Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Driving Global Innovation: Peyman Shahmirzadi’s Role in Redefining Startup Acceleration at Peachscore

Transcript

Driving Global Innovation: Peyman Shahmirzadi’s Role in Redefining Startup Acceleration at Peachscore · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:17
  today's guest is Peyman Shamarazi.
• 0:20
  He is the Co founder, COO and head of accelerator at Peach
• 0:23
  Score. They are a data-driven startup
• 0:26
  accelerator supporting early stage businesses worldwide.
• 0:30
  Now their mission is to make education, networking and
• 0:33
  investment more accessible to every founder.
• 0:36
  Offering a 12 week accelerator program that emphasizes AI
• 0:41
  driven tools, mentor connections and potential funding of up to
• 0:46
  $500,000 through their investment network.
• 0:50
  Now under Payment's guidance, Peach Score has managed over 12
• 0:53
  cohorts each year, empowering start up teams to revise their
• 0:57
  strategies and scale effectively.
• 1:00
  They've also introduced innovative technology that
• 1:03
  enhances efficiency, all while cultivating a large community of
• 1:07
  mentors and investors. Payment has extensive experience
• 1:11
  in operational leadership, strategic planning, raising
• 1:14
  capital, and program management, making him an expert when it
• 1:19
  comes to helping entrepreneurs navigate early challenges and
• 1:22
  seize new opportunities. Now before we get into all this
• 1:26
  good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
• 1:29
  Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 1:59
  today, Co founder and CEOCOO of Peach Score Peymont.
• 2:04
  I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:06
  Thank you so much, Anthony. Thank you for having me.
• 2:08
  I look forward to the conversation.
• 2:11
  So Peyman, you've worked with over 750 startups across 80
• 2:16
  countries before you hatched the idea for Peach Score.
• 2:21
  What were you doing previously that eventually and uniquely
• 2:26
  positioned you to bring this idea to market?
• 2:29
  Sure, I actually have a fairly diverse background.
• 2:33
  My career started in as a engineer.
• 2:35
  I have a computer engineering background and I work for, you
• 2:38
  know, Fortune 500 companies such as HP, where my career started,
• 2:42
  and Philips and a number of different companies of various
• 2:45
  sizes. But recently, before Pete Score,
• 2:50
  I actually started my own startup and then I got into
• 2:53
  working with startups in a advisory consulting firm that I
• 2:58
  had as a partner with a friend of mine actually.
• 3:02
  And through that, I started really learning the side of
• 3:05
  working with founders, being able to see how we can support
• 3:09
  them. I was initially looking at it
• 3:11
  from a biz dev standpoint and investment standpoint.
• 3:15
  And then that led me to Pete Score.
• 3:16
  Actually, I met the founder of Pete Score at the very early
• 3:19
  stages of the company in the concept stage and I became one
• 3:23
  of his very initial investors. So I'm, I think he master #3 in
• 3:27
  Pittsburgh. And sometime later he asked me
• 3:31
  to join the company help Scale. And here we are several years
• 3:35
  later, we built the company we have today in the Accelerate
• 3:40
  program, which I'm very proud of.
• 3:42
  So, but through the combination of all these different things
• 3:44
  that I've done, various different organizations, and
• 3:47
  I've been part of anywhere from engineering to operations to
• 3:51
  marketing to program management throughout my career.
• 3:55
  This is a really natural fit for me in terms of being able to
• 3:59
  support founders on a number of different topics.
• 4:02
  You know, and it's always very interesting to work with
• 4:04
  founders on, regardless of the industry, regardless of what
• 4:08
  journey they're on, being able to add value in terms of what
• 4:11
  they're doing. So that's how I ended up here.
• 4:13
  It's been a very interesting ride.
• 4:15
  So these prior experiences have really given you kind of a 360
• 4:18
  view of what startups and the founders go through that's got
• 4:24
  you in a good position to be able to help them and coach them
• 4:26
  because you've been through what they're about to go through or
• 4:30
  are going through. So break it out for us.
• 4:34
  What kinds of services are you guys more specifically offering
• 4:37
  to your members? Sure.
• 4:38
  I mean, so several things. We're very different than
• 4:41
  traditional cellular programs. First and foremost, we're a
• 4:44
  technology company. We built the platform in order
• 4:47
  to be able to service our founders in a number of
• 4:50
  different ways. So there is a educational
• 4:54
  component to what we provide, which is the 12 week
• 4:56
  accelerator. It's both a combination of
• 5:00
  online learning as well as live a workshop sessions all curated
• 5:06
  and provided through our mentorship network that we have.
• 5:10
  These are executives that are either in the technology space,
• 5:14
  investment, you know, in terms of VCs or angels or even
• 5:19
  governments that are coming in and sharing their wisdom,
• 5:22
  sharing their insights for our program.
• 5:25
  Beyond that, we provide a number of different types of tools
• 5:28
  available to our founders, such as marketing sites to being able
• 5:32
  to really look at see what's happening in the startup
• 5:34
  ecosystem. Being able to analyze their
• 5:37
  company within an industry that they're in to see who can be a
• 5:41
  potential competitor to a partner to a potential customer
• 5:46
  to them. As well as tools for helping
• 5:50
  them raise funding such as their executive one pager tool or a
• 5:54
  pitch deck analysis tool that we just released in which they can
• 5:57
  upload. Our founders can upload their
• 5:59
  pitch deck and we'll come back and give them feedback on the
• 6:02
  overall quality of the pitch deck and both holistically and
• 6:09
  per slide. And above that, we also
• 6:12
  benchmark every founder, every startup that comes into our
• 6:16
  program. So what happens is as companies
• 6:19
  come in and you can fill out your P score profile, your
• 6:22
  company profile, we analyze your company and benchmark you
• 6:26
  against 600,000 other companies within the industry.
• 6:30
  And we're able to provide you a 30 page assessment report that's
• 6:33
  done from an investor's perspective as well as we score
• 6:37
  every startup. And that's how actually the
• 6:40
  company initially got started is this benchmarking and scoring
• 6:43
  system. And then a few years back, back
• 6:45
  in 23, we added the acceleration aspect of it in order to be able
• 6:51
  to support founders. So and then repeat.
• 6:53
  Score. There's some kind of a a score.
• 6:57
  There's a, you come onto our platform, you get a score, the
• 7:00
  peak score, score absolutely as well as the detailed
• 7:04
  benchmarking, which is amazing. In fact, that's one of the,
• 7:07
  that's the main reason I invested in the company
• 7:09
  initially back in the concept stage of the company was at that
• 7:13
  time I was evaluating startups for potential investment and the
• 7:18
  process. It's one thing if you're AVC
• 7:20
  firm and you have a number of venture associates, as they call
• 7:24
  them, to be able to do a lot of legwork, a lot of the analysis,
• 7:28
  but as an Angel investor with limited resources, being able to
• 7:32
  analyze start-ups effectively is extremely time consuming.
• 7:35
  So when I met Alex, the founder of Pete Score, he was describing
• 7:39
  to me the concept of being able to using AI, you know, and this
• 7:44
  is back in 2020, so early days, right?
• 7:49
  AI wasn't talked about the way it is today.
• 7:52
  You know, being able to build a system that can analyze start up
• 7:58
  companies and benchmark them and be able to use that for both.
• 8:03
  It's great information for the founder to really understand how
• 8:06
  an investor will look at them. But also it can streamline the
• 8:10
  due diligence process for an investor.
• 8:12
  And that's what really attracted me to the company because I felt
• 8:15
  this is something that's really needed, can really change the
• 8:18
  can. Help you evaluate a large number
• 8:20
  of deals a lot more efficiently. Exactly.
• 8:22
  Much, much more efficiently. And it's like a Swiss Army knife
• 8:26
  for investors. It really is because, you know,
• 8:29
  back when I was initially just using the platform, even in its
• 8:32
  initial private launch, you know, if I were to value the
• 8:36
  company using the feed score platform, it streamlined the
• 8:39
  entire process. It's like my first meeting with
• 8:42
  the founder would have been like the 5th or 6th meeting the old
• 8:44
  way. So that foundation brought us to
• 8:48
  2023 and we looked at really what else can we do in terms of
• 8:51
  supporting founders. And that's when we build the
• 8:54
  acceleration platform that basically sits on top of the
• 8:57
  technology that we've built to be able to support founders as
• 9:00
  we are today. So can anyone join Peachcorp?
• 9:03
  Is this open to anybody or is there?
• 9:05
  Like a yeah, there's an application process that you go
• 9:11
  through, but we are a data-driven accelerator.
• 9:15
  So the process is not like other acceler programs where you apply
• 9:18
  and sometimes you have to wait months and sometimes go through
• 9:21
  several interviews. Our platform analyzes your
• 9:24
  application. So it's a short form application
• 9:26
  that we take and we also look at data readily available to us
• 9:31
  within, you know, that's publicly available on your
• 9:34
  company. Based on that, our engine makes
• 9:38
  a determination whether you're a good fit for a program or not.
• 9:41
  If you are, it will give you your acceptance and you're able
• 9:45
  to enroll immediately and actually get access to our
• 9:48
  platform to our program that same day.
• 9:51
  You know, so if you apply in the morning, you can be in office
• 9:54
  hours and start talking to us in the afternoon, which is really
• 9:57
  unheard of in terms of what we do.
• 9:59
  In the cases that our platform is not able to really decide
• 10:03
  whether you're a good fit or not, it will send a message back
• 10:06
  that's saying some of our team needs to speak with you.
• 10:09
  And then we do have a normal interview process that we go
• 10:11
  through that we talk to the founder to make sure the
• 10:14
  alignment is there. So the process would be, I'm a
• 10:17
  founder, I've got an idea. My idea is for a new kind of
• 10:21
  calculator. Yeah.
• 10:22
  And so I go in there and I get some information about me, my
• 10:25
  background and I explain what the calculator idea is.
• 10:29
  To some extent, yeah, to some. Extent.
• 10:31
  OK. And then?
• 10:32
  Upload your pitch deck, you know, we'll analyze that you're
• 10:35
  talking about what kind of company you have.
• 10:37
  Are you raising money? How much funding do you
• 10:40
  currently have? You know, it's a short form
• 10:43
  question there, but it's enough information to be able to see
• 10:46
  whether you're a good fit. Keep in mind, our goal is to and
• 10:49
  what we do, we support founders from ideation up to Series A.
• 10:53
  Most of our founders are in pre seed and seed stage, you know,
• 10:57
  so most founders are really looking for fundraising is one
• 11:00
  of the main reasons some are looking to scale.
• 11:02
  But have we had anywhere from a founder saying, I have an idea,
• 11:06
  does it make sense to build a company versus those that had
• 11:10
  already, you know, close to raising their series, they doing
• 11:13
  $4 million of revenue in the program, looking for
• 11:17
  introductions in the corporate world in terms of being able to
• 11:19
  scale their company. So our selection criteria is
• 11:23
  broader and it's the broader on purpose because our goal is to
• 11:27
  really support founders at scale globally.
• 11:30
  This is why, you know, that we structured the program as we
• 11:34
  have, it's more inclusive and but you know, there's still a
• 11:38
  process you got to go through in order to be able to get accepted
• 11:41
  and join the program. And I'm proud to say I think
• 11:44
  we're, we're in 80 countries now.
• 11:46
  So it's, it's been amazing. I mean, meeting founders from
• 11:49
  all across the globe, it's been absolutely a pleasure.
• 11:52
  Is it challenging to work with folks in different countries
• 11:56
  because I don't know, maybe the regulations there are different
• 12:00
  or is the stuff that you're helping them with sort of not at
• 12:04
  that? Regulations not that much of A
• 12:06
  concern because of how we're helping them fundamentally,
• 12:09
  every business that you're trying to build requires some
• 12:12
  fundamental structure right Fundraising is pretty much the
• 12:16
  same everywhere. What's different is the mindset
• 12:18
  of the investors. Their processes are different
• 12:21
  yes, regulations are different, but if how you speak to an
• 12:25
  investor is pretty much the same no matter where you're
• 12:28
  investing, you got to really understand things from the
• 12:31
  investors mindset. Why are they investing in your
• 12:34
  company? It's not because you built the
• 12:35
  best slice the best thing since slice spreads because you're
• 12:38
  solving a problem that needs to be solved and that market is
• 12:41
  willing to accept your product accept your solution and bear
• 12:45
  the price that you're selling and that's very common
• 12:47
  regardless of where you at now different parts of the world
• 12:51
  have different challenges. The the markets are different
• 12:54
  the price points are different the types of solutions that are
• 12:57
  acceptable are different and the types of problems we see are
• 13:01
  very different. You know, one of the things that
• 13:03
  was really pleasantly surprised by it when I started seeing a
• 13:07
  lot of companies come to us from Africa, countries like Kenya and
• 13:11
  Nigeria and so on and so forth, doing a lot of development
• 13:17
  around fintech. And it turns out that just a
• 13:21
  money transfer, doing commerce in those regions is extremely
• 13:25
  difficult. So there's a lot of innovative
• 13:28
  founders in those regions looking for ways to be able to
• 13:31
  help people in terms of be able to transfer what we take for
• 13:35
  granted here. I can sell you some money right
• 13:38
  now where I can go do commerce online without even thinking
• 13:40
  about it. But those things aren't readily
• 13:42
  available due to all the challenges that they have.
• 13:46
  And seeing some of that stuff is really interesting, being able
• 13:48
  to see what's happening in different parts of the world and
• 13:51
  what people are focusing on. But I haven't seen regulation be
• 13:54
  an issue in terms of the conversations that we've had.
• 13:57
  You know, our founders, obviously, you know, depending
• 13:59
  on the country that they're in, they need to be aware of any
• 14:03
  kind of regulation or legal requirements that they have.
• 14:06
  But they come to us to ask us, you know, how should we approach
• 14:08
  investors? What should I do in terms of
• 14:10
  pricing strategy? How should I go to market with
• 14:13
  this product? You know, what does it mean to
• 14:16
  really analyze the competitive landscape of my company, you
• 14:20
  know, all from how does a investor looks at it?
• 14:22
  And that's the really the biggest thing, you know, because
• 14:26
  founders, they may go pitch a lot, right?
• 14:29
  And typically what they hear back is great job, you know, I
• 14:32
  appreciate it. We'll get back to you.
• 14:34
  That's the normal response. And so the founders left with
• 14:38
  this sense of wow, it is really good, you know, and but they
• 14:41
  don't hear back and they're always wondering why they don't
• 14:44
  hear back. So one of the things we do in
• 14:46
  our program, we actually share what the investors are actually
• 14:49
  thinking. You know, I look at every
• 14:52
  founder and every start up and when I'm speaking to them in the
• 14:56
  office hours that we have as if I'm a potential investor.
• 15:00
  And I actually share with them the thoughts that would come to
• 15:03
  me as if it was evaluating them for a potential investment
• 15:06
  investment. And that's I think.
• 15:08
  You kind of take the kid gloves off and you absolutely.
• 15:11
  Exactly what it is because, you know, I've had, for example,
• 15:15
  founders show me a pitch and I asked them, So what was the
• 15:20
  result? And they go, well, I pitched
• 15:22
  this on stage like amazing, How did it go?
• 15:25
  They're like, everybody clapped for me, like fantastic.
• 15:28
  So what was the results? Well, everybody loved it.
• 15:30
  Everybody told me I did a fantastic job.
• 15:32
  Fantastic. So what were the results?
• 15:35
  And they go, what everybody clap afterwards.
• 15:37
  I had a lot of great feedback. Fantastic.
• 15:39
  What were the results? And after a few times, they
• 15:42
  realize I'm asking the same question over again.
• 15:44
  And they said, well, what do you mean?
• 15:45
  I'm like, what came afterwards? You got all the Pats on the
• 15:49
  back. You got all the everyone
• 15:51
  clapping for you. What were the results of the
• 15:54
  pitch? And they're like, well,
• 15:55
  nothing's happened. I haven't heard anything back.
• 15:57
  I'm like, aha. So what you're hearing is
• 16:00
  everybody appreciating that you took the time to come and pitch,
• 16:04
  but it didn't resonate enough for anyone to want to speak with
• 16:07
  you further, to really dive in into your company, to really
• 16:10
  learn about you, your team with the problem you're solving, the
• 16:14
  product you bring into market. So the conversation isn't
• 16:17
  continuing forward. You know, most investors and
• 16:20
  myself included. And I got to catch myself once
• 16:22
  in a while. If I'm out and about and someone
• 16:25
  pitches to me, typically the response is, thank you, I
• 16:29
  appreciate it. I'll get back to you if there's
• 16:31
  an interest. And the reason for that is if
• 16:34
  you do say anything that you may be thinking, unless it's super
• 16:38
  positive and it's like, yeah, let's go have a meeting, the
• 16:41
  founder typically gets very defensive, right?
• 16:44
  And wants to justify, and rightly so.
• 16:46
  They want to justify what it is they're building, and then
• 16:50
  they'll come back. Well, no, this is actually you
• 16:52
  misunderstood. This is what we're doing.
• 16:54
  And then what the investor finds themselves in this little back
• 16:57
  and forth that they don't want to be a part of it.
• 17:00
  So that's why most of the times you don't hear the raw feedback,
• 17:04
  I mean, unless an investor sitting on a panel for feedback.
• 17:09
  And we do that, by the way, we have those sessions where I
• 17:11
  bring in investors into what we call practice pitch sessions.
• 17:16
  And they listen to a pitch and they provide raw feedback, you
• 17:20
  know, and they're so founders are able to hear it not just
• 17:24
  from us, but also others. But typically that does not
• 17:27
  happen. So typically it's, you know,
• 17:29
  very pointed questions if they're sitting on the panel.
• 17:31
  And that's about it. So we really take the kid
• 17:34
  Glozell off, as you said, and we tell it like it is and.
• 17:38
  That's really what they that's what they need to hear.
• 17:41
  Absolutely. And I tell them it's a safe
• 17:42
  space, there's no judgement, but if you want to really hear, you
• 17:46
  know, a thought of what investors see or hear when
• 17:49
  you're speaking, this is what's happening.
• 17:51
  And it's quite eye opening for many of them.
• 17:54
  I mean, that gives them a chance to pivot, to make adjustments to
• 17:58
  to maybe abandon the idea of if it leads them to the conclusion
• 18:01
  that it's this isn't worth pursuing.
• 18:03
  But at a minimum they they can make modifications to what?
• 18:06
  It is, yeah. You know, actually, what's a
• 18:10
  couple of times what I've had actually companies that are
• 18:13
  doing great come in to see whether they want to raise
• 18:17
  money, right. And, you know, I always tell
• 18:20
  every founder raising money needs to be strategic.
• 18:23
  And all money is not good money. And every, every money you get
• 18:26
  comes with strings. So you got to kind of remember
• 18:29
  this paradox. So I've had founders come in and
• 18:32
  say, like, I have one company, in fact out of Argentina, I
• 18:36
  believe they were doing, I believe about $4 million of
• 18:39
  revenue. And they came into our program
• 18:41
  saying, OK, we want to raise money.
• 18:42
  I'm like, why? Well, we're trying to look to
• 18:44
  scale faster. Fantastic.
• 18:46
  And as they went through the program they really started
• 18:48
  understanding what it means to be a venture backed company and
• 18:52
  having to deal with investors and at the end decided, no, no,
• 18:55
  we're doing just fine growing organically.
• 18:58
  Not only the, I do not want to dilute my ownership in the
• 19:01
  company, I also don't want to deal with outside parties
• 19:03
  telling us whether we should go left or right.
• 19:06
  So, and that's a great learning to come in instead of going and
• 19:09
  spending months and months building pitch decks and, and
• 19:12
  pitching and after a year then deciding, wait a minute, this is
• 19:16
  not the right path so we can short circuit all of that.
• 19:18
  So it's been a lot of very interesting discussions with a
• 19:23
  lot of founders. So every founder's journey is
• 19:25
  slightly different, but there's a lot of commonality across
• 19:28
  them. So somebody applies to the
• 19:31
  program. If they're accepted, they pay a
• 19:32
  fee. I don't know how much is the
• 19:35
  fee. The application fee is $75.00,
• 19:37
  the enrollment fee is 275. So if you know both is $350.00
• 19:42
  for everything that we do, then there's no equity, there's no
• 19:45
  warrants, there's none of that stuff.
• 19:47
  So you. You guys are not taking an
• 19:49
  ownership interest in any of the really.
• 19:53
  Yeah, we're doing that on purpose.
• 19:55
  See a lot of traditional programs, you know, they may not
• 19:59
  charge an upfront fee quote UN quote and they'll bring in a
• 20:03
  handful of cohort members 1520 whatever it may be.
• 20:07
  At the end, all those members end up pitching to the program
• 20:13
  owners themselves and it's a closed.
• 20:16
  Pitch and then they ended up maybe one person gets a
• 20:20
  potential investment and that investment comes in the form of
• 20:23
  here's $120,000, but we're going to keep 30 grand, 3540 thousand
• 20:28
  dollars of it for services that we're going to provide you.
• 20:31
  So you get, let's say $85,000 of cash and we'll take 10% equity,
• 20:36
  12% equity, which is super expensive.
• 20:39
  So, but in the beginning you're like, well, this is a free
• 20:41
  program, I'm getting in. But that's what I mean, that's
• 20:43
  the reason these programs exist. Yes, they do want to help
• 20:46
  founders, but they're also looking for ways to invest at
• 20:50
  very high equity stakes in companies.
• 20:54
  You know, so we what didn't want to do that.
• 20:56
  We really, our goal is to really support founders globally at
• 21:01
  scale, being able to provide them education, access,
• 21:04
  advisory, mentorship in a way that's never been done before,
• 21:08
  at a scale that's never been done before.
• 21:10
  And part of doing that is to not make cost a barrier for them,
• 21:16
  right? So This is why we love our
• 21:18
  partners. This is why we really work with
• 21:21
  amazing partners throughout different regions of the globe
• 21:25
  and with them we're able to really bring down the cost for
• 21:28
  the founders. So for $350.00 and in fact,
• 21:31
  right now I think our team is running a made bonus where they
• 21:34
  can actually even get 50 bucks off the application.
• 21:37
  The money is not the key thing for us that the founders pay is
• 21:40
  being able to provide the value to them.
• 21:42
  But you know, he says. So why isn't it free?
• 21:44
  Because free has a very negative connotation to it.
• 21:49
  You know, even if you're spending a few $100, you know,
• 21:52
  at least you feel like I, I need to get my money's worth out of
• 21:55
  this. And just by coming and
• 21:57
  participating because you invested just a few $100, you
• 22:00
  end up seeing the value that they provide.
• 22:02
  I've had many cases where the founders spend one hour and
• 22:05
  office hours with us and they say I just made my money back.
• 22:09
  And then so, but on top of it, we have like over $2,000,000 in
• 22:13
  perks, discounts and credit from AWS and Microsoft and Carda and
• 22:19
  Hopspot and all these other amazing organizations.
• 22:22
  So as part of our program we can come in and apply for those.
• 22:26
  So the money is not a barrier that definitely we wanted to.
• 22:29
  Remove. I was going to say at $350.00 a
• 22:31
  pop, there's not much of A revenue incentive for you guys
• 22:36
  to provide the service, but it sounds like you've also got
• 22:39
  partners on the back end that are helping.
• 22:41
  Yeah, we do. And and keep in mind we're also
• 22:43
  a venture backed company. We work with LP's a lot and so
• 22:47
  we have investors ourselves and also we're working at scale,
• 22:51
  right. My goal is today we have almost
• 22:54
  800 founders that have been part of our program.
• 22:58
  I, you know, I want to service 10,000 founders.
• 23:00
  Imagine those kind of numbers, right, to be able to really make
• 23:04
  an impact. See one of the things that's
• 23:07
  happening in the ecosystem that maybe not be readily
• 23:12
  knowledgeable by everyone that there's over 4 million founders
• 23:16
  every year around the globe that are building companies looking
• 23:19
  for support. About half of them end up
• 23:22
  applying for accelerator program, 1.6 million.
• 23:24
  I think the last time I saw the report and added one point
• 23:28
  6,048,000 or so get accepted into a accelerator program and
• 23:33
  half of them 1820 thousand or so actually get any sort of
• 23:37
  investment or help. So what happens to the 97%, the
• 23:41
  98%, They really don't have a way to be able to get the
• 23:46
  support that they and there's amazing innovation, amazing
• 23:49
  founders all around the globe. And that's why we've done what
• 23:53
  we're doing because we saw there's absolutely a need to be
• 23:56
  able to support this ecosystem in, in such a way to be able to
• 24:00
  really help these founders. I mean, I can get a founder
• 24:04
  sitting in India and Australia and connect them to investors
• 24:08
  sitting in Silicon Valley. And they don't have to travel
• 24:10
  anywhere. They can learn from these folks.
• 24:13
  They can learn from the expertise that we have around us
• 24:16
  and the knowledge base that's available.
• 24:18
  Whereas most traditional programs say, OK, you need to
• 24:21
  fly out, come in and sit in the conference room for 10 weeks.
• 24:25
  And at the end of it, we'll see if you're one of the selected
• 24:27
  companies. And if not, then thank you for
• 24:30
  being a part of our program. That doesn't work at scale,
• 24:35
  right? So.
• 24:35
  That's there's a huge underserved population of of
• 24:39
  startup founders. You said it's only but like 3%
• 24:42
  that are actually sort of getting the attention that
• 24:44
  they're seeking. So you've huge untapped
• 24:47
  potential. Absolutely, yeah.
• 24:49
  I mean, I'm there, don't get me wrong.
• 24:50
  They're amazing programs out there.
• 24:52
  Like YC for example. They're a global brand.
• 24:54
  They're one. They got an amazing program and
• 24:57
  any founder that asked me, I said by all means apply to them,
• 25:00
  see if you can get into that program.
• 25:02
  They get 10's and 10s of thousands of applications, but
• 25:06
  only select, you know, less than 1%, I believe one, maybe 1% or
• 25:11
  so. So if you can get into a program
• 25:14
  like that, absolutely, there's many.
• 25:16
  I mean, I don't knock any of the other programs for anything that
• 25:19
  they're doing. I think they're all valuable.
• 25:21
  There's so many founders that they support.
• 25:25
  But in terms of being able to support founders at scale in a
• 25:28
  different way, the traditional model just doesn't work.
• 25:31
  It doesn't work in terms of numbers.
• 25:33
  And given that we're a technology company and being
• 25:36
  able to Add all this expertise and tools and infrastructure on
• 25:39
  top of it, we're able to help founders in a way that frankly.
• 25:44
  Are most of the companies that are applying to your accelerator
• 25:46
  tech related? No, actually I've had a candy
• 25:50
  company out of Turkey. I know I've had a water boiling
• 25:54
  company here in the US, You know, so we're industry agnostic
• 25:59
  on purpose. You know, in any industry that
• 26:03
  you're in, we can find a way to support you depending on the
• 26:06
  support that you need. You know, now there are some
• 26:09
  companies that they don't lend themselves well, like for
• 26:12
  example, consulting firms. If you're consulting firms and
• 26:16
  you say I want to raise money, well, that doesn't work because
• 26:20
  consulting firms, as I'm sure you know, they, they are human
• 26:24
  driven. In order to be able to do more
• 26:27
  projects, you need more people typically, right?
• 26:29
  So they don't scale in a natural way that a tech company would or
• 26:34
  even ACPG company that's product oriented would, right.
• 26:37
  So from an investor perspective, they're not as attractive.
• 26:40
  They typically, and for an investor to invest in a
• 26:43
  consulting firm, they want to be a part of that business.
• 26:46
  They want to be a business partner, not a traditional
• 26:49
  investment. But besides that, you know any
• 26:51
  type of industry that we can definitely support.
• 26:54
  OK, so I joined this accelerated program.
• 26:57
  It's 12 week program. So I'm going to guess it
• 26:59
  probably starts like once every month or so.
• 27:02
  So I kind of wait for the OR or it starts today whenever I want
• 27:06
  to to get in as. Soon as you enroll, you can
• 27:09
  start and. There's online education and I
• 27:12
  get access to advisors to ask questions, office hours, that
• 27:16
  kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:17
  Let me, let me describe it in a little bit more detail.
• 27:19
  So you, you submit your application.
• 27:21
  If your application is accepted, you can enroll immediately.
• 27:24
  Once you enroll, you Get full access of the platform and then
• 27:29
  you can come join the office hours.
• 27:32
  We have office hours. This is also very unique to us.
• 27:35
  So twice per day. So we're in California, I'm in
• 27:39
  LA. We run the office hours at 8:00
• 27:42
  AM and 2:00 PM Pacific Time zone five days a week, unless there's
• 27:46
  exceptions like yesterday was a holiday, so we cancelled it.
• 27:50
  But in the one year period, you got access to over 500 hours of
• 27:54
  office hours that you can come into and talk about anything
• 27:57
  regarding your company. You know, I had a founder
• 28:01
  earlier today talking about I'm looking to build this company
• 28:04
  doing this. Does this make sense?
• 28:07
  How? I mean, so we had that
• 28:09
  conversation versus another one, you know, that's just hit we're
• 28:13
  already in revenue. We need to scale faster.
• 28:16
  So you know, I've had conversations regarding Co
• 28:19
  founders, good, bad and the ugly, you know, all kinds of
• 28:22
  challenges, legal challenges, LLCS versus C courts, all of
• 28:26
  these activities. So the program is structured for
• 28:29
  you to be able to join immediately.
• 28:32
  Yes, there's a 12 week accelerator component to it.
• 28:35
  But as I mentioned earlier, one whole year of support and it's
• 28:38
  based on your schedule, not our schedule.
• 28:40
  That's also something very. What does that mean?
• 28:42
  One year of support? What's the the 12 week
• 28:45
  accelerator program is over? What is it that I continue to
• 28:48
  get access to? Good question so after you
• 28:50
  graduate now you can take 3 months to graduate if you're
• 28:53
  ready you can graduate in less than a month really we'll
• 28:57
  analyze you know where you're at if you're ready to graduate
• 29:00
  let's say you're a late state seed company and you know yeah
• 29:05
  everything is set you know you're really looking to scale
• 29:07
  revenue. We can get you graduated very
• 29:09
  fast. Once you graduate though you as
• 29:13
  part of our graduation by the way, you attend the demo day
• 29:16
  that's inclusive every we invite everybody.
• 29:19
  It's not just to us, right. So we typically a few 100 people
• 29:23
  intended from investors, corporate and as well as
• 29:26
  government agencies that we work with.
• 29:29
  But beyond that after that we continue supporting you.
• 29:34
  I have founders that reach out to me and say, hey, Peymon, I'm
• 29:37
  doing looking to do a partnership with so and so can
• 29:40
  we talk about it? Does this make sense?
• 29:42
  Had a founder say, hey, I got a term sheet for potential
• 29:47
  investment. Can we review the terms
• 29:48
  together? So we providing that as an
• 29:51
  ongoing support infrastructure. Not only that, we also continue
• 29:55
  promoting you. We share your success stories on
• 29:58
  our website. You know, we started actually a
• 30:01
  podcast to be able to talk to these founders to share their
• 30:04
  stories a little bit more and continue promoting them as well
• 30:09
  as being on our platform. You're get immediate visibility
• 30:13
  within the ecosystem. You can go to our website under
• 30:17
  portfolio, you can see all of our graduated startups pitch
• 30:20
  videos, pitch decks, pitch core profiles.
• 30:23
  Investors are looking at those as well as we're doing
• 30:26
  partnerships with companies such as Dilip where we're integrating
• 30:31
  our benchmarking scoring system and collaborating with them so
• 30:35
  that over 25,000 investors on their platform, they're able to
• 30:39
  see startup scoring, startups benchmarking, you know, so as
• 30:43
  you maintain your your company's profile on our platform, you get
• 30:47
  even broader visibility as well as all the support that.
• 30:50
  So that large network of investors can come in and they
• 30:53
  can do a search and you know, hey, I'm looking for something
• 30:56
  in blockchain or AI or I'm. Yeah, you can.
• 30:59
  You can do that on our platform, but you can also do it on
• 31:01
  platforms such as dealings platform where all these Angel
• 31:04
  groups are and they use that platform for their back office.
• 31:08
  And as startups come in to apply for a particular Angel group
• 31:12
  that's on that platform, that Angel group is able to see, oh,
• 31:15
  what is this company's the startups Peach scores or what is
• 31:19
  their report look like? And that streamlines the entire
• 31:23
  due diligence. So from the founders
• 31:24
  perspectives, like, you know, being able to stay within our
• 31:28
  platform, our ecosystem to continually maintain it.
• 31:32
  And, but I think the biggest value founders get post
• 31:35
  graduation is the life support that they also get from us.
• 31:40
  I mean, they can come into office hours, you know, every
• 31:43
  single day if they wanted to talk about every aspect of their
• 31:46
  companies. I mean, that's really unheard
• 31:48
  of, you know, to be able to just have someone to bounce ideas off
• 31:52
  of, to validate things to review, in some cases,
• 31:55
  contracts. I mean, we don't necessarily do
• 31:57
  a deep dive in, in most things, but in whatever we can cover in
• 32:02
  office hours. And I have many, many founders
• 32:04
  that take advantage of that throughout the year.
• 32:09
  So the funding doesn't actually come from Peach Score itself, it
• 32:13
  comes from your network of. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:16
  Partners and investors, Yeah. So we have what we call Peach
• 32:18
  Score Capital, which is comprised of different Angel
• 32:22
  groups that we work in, different angels, different
• 32:25
  investors. And their thematic thesis is
• 32:27
  based on the particular group that we're working in.
• 32:29
  And they'll come and say, I mean, last session that I had
• 32:33
  with them, they said we're looking for Med tech, biotech
• 32:36
  companies in the US doing this. This particular set of criteria,
• 32:42
  we had startups meeting that requirement.
• 32:45
  So we brought them into a, a session to pitch to them
• 32:49
  directly to see if they were interested in investing.
• 32:52
  We basically provide input and all the due diligence needed for
• 32:57
  them to be able to make a decision.
• 32:58
  But beyond that, see that's what 1 venue in terms of being able
• 33:02
  to raise money. There are so many other
• 33:05
  opportunities and our goal is to get our founders ready to be
• 33:09
  able to go on any stage in any pitch competition and pitch we
• 33:13
  work on a 5 minute pitch on in a non vertical based pitch
• 33:17
  setting. And that pitch, the way we
• 33:19
  structured it, you can, it's kind of like an accordion as I
• 33:23
  call it. If you go in and someone says
• 33:25
  you have 15 minutes, you can extend it, Someone says you have
• 33:28
  3 minutes, you can, you know, shorten it to the key points
• 33:30
  that they want to cover. But that baseline 5 minute pitch
• 33:33
  really allows you, you learn how to speak to founders, how to
• 33:37
  talk in terms of what they, how best to communicate what it is
• 33:42
  you're doing so you can resonate with the investors.
• 33:45
  You know, so that's I think the biggest thing.
• 33:47
  And we've had many founders raise money, you know,
• 33:51
  $3,000,000 closing seed rounds. You see, actually we're starting
• 33:54
  with a new page on our website to share all these success
• 33:57
  stories precede close 150K350K. You know, when our founders
• 34:05
  mentioned he came into the program looking to raise
• 34:07
  $3,000,000 and he raised 2.7 of it immediately after graduating.
• 34:11
  So, you know, there's many success stories like that
• 34:14
  through the support that we provide.
• 34:16
  So and then we're really proud of that, being able to really
• 34:19
  get our founders ready to be able to really take advantage of
• 34:23
  what's happening in the ecosystem.
• 34:25
  So you kind of touched on this, you know, each investor or
• 34:28
  investor group, they've got their own thesis, they've got
• 34:31
  their own thing that they're looking for.
• 34:35
  But aside from sort of those specific criteria, sort of big
• 34:40
  picture, what is it that you think investors are looking for
• 34:44
  in a start up idea and what are they looking for in a founder?
• 34:50
  Good question. Biggest thing is whether they
• 34:52
  can make money, honestly. You know, I, I, you know, I tell
• 34:58
  this to our founders too. It's like it doesn't matter if
• 35:00
  you're an Angel, you know, Family Office, Micro, VCOVC, the
• 35:06
  reason you're investing, unless you're friends and family, is
• 35:09
  because you're looking to see whether this is the right
• 35:12
  founder with the right company for you to make money.
• 35:16
  That's what they're looking for. Now, their thematic thesis kind
• 35:19
  of defines what that looks like, whether what industry is in,
• 35:23
  what stage they're in. But fundamentally, it really
• 35:26
  comes down to that, you know, you know, you asked about the
• 35:31
  founder. So what are the traits of the
• 35:33
  founder? Is the founder someone that has
• 35:36
  history of building companies or is this the first time?
• 35:40
  And they're both are OK. But if you had a founder that's
• 35:42
  a serial entrepreneur that exists in the past, obviously it
• 35:46
  increases the chance. See the, the way I'd like to
• 35:49
  talk about this is there's, there's two levers that every
• 35:52
  investor looks at. One is risk, one is potential of
• 35:56
  success, right? So as we're evaluating
• 36:00
  companies, it's like, OK, what's the risk of you failing me
• 36:05
  losing my money? What's the chance of you making
• 36:08
  it? And, you know, I'll be able to
• 36:10
  make some money. So these two levers I've had
• 36:13
  other investors tells me for me, it's fear.
• 36:15
  Fear of me losing my money and my greed of missing out.
• 36:19
  It's all the same. And you know, regardless of the
• 36:21
  type of investor that you are, it really comes down to these
• 36:24
  two things. And the things founders need to
• 36:27
  realize is every startup is simply a deal to an investor,
• 36:32
  right? It's just an opportunity.
• 36:35
  And what is there many of is many, many start-ups, right?
• 36:40
  So you could our demo days, we have 15 start-ups pitching each
• 36:44
  time, right? So there's and as I mentioned
• 36:47
  earlier, there's 4 million start-ups globally out there.
• 36:50
  So there's many of you. So when you want to pitch, you
• 36:54
  want to make sure that you really understand the
• 36:56
  perspective of the investor and put the best pitch forward for
• 36:59
  it to resonate and in their mind.
• 37:01
  And within 5 minutes, what's the risk profile, what's your
• 37:05
  success chances as compared to the other companies that I'm
• 37:09
  looking at. So an Angel may end up looking
• 37:11
  at 2530 companies within a few months.
• 37:15
  Write a check for one, you know, VC pool may be bigger because
• 37:19
  they might have 10 venture associates.
• 37:21
  Each one may go analyze 2030 companies.
• 37:23
  But at the end it comes down to we're going to write, you know,
• 37:26
  2 checks a year, 5 checks a or not, sorry, not a year, but 1/4
• 37:31
  maybe you know, so, but it all comes down to the same thing.
• 37:34
  So that's the biggest thing We really work with our founders or
• 37:38
  to really understand that perspective, why we say when you
• 37:42
  start your presentation, it shouldn't be all about you.
• 37:45
  It should be about your customer and the problem that you're
• 37:48
  trying to solve for your customer.
• 37:51
  Because as an investor, unless I believe that this is a real
• 37:54
  problem, it's a big problem, the pain of it is really high
• 37:58
  enough, then why should I keep listening?
• 38:01
  So it's, it's these type of factors that we really look for.
• 38:04
  And so the founder themselves, though, as an investor, I really
• 38:09
  look for a founder that's really their vision as you get to know
• 38:16
  them both, the vision that they have, their work ethic that they
• 38:20
  have, what they're thinking of both today and tomorrow, how
• 38:24
  they're thinking about it matters, and also how coachable
• 38:27
  they are, right? I mean that that's sometimes you
• 38:32
  meet founders that they're dead set in their way and even if you
• 38:36
  try to help you see there's the resistance there.
• 38:40
  So some investors are back office when they see that.
• 38:43
  So you know, but those those are some of the key elements that I
• 38:47
  think every investor releases. Peyman, what's the biggest
• 38:51
  mistake that you see most founders make?
• 38:56
  Not understanding the perspective of an investor, not
• 39:00
  not a thinking of the world from the viewpoint of their company
• 39:03
  only, you know, really everything is about them and
• 39:08
  their company. Not really being able to
• 39:11
  articulate who their customers are and what problem they're
• 39:15
  having. Why would an investor care?
• 39:17
  Really missing that gap. I think that that's really key.
• 39:21
  And and you know, some, a lot of it's not to their fault because
• 39:25
  if they were never on the other side of the table, it's hard to
• 39:27
  put yourself there, you know, but you should be able to do
• 39:30
  that at least with your customer, maybe not an investor.
• 39:33
  So, and not seeking help. That's the other one.
• 39:37
  You know, I see many, many start-ups that or founders that
• 39:42
  after three or four years of trying it on their own, they
• 39:45
  finally say, you know what, maybe I should go get help.
• 39:47
  Maybe I should go get some advisors.
• 39:49
  Maybe I should go get some mentors.
• 39:51
  Maybe I'm missing something. You know, when you're first
• 39:54
  starting out, you may be coming from an amazing background.
• 39:58
  There are obviously there's exceptions, right?
• 40:00
  They're, they're the 1% that they leave an amazing job, start
• 40:04
  something and through the networks, they're able to really
• 40:06
  hit it out of the park. But generally speaking, most
• 40:10
  founders, when they first start, their immediate thought is I
• 40:14
  know exactly what's going to happen.
• 40:15
  I'm if I build it, they will come.
• 40:18
  This is such a fallacy. This is such a not everybody has
• 40:22
  that kind of luck, frankly. And it's luck, You know, a, a
• 40:26
  great example of that is what was that app, the, the app
• 40:35
  during the COVID days. Oh my God, like the the one that
• 40:39
  came out with their old radio shows that everybody was
• 40:42
  listening to Clubhouse, Clubhouse app.
• 40:46
  You know, I was on that platform, it came out and, and
• 40:49
  it's amazing. Sometimes these things happen at
• 40:52
  the right time and they go viral and everybody gets on them and
• 40:56
  all of a sudden all these crazy valuations.
• 40:58
  And so when Clubhouse came out, right during when COVID started,
• 41:03
  we're all stuck at home. And I got an invite from a
• 41:05
  friend of mine. You should join this platform.
• 41:07
  OK, what is it? Let's go check it out.
• 41:10
  And I go there and I was on there every day.
• 41:11
  I invited other people. Man, this is amazing.
• 41:13
  Let's come in. Let's have conversations on all
• 41:15
  this stuff. And I got on many stages.
• 41:18
  I was talking about, you know, all kinds of stuff.
• 41:21
  But when the world started going back to normal, no one was going
• 41:26
  back. And one of the things that I
• 41:27
  wondered when I was on that platform, how is this company
• 41:29
  going to make money? They're getting a massive user
• 41:33
  base book for free. Great model.
• 41:36
  But then they started said, OK, maybe we want to charge users
• 41:41
  come in it. No, that doesn't work.
• 41:42
  Maybe we want to do charge people that host premium rooms.
• 41:47
  They charge for other people's to attend.
• 41:49
  And then as soon as they started really looking at this stuff,
• 41:52
  they're everything started falling.
• 41:55
  I, I haven't been on that platform for many years.
• 41:57
  I really don't know what the status is.
• 41:59
  I hopefully they're doing OK. But see, there's things like
• 42:02
  that, you know, being being able to really how you build a
• 42:08
  company for the right reason, being able, do you really
• 42:11
  understand the customer and being able to really define what
• 42:16
  that customer's pain is and that pain isn't high enough for them
• 42:20
  to come and look for a solution. You know, one of the slides that
• 42:24
  we actually don't have in our flow is a slide called Why not?
• 42:28
  And I and I, you know, if you go to research online and say, what
• 42:32
  are some of the key slides you need to have, that's one that
• 42:34
  always pops. So you got to say you have a
• 42:35
  slide, say why not? And I completely disagree with
• 42:38
  that because if you have, you articulate the problem from the
• 42:44
  perspective of your customer. So as an investor, I understand
• 42:50
  who's having the problem. If you're AB to C, is it a few
• 42:53
  number of people? Is it or is it millions of
• 42:56
  people? If you're AB to B, is it a few
• 42:58
  companies or is it hundreds of thousands of companies, 1000
• 43:01
  million, What type of problem they're having?
• 43:03
  What's the pain that this problem's causing them for me to
• 43:07
  be able to say, yeah, this problem's real, it's big enough
• 43:09
  and it makes sense then I know why it needs to be solved now.
• 43:12
  And that's really the way that you think about this is framing
• 43:15
  it in terms of what, what problem are you solving?
• 43:18
  Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:20
  How, how big of a pain is it for those people who have this?
• 43:22
  Problem otherwise, if it's not painful enough, then why would
• 43:26
  they want a solution, right? It's like, you know, sometimes
• 43:30
  we call it as are you offering vitamin or are you offering
• 43:33
  medicine? A vitamin could be nice, but a
• 43:36
  medicine's because somebody's sick.
• 43:39
  So in the same analogy, you may create a product that a company
• 43:42
  may look and say, OK, this could be nice to have, but it's not a
• 43:45
  necessity. You know, if I had extra money,
• 43:48
  extra budget, yeah, maybe I'll do this, but it's not the core
• 43:52
  requirement. But if my business is failing,
• 43:55
  my sales aren't improving, my OpEx is too high, I I'm in
• 43:59
  danger of really losing a lot of millions of dollars potentially.
• 44:03
  Or, you know, then I need a solution.
• 44:05
  I need the medicine, right? Then, you know, who's providing
• 44:09
  that for us, You know, so that it's all of these aspects.
• 44:12
  And this is actually the conversation you and I are
• 44:15
  having is what we end up having during the office hours.
• 44:19
  You know, when founders started approaching us and talking to us
• 44:21
  about what they're doing and being able to speak with them
• 44:24
  from this perspective. And they go, wow, never even
• 44:26
  thought about it that way. So.
• 44:28
  So you obviously get to see all kinds of businesses.
• 44:32
  I mean you've got probably you know, one of the best sort of
• 44:35
  big picture views of what's going on in the start up space
• 44:38
  because of what you guys are doing at scale.
• 44:40
  Are there particular trends or emerging technologies that
• 44:46
  you're seeing and or are particularly excited about?
• 44:52
  Well, I think what I see is what everybody sees today.
• 44:56
  AI is very dominant in just about every industry now,
• 45:01
  whether it's real AI or what people think is AI is a
• 45:05
  different conversation, but I've seen some really interesting
• 45:09
  stuff happening around AI that really solves big problems.
• 45:13
  I founder that recently joined us when what he's doing is built
• 45:18
  an AI to be able to digest cold case data and from law
• 45:24
  enforcement or insurance, right, being able to pull in massive
• 45:28
  amounts of data, whether it's cold or whether it's active, and
• 45:31
  being able to very quickly provide actionable insights.
• 45:35
  That's huge value, you know, and, and, and being able to
• 45:39
  really help that organization to be able to get to a conclusion
• 45:45
  on a particular case, sometimes in a matter of days or weeks, if
• 45:49
  not months or years. Huge value, you know, being able
• 45:53
  to around AI and robotics is another place that I'm seeing a
• 45:57
  lot of innovation, really interesting stuff.
• 46:00
  One of our companies builds robotics fixtures for dental
• 46:05
  dentistry schools, which was this was really interesting for
• 46:09
  me. I mean, when I met this founder,
• 46:13
  I was like, why are you doing this?
• 46:15
  He goes, well, do you realize that most dentists, and he's out
• 46:18
  of Canada, but most dentists when they become dentists, when
• 46:22
  they graduate, they actually rarely have worked inside a
• 46:25
  human's mouth. Like, what do you mean?
• 46:27
  He goes, yeah, they once they work in a dental office, they
• 46:30
  get to practice in people's mouth.
• 46:32
  Like, you got to be kidding me. He goes, no, that's very
• 46:34
  prevalent, right? And so he's, and by the way, he
• 46:39
  saw this because his spouse became a dentist, went through
• 46:44
  this and he's got a background in robotics and AI and all this
• 46:47
  technology goes, well, we can fix that.
• 46:49
  We actually built robotic fixtures that mimic the human
• 46:52
  mouth and he's able to provide it to schools, universities,
• 46:56
  dental universities for the students to be able to actually
• 46:59
  pretend like they're working in an human mouth.
• 47:01
  So that's the kind of thing I love is being able to see a real
• 47:05
  problem, especially has human implication and building
• 47:09
  technology around it to solve right.
• 47:11
  I have a I'm not a founder that's actually very close to
• 47:14
  graduating. They built an AR platform for
• 47:19
  doing surgeries, being able to really look at the humans.
• 47:22
  So you wear the goggles and and being able to see the patient
• 47:27
  and actually see what the doctor needs to do from AVR standpoint
• 47:32
  before they actually. Start.
• 47:33
  They're looking at an actual patient with the AR setup, or
• 47:36
  they're looking at a just a. Virtual patient, you know, so
• 47:40
  very, very interesting tech there.
• 47:43
  There's another one actually. See the the human element to me
• 47:47
  is key. One of our other companies built
• 47:50
  AVR platform for training for the construction workers, people
• 47:56
  working with heavy machinery, heavy equipment on construction
• 47:59
  sites, right? Why did they build this company?
• 48:03
  Well, because they knew someone that got hurt very badly, right?
• 48:09
  So they saw what we have a training issue here, right?
• 48:12
  And those are the kind of things that really resonate because
• 48:15
  it's it's not only it's a real problem, but it's also a human
• 48:18
  problem and being able to build technology around it that can
• 48:22
  really help. So those are the things I'm
• 48:26
  excited about. Any time I've seen companies
• 48:28
  that really look fine, areas that from a human perspective
• 48:32
  there's deficiencies or challenges that technology can
• 48:36
  solve, I I get pretty excited. How about maybe one of your
• 48:40
  earlier, I'm going to call them students, one of your earlier
• 48:44
  accelerator participants that has now gone on to find, you
• 48:49
  know, a pretty substantial level of success.
• 48:51
  Well, the the one I mentioned that raised 2.7 million, it was
• 48:56
  in cohort 1. Did you say more about what her
• 48:59
  business? Is they're, they're a climate
• 49:01
  tech company. They built technology in order
• 49:04
  to be able to work with manufacturers to be able to
• 49:08
  really analyze their carbon footprint and be able to help
• 49:12
  them reduce, you know, their, I mean, overall statistical data
• 49:17
  behind what that manufacturer is doing and be able to help them
• 49:21
  reduce what it is generating in terms of from a climate impact
• 49:26
  standpoint. And I actually met him while I
• 49:30
  was at Germany, the German government out of NRWS, one of
• 49:35
  the partners that we work with. And we actually took a, a
• 49:39
  delegate of startups there to be able to be at an event.
• 49:42
  And he was this founder was there from an Indian delegation,
• 49:48
  Chandler. And when I met him, they were
• 49:50
  like, we're trying to raise $3,000,000 to take this company
• 49:54
  to the next level. And you know, through our
• 49:57
  conversation, they ended up joining.
• 49:58
  And one of the biggest things that we've worked on during the
• 50:01
  part, I thought it was part of the accelerating the first
• 50:04
  cohort was on his pitch, getting it to resonate with the
• 50:09
  investors. You know, being able to really
• 50:11
  articulate when you have such high growth rate in a financial
• 50:15
  projection, how best to communicate that.
• 50:18
  And he's been doing great. In fact, he's showcased on our
• 50:20
  website. The company is a living sense.
• 50:22
  You can see them on our website and see what they're doing and.
• 50:25
  We've referenced the website a couple of times for those folks
• 50:28
  listening. It'll be in the show notes, but
• 50:29
  it's Peach score dot. Com So Peach like the fruitless
• 50:33
  score, Yeah. You mentioned before you've got
• 50:36
  your own podcast where you're highlighting some.
• 50:39
  Success stories. We just started.
• 50:40
  Yeah, we have a few episodes under our belt.
• 50:43
  It's been an interesting thing. What's it called?
• 50:45
  Where would people find it? Right now you can find it on the
• 50:48
  Pete Score YouTube page. You can see it's, we're calling
• 50:52
  it the Honest Hour Podcast and you know, by Pete Score.
• 50:57
  So it's currently on the Pete Score YouTube page.
• 51:01
  And you know, for us, we decided to do this for a couple of
• 51:04
  reasons. One, showcasing the companies is
• 51:09
  really important, getting getting visibility to our for
• 51:11
  our companies as much as possible, you know, and also
• 51:15
  sharing their stories. So one of the things you
• 51:17
  typically find in most conversations with entrepreneurs
• 51:22
  is talking to people that have made so they have some
• 51:26
  notoriety. They they've made their
• 51:28
  millions, they've built many amazing companies potentially or
• 51:32
  had they had that one major success, which which is great,
• 51:34
  which is always really interesting to hear from them.
• 51:40
  What we wanted to do was look at this slightly different.
• 51:42
  What if talking to founders that are going through the journey,
• 51:47
  they're in their pre seed stage, they're in their seed stage,
• 51:50
  they're they're going through trying to understand how to do
• 51:54
  product market fit. What are the challenges that
• 51:56
  they're facing? What what is that?
• 51:58
  So when you talk to someone that's already built $100
• 52:01
  million company, they will refer to some of those things, but
• 52:04
  their mindset and where they're at in the world they're.
• 52:08
  Not in the wrong moment of it. They're not in the wrong.
• 52:11
  That's the best way to they're not in that wrong moment of it
• 52:13
  versus the founder that's going wow, I I got six months runway
• 52:18
  left. I got three months runway left.
• 52:19
  What should I do, you know, or how do I get approach product
• 52:25
  market fit? How much money should I raise or
• 52:28
  should I even raise my all these things that I need a Co founder.
• 52:32
  Should I get one or not get one? I need to build the team.
• 52:35
  Oh, I need to go hire someone out of Amazon and they cost
• 52:38
  $300,000. You know, how do I raise money
• 52:41
  to do that? Should all of these things, you
• 52:44
  know, being able to have those conversation I think is very
• 52:46
  valuable. Do you find it easy to get
• 52:49
  founders to talk about those present moment challenges?
• 52:54
  Because as a founder is especially in a start up mode,
• 52:57
  like you want to present a good face and like, hey, like things
• 53:01
  are going well. We've got this bit of progress
• 53:03
  and now you're kind of asking them to.
• 53:05
  Yeah, yeah, that, that's a good point.
• 53:07
  But so, so far, I think we have three sessions under our belt.
• 53:11
  OK, I, I just, in fact, I, I just did the third session last
• 53:15
  Friday and, and they're, they're short, they're like 20-30 minute
• 53:18
  sessions. So, you know, I, I see what I'm
• 53:22
  mostly interested in is them, what they think about the
• 53:28
  process, what it's not necessarily they're, they're so
• 53:32
  we talk about why they built the company, what problem they're
• 53:36
  solving, but more about from the human side of it.
• 53:39
  How do they see this? Why do they believe having like
• 53:43
  advisors is a good thing? What are the challenges that
• 53:47
  they're facing? And you know, and that they feel
• 53:51
  like this particular challenge that I'm facing today is a lot
• 53:55
  more important than the things I was worrying about even months
• 53:58
  ago. I was stressing over things that
• 54:00
  I shouldn't have been, right? It's those those things that I
• 54:04
  think that are key. I mean, you're right, this and
• 54:07
  our goal isn't let's let's talk about all The Dirty laundry,
• 54:10
  quote UN quote, but it's more about, you know, just talk about
• 54:14
  some of the things that you're going through in terms of how
• 54:16
  it's helped you, but as well as how it can help others.
• 54:21
  You know, like one of the questions I typically ask is,
• 54:25
  you know, as a founder, advices comes along a lot, you know, you
• 54:31
  know, what's the value of dues? Do they see in getting advisors,
• 54:36
  getting mentors? And then what do they do when
• 54:38
  they get conflicting answers? You know, you can easily grab 10
• 54:42
  people around you that tell you 10 different things.
• 54:44
  How do you decide which one to take right?
• 54:48
  Yeah, my hat's off to you. If you can get them to talk
• 54:51
  about sort of the present moment challenges.
• 54:53
  It was something that I kind of thought about doing early on
• 54:56
  with this podcast, and I realized that that's sort of a
• 54:59
  tough spot to put somebody in, you know, on air because, you
• 55:04
  know, then you're being super vulnerable in the moment.
• 55:08
  This is actually a really good lead in for my favorite question
• 55:11
  that I always ask my guests on this interview, which is, what's
• 55:14
  the serious challenge that you've gone through in the past,
• 55:17
  Peymon? Yeah.
• 55:19
  How did you get through it? What did you learn?
• 55:21
  You know, how has it made you a better person today?
• 55:24
  Well, I when I built my first start up and it failed so and
• 55:31
  you know, I built that company after I left the corporate world
• 55:35
  thinking I want to be an entrepreneur.
• 55:37
  I've walked up the corporate ladder many times in different
• 55:40
  areas and I want to try my hand up having my own business.
• 55:45
  And that's where actually the thought came out.
• 55:46
  I wanted my own business. And then I got into it because
• 55:51
  someone I knew proposed an idea and I said, sure, that sounds
• 55:54
  good. Let's let's go try this.
• 55:57
  Knowing what I didn't know. Now, I would have done that so
• 56:00
  differently. I went into it very blindly,
• 56:04
  kind of believing and trusting things because they sounded
• 56:06
  good, not because of the hard data behind it, you know,
• 56:12
  picking team members that you know, because of knowing them,
• 56:17
  not because of their there's alignment in terms of building
• 56:22
  the company and the strategic vision of it.
• 56:25
  So those things, you know, and, and during that whole thing, you
• 56:29
  know, start a company with few $1000 made, you know, I don't
• 56:32
  know, few 10s of KS of dollars. But at the end, it wasn't going
• 56:38
  to get to where I wanted to, you know, but what the vision I had
• 56:43
  in mind because of how it started, because of the
• 56:46
  infrastructure that we built within that company in terms of
• 56:50
  scaling the customer base. You know, I learned about the
• 56:53
  customer base. I thought I knew them, but six
• 56:56
  months into I started really annoying them.
• 56:58
  I'm like, wait a minute, this what we're trying to do?
• 57:01
  This market can't pay for it. Can you, can you be more
• 57:04
  specific about what it was that you learned?
• 57:06
  Yeah, we, the idea was to be able to serve the real estate
• 57:13
  agents that really, I should also phrase this is like back 15
• 57:20
  years ago. So this is not recent.
• 57:23
  So back then marketing was really shifting towards online
• 57:26
  marketing. A lot of the Realtors that were
• 57:30
  in the business for 20-30 years, they weren't able to adopt, you
• 57:35
  know, adapt, I should say, excuse me, that whole marketing
• 57:38
  shift. So us having technical
• 57:41
  background, we said OK, we can help them, we can build their
• 57:45
  online presence, we can be their marketing arm.
• 57:48
  You know, back then agents would get like a single page with a
• 57:52
  little picture and like a paragraph about them on their
• 57:56
  broker's website. So we can change that.
• 57:58
  We can give them their own identity and all this.
• 58:02
  So that's, that was the approach.
• 58:05
  The what we ended up, I ended up finding out is that most
• 58:10
  Realtors fake it till they make it, you know, as as many do,
• 58:14
  they're, they may drive Mercedes, but they're not going
• 58:16
  to spend, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars on
• 58:19
  websites, right. So understanding the market from
• 58:22
  the customer's perspective is something I learned the hard way
• 58:25
  there, you know, assumptions that I had made going into that
• 58:31
  business. As time went by, I started
• 58:35
  validating those assumptions and realizing, oh, which ones are
• 58:38
  true, which ones isn't? You know, so towards that
• 58:41
  process it, it really provided a different perspective in terms
• 58:46
  of what entrepreneurship is and what's the right way to approach
• 58:50
  it. You know, so, and now I use that
• 58:54
  and you know, when I had talked with our founders, I mean like
• 58:56
  this morning, I was speaking with the founder that just
• 58:59
  joined us, describing to me the product that they're building.
• 59:03
  And when I shifted the conversation towards the
• 59:05
  customer, I'm like, OK, if you're the customer, these are
• 59:08
  the questions I would ask. How would you answer it?
• 59:10
  You would pause. And I said, well, I'm not sure I
• 59:12
  got to think about that. It's like, let's go do that
• 59:15
  research. All right.
• 59:16
  So now I have like a founder that came and said, hey, I'm
• 59:19
  running surveys with different groups and I got 2 ideas for a
• 59:25
  business trying to see which one makes more sense.
• 59:28
  It's like amazing, the right thing.
• 59:29
  So not that one particular experience for me, but it didn't
• 59:34
  by any means remove my desire to go into entrepreneurship.
• 59:39
  You know, I that I knew that's something I wanted to do, but
• 59:42
  what it morphed into was not just building my own companies,
• 59:47
  but finding a way to help other founders.
• 59:50
  You know, I, one of the things I did very early in my career was
• 59:55
  as I was finishing my my degree, I actually did an internship at
• 1:00:00
  Hewlett Packard and they asked me to go back to my alma mater
• 1:00:06
  and teach there as part of a sponsorship from HP.
• 1:00:10
  So I ended up becoming a like a quote UN quote professor
• 1:00:14
  teaching a engineering course. And I did that for several years
• 1:00:18
  while while I was living up there.
• 1:00:19
  And I really enjoyed that. And I never realized that about
• 1:00:22
  myself that, you know, having this.
• 1:00:25
  In a in and it was really an interesting thing for me because
• 1:00:28
  in fact the first semester I did it, the people in the class were
• 1:00:33
  my friends, my roommate and my ex professors.
• 1:00:38
  Now they are sitting in front of me and I'm on trying to teach
• 1:00:41
  them and I was like man, what can I teach these guys?
• 1:00:44
  And I realized just because I was in the industry for, I think
• 1:00:48
  at that time, nine months, what I was exposed to was so far
• 1:00:53
  ahead that what they had seen in academia that there was value
• 1:00:56
  that I could see that, OK, we're starting the conversation here
• 1:00:59
  on day one. By the time the semester ended,
• 1:01:02
  what knowledge I was able to partake.
• 1:01:04
  And that's always stuck with me. So now, I mean, one of the
• 1:01:08
  things for us to go from just a pure benchmarking scoring system
• 1:01:13
  to add this accelerate program, Add all this value, all this
• 1:01:17
  education into what we offer founders.
• 1:01:20
  It's, it's kind of a very interesting, you know, 360
• 1:01:23
  moment for me, so. Excuse me.
• 1:01:26
  So when you were going through that first start up, how did you
• 1:01:31
  get to the point of realizing this isn't going to work?
• 1:01:34
  Was there somebody from the outside that was sort of like
• 1:01:37
  shining a light for you? Was it a sudden realization for
• 1:01:40
  you? Was it like a slow burn where
• 1:01:42
  you kind of eventually got comfortable with the fact that?
• 1:01:46
  What? We're doing here isn't working.
• 1:01:50
  I'm a quick study and I said, after several months, I realized
• 1:01:54
  this isn't going to work mainly because the Co founder I had our
• 1:01:58
  thoughts about being building a company was very different.
• 1:02:02
  You know his his mind. You know nothing wrong with it.
• 1:02:05
  It's just you know, everybody has their their way, their
• 1:02:09
  thoughts behind how to build the company and what I had
• 1:02:12
  envisioned and what he had envisioned was slightly
• 1:02:15
  different. And not only that, the pressures
• 1:02:18
  of, you know, leaving a high paying job and building a
• 1:02:22
  company now you're not you're living off your savings.
• 1:02:24
  So it's like, OK, how much can I continue this before it can take
• 1:02:31
  off? Will it take off?
• 1:02:32
  You know, and then seeing the dynamics with my business
• 1:02:36
  partner at that time, it became very evident to me that this
• 1:02:40
  this isn't going to work long term.
• 1:02:42
  I either got to completely pivot the company, build it
• 1:02:46
  differently, maybe going to other markets as well, and also,
• 1:02:51
  you know, from a company formation from a partnership
• 1:02:55
  standpoint that wasn't going to work.
• 1:02:58
  So, you know, after, you know, I think it was nine months or so,
• 1:03:03
  I realized that this is not going to be as effective as I
• 1:03:06
  had thought. Was there an emotional component
• 1:03:08
  there for you to deal with or were you being called and
• 1:03:10
  calculated and like next thing? No, but but it was mutual.
• 1:03:15
  But it wasn't just me. It was we both sat this side,
• 1:03:18
  OK, this is not going to work because of honestly.
• 1:03:21
  And then what drove it was we can't feed to households with
• 1:03:27
  this company. Maybe not emotional between each
• 1:03:30
  other, but was there like an emotional component for you you
• 1:03:33
  were able to separate? That Oh yeah, that, that I, I've
• 1:03:36
  never been emotional that way whatsoever.
• 1:03:39
  I mean, business is business. Life is life.
• 1:03:41
  I mean, for me, it's got to make sense to invest your energy
• 1:03:46
  someplace, right? I mean, you invest, you know,
• 1:03:49
  all day long in terms of your energy, your, you know, your,
• 1:03:54
  your work. I don't want to say it's your
• 1:03:57
  life, but it's a huge component of your life, right?
• 1:04:00
  You know where you spend it. You know, it's not only with
• 1:04:02
  your family, it's not with your friends.
• 1:04:04
  It's like doing it and, and when you're building a company, it's
• 1:04:07
  not just 9:00 to 5:00 or 8:00 to 5:00, right?
• 1:04:10
  It's nights, weekends, holidays, doesn't matter.
• 1:04:13
  So I mean, yesterday was a holiday and I was working, you
• 1:04:16
  know, so you have to be comfortable with that.
• 1:04:19
  You have to be OK with that. And if it, you realize that it's
• 1:04:22
  not working, you have to be OK with pulling the plug, you know,
• 1:04:26
  So I mean, for me, I got to really believe in something.
• 1:04:31
  And when I do, I don't let go. I don't bend the knees easily,
• 1:04:35
  but when I realized, OK, this is, this is not going to work.
• 1:04:40
  I don't believe that it's going to work.
• 1:04:41
  Once the belief is gone, then it's immediate for me.
• 1:04:45
  It's pretty clean cut for you. So up to this point, what are
• 1:04:51
  the biggest growth levers that you've been able to pull for
• 1:04:54
  Peach Score? What has contributed the most to
• 1:04:58
  that growth in the number of? Members, Absolutely.
• 1:05:01
  As soon as you guys added that, no.
• 1:05:03
  No, see, I mean, we built the company around the benchmarking
• 1:05:07
  scoring system, which I mean, it's core part of what we do,
• 1:05:12
  right? But that by itself, it's like,
• 1:05:16
  how do we get scale in terms of globally, people recognize this
• 1:05:21
  as something they need. What they need is we need to
• 1:05:25
  help people. We need to really help founders
• 1:05:28
  in all aspects of them building their business.
• 1:05:31
  And that that realization was absolutely huge.
• 1:05:34
  I mean, I, I remember the day vividly when the founder called
• 1:05:39
  me when Alex called me and said, what do you think if you did
• 1:05:42
  this? And, you know, we talked for
• 1:05:46
  days trying to really understand, you know, and, and
• 1:05:49
  we didn't want to do it the same.
• 1:05:51
  And there's you go search online for accelerators, incubators.
• 1:05:56
  I mean, the lists are limitless, you know, globally.
• 1:05:58
  So the differentiation was one thing, but the value that was to
• 1:06:04
  to me, to us was really, really huge.
• 1:06:06
  The value that we can provide founders now we can truly help
• 1:06:10
  them, you know, I mean that that what I mean, it was it was like,
• 1:06:16
  wow, this is it, you know, like for me, that was really huge so.
• 1:06:20
  How do most people find you Peymon?
• 1:06:23
  Do you know a good good question for me personally or?
• 1:06:26
  No Peach score, Yeah. Peach score Well, we just, you
• 1:06:29
  know, look up peachscorepeachscore.com is the
• 1:06:31
  best way to find us. Sorry, let me rephrase the
• 1:06:34
  question. How do most people become aware
• 1:06:36
  of Peach score? So that.
• 1:06:37
  Are you guys running Facebook ads?
• 1:06:39
  Is it from? A from a marketing stand.
• 1:06:41
  From a marketing perspective. 1st, it's through our
• 1:06:44
  partnerships. We love partnerships.
• 1:06:46
  I mean, if you look on our websites right now, it says
• 1:06:49
  Peach Score Plus Dilo Delam is a massive organization around
• 1:06:56
  supporting Angel groups out of Estonia.
• 1:06:58
  They're one of our key partners. We also, we announce
• 1:07:01
  partnerships quite regularly because partnerships are key for
• 1:07:05
  business. Having the right partners can
• 1:07:07
  really elevate you see one of the challenges that every star,
• 1:07:11
  I mean Peach Core, you know, we're a fairly young company.
• 1:07:15
  You know, one of the things that every young company has a
• 1:07:18
  challenge of is exactly that. How do people find you right?
• 1:07:22
  My goal is for anyone that around the world that says, OK,
• 1:07:26
  we need help, where should we go?
• 1:07:29
  They might think, well, YC or Pete score.
• 1:07:32
  That's what I want. I want us our right now.
• 1:07:34
  Actually, I think if you search for accelerators and chat GPTR
• 1:07:37
  name comes up pretty high. It's not the highest, you know,
• 1:07:40
  so getting our name recognition, getting people to know who we
• 1:07:44
  are is really important getting and this is true for every
• 1:07:47
  startup. So to answer your question from
• 1:07:50
  the marketing standpoint, partnerships, that's that's a
• 1:07:53
  great vehicle for any founder, any startup.
• 1:07:55
  You build the right partnerships And see, I look at partnerships
• 1:07:59
  as building bridges, but I look at it slightly different.
• 1:08:02
  So partnerships you typically say there needs to be a win win.
• 1:08:05
  Absolutely. But I look at it and say they
• 1:08:08
  need to be a win, win, win, three wins.
• 1:08:10
  Well, how is that? Well, I need to provide a win to
• 1:08:12
  my partner. They need to provide a win to
• 1:08:14
  me. But to combine, we need to
• 1:08:17
  provide a win to the ecosystem, to the startup community, right?
• 1:08:21
  And those are the type of synergetic partnerships that we
• 1:08:24
  look for, companies that are completely aligned in terms of
• 1:08:27
  the vision that we have, in terms of the value and the
• 1:08:30
  support that we want to offer founders globally.
• 1:08:33
  And when you do that, your brand awareness really rises.
• 1:08:36
  It sounds to me like, you know, especially with the introduction
• 1:08:39
  of the accelerator program more recently, that you guys are
• 1:08:43
  already offering tremendous value and services to your
• 1:08:47
  members. What does the future look like?
• 1:08:50
  Are there other services that you want to offer?
• 1:08:53
  Is it sort of like we've got a core group of services, we just
• 1:08:55
  want to get the word out more? Well, no, there, there's
• 1:08:58
  definitely that. We want to continue getting the
• 1:09:00
  word out, but no, I envision being able to have founders to
• 1:09:05
  be able to utilize Peach score from the time they think of a
• 1:09:08
  company all the way onto Series A and beyond and every aspect of
• 1:09:12
  it. Me being able to tie it to
• 1:09:16
  financial aspects of their being able to through our partners,
• 1:09:20
  you know, being able to open bank accounts, being able to
• 1:09:24
  manage their cap table, being of all kinds of different things.
• 1:09:27
  We can as a this is the thing I love because we're a tech
• 1:09:30
  company. We, you know, we're not a
• 1:09:33
  services company purely right. Because of that, we're able to
• 1:09:37
  say, OK, how else can we help the founders?
• 1:09:39
  So one of the things that we just did, we introduced I, I
• 1:09:43
  think I mentioned that early in our conversation, AAI based tool
• 1:09:47
  to analyze APDF pitch stack. All right, so now it's the same
• 1:09:53
  way, our benchmarking report. Now you don't have to sit down
• 1:09:55
  with an advisor, you don't have to go find a mentor.
• 1:09:58
  You can come on to the PIT Score platform, upload your pitch
• 1:10:01
  stack, see the report, see what it says and you can analyze
• 1:10:05
  that, go to the educational components that we talked about
• 1:10:08
  and then be able to do that. So we can do that in a number of
• 1:10:11
  different areas as you're building your business, you
• 1:10:14
  know, what type of entity structure should you have, what
• 1:10:17
  you know, how do you you know what type of bank accounts, who
• 1:10:20
  should bank, you know, suggestions for that cap table
• 1:10:23
  management, you know all these. And we're through with our
• 1:10:25
  partners that we have been able to bring in solutions all in one
• 1:10:29
  place. So you have like a dashboard to
• 1:10:31
  be able to really manage your business.
• 1:10:34
  I definitely can. Our company growing in that
• 1:10:36
  direction, being able to, you know, add more and more value to
• 1:10:39
  our founders. And then also for them to be
• 1:10:42
  able to gain visibility throughout the investment
• 1:10:45
  corporate community via their PIT score profiles, you know,
• 1:10:50
  and that will, you know, they can renew their membership with
• 1:10:53
  us on an annual basis and they'll continue staying with us
• 1:10:56
  as we continue to support it. Peyman, I've just got one more
• 1:11:00
  question for you before I ask it.
• 1:11:02
  I'm going to invite everyone in to go ahead and hit the follow
• 1:11:04
  button on their favorite podcast app.
• 1:11:06
  Continue to get more great interviews like we've had today
• 1:11:08
  with Peyman from peachscore.com. I think we've already covered
• 1:11:12
  this next point, which is how can folks get in touch with you?
• 1:11:14
  It's peachscore.com or the Peach Score channel on YouTube.
• 1:11:18
  Any other ways for folks to? I think we're starting to also
• 1:11:24
  get going on X and and some of the other platforms.
• 1:11:27
  Me personally, the best way to get a hold of me is on LinkedIn
• 1:11:31
  always. The P score is on LinkedIn as
• 1:11:33
  well and my e-mail is paymon@pscore.com.
• 1:11:36
  Very easy if you'd like to get a hold.
• 1:11:37
  We'll include links for all that in the show notes, folks.
• 1:11:40
  But last question for you, Paymon, what's your superpower?
• 1:11:43
  How would you characterize that? Jack of all trades, you know,
• 1:11:52
  I've actually had management I work with call me that see part
• 1:11:57
  of this. I don't know how much time we
• 1:11:59
  have, but I can give you a little story.
• 1:12:02
  I graduated high school at 16. So when I graduated that early
• 1:12:07
  and my, you know, first time immigrant, my parents that came
• 1:12:13
  here, they really, they didn't go to college, you know, so for
• 1:12:18
  them I was the first child, you know, graduating, trying to go.
• 1:12:22
  I had no idea. And I was good in math.
• 1:12:25
  So I was like, OK, I need to apply to college because I guess
• 1:12:29
  that's what she's supposed to do when you graduate high school.
• 1:12:32
  And I literally thought about it that way.
• 1:12:34
  So I want to sit down with a counselor.
• 1:12:36
  I'm like, I want to apply. Like where do you want to apply?
• 1:12:38
  I'm like, I don't know. I'm keeping my 16 year old kid
• 1:12:42
  immigrated here. Like, yeah, what was it 4 years,
• 1:12:45
  4 1/2 years earlier? I have no clue about any of
• 1:12:49
  this. And my parents didn't know
• 1:12:51
  either. So it was, you know, going to a
• 1:12:53
  school counselor and going they're like, well, the school
• 1:12:56
  here. So I went to California State
• 1:12:59
  University, Sacramento. That's where I grew up.
• 1:13:01
  And they're like, it's a grade school.
• 1:13:04
  What do you want to study? I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:13:05
  That was really my I don't know. Well, you're great in math.
• 1:13:09
  You're doing it. How about you being a math
• 1:13:10
  major? Sure.
• 1:13:12
  So I went to Sax Data as a math major and I started meeting
• 1:13:16
  friends and they started asking me what's your major?
• 1:13:20
  I'm like math. They're like, oh, fantastic, you
• 1:13:21
  want to be a teacher? I'm like, no, I don't.
• 1:13:23
  Who says I want to be a teacher? And then, you know, I started
• 1:13:28
  really saying, OK, I got to really figure this out.
• 1:13:30
  I can't just let other people decide which is where I want to
• 1:13:33
  go. And at the time, computers were
• 1:13:36
  really starting their personal computers.
• 1:13:38
  We're talking 480 sixes. You know, I'm paging myself
• 1:13:41
  there. You know, I started coming out
• 1:13:44
  and I had a lot of interest in using them.
• 1:13:48
  And so I started looking. And SAG stayed actually very
• 1:13:54
  interesting school because they had a computer science program
• 1:13:57
  and they had started a computer engineering program, right?
• 1:14:02
  And then they obviously had electrical, electronic
• 1:14:04
  engineering. And at first I thought
• 1:14:07
  electrical engineering, right, That's the thing.
• 1:14:09
  But then I met students that graduated and then next fall
• 1:14:14
  they were back. And I asked them why they're
• 1:14:16
  like, there's no jobs. So I'm like, OK, I got to really
• 1:14:19
  figure this out there. They were like, at that time,
• 1:14:21
  electrical engineering was like the fastest growing thing.
• 1:14:24
  So the competition was too high. So then I started looking at
• 1:14:29
  computers science or engineering.
• 1:14:31
  What's the difference? And I learned computer science.
• 1:14:34
  It's mainly you become a program, you start coding and
• 1:14:37
  development engineering, you get to do both hardware and
• 1:14:40
  software. And that intrigues me.
• 1:14:42
  And that's been something that's in me all the time.
• 1:14:46
  I'm not satisfied with doing just one thing.
• 1:14:48
  You know, it's a constant growth.
• 1:14:50
  I got to learn more. I got to figure new things out.
• 1:14:53
  So it's like, oh, I can do software and hardware.
• 1:14:55
  Fantastic. So roll the clock forward.
• 1:14:57
  And now I graduate. And I actually got into HP
• 1:15:01
  through a sponsorship program that HP was doing where they
• 1:15:03
  sent one of their management out of the engineering group to
• 1:15:08
  teach a new program on ASIC design, custom chip design using
• 1:15:13
  Verilog. And they handpicked top 12
• 1:15:16
  students out of the computer engineering program.
• 1:15:19
  And I was one of them. And they said, you guys need to
• 1:15:20
  go into this program. We're like, why we're
• 1:15:22
  graduating. No, no, you guys better go in
• 1:15:24
  there. And what we didn't know was a
• 1:15:25
  recruiting mechanism for HP. So most of us got hired into HP
• 1:15:31
  during that program. And I actually at that time, I
• 1:15:33
  was doing that class and also in a class that I was writing an
• 1:15:37
  operating system for the the graduation course requirement.
• 1:15:42
  I was really enjoying that. Not a piece of software, but a
• 1:15:45
  whole an. Actual operating.
• 1:15:47
  System. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:48
  It was an operating system, of course, and so when I got in it,
• 1:15:51
  this was so interesting because when they brought the HP
• 1:15:56
  management to talk to us to see who's a good fit, when they
• 1:15:59
  asked me what I wanted to do, what I like doing, I was having
• 1:16:03
  so much fun in that OS class. That's what I talked about.
• 1:16:06
  And they're like, OK, these guys are hardware folks, Paymon is a
• 1:16:09
  software folk. So they actually hired me to go
• 1:16:12
  into their software group and I was like, that's really
• 1:16:15
  interesting. But I went in and I and I and I
• 1:16:17
  went, it was so great because I was able to work in software and
• 1:16:22
  firmware actually, not software for doing low level code.
• 1:16:26
  And I got to do all kinds of new stuff, new innovations there,
• 1:16:30
  right. And then sure enough, nine
• 1:16:32
  months later, they asked me to go back and teach as I
• 1:16:34
  mentioned. But then I was like, you know
• 1:16:36
  what, I want to do something different now.
• 1:16:38
  And I imagine this, yeah, two years out of school, I want to
• 1:16:41
  say I want to do something different.
• 1:16:43
  Like, sure, what do you want to do?
• 1:16:43
  I want to say I want to do some hardware stuff.
• 1:16:46
  So the five years I was at HPI was I did almost every
• 1:16:50
  engineering job that division had and I was able to move
• 1:16:53
  around and I that followed me throughout my career.
• 1:16:57
  And Jack of all trades, it's what gives you that 360 view
• 1:17:00
  that we were. Talking about so I ended up, you
• 1:17:02
  know, throughout my career been a software engineer, been a
• 1:17:05
  hardware engineer. Then I was like, and you know,
• 1:17:08
  but a lot of it, I got to give credit to the management that I
• 1:17:11
  had because they've given it the opportunity to do it regardless
• 1:17:16
  about it, because it's very easy to say no, no, no, we hired you
• 1:17:19
  to be this, you stay in doing that.
• 1:17:21
  And they didn't see it that way. And you know that those first
• 1:17:24
  five years and even when I left HP and I left HP to the start of
• 1:17:29
  Design Center for Phillips Semiconductors.
• 1:17:33
  And when I did that, even there I was doing different things and
• 1:17:36
  it was like, you know, program management.
• 1:17:40
  I got into program management because management came and
• 1:17:43
  said, hey, we've got this giant project going on multiple sites.
• 1:17:48
  There's nobody managing this whole thing.
• 1:17:50
  Can you go and manage this? I'm like, I've never done that.
• 1:17:52
  They're like, you'll figure it out, just go do it.
• 1:17:54
  And that's how I got into program management.
• 1:17:56
  And after that was over, they're like, hey, you know, we need
• 1:17:59
  some help in marketing. You want to come and do this?
• 1:18:01
  So I ended up just, and I got this really broad background and
• 1:18:06
  experience and now in Pete Score I'm able to talk to founders
• 1:18:10
  about all of these different aspects of building their
• 1:18:12
  company. So it's really interesting how
• 1:18:14
  some early things in your career end up really helping shape how
• 1:18:18
  you can give back and you can provide value.
• 1:18:20
  Anyhow, sorry long story but. Hey man, from petescore.com, I
• 1:18:24
  want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your
• 1:18:26
  time and your story with us today.
• 1:18:28
  I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Anthony.
• 1:18:30
  Thank you for having me. It's been a great discussion.
• 1:18:33
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:18:35
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:18:37
  today.