In Episode 1, Rob and Josef kick around bucket list ideas and shattered Vikings dreams, then dive into the interview with the former Co-Founder and CEO of SportsEngine.
Justin Kaufenberg shares his path to venture from childhood brainstorming sessions trying to make his dad rich, to the realization and creation of the “atomic unit” central to SportsEngine’s success. He talks M&A, and how he hit the road running as Managing Partner at Rally Ventures. Rob shares what he misses about creating startups, and relates to Justin’s experience.
Who does Justin see executing? Tom O’Neill at Parallax, and Jazz Hampton at TurnSignl.
Full Transcript Below:
00:00
Welcome to the execution is king podcast. This week I’m joined by Great North managing partner, Rob Webber, and our guest is Justin coffin Berg, Managing Director at rally ventures, which is a venture capital firm focused on early stage enterprise technology companies. Justin was previously the CEO of sports engine. Welcome to the podcast, Justin. Thank you. Glad to be here. Appreciate it. Joseph.
00:29
It’s great to connect with you today. Justin, I know, you know, I’ve known go back many years and you know, just for our audience, can you pry a little bit of background, you know, what you’re doing before rally ventures and kind of walk us through your entrepreneurial journey a little bit? And then maybe that can take us into what you’re working on at rally?
00:46
Yeah, glad to rob good to talk to you again, too. So yeah, quick background, I was I grew up in Shakopee, Minnesota, and had a very entrepreneurial father. So we used to have to have family meetings sitting around the table once a month as kids. And it was a it was the same agenda every meeting every month for 18 years, which is what can dad invent, to make them rich. So because dad’s a little sick of sitting on 169, and traffic commuting to and from the office every day. So myself and my three brothers, we’d sit around the table with my dad writing down, you know, what I can only imagine was a series of, you know, truly awful ideas. But you do that every month for your entire childhood. And by the time you go off to college, you know, it’s kind of a foregone conclusion, you’re not going to go work for somebody else. So it was, you know, was fortunate just to have that, you know, deeply ingrained in me my whole life, and went to college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and along the way, actually started a college pro painters franchise, which, you know, I will say to this day is about as good entrepreneurial training as you can possibly get, you know, when they effectively say, you know, you got to go hire a couple of dozen people, you got to pay him every week, here’s a credit card at Home Depot, here’s a credit line at Sherwin Williams figure it out. That’s, that’s, that’s kind of into the deep end. So you start, you know, running around, you know, knocking on doors, you know, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of doors, begging people to let you paint their home, and interviewing new employees. And you basically figure out how to become an entrepreneur or you don’t in about 90 days. And so that was terrific training. And along the way, started a company in our dorm rooms called third north, which was third floor North Wing of Marie Hall, Carson’s dorm room, Carson’s bedroom. And that was effectively custom design, custom development, we were building ecommerce applications for for companies. And eventually that led to sports engine, which went through a series of you know, terrible names before we settled on sports engine, which is, you know, when you and I met along the way,
02:50
yeah, it kind of reminds me of a little bit of my own entrepreneurial journey, you know, kind of building websites for others, and, you know, and then kind of deciding, like, you know, that’s not the best business model like services and deciding to build like an actual software company, like a product company and or platform company. So I know, there were, you know, you grew sport engine to quite a success, and ultimately sold it to Comcast, NBC Sports, you know, like any entrepreneurial journey, there’s inflection points along the way, can you walk us through to some of the, some of the inflection points for you and for the, you know, for the team and, and talk a little bit more about the business model? And just kind of the evolution along the way?
03:30
Yeah, it’s a good question. So, you know, for us, it was definitely an evolution. So we were running third Northwich Exactly. To your point, we were building, you know, ecommerce solutions, checkout tools, you know, websites, things like that. And one of our customers at third North was a sports organization. So we built them a proprietary CMS system. And along the way, came to realize that sports organizations, you know, the hundreds of 1000s of them that exists just the United States, all needed CMS and e commerce and checkout and payment tools. So it was the very first time when we thought that building a services business building a software development business, you know, wasn’t the right way to do it, that you had to build a recurring revenue model, you had to build a real software product. So we started doing that. So there was this early inflection point just as entrepreneurs, where we decided to take the business that was, you know, paying us I mean, building third North was, I mean, it was hard. I mean, it made you know, $0 for years, we got to the point where we finally at customers, we had customers that were giving us big projects, we were paying ourselves, we had a nice office, we had a good staff, and we had to make a big strategic decision to just simply shut it all down and transition entirely to the product company and to the software company. We tried to do both for a while. You know, we tried to basically work eight hours a day at third north, then take a break and work eight hours a day on sports engine, what was called Puck systems at the time, actually But it just, it just didn’t work. I mean, there was a time when we physically had, I mean, this is a long time ago now, but you know, two cordless phones, and one of them had a third North sticker on it, and one of them had a puck system sticker on it. And they both sat on my desk, and I would just answer them, you know, and change who I was, and change what company I worked for, and change the entire story, depending on which of the two of them rang. And, you know, eventually, we just decided you can’t, you know, it’s it’s a good idea to build a services business and transition it into a software company. But in practice, it’s really difficult not to just wake up and spend 100% of your hours on the software product and on the long term company and the long term vision. So that was probably the first major inflection point where we had to shut down third north, and start back from total zero, you know, Puck systems had $0, in revenue, zero customers, we had $0, in the bank, we had no friends money, no family money, no safety net, no investors. And we just decided that this was going to have to be a multi year product development process. And we were just going to have to make ends meet with no money, and no safety net, and things got awfully awfully skinny. That was the first really big inflection point,
06:13
I got to ask, did you ever mix up the phones?
06:17
Oh, plenty of times. I mean, we were we, you know, one one business, you know, had management that I needed to check with, you know, the other business had a sales manager that I needed to consult with, you know, all of whom were, you know, imaginary people. So not only did I screw up the name, I mean, I screwed up all of it. So, yeah, it’s probably more often than not,
06:37
you must have gotten pretty flexible at troubleshooting those those relationship issues.
06:43
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s hard, you know, large businesses, you know, are skeptical, you know, of a two person, you know, company. And so you do everything you can to, you know, try to, you know, engender just a little bit of confidence.
06:54
Kind of a follow up question. I have kind of privilege of getting to know you throughout this time while you’re scaling your company. And as a founder who, you know, really bootstrapped a company, in particular, not being very acquisitive, and are in the business I started. I always thought it was really interesting. I know, your team made you guys made a number of acquisitions over the years. And I think that’s something I see with a lot of founders kind of struggle with that. And I’ve always been impressed by kind of your vision is, obviously a lot of people really fail at m&a. And it seemed like it was a, you know, became a part of a growth strategy, a sport engine, quite frankly, before you guys, there’s a really fragmented market. Right? And can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the lessons you learned as a founder and CEO kind of driving overall just market strategy and kind of m&a? And how did you wrestle with, you know, which kind of targets to go after as you were scaling? And I think it’d be really interesting to, you know, maybe to hear a little bit more about, you know, some of the lessons learned there?
07:49
Yeah, I do think it’s an area that that doesn’t get enough focus. And I think it’s an area that’s, you know, underutilized as a tool by most founders. You know, for us, we had those early days, when the company was still called pucks systems were mean, frankly, we were making a lot of mistakes when it came to kind of pure architecture, pure software design. But they were, it was a good time to be making mistakes, we were learning about what a sports organization was going to need from their software solution. We had, you know, I think the time and the space, you know, because we were bootstrapping it, because we didn’t have any outside investment. We had a couple of years there, where, frankly, we could, we could experiment. And we did, and ultimately, you know, Puck systems came to market, we changed the name actually along the way to TST media, and then eventually team sport technologies, and eventually the sports engine. And you know, along the way, we raised four rounds of venture capital financing, or one Angel round and three rounds of venture capital financing. But it was back in those very early days when we were having those architectural decisions, where we decided on what an m&a strategy would look like. And what we came to believe is that if you architected the core platform in such a way, where you had a single instance of an athlete is what we call it, or kind of a true atomic unit where one person, one asset existed only one time within the system globally. So there was a single version of an athlete, a single version of a coach, a single version of a referee, a single version of a sports facility. And to that single instance of a person to that single profile, you would append additional data depending on what they did. So your soccer life, your hockey life, your softball, life, all of those things became data points added onto your single core profile over time. And because of that, the system was going to be very, very intelligent about understanding who the user was, what their credit card was on file, what was the single aggregate family calendar for all the sports in which you participate. If you have that type of technical architecture, then you get very smart at the profile and the identity level. Our belief is that if we always own the identity, and we always own the profile, and we always own kind of the things that go natively around Like the FinTech stack the credit card on file, the calendar, then we could add on acquisitions that were complimentary on a sports specific basis. So we came to believe that you didn’t have to build the soccer statistics engine, you could go buy a company that did that you didn’t have to build the volleyball tournament management engine, you could go by that you didn’t have to build the wrestling, meat management engine, you could go by that, as long as each of those things were integrated deeply into the core identity at the sports engine level, so that you were never duplicating an instance of a person, you are never creating a second login for Mom and Dad, you were never creating a second credit card on file. So as long as that core identity remained true, and always was the identity, even for the acquired entities, that you could build a really effective m&a strategy, where the end user didn’t see any degradation of usability. It truly felt like native applications, even though they were acquired. I think the actual technical architecture and the strategy of m&a was why it ultimately became a success and a financial success.
11:09
In my experience of, you know, observing other startups and growth companies, you know, where usually things kind of go wrong, or kind of twofold. It’s either the cultural fit is just really bad. And, and or, you know, you just never have a really strong integration. You know, many of your acquisitions that with sport engine over the years, where there are large teams involved, or was it generally more you requiring this, this kind of a Jason, functionality that you could plug on the platform, but it wasn’t a lot. There weren’t a lot of people and cultural issues. I don’t know how many employees did sport engine have no through the eggs, it was got to be a pretty large group. Right. And I’m just kind of curious how you maintain a strong culture, you know, throughout these acquisitions?
11:50
Yeah, it’s a good question, Rob. So yeah, sports engineers, we did have more than 500 full time employees at the company. And the way we thought about m&a was that, you know, it was kind of like a layer cake, like a series of priorities. So So priority one, don’t even consider acquiring a company unless it can be technically integrated in the way we want to integrate it. As long as that’s true, then the second consideration becomes, you know, who are the people? You know, the people are critical to successful m&a. So, are they a cultural fit? Are they good people? Do they want to be part of the combined entity, you know, what are their respective skill sets, so we spent a ton of time on that. And we were really fortunate in the sense that we had a HR team, and an HR leader at sports engine, who was exceptionally bright and exceptionally thoughtful and smart around that topic. So we were going in and meeting with the teams during the m&a process, we were really spending a lot of time looking at what our current company organization chart looked like. And then what the potential new org chart would look like, we were talking about how people who might come with the acquire entity plug into that org chart, or how they don’t fit into that org chart. So we were spending a lot of time on the people. And then what we tried to do is following an acquisition, we tried to just be, you know, really forthright, and talk to the staffs that had been acquired, and talk to them about what the vision for our businesses, what the vision for that acquisition is, you know, how we see them fitting into that, and trying to just be, you know, really frank with them. And I think that built a lot of trust. It also forced us to get comfortable with our remote work environment. You know, we had some acquisitions where there were, you know, five employees, we had other acquisitions where there were 50 employees. But it doesn’t matter if there’s five or 50, you know, you have to do it the same way. They have to have a good onboarding experience. They have to feel like they’re part of the family, they have to feel like they’re not off on an island in a remote office. They don’t they can’t feel like a second class citizen because they’ve been acquired. You’re right. It’s as long as you can integrate. Then after that the other 90% of the work is people.
13:57
It’s great to hear the background on sport engine and some of the lessons learned. I like to commend change gears and talk about more about what you’re doing. Now. I know you have joined rally ventures, being on both sides of the table. I think it’s already it’s very interesting. You know, how is your entrepreneurial background kind of shape, the kinds of investments you’re looking for at rally? And maybe some of the other activities that you get involved with working with startups?
14:23
Yeah, you bet. So the background with myself in rally was that the firm founded by two partners, Jeff pink and Charles beeler. And they actually prior to rally they were running a venture capital firm called Eldorado ventures, and Eldorado ventures led sports engine series A in 2011 $3.5 million. Series A and Jeff and Charles led that investment. Jeff joined our board at that time, and he was an immediate impact board member and immediate impact investor. So 12 months later when we went out to raise a series Be, they had decided to start rally formally. And they shared with me what their vision for the firm was, which was to not just have a, you know, set of great partners, and to have a set of great, you know, investors, but also to have this concept of tech partners, where they would have, you know, up to 100 other individuals, all of whom would be investors in the fund, all of whom would be available to me as a CEO gratis, to help with marketing or engineering or sales. And it was just a model that really resonated with me. So you get like these big VC firm resources in a very small agile firm, so kind of the best of both worlds. So they then also led our B round, which I think technically was the first investment ever out of rally ventures fund one, they then participated in our C round in 2014. Also, and after we sold the company, I began talking to Jeff and Charles about joining the firm. And the reason was that we had some other terrific investors at sports engine, we were very fortunate, we had good investors and good board members. But rally and Jeff and Charles just stood out. You know, one thing, at least for me, when I was a CEO, on the other side of the table, the thing that I most wanted, and most rarely got was just very, very specific advice and very, very direct feedback. And I just absolutely couldn’t stand you know, when an investor would parachute into a board meeting, and start just generally opining on the state of our business or on the state of the industry. Or you’d ask a question, and they’d give generalist advice or compare you to a different portfolio company, that was just the most worthless shit. It just I hated that advice. And take that same question and pose it to Jeff. And you know, we’d say Alright, we’re thinking about hiring a VP of sales, you know, what should we do? You know, some of the investors would give kind of more generalist advice, Jeff would say, Well, here’s a spreadsheet of the last 50 VPS of sales we’ve hired within our portfolio, I’ve broken them down by west coast, Midwest, East Coast, I broken them down by stage, I’ve categorized them by base salary, commission, compensation, equity grants, all broken down by stage. I mean, they were just ridiculously specific answers. And when you’re a first time CEO, that is so empowering, you feel like you’re making a decision with confidence for the first time in your life. And that’s how Jeff answers every question. So by the time I decided to go into venture capital, I was just really passionate about being the type of investor to other entrepreneurs, that Jeff and Charles were to me.
17:32
You know, in my prior experience, before starting our fund, I did a lot of angel investments. And through those experiences, saw a lot of the same bad advice or generic generic advice that, you know, it’s it’s great when operators, you know, start a fun and great when a when you have talented people like Charles and Jeff, who can really share, you know, true wisdom that comes from actual experience and not just, you know, speak in generalities, and whatever. And I think it’s really special, what, you know, what they’ve been able to build. And now with you there, I noticed, why not? You have this new also this new venture studio called rally build. Can you tell us a little about, you know, why you started that and kind of compare and contrast that to maybe, you know, starting a business outside of a venture studio? Since you’ve done both?
18:21
Yeah, no, glad glad to it. And I’d actually love to hear a little bit about what you’re doing. at Great North, also, with with your studio, from a rally perspective, kind of the way we think about it is that, you know, the overwhelming majority of our time is spent on traditional investments. For us, that’s, you know, seed or we call it kind of late seed, or early series A, and typically, it’s about 1/3, into cyber security about 1/3 into what we call SAS plus, which is basically like a core business software plus FinTech and then about a third into what we consider kind of deep tech, typically, it’s AI or ml, but applied to a given vertical industry. And so we’re pretty, we’re pretty narrow, really, it’s kind of 1/3 1/3 1/3, but only late seed early a only enterprise software. So that’s still the overwhelming majority of our time. But what we’ve come to believe is that in a couple of situations, not often, but in rare situations, maybe once a year, maybe a couple of times per fund, there’s a particular problem that we have unique insights on. And we feel like we might have an unfair advantage in that specific area. In those situations. We believe that based on our networks, based on the other, you know, entrepreneurs, we know the other executives we know and want to work with, again, that there’s an opportunity for us to actually incubate that business inside of rally. And it’s an opportunity for us to bring our whole tech partner network to bear our whole networks to bear early capital to bear and to help a company be created, build it inside of rally, and then ultimately spin that out and invest in it as a proper fund investment. So we done that now three times, at rally, we’ve done that once in a company called yard stick, which is in what we call the human security service space, which is background screening, certification management and verification management, all bundled as a pure white label pure API platform that can be consumed by other platforms. So if you’re running a hospital system, software platform, or your school system software platform, or a four H or Boy Scouts, software platform, or a delivery or b2b logistics platform, you should have a platform like yardstick deeply natively integrated. So all of your employees, all of your drivers, all of your gig workers are not just being background screen, but their certifications are being verified. Their verifications are being confirmed if they need ongoing training that happens natively within the platform. And that was all inspired by my experience at sports engine, where we background screened millions of coaches, which had a direct impact at the safety of youth athletes. So that’s the first one, we did another one in the cybersecurity space, that we’re not quite at liberty to talk about yet, but that one is going to be kind of getting public here in the coming months. And then we’re working on one right now, in what we generally refer to as kind of the kind of deep FinTech rails space, having to do with payments optimization kind of deep, deep at the interchange level. So that’s a company that we haven’t begun to talk about yet, but it’s going through the process now. So we won’t do this terribly often. But we’ll do it when we believe that it’s a space, we have a lot of passion around, we have a lot of insight into, and there’s not a suitable traditional investment to make.
21:39
I think it’s, it’s awesome. And when I hear you describe how you use your tech partners, to provide this high level, you know, this really top of sort of the tier support to a startup, I’m a huge fan of kind of fractional support in the startup, I think it’s, you know, so important that you build a, you know, a strong foundation from the beginning. But you cannot a startup can have, you know, super senior person in every functional role, or every technical role at the beginning. But also the the thing that kills startups, and I think a really common mistake is, you know, you end up hiring, like really Junior people who don’t have perspective, and then you can end up you know, creating all this technical debt or, or just make, you know, too many mistakes, and that can kind of kill a startup. And I think the beauty of the model, you described it, the way I sort of kind of come to understand it is getting these fractional experts to kind of really set up the company for success. Without you know, having these sort of periods, we have to go back and make corrections due to some kind of technical debt or something that you know, something wrong with a business model, or what have you. That seems super compelling in I think, for a founding a company outside of such a platform, it would be very difficult not to probably pull in, you know, that sort of bench of tech partner relationships that you guys have. So it gives you some huge advantages, right?
22:58
Yeah, we really think so, you know, when we talked to the portfolio companies, especially those that are being incubated inside of rally, you know, we really ensure that they know exactly who the tech partners are, where their expertise is, we make those connections. If you’re building a cybersecurity company inside of rally, you know, you should talk to our tech partner, you know, Julie Bushman, the longtime CIO of three m, you know, you’re not going to find somebody that has deeper experience, in terms of choosing cybersecurity solutions for some of the largest fortune five hundreds, or you should reach out to Ben freed the CIO at Google, and other one of our tech partners and bounce these ideas off people like that, before making important decisions. If you’re thinking about building a sales organization, don’t just blindly build it, you know, talk to our tech partner, Jean DeWitt, who runs, you know, all of North American revenue for stripe, for example, you know, one of the brightest minds and go to market strategy. So it’s really important to us that those people surround these companies with love and advice, which, you know, we think just give them you know, tremendous advantage.
23:58
Totally. So you mentioned earlier about the types of business models that you’re pretty focused on with rally, typically, you would have been more probably SAS in the past. And now it’s more SAS plus, as you described, and then, you know, you’re heavy, you have a lot of background and kind of payments in in that side. Have you seen these kind of markets evolve? And, and I guess, also, I’d love to hear what you think about like, you know, the newer ways to finance SAS companies like pipe and how does that change the way? You know, venture capitalists used to maybe may have looked at typical SaaS companies in the past knowing there’s these other competing kind of capital sources?
24:35
Yeah, no, yeah. It’s a good question, Rob. So I think for our portfolio, it’s been pretty consistent across funds, one, two, and three, and now four, but with some nuance. So I think we’ll, we’ll continue to have roughly a third of the portfolio in cybersecurity. My partner, Charles is an expert there. We have a number of tech partners, you know, kind of deep in that industry, you know, and it’s just like this enormous looming threat of Our economy, I mean, one of the biggest. So we just think there’s, there’s great businesses to be built in cybersecurity. My partner, Jeff has, you know, some real expertise in what you’d consider like applied AI and applied ml. And these kind of hardcore business software solutions that can transform the market. And then for myself, I concentrate a little bit more to your point on companies that we generally call SAS plus. And typically, that’s a CRM in a given vertical market, teamed with payments and other revenue streams. And, you know, in terms of like the big themes and software, you know, I think that’s one of the big themes in software, the idea that a verticalized software solution is almost always going to be the horizontal solution. So just increasingly, we see that most companies are willing to move away from like a Salesforce, for example, to go to a platform that’s been very specifically built for their industry, with all the tiny little nuances that makes it better for their industry easier to implement easier to integrate handles all the edge cases that Salesforce just never will. So we love those vertical platforms of record. And one big theme is that we’ve seen these vertical platforms of record just earn incredible trust with their customers. So if you’re the vertical platform of record in sports, like we were at sports engine, or like, some of our other portfolio companies are in their respective areas, your customers want to use you for more than just CRM, they want to use you for payments, they want to use you for background screening, they want to use you for their lending needs and their borrowing needs and their revolving credit facility needs. They want to use you for their insurance needs, they frankly, want to use you for everything because you know their business, well, you are already a trusted vendor, you already are controlling their funds flow. So we just think that having the vertical platform of record approach and then adding on top of it a FinTech layer and a payments revenue stream, and additional revenue streams is just one of those big themes that you know, we happen to have some experience in. So it tends to be where I spend a lot of my time.
26:58
Excellent. Excellent. So I know, obviously, you’re super passionate about supporting entrepreneurs, and you know, have this great success. Woody, do you ever find time for any, any hobbies or anything else that, you know, that you can squeeze in there these days?
27:15
Yeah, well, you know, I’d ask that ask the same you it’s, it’s not easy, you know, I, I will say that, I think I you know, I had kind of a personal epiphany. And, you know, after we you know, sold the company sold sports engine, you know, NBC Sports was, you know, just a terrific buyer. Like, they were awesome, great parent company, great partners, great people just had an awesome experience being part of NBC. And I think in some ways that shaped my personal epiphany was that I don’t ever want to stop working, like ever. I love what I do. I just love it. I love being part of starting companies, I love being part of supporting other entrepreneurs. I have a huge amount of pride in our economy here in Minneapolis and our startup ecosystem. And I want to do it forever. So that was a big, just personal decision. And then the moment that you decide that, then it just becomes an easier question, which is, well, what’s the best way to do it? What’s the most impactful way to do it, and I came to the conclusion that being on the venture capital side, and being on the capital supply side, was the most impactful way to do it. Because I thought it’s one of the biggest gaps in our ecosystem, which is access to early stage capital, and access to you know, seed and series a capital. So, from a business perspective, that was a big revelation, because that is my biggest hobby. Like, you know, when I’m not working, I’m basically like, thinking about what else I can do to impact my work. I love it. Like, I just, I just love it, I feel super fortunate. And I know you feel the same way. But I’d like to hear you talk about it too. And as far as other hobbies are concerned, you know, in the moments when you do wind down, I mean, my family is just, you know, my kids are super important to me. They’re 10, eight and five, coach, all three of their hockey teams go to their baseball teams, we play golf together, fishing is my passion. Like, that’s my, that’s my single largest personal passion. So I’m desperately working on each one of them in their ability to, you know, get to get the leeches on the hook themselves.
29:14
You know, we are so similar. It’s, it’s, it’s just crazy. I know, I think it’s something about, you know, once you have a chance to reflect like, Look, we’re all living in America, we’re in, we’re in like the greatest industry in the history of the world. And the wealth sort of comes to the people who our true builders, like, if you get to a point where it’s, it’s, you really don’t do it because of the money. You know, you do it because you love to build. That’s sort of how I kind of like, that’s how it sort of evolved for me, like building. I was really happy building startups in the mid 90s. Like, you know, just publishing websites and, you know, experimenting with things and trying out ideas. And, you know, that’s the beauty of like, you know, software based businesses is just being able to build something and see if you can create value for people and there’s something just so rewarding about that. And I think the reason I really became attracted to investing is a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned is, and I guess, for me, especially early stage, I really liked early stage. You know, we didn’t quite get to 500 employees at our company, but we had 170, across Minnesota and San Francisco. And I have to say, like, I lost a little bit of a joy over time, you know, it’s still it, still enjoyed it. But like, I don’t really like love all the, as the company’s company gets bigger, and you have middle management, and then there’s just a lot of it’s sold leadership. And I’ve always really, I know about myself, it’s like, the customer empathy, the sort of product engineering, and then just a sort of go to market strategy. Those are the things that I really enjoy about entrepreneurship. It’s not necessarily like, there’s great managers out there, I think I became a better manager, but and I guess, in running an early stage fund, I felt like, Wow, what a perfect opportunity to just ensure that I can focus on that combinate, that sort of entrepreneurial discipline and that early execution, that is I just feel so much of the magic there. And then, you know, I think he didn’t, if that man, if you become so passionate about that, you know, I’m definitely a family guy too. And the beauty of this COVID period is I can be working at my cabin, and I can take the kids out fishing for copies or doing something. And then I can be hopping right back on a call or something. And, you know, and I think that’s been, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. Well, we, it’s, it’s great to have you on our podcast, I’ve been a huge fan of everything you’ve been able to achieve. And you know, super proud of all your success and what you guys are doing at rally. So thanks for joining us today.
31:33
Yeah, thanks. Wow, that’s kind of you to say, I feel the same way about you guys. It’s you know, we’re, we’re fortunate to have some co investments together, you know, excited to do a lot more. And I just think the way you guys approach the business, you know, the way you approach these entrepreneurs the way you surround them with support and operational expertise, you know, it’s just super inspiring. So yeah, we feel the same way. Thanks so much.
31:54
before we let you go, Justin, I just have one last question. You know, I like to ask all of our guests, if there’s someone you’ve seen lately, that’s executing at a really high level that are you know, our listeners might not have heard of somebody who’s been flying under the radar, or maybe it’s a startup?
32:11
Yeah. Good question, Joseph. Let me think about that. Well, you know, I’ll mention two of them. Two that come to mind. So one of them is a rally portfolio company locally here. One of them is not. So the rally portfolio company, located locally here is a company called parallax. And parallax is it’s founded by a gentleman named Tom O’Neil, who prior to this was the CEO at the nerdery, you know, was part of a you know, team that built a very, very successful business there. And, you know, we talked about this concept of founder market fit. And Tom has extreme founder market fit. So he saw very, very firsthand the needs of a large scale software engineering firm and a large scale outsourcing firm. And he saw that there was no software that could truly help them manage their capacity, maximize their hours work, understand what their incoming work is, understanding what talent they had in the building, understanding how that influenced you know, what they needed to recruit for and hire for to match the people to the work. And he built an incredible software platform, one of the better tools I’ve seen built in yours, beautiful UX, super usable, called parallax. And now I just I mean, I’ve just like find so much joy in watching how they operate, like they grind, like grind. I mean, nobody out works this team, he and Dave and Amanda and the rest of the team there. And to now see them go from just grinding and grinding and grinding for the first year and a half, to now sales look like they should look like they deserve to look which is a really steep curve, you know, they’ve got from zero to more than a million in ARR quickly. Now they’re just you know, accelerating beyond that. So that’s one that you know, we get to see day in and day out operate as part of the portfolio. And they’re just the type of people that you want to see rewarded because there’s such executioner’s and such grinders. And they are there, they’re just doing a fantastic job. The other one that’s not a portfolio company, but I met recently, gentleman named jazz Hampton over a company called turn signal. And I got introduced to jazz a few months ago. And we talked at that time, a little bit about his vision for turn signal being effectively an onboard application, you know, in your car as you are driving. And in the event of a traffic stop, you can effectively turn on turn signal, have an attorney or have a lawyer instantly present in the car, talking to both you the driver and the officer who may be approaching the vehicle, ensuring that it’s a traffic stop where everybody knows their rights. It’s a traffic stop that doesn’t result in unnecessary violence, a traffic stop that’s handled the right way by everybody involved. And I thought just a super smart way to approach that problem. I was really blown away by jazz and by his co founders and then to see their updates, you know, a couple weeks later and a couple weeks later And a couple weeks later and to see the progress they are making, I was just really inspired by the way they’re executing. So they’re not not part of the rally portfolio company, at least not at this time, but I’ve just been super impressed with them.
35:12
Great. Thanks for sharing and again, thanks for coming and visiting us and being on the podcast. Yeah. Glad to do it.
