Prototyping as a Foundation, Bootstrapping Startups, and Matbock with Sean Matson

Join host Callye Keen in this insightful episode featuring Sean Matson, co-founder of MATBOCK. Sean's journey from a Navy SEAL to a successful entrepreneur is both inspiring and educational. Together, they discuss the intricacies of innovation, product development, and the defense industry.

Topic Highlights:

[00:00] - A Message from Host Callye Keen
Callye shares with the audience a message regarding his audio quality. This was an important podcast to release, so while Callye’s audio quality is slightly degraded, Guest Sean Matson’s is good.

[00:46] - Introduce Sean Matson
Callye Keen introduces Sean Matson, Co-founder MATBOCK, an organization that helps To Bring Disruptive Technologies to The Market and Empower Others in Our Journey.

[08:20] - The Power of Prototyping
The importance of building prototypes, no matter how rudimentary they may seem. 

[16:29] - Bootstrapping Your Startup
The benefits of self-funding and taking a hands-on approach to reduce costs.

[18:35] - Innovative Product Development
MATBOCK's unique approach to creating products that stand out in the defense industry 

[00:25:31] - Starting Small and Scaling Up
The value of starting with minimal resources and gradually expanding.

[31:13] - The Key to Successful Pitches
Sean's advice on crafting a pitch deck that's concise, informative, and captivating.

"As a startup, you have to start somewhere. You have to start moving in that path. Give me a prototype. I don't care how ugly the prototype is. Give me something to look at." - Sean Matson

Tune in to this episode for an engaging conversation that delves into the world of startups, innovation, and the military perspective on entrepreneurship.


Callye Keen - Kform
https://kform.com/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/callyekeen/ 
https://youtube.com/@kforminc  
https://twitter.com/CallyeKeen 

Sean Matson - Co-founder MATBOCK
https://www.matbock.com/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-matson/ 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the startup defense. My name is Callie Keen. Word of warning about this week's episode. My audio was off and I apologize. I apologize to you, the listener. Bear with me and I apologize to my guest, but this episode with Sean is so good and I Love what Sean is doing and his story so much I have to get this episode out here. So again, bear with me, I apologize, but listen to this very special episode. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:28

And so we went and built it myself, zach and my grandmother and Richmond. We worked in her garage actually to build this first prototype. We had an initial one that was like a one-foot scale model of it that we built out of half inch duct tape, staples and 550 cords welcome to the startup defense today.

Speaker 1: 0:48

I have I plan Sean. That's Sean what is up?

Speaker 2: 0:53

Good man, how are you doing? Good to see you again.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Very good Very good. For our audience. Can you tell us who is Sean Madsen? What are you up to? What are you cashing?

Speaker 2: 1:03

Yeah. So Sean Madsen grew up in Richmond, virginia, originally went to school out in Lexington, virginia, at Virginia Military Institute, swan there, and then spent 13 years as a SEAL officer. So from 2005 to 2018, I did five deployments during that time. Also kind of during that time that I was active, well, my business partner and I started map box, which MAT B OCK it's part of my last name, part of his last name. We started it Really in 2006 with this idea of how to make a new cargo net system for the military, which has been our worst product to date. I think we've made a sold to other and I think we gave one away. But what it did do is it helped that the foundation to us understanding how to get a product to market, get a patent, find manufacturing, do all this while we were still active and while we had a paying job and to just kind of get this business going. Officially we've been in business 13 years, so 2010 is when we actually Officially incorporated. You know we've been at this since 2006.

Speaker 1: 2:06

I've seen you launch a really wide range of products. So I've seen you launch drinks kind of energy products, and I Kind of want to get into that.

Speaker 1: 2:16

But I've also seen the mat block products, including Backpacks and wearables, which really gets into the space where I mix in the electronics and man packs though. So yeah, really peaks my interest. But in general, there's got to be a through line. Here is because you're picking these ideas and then bringing it to market. I know you kind of mentioned the nets, your worst selling product, but how is that kind of development or you know, business development, personal development process been honing, taking an idea and then bringing it into the market as something to innovate defense problem?

Speaker 2: 2:55

We have always looked at ourselves as a tech development company at the end of the day. We do have kind of soft goods with you mentioned, you know, backpacks or plate carriers or other things like that but we have an autofocus night vision got in the accessory that goes on the end of a MVG, which is one of our best selling products. You know. We have electronics, that for Indirect firing control systems for mortar teams or fire support officers. We have a wide range of things. In fact we're even working on a electric hybrid JLTV right now for the army. So we won that contract last year from the army and we're developing, you know, their next generation joint light tactical vehicle in a hybrid version of that wide spectrum of things. But again, when it comes back down to it, it's a we're a tech development company. We really look at innovation. We look at the new materials, new manufacturing process, how to sometimes incorporate both of those and new material and new manufacturing process to ultimately bring a new product to the market. Our primary customer is the government. It's, you know, the law enforcement, military first responders kind of in that world.

Speaker 2: 4:02

You mentioned earlier, you know, launching an energy drink company right when we launched that. It was the same, same exact concept as these others. It was something innovative. We took what historically has been in a can you know, an energy drink and or something like that, and we took the chemistry that is in the energy drink and, worked with engineers, reformulated it so that everything could sit in. Essentially what it was a ketchup packet that was a liquid, and then the solder, sailors, marines, could ship all over the world for them. I pour into 20 ounces of water and then they had their energy drink Fast forward.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Now we sold that business about two and a half years ago or so and they're still in business. But we saw a little bit more that we wanted to do in that space outside of just energy drinks. So we ended up selling our shares and we went after the supplement space and so we created what is called Cardomax now, which is Cardomaximus is the north-south running road in Roman times where they would build their cities off of, and so it's a center point of what they would build the cities for. But Cardomax is a whole line of supplements. So we have an energy line, we have an immune booster, we have a hydration, a new tropic for focus, we have recovery. So we went down and used all that science and information that we'd already developed, but worked and re-engineered some of the products so that we had a full line of supplements.

Speaker 1: 5:31

What I'm taking out of this is when you so as an aside, sean is a good LinkedIn follower because you are always doing interesting things and so, yeah, I see these tech products which I'm attracted to, and then I see the new drink and the supplement line come out. But abstractly, think of it like this is you've been trained to see problems and trends. And I was just talking to Trish, she was the coordinator for the Deaf community, the defense entrepreneur forum.

Speaker 2: 6:00

She was just on the show.

Speaker 1: 6:01

We were talking about this. This is why I like working with operators former operators, people that are or were in the IC is because there's such a training towards seeing and solve problems and like looking at the data and analytics and as a product development company. This is why a lot of products fail, because they don't actually solve a problem.

Speaker 1: 6:24

They're just an idea that is untethered from reality and so it sounds like wildly different things. But in reality I know that you're looking at the same customer segments of problems and you have a process for developing a problem solution fit into. There's not really a whole lot process-wise the difference between working with a mechanical engineer and working with a formulator At the end of the day. It's still a process of developing, prototyping, testing, piloting, etc.

Speaker 1: 6:55

So for a lay person it sounds wildly different, but I think from a product development standpoint innovation is innovation, obviously, like you mentioned.

Speaker 2: 7:05

I mean, whether you're innovating a new supplement line or, like I talked about the JLTV, right, the steps are the same in terms of, like, the gross macro steps that you have to take to get through that process right. What is different is all the subtasks and sub-components to each of the macro things that have to go in there. Right, like the JLTV has hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of things that have to all go right in a particular step before you can move on to the next step, where formulating a hydration product might only have four or five steps that really have to do, or four or five sub-tasks before you have to go into the next step. So the level of complexity and, ultimately, time varies between those things, but we do have that process. We do constantly look at things but then also look at similar to how we would do things in the military. After we finish a mission, the first thing we're doing is we're doing an AAR and, after actual review and looking at really subjectively, where we screwed up and how we can make things better so that we don't continue to make those same mistakes, but also for the next project, we're trying to get it to those guys that like, hey, listen, we might need to look at either a different piece of technology that we're using or another way, or vendor or something.

Speaker 2: 8:32

I think everybody saw it during COVID obviously, supply chain and different things. That really stressed the ability to manufacture some of these things really since the first start of COVID. I mean, even though everything that we do on the map box side has to be sourced and manufactured here in the United States, so we don't have to worry about some of the longer logistics lines. Even us, like we went back and we're still really going through a lot of this with some of our vendors just because we haven't found exactly the right fit in some areas, is making sure we double and purple tap some of these places. That to make sure that if one vendor goes away, you know, we know that we have the resources to continue to grow and scale. Some of it's part of COVID and other is just the demand. We're hitting too much demand from one vendor that we need to go source this particular item from two or three vendors that do the same thing.

Speaker 1: 9:26

We're still seeing sub components, things like power converters or even smaller power components have really long lead times, especially, in particular, more niche configurations of that product, which of course of course I need the hardest to get version of that product right In addition to that there's finally a big movement to reshore and you know, like you, everything that we do is made in the USA because we are manufacturing company.

Speaker 1: 9:54

But now it's getting all to the electronics, it's getting to the optics, it's getting more and more to the software part of it. So the idea of having software build materials that is all overseen domestically and that's putting a lot of additional stress in the system, you could just buy XYZ component, slap it in there, get an exception for it, and you really can't do that now and then in another year or so you really won't be able to do something as simple as electronics really holds up that whole system. Going from this TOTS to now this blue secure supply chain, see that it's being a big point of contention for product development companies that aren't as good at that day. What are some other lessons you can learn as you're building this product development company? I feel like and this might be speaking out of turn, but with my friends that are entrepreneurs that have come out of the service.

Speaker 1: 10:48

It seems like they have better mission focus and that they're able to handle a lot of more ambiguity than, say, a startup that's just thinking, hey, we're gonna win tomorrow. You have that kind of entrepreneur math versus the focus. I'm gonna do these things deliberately. If this makes sense what lessons have you pulled from your experience into this present date?

Speaker 2: 11:14

I touched on it briefly, like the cargo net system, was what really got everything started. A little bit longer of a story to that was, you know, when we first came up with the idea. It was a flight from San Diego to Alaska and it was an eight hour flight on the back of a C-130. And we're sitting there yelling and screaming at each other coming up with this new cargo net system. The cargo nets have not changed since World War II. The same company that manufactured them back in World War II was still same design. I guess I should say is the exact same thing that is still done to this day. It's a large company. You've seen their ratchet straps and buckles basically on the back of every open bed semi truck that's out there. Kennedine is the name of the company that makes them, but they make the military cargo nets. It's about a 30 to $40 million a year contract for these cargo nets between manufacturing new cargo nets and servicing the old cargo nets.

Speaker 2: 12:06

So we were like, hey, what was a? Sell this idea to the company that'll love this new idea that we just came up with and the rest will be history right. And we got nothing like not interested. We started talking to investors to potentially invest in us and every one of them, because you know we're O-1s at the time, like fresh out of college, you know with making decent money, for you know in the military as an officer and as a seal, with the special pays and things like that but not about money that start this throwing at all these other stuff they're doing. And so we talked about raising money and doing all these other stuff and people investing. And every time we kept going out this way, everyone that we'd talked to was like listen, like it's a great idea, you just need to go build it. Like, you need to go build it, go do it. And so we just were like fine, like we just got tired of hearing the same feedback from other people.

Speaker 2: 13:01

And so we went and built it myself, zach and my grandmother and Richmond. We worked in her garage actually to build this first prototype. We had an initial one that was like a one-fifth scale model of it that we built out of half inch duct tape, staples and 550 cord. That we made to make us our first like one-fifth scale model. And we developed it, built that first like full functioning, full sized prototype of it, and learned some things from that, just from building from a one-fifth scale to a full scale, we learned some things that we needed to adjust and do, and my grandma actually came out with this really neat idea to control some of how big this net is and this cargo net and cargo is eight feet or so by eight feet. I mean it's a huge cube area that you're dealing with and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of gear that can be stacked on this thing.

Speaker 2: 13:57

We came up with this idea and other things and ultimately took it to a manufacturer that did other things in the aerospace area and they ultimately picked it up as a product that they were gonna OEM for us. So we got pricing on it, we got it up on our website and send it off to get the preliminary drawings filed for provisional patent, finally got a patent Ultimately, even though, like, the initial idea of selling this idea and making money off of that didn't turn into anything. Then the next thing was is well, we'll just make it and then we'll start selling it. Really, 13 years later, still hasn't turned into anything but what it has done right. And this is where I think, when you talk about startups really just losing some of that focus or just keep going back. What they did do is that paved an incredible roadmap and path for us, that what we're doing is to trigger the project that we're done in. We're gonna be selling what we've earned really long outside of our sealed. I can now get a product from Inception to you know, basically production ready in weeks, we know where.

Speaker 2: 14:57

Before it was taken years. You know, and figuring out like, oh, who do I talk to for maybe this part of it? Or cost, modeling and prototyping, cost and just all of these things that at the beginning you're just like, oh gosh, I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this. Well, now it's like you've got these things, where you just got formulas, you can just plug in some numbers and you can get your information spit out to you in matters of seconds sometimes, and so it's created that roadmap. But it is also that process to get those products to market and we never let that stop us from thinking you know what we were building with MapBock in terms of an innovative tech development company.

Speaker 2: 15:40

That foundation was needed in the defense space.

Speaker 2: 15:43

And now, again, you have passed forward 13 years and you know we absolutely see where ideas and things that we were talking about back in 2007, eight time frame, we were really starting to kind of like, oh, maybe we should start a company and talk about. But we're like, well, what do we want it to be? And we were like we want to be different than everybody else. We don't want to do what everybody else is doing because there's 30 companies making the same plate carrier. So let's not do that. Let's figure out our own path and really push innovation in that. And now you know again, when you look at what's kind of happened to the defense industry, you know a lot of those companies are gone. The demand's not there for, you know, 30 companies making the same plate carrier. They've whittled it down. They've got a few companies making that plate carrier now but they're spending a lot more money on R&D and looking for companies to really innovate and push those technologies. And that's where we're really picking up some steam on others, where it wasn't typically there before.

Speaker 1: 16:39

There's so much in product development on the other side of product development getting something to market that you really can't know or can't really be taught without doing it. So I like that story because the things that you make now are technically complicated. They are technical products, we would say hard tech innovations. They're not something that you can just buy and slap a coat of paint on. They're not something you could sew or three print and just be done with it. They're complex and have complex development associated with it. So you have to understand the process and how to get customer buy-in and test things and have a validated idea.

Speaker 1: 17:19

But I could tell somebody this a million times but until they actually start making things it's hard to relay. I mean, I love that story because people ask me how I got started in developing products, and one I grew up in a machine shop. So this is like that's one piece. But I started developing products by making little things for history fair and science fair, or professionally, by reverse engineering, so we could make 10 more of a thing, just measuring it and really really straightforward, because there's so much even in doing something simple that you don't know. It's like you have to have some basis out there to play into, because that process, whatever discipline that you can put into that process, it scales up. We want to do cool stuff, but it's like there's a lot of boring stuff that facilitates making really cool stuff. What's on the horizon for Mapo?

Speaker 2: 18:14

The biggest thing right now for us at Mapo is the JLTV.

Speaker 2: 18:19

That is really interesting where we're going with that.

Speaker 2: 18:23

We've got a lot of really cool tech in there to not only help write some of the military history side of things, but I also think that it's going to also translate into the civilian sector.

Speaker 2: 18:36

Unfortunately, I can't get into details of some of it. Part of it is because the contract that we're on with the army on it, we, when we looked at this again as a problem and when we competed against I mean we competed against North of Grumman, lockheed, boeing, all the big defense companies in this space that are a thousand X times bigger than we are when it comes to scale and funding and everything else Ultimately we won because we were the most aggressive with our proposal. While we're not going to hit necessarily the moon or we say we're not going to hit Mars, on this first one we're going to fall short, a little short, and we're going to hit the moon. It's like, hey, we are actually pushing huge technology leaps with what we're putting together and it's exciting to watch it all start to come together now that we're in the build phase and we're starting to finish up, getting into the integration phase and pushing through these last six months of the year to get this contract completed.

Speaker 1: 19:35

I love that. I'll speak for myself, but this is something I repeat like a mantra over and over again we're too small to make bad products. If I was a massive company, I'm a safe bet, right I? Can make something that's incrementally better. They're going to look at my resources, my team, my track record and say you know what you know whenever got fired for picking NGC or for picking Lockheed. That's a good bet.

Speaker 1: 19:59

They can write the ship if something goes a little off the filter. So I can't compete by making the good products. I have to make something that's bizarrely better. Like I said, I'm speaking for myself, but I feel like you're coming from that same space is like we have to be absurdly better or have incredibly high value proposition.

Speaker 2: 20:21

And honestly, that's where Zach's mechanical engineer I was a double engineer, so both of us have that just mindset of constantly, oh I can fix this or I could do this, or, you know, make this better, and you know what's the next mouth strap oh yeah, let's make that, you know, a little bit better. Zach was really instrumental in getting that concept kind of really flushed out in his head and kind of letting us know what his thought was on it and then really convincing, you know, the army, that this was a viable option. You know, against a lot of, I think, people looking at it or just like listen, like we hear you. However, no one else is doing that Like not even close to what you guys are proposing. So what makes you think you know, kind of like to your point, like what makes you think you could do it? And it's like, well, I mean watch us. You know so the army and their entire team that we're working with on this. They've been phenomenal throughout this entire process with us.

Speaker 2: 21:15

You know, whatever you're doing, innovation does. Every step happened 100% correct the first time, and so we've had to make some audibles, We've had to make some adjustments, but ultimately we've been completely transparent with everybody on it. Maybe sometimes, maybe too much transparency, or just it's like that's what you have to do. Though, when you're way again, when you're doing these things like this, because you know the worst thing you want to happen is like it get down to hurting it over and they're like wait a minute, why was this one cable, not this that you said it was gonna be? And it's like oh yeah, we made this little change. We thought it would be no issue. It's like it's kind of a big issue, you know, and so, anyway, you completely understand. It's just like you gotta over communicate. You got to.

Speaker 2: 21:57

When you're in these situations where you know one, you're faced against there a huge leap in innovation, but also a time-crunk, in that we're given right now, 18 months basically from the time the all contract was awarded to fully turn this thing around. And I mean, on day one when we got the JLTV, it was like ripped everything out of the engine transmission. You know everything is like and start we're doing it from. You know, basically not the ground up, but basically the entire drivetrain, part of it is completely getting redone, and so I mean it's just a massive overhaul when it comes to this and trying to get all the integration going. But it's also very Exciting because I think here in the next few weeks we're hoping to be able to put out another press release kind of on our progress. You know, make sure you, it's exciting to see where some of this technology could potentially be going here in the near future.

Speaker 1: 22:49

I like that you said that not everything goes according to plan, because this is a big Misunderstanding with startups and innovation. Is that?

Speaker 1: 22:59

you're gonna you know they're gonna work with you, they're gonna work with me and then work with somebody and it's just execute. But why should it go right? It's never existed, no one's ever done it. Why would it go correctly the first time? It's intuitive after you've done it a number of times that that's impossible. But it's a common disappointment that people have in innovation is that it doesn't magically work out perfect the first time.

Speaker 1: 23:21

Kind of Makes me think about jets flying. But you know that's a. It's like a whole nother level of technical innovation. You know I'm like I work with people on those teams. It's amazing the level of due diligence that goes in. But still it's amazing that a plane flies. It's fairly binary. When it does it does. I've met innumerable people. They'll want to do what you're doing. They're coming out of the service or they're coming out of school and they want to start innovation company. They want to go down and part of what we're trying to tackle on the show is get them to see the opportunities and the problems that are over in this DOD or federal space right. So that might be Leo. It might be disaster recovery. It might be a humanitarian aid.

Speaker 1: 24:04

But it might be intelligence community DOD. But to cluster it into one product is to look at non-traditional source problems in new market. But the issue that startups have, or somebody coming out of college, is this looks like the most absurdly difficult to enter industry. Really isn't, but can you give some lessons learned about how to get in? Find those opportunities, get from customers.

Speaker 2: 24:31

So, going back to first thing is is like and and like you right top to different people all the time, and it was like I got this great idea. So, like, one of our first benchmarks to work with someone is is they have to send it, they have to make a prototype. If they're not willing to invest time and make an a prototype, then I want nothing to do with this person. It's just an idea that they've got in their head. I don't have time for it. And I tell them like hey, listen, I don't care if you make this out of cardboard duct tape. You know. If it's it, if it's an app, right, build the flow of what the app looks like on a PowerPoint. I don't care, but I have to see you've actually put some thought into this, rather than you just Blabber on a paragraph after paragraph about this idea and then you want me and my team to go build this thing for you. It's like no. So we always require Anybody that we work with to build a prototype. And again, I don't care if it's made out of cardboard duct tape, staples. I want to see whatever is in your idea in your head come to flourish. And so that's step one, and right there you weed out, like 90% of the people, because they won't even do that. I think that's just a testament that their stomachs not there and you know they're not cut out. That go do this. If they do come back with said prototype, then I'm willing to work with them and move forward and help them. You know, go down that road, but at least they've taken the time to invest in, to taking their idea, make it turn into something, and now I know that they're committed to seeing this actually come, to make it into a full-on product eventually.

Speaker 2: 26:01

I know you've made hundreds, thousands of different prototypes of forests. Not every one of them are pretty. Sometimes it literally is like stupid, simple, like you're just taking a piece of paper and you're coupling it up. Don't making some things you like. That's all we have to do. The autofocus night vision Goggle accessory that we did. We couldn't find what we needed to do and we kept trying to make it work. And then all of a sudden on it this was years ago, before Amazon was as big as they are now I saw a pasta measuring device which was an iris that open and close. I bought it for like $4 and some change I put it on the end of my night vision goggles and I was like it works, you know, at this land, is exactly what we wanted to do.

Speaker 2: 26:37

Like this works. It actually does, you know, do what it needs to do. Again, it was just like it's such a dumb idea, but it solved what I needed to do. It created, you know, that idea because I couldn't get the 3d models to work the way we wanted to do. I couldn't get the precision that you need to make some of the fins. We did a cost us way more money than we had to invest in that to get that product and I was like look this thing's five bucks.

Speaker 2: 27:02

At the end of the day, start up. First thing you have to do is you have to start. You have to start somewhere. You have to start moving in that path. And so, again, for us it's give me a prototype. I don't care how ugly the prototype is, give me something to look at. From there it's slowly building out kind of what you mentioned, like that, that problem statement You're looking at, like the customers that you wanted to ask, or who you think this product you know really appeals to, and things like that. And then getting the products to market.

Speaker 2: 27:33

I think the next phase and I see a lot of people fail at, as they think well, I have to have a hundred million dollars to go start this company, and then they go raise capital and lose half their company, or they raise a whole bunch of capital and they are Really stupid with the money and then they're broke after 18 months of they just blew ten million dollars and someone else's money and they really don't even have a company yet. They still got this, this product that they haven't been able to sell, and so I've always been a proponent that you can always bootstrap any business to some level. Right, you might only last eight months or a year, but at the end of the day, if you're using your own money money in your pocket you can start a business register, get an LLC, get a website, get some of these things. Learn how to do different things, like I taught myself how to do some basic photo editing and video editing, and you know some of these things on the internet that are free. I learned how to build a website. You know both MapBock and CardiMax. I built those websites at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 28:34

Now there are certain features that I didn't know how to do, so I know enough about the back ends of how those websites work, that I can hire a guru for a couple hundred bucks and they can make the functions do the last little bit of things that I, you know, might want them to do for a particular product or collection or something. But I've been on there enough to know how to kind of talk some of that language and say, hey, like I'm not getting this to happen, I need this to be sear and have them. And then you're not spending $10,000 for someone to build a website because you just tell a guy, hey, want to start this new business, got this idea, got this great product, I need a website. He's like it's going to be $10,000 because you have no idea what you're going to do. You know he's already thinking in his head I'm going to have to help this guy figure out his logo, I'm going to have to help the color schemes, I'm going to have to have the type font, I'm going to have to have all these things that go in that you haven't even thought about. And that's why he charges you the ridiculous amount of money to build a website when you could do it for free for seven days on Shopify. Get a free trial and you could build the website in less than a couple hours and have even to the point where you're taking orders and less than a couple hours very easily have a couple pages on a website and done and it costs you again maybe a couple hours of your time to do.

Speaker 2: 29:52

First one is prototype, that commitment of Axbury seeing product. And then I think the next thing is just wasting money on just kind of dumb things because they're not willing again to invest some of their own time and effort into learning some of these things, to do some of this themselves, and then they just waste money on. I mentioned the website. Another one that I see is I got a trademark and patent and all this stuff and it's like hey, man, I hate to break it to you, but you're a startup. Nobody cares about your little widget or your little trademark name that you're going to do so because you just wasted another $10,000, that could have been $10,000 that you just put towards making your product better and turning into more sales. Those would be my two biggest things that I always see at the beginning with people.

Speaker 1: 30:34

Really someone would call us to write. Somebody has that skin in the game. Why do I have to fill in the belief that they don't have right the?

Speaker 2: 30:43

website is a great.

Speaker 1: 30:45

I call that conversationally confident, right, I want to be conversationally confident about something and I can hire somebody to have them on my team, but I can communicate. Oh, this is what I want. This is how we did it before, this is what I've seen, what works and does work, some foundation for expertise to live on, but the prototype is the same. I'll be honest. I asked people to send me a pitch deck and I say, hey, here's a template for pitch deck, because I don't want a science fair project. I don't want big write up, I want 10 slides that cover these basic topics. Run accelerators for six years, so I know that we've had 12 year olds in this program. I had professors, which are the worst I've had. Them have good outcomes, right, and so somebody has an idea.

Speaker 1: 31:30

I say hey, just give me an hour and just fill out this pitch deck template so I understand what the opportunity is. Who's your customer going to be? Do you have access to that customer? And if not, that's the problem that I have to solve with you, Not like, can you make this thing? Because the answer can you make this thing? Unless it goes against the laws of nature. The answer is yes, Like I can, for sure. It's just like can you afford for it to be made? Is it going to be profitable?

Speaker 1: 31:55

Yeah, if somebody took the extra time to build a duct tape prototype or rip something apart and glue a pasta strainer or pasta measuring thing on some goggles. I think we would get a lot farther in that conversation.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Whenever I hear pitch deck, the first thing that always pops in my head is 10, 20, 30. So no more than 10 slides, no less than 20 size, 20 font, and the deck should take you about 30 minutes to breeze it. They give yourself about 30 minutes for question and answer time.

Speaker 1: 32:26

That's the exact template that we actually use in most of the accelerators, because I can say hey, here's this other guy, much more successful than me, and he says use big fonts and don't put a bunch of words on page right. And because I don't need that. Sean, thank you so much for being on the show. It's great to catch up with you. I know you're busy and you're always planning the next thing, so maybe we'll have you come back on the show when you have worded disclose. But for people that are listening, he is a good LinkedIn follow because they're making cool products and you always see it getting out there and I know so many people that want to develop the kind of business that you have. So if you're thinking about getting into the innovation business, follow. Sean is a good example of coming out of the service, having ideas and developing that process and bringing products to practice, so a really good example.

Speaker 2: 33:17

Now, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time and good catching up again. It's been a while since the clubhouse day.

Speaker 1: 33:25

So clubhouse is over, I guess. But a good takeaway is early on I met so many great people. I built some really, really fantastic relationships.

Speaker 2: 33:34

There's a time and a place for everything. Yeah, actually last weekend I was down in Florida and I met Magda, who is in a lot of our channels and stuff like that, another veteran entrepreneur. So it was really funny, like we're walking into this conference, I was like, hey, I know you. It was like only child, where do you do it down here? So it's just, you know, small world, go man. We'll appreciate it done. Thank you, sean. This has been the start of the conference.