Episode 20 – Building Community-Driven Startups in San Antonio’s Thriving Tech Scene

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okay welcome everybody to the session with the Boost live on podcast a special thanks to our sponsors to boost for their support this week um now I’ll pass the mic over mic over to Leon to lead us on hello it’s cool okay so we’re going to do live podcast I think today’s topic is actually what is it or is that tomorrow I think it’s today I think it’s that’s what we’re doing okay we the the show moved a couple times so in my defense in community that’s what we’re rolling with we all love community and and everybody here is

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a part of a community so Pablo is is very very uh uh swagged out and he’s got Venture lab he’s Venture lab R in Venture lab he’s got that we’ve got him in the geeka mentor Community he’s part of uh Mentor community and then he’s going to Mexico as part of the delegation with aim tech block and um the Hispanic chamber of commerce so a lot of involvement in the community in in that perspective then we’ve got Zach here and I’ll give a little intro and then you guys can explain yourselves a little bit

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more uh Zach’s he he’s involved in everything he’s got nonprofits HQ he’s helping nonprofits figure out some pretty complex issues and managing how to run the organizations um he is every panel if we can get him to talk he will talk um and he’s running a lot of programs like there there’s a number of events I’ve just seen you hosting and shepherding along um and then we’ve got Lawrence here who’s really involved in the new tech Alliance or the San San Antonio new tech San Antonio new tech which Zach is

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my partner in crime with that so trying to make an alliance um but he he understands a lot of the perspective of Reviving that bringing it back and then also he’s a mentor at geekdom and anything else I’m also a board Treasurer with emerging rise which is an organization that’s a business incubator and trying to help uh focus on SMB especially okay very nice so Zach do you want to you want to add anything to your your part I I undersold you yeah no no worries so I think I mean that was pretty much the gist of it but

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essentially what I’ve been focused on since coming to s Antonio I am a transplant from Phoenix but what I’ve been really focused on is building that that community of startup Founders and and really uniting the ecosystem to make it a productive successful place for companies to grow and uh a large section of that is like mentoring through the geekdom network I’m also joining Pablo on the uh Tech Block delegation to Mexico City all those different things that really unite people bring people together and help us collaboratively

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build success for everybody that’s building and and working right here in San Antonio I I I love it and you’re you’re always willing to help like every part of of this is somebody comes to you and I see it all the time I’m I’m across the hall from them and and our co-working basically there geeked them and people are always coming and asking him to be involved in the community and I never hear no I hear yes or hey I’ve got this other event which which is unique because you are a transplant you did

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benefit obviously a lot from what what we what they’ve built here but you are giving back more than you’ve taken in my opinion and I and I think that’s that’s key and it’s it’s totally not just me either um I think that’s key right there’s every ecosystem has a lot of give and take we need to find the resources that we need to build and build successfully but we also need to give back to that and ensure that future generations of companies or organizations that are coming to San Antonio or thinking about San Antonio

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are able to be successful as well so think about the things that that we don’t have or that we wish we had and let’s put them in place for the next generation of Founders so one thing I’d say is um just in general I mean first of all Zach flew in like a comet okay just ball of fired and he’s he’s been here he’s he’s you know engaged he’s not just simply being uh a face that people get to know and you know you could ride the Fanfare if you wanted to but he’s not he’s putting in the most valuable

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asset that he and all of us in this room have and that’s our time you know like we keep forgetting we keep thinking that money is the only thing that makes the world go around the fact of the matter is our time is the most valuable thing that we can offer to each of us right and I hate to make it sound like oh you know like uh that sounds so Kumbaya but the fact of the matter is is how many people in this room have had a couple of pennies or maybe not even two pennies to to to you know to to rub together you

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know it’s happened many many times in my life and I’ll tell you time and support and the bridges that have nothing to do with the economics are what got me through and I think it’s the kind of thing that as you start finding that success you recognize that your time is the most valuable thing you can offer and just be willing to do it in whatever way a small way you can and it will make a huge difference to the community at large we all benefit from that one of the things I’d like to add to uh I’m a

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multigenerational Tex and been here since 1850s uh our family never left uh you know we didn’t explore out other than one sibling in my family who’s gone on to California 99% of the rest of us from all the generations have stayed here from working with Zach a lot through sa new tech and through uh mentoring with together at geekdom just knowing him and his character one of the things I can say is one of the reason why he’s most successful two is he understands us very well and he wants to fit in here and he

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wants to expand what we have here he sees the gaps in our Marketplace not as a a weakness in our character what’s been holding us back but as things that we need to build together to push us forward and I I 100% agree with his optimistic perspective of growth and that we can focus on you know what we can do to move the chains forward uh you know definitely looking at where the gaps are but you know um doing it together and and I think that’s why like you and I are paed so well with the ESS new TCH stuff and like the things that

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we’re working on together like Lawrence is probably one of the most diplomatic and methodical people that I have ever met and he likes to like think things through very well and he builds relationships he cultivates them and he protects those and then I’m like let’s get [ __ ] done like let’s bulldoze through everything and get stuff done and I think that’s why you and I are so are paired so well together because you you’ve been able to on a few things at this point be able to kind of keep me uh

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a little you know a little um more diplomatic in the situations where we need to be uh and then I’ve been able to help kind of like push us a little further along in areas where it makes more sense sometimes you do just need to break a few dishes uh you know that’s the truth of the matter right especially in entrepreneurship that’s a huge part of what we do execute and iterate I think uh for my part you some of it is like just where I’ve fallen flat in my face before too like okay maybe down this path path that you know will

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probably fall again so it helps a little bit looking at that perspective but I think one of the things I value about how we get along as I think we have an interesting similar view of business in general like everything like from early days when we met like we were aligned with a lot of you know different various choices that you can make in business well one thing that you said Zach and You’ mentioned it to Lawrence but nobody talked about it really is those conversations you are having about the gaps in in San Antonio it it’s the

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valley of death I think San Antonio startup week has helped talk about it you’ve brought those things but in those perspectives you’re you’re the squeaky wheel to help facilitate those you’re you’re bringing that in and saying there is a gap in what San Antonio is right now the startup Community has come a long way from before even 300 Main was here and it was a parking lot um it’s progressed and it’s because people stay in the community they continue to contribute they continue to mentor and then Tech Block is facilitating these

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trips to Mexico you’ve got geekdom running the startup boot camp the pre accelerator and then um the other program what is it it’s the boot camp accelerator it’s the incubator and in there we go stagger walkround yes yes which is now the next Gap is that that valley of death and actually raising money actually building a sustainable business and the way and path to do it is through a community because you are going to need in your case possibly through nonprofits HQ you’re going to need Channel Partners

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you’re going to need folks to connect you with these these other programs you’re going to need incubators to to go connect with especially if San Antonio is a target market and a growth potential for you so just a quick question for for Zach I’m also a transplant but I’m from the East Coast uh you know Baltimore is a little different than than obviously Phoenix but um I still R Baltimore but I love San Antonio I’ve been here eight years and uh you know my my kids are San antonians through and through they’ve

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lived here more than half their lives at this point I’m not going anywhere um but I chose San Antonio because San Antonio chose me and I was actually excited uh about coming and I had a lot of connections here before I came uh obviously being uh Hispanic uh this is one of the most wonderful cities to be uh if you want to speak Spanish on the street for some random reason this is the place that do it uh so culturally from the standpoint of where I came from where you know Latino Centric wasn’t necessarily the norm uh you know that

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was something that made San Antonio special for me from a cultural standpoint uh but for example from coming from Phoenix why did you choose San Antonio’s act yeah definitely um so to be honest San Antonio was not on the list um it originally was on the list like when you’re thinking about where you go to build a startup um you think what the Bay Area you think probably New York you think Atlanta Chicago all these other places Austin which was on our list um and as we started exploring different places we knew we couldn’t

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find the resources that we needed in Phoenix to build what we wanted to build um and resources not just being capital I think a lot of companies a lot of Founders get stuck on this idea of needing to raise some type of money in order to start building and in order to start doing things but resources in terms of teaching us how to actually be business people right this is our first startup we we know the product space really well and we’re still learning how to actually uh you know keep the records

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that we need to keep how to have the conversations that we need to have and then uh networking was very draining and and something that I was awful at before um but so as we were exploring places to find those things that we need to build successfully we were looking at Austin which was cost prohibitive for us right we needed Runway personally and Runway way professionally in order to build um San Antonio kept coming up in that in that search right as we were looking around Austin and as we were looking for

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places to go San Antonio kept coming up resources through you know geek Dum and launcha and techblock and Capital Factory all of these things kept coming up in the research that we were doing so we had a few boxes that we needed to check off right we needed to have the cost of living low enough that we could um sustainably build on like no dollars um we needed to have resources to to help us on our weaknesses not just the weaknesses that we’ve identified but the weaknesses that we don’t know we have

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yet help us explore those and account for those and then we needed a place where there was enough market for us that we could get integrated with and San Antonio kind of checked all those boxes the resources through the various programs that exist the cost of living and then it’s a very very um there’s a very large saturation in this case saturation is a good term of uh nonprofit organizations which is who we support so checked all of those boxes and while there’s still you know you mentioned the Valley of Death there’s

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still a lot of work to be done once you get your product built once you get in production and start selling um San Antonio uh there’s still a lot of work to make it a place where companies can cannot just start not just grow but more importantly stay and I think it falls on the current ecosystem players but not just them it falls on us as Founders to make those resources available and to make this an environment where startups can succeed so so I started this by saying San Antonio was not on the list

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of places where we thought we could go and build so the mission now becomes let’s change that well why isn’t San Antonio on the list of cities where people think they can come and they can successfully build let’s identify what those reasons are let’s bring these conversations into public which we’ve been doing a lot of throughout startup week this year and let’s actually turn those into actions let’s put San Antonio on the list where people can come and build very well well said loud cheering Applause y Lawrence yeah you’ve been

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here you’ve been here forever yeah yeah why do you choose to stay I guess why I choose to stay that’s a great question actually um I’ve been recruited throughout my career throughout the country uh when I was spending some time with the consultant practice here in San Antonio got recruited to go uh to their headquarters back off in the East uh multiple times those kind of situations arose at twofold to that one first and foremost from the perspective of it’s my homeland we’ve been here forever anyone

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that you know was born in Texas understands sort of um why we have a tendency more than any other state to have the highest retention rates like if you look at studies so part of it’s just you know the simple answer of I’m just another native Texan um and then the other side of it is genuinely I’m a business person I think you Zach was touching on some things and what he was talking about that really resonated with me about how we really know business fundamentals well and Texas is really good at

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business fundamentals and it’s something that I know that for example in San Antonio like we talked about this earlier this week we had data point here in San Antonio that built the initial technology for the modern you know computer they created the first microchip processor intel was their uh Builder on that and you know after that time period in the ’90s we also had Wi-Fi standards that we helped contribute to uh that so basically the modern computer the Wi-Fi that we’re connecting to wouldn’t have existed had

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San Antonio not existed going back to my forbears I mean they were vicos and they were Cowboys and so like there’s the whole you know Cowboy Ingenuity and Innovation so I’ve always seen San Antonio as an innovation City because of that origin and because of our roots and but I’ve seen it as something one we’re not braggadocious that’s maybe a downside so if we have successful Founders for example they’re not necessarily talking about it or sharing about it where others might and provide more visibility uh but as well I see that you

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know if we stay if more of us stay that you know and there’s the talent here we can build it like this conversation we’re having right now I argue that us everyone in this room everyone this week is the Future Leaders that we need to come to the next level and I would also argue that like look at other places that don’t have what we’ve already achieved we’re the seventh largest city in the US we are very successful as a city could we look at like New York City could we look at you know LA or San

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Francisco all these other places and compare ourselves yeah we certainly we could and there’s always things to look at there’s also Lessons Learned right and and as people scale and as a lot of the native Texans I know and grew up with like we always kind like you know you’d have uh you know I didn’t wear my first cowboy hat and didn’t own my first cowboy hat till a year ago CU my grandfather would have called me a dime store Cowboy you know even though I was born to a house with a dirt floor you know

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it’s like I never was a cowboy my grandfather was last in our line I still have his Spurs hung up in my office and uh you the reality is that you know we we’ve got something special here I think and I think that the folks that we have like Zach understand that at a core level that you know is like you know they say uh you know if you didn’t get you didn’t get here fast enough or whatever you know the expression is and he’s out as an ambassador in me like you are in Mexico in uh California these other

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areas that yes we do need to stretch out a little bit outside of our comfort zone as Texans and say hello world let’s communicate with you and let’s be proactive I mean we’re setting up right now in the process of setting up an exchange our own exchange like the NASDAQ you know like anything else here in Texas and so this is coming what the next phase is coming it’s really like what do we think is the best way to avoid mistakes is sort of more the conversation I think we’re having right now than like will it come can it come I

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think it’s coming whether or not we want it to or not I I I want to add before we move on um one like add to something that Lawrence just said that was amazing right San Antonio is unique so we often fall into this trap of comparing ourselves to Austin or San Francisco or New York all these places because they have a record a history of building successful prises and really being on the bleeding edge of Technology but I think San Antonio is San Antonio because of San Antonio so we can look at these

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other places and we can learn about what made sense for that location to be as successful and to build the ecosystems that they did but I think we need to translate that into what makes sense for San Antonio just because we are missing something in comparison to another place doesn’t mean it’s something that we need to build here I think we need to understand what it is that our Founders need that our companies need that our uh our cities need and we need to build that and like you hit that you hit the

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nail on the head there uh San Antonio is unique let’s lean into San Antonio amen nothing to add the the part I’m going to add is most of these programming are free this is provided from ad20 H and proxy Weston Urban Grand Weston geekd yeser rise the these communities are all the the Central Focus they they’re selfless leaders that are coming and giving away a lot of content and a lot of material that other places charge a lot of money for if you want to be in San Francisco and talk about San Francisco you look at

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y combinator you know they’re going to invest in you it’s a small subset group of folks that are startups they’re going to take 10% granted you get 500k or a million now but those are very small groups of people the same happens in New York and Chicago Nashville Austin Capital factor is amazing but again it’s still very small Niche they’re they’re looking for return on their money almost always geekdom is a small portion of that that takes no equity they don’t they don’t ask for anything minus a a

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geek the membership but which is also fairly priced yeah it it’s it starts at like $200 free coffee free coffeee free events free networking and you don’t get that at F places like we work you don’t get those at any sort of other co-working places and I’ve been to many cities where you go to a co-working spot and it’s very boring it’s very dry nobody’s really interacting nobody’s collaborating and San Antonio has that small unique part and you know you mentioned it to me maybe a few months ago when Fiesta was going on it feels

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like a few months ago it was much longer but you don’t see that that like programming even on the city and state level really happen anywhere else like Phoenix has fairs and they have other things but fiestas is a unique thing same thing with Kum and and who started out with Lorenzo and Nick Longo and and Graham Weston it’s it’s a important part that has contributed to San Antonio actually growing their Tech scene from data point to Rackspace to now so many other companies from bronston to uh jungle disc that became now nonprofits

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HQ now nonprofits HQ yes one day um but it that that free programming I think is the core part of it is everybody is giving back and they’re not asking for a dollar or a dime they’re asking for that you know next help the the cosmic Karma of hey at some point I’m going to need help I’m going to need to be picked up or I’m going to have a hard problem and I want to come to you and that’s what really I think makes this community go around I I think one of the ways that we’re looking at it here is if we build

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it they will come and you know here’s that back he’s maybe the first of many that will start coming I’ve been hearing some folks coming from Mexico like we’ve got a Mexico City founder that was in the last uh incubator with geek Dum and you know that was for me Jen dox right Jen do Jean Paradox be on Lookout um and so he’s the first of potentially many from that Corridor right that’s coming this way for similar reasons probably from the conversations I’ve had with him is the reason why he came so that me I mean it’s like it’s uh was

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it startup MBA is that we’re going to call it I don’t know but it’s like that’s the program that that geek them and Tech Block emergent rise and other leaders within our community are providing one thing that I will share also and it doesn’t get enough Fanfare because I think it’s a bit of a of an assumption uh San Antonio is one of the few majority Hispanic cities in the whole country people don’t recognize that that means that there’s a natural inclination a natural lean meaning into minority business Enterprise and Tech

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entrepreneurs nobody likes to talk about it because hey everybody’s Hispanic here right I’m coming from a place where not everyone is and I I also come from a place where that underrepresentation is a forgone conclusion because of the makeup of this city naturally there are more entrepreneurs and more uh startups that have uh Founders that look more like like me now I’m nearly 50 years old and I’ve been doing this thing for a long time and the thing is is this is not something that should be taken for

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granted it’s something that should be cultivated so back to the community building it’s supporting those things and ensuring that you make yourself available because it’s not something that everyone can do it’s hard to be an entrepreneur it’s hard to do things when people are telling you that you can’t right so it’s not a Rah it’s just simply to say look if we support each other naturally we will all do better and I think at the end of the day and what I mean by minorities I don’t mean just skin color I’m talking about look

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Venture lab started by someone that was interested in promoting more females and stem from a young age now it’s open to everyone but those are the types of things that’s the spirit that we’re talking about I see that in San Antonio a lot I do not see that in a lot of other cities where it is all about just Revenue generation but not social entrepreneurship that’s something else to be considered as well I feel I feel like that makes us special as well yeah I love that I think you know a big part of the reason why my

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wife and I you know chose San Antonio over Austin I’m from Corpus originally so sou Tex boy uh but grew up a lot of time within the Houston Market I chose San Antonio specifically because of the cultural components of my wife in first generation from mon myself my family came from a diverse background my mut and we found a home here with that I think one of the things that you mentioned that was very interesting that I think we don’t want to glorify entrepreneurship I think because of the fact that it is hard and there is going

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to be failure and I think for me the way forward to get through like the and grow as a as a city we’re going to have to basically increase two things we’re going to have to have more failed businesses and we’re going to have to have more successful ones and I think the two go hand in hand because 90% of businesses fail so it’s a hard game but your point I think entrepreneurship is like the number one way to rise people up and I think it goes beyond just the any one minority to your point anyone that is

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coming from being downtrodden if you of any category you might fit into the best way to get out of that is to uh fight your way through in entrepreneurship and it’s why something I believe strongly in giving back time I’ve done like huge big things in my career and that’s why I love mentorship so much because I feel like there’s an opportunity like through that kind of volunteering I can do so much more help than anything else but I do try to I mean people sometimes call me out that because geekon can be very

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positive and optimistic and so sometimes when we’re giv the talks at the end I’ll hit with like yeah you might fail you know and it comes across as harsh but it’s kind love too you know and that that might be the outcome I can tell you from experience I’ve gone down that path I’ve had failures with massive collateral damage in my life and I’ve had you know just miniature failures of things where I was right completely but at the end of the day it was just the wrong time for things which is why we

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always talk about the pivot the pivot making sure you’re hitting produ Market fit that’s that’s such an interesting point too because like as we’re building San Antonio already like turns out so many companies and entrepreneurs and and and shows people that are already connected in the system or or have found that it’s available that you can build something regardless of where you come from regardless of what your background is you can build something that can be successful um but I think a lot of what

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you know isn’t necessarily taught in our current programs and as we’re building these companies are that it’s hard entrepreneurship and starting a company is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life on days it sucked it really sucked you know you’re trying to figure out how you pay your personal electric bill then you’re trying to figure out what your runway for your business looks like and then you’re also trying to figure out what networking event you go to so you can eat that day

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right because there’s usually food and so all these things that have to kind of go into building these companies and I I think we need to be honest like we don’t want to scare people away from building a company but the worst thing you can do is you know have people have this like glorified idea of Entrepreneurship like what you see on Shark Tank or you see on the tech crunch articles from these YC deals that come out and then they get slapped in the face with the reality of what it is you’re you’re going to be

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fighting against almost every odd that there is right um you’re going to have to prove that what you’re talking about makes sense and that you are the person to execute on that and then you don’t have to actually execute on that while nine out of 10 people are telling you no this doesn’t make sense I don’t understand this this isn’t for me but you do it for that that 10th person that says wow this makes sense you know when we first generated Revenue um with nonprofits HQ we were running our beta

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program and we weren’t charging subscription fees or anything like that because we wanted to iron out the the details but we were collecting a small markup on transactions that were processed on the platform and so the first time somebody actually paid us for what we built and all the hard work we got in it was 33 cents it was 33 cents of Revenue and we were so excited you know I left my job making half a million dollars a year as a software engineer and I was so excited because we made 33 cents and now every

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year the same now every year we have the 33 party because that’s where we started and that was so exciting and so rewarding we built something Against All Odds that somebody said wow this makes sense this is really cool here’s 33 cents and we just went from there but like it’s really hard but I think that’s where we can lean back into Community right a lot of our first customers were people that we knew were people that we met that we understood what their problems were and worked with them to create Technology Solutions to solve

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them and I think we need to lean more into Community we need to talk about how hard entrepreneurship is not in a negative way but in a way that can move people forward and we need to think about sustainable business models right we have not raised a dollar in capital we we have not we kept building and you know we got like resources from Google like they still cover a lot of our infrastructure costs through the Google for startups program uh we won the pitch competition at geek Dum which was 20K in

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and and things like this right but we we need to start thinking about these companies that were turning out making themselves sustainable you’re going to have those edge cases where what you’re building is super Capital intensive that’s always going to be the case and in those situations you have to change that approach but nine out of 10 companies or n out of 10 ideas are just refinements of something that already exists right and you can build on that and you can refine those processes and expand on those very quickly by yourself

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um or within your community right but we need to start generating Revenue as quickly as possible even small amounts of Revenue like 33 cents right sets us on that path to building the rest of what we’re building the game is basically get revenue or die realistically exactly and when we’re talking about solving these things like the startup valley of death which is been a really hot topic that a lot of folks are working on here in San Antonio like that’s one of the paths that we have to get across that bridge right as

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entrepreneurs it is our responsibility to find that Revenue if what we’re doing is not working we have to Pivot we have to do something else to find Revenue in even if it’s a different stream than we anticipated um and I think community and being realistic about what that looks like is a good first step and and to me that’s part of why I love the Boost podcast and I appreciate again for uh you know go uh boost FM boost FM and sa new tech we see as partners in that you know going forward as well because

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we see it as a way to elevate this conversation that we think we need to continue to have and that we we’re no one’s coming to save us right like Revenue like is not come there’s not going to be a bunch of money coming in until we have successful Founders here in San Antonio that have the money to reinvest back in and all the niches we need them to to continue to grow because we have places that we right where we’ve had Founders that had success that invest back that’s part of the challenge that doesn’t cover it like you might be

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just a random startup that you have no investor for here right so that’s where you got to go outside so I think until we break through where we have enough failure like to Zach point we need Revenue we need Revenue like sell sell sell so two parts here uh the first one is that that the reason why we started the Boost was to allow startups to come and make infomercials more or less how those clips go share them on social media look important and be able to have something that they can tout and say hey

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they’re going to go build the personal brand I’ve I’ve talked to every single founder that I’ve mentored through the program you need to build a personal brand you have to be on LinkedIn you know it depends what you’re doing you can be on X Twitter whatever you want to call it it’s Twitter um or it might even be Instagram you know there’s there’s Fitness companies there’s Fitness folks that come in there there’s restaurants that come in there and it’s hey build a personal brand make sure that if you

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fail you have to be ready to Pivot and if you’re going to Pivot you’re going to have to have a network of folks that you can turn around and not be ashamed to say that project failed and I think that is also part of part of it is there’s a glorification of the success look you know you guys are all successful I’ve I’ve done well for myself too and it’s it’s something that nobody really talks about is their failures you know there’s been so many things that have gone wrong in in a business or cash flow problems

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that you’re trying to address or even loans that that you’re you know you’re you’re coming up on and how do you pay for it it’s an additional loan or or you go get outside funding and now now you’ve got investors there’s a lot of that and kind of ties to the second part is how do we support those folks and kind of air those parts of the community out and say hey this is not always bad there’s many many a failure that you’re going to do it don’t have an ego don’t worry about it it’s part of building

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because everybody talks about that hockey stick but the part of it is there was maybe six seven years of building before that hockey stick happened yeah I think some of it is through you know the Boost it’s through sa new tech and it’s through I know Matt also you know plug his show what is Matt’s uh mat Matthew Duke the South Texas business yeah he also has a great program as well where we’re all trying to provide that visibility to the community as a whole so some of that’s it’s a platform where

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folks like y’all in our community here today can continue to come out and to listen to what businesses are doing and provide that feedback you know many respects and provide the you know the visibility and share it with your network and things to that effect and I think through like SN tech one of the things we’re also doing is you know as folks are coming up like our talks are somewhat like a a panel format where we’re uh letting people give a pitch essentially like taking a capability presentation putting it into a

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conversation as part of that we’re as folks that know how to have a commercial conversation we’re saying okay well this is how you talk to like sell your product versus how you talk to an investor to prob pitch your product which we have a lot of support in our ecosystem for how to pitch to investors but besides you know Matt y’alls and us you know that’s the first three kind of out you know of the gate trying to help build community around let’s have a conversation about what your capabilities are what you’re trying to

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sell and who you’re trying to sell and where you’re trying to go and and that that’s one step I mean obviously the other part of it’s going to be where Founders need to focus in on that the one thing that I’d share is I think in general the conversations that Leon and I have had and we’ve done plenty of websites we’ve done plenty of you know marketing materials for for Founders and look the fact of the matter is most Founders don’t have it figured out they don’t know step one about what it is to run a business we just had a

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show earlier today where uh the founder said I don’t know how to run a business I know how to get my ID out there I know how to present it but now what right so don’t feel like because you haven’t figured out how to do the sales or the marketing or The Branding or any of those things that are beyond the idea right Beyond just the platform that’s it to beyond the idea because that’s what geek them is right right it’s the idea how do you get beyond the idea to where your commercial phase mhm and to your

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point Marketing sales can help especially it gets Beyond sort of that early idea stage where you’re just conceptually and putting together a lean canvas and may be a Pitch exactly exactly and many times I mean we’ve donated our time expertise to just simply get over the hump and money that’s true um you know I think the thing is is don’t be afraid to ask I guess at the end of the day even if you need guidance look guidance is free you know uh opinions sometimes everyone has them but very few people will give you

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the help that you’re asking for so I think that’s the piece take the opinions of the people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and help you actually address the issue yeah there’s there’s many folks in the community there some of them are geekdom some of them are Tech Block some of them are launch saay there there’s so many others emergent rise yes there there’s so many resources out there um for startup Founders and it it’s it’s nice to see especially like during startup week everybody come together from every

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single background I saw immigration lawyers I saw UTSA folks HBS here there’s so many ma uh the Massachusetts um Mass challenge was here yeah Mass challenge yes yeah I they originally had uh reached out and we connected them with tech block and uh they’re making a big entrance from Dallas that’s great and planning on staying here so that’s an indication of all the staff that geekam and Tech Block have been you know working towards well I appreciate everybody here um thank you guys for coming watching

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the show actually live yes thank you very much if you guys want to ever subscribe it’s YouTube It’s the podcast it’s all of that we’re we’re at geekdom all the time so if you want to be on the show you also talk to the digital audience later like comment subscribe yes I I’ll record another little block for that but thank you everybody for coming and then thank you guys for joining us thank you J [Music]