Shane Murphy

never have I ever changed my pricing model during a sales call have you ever done that oh absolutely absolutely absolutely many times oh yeah that's uh $500 oh wait no for you $300 here's the thing you do not validate a business without doing that like you you just don't do it you change your pricing constantly in some of my best ones are that's $3,000 a year but if you want to break into 12 monthly payments it's only 300 a month well I'll take the 300 a month I just made $3,600 okay all right everybody welcome back to the startup ignition podcast we are your hosts Tyler and John Richards you know us by now we're the old news but today we have a very exciting guest Shane Murphy and he is with a company in a startup called boostle that just recently announced and some exciting news and last minute we asked Shane to come on the podcast and he was gracious enough to come here on probably a pretty crazy week for you with all the interviews and people wanting to talk to you but a little background on Shane just to introduce him he is the CEO and co-founder of booley Shane's journey is obviously a special one for us because he has come through the startup ignition boot camp we love seeing our alumni going on to bigger better awesome things booley is a startup and it is leading the charge in SMS marketing for restaurants and they just announced a $22 million series a this week let's Pi that's a 22 million round not the valuation oh no yeah that's that's check that is that is check that is the check that is an awesome check and that's no small feat you know and and and in this challenging startup environment and VC environment that we're in today since 2021s high right we've kind of been in this trough so that's amazing so kudos to Shane um but yeah you also um took booley through YC y combinator uh obviously adding to your impressive track record um and Shane is not only a proven founder but with extensive sales expertise CU When we met you you were very deep into the thoros and the troughs of salesmanship right yep absolutely um but he's all around just a great guy so everybody Welcome Shane to the podcast we're excited to have them but before we get into it and I know you're itching to talk about backgrounds and and and kind of go down memory lane a little bit with Shane we like to do a thing called what we call the startup ignition Icebreaker with our guests and even with ourselves and we like to play just a just a fun easy get into the podcast mode um icebreaking game so you ready right on okay here we go so I'm going to lead this section okay and we're it's going to play off the game of never have I ever I know it's a drinking game we're not we're not going to be drinking today uh but founder stories get get a little dicey at times so I feel like I need to plead the fifth probably maybe we should have some drinks here on the side but never have I ever so um I'm just going to lead it you guys don't have to come up with the never have I ever I'm not going to put you on the spot but you two and Me Maybe I'll contribute as well I'm going to say something and never have you ever if you have done it you raise your hand if you haven't done it just keep your hand down okay okay all right here we go never have I ever made a pitch Deck with a typo in it have you done it raise your hand if you haven't done it keep it down I'm sure I have oh for I'm sure I have I must have but I corrected check for that a lot because that's a pet peeve of mine I don't think I've pitched with a with an error it's a great lesson as investors if I see a pitch Deck with a obvious glaring grammatical or misspelling typo that does not say a lot for the it's a bad look it's a bad look but I definitely have I don't think I've gone into a pitch with those issues but I've done dry runs and things like internally where like oh shoot I'm glad I saw that totally okay never have I ever agreed to build a feature just to land a big customer have you done that yes I have done that so we never have I I have done that yes not at booley I I I have created a product and a version of our product not specifically like a software feature but yes I have created a product just to land someone who said they wanted X thing right I've done that before no in in my days at infospace we had a $200,000 a month customer that wanted a certain something and we did it and you did it yeah yeah I don't think I I don't think I I've removed that sales habit of prising the feature yeah I'll say it's down it's coming later yeah yeah it's coming later yeah yeah um okay here we go uh never have I ever ghosted an investor after an investor meeting I I haven't ghosted an investor yeah like like you just you just either the meeting went terrible or you just sto communication with him I I know this happens a lot investor to founder or investor just go go but have you ever ghosted an investor no no me neither okay there we go here we go few more and then we'll get into the podcast here okay never have I ever used Bud buzzwords like disruptive Synergy or paradigm shift in a pitch Ed those many times I have yeah I think bud wordss are are key to a good pitch especially right now ai ai ai it's better if you're on The Cutting Edge of using buzzwords than the lagging leader in using buzzwords you don't want to be one year or two years behind but if you're at concurrent or you're kind of one of the first ones using it then it's useful okay last one this one's for Shane okay here we go last one then we'll get into the meat of the podcast okay never have I ever changed my pricing model during a sales call have you ever done that oh absolutely absolutely absolutely many times oh yeah that's uh $500 oh wait no for you $300 here's the thing you do not validate a business without doing that like you you just don't do it you change your pricing constantly in the the some of my best ones are that's $3,000 a year but if you want to break in the 12- monthly payments it's only 300 a month oh I'll take the 300 a month I just made $3,600 yeah okay so okay thank you for playing the game I just wanted to break the ice it's a good way to get in the podcast mode but let's get into the meat of the content here because we have awesome Shane here from booley okay again going back to the news of this week that broke out being a boot camp Alum we were so excited to see that and I like we texted you right away like oh my gosh congratulations oh aw will you come on our podcast so I'm glad you're here but I just want to take a minute and go back into the history now with Shane and for how long I don't know has it been a decade that we've known you for I don't know for me it's person not a decade because the boot Camp's only a decade old but he was in an early cohort probably eight years I it would have been 20 2017 201 it started in 2015 yeah so so yeah about 8 years and um I know that we talked even prior to the uh to boole's Creation right and even before booley was even a thing but going back to the early days of startup ignition and I just want to discuss your early days experience like where have you been give us a little bit of history of I'd even like to know like Pro you know you became a real sales leader and one of the top performing salespersons at the company you're at at the time you came into the cohort thinking about a new startup right so I'm curious what led to that where how did you get into sales and then how did you get the entrepreneurial bug and I I remember you were at we I feel like we could say the company named jolt you were at jolt and I feel like you had a very high pain very nice awesome situation at jolt weren't you the number one sales producer uh well I was an individual contributor I was um I was running the sales team and on the executive but you like you were key to their revenue generation and I remember you having like a not an internal struggle but just like oh man like should I leave my job I don't think it was a question of should I leave my job but it was like man I am leaving a very good situation and job absolutely um yeah I can go go back yeah how did you get into sales and then when did you think I'm going to do my own company yeah so when gosh back in 2011 yeah I so maybe to step back even before that so I originally was going to school as a music Major I was a trombone performance and a jazz studies double major I didn't know that you can't do anything with either of those those careers other than play music and make no money and so but that that is I built my first I'd say this was building a company I built a little uh entertainment booking agency in high school and my first year in in college I was doing that music is all that I knew how to do and all that I thought I would do and then I ended up going and being a missionary for a couple years for my church and I came back and realized I'm not g to keep doing this music thing yeah um I I think sales is what I'm naturally good at I have interest in that and so I grew up in Michigan I ended up coming out to Utah and got my first job in sales essentially as an SDR making cold calls for a rep a um digital Radiology company and for our listeners and SDR is uh sales development rep you're making cold calls all day long to set outbound you're outbound all day and that was my first real exposure to sales and I realized hey I'm good at this I was having a lot of success um then I ended up TR having a shot to do some level of account executive work but it was like a year plus sales cycle multi-million dollar contracts and I realized I'm not learning a ton and I'm not going to learn a ton with this long of a sales cycle so I went and found this super early stage startup uh American Healthcare lending there were you know six other people in the room we were um pre-selling a product that didn't didn't exist and that was halfway built and it it was an amazing opportunity to learn and to grow and so I joined that team and really started cutting my teeth in sales yeah and it was a higher velocity sale I was learning a ton having a blast and it was a startup environment yeah it was a startup yeah and about a year in I had the chance to buy some Equity off of a Founder who had left the company and that is where kind of that entrepreneurial bug really the ownership bug yes yes it was different I loved building at that company and I was always in this role of if there was a new market or a new type of customer that we're going to go after I would go and you know try it out figure out how do we sell to this and then make it repeatable and that I I really learned how to sell at American Healthcare lending I trained my butt off I feel like you assumed the founder role like that's the founder job almost right like well we were we were we were a couple years into the business already and um like the founder um Shan Sorenson he was an absolute mentor to me still is and um is that Shan soron I think we've done business with him we're co-invested with him in a company right now we just met him about a year ago and we love the company we're working with him on y yeah so Sean is is has been one of my mentors and he he really shaped my sales career he gave me a lot of opportunities to grow and to learn and develop at American Healthcare lending and while I was there I thought I just want to be a salesperson I love closing deals then there was a moment when I started managing a little bit I was a really poor manager but was learning a ton and made this small investment in American Healthcare lending and I started really seeing how the business all fit together that's the beauty of early stage startups is you get to learn how businesses work and you get to see things that you won't see at any other type of business yeah and that's when I started realizing I think I want to be an entrepreneur someday and so I started taking a bunch of entrepreneurs that I knew and respected to lunch and just asking them what are the qualities that are going to make me a great entrepreneur yeah and started this list of here's what I need to grow and develop in and you know fast forward a few years um American Healthcare lending sold and got acquired and that was my first taste of I didn't have a ton of equity but whoo my bank account is bigger than it was it was and I got a lump sum and what does that do for me and my family that's a life-changing moment even having a little bit of influx and cash it all comes up up front yeah yeah and we knew at that point I'm going to be an entrepreneur you were done you were sold I want this at a massive scale and at the same time knew I have more to learn and so is that when you transitioned to jolt then yeah about 18 months after the acquisition um I went on to be the head of sales at jolt and they were a really you know fledgling company they had a really awesome product Market fit not much of a sales organization and I was coming on to help them scale sales for listeners here because joltz had a amazing track record in Utah right as a Utah based company tell a little bit about what they did and why you liked it and all that yeah yeah so jolt um does restaurant operations software think of digital checklists um for employees at restaurants specifically for like franchises almost right or is it for single they did you know SB restaurants but a lot in the franchises right right um and their product was incredible really built from the groundup of solving a true industry need um and when I came on they were doing probably 50,000 a month in Revenue maybe a little bit less oh wow um they were like 30 to 50K in monthly Revenue so you were pretty early then yeah yeah and the they had probably 10 to 15 Engineers they had like three salespeople yeah um and so I came on and over the next year we scaled that thing we went to five million in annual revenue um we had you know and a account executive team of 10 we built out an SDR team of you know 15 to 20 people we built customer success from the ground up and this company was just taking off and it it was such a fun thing to be a part of yeah but for me it was this moment of realizing this is my chance to build without the training wheels of American Healthcare lending's Founders who are my mentors and can I replicate what we did at American Healthcare Lending in a new environment with a new product different market and can I can I take what I learned and do it again and we did and that was a blast and I absolutely loved it and then this is where you guys kind of come into the picture you know my my wife she she got her MBA at BYU she's interested in business you know I obviously love business love sales love startups and my wife was talking to a friend and her friend's like hey yeah I know you guys like entrepreneurship have you heard of this entrepreneurial boot camp startup ignition we're like no haven't haven't heard of that so I come home from work one day and my wife Katherine says hey Shane I have an idea I heard about this thing startup ignition it sounds pretty cool what if we go on a weekend date to St George and it's a Friday and Saturday and we just talk entrepreneurship for for a weekend yeah and I'm like that sounds like a blast like this is great which my wife is so incredible like I feel like that's a rare opportunity where your wife's like hey let's go to this startup boot camp together um and talk entrepreneurship sounds like it be fun star boot Camp's a great coupl date night absolutely and and the some of this was we had been talking for ages of the goal is I'm G to start a start a company someday and so we were like being very intentional about saving money and putting money aside we were making good good money at jolt had a great successful um career in sales and we were just stocking stocking cash and trying to live like peasants in the meantime so that when the day came when the idea lines up with my skill set and the timing would just be perfect to say hey let's go start something and cash isn't a concern and so we went to you know startup ignition and that was the one and only time we held it in St George because the the live boot camp is usually held in Lehi or Provo we've done it a few times in other areas but that was the one time in St George but you were from up North more and had to go down south to attend it so that was the one that was happening yeah yeah and so we actually we made it even more of a family affair cuz we had a small baby at the time that was is like still breastfeeding and so and I remember you guys asked can you bring the baby yeah and I said yes which I usually don't but I said yes yeah so we brought um my wife's mom and our baby down to St George and I you know you're always jotting down ideas and problems to solve and things and so I I had like some fledgling ideas and I was like yeah I think this could be a company it's kind of at the stage where you're browsing for domain names just on the sides works like this this sounds like it' be really really fun but at the time I had no intention of leaving jolt and starting starting a company um this was more of this going to be fun yeah yeah and so we go and we're going through the startup ignition course my wife you know in between she says hey you've you've done a lot of these things like you've seen a lot of things that we're talking about you know things about like the 83b election and how stock works and validating business models you've like done the validation bit a lot yeah and like yeah like this is this is great so Katherine walked away thinking oh I have more confidence that man Shane you could actually start a company and we're not just gonna go bankrupt in the process yeah that was probably the biggest realization I remember from that is that you you you were you I think you were but I think your wife just said actually go for I believe in Shane as the founder CEO and with my support and help I believe our family could be the founders of a great company I think that happened that weekend for her you agree um yeah yeah and I do remember you being pretty meticulous and a good Lean Startup follower right because like a lot of people that come through the boot camp they'll listen to it and they'll be like Oh yeah duh I need to validate my business or oh yeah duh of course I need to talk to my customers but them actually doing it thing I want to get that more but I want to hear the conclusion of this CU actually I am going to say this that you are one of the best practitioners of Lean Startup that I've seen you know I've seen a great just update update Shane I think this cohort that is coming up next week of the boot camp um I think it's 55 or 56 right the 56th cohort of startup ignition something like that right over 600 Ventures have now gone through the boot camp so for him to say hey you're in the top 1% you know that's that's that's no small feat so I appreciate that so yeah so so you went through that and finish up how you felt after that first boot camp you know it's interesting because throughout those two days there were we got like an hour or two to just do a one-on-one with John and one of my questions was so I have this idea I have this really great gig going on and I'm making a lot of money yeah um how how do you think I should should approach this um and you had said you are in a really good setup like if I were you like keep doing your your thing and like validate this stuff on the side but like hold on to what you got cuz you've got a really good thing going you did you have Equity over at jolt is that is that why um we were coming up on a decision to get equity and that was but he was making for the time especially you know this is almost 10 years ago you're were making good money yeah yeah I was yeah I was I was making I was making great money I mean you were compared to the pay that was going around Utah at that time you were making good money yeah I was in the top percentiles for sure yeah um but that was some advice that you given of like validate this on the side and walking away from that that was one of the pieces of advice that just didn't jive with me at the time where um I I was pouring everything I had into jolt and part of of like my value system was if I'm building at jolt jolt gets every bit of me it gets me in the evenings and I'm thinking about the business it gets me during the day when I'm cranking on the business it it gets all of me so you could not not do that like you had to be all in whatever it is you were doing yeah and at the same time we had been preparing for that type of an event it came sooner than we anticipated um but financially we were trying to prepare for that moment when we could just go all in yeah yes some of the principles there for our listeners just to learn is that uh you know when we talk about doing a startup there's two major phases there's the search phase searching for a viable sustainable and profitable business model and then there's the execution phase where you're actually executing the business you should not be working for somebody else that expects your business devotion and be in execution mode but to be in validation mode the most common way that startups happen in America is somebody's working for somebody else and because of the knowledge they've gained on a certain vertical industry they see an Insight that leads to an idea for a new company and they could share it with their current employer or they said no I'm going to leave and start my own company that's what America's built on and in many many ways that's what America's built on and that's where you were at but what you learned was the the search phase search for business model the validation validating a customer that they really have the need or problem you're hypothesizing and searching for that business model that you can wrap around it to deliver that value to your customer you can go validate that while you're working for somebody else going to school or have other things but once you find that business model it's time to go all in yeah you have to so when you learn that you said oh that opens up the opportunity to hear more yeah yeah and so essentially a you know fast forward a couple weeks and my wife gave me gave me the push and one night she like hey I think it's time I think you should uh quit tomorrow yeah oh wow and go and go start start a company that's rare there's right now a lot of guys out there saying why can't my wife say that to me they're going to be very envious well gosh I mean ignorance is bliss you don't know what you're signing up for at that point you don't know how many times I've come across in my mentoring career where the opposite happens where the man really has a great idea and wants to do it and it's a business you're you're it's a business marriage you know uh in when you take on investors and all that but your actual marriage is very important you have to be on the same page yeah AB absolutely and so um you know there were some discussions surrounding it that evening and then the next day it was like okay I set a meeting with the founders at jolt and was going to go tell them like hey I'm gonna I'm going to go start something and I remember I was telling him I'm going to go start something in four months I will hire my replacement I'll help hand things off and like it ended up being like a month in reality which makes total sense but um that was the experience and I'll never forget that morning I was feeling so nervous and then I got a text message from another mentor of mine Ron subber he was the the president of Prosper Marketplace who had acquired American Healthcare lending and he sent me a random text it was a picture of a note on his desk and it was the quote that said something about how the the risk makes the journey worth it yeah and I was like okay this is what I need today and so I went and told them and then a month later went on a two-e vacation with my family and then it was we are all in on validating this startup so when you quit you didn't have a validated business model that you knew was going to work you just literally said if I am going to get to a validated business model or find something that is going to work that I can create business around I have to a footnote to that little mini lesson I gave a second ago was if you can go all in during the search phase all the better because because you'll go faster yeah it'll hyper it acceler speed it up yeah and that that wholly aligned with my values where I was not going to be doing I needed to be Allin on something yeah and if I wasn't going to be in on the on like building at jolt I needed to not be at jolt and I it's best for them to not have somebody who's half in and half out and so that shows a lot of Integrity yeah yeah so I went all in on on this this idea and a journey an entrepreneurial Journey yeah and I mean fast forward seven or eight years and you know it's it's been a period of life where I've grown immensely um I've learned a ton and gained plenty of scars along the way but we just started validating that thing and I came home started cold calling restaurants and setting appointments with this little PowerPoint deck your first hypothesis for a business model what what were you going to so you you were in the restaurant industry so to speak given a technological software product what was your idea yeah so the initial idea was um essentially an online ordering marketplace where you had an application where you could order from all the local restaurants and track all of your loyalty points within one app and the restaurants could you know Market back to the consumers to get them to order from you more yeah and doing it without a commission so like the grub hubs the door dashes they all take a high percentage of sales and I thought well we could do this on a subscription model and change the game which was somewhat what we did at American Healthcare lending we were in a highly transactional uh commission space and we went in with a sub subscription product and disrupted the industry that way and I thought we could apply that here in this way and so that was the initial idea I started taking that in front of restaurant owners and kept getting some of the same feedback it was um this is great how many people do you have on your Marketplace that we can Market to zero um it's going to take time to build that up we need the restaurants to attract the consumers and then I'd go and be talking to Consumers and well how many restaurants are on the app are these it's like yeah I have this chicken the Classic Market chicken and egg concept and I realized this is going to be more expensive than what I want to build this um there's probably a trimmed down version and so I kept making a few different iterations i' change my my slide deck after every single meeting I had with an operator changed the idea micro pivoting yeah and we probably went through you know three to five different options and then start getting pre-sales and what it landed on was this is a direct online ordering solution that you put it on your website and we are your online ordering system and we have a couple marketing tools built in so there's a referral program to get you more sales and and a feedback so so if I'm a restaurant you were saying if I'm a restaurant you can come to me and and at the time I believe it was super hot to start doing online ordering you if you were a restaurant you could make nice add-on Revenue by being able to take an order and so GrubHub and those were selling that facility to restaurants but taking like 35% of the ticket or something right something like that and you had a better solution G give me a little bit of a glimpse of timeline here so from when you left M and quit your job to where you are right now landing on this third or fourth kind of pivoted idea within the beginning days of boole where where are we at right now so um August 1st is when I start I started I quit um Mid mid July and August 1st I started validating okay um August through I mean mid September I was micro pivoting like crazy and had you know half a I I probably had like five to eight pre-sales where this is part of how how I believe validation goes is if they're not willing to pay for it then it's not truly validated and so I was collecting banking information I was getting um commitment I would give people like a mafia offer where it's too good to be true and I'll give you you know you pay for one month in a setup fee and then you get the first person was 12 12 months for free yeah and then the second person was 6 months for free because that was too easy and then I kept I did like four on six months for free and then you get three months for free until um and it was all we won't charge you until we deliver the product what's really important to point out here just again I love to help our listeners learn the principles you're putting into play is that only a Founder can do what you did this is why you don't you're not a founder and say uh oh I hope I can find a VP of sales a white knight that's just a trained salesperson to come in and do this for me because you don't want to hire a non-founder to come in and be your head of sales and be flying like that shooting from the hip you can't have that happen that's just not how it works so what you were doing is what you were actually doing Lean Startup to figure out your market and only is you can't do it by proxy you can't have somebody come in and do it for you only a Founder can do it yeah absolutely and at that point I was like okay I think I'm on to something I and I test one of the assumptions that I had was there's a really good online ordering uh product out there called chow now they all the mentoring we did around Chow now yeah Chow now has 10,000 customers like it's it's a great online ordering system and my question was will my value proposition enable some cause somebody to switch from chall now to my product with the additional features that I've tacked on hey can we we're and give some context on timing too about what who your Tech partner was or did you have one yet Mikey coming to the picture here yeah we're we're we're coming to that because at that point um what were you doing to get anything built or to show customers at that point um I was only showing customers um PowerPoint slides okay um I this is great Lean Startup by the way um did you mock something up or I I at one point I created a mockup in they're out of business now but Invision it was like a a prototyping tool I made a little prototype of the initial application and it was bad like terrible design like couple click-throughs but primarily it was just PowerPoint slides I cob I I you're saying it was terrible but I bet you that simple thing helped your customers understand what you're doing and you got insightful feedback absolutely did you take that to Mikey and that's how Mikey got involved with his no no no get that story okay so before that on the Chow now hypothesis what I did is I went to Chow now's website I looked up their testimonials and there was one of them was in Salt Lake and so I was like oh I'm GNA go pitch this person and see if you can steal and see if I can steal him and so I I call him up I set up a meeting I go go in person and I say hey you have Chow now this is Chau plus these these things um Chau is a better online ordering system but this has the marketing component and they're like where do I sign up and so I was like okay now I really know I'm on to something and that was probably our seventh pre-sale and so at that point I'm like I need somebody to help me build this yeah I'm not technical um and so I started I started hunting for a co-founder and I was going to all of the local meetups um where Engineers were at I'd hop in I'd get there a little bit early grab the mic at the front and be like hey this is me this is what I just left um to build some confidence in me um I have pre-sales and I'm I'm building something awesome I'll be in the corner yeah and I started just taking Engineers to lunch like half of the day um and there was there were a there were two that I was I started talking about like database design and they were actually helping me figure out how do I think about building this like what languages would you do I didn't know what I was doing so I was learning through those interviewing processes and I found a lot of great developers but not what I would consider a true co-founder they didn't have the business Acumen they didn't know how to think through some of like product Market fit challenges or pivoting yeah but they could build but that wasn't what I wanted I wanted a true co yeah the actual Tech co-founder you take all the technology or coders and you actually get to a very small circle when you start saying what's needed in a technical co-founder versus a VP of engineering or a software developer right yeah yeah and so I was interviewing people like crazy not finding success so I went to John and said John you have a network and can you post this to your network and John's like Shane I have so many Founders who ask me for this and we have all this startup ignition alumni like if I'm posting this out to my network like other people are going to want the people who respond too and it said give me 48 hours give me 48 Hours of exclusivity to win these people over and then you can share it on the startup ignition like alumni portals and everything he's like okay and so he made he made the post there were you know probably like a half dozen or so people who responded um my now co-founder Mikey Murphy was one of them who who responded and what happens is Mikey on the other side was saying I've suddenly become free and I get them ask me what's a good business co-founder I could join his deal on and so yeah because wasn't Mikey doing um like a Dev shop at the time right with no so he he was um he had built a company with with his co-founder they had gone through Tech Stars but they had acquired a service-based business yeah and like it was like I'm a tech guy and now a service based compan he's quality guy and he came to me and at the same time he say yeah I want to but he was picky and he wanted to be with some a business guy that he could trust and believe in with a great idea right and so I'm kind of that kind of connector and by the way just as a side note you should know that in our Venture phone we've done about 18 Investments about half of them we've found the tech code found in the same way because it works right but but what it is is we're connector it was just so fun when I said I had to say to Mikey and I I hope it's okay I share this and you keep telling your story but I said Mikey I've actually got one of my favorite business entrepreneurs that have come through startup inician who's actually looking for just like you right now and um and then you know and then I went to you and said hey this is a really top guy so he's really good and take it from there yeah and so Mikey checked every single box of what I was looking for in a true technical co-founder and um I think we met midt at this point so we're a we're like a month and a half into validating and you know picking the idea um and so Mikey and I decided hey we're going to we're we're GNA do this let's try out working together here for for a little bit and and just keeping it real too he did you know he asked he go because I had to vouch for you okay and I had to vouch to you for him and it's kind of interesting and that's how these things come together just real this is really important process because this is the Magic Mix that makes things go yeah like Boley would not be successful if Shane and Mikey weren't the two people who uh who built it yeah like if it was someone else that I had as my co-founder I don't think boost Lee would be where we are today and it and and that's there's some Serendipity timing ET yeah and and also you have to be easy to work with so you two F you know are good guys who can find a way to work with other people yeah yeah and Mikey and I are very yin and yang we think very differently about many many things you don't want to clone of yourself and that was that was part of what I was looking for I didn't want somebody who thought the same way as me I wanted someone who would push and Challenge and Mikey had that capacity in Spades and in a way that he was tuned into the business aspect of of building right he wasn't just a product guy he also thought about the Strategic business side of what product building is you know what I mean like he had both sides of the of the puzzle so when you got together what happened magic so yeah I mean it it was great it was we were at the startup building he was sitting across one the table from me I was making cold calls um he was you know coding up some software a shout out to the startup building because they just did us a favor today so uh startup buildings in Provo Utah and it's an entire block basically dedicated to housing startups at the very early stages I mean I office next to you guys for that's where Tyler built built Dev Mountain yeah yeah and so from the time Mikey and I met to the time we like actually Incorporated the company it was about a month mhm so mid October at that point we officially like signed incorporation documents and that was when okay the company's real and now we have to build something and from mid October to I think January 2nd we launched our MVP um live to customers was it uh going more towards the Chow now or were you pivoting still where were you at at that point it was Chow now plus marketing a marketing and feedback remember and so what we launched and um we you know we just we just I just kept selling people now I'm not selling people on a mafia offer anymore we have a live product we can onboard them and so how long did it take from when Mikey and you incorporated or Mikey seriously got hands on a keyboard to where you actually got a product into the very first customer's hands um it would have been two and a half months okay um so now we're like towards the end of the year is yeah so January into 2017 yeah January 2nd 2017 we launch we launched to our pre-sold customers we had about 12 of them at that point and then every month I was just adding adding more people we hired another cold caller to so that I could do more demos while he's adding moreing Y and you know at night I'm onboarding customers during the day I'm selling customers and we were doing that for with like some like small product pivots and iterations along the way for about a year from that point on and then we had a realization December 2017 like guess what guys this was the day before Christmas like this isn't this isn't what we're going to scale like this isn't it we have six months of cash left and like we know we don't want to scale an online ordering company um we had hired a great salesperson we thought we were ready to scale and that great salesperson struggled to sell and it was that founder magic that I was I was pushing this into the marketplace I think we got the company to about 15 to 18K in monthly you were doing what we call Brute for sales yes you were because a Founder can do brute for sales but the key is a Founder needs to get a non-founder actually selling a system the founder says hey you non-founder come sell this and it works on Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday yep yeah and what we realized is this the cold calling very repeatable the closing of customers was not as repeatable as I anticipated yeah and it it was not the salesperson it was a product Market fit challenge and that was evidenced by this is a great salesperson who's selling relatively similar to me I'm having success in selling he's not and I can hear what he's saying and I don't think it's a him problem yeah I think it's an us problem and so that means we we have to we have to Pivot we need to do something different and so in January of 2018 we kept we kept the online ordering customers going because it was bringing in you know 200k in Revenue per year and that's helping us fund the company and we were taking annual payments on 30 you still haven't raised at this point you haven't raised any funds it was all customer funded Revenue yeah so I funded the company and then Revenue was supplementing MH um and we we kept doing that through like the end of 2018 2018 we decided hey we're going to what if we don't do the online ordering portion we just focus on the marketing tools because we noticed customers were swapping out a good online ordering system for our bad online ordering system just to get the marketing tools yeah and so he said let's lean into the value proposition that people are buying and stop the online ordering let's see how we can pull data from all the other online ordering vendors and specialize in the marketing piece and we validated that everything we ever validated we've probably validated eight different products Through The Years all of them follow the same model pre-sell take the hypothesis pre-sell the thing until you get a lot of pre-sell build it and then keep testing the hypothesis can you retain the customers and if so great we're on to something well everything's a hypothesis until it is validated whether that is an actual feature whether that's a whole product Suite whether that's an assumption or strategy everything's a hypoth and the key is to not spend a horde of money in the validation process spend what you need to but stay Frugal until you nail it so what what I'm finding interesting about your story too is the the the the the quickness um and the accelerated process you've been going through like even your timelines of like oh I quit my job a month later I had some something validated a month later I had met Mikey a month later we incorporated a month later we had version one two months later we're collecting revenues it's just like that's very that's the speed I think you should be going at but that's not very normal and by the way this pivot history is so instructional for the listeners and the viewers of of our podcast here so that was a huge major pivot keep take us through the pivots and bring us to current day I just don't want to run out of time today yeah so so we we pivoted at that point um funny enough we went to the international Pizza Expo with a bunch of slides and said how how's it going to how's the customer response going to be and how how does it sell guess who the the top salesperson at that trade show was you Mikey Murphy my technical co-founder really what and that was the moment when we're like ah I think we're on to something Mike sing Mike Mikey the guy who's been sitting in a corner coding he just sold out outsold everybody at this show on these slides like okay this feels more like product Market fit and then we realized well we have retention issues we got to stop stop the selling focus on retention we doubled our Revenue just by focusing on our customers like oh this feels really good and then um fast forward to 2019 now we have a repeatable sales process nonfounders are able to sell it this is going well and we go into 2020 and it's like this is our year we're going to scale we're going to we've Bo like q1 of 2020 we've bootstrapped up up to this point we've raised no Capital um and so 20189 like it it's just me and customers and then March 18th happened restaurants shut down across the country with the Pand you remember the date oh it was it was a sad day black day we were like okay we have to face reality we might we are likely to go out of business yeah and we had to go and explore all of those dark moments and say okay we might go out of business what do we do to enforce contracts keep people keep revenue coming in and so what do we do validate additional products that in this period can help restaurants so we validated like a um restaurant on subscription we validated uh an HR benefit for remote employees we validated a catering Marketplace uh for business catering and remote worker catering and it was the same thing pre-sell pre-sell pre-sell build it validate iterate change product pre-sell pre-sell okay this is sticking this isn't we did that for four or five different products during 2020 and we we felt hey we have this catering Marketplace that is getting a decent amount of traction and then at the end of 2020 we had customers saying from our old pre-co pipeline hey we're ready we think we're ready to sign up what do we have to do to get started with your text marketing product yeah like oh that's interesting and our customers started telling us hey we're ready to expand locations again like oh okay I think the buying appetite is here it's 2021 let's do a full restart with a new pricing model new like let's scope down our product and make it a more narrow focused product and then we we start we restarted outbound sales and it was clicking and it was like things were growing and that felt great and so 2022 middle of the year um we went through Y combinator and just kept kept growing um and that was through y com based on the latest pivot you made to that product correct okay can you just 30 seconds that product describe it again exactly what it did um so it was um essentially SMS marketing for for restaurants where um we would pull customer data from their point of sale and online ordering system um we had a a process to turn those people into opted in SMS marketing subscribers and then we would essentially Mass market and tex has such a high read and and open rate compared to email that you just killed it correct and so that that was working people were paying for it and um it seemed like we could we could scale this and so we went through y combinator we went from beginning of the year we were doing um probably 45,000 in monthly Revenue at that point um when we got into y combinator at the end of the year we were doing a 100 Grand in monthly revenue and then we raised a little bit of capital at the end of Y combinator that was our first external money into the business MH and then you know the next year we went to 200k in monthly Revenue wow and then um the start of you know 2020 any pivots or is just on this latest model micro pivots micro pivots Okay small iterations but still the base the Genesis of it is marketing tools for restaurants yeah leveraging the data that they already have they already have they're getting themselves and turn that into a marketing machine okay awesome and so that's what we were doing and at that point we're like okay we're actually starting to scale middle of 2024 um we closed a seed round of capital um I remember that conversation that we had yep yeah so at the end of Y YC I think we had our first conversation we raised like 1.8 million um at that point and then middle of 2024 we raised an additional 3.8 million um who led all these rounds like the the one point there was no clear lead at NYC that was like it was just a bunch of investors JP on to it and okay and then the who led the second round the three million Trestle Partners um they're out of New York happy with them yeah they're they're they're awesome great um and we actually got introduced to them by Peak span Capital who ended up leading our series a the recent one yeah so this all happened $22 million one yeah this all happened pretty fast fast so in um May of you know beginning of the year of 2024 we went out to raise a seed round and we closed that in May one of the investors we talked to at that point was Peak span and they said hey you're you're raising you know $3 million right now we invest a lot more and we're more series a you're too early for us yeah but we know we know an investor who would love you yeah um Trestle they made an introduction to Trestle two weeks later they let our seed round and and we closed in May what's the size of trestle what average check size are they cutting in they're doing seed rounds specifically yeah they're doing they're doing seed rounds they play in the space of companies that are kind of between a traditional seed and series a yeah where I call it late State seed later State late State seed because you know in Utah the round sizes and valuations are just so different than the coast or maybe it's better to say the coasts are so different than almost every everywhere else right because New York or Silicon Valley they're just but what an accomplishment what a compliment to your company building skills that you got on this path so so um what were the month and year okay so the 3 Point how much was it uh 3.8 million and that was from Trestle and that and that was what month year4 yeah mid 2024 May of 24 is when we closed we were doing a little over 3 million in Revenue yeah in annual annual Revenue um and that's about the stage where they they tend to invest about 2 to 3 million uh you have good growth you're efficient and they generally invest a 3 million what a great deal psan was able to with their referral of trestle they were able to watch you all that time and they just and all good news was coming out and then they just did this great deal yeah and so fast forward three months after that peakspan reaches out and says hey we have interest we think that you're at the stage now that we have interest in investing would you consider it we said we have a great balance sheet like we're we're not going to raise money for another 18 months we just barely raised and then two weeks later they reached out and said we know you aren't raising if we send put together like a term sheet like we're really serious about this would you consider it and at that point it was like I know those are the investors that I want um and let's see what happens and so you know mid late October we start talking they start doing some some diligence and we sign a term sheet and uh then end of January of 2025 we close the round so they basically gave you a deal that you couldn't refuse is that what it boils down to or did you just want to work with them and knew you wanted them that you were like okay I'm going to almost prematurely raise this round because you said you had 18 months of Runway way yeah kind of shed them away at the beginning yeah it was a it was a preemptive series a for sure and so when they came back and said hey we're really serious about this let's have a couple conversations and then we think we could issue a term sheet at that point I said I'm going to run run a quick process and I'm going to line up a bunch of series a investors I have a short list of people that I talked to this last this last round and I talked to like 10 different investors but as I'm talking to them all I real Trestle is or peakspan they are the investors that I want I align the best with them and how they think about company building you I they value efficiency in the business and not just running running burn burn through the roof and I have high trust in them they understand our business in ways other investors don't there's a lot of alignment and they they definitely structured the deal in an interesting way where it made sense for us to do it now all right we've only got a few minutes left can you believe it we're only down to a few minutes so let me this is fantastic just such congratulations let me ask you this okay let's go back to the beginning now so you and Katherine come to our boot camp yep not sure if you're going to do a startup or what's going on right and I just want to know sitting here today you know because I kind of take a little credit for corrupting you from going from working for the man to being an entrepreneur are you happy are you loving life I mean you and Katherine how you doing everything good yeah absolutely like life is great we're super super blessed and like I'm absolutely grateful for this journey I think this this has been like a extremely meaningful like experience for me to grow and develop and become more than what I was when when this started and I I wouldn't change it well this is uh one of the reasons we wanted you as one of our first guests too not just because of this event but you know that just happened to you in business but also you were just a great guy who also quickly assimilated important information on how to do a startup right and went through all the process and did it correctly and look at the outcome yeah and I I think you align so much with our methodologies right the way that we attack and approach business as well and obviously because you came through the boot camp and you know probably you know really really aligned with our curriculum and we're like yeah that is what I'm doing or oh yeah that is what I should be doing and it just and he made it his own and built on top of it and you've just the just what you've shared today is so valuable I hope all of you entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are listening this is a great example of Entrepreneurship yeah so maybe to wrap it up um I don't know is there any other parting wisdom that you could maybe share with our audience that's it's like what's what's a top tip or two you'd give us well you know it's not every day that you run across an entrepreneur who's raised as much Capital as you has and I know and built such a great business and built such a great business but and I know that capital and fundraising is not the end all be all there's still a massive exit strategy that needs to go into play here right otherwise your investors are going to be very upset with you right there we have $25 million at play here right so uh you know but fundraising as much as it's not a sign of success it there's obviously a lot of smart people around you and believing in you and I and seeing something that is working correctly so what are maybe some strategies tips or advice that you would give around fundraising but also around just building and growing true real business like what you know think about when it was just you and then you got Mikey in and just a couple two three four people what's the number one tip if you had just 30 seconds say here's the most important thing I learned of what I needed to do or how to go forward you're right yeah I know it's a put spot what's something you'd share yeah so I'll mix a couple things together um fundraising like people talk about fundraising all the time that'll take care of itself if you build a good business right excellent build a good business that works like that the customers want to pay for and that it's healthy that can be a healthy business fundraising will take care of itself that by doing that you put yourself in the driver's seat too yeah the other side of it is like bringing surrounding yourself with amazing people who can build with you is the secret um you get that with a co-founder and you have to be Scrappy in the early days and early on you're bringing on employees who are Scrappy by Nature um I think we we took a really long time to hire higher level people um and the moment we did it changed the business yeah um and so surrounding yourself with really amazing people who will build with you is is crucial today awesome we are actually overtime so Mr moderator you need to wrap it up well we are but Shane just has so much stuff that I feel like our listeners will love but yes we will have to we're gon to have to wrap this up but Shane thank you so much for joining us your story is amazing there are so many tidbits of information in there that I feel like really pertain to the average entrepreneur um um I hope we can stay up to date on the new news that happens moving forward with booley and by the way I don't think we ever said so what boole's been around for how long now it's not it's not a yesterday company people need to realize this no this is I mean 2017 right yeah late 2017 so so this is an eight-year-old company okay because a lot of people think yeah but he was in an industry that absolutely lamb bastard for two or three years and what a compliment that he's sitting and and just I want to conclude by this Mr moderator I'm going to say this maybe as a conclusion Shane you're truly you know sincerely we just you're a good guy but all this other stuff that doesn't count nearly as much as just you're a great guy to be around and you're just a sincerely good person okay so we'll wrap it up Shane's story is obviously proof that success comes from solving real world problems not just fundraising that comes afterwards but thank you for joining in this is the startup ignition podcast we're going to call it a day today join us for the next episode thank you for listening like share subscribe tell your entrepreneurial friends we're here send us a message we're here for you guys we we love to share advice give mentorship wherever we can and thank you for joining us and that's it and thank you Shane for coming on happy to be here thanks great rock rock rock