Ep. #48: Jesse Buckingham, CEO and Cofounder of Vooma

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey listeners, before we get started today, I want to
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(00:23):
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We look forward to working withyou To our listeners.
That's it.
Let's get the show on the road.
Welcome back, welcome back.

(01:43):
Welcome back to another episodeof the Freight Pod.
I'm your host, andrew Silver.
I'm rocking some new headphonestoday for those of you who are
here for the video, not just theaudio.
I also, if you can't tell, myeyes are a little puffy.
I had a rough weekend in MexicoCity, my first time visiting
the capital of Mexico.

(02:03):
That is the capital, right,jesse?
Am I right there?
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, if not.
It's certainly the largest city, with 22 million people in the
surrounding area and I think 9million in the downtown area,
which is an insane number.
When I got there it was kind ofhard to fathom how big the city
was.
I did not get to explore it theway I might have liked.
I did enjoy a Michelin starrestaurant M One of the best

(02:30):
food experiences of my life anincredible tuna tostada.
But the following 24 hours werequite miserable, as I spent
them in a hospital dealing witha pretty ugly stomach flu or
whatever virus I contractedthere.
It was not fun.
Stomach flu or whatever virus Icontracted there it was not fun
.
So I'm recovering, but in goodshape to have a great guest
today.
Mr Jesse Buckingham, welcome tothe show.

(02:53):
Ceo and co-founder of Vuma.
How are you doing today, man?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I'm doing very well.
Thanks for having me on.
It's great to get to chat today.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this one.
So I got to be honest, I'vebeen a little scared to jump
into the kind of AI waters withrespect to the show, because
it's just so far from a corecompetency for myself as someone
who is not even close to techsavvy.
It's just it's been somethingthat I've shied away from out of
fear of, I don't know, lookinglike an idiot or not knowing how
to have the right conversation.
But, um, I'm excited to justask the questions and and and

(03:34):
learn as much as I can about thebusiness you've built, how AI
is starting to play a muchbigger role in our space than it
ever has, and, um, with, withsmart people like yourself, I
think there's a lot both myselfand our audience can learn.
So, before we jump into Vuma,take me back to so you went to

(03:54):
school in Australia.
Is that correct?
Are you from Australia?

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, so, born and raised in Australia, I spent
like 10 years of my lifechildhood overseas in Australia.
I spent like 10 years of mylife childhood overseas,
including like five or six ofthat in the U?
S in the Bay area.
So I think I've always like hada bit of a connection and
affinity for America.
I had some like formative yearsup from when I was like eight
till I was 13.
And, um, it was kind of aroundthe like originalcom era, I

(04:21):
think you know.
So I probably like picked up ona little bit of the like
Silicon Valley, like tech buzzat that point in my life.
Um, and then we I moved back,went to undergrad in Australia
but always kind of had a sensethat I'd want to get back to the
U S.
Um, and so I moved, moved backout here 10 years ago Now,

(04:42):
married an american woman here,got two little american kids now
and you know I'm in the land ofthe free um, that's awesome,
and and what kind of drew you to?

Speaker 1 (04:52):
was it just kind of the history that you had had
here in america that made youwant to eventually spend, I
guess, the the adult part ofyour life here, or what kind of
brought you back?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
yeah, it's interesting.
Like I always, australia is anincredible country, um, and
there's this like culturephenomenon that I talk about
quite quite like openly inaustralia, called like the tall
poppy syndrome, where the ideais like, if you ever get like a
like a poppy that grows liketaller than the rest, like it's

(05:24):
the job of an australian to likecut the poppy down, down the
size, which, like is verydifferent than the like american
kind of ethos whereeverything's very like you know,
like hey, it's awesome, likepeople are kind of you know,
much more like willing to say,hey, I've got like big dreams
and aspirations.
It's what makes likeaustralians very like, laid back

(05:44):
and fun to get along with.
It's also like I'm a prettylike ambitious person myself and
I love like you know, like Ireally love my career and I love
building things and I love likebeing ambitious and like.
There's always a sense where,like I love parts of Australian
culture and there's a lot that Ilove about being in America
because I think it allows me tolike be like a fuller version of

(06:06):
myself in ways that I can'talways in Australia, and so I
think that was like a little bitof it, but I've always been
quite enamored by liketechnology is, you know, like
for myself, I kind of think oflike wanting to be able to have
a scaled impact on the world,and being able to do that like
through technology and throughbusinesses that have like impact

(06:27):
on the economy is like one ofthe most like I don't know
rewarding things, and so to methere's like there's no bigger
market and opportunity than likebeing in the us.
I was like I gotta get, I gottaget back over here, and then,
you know, there was a bunch ofsort of steps in between that
and like starting Vuma, which wecan talk about, but that's kind
of what drew me back and youknow, and then I came out here

(06:50):
where I was at Bain Company, theconsulting firm, met my wife
actually through that and thenwent to business school at
Stanford and then, you know, itkind of it snowballed from there
, but no, I really love it.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
And was there something about your?
You know consulting is aninteresting business for people
to get into.
You know, it's not always theentrepreneurial bug that that
comes out of that.
I'm curious was there somethingyou saw there, or did you
always have this kind ofentrepreneurial bug that you
wanted to one day start abusiness?
How did Bain play into thatkind of path for you?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
yeah, I did so.
I'd always had the like startupbug.
Like I lived in a in a housewith five guys through college
and I think every single one ofthem are founders now and like
spent all of my like universityworking on like different things
and bane was really like twoyears stint to learn like a good
set of like commercial problemsolving skill sets is like an

(07:46):
initial training ground and mysort of viewers I'll do sort of
two, three years there and thenI thought kind of like jump into
like early stage startups orstart it, start a business.
And then it ended up, um, goingto business school at stanford
really is a way, because it'slike sort of I was excited about
it because they focus a lot onlike personal leadership
development and that's somethingI like love just thinking about

(08:08):
and then also just like deeplyembedded in the tech ecosystem
over here.
So that's kind of like whatdrew me over to the US.
But, bain, there's a lot offounders that come out of it,
but really it was sort of likethe training ground for being
able to do other stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
So stanford gave you that kind of double dip of being
in the kind of tech ecospherewhile also getting the um kind
of leadership skill development.
That is obviously imperativefor a good founder and and a
good business leader.
And I'm curious, you joinedfrom there into Alpine.

(08:47):
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's right.
And what did help me understandwhat that environment looked
like?
Because, from what I could tell, you've kind of led several
businesses over the course oflike from 2018 through 2021.
How did that whole experiencework?

Speaker 2 (09:06):
yeah.
So alpine is a uh software andservices private equity fund
based out of the bay.
When I their model, they werestarted by a guy who was 20,
like 26 years old at stanfordbusiness school, which is why
they recruit out of it and hestarted like buying his initial
businesses basically off likecredit cards and has now grown

(09:28):
it into I think they have $17billion under management and
have a really likehigh-performing private equity
fund and a lot of their likekind of ethos is around how do
we it's like kind of talentarbitrage.
It's like how do you take kindof high potential but low
experience people and like throwthem into like roles and in
kind of like a sync or somethingway and you know and and kind

(09:50):
of see what happens.
And for me, like that was likereally compelling because I
always knew that I wanted to belike building and scaling teams
and if someone was going to likethrow me the keys to like drive
the truck, I was, you know, andlike I was like give me the,
give me the keys, let's see whathappens and um, and so part of
part of their playbook is, youknow, like they will buy in
partnership with folks likemyself, to like buy businesses

(10:14):
where founders are like lookingto tap out for a number of
reasons.
Um, in my case, the firstbusiness that I jumped into was
this great fleet inspectionsoftware platform based out of
um seattle, that was founded bythese two guys from like
enterprise car rental.
One of them stayed in thebusiness.
The other one was like starteda professional rugby team and

(10:34):
wanted to, you know, sell thebusiness and have somebody kind
of scale it from there.
And so for me I kind of jumpedat that like because I was like
this is an incredibleopportunity to learn how to like
build and scale teams and, youknow, just get those like reps
in a bat and that's kind of howit how it started coming out of
uh, out of grad school.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
But you knew, nothing about fleet inspection correct.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
No, I mean candidly like I was, you know, I was 28
years old at the time.
I'd had about two years ofexperience, uh, and then was,
like you know, jumped in as theCEO of a business like founded
by these two guys that were likebasically you know, twice my
age, um, you know, with a team.
So it's like a pretty wildscenario, uh, to be thrown into.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
How did you give them the confidence that you were
the guy to come take over their,their baby or their?
You know the thing that theyhad put a lot of time and energy
into yeah, I mean it's uh, it'shard.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
If I I wouldn't be, I'd be lying if I said, like the
first year didn't like have mein some like fetal positions in
the in the bed, likeoccasionally, um, but a lot of
it is like kind of like trustingyourself.
You know, like I sort of like Iknow that I, I had, I had stuff
to learn, but I also like knowthat I had good judgment and

(11:52):
that, like you know, you sort oftake it slow at the beginning
and build trust and look forlike ways to put runs on the
board and like understand thekind of key relationships with
the team and like show thatyou're sort of there to like
listen and not be the one whocomes in.
And you know it's kind ofdifferent, it's a very different
dynamic to like founding acompany.
It's because you're jumping inand like you you don't know you

(12:14):
haven't been there for the storythat you don't carry that like
natural, like genesis story.
So there's a lot, a lot oftrust building.
But then, over time, as youstart to like make judgment
calls and improve things and thebusiness starts performing like
, you develop your owncredibility.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
It really took probably a full, full year,
though, and not without it'slike challenges I mean that that
strikes me as as such achallenge as someone who's been
a founder like one of the thingsthat a founder can always lean
on is kind of their passion andenergy for the business and the
vision it's like, when in doubt,lean on your passion, lean on

(12:51):
your vision and people who havebeen there and have trusted you
along the way they lean intotrusting you.
But if you're coming into abusiness brand new that is
someone else's dream, someoneelse's vision, someone else's
passion it's way harder, I wouldthink, to generate that initial

(13:12):
trust, the buy-in, or you maybescrewed something up and and
had to navigate, dealing withthat as the 28 year old kid who
kind of took over and like whatdid that look like for you?

(13:32):
How did you navigate that?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I mean, I mean there was like especially at the
beginning, right, Because sowhat I ended up doing was, you
know, after the year you had areally good first year and the
fun strategy is kind of like putmore behind people and things
that are working.
And so we saw this biggeropportunity.
We went on to buy three morecompanies Um, and by that stage
I'd kind of I'd like had a lotmore reps and sets.

(13:55):
And so you definitely like youjust definitely improve Um and
you develop more people havemore confidence in you because
they've kind of seen the resultsthat you've like put on the
board um before and the teamsthat you've built and the like
cultural transformation thatyou've been on.
But I mean, I remember like thefirst the foot, when it was
just this first business, therewas, uh, you get all this

(14:16):
feedback from from the team andthey'd be someone said like yeah
, no, I don't trust him, like hehasn't been around the block,
and this is, you know, granted,like I hadn't really been around
the block, yeah, but thosethings are like they're kind of
like gut punches at the time.
But you also need to exude alot of confidence as well in um,
in in the way that you show up,because you know what it's like

(14:37):
as a leader.
Like that's kind of what peopleneed often is like to have
confidence, even, or being ableto like navigate ambiguity well
where they're like maybe wedon't know, have all the answers
, but this person's going tokind of lead us there.
So it's like it was.
It was definitely um, it wasdefinitely hard.
The other thing is like thedynamics.
Like you know, the firstbusiness, one of the co-founders

(14:58):
stayed in the in the business.
He's now like a very closefriend of mine and like an
awesome partner.
But remember, out of the gates,like you know, not a lot of
trust and a lot of skepticismthat his baby was going to get
like driven into the, into theground Right.
Or, like you know, everyone'skind of sizing, sizing you up,
and I ended up, you know, try tofind like what's the right

(15:20):
dynamic there where you likereally honor their like legacy,
but also like acknowledge.
Like acknowledge that you knowthings, that things need to
change and the business needs tochange in certain ways is, like
you know, it takes a lot oflike trust building, you know,
and like being in the trenchesand kind of going.
You know, for me it's likeabout directness often with
people is, like you know,showing that like I care about

(15:40):
them as individuals but I'llalso kind of shoot them straight
, and that, like conflict andand repairs, is part of the
journey of like building thattrust with founding teams.
But yeah, I mean it was hardfor sure.
What was the name of thatbusiness?
That first one was Record 360.
And really like and it's.

(16:01):
You know, I had the time of mylife there, really great team.
I had the time of my life there, really great team.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
That business actually just sold a few months
ago now.
When did you exit from thebusiness?
Was that part of the plan allalong, just to come and be a
part of the journey for a while,get it to a point and then you
would come out, or how did thatlook?

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, to a point, and then you would come out, or how
did that look?
Yeah, so we bought, we ended upbuilding.
So I ended up like seeing thisopportunity to build out a
bigger like logistics andconstruction technology, um
business, with the initialintent was to kind of integrate
them all, although that ended upnot making a bunch of sense.
So we went on to buy two tmsplatforms, um, that were for
final mile delivery businesses,so I think kind of like regional

(16:46):
, like pharmaceutical andmedical distribution businesses,
and then went on to lead theacquisition of Trucker Tools,
which I'm sure you would know,and so like.
At various points it was kindof a lot of like.
You know, do we integrate thesebusinesses, do we not?
Do we get leadership teams inplace?
But for me, like, my personalpassion has always been for like

(17:07):
building from the ground up,like I think there's like
something really beautiful aboutlike bringing things into the
world that didn't exist before,and so for me, that was always
kind of like my intention was toget, you know, have like put
these businesses on track forreally great outcomes, which,
which we did and you knowthey'll, um, you know, really
proud.
Put these businesses on trackfor really great outcomes, which
, which we did, and you knowthey'll, um, you know really

(17:28):
proud of the like teams that webuilt and they're all like gonna
gonna end up doing really well.
Um, but for me, the like rewardof like getting to build from
the ground up.
So when I was about three and ahalf years in and then kind of
like hired tos to take overthose various businesses, did a
long transition and make sureyou know, because obviously I
cared a lot for the teams that Ibuilt there and wanted them to

(17:48):
succeed but then sort ofnavigated that transition and
then stepped out to build themup from there.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
So what would you say was the biggest lesson you
learned from your first ventureas a CEO?

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, there's a few, um, one of them is around, like
I mean, there's a few.
One of them is around like howimportant it is to have the
right leadership in place inbusinesses.
Like when I was was one of themistakes that I made was trying
to like implement change in, youknow, in the company, like you

(18:29):
know, getting everyone to likeoperate faster.
But maybe, like in certainsituations, I didn't have the
right leaders in place and it'skind of like pushing up against
a wall where, like nothing,nothing moves.
And it wasn't until, like Ikind of really like dealt with
that and made some of the liketough people decisions that and
and got the right people inplace, that things actually

(18:52):
started to move.
And I think, as like afirst-time ceo I mean for most
people they're like sort ofsometimes too slow in like
acknowledging the fact that,like some people aren't always
good fits in in businesses, butI think that was a big one is
that like nothing matters untilyou get the who right, so you
got to get the right rightpeople in the right seat before
you really want to start likerolling the boat, because if, if

(19:14):
you, if you go the other wayaround, like things kind of
break down pretty quickly.
Um, and then to me there waslike also a piece around this
like what you described is likeconnecting with the vision, and
the story, like as a founder ofa business comes very naturally,
because you've got this likejust Rolodex of war stories from
the early days, where you'resort of like heroed something
into the world that didn't existbefore.

(19:36):
When you come in as like aoperator, ceo, it's kind of
different.
So you got to find your own wayof like telling the story of
the business that like inspires.
And it took me a while.
Like I probably was like overintellectualized the whole thing
at the beginning, where I was,you know, I know I was like very
focused on the like hey, we'regoing to make this, you know
we're going to do better X, yand Z, but really, like you know

(19:57):
, not everyone cares about thesame things that you care about,
and so you've got to like ittook me a while to like figure
out the thread of how do I likeauthentically get people like
fired up and connected to whatwe're doing here when I don't
have when it's you know it won'thave that like founder story.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Uh, yeah, so many good comments in there.
I mean just thinking about one.
I mean, so the right people inthe right places?
Yeah, the what you're buildingdoesn't matter if the people you
have to sell it or to operateit to, you know, be the actual
builders of it.
If they're not the right peopleand I think, especially as an

(20:37):
early ceo, a first-time ceo andI imagine it's even harder if
it's not a team that you built,you know you come in and you
naturally want to make it workwith the people you have and it,
it, it.
There is something about Iremember a struggle I had.
I I hated firing people and andreally avoided it at all costs.

(20:58):
And I think it hurt thebusiness in some cases because
we would hold on to peoplelonger than we should have.
And maybe it's because you justhave compassion, or I think
that's maybe just the hardestpart of the job, especially if
you're someone who pours yourheart into a business.
It's like you ask so much ofpeople and then sometimes it's

(21:20):
not their fault that they're notthe right fit.
They just don't have the skillset needed.
Sometimes it's not their faultthat they're not the right fit.
They just don't have theskillset needed and it just
takes a kind of no BS mentalityto cut when you need to cut.
And I think that's just areally good point that anybody
who's starting a business orcoming in to lead a business

(21:41):
should think about.
Look at the people first, andit's hard to assess day one if
you have the right people.
You know it's one thing to lookat kind of a track record of
what they've done.
It's another to kind of givethem an opportunity to prove
themselves in front of you andshow that they can do the job.
But you know, not holding ontoo long is an important skill

(22:02):
for any leader.
And to move on to kind of thesecond thing you said, or one of
the second things you said, noteverybody cares about the same
things that you do as the CEO,and that is something that
people don't necessarily realizeuntil they've sat in that seat
and tried to put themselves inthe shoes of every individual on

(22:23):
their team.
Not everybody's paid to careabout the same things that you
are and it takes a really,really I think it's a skill as a
CEO to get everybody ralliedaround the entire vision of the
business, because most people inan organization are not paid to
care about every aspect of thebusiness.

(22:44):
They're paid to care abouttheir specific function within
the business and some businesses, startups and whatnot can give
equity to a lot of employees.
It's rare that you're going tosee it across the board and the
sooner that you can understandthat one of two things you
either have to develop the skillwhere you can help people see

(23:06):
the bigger picture andunderstand that if they do care
about every aspect of thebusiness, it can be better for
them as individuals, even ifthey don't have an equity piece
of the business.
But if you think about it justfrom a brokerage standpoint, as
a carrier rep, you might onlycare about booking as many loads
as possible to get as manydollars in your pocket and that

(23:29):
might mean you might take risksby putting carriers on loads
that they might not be on time,but it's a higher margin
potential for you.
That might lead to somebodymaking decisions very much just
in their own kind of referenceor frame of reference of caring
about their commissions.
If you can help them understandthat when we operate at 98% on

(23:51):
time and we take care of everyone of our customers and as a
rep, that means that you need toput the carrier on the load who
you know is going to give usthe best chance to be on time,
even if it means you might make10 less dollars on that load or
15 less dollars on that load,but we're going to be on time.
That means that customer isgoing to come back and give us

(24:12):
twice as many loads next week ortwice as many loads in the next
bid, and it's being able to getpeople to kind of pivot their
perspective to understand thatwhen we all execute at the
highest level, there's growthinvolved for all of us there's
more teams that we can create,there's more promotions that we
can have and, ultimately,there's more commission for
everybody because there's moreloads for us to book.

(24:34):
But that is a skill and it'snot something that I think every
CEO even cares to think about.
So I think I really appreciateyou bringing that up, because
it's an important thing torecognize within your business
that people do not naturallyjust care about all the things
that you, the CEO, care about.
It takes you to kind of helpthem understand why they should

(24:57):
care to get that out of themtotally yeah, totally yeah, and
it's, it is, and it's.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
You realize that everyone like has different like
motivations for, like, why theywant to show up and um, and
you've got to be able to, likeyou know, even like
interpersonally kind of readthat about people to understand,
like, what motivates andexcites them and um, and then
string it all together.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's uh, yeah, it's an art yeah, so I appreciate you
kind of sharing those pointsand I agree with that.
So, moving on from there, so,um, you mentioned you were
involved in trucker tools aswell.
That's an interesting business.
I've had carrie jabonski on theshow, which will not be twice
by the time that this episodeairs.
Talk to me about that piece.

(25:45):
You were involved in thatbusiness for a year or so.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, so I was leading the logistics strategy
within ASG and so I was veryinvolved in the actual
acquisition of that business andthen was there for it was eight
or nine months, uh,post-acquisition.
So, um, you know, had a closerelationship and kind of getting
the leadership team in place uh, post-acquisition, but that was
right at the time where I wasalso starting to transition out

(26:11):
to uh to build Vuma.
Um, so, no, yeah, like Prasadand Murali there, well, and the
team and Kara's done a reallyawesome job with growing the
business as well.
She's awesome.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
And what inspired Vuma?
You clearly had several ballsin the air as you were leading
the logistic strategy for ASG.
What told you that it was timeto go?
Why did Vuma make sense?

Speaker 2 (26:42):
How did Vuma come about?
Yeah, I mean really the thingthat I'd seen in you know,
trucker Tools works with youknow hundreds, like many of the
top brokerages, hundreds ofthousands of trucking companies,
and I knew that I wanted tobuild in full truckloadload.
Like I'd kind of had this likebroad purview of the logistics
ecosystem, kind of on the assetside, with the like truck and

(27:04):
trailer inspection platform.
We had the last mile piece andthen when I, when I like got
exposed to and like startedgetting into full truckload, um
I kind of fell in love with itbecause the entrepreneurial like
energy is is very different,just because like the scale of
the markets and theopportunities there like I just

(27:25):
I felt like kind of like thetrucking industry in a lot of
ways is like this likeexpression of the american dream
where, like anyone with like alot of grind and hustle can kind
of come out and like build areally massive business.
Like you look at the stories ofeven, like you know, jb hunt or
a lot of the big brokerageswhere they all started started
with like guy in a truck or likeguy like a phone or a fax

(27:46):
machine or whatever it is backin the day and then just through
like a lot of like raw willhave kind of like built these
really massive companies like I.
That was just a track.
I was like I like being anentrepreneur in an industry that
like has such anentrepreneurial industry like
energy, was like really excitingto me.
And then, like you know, wewere sort of looking at like

(28:07):
okay, so you've had this likefirst wave of innovation that
came through like prior to,prior to like a convoy and over
freight.
There was obviously stilltechnology in logistics, um, but
that was probably like siliconvalley's like awakening moment
for it.
But then, you know, trap toolsin a lot of ways was a platform
that was kind of buildingtooling that provided similar,

(28:28):
you know, technology to theincumbents in um, in the
industry, um, but everywhere Ikind of looked around and I was
like, despite a lot of thistooling, like it's still really
manual moving freight, like it's.
You know, even when we talkabout visibility, um, there's
still huge teams of track andtrade, like even today with the

(28:48):
fact, you know, there's stillhuge teams of people that are
like dialing on every load or,like you know, it was kind of in
the era of like digital freightmatching and starting to build
like carrier sales automation,and it was still the case that
it was like 90 plus 60 percent,you know, of loads were just
getting booked through liketraditional you know ways, and
so it's kind of like this issort of dirty secret.

(29:10):
A little bit was like the waythat things are kind of working
is like actually not thatdifferent than it is.
There was to like you know, anumber of years ago, despite and
it was kind of like good reasonfor that, but like what I sort
of saw was like okay, so likethere's still a lot of like room
here to improve the way thatthings operate, and it's like
really important.
I think that like we, we canbuild a supply chain that can

(29:31):
work at really really highlevels of efficiency with like
high ratios of loads to humans,because, like that's a good
thing for the economy, it's goodfor like having flexible and
resilient supply chains in theus.
It's good for like bringingdown the cost of transportation
so that you can have this pieceof like economic infrastructure
that can supportentrepreneurialism in the us.

(29:52):
Um, and it was also true that,like all of the prior forms of
technology that were kind oflike you know, web, saas, like
software tooling, still requiredlike people to be like
executing and doing a lot of thestuff.
And so when, like, this wasright at the time, like
pre-ChatGPT but before that itwas like the GPT-3 API, where

(30:16):
large language models weredeveloped, where it gave gave me
this like glimpse into atechnology that could suddenly
start to like tackle a lot ofthe things that were really hard
about like automating process.
So, like you know, logisticshas been challenging to automate
because one it's extremelyfragmented, right, I mean, as
you know, like there's 100,200,000 shippers, there's 25,000

(30:38):
brokers, hundreds of thousandsof trucking companies, and the
industry has to work with thelike lowest common denominator
of technology adoption.
So you're, like you know, andso then you get this like
everything converges on, likeemail and phone calls as the
like protocol for communication,and it just means like that's
kind of that was impossible tolike really bring technology to,

(31:02):
and that was kind of why, likeI think some of these like
highly digitized brokerageofferings ended up sort of
working, but maybe for the likevery larger shippers where you
could build a highly automatedflow.
But then you've got the like200,000 shippers out there that
like for whom that that's not agood offering, and so that was.
It was kind of like seeing that.
It was like seeing that thelike the tech waves that have

(31:25):
come through weren't really sortof addressing a lot of the
issues.
It was still extremely therewas a lot of like just raw, you
know, like tedious work that gotall across the load lifecycle
that was now suddenlyaddressable.
That was the originalinspiration for starting Vuma
and then we ended up startingwith a very focused product that

(31:45):
we could like deliver valuequickly.
But that was kind of how itcame about.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
What was the first product for Vuma?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah.
So I mean, the original visionfor it was to be able to build,
uh, you know, an ai co-workerthat could go and execute a lot
of the work that goes into, youknow, moving freight from all
the way from coding, all youknow, down to the end of the
life cycle at invoicing.
But we actually started withorder entry automation.
Um, so I mean, as you know,like still the case today for a

(32:16):
lot of big brokers that aregetting 60 of the loads kind of
tended over email spreadsheetset cetera, and it's you know ops
or like account managers orsales reps are plugging that
stuff in and error prone, causesslow pays, causes service
failures, and so Vuma, likeallows you to just forward an
email or click a button and theAI will extract it, brings all
of their tribal knowledge andhow to kind of read and

(32:37):
understand that document, andwe'll build it as, uh, as
shipments in the tms.
And actually your uh molo wasthe first customer that went
live on, uh, on the platform infact.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
So, um, yeah, credit credit, credit to molo, credit
to molo for being a pioneer inthe ai space and um I.
I think there was aninteresting comment you made and
I'm curious if, if, if, thiswas the why, um, but, but your
comment around the lowest commondenominator with, with respect

(33:08):
to technology, um, and how youhad to understand that, between
all the players you had toparticipate in, whatever that
lowest common denominator was,and in this case, email is where
all of these parties live.
And, yes, you have the kind ofmore forward-thinking companies

(33:29):
using APIs and other tools thatare more, maybe, efficient, but
I like the idea of kind offocusing on or understanding
that to there was an opportunityto create a solution, but you
had to be mindful of theexception, almost, or the, the,

(33:51):
the, that lowest commondenominator you talk about,
because if people aren't willingto move upstream to APIs, then
there's no point in having asolution that's solely focused
on apis, because you're not,you're going to miss, you're not
going to capture a largepercentage of the market and I
think, to be honest, I thinkthat's a big reason why
companies like convoy weren't assuccessful as they could have

(34:13):
been like I.
I think today, a lot of us whounderstand what has come from
Convoy, understand that theybuilt some exceptional
technology, but when I thinkabout that kind of load board
concept and I think about howthey applied it, like I think
about Tinder and I think about,like the dating apps, and my

(34:38):
point is, as a broker, it's yourjob to match or execute all the
loads that you commit to, andwhat they built was a platform
that could match a lot of loadsand it it made it very easy for
the truckers and and the loadsto get on the same app and go

(35:00):
ahead and swipe left, swiperight, and you got a lot of
matches and, where it made sense, you had a lot of good matches
that could be executed well, andI saw from conversations I had
with people that there weresituations for companies like
Niagara is a good example of acompany that they did very, very
well for and it was very highlyautomated and they had good

(35:22):
margins and they had carrierswho would take the loads and
execute them, and that was agreat example of how the
technology worked very wellbecause the right players were
all participating together.
But again, your job is to makesure all of the loads match to
you, have drivers for every loadand like Tinder doesn't work
like that Like not everybodygets a match, and if you solely

(35:43):
rely on that as your executionstrategy, you're left with
unhappy people who don't matchor, in this case, loads that
don't get executed and thatleads to unhappy customers loads
that don't get executed andthat leads to unhappy customers.
So my point is just that, like,I think, a lot of these
companies that have come intothe space and applied technology

(36:04):
, I think they make the mistakeof not focusing on the lowest
common denominator and the thingthat makes sure you capture as
much of the market as possibleto be successful.
Because you know, if you'retrying to execute for a broker,
you have to make sure that thatbroker can do the whole job, not
just 80% of the job.
And if they are only able to do80% of the job, you have to be
very clear about that so theyknow the other 20% they have to

(36:27):
figure out how to do in anotherway.
Is what I'm saying making sensein how I'm kind of describing
this?

Speaker 2 (36:32):
No, yeah, 100% no, and I think I agree with that.
And it's like it's also truewhen you think about like, if
you're a brokerage and you thinkabout which customers that you
work with, like going and tryingto tell you know a steel fab
and you know that has like a fewlocations, they're moving a
good amount of freight butthey're like you need them to be

(36:53):
like hooked up in X way and,like you know, tend to your
freight.
Them to be like hooked up in xway and, like you know, tend to
your freight.
Like that's not really gonnawork.
And I think there's so much yeah, there's so much opportunity
for like for brokers there where, like, the margins are really
good on that freight and it'soften like a type of shipper
that wants to have a little bitmore of a relationship and they

(37:13):
need a little bit morehand-holding and you get to play
, be a little bit more of a sortof like a strategic, like
supply chain partner.
And then the challenge is likehow do you like, what are your
operations look like?
And a lot of people shy awayfrom that because they're like
well, hang on, like the way thatI serve niagara needs to look
very different to the like waythat I serve that customer, and
not every broker kind of hasthose two kind of like modes

(37:37):
modes built in, but there'sreally like attractive um
revenue on the on the customerside, and then that's obviously
true on the carrier side as well, as, like you know, there are
like pools of carriers that areon the apps and I think that,
like, for some types of carriers, that's a really really good
fit um, and then for some, likeit's, it's not, and so you, you
need different tooling to beable to reach them, and so that

(37:59):
had been a lot of phone callsand emails.
The thing that's changing nowis that there is actually
software that can move throughthose channels, which I think is
exciting.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, I think that's another good point you bring up,
because, at the end of the day,I think the mistake people make
is looking at some of thesesolutions and thinking that they
need to be the all-encompassingsolution of the problem, when
the reality is, as a serviceprovider, it's my job to make
sure I have an all-encompassingsolution and that

(38:33):
all-encompassing solution couldbe made of many parts solution
and that all-encompassingsolution could be made of many
parts.
It might be part VUMA, with theback support of my own
operations reps.
It might be 14 different otherthings.
There's a lot of conversationright now about the AI voice
agents that are showing up inthe space and people are the non

(38:54):
.
The anti group is saying well,no, drivers won't want to talk
to them and this and that it'sit's it's, it's too nuanced of a
problem to simplify and and saythat people just won't want to
deal with it and they'll sayagent, agent, agent over and
over again to get to talk to aperson.
I've dealt with that.
I've been the guy when I callUnited or I call my bank and I'm

(39:23):
saying agent, agent, agentbecause I don't think they can
solve the problem for me.
And that might be true in whatthat technology has looked like
for the past year or two, but itis improving, and it is
improving at a rate that I thinkwe all need to pay attention to
.
I think of it again.
I'm going to go back to Convoyfor a second, just because when
I talked to Bill Drieger, heexplained something to me about
Convoy that I had not consideredbefore, and it was the way in

(39:45):
which Convoy opened the door fornon-English speaking drivers to
participate and negotiate inways that they were severely
disadvantaged before.
In ways that they were severelydisadvantaged before.
And while I don't think many ofthe voice agent AI tools today
are exceptional in Spanish andPolish and Russian and whatever

(40:08):
other languages, I'm certainthey're all going to get there,
and when they do, they willdramatically be an improvement
against what brokers areoffering today to those types of
carriers that want theirfreight.
So it's not to say that thevoice AI agent is going to
replace 100% of carrier reps Idon't think that's what anyone
is arguing but it is certainlygoing to augment and be another

(40:34):
tool in the toolbox for theright players who are thinking
about how to execute at thehighest level.
What is your kind of thought onthat is vooma participating in
the voice ai stuff as well.
Is that part of the?
Yeah, we actually?

Speaker 2 (40:45):
announced.
We just announced, uh, ourvoice product and that's going
to be available for like generalrelease very early next next
year.
So, um, we're believers that ithas like a role to to play.
Like the way that we kind ofthink of it is like it is a
communication channel in thesame way that email and text and
others are, and so, as we kindof build up platform to allow

(41:07):
people to build digital workers,voice is a mode that people
have access to.
But I think this point like is areally important one is that,
like trucking is like an 800billion dollar industry.
There's like hundreds ofthousands of different people
with very different likepreferences in there, and so,
like it isn't like one size fitsall.

(41:27):
I think they're likeinternational speakers on the
carrier apps is a really goodexample of it.
It's true on like the shipperside as well, where people talk
about like all shippers wantinglike a relationship, and that's
true in some cases.
And then there's a lot whereit's just like hey, just give me
a rent, you know like that's,and so you it's kind of like
knowing, okay, what is the rightservice offering for this, um,

(41:49):
for this individual that's goingto make sense for them, um, and
that you know, I I am excitedabout the voice applications
because voice is kind of theuniversal API, right, like, if
you think of the language thateveryone speaks, and it's very
like low effort.
Being able to like talk is partof that, and we are so far
beyond now this like hey, I wantto speak to an agent, and

(42:11):
that's always going to beavailable and easy, but the like
level of capability and nuancethat already exists and is only
just going to get better is, um,I think it's it's going to
unlock a lot.
The other thing that I don'tthink people appreciate is not
just like how, say, like voicecan impact existing workflows,

(42:32):
but like what are the thingsthat you wish you could have
done as a broker if you hadinfinite amount of resources?
And it's like all of these likeuse cases where you never
actually did them because itjust would never have made sense
.
But now you suddenly havesomething that you can scale up
10, 100 times instantly, andthat's what we start to like you

(42:56):
know we're excited about right,which is like what are all of
the things that like couldreally improve the way that
logistics works if you just wereputting a little bit more
effort in, but instead now youcan kind of have AI go and
execute that.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
So I think just one example of this is being able to
answer every inbound call thatyou get.
This is a problem that is nottalked about enough in brokerage
, frankly, because I don't thinkbrokers want to admit it's a
problem.
It's just like the idea thatbrokers don't want to admit that
they use the DAT or internettruck stop to post their loads.

(43:30):
I have a different take onthose platforms.
I think that brokers should beable to post on DAT and they
should be able to post on truckstop, and their customers
shouldn't be upset about it.
This is again a nuanced topic.
Do I think a customer should beupset if a broker's sole
strategy for coverage is postingloads on DAT and truck stop?
Yeah, I don't think that's astrategic partner you want to

(43:51):
work with.
If I think about it from theother side, if I'm a broker
whose first priority is todevelop relationships with
carriers and reuse thosecarriers on as much freight as
possible, while also making suremy freight is accessible from
every platform possible andevery means possible, I want to

(44:14):
touch every potential carrierthat's out there to see my
freight, and if that means Ihave to post some of those loads
on DAT, that shouldn't be anissue.
The next question should be howdo I vet the carriers that call
me for opportunities or that Ireach out to?
It shouldn't matter whether Icalled them off of carrier 411,

(44:34):
it's someone I've used 10 timesin the past or it's someone who
calls me off of DAT.
It's a carrier nonetheless andin some cases it's somebody
who's being fraudulent andtrying to take advantage of me.
Regardless, if I have a clearvetting process that is high
quality and using kind ofindustry standard companies like
Highway RMIS, whatever it maybe, those are tools that help me

(44:58):
make the right decision to putcarriers on loads that I should
be putting on the loads.
The fact that I put the load ondat to begin with, all it is,
is a resource for me to bringcapacity into the network and
someone who might be wantingusing might want to haul my
freight um, and so I.
I just think there's a lot ofnuance to that and when people

(45:20):
do post loads, carriers call inand it is a very difficult
problem to solve with just humanresources.
You have a limited number ofhuman resources to answer the
phone.
Call it 100.
Let's say you have 300 loads aday to cover and you have a
three to one ratio of loads tocarrier reps.

(45:42):
I'm not saying that's a greatratio, I'm just using some round
numbers here.
Whether you post 20 or 50 ofthose loads or 75 of them, the
only thing that you don't have aclear understanding of is how
many people are going to callyou because of the interest in
those specific loads, based onwho might be in that area on a
specific day, based on supplyand demand, of what markets are

(46:04):
hot, which ones aren't.
There's a chance there's athousand.
There's a chance there's 5,000calls that come in, because it's
just the way the equation workson a given day.
And if that's the case and youonly have 100 finite humans to
answer the phones, there aretimes where the phone rings and

(46:25):
nobody answers.
And, to be clear with mostbrokers, I'm pretty sure have
issues where at least ameaningful percentage of the
call-ins that come in the callsdon't get answered Right.
The voice AI that you'retalking about is a solution to
that problem, like clear as daya solution, even if it's not to

(46:47):
sell the load, just to make surethat someone picks up the phone
, gets the carrier's information, logs that information for a
human to make a decision, ifthat's how you want it to be, or
a human to vet the carrier, ifthat's how you want it to be.
This is a real solution we'retalking about.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah, yeah, no, I fully agree.
I mean, we, we see thisconsistently right, like.
I mean, everyone's numbers willbe different, but it could be
like 30 or 40 percent of callsthat are like going unanswered,
and during peak periods maybemore.
Um, and that's the thing that'sinteresting about like when
you've got if you don't liketeams of people just kind of
have fixed capacity, um, butlike everything in freight is
very like volatile in terms ofthe amount of work that needs to

(47:25):
be done, and so you know, themore that you can have like
flexible resources, not just forcalls but for other workflows,
um, it allows you to like smoothout your operations, to like
not get bottlenecked and back up.
Um, you know, we see this allthe time on the load building
side, where somebody sends overlike 100 tenders and then you're
spending like like three hoursyou know doing or you're not,

(47:46):
like you're not building thoseand those loads are not getting
scheduled and covered, um, butit's, you know, it's true on the
calls as well.
Um, yeah, and you know we evensee like brokers that throttle
the amount that they post on DATexactly for this reason.
Like not because, you know,because they're fine to post
more, but they they can't dealwith the call volumes and then
that's like a I mean, it's a badexperience for carriers and you

(48:09):
know, then they're posting onyour Google reviews telling you
that you're like slow and neverpick up.
You know, people loveresponsiveness.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
You know, and and this is a way to provide that to
them- yeah, so in all thepeople who I see, my brother's
one of them, and my brother andI got into it this morning on
Twitter and I saw a little bitof that, yeah, yeah.
Well, I guess by the time thispost it will be two weeks.
Two weeks ago my brother and Igot into it on Twitter where he

(48:37):
posted about you know, agent,agent, agent.
I want to talk to an agent.
Okay, sure, but now let meframe the problem in a different
way.
You have two options.
Either you call and nobody everanswers, or you call and a bot
answers the phone who can giveyou all the information about
the load so you can at leastmake a decision, if you're
interested, whether or not thebot is allowed to sell you the

(48:59):
load.
That's a different problem fora different kind of situation,
for the, the care, I'm sorry,the broker to kind of define
within the rules of their ownsolution with a company like
yours or another one, whateverit may be.
Um, but when you look at thosetwo options, people are picking
the bot, I think, a hundredtimes out of a hundred, versus
just calling and nobody everanswering the phone.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Right, yeah, yeah, I think I think so.
And you think, like, the thingthat's interesting in like
freight is this like crazymatching problem that's
happening every day, whereyou've got like freight that
needs to to get moved and thenyou've got to like then, and
then there's like, how do truckslike figure out and find out
what they they want to move?

(49:39):
And the challenge with the, thedirect kind of like marketplace
listings, is that everyone hasa bunch of questions that they
want to ask.
You know, there's a lot likethe carriers have a ton they
want to like hey, what was ithauling before it hauled this
load?
You know, like what's on thetrack.
Like you know, hey, is it?
You know, is it x facility oris it y facility, or it's like

(50:01):
there's just a lot there.
And then the brokers it's thesame right, like you need to
make sure you're working withsomeone that you trust that's
going to move the freight, andso there's a lot of steps there.
That, I think, is the thingthat's interesting about like
these voice AI or even likeemail processes, is that that
process of like discovery onboth sides, of whether or not

(50:22):
this is going to be a good fit,is really really intensive right
now, and I think that it's partof why we haven't seen this
explosion of digital bookings.
Right, because you can't everlike answer all of those
questions by just like creatinga like a Tinder style scenario.
But if you can have AI on bothsides that can help understand

(50:45):
whether or not something's agood fit, it's actually going to
drive much higher levels ofproductivity in that kind of
matching process.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Certainly when you think about the productivity for
the individual people involved,because you can take a lot of
that time off of their plate.
Because a lot of the time youask eight questions and the
first seven you might get theanswer you're looking for, but
the eighth one is an answer youcouldn't accept.
You know it's a Monday eveningdelivery that you needed Monday

(51:17):
morning or it's pork and youcan't all pork, whatever it is.
But having the human waste thetime to go through the seven
questions first is time.
You don't get that time back.
And I'm curious you mentionedkind of having AI on both sides.
I haven't kind of envisionedthat side yet from the carrier

(51:38):
side, are you guys buildingtools for carriers directly that
you'd be supporting today, orare you guys focused more on the
brokerage?

Speaker 2 (51:47):
So we do sell to brokers and carriers, but the
carriers that we serve areusually like slightly larger
fleets, maybe like 100 trucks,where we're kind of helping them
with load building, automationand other things.
We don't today, like our aiproduct isn't representing
carriers today to reach out tobrokers, but I but I do think

(52:07):
that that will get built in thein the industry um, because I
think there's a lot of, there'sa lot of value to to carriers
like to have somebody going andrepresenting them to go and find
freight that meets their, theirneeds as well so, so talk to me
.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
We've I.
I Sorry I've gotten excitedabout this so I keep jumping and
answering questions with you,but let me give you an
opportunity.
Just talk to me abouteverything that Vuma is in terms
of all of the product offeringsyou have, what you have today
and then what you're kind ofbuilding still for the future.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah, so what we're building is a platform that will
allow logistics companies tobuild multi-channel workers that
can execute workflows allacross the load lifecycle.
We started and what we're knownfor in the industry and our
customers are using us for todayis email spot quoting,
visibility and automation andload building automation, and we

(53:03):
have now just announced ascheduling product which will be
getting released soon, ourvoice product, which is kind of
like a mode, but we'll be doingcarrier inbound voice automation
, track and trace automation.
You can really it's a flexibleframework that allows you to,
like, in natural language,specify all of these kind of

(53:24):
like nuanced workflows thatcapture a lot of the tribal
knowledge that goes into, likemoving freight, to be able to
then create these workers thatcan go and execute as a sidekick
to a person and then kick upexceptions and and and receive
input when required.
And so, yeah, today a lot of itis on the email spot quoting and

(53:47):
visibility, because on theemail side it's interesting.
It's like reps today spend, asyou know, like half of their day
just in their inbox receivinghundreds thousands of emails and
like, if you're an executive,especially if you're like a
spot-heavy brokerage, you justdon't have any visibility today
into like, really, what's goingon in your team's inbox and that

(54:10):
, like, you can't answerquestions like how much revenue
is my team seeing on what lanesfrom which customers?
How fast are we responding?
You know, where do we havebetter opportunities if we could
get better rates on the carrierside?
It's really hard to answerthose questions today, and so we
our AI, essentially sits thereand listens on the inbox to act

(54:31):
as like and automatically like,extracts all of that data into
insights, dashboards thatexecutives can use to like
manage their teams better andmake better decisions.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
So, as an example, you're saying steel company
emails me Cleveland to St Louisspot quote and my rep replies
and says $2,000.
Steel company replies and saysyou're too high and that's the
end of the exchange.
In in an school brokerage, asthe CEO or anybody in leadership

(55:09):
who's trying to understandwhat's our missed opportunity
today, I never would have knownabout that.
And you're telling me that yourtool essentially creates better
lines of reporting so I cancapture that information and
understand there were 74 loadsthat you guys quoted today that
you did not win for X, y, zreason.

(55:31):
I mean it's.
It's helped me understand likehow, what, what I can do with
this information or how it's,how it's coming about.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's.
It's exactly that, like youknow, you're trying to hit your
number for the year and you'relike, hey, you know where are we
winning or losing freight?
You can't answer that questiontoday.
Or maybe you want to say, hey,like I want to see all of the
opportunities that we saw thisweek.
Like, what did we?
You know, what did we bid andwhat did we win and what did we

(55:58):
lose?
You can't, you don't know thattoday because no one's recording
that in the TMS.
Right, it's like you mostlyhave to build a full load, so
it's just not happening, sothat's lost.
Or maybe you've got like a salesrep who's like not quite
hitting the number and you'retrying to figure out, like, hey,
what's going on here?
Like, are you not seeing enoughopportunities in your customer

(56:19):
base?
Are you just not respondingfast enough because you're
bogged down in like other manualwork that's preventing?
Are you just bidding everythingat 40 margins and so you're
never gonna win that?
Or like, hey, you know we'reseeing a big uptick in spot
freight coming out of thisshipper's facility.
Like, are we having aconversation with them about,
like, what's failing in theirrouting guide?

(56:40):
You know, today you can't seethe forest from the tree Like
it's such a rich source of datawhen, for you know, for a lot of
brokerages 60 plus percent,sometimes 100%, of their spot
opportunities are coming overtheir email.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
And so not only do you have a tool that can extract
information from email to buildloads, I assume you can quote
loads too.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Yeah, exactly so it can you know as a co-pilot or it
can automatically bid for onbehalf of the broker.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
And then, on top of that, it could be a reporting
tool on steroids, relative towhat brokers have historically
had available to them to reporton.
Yeah, that's pretty exceptional.
I mean, is that hard to sell,or are you walking into brokers
showing them this and then theybuy it?

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Yeah, I mean a lot of these have been issues that
have existed and people havebeen like searching for
solutions in the industry for awhile.
Um, the question is always justlike, hey, does it does it work
?
And the platform is very goodand it works, and so, um, people
are, yeah, very, very excitedabout it and get a lot of value
from it.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
So, I probably should have like called an old
employee and asked them whattheir experience has been like
with vooma, but I did not dothat.
So I'm just going to ask themwhat their experience has been
like with Vuma, but I did not dothat.
So I'm just going to ask thequestion what have been some of
the challenges that you've runinto with customers?
Because I can't imagine atleast from what I've heard about
other AI tools is like none ofthem have been perfect, at least

(58:16):
not from the jump, and that,whether it's challenges with
exceptions or other things, justtalk to me about what some of
the challenges have been foryour team and how you've gone
about trying to address and fixthem.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, like I can talk through on the.
I mean a lot of these have beenthings that we've been now hard
at work on solving.
I mean, on the order entry side, there is wild levels of
complexity in what you see fromshippers.
You know, some of these arelike pdfs and it's great.
You just rip it and it's like100 accurate, but then you get a
bunch where it's like half ofit's in the body and some of
it's in the email and nothing'slabeled and you know half of the

(58:53):
data points sitting insomebody's head.
So you actually need to bringin data like those are much,
much harder.
You even get somewhere it'slike hey, I got another one
coming out of philly tomorrow.
You know, okay, how do youbuild a full load off that like
it's?
But we can't.
We actually have tools now to belike look at historical
examples and we understand thelike typical loads that they
move and so there's a lot thatwe can do.

(59:14):
So, like it's been a lot of itis is um.
On the order entry side is likehow do you capture the tribal
knowledge that sits insomebody's head about how to
read this document and whatother pieces are missing, and
how do you like instruct the aiso that it can actually it's not
just data extraction but it'sactually like really automating
the task.
Um, and on the the quoting theanalytics side, like it's a

(59:37):
surprisingly hard problem to getreally accurate analytics in a
broker's inbox when they'regetting, you know, hundreds of
thousands of quotes and likesome of them are coming out of
bid boards and sometimes theshippers forwarding it to like
13 people at the brokerage.
Is that 13 quotes?
It's not really, it's like onequote.
And how do you strip out?

(59:58):
And what if I don't want to seeinternational and like LTL?
So you need to like there'sjust wild like these are all
like good ideas with like wildlevels of like kind of you know,
just just detail that you kindof have to wade through to get
it to like a production qualitysystem that is reliable.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Yeah, and am I understanding the way AI works
correctly in that, in how it'strained?
Is that the first time you havethe exception, it's probably
going to struggle to understandhow to navigate it, but the
second time it has the sameexception, it's way more likely
that it has now learned and canmanage said exception and can

(01:00:41):
manage said exception and thenit's just a product of getting
through as many of theexceptions as possible that you
need kind of manual support oninitially, to then get to a
place where the AI understandshow to do it and you get to
almost the perfect state thatyou're looking for.
Is that how that works, or am Imisunderstanding?

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Yeah, it was like look, AI is refers to a bunch of
stuff.
I mean it's funny because we'relike an ai business, but I'm I
don't, you know, to me it's likemore important than kind of
like problems that you'resolving for people.
But the the current version ofai that people are talking about
is large language models mayrespond really well to like
instructions and guidance on howto perform tasks, and so, um,

(01:01:23):
examples you it's often learningfrom examples or learning from
guidance about how to perform aparticular task.
Like the analogy of how youwould train an employee is
actually a very good one, right?
Like if you told somebody likeday zero, they jump into the
brokerage, go and build thisload.
They're going to look at it andthey'll like be like well, I
think this is that data pointand I think this is that data

(01:01:45):
point and I think this is that.
And then you tell them like,well, hang on, we actually have
got this, like you know, ratetable of contract rates, and
you've got to go look up thelane and then pull this
reference number in and thenmake top it if it's, you know, x
facility, and you're sort oflike, oh shit, I have to tell
you these things right.

(01:02:05):
You're not going to like intuitthem.
Once you instruct the AI onlike how to do those things,
then the next time it performsthe task it will be much better.
And then you do it again andlike it's not the case that you
need thousands of exampleslegally.
It's like it's learning reallyquickly through like two to five
.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
That legally it's like it's it's learning really
quickly through like two to five.
That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
I appreciate you clarifying because, yes, as as
the novice, I'm just throwingout the term ai and kind of
expecting it to no, but yeah, itis because, like there are
different forms of like you knowsome of the like like pricing
prediction models, um, out therethey're a little bit different,
like they benefit from a ton ofdata going into them, where
it's like you're makingpredictions about what the price

(01:02:48):
of freight is going to be overthe next like two to 14 days,
and the more data points youhave the better, whereas some of
the tools that you know, likethe way our platform is built,
based on large language models,it kind of it learns and
improves in a slightly differentway.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Did you say that you guys are also playing in the
predictive pricing world as well?
Is that one of your solutionsor no?

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
We no, we do not.
We partner with.
You know a lot of the leadingproviders there.
It depends a lot on what ourcustomers use.
So you know, for the bigbrokers we'll hook into their
proprietary pricing models.
If they have benchmark ratesthat they want to pull in, we'll
help them with that.
We're recording all of theirbid data so we can help surface.
You know like, hey, where areyou winning or losing?
But we do not do anythingdirectly in that space.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
And I think your solution has been live now for a
little over two years.
Is that right we?

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
started the business at the beginning of last year.
Yeah, went live with our firstcustomers in may last year.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Okay, so a year and a half of of customers live using
the product.
What's been the best kind oflesson for you a year and a half
in in terms of, like, how tosupport brokerages um in the
execution of their businesses?

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Yeah, in terms of, I mean, I think the big, the big
one for me that always standsout is like brokerage is a
service business and so, like,being a technology vendor with
like a service orientation, Ithink has like served us really
well.
Um, I think that that is ismaybe like one of the like we
really try to like bear hug ourcustomers and do whatever we can

(01:04:28):
to make them successful, um,with the, with the product,
because we kind of see these aslike.
I mean, you know what it's likelike the best partnerships are
these ones where it's sort offeel it's like hey, this is a
long-term partnership where,like, you're growing your
business, is like me growing mybusiness and we're gonna like
help each other succeed, and sothat's like that's the man

(01:04:48):
that's served us really well.
Now, as we like build andintroduce new products, our
customers are really excited tolike partner with us on them
because we've kind of likedelivered for them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Uh, before, yeah, and and I think you're thinking
about it the right way I it's.
It's a problem that I'vestruggled to answer.
This next question I'm going toask, which is how do you keep
your customers, how do you makesure like it feels like this
space is getting very crowdedproducts that your team is

(01:05:25):
offering I could list probably10 or 15 other companies that
have started in the last twoyears who are offering the same
type of product, and the othercaveat to this is it doesn't
seem like it takes 100 engineersto get these types of products
up and running.
It's typically a small team ofpeople who haven't yet raised a
bunch of money, and it'sambitious guys like yourself,

(01:05:46):
and whether it's three or fiveor eight engineers and they go
and they get a product up offthe ground.
Whether it's a schedulingproduct let's talk about
scheduling because it's just agood example.
There are a lot of thesecompanies starting.
My fear would be that I'm goingto offer a price point of X and
within six months, 10 companiesare going to come.
I'm going to offer a pricepoint of x and, you know, within
six months, 10 companies aregoing to come in and try to

(01:06:06):
offer x minus 10 cents or xminus 25 cents and like how do
you keep the customers is thequestion I I have, because it
does feel like it's becoming avery crowded space yeah, well, I
mean, we've we've never lost acustomer and I think a lot of
like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
So I mean, I think a lot of it is over time, like
there is a moment in time rightnow where you know like AI is
evolving quickly and so I thinkthere are, like you know, I know
what you're saying there are alot of folks in the space, but
what I also hear from customersis that they're like looking to
like partner with people for thelong term.

(01:06:43):
But what I also hear fromcustomers is that they're like
looking to like partner withpeople for the long term, and
part of the decision thatthey're trying to make is like
who are the right partners tolike working with where I, you
know I have confidence that onethey're going to like be able to
help me stay up to speed,because that's what I think a
lot of our customers are likelooking to us for, in a way is
like how do I make sure that Ican translate a lot of these
like developments in AI and realbusiness impact into my

(01:07:07):
business?
Um, and then not, it's, it'slike it's not super trivial
often to build really highquality production systems that
can scale at large.
You know, um, and so that thatis like that is.
It's not super trivial.
And I think, like, over time,as you start to like you know,
we sort of think about it aslike, as we start to expand out

(01:07:31):
into like more and more of theseworkflows, there's a lot of
like interesting opportunitiesto like provide a lot of value
by like stitching them together,where you suddenly have, like
an AI that can build the loadschedule and cover the freight
in a relatively automatedfashion, and so I think it's
like that platform aspect endsup becoming really important.

(01:07:52):
And you know, like what we'rereally building for folks is it
is like we think that, like thefuture of technology is actually
going to like shift prettymeaningfully, where a lot of the
role is going to be peoplebuilding and managing like teams
of digital co-workers that areexecuting their tasks, and

(01:08:13):
that's like a very different,that's a very different sort of
platform shift.
And so, like we sort ofenvisage the world where, like
you, you know, folks start tolearn how to build their digital
co-workers on Vuma and thoseco-workers are executing all
across the load lifecycle andyour job is then a lot of like

(01:08:34):
supervising and providing inputand coaching to make these
things better and that's goingto become like a really
important system I think in inin logistics companies over the
next five years.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
So that's an exceptional thing for me to try
to.
It's just fantastic for me tojust try to envision right now.
I mean, I expect that one day,hopefully sooner than later, I
will be back in brokerage, andwhether it's two years from now
or longer or shorter, whateverit is, I know it's going to be a
very different space than theone that I built my company in,

(01:09:08):
dating back to 2017.
And one of the questions that Iask myself, that I struggle
with a lot, is how do you definethe roles of employees on your
team when the capabilities ofthe technology that can support
those roles is evolvingseemingly every month, every
quarter, and it's today.

(01:09:31):
My operations rep is responsiblefor building loads, scheduling
loads, quoting loads, managingthe profitability on the account
, whatever Call it those fourtasks.
Already, you have a tool thatcan do at least some of kind of
all of those four things Maybenot in totality, but some of all
of those four things.

(01:09:51):
And so a question that maybeyou don't even have the answer
for, but I love your perspective, is how do brokerages manage
their employees when they thinkabout the responsibilities and
even their compensation, when somany of these tools are going
to continue to evolve atseemingly a rapid pace?

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's the right question to
be asking.
With all of these tools, theynever solve 100% of the problem.
Initially, right, like?
So we, we build all of ourproducts with like thinking of
them as extensions of thebrokerage team member and not
like, and I think it can be amistake in some situations to

(01:10:35):
not do that because, like, theai needs somebody to like
interact with and clarify and,um, and so I a lot of it.
You'll have an operations repthat is going to need to become
better at building and managingthese workflows.
Like a lot of this is like beingable to articulate what is your
SOP?
Like how does your businessoperate?

(01:10:56):
Because, like a lot of thethings that like sit as tribal
knowledge in people's heads, ifyou can actually force yourself
sort of self to articulate andrefine them like, that is the
muscle that's going to need tobecome really good, to be come
really good at building goodlike digital co-workers.
It's kind of like being able tospecify and embed what like,

(01:11:17):
what do you actually?
How should this, this thing,operate to be able to like
perform, perform the task, andit is a slightly different like
it's.
I think that's actually morelike evolved and a more like
rewarding job for people.
And I mean, you know, there'slike I always find it
fascinating that, like you know,a lot of brokerages are hiring
like really smart, intelligentpeople out of like good colleges

(01:11:38):
in the US and then like not allof their day but like a good
amount of their day is like kindof punching numbers.
You know, like that's thevision for like this is like how
do we make this like anincredible job to come out, this
like super intellectuallystimulating that cuts out all of
those pieces.
But you're sort of still likeit's almost like giving that ops
person their like team ofpeople that can support them and

(01:12:00):
so they're going to have to begood at like defining workflows
and providing input and um, andI think it's, you know, I think
we all like I think about this alot in my job and my business
and the way that we operate.
If we're not like thinkingabout what is like the ai first
approach, somebody else is rightand then like that's that's who

(01:12:21):
you kind of need to be worriedabout.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
And the other piece, too, that this solves.
I mean, you're 100% right thatthere are highly intelligent,
hardworking, well-educatedpeople who are hired into these
roles and then handed fairlymonotonous tasks to do
repetitively.
It's, it's, it's always justbeen a part of the job and
you've just had to navigate it.
The other piece of this that Ithink a tool like Vuma can solve
is the time and this has alwaysbeen a job that you can't
really get away from your phoneand in some cases you can't get
away from your desk, for,whether you got to work 10 or 12

(01:13:01):
hours a day, if you want to bea high performing salesperson,
account manager, whatever it is,you have to be ready to answer
the call when your customercalls, and there's a lot of work
that comes with that, and itsounds like these tools are
going to help navigate thatproblem in a very significant
way.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Yeah, I mean, that's the vision.
Even like our auto quotingproduct, for example, like you
can set that to bid on freightafter hours or on the weekend,
for example, so like you knowyou're out and you can't get to
that.
Or like you know, instead ofhaving to build a load on the
weekend, you just forward itright.
It's sort of it's being able tolike dispatch work to somebody
to do it on your behalf.

(01:13:42):
Um, that I think the the visionhere is to make the job much
more sustainable for people yeah, let me ask you this too.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
I'm back to kind of envisioning the digital workers
as you've described them.
Let's say that I'm a managerand I've got I don't know, would
I need multiple digital workers, or one digital worker can do
the job of eight people?
Is that like?
Just before I get into thehigher arching question, help me
understand that piece.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Yeah, I mean the worker is sort of an analogy.
What these will be is, you knowthese are workflows, you know.
So you might say, hey, I'mgoing to a a worker that does my
track and trace, for example,and here's my sop for how I want
to do track and trace.

(01:14:33):
I want to call two hours beforepickup to make sure they're
free and clear their last load.
Call when they're at, you know,at the pickup and then make
sure that they're kind of like,on the road and on track for an
on-time delivery.
And I want to.
You know, I want a text messageand I want to email and I want
to call 20 minutes later if Idon't hear back from either the
driver or the dispatcher.
You can build an AI that canlike execute that task for you.

(01:14:55):
Maybe you're moving like highvalue freight and you're like
SOP is very different, so you'regoing to spin up a different
worker for that use case, mostlikely.
And so you know it's sort oflike it depends a little bit,
right, like if one worker can do, you should be able to scale up
that worker infinitely to beable to perform that task.
But you may have nuancedrequirements for particular

(01:15:17):
situations where you want tobuild something different for
that scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Okay, so that was kind of what I was going to get
to was trying to understand.
I've got my own digitalworkflow support system AI,
whatever you want to call it andthen you're on a different team
in the same company.
You know, when I think abouthow I use chat GPT I've got one

(01:15:49):
kind of GPT that I'm I'm talkingto about my, my, my diet, and
it tells me what to eat.
And then, when I want toprepare for interviews, I've got
another one that I talked toabout my podcast, and I always
go back to the same one to talkabout the podcast, and I feel
like it's helped me if I'm wrong, but I think it's learning and
understanding more and moreabout the podcast, but it
doesn't know anything about mydiet.
The one up top knows about mydiet.

(01:16:11):
That's kind of how that workstoday.
Right?
It's a similar concept, yes, soin that, my question then is if
I've got one that I'm buildingfor my customers and you've got
one that you're kind ofnavigating for your customers,
is there a kind of nucleuswithin my company or our company

(01:16:32):
that's learning all of this andis kind of digesting all of it
and able to deploy it all?
Or is mine.
Maybe if I have 10 times asmany customers and I'm just
better at this than you and Ihave better workflows and you're
just kind of lazy and you don'tdo it very well Is mine just
way better than yours?

(01:16:52):
Or help me understand how thatcould work?

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you can kind of think of it as,
like you know, we think thatthere's you're going to want to
be refining these at anorganizational level to be the
very best version that they can,and for that, you know, for
that ai to get be learning andbecoming better and better at
that workflow.
But you could imagine also thenbeing able to like fork that off

(01:17:15):
as as an employee if there werelike nuances for your specific
situation.
Um, so I think it will depend,but like, yes, like I, I think
you will.
I think there will be a lot oflike, yes, like I think you will
.
I think there will be a lot oflike pull to like have the very
best version of this at acompany level, cause, like you
sort of think about that's how,like SOPs work today, right,
like somebody has some insightabout how to do something better

(01:17:39):
, and a good manager will noticethat and say, hey, we should,
like you know, we should takethat learning and like make sure
that it's getting appliedacross the business with
consistency.
And that's what part of what Ithink is exciting here is that
you know like you can drive alot of that like consistency and
like operational excellence bylike codifying it in ways that

(01:17:59):
it requires so much training andreinforcement, especially when
you have a lot of like turnoverand roles enforcement,
especially when you get a lot oflike turnover and roles.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
It sounds like what you're telling me is if I'm
envisioning what a futurebrokerage I might want to build.
Looks like some of the skills Iused to think about were grit
and tenacity, hard work,communication skills,
salesmanship, things like that.
It sounds like one of the mostimportant skills I need to be
looking for is sop development.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Is that the way I would think about.
Yeah, there's a sense in which,like, you need like to be
somebody who is good at using aitools.
You need to be able to like,think and decide what you want
your ai to be doing for you, andthat is a really important
skill.
I think like grit and I thinklike being a good salesperson,

(01:18:53):
like all of those things aregoing to matter potentially even
more because, like, I actuallythink today those things matter
and like, but you're going toit's like the very best people
are going to have thisincredible leverage, and so then
you're going to like it's goingto matter a lot Like, how good
are you at, like selling andcommanding that business?

(01:19:15):
I don't think this is actuallylike fundamentally changes the
offering very much, but I dothink it changes the way some of
the ops and stuff get executed.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
Yeah, it feels like, in a way, it's just
fundamentally going to changethe internal operations of
brokerages and it's going toreduce OPEX tremendously for the
ones that know how to do thisvery well and, in turn, will
allow them to offer pricing thatis just more competitive than
the ones that will continue tooperate the way they have for
the last 10, 15 years.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think that exactly.
I mean this is like a prettywell understood thing, but the
the thing that kind of mattershere in brokerage.
A lot of it is like, hey,what's, what is your cost per
load and therefore, what doesthat allow you to like price the
freight at and like how manylike margin dollars do you end
up, you know, being able to tomake, and if you can get more

(01:20:05):
aggressive, you're going to endup like winning a lot more
business.
And I think it's like you know,whether or not it's through AI
or some other mechanism, I thinkit's the, you know it is the
brokerages that kind of likefigure that out, that, um, that
end up taking a lot of share andbeing able to grow really,
really quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
It will be very it'll be fascinating if, if I hear
shippers start to ask in theirvetting questions, what is your
cost per load?
Because that has never been aquestion asked before.
But it is a question worthasking and one that I think for
one, a lot of salespeople arenot trained to.

(01:20:41):
The ones that are not in thetop 50 in brokerage are probably
not exceptional at that, but,um, I see how that's going to
become a uh a.
Certainly a meaningful part ofof the end result, but it could
be a meaningful part of theopening of the door.
Is you know if I'm looking fora certain number and if you're
not below that number, I'm not.

(01:21:02):
I'm not giving you a freight.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I haven't really thought aboutthat.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
So let's pivot for just a second.
We're not really pivot, butwe're an hour and 20 minutes in
and I've yet to congratulate youor even talk to you about your
recent fundraising round.
So let's talk about that for asecond.
How much did you guys raise?
This was your Series A, correct?

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Yeah, so we announced our seed in Series A.
So we raised the $13 millionSeries A and announced our
roughly $3.5 million seed roundas well.
Seed was led by Index and theSeries A was led by Craft
Ventures.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
Congrats, first and foremost.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's funny.
There's a lot of talk aboutthis.
I think I was I think I wassaying this to someone the other
day where, like it's kind oflike congratulating someone when
they get their student loans orsomething you know, like there
is a lot of like celebrationaround this.
But the truth is like it's a,it is like an important
milestone, because I think it'ssort of like an endorsement and
vote of confidence in what we'redoing, like been doing, in the

(01:22:06):
like impact that we've beenhaving on our customers and, uh,
you know, gives us theopportunity to like do a lot
more.
Um, but the you know, we we'retrying to like acknowledge the
milestone but like alsorecognize that like that's not
the thing, right, it's like, um,I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
I think you're thinking about it the right way.
My friend, uh, mr Chad Ellison,had had, I think he put had a
funny LinkedIn post calling outthat this whole concept and I, I
agree, I agree with both sides.
I think that, um, I thinkeverything is situational and
the companies that are raisingmoney as a result of success
they've had tied to an idea theyhad and this is about how do

(01:22:47):
you take that idea in a hundredexit, I think those are worth
congratulating and knowing thatyou know from my old company
being your first customer, toyour comments around having
never lost a customer there'sclearly a path of success that
has been you've started on, andso there's some.
This is somewhat of arecognition of success you've
started to have and also, Ithink, a belief from uh, craft

(01:23:11):
and and um and everybody elsewho invested that you know
there's more to come here.
So my question is is kind ofwhat is the plan, what is what
is the more to come that youwill use this money for in the
coming months, years?

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
Yeah, so a lot of it is.
We've been quite deliberate in,like you know, holding like a
big vision for what we want theVerma platform to become.
But we started quitedeliberately being quite focused
in the products that we werebuilding, starting with auto
entry and quoting, and now a lotof what this funding enables us
to do is to start to reallybuild out the platform much more

(01:23:50):
aggressively, and so weannounced our voice product, we
announced scheduling, weannounced this Avuma Agents,
which is this sort of SOPplatform that allows you to
build these digital workers, andthere is so much more there to
like be built and done.
So a lot of it is like productand engineering hiring.
But then, of course, like youknow, we're like rapidly adding

(01:24:12):
new customers to the fold and wewant, like, more people in the
industry to get the benefit ofwhat we're doing.
So we'll be growing, like youknow, go-to-market and customer
success and onboardings, etcetera to be able to like
support all of the growth aswell, but staying, et cetera, to
be able to like support all ofthe the growth as well, um, but
staying, you know, reallyfocused on, on just like trying

(01:24:34):
to.
We've kept a pretty high barfor like what we try to deliver
and build, and so, you know,just making sure that we like
really stay laser focused onthat as we, as we scale the
business from here.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
How do you make sure that you stay focused when you
do have to kind of spread thewings a little bit and start to
take on more things?
For one, you're taking on morecustomers, which, in a business
like yours, has always got to bea little bit not scary.
I'm sure it's very exciting,but it's also like hey, we can't
screw this up.
But you're also got to befocused on building new products

(01:25:03):
and making sure those arematching the high bar that
you've set.
You know, how do you make surethat you keep the whole team
focused to make sure all ofthese things happen in kind of a
beautiful symphony or orchestra, that the way that you want it
to?

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
it's a beautiful symphony and that's exactly the
right way that, yeah, no, it's,um, it's a, it's, it is a really
like it's such an importantpiece of it.
I mean I think a's it is areally like it's such an
important piece of it.
I mean I think a lot of it islike.
One of the things that we'vefocused on in building our like
early team is hiring individualsthat have the capacity to like

(01:25:39):
very autonomously like buildproducts end to end for our
customers, and so theengineering team that we have
built are not just like verystrong technically, but these
are like people that have theability to like really
understand a customer's likeproblem and workflow and
envisage what the solution lookslike and then sort of like

(01:25:59):
drive that through to completionand iterate on it.
Because, like I think of like incompany building, I think a lot
of like what is theorganizational capacity of your
business to go and like tacklenew things is not really a
function of your head count, butit's a function of the like
number of people that can likesolve ambiguous problems and

(01:26:22):
envisage solutions and drivethem through to completion, and
so, like that's like the mostimportant thing that we've
actually focused on is makingsure that the team that we have
built are people that we can say, hey, big problem area like
this is yours to like own and goand solve.
And so that allows us to like bea little bit more ambitious in

(01:26:43):
terms of you know what we takeon, but then being like what we
take on, but then being likeextremely disciplined around,
like clearly articulating likewhat are we working on, like
what are we not working on andwhat are we saying you know no
to, and not letting us like be.
You know, it's like we want tobe aggressive because we think
that there's a huge opportunityhere to build out platform that

(01:27:04):
ends up driving a lot of valuefor the industry.
And so you know, know there'ssome sense in like which, like
pace and speed really reallymatters, um, but at the same
time, it's like making sure thatwhen we say we're going to do
something, like we deliver,because I think that's a lot of
like the reputation that we'vebuilt in the in the industry so
far I mean I think that's agreat answer.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
I just want to push on one part of it.
How do you make sure you'refinding that person?
When you're talking aboutsomeone who you think can
envision that kind ofoverarching problem but also own
it and then understand what weshould be going after to solve
that problem, how do youinterview for that?
How do you make sure, whenyou're looking at someone, that
they have that skill?

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
Yeah, I mean a lot of when we interview um, you know
some some of it is evaluatingpeople's background, but I
actually put like way more ontrying to design situations that
give you a glimpse into thatperson's ability to like do the
thing.
So, you know, engineering hiringprocess is it's very rigorous
and has like many, many steps,and for all of the different

(01:28:09):
types of capabilities that wewant, we've designed some
scenario that allows us to testfor those and like.
So one of them is like a veryambiguous like product problem
where it, like you know, youstart with just like a very
blanket statement of like hey,we want to build an x solution.
How do you do it?
And it, you know, the rightanswer isn't like just do this,

(01:28:30):
it's like well, how do I evenwrestle that problem into
something that like has clarity?
And then how do I translatethat into like a system that
actually like delivers thatresult?
And then like what's the likethe process for getting that out
and figuring out if it worked,and so you can actually really
get a lot of it's like trying toget a sense for like how people
work through these reallyambiguous problems and then

(01:28:53):
looking for instances in theirpast where they've like
demonstrated that yeah youalmost don't want to see an
answer right away when you askthat question.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
You want to see the first question they have to ask
before they get to an answeryeah, because a lot of this
stuff is.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
you're out there chopping through the wilderness
right, trying to like figure outlike which which way to go, and
being able to deal with thatambiguity and like bringing it
to like clarity and impact is,um, it's a hard skill okay, last
question you just had yoursecond child, am I right?

(01:29:29):
Yes, congratulations, milesjacob william buckingham miles,
jacob william, buckingham.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
So how do you navigate, building a business
like this that is trying to beat the forefront of innovation
in technology in our space whilealso navigating having a
newborn at home?
Uh, that I'm.
You know.
This all just jogged my memorybecause I think I heard one of
your kids yelling you'reprobably the older child yelling
just a second ago.
Um, how do you balance that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
yeah, look, it's not without its challenges, as you
know.
Any sort of like parent did youhave?
You had your?

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
not yet I'm I just got married.
I just got married earlier thisyear, so I'm not there yet yeah
, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
So I mean it's um like it's such a, such a delight
and it's.
It is a, it is a challenge.
Um, the way that I deal with itis to be you've got to like
prioritize very aggressively, um, and you've got to.
You've got to like for me, it'slike a lot of structuring my
day so that I know exactly, likeyou know, what is kind of

(01:30:36):
needed of me, um, but yeah, it'snot not without its tensions.
Uh, like, I think my wife wouldprobably like like me to be
spending more time with thefamily, and you know it's always
hard to be.
You want to make sure you'respending as much time on the on
the business as well, but Ithink it's it's like surrounding
yourself with like reallyawesome people.
It's like being good at likeunderstanding what is the

(01:30:57):
critical thing for you to workon and push the ball forward.
It's about knowing how todelegate really well to people
so that they can like take onand own things, um, and and then
just putting in the hours aswell.
I mean, I do think that there'slike there's no translation for
like hard work in general.
I do think that like goodjudgment and decision making

(01:31:19):
about like what to focus on isactually like the most important
thing for businesses, because Ithink like it's very easy to
like just do a lot of workwithout that translating if
you're not working on the rightstuff, and so I do spend a lot
of time thinking about likewhat's the highest impact thing
for me and for the business tobe working on and making sure
that we're like focused there,because I do sort of believe for

(01:31:42):
most people that the biggestlike time productivity really
matters, but a lot of it'saround like energy productivity.
Like most people only have acertain amount of like high
energy, good thinking hours thatthey can spend, and so, for
myself, I think a lot about that.
Like you know, I meditate a lot.
I have a lot of like thingsthat allow me to like bring my
like, bring mental clarity, likeon demand, so that I can make

(01:32:05):
sure the time that I do spend islike is very rich.
So, um, it's an ongoing journey, though, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
I love that answer and it has.
It forces me to ask anotherquestion, because I'm someone
who is I'm not good atmeditating, but I've talked
about it maybe seven or eighttimes over the course of the
year.
Year and a little bit that I'vebeen on running the show.
This is the best.
I've talked about it, maybeseven or eight times over the
course of the year and a littlebit that I've been running the
show.
This is the best I've ever beenat it, in that I've been able
to habit stack it with my saunatime after the gym.
I've done it probably eight ofthe last 11 days.

(01:32:36):
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you got into meditating and
if it was challenging for you atfirst or if it was just just
help me understand.
How do I get better at it?

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
for you at first, or if it was just just help me
understand how do I get betterat it?
Yeah, yeah, I mean I got intomeditating because, when you're
very consumed by situations, youbelieve that, like, whatever
you're experiencing is like thefull reality, and when I started
to like meditate, it helped meto understand that that that's
not everything.
Like, even when you're in amode where you feel very

(01:33:10):
consumed by something, there'slike a way to like pay attention
to that feeling that separatesyou from it, and, like, by
creating that space, it, it, itis quite calming to the mind,
because you're sort of yourealize that like, oh, this
isn't everything.
There's something else that islike peaceful and just aware and
that, like by spending moretime in that state, I think it

(01:33:30):
helps you to feel a little bitmore grounded and in control,
and and to be able to like bemore intentional about how you
want to act, um, and so like, asI started to like practice it.
That's the sort of the thingthat really, um, attracted me to
it.
The thing that I have noticed,though, is like there's
different styles of meditation.
I used to do a very like formof it.

(01:33:50):
It was quite intellectual andquite hard work right.
Like it really felt likepractice.
I've also started recentlydoing these like non-sleep deep
rest 10 to 20 minute that aremuch more about like focused on
your kind of like nervous systemand trying to like get cortisol
out of your system, and so I dothat like twice a day if I can,

(01:34:12):
but certainly once per day, andthat gives me the like, the
kick in the evenings to, likeyou know, put my son to bed and
then like get back on line, andthat's been really powerful.
Um, because often I get to theend of the day and it's not that
I have so much motivation to dowork, but my brain feels very
like full and that's been like areally powerful way for me to

(01:34:34):
just like clear it and get alittle like like a reset.
Slightly different mode to thelike, very like intentional
meditation.

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
I really appreciate that answer.
I mean it's, it's such, it's somotivating for me as someone,
as someone who has alwaysstruggled to get control of my
mind and and, like I, I've neverbeen able to maximize my own
potential because, like, thereare moments where I can be
really good and really dialed inand then there's times where

(01:35:03):
I'm just like, as you said, kindof consumed by something and
it's, it's and it becomes liketoo much and too challenging to
kind of move forward or whatever.
You know I'm trying to do.
So I just I'm on the meditationjourney and I'm staying on it
because I see the potential andhearing you talk about it just
affirms the belief I have that Ineed to stay on it and keep

(01:35:27):
pushing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
I think it's really powerful because there's another
piece of it where I mean youknow this as a business leader
that there's all these timeswhere there is so much ego
wrapped up in a lot of thisstuff and there's moments where
you feel embarrassed or like letdown, you know whatever it is.
Um, and being able to realizethat even that like sense that

(01:35:52):
that like like you it is, you'reactually your, your ego, like
it is a sense of self that isalso not who you are, right like
you can even like pay attentionto the feeling that you are a
particular way and that helpsyou to realize that like, oh
shit, that's just it's not meeither, like I am something else

(01:36:14):
than that and that allows melike to just like let things
flow off the back.
Like something goes wrong.
Like you know, you can just belike cool, like that's okay, I
don't need to like let thatchange my sense of self or
identity, because I get todecide what that is.
It's not like I don't, I don'tneed to like punish myself for

(01:36:34):
that, for that situation orwhatever it is.
And I think meditation can helpyou observe that right Like,
which is has been one of theways in which it's been really
impactful for me.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
Well, listen, man.
I really enjoyed the 90 minuteswe just spent talking about
your business, talking aboutyour journey.
I don't have any more questionsfor you.
Do you have any partingthoughts or questions yourself?
Or should we call it a day?

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
No, I think this has been a really great,
wide-ranging conversation andappreciate you having me on.
It was great to get to chat.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
All right, man.
Well, with that audience, Ihope you guys enjoyed it and
maybe some future Vuma customershere as a result of this
conversation and the interestthey may have as coming out of
this.
So with that we'll call it aday and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
Thank you have a good one you.

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