Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Accidental startup to cutting edge procurement solution: The story of Response with Keivan Shahida

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Accidental startup to cutting edge procurement solution: The story of Response with Keivan Shahida · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Today we sit down with Kayvon Shahida, a dynamic entrepreneur who is tackling a critical, yet often overlooked aspect of business operations.
• 0:11
  Kevan is the co founder and CEO of Response.
• 0:15
  His entrepreneurial journey began during his computer science studies at Cornell, leading him and his co founder into the procurement industry.
• 0:25
  We'll explore the story behind Response, a platform that's revolutionizing space control for retailers and 3 PLs.
• 0:34
  Kayvon shares a fascinating journey of how Response came to be from its initial conception to navigating the complexities of the COVID 19 pandemic and ultimately finding its niche in simplifying and centralizing purchasing activities.
• 0:51
  We'll explore how Response empowers businesses to streamline their operations, gain real time visibility over their spending, and ultimately transform days of tedious work into mere minutes.
• 1:04
  Kavan also shares his insights from Y Combinator and the key lessons learned while growing Response.
• 1:10
  Get ready for an inspiring story of resilience and innovation as we learn how Kayvon and his team are improving procurement.
• 1:20
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:25
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment Podcast.
• 1:30
  I'm.
• 1:30
  I'm your host Dave Gulas, and this week my guest is the CEO and co founder of Response, Kayvon Chahida.
• 1:39
  Welcome Kevon.
• 1:40
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:42
  Absolutely.
• 1:43
  We appreciate you taking the time to be here.
• 1:46
  So Kevon, Response, tell us what that company is.
• 1:51
  Yeah, definitely.
• 1:53
  So Response is a company I co founded with a longtime friend and business partner of mine, Kaiser Bayerjean.
• 2:02
  We met when we were studying engineering at Cornell.
• 2:05
  And the basic idea behind Response is we've aggregated all of the top industrial business and packaging vendors in the US into a single platform.
• 2:15
  And on top of those integrations, we built a platform for controlling spend.
• 2:21
  So if you're a mid sized 3 PL or retailer were a way for you to ultimately control exactly what your team can buy.
• 2:29
  Typically our customers, before Response, they're giving out credit cards to people.
• 2:34
  They're letting people issue pos left, right and center.
• 2:38
  It's just the wild west of procurement.
• 2:40
  And the idea behind Response is we help them centralize all that spend so they have visibility into exactly what their team is buying in real time.
• 2:48
  And then we give them control so they can control the exact SKUs and the exact amounts and the exact vendors that their team can buy.
• 2:57
  Okay, yeah, so a lot to unpack there with Response and what it's doing and certainly some big news that you've made recently.
• 3:05
  But let's just go back to the beginning so you're studying.
• 3:09
  I think it's computer science at Cornell.
• 3:12
  Yep.
• 3:12
  And so what.
• 3:13
  What was like, how did this idea to start this company come about?
• 3:18
  It was.
• 3:19
  It was almost a complete accident.
• 3:21
  I know it's crazy to say, but we were working on something entirely different.
• 3:26
  And in the process of doing research for that idea, we had to start talking to people in procurement, people in operations, and they started to explain to us some of the challenges that they were having in purchasing and
• 3:38
  B2B purchasing.
• 3:40
  And our minds were just blown.
• 3:42
  We were like, oh, my God, how.
• 3:44
  How is it that people are using these tools from decades ago?
• 3:48
  It's so manual, it's so slow, it's so inefficient.
• 3:52
  There has to be a better way to.
• 3:55
  To do this.
• 3:56
  And the opportunity was just so massive that we effectively just dropped what we were working on before, because we realized, wait, this is a way bigger, way gnarlier challenge for us to go after.
• 4:09
  And so after that point, we actually spent the first couple of years really just researching, not even building anything.
• 4:19
  We wanted to make sure that we really deeply understood the challenges that people in procurement or, you know, operations, people who maybe have procurement as one of their many responsibilities, we wanted to understand the root of those challenges.
• 4:33
  And so we interviewed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of teams before building anything.
• 4:40
  And eventually what ended up happening is we got into yc and YC was an incredible, incredible opportunity for us.
• 4:49
  Y Combinator, they're one of the top startup accelerators in the world.
• 4:53
  They were the first investors in companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Doordash, Flexport, you name it.
• 5:02
  They're the big dogs in town.
• 5:04
  And so we get into YC and Covid Hits, and when we entered yc, we're building this enterprise software for procurement teams, helping them automate these super complex, complex workflows.
• 5:18
  RFPs, RFQs, tender offers, you name it.
• 5:23
  But Covid hit, and all the contracts that we had effectively just, poof, vanished.
• 5:29
  And we had to figure out, what are we going to do?
• 5:32
  Like, we just got into yc.
• 5:34
  This is our opportunity.
• 5:35
  This was going to be the moment where we shine and we go into YC and it just takes off.
• 5:41
  And instead we have to.
• 5:43
  We have to really rebuild and rethink our approach.
• 5:47
  And at the time, this is one of the craziest parts of our journey at the time, you know, we were hearing constantly about healthcare workers needing to source PPE, so gloves, masks, sanitation products, etc.
• 6:01
  It was such a challenge for them to source what was at the time, life saving equipment and supplies.
• 6:08
  And we said, wait, we have this platform for letting people source things globally in an efficient way.
• 6:15
  What if we just worked with healthcare teams and helped them source ppe?
• 6:20
  And so during the course of yc we were just in this wild west of healthcare, but we really made a big mistake there because unlike when we'd spent years interviewing procurement teams and ops people, we knew nothing about
• 6:36
  healthcare workers and their day to day challenges.
• 6:40
  And so the mistake we made there was we effectively slapped our solution onto a group of people in a problem that we didn't know much as much about.
• 6:50
  And yes, they were having a problem sourcing ppe, but it was very much a one and done problem once they got it.
• 6:58
  And of course once Covid died down, it was no longer a problem.
• 7:04
  But that's when we got lucky.
• 7:05
  And that's actually where the journey of response as it exists today started.
• 7:10
  So towards the end of the pandemic, we weren't just helping healthcare workers source PPE at the time, other businesses were coming back online in person and they still needed to source these kind of supplies.
• 7:25
  And so we started helping a few warehouse teams.
• 7:28
  And one day this VP of operations comes to us and she said, you know, you guys are helping us with all this ppe, but we have to buy all of this other stuff to run the operation and I
• 7:42
  don't want to deal with it, but I know we're overspending, I know we're not doing things efficiently.
• 7:46
  Can you guys just take this off our plate?
• 7:49
  And so we're like, oh, that's very interesting.
• 7:53
  But we, we reflected on all the mistakes and all the learnings of the previous years and we said, all right, we're going to do this.
• 8:00
  We need to make sure we really understand the space and spend a lot of time with people in person, understanding the day to day lives of these operators to figure out if the problem is really a big one
• 8:13
  and if it is a big one, how to start addressing it in the most effective way.
• 8:17
  And so we dug in again and just started meeting with operations teams, started working with warehouse teams, and that ended up being the basis of all the research and foundation of response as it exists today, where now we're
• 8:33
  helping 3pls, we're helping retailers who have their own physical stores and fulfillment centers, we're helping distributors, you name it.
• 8:44
  But yeah, that is kind of the high level, high level story of response.
• 8:53
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• 8:54
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• 8:58
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• 9:02
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• 9:09
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• 9:13
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• 9:19
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• 9:24
  So we can tailor the equipment to the shipment and the fully trained and experienced operations team who is always available to help.
• 9:32
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• 9:37
  If you've got freight to move, go to Freight by Dave.com that's Freight by Dave.com wow.
• 9:46
  Okay, so a lot to unpack there as well.
• 9:50
  So you, you originally had.
• 9:51
  This is originally an enterprise solution.
• 9:54
  You get into Y and just for, for people, in case everyone doesn't understand what's the process like to even get into Y Combinator?
• 10:02
  Oh, it's absolutely insane.
• 10:04
  So we, we actually applied twice.
• 10:06
  The first time we applied we didn't get in.
• 10:10
  And at the time I think it was, and it's probably similar numbers now, it's something like 20,000 companies apply for each batch.
• 10:19
  And at the time I believe they were taking something like just under 200 companies.
• 10:26
  So incredibly competitive process.
• 10:29
  After the application step, if you make it to the next step, there's an interview.
• 10:35
  That interview is also this kind of legendary thing in the story of many, many startups out there.
• 10:42
  And the interview is unique because at the time what they would do is they would fly you to Mountain View here in California in the South Bay and you have something like 13 minutes with them.
• 10:56
  It's like a, it's a bizarre number, it's super short, but for them it's really efficient.
• 11:01
  And you go into that process and it's like, you know, you're expecting them and you're preparing for them to just grill you something like 50 questions, right?
• 11:11
  They're just gonna ask you rapid fire to figure out whether it's a company they want to invest in or not.
• 11:17
  And then within the same day they will give you a decision.
• 11:21
  And you know, we were preparing like crazy because again, it was the second time that we applied, we ended up finding out that they want to fly us out.
• 11:31
  We're just over the moon, like this is our dream.
• 11:34
  And we were just grinding, preparing for that interview for weeks.
• 11:38
  Meeting with X, you know, YC founders, people had gone through the program just getting that prep and you know, we go into that meeting super nervous, thinking like all right, we're about to get torn to shreds because that's
• 11:54
  kind of the reputation that it has, you know, going, going into those interview and we sit down and the first thing they say is, so you guys are solving a really big problem here.
• 12:05
  And we're like, wait, what?
• 12:07
  Like, usually you have to convince them or explain, get them to a point where they realize this is a big problem, but they saw it and they, they understood it.
• 12:16
  And really the main question they had was, all right, this is a big problem, but it's super gnarly.
• 12:22
  How are you going to get started?
• 12:23
  There's so many potential starting points in procurement, by industry, by different problem subset within procurement, etc.
• 12:31
  So we go through that interview and if, if they accept you, you'll get a phone call.
• 12:39
  If they deny you, you'll get an email after that.
• 12:42
  And so we were just nervously waiting around, you know, our phone for the next hour and we got the call and we were just over the moon.
• 12:54
  We ended up getting in and then from there it's a three month program.
• 12:58
  You're partnered up with the specific investment partner there.
• 13:02
  These are people who have worked with hundreds if not thousands of startups.
• 13:06
  They're really just like these, these experts, largely experts in failure because a lot of most startups will fail.
• 13:15
  And so what their superpowers are, are pointing out potential red flags, potential traps that you might fall into and helping you get around or jump over those traps and avoid them entirely.
• 13:28
  During the program.
• 13:29
  They bring in tons of notable founders.
• 13:32
  The batch started off with the founders of Airbnb giving a talk to everyone and then a ton of other notable founders come in throughout the course of the batch.
• 13:42
  And it all then culminates in something called Demo Day.
• 13:46
  And Demo Day is this opportunity where 200 startups are all pitching to an audience of something like thousands of investors.
• 13:56
  And there's just this insane flurry of excitement and intensity where most companies exiting yc, they're trying to, to fundraise so they can get the money they need to get to that next step in their journey.
• 14:12
  And yc, one of YC superpowers, in addition to their knowledge, is Demo Day itself.
• 14:19
  And just this environment that it creates where investors are flocking to you.
• 14:24
  Unlike, you know, in a scenario without yc, if you don't have an extensive network already of investors, which most people don't, often you're trying to get them to spend time with you, whereas here they're trying to get time
• 14:38
  with you.
• 14:38
  So they flip, flipped, they flipped the table.
• 14:42
  So overall, amazing experience.
• 14:44
  We're still super close with our partner there, Dalton Caldwell, who has been invaluable to our journey at response, but that was our experience with yc.
• 14:54
  Okay, all right.
• 14:56
  And you know, you have this idea right when you have the aha moment, you see this big problem exists.
• 15:02
  And okay, let, let you drop the other project and let's dive head first into this.
• 15:07
  But what was the process like of actually tangible, tangibly building this, this software solution?
• 15:16
  We were insanely methodical and how we approached it, this was like a very classic engineer approach for us to take.
• 15:26
  So what we did actually before even starting the building process is we pulled up just a simple business model canvas and we wrote out all of the assumptions we had about the business.
• 15:38
  And then what we did is we put all of those assumptions in a spreadsheet and we had two columns.
• 15:44
  One column was, you know, how confident are we about this assumption?
• 15:49
  Meaning, like, how much data do we already have to support it?
• 15:53
  And the other column is, how risky is this assumption if we get it wrong?
• 15:57
  So, meaning if we're wrong about this, is it going to tank the entire idea and approach entirely, or is it something that we can just tweak slightly and all as well?
• 16:06
  So we kind of, we, we listed these out, we ranked them, said, all right, we're going to now run interviews.
• 16:14
  It was just simple conversations to start to test our riskiest hypotheses, the ones that we knew the least about.
• 16:22
  But if we get wrong, had some sort of foundational or fundamental error that it would cause in our approach to building the company.
• 16:31
  And so it started off from there, just interviewing people.
• 16:35
  And we had no, we had no network in supply chain and logistics at that point.
• 16:42
  This was kind of, you know, after, after yc, when we kind of ran through this process and we just had to cold call people, it was a lot of LinkedIn cold outreach.
• 16:54
  And it was a lot of people just out of the kindness of their hearts, taking the time with us.
• 17:00
  And usually they would take the time because actually they had this problem and so they wanted to help someone investigate it and ultimately solve the problem so that they wouldn't have to deal with it during the course of
• 17:14
  their.
• 17:14
  Their work.
• 17:15
  And so once we tested those hypotheses, it became much clearer what we needed to build.
• 17:21
  And again, we're just trying to be lean, move really fast.
• 17:25
  And so the next stage from there was we just built prototypes.
• 17:30
  We still didn't build the full thing.
• 17:33
  We just wanted to have something to show someone because it would take months to build it if we needed to build it.
• 17:39
  So we didn't want to have to wait months to find out that our first approach was wrong.
• 17:44
  And often the first approach is always going to be wrong.
• 17:47
  So our philosophy was, let's just.
• 17:49
  Now that we've learned all these fundamental, you know, facts and about the assumptions that we made, let's put this forward in front of people as a prototype.
• 18:00
  And we just ran the process again.
• 18:02
  And by the time we did that five times, it was like, all right, it's very clear what we need to build.
• 18:07
  And we built it.
• 18:09
  And as a result of building this rapport with this initial community, that in the beginning it was just cold outreach.
• 18:17
  But consistently we're coming back to them and saying, we've made this progress or hey, this thing you suggested, we've actually implemented it.
• 18:25
  We've actually researched it deeply, because we did that and we followed through and we followed up.
• 18:30
  Those people were then showing up for each additional step in the process.
• 18:35
  And by the end of it, those were our earliest customers and users of the product.
• 18:39
  These were operators again, in three PLs, different e commerce companies, etc.
• 18:45
  Who they saw, they spoke with us before we even had anything.
• 18:50
  And then they ended up being the first people to ever place orders on.
• 18:54
  On response.
• 18:56
  Wow.
• 18:57
  Okay.
• 18:58
  So you go through that process, you take your time, a lot of interviews, lot of tweaking, right?
• 19:04
  And you find, like you said, you finally get it right and you, you launch.
• 19:08
  And like you said, the people that gave you the feedback are, are your early customers.
• 19:13
  So you're, you're at that point and now you're, you go to market and then what happens next?
• 19:18
  Yeah, so it definitely wasn't, it still wasn't.
• 19:21
  Sunshine and roses.
• 19:22
  Right, and off to the races.
• 19:24
  So we had this group of people using the product and there was kind of two different camps that were emerging of what people wanted out of us.
• 19:33
  And again, we're slowly, gradually learning the nuances of supply chain and logistics.
• 19:38
  We were new to the industry, we knew a lot about procurement at this point, but that was just kind of.
• 19:44
  It was across so many different industries.
• 19:46
  And so these different camps kind of emerge.
• 19:50
  And the first one was what we called effectively the price shoppers.
• 19:54
  And the idea that people had initially our first jab at response, even after all this testing, this seemed like it was the right move.
• 20:02
  And so we built a.
• 20:03
  We built a product that allowed people to search across the market.
• 20:07
  The idea was pretty basic.
• 20:09
  It's like Google flights or kayak all right, I'm looking for this supply.
• 20:13
  Show me this supply and all the similar products across 100 vendors so I can quickly get the best price.
• 20:21
  And so we end up building that.
• 20:23
  It takes some time to build a product of that scale with something like 20 to 30 million products.
• 20:29
  And there's just an insane lift to build something like that to deliver that experience.
• 20:35
  And people were using it, but it just wasn't, it wasn't taking off in the way that we, we needed it to be taking off.
• 20:43
  And when we looked at the data and we looked at who's sticking around and who isn't, there was a really clear split.
• 20:52
  We were like, oh my God, how did we miss this?
• 20:55
  And the people who weren't staying around were often these kind of single location, smb3pls, retailers, etc.
• 21:05
  They were the price shoppers, right?
• 21:07
  But, but by nature of being price shoppers, they were not necessarily, they were not necessarily loyal, right, because they're always looking for the best price.
• 21:17
  So unless we could guarantee that the best price was on response, which was a tall order for a startup to be doing, then they were hopping on to some other tool.
• 21:26
  And for most people, they don't want to have to think about it, they just want an easy button for this stuff.
• 21:32
  So those people weren't sticking around.
• 21:34
  But when we looked at who was sticking around, it was all of these mid market organizations, larger organizations, where maybe they have six facilities or a dozen facilities, et cetera, and they were using us in this way that
• 21:49
  we just, it was right under our nose.
• 21:51
  We didn't realize what value they were getting out of us.
• 21:55
  And we had built this little feature called lists just to help people stay organized.
• 22:00
  In response, the basic idea was, all right, if I'm buying corrugate, here's my list for all my boxes and here's my list for my janitorial supplies, et cetera.
• 22:10
  But instead of building lists in the way that we'd envision, what these customers were doing was they were doing things like Atlanta operations team, Columbus operations team, New York, you know, office team.
• 22:26
  And we asked them, we're like, okay, why, what are you using this for?
• 22:31
  They're like, oh, you know, before response, our team was just going out and buying whatever they wanted, right?
• 22:37
  Either overspending or buying products that they shouldn't be.
• 22:41
  Maybe we negotiated with one vendor like staples for paper, but then they're going out to Office Depot and paying twice as much.
• 22:50
  And so we want to just put the products that they're allowed to buy in one place.
• 22:55
  So all they have to do is log in and click, click, click.
• 22:58
  Here's their personal store of what they're allowed to buy.
• 23:01
  They check out, it's done, and all that spend is controlled.
• 23:04
  But the individual operator feels like they have the freedom to quickly go in, select what they want and get on with their lives.
• 23:11
  We're like, whoa, like, how did we totally miss this?
• 23:15
  And so what we did from there was we said, all right, it's, it's, we're going to double down on this, we're going to double down on being this command center for operational spend.
• 23:25
  Indirect spend takes a bunch of different shapes and forms, but really it's just everything from packaging to janitorial supplies to office supplies, equipment, everything you need to buy the physical, physical goods you need to buy to run your
• 23:41
  operation.
• 23:43
  They just wanted a control center for that.
• 23:45
  They wanted a command center so that they had visibility.
• 23:48
  Because before that they didn't know how much.
• 23:51
  They didn't know what their team was buying.
• 23:52
  Maybe they would know, all right, we spent 5 million on consumables, but what are all of those subcategories of consumables?
• 24:01
  And not only that, purchases were happening and after the fact, they were saying to people, why did you make this order?
• 24:08
  And they were slapping people on the wrist so they didn't have any way to proactively prevent that rogue spend from happening.
• 24:15
  And so we doubled down and we made it incredibly easy where people can just link their accounts directly to response.
• 24:23
  They can get up and running in less than a day if they really want to.
• 24:27
  Once their products are in response, they can put controls in place so they can say, all right, you know, operations team in this location has access to these products.
• 24:37
  And then on top of that, we give them the tools to analyze and optimize that spend.
• 24:42
  So looking at their spend overall, seeing, okay, where is their opportunity for consolidation?
• 24:48
  Are there any interesting trends in what we're buying?
• 24:51
  Why, why is Columbus spending 50% more this month than last month?
• 24:57
  These are kind of things that they seem so simple.
• 25:00
  But before response, most businesses do not have the ability to quickly get access to those kind of, those kind of answers to those questions.
• 25:10
  Yeah, I mean, it seems like a no brainer in terms of you'd want to have that in place.
• 25:14
  But of course, like there's not been a solution.
• 25:18
  What, what was the process like when you had that other, that insight to, okay, now we want to have, you know, the teams, you know, be separate by facility and be able to make all these other updates, how
• 25:31
  much work was.
• 25:32
  Was it in terms of putting all that in place?
• 25:35
  The funny thing was, versus building the marketplace, it was actually way simpler.
• 25:39
  Like, building the marketplace was this crazy technical challenge, because 30 million products and you have to come up with a way to determine which products are similar.
• 25:50
  Like one vendor might call something cardboard boxes and other might call it cartons.
• 25:57
  And we have to build the data science infrastructure to figure out, you know, which products are apples to apples.
• 26:04
  And that's.
• 26:05
  That's not an easy challenge at all.
• 26:07
  And then it had to be a really simple user experience.
• 26:10
  Whereas this world that we're in now because we built all those integrations, it actually set us up for success.
• 26:17
  And that it was.
• 26:19
  It was much simpler because this was just effectively building lists of products and then just having guardrails in the product to make sure that based on someone's level of seniority, they can't do certain things that they're not allowed
• 26:34
  to do.
• 26:34
  So from a development standpoint, was actually way more straightforward to build the product that we have today.
• 26:42
  But we were able to move quickly because we'd built that solid foundation of all of those integrations, all of the messy data cleanup that we had to do.
• 26:53
  So that ultimately allowed us to build something pretty unique compared to some of the other solutions that are out there.
• 27:01
  Okay, all right, so then you settle on, that's where the product is now, and then thereafter, you had a.
• 27:11
  Another capital raise, is that right?
• 27:13
  Exactly.
• 27:14
  Yeah.
• 27:14
  So we reached a point where, all right, people are now using Response as this control center for all their spend.
• 27:23
  We're now repeatedly closing customers.
• 27:26
  You know, we've gone from customers that have one location to customers that have dozens of locations, public companies, you know, using Response.
• 27:36
  So we felt like, all right, we've raised this money.
• 27:40
  Now is the opportunity to announce it to the world.
• 27:44
  And so at the start of February of 2025, we did a launch on February 6th.
• 27:49
  And it was this incredible moment for us where all the vanity metrics were there.
• 27:57
  The launch itself got a ton of traction, a ton of engagement.
• 28:02
  We launched these incredible vests and sent them out to influencers across the space who were posting about Response.
• 28:10
  So it was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views and engagements with the launch itself.
• 28:16
  But really, I would say the most fascinating thing that came out of the launch was really who was signing up.
• 28:24
  And traditionally at Response, we'd targeted operations people.
• 28:29
  Those were the people we built the early connections with that we ended up building out this network with.
• 28:37
  But what we found was after the launch, all of the people who were signing up inbound were all in finance.
• 28:44
  And one of the most interesting things that happened before our launch was we were building out case studies so we can put them up on our site to prove the ROI of response.
• 28:54
  And I was meeting with the director of operations at Nimble Fulfillment, there are three pl and in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• 29:01
  And he said something really interesting to me, which is he said, yeah, the time savings for operations team has been incredible.
• 29:08
  You know, you're saving them hours and hours of time every week.
• 29:13
  But really the people who were most excited by response, who have had the most value out of response, are our finance team.
• 29:22
  And at the end of the month, because before response, people were buying whatever they wanted.
• 29:28
  Invoices were flying left and right.
• 29:31
  At the end of the month.
• 29:32
  It was this like this hunt for them there.
• 29:35
  It was a wild goose chase where they're just trying to figure out, where is this invoice?
• 29:39
  Why did you buy this?
• 29:40
  Multiplied across a dozen vendors, multiply, multiplied across a dozen buyers, multiplied across dozens and dozens of orders that had to be placed to buy what they needed.
• 29:51
  So when OPS wasn't following the best practices, it was just creating this mountain of work for them at the end of the month to reconcile that spend so they can close out the books for the month.
• 30:02
  And he said, you took a process that took them two days of work and turn it into just 30 minutes.
• 30:09
  I was like, oh my God, that's crazy.
• 30:11
  How did we completely miss that here?
• 30:14
  And lo and behold, when we did the launch, guess who was signing up for response?
• 30:20
  It was all finance people.
• 30:22
  And so it's been super exciting.
• 30:24
  You know, the pitch is, is really landing like one after another.
• 30:29
  Now when we're pitching finance people, they just get it because they're living in this problem.
• 30:35
  It is this hair on fire problem for them.
• 30:37
  For ops, there's definitely inefficiency there, right?
• 30:41
  They don't want to deal with it.
• 30:43
  They don't want procurement to be one of their responsibilities.
• 30:46
  And so there's an opportunity for us to step in and provide them this really easy experience to just go in and out, buy what they need.
• 30:54
  But really the ultimate benefit of response are the downstream effects.
• 31:00
  It's spend being coded correctly.
• 31:02
  It's invoices, bills of lading or delivery receipts, purchase orders all being in one place.
• 31:08
  It's all that spend being under one hood.
• 31:10
  So that at the end of the month when finance goes to see, are we on budget?
• 31:15
  You know, do we have all the invoices we need, were things delivered?
• 31:18
  Is it coded correctly?
• 31:20
  That's just being done as they go throughout the month.
• 31:23
  So all of that work is just getting automated away for them.
• 31:28
  Okay.
• 31:30
  All right.
• 31:30
  And Kayvon, if people want to find out more about response and how they can potentially sign up, what's the best way that people can reach out to you?
• 31:38
  Yeah, there's a few ways.
• 31:40
  One of the best ways is to visit our website.
• 31:42
  That's www.try respons.com t r y response spelled normally.com.
• 31:50
  they can also reach out to me on LinkedIn.
• 31:52
  Kayvon Shahida.
• 31:54
  That's K E I V A N S H A H I D A K V on Shahida on.
• 32:00
  On LinkedIn.
• 32:01
  They can feel free to.
• 32:02
  To shoot me a DM and I'd be happy to.
• 32:05
  To respond to them there.
• 32:07
  Okay.
• 32:08
  And we'll link all that in the show.
• 32:09
  Notes for everyone.
• 32:11
  That's great.
• 32:12
  Well, Kayvon, thank you so much for joining the show today, sharing all this wisdom from your journey and certainly some great lessons for entrepreneurs.
• 32:20
  And best of luck with what you're building and where you're headed next.
• 32:24
  Awesome.
• 32:24
  Thank you so much, Dave.
• 32:26
  All right, and that's all the time we have for now.
• 32:28
  We will see you next time.