Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / The Searchable Life: When Memories Get a Database

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The Searchable Life: When Memories Get a Database · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Everyone says capture the moment, but that's wrong.
0:02
Capturing the moment is actually why you're forgetting your life.
0:05
You've got 50,000 photos and not a single story.
0:09
You remember your kids laugh? Or do you just remember the
0:12
video of it? We're documenting everything and
0:14
remembering nothing. Because memories aren't pixels,
0:17
they're context. They're emotion.
0:18
They're the tiny details that hit you in the chest when you
0:21
least expect it. Say there's a product where you
0:23
don't just store memories, you interrogate them.
0:26
Show me every moment my mom smiled at my wedding.
0:28
What did my best friend say to me that day?
0:30
What color was the bench on that random road trip that changed
0:33
everything? Not a photo library, A
0:35
searchable life O here's a real question.
0:38
If your life was searchable, would you like what comes U?
0:41
Welcome to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:44
Today you're going to learn how founders are turning memories
0:46
into products, how AI is collapsing years of engineering
0:49
into weeks, and why distribution might matter more than the
0:53
product itself. This is for founders who want to
0:55
build things that actually stick emotionally and scale
0:58
commercially. And this idea, it comes from Bob
1:01
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They book you on the right podcast, get you on the right
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1:41
Bob, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining
1:43
me. Awesome.
1:44
Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate you having me.
1:46
Absolutely, my pleasure. Is it safe to say that you're a
1:49
romantic? Maybe the older I get the more
1:54
nostalgic I get, that's for sure.
1:56
Oh, I know, me too. In the same way.
1:58
The way I talk to my kids about the 90s.
2:00
You think we're all we all had flowers in our hair.
2:04
I married someone who cannot be more nostalgic.
2:08
I mean, it is not possible to be to be more nostalgic than my
2:11
wife is. And so I think over time that
2:14
has rubbed off on me in a lot of ways.
2:17
And it's super ironic that I'm the one doing this and not her.
2:21
It's amazing. You know, my my wife could be in
2:23
the contention for most nostalgic as well.
2:25
Here's a test. If you're pulling out an old box
2:28
from the garage and you're like, hey, maybe we can put this into
2:30
a smaller box, how long is it going to take to get through the
2:33
stuff in that box? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:37
The, the, the real, the real question is how many boxes are
2:40
there, right. We, we are first kid, the first
2:45
shot that she had, you know the normal like pediatrician shots,
2:50
right? We saved the Band-Aid from that
2:53
first shot. Incredible.
2:55
And and you know what? It felt right to both of us,
2:58
right? It wasn't just her.
2:59
So I think that was clearly a turning point in my nostalgia.
3:04
And what about the time where I started thinking about
3:05
relivable? So, all right, well, you, you
3:08
get a black belt, you're a black belt nostalgia, which is
3:10
probably a good way to dovetail into your really cool product
3:15
Relivable and people can check it out at relivable.com.
3:18
Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, sure.
3:20
So you know, my background has been in kind of building tech
3:24
companies and you know, first as an early employee and then it
3:27
switched over a tenant kind of that founder role.
3:30
And I've always kind of been, you know, sort of drawn to new
3:37
stuff. I like the beginners mindset.
3:39
And I started relivable right around the time as I started
3:44
having kids. I had one kid and another one on
3:47
the way. And for me, I, I realized that,
3:51
you know, my behavior had changed.
3:53
I was taking photos and videos of seemingly everything in my
3:56
life. And I started to think, well,
3:58
how is technology going to help me look back at the life
4:02
memories that I want to, you know, sort of be nostalgic
4:05
about? And you know, for me, a photo is
4:09
great, right? Video is great because it's more
4:12
dynamic, right? You can hear voices, but there's
4:15
so much more to memories than just having a photograph of it.
4:20
And there's context, right? It's the stuff that engages you
4:23
into, you know, a story, albeit a, you know, a book, an article
4:27
or a movie, right? And so this was kind of the
4:32
initial impetus for Relivable was how are we using technology
4:37
to look back at the important life stuff, right?
4:40
And the first thing I did, because this was, you know, sort
4:44
of 2022-2023, I didn't want to jump into building another
4:50
company right away. So I spent some time researching
4:54
and was really methodical about how I approached Reliveable was,
5:00
you know, first let me just understand this.
5:02
Let me see if I want to fall in love with this idea, right?
5:07
And the more I started to pull a thread, the more I got really
5:11
excited about their needing to be a new platform where people
5:19
would have their digital keepsakes from their important
5:24
life memories. And you know, your photos app is
5:27
great, right? We take a ton of photos, but
5:30
it's also chaos, right? There's too much stuff there.
5:35
And so in, you know, our world of a reliable in the future,
5:39
right, It's digital keepsakes from your wedding, from, you
5:45
know, birth of kids, you know, kind of a, a, a whole journey
5:49
with your kids from birth, you know, through everything, right,
5:54
family trips, etcetera. And, you know, yes, there's
5:58
visual and there's a, you know, visual component of that is, is
6:01
is big, but also there's context in story, right?
6:05
You should be able to ask it questions, right?
6:07
You know what, you know, what color was the bench that we had
6:11
lunch on when we were on that road trip to Colorado, right?
6:15
You know, or whatever, you know, the detail is that you're
6:18
looking for. So that was kind of the origin
6:21
of reliveable. That got me really interested in
6:23
the more I dug in, the more I fell in love and the more I
6:28
wanted to make this a real thing.
6:32
Certainly we've changed and pivoted as a company from kind
6:36
of the initial research that we were doing, but we've always
6:40
been sort of, you know, attached to life events and how we
6:44
document them. I love it.
6:47
It's, you know, this is going to be sentimental because I'm
6:50
thinking of like, you know, like kind of how I share pictures
6:54
with my family. You know, my kiddos are 17 and
6:56
18. And so, you know, my daughter
7:00
when she was, I don't know, 5 was like when I, when do I get a
7:03
phone? And I was like, I don't know, 8
7:05
and she began a countdown. And so her 8th birthday is like,
7:09
where's my phone? And so we got her one.
7:11
So like, you know, thinking about like her videos and photos
7:14
from that, you know, the perspective, like everything is
7:17
up because she was little, you know, so like the the your, your
7:20
photos and videos, the older you get, the, the older the photos
7:25
and videos are, the more precious they are just
7:27
incredible, you know, to hear their little voices and things.
7:29
And in like that, it's like it's, it's so important.
7:32
And you know, the way that we share, it's just probably
7:34
through like on text thread, you know, we have a, a family text
7:39
thread that's called birdie buns for reasons.
7:42
But every once in a while I'll unearth some like kid memories
7:45
and stuff. And you put it in there, but
7:46
you're kind of at the whim of like whatever Apple's offering
7:49
up for you for the day. The ability to search, you know,
7:53
is, is huge, you know, because then you can get themes and you
7:56
can do more fun things. And obviously with generative AI
7:59
stuff, you can like have fun with it and do different stuff.
8:02
So I, I think there's like something like very, very sticky
8:05
with something like this because not only you kind of like, it's
8:08
not really about, it's not really about the photo videos,
8:13
it's about the, the experiences you shared with the people you
8:16
love the most. Yeah.
8:18
And I think one of the things you kind of touched on were some
8:21
of the details, right? The littlest details can connect
8:25
you to a memory in a way that makes it emotional.
8:30
You know, smile. You know it draws emotion,
8:32
right? You can smile, you could cry,
8:33
you could, you know, sort of laugh, you could be mad,
8:37
whatever, you know, sort of the emotion is.
8:40
But you know, when you think about the vantage point of the
8:43
photo, because your daughter was right, because she was little,
8:47
right, is such a fun thing to think about, right?
8:51
And it makes you, you know, then your mind kind of goes off and
8:55
all sorts of things of, oh, my goodness, how is she older now
8:58
and now how long ago was that? But I think the other thing that
9:02
technology is going to allow us to do in such a fun, you know,
9:11
cool way is interact with the content, right?
9:17
And you know, it's like the searchable create videos, right?
9:23
Add people in, you know, it's all real stuff.
9:28
So it's not, you know, trying to say like, put me in the Grand
9:31
Canyon if I've never been at the Grand Canyon.
9:33
But, you know, I think technology is going to allow us
9:36
to take the stuff that we have done, the real events in life,
9:41
the stuff that's really meaningful, right, And interact
9:44
with it in a way that is, you know, allows you to be more
9:48
nostalgic, right? I think that I wish I was better
9:54
at documenting my life before I was 37.
9:57
Right. Yeah.
10:00
You know, there's like the pre kids and the post kids me,
10:03
right? And you know, it's the older I
10:06
get, the Bornus Aldrich I get. Totally.
10:09
Well, and there's kind of it's kind of a category of product
10:11
called like Second Brain. Some people call it, you know,
10:14
where, you know, we can document these things and relive them
10:18
later. And if I'm being honest with
10:20
myself, probably a lot of the memories I have of my children
10:24
are when they were children is actually memories of the videos
10:28
and pictures that we took, you know, cause for whatever reason,
10:32
you know, the moment is fleeting.
10:34
And I think it's probably some kind of like evolutionary
10:37
advantage that we can't, we don't have a great memory of
10:39
things, but we have a much better memory of looking at a
10:42
photo because we're much more in the moment looking at a picture.
10:45
So I, the, the image I have in my head of my kids eating
10:48
breakfast, you know, and they're eating eggs on their little
10:51
table with their little chairs and they're just like eating
10:53
eggs. It's actually a video I took
10:55
when I first got a video camera because phones didn't have
10:58
videos back then. So I was like, Oh, I got a
10:59
little handhelds and I was taking, you know, probably what
11:02
everybody does. You get it out-of-the-box, you
11:03
take videos for a week and then like, it just goes to the back
11:06
of the shelf. You never touch it again.
11:07
But that that's what I think about when I think about
11:10
breakfast with my babies, you know, So it's it's it has the
11:14
opportunity to be incredibly sticky, sticky product for one,
11:17
but also just like sweet, you know, and it's like, it seems
11:21
like as a project, it's a really fun project to work on.
11:25
No, it it has and you know the the science behind how you
11:30
remember stuff, right? When you are the act of taking a
11:34
photo, right? It just triggers something you
11:37
know, differently in your brain and you know, hopefully for a
11:42
good right and not for for the bad right.
11:45
But you know, the the thing I think it's really, really hard
11:48
to change human behavior, but human behavior has now changed
11:51
to where we're all photographers, right?
11:55
And, you know, our phone is our camera.
11:59
And, you know, we're for the most part, I, I, you know, all
12:03
age demographics too, right? Like my dad, who's in his 70s
12:07
takes photos. My mom in her 70s takes photos,
12:09
right? And my, you know, oldest niece
12:13
who's 13 takes photos, right? And it's, you know, everybody is
12:18
trained to be a photographer, where as you know, you go back
12:23
even 10 years ago, that was not the case, right?
12:28
And you know, and then. The quality, it is unbelievable
12:32
now, I mean, you want to know the best photographers in the
12:35
world? It's probably your niece and
12:36
your 13 year old girlfriends. Like teenage girls know how to
12:39
take a picture and they get upset if you don't do it right.
12:41
It's like, no, you got to zoom here, like this angle and you're
12:44
too close. I'm just like, I don't know,
12:46
Yeah. Family gatherings, we're not
12:49
handing the phone to me, you know, it's the we're handing in
12:53
somebody else to take it. So and then the other thing that
12:57
I found interesting, you said this is a project to work on is
13:00
that I really started this as a project to see whether I really
13:04
felt like this was a company, right?
13:06
And when I started the initial research, this wasn't a free
13:11
ChatGPT world. And I think what you can do with
13:18
AI today versus what was accessible a couple years ago
13:22
when we were just getting going is very different.
13:25
And, you know, with it, our thinking about the company has
13:29
evolved and we've made some pivots along the way to, you
13:34
know, try to do more and really see like where can we
13:38
differentiate reliveable long term for our customers?
13:44
And that's also been kind of a fun thing to sort of see, you
13:47
know, three years ago, what we do with our consumer app, right,
13:52
would have been 11:50 engineers in a year, a building, right?
13:55
Because it's very complicated. Now we're, you know, leveraging
14:00
some AI tools, but also building some of our own stuff, right,
14:03
with a much smaller team and much faster.
14:06
And I think that's kind of another thing that technologist
14:09
in me is sort of really enjoyed is it's like as I've sat with
14:13
this and you know, sort of been building the business, you know,
14:16
the tools have changed, right? And you know, to the point
14:20
where, you know, I'm by no means an engineer, but I can kind of
14:25
lean a little little bit on the product stuff, which is also fun
14:28
for me. But you are an engineer now.
14:31
I mean, that's that's the crazy thing it there's.
14:33
Claude made me one. Claude made me one.
14:36
Yeah, I mean, that's I, I've been like kind of correcting
14:39
myself when I've had those thoughts because I'm, I've
14:42
always felt like I'm a designer, you know, maybe I'm a lot of
14:45
things, but like I always related most to design.
14:48
But now it's like, no, no, no man, like you're, you're an
14:51
engineer now, like and and hold that because it's true, you
14:55
know, it's like we have a senior engineer and a whole fleet of
14:58
them right there, you know, and it's only getting better, which
15:02
is really interesting. Now with relivable, it looks
15:04
like you're really positioning around the wedding right now.
15:07
Is that intentional? And kind of where do you see
15:09
that? How has that evolved?
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16:07
Now back to the show. Yeah, absolutely.
16:09
So, so initially we started with wedding because it's such an
16:13
important life event. We wanted to be purpose built
16:16
for an event where a there's a lot of content and content is
16:22
very important, right? And it's a pain point for
16:24
everybody. We also wanted a memory that was
16:29
in a life event that would had a long shelf life, right?
16:32
Something that was intended to last a long time, which weddings
16:36
are. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully.
16:42
And and and then lastly, you know, as we thought about the
16:49
events that we wanted to target, right, we thought about kind of
16:54
some of the characteristics. So the content from weddings is
16:58
extremely collaborative. So today's couple can have, you
17:01
know, 4 or 5000 photos and videos taken along the way from
17:06
the beginning when they're engaged all the way through to,
17:10
you know, their honeymoon, right?
17:12
And it can be, you know, depending on your wedding size,
17:14
you know, you know, dozens, if not over 100 people who have
17:18
photos that you would want, right?
17:21
And so we wanted to create something that would make it
17:25
easy to collaborate with those, you know, sort of guest friends,
17:30
people to contribute, but also the professional.
17:34
And we want to merge, you know, the user generated with
17:37
professional content, because when you're thinking about your
17:41
wedding and you go back, you're not like, I only want to see the
17:44
one that Ryan the photographer took, right?
17:47
You're like, no, I want to see the ones with me and my really
17:50
good childhood friends, right? Or with my parents, right?
17:54
You're, you're thinking about a memory.
17:55
You're not thinking of who took the photo, right?
18:00
The second thing is we wanted to create a way for where we could
18:05
get context, right? We could get the stories, we
18:08
could get more than just the photo.
18:10
And so we thought that the wedding had kind of this natural
18:13
guest book, you know, diary type of functionality where it's
18:19
already somewhat built into the process.
18:24
It's just not in one centralized place.
18:26
And so, you know, there could be a guest book, people could be
18:29
sending a text message or an e-mail after the event where
18:32
there's a lot of notes that the couple will get from their loved
18:36
ones. And so we found that this is a
18:39
really important part of documenting the life event.
18:43
And so again, we wanted to think about an event where that was
18:47
already sort of happening, right?
18:50
In some ways, because, you know, we want you to be able to go
18:54
back and really like ask it questions or create content off
18:58
of stuff where when I want to get nostalgic and I want
19:01
something with just me and my mom from my wedding, right?
19:04
You should be able to sort of tell it to build something for
19:08
that, right? And what were the words that my
19:10
mom said the day of my wedding, right?
19:14
So that's, that was sort of the initial thing, but, but we've
19:19
always had bigger or grander visions than just weddings.
19:21
So we, you know, we, we certainly are not stopping
19:24
there. And one of the more interesting
19:26
pivots that we made about six months ago was to build a second
19:32
product that was focused on venues, hotel venues, event
19:38
venues, places where events are happening.
19:42
And we were started to meet venues and show them our
19:47
consumer app. And what was interesting is that
19:50
the venue, the hotel and everything from Four Seasons
19:54
type, you know, high, you know, high end luxury to your, you
19:58
know, every, you know, you know, more budget.
20:01
Event Center asked us if they could use Relivable to store
20:07
their content to use for kind of the selling and planning
20:11
process. Right.
20:12
Their teams struggle to find quality content to show the
20:17
prospect is thinking about an event, a wedding, a corporate
20:20
event, whatever it may be at their venue.
20:23
And we started to hear this enough that we got really
20:27
interested. And so we took one step back.
20:30
We did a bunch of research and we dug in and we think we've
20:33
take taken several steps forward where we've now released a
20:37
second product that's all B to B focused and is really centered
20:42
around helping the venue with, you know, sort of selling their
20:47
prospect, right? And you know, visualizing what
20:50
the event could look like for them.
20:52
But then also beyond that, kind of creating some efficiencies of
20:56
all the different things that go into making that event a
21:00
reality, right? There's so many things that go
21:03
into planning a wedding, most of which my wife knows more about
21:07
than I do. But but that's where, you know,
21:12
about six months ago, we made an important shift.
21:15
And when we did this, it really started to unlock a lot of
21:20
potential with the business. And not surprising, you know,
21:24
we're AB to B to C company now, which is something in my career
21:29
I seem to gravitate towards. Cool.
21:31
Well, and plus advantage with weddings is everybody looks
21:35
great or everybody looks as good as they can be if I'm there, you
21:40
know, and you know, another thing too, to kind of for our
21:44
Gen. Z listeners to kind of wrap
21:45
their head around, it's probably pretty common that like, Oh
21:47
yeah, big event, 4 to 5000 pictures for sure.
21:51
But you know, I, I was married 21 years ago on a scratch
21:55
budget, you know, got married on a Sunday in the mountains and,
21:58
you know, I was engaged and we got married four months later.
22:01
We, we, they, they do things differently now, but a buddy of
22:04
mine had like a nice camera. I was like, hey, will you be the
22:06
photographer? He's like, sure, I'm going to
22:08
shoot in black and white. I'm like, great, that'll be
22:09
awesome. And out of the entire wedding,
22:12
we got 2 pictures, you know, and of course I, those hold a
22:18
special place in my heart. But like, now you know it, you
22:21
really need a place where they can all come together.
22:24
And as a venue, it makes total sense too, because it's
22:27
something that you can add on to at all times.
22:29
Plus with a venue, there's different ways you want to style
22:32
to taste, right? So you can have the, you have
22:34
the, the purple and white wedding and you have the gold
22:37
and black wedding and you can like really kind of give people
22:40
different looks based on that. And of course, you could use
22:43
that is an inspiration for the party planners to go in there
22:46
and say like, OK, here's the, the blank canvas of the the
22:49
venue. Here's our inspiration.
22:50
We can just do generative things to like make it to spec.
22:53
And it's that's just like a huge selling point, it seems really.
22:57
One of the things, yeah, one of the things on the venue sales
23:01
side is that typically a wedding is going to be one of the more
23:04
expensive, if not the most expensive purchase that that
23:07
couple is making in their life, right until they maybe buy a
23:12
home. And with the investment that
23:14
they're making, and no matter whether that's a lower or a high
23:17
budget, you would think that the venue would really want to
23:22
personalize the sales process for them.
23:25
And it's in, it's not that they don't want to, it's that it's
23:28
relatively challenging to manage content and give visuals to Ryan
23:35
for the type of wedding Ryan wants to have, right?
23:38
And you know, if you're going to have a really elegant black tie
23:42
wedding, you probably want to show Ryan images of black tie
23:49
weddings that have happened in really elegant setups.
23:52
If Ryan's coming in and saying, hey, I want a super casual like
23:56
fun party where we've got a buffet and everybody's dancing,
23:59
you probably want to show a different setup, right?
24:01
You want to show that you can really execute the type of event
24:05
that, you know, the prospect is telling you they want to have.
24:08
And you know, I, I mentioned the thing about it being such a big
24:12
expense is that, you know, you'd want to tailor that sales
24:15
process as much as possible for them to visualize it, right.
24:21
And you know, the, and then your comment about the Gen.
24:24
Z, you know, sort of couples getting married today is like
24:28
they've had an iPhone for most of their life, not just a phone,
24:32
right? You know, they've had an iPhone
24:33
has, has been there. You know, they didn't have the
24:35
camera or the Zack Morris phone, right?
24:38
You know, they had, they've, they've had a camera phone where
24:42
they've always had quality images from their, their phone.
24:47
And so as a results, you know, these are digital natives,
24:50
right? They're, they're, they're
24:51
expecting you to have these types of tools.
24:55
And so when we partner with a venue, we can build the consumer
24:59
app into the offering as well, where it just lets the venue
25:03
kind of speak to the challenges that the couples are going to,
25:06
you know, experience, right? Yeah, well, and the category is
25:09
only going to grow because how sophisticated Gen.
25:12
Z is with pictures alone is staggering.
25:16
So, I mean, you know, take my daughter, for example.
25:18
She and her friends are all gorgeous, you know,
25:21
unbelievable. So on one hand, they're taking
25:24
50 throwaway Snapchats a day. I don't even, it gives me
25:28
anxiety looking at her phone blowing up with Snapchat all the
25:31
time. But it's always like little
25:33
candid shots. But then they all have like at
25:36
least 2. I don't even know how many.
25:38
Maybe 2-3 different Instagrams, 2-3 different Tik Toks for
25:43
different things with different images and different aesthetics
25:46
on all of those. Like their understanding of like
25:49
how to represent themselves digitally online is, is
25:53
unbelievably nuanced and sophisticated that if they want
25:56
to have like a new channel with dedicated to this one thing,
25:59
they can execute on that like better than anybody I've ever
26:02
seen, you know, So the expectation, particularly around
26:04
a venue is like, you better, you better have some of the
26:07
something like this out-of-the-box or they're just
26:08
going to completely ignore you. Well, and that I think is such
26:12
an important point to kind of lean into is today's couple and
26:17
that, you know, I saw this dad online and it's not verified or
26:19
not mine, but it said 65% of couples are using ChatGPT to
26:24
plan their wedding, right? So 2/3 of the people getting
26:27
married are leaning into this AI tool, right?
26:31
Whereas 5% of hotels are using some form of AI.
26:36
So there's a huge gap, right? Consumers are saying, hey, we
26:40
like this, we want this. And hotels are event centers.
26:45
They don't know how, right? And what we aim to deliver for a
26:49
venue is a lot of that personalized, customized
26:53
experience that the Gen. Z client expects, right?
26:57
You know, they want to be able to ask questions like they're
26:59
talking to ChatGPT. They want instant gratification,
27:02
right? And you know, they wanted to be
27:05
really relevant to them, right? Show me the stuff I care about,
27:09
right? Don't show me the stuff.
27:10
Don't make me sift through it, right?
27:14
And as we've started to build out our B to B product, that's a
27:19
lot of what we aim to deliver as an improved consumer experience
27:23
to vet out the venues that you're looking at, right?
27:27
Give instant gratification. When somebody submits a form
27:31
today to have an event at a venue, they get a call back in a
27:35
day or two days or three days, right?
27:37
It's sort of a, you know, a black hole.
27:39
You submit an inquiry and you wait, right?
27:42
Whereas in our world, we think you should immediately get
27:45
something from the venue, but have it be curated for the type
27:49
of event you're having, right? I'm having a 200 person wedding
27:53
and it's going to be black tie and it's going to be this.
27:56
And I should have an album curated of content that's
27:59
relevant, right? Or if I'm someone hosting a
28:02
corporate event and I said, hey, I'm having a hundred person off
28:05
site and we're going to do a cocktail reception and then a
28:07
dinner afterwards. Like here's what I'm looking
28:10
for. You should curate content for
28:12
that person, right? Because that consumer, when they
28:15
submit the form, they're on your business.
28:17
They're interested, right? Don't make them wait, right?
28:23
You should give them immediately.
28:24
Let them interact with your brand, right?
28:27
And prime them, right, Or they opt out, right?
28:30
Maybe what you give them doesn't match what they want.
28:34
And then your sales team doesn't even need to spend any time on
28:36
it. Yeah.
28:37
I love that. Yeah.
28:38
I mean, those that weight lose now, I mean, people want toys to
28:42
play around with. If I'm coming to your venue and
28:45
it's like you're giving me all these traditional, you know,
28:47
pictures that are maybe maybe 10 years old, not maybe out of
28:50
fashion a little bit. I'm like, no, no, I I want a
28:53
country Western wedding. Like this isn't helping me when
28:56
you could immediately like cater that to be like some some kind
28:59
of whatever you want, you know, and if you can have that
29:02
interaction from a tool, brilliant.
29:05
I love it. OK.
29:06
And. Styles too, I think, you know, I
29:08
think the the systematic approach we've taken is to
29:10
always be able to kind of stay up with trends and styles.
29:13
And if the images are from 2012, someone might say, have you had
29:17
any events here since, you know, to 1415 years ago?
29:21
So, yeah, yeah. Everyone's wearing masks on the
29:24
website. You like, bro?
29:26
Come on man, don't. Yeah, exactly.
29:28
Bad memories. Come on now.
29:30
You still have the six feet, the six feet distant disclaimer.
29:35
Totally amazing. So where are you with the
29:38
project? Obviously this is launched.
29:39
Obviously you have clients. Did you finance, did you do, did
29:43
you bootstrap it? How did you begin?
29:47
Yeah. So I started with my own capital
29:49
and, you know, wanted to research and really sort of bet
29:53
out how much I liked this opportunity.
29:56
After I got through a certain point, I said, you know, I'm
29:59
going to raise some capital and, you know, really precede.
30:02
And so it was kind of that mix of friends, family, business
30:05
owners in my network who supported my vision understood
30:10
that we weren't, you know, we didn't have all the answers.
30:14
We were a typical PRECEDE company where we had an idea
30:17
that we wanted to bet out right at the end.
30:21
We kind of graduated from PRECEDE when we realized and you
30:26
know sort of validated this B to B go to market strategy where we
30:30
partner with venues as a way to, you know, help them, you know,
30:34
sell their space, but then also a distribution channel for our
30:36
consumer app. And so that was this fall.
30:41
So this spring we or this winter and spring we are raising a seed
30:45
round of capital, brought in some really good investors who
30:49
are you know sort of a mix of strategic and you know former
30:54
operators with tons of experience.
30:58
So we're now going to use that capital to scale the business,
31:03
continue to build out more product and also start to work
31:06
with more venues. We have a mix of clients right
31:08
now where it's some high end luxury resorts.
31:14
We also work with one of the brands at the corporate office,
31:17
one of the big brands at the corporate office.
31:18
And then we have some other kind of smaller local more, you know,
31:24
local event centers. Right now we're looking to
31:27
expand. Cool.
31:29
I'd love to kind of get your thought process around raising
31:31
because you have an incredible like startup career.
31:35
You know, from what I can see, you've, you've closed at least 7
31:38
rounds of funding with, with your prior project, have a
31:42
successful exit, you know, raised 8 figures for for that
31:47
business. You could bootstrap it
31:49
completely independently. Talk about like the value gained
31:53
from doing a precede and bringing in kind of strategic
31:56
advisors and kind of tactically what those folks are doing at
31:59
this stage in the business. Yeah, I, I'd say the first and
32:03
foremost for me, I didn't take outside capital until I was
32:08
fully committed to the business. You know, it's OK for me to, you
32:11
know, lose some of my own money. But before, you know, before I
32:14
raised outside capital, I had to know that I was committed
32:18
because that's a, that's a formal contract between me and
32:21
an investor that I'm going to, you know, do my best to get a
32:25
good outcome. And I, so I think that was the
32:28
first thing that I gave myself plenty of time to kind of fall
32:31
in love. I can't, you know, if I don't
32:35
love it, then, you know, the founder doesn't love it, right?
32:37
Like then, you know, I think you're going to, you're, you're
32:40
starting off on the wrong foot in terms of kind of who I've
32:43
targeted, how I sort of use current investors or, or, you
32:47
know, leverage, use leverage current investors.
32:50
And then the round that we've put together, you know, sort of
32:53
this year, first and foremost, I, I feel like it good investors
32:59
kind of hold you accountable and I'm always responsible for
33:03
sharing progress with the business with those investors,
33:07
right? And you know, at the PRECEDE
33:10
level, it may not be, you know, progress from sales and revenue
33:14
numbers, right? It could be, you know,
33:16
learnings, right, things that have gone wrong change ways that
33:20
we're changing, you know, sort of our thinking about the vision
33:23
for the company. And I, I, I use this sort of
33:27
term that we graduated from precede because I feel like you
33:31
graduate from precede when you have conviction in your product,
33:35
right? I don't think you have product
33:36
market fit, but you've got conviction in your product,
33:39
you've got some revenue, some paying customers and you have a
33:44
clear go to market strategy that you can execute on and that
33:50
you've validated in some way. And I feel like we did each one
33:53
of those things to my liking that we became a really good use
34:00
case for capital. And a good use case for capital,
34:04
in my opinion, is that you have something and you just need more
34:08
resources to go faster, right? And also speed is important.
34:15
I think what we're doing, somebody else could do
34:17
themselves, right? Today, everybody can build.
34:20
When we talked about being an engineer, right?
34:22
Today, everybody can build a product, right?
34:26
AI is making it easier and easier.
34:28
And there's another update coming in the next however many
34:31
weeks or months that's going to be even better than the today's
34:35
models. And So what I think is we need
34:40
to move fast, right? We need to really figure out how
34:47
we control value with our clients and build a mode around
34:51
our business of which I think we have a very good opportunity to
34:55
do that. I, I, you know, sort of believe
34:57
in our strategy, right? But I think if we wait too long,
35:01
someone else is going to do it, right.
35:03
And so one of the reasons why I decided to take on additional
35:08
capital and have a scale a little bit faster, right, is
35:11
because I think the next two to three years is so important for,
35:16
you know, our business. Just a lot of other business out
35:18
there that are trying to kind of figure out how they, you know,
35:21
sort of control enterprise relationships, right, with, you
35:26
know, the evolving AI landscape, right?
35:29
Tools are getting better and better, and it's easier and
35:31
easier for people to stand something up.
35:33
Yeah, you know, along those lines, it's, you know, startups,
35:37
I have such a passion for it right now, it seems very
35:39
important to have almost had distribution on the cap table.
35:43
So I, I'm curious like if any of your, you know, pre seed
35:48
investors are either design partners or early customers or
35:52
influencers in some capacity or if you're thinking about like
35:56
that broader distribution as being kind of maybe or maybe
36:00
even just bringing those kind of people onto the cap table.
36:03
Yes to all of that. Yes, the cap table currently has
36:07
people who help with distribution from different
36:10
angles. My last company, the first check
36:13
into my business was we sold to institutionally managed
36:17
apartment buildings. And the first checks into the
36:20
business were people who were the owner and operators of large
36:24
apartment buildings. And what I found it was that,
36:28
you know, having those people as investors is AG code because
36:34
they can not only give you access to the stuff that they
36:37
control as, you know, clients, they're also, you know, their
36:41
peers in the industry, right, that they can connect you with.
36:45
However, you don't just need one stakeholder, right?
36:49
Strategic can come in many different forms.
36:52
And so this time around, I've targeted people who are from the
36:55
owner, from the operator and understand the management side
36:59
of hotels and event venues, but also targeted people who know
37:02
the planning and people who know other elements of the event
37:06
business. Because for us to really scale
37:10
to what we, I think we can, right, we need to come at it
37:14
from kind of all angles and lean into, you know, sort of the
37:18
planner as well as the owner as well as the manager profile,
37:23
right? And so one of our, you know, one
37:26
person on the cap table is, you know, kind of the event planner
37:30
to the celebrity, right? And having her team starting to
37:33
use our product and give feedback on, you know, how they
37:36
can use it and how venues can use it is invaluable, right?
37:40
And, you know, let alone the connections and introductions
37:44
that can be made with someone who is, you know, planning these
37:48
ultra, you know, luxury bespoke events.
37:52
Yeah, I mean, it's, that's what's interesting is there is a
37:54
network effect play here. You know, it's B to B to C, but
37:58
the C part's really important because if it, if the UI is
38:01
elegant and you know, let's say it is some like mega baller
38:05
wedding where everyone is encouraged to share their thing
38:07
with the relivable link. And then that becomes, well, it
38:11
reminds me of one of the Kardashians.
38:14
There's kind of a famous way this gal who is making bikinis
38:18
wanted to get to Kylie. That's a that's a Kardashian,
38:22
right? Now you're talking about the
38:24
wrong person, but sounds right. I think, yeah, it's one of them.
38:27
It's one of them. But she really wanted to to
38:29
dress one of the Cardazians in her bikini, but reaching her is
38:34
almost impossible. So what she did is she gave away
38:36
these bikinis to all of her friends.
38:39
And so then Miss Kardashian was like, what are you guys all
38:43
wearing, you know? And so she felt excluded.
38:46
So immediately she had her assistant reach out and be like,
38:48
I need one of them, all of them. And she gave her a shout out on
38:50
Instagram or something which like put her brand into the
38:53
stroll. Of the brand.
38:54
You know, so this network effect can be very, very powerful.
38:57
And if there's this elegant experience at your best friend's
39:01
wedding and you're like, what is this tool?
39:03
This is the tool I need for my wedding in six months.
39:05
Because we know how friend groups get married in waves, you
39:09
know what I mean? So it's like having the the the
39:11
best experience at the most opportune time will naturally
39:14
create more customer experiences.
39:17
Yeah, the network effect is real here and in a lot of different
39:20
ways. And one of the smarter wedding
39:22
planners that our former wedding planners that I've gotten to
39:25
know told me that the way she grew her business was by being
39:28
best friends with the bridesmaids, because that was
39:31
her opportunity to grow. Because someone in there is
39:34
getting someone in there and getting married or knows
39:37
somebody who's getting married. My, I can remember, it is a
39:41
small little anecdote about my last company.
39:43
We worked with apartment buildings.
39:44
And so we provided an app to people who lived in an apartment
39:48
building as a way to communicate with the property.
39:51
And I remember we were thinking about, well, what if somebody
39:55
moves from one apartment into another apartment?
39:58
That works with us, right? And I, I thought that like blew
40:01
my mind up. I was like, we have to grow so
40:05
much for that to happen, right? And sure enough, it did end up
40:08
happening. Whereas for this business,
40:11
somebody going to one wedding, right?
40:14
And then being a guest at another wedding where our tool
40:17
could be used is very likely, right?
40:19
Just because, you know, a lot of, you know, weddings can have
40:22
100 and 5200 and 250 people and the way you usually idea of what
40:27
to use at your wedding is based off of what you've seen and used
40:32
at other weddings. And so, you know, I hope that we
40:35
get to the point where we're running into issues because
40:37
people have so many weddings on our platform where we're not
40:40
quite running into it yet. But knock on wood, hopefully
40:43
we'll we'll get there soon. Amazing.
40:46
We got a little time left. I'd like to take us into the
40:48
quantum round. Are you ready?
40:50
Sure. OK.
40:53
From your last project you were a little bit tentative getting
40:56
into a new project and I think that's very considerate to make
40:59
sure that like, hey, if I'm all in, I'm, I'm not afraid to like
41:02
launch this officially. What's something that take away
41:05
from your last company that you'll be sure not to do with
41:08
this one? I did a lot of reflecting at the
41:15
end of my last company before starting anything else.
41:20
We had some success and we certainly had some failures.
41:22
We made mistakes for sure. And I think one of the things
41:28
that we did is that we scaled a little fast and, you know, we
41:35
went from, you know, 10 people to 60 people a little faster
41:42
than I would have liked. And that we had certain areas of
41:46
our company that needed to grow up, some foundational stuff as
41:51
non sexy as it sounds, accounting, you know, some
41:53
things that, you know, are super important of how you're
41:56
collecting from your customers, right?
42:00
And as a result, got a little bit out ahead of our skis.
42:03
And I have told myself, you know, sort of after the fact is
42:08
I want to scale, but I also want to make sure we have a really
42:11
strong foundation as we scale so that we're only handling stuff
42:16
that we think that we can deliver on.
42:18
And, you know, we're not, you know, with new capital, we're
42:22
not going out and overspending, right?
42:25
You know, we're going to be, you know, yes, we have, you know,
42:28
ambition and we want to scale fast, but we're also not going
42:31
to get ahead of ourselves. Yeah, I love that.
42:35
And you also mentioned kind of like it was a cheat code to have
42:39
early customers on the cap table last time.
42:41
What are other superpowers you're carrying with you from
42:43
your last project to this one? Best compliment I got from one
42:49
of my past investors was just how determined I was to make
42:53
sure that the company succeeded. And he didn't mean this in a
42:59
negative way, but he said, I thought the company was dead 3
43:03
times. And somehow you, you know, got
43:08
the company through it. And, you know, not only did
43:11
that, but there was a successful exit to, you know, being, you
43:15
know, a big owner. And I took that as a compliment.
43:19
And it's certainly kind of part of my DNA is to not fail, right?
43:23
And just extraordinarily determined to make sure that
43:28
this company has an outcome. And you know, I see that as a,
43:35
you know, a skill and a strength and you know, something that
43:39
gets tested every day because this isn't easy.
43:43
But you know what? One thing I would just, you
43:45
know, as the, the type of founder I am is that, you know,
43:48
again, when you go all in to make this work, you've got to
43:52
make it work. I love it.
43:55
All right, last question. So Gen.
43:57
Z and millennials are notorious right now for taking longer to
44:02
get married, taking longer to have children.
44:05
Obviously, you're in the memories business.
44:07
You want to encourage both of them to get married and have
44:10
kids. Give me one song that you feel
44:14
that these generations could listen to that would do a good
44:17
job and inspiring them to take the next big step.
44:22
This is a hard one. I'm not the most musical person
44:25
I would have to go to like Bruce Springsteen because I'm a huge
44:28
Boss fan so. But some of the songs he writes
44:31
are a little sad. Yeah, that's what that's not
44:35
helping them Thunder. Road doesn't necessarily
44:37
inspire. Maybe born in the USA but.
44:42
It's also kind of a little dark. Yeah, Gosh, I don't know.
44:50
I'm not. I wish I was better at the
44:53
music. Answer here.
44:55
Mark this down as a fail for me. No, it's not.
44:57
It was a trick question. The correct answer is Let's Get
44:59
It on by Marvin Gaye. I like it.
45:05
This was a pass fail. That's right.
45:07
That's right. Yes.
45:10
Yeah. Incredible.
45:11
Well, this was fun. This was this was a lot of this
45:15
was good. I hopefully I was, you know,
45:17
articulate in some of my answers.
45:19
It was incredible. Ladies and gentlemen, go to
45:21
reliveable.com. Is that the best gateway to get
45:25
get the application? If you're a venue to go check
45:28
out and learn more from the demo.
45:31
Yeah, say www.reliveable.com you can learn about our consumer
45:35
facing app and or e-mail me bob@reliveable.com.
45:40
And one of the nice things about it being your company is you can
45:44
have a simple e-mail. Totally.
45:47
Is there any other good place for people to connect with you
45:49
personally online? Are you AX guy?
45:51
Are you a LinkedIn guy? LinkedIn I'm working on
45:56
improving my X although I've never known really what to
46:00
tweet, but LinkedIn is probably the best place for me.
46:04
Or or a reliable account. Reliable 5 and at Reliable 5 is
46:08
our Instagram handle. Incredible.
46:11
And I will put links to all that in the show notes.
46:13
Bob, thank you so much. This was amazing and
46:15
congratulations on a really cool company.
46:18
Awesome. Thank you, Ryan.
46:19
I really appreciate it. Enjoyed it?
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