September 22, 2023 • 19 mins
What does it take to equip a global workforce with everything they need for their work-from-home setups? That's exactly what we unravel in this engaging dialogue with Chris Herd, the trailblazing founder and CEO of Firstbase. This episode is a treasure trove of insights into the unique business model of Firstbase, where they provide a cradle to grave service for office equipment and their innovative software that allows employees to personalize their gear. We discuss the ripple effects of remote work, the peculiar challenges it has birthed, and how First Base is navigating these uncharted waters.
Venture with us into the impressive logistical operations of Firstbase as we find out how they help companies manage inventory, save resources, and ensure the right equipment reaches the right person. We delve into the wide array of equipment that Firstbase provides, from the essential laptops to the delightful additions like coffee machines. Our conversation takes a fascinating turn as we discuss the most unique requests they've received since the start of the pandemic. We wrap up our enlightening chat with Chris, reflecting on why it is a sound business decision to invest in Firstbase. So, are you ready to discover how Firstbase is reshaping the future of remote work? Listen in.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, WilliamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This is William Tincup and you are listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Chris on fromFirst Base and we'll be talking
about the business case, or theuse case, why customers and
prospects make the case ofspending money with First Base.
So, Chris, would you do us afavor and introduce yourself in
First Base?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, nice to be here , William.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm Chris.
I'm the founder and CEO ofFirst Base.
We help companies provide thetools and equipment their
workers need wherever in theworld they are.
Yeah, maybe the one surprisingthing to that is everyone still
sees us as the remote team forremote workers.
We have clients across theboard fully remote, of course,
but also hybrid teams and officeteams as well.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh, interesting.
Okay, so when we say tools andequipment, give us an idea, give
the audience an idea of whatare we talking about?
What's the array here?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, it varies pretty dramatically company to
company, but a standard packagewould be some form of laptop,
usually includes a monitor, akeyboard and a mouse and then
from there it depends on thecompany.
Some companies it'll be a deskand a chair, other companies it
might include an array of otherthings which are really more
experiential.
(01:38):
I don't know, coffee machinesperhaps.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And so do you clone or do you all deal with the
laptops?
Does the company ship them toyou and then you ship them out?
Do you all actually get themready for yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We do equipment in three different ways.
So depending on the companysize really dictates it.
So if it's a really big company, they probably have great
procurement relationships.
They're just going to use oursoftware platform and they're
going to essentially use us astheir logistics service provider
on top of that as well.
So they ship the stuff to us.
We then ship it to wherevertheir workers are.
(02:14):
Version number two is if it's aslightly smaller company, maybe
our purchasing power is morethan theirs.
We're essentially a marketplacewhere they buy the equipment
from, as well as the softwareand the usage-based stuff.
And then the third way is ifthey want to subscribe to the
equipment so it's a hardware asa service model we can do that
as well on top of the softwareand usage too.
(02:34):
Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And in the software for them it's a pass-through, or
basically you can set it up.
They need Creative Suite or ifthey need specific programs on
there, you can image it or haveit set up to where the employee
didn't have to do any of that.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Exactly so cradle to grave for the equipment, making
sure that the image is on it.
So the worker flips the lead,puts their password in for the
first time, they're ready to go,and then the software on our
side is a two-sided platform.
So on one side, generally usedby IT admins, it operators,
sometimes CSIOs, sometimes CEOsof a smaller company.
(03:12):
For them it's a single sourceof truth for where all their
assets are, and on top of thatthey can create catalogs of
equipment that their workers canchoose from.
On the worker side, webasically serve you up an
e-commerce-type experience.
Where you go through it, youchoose the laptop that you want
to work on, the desk, the chair,the headset, the microphone,
but crucially, you're going topersonalize that to your
(03:34):
preference, which obviouslyworkers really love.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I was about to ask you is at one point it was a Mac
versus PC thing 100 years ago.
Have you seen a more fluidexperience with employees and
environments where you pick it'sa budget, of course, but pick.
If you want to be on a PC,great.
You want to be on a gaminglaptop, you want to be on a Mac,
whatever.
It doesn't really matter aslong as the work gets done.
(03:58):
Have you seen letting theemployees pick out the things
that they want, that they thinkthey're going to make them
successful?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Exactly it's really about how do we give the worker
the equipment they need to dothe best work that they've ever
done in their lives.
And if that's on a Mac, ifthat's on a Windows machine, if
that's on a Linux machineorganizations generally give
them that choice and, again,various in all types of
companies.
If it's a small startup, maybethey're predominantly a Windows
(04:27):
sorry, a Mac shop.
Maybe the finance person comesin and they need a machine that
can do Excel better than a Maccan.
So they start to reduce theWindows stuff.
And, of course, as you go intobigger and bigger companies,
they generally have a widerspread as well.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Right.
So you did say at the beginningthat you could just started
with remote.
Okay, we're going to helppeople through the pandemic, you
got your talent all over theplace, etc.
But the model is obviouslyexpanded since then and so you
can help people with hybrid.
So, again, a setup to wherethey can take their laptop from
one place to another, etc.
(05:02):
Or an office itself.
Okay, there's setting up a newoffice in Aberdeen a place, and
so they need they needed theentire office, especially the
stuff that they can get from you.
They need all of it set up andshipped to their location.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, and that's been the crazy thing for us, where
we found the business pre COVID,that we have this vision of the
world and where it's going to.
And then obviously there's thismass acceleration that we
didn't expect which is likewe're 10 or 15 years in the
future.
And yeah, there's that ironywhere, like during that whole
thing, we're like great, thething we bet on has had this
acceleration.
But also, as you dig in on theproduct usage data, you start to
(05:42):
see these this like weirdthings where people are like San
Francisco office or hybridemployee in Europe.
So we just start to doubleclick in there and be like okay,
guys, this seems weird, whatare you actually doing with the
product?
And they're like we're using itfor hybrid workers, we're using
for office based workers andwe're like okay, but like the
product isn't really designedfor that and we don't imagine
(06:03):
the experience is that great, somaybe let us make it a little
bit better.
And that's what we've beendoing.
So, like, everything you say istrue.
It's shipping a stuff to peoplethat are working remotely at
home.
It's shipping stuff for peoplethat are working hybrid between
two or three locations.
It's shipping a lot ofequipment to people that are in
an office.
It's also the other side, onthe software piece, where you
(06:23):
can, if you can imagine like youuse us as a remote company.
We do all the stuff in the backend, so we make sure that the
right person has the rightlaptop associated with them.
When people leave, we collectthe equipment as well.
We cleanse that bothtechnologically and physically
so we can redeploy it again.
But in a hybrid world, some ofthese companies are going to be
shipping stuff back to their ownoffice locations rather than
(06:46):
our warehouses, so you need toexpose that side of the platform
to them as well.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I can see that being not a logistics nightmare,
but I can see that there'sanother step or a couple other
steps in there that thecompanies are going to have to
think about and y'all are goingto have to think about too.
So tell me a little bit moreabout the marketplace in terms,
especially like for employeesthat are going to go in and pick
stuff.
What is that?
What's that experience like?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah.
So on the company side it'sreally about can we give them
the equipment that they need andthey want to provide to their
workers?
And then historically that hasbeen giving them full aperture
of whatever they want.
They're a window shop.
We're going to give themLenovo's, hp's, dell's, and they
can have whichever model ofthose things they want.
So you start off with the basicspec models which are off the
(07:34):
shelf and then you end up withthese custom to order models
which clearly aren't on theshelf, and then same for every
other piece of equipment.
Right, there's off the shelfkeyboards, there's off the shelf
monitors.
So we start out with thatconversation with the company
and say let's build this catalogfor you and then from there you
can pull a subset of thatequipment per catalog that
you're creating.
(07:55):
And those catalogs companiesgenerally define in three ways,
or one of three ways.
They might do it by geography.
So if you live in the US, youcan choose from equipment spec Y
it might be on job role.
If you're a salesperson, youcan choose equipment spec Z it
might be senior.
So if you're above a directorlevel, you get to choose this
(08:16):
equipment.
And that really is themarketplace for them to go into
and say these are the things Iwant.
These are the things that aregoing to empower me to do the
best work that I've ever done inmy life.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I also love you mentioned inventory.
I can see that being reallyimportant to the accounting
folks.
Not just we talked about itbeing able to know where these
things are coming from,especially data understanding
who's got what laptop and ifsomething goes wrong they can
track back pretty easily towhere that is, et cetera.
But the accountants this is apart of what plans properly
(08:49):
equipped this can be depreciated.
Do you?
Do you all depreciate thethings that come back to you?
Do you appreciate to depreciatethose things as well, or is it
really the company side?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah.
So what we're going to give theaccount and say team is is a
way to take the information offthe platform and plug that into
their models.
So we're going to say that ifit's a Mac Pro, it's got a three
year life cycle.
Maybe it's a four year lifecycle.
We're going to let them definethat.
So what we're going to makereally clear is when this piece
of equipment is due for renewal.
The company can then obviouslypull that out, push that into
(09:23):
whatever system they use tomodel the depreciation or
anything else, and then on theback end, when this stuff comes
back to us at the end of thethree years, we're going to help
them recycle that as well.
So where you end up there is OK.
This is a big part for theaccount and safe part of an
organization.
It also is about giving theGNAR, more broadly, superpowers.
(09:44):
So how can we help HR?
How can we help IT?
How can we help finance?
How can we help facilities savetime?
So they're not spending time onthese menial tasks of shipping
laptops all around the world?
Right, they can focus on thethings that really matter.
Number two how do we help themsave money?
We're going to collect equipmentthat they generally can't
(10:05):
collect themselves.
The average rate of collectionis somewhere between 50 and 70
percent.
We collect 97 percent, plusthere's the redeployment of that
equipment, so they're notbuying as much.
There's security.
So we have the sort of cradlegrave audit trail of where the
equipment's been, who's had it,what's happened to it.
And then the final piece, whichI think is growing in
(10:26):
popularity, is the carbon piece.
We're not buying as muchequipment.
We're getting more from theequipment that we do buy, and
then, when it's end of life,we're recycling it in the same
way and really giving thosepieces of data to the
organization to say this is thevalue that the GNAR is bringing
the company.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
All right, before we do some buy side questions is
the craziest request that cameacross.
That's come across your desk sofar.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, a month in the pandemic, one of the big banks
in New York asked us if we coulddo multiple Paladin bikes to a
executive's place.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Multiple Paladins to one executive's place, to one
location.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And, to be clear, we ended up not working for them,
but that was for sure thequestion that was.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Can we do it?
Yes, should we do it?
No, that's funny.
It's funny.
I have a gaming laptop.
So I've worked on gaminglaptops for my work work for a
long time because I just foundthem really powerful.
I don't game off of them,that's not the bit, but I use
them because they're just sopowerful.
I never have them.
They don't break down.
(11:34):
They're just built differently,clearly, and they're more
expensive.
But I find that it's better forme.
When you get to show, I'm gonnasay the demo, but basically
it's like you get to show firstbase people to the first time.
You're gonna get a mixture ofbeing able to show software and
show the power, logistics, work,etc.
What do they fall in love with?
(11:54):
Like when you get to show themfor the first time.
They've never seen it, theyhave a vague idea of what you do
and you know that if I can getto this screen, they're gonna.
They're gonna get it.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
For us, it's the power that we're giving the
individual who is doing this allon their own One.
If GNA organizations outside offinance, you know they're all
under invested in right, theydon't have tooling, they do a
bunch of manual tasks.
So for us, it's about sayinghey guys, hey girls like we,
we're gonna take this pain allthe way from you.
(12:28):
We're gonna take care ofprocurement.
Here's how we're gonna do that.
We're gonna ingest yourexisting asset registries, so no
more managing the equipmentthat you've supplied will treat
it as if it's equipment we have.
Here's all the data.
We're gonna report on that.
Here's the dashboarding.
Here's how we integrate to yourHRS system so you never have to
come in the platform and putsomething in manually.
And here's how we're gonnaempower the worker as well.
(12:50):
So we're gonna make your lifebetter.
We're gonna make you asuperhero in the organization.
But on the other side, this isthe experience of what it would
have looked like had weonboarded you inside your
business, and the combination ofthose two things.
Here's how we're gonna help you.
Here's how great yourexperience would have been if it
was this.
I think that generally blowsthem away with the power across
(13:10):
this, the spectrum of all thestuff that we do for them.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, and it's also global.
I think people can.
Yeah, okay, if it was just inone city, okay, everybody's in a
box.
We can, we can do this or wecould do this ourselves.
Now they're not not that theyshould, but they could do it
themselves.
Now you're dealing withemployees Are talent that's all
over the world and some ofthat's like really remote, and
(13:33):
so it's okay.
You weren't really that good atit to begin with.
You shouldn't be, shouldn'treally ever have been doing it.
I know a lot of IT folks that,especially on the network side
of things, they hated this partof the job, despise it.
Like when new employees are,we're all excited, oh, we're
onboarding 10 new employees andyou could just see it in their
(13:55):
faces like the dread of havingto set up 10 new computers and
go and don't just Getting peoplelike that was just, like it was
beneath.
I say beneath, that's maybe alittle harsh, but you could just
see it wasn't the best use oftheir, their skills.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, yeah, and I it's.
It's they want to work on thetransformational stuff, right,
it's that they know they bringall this value to the
organization.
And it's the frustration thatthey're spending their time on
things that, yeah, they can do,but they could be doing so much
more.
And I think that's really thesuperpower we deliver, right,
(14:31):
like, we know you guys can dothis.
Yeah, we know it's not thathard.
We know it becomes likediametrically an exponentially
difficult the more countriesyou're in.
Yeah, it sucks if you're in one, but you can manage it much
harder if you're in two.
And if you're in three, give up, right, there's no way you're
collecting women back from thoseplaces.
But we're just gonna give youthe time back, right, we're
(14:52):
gonna let you work on thetransformational projects for
the business.
And it's funny I see the otherside is you've seen that
draining out with their faces.
I've seen like the color comeback in their faces, where
they're like wait, we don't haveto do this anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
No, no, there's a better way.
There's a better that turns out.
There's a better way.
What are if someone, if you'redoing with a lot of different
types of buyers, but let's justsay They've never done this
before, so they've alwaysensourced it, even through the
pandemic and otherwise They'vealways.
Just, they've always done itwith their own team, etc.
Again, not well and not a greatuse of their time, but this is
(15:27):
the first time that they'regoing to do, going to outsource
this.
One of the questions that theyshould be asking the.
If you could script them andsay you should be asking these
questions of any provider but usin particular.
What are those questions?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
The first one we generally get is like how long
is this going to take us to getup and running?
The integration part isintegral, right?
As you get into much bigger andbigger organizations, it's one
thing to say we're going to takeall this pain away.
It's another thing if you saythem, but we're going to replace
it with you having to put in abunch of manual data, right?
So the first part is whatshould we integrate into?
(16:05):
Should it be our HRIS system?
Should it be our mobile devicemanagement system?
It should be all of them and itshould work with whatever they
use understanding their tooling,understanding their process.
Number two how does this changewhat we do on a day-to-day basis
?
How involved do we need to be?
Where does first base end andwhere do we begin?
(16:28):
And for that question, it'sessentially we're going to take
care of everything from themachine.
You're going to handle the IThelp desk.
If someone forgets theirpassword, they're going to come
to you or your outsource team.
If they drop the laptop andbreak it, they're going to come
to us.
And then I think, as you startto think longer term, there's a
bunch of other opportunities aswell, and that's, I think, a
(16:48):
longer term thing for us arounduse cases to say what other
problems have you got?
What we also want to hear arenot just the problems they have
today, not just on this piece ofcore infrastructure.
Also tell us all the otherchallenges and obstacles that
you're facing as you becomeincreasingly distributed.
We'd like to hear about them.
We might not fix them all today.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
But at least knowing about them knows that.
Okay, if they have that problem, then maybe some of your other
customers have that problem,Then maybe it is something you
can fix, Maybe it is somethingyou can address.
But again, if you don't knowthat the problem exists, you
can't address it.
So the first thing first yougot to know that they have a
problem.
What are you looking forward toin, say, the next year?
So where do you see this going?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I wrote a LinkedIn post today which was, in some
ways, a reflection on the lastthree years.
It's touched on some of thestuff we've spoken about today
where it was like the mostsurprising thing to me has been
the way our customers have usedour product that we didn't
expect.
As a consequence of that hybridworking, in-office working,
(17:53):
fully remote working we'veclosed more enterprise clients
in the last three months than wedid in the prior three years.
So the thing that gets meexcited is just the compounding
that comes from progress.
We're lucky enough to work witheveryone from early stage
startups that you would know to$20 billion plus publicly listed
(18:14):
businesses, and I think that'swhat drives us.
It's being in the weeds with ourcustomers, being there to
partner with them on theirproblems, and it feels like
we're just getting to anotherinflection point where that's
going to accelerate even further.
There's obviously been a riseof remote.
There's obviously been talkaround like return to office.
I think we're getting throughboth of that now, where there's
(18:36):
this equilibrium and I thinkpeople are having this
recognition of the fact that theworld isn't the same and the
same solutions to prior problemsaren't going to cut it anymore
and I think there's an opennessto new things, jops.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Mike walks off stage.
Chris, this has been fantastic.
Thank you so much for carvingout time for us and talking
about First Base.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I appreciate you having me, William.
This was fun.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Absolutely, and thanks everybody for listening.
Until next time.
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, WilliamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This is William Tincup and you are listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Chris on fromFirst Base and we'll be talking
about the business case, or theuse case, why customers and
prospects make the case ofspending money with First Base.
So, Chris, would you do us afavor and introduce yourself in
First Base?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, nice to be here , William.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm Chris.
I'm the founder and CEO ofFirst Base.
We help companies provide thetools and equipment their
workers need wherever in theworld they are.
Yeah, maybe the one surprisingthing to that is everyone still
sees us as the remote team forremote workers.
We have clients across theboard fully remote, of course,
but also hybrid teams and officeteams as well.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh, interesting.
Okay, so when we say tools andequipment, give us an idea, give
the audience an idea of whatare we talking about?
What's the array here?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, it varies pretty dramatically company to
company, but a standard packagewould be some form of laptop,
usually includes a monitor, akeyboard and a mouse and then
from there it depends on thecompany.
Some companies it'll be a deskand a chair, other companies it
might include an array of otherthings which are really more
experiential.
(01:38):
I don't know, coffee machinesperhaps.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And so do you clone or do you all deal with the
laptops?
Does the company ship them toyou and then you ship them out?
Do you all actually get themready for yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We do equipment in three different ways.
So depending on the companysize really dictates it.
So if it's a really big company, they probably have great
procurement relationships.
They're just going to use oursoftware platform and they're
going to essentially use us astheir logistics service provider
on top of that as well.
So they ship the stuff to us.
We then ship it to wherevertheir workers are.
(02:14):
Version number two is if it's aslightly smaller company, maybe
our purchasing power is morethan theirs.
We're essentially a marketplacewhere they buy the equipment
from, as well as the softwareand the usage-based stuff.
And then the third way is ifthey want to subscribe to the
equipment so it's a hardware asa service model we can do that
as well on top of the softwareand usage too.
(02:34):
Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And in the software for them it's a pass-through, or
basically you can set it up.
They need Creative Suite or ifthey need specific programs on
there, you can image it or haveit set up to where the employee
didn't have to do any of that.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Exactly so cradle to grave for the equipment, making
sure that the image is on it.
So the worker flips the lead,puts their password in for the
first time, they're ready to go,and then the software on our
side is a two-sided platform.
So on one side, generally usedby IT admins, it operators,
sometimes CSIOs, sometimes CEOsof a smaller company.
(03:12):
For them it's a single sourceof truth for where all their
assets are, and on top of thatthey can create catalogs of
equipment that their workers canchoose from.
On the worker side, webasically serve you up an
e-commerce-type experience.
Where you go through it, youchoose the laptop that you want
to work on, the desk, the chair,the headset, the microphone,
but crucially, you're going topersonalize that to your
(03:34):
preference, which obviouslyworkers really love.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I was about to ask you is at one point it was a Mac
versus PC thing 100 years ago.
Have you seen a more fluidexperience with employees and
environments where you pick it'sa budget, of course, but pick.
If you want to be on a PC,great.
You want to be on a gaminglaptop, you want to be on a Mac,
whatever.
It doesn't really matter aslong as the work gets done.
(03:58):
Have you seen letting theemployees pick out the things
that they want, that they thinkthey're going to make them
successful?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Exactly it's really about how do we give the worker
the equipment they need to dothe best work that they've ever
done in their lives.
And if that's on a Mac, ifthat's on a Windows machine, if
that's on a Linux machineorganizations generally give
them that choice and, again,various in all types of
companies.
If it's a small startup, maybethey're predominantly a Windows
(04:27):
sorry, a Mac shop.
Maybe the finance person comesin and they need a machine that
can do Excel better than a Maccan.
So they start to reduce theWindows stuff.
And, of course, as you go intobigger and bigger companies,
they generally have a widerspread as well.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Right.
So you did say at the beginningthat you could just started
with remote.
Okay, we're going to helppeople through the pandemic, you
got your talent all over theplace, etc.
But the model is obviouslyexpanded since then and so you
can help people with hybrid.
So, again, a setup to wherethey can take their laptop from
one place to another, etc.
(05:02):
Or an office itself.
Okay, there's setting up a newoffice in Aberdeen a place, and
so they need they needed theentire office, especially the
stuff that they can get from you.
They need all of it set up andshipped to their location.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, and that's been the crazy thing for us, where
we found the business pre COVID,that we have this vision of the
world and where it's going to.
And then obviously there's thismass acceleration that we
didn't expect which is likewe're 10 or 15 years in the
future.
And yeah, there's that ironywhere, like during that whole
thing, we're like great, thething we bet on has had this
acceleration.
But also, as you dig in on theproduct usage data, you start to
(05:42):
see these this like weirdthings where people are like San
Francisco office or hybridemployee in Europe.
So we just start to doubleclick in there and be like okay,
guys, this seems weird, whatare you actually doing with the
product?
And they're like we're using itfor hybrid workers, we're using
for office based workers andwe're like okay, but like the
product isn't really designedfor that and we don't imagine
(06:03):
the experience is that great, somaybe let us make it a little
bit better.
And that's what we've beendoing.
So, like, everything you say istrue.
It's shipping a stuff to peoplethat are working remotely at
home.
It's shipping stuff for peoplethat are working hybrid between
two or three locations.
It's shipping a lot ofequipment to people that are in
an office.
It's also the other side, onthe software piece, where you
(06:23):
can, if you can imagine like youuse us as a remote company.
We do all the stuff in the backend, so we make sure that the
right person has the rightlaptop associated with them.
When people leave, we collectthe equipment as well.
We cleanse that bothtechnologically and physically
so we can redeploy it again.
But in a hybrid world, some ofthese companies are going to be
shipping stuff back to their ownoffice locations rather than
(06:46):
our warehouses, so you need toexpose that side of the platform
to them as well.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I can see that being not a logistics nightmare,
but I can see that there'sanother step or a couple other
steps in there that thecompanies are going to have to
think about and y'all are goingto have to think about too.
So tell me a little bit moreabout the marketplace in terms,
especially like for employeesthat are going to go in and pick
stuff.
What is that?
What's that experience like?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah.
So on the company side it'sreally about can we give them
the equipment that they need andthey want to provide to their
workers?
And then historically that hasbeen giving them full aperture
of whatever they want.
They're a window shop.
We're going to give themLenovo's, hp's, dell's, and they
can have whichever model ofthose things they want.
So you start off with the basicspec models which are off the
(07:34):
shelf and then you end up withthese custom to order models
which clearly aren't on theshelf, and then same for every
other piece of equipment.
Right, there's off the shelfkeyboards, there's off the shelf
monitors.
So we start out with thatconversation with the company
and say let's build this catalogfor you and then from there you
can pull a subset of thatequipment per catalog that
you're creating.
(07:55):
And those catalogs companiesgenerally define in three ways,
or one of three ways.
They might do it by geography.
So if you live in the US, youcan choose from equipment spec Y
it might be on job role.
If you're a salesperson, youcan choose equipment spec Z it
might be senior.
So if you're above a directorlevel, you get to choose this
(08:16):
equipment.
And that really is themarketplace for them to go into
and say these are the things Iwant.
These are the things that aregoing to empower me to do the
best work that I've ever done inmy life.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I also love you mentioned inventory.
I can see that being reallyimportant to the accounting
folks.
Not just we talked about itbeing able to know where these
things are coming from,especially data understanding
who's got what laptop and ifsomething goes wrong they can
track back pretty easily towhere that is, et cetera.
But the accountants this is apart of what plans properly
(08:49):
equipped this can be depreciated.
Do you?
Do you all depreciate thethings that come back to you?
Do you appreciate to depreciatethose things as well, or is it
really the company side?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah.
So what we're going to give theaccount and say team is is a
way to take the information offthe platform and plug that into
their models.
So we're going to say that ifit's a Mac Pro, it's got a three
year life cycle.
Maybe it's a four year lifecycle.
We're going to let them definethat.
So what we're going to makereally clear is when this piece
of equipment is due for renewal.
The company can then obviouslypull that out, push that into
(09:23):
whatever system they use tomodel the depreciation or
anything else, and then on theback end, when this stuff comes
back to us at the end of thethree years, we're going to help
them recycle that as well.
So where you end up there is OK.
This is a big part for theaccount and safe part of an
organization.
It also is about giving theGNAR, more broadly, superpowers.
(09:44):
So how can we help HR?
How can we help IT?
How can we help finance?
How can we help facilities savetime?
So they're not spending time onthese menial tasks of shipping
laptops all around the world?
Right, they can focus on thethings that really matter.
Number two how do we help themsave money?
We're going to collect equipmentthat they generally can't
(10:05):
collect themselves.
The average rate of collectionis somewhere between 50 and 70
percent.
We collect 97 percent, plusthere's the redeployment of that
equipment, so they're notbuying as much.
There's security.
So we have the sort of cradlegrave audit trail of where the
equipment's been, who's had it,what's happened to it.
And then the final piece, whichI think is growing in
(10:26):
popularity, is the carbon piece.
We're not buying as muchequipment.
We're getting more from theequipment that we do buy, and
then, when it's end of life,we're recycling it in the same
way and really giving thosepieces of data to the
organization to say this is thevalue that the GNAR is bringing
the company.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
All right, before we do some buy side questions is
the craziest request that cameacross.
That's come across your desk sofar.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, a month in the pandemic, one of the big banks
in New York asked us if we coulddo multiple Paladin bikes to a
executive's place.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Multiple Paladins to one executive's place, to one
location.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And, to be clear, we ended up not working for them,
but that was for sure thequestion that was.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Can we do it?
Yes, should we do it?
No, that's funny.
It's funny.
I have a gaming laptop.
So I've worked on gaminglaptops for my work work for a
long time because I just foundthem really powerful.
I don't game off of them,that's not the bit, but I use
them because they're just sopowerful.
I never have them.
They don't break down.
(11:34):
They're just built differently,clearly, and they're more
expensive.
But I find that it's better forme.
When you get to show, I'm gonnasay the demo, but basically
it's like you get to show firstbase people to the first time.
You're gonna get a mixture ofbeing able to show software and
show the power, logistics, work,etc.
What do they fall in love with?
(11:54):
Like when you get to show themfor the first time.
They've never seen it, theyhave a vague idea of what you do
and you know that if I can getto this screen, they're gonna.
They're gonna get it.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
For us, it's the power that we're giving the
individual who is doing this allon their own One.
If GNA organizations outside offinance, you know they're all
under invested in right, theydon't have tooling, they do a
bunch of manual tasks.
So for us, it's about sayinghey guys, hey girls like we,
we're gonna take this pain allthe way from you.
(12:28):
We're gonna take care ofprocurement.
Here's how we're gonna do that.
We're gonna ingest yourexisting asset registries, so no
more managing the equipmentthat you've supplied will treat
it as if it's equipment we have.
Here's all the data.
We're gonna report on that.
Here's the dashboarding.
Here's how we integrate to yourHRS system so you never have to
come in the platform and putsomething in manually.
And here's how we're gonnaempower the worker as well.
(12:50):
So we're gonna make your lifebetter.
We're gonna make you asuperhero in the organization.
But on the other side, this isthe experience of what it would
have looked like had weonboarded you inside your
business, and the combination ofthose two things.
Here's how we're gonna help you.
Here's how great yourexperience would have been if it
was this.
I think that generally blowsthem away with the power across
(13:10):
this, the spectrum of all thestuff that we do for them.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, and it's also global.
I think people can.
Yeah, okay, if it was just inone city, okay, everybody's in a
box.
We can, we can do this or wecould do this ourselves.
Now they're not not that theyshould, but they could do it
themselves.
Now you're dealing withemployees Are talent that's all
over the world and some ofthat's like really remote, and
(13:33):
so it's okay.
You weren't really that good atit to begin with.
You shouldn't be, shouldn'treally ever have been doing it.
I know a lot of IT folks that,especially on the network side
of things, they hated this partof the job, despise it.
Like when new employees are,we're all excited, oh, we're
onboarding 10 new employees andyou could just see it in their
(13:55):
faces like the dread of havingto set up 10 new computers and
go and don't just Getting peoplelike that was just, like it was
beneath.
I say beneath, that's maybe alittle harsh, but you could just
see it wasn't the best use oftheir, their skills.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, yeah, and I it's.
It's they want to work on thetransformational stuff, right,
it's that they know they bringall this value to the
organization.
And it's the frustration thatthey're spending their time on
things that, yeah, they can do,but they could be doing so much
more.
And I think that's really thesuperpower we deliver, right,
(14:31):
like, we know you guys can dothis.
Yeah, we know it's not thathard.
We know it becomes likediametrically an exponentially
difficult the more countriesyou're in.
Yeah, it sucks if you're in one, but you can manage it much
harder if you're in two.
And if you're in three, give up, right, there's no way you're
collecting women back from thoseplaces.
But we're just gonna give youthe time back, right, we're
(14:52):
gonna let you work on thetransformational projects for
the business.
And it's funny I see the otherside is you've seen that
draining out with their faces.
I've seen like the color comeback in their faces, where
they're like wait, we don't haveto do this anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
No, no, there's a better way.
There's a better that turns out.
There's a better way.
What are if someone, if you'redoing with a lot of different
types of buyers, but let's justsay They've never done this
before, so they've alwaysensourced it, even through the
pandemic and otherwise They'vealways.
Just, they've always done itwith their own team, etc.
Again, not well and not a greatuse of their time, but this is
(15:27):
the first time that they'regoing to do, going to outsource
this.
One of the questions that theyshould be asking the.
If you could script them andsay you should be asking these
questions of any provider but usin particular.
What are those questions?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
The first one we generally get is like how long
is this going to take us to getup and running?
The integration part isintegral, right?
As you get into much bigger andbigger organizations, it's one
thing to say we're going to takeall this pain away.
It's another thing if you saythem, but we're going to replace
it with you having to put in abunch of manual data, right?
So the first part is whatshould we integrate into?
(16:05):
Should it be our HRIS system?
Should it be our mobile devicemanagement system?
It should be all of them and itshould work with whatever they
use understanding their tooling,understanding their process.
Number two how does this changewhat we do on a day-to-day basis
?
How involved do we need to be?
Where does first base end andwhere do we begin?
(16:28):
And for that question, it'sessentially we're going to take
care of everything from themachine.
You're going to handle the IThelp desk.
If someone forgets theirpassword, they're going to come
to you or your outsource team.
If they drop the laptop andbreak it, they're going to come
to us.
And then I think, as you startto think longer term, there's a
bunch of other opportunities aswell, and that's, I think, a
(16:48):
longer term thing for us arounduse cases to say what other
problems have you got?
What we also want to hear arenot just the problems they have
today, not just on this piece ofcore infrastructure.
Also tell us all the otherchallenges and obstacles that
you're facing as you becomeincreasingly distributed.
We'd like to hear about them.
We might not fix them all today.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
But at least knowing about them knows that.
Okay, if they have that problem, then maybe some of your other
customers have that problem,Then maybe it is something you
can fix, Maybe it is somethingyou can address.
But again, if you don't knowthat the problem exists, you
can't address it.
So the first thing first yougot to know that they have a
problem.
What are you looking forward toin, say, the next year?
So where do you see this going?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I wrote a LinkedIn post today which was, in some
ways, a reflection on the lastthree years.
It's touched on some of thestuff we've spoken about today
where it was like the mostsurprising thing to me has been
the way our customers have usedour product that we didn't
expect.
As a consequence of that hybridworking, in-office working,
(17:53):
fully remote working we'veclosed more enterprise clients
in the last three months than wedid in the prior three years.
So the thing that gets meexcited is just the compounding
that comes from progress.
We're lucky enough to work witheveryone from early stage
startups that you would know to$20 billion plus publicly listed
(18:14):
businesses, and I think that'swhat drives us.
It's being in the weeds with ourcustomers, being there to
partner with them on theirproblems, and it feels like
we're just getting to anotherinflection point where that's
going to accelerate even further.
There's obviously been a riseof remote.
There's obviously been talkaround like return to office.
I think we're getting throughboth of that now, where there's
(18:36):
this equilibrium and I thinkpeople are having this
recognition of the fact that theworld isn't the same and the
same solutions to prior problemsaren't going to cut it anymore
and I think there's an opennessto new things, jops.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Mike walks off stage.
Chris, this has been fantastic.
Thank you so much for carvingout time for us and talking
about First Base.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I appreciate you having me, William.
This was fun.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Absolutely, and thanks everybody for listening.
Until next time.
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