Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Scaling With Private Equity: Mike Horvath's Viking Global Partnership at Revenova
Transcript
- 0:04Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
- 0:08where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
- 0:11their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
- 0:14adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and
- 0:17today's guest is Michael Horvath, COO and Co founder of
- 0:21Revanova, the industry's only CRM powered transportation
- 0:26management system for freight brokers, 3 PLS carriers and
- 0:30shippers. Founded in 2014 and deployed on
- 0:34Salesforce, Revanova TMS unifies multimodal quoting, planning,
- 0:39booking, dispatch, tracking and settlement with market leading
- 0:44CRM, digital engagement, AI and analytics.
- 0:48All of this to help mid market and enterprise customers,
- 0:52including some of North America's largest three PLS,
- 0:55grow revenue, improve service and lower costs.
- 0:59Michael leads Revanova's go to market and product strategy.
- 1:02Before this, he Co founded for SEBA the first native Salesforce
- 1:07credit and collection suite, serving as CMO and Executive
- 1:11Vice President until its acquisition by Equifax in 2014.
- 1:17Earlier stops include NCR, Quintus, Avaya and Cortera.
- 1:21A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Michael brings a
- 1:25builder's perspective to logistics tech.
- 1:28Now before we get into all that good stuff, today our episode is
- 1:32brought to you by my company Add Back Benefits Agency, where we
- 1:35offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both
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- 1:43Imagine being able to give your logistics employees free access
- 1:46to doctors, therapists and prescription medications.
- 1:49And here's the fun part. The program actually puts more
- 1:52money into your employees pockets and the companies too.
- 1:56One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per
- 2:00employee per year. The results vary for each
- 2:04company and some organizations may not be eligible.
- 2:07To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
- 2:10AD Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
- 2:13today, CEO of Revanova and Co founder, Michael Horvath.
- 2:17Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
- 2:20Well, thanks for having me today.
- 2:21Very excited about the conversation.
- 2:23So Mike, you've got a pretty long and storied career in
- 2:27sales. Is that something that came
- 2:29naturally to you or did you have to kind of build that skill and
- 2:33that comfort level over time? Yeah, it's a great question.
- 2:37You know, I, I got into sales primarily because of a college
- 2:41professor at Northern Illinois University.
- 2:43I took a sales class in the first day of class, the teacher
- 2:47said I have to teach the textbook.
- 2:49And so I'm going to have the midterm exam next week and the
- 2:53final exam two weeks from now because I, it's required for me
- 2:56to teach this book. So I need to read half the book,
- 2:58get ready for the test. And you still have time to drop
- 3:01this class if you want, if that's not something you're
- 3:03interested in. And he's like in sales, you have
- 3:06to do unreal things on the, on unreal timelines.
- 3:08And I'm like, wow, this is very intriguing.
- 3:10So I didn't drop it. I stuck it out.
- 3:12We did the midterm exam a week later, final exam a week after
- 3:15that. And then we were basically
- 3:17paired up with salespeople, professional salespeople as
- 3:20almost like an internship for the rest of the semester while
- 3:23we were learning all different things about sales, how to
- 3:26prospect, how to objection, handle all these different
- 3:28really interesting things. And, you know, from that point
- 3:32on I was like, OK, this is, I like this, you know, and I had a
- 3:35really good time with the internship.
- 3:38And after that, you know, I, I picked up my first job with NCR
- 3:41and sales because really of that influence of a professor at.
- 3:45NIU and then that's an incredible way to structure a
- 3:48course. You know, I graduated with a
- 3:50business degree and one of my big complaints coming out of
- 3:53there was no entrepreneurship courses and at least that I was
- 3:59aware of, there were no sales courses available.
- 4:02And so not only did you have a sort a sales course available,
- 4:05but they were doing the practical things, right.
- 4:08You weren't just learning the terms and the theory like you
- 4:11were learning the practice of how to do it.
- 4:13I mean, that's, that's incredibly impactful to young
- 4:15age. Yeah.
- 4:17I went into it as a marketing major thinking, you know,
- 4:19marketing, advertising more on the marketing side of business.
- 4:22And after that class and after doing the experience and at the
- 4:26internship level, like I said, I think I could do this.
- 4:29I think I like it. It was really, you know,
- 4:31engaging with people. I really like that aspect of it.
- 4:34You're always problem solving, you're always engaging people in
- 4:37conversations, trying to convince, you know, folks and
- 4:40understand the requirements, all the things you do as a good
- 4:42salesperson and all the activity management and and time time
- 4:46management that you have to do as well.
- 4:48So yeah, it's that's how I started down the down that path
- 4:52and. What specifically were you
- 4:53selling at NCR back then? Retail systems.
- 4:57So it was all about the tech. And so that's kind of how I got
- 5:00into the tech space as well. It was point of sale, you know,
- 5:04and working on different point of sale opportunities with
- 5:06grocery stores, restaurants, retail outlets, you know, in
- 5:10central Illinois and basically in the car driving around
- 5:14talking to different people, set up appointments.
- 5:16And you know, I'm trying to understand what the requirements
- 5:18are and how our how our solutions can help them.
- 5:22Before we get to talking about your current venture, Revanova,
- 5:26want to hear just a little bit about your past?
- 5:28Maybe pick one of your most formidable stops along the way
- 5:31and talk to us about that. When did you learn there?
- 5:34Yeah, that's an easy answer for me.
- 5:36That would be Quintus Corporation.
- 5:38We were ACRM vendor in the mid 90s.
- 5:42Yep, before Salesforce.com was even probably a thought on
- 5:45people's minds and we had a great product and we had a great
- 5:49company. I was early there.
- 5:50That's one of the salespeople and and was able to close very
- 5:53large accounts like State Farm Insurance and John Deere and
- 5:57United Airlines in the central region.
- 5:59We were crushing it as a company and in 1999 we went public and
- 6:05you know, he had great mentors there.
- 6:07Gentleman by name of John Cecala works for Google Now.
- 6:10I've learned so much from John. He was a great mentor.
- 6:12Peter Kenyon and other great mentor there.
- 6:15And we were just doing great, going like gangbusters.
- 6:19And then the whole bottom dropped out of the company.
- 6:22Our CEO, under the public pressure of making numbers, did
- 6:27some illegal things. Oh, wow.
- 6:29And we ultimately got delisted off, off the exchange and
- 6:36everybody's equity value, a lot of people lost a lot of money,
- 6:39including myself, you know, potential money.
- 6:41In terms of the equity value we had, we, we had a market cap of
- 6:44over 1.7 billion when we went public.
- 6:47Our stock went from 18 to $55 on day one.
- 6:49We were a darling of Silicon Valley at the time.
- 6:52And now we are in survival mode. You know, I, I was the RVP of
- 6:57sales at the time. I had to let go half my team.
- 7:00Like I got a call saying we got to let go performers, you know,
- 7:03we have to do all these things. And so you learn a lot from that
- 7:07experience. The unbelievable highs of taking
- 7:10something that was a small software company and going and
- 7:12getting going public and watching it just be a complete
- 7:17win to being a complete loss. And ultimately we we filed
- 7:23bankruptcy that the, the investors actually bank, you
- 7:26know, did a pre packed bankruptcy sale to Avaya.
- 7:28So basically sold our tech to Avaya, which then lived on as
- 7:32their customer reaction center and so on.
- 7:35And when that's when I decided to leave the company, I'd spent
- 7:39a ton of time on the good side and on the bad side, you know,
- 7:43recovering customers, keeping customers on board, keeping the
- 7:46revenue. We had a great product and we
- 7:48had great people working at the company and our customers were
- 7:51seeing value from it. But that whole ethics problem
- 7:54with our CEO, Alan Anderson, you can look it up, you know, Google
- 7:58them, you can see all the things that happened ultimately got be
- 8:02a banned by the FCC, you know, to be ACEO or executive on a
- 8:06public company, a lot of different things that happened
- 8:08as a result of that. But yeah, so that that was a
- 8:12great learning experience. And you could, you know, I'd
- 8:15look at it both from the positive aspects I took away
- 8:17from it and what did I learn from the downside of that.
- 8:23What was the biggest thing you learned from the downside?
- 8:27The biggest, the biggest take away was you have to work with
- 8:30ethical people you can trust because that was a classic
- 8:34example of everything was going well.
- 8:37And one, one, maybe one person for sure.
- 8:41And how it got through the rest of the audit checks and stuff.
- 8:45I don't know the answers to that.
- 8:47But ethical people line yourself up with people you can trust and
- 8:51that have good ethics, because these things can happen if you
- 8:56don't, right? But this was somebody that you
- 8:58had worked with for some period of time before the company went
- 9:01public. Were there any signs that there
- 9:04were some unscrupulous things, or maybe that the character of
- 9:08this person was questionable? No, I mean nothing that obvious
- 9:12to me. And I was in the central region,
- 9:15you know, and then the executive team was in Fremont, CA, So I
- 9:18didn't have day-to-day interactions, you know, with,
- 9:21you know, Ellen Anderson specifically.
- 9:23I mean, I talk to them quite often as one of the top reps and
- 9:26our region was always a top performing region, but never,
- 9:29never anything that would indicate that this would happen.
- 9:33And so I do think like if you're going into a company and
- 9:38researching the people that you're going to work with is a
- 9:40good idea, Like see what backgrounds exist.
- 9:44You know, obviously the internet's a great thing to look
- 9:46at backgrounds on folks and see, you know, what they may or may
- 9:49not not have done or been involved with in the past.
- 9:51You know, make sure you cross those TS and dot those I's when
- 9:54you're going to, you know, especially partner up with
- 9:56somebody or invest a lot of time in a career.
- 9:59But I know that was the shocking part of it is Yellen was very,
- 10:03you know, he dynamic man, lots of positive aspects, you know,
- 10:08could go out there and really promote the company, You know,
- 10:11very, very well. You know, why these things
- 10:13happen, why he did it. You know, I can only guess
- 10:16financial motives potentially, you know, stock price stuff, you
- 10:19know, as a public company. But yes, yeah, that's my big
- 10:23take away. And and it's obviously you can't
- 10:25always prepare for those things. And I think that's life, right?
- 10:28Life is hurdles you have to overcome that come at you that
- 10:31you never saw right. Yeah, So it's not like you look
- 10:35back and you're like, oh, there were some red flags that I
- 10:37missed. This just this blew you away.
- 10:39This was not something. I know it's the biggest
- 10:41frustrating part of it for, you know, and I still stay in touch
- 10:44with a lot of the team that we work together with how you get
- 10:48off this California quite a bit. Being a Salesforce partner, I
- 10:51usually connect up with the the team that we had there because
- 10:55we built great relationships. We had great friendships.
- 10:58We had, like I said, a great product.
- 11:00It it just was a really bad ending.
- 11:04So where did the idea to start Rebenova come from?
- 11:08That came from my colleague Charles Craig Miles.
- 11:11So, you know, Charles and I and Dave and Jeff Parisi kind of the
- 11:14four, four of us, we actually had two companies.
- 11:18The Forciva 1 you mentioned in the intro that was a result of
- 11:22me coming out of another kind of bad experience.
- 11:25Talk about overcoming hurdles. Yeah, Forciva.
- 11:29I was at a company called E Credit, saw it on my bio and we
- 11:34were, it was a turn around situation working with a one of
- 11:37my mentors, Jeff Dickerson, another great person I learned a
- 11:40lot from. And we turned a company around
- 11:42and, you know, ultimately sold it to an investment group And
- 11:45the new CEO came in. And at the time, I was really
- 11:47much, very much, I love where we were heading as a company.
- 11:51E Credit. We had turned around.
- 11:52We had a good vision for what we are going to do.
- 11:55And the new CEO came in and we kind of talked about stuff and
- 11:59I'm like, I just want to know, you know, new management, new
- 12:01investors, am I your guy? Here's what I think, here's
- 12:04what, here's what we've done. Here's my track record.
- 12:07I'd like to stay. He's like, yeah, I, you know, we
- 12:09kind of came to that agreement literally a week later.
- 12:12We met in Chicago and he fired me.
- 12:14Oh my gosh. Yeah.
- 12:17So I go, OK, that's certainly 180° turn around from the
- 12:20conversation we had a week prior on, you know, am I in or out
- 12:24kind of thing and you know, where are we going and what what
- 12:26our visions are? Do we share those things?
- 12:28So you know, there's another great example of woe.
- 12:31What just happened in that of course, Jeff Dickerson, former
- 12:34CEO of accredited, offered me another position at another
- 12:38company he had went to post acquisition and I call up like
- 12:41Jeff, that's the thing was, I know Mike, I made a commitment
- 12:44to another good friend of mine that was going to take on the
- 12:46role that he was thinking about for me.
- 12:48So I was like, oh boy, what do I do now?
- 12:50And and Jeff kind of said, hey, Mike, you know, you're smart
- 12:51enough. Why don't you start a company
- 12:53like you? You've he and I had worked
- 12:55together and many times and you have multiple occasions and he's
- 13:00like, you're smart enough. You know, you've got good ideas,
- 13:02you know, take one of those, go get some money.
- 13:04I can help you do that and let's let's start a company.
- 13:06So I connected with a, a colleague of mine, Dave Craig
- 13:10Mile was one of the Co founders and he's best tech guy architect
- 13:14I've ever worked with. And I said, I've got this idea
- 13:17for an application for, you know, one click credit checks on
- 13:20Salesforce. Every sales guy needs to get
- 13:22through the credit hurdles if you're selling.
- 13:23I, I learned that first hand when I was selling, you know, I
- 13:26want to get the deal closed. Well, wait a minute, you know
- 13:28credit has to approve the customer and it's slowing the
- 13:31deal down and you'll fill out the application.
- 13:33And so this is a credit check for an individual.
- 13:36Credit check on a company, so like, say a company wants to buy
- 13:39on terms, can you sell it on terms or you got to get cash
- 13:41upfront? All those types of credit
- 13:43decisions that companies make when they do AB2B transaction.
- 13:47So I had this idea. So I, I talked to Dave, we
- 13:49prototype something and I'm like, the dog will hunt.
- 13:52Technically, I think there's a good idea here.
- 13:53And I'd seen this kind of process, you know, in the field
- 13:57when I was 80 credit. And so he was like, oh, my
- 14:00brother knows a rich guy. His name was Rich actually and
- 14:05he goes he he's an Angel investor.
- 14:06Let's talk to my brother about getting connected with this get
- 14:09some funding. He said, OK, let's do that.
- 14:11And then Charles listen to the business pitch.
- 14:14I put a deck together and he's like, hey, I'd like to be part
- 14:16of this. I'm I'm at Schneider logistics
- 14:19right now, but I was thinking about making a career change.
- 14:21I wouldn't mind doing such an entrepreneurial.
- 14:23And so we met up with rich. He funded the company and Dave
- 14:26Charles and I and Jeff Parisi, who is a top sales guy at E
- 14:31credit that I'd met through that environment.
- 14:33We started for Seva and then we grew it, you know, over a four
- 14:37year period and and sold to Equifax ultimately and that was
- 14:41a great ride, incredible fun. It was, it was and what was
- 14:45great about this was Dave Charles and I had highly
- 14:51complimentary skill sets. We are philosophically aligned.
- 14:55I knew Dave from a prior work experience at Shop Talk and we
- 15:01just had a very similar philosophy of what we wanted to
- 15:04do as a business. And so that was great.
- 15:07And yet we were, we always were not afraid of conflict either as
- 15:11a management team. And we always knew enough about
- 15:13each other's domain to kind of challenge your thinking if you
- 15:16thought it need to be challenged.
- 15:18And you know, one of the philosophies is, you know, hard
- 15:20on the problem, easy on the people, which is, you know, if
- 15:22you got it, if you're gonna don't be afraid of conflict.
- 15:24We'll talk more about that maybe later.
- 15:26But we had, if we, we were able to really build a company, do it
- 15:31the right way. I, you know, in our opinion, we
- 15:33bootstrapped it, you know, with some Angel investments and, you
- 15:36know, we didn't now kick our coverage.
- 15:37We just did all the, I think the right things to grow a company.
- 15:40And I learned a lot through my growth period at Quintus working
- 15:43for large companies like NCR. And you know what, you know,
- 15:47what were the good things to take away and what we are trying
- 15:50to emulate to, you know, grow a company.
- 15:52And, and through that experience, when we exited,
- 15:54Charles is like, and our investor Rich is like, wow, what
- 15:57do we do next? Like this was awesome.
- 15:59No founder drama. Your business plan was exactly
- 16:02what you said it was going to be 4 years ago and this is how
- 16:04we're going to grow the business.
- 16:06Either are possible. That rarely happens.
- 16:09It you know what he says the same thing and he invests in a
- 16:11lot of different companies. He's like man, you guys are
- 16:13because what are we going to do next?
- 16:15Because this was a lot of fun. You know, I never took the phone
- 16:17call. I'm quitting the company, you
- 16:19know, you know, anyway, we're going to change our business
- 16:21plan 180°, you know, this kind of thing.
- 16:24It was, we had a vision for what we wanted to do.
- 16:26We executed on it and we exited because we got a great offer.
- 16:29We just couldn't refuse, you know, and, and you know, we had
- 16:33no intention of building the company to sell it.
- 16:34You know, we just said we're going to build a good, we're
- 16:36going to build a great company or people like the work.
- 16:39We're going to serve our customers and we'll see where it
- 16:41goes from there, you know, and we'll evaluate that.
- 16:44So we never had any plan to build, to sell it, to build it
- 16:47to go public, to build it to stay private.
- 16:48We're just let's go acquire customers, make them happy, work
- 16:52with great people, and we'll see where the chips see what.
- 16:54Happens. Yeah.
- 16:55So Charles is like, well, what do we do next?
- 16:57Well, you know, when I was at Schneider, I had three TM s s.
- 17:00It wasn't connected to my CRM. And you know, maybe we can do
- 17:04the same thing with transportation management that
- 17:06we just did with credit management on Salesforce.
- 17:10And so we went out, talked to a few the brokerages because
- 17:14that's in Charles that come out of the brokerage iron of
- 17:15Schneider. People are like.
- 17:17Explain this a little bit. What's ATMs?
- 17:20What's explain the brokerage role here?
- 17:23Yeah, sure. So when you think about
- 17:24transportation, when I talk about transportation, I'm
- 17:26talking about trucks, you know, delivering commercial goods or
- 17:29you know, moving things on trains or moving things by plane
- 17:32or moving things by containers on oceans or trains.
- 17:35So the whole logistics transportation of, of physical
- 17:38goods around the globe. So a transportation management
- 17:41system is what orchestrates that manages that.
- 17:44So how do you price it? How do you track it?
- 17:46How do you, you know, settle, charge your customer, pay your
- 17:50carriers that move the freight for you, All the things that go
- 17:53in between that those transactions.
- 17:55That's what the transportation management system is going to do
- 17:57for you is the operational side of that traditionally, which is
- 18:00I've got a load of products, a truck load of things that need
- 18:03to go from point A to point B or point A to B to C to D to E.
- 18:08And how do you operationally planned for that book the
- 18:12carriers, get the appointments with the location to make sure
- 18:14it all happens on time and then, you know, bill for it and pay
- 18:18for it. And so wrapped around that, of
- 18:20course, are sales people trying to find new shippers, You know,
- 18:23in the brokerage world, a broker, what they do is they sit
- 18:25between carriers out there, truck drivers and trucking
- 18:28companies, etcetera, and the customers that have to move
- 18:31freight. And the broker says I've got a
- 18:33carrier network that I can help you move your freight, you know,
- 18:37Mr. Shipper, and I could do that at a great rate for you and I
- 18:40can service that for you. And I can deal with all the
- 18:43crazy stuff that happened in the logistics, you know, do the
- 18:45traffic and weather and other events.
- 18:48And I'll deal with all of that on your behalf.
- 18:50And I'm going to basically mark up that carrier's cost to you
- 18:54for that, for doing that for you on your behalf, then take all
- 18:58that off your off your plate. So that's what brokers do, you
- 19:00know, they just basically sit in between and it sometimes, you
- 19:04know, there's a lot of terminology in our space
- 19:06brokerages, third party logistics companies, which are
- 19:09three PLS often, you know, referred to as they're a third
- 19:13party that does logistics on your behalf.
- 19:14So they might actually manage your warehouse facilities.
- 19:17They might also have trucks that they use of their own, so they
- 19:20manage their own fleet. So our TMS, our vision for that
- 19:24was we're going to build ATMs today is tightly coupled with
- 19:27sales processing and marketing. Because in order for a broker or
- 19:32a three PL. or even a shipper to get the right carrier network,
- 19:36you have to have a sales and marketing campaign to go find
- 19:39the right partners, right? So you have to go find the
- 19:42carriers, they're going to be a best fit for your business if
- 19:45you're a broker and or a shipper.
- 19:48And if you're a broker, you need to go find the customers that
- 19:50have freight that you can move on those carriers.
- 19:52So you're selling and marketing One Direction for customers as a
- 19:55broker in three PL. and you're also selling and marketing to
- 19:58the providers, the partners. That you're going to need to
- 20:02move that freight. So it's a natural, it's a
- 20:04natural way to natural process extension.
- 20:07TMS kind of sits in the middle of that transaction, you know,
- 20:10then feeds everything into an accounting system.
- 20:12So our whole vision was, well, why the heck don't we just put
- 20:15it all together, right? Why don't we put it on
- 20:16Salesforce? So it's sharing the same data by
- 20:20design. So all the accounts that you're
- 20:22prospecting to and you're quoting freight for are, are
- 20:25already in the system. You don't have to do this
- 20:27synchronization of data. Which is a big challenge in our
- 20:31industry. Sorry Mike.
- 20:32Prior to this point, the the CRM and all these sort of logistics
- 20:37functions were housed in two different software products.
- 20:41Yeah, it may. It may be more than two because
- 20:44there's a lot of tools that people use to facilitate this
- 20:46process. So you might have a sales, you
- 20:48might use Salesforce for your CRM and marketing for sales and
- 20:50marketing. Then you have some TMS, it's
- 20:52over here. So now you've got the same data
- 20:55that needs to be here, over here, you got to replicate that.
- 20:58Then there might be, you know, an accounting system that's on
- 21:00another platform, you got to get the data over there.
- 21:02Then there's a whole host of third party tools and data that
- 21:06logistics professionals use to help them price freight
- 21:09correctly, to track freight correctly.
- 21:11So you now you've got this mishmash of things and seven
- 21:15monitor, you know, 3 monitors, 7 different applications up trying
- 21:18to all coordinate that process. And our vision was why don't we
- 21:23try to eliminate all of that swivel chair kind of application
- 21:26flow and all that data synchronization stuff and allow
- 21:29you, what we say, focus on innovation versus integration.
- 21:34So the challenge in our industry is you have to integrate it so
- 21:36many things. And even in our world, you're
- 21:38still integrating things. But if you can make the user's
- 21:40experience very seamless and you can work off the same set of
- 21:43master data, you, you got a big head start on your competitors
- 21:47who have to spend a lot of time, effort, energy and money getting
- 21:51things just to work together, right?
- 21:53So nobody had done this, nobody had done this, nobody had done
- 21:56it before. Yeah, that we are the first TMS
- 21:59to, you know, come up on the Salesforce app exchange.
- 22:02So if you're not familiar with Salesforce, I mean everybody
- 22:06pretty much knows in the industry who they are.
- 22:08But a lot of people don't realize that Salesforce also has
- 22:11a huge ecosystem of third parties that develop on their
- 22:14platform and or support their platform.
- 22:16And most of that development is stuff that's complementary to
- 22:19the Salesforce suite of products.
- 22:21But vendors like us can build a completely new departmental
- 22:24module and live on the platform too.
- 22:27And that's what we did at Forsela and that's what we did
- 22:29again at Revanovo. So we kind of took, hey, we did
- 22:32it once successfully and it's worked and now it's we did it
- 22:35again with a different application to serve a different
- 22:37industry need with with Revanova and so right out of the gate.
- 22:42Were you guys getting customers? How did that first one come
- 22:45about? Yeah.
- 22:46So the the first one really came about from our additional kind
- 22:49of research that we were doing on the the concept.
- 22:52So it as a young company and you're, and it's a start up, you
- 22:55know, you have to find willing partners to kind of go along for
- 22:58the ride, right, to get to an MVP product that they can
- 23:02actually use their in their business.
- 23:04So we we had a couple of customers that really said, I'll
- 23:07help you develop this and I'll test it and I'll do these things
- 23:10while I'm still using someone else's product.
- 23:12But I love your vision and when you get there, I'm in, right?
- 23:15And so, you know, one of the takeaways that I've learned over
- 23:18the years was I work for a startup that spent long before
- 23:22the product was ready, spent 10's and 10s of millions of
- 23:24dollars on marketing only not to have a product that could
- 23:28actually be truly implemented. And you know, one of the
- 23:31takeaways I took from that experience was don't spend a
- 23:33dime on marketing until you've got at least three customers and
- 23:36ideally 5 to 10 customers running your platform, running
- 23:40your app, working it like it will reference it, and then you
- 23:44can pour money into marketing. So what you're describing is a
- 23:48big time commitment from the customer, right?
- 23:52They don't know that you're going to end up developing
- 23:55whatever it is that you're, you know, sort of putting on paper
- 23:59in a presentation. And it takes a lot of time from
- 24:02them to be testing this, telling you the bugs, asking for new
- 24:06features while they're still trying to run their business.
- 24:09How did you get these three to five first, people kind of agree
- 24:12to do that. I guess that's the art of the
- 24:16deal they like. So one of the things we always
- 24:21talk about is why do you want to do business with us?
- 24:23Here's our vision for your, here's our vision for the market
- 24:27and here's how it can benefit you.
- 24:29We're not when you're in start up mode, we're not there today,
- 24:31but that's what we're trying to achieve.
- 24:33Will you be a part of that? Will you be part of the initial
- 24:36design and are you? So if you're willing to do that,
- 24:38we're going to be highly collaborative with you.
- 24:41You're going to get the things that you want.
- 24:42Because I think as as most startups, it's really, I think
- 24:46the best big success for us has been like the customers tell you
- 24:50everything you need to know about how to make your product
- 24:53highly attractive and highly valuable, right?
- 24:55So we were willing to put in all the time as well to sit side by
- 25:00side with customers to build it the way would improve their
- 25:03business in a way that it was worth the time investment,
- 25:06right. So they're saying, hey, I've
- 25:07looked around the market, I haven't seen anything like this.
- 25:10I love this idea. And if I'm one of the first in
- 25:12once we go live first, we give them nice financial incentives,
- 25:15you know, on the actual use of the product, you know, virtually
- 25:19giving it away to cover our cost to get those first customers up
- 25:23live and running as a reward for the investment in time that they
- 25:27put into helping us get there. And that that was that proved
- 25:31out to be great. Now I would say a handful of
- 25:33those customers are still with us and a few of left, you know,
- 25:37from actually went out of business, you know, brokers that
- 25:40come and go. We started off with smaller
- 25:42companies initially to prove the concept.
- 25:44You know, it was a much easier thing for a smaller company to
- 25:47bite off. You know, the five man
- 25:49brokerage, the 5 truck fleet was much easier.
- 25:53We've hence moved up market, you know, after, you know, years and
- 25:56years and years of development because they're the deals were
- 25:59there, but early on it was just lock arms and and you just have
- 26:03to go and keep knocking on doors until you find 3 or 4 that we're
- 26:07willing to do it with you that represent an ICP you want to go
- 26:10address, you know, after you've got to an MVP status and so.
- 26:14How does where the product is right now compared to what the
- 26:18original vision was? Well, the vision is the same,
- 26:22but the feature sets, you know, 50X and what we started with the
- 26:28vision was always we were not going to pin ourselves to a
- 26:30specific mode of transportation, meaning like truckload versus
- 26:34less than truckload versus drayage versus ocean freight
- 26:38versus, you know, intermodal, which is moving freight on the
- 26:40rail lines. We are going to make our TMS
- 26:44agnostic to any mode specificity.
- 26:46So we had seen the competitors. I have a truckload TMS or an
- 26:48LTLTMS. But if you did both modes as a
- 26:51provider, you needed two different products.
- 26:53You have the data synchronization problem, yet all
- 26:55that stuff and in many moves today are a combination of
- 26:58moving something by container and then moving it, but taking
- 27:02stuff out of the container or moving it with a bunch of trucks
- 27:04all over the other place. So the logistics can get
- 27:06complicated and it's a mix of these different modes of
- 27:09operation. So our initial vision was we
- 27:11were going to limit ourselves to a mode, we weren't going to
- 27:13limit ourselves to a geography, meaning we are going to be multi
- 27:15currency and multilingual, you know, out-of-the-box, meaning,
- 27:19you know, so now today a lot of our customers are in Canada that
- 27:21move cross-border freights. They sell it in Canadian
- 27:23dollars, they move it in U.S. dollars and we reconcile all
- 27:26that stuff. And they have people that have
- 27:28French language requirements, so they work in French or they have
- 27:30French documents. And so we said we're going to be
- 27:33a logistics provider. And logistics is global.
- 27:36Stuff comes from China, stuff comes from other areas.
- 27:39We move stuff over there. As US manufacturers, we would
- 27:43not limit ourselves to anything. Even the name Revanova had
- 27:45nothing to do with logistics. It was just a name, right?
- 27:49And that we came up with after, you know, a session, probably
- 27:53with a few cocktails and looking for open URLs to, you know, what
- 27:57was available and what sounded kind of cool and what didn't
- 27:59pigeonhole us into what we were thinking we were going to be.
- 28:03It's a company name that could go any direction in case our
- 28:06vision needed to change, you know, like, oh, this is this dog
- 28:09ain't hunting. Maybe we go a different
- 28:11direction. No, but.
- 28:12And just like Foreseeva, our vision hasn't changed at all.
- 28:16We've just been executing on it. So we've just been adding more
- 28:19features, adding more modes. We're going to continue to do
- 28:22that as we grow. And, and so, yeah, nothing has
- 28:25changed. No founder drama, no vision
- 28:28changes so far. So when you go to a new client,
- 28:32new prospect, who is it that you're actually selling to?
- 28:35What's their role? Yeah, it'll depend on the
- 28:39company. So broker 3 PL. space, we're
- 28:42usually dealing with the, you know, executive team, CEOs, VPS
- 28:47of operations, VP of transportation.
- 28:50People are in charge of customer sales or carrier sales, kind of
- 28:52depending on the size of the company.
- 28:55If we're going, if we're talking with manufacturers who actually
- 28:58make the products that need to be shipped, it tends to be the
- 29:00people in their logistics or shipping areas that we start
- 29:03with, not the CEO of. We wouldn't go to the CEO of,
- 29:08you know, Procter and Gamble. It would be their logistics
- 29:10people at Procter and Gamble, for example.
- 29:13Those would be the people we go there.
- 29:14So it depends on the customer segment on where we would end up
- 29:18going. But we, we tend to want to, we
- 29:21tend to like to sell high, but we also do grassroots things as
- 29:25well. You'll talk to the people
- 29:26actually doing the job. So dispatchers and, you know,
- 29:29freight brokers and things that we see at trade events and
- 29:31others to maybe build it up from the bottom and, you know, bring
- 29:35it down from the top because there's, you know, value props,
- 29:37you know, across the continuum there.
- 29:40So I know a couple of things that your platform focuses on
- 29:42are predictive pricing and route optimization.
- 29:47Do you have any case studies or any numbers off the top of your
- 29:50head that you can share about, you know, a client where you
- 29:54know, here was sort of the economics before and then the
- 29:58economics after Revanova came in?
- 30:03Sure. And and they there's a lot of
- 30:06demonstrable ROI, you know, across a lot of different
- 30:10components this, you know, lack of the need to do integration
- 30:13versus innovate in and of itself has a 3040% kind of ROI.
- 30:18It relates to what maybe what they were doing prior to, you
- 30:21know, deploying Revanova. But the coolest thing I would
- 30:24say that we've, you know, on the pricing dynamic pricing side is,
- 30:29you know, after about two years ago, after being, you know, in
- 30:32business for almost 10 years, our customers use a lot of
- 30:36different third party, what we call pricing resources to
- 30:39understand the spot market. Think of it a lot like how you
- 30:43would look at the stock market ticker on Yahoo Finance.
- 30:45You kind of want to see what the trade, what's thing, what are
- 30:47things trading at, what's the price, is it going up, is it
- 30:50going down? And in that world you get a very
- 30:53real time view of what's going on in the market, right?
- 30:56Yeah, You could see what's going on on the Wall Street, you know,
- 30:58on, on the NASDAQ, and you can look at all of those exchanges
- 31:02in real time. It's going to see, make
- 31:04decisions on that. Well, freight markers work very
- 31:06similarly. The the truck, the full
- 31:09truckload market in the US is very much a dynamic market.
- 31:13You know, trucks are moving around the country constantly.
- 31:15They're always in different areas.
- 31:16There's a limited number of trucks out there and you know
- 31:20you need to get your freight moved and you got to find
- 31:22someone who's going to do it for you.
- 31:23And the pricing on it they call a spot market.
- 31:26If there's somebody who's just looking for freight today as a
- 31:29carrier and someone who's got a load to move today, they don't
- 31:32have a contract, they're going to say how much and they're
- 31:34going to tell you how much based on what they need to move the
- 31:37load at what the market's telling them.
- 31:39How hard is it to find a carrier?
- 31:41How's it going to be going to dictate how much you're going to
- 31:42will you pay? So our customers are asking us
- 31:45for help on that. And so we introduced something
- 31:48we call our land IQ network, which is a real time pricing
- 31:51engine, which is, and it's anonymized.
- 31:53So for a competitive standpoint, you know, to give up, you know,
- 31:56any of your business secrets like what are my great carriers
- 31:59that I like to use on certain lanes that they call them
- 32:02logistic lanes are basically Chicago to Dallas or Dallas to
- 32:06LA. That's a lane, if you will, of a
- 32:09shipping lane. And so different carriers
- 32:11specialize in these different lanes and the whole trick and
- 32:14three PLS and brokerages is building out that carrier
- 32:16network. And then I kind of keeping them
- 32:19captive, if you will, not the right word, but basically
- 32:23keeping them engaged. So you keep feeding them
- 32:25freight, keep their trucks busy. It's easy on them.
- 32:27They don't have to go out and try to find freight.
- 32:29You're just pitching them freight left and right, right.
- 32:32And you know, ultimately, if you have those kind of
- 32:34relationships, you start to build contracted rates.
- 32:36OK, I'll agree to move this for X.
- 32:38Could you just keep giving me freight?
- 32:39This is great. This works for me.
- 32:41But there's a lot of freight that moves in the spot market.
- 32:43I don't have a truck, I don't have a contracted rate.
- 32:46I need to move this. So how much Mr. Carrier to move
- 32:49this today? And so knowing what the market
- 32:52is doing pricing these lanes is highly important to any
- 32:55logistics company. Anybody you doing logistics,
- 32:58what's the spot market look like today for like full truckload or
- 33:01flatbed moves etcetera. So in our world, we we roll up
- 33:06all of that anonymize and provide it back in real time.
- 33:08So like a real time view of the market versus a historical view,
- 33:11which is what most competitive solutions do.
- 33:13They roll up data from his history and try to say, well,
- 33:16based on three days ago, seven days ago, here's what I think
- 33:19the price should look like today.
- 33:21We're saying here's what the price looks like today.
- 33:24Here's 10 carriers that bid that lane.
- 33:25This is what it looks like, not the carrier names, but just the
- 33:28rates. And that's the difference.
- 33:29And that's really exciting because that's.
- 33:31It's something very new. Is that most helpful to the the
- 33:35person who needs the freight shipped or the carrier that's
- 33:37doing the shipping so that they don't have to guess it?
- 33:42It's sort of like, hey, here's sort of where the market
- 33:45standard is today in this moment in this region.
- 33:48Yeah, that's right. It's it's really about where,
- 33:50where is this at? You know, everybody's, Yep, if
- 33:53you think about it like any negotiation you're trying to
- 33:55buy, you're trying to buy the freight at the lowest possible
- 33:58cost. And the carry of course, is
- 34:00trying to cover their cost at a nice margin.
- 34:03And so there's this back and forth and moving something for
- 34:07something when you need to get your truck back to Chicago
- 34:09because you're in Dallas and you got to get it back there for a
- 34:11load maybe two days later. You know, that's called a
- 34:14backhaul. You're willing to maybe take a
- 34:17better, you know, lower rate just to get something to cover
- 34:20the cost of the truck moving back to where it's going to pick
- 34:22up its next load, right. And ideally you want to get as
- 34:24much as you can. And so that's the, you know, the
- 34:27trick on both sides is understanding what people are
- 34:29bidding for that lane and, and what people are paying for that
- 34:33lane. And what we're showing is what,
- 34:35what are the carriers charging for that lane because they have
- 34:37to cover their costs. So there's a, there is a floor.
- 34:39I mean, you can get below that. Occasionally people like, oh, I
- 34:41got it. I'll take anything because I
- 34:42just want to cover something. But typically, you know,
- 34:45carriers are trying to cover their costs at margins.
- 34:47So you kind of know where the game is being played at that
- 34:50point and you can negotiate and. It gets both parties to a
- 34:54decision point faster, right? Because all of this is time
- 34:56sensitive, I need my goods to get there in a certain amount of
- 34:59time, and as the carrier, I need to get the truck back to a
- 35:02different city in a certain amount of time as well.
- 35:06Yeah, ideally, you know, when they put out what's called an
- 35:07offer rate, you say I have a shipment and I'm willing to pay
- 35:10X for it. And knowing that that's a,
- 35:13that's a fair price, that's, you know, you're not gouging the
- 35:16carrier because you don't want, that's a bad business
- 35:17relationship too, right? You know, I'm just jamming you
- 35:19down for, you know, you're not making any money.
- 35:21Eventually that relationship dies, right, Because you're not,
- 35:24that person's not going to want to do business with you.
- 35:26So the idea is try to get a fair rate based on what the market
- 35:29conditions are because capacity moves around.
- 35:31As I mentioned, if there's only a few trucks available, well,
- 35:34you, you know, you probably can get a better rate for your truck
- 35:37because you got 30 people trying to move freight and you got 3
- 35:39trucks. You know, it's a, an example of
- 35:42kind of the dynamics of supply and demand, but it truly is a, a
- 35:45constantly moving supply and demand.
- 35:47Market Can you share a story about an unexpected hurdle that
- 35:52you guys faced at Revanova and how you and your team overcame
- 35:55it? Yeah, the, the probably the
- 35:59unexpected hurdles that I've, I would say that we haven't had
- 36:03many unexpected hurdles. Most of them you expected.
- 36:09Yeah. I, I, I think we, yeah, I, I can
- 36:12honestly say that it at Revanova, we, that can't think
- 36:15of something we're going, Oh my God, like we weren't expecting
- 36:19that. I, I think most of the hurdles
- 36:21we've had to overcome have been expected.
- 36:24And so really, really more around those lines.
- 36:28And most of those hurdles have just been features or product
- 36:32features that we didn't think would be hurdles to and maybe
- 36:35getting to a different segment of the market and ultimately
- 36:38were. And so, you know, you learn that
- 36:40on the fly, you know, you're out there and you're losing
- 36:43business, right? You know, we lose our fair share
- 36:46too, you know, go in and competers, good competitors out
- 36:48there and you learn, right. So, you know, and sometimes
- 36:52those hurdles, some of those features were like, whoa, that's
- 36:54a big gap. We better, we better, you know,
- 36:56plug that. So I'd say those are the types
- 36:59of hurdles we've had to overcome have been more product feature
- 37:02related against, you know, an addressable market.
- 37:04We thought we were ready to go after and and quite weren't
- 37:07ready to go after after really getting into it.
- 37:11But you know, those things, we just adjust our, adjust our plan
- 37:14and keep going, you know, and, and plug those gaps and then go
- 37:17back and, you know, give it if, if the market's worth it, you
- 37:20need to keep going back. And you find people like I did,
- 37:22I talked about earlier in startup mode, which is you find
- 37:25customers and you're trying to enter new markets.
- 37:27As we expand our TMS into different modes, it's
- 37:31essentially a whole new market for us.
- 37:33Even though there's a lot of commonality in TM S S, there's a
- 37:35lot of nuances by mode that you have to, you know, put into your
- 37:40product in order to effectively service that industry or that
- 37:43particular mode, you know, within an industry.
- 37:46And so, yeah, you look for people that are willing to
- 37:47partner with you to get you over those feature sets, you know, to
- 37:52an MVP product for that market, then expand from there.
- 37:56What growth? Strategy has been most effective
- 37:58for you guys. Yeah, I think our from a growth
- 38:03perspective philosophically we believe in that.
- 38:08I call it don't out kick your coverage.
- 38:11So one of the things we as a company said we didn't want to
- 38:14do is thrash. And what I mean by that is we
- 38:17see a lot of companies, you know, investigate lots of
- 38:21investment, hire a ton of people, go do a bunch of things,
- 38:24you know, spend the 40 million in marketing and the business
- 38:28doesn't come and they got to cut 30% of their workforce a year
- 38:32later, stuff like that. And we said we're not going to
- 38:35do that. You know, one of the things that
- 38:37I think we've been able to do very, very well is is is people
- 38:40matter, right? You know, they're not just field
- 38:42replaceable units. Like you hire somebody, we hire
- 38:45people with an expectation that they're going to come in,
- 38:46they're going to be a high performer, they're going to be
- 38:48able to grow with a company and you're going to be here forever.
- 38:51If and that's it's it's not. Let's just hire a bunch of
- 38:55people, see who sticks, and then you know that we'll keep the
- 38:57ones that doing the ones that fail.
- 38:59We just, you know, you know, move out.
- 39:02It's just not Charles they verize or Jeff's philosophy at
- 39:05all. And so we tried to and we never
- 39:09had an expectation that we would ever get any money from anybody
- 39:11else after we stopped founded the company either.
- 39:13So we said we're going to grow this business responsibly.
- 39:16We're going to be good stewards of our money that we have.
- 39:20We're going to be good stewards of the people and build a good
- 39:23culture. We want people to be engaged.
- 39:25We want them to see the vision. We want them to feel part of
- 39:28this. And that's how we've grown the
- 39:30business. Now in in the case of Revanova a
- 39:33few years ago we sold our company right to Viking Global
- 39:37Investors, you know bought revenue and they said we love
- 39:41what you guys are doing. We just want you to do it faster
- 39:44and bigger, right. And so they are they inject and
- 39:47we ingested a lot of capital. They put a lot of capital on our
- 39:50balance sheet to do that. And we've done that.
- 39:51You know, at the time I think we were about 18 people or you know
- 39:54about 80 now. And we've and we've grown that
- 39:56over that time period. I think again in the very
- 39:59responsible way, you know, with. With hiring people that we think
- 40:04will be long term employees and not just kind of loading up the
- 40:07bus and see who sticks. And I like that.
- 40:09I think our employees would tell you that and we give them a lot
- 40:13of intra, intra departmental mobility.
- 40:15You know, you come in and you kind of doing something and now
- 40:17you want to, hey, I really like what's going on over there and I
- 40:20think I have a better fit over there.
- 40:21We're very, we're very good at moving people around to the best
- 40:25fit for their skills and where they want to go with their
- 40:27careers as well. And I think having that culture
- 40:30allows you, you know, to do great things, you know, with the
- 40:32team that you have. With over 15 years in tech
- 40:39leadership, as you kind of look forward now, what excites you
- 40:43most about the future of your space?
- 40:47Well, the the big thing for us and it's everywhere is AI.
- 40:50So there are some tremendous use cases that can be that were AI
- 40:57can contribute to productivity and logistics.
- 41:01And when we're implementing a bunch of that at Revanova and
- 41:06it's we're just scratching the surface at this point.
- 41:08So it's, I think it's, it's definitely a disruptive
- 41:11technology that many industries are adopting and is changing the
- 41:15business landscape, I think in ways that are going to stick and
- 41:20it will will hot wool. We're going to change a lot of
- 41:23things in the business world. So we're in out at 100%.
- 41:27And I think that's where the biggest opportunities lie.
- 41:30When you combine the power of AI with, you know, a very powerful
- 41:33workflow and data integration platform like we have with AI on
- 41:38platform IT, it presents itself with an opportunity for just
- 41:42amazing productivity gains. What can you say about how
- 41:46you're currently using AI and what some of the future plans
- 41:50look like? Yeah, yeah.
- 41:53The the current state, you know, the big benefit is getting
- 41:57quotes back to customers quickly.
- 42:00And so in the logistics world, you'll get a lot of inquiries on
- 42:04how much to move this from here to there.
- 42:05I'm shopping around and those a lot of that inbound traffic
- 42:09comes on e-mail. And so using AI to read the
- 42:12e-mail, using AI to formulate a response, then combining it with
- 42:16the workflow and all the business intelligence we keep on
- 42:18platform around the rating as I talked about, you know, what's
- 42:21the price, what's the market look like?
- 42:22Being able to generate a good rate with the right margin
- 42:25profile and be able to respond to a customer within a under a
- 42:30minute. You know, they send the e-mail
- 42:32in and less than a minute later, you know, here's what I got for
- 42:35you. And that's all done through
- 42:37automation and that's AI plus all the other workflow things
- 42:41that we, we deliver on platform. That's way different than a
- 42:45person getting it, having to translate it, key it into a
- 42:48system and then go back and engage the customer.
- 42:50So the productivity gains in there are huge.
- 42:52And that's just one use case. The other use case that we're
- 42:55using is on the capacity aspect of it.
- 42:58So carriers will often send emails all over to brokers in
- 43:01the Dallas saying I've got empty trucks in the city.
- 43:03I I need free what you got. We're doing the same thing
- 43:06there. They send an e-mail in and we're
- 43:08responding back with here's the freight I have for you, you
- 43:11know, all automated all through AI and workflow and integration
- 43:16with the rest of the systems platform and then responds on
- 43:19its own without like human being like interceding there that
- 43:24responds as if you were it responds like your human being
- 43:27would respond. So it's, it's combining the AI
- 43:31capabilities of understanding unstructured data and turning it
- 43:35into structured data and also then responding with something,
- 43:38you know, a response. And then in between that is all
- 43:42the business process and workflow that you have that a
- 43:44user would use to price that same freight.
- 43:46It's just the AI is talking to that and now presenting it back,
- 43:50right. And then we are, we're now we're
- 43:54going down to multi channel, you know, conversational AI as we
- 43:57like to call it, where it could be an e-mail, it could be a
- 44:01voice phone call. I could make a phone call using
- 44:04a combination of workflow and AI.
- 44:06So I could call you, you could call in and say, hey, what's the
- 44:08status of my load? You know, it's supposed to be
- 44:11here at 3. Is it on time?
- 44:12And we ingest that voice call, we hand it off to both AI and
- 44:18workflow and we respond back to you with a voice.
- 44:20Like my voice could be my voice. I'd say, yeah.
- 44:23Anthony, your shipments on time, showing on time should be there
- 44:25at 3. Anything else I can help you
- 44:27with? No.
- 44:27OK, good. OK, Thank you.
- 44:29But I'm not actually. Talking to you, I'm talking to
- 44:32the AI. Exactly, yeah.
- 44:34You're talking to a combination of AI, workflow, telephony.
- 44:37There's a whole technology mash up there, but AI is part of it
- 44:41for the more conversational aspects of, you know, ChatGPT,
- 44:45right? You ask it a question that comes
- 44:46back with an answer. It's not a pre canned answer.
- 44:49It's what the AI delivers as the answer and now you're speaking
- 44:53that back. So it's more conversational in
- 44:55nature. That's where the AI think comes
- 44:57in real handy on The Voice side. You know, the rest of it is all
- 45:00the other things that person would do in the TMS.
- 45:03It's just orchestrated, you know, in that workflow, data
- 45:07integration and AI combination. It's incredible.
- 45:11Yeah. I mean, we're talking about a
- 45:12couple of things here that are incredible.
- 45:14And the the the first part of it sort of the front and you know,
- 45:17having the human like voice that responds and very conversational
- 45:22like that's being applied in other spaces still amazing.
- 45:26And then so you guys are taking some form of that tech and
- 45:28you're combining it with all the back end data that you've got so
- 45:33that you didn't have to take a customer service rep's time to
- 45:37go and look and research. It knows right where to pull the
- 45:40data from it puts it in this human like voice package and
- 45:45delivers the answer to the customer.
- 45:47And, and what's that sort of time frame?
- 45:50I asked the question. I get the answer back in a few
- 45:53seconds, several seconds. What's how's that?
- 45:56Work. It's highly conversational.
- 45:58So it's almost as if like we're talking about today, you know,
- 46:01you asked the question, there's probably a slight in most cases,
- 46:05a little pause off of a normal conversation, but not, not bad.
- 46:10I mean, we're skeptics. I will tell you when this was
- 46:13all hitting, we're like, I don't know if that dog, you know, you
- 46:15know, hunts, right? And, and sure enough, you know,
- 46:18as you go through some of the, some of these use cases, and
- 46:21especially in the logistics as a 24 by 7 world, you know, you've
- 46:24got people moving on the roads all day, all night and things
- 46:27happen and they need to get a hold of somebody or they need a
- 46:29quick question, answer it. It's a very effective way to get
- 46:33that on that Channel done. Of course, you always have the
- 46:36option to say, I need to talk to somebody and it opts out and you
- 46:39know, you can route that call to somebody else.
- 46:42But I, I see a lot of upside to this, you know, in this multi
- 46:45channel concept, you know, combination of AI making it more
- 46:49of a human like experience versus a very structured, you
- 46:52know, flow experience. And we've all.
- 46:54Experienced push one for this push. 2 for you exactly.
- 46:57Yeah, those are Yeah. So, and it's just scratching the
- 46:59surface. So it's only going to get better
- 47:01and better and better and so and which presents a challenge.
- 47:06It's an opportunity and a challenge too, right?
- 47:07You know, you got a lot of people doing these jobs today.
- 47:10And so, you know, how do you now redeploy those folks for more
- 47:13productive, productive work or, you know, do Or are you laying
- 47:17people off, you know, so you can see how disruptive it could be.
- 47:20And our philosophy has always been, you know, try to you're
- 47:24going to have to balance that now, you know, with your your
- 47:27hiring functions, because some of these things will for all the
- 47:33kind of we call happy pass, you know, mundane, repetible,
- 47:36repeatable things will probably be very well handled by AI and
- 47:40by AI enabled flows like this in the coming years across all
- 47:44industries. And it will probably reduce the
- 47:48need to have as many people as you have today if that's all
- 47:51they're doing. So you're training people to do
- 47:53other things that add value to the business.
- 47:55I think is also a cultural thing.
- 47:58All industries are going to have to deal with with their employee
- 48:01bases because of you know what AI will the opportunity AI
- 48:05offers. And so how do you handle when
- 48:07somebody calls in and they get this AI responder, it, is it
- 48:14identifying itself as AI? Is it going to be obvious to
- 48:19folks that it's not a human being?
- 48:22Yeah. I think that's how we approach
- 48:24it, but that's up to really the company deploying it, you know
- 48:28how. Are you doing?
- 48:28We do. Yeah, we're doing it under the
- 48:30brand called Artemis. And Artemis is our persona for
- 48:34AI and it's, it's kind of a, it was built off of RTMS, which is
- 48:38Revanova, TMSRTMSAI and you. And when you combine all those
- 48:44letters, it becomes, it's Artemis spelled that way.
- 48:46ARTIMUS in our, our default flows that are pre integrated
- 48:53and ready to go because the long pole in the tent for any AI
- 48:55deployment is the integration and workflow layer is not the AI
- 48:58side of it necessarily. All of our pre integrated
- 49:02packaged, you know, cases I described, they all say, Hey,
- 49:06I'm Artemis, I'm your AI assistant.
- 49:08You know, I'm here to help you and here's what I can do for you
- 49:11and and then it does its thing and so they in our world, we say
- 49:16it's that you're talking to some AI capability, but that's just a
- 49:21prompt. You don't have to do that.
- 49:23You can say hi, this is Anthony I'm here to help you you know,
- 49:25how can I help you today I have a funny anecdotal story.
- 49:29One of our customers, we've been talking about this and, and,
- 49:31and, and everybody has different philosophies and that's why it's
- 49:34always, these are always optional things.
- 49:35But he's like, we have one of our, one of our employees who
- 49:38has sort of has a monotone voice.
- 49:40And when he talks to customers, he constantly gets, are you AI
- 49:43or are you a person? And I said, you know, it's
- 49:48funny, but when you have people that are on the other on the
- 49:51phone that where they almost can't distinguish it, you know,
- 49:54it's very interesting, right, Because usually on, you know,
- 49:57voice apps, you can tell right away if you're talking to a, you
- 50:00know, a recorded prompt and not some sort of personality, right?
- 50:05And and that's the that's the upside of AI think is you can
- 50:08kind of develop a personality with it.
- 50:10That could be very smart, can be very quick, can be very
- 50:14informative and is available 24 by 7 to do, you know, very task
- 50:19specific things and over time, many, many, many things.
- 50:22And that's where, you know, everybody's business philosophy
- 50:25is going to come into play. We have customers who say if
- 50:27someone wants to talk, we're going to put a human in front of
- 50:30them. And that's a very valid way to
- 50:31do business. And there'll be a lot of people
- 50:33who, you know, appreciate that. There's others who want to have
- 50:36kind of a hybrid, others who are looking to automate everything,
- 50:38you know, as much as possible. You know, they call it a digital
- 50:41brokerage. Like, no, almost no people.
- 50:43Everything happens to the automation.
- 50:46We'll see where it goes. You know, we're positioning
- 50:48ourselves to have features that can kind of address the needs of
- 50:51those three different philosophies.
- 50:53So if you want to try to go fully automated across all
- 50:56interaction channels, you know, we're going to try to put you in
- 50:59a position to be there. And if you want to have a mix of
- 51:01that or a hybrid, that's fine too.
- 51:02That's your call. As a business, we're just
- 51:04enabling, you know, these types of capabilities.
- 51:07Exciting times. Mike, what's a serious challenge
- 51:10that you've had to overcome in your life, What you learn going
- 51:14through that and and how did you get through it?
- 51:18Yeah, and and professional or personal side.
- 51:20Let's get let's do both one at a time, OK?
- 51:24Well, personally, I've had two near death experiences in my
- 51:29life. So when I was young and there's
- 51:31a scar here that I have, I was rundown by a motorist on my
- 51:34bicycle and almost died from that.
- 51:38I get my whole neck ripped open and it was not it was not a
- 51:42pretty experience, but you you learn a lot from that.
- 51:46So that was I was young at when it happened and and it kind of
- 51:49changed my whole perspective on life in general that, you know,
- 51:52you're moments away from something catastrophic
- 51:55happening. So be optimistic.
- 51:58You know, I always folks laugh there.
- 52:01So you know, how you doing? Every time I wake up on this
- 52:04side of the grass is a good day. Let's go make it the best one
- 52:06ever. That was the start of that
- 52:08philosophy. In 2020, I got COVID and before
- 52:14vaccines and anything were available and I got actually, I
- 52:18recovered from it. I got a second time, but the
- 52:20second time I was hospitalized. And it was, you know, the
- 52:25doctors were like, hey, you know, sign off on a ventilator,
- 52:29you know, and I'm like, and I'm like, I don't feel like doing
- 52:32that. And I said, how about we wait,
- 52:35you know, and this was a really interesting question.
- 52:37You know, he, he asked me, hey, are you in good with God?
- 52:41And I said, you know, I think I am, I'm a, I'm a, you know,
- 52:44Catholic and believer and I go God, I go, God has intervened
- 52:47once before for me. And he's like, when is that?
- 52:49I told him about the car accident story.
- 52:51And he's like, OK, because we're going to hold off on this end.
- 52:53And, and sure enough, I turned around in a couple days, I was
- 52:57out of the hospital and, you know, I didn't, you know, throw
- 53:00me on a ventilator. So and of course that was good.
- 53:03But again, kind of reinforced my whole life philosophy, which is,
- 53:07you know, things can happen quickly, you know, go in itself,
- 53:11enjoy your life, you know, bake the best of every day that you
- 53:15can and then keep going so that you know, that's those are the
- 53:20personal stories. So on that I'm.
- 53:22Curious, can you describe in more detail how that changes the
- 53:28way that you feel at your core? Is it that things roll off you
- 53:33more easily? Is it that you're seeking more
- 53:35of the joy than the work? Or, I don't know, kind of help
- 53:39us who haven't been through something like that understand
- 53:42it. Yeah, I would say that you
- 53:45described it well, which is the, the first part of it was at a
- 53:49young age was how do you overcome that, right.
- 53:52Like here I was, I had over 800 stitches.
- 53:56I had the lots, you know, the scar thing and you're young and
- 53:59like you, you learn to toughen up for sure.
- 54:02You know, because of the physical stuff that you know,
- 54:05people, you know, kids are cruel, come at you, you know,
- 54:08Frankenstein, blah, blah, blah. And you, you learn that that's
- 54:11not important and it's not a reflection on you.
- 54:13That's a reflection on them. And so you, you know, you end up
- 54:16being, it ended up improving my optimistic view on things and
- 54:21also the ability to just deal with all kinds of stuff that
- 54:24gets thrown at you. And also realizing that again,
- 54:28you know, life is, is, is, is an incredible thing.
- 54:32It's very fragile. And yet, you know, you can be
- 54:34very resilient to, I mean, surviving.
- 54:36That was, you know, the doctors all said, I don't even know how
- 54:38you made it to the hospital, but I did and I survived, you know,
- 54:42they magnificent doctors. And the same thing with the
- 54:44COVID experience, the IT, it changes your philosophy to base
- 54:50basically go, there are things that are important in life.
- 54:52And the most important thing is you can't do anything unless
- 54:54you're healthy. And so I focus a lot on that,
- 54:57you know, through nutrition and exercise and stress management,
- 55:02you know, because nothing more stressful.
- 55:04And someone telling you in both cases, I remember when I was in
- 55:07the hospital when I get up in the car and the, and the
- 55:09doctor's like, you know, I want to bring like a priest and to
- 55:12give him last rites, like we're not sure he's going to make it
- 55:14through the night. And I remember the look at my
- 55:17father's face and I was like, he might, my dad was a strong World
- 55:21War 2 veteran. And he's just was like, he's
- 55:24like, I got nothing, you know, and I can see it on his face.
- 55:27And he was worried. And that was the first time I
- 55:29think I saw my dad worried every time, you know, in my life.
- 55:32He was a much more, you know, strong man, like, say, World War
- 55:352 vet, police officer. So he'd seen a lot, been through
- 55:39a lot, never fazed by anything. And this phased him big.
- 55:41And I was like, oh, you know, am I in trouble here?
- 55:44But again, survived it, you know, through a lot of great
- 55:47folks on the doctor side that pulled me through.
- 55:49And then same thing with COVID, you know, somehow got through
- 55:51that and it, it just definitely toughens you up and, and it
- 55:57makes you focus on what's important.
- 55:59And the first thing again is that your health, your health,
- 56:02and then you focus on the things that make sense for you and make
- 56:05sure you focus on all the things around you that matter and the
- 56:09things that don't matter put off to the side.
- 56:10It's kind of going back to like a business philosophy of working
- 56:12prioritized lists. I'm a big list manager, but you
- 56:17got to prioritize like what's because you know, time is your
- 56:19worst enemy. You know, you get, So what are
- 56:21you going to spend time on? You do that.
- 56:23I do that in my personal life and I do that in my professional
- 56:26life. These are the things I got to
- 56:27tackle today professionally. These are the things I want to
- 56:29focus on personally. And everything else was going to
- 56:32just have to wait until I accomplish those things.
- 56:34And that's OK, because you can't do everything for everybody all
- 56:38the time, right? How about on the professional
- 56:42side? Yeah.
- 56:44So hurdles we talked about Quintus, of course, we talked
- 56:48about probably the ones, probably talked about the ones
- 56:51that were the biggest challenges, you know, just
- 56:54suddenly getting let go. I mean shop talk, probably
- 56:56another one where the investors pulled funding.
- 56:58So just showed up one day and the chairman of the board was
- 57:00there and I'm like, hey Joanna, what are you doing?
- 57:03Talent. She's like, well, I'm here to
- 57:05shut the company down. Like really it was a mismatch.
- 57:10So it was a marketing company that was trying to get into the
- 57:13software space. And I was hired because I had a
- 57:15lot of software experience and we were going to try to move
- 57:17into the software space. So the sales cycles were
- 57:20different, the business was different.
- 57:21The investors were misaligned by another good business
- 57:24experiences. Are your investors aligned?
- 57:26If you're, if you're funded by investors, are they aligned with
- 57:29what you're trying to do and the timing in which it's going to
- 57:31take to get it done? But so, yeah, so that between
- 57:36that one, just bang, you know, companies closed today.
- 57:38I decided to go. It was the first and only time I
- 57:41filed for unemployment. I said, hey, you know what I'm
- 57:44going to do today? I'm going to go down to the
- 57:45unemployment office and sat in the room.
- 57:47I filled out my form. And you'll laugh at this.
- 57:49I I filled out the form and I'm sitting there with a bunch of
- 57:51folks in the room. And and then also know, like Mr.
- 57:54Horwath, will you please come to the front?
- 57:56I'm like, Oh my God, what did I do wrong?
- 57:57I did Kenny. I was like, did I really miss?
- 58:00She got some. She goes, you can go your form
- 58:02looks fine and she goes that's I don't always get, you know,
- 58:05forms filled out correctly. So I went home, my wife cheaper.
- 58:10In the unemployment line, my. Wife's like, what are you doing
- 58:13at home? I go, well, they closed the
- 58:15company today and I have no job. And she's like, oh, you know, of
- 58:18course she's panicking, but I've never panicked on that stuff.
- 58:21I always felt like, again, going back to that why not me
- 58:24philosophy that I've had like, why not me?
- 58:26I mean, I grew up in a my bet, my mom was a secretary of my dad
- 58:30was a police officer. You know, I'd argue a middle
- 58:32class, you can argue lower middle class, you know,
- 58:35neighborhood. I went to a public high school
- 58:37and went to Northern Illinois University, which I loved,
- 58:39funded it myself mostly with a small student loan, which I paid
- 58:43off by the way. And and you know, people say,
- 58:48oh, you can't, you know, you can't compete with the Ivy
- 58:51Leaguers. You can't do that.
- 58:52You can't. People constantly would come out
- 58:54of the woodwork and I'd say I got to say interesting idea or
- 58:56something like that. And you know, I always had the
- 59:00philosophy is why not me? And yes, I can, you know, don't
- 59:02get in my way. I've, I've, I've got things I
- 59:05want to accomplish and I'm going to go for them.
- 59:06And just, you know, it's about, I think it's a lot about your
- 59:10intangibles, right? It's about your perseverance,
- 59:12it's about your attitude, it's about your optimism, it's about
- 59:15your work ethic. You can learn a lot of things in
- 59:17college, you know, that you will use and you won't use.
- 59:20But I think that the intangibles, the personality
- 59:22traits, things like that, that you learn along the way from
- 59:25mentors, from family, from friends, I think are bigger
- 59:28indicator of whether or not you're going to be a success in
- 59:31life or not. Because if you just stick to it
- 59:34and and keep learning, you know, I try to learn all the time.
- 59:37I never stop learning, read, you know, watch podcast, do things,
- 59:41always try to learn something new every day of as you go
- 59:47through life, because you know, there's just so much to know and
- 59:51you never know what's going to help you in a situation that's
- 59:53at some point in time. So just keep expanding your
- 59:55knowledge base. Like that?
- 59:58Why not me? Philosophy.
- 1:00:01Was that there before your first near death experience?
- 1:00:05Was that already part of you? No.
- 1:00:07I don't think so. You know, I was young at the
- 1:00:09time and I think that just was sort of an eye opener on, you
- 1:00:12know, just how to live life and and be aware of your
- 1:00:15surroundings and be more cautious.
- 1:00:16You know, there was kind of a the why not me thing happened, I
- 1:00:20think as I started in my career and and you know, probably the
- 1:00:25first challenge was, you know, hey, you're the Midwest sales
- 1:00:27guy. You know, you'll never
- 1:00:28outperform the West Coast salespeople on the East Coast.
- 1:00:30They got better territories. They get this, they get that.
- 1:00:33They're always the top. I remember taking that as a
- 1:00:35personal challenge going, OK, I'm going to outsell, I'm going
- 1:00:38to, I want to be the number one guy in the company.
- 1:00:39You know, that's that's my goal, you know, and, and said, how do
- 1:00:43I do it? Right.
- 1:00:44So just started to go after it and I said working lists, doing
- 1:00:50the things that I learned initially from Doctor Holland,
- 1:00:53you know, have a process, learn how to prospect, how to overcome
- 1:00:56objections. I just started applying what I
- 1:00:58had learned and just, you know, gain a ton of experience and
- 1:01:00just kept going at it. And then when I saw success
- 1:01:04there, I think is when I got to the why not me?
- 1:01:06I, I did it, why not me? Why can't I do the next big
- 1:01:09thing? Why can't I taste of success
- 1:01:12after somebody told you you couldn't do it and you proved
- 1:01:14that you could, that that's kind of where the switch went up?
- 1:01:19Yeah, I think that was a big part of it was real weird
- 1:01:21anecdotal stories I could tell you too.
- 1:01:23You know, I'm a musician. I I play bass guitar and guitar
- 1:01:26and, you know, can hack my way around a keyboard and a few
- 1:01:28other instruments. And I remember a guy that was
- 1:01:31probably my age at the time was, was in a band and we were a
- 1:01:34bunch of teenagers playing in the garage.
- 1:01:35And he's like, you guys sound good, but how come no one's
- 1:01:37singing? And we're like, well, none of us
- 1:01:40know how to sing. He's like, why don't, Why not,
- 1:01:42you know, give it a try, you know, do these things, you know,
- 1:01:44so we all started doing it. We got pretty good at it.
- 1:01:47And that's that was Mr. Vino. I forgot.
- 1:01:49I mean, I'm like, yeah, you know, he's right.
- 1:01:50Why didn't we try this? Like, you know, so I think there
- 1:01:53were Nuggets of that through life that you get right.
- 1:01:56And and it's it's you just, you know, you you take those things
- 1:02:00and they might even be, you might not even be conscious of
- 1:02:04them. You know, they might be
- 1:02:05subconscious things that you've learned in the past that
- 1:02:09contribute to that. But certainly, Yeah, Well, as I
- 1:02:12got into the professional world and people were very skeptical
- 1:02:15about, you know, you'll never be able to do that or you can't do
- 1:02:17that or how are you going to start a company?
- 1:02:20You know, there were people that said, yeah, you can, you know,
- 1:02:22that were mentors that said you can do that, man, you're smart
- 1:02:25enough. So he had good people.
- 1:02:26And I think that's a great thing for anybody that's, you know,
- 1:02:30young in the industry or just, you know, building their careers
- 1:02:32is fine. Gravitate to those mentors and
- 1:02:36just you absorb as much as you can from the good people that
- 1:02:39you work with that are willing to be mentors.
- 1:02:41And if you are someone who's got a lot of experience, mentor the
- 1:02:44younger people coming up behind you, you know, give them and
- 1:02:47still these types of things in them.
- 1:02:49Because I, I tell you, I say this to our team a lot.
- 1:02:52You know, you guys can do this, you know, like that's one of the
- 1:02:55challenges as a founder is, is stepping back, right.
- 1:02:57You know, is, is getting out of the day-to-day details like as
- 1:03:00we grew the company from, you know, 15 people where I was
- 1:03:03involved in so much and now almost 9, almost 100 now where
- 1:03:08I'm not involved in a day-to-day.
- 1:03:09And I I committed to the people that you know, that or I used to
- 1:03:13do those jobs and look like I'm not going to helicopter you.
- 1:03:15You're smart enough, you're good enough.
- 1:03:16You can do this. If you need my help or you have
- 1:03:19a question always here for you, but I'm not going to helicopter
- 1:03:22you. I'm not going to tell you what
- 1:03:23to do. You're going to do this.
- 1:03:25You can do this. Then you need people in your
- 1:03:27life that tell you that too. You know, not just the
- 1:03:30naysayers. And you know, you don't have to
- 1:03:32overcome that personally, but you do need people that can
- 1:03:35reinforce that you can do. Things you need a cheerleader?
- 1:03:38Absolutely. I've just got one more.
- 1:03:40Question coming to Chief morale. They used to call me Chief
- 1:03:43morale, that CMO, like chief Morale Officer, because you
- 1:03:45always come in here and you're always pumping everybody up.
- 1:03:48But I think that's important. I I think it's easy to get
- 1:03:50distracted by what's not going right and not and not, you know,
- 1:03:54also, I mean, mindset is everything that are going right.
- 1:03:56Yeah, mindset's everything. And so you, if you can help put
- 1:04:00your team into the right mindset, you can do this.
- 1:04:04We are capable. We've got a great product.
- 1:04:06We can overcome whatever obstacle is there.
- 1:04:10You're you're sort of greased in the slide, right?
- 1:04:14Absolutely. You know, I told everybody,
- 1:04:16look, when we started Revanova, nobody even knew what it meant,
- 1:04:19what it was. There was no, you know, who are
- 1:04:21you guys? I mean, we have, you know,
- 1:04:23formidable customers now, you know, very, very successful
- 1:04:26customers, household names. I go we have a lot going for us.
- 1:04:30You know, of course there's always challenges, you know, any
- 1:04:33product company, it's evolving. You know, there's always things
- 1:04:35you don't have that you wish you had.
- 1:04:37Now it's going to take you months to get there and you
- 1:04:39just, you have to always, you know, you also also focus on all
- 1:04:42the great things you already have, right?
- 1:04:45You can't just focus on the things you don't have.
- 1:04:46So it's it's this optimism I've always had, you know, an
- 1:04:49optimistic kind of after those near death experiences is you
- 1:04:52just have to be an optimist, you know, otherwise, why live life?
- 1:04:56Why be a pessimist? Why be cranky and crabby all
- 1:04:59day? Like, no way, that's not going
- 1:05:00to be me. I'm going to going out on a
- 1:05:02happy note, going out with a smile.
- 1:05:05I love it. Before I ask my last question,
- 1:05:07Mike, I just want to take care of a few housekeeping items
- 1:05:10here. Anyone who wants to get in touch
- 1:05:12with Mike, you can look him up on LinkedIn, Michael Horvath,
- 1:05:16and look for Rebenova in that search.
- 1:05:19We'll also include a link to that.
- 1:05:21His company is revanova.com, Rev en-o-v-a.com, and then his
- 1:05:27e-mail address is mhorvath@revanova.com.
- 1:05:30Again, links to all that will be in the show Nuts for this.
- 1:05:33And as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to
- 1:05:36benefits that aren't going to hurt them financially and
- 1:05:38carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to add
- 1:05:41back benefits.com. And finally, if you take just a
- 1:05:44moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast
- 1:05:47app, we will be forever grateful.
- 1:05:49So last question for you, Mike, you and I reconnect one year
- 1:05:52from today and you are celebrating something big.
- 1:05:55What's that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from
- 1:05:58now? Well, I guess, and that I'm
- 1:06:03still here, that'd be a good one.
- 1:06:07And that, you know, we're launching, we, we, we were
- 1:06:11launching into the, the fleet space as a company.
- 1:06:14So the company goal for, you know, a year from now is that we
- 1:06:17are a player on the fleet side of the, of the industry.
- 1:06:21So carriers that are looking to for ATMSA year from now, I'm
- 1:06:26hoping, hey, those are guys, you should look at them.
- 1:06:28They got something pretty cool. We have a we're launching, we've
- 1:06:31been soft launching that for some period of time.
- 1:06:34We're going to go in a big way starting Q1 of 26.
- 1:06:38So we're we have a few launch partners.
- 1:06:41It'll be some well known names that people would be like, wow,
- 1:06:44they bought Revanova for their fleet and they're like, yes,
- 1:06:46they did so, but that's not been publicly announced yet.
- 1:06:50So hopefully you're from now we'll be talking a lot about
- 1:06:52that as a business. Terrific.
- 1:06:54Well, my core math from Revanova, I want to be the first
- 1:06:57to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
- 1:06:59today. I really appreciate it.
- 1:07:01Oh thank you, this was quite enjoyable and I'd love to come
- 1:07:05back if you've got another topic you want to talk about.
- 1:07:08I'll take you up on that, folks. That's a wrap on another episode
- 1:07:11of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
- 1:07:13today.