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How Two Friends Built a $750 Million Barber Tech Company · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:01
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  Speaker 1: to the people.
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  Speaker 3: That's from the dreunies that we grew up with.
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  Speaker 4: You all are the bright spot thank rudership for Black Americans.
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  Speaker 2: All right, guys, welcome back e y l a special episode,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: you know, long overdue friends of ours and people that
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: have really built tremendous business and really revolutionized the industry
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: that for a long time kind of was in the
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: dark ages. When it comes to technology in the barbershop,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: we think of barbershop industry. So yeah, we got a
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: song David from Squire. If you're not familiar with Squire,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: that's an app that actually allows well i'll let you
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: guys talk about it, but how I know. It is
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: an app that allows you to book for appointments for
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: your barber. Right, it allows the barber to manage the
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: schedule to run a barbershop like an actual operation. Right.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: What's the other tech that's behind it as well?
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  Speaker 6: That allows Another part that's important is the payments.
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  Speaker 7: So we make that, you know, really really simple and easy,
• 2:22
  Speaker 7: kind of like that experience and when you're tak an uber,
• 2:23
  Speaker 7: you just get in, you know, through your ride and
• 2:25
  Speaker 7: then get out. You know, we have to worry about
• 2:27
  Speaker 7: tipping and cash and all that. We take that kind
• 2:29
  Speaker 7: of experience like to the barbershop as well.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and when we started this business like
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: nine years ago, you know, it was nothing Uber fifteen
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. Uber was just getting traction and the experience
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: of going down to the barbershop, having everything handled, just
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: walking out after. We just wanted that seamless experience. And
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: then we realized once we were in the business, the
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: real opportunity was streamline.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: No entire operations of the business.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: So that's kind of how Squire was born as a
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: full management system that it is today.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And the valuation right now is seven hundred and fifty million. Yes, congrats,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So congratulations. Thank you first and foremost, thank you God
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: for joining us. Man, appreciate it.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: We run into y'all a lot, Dave. I feel like
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: we've run into each other all the time. So it's
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: good to have you out here, man, And like you said,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: something that's disruptive, but it's helped our community for sure.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Lots of communities.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Get back time, which is the one asset that you
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: can't replicate, and you guys have done that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: So congratulations.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: All right, so let's get into it. So, Okay, you
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: guys start an app which seems like that somebody should
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: have been in that, right. It wasn't something that was
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: like too far out of the realm of like thought
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: process as far as being able to book online, being
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: able to process payments correctly, being able to manage appointments
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: for barbers, like, it seems like something that you know
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: should have been in existence, right, but it wasn't. So
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: walk us through a how you guys developed a relationship
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: and the process of actually coming up with the idea
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: and then getting the idea off the ground into market.
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: So David and I we were friends before actually starting Square.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: We both were in New York.
• 4:26
  Speaker 7: I was working at a law firm at the time
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  Speaker 7: and he was like in finance. So we had a
• 4:30
  Speaker 7: lot of friends that come and going out. You know,
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  Speaker 7: we were in our twenties at the time, and after
• 4:35
  Speaker 7: a few years we were like really wanted to work
• 4:37
  Speaker 7: on something that would be more impactful, and we weren't
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  Speaker 7: really kind of fulfilled with the corporate trajectory we were on.
• 4:44
  Speaker 7: So we were literally brainstorm ideas on the weekends instead
• 4:46
  Speaker 7: of going out. We used to sneaking to Columbia campus
• 4:49
  Speaker 7: because we both lived up uptown in Harlem and we
• 4:52
  Speaker 7: were literally just white whiteboard ideas like what could we
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: work on, what could we do that would actually, you know,
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: could have a legacy that they would have a bigger
• 4:58
  Speaker 7: impact on you communities just be more positive. And through
• 5:02
  Speaker 7: that process we came up with this this experience of
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: the barbershop.
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: Like both of us have been going to barber since
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: we were kids.
• 5:08
  Speaker 7: I started going like around six or seven off my
• 5:10
  Speaker 7: pops back in the day, and the experience of getting
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: haircut hadn't changed twenty years later. You go in, you wait,
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: it could be ten minutes, it could be two hours.
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: You might you know, you have to pay cash, you
• 5:21
  Speaker 7: text back and forth as your barber, And didn't make
• 5:24
  Speaker 7: sense that this one experience of life that was like
• 5:26
  Speaker 7: so important and so like joyous and one on the
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: one hand was also so painful. So that that's why
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: we came up the idea like how can we solve
• 5:35
  Speaker 7: this with technology.
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  Speaker 4: Everybody got the experience when you go to barber shop
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: there's a big homie comes in and were like he's next.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I was seeing that for three hours.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Everybody has that experience, and you know, like that used
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: to having me an all the time with a little kid,
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: because you know, I grew up, you know, I used
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: to go to barbershop by myself because my alm was
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: working or whatever the case maybe. But with technology now
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: you can't do that because everything is ready, edgimented, everything
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: is on point.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: And that's a harder.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: That's harder pill the swallow for the barbershop, older barbers
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: to like say, nah, somebody else was.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Next, and a matter of what happens you used to
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: happen all the time. You make appointment at twelve, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: then even if nobody took your spot, the barber's just
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: running late, so it's taking an hour and a half
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: forty five minutes, so you don't actually get into the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: chair until two o'clock, and it's like you you can't
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: really run your day by like kind of hoping and
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: wishing that there's a ninety minute window that you might
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: potentially get get cut. So if you have set slots
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: every hour right like that, it holds I think it
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: holds everybody accountable.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's done a job for barbers. It's made
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: them more efficient with the time, but they're able to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: cut more efficiency knowing like hey, I got somebody coming
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: out the here, let me be precise with this one,
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  Speaker 1: make sure I can because I can get more people
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: in rather than wasting the time where it's like you'll
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: waiting for this dude or your next who I don't
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: know is they're actually becoming more efficient, which actually means
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: more customers, more clients, more.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: Moment Absolutely absolutely, And now you know, with the AI
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: and being being in the squire now and having then
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: AI kind of like focused companies, the tools that we
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: able to leverage now is just incredible. Like we built Operator,
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: which you know I demo at LV barber Xpo. It's
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  Speaker 4: a way for barbers to never have to answer their phone.
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  Speaker 4: You know, people just call the barbershop and this human
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  Speaker 4: like voice picks up and does all the scheduling for
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  Speaker 4: you and really is able to like do like the
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: operations that normally a human would do. So we're just
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  Speaker 4: it's just making the barbers and the barbershop owners lives
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  Speaker 4: more efficient, and efficiency leads to more money.
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  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, when y'all first figure
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  Speaker 1: out that you're going to create a solution for this problem,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: where's the first shop that you go to to tell
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  Speaker 1: them about this technology that you're about to use. Do
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  Speaker 1: you go back to the same spot, like, yo, bro,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sitting here for three hours, here's this product
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that how did that go?
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: So the thing the thing with that is like what
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: we did was like we went out like when we
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: first had the idea, then we went out with a
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: iPad and and just ask questions like if we would
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: build this thing, would you use it? Like ask the feedback,
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: you know, interviews and like it's hard to tell somebody
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  Speaker 4: know when you're ready been involved in the process all along.
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  Speaker 4: So so what we did early on is we built
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: with the guys or with the owners, and we had
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: them a part of the process. And then when it
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: was time to launch, you can't really say you're not
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: doing this because you were lockstep the entire process.
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  Speaker 2: So let me ask you this, as far as the idea,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: it's a relatively it's not a complex idea, right, but
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: what does it take to actually get that tech to
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: make it come to life and make it the application
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: actually happen? Like how much money does that cost? And
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: what was the process as far as on the technical
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: side to actually make that app get up and running
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  Speaker 2: in actually in the app store.
• 9:13
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So when we were at that stage, you know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 7: this was like almost ten years ago. There was no
• 9:18
  Speaker 7: vibe coding at the time. It's a total different world
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: where it was a lot harder to build that first
• 9:22
  Speaker 7: like MVP, first vision of the product to get in
• 9:25
  Speaker 7: front of the customers. So the approachure we took was
• 9:28
  Speaker 7: we wanted to recruit a co founder to be technical
• 9:32
  Speaker 7: that's like part of the team instead of outsourcing and
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: like paying And you know, some people do it in
• 9:38
  Speaker 7: different ways, but our philosopher is always like, if you're
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: paying somebody to build your product, you have inverse like goals,
• 9:46
  Speaker 7: like they want to do it for as fast as
• 9:48
  Speaker 7: possible and make as much money as possible, and you
• 9:50
  Speaker 7: want to get the best quality and pay as little
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: as possible. So you're already kind of set up for failure.
• 9:55
  Speaker 7: So we were really focused on recruiting somebody to be
• 9:58
  Speaker 7: our CTO and co founder, and it took some time
• 10:01
  Speaker 7: and we went through some you know, a couple iterations
• 10:03
  Speaker 7: where like it didn't work out, but eventually we did
• 10:06
  Speaker 7: find that person, and that person kind of joined the
• 10:09
  Speaker 7: company at the time and helped us build that first
• 10:11
  Speaker 7: first version of the product.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, you guys don't come obviously when Lull you in finance.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: How in depth did you have to get in the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: technological side, right, because you're trying to build an app
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that is going through Obviously you're going to recruit people
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: to find but how much did y'all have to get
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: in the weeds inside of tech to realize that we
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: have to understand this industry just as much as the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: one that we came from.
• 10:34
  Speaker 7: It was a learning process. Like we didn't know anything
• 10:37
  Speaker 7: about tech, had never you know, started a tech company,
• 10:40
  Speaker 7: didn't have any connections in tech after at the time.
• 10:42
  Speaker 7: So honestly, we didn't know what we were doing. What
• 10:45
  Speaker 7: we did have is pretty good product instincts because we
• 10:48
  Speaker 7: were so close to the customers, so we understood the
• 10:50
  Speaker 7: pain points and kind of like what we were trying
• 10:52
  Speaker 7: to solve for. But in terms of under the hood
• 10:55
  Speaker 7: and act the actual process of like building something and
• 10:59
  Speaker 7: like actually like building the first version of the app,
• 11:01
  Speaker 7: which was an iOS app, were we were completely clueless
• 11:06
  Speaker 7: as to what was actually happening.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we're it's a consumer facing application, so you know, directionally,
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: we you know what felt right in terms of like
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: a what a product actually operates, but in terms of
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: like under the hood, we didn't know anything.
• 11:22
  Speaker 7: I mean, how would you know, Like you're just starting out.
• 11:24
  Speaker 7: You have an idea and you're like I want to
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: go build this, but you don't actually know like what
• 11:28
  Speaker 7: it takes. Now, of course we've learned a lot, but
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: that you know further was like more reason and why
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: we wanted to have somebody on the team who was
• 11:35
  Speaker 7: aligned incentives and could help help build it out. Because
• 11:39
  Speaker 7: when you're non technical, especially back then before AI was
• 11:42
  Speaker 7: was the way it is now, like it's it's very
• 11:45
  Speaker 7: difficult to like understand from a from a technical process,
• 11:49
  Speaker 7: like what is actually required, Like something could take a
• 11:53
  Speaker 7: day and they could say it takes a month. You
• 11:55
  Speaker 7: have no idea, so you're really at it. There's an
• 11:57
  Speaker 7: asymmetry of like knowledge at that point. So when I
• 12:01
  Speaker 7: talked to early stage founders who want to be you know,
• 12:03
  Speaker 7: tech founders and want to start companies, I said, you know,
• 12:07
  Speaker 7: either learned the code.
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: Now you can learn a lot with AI and.
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: You can vibe code your way to a lot, but
• 12:12
  Speaker 7: really like you want to have someone on your team
• 12:14
  Speaker 7: who has a strong technical foundation if possible.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So how did what was a marketing campaign as far
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: as to get Barbers on board. Was it to get
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: barber's on board? Was you get the clients of barbers
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: on board? Like what was the.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: First you know, we did everything under the sun, but
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: it was just so. So what happened in the beginning
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: is we thought that if we built this beautiful application
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: and folks started to use it, everything would run smoothly.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: The barbers love it, the customers love it. Early financial
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: models had us get into ten billion dollars in three years.
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: But but that's before.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: But but what was interesting is it didn't work. You know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: it didn't work anything that when we sent customers barberas
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: use would use it as a client acquisition tool and.
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: It would be a jancade experience for the users.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: So folks would come in and a barber would have
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: them pay twice in the app and in the store
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: again because he didn't trust he or she didn't trust
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: the application. So there was stuff like that. There was
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: double bookings. So even though we would say, hey, use
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: this for your your all your appointments, he would then
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: or she would then just keep on taking appointents appointents
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: to a ways from existing customers. So we realized that if
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: we didn't have the entire back end for the entire barbershop.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: It would we would still run into these problems over
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: and over and again. So we had to make sure
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: all the appointments and the barbershop went through this system.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: So that was the first kind of unlock of like, hey,
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: we're not just building app, we have to build a
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: comprehensive system that manages everything through the barber shop.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: So you targeted the barbershops. Yeah, did you give it
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: out for free at first? Absolutely?
• 14:05
  Speaker 7: So we were literally he and I walk into every
• 14:08
  Speaker 7: shop we could, like near our office in New York
• 14:11
  Speaker 7: or near where we lived, Like we were just like
• 14:13
  Speaker 7: walking ourselves. Wait, talk to the owner, try to get
• 14:17
  Speaker 7: them to use the app. Sometimes, you know, they didn't
• 14:19
  Speaker 7: want to hear from us because they were like, you know,
• 14:21
  Speaker 7: like where are you selling kind of things, especially in
• 14:23
  Speaker 7: New York. And sometimes we had to actually like book
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: a service, like what's the cheap of service you got?
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: Or beer trim?
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: All right, I'll pay you for that time, and then
• 14:30
  Speaker 7: when you're in the chair you can talk to them
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: and kind of get their attention. So we was really
• 14:34
  Speaker 7: like hand in hand combat.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: How many how many did you give way for free? First?
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: Before you started, I mean, we didn't start charging for
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: the software into.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: Like twenty twenty eighteen, so how many weeks?
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: Years?
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, three years, yeah, just basically here. But we made
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: money on the like the transaction, so it's like, hey,
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: we still had some revenue coming in. But you know,
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: in the first you just got to when you're unproven,
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: when it's a new motion, you got to give it
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: away free to get product market fit.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: So how did it? Most people probably thinking like how
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: do you guys make the money?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So the transaction fee, there's a percentage that goes from it,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: then the subscription from the barbershops that use it.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: That's how you built the business model.
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: How much is that? How much is the subscription right now?
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Like today?
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: So it's a one hundred dollars or two point fifty
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: depending on yeah, mo, yeah, depending on what features set
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: you have.
• 15:32
  Speaker 7: He starts at thirty individual parmer, Yeah starts at thirty.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so if he has his own salon, that's just
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: like alright, So like now that there's the business part
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of it, Like you're making the money, but you're giving
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: away for free, but you're trying to get it on
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: it's iOS you said, so you know that Apple's got
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: coming for that thirty percent? How did how you guys
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: envisioned in this and you're bouncing it to say, all right,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: we need to make revenue.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: We're giving the product way for free.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, we're making some from the transactions, but we need
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to keep the business alive.
• 16:00
  Speaker 7: Well, you know that's where earlier, when you're that early
• 16:04
  Speaker 7: before you're like making meaningful revenue, if you're able to
• 16:07
  Speaker 7: raise money, that kind of that capital and fusion is
• 16:09
  Speaker 7: what keeps the lights on it. And we were fortunate
• 16:13
  Speaker 7: to be able to raise like some angel rounds from
• 16:15
  Speaker 7: our network of people who we knew, not not big checks,
• 16:19
  Speaker 7: but you know, familiarhere, from like twenty thirty thousand to
• 16:21
  Speaker 7: up too hundred, So that that was our first capital
• 16:25
  Speaker 7: that they were able to raise, and that sustained us
• 16:28
  Speaker 7: over the first two or three years, just these these
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: angel checks that we were getting from from people we knew,
• 16:35
  Speaker 7: and because the revenue wasn't we were definitely not making
• 16:38
  Speaker 7: enough revenue to like support the business.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Was that was that a space that you all were
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: familiar with because the angel investment, I mean it's not
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: common to a lot of people.
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: Nothing, it's a network, you know, One of the guys
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: that gave us a big, you know, sign of approval
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: early on was Richard Luke Dennis Uh he invested money
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: when we have anything because what we had traction, but
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: not a lot of traction compared to today, but with venture,
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: you know, and the way we did it, because we
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: didn't have access to the traditional networks. We used to
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: just build something, get a little traction. Look what we built,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: give us some like, go out to our network, get
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: some more traction. Go out to that network again, because
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: you know, back then it was very it was very
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: difficult to raise, you know, money, like for over four years.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: It was just this piecemeal type of thing. We went
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: through y Commator, which is a big inflection point in
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, so we were able to raise some money
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: out of that. But we were very fortunate because a
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: lot of folks back then didn't didn't make it. But
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: because of our network, because of our pedigrees, because of
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: the hustle mentality, we were able to kind of just
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: raise some money.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So at what point do you start, Like the pathway
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: that being died at seven hundred and fifty million dollars,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: right that comes from you obviously had multiple rounds of
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: being raising money, right, and then you have revenue coming
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: in as well, So when does it start becoming like
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: profitable as far as okay, this is now a real
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: business that we're running full.
• 18:10
  Speaker 7: Time, Say around the time we raised our Series A,
• 18:14
  Speaker 7: which was twenty nineteen, that was the first institutional money
• 18:19
  Speaker 7: so so meaning like a big firm that that will
• 18:23
  Speaker 7: give you, you know, one check that would be enough to
• 18:25
  Speaker 7: sustain you to get to the next How much was
• 18:27
  Speaker 7: that when that was for eight million paper that was
• 18:29
  Speaker 7: the most money we ever had at once and the
• 18:31
  Speaker 7: first time we ever had enough to not be worried
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: about fundraising.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So what made them value the company enough to raise
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: to give you a check for eight million dollars? Future
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: future valuations based off of revenue models like what was the.
• 18:46
  Speaker 6: So to raise a Series A?
• 18:48
  Speaker 7: You know, typically at that point they want to see
• 18:51
  Speaker 7: signs of like consistency, so like a consistent go to
• 18:54
  Speaker 7: market motion that you're making, which is called urprov like
• 19:00
  Speaker 7: average revenue per user that it was consistent, So they
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: can kind of see a pathway of like okay, if
• 19:05
  Speaker 7: they can get to this, we can we can see
• 19:07
  Speaker 7: how they can get to that, you know, a bigger level.
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: Typically back then it was like if you can basically
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: a million dollars in annual recurring revenue used to be
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: the kind of milestone when you were about ready for
• 19:18
  Speaker 7: a Series A. And that's where we were at that time.
• 19:21
  Speaker 7: I think now that goal post has moved from what
• 19:23
  Speaker 7: I've heard for early stage founders. But back in twenty nineteen,
• 19:27
  Speaker 7: that was that was it. So we were doing a
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: million roughly in arr We had you know, a consistent
• 19:33
  Speaker 7: sales process, you know that you could see how our
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: art pool would grow over time as the shops were
• 19:38
  Speaker 7: coming on the square. All of that was evidence for
• 19:42
  Speaker 7: an investor to see, okay, if they can do this,
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: I could see how they could get to you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: ten million, fifty million, one hundred million because they have
• 19:48
  Speaker 7: like a process that's repeatable, that makes sense.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: How was the retention right for you guys early stage
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: into the Series A?
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: How was our attention?
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: Then?
• 19:56
  Speaker 6: It's a lot better now, we.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: Love I mean Son, even that fundraise was difficult, Like
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: I just think back like it was a fundraise from hell,
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: Like I think we had about sixty meetings and it
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: got like one term seet like one offer, you know,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: and based on the numbers.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, we should have had at least four or
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: five in my view.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: So so it was not an easy process with all
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: the credentials, with all the BACKENDU of Y Combinator. We
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: went through a Y Comedy Series A program and we
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: still it was still difficult.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: So okay, how did you know the process of actually
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: even going through to try to get venture capital money?
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Would you? Did you have a mentor that was like
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: ushering you through these different meetings or you just cold
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: calling different firms?
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: So as they adventure, we did Y Combinator in twenty sixteen.
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: So when we did that, we moved to the Bay Area,
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: we moved to the entire company kind of there, and
• 20:59
  Speaker 7: we went through that process. Did that Saying fast forward
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: twenty nineteen, at the time, why Combinator had a Series
• 21:05
  Speaker 7: A program.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Can you explain why combination for people that people that
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: may not be familiar.
• 21:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So it's what I would call like the pre
• 21:12
  Speaker 7: eminent accelerator program for early stage startups. You know, base
• 21:20
  Speaker 7: based in Silicon Valley. Uh, some of the people who
• 21:24
  Speaker 7: are affiliated with there is essentially like the highest echelon
• 21:27
  Speaker 7: of tech. For example, like Sam Altman was there when
• 21:29
  Speaker 7: we were there, so you know, we got we got
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: to know him pretty well. Michael Seigel, mentor of ours,
• 21:37
  Speaker 7: and you know, used to run the run the program.
• 21:40
  Speaker 6: When the co founders of Twitch, you know.
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: Pretty much they are like the biggest name in tech
• 21:47
  Speaker 7: for early stage companies, and so when you have that
• 21:50
  Speaker 7: stamp of approval, it's equivalent to like going to Harvard
• 21:53
  Speaker 7: or Stafford or something for in the tech world. So
• 21:55
  Speaker 7: it was a big deal when we did it. And
• 21:58
  Speaker 7: then twenty nineteen at the time, they had a Series
• 22:01
  Speaker 7: A program. So for the companies that went through the
• 22:04
  Speaker 7: core program that they thought were like ready for Series A,
• 22:07
  Speaker 7: you could kind of reply and then redo it. But
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: for Series A, so they would help us like set
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: up investor meetings, connect us with the right people, help
• 22:17
  Speaker 7: us with our pitch. So we had about as much
• 22:19
  Speaker 7: help and support as any company could have in raising
• 22:22
  Speaker 7: a Series A. And today's point, you know, we still
• 22:24
  Speaker 7: had you know, sixty meetings of different VC funds and
• 22:29
  Speaker 7: fifty nine rejections and we ended up getting one.
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: And that's what allowed us to get to the next level.
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: But all you need is one, that's it is one.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: What was that process like we talked to a lot
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of people who've created businesses and founders that moment when
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you take the on money. Right before it was just
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you guys and you got a CTO, and now you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: have investors that you have to answer to and you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: make sure that they're all on board. What's going on?
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: What was that process like for you? Was at an
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: adjustment space for sure? For sure it was the first time.
• 23:03
  Speaker 7: So when it when you get in an institutional UH
• 23:07
  Speaker 7: fund fund, then invest usually they want a board seat.
• 23:11
  Speaker 7: So that was the first time that we, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 7: had an actual investor on our board and had to
• 23:17
  Speaker 7: start being more formal in terms of having like board
• 23:20
  Speaker 7: meetings and reporting and.
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: All that stuff.
• 23:22
  Speaker 7: So at the time it was a bit stressful, if
• 23:25
  Speaker 7: I fun honest, and it was. It was a change,
• 23:27
  Speaker 7: but in retrospect, it definitely made us mature as a
• 23:31
  Speaker 7: company and mature as founders. So so it was a
• 23:34
  Speaker 7: healthy thing for the company. But it's it's increased scrutiny.
• 23:38
  Speaker 7: Like now you're you're you're literally accountable responsible every quarter,
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: you have to report how you're doing, and someone who's
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: kind of in a sense a little bit over you
• 23:46
  Speaker 7: because they you know, they they're the board is like saying,
• 23:50
  Speaker 7: you know, giving your feedback and really pushing you to
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: go further.
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: So yeah, it was a big change.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: And the best board members, you know, I think are.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Super helpful because they can use their experience as operator
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: and or their experience from other boards that they sit on.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: So you know, sometimes you don't agree with what they
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: are saying in the present moment, but you know there's
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: been times like six months a year later, hey, no,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: maybe it made sense, but I didn't see it because
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: you haven't experienced that or you haven't lived through that.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: So what mistakes did you make or what lessons did
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: you learn as far as in pitching your company to
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: VC firms that if you did it now, you might
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: do differently.
• 24:45
  Speaker 7: So I think what separated in the early days when
• 24:49
  Speaker 7: we really struggled, we're getting them excited about the opportunity,
• 24:53
  Speaker 7: and later on when we got better at it, is
• 24:57
  Speaker 7: the size of how big can get. I think a
• 25:01
  Speaker 7: lot particularly a lot of a lot of founders, you know,
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: from our communities, like we tend to be like very
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: practical and like we want to paint a vision that
• 25:09
  Speaker 7: we think we can really achieve, but like the ethos
• 25:11
  Speaker 7: of like, particularly like Silicon Valley is like you have
• 25:14
  Speaker 7: to go big. You have to have the biggest possible
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: vision imaginable and sell that because that's what gets people excited.
• 25:22
  Speaker 7: You know, they get excited about, you know, how can
• 25:25
  Speaker 7: this company be a billion dollar company or ten billion
• 25:27
  Speaker 7: dollar company or one hundred million dollar company. So in
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: the early days, like it was, it was hard for
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: us to like make our native shape our native to
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: fit something so big. Over time we started getting better
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: at it. And over time, the more you know, data,
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: the more that we learned about our business, we started
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: being able to see a pathway like, Okay, this is
• 25:45
  Speaker 7: how we get to a hundred million revenue, this is
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: how we get to you know, a billion plus valuation.
• 25:49
  Speaker 7: And then if you believe it, they can believe it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: But if you can't even see it, the investors never
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: going to see it either.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Is that the goal?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Like did you guys sit down one day obviously as
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: a vision become clear and said, yeah, we're going to
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: be a unicorn like this we have the potential to
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: Believe it, I mean, but it's communicating it. In Silicon Valley,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: it over emphasizes the outliers. You know, like the whole
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: business model, the whole VC model is outliers. They want
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: the folks that is like the zo point one of
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: one percent because that can return the fund and you
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: know if you invest, So the math is the math.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: They don't out of ten portfolio companies.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: One they hope one is going to be that one
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: hundred x return and that one hundred x return will
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: pay out the pay back to fund and make the
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: individual partner very rich. So you have to understand that.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: So if you don't, if you don't like pitch one
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: hundred x type of opportunity, then it just doesn't excite
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: them as much.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: How does it look for Ford revenu if you guys
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: in terms of valuation, Like what's that forward multiple?
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Is it like a four five ten?
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: It?
• 26:57
  Speaker 7: Honestly, it varies and there's so many facts like macroeconomic factors.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: So the last fund raise that we did was in
• 27:04
  Speaker 7: twenty twenty one, and that was a very different climate.
• 27:07
  Speaker 7: Interest rates were super low. It was like what they
• 27:09
  Speaker 7: call it the you know zerp era where the interestrace
• 27:11
  Speaker 7: from you know, almost zero. So as a result, like
• 27:15
  Speaker 7: there's an inverse relation on multiples. So multiples were just
• 27:19
  Speaker 7: much higher across the board for all companies, and you
• 27:22
  Speaker 7: know that that gives in takes, and that changed with
• 27:24
  Speaker 7: the economy. So our focus is always on building a
• 27:27
  Speaker 7: really great business. If you build a great business that
• 27:31
  Speaker 7: fundamentally is strong, has great unique economics and a pathway
• 27:35
  Speaker 7: to like being really big regardless of the of the
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: economic climate, like you're going to you're going to be successful.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: That was one of those things and that you finished
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: it was like if you create a business, make sure
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you have these components, right, so make sure you have
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the tech component and some of it, like all those components.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: As you're doing it, you're checking off those like, oh
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: we have all those things.
• 27:54
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean yeah, I think so, and I think
• 27:57
  Speaker 7: you know, the more we learn about our business, and
• 28:00
  Speaker 7: you know, the more mature we get, like we see like, okay,
• 28:02
  Speaker 7: this is fundamentally this is a really solid, strong business
• 28:06
  Speaker 7: that's going to endure. And the great thing about about
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: our customers is that, like people keep getting haircuts.
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: It's very resilient.
• 28:13
  Speaker 7: You know, if there's an economic downturn, actually people tend
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: to get more haircuts because it's one of those luxuries
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: you can afford even if you're not making as much money.
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: So I think we're really well positioned to continue to
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: thrive like kind of regardless of what happens in the economy.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to So, so a couple of things.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: And we're seeing that I was at a dinner last
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: last night and a seed early stage and they're raising
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: two hundred x revenue, these AI companies. So so it's
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: just it just shifts with the tie, you know. So
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: so it's still there if you're the hot the hot
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: company a hot industry at that time, and this competition
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: people pay whatever irrational.
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: So so that that's one thing.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: And second thing I want to go back to is like,
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: you know, paint the vision a lot of folks, you know,
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: because we're two black founders that we're just focusing on
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: black barbershops, and you know, we made it really clear
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: that we were not. In fact, in our early pitch decks,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: there was no mention of everything was like these hipster
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: type barbershops. So people can relate to because most of
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: the investors that that you were, you know, meeting were
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: not of color, so it had we had to make
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: sure it resonated with them and those little social cues
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: that you pick up on that you need to kind
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: of incorporate the story to make it seem like hey,
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: And then still some investors said, are you guys still
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: targeted black barbershops when like it just didn't make any
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: sense to me, And you know, I get it, but like,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: you know, we made it really clear that we were
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: going after the.
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: Entire market, not just a slither of the market.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: What's the percentage of barbershops as you think you have
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: that are not black?
• 30:04
  Speaker 7: I mean, I think it probably matches the population overall,
• 30:09
  Speaker 7: so probably you know eight.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: So marketing to barbershops? Right, are you marketing? At the
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: beginning you were to face you were going in hand
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: in hand? So were you doing that with white barbershops? Also?
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: Absolutely?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Well how did that work out?
• 30:31
  Speaker 7: So funny enough, when we were first kind of thinking
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: through how we're going to do this, we had a
• 30:36
  Speaker 7: bias against ourselves.
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: We thought we probably couldn't.
• 30:39
  Speaker 7: Go in there and like you know, resonate with with
• 30:41
  Speaker 7: with these like non black barbershops. So we ended up
• 30:45
  Speaker 7: hiring a friend of ours who's actually still with the company,
• 30:49
  Speaker 7: who's white, and like his job was going to be
• 30:52
  Speaker 7: kind of BIZDV like going to the shops, So he
• 30:55
  Speaker 7: was doing that, we were still doing it. And over
• 30:57
  Speaker 7: time this on experience, we started finding out there like,
• 31:00
  Speaker 7: actually we were better even at the white shops selling
• 31:05
  Speaker 7: them than he was. And some of the bias that
• 31:07
  Speaker 7: we had, you know, the preconceived notion that we had
• 31:09
  Speaker 7: that these shop owners, because we didn't look like them,
• 31:12
  Speaker 7: weren't going to want to hear us out. Actually it
• 31:15
  Speaker 7: was just totally not true. And then you know, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 7: it turns out, you know, the white guy who we
• 31:20
  Speaker 7: hire wasn't good at that, He ended up being really
• 31:22
  Speaker 7: good at other things, so he moved into like product
• 31:24
  Speaker 7: on the product side. So you just never you never know,
• 31:27
  Speaker 7: and sometimes there's a tendency to sell yourself short because
• 31:30
  Speaker 7: you know, you think somebody's going to think something about you.
• 31:33
  Speaker 7: But if you have a great product and you go
• 31:35
  Speaker 7: there and you meet them, iy to you know, we
• 31:37
  Speaker 7: found that for the most part, customers are willing to
• 31:41
  Speaker 7: hear you out, you know, regardless of what you look like.
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, are you solving the hair on fire problem? You know?
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: And if you solving that problem, I don't get whatever
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: you are. I think they gotta listen to you because
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: it's you're addressing a real pain. Point in their lives.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: All right, correct me if I'm wrong on these numbers.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Thirty two thousand barber shops.
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: Thirty two thousand barber shops, yet barber's.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Barbers ten million clients.
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: Last time I checked it somewhere in that.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: How are we like?
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: This is because like you're talking from twenty sixteen to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this point, how are we scaling year to year?
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Are you like what trends are you watching to say?
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: He's an opportunity, his opportunity. This is a potemographic this
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: is that we haven't touched this place. How are y'all
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: going about that? That's a lot. Congrats, Thank you, thank you,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: thank you. It's never enough, though. Let's get to the next.
• 32:32
  Speaker 7: So what we learned is a super super important to
• 32:35
  Speaker 7: scales that you really have to scale your team. So
• 32:39
  Speaker 7: you know, in the early stages, you know, it was
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: us and then a few other early employees, but as
• 32:44
  Speaker 7: you get bigger, you really have to bring on folks
• 32:47
  Speaker 7: who have the experience of kind of getting to the
• 32:50
  Speaker 7: next level where you're trying to get. And over time,
• 32:54
  Speaker 7: we built up a really incredible kind of bench of
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: our executives. Uh, and that that has helped you know,
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: helped tremendously, and in the early days you do you know,
• 33:04
  Speaker 7: it's called doing things that don't scale, like walking into
• 33:07
  Speaker 7: the barbershop yourself and pitching them like that's great, but
• 33:10
  Speaker 7: like you can't. That's not going to get you to
• 33:12
  Speaker 7: where we are now. So over time you have to
• 33:14
  Speaker 7: figure out how do you build like repeatable motions, reputable
• 33:17
  Speaker 7: processes that's like scalable and you know, that's essentially essentially
• 33:22
  Speaker 7: what we've been able to do.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So So as far as this number of seven hundred
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: and fifty million dollar valuation, what can you break that down?
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: As far as like what does that actually mean in
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: layman terms for somebody that just they hear that, but
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: it's like.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: That is the enterprise value or the kind of like
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: market cap of your business. So if somebody were to
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: purchase the building business, they would have to pay seven
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: hundred and fifty million dollars for entire business. And if
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: somebody is investing, you know, based on the dollar mode
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: they invest, that's percentage amount of the seven hundred fifty million.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: And that seven hundred fifty million would come from investors
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: valuing the company at that As far as okay, I'm
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: gonna put this amount of money in per percentage and
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: then that equals to seven fifty or does that come
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: from revenue that is projected to be like okay, ten
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: x revenue, like what it?
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's some formula that they create, but that's
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: essentially the former is like, hey, look, you know, for
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: one percent, it's seven point five million, so times that
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: by ten. If you want ten percent, you got to
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: put up seventy five million. So that's kind of how
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: the math works. And it's just supply and demand.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: You know, if you have a great product, if you
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: have some proprietary technology that they think might you know,
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: transform the world, they're gonna they're gonna pay whatever they're
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: gonna pay for. It's just like, you know, what the company,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: what people think the company is worth.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: How does the ownership table look?
• 34:58
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of times startups, you know, we don't
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: have money, right, we haven't got a venture capital and
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: so a lot of times people will off of equity
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: right like as an exchange or collateral to say, hey,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I need you a part of the team.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: How does ownership look then?
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: How does it look Now obviously you've got a board,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: you've got investors. Are you guys majority owners still, Like,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: how does this work?
• 35:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So as far as the equity, like all of
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: our employees have some degree of equity.
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: We think that's important.
• 35:27
  Speaker 7: We think it's important one to align incentives, and it's
• 35:31
  Speaker 7: also important as a wealth building mechanism.
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: Our company is I don't know.
• 35:36
  Speaker 7: For sure, but I would say it's probably maybe the
• 35:39
  Speaker 7: most diverse and one of the most diverse of a
• 35:41
  Speaker 7: company like at our scale in terms of like the
• 35:43
  Speaker 7: breakground of our employees. So we think it's you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 7: it's really important for them to have skin in the game,
• 35:47
  Speaker 7: and like when we do have the big exit, you know,
• 35:49
  Speaker 7: hopefully we'll be creating a lot of millionaires and creating
• 35:52
  Speaker 7: a lot of wealth in the community. So that so
• 35:55
  Speaker 7: that's important. The second was the second part of your question, ownership.
• 35:59
  Speaker 7: I think, oh, yeah, get diluted. I mean it's natural,
• 36:03
  Speaker 7: you know, it's the pie gets gets bigger, but you're
• 36:08
  Speaker 7: you know, year, a percentage of the pie goes down
• 36:09
  Speaker 7: over over time, so you know, Unfortunately, no, I wouldn't
• 36:13
  Speaker 7: say we have we have majority, but you know that's
• 36:16
  Speaker 7: just kind of the name of the game.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, control, I think is also super important,
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: like you know, you know, when you go through this fundraising,
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: take on more more investors, you know, you lose control.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: But we were still like a board can't get rid
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: of us if they if they wanted to, because of
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: the structure we have in place, and that's equally important control.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: So the decision making process, you guys still make all
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: able to make decisions without having to have input or.
• 36:48
  Speaker 7: You get you get input and and you know you
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: take you know, the feedback. But but today's points, as
• 36:55
  Speaker 7: you founders are raised, raising and bringing on investors is
• 36:59
  Speaker 7: super important to understand, like the control provisions and control
• 37:04
  Speaker 7: mechanisms with respect to like majority of equity, but also
• 37:08
  Speaker 7: board dynamics. So that's a lot of times people aren't
• 37:12
  Speaker 7: thinking about that and they raise money, they get these
• 37:15
  Speaker 7: boards and the next thing, you know, they have a
• 37:17
  Speaker 7: bad quarter and then the boards like all right.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: So can you explain that? Is there a set term
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: that has to be in the contract to be like okay,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: you know, even though I'm not a majority shareholder, I
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: still cannot be removed from.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: I think it's pretty much just a couple of way
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: this uh, like marks upwork has this uh we don't
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: have this, but he has super majority voting, so essentially
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: one of his shares equal like ten or whatever shares
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: that he has, and ultimately that's super rare way he
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: has at a public stage, he can do whatever he
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: wants and they just literally can't get rid of. And
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: you know, you have to think about like, especially in
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: the public markets, investors are quarter quarter very short term.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: You guys know this, but you know, as a founder
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: led you know you're thinking three four quarters ahead, so
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: you might you know, max out cap X for a
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: couple of quarters, but your vision is you know this
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: will ultimately pan out, and if you're looking at it
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: from a quarter over quarter basis, you're not going to
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: make those long term decisions. So super majority is one,
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: and then the second is board seats. So if you
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: have the board, you know controls the company, and if
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: you have if your investors have more board seats than
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: you have, they can just vote you out.
• 38:40
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: But in our city scenario, we have the same amount
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: of board seats as investors, so in any case, it's
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: going to be a kind of like a deadlock situation.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you mentioned the exit.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people get this misconscrewed,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: especially if there's no education around it. Talk about the
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: vision for that? Is there a number that we have
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: in mind? And it's like all right, and then obviously
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: there's a borderp proof explain it the process because we've
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: seen people sell their businesses and a lot of times
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, they sold out the business.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: They sell out.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: They don't understand the functionality behind creating a business, getting
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: capital and then saying all right, we're going to exit
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: potentially just start something new. Doesn't happen too frequently. What
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: is there a number that we got in mind? Like,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: what's the vision for?
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: I think I think we just want to build a
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: great business. I think our metrics is like, hey, the
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: best businesses are bought, not sold. And if you are,
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: you know, continued to add value, continue to build, continue
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: to you know, drive revenues up untol the right like
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: businesses will will bigger businesses or you know, public markets
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: will will come calling. H So I guess you know
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: that's kind of what we're focus on right now and
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: you know when it gets there.
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: But like to answer it, to speak to your first.
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Point, Troy is like capital has to be returned at
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: some point you know, like, you can't just do this
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: if you take capital as investors, You've got to return
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: to capital someway somehow, at some point. So so you
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: can't have these evergreen situations where you're just building because
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: you know, like there needs to be exit at some point.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: I got'ta pay back.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: So how are you marketing? Is like, I know you
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: did the barbershop ex bow with Jay, shout out to him.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: That's a way to get barbers on board. I'm assuming
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you're running ads, Like what is the main source of
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: actually creating awareness to make sure that the message is
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: being spread to all barbershops in a diverse manner.
• 40:51
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so those those are two big ways. We're really
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: big on events. So we do a lot of trade shows.
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: We do big trade shows like ct barber Expo, which
• 41:00
  Speaker 7: which we're you know, I know you attended, which was
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: super dope. But then we do a lot of smaller
• 41:05
  Speaker 7: events also we do like local community events. Uh so
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: we'll partner with like a barbershop that's got like a
• 41:12
  Speaker 7: good reputation in a certain city or neighborhood and then
• 41:15
  Speaker 7: invite all the other barbershops around and host things like that.
• 41:19
  Speaker 7: And part of it is marketing, but part of it
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: is also just kind of like being there in the community,
• 41:23
  Speaker 7: showing up, you know, where our customers are and meeting
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: them where they are. We do a lot of advertisements,
• 41:30
  Speaker 7: you know, online digitally. Our customers are very active on
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: social particularly on like Instagram and then now like TikTok
• 41:39
  Speaker 7: as well. Uh so you know, we try to be like,
• 41:42
  Speaker 7: you know where they are. And then a lot of
• 41:44
  Speaker 7: it is honestly bordermouth. Like Barbara Barbera's are naturally very
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: very communal type of businesses, so like in every neighborhood,
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: each shop knows all the shops around there.
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: It's like hyper local.
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: So we we try to incentivize, uh, you know, our
• 42:00
  Speaker 7: customers to like share a square for other shops that
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: they know and like it's kind of spreads that way
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: as well.
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: And also we have a sales team out in Austin, Texas,
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: and they they reach out to shops on a daily basis.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: They monitor cold call, but more so like warm warm leads. Essentially,
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: you know, they know where they are, they might meet
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: them on the show, they might comment on that page.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: But they're also always like sourcing opportunities. But you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: I think the community there in that Austin office is incredible.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Everybody says together, I think there's value now in office
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: environments because I know a lot of people don't like it,
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: but you know, we see the value of people coming
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: to get coming to to work every day, being amongst people.
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: You're saying at the same age, you sharing stories, learning
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: from each other in real time. I think it's ready
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: impactful and we're seeing it with the culture and also
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: like the winds and the scale that we're achieving that
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: in Austin office.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: You guys created something when it needed to be created, right,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: So I remember having squired early on and I'm like,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in a barber shop.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: My barber didn't have.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: It really yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in a bronze
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Jamaican You know, we stubborn. But that was a time
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: when you guys were the only person doing it. And
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: now twenty twenty five, there are people who have apps
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: that are some I wonder at this point, how do
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: you guys look at the landscape from a competitive standpoint?
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: What keeps you ahead?
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Like, what's the technology that gives you the mode to
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: keep squire at that evaluation, to keep growing?
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 43:53
  Speaker 7: No, that's that's a good point at that the time
• 43:56
  Speaker 7: when we started, there were definitely like fewer people trying
• 44:00
  Speaker 7: to go out to this market. And then you know,
• 44:01
  Speaker 7: as we've been more successful, people see it, you know,
• 44:03
  Speaker 7: so they're kind of trying to get in. But most
• 44:06
  Speaker 7: of the competitive landscape is still software companies that are
• 44:11
  Speaker 7: really focused on salons, spas, yoga studios, everything, and then
• 44:15
  Speaker 7: they also try to do barbers like on the side,
• 44:18
  Speaker 7: but it's not really their focus. So part of our
• 44:21
  Speaker 7: differentiation is just like we're so laser focused on building
• 44:25
  Speaker 7: the best products specifically for this this user base, and
• 44:28
  Speaker 7: that allows us to go deeper and just build things
• 44:30
  Speaker 7: that like a lot of these other companies, many of
• 44:32
  Speaker 7: them are even bigger than us, aren't.
• 44:35
  Speaker 6: Willing to do.
• 44:36
  Speaker 7: But then now, like what we're really excited about is
• 44:39
  Speaker 7: just this AI lens and really having like an AI
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: first approach. What we see in the landscape is that
• 44:46
  Speaker 7: there's a lot of attention and a lot of investment
• 44:49
  Speaker 7: going into too building AI solutions for like at the
• 44:52
  Speaker 7: enterprise level for like big companies and then at the
• 44:55
  Speaker 7: consumer level, but for the small business level, like there's
• 44:59
  Speaker 7: really not a lot of becus I'm bringing this like
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: powerful technology, like to these small business entrepreneurs and like
• 45:04
  Speaker 7: that's where we step in, Like we think they were
• 45:06
  Speaker 7: really really well positioned to do that, and that's what
• 45:08
  Speaker 7: we're doing.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: What was the most recent raise It was you had
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: a D.
• 45:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, twenty twenty one.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, So now with Tiger Tiger Global. So walk us
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: through that that one, Like what was the difference between
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: that Series D in the Series A, and like what
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: did you know? How did how did that look?
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: So so we raised our Series A May of twenty nineteen,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: we raised our B, series C and D over the
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: next fourteen months, so in the year we raised over
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: one hundred million dollars.
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: Over the year over year.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Technology was that right?
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: So over year we raised about one hundred million and
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: and what happened was like we got that first check
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: and we executed, you know, we went, you know fast,
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: We started gaining a lot of customers, and the folks
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: that you know passed on the Series A came back
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: and led the B six months later, and then nine
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: months later we raised the C and And that was.
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: On the back of COVID.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: So when COVID went, When COVID kind of was like
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: an inflection point for us because we were the first
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: company to you know, wave substution fees, so we didn't
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: charge our customers. Then we built things tools that allowed
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: our barbershops to operate during that time, so virtual waiting
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: room because everybody was trying to do social distances COVID
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: forms because people need to check they haven't been to
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: an area in two weeks or whether the case may
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: be you know, access to you know, low access to
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: you know, the various government programs, so streamlining the operations
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: to get the required documentation to get those those those
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: the the federal government help. So in the matter of
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: six weeks, we launched like four or five products and
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: then we when everything opened back up, like we had
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: a boom effect because we were a community first, our
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: message was cleared that we're not going to charge you subscriptions,
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: and also we built all this product that made these lives,
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: the lives of our customers better. So coming out of
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: that best month sales because everybody had to use some
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: form of technology now because of the regulations. And then
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: we raised in September, we raised our Serious C and
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: then ten months later we raised our Series D And
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: what was coming in is like we weren't pitching.
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: People were just coming to you, coming to us. So
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: it was like.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: One eighty from our Series A where we had to
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: guard and do a lot of the pitching to like
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: VC's pitching us.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Now, when you get the infusion of one hundred million
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: in a very short period of time, what did you
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: do with the one hundred million dollars?
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: We held on to it.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: It's like, you know, like we always remember like how
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: difficult it was. So so I guess you know a
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: lot of folks they go out and they spend, they
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: do all this stuff.
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: I think we were very careful because.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: We were of the of the school of thought that
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: we didn't want to go out and have to raise
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: again if we wanted under because we've been in both
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: sides of the spectrum where we had to really make
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: it really difficult to us to raise, and then when
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: it came really easy, we said, hey, we just want
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: it easy, you know, like we just want to save
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: this money, build a business martialwards profitability, and if.
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: We want to raise, we.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Will, Like what does that look like all right for
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: the average person?
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: They think you get a hundred million dollars and like
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: there's one thing to get a hundred million dollars, but
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: how do you deploy that properly? Like, because that's deploying
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars is not as easy as somebody
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: would think, right, So, like, how do you know? This
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: is how much we're going to save to have reserved,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: This is how much we're going to put marketing, This
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: is how much we're going to like is there a team,
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: is there a board? The people that give you the
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: money have stipulations on what to do with the money,
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: like kind of walk us through that whole process.
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so they give you the money. You know, the
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: money is in the bank account of the business, so
• 49:17
  Speaker 7: you can kind of use it as you see fit.
• 49:19
  Speaker 7: But what they do is they're going to hold you
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: accountable for kind of the growth and the performance the
• 49:24
  Speaker 7: performance of the business. So that's you know, what you
• 49:30
  Speaker 7: have to do is like really be measured about how
• 49:33
  Speaker 7: you're spending it. And what allows you to do is
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: take more risks so you can try to do things
• 49:38
  Speaker 7: like that you couldn't have afforded to do before to
• 49:40
  Speaker 7: fuel that growth. Some things will work, some things won't work,
• 49:43
  Speaker 7: and that's kind of the nature of an early stage startup.
• 49:45
  Speaker 7: So you know, investors are usually pretty forgiving of that,
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: but ultimately, like when you raise a big amount, they're
• 49:53
  Speaker 7: investing that based on where they think you're going to
• 49:56
  Speaker 7: get to at a certain point and that's going to
• 49:57
  Speaker 7: return their money and you're going to be you're that
• 50:00
  Speaker 7: more than when they invested. So if you're not hitting
• 50:02
  Speaker 7: those milestones and you're not kind of growing into that,
• 50:05
  Speaker 7: eventually they will start being like, okay, like, what's up
• 50:07
  Speaker 7: this company's not performing well?
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Is there a time threshold that they put on it? Right, Like,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: if they're invested in it, is it have to be?
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: I think they want to see it a growth rate,
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: a growth rate, and if the thumb is uh for
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: late stage, probably at least thirty percent year over your
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: growth yeah over yeah, yeah, as far as revenue revenues, yeah,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: and they want to see revenue going up and cash
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: burns going down.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: So you're growing.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: If you're growing like one hundred percent, it's different, but
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: if you're growing like thirty percent, they want to see
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: you growing thirty percent but getting more efficient at the
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: same time.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, since the we I think about y'all, and obviously
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: the thirty two thousand Barbers I wanted to learn about
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: the global expansion, right, like we travel a lot. We
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: would just in Dubai, I have to figure out to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: get barbers for the wedd end. Where in Africa? How
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: does this work? Are you guys? Do you guys have
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: a global imprint? And is that on the vision board
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: to expand into the continent and the broad Yeah.
• 51:13
  Speaker 7: Yes, so right now we are in other countries. We're
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: in US obviously, UK, Canada, so kind of English speaking
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: for now.
• 51:22
  Speaker 6: I totally agree with you.
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: I think that the global opportunity is crazy because like
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: there's barbers everywhere, people getting haircuts everywhere, and the businesses
• 51:32
  Speaker 7: don't vary that much, but there's always like the culture
• 51:34
  Speaker 7: nuances and things that you need to think about. So
• 51:38
  Speaker 7: long story shore, Like I do think eventually there's a
• 51:40
  Speaker 7: place for us to be, you know, I would love
• 51:42
  Speaker 7: to be on the continent. Like you know, I spent
• 51:44
  Speaker 7: some time in Kenya last year and just there were
• 51:48
  Speaker 7: so many barbershops there and like every every time I'm
• 51:51
  Speaker 7: going in there be like every when are you coming?
• 51:54
  Speaker 7: So but also you know, it's it's not easy, like
• 51:58
  Speaker 7: you have to really do it right, and it's you
• 52:02
  Speaker 7: it's easy to kind of mess up in Globaloks mansion
• 52:05
  Speaker 7: if you're not thoughtful about it. So it's not going
• 52:07
  Speaker 7: to be in the near term probably, but eventually I
• 52:12
  Speaker 7: see I see us being like in way more countries
• 52:14
  Speaker 7: than we're in now.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if you need a barber anywhere, it just hit me,
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: like we have some London based barbers you know, operate
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: in Dubai, but they're from London because we operate a
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: lotter so you know, everybody goes back from London to Dubai.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: So you ever in the city and they'll have a barber.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Just messes me.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Now, I've been pretty good that just referrals. That's one
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: thing like I feel like any city, I never had
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: a problem finding the ball because like the people that
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: I know in the city, I just asked them who's
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: the best bar but who do you recommend? And it's
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: never really failed me so far.
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: And we're building we're building something like that to help
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: that from a digital perspective, you know, like hey, we
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: have a city pages where you can go in the
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: city and then you can look at all the barbers
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: and we have the referrals on that as a product
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: we launched last year and you can actually you can
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: actually a connection put a video of their work and
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: it's really really cool to see the videos.
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: And that's like a next level feature.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because that would be good because I mean, fortunately
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: for us, we know a lot of people. Yeah, but
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: sometimes people they might not know somebody. They might just
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: be in Cleveland, Ohio for work and just randomly, like
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: they just need a barber. They don't know anybody in Cleveland.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: So that's like a good, good tool.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: That's that's that power of a you talked about launching
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: in terms of customer service. When I heard you talk
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: about cash Buran, the first thing when I think AI
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: is efficiency. So how else are you guys looking to
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: incorporate it to become more efficient?
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Obviously the revenue goes up, cash burn goes down. Yeah, So.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I think we launched, you know, a product called Cursor
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: internally over the last twelve months are engineering efficiency amongst
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: other things, we got to do cpt O the VP
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: of engineering from Strike. But our output is ninety four
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: percent more than last year. And because of that, because
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: of all those that I mentioned, but AI plays a
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: big part in that.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: In that So from that standpoint, how many employees do
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: you have.
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: Just a little over two hundred, like around two hundred.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: So do you see AI taking jobs from existing employees
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: that you have to run more efficiently at a lower
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: cost point.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: So he's dipped us off by his head shape.
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we see that.
• 54:35
  Speaker 7: We think we'll be able to do kind of more
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: with the existing So I don't think that we're like, Okay,
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: we're gonna need to cut ex percent, but with the
• 54:43
  Speaker 7: two hundred we have, we think we'll be able to
• 54:45
  Speaker 7: actually achieve a lot more and then we'll as we grow,
• 54:48
  Speaker 7: we'll be able to probably hire a fewer than we
• 54:50
  Speaker 7: would have needed to hire like a couple of years ago.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so they think about it like, you know, the
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: two hundred engineers, well probably get three hundred three hundred
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: engineering output, which is meaningful.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, So any hair salons.
• 55:10
  Speaker 7: We actually have a few and they come on Square
• 55:12
  Speaker 7: organically and we have a handful and there we talk
• 55:16
  Speaker 7: to them and kind of learn about how how it's
• 55:18
  Speaker 7: working with them. Our focus is barberous, you know right now,
• 55:23
  Speaker 7: like that that's the focus. But you know there's a
• 55:26
  Speaker 7: lot of hair salons out.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: There, probably more than barbershop. There's ten more times ten. Yeah,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: and they spend more money.
• 55:33
  Speaker 7: They spend more money. They don't get their haircut as often,
• 55:36
  Speaker 7: but when they do, they spend more.
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: And if you go like extensions, if you go like
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: you know, color, it gets these braiders.
• 55:44
  Speaker 7: Have you all seen these braiders that have been popping up?
• 55:46
  Speaker 7: They open twenty four to seven. They're all over.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: I live in Harlem, there's like five on every block.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: My system lowers that one ahead in the morning through
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: incredible business.
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: I don't fully understand it, but it's it's amazing.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: It's time consuming.
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I just saw something they have like a
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: on a like a.
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: Harvard the robot.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yo, I saw that.
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: It just depressure just starts it.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: They just starts to cut time into like out like
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Some some crazy.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: Boss of the AI bar You saw the ar thing.
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: That's not real.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: That's not real.
• 56:19
  Speaker 7: Put your head into the well.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: But all right, that's not real. But do you think
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: that that's gonna come as far as having an AI barber,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: I mean or a machine a machine.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: Barber decision cut maybe like twenty twenty five, thirty years maybe,
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: but like the cost doesn't like the investment is just
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: not worth it at this point to do it, and
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: it's like so nuanced. Like you know, I think there's
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: better uses of AI, like solving cancer.
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: Thing that makes sense from a return expected return process.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I think I know the answer to this, But I'm
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: just gonna ask any of the cost of haircuts beneficial
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: for you?
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: They've gone up, right.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: They're going up to stay.
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: You know, I saw something the other day.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on it?
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Like we come from it? Ever, was like it was
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: ten dollars and if you're getting fifteen. That was a tip.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Recently we've seen numbers inflate, like you said, but that
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: helps business. No, right, the higher the price the commission
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: close on yourself.
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: It helps. It helps our business.
• 57:23
  Speaker 7: It helps the business of the barbers who are able
• 57:26
  Speaker 7: to raise their prices and then keep their books full.
• 57:29
  Speaker 7: So what I think about I think it's great. I
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: think it's capitalism. It's it's it's the market. Like for
• 57:34
  Speaker 7: those who over overcharge and their prices go higher than
• 57:38
  Speaker 7: their the market of their consumers are willing to bear,
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: like they're going to have fewer bookings and they're going
• 57:42
  Speaker 7: to have to calibrate real quick or they're not going
• 57:44
  Speaker 7: to stay in business. So every every people, everybody that
• 57:47
  Speaker 7: you know like that complains about the prices. I'm like,
• 57:49
  Speaker 7: the consumers ultimately have power, and people are paying these prices.
• 57:53
  Speaker 7: People are paying fifty sixty seventy hundred dollars a cut,
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: So that means that's that's what the market is saying
• 57:59
  Speaker 7: that the price should be. If it goes too high,
• 58:01
  Speaker 7: maybe it'll come down.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but man, look at Nike's people charge
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty people still paying it. You think
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: if they weren't paying like you would still charge that
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: they were cut their prices. But I think, what would
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: I try to communicate when I'm talking to barbers about
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: the prices in general? I said, hey, it's okay to
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: increase your prices, but at the same time, are you
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: increasing the experience?
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: Because the experience should justify the prices.
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: If you haven't your client's rate, you know, fifteen thirty
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: minutes for a haircut, and then that's not a good experience,
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: Like why am I paying this? You know, and a
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: lot a lot of folks everybody can get it do
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: a decent haircut, you know. I've gotten a lot of
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: haircuts all the time, and like a lot of barbers
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: can get you there. What people do understand and the
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: ones that are very successful is a customer service. It's
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: always on time. You get the Olympics, like you get
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: in that chair eleven a clock. And and I think
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: that is a difference in what people value nowadays, especially
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: if you're charging those high dollar amounts. They just value
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: their time.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: What how do you like delegate who's making the decision
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: or what area you guys are focusing on or who
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: you know who's where what needs to be communicated as
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: well as your leadership roles are concerned.
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So it's funny, so early on when we first started,
• 59:30
  Speaker 7: it was just like everybody's doing whatever, like everybody wear
• 59:33
  Speaker 7: as many hats and and that works. I think as
• 59:37
  Speaker 7: the company gets bigger and more mature, you start bringing
• 59:40
  Speaker 7: on these executives, there starts to be more of a
• 59:42
  Speaker 7: need for like clearly like defined roles and and and
• 59:45
  Speaker 7: and whatnot. So I mean where it is now is
• 59:49
  Speaker 7: that you know, I'm the CEO, Davis a president. You know,
• 59:53
  Speaker 7: I have like kind of like typical CEO kind of
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: you know role that most companies would have in terms
• 59:58
  Speaker 7: of you know, the c suite report and all that stuff.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 7: Davis like has some really really dope initiatives that I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 7: actually think we should talk about, like the barber school
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 7: and partnerships, and you want to talk about barber.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: School Yeah, yeah, so so so barber schools initiative that
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: you know we're undertaking where you know, we want to
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: get we want to get the barber's doing the right
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: behaviors early on. So what we launch is a Square
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: for Schools, which is essentially we give the software to
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: barber schools for free and it gets some indoctrinated in
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: the right way to do business, right way to take appointments, right,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: professionalism right, you know, just operational excellence from the beginning.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: So we partner with like one hundred one hundred or
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: about one hundred schools right now, and we see that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: program being like, you know, how we step into the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: future a bit.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: We start from law and finance, we've become successful entrepreneurs.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: How are you guys doing outside of business right, because
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: we always talk about balancing and balancing it's subjective. How
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: have y'all managed to navigate your new found lives over
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the past five years as opposed to what we were
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: prior to this journey.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's been it's been a journey.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 7: It's been, uh, honestly the best experience that I could
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 7: have ever wanted, just going through this and going through
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 7: the struggles and the triumphs and us being together throughout
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 7: throughout the whole you know process as co founders. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 7: you know, during this I've you know, we both had children.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 7: I've had you know, two kids that they've had a child,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 7: and I've gotten married, so like we've our personal lives
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 7: have also, you know, there's been so much change, you
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 7: know over the last ten years. And you know, we
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 7: know at some point we were very broke in those
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 7: early days, and and you make a lot of sacrifices,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 7: and then when you start to do better, you know,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 7: the situation changes and quality of life and lifestyle changes.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 7: So I think we we've we've really managed there's really
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 7: no work life balance when you're a founder, Like it's
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 7: just all life. It's all part of the same thing.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 7: Like you're never really turning off, and it goes with
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 7: you everywhere. And I think, you know, for me, I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 7: think it's you know, it's important to have other outlets
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 7: and to really be focused on like you know, wellness,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 7: working out, like trying to keep your energy level high
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 7: because it's a marathon.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: This ship is hard, like it will.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 7: I've seen a lot of founders like crash out, burnout,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: and like you know, they've had to close the companies
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 7: down and that's mentally they just haven't been there. So
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 7: but I think we're doing you know, doing well now.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: Stress yeah, you know, but but I think outlets, like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: my outlet is like music. You know, I love I
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: love music, and you know, you know also you know
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: we we have a lounge and a lounge and health.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: You talk about talk about that.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: I mean it's creative, you know.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: I think the great thing about saying is like it's
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: a place where the community gret could like gather. I
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: think there was avoid in the market for that avoid
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: that you know, folks of color, ages like twenty five
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: to forty five come in Manhattan, feel welcome.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: We have a great operator James Jones, who you know
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: is a friend of mine for twenty twenty years and
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: he's been doing this so yeah, I mean, yeah, it
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: just was an opportunity.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: And then so you guys, I mentioned like as far
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: as exit right, so you're planning for the exit right.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 7: Is that it to say, Yeah, I mean you're always planning.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 7: So we're in building the company and trying to get
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 7: as big as possible like that in a sense as
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 7: planning for the exit because you know that's going to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 7: help the ultimate exit, but we're not actively like in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 7: a process.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but even that, because it's like even how a
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: company's built, like you got to keep in mind to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: build a company to exit, right, like, and that's something
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: that people might not be fully aware of also, so
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: like talk about that as far as like having that
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: end in mind even when building a company and having
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: it structured so it's like eventually gets to that point,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: it's already you don't have to like rework things and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: try to you know, figure it out on the fly.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 7: Yeah, if you if you're raising money from professional investors,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 7: they're they're investing with the expectation there's going to be
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: a liquidation, a liquidity event, an exit event some time.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: If you have a small business and it's like a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: lifestyle business and you haven't taken on, you know, money
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 7: from professional investors, like that's different. You could just run
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 7: that forever and that's just your lifestyle. It just kicks
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 7: off cash. It provides income for you, and that's cool,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 7: but that's a different kind of business what we have
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: as a venture backed, you know, business of scale. So
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 7: the expectation is there will be some type of event
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 7: and that could be an I P O or that
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 7: could be getting acquired. That's really only two ways and
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 7: so those are you know, just like any other company
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: like us, like those would be the two options to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 7: get liquidity.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's not many.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we spoke about why commenty we had did
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: episode a couple of years ago to speak about it.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: But if there's like a young group of.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Guys of girls that are trying to get to Y
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Combinator have their startup being, I have more eyeballs on it.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: What are the type of qualities that founder should have
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: prior to going there.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that the.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: Founder quality traits are like I think the number one
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: trade is resilience because it's not gonna be easy, Like
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: you don't have to be the smartest. You just have
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: to be the folks that will like it's a war
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: attrician engine that won't give up.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: I think that's the really the folks. There's folks that
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: I see.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, that person is gonna make it because
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: of the nasty and the let's say, hey, I'm making somehow.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: And also.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: What's really telling if you give somebody advice right on
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: how to do something and they they need to do
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: it themselves to find out early on, like later on
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: like hey you live, you have experts or you have experiences,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: but early on, like the best ospregeurs I met, even
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: if you gave them the advice, they have to see
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: it through themselves to understand it from their perspective, and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: you learn a lesson. But I think that the number
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: one quality is the determination and kind of grit.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: When you saw Sam, you saw that Sam Oltman.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. We didn't know what's going
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 7: to be a level Now.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: Sam's cool dude, Like he gets a lot of you know,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: flack sometimes, but you know he's the same person that
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: he was nine ten years ago.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Very important gun he was.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: He was he had a Sympsons like he was thinking
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: about universal Basic Income UBI ten years ago and there
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: are and.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: So what's next for you guys? And where can people
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: you know find you like talk about what's next as
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: far as initiatives and then website, social media and all
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: that stuff.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, what's next just doubling down on this
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: AI uh and and really trying to incorporate it more
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: in the business as well as, you know, continue to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: add value for our customers.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 7: Yeah, you can go to get squared AI Scott. It's
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 7: got the latest on that.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: And the AI, like you said, it's calling is it
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: more than that or is that the main focus more?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 6: That's just one.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: That's what's what's the what's the other people?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 7: So we're essentially we're embedding like this AI layer throughout
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 7: the entire like back in like platform, so it's really
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 7: going to be touch everything and and is designed to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 7: make the barber's lives more efficient and help them make
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 7: more money. The other way that we already have it
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 7: incorporated is through our marketing future, which is called Engage,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 7: which allows the barbers and the barbershop owners to like
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 7: message send messages to their client base like email, text, pusification.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 7: So we've supercharged that with AI now, so now they
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 7: can just type in what they want to achieve, like
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 7: I want to get my customers to come in for
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 7: Howiday cut, and it'll literally create the campaign and then
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 7: tell them who to send it to and then send
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 7: it out, so it's like their personal like business partner
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 7: that just like executes on things for them. So we're
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 7: in the early early phases. Those are the first two things,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: but we have so much more coming.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Well, appreciate you guys, man, thank you, thank you for
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: your time and yeah, man, look forward to it for sure.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: Appreciate thank you for being disruptive.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: All right, y'all, thank you for rocking us. To see
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: you next week. Peace.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: Earners, what's up?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: You have a walk into a small business and everything
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: just works like. The checkout is fast, the re seats
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: just feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: vendor at a pop up market, or even one of.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: Our merch partners.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: One of the things we love most is seeing neighborhood
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: businesses level up. Business West Indian spired writing our community
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: that started with a small takeout counter now with Square.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: They've been able to expand into a full sit down
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: restaurant and even started catering events across the city. That's
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: the kind of growth that inspires us, and it's powered
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: by Square. Square is built for all types of businesses,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: from the corner bagel shop that turned into a local
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: chain to the specialty market with thousands of unique items
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: who's been holding you down for years? If you're a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon,
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• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: there to help you start, run and grow. It's not
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: just about payments, it's about giving you time back so
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  Speaker 1: you can focus on what matters most Ready. To see
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  Speaker 1: how Square can transform your business, visit Square dot com backslash,
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  Speaker 1: the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward.