GTM = "Get The Money"/Bobby Napiltonia - Building a Marketplace, Distribution, Hershey ~ Spark of Ages Ep 27 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rajiv Parikh (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today, our guest isBobby Nap I'm gonna screw
up your name, Bobby.
Bobby

Bobby Napiltonia (00:11):
Nap.
Everyone knows that.
You know, most of mynotes are hello from Bobby
Nap because Napiltonia'sa plague and a curse.

Sandeep Parikh (00:17):
As guys with Indian names who've suffered
many, many mispronunciations,I feel compelled that
we gotta get it right.
We can do this.
It's

phonetic.
Napiltonia.

Napiltonia.
There you go.
Now, Bobby's resume is Waytoo long to go over here.
So if you want, look themup on LinkedIn and good luck
trying to figure it all out.
But it's an amazing background.
Bobby Napoletania has over 36years of experience having built
and delivered transformativetechnologies that we use every
single day from creating theglobal standard for JSON and
bringing sound to computers atcreative labs to democratizing

(00:47):
the telecommunicationsindustry with Twilio.
Bobby has a proven track recordof scaling technology companies,
but most of you recognize.
Salesforce's AppExchangethat he built for Mark
Benioff at Salesforce,which became a foundation
for many of today's cloudcompanies and marketplaces,
which has now grown into atrillion dollar ecosystem.
Bobby's an authority ongo to market strategies

(01:09):
and is passionate aboutcloud computing, APIs, gen
AI, robotics, deep tech,open source, and building
powerful ecosystems.
Just a few thingsthat you do, Bobby.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode,
what an expert in scaling growthfor technology companies like
Bobby focuses on when he'stalking about go to market a
case study into how and whySalesforce built their app

(01:30):
exchange ecosystem, how tobuild a career with longevity
and passion for what you do.
So Bobby, welcome tothe spark of ages.

Thank you so much for having me.
It's interesting.
You know, I've known you fora couple of years and I've
seen you at a variety ofevents and we never really
got into, it was more like.
Friendly stuff like, Hey,there's a G what's happening?
How are the kids?
What's going on?
Are you going to Thursdaynight at Sean's house?
It was never what do you do?
And how do you get here?
So when you ask me, Iwas, I did some research
and I was thrilled.
Um, uh, because a two brotherson an episode, I thought this

(02:10):
is going to be very interesting.
And now that I know who'solder, there's so many
questions that I have.
But we'll keep that for maybe

we can even do a who's older thing.
So my

gosh, it's going to be a contest.
Okay.
This is depressing me.
Oh, you can seefrom the wrinkles.
Who's older, right?

Wow.
Which one are you?

Shots

fired.

All right, Bobby, you and I have had many, done
many fun things together.
Um, but.
We have been to many49ers game together.
I love how you bring yourdaughter and make it a
thing that you both do.
But I think what really got mewas when you were at the recent,
uh, private equity conferencetalking about go to market.
And I just thought, man, this,he'd be great for the show.
So when you thinkabout go to market.

(02:51):
What's the first placethat you start at?

So I don't call it go to market.
I call it get the money andthere's a big difference there.
If you're laughing, right?
I like it.
Call it GTM firm to let peoplesort of know what that means,
but it's about getting themoney for, for far too often.
Everybody thinks.
Well, for me to get themoney, I've got to go through
these mechanics and I gotto find my ICP and I got
to get this message right.
And I got to turn the crankon this wheel and I got to

(03:14):
hope that these things work.
And there's too manythings that must be true.
And so I've got a processwhere we truly look at
how we get the money.
And we look at that froma zoom out perspective.
And how we were sosuccessful repeatedly is
we sort of dismantle anddon't look at the industry.
And we go, if I wereto dissect to rebuild,
what would it look like?

(03:35):
Because far too ofteneverybody goes, I'm going
to make this change.
I'm going to jump slip stream.
And you probably rememberbecause you're older Sandeep's
not the EDS commercial wherethey changing the plane
while they were flying it toshow that this is what they
were trying to transform.
And that was a big whenwe went from mainframes
to client server.
And it was a bigpush to be honest.
Transcripts So when youthink through that, too many

(03:55):
companies are parochial,too many of them go to those
conferences where I met you andwe see how you make cookies.
Look, if everybody makescookies the same way,
there's no way you're goingto have a skyrocket cookie.
Right?
I mean, I would argue, speakingof skyrockets, look at what
SpaceX, they don't go to marketlike any other company has.
So if you look ateven people like Reed
Hastings, no rules rules.

(04:16):
It's the ones that don't look atwhat people are doing that win.

Rajiv Parik (04:19):
That's interesting.
So they invent clever ways.
I thought you were going togo into the whole thing about
knobs, dials, and levers.
We could definitely

go into that, but think about this,
Elon, you couldn't raise money.
So he said, listen, whowould like to put a thousand
dollars deposit on a car?
And the next thing youknow, he had 28 million
of someone else's money.
That's called get the money.
Basically crowdfunded.

No better way to prove that whether you have
product market viability thanto have non refundable deposits.
Right.

Bobby Napil (04:48):
That will tell you.
So that's a great way.
And an example, and we couldgo on and on, you know,
depending on where the moneycomes from, you'll hear me
call it coupon clipping,because it can be that simple.
If you, you grease theskids and you truly
understand what's going on.
What that looks like, wetransform industries by taking
money from the utilitiesand then the government and
end up getting sensors andceilings to a billion square

(05:08):
feet and didn't pay a dime.
It was financed by other people.
So when I think aboutthat, we truly like to
look at what's the problem.
And, you know, you alwayshear me ask people, well, why
aren't you growing faster?
In the question of alwaysas well, I'm double,
double, triple tripping.
I'm good.
So you read that in somebook that told you about
ABCs, a apple, B boys, C cat.
Guess what?
You're not going tobe a breakaway if you

(05:28):
follow fundamentals.

All right.
So you don't followthe fundamentals,

follow the fundamentals, start

with the notion of how you're going
to get money out of folks

and where that money can come from, and it's
usually the most unusual spots,and if you think about it,
right, hence the ecosystem play.
Think about that.
Those are all offbalance sheet resources.
I don't have to payanything to you perform.
Think about that.
Like there's a lot to besaid, hence why, why, why,
why I'm a big ecosystempusher, so to speak.

(05:57):
By the way, I learned it.
I would love to tell you,I made this stuff up.
Um, I learned it fromthe best of the best.
Now I'll ask you, who is thecompany in this industry that
guarantees that you don't eatunless you push their product
and your kids won't eat andthey won't wear clothing
and they won't go to school.
Who is that company?

Uh, I would say, um, if you are a
partner of Microsoft,

Bingo, that's the million dollar prize.
If you're a Microsoftpartner, you'll sit there on
the sideline, do they bringthe right things to market?
You'll wait.
You are a captive audienceand your kids don't eat
unless you push their stuff.
And it was really aroundecosystem enablement.
And if you think backto that meme, we saw.
We're jumping up and down.
It was developers.
Now it's less developers.

(06:40):
It's the sellers people wantaccess to in these marketplaces.
And that was underscoredby where did three of
Salesforce's biggest dealscome from last quarter?

That one?
I don't know.
You would think it's likethe hyperscalers know?

Yeah.
Look, which one

it should be either Azure or well
maybe they won't work withSalesforce anymore because
they're doing their ownthing, their own version.
so maybe AWS?

Bingo AWS, three of the biggest deals came.
So now what that tells meis we're back to wallet
share market share, like SunMicrosystems and IBM were the
two companies and they'd say.
You got 10.
What do you want?
Hardware, software, support,maintenance, services,
and then you take it.
And as a, as a, cause at the endof the day, CFOs have a budget.
It's 10.
You don't get to make it bigger.
You got to manage your business.

(07:24):
And so I believe thesemarketplaces are going to have
a bigger impact in the next 10years than we even know, because
they're going out and securingall the money from a company.
And then you can buyanything from them.
It's like the new Walmart.
So it's like, it's like Amazon

in a way, right?
And you guys like Amazon on our

credit cards.
I mean, how many, how

many things like, you know, for Halloween
people were like, Hey,where'd you get that cool
Top Gun leather jacket?
I'm like, Hey, Amazon,Amazon comes to our

Bobby Napilton (07:47):
house every day.
So why would you not do that?
Same thing to the business.
And you see them look, here'san underscore to make that true.
Guess who's going toreinvent this year?
Are you going?
Andy! Andy's going.
We hadn't.
Yeah, we hadn't seen theold boss at any reinvention
in like a long time.
So the fact that the headhoncho is now coming back
tells you how important AWSis, not to him personally,

(08:08):
but the organization,the company as a whole.

No, it's critical.
I mean, he's the one Thatstarted initially, right?
Started building it, fell

asleep at the wheel on AI.
Let's be honest.
If we're really goingto use this to be a
transparent, trustworthystewards of the industry.

There you go.
So, so he's coming back.
He sees the power of themarketplace and he's going
to enable that to grow.
So, so is that the game now?
And when you're talkingabout go to market is to
associate yourself with oneof these marketplaces, because
like you're saying, it.
To do go like thousands ofcompanies start up and you can't
just do what everybody elsedoes, but you have to figure out
some way to get off the ground.

(08:42):
Like you can't just createyet another marketplace.

No, can

you,

you know, that's interesting.
I've tried in every industry.
Um, and, and because ittakes a lot of unique
ingredients to make it happen.
And I thought, well, ifwe can't do it in the
electricity space, we're nevergoing to be able to do it.
Cause what's the one thingwe all consume every day?
Electricity.
What's the one thing we're shortaround the world, electricity.
And we really thought we hada platform and we ended up

(09:06):
rolling about 17 countriesbecame a global standard
and sold it to Siemens.
Cause then you need somebig company to push it
around in those slow movingindustries, we'll call them.
And I passed on acouple of companies.
Cause after leavingthe app exchange, I got
calls from everyone.
Hey, zoom wouldlike to build it.
Talk about who missed the.
That would

have been the, that would have been the
perfect marketplace, right?
For putting up different apps.
Oh, VMware had a lot.

VMware, think about what you could have done.
A lot of people alreadytalked to Paul when he was
running it after, after Diane.
And what you realizeis that there's very
few people like Mark.
That could pull it off.
And, um, uh, uh, and you,so you ask those questions
before you even go in.
And I was fortunate enough,Mark and I launched our
startups at the same time,at the same conference, the

(09:48):
demo conference in 2001.
And that's how we met.
That's amazing.
We didn't get the fundingand that's when we open
sourced into became Jason.
And, um, eventually he convincedme to join him on a mission
that we clearly democratizethe cloud for the world.

Can you go a little bit further into that?
What, what, what the big messfor a zoom was just help me.
Yeah, they didn't want

to build out.
And so if you think about thisand, you know, I'm not going
to be able to turn why, whydo companies like gong exist?

Anybody can do recording and
transcripting, right.
And then take some insights andoffer that to a lot of people.
Right.
And so why do I needa separate thing?
Why couldn't I just buildthat into zoom, which
they did way later, right?

Too late.
Right.
You would argue everyone doesthings too late because you
either have to be the leader.
Or a faster follow.
And at some point you can't evencatch up on your own platform.
And so think aboutthose, why do they do it?
It's a, it's a big undertaking.
If you really want to builda platform and you start
saying, you go, do you have thefortitude and stomach to build
like it's a 10 year journey.
It's not like, let me start it.
And it's a heavy front endinvestment to get people

(10:46):
to have a design win onyour platform, that you'll
actually be able to do it.
Our blessing at Salesforceis I had the Holy grail.
I own the customers.
Guess what?
You wanted access to my world,so you would jump ball and
do anything I needed youto do to have that access.

So in their case, in a way they started
to, because they weredirect first and had so
many customers and had thecustomer record, they could
push people to that, right?
You actually had foryour customers, every
customer record.
And then you could say tothem, Hey, I'm already here,
I'm extending, and then I'mgoing to build this market.
So it was a

weekend away with this guy.
You probably know Jeffrey Moore.
Yep.
And we talk about crossingthe chasm inside the tornado.
And, um, he beat thehell out of us on what's
your core versus context.
If you look, you know whatthat is and you know what
the importance, and everyCO wants to own everything.
And he beat us up over theweekend to realize you just
need to own the customer.
And I wish we had adifferent word for that.

(11:39):
You know, back in the day, itwas called the customer master.
The master word's a hard word.
All it really means is asource of truth record.
If you think about it, what doesSAP own the system of record of?
Right.

Manufacturing.
Factored that.

What does it work on financial services?
So we had the opportunityto own the customer.
System of record, and whenyou do that, it became
complete compliment extend.
What are the thingsyou need to grow?
And then it wasbuilt by partner.
We couldn't build it, didn'thave enough engineers,
had no money to buy it.
So the partnering became that.
And then we just startedthis episodic thing of

(12:10):
what do we need to makethe sale go better, faster.
And those were the off balancesheet resources that did my
product roadmap completion.
Right.

You can think about that, right?
You had the underlyingcore elements.
You could see people buildingvarious things off of it.
And because they were selling,you could see where the
market was going, right?
Where the market wastrending, but you still had
to put a ton into enablingthat infrastructure, which
didn't produce the normalROI you'd expect in the
first month or two monthsor six months, four years.

(12:38):
This is really good.
This

never came up.
And when you said that thistriggered it, we were only
able to do it because weran in parallel a product
offering called PRM that wecan showcase to the world
what we were building by eat,drinking our own champagne.
And, you know, Eli Cohen wasmy product manager, and we
went out and showed the world.
Here's what PRM and ahigh tech looks like.
And today you havecompanies like.

(13:00):
There's companies out actuallymaking a business out of
just that and we offeredit as a feature and an
offering because the partnerecosystem is so important.
But not just for high tech,most industries actually have
ecosystems that sell for them.

All right.
So for all of us, for the restof the world, what is PRM?

Bobby Napilt (13:14):
Oh, good question.
Partner, Resource management.
And so what you need todo is managing your people
and partners, just likeyou direct sales, right?
You have to, are you trained?
Did you sell?
Where's the pipeline?
Where's the activity?
Did you follow up on that lead?
What are you doing?
Did you deliver?
Is that customer happy?
I mean, it's just an extensionof your exact, uh, it's

your CRM, right?
It's your CRM forpartners, managing

them, giving them, enabling them,
and all of those, yes.

Yes.
So that was critical as partof this, cause you want to
see who's performing, who'snot, where do you put your
resources and then help those

adopted it from Symantec to Veritas to
every high tech company world,because we got to showcase,
here's what great looks like.

Wow.
Everybody in the world wantsto build a platform, right?
Every pitch is all aboutbuilding a platform.

Yeah.

But it's not that easy to pull it off.
Um, it's much easier to put off,pull together an application
than it is a whole platform.
Well, if

the application you solve a
problem, I cure diabetes, Istop diarrhea, I top your cough.
I mean like those are thingsyou'll pay for dearly, right?
Right.
Versus the platform.
How will it benefit me?
What will come on?
You know, we had to sell CRMbefore we could launch force.
com because no one wouldhave come to build it.
And then one of my tasks forMark was go find someone to
build CRM on your platform.
Then I'll know wehave a real platform.

That's right.
So that the platform part ofit is the extension of it to
multiple, multiple places.
It's not a single useapplication, like solve
my, solve my cough.
Solve my diabetes was

for CIOs who had a backlog.
And for the first time theysaw the clicks, not code.
So platform.
And so they were blownaway that they could
attack a backlog list.
That was how we really, youknow, and we made them the
chief innovation officer versusthe chief information officer.
And they got to do things thatthat role has never done before.

That's pretty

cool.

Awesome.
So I want to take a quickstep back, uh, Bobby, if
I could just to get somebasics for the audience.
Like, you know, you joked abouthow your, your resume is, uh,
too long to really stay init, in a, in a bio or in an
open and you call yourself achief helper on your LinkedIn.
So, so what is the dayin, in, in the life of,
of Bobby Napoletania, thechief helper look like?

(15:11):
Like what is your day to day?

You know, we all have to realize what
are our superpowers that wewant to apply to make sure
we wake up every day happy.
And what is it that weget gratification from?
And so I'm a big believer thatchanged lives change lives.
And, um, I grew up poorson of a waitress truck
driver in Pennsylvania.
And, um, happened to getthe right opportunities

(15:34):
and took advantage.
You'll hear me callit chopping wood.
And when you think aboutthat, that's just to burn.
So we can have heat, so we don'tfreeze to death, but you've
got to plant those trees andlove them and care for them to
actually get them to grow, toget the wood, to chop so you
could cook and eat and not die.
So it is a wholelife cycle of things.
And so when Ithink through that.
I get my greatest pleasuresfrom helping people and not
just like, here, let me helpyou across the street, right?

(15:55):
That's what, whyCombinator and Techstars
is for helping startups.
Let me help youcross the street.
Those are just likeBoy Scout, Girl Scouts.
Here's how you get these WeBelowbadges and some make it out.
Don't get me wrong.
We were doing a comparisonat billion dollar company
valuations out of the Salesforceecosystem out of anything else.
And 99 percent came from us.
So when they say we crank thesethings out, yes, they got that
Airbnb or they got those onehit wonders, which are great.

(16:19):
Everyone likes the Macarena.
Kung fu fighting.
I love those songs, butthere wasn't no follow on.
We all want those Beatles,those gold standard plans
repeated, repeated, repeated.
So with this helper rolethat we have, we tried to
identify categories thatwe're passionate about that
we have some experience.
So I can call it bullshit andthat we believe we're going

(16:40):
to make a meaningful impactin what I think is this next
two decades of the internet.
Cause that's how much longerI want to do this for.
And, um, to your point,I kind of joke and we're
working on a presentation.
I have the Forrest Gumplife of technology.
If it happened, I was therein the room when it happened.
You were laughing.
It's really true.
It's true.
And

okay.
I was trying tomake the connection.
So it's, it's just likehow stuff just sort of
happened or he, he was right.

Life is a box of chocolates.

Yeah.
Life is a box ofchocolates, man.
I mean, think about it.
Three of the fastestgrowing companies in the
world during the decade.
That I was an earlyexecutive, not some tag along.
Let's hope you can helppush the bus down the road,
build the bus, tune theengine, make it go faster.
That's something credible.
And those are the storieswe want to help with.
So what's a normalday look like today?
We're helping folksin robotic space.

(17:27):
Why?
Because we have to bringmanufacturing back to America.
We just saw what,how that debacle was.
And we've known that for awhile, but But we, as Americans
are lazy, let's be clear.
And we don't mind outsourcingeverything if we don't have to
do it until we need the stuffthat we can get access to.
We realized, Oh, it wasa what to call it moment.
And so, um, that'svery important for us.
I went and met with everyrobotics company cause I

(17:49):
called the VCs that fundedthem and said, Hey, look,
this is what I'm looking for.
Psychologically safe foundersthat know they need some
help and that are willingto listen a little bit.
And, um, it's hard tofind that individual.
And I found one and it'sbeen an interesting ride.
We just announced two weeks ago,a hundred million in funding
to roll out robots as a servicesound familiar so that we can

(18:10):
transform the shop floors.
Yes.
We raised money so youdon't have to spend money.
Think about that.
If you're in manufacturing,you go, God, I got to
overhaul my shop floor.
It's 3 million and I can doit for 200 K a year, two 50.
You have no excuse now.
No, by the way, you don'thave the shop floor.
Guess what?
We have these foundries we'repropping up across America
that you can ship us theparts and we'll do it for you.

(18:32):
Just like Apple makes phones,you know, by outsourcing
them to those other people.
Gen AI was therefor no software.
So I'm going to be therefor no applications.
Look, CRM is whitecollar workflow.
Do your job.
When I worked at UPS, we hadthe same workflows, except
I cracked a whip and madethe people get measured.
That's all CRM is.
You know that they're justa white collar workflow.

(18:52):
And so it's all it is.
Let's be clear.
And then from that model,we'll start saying, what are
the most important things?
And this is the one that's beenkeeping me really up at night.
Are you, you.
Now you might go, why doyou care about keeping
things up at night?
Well, we sort of talkedabout why I got addicted
to the industry.
We wouldn't be here if I wasn'tthere for the creation of sound.
Jason is the number oneglobal standard everyone

(19:14):
in the world uses.
So now that I know the world canuse my technology, I feel like
a steward to help figure outwhat are those next things I can
change because you've made theworld a better place in general.
So why not keep it going isRUU and identity is the biggest
problem we have on the net.
It's a look game.
We're just havingthis conversation.
This point, fraud in gamingalone is going to be bigger

(19:35):
than the global drug trade.
Yeah, by 2020, think about thatfraud, just stealing from games.
That's not evenfinancial institutions.
We're going to go overthose next things.
And so, um, I was just

streaming yesterday and, uh, you know,
sometimes I live stream, uh,video gaming and, uh, one of
the streamers was like, Hey,Don't play that game because
this game is, uh, it's, it'sgot some holes in it and,
uh, people are getting their,you know, computers back
through the game, back, back

towards, uh, yeah, yeah.
I was trying to, you know,I don't play a lot of games
other than just in real life.
So you're saying that peopleare, people are using these
games to get deep into your,your systems, ask questions
of you, learn your behavior,and then use that against you.

Yeah.
From you.
Yeah.
Fraud.
Fraudsters.
Click fraud.
I mean, we can go down and down.
And by the way,that's so important.
You know, gaming isnever going away.
And we now, you know howI know how big gaming is.
What did Microsoftplay for Blizzard?

They paid like what?
65 billion dollars.
Okay.
That's not like.

Six billion.
That's like 65 billion.
That's a lot of

money.
That's, uh, more than 10 times,what is that, 12 times the
amount that, uh, Disney paidfor, uh, Star Wars franchise.
There you go.
You know what they get

is they're, what they really bought,
in my opinion, is kidsare learning from gaming.
Tomorrow's educationsystem has to change.
What can we learnfrom all of that?
That's really what it takes.
Boils down to my opinion.
They didn't needthe money, right?
They needed to understandwhat tomorrow looks like
today and how do I own it,

right?
So, so you're trying to,so yeah, that's the big win
for them is understandingpeople's behaviors and
understanding what drives them.
We've

never seen anything like this group of
kids and cookies are going away.
And where's that marketingmoney go to and social
isolation's real.
And they got something, they allhave cancer, you know, right?
They all have cancer right here.
It is.
And that cancer eats upthe time that they can
never get back in life.
You've got kids, if you knowwhat I'm talking about, you
see it on the employees.
It's insane.

(21:28):
I look at a 22 or 23 yearold working, they spend more
time, I'm like, what areyou doing on your phone?
It's a

Sandeep Pa (21:33):
cancer of attention.
I never

Bobby N (21:35):
thought of it that way.
100 percent cancer of attention.
And not just attention, butuselessness that you can't
get your real work done.
A hundred percent.
I

think of it as more of a drug, right?
It's a, it's a drug.
It's you're hooked.
It's sucking in yourdopamine receptors.
You feel like youhave to touch it.
How many times youtouch a phone in a day?

Oh my gosh.

Right.
You touch your phone more than

I got mine.
Like we had a day off acouple of weeks ago and it
said you didn't work long,long enough this week.
What happened to you?
Oh gosh.
Versus yesterday itwas, you know, 6.
9 hours a day on the phone.
I'm thinking, wow,that's a lot of time.
When do I do work?

Yeah, yeah.
No, that's, that's crazy.
That's crazy.
So

helpers.
So we start by lookingat the companies we're
working with, where theyare in their lifecycle.
What is it that they needand what are the things that
we can do to accelerate thembeyond where they are today?

You're, you're like hunt, hunting
for these companies.
No, usually they find me.
Oh, they find you.
Oh,

okay.
Okay.
Uh, the VCs is the communitythat I've been fortunate enough
to tap into, but you know,this is a great conversation
because then I started learning.
VCs spend dollarsto get pennies.
Okay.
Thanks.

Everyone (22:32):
Cause it's

not their money and they still get
paid and it doesn't matter.
Private equity spends penniesto get dollars because they
need to make that moneyor they don't get paid.
Then we look at small marketcap stocks, they'll do anything
to stay alive and save cash.
So what we're really doingis looking at who has the
biggest need where we can go.
We just jumped into ourfirst publicly traded
company last week.

(22:53):
And so we're going totry to say, is it your
product portfolio?
Was it management?
And can we helpsuperside unstuck you?
Right?
Cause you're clearly stuck.

So Bobby, you're saying, you're saying we,
so is it you and a group?
Are you saying you arepeople that you assemble
for a particular situation?
Are you like the NavySEAL crew that jumps
in and you pull people?
Sometimes

we don't even know what the fires
like when we jump in,depending on what they are.
But yes, I would equateit to the Navy SEAL.
So I say the, we.
So I've got a partner who,um, I test, we can all build
things, but if the worlddoesn't know, it doesn't matter.
Nothing happened.
So the gentleman that got me onstage back in 2001 is a media
man and, um, he's got his ownpodcast and we've interviewed,

(23:34):
he's interviewed everyone from,uh, Mark Cuban to Heidi Rosen
to Nolan Bushnell last week.
And so we use a lot ofthat then for the content,
because our industry is thechange that stays the same.
It doesn't change.
Everybody thinks it is.
And I meet these young kids.
I was just a tech crush disrupt.
And they're telling me,seems like, you know, I
saw that in the nineties.

That's right.
It's just in a different form.
It's in a different form, right?
We're always trying tosolve a lot of the same
problems in a different form.
And we have friends of oursthat fund companies that
continue to disrupt the,the, the current player.
So it's part

of that fun.
Here's where I'm going to tellyou this time it's different.
Then any of the other timesbefore, and it's different.
Okay.
Is this AI

cloud?
100

percent it's AI 100 percent it, you know,
cloud computing democratizedit so that everybody could
have an excuse, right?
We can all have gymmemberships, right?
Sign and drive cloud computing.
Maybe she didn'thave to have that.
And when you think aboutwhat AI is going to do, and
I've, um, I've got a coupleof posts that I'll do from
the smarter people than me.
Um, Brett Queener whoworked with me at Salesforce
really wrote, there's nobetter time to be a founder.

(24:35):
One, yes, it's hard toraise money, but it's always
hard to raise money, evenin go go days, unless you
know what you're doing.
But if you think about theopportunity, you know, this for
your business, uh, Bridget, theopportunity to know everything
about your customer through AIor prospect is unprecedented.
It

is unbelievable.
Yeah.

Bobby Napil (24:53):
The ability to, uh.
Cost effectively touch and reachthem we've never seen before.
And the second post that I'lldo is this guy, Adam Bosworth,
who is, um, our sponsor, whereI thought we were going to
sell, uh, state software toBEA, is he did a post last week.
He was super technicalperson that I respect.
There's like 10 I've met inmy life and he's one of those.
He spoke about how he, he'sbeen looking to write this

(25:14):
application and he didn'thave a vote at the time.
He thought it wouldtake him a week.
And so he decided tomake the machine do it
and it blew him away.
And when that level, he createdJ rocket, the app server
that brand the internet.
So when someone of that calibermakes the statement that
holy, this has happened andthe machine wrote the code.

(25:34):
And this is like a gradeone Google engineer code.
It's over.
It's over.

Oh, things change.
I have folks who, uh, when Ihave a set of folks who do,
who write code, who write AIfor me, that for our marketing
applications, but then thereare folks who just are really
good structured thinkers andthey, with a big ass prompt,
basically write an applicationand it'll ask you questions.
It'll give you answers,but they didn't write.

(26:01):
One bit of normal code,

right?

And that's the change that they knew
the English language, theEnglish language, and they
knew it well, and they'rewilling to probe deeply and
not have limits in their head.

I'm chatting, I'm chatting with a company
for, for, for myself and funny.
That's, um, They, uh,program, uh, computer games
just based off the scripts.
So instead of me having to learnhow to develop my own game, I
can just write a script, whichis what I'm good at as a writer.
And then their software, theirAI software will generate an
entire video game universefor me based off that.

(26:31):
That's super cool.
Pretty incredible.
My question is this though,Bobby, um, I wonder about
this sort of environmentalcosts of AI and how, how
you think about that.
And this is the answer thatAI gave me when I asked it
about what, what it's, whatit's, what it's costing us.
It's an, a, you know,the computational
power required for.
is doubling every 3.
4 months, leading toan exponential increase
in energy demand.
So I'm using AI to make my videogame about booger flinging.

(26:54):
Um, is that how we want toburn down the rainforests?
I'm asking, you know,

are you asking a loaded question?
Cause you know, I spent sometime in the energy space.
Yeah.
So, um, I got a lot ofperspective on the utility and
the grid on a global basis,having seen it like in a lot
of the countries around theworld, uh, ours in America
is the worst without a doubt.
It's insane how crippled itis now are old and decrippling
and it's, it's, it'spathetic to be honest with

(27:20):
you, but I was blown away.
I'm from Pennsylvania whenI saw that they're going to
fire up three mile Islandbecause we need to get out.
bring back a nuclearreactor that leaked just
because we need power forMicrosoft to run a data farm.
And I think what we reallyshould be asking ourselves as
we backtrack, we haven't builtdata centers in two decades.
Now they're coming back andthey're going to be more
powerful and they're goingto be put in places that

(27:42):
we've never had before.
What do you think that my numberone concern with us building
them besides the need forpower, because power will figure
out, look, we've got old coalplants that we could fire up.
Yes, they're not dirtyWyoming has 44 percent
of the coal in America.
You add 3 states.
We have 70 percent of theworld's coal in America alone.
So we're not running outof energy and intense and
we just choose to havecleaner energy burning.

(28:05):
But when you think throughthe amount of energy needed
and necessary, yeah, we'vegot, I think, better control.
It's like the.
com all over again.
Without controls, but whatI'm most concerned if we build
these up is the wastewater.
So think about this.
We're putting them in townsthat were never thought of
having an AI data center.
That equipment requires freshwater to remain cool that you

(28:27):
can only use 2 or 3 times.
You got to discard it.
And it's going to yourwastewater treatment
plant in your backyard.
That doesn't know anythingabout stripping out metals
and what came out of there.
So what's going tohappen to the towns?
They're building a bunch of

Flint, Michigan's across the

country.
That's like, so I'm worriedabout that part of it.
It's no different than say,how much does it take to
make a battery to power aTesla and you look, you got
to dig a hole so deep in theearth just to get the, at
some point, I think we've gotto be true to ourselves and
ask, are we solving problemsthat don't need to be solved?
And creating industries thatwe need to create to create
industries are these realimpacts that we can make and

(29:01):
look, most American automobilemanufacturers shut down their
electric plants this past year.
Yeah.
Think about that.
After retooling ahundred percent of them
to be electric only.

So it becomes the arbiter of that, of
like whether or not you're,you know, using AI properly
when it's at our fingertips.

The P U C.
Is going to, andhere's the worst part.
I mean, it's no different thanasking Congress what you think
about advertising or Facebookand they don't even know
what like, you know, right.
Think about right.
You already know how to log

into Facebook.

I don't even know what Facebook is.
They're looking at the people'sfaces around them, right?
Um, it's a big concern.
I think we're taking it forgranted because we're all
looking at the upside and thehype associated with it, right?
Who would be the governing body?
There is no OSHAfor the environment.
Right.
Right.
So it would be the PUC.
And if they end up saying,look, we're going to control
who gets energy and utility.

(29:52):
And by the way, you build thatdata center, you're going to
spend 72 cents a kilowatt.
Cause we got to take thatmoney from you to prop up
some clean, to make sure thatthe, where you're going to
be as good for the societyin which you're living in.
Otherwise we don't wantthe next Flint, Michigan,
or pick some town orsomething that will happen.
Like an eyes wide open moment.
Right.

No, I think, yeah, I think there's like a, there's
a notion to this that you haveto create a, a regulatory, I
hate doing regular regulations,but maybe there's a way to
create a market based mechanism,just like you do credits, right?
We did emissioncredits for acid rain.
We have this notion ofemission credits here in
California, you can do tradingsystems so that people are

(30:30):
getting the carbon credits.
Right.
So you create a, you create away to let the market figure
out the most efficient wayto solve particular problems.
And if that's one of them,if one of them is, we need
power, but we need cleanpower and we need power that
where the water is clean,we have to, you know, that
becomes part of the solution,

right?
You say that we needthe clean power.
Who's the weed, right?
Cause I'm going to lookand say, we're only what
360 million Americans.
Yeah.
And there's what,7 billion people.
So we're much, I mean, I knowwe're 12 or 14 percent of
the global GDP with 2 percentof the global population.
But when you start thinkingabout that, unless we control

(31:08):
China and India, what we dohere is not going to matter.
Let's be clear.
We don't manufactureenough stuff to matter.

So you're suggesting a
global trading system?

Well, I mean, if you think about it, if we're
going to go and make clean powerand the rest of the world's
not, uh, uh, compliant to cleanpower, we're at a disadvantage.

Well, but wouldn't you, wouldn't you
argue that China, because itsaw, because it has an issue
with a, with a balance ofpayments because of oil, right?
Ford exchange leaves themto buy oil and they saw an
opportunity with solar energy.
They decided toreally invest in that.
Decided to invest in EVs.
And so they're way ahead ofthe rest of the world, right?
If, if we didn't have tariffson Chinese, Chinese vehicles, we

(31:46):
all might be driving one today.

We would be.
Yeah.

So China, when it sees it in its self
interest may, may surprise us.
Right.
Didn't they build more,more, more solar and wind
last year than the U.
S.
did ever?

I, here's what they did do in a matter
of three, two, two and a halfto three years, they poured
more concrete than the restof the world did in 99 years.
True.
Think about that.
Wow.
More concrete than therest of the world in
the last hundred years.
They poured in the last twoyears, they built cities that
are still desolate and open.
You know, they builtthe roads to nowhere.
Um, they did that to put thepeople to work so that they

(32:22):
would actually have an economyand you can't do that because
no one's living in, by theway, they're going through
this problem right now that thegovernment's trying to figure
out how do I prop this back up?
Yep.
Because America stoppedbuying dollar store spatulas.

Yep.
No, it's going tobe a big issue.
30 percent of theirGDP is in real estate.
All right.
I'm going to take youanother direction.
We're going to go alittle bit to your past.
So not too long ago,you recently sold
Okara to Databricks.
A data access platformenabling secure and scalable
data governance of the cloud.
It was your secondsuccessful exit along
with live objects by Zora.
So are these the spacesyou're going to jump into?

(32:54):
Robot as a service, uh,energy, AI, identity.
What's the, which, whichone is the one that you're
really excited about?
I saw one, I saw somethingrecently about, um, cities
and sensors and data.

Those are all things that are going
to change the way in whichwe interact with the world.

Okay.

Bobby N (33:11):
That's what excites me.
That's what gets you going.
What do I mean by that?
If you take robotics, we,especially you and I, Rajiv,
we need it to work becausein 20 years when we retire,
there's not going to be enoughnurses to take care of us.
Let me be clear with that.
The aging population, there'snot enough people to help us.
Studies have already been shownreleasing robots and memory
care centers and old stuff.
They've started seeingthings because there's not

(33:33):
enough one on one care.
I can get a, uh, a Cobotor humanoid there in the
next two or three yearsto be doing that work.
If you look at the lifecycle of things, you're going
to pay 25 for a hamburger.
No.
No.
What's the minimum wage now?
21.
Yeah.
21 in California.
Right.
You see where I'mgoing with this?
So we have, have tosolve that problem.
So that's what drove me there.

(33:53):
The second problem wehave to solve is more
diversity in our industry.
And so you see me do alot of work with first
time female founders.
I teach a class at the NASDAQentrepreneurial center.
That's where we createdthe knobs, dials, and
levers content so we couldteach you from the get go.
Here's things that willmake sure you succeed.
Follow these andyou're going to win.
Sounds likeCandyland game wired.
Um, or shoots and ladders,it's always a fun ride.

(34:16):
And so, uh, that's one, um,I shared with you before you

move off of that, cause I love that you're
pursuing diversity, um, butin terms of your philosophy
for get the money, right?
Like that, that's like alonger scheme potentially to
get the money because you areprivileging or speak to that.
Like, you know, it's not thefastest path to getting the
money if, if you're thinkingabout, Hey, how do I bring

(34:40):
in players that are, youknow, not typically, you
know, Uh, in, in a space.

Maybe it's to shine some light on some
really badly broken processes.
Yeah.
I don't mind breakingglass and saying things.
I think one of the things thatwas in your questionnaire,
I'm very opinionated and Igot a lot of shit to say.
I don't care what youthink about it, right?
No filter, no throttle.
It's just who I am.
And I feel like I've deservedor earned that right.
And you don't have to like it.
So it's a perspectiveand an opinion, usually

(35:05):
fairly grounded.
I don't like losing arguments.
So you won't seeme argue stupid.

That's why we like you here, by the way,

I was dying to find an
African American founder.
Do you know how hard it is?
Just period.

And

anything.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I found one.
I looked at a thousand startups.
I'm a, uh, Universityof Alabama.
I went through a bunch ofstartup things, sec challenges.
I mean, I like, I like to startwhere I go to, I see probably
more than most VCs a yearjust because of where I go.
And they're too selectiveto look at what they
want to look at.
So I found an AfricanAmerican man, Gavin.
He was beyond accomplished.

(35:42):
He's a lawyer.
He was in the military,speaks multiple, learned
four languages in 11 months.
So like, this is just not yourrun of the mill entrepreneur.
And he met this guy at acocktail party who happened to
write a paper on the Blythe.
This is the beginningof the end of a city.
And all of a sudden it waspicked up in the small map
paper called the wall streetjournal than the new york times.
And he all of a sudden becamewell known for that that they

(36:04):
put and said, if we couldstop cities from falling
apart by identifying early.
Well, how would we do that?
Very simple.
We'd throw a camera ona trash truck that goes
around the city every day.
And I'll get to see 100percent Google Earth.
Let me see downthat helped me ring.
Let me see out.
Just imagine if I could seethe city what I can see.

Everyone (36:21):
Hmm.

Thank God we did Asheville before the storms.
FEMA called us up andsaid, we'd like a before
and after blueprint sowe could see the damage.
So that one's having to blow up.
That's the worst part.
Sandy.
I personally looked on theinternet who says they found
fund black venture, blackthis, that, the other thing.
And I wrote to them alland called them of the
20 that said they did it.

(36:43):
How many of them returnedmy, and you see, I have
at least a background thatyou should return my call
or at least be like, off.
Tell me that at leastI'm fine with that.
How many of the 20?
How many did I get?
All right.
So

what do you, what do you say?
Three?

Bingo.
Yeah,

I was going to tell you.
No, I just guessedI was looking at 15

percent and I was blown away.
I actually had to calltheir boss's boss, yeah.
To say, Hey, you atinsight capital, Jeff,
do you mind asking thisperson to return my email?
I know he's not there.
Hey, to these people over,if I named the venture firms,
you they're all tier one.
You'd be like, there'sno way that person
didn't return your call.

(37:22):
And it's eitherthey're overwhelmed.
They don't get it.
They don't know, or they'reall lip service and saying they
fund African Americans becausethey don't, they're bullshit.
Hmm.
So we've got him funded.
It's a non-traditional way andwe're starting to crush it.
When I met him,he was doing 60 k.
We have a, that was last yearat this time we've got a $3
million backlog 12 months later.
That's fantastic.
That's more than double, double.
Triple.
Triple.
So, um, there's a bigger story.

(37:43):
We, we can, we we're gonnaeventually launch this thing
called the Super Foundry.
I don't know ifyou know Ali Tabi.
He's over at DCBC and he wrotea book called Super Founders.
Mm-hmm . And he interviewed athousand of 'em to find out.
What they did, and I thoughtto myself, I've built
a thousand, so I don'thave to interview them.
I'm going to go outand help them with
what my scar tissue is.
And no, so hence, that'swhy we really created

(38:03):
the get the money firm.
And I could go down 99 ways.
We got money without it beingventure money or how we funded
things and why we did this,why we did it differently
and why that allowed us towin and become number one.

That's cool.
So is there a court whenyou, when you, when you go to
what motivated you to go dothese sorts of things, right?
You weren't doing thingsin a traditional fashion.
You got yourself into theseworlds that you talk about
being the Forrest Gump, right?
You found your way, you gotyour way into it and you were
very passionate about it.
What got you there?

So destiny had me on a path that wasn't this.
I already told youwhat my dad did.
Uh, so I figured, uh, my senioryear, he got cancer and they
gave him six months to live.
So I didn't go away to college.
Now, the reason that'simportant, same thing happened
to him and his dad died.
He dropped out of high schooland he ended up digging ditches
and he moved from graveyarddigger to truck driver.
So here I am thinkingthat's going to be my life.

(38:53):
I'm not going tobe digging graves.
I'm going to be, uh, I'mgoing to work at UPS and I
got a job working at UPS.
Um, And I realizedI'm not a laborer.
I thank God got the unloadand end up within six months,
learned the zip code so Icould be a sorter and make
another dollar an hour.
And then about 90 dayslater, I qualified for an
exemplary employee that I gotto apply to be a supervisor.

(39:15):
And I did that tillI was 20 years old.
And I saw a call center andI thought I had a little
call center exposure, whichwe didn't talk about yet.
And I thought, that'swhat I want to be part of.
And I looked at who, what callcenters are in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, and are there anythings out there and I saw this
company D and H distributing.
And so I apply for the job.
I get a job in the call center.

(39:35):
I was, I was hesitant toleave my job where I was
getting benefits and I sortof saw a path and at UPS.
All of their executivemanagement came from within.
So they promote within.
So I'm seeing these peoplethat look like me, you know,
no college degree making250 back then, you know,
250 a year was real money.
It's like a milliondollars a year now.
So they do pay their people wellbecause they need to keep you.

(39:56):
Cause where are you going tolearn that business unless
you come from the inside?
And I joined DNH and theyhad been in business at
this time for over 70 years.
So what does that tell you?
They do.
Reinvent themselves.
The grandparents of thesepeople started a company in
Williamsport, Pennsylvaniawith retreaded tires.
They were Jewish immigrants.
When I met them 70 years later,they were the largest Whirlpool

(40:18):
and RCA distributor in America.
Now I'm going to askyou smart people, why?
Is that an importantfact in our lives?

They were the top brands of their time.
Those were the first thingswe bought after a house,

we bought a house, first TV, bought a car.
Then we needed washingmachines and TVs and stereos.
And so this whole dealernetwork had to be set up
and everything went throughdistribution because there
was no direct salespeople.
So what I got to see is Icall it the customer coverage
model and they nailed it.
And by the way, why don'twe shop at Amazon today?
It's customer coverage model.
I'll get it tomorrow.
So it's this.

(40:52):
Change that stays thesame change today.
That's an 8 billionESOP privately held
their children run it.
I communicate withthem regularly.
So I'm friends with them.
I think that's atestament to the type
of individual that I am.
And, um, uh, I learned a lotof my framing from there.
And therefore you putanything in the model.

(41:14):
Look, if they did retreadedtires and spatulas and games and
computers and got to 8 billion,I sure as hell can figure
out how we do that with tech.

So what you saw on them was that they
had a way to get productsto the market without.
Leveraging their ownbalance sheet, they can
use others to help you get

there.
That, plus they also gotdistribution, which is razor
thin margins and understandcustomer support, customer care,
the importance to have training,don't touch the product, don't
ship it, no returns, like allof those fundamentals that are
very important for margin, whichis how we all live by margin.

Right.
So when you say, when yousaw that level, when you
saw those elements, right,understanding the distribution
game, understanding howto drive it, how to, how
to see it, how did you.
Take that forward.
Like what

if you think about it today,
we call those pivots.
They're just reinventingthemselves because they got
the machinery and you just putsomething back in the machinery.
And so again, I'll goback to it to the change.
It stays the same.

Yeah.

We were only able to do that 10 times
because it's a process, right?

But, but situate me in the, so how
old were you when you gotthis, this job, I want to
look at it from your lens.
Cause now you're, you'respeaking with all this wealth of
experience with all these reallysort of catchy bits of wisdom.
But as the 20 year old, how areyou looking at this operation
and how is that influencingyou to then go to the next
stage versus just beinglike, well, I'll just be, you

(42:36):
know, climb the ranks here.
Or.
You know, just, uh, you know,take a really good question.

So it's, uh, it couldn't come better timing.
I hired 1 of our 1st employees,uh, to the firm and, um, he's
from Harrisburg, Pennsylvaniaand from the Jewish community.
So, when I tell you that I'ma giver and give back to the
things that make me who I am.
It's really true.
The women things I do, I hada strong mother that put me
in a position that if I canenable women, we can talk
about some of the ones andwhere we've made impact,

(43:01):
some of they are, um, it's apassion driven Sandy, hence the
chief helper, helping othersgrowing up, poor and Catholic.
The one thing you knewhow to do was give.
And sacrifice.
I mean, we might belaughing about that, but
those are fundamentals.
I always say my mothergave me the most priceless
things in the world.
Manners don't costus anything, right?
Things that greeting people,engagement people, things

(43:23):
that you don't have to havemoney to have that can set
you apart from those that do.
Yeah.
So I saw the power of acall center that led me to
believe what's out there.
I spent seven years at thebeginning of the birth of
the PC, which I'll get bythe way, Microsoft went
through distribution, HP,Compaq, Apple, everybody.
They use rep firms and we'restarting to see some things.
If we did a follow up, I'mgoing to project what the

(43:44):
next decade looks like.
And it's not like this inthe next two years is going
to, we're going to see thatchange all, all because
of the AI comments we had.

So, cause you're not going back to
college at this point, you're,you're in the workforce
and you're, and you're,and you're going from here.
Right.

I do teach at colleges.
So I don't know if I go back.
My daughter's at theuniversity of Alabama.
So I immediately knew.

I'm saying back when you were, you know,
in your twenties and you're,you're, you're going from
call center to the next gig.

Right.
Great.
Good, great question.
What college couldhave taught us this?

Yeah.
No, I don't know.
Yeah.

I got none.
Which is why I get invitesto go to MIT and Harvard
to come speak about thedigitization of industries.
Cause no one's donethese things before.

No, it's super inspiring.
So I kind of want to put peoplein the perspective of you at
that age and, and to reallythink about how I want to
hear what you thought about

the real question was.
I was beyond curious andthey afforded me every
opportunity and literacyis telling the story of
the gentleman that I hired.
They allow me to work weekends.
Listen, I learned how to dopunch panels, twisted pair.
I did cat5 cables, crimping.
They gave, there wasno shortage of work.
And if you were a worker,if you know anything about
that community, it's allabout work hard, work hard.

(44:52):
And they allowed me to do that.
There was no stoppingwhat I could learn there.

Yeah.
And then

how did you get from there
to Silicon Valley?
Great question.
So during this, I got tosee all the seven years.
So you've got to remember thebeginning of the PC, we're
talking green screens, coredata names, people here never
heard of our orange screens.
And so I got to see thebirth of the X 86 to 86,
36, 46, 10 megabyte harddrives to where we are today.
And so you saw a lot of roadkilland I've been offered a lot of

(45:19):
jobs in that seven years there.
And I thought to myself,I'm never leaving here.
I see how you treat people.
You've been inbusiness 70 years.
I'm going to retire.
This is great.
I love it here.
And then they treated me sowell like a family member.
We joke around.
I was Bobby Napolsteinto pronounce.
I like that.
I like that.

Rajiv Pari (45:36):
That's kind of cool.
Yeah.
Right.
And so I

was part of the tribe and all of that.
And they really welcomed me in.
But back to the essence ofyour question, they afforded
every opportunity to work.
And you heard me chop wood.
If you work hard,things will pay off.
Work hard, work hard.
It will pay off.
You know that.

That's great.
So then you found yourselfin Silicon Valley.
You got your sense.
No, I'm

looking and I pass on all these
jobs and we have a multi me.
I get to launch thesoftware division.
We're getting into software atthe time because we was mainly
hardware and it was gamingat the time at the beginning,
early productivity tools.
And we had a multimediaevent at our facility.
And so a bunch of companiescame to it and sponsored it.
And I met these two gentlemen,and we were going to the off

(46:16):
site, which was you could gooff at the Hershey country
club or go to Hershey park.
And so they asked me,where are you going?
I go, I'm going to Hershey park.
Why aren't you going golfing?
I go, do you see whereeveryone else is going?
I don't want to go off andspend my day with you in a
cart when I could go spend mytime with all of those people
and have fun in the park.
And they're like, Oh my God.
Two weeks later, theymade me an offer.
I turned it down.
They came back andmade it sweeter.

(46:37):
I joined them at a companywas doing about 30 million.
Uh, a year.
So small.
And when I left seven yearslater, we were doing a
billion form or the fastestgrowing company in the world.
The third after Microsoft andIntel to reach a hundred million
users selling a 99 product.
And we cracked CAC and LTVbefore this, this industry
even knew what they meant byselling a 16 chip to an OEM

(47:00):
manufacturer to own the floor.
Then that got us the sound.
Then I upgraded you a 16bit, a 32 bit, a 64 CD ROM
drive, a DVD drive, speakers.
There's a great, we almostbought Nvidia until Jensen
turned us down and we ended upbuying 3d effects, who knows
what it would have been like.
And it wasn't until thiscompany in Cupertino stole

(47:20):
our technology and wroteus a half a billion dollar
check and the MP3 player wasborn otherwise we would have
probably owned that as well.
And that's a true story.
Wow.
It's an awesome story.
Have you written a book?
Um, that's just chapter one,.

It's time, time We'll do an audio book
or we'll do chapters.
Books are dead if you,in my opinion, people
write books to be heard.
I'd rather share these storiesand have a subscriber, you
know, like I have a lookat it, rather write a book.
I'd rather gimme $10 ayear for a subscription.
I'll tell you storiesthroughout the entire year.
You go, there it is.

Yes.
Extended podcast.
Alright, so now we getto go and do the game.
Let's do the games.
Yes.
So

speaking of Hershey, I think it's a
perfect segue into this, Bobby.
I'd like to welcome you now.
You, I hope you've been enjoyingyour time in the podcast.
Cause you're about toenter the spark tank.
Okay.
So this is a, you know, thewhole world has changed here.
Um, this is where the lightshave shown down on you.
They're bright, they're hot.
Um, this is where twomarketing mavens enter.
And, uh, one gets crushed andit's going to get tarred and

(48:19):
feathered, except this timethe tar is going to taste
a little sweeter becauseit's going to be chocolate.
Today's game is focused onthe life and times of the
chocolatier and confectionerymogul, Milton Hershey,
labeled as one of your heroes.
So in one corner, we've gotBobby and Appletonia with
36 years of experience intech, having shaped and

(48:40):
transformed some of the mostinnovative and influential
companies in the world.
And as we stated,loves Milton Hershey.
And then we have my brother,Rajiv, CEO of Position Squared,
who inhales autobiographieslike they are chocolate bars.
So, you know, I think this isa good head to head matchup.
I will, I don't

know, I'm at a disadvantage.

We'll see, we'll see, we're going
to play, we're going toplay two truths and a lie.
Um, and so I'm going to readyou a list of three supposed
facts about Hershey, two ofwhich are true and one is fake.
I'm going to then countdown from three to one.
And when I say one, you'regoing to show me your answers
at the same time, one, two,or three, so that there's no
cheating off of each other.
Does that make sense?

And we're going to pick
the fake or the truth.

You're picking the fake.
Two of the true, twoof them are true.
All right.
One is a lie.
All right.
All right.
Round one.
Uh, Milton Hershey's life is aninspiring, much like yours and
inspiring rags to riches story.
Uh, which of these statementsabout his inspiring
early life is the lie.
Number one, Milton Hershey onlyhad a fourth grade education,
but he was determined to learna trade and become successful,

(49:39):
so he apprenticed for a printerbefore he was fired for spilling
ink on the printing press.
Number two, after failing at hisfirst confectionery business in
Philadelphia, Hershey eventuallymoved out into a frontier town
in the 1880s, Denver, Colorado,where he struck gold in a very
unusual way by learning tomake caramels with fresh milk.

(50:01):
It was.
White gold.
Number three, Hershey tooka huge gamble by ditching
his then successful caramelcompany to focus entirely
on making milk chocolate.
And to fund this, hesold all of his personal
possessions, includinghis house and furniture,
and bet it all on Brown.
Alright.
So, so this is likea connected set of

questions in

a way.
It kind of is.
These are three statementsabout his early life.
One of them is false.
Two of them are true.
Three, two, one, go.
Okay, you both say that oneis the lie, that he only had a
fourth grade education beforehe apprenticed for a printer.
Well, I gotta tellyou, that is true.
Oh, so fa wow.

(50:43):
I knew caramels were true.
He, he didn't, and Iknew the milk chunk.
So, you know, I guessthe devil's in the
details on this one.
He didn't leverage his, allof his personal possessions
and in house his furnitureto, uh, to then bet
into the milk chocolate.
He actually sold his company,uh, for staggering $1
million, the equivalent towhat's $34 million today.
Wow.
Um, so he wasn't, and he bought,

he bought the 30 acres in Dairy
Township, which became Hershey.

Correct.
So, so I just, I got you ona little fine print there.
So you guys are stillzero, zero here.
We go round two.
Tied at zero.
Hershey wasn't just aninnovative chocolatier in the
lab or a brilliant operator,he was also a marketing genius.
He had many greatmarketing moves.
Uh, which of these thoughis not one of those
great marketing moves.

(51:27):
Number one, to promoteHershey's Kisses, the company
set up kissing booths in majorcities where customers could
receive a free kiss in exchangefor a kiss on the cheek.
Number two, to promote hischocolate and the town of
Hershey, Pennsylvania, MiltonHershey had a trolley car built
entirely out of chocolate.
It was displayed at variousevents and exhibitions, drawing
crowds and generating buzz.
Number three, An early Hersheyslogan was more sustaining

(51:52):
than meat, emphasizingthe nutritional value of
chocolate at a time whenit was considered a treat.
So which of these threemarketing moves was in fact
not one that Milton enacted?
Here we go.
Your answer in three, two, one.
Wow, you guys are just,like, you guys go to
too many 49ers games.

(52:12):
We gotta separate you two.
Okay, you both said three,which is the ridiculous
slogan, which is in fact true.
True.
I knew you were gonna say that.
He did, in fact, want to, yes,yes, there was, Morse's Sitting
Meat was a terrible slogan.
It's pretty wild.
Pretty wild.
Well, in fact But it must haveworked back in those days.
The false was thekissing booths.

(52:32):
That was not, that was not true.
So that didn't happen.
Uh, but there was singingtelegrams of Hershey's
kisses, uh, that were, thatwere delivered by a person
dressed as a Hershey's kiss.
So it's based in some truth,but they didn't actually say

you and I are zero, zero,

let's get some offense going here, uh, in 1906.
delightful trait emerged fromthe Hershey's Chocolate Factory
and that was the Hershey's Kiss.
So we're gonnadouble click on that.
Okay, so, there, peopledon't know the exact origin
of the Hershey's Kiss, whythey called it the Kiss.
There are many rumored ideasthat have become famous lore.
Uh, two of these rumoredorigin stories are, are true.

(53:07):
Real or rumored originstories and one of them is
entirely invented by me.
Can you pick whichone is the fake one?
Here we go.
Number one, uh Milton Hersheya man of few words believed
in simplicity and quantity Heoften referred to the acronym
KISS Keep it simple sweetheartto represent his business
and marketing philosophyand it was an employee who

(53:28):
then suggested Calling thatsilver wrapped Treat a kiss.
Number two, the Hershey'skiss was inspired when Milton
witnessed an assembly linechocolatier who after accidently
dropping a dollop of chocolateon the assembly line kissed his
hand after he cleaned it up.
Number three, the soundthis machine makes when
it deposits the chocolateonto the conveyor belt.

(53:50):
People say that it makes akissing sound like a quick peck.
So which of these three rumors.
are actually in the lore ofrumors of how the Hershey's
Kiss was originated.
Three, two, oh boy.
Do you want to pick it?
I'm going to let you choose.
You're the guest.
You get, do you want tostay where you are and force

(54:10):
Rajiv to change his answer?
Or do you want to potentiallychange your answer?
I'd

Bobby Napilt (54:14):
like to keep mine.
So I'm happy to change

it.
Okay, I got it.
I'll go one.
Well, we do in facthave a winner now.
Number one is The Lie.
So, yeah, that'sthe one I made up.
There is no actual acronym.
Congratulations, Rajiv.
I can't believe it.
Third week in a row.
Third podcast in a row.
Bobby, I was reallyholding out hope that
you would take him down.

Yeah, me too.
I knew it was from thesound of the machine.
It was the truth.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, some of them youheard as kids, you know, the
stories and going to the top ofthe theme park and all of that,
but it was the best babysitter.
I think a hall pass was35 a year and that's where
your parents would dropyou off and pick you up
at the end of the day.
Right.

Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, how about this real quick?
Because I hate it when Reggiewins double or nothing.
Bobby, if you can answerthis, what movie was Hershey's
chocolate syrup used?
In a famous showerscene, instead of blood.

Hey, I don't know that one.
I was gonna guess it wasa sex movie of some sort.
And there's likewater for chocolate.

That's your definition of a sex movie?

Everyone (55:19):
It's

Sandeep Pari (55:19):
raining chocolate.
I

Bobby Napi (55:21):
was trying to think.
Kind of like AmericanBeauty, it's raining frogs.
It's 50 shades of gray andI didn't, I didn't know.
Watch the movie.
And therefore it was inthat movie or was it,
you know, last night,

Sandeep Pa (55:30):
it's like, no, okay.
Uh, any hints there?
It's psycho.
Yes.
Psycho.
Psycho is the moviewhere, uh, yeah, cause
it was black and white.
Right.
It was black and white.
Exactly.
So they used Alfred Hitchcockused Hershey's chocolate
syrup instead of blood.
All right.
Well, that makes, unfortunately,makes Rajiv the double winner.
Uh, congratulations, Roger,on your three podcasts

(55:52):
in a row win streak.
And Bobby, thank youso much for playing.

Thank you for making it.
Thanks for having me.
I'll listen to Rajiv every day.
As long as I get to hangout with you, Bobby.
All right, Bobby, we have a fewquestions that you're going to
answer super fast, all right?
Here we go.
This is our final few.
What's your anti portfolio?
We all have a company wewish we invested in or a
company that hired us or acompany that you founded.

(56:16):
Give me two of your anti

portfolio, meaning that I'm assuming about
places I didn't go to work.

That's right.
You wish you could have been,you could have worked there.
You wish you had invested in it.
Uh, something you wishyou could have founded
that you came close.
There's

too many.
There's far, far too many.
Um, nest is one.
And I thought no, one'spaying three 53rd thermostat.
And they weren't, theywanted the data from
the people's homes.
That's definitelyone that I passed on.
I actually did thecommercial version of that.
And that's the companywe sold to Siemens.
I wasn't far off new.
Interesting part washusband and wife.
One was at Kleiner Perkins,one's at foundation and
one had a consumer andone had the commercial and

(56:51):
they were both vying forwhere I would go to work.
And it started withthe people first.
Uh, I chose her over him.
Anyway, uh, that'sprobably the first one.
I don't have many regrets.

Uh, you don't have any regrets.
Well, I like that.
I like that.
Here we go.
What's your personal moonshot?
What pops to mind immediately?

Um, owning a sports team.

That's

awesome.

I love that.
Do you have afavorite life motto?

Bobby Nap (57:15):
Work hard, play hard.

Work hard, play hard.
Love it.
Next great thing youplan on starting?
Book tv show movie podcast videogame money's no object money
even making money is no object

great question so i recently moved
to the pacific northwest and idiscovered what i think could
be a gold mine that we wehaven't seen anywhere else in
the world i've been trying tofigure out how we take silicon
valley dna i talked to nicolawho runs the entrepreneur
program over at the nasdaqand we say if you could just
get certain things You out ofSilicon Valley and repeat them.
And I think here in Bend,Oregon, there's a lot

(57:49):
of the things that will,that, that could make
Silicon Valley absentee auniversity, although there
are two, not far from here.
The amount of wealth is here.
That is Silicon Valley.
Wealth has blown my mind away.
It's a bunch of startups.
And so I got to keynote atthe Bend Venture Conference
a couple of weeks ago.
My goal would be to coalescethe community and see if
we can get like a realmoonshot out of here.

(58:10):
Now, why do I believe that?
Listen, I'm hanging outwith a guy that ran AI
at Apple for nine years.
He lives in my backyard.
Like there are other peoplelike me that have come here.
The guy that runs KKR softwarehas got a place up here.
So I start thinking, if you hadto take the pieces that would
make it happen, we have them.
How can we assemble that?
And can we make this microcosm?
And can I build a bridgeto Silicon Valley?

(58:32):
Cause we need outposts.
You know, it can't bethe heartbeat forever.

I'm a big, whenever folks say, Oh, uh,
we're starting here, maybeMiami, Austin, Boston, wherever
I'm, I'm just thrilled.
I think we needmore competition.
Competition's always great.
And it's important tocreate this ecosystem that
goes around the world.
So I love the idea.
So Bobby, thank you forhaving us here today.

Oh, I got, I got one, I got a one final,
final one for the final fastfour or whatever we're calling
it, which is I have downhere that you traveled with
the circus for three years.
Give me your bigtakeaway from that

experience.
Oh, wow.
It was the most incredibleexperience of a lifetime.
Uh, well, first of all,the animals, I fell in
love with elephants.
I spent a lot of timewith the animals.
So that part was ablessing as a young man.
And the takeaway though,was I ended up getting on
the business side of it.
I ran the joint, I ran a joint.
And so my, my sophomore, mysecond and third year, second

(59:27):
year, I was on cotton candy.
So I learned from agentleman, Billy Rawls.
And what I learned was acotton candy, you sell for a
dollar, your cost of goods is3 cents because the cone costs
one flossing to human labor.
And by my third year, byI'm 15 years old, I have
four people working for me.
And I'm running probablya Couple hundred thousand
dollar little enterprise.
Yeah.

(59:47):
Yeah.
And I have four people working.
So I got to understand at avery young age, margin dollars,
cost of goods, people workfor me and how I make money.
And that's really the Genesisthat I've applied that every
company for the last few years.
50 years since I was 13.

Rajiv Parikh (01:00:01):
Awesome.
No, I love it.
Bobby, such a thrill to haveyou with me today and Sunday,
but we just had a blast tothe spark of ages audience.
We'd love to hear from you.
So thank you somuch for joining us.

Bobby Napiltonia (01:00:11):
Thanks.
Hit me up on LinkedIn.
Listen, follow, share.
I appreciate you guys having meand I look forward to meeting
in person someday, Sandy.

Yes.
Same here.
Bring it on.
Right.
Well, that wasjust a lot of fun.
Bobby is just like a, youknow, It's like drinking

(01:00:38):
out of a fire hose.
He's right.
Instead of

Sandeep Parikh (01:00:41):
water, you're just drinking like,
you know, informationon the history of, uh,

tech, it's a mega stream of technology, chocolate.
All right.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod,please take a moment
to rate it and comment.
You can find us on Apple,Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere
podcasts can be found.

Hey, this show is produced by moi,
Sandeep Parikh, and AnandShah, production assistance
by Taryn Talley, and edited bySean Maher and Aiden McGarvey.

And I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh from
Position Squared, a leading AIbased growth marketing company
based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at www.
positionsquared.
com.
www.
position2.
com.
This has been an effingfunny production and
we'll catch you next time.
And remember folks, be likeBobby, be ever curious.

For our, for our listeners.
We generally, there's a preshow where I run down a list of
housekeeping and then, you know,we ask, I ask, Hey, you have
any questions before we begin?
Now, Bobby, our guest todaydecided to ask a question right
off the top that I think isworthwhile answering on the pod.
So let's go.
Give us your question.
Certainly.

Bobby Napiltonia (01:01:53):
Who's the most interesting interview
that you've had and why?

Yeah, that's see, this is obviously a
charged, potentially charged,uh, a lot of crap for this.
Yeah.
We could, we could use a lotof your buddies here, but,
um, I don't know, Rajiv,what comes to your mind?
I think about a

couple of, when I think about the
highest performers, uh, AnkurSrivastava did really well.
David Yakubovich did really wellin terms of just raw numbers.
He really rocked it.
He's got an amazing community.
I really enjoyed.
Two of the women, uh,on the podcast and the
geest and was awesome.
That was on my list.
Uh, Joanna stroberof midi health.

(01:02:28):
I, she made me confront anuncomfortable topic about,
um, middle age women'shealth and menopause.
And I think that was fun for meto learn to be natural about it.

And then we have fun ones.
We had that we had,uh, the crispy crunchy
chicken lady rock.
She rocked it.
Yes.
Which was just like atotally kind of for us.
kind of out there topic thatwe never really get to talk
about, you know, uh, Uh,crispy chicken distribution.
That's right.
And so that, that,that was cool.
I think it's whenever it sortof really sparks our curiosity

(01:03:01):
and you can feel yourselfleaning into the conversation
because either they, you know,bringing in insights that you
had never thought of beforefacts or data that, that just
surprise you, that's, that'sthe stuff that, that really, you
know, Gets me personally going

Bobby Nap (01:03:13):
well, especially with being a history buff.
I'm sure that those curveballs come at you and
then you can validatewhether it's true or not.
Right.
I think so.
Thankfully we have the internetat our disposal as well,

just in case to make ourselves
look like history buffs.

All Episodes

GTM = "Get The Money"/Bobby Napiltonia - Building a Marketplace, Distribution, Hershey ~ Spark of Ages Ep 27

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}GTM = "Get The Money"/Bobby Napiltonia - Building a Marketplace, Distribution, Hershey ~ Spark of Ages Ep 27