in the
ecosystem that I was in andwould always talk people's ear,
(08:32):
ear off, but also listen andjust ingest.
You know what are the problemsgoing on, uh, when I first got
to inspire I, you know, everytime somebody was like, okay,
happy hour time, I'd be therejust to talk to the engineers
and learn from them and becamereally great friends with them.
And same thing at Astronis andother places.
You know, go out for beers,listen to people that are expert
(08:55):
in their craft and doing really, really spectacular things and
how to move fast, how to youknow how to get the job done.
Complaints hearing a lot ofcomplaints helped give me
perspective on that's hard to do.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's hard to do, listening to people complain
about your stuff and not getdistracted or distraught.
That you know these people are,you know, taking a crap on your
stuff, and I mean people intech can be really hard on you.
The personality types in techare not they're not nice people,
especially when they have egos.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
yeah, yeah, it's uh.
Luckily, the space industry is,is a pretty kind, kind place.
Uh, I think, because thetechnology is so relentless, um,
you know, you only get one shot, maybe two, maybe three,
potentially four, which might beyour last shot, which is the.
You know the story of spacex,um, uh, and the.
(09:49):
The hardware is sofundamentally brutal that people
tend to be nicer.
I like to say it came for thetechnology and stayed for the
people, um and uh, you know, somaybe a benefit from that
significantly, uh, where, whereegos can get shattered pretty
quickly and pretty spectacularly.
So you just got to pickyourself up and uh and dust
(10:10):
yourself off, um, uh, but theyeah, just the just the real get
shit done attitude.
You know, people have said fordecades you can't build
satellites in our apartment andthings like this.
And then companies like Spireand Planet Labs literally
started in the garage andstarted building these highly
capable spacecraft andsatellites that are imaging the
(10:31):
earth every day or trackingships and and planes.
You know it's really incredible.
So I think I just benefit fromreally spectacular people around
me.
They are out there, believe itor not.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah.
And in SF you can't afford anoffice and an apartment.
So you have to you have tofigure it out, right, like I
mean it just is what it is.
So, yeah, I mean I have a kindof a soft spot for for Seattle
because I mean we were, we soldour company back in 15 to Zillow
and they took over our officehere and then all of a sudden,
(11:04):
all of our poor employees, whowe were, you know, barely being
able to pay, all of a suddenthey had free Starbucks.
They had free, you know, it waslike a market.
All of a sudden Zillow openedup inside our office and
everybody got pay raises andthey started donating money to
the homeless shelters aroundhere.
It was like it was like a wholenew thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
You hear that, stephen, he has his headphones
on.
Yeah, few people are at lunchright now, but I'm just going to
take that clip for as amotivator.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh they got all kinds of stuff.
I would go up there.
So I, you know, I, myco-founders all went full time
with it.
I owned an advertising agencybut I was downstairs from them
and they'd always come down andbug me for like marketing stuff
and design stuff and everything.
But then every once in a whileI just sneak up there, hey
what's going on, guys, and justlike kind of grab a couple of
things you know and just youknow.
But but yeah, man, so you knowI'm here in Cincinnati.
(11:56):
Well, I'm actually sitting innorthern Kentucky right now, but
since I ride across the riverthere and I've, you know, we've
got somebody once told me fromEastern Kentucky University all
the way up to Dayton OhioWright-Patterson Air Force Base
you're probably familiar with.
That is everything you need tobuild a plane.
Ge, as you know, is breaking upinto I think, three companies.
(12:19):
Ge Aircraft has always beenhere, but now GE Aircraft is
their biggest division and theyare going to branch off.
They're going to be their ownFortune 500 company and based
here in Cincinnati, and youcould tell you know Boeing's
having some issues and thingslike that.
So now you know GE is going tobe like the thing and there's a
bunch of other companies in theaerospace world, universities, a
(12:43):
lot of stuff kind of happeningaround that you know.
So you've got a lot of roboticstuff happening here.
You've got a lot of 3d printingthat's being revolutionized in
the aircraft industry.
You've got a lot of stuff justhappening around that you know.
So explain to people who may belistening here and in aerospace
actually being a pretty bigindustry here kind of how you
(13:03):
guys help with your softwarewith your software.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, yeah, um.
So I'm still kind of reelingfrom the thought that that G can
split into three companies andone at least one of them still
be a fortune 500.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Is it a wild?
Isn't it wild, yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, that's the my uh.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
AT&T all over again.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, one of my colleagues, yeah, yeah, one of
my colleagues in Texas is goingto hate that I'm saying this,
but I lived in Alaska for theAir Force and it just reminds me
very much of the.
If you were to split Alaska intwo, it would still be, you know
, the number one and two largeststates in the country.
That's right.
We have, from an aerospaceperspective, what we you know,
(13:44):
what we, what we help with isthere are a lot of terms thrown
around about innovation, theateror collaborative theater as
something what we, what we helpwith, is uh, there are a lot of
terms thrown around aboutinnovation theater or
collaborative theater assomething that we, uh, that we
talk about a lot.
Um, you know, people didn'treally fundamentally understand
what collaboration on uh, onworksheets or documents or
(14:04):
anything was until Google, um,googleets and all this came out.
You can actually work togetherin the same document, side by
side, and all this.
It gets a little bit morecomplex with project and program
management because you haveyour production schedule and
then you have your BD peoplethat need to sell whatever's
(14:26):
being produced, and then youhave your customers.
That's a grossly oversimplifiedway of saying it, but you have
some subsection of these threesectors and you don't want to
show your entire productionschedule to your customers, but
they need to see the highlightsand there's some input from your
customers that you need forwhat's going to be produced.
(14:49):
And then, bd, sitting in themiddle, was your statement of
work for all the deliverablesnecessary from the company to
the customer and the customer'spayments to the company.
So you have hundreds ofschedules, especially at these
large production suites, thatthat are being passed back and
forth via Excel spreadsheets andyou're just getting snapshots
(15:09):
that are being passed back andforth via Excel spreadsheets.
Oh rough, and you're justgetting snapshots.
So what we say is it's akin totrying to conduct an orchestra
by telling all the musicians togo to separate rooms and then
texting them snapshots of themusic every two weeks.
Oh God, yeah, it's not going tosound great.
I get it, and that's how we'vebeen working for decades and it
(15:31):
absolutely.
You know it works.
But also you know NASA sentpeople to the moon using slide
rules, but not exactly how wewant to do it anymore and not
the most efficient process.
So our software allows you tobuild an entire source of truth
across your entire companyInternal collaboration is super
(15:52):
key and then be able to parseout pieces of that uh, of that
schedule to your BD team, toyour, to your external customers
, to a supply chain, can feed intheir lead times directly into
your schedule.
So it's not just wow.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, it's not just external partners too.
Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's not just yeah, it's not just external partners
too, exactly.
Yeah, it's not just creatingwhile keeping everything
firewalled from each other.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So you don't give you know you don't give up your
entire schedule.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They just see pieces.
Everything's permissioned.
Yeah, exactly yeah To the, tothe subtask level.
It's pretty intense Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Wow.
Are you utilizing any uh likeinnovative technologies?
Are you using any kind of likeblockchain stuff for some of the
supply chain management?
Are you using any AI?
Yeah, Because nowadays it'slike so hard to raise money
unless you've got like AIintegrated into your stuff
somehow.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
right, yeah, it's, it's oh, how do I, how do I
navigate this one withoutpissing anybody?
Oh yeah, without overcommitting your development team
.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
When did we talk about AI?
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
yeah, exactly.
So we have not once publicly orin investor pitches said AI,
and I think it comes from beingway.
Oh, we haven't once said AI,despite our chief architect and
co-founder, our technicalco-founder, having two degrees
in machine learning.
(17:16):
Oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
God, how do you even get that?
How did he already get donewith degrees in machine learning
?
I feel like those just came out.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's been around for decades, you know, and it's just
the new hot thing.
And don't get me wrong, ai isgigantic, like it is absolutely
spectacular for a lot of uses,but you got to have the right
data infrastructure and you haveto have everything actually
built to be useful to peoplebefore just slapping AI into it
(17:47):
or onto it.
So we had some fundamentaltechnology issues that we needed
to overcome before we evenapproach what we do.
You know, with risk management,ai could be really spectacular,
but we have to have the data inplace for people to for AI or
machine learning algorithms tobe utilized, to then pull out
(18:10):
and say, hey, this schedule riskis very, very real, so we'll
get there.
But this collaborative aspect,like the deep customer need,
didn't lay in AI or blockchainor anything, and I think I'm
just wagering a guess that it'sa little bit too much.
My own practical BS coming fromthe hardware world, um, and
(18:31):
then entering the software worldwhere, uh, you know I, I had to
have a bit of an attitudeadjustment as well, because in
hardware, you know, you havethese giant mechanisms that are
moving and you say, hey, stopimmediately to somebody, very,
very directly, or, you know,with a few expletives in there
and they know it's for theirsafety and it's like, oh God, ok
(18:54):
, and it's just.
It's just a part of it.
People talk to each other thatway all the time and whatnot.
It's not necessarily the casewith software.
So I think, yeah, the, so thesofter touch and the, the the
lower tolerance for hype is, iskind of deeply ingrained in this
company.
So we want to be very practicaland make sure we're servicing
(19:16):
customers.
Long way of saying that.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
No, no, no, no.
That's great.
I mean, you guys aren't justlike slapping a chatbot on your
thing and saying hey look,there's AI here.
Now we have a chatbot pluginthat we just added into our
software.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
here we have a chat bot plugin that we just added
into our software here.
So yeah, we'll use it when itis practical and like a leap
ahead for our customers For sure.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I like it.
Yeah, you got to think aboutthe right way to do things and I
you know a lot of folks try tooverdo it or they they follow
that hype train to their owndestruction.
So you got to stay on task.
You got to know what you'regood at, what you can actually
accomplish.
The fact that you have somebodyon staff with two degrees in
machine learning is amazing.
(19:58):
So I mean, if you guys neededto pivot, I mean if you guys
needed a pivot or you guysneeded to do something a little
bit different, I mean you havethat talent in house and you
could say, look, investors, wegot the guy, we're thinking
about it, but we're not ready toimplement that just yet.
Which if, as an investor, I'dbe like, okay, yeah, I get it.
That makes sense.
(20:19):
They're being responsible withwhat they're building and the
customers are into what you'vegot.
Now Talk a little bit about andthis is a big problem, I think,
for a lot of people outside ofraising money.
I think preparing to raisemoney is the thing and it's
gotten, like we said.
It's gotten a lot harderbecause money has gotten more
(20:39):
expensive.
People are a little bit morecautious about what they throw
money at.
I got a friend.
He was raising.
He was raising a hundred.
He raised 175 million, I thinkin 2021, at a 1.6 billion dollar
valuation for his new realestate company and it was around
six months.
So there were some crazy, crazythings happening and people
(21:03):
were just dumping money intoanything.
You know, money was so cheap,they were borrowing it or
whatever.
Uh, now it's very much harderand people are going to be a lot
more skeptical.
They're going to look for afinished product.
Uh, before they invest even inthat like angel round or the
seed round.
Uh, you know, do you havecustomers, do you have a product
?
When you guys started raising,maybe outside of friends and
(21:27):
family, where were you at withthe product?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
yeah, that's uh.
So when I left uh, abl, itwasn't um, you know, I had an
idea of what I wanted to buildand I really honed in on it and
I was building.
Essentially I was building itout of on bubble I think it was
on a no code platform oh, yeah,yeah On a bubble.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, right, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So it was essentially like how to move satellites
around on a launch manifest ormultiple launch fan of manifest,
or really really zoomed in andI had built this and a buddy and
co-founder, paul, looked overmy shoulder and I was like,
cause he was over for we.
And it was like, uh, because hewas over for we're about to go
get beers, and he was like man,that looks like shit.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Can I just build this for you.
Dude.
It's always like the ideas Iwant to do, I I'm always like
there's no way I could do thison no code, like there's no way
this would work, like I can, thesystem just cannot do what I
want it to do.
And then the integrations youstart having problems with that
and and yeah, yeah, oh, Itotally get it.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
But you got a, you got a proof of concept kind of
out there, right, absolutely,and I think we might have raised
on that proof of concept, ifnot wireframes initially.
You know the pre-seed level.
It's definitely a team in thedream.
It's who you know.
Who do you know?
Who do you have, do you havethe capability of kind of the
hacker, uh, hipster, hustlercombination, which, which is
(22:53):
very important very importantpretty spectacularly.
andrew sloan, our, our otherco-founder ran a digital brand
agents or a brand agency for thespace industry for for seven,
seven years or so, uh, and had10 years prior to that in
software.
This was, this was his thirdstartup, um, and then, uh, uh,
(23:14):
all our technical co-founder, asI said, two degrees in machine
learning and all this and thenwhatever I do now, but I had all
the startup experience andexperience.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I was one of you.
I was the, the, the guy whothinks about the new stuff that
I wanted to build and like theoriginal ideas and like how do
we, what's the next thing?
What's going to happen likefive years from now?
You know that's.
And then going out and sellingit, right that's.
You know, developers aren'tnecessarily the best people at
selling stuff, so they'reintroverts, things that I I am,
(23:46):
I am not good at.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I want a super introverted developer.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I want a dude who's just like.
All I want to do is sit hereand write code all day.
Great, okay, then you're not.
We're not going to have toworry about you.
You can just complain when wetell you we got this new feature
and that's fine.
But yeah, yeah.
So how do you see yourself?
What do you see yourself as?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, so you know I worked both the supply chain
procurement.
I was early on at the majorityof these startups, so largely I
did everything that a firstnon-technical hire would do at
these.
So it was business operations.
So you know, I'm by no meansgoing to say that I did
accounting, but keeping an eyeon cost and schedule and things
(24:26):
like that Procurement supplychain, actually negotiating
hardware deals and on top of itbusiness, commercial and federal
business development because,no matter what anybody says,
space industry is still prettydependent on federal business.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, and so.
So I just kind of did all ofthose things all at once, all
the time, much to the detrimentof my, of my health and sanity
sometimes, but but I'm here, so,um, so, a lot of experience in
sales, a lot of experience innavigating, uh, the government,
um, you know, once you I guessit's same with everything Once
(25:08):
you actually know, uh, how thegovernment works, that
government or people too is uh,um, it's, uh, it's a lot easier,
less scary to navigate, um, andthen, uh, and then, knowing the
deep, the deep problem thatwe're trying to solve, for this
is, you know, we're building anapplication again that I wish I
had had at every hardwarestartup I worked at, or larger
(25:29):
company as well, um, so, sodefinitely not.
Um, yeah, definitely in tunewith with the core problem that
we're we're trying to solve andthe ability to sell it.
Um, but sass is a completelydifferent game than hardware.
You know, 100 oh've sold reallycomplex, crazy types of
hardware, uh, before, and then Igot to sass and I was like holy
(25:52):
shnikes, the bar is is superhigh, um and uh, on the
commercial side and andgovernment side, and uh, and
people want a lot of bells andwhistles and a lot, of, a lot,
of, a lot of parody, and it'sperfectly reasonable.
You know, we we go in justabout every week or every month
and test our own things out,putting ourselves in the mindset
(26:14):
of a new customer, and yeah,that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Well, that's a skill too, being able to do that and
being in a place like Seattle,which is well known for startups
.
I mean, you got Microsoft there, you got Zillow there.
There's a bunch of you know,really popular, uh startups that
have have kind of grown out ofthere.
Did Slack?
Was Slack out of there too, oris that a San Francisco thing?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Uh, I think that San Francisco one of the greatest
pivots of all time.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Seriously, yeah, that's a great story, but uh,
but you got a lot, of, a lot ofmoney there, also because of the
tech industry being so strongthere in eyes on startups.
But what is your feeling?
Non-tech people what is thevalue in a place, in a startup
for folks that aren't writingcode?
(27:01):
What skills do you have to haveas somebody like you, who you
know maybe can distillcomplicated things for investors
or for salespeople, or you knowwhat's what?
What are the skills that youhave to have to be a non tech
person in a place like that?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think top outside of grit and perseverance is
constantly identified as thenumber one uh skill.
And you know grit doesn't meanbeing pissed off and then keep
going one day.
It means over over years.
But outside of that, theability to deal with ambiguity
is gigantic, because you'regoing to be thrown a million
(27:43):
scenarios that you could havenever imagined.
You're gonna have great days,you're have terrible days, you
can't ride the wave every singleday, but the ability to deal
with and be comfortable inambiguity and practice that
every single day run towardevery fearful decision you make
every day, and make a decision,because the only dead squirrel
or the only flat squirrel is onethat couldn't make a decision.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You know, yeah, it's true, there you go.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I'm going, you know, yeah, it's true, there you go,
I'm gonna start using that, yeah, yeah, um, so the the ability
to deal with ambiguity and it'sa learning curve.
Um, it's all the the will andwant to learn, um in excess
amounts, like the after hoursgoing to bars, and we would just
get into.
You don't have to go to a barcoffee shop, you know.
Just a long walk is great, um,but, uh, but something that you
(28:36):
can just constantly be learningfrom other people or learning on
your own.
When I was uh at the consultingcompany, I worked at nasa office
, the chief financial officerand I think, um, you not to toot
my own horn I didn't realize itat the at the time.
I was kind of scared, shitlessat the time, and I was just
trying to figure out how I couldlevel myself up to get to the
(28:58):
level of all these incrediblybrilliant people that I was
working with.
But it was.
I was in Udacity all the time,learning how to code, script or
learning how to script.
I will not say that I'm asoftware engineer, but learning
how to script.
I will not say that I'm asoftware engineer, but learning
how to script so that I canwrangle data better so that I
can put reports together fasterand all these things, and it's
that after hours work startupsdon't really have hours, uh, and
(29:19):
I know that sounds yeah, yeah,but it's.
It's a learning curve for a lotof people.
They're like cool, nine to five, I'll get everything I need to
get done and all the learning ontop of it done that's necessary
to to level up just isn't um,you know, can we can all look at
that bosses and in siliconvalley and be like they're
(29:40):
assholes for driving people, butit's just a fact of life.
It's what it is, man apple.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I mean, who's better than that, than Steve Jobs, at
pushing people?
My co-founder.
It was his idea, our company.
He knew how to get the most outof people.
He's calling me at 11, 12o'clock at night asking for
stuff like hey, I think we'regoing to go to this thing
tomorrow, can you whip up aone-page flyer for the company
and then I'll send it over andthen one o'clock in the morning
(30:07):
he's doing copy changes andstuff to it.
It's just like that's the kindof team you have to have.
And you know me being like anENTP extroverted, you know,
debater type person.
You know, with someone who'smore introverted I think there's
a there's actually a startupcompany here or there's a
there's a VC here you can'treach out to them, you can only
(30:31):
fill out this form that theyhave and they will filter out
everybody who doesn't have likefour or five different kinds of
personality types, likeMyers-Briggs They've got their
own right, but it's kind ofloosely based on Myers-Briggs.
But the I think the INTJ or theINFJ was like the number one.
I don't know how much you areinto myers-briggs and stuff like
that, but it's kind of like theasshole personality type they
(30:54):
are.
They're the one, the relentlessasshole like they are.
They're the founder type, right, yeah, and I'm kind of like
third or fourth or whatever, butit's good to have like me on
the team, kind of like you knowyou would be hard to replace
because you're extroverted,you're, you're good at taking
this complicated information,distilling it down.
You're a constant learner.
(31:17):
But I mean, you mentioned alittle bit, you led into it a
little bit with team.
Explain a little bit of thedifferent types of personalities
.
I think that you because it wasvery important to us I could
tell you right now the differenttypes of personalities really
matter.
But explain to me what youthink is important.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Trust.
Um, uh, that sounds like a copout, but it's, it's true.
Uh, I don't think.
You know, there, there've beenplenty of times and Paul's
sitting right over here, so heknows all this but, um, there
there were plenty of times wherewe, you know, we went at it,
but I always knew I could trusthim so we could, you know we
could, we could make it through.
(31:56):
You know, once trust is broken,it's pretty hard to recover.
Same with Andrew, other otherco-founder.
I just knew that I know thatshit's going to get done when it
says it's going to get done,and if it doesn't, there's a
good reason for it, or we're sooverloaded that we're like, okay
, we're running the red andrunning so hot, so that's huge.
(32:20):
Uh, also, what comes along withthat trust is the ability to,
to give and receive feedback.
You know, I think at this pointthey, they trust that they can
give me feedback and they know,you know, if I'm being, if I'm
just outright being an asshole,they can tell me, you know, and
vice versa, um and uh, and so mebeing able to learn and grow
(32:44):
and and all of us being able tolearn and grow together and, uh,
not just say screw you whenit's like, hey, you're coming in
really hot, what, what else isgoing on?
Um?
So I think that emotionalsensitivity is really important,
uh, but it can be adouble-edged sword, I get, you
know, I some of the times that Iget most worked up is when I
(33:04):
perceive a slowdown or I'mworried about somebody and I
didn't have the toolsnecessarily to to explicitly
call that out or point at it andsay this is why I'm actually
pissed off.
Let me take a step back, let mego for a walk, let me breathe
out.
You know what it actually, whatthe core problem is and it
(33:26):
usually comes out of caring,distrust or um or uh, being left
in the dark, uh, anduncertainty, um, but being able
to really really dig into thatand be like what's the core
emotion here that has me so, sofrustrated, so lit up, so fired
up, and then being able to bringit down and be like, okay, cool
(33:46):
, you know, get to the root ofwhat somebody actually meant,
because the vast majority ofpeople have good intentions, but
if they, if they don't, youalso have to or if they've shown
you know my Angelo quotebelieve people when they tell
you who they are, that's right,no, that's the first time.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
That's right, man.
I just watched a video onYouTube last night about a lady
who won the lottery.
She won that like $1.6 billiona while back and the type of
people that were scamming thatwere coming out, that were
knocking on her neighbor's doorstrying to find out where she
lived Like it's crazy.
People can be freaking crazy,and sometimes what you've got to
do to the people in your life,I mean if crazy.
And sometimes what you've gotto do to the people in your life
(34:27):
, I mean if you're not in astable relationship, if you're
dating, you're running arounddoing whatever that can, kind of
.
I mean I had, you know, I wasdating a girl at the time that
told me the idea that we did wasstupid and that I should just
spend the weekends with herinstead.
And uh, you know, and then wesold for nine figures and it's
like good thing I didn't listento her Right.
But you know, it's just crazythings like that, that people
(34:48):
that just kind of get in yourway they don't necessarily want
to see you do.
Well, how much do you guys justtune out?
It just become hermits sitting,just work and just sit in there
and ignore what's going on withpolitics, ignore what's going
on with you know, the homelessguy outside sleeping in front of
your door.
Like how much of that do youtune out and how much of that do
(35:08):
you actually need to kind ofbreak away sometimes?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, we were pretty empathetic bunch, which, again,
you know, double edged sword, soit's pretty impossible for us
to tune out humanity.
Possible for us to tune outhumanity, um, it, uh, it can be
distracting and there's a lot of, you know, focused thinking
about it.
Getting rid of a lot of socialmedia has helped, andrew.
You know there there's been alot of stuff over the past three
years to get really, or twoyears that we had this company
(35:41):
to get really pissed off aboutUm, and there there's some
things that affected me so muchthat it was it was hard to
concentrate and uh, and Andrewwas like dude, delete this, the,
the social apps, like get offof the.
You shouldn't even know thatthis, this part of the thing
exists.
It's one thing to be in tune andknow what's going on in the
(36:03):
world and be intelligent aboutit and and care and deeply feel
it's.
It's another thing to justinundate yourself with all of
these crazy opinions in so manydifferent ways.
So block that out.
So that's something.
That was one of the best piecesof advice I got as far as
(36:25):
people saying you know this ordon't, don't do this, um, I
always look to what they'vebuilt.
Oh, and you know, and and 98 ofthe people that are like why
would you ever do that?
That's, that's impossible.
Don't do that.
I've never built a single thing.
You know, and, and that sounds,sounds like a big kind of
(36:47):
asshole way to think, but it's,it's true.
These things are hard and andthe people that say you know you
can do something generally havehave fought odds and won the.
(37:08):
The filter is pretty clear whenit's when you look back and and
you're like okay, what is thisperson built?
How well do they know what ittakes?
What kind of pain, uh,unwilling to endure, what kind
of background and history dothey have that actually supports
their?
No, you know, um, and I don'tmean to get dark or morbid, but
it also comes from a little bitof pain.
I think people that haveexperienced deaths close to them
(37:31):
have a different outlook and adifferent drive and a different
mentality about a lot of things.
You don't have a lot of time,but you might as well swing for
the fences.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Or if you grow up in a like I mean I grew up in a
really bad neighborhood inCincinnati and it's Rust Belt,
you know it's.
It can be real violent and the.
You got to be careful too notto dehumanize yourself because
you see so much of it and youalmost kind of tune it out.
It's almost like you play warvideo games.
You don't think about all these.
You know video game charactersyou're shooting all day.
(38:04):
You know it's just like oh,it's just a video game, right?
that happens in like real life,like you start not even caring
you.
You know somebody got shot.
Uh, you know, somehow I hearanother story about this or that
or whatever and you don't know,I mean it could be affecting
you in a different way.
You think you're justdesensitized and it doesn't
bother you anymore.
But the shit will add up andit's.
(38:26):
It can be, it can be a hot mess.
And you know, I mean you're aneconomics guy.
You hear the.
You know you hear the sayingnever take financial advice from
somebody broker than you.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And it's kind of like you know you've got the same
thing going on with, with whatyou kind of said and it's, but
at some point you just kind ofyou know you desensitize
yourself to everybody who who'snot on the same page or doesn't
have the same trajectory in lifethat you have.
And you know, I think once youmake it though, like once you
get that thing going, like onceyou guys sell, you got your
thing happening, you're doing itThen you go back and be
(39:02):
altruistic, then you go back andyou help.
Right, don't, don't stressyourself out, worrying about all
these things.
Stay in tune to what's going onin your industry and everything
.
But.
But there's another sayingdon't set yourself on fire to
keep everybody else warm.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yep, and that's sometimes you want to do that,
you want to help and you seethings happening and stuff, but
it's like you can't.
You got to make sure you'regood first before you go help
another people making commentson social media.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you can go help another people
making comments on social media.
Yeah, not, yeah.
Yeah, so that's coming before.
Before assisting others, yeahthat's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
There's a bunch of them, right, you can, yeah, you
go on and on.
Well, you mentioned somethingabout the government too, in in
your industry.
I just had a lady in here uhtalking about grants, uh, in our
co-working space here, and youknow she was telling us about
samgov, grantsgov.
Do you, do you play in thatspace at all?
Are you a startup that can alsogo after grant money?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Oh yeah, so we are our biggest customer and I think
biggest customer in the world Idon't like it's terrible to say
is the US government right now.
So we won a $1.25 million SBIRsmall business innovation
research grant from the SpaceForce specifically that we're
(40:17):
working, you know, working tomake into a.
The dream is always to convertit into an actual funded program
and so we're working very hardto that, to that end, and we
have some really, reallyspectacular government sponsors.
Um, I, uh, I served one of our,one of my co-founders served.
So we've never shied away from,uh, from you know, service, uh,
(40:40):
service to the country and andthe, the um, the drive there is
strong.
Uh, when I got to Silicon Valley, this attitude and sort of
saber rattling around defensewas quite the opposite.
It was one company I had to nothide but be discreet about the
(41:02):
defense work that I was doing,one out of the four hardware
companies, uh, because peoplehated it so much and hated the
idea of ever doing anything withthe government.
Um, so so, yeah, we, weabsolutely are our dual use, um,
defense and and commercial useand in the space industry and
(41:23):
hardware generally, uh is theyou don't have to be but a lot
um, it's a lot better to be.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
So, wow, and now.
So you got these platforms thatI found out that you can if you
have anything to do withgovernment or you want to try to
get some work from thegovernment.
There's this one, uh, thiswoman showed me called
instrumental and it's TL at theend.
I don't know if you've everused that, but it costs money,
but you can go in there and itjust you could set up filters,
(41:52):
you could set up alerts, allkinds of stuff for the types of
grants that you want, and thiswoman, she writes grants for a
living.
So she was telling me about that, I said hey look, I'm a white
dude, I'm a middle-aged guy.
You know, I'm a littleAppalachian, so like maybe
there's some Appalachian stuffout there, I might have some,
you know.
I'm trying to find anything.
You know it's just like yougotta start digging around and
(42:13):
trying to find what you can get.
But I mean that could be apotential for you guys.
And have you ever used any, anyplatforms for raising uh, for
raising money?
Have you Uh?
no, no, we haven't um thethere's like that top doll, top
tal freelance consulting or uh,they're freelance um uh uh
(42:35):
consultants for raising money oh, oh yeah, no, we we we never um
went that way.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
um, uh, we we have some.
Some investors are early andand I mean our current investors
are still early investors Uh,we had.
I'm just constantly blown awayby, by the luck we've had with
the, with the investors that wehave, um, and how hard they work
for us.
Specifically, you always hearthese horror stories of
(43:06):
non-value-add investors andwe're, I mean, I just feel,
lucky every day for our team andour investors.
Frankly and it might sound likelip service, whatever, I think
the impression is probably thatI'm not that way.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
No, no, no, Are they mostly Seattle guys or West
Coast?
Yeah, west Coast say, are they?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
mostly seattle guys, or west coast or, uh, yeah, west
coast.
So our earliest village global,um la and, and san francisco,
uh.
And then the two, the, the leadin our seed round, hyperplanes,
actually out of boston, so theyreally understand the robotic
space as well and have seen theproblem that we're trying to
solve firsthand.
And then then uh, in that roundas well, riots uh capital out
(43:56):
of out of arrive, ventures outof uh out of LA, really really
knows the software for hardwareand the hardware space Uh.
And then the guy that put inthe first check from village
global, uh, lucas, um, uh,started, started his own, his
own firm called raveling capital, and he, he invested in the
seed round as a follow-on aswell and has just worked
(44:18):
relentlessly for us as well.
So we've just gotten uhinsanely lucky with the, with
the investors we have on board.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
They're, they're, they seem very specific to what
you do, like how do you put theword out that this is what we do
and how do they find you in thefirst place?
Like how did you guys get thatinitial kind of how'd you get
the ball rolling?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, the initial bit came from my network in the
space industry and reaching outto a bunch of space investors
and even if they turned down, aslong as you know, I hope I'm
not not too much of an asshole,but as long as you're not too
much of an asshole, they'llgenerally be willing to say you
(44:58):
know, this isn't a fit for us,but you should talk to these,
these people, and that's sort ofgot the, the, everything in
motion.
And then, well, we got our firstuh, our first check came from
dear friend named kiri, uh, andso she put out a lot of uh you
know she's an angel and she putuh, put out a lot of feelers, a
(45:19):
lot of introductions for us.
And then our angels really,really helped get the get the
word out and make introductions.
And then when we got villageglobal on, they just kind of get
the word out and makeintroductions.
And then when we got VillageGlobal on, they just kind of
blew the doors open, changed thegame.
Yeah, they know every singleinvestor out there and just were
spectacular and helping usraise our seed round.
And then same, well, you knowwe haven't had to raise from
(45:42):
Hyperplane and after Hyperplane,ravelin and John Cavalupo, but
I'm sure they'll be the sameonce we go out to raise again.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Well, and there's a lot of people who would love to
be in the startup space.
Like you, they'd love to go outand raise money, break away
from that nine-to-five lifestyle.
How important is it, do youthink, to be on the West Coast
or East Coast, where most of themoney is?
On the West coast or East coast, uh, where?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
most of the money is yeah, um, you know when, if we
we raised next, I'll be, I'll besitting in San Francisco for a
month and a half, for sure.
I think it just in person.
We actually had one investorjust be like, yeah, you're okay,
uh, on zoom, and I was likethat doesn't sound right.
And they were like you're okayon Zoom.
And I was like that doesn'tsound right.
And they were like you're awfulon Zoom.
Oh no you're great man.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I'm sitting here listening to you, you're doing
great, yeah, this is different.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
I mean you know, it's not a pitch.
You're kind of pitching, I meanyeah, yeah, fair, but I was
probably over it by the time Igot to these interviews oh yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And they were like no, we metyou in person, we just we loved
it, and so I think being inperson is great if you have the
ability to be.
(46:55):
I don't think you have to livethere or be based there, but the
talent pool definitely affectsdecisions.
But you know, there'sspectacular talent everywhere
there's.
You just mentioned fivecompanies and everything you
need to build.
Build an airplane between twocities in the Midwest and
(47:16):
Midwest yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, cincinnati, northern Kentucky, kind of.
Well, the thing is aboutCincinnati is it's a, it's very
much becoming a logistics supplychain logistics city.
The second biggest freightbroker in the country is here,
tql.
We have the largest Amazon hubin the world.
I believe we have the largestDHL hub in America.
We have the largest Wayfairoutlet here, our hub here.
(47:38):
It's got rail transport, youknow, I mean it's established
rail for a hundred somethingyears, 140 years.
You've got an airport which isnot even really a passenger
airport, it's mostly a logisticsairport.
And, uh, you've got, yeah, likeI said, ge's here, procter and
gamble's, the biggest consumerpackage goods company in the
world.
They're based here.
The largest grocery chain inthe world's here kroger, uh,
(47:59):
centos, which is a big supplierof like things to offices and
all that.
I mean dude, it's crazy, like Imean, the number of businesses
and everything that are here.
And you've got three large,relatively large, universities.
I mean it's you're, you're,yeah, it's nuts.
You're an hour and a half fromIndianapolis, from Louisville.
You're an hour from Lexington.
You're an hour and a half fromColumbus, ohio.
You have three hours ofCleveland, five hours of
(48:20):
Pittsburgh, four hours and fourand a half hours of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
St Louis is four and a half hours.
I mean you're a third, you're aday's drive from a third of the
U?
S population.
So and then, um, it's not ananecdote uh, uh, related to that
is one of the most successfulspace companies in the world
right now rocket lab uh buildstheir, they, they build and fly
their rockets out of New Zealand, which did not have a space or
rocket industry before, and theypulled from boating and all of
these different engineeringdisciplines.
(48:56):
They might have moved to LA foraerospace initially, but you
can build with enough grit,determination and, honestly, a
healthy dose of naivety on howhard these things are I mean
think about it.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I mean we're not very far from purdue, which is
probably one of the topengineering schools in the
entire country.
University cincinnati's got agreat engineering school.
Uh, I mean it's, it's.
I mean you're so close to somany universities and see,
that's one thing that kills usin, uh, college basketball and
football and all that is.
You know, everybody wants tosend their talent.
Like, we got tons of highschool talent here, but they can
go to, they can go to Indiana,they can go to Purdue, they can
(49:32):
go to Butler, they can go to,you know, university of Kentucky
, louisville, ohio state, likeDayton, I mean it's all like an
hour and a half away.
So there's no consensus here onon who you should root for, like
there is in some cities.
But yeah, but, man, john, thishas been awesome man and I
really appreciate your time andsharing some of these insights
(49:53):
of, like what it's like to be ina young startup.
You know, still raising money,still getting out there.
Tell people how they can findout about you.
Are you guys, are you raisingaround right now?
Where can they access that ifthey are interested in investing
or becoming a customer?
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, yeah, we're heads down onboarding customers,
uh, left and right right now,um and uh, you know, working
working with government, uh, sonot raising around right now,
but uh, I think if you go tointegrateco, uh, you're in for
hopefully a hopefullya pleasantsurprise.
But we've gotten to get a 50-50split on whether people love or
(50:29):
hate the website.
So come check out the websiteand learn about what we do and
tell us what you think, becausewe have a bit of a pool going on
on who's gonna love it andwho's not.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
And I'm guessing people can find you on LinkedIn
John Conafay, c-o-n-a-f-a-y.
Is there a bunch of JohnConafays on there, or are you?
There's one.
Oh well, congratulations, sir.
My name's kind of weird too,but for some reason there's a
whole bunch of us on there, andI don't know why, but most of us
are in Ohio too, so it sucksfor me.
(51:01):
Awesome, so many German peoplehere.
Anyway, well, john, thanks somuch for your time, sir, and I
really appreciate everythingyou've given our audience, and
I'm sure they do too.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Cool.
Thanks, so much, adam, allright.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(51:36):
Thank you.
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