Make Your Product Future Proof w/ Oz Merchant | Ep. 208

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we talk with Oz Merchant, founder of Futureproof, about the real struggle of building a company from the ground up.

We discuss being a founder, navigating funding, generating leads, and what it actually takes to go from zero to one and close that first meaningful sale.

LINKS:
Accelerator Hub

Oz on LinkedIn

Future Proof on LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Oz: Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, I think s Sales always comes down to storytelling. When you're selling services, it's the story of what you're going to be able to achieve through using your service, using your people, your talent to fulfill whatever it is you're trying to fulfill.

[00:00:16] David: Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. Joined today per usual by Gary Voight. Today I'm in the tundra. How are you, Mr. Gary? Down in Florida.

[00:00:28] Gary: It is crazy. You guys went through a snow storm this weekend and we had 86 degree weather, but now we're getting the

[00:00:36] David: we had and gave it to you.

[00:00:38] Gary: pretty much, but now I'm getting a little bit of your cold 'cause it's dropping from 77 this morning down to 75.

[00:00:43] David: I went to Florida a week ago to visit a client and it was 30 degrees and I

was very mad at you because that is not supposed to happen. I was not dressed for 30 degree weather in Florida. 

[00:00:56] Gary: That was the second cold front we've had so far. This year we're entering our third and probably last.

[00:01:04] David: This is one of those times where it's like no matter where you are, if you're anywhere in the half right side of the country, you're under ice right now. That is just very strange. That was a big storm. We hardly got anything, but more importantly than the weather, we're gonna talk to os merchant.

Hello sir, how are you? You are the CEO and founder of Future Proof. I see you all over the place. I don't think we have had, I've had the pleasure to talk to you very much, so I'm very excited about this. How are you?

[00:01:33] Oz: Good meeting you, David. Thanks, Gary.

[00:01:35] David: Did you get stuck under the ice shelf or are you nice and warm and cozy?

[00:01:39] Oz: No, it wasn't, they built it all up. Then throughout the week it just progressively got it's gonna be like 11 inches and then down to five inches, and I think we got maybe an inch or two of ice. 

[00:01:50] David: Yeah, that 

[00:01:51] Oz: Enough to get some sledding in. So my daughter was happy.

[00:01:53] Gary: Oh man, I miss sledding.

[00:01:55] David: We didn't leave the house at once. I have not left the house in days. It's very sad someone, not me. Anyway, so we got a few questions we'd like to start with that are just easy questions to get to know you a little bit better. These are not, he, Oz has never seen these. This is my favorite part. You have no idea what's coming. Alright. Start off as softball. Favorite dessert.

[00:02:16] Oz: I think my go-to is probably a cheesecake.

[00:02:18] David: Nice. Nice. Do you have a specific kind of cheesecake? Are you Cheesecake Factory guy, store-bought, what are you, where are

you 

[00:02:25] Oz: New York cheesecake Plain. Maybe some some what is it? Strawberry raspberry stuff on it

[00:02:31] David: Nice. Nice.

[00:02:32] Gary: What about the chocolate? You like the chocolate cheesecake or no?

[00:02:37] Oz: in mild. 

[00:02:39] David: That's

cheating 

[00:02:39] Oz: It's too it's too much. Sometimes like a nice key lime pie is also good. It's just cleans the pallet.

[00:02:45] David: That is good stuff. My wife

hates key lime pie, but I love it. It's good stuff. Alright. Best book you have read or listened to in today's world in the last 12 months.

[00:02:56] Oz: Ooh, the last 12 months. Ooh. 

[00:02:59] Gary: Not a huge reader, just the last one or one that's been memorable 

[00:03:02] Oz: I read a lot. Probably one that I think that stands out most recently is what's his name? The, is it ab Sumo guy?

[00:03:13] David: Okay. Yeah. I know AB Sumo at least. 

[00:03:16] Oz: Yeah. Is that who wrote it? I'm trying to think. I'm trying to look at my bookshelves like I know. Million Dollar Weekend. Yeah, that's what it's 

[00:03:24] David: weekend. Million Dollar 

[00:03:25] Oz: Million Dollar Weekend.

[00:03:26] David: Okay. All right.

[00:03:27] Oz: Just from a very tactical, actionable, go do something.

[00:03:32] David: Yeah. Okay. Choose your superpower.

[00:03:37] Oz: Choose my superpower. If I wasn't afraid of heights, I think, it's, 'cause I just watched a, what is it the skyscraper last night 

[00:03:44] David: Oh, 

[00:03:44] Gary: Oh.

[00:03:45] David: ICRA.

[00:03:46] Oz: yeah,

[00:03:47] Gary: not seen it 'cause I, I have developed a slight fear of heights in my older age 

[00:03:52] David: Oh man, you should see my wife watching that the

whole time. She's I can't watch this. Oh, that was crazy. Yeah, we

accidentally just happened to, we were watching another movie. We watched The rip,

which is the new Netflix movie. It was fine, but it ended right when that thing was about to start.

So my kids were like, what is this?

And we sat and watched, like I left it on the whole time. I would gum and go, 'cause it's it got repetitive, but. Dude, that was nuts when he would just let his legs fly free and he's a thousand feet off the ground anyway.

Yes. That's 

[00:04:19] Oz: So I was like,

[00:04:21] Gary: to Adam Lockwood,

[00:04:23] David: No, that's not his

[00:04:24] Oz: No,

Alex Hos. Alex Huss.

[00:04:27] David: Yeah. Something. Yeah, that sounds right. It was an h.

[00:04:30] Oz: Yeah. Yeah, so flying's always nice if you can be okay 

[00:04:35] David: would be hard. If you're scared of heights though,

you're like hovering that you're, you would prefer hover a foot off the ground. That's nice.

[00:04:42] Oz: I went skydiving many years back and it was like, you get to a certain point where it just becomes a bit surreal. So you, if you're afraid of heights, it's only because you can see the distance and when it becomes just like a giant postcard looking down, it's less scary.

[00:04:56] Gary: I've heard that. Yeah. I have friends that regularly skydive and they're like, it the hardest part is the, just the jumping out and then you're fine.

[00:05:04] David: I haven't done that. I don't know, but I weigh it. I don't know. I don't know if I could do it. Alright. Last one. What do you do as a hobby?

[00:05:11] Oz: Soccer 

[00:05:13] David: Soccer. Nice.

[00:05:15] Oz: Yeah. Yeah. Indoor, outdoor

[00:05:17] David: good.

[00:05:18] Gary: Now on that note, Ted Lasso fan,

[00:05:21] David: Oh, Ted

Lasso. 

[00:05:23] Oz: I have to, since we're here, we gotta, this is what I got for

[00:05:27] Gary: he's got an I believe poster.

[00:05:29] David: Yes.

[00:05:31] Gary: Ted Lasso do? 

[00:05:32] David: Oh, I love that so much. I have a shirt my kids gave me that has a bunch of his stuff be cur, be a goldfish.

[00:05:38] Oz: I got one of those.

[00:05:39] David: Like I, it's a bunch of his quotes. Dude, best show I've seen in a decade. 

[00:05:43] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:05:43] Oz: I have a picture. I have one of shirt, it's just the outline of where Ken's face,

[00:05:48] David: Yes.

[00:05:49] Oz: it says something. I can't remember what it says, but it's, 

[00:05:51] David: what I, have you ever seen Roy Kent? The human, not the character

[00:05:56] Gary: Brett Goldstein. Yeah.

[00:05:58] David: Yeah. He is just

[00:05:59] Oz: His stand ups on Netflix, I think.

[00:06:00] David: he couldn't be more different. He could not be

more 

[00:06:04] Gary: calm, he's soft spoken and nice. Yeah.

[00:06:08] Oz: Yeah.

[00:06:09] David: Could not be more different. tell me about future proof. Tell me, you are involved in a lot of things, but let's start there.

Where's what? Tell me about future proof.

[00:06:17] Oz: Yeah, future proof. So essentially s startup number seven. And it came about because of working with a lot of different founders. So I run an accelerator program through Founder Institute for North Carolina. I'm mentoring a lot of other accelerator programs as well. So I've been working with a lot of mentors over the last few years and it came about from just going through this exercise of helping somebody figure out their proforma three year projections. Just wow, okay, why are we still doing this in spreadsheets? Why is there not an easier way? And the same time I think I was doing a podcast for e-commerce, and one of the questions the interviewer asked me, he was like, Hey, how do you grow from seven figures to eight figures? And it's like at some point you need that CFO type lens. Somebody that's looking far enough in a head especially from e-commerce because there's lead times, there's it's capital intensive business. You really need somebody that's monitoring all of that because that's what's gonna take to, to scale and grow. So that weekend, I think just that amalgam of working with this founder, helping them do the projections and having that conversation on the, that previous podcast. Just spawned the idea of okay, what if we built some sort of AI CFO to help SaaS and e-commerce founders specifically? That was the 

[00:07:30] David: So you guys have been around about nine months. Where are you in terms of, are you launched? Are you out the door? Do you have revenue? Are you on a runway? Where are you at?

[00:07:37] Oz: just starting to go out the door, just initial revenue going, so all happening now pretty much.

[00:07:44] David: Very cool. That's about where we, you're a few steps ahead of where we are with Teela, and except for you have a massive advantage in the fact that you know what you're doing and we're just flying blind. So I totally am jealous. That's, it's.

[00:07:56] Gary: Yeah, we're being run by David here, so

[00:08:00] David: Is the, is a very, nice word, more like stumble. But it's really interesting because I'm a builder. I can build, I can design well enough and I can do the software piece. Like I got that once it's gone and I've mentored hundreds of startups, I don't know, hundreds, at least a hundred startups over the years.

And I'm good at that. I have never sat on this side of the table. I've said this on our podcast before, and so this is all new to me.

[00:08:28] Oz: We, we are using AI tons constantly from FAQs to knowledge based stuff, and you have to reread it. I remember we applied for NCID last cohort. And we made it down to the final 20. And I remember seeing some of the stuff they sent out was like the amount of a I used in the application submission.

They could, they were tracking it and seeing it was almost creeping up to a hundred percent.

[00:08:54] Gary: Whoa.

[00:08:55] David: that half

of 'em now just get kicked out 'cause we're trying for the micro grant. The tiny one. 'Cause I really want the content. I don't care about the $10,000, I want that six weeks of content, but, they were saying half of 'em, 'cause the numbers of who's applying has gone up considerably. 

They're almost up 300, but they said half of them go away almost immediately. Like they're half done. They're pure ai, they're not thought through. You could tell

someone just shoved it out the door. And then about 150 are still legit. It's still very competitive, but the numbers

have gone up because it's just seems oh, I could just push a button.

[00:09:26] Oz: Yeah, with AI it is getting garbage and garbage out if you're not, pro prompting is a key factor. In fact, talking to a lot of different founders and engineers, and developers especially that are doing a lot of outsourcing. I heard one of the big challenges has been, people overseas, they really struggle with ai. They're basically they've, spent whatever the last five years developing and they're being told, okay, we'll now use AI stuff. And they'll try it, they'll get the wrong kind of output and they'll default back to, let me just go code this 'cause I know how to do it. Because part of the challenge is because of the language barriers and stuff, if you don't know how to prompt right, you're not gonna get the right output. So they default back to I'm not gonna sit there and try to figure out how to do the prompting. Let me just go back to doing coding 'cause I'll get, my output.

[00:10:12] David: In our development world, especially when we've used contractors in the last year, we're heavily big. Pixel is heavily into AI in terms of development. It's we're pushing ourselves to be good at it, and then we bring in a contractor and there it's like we've just gone to the dark ages. They won't touch it.

And I realize when you are an hourly worker. AI is not your friend.

You do not want something to double your speed. That is the worst thing you can do. 'cause you can't triple your rate. I'm now $400 an hour. That's not gonna work. And so we realize our contractors just are the slowest to adopt. The anything ai. And I get that, but at the same time I'm like, if you want to be with us, you have to use these tools or we're not gonna work with you anymore. And we cut back almost all of our contracts because of that. But it is interesting. And also arcs are US-based contractors, so I can't even imagine Foreign, right?

Like it's. And even internally we have that same tension where it's like our devs, when they start, when they started, they're much better now, but they were like, I can do this faster initially, because they couldn't get the prompt right. I'm like, just stick with it, dude. I was like, in the

canary in the coal mine.

I'm way out in front. Just keep at it and your speed will dramatically go up. And that was true, but it does, it is rough. That first little bit.

[00:11:27] Oz: And of course the technology mean if you're doing this five, six months ago versus now, it's changing. I think what if you follow like Boris from Anthropic, he mentioned what, almost the month of December, he went 30 days without, and he's the one that created CLO code. He'd used CLO code to basically do all the CLO code development for 30 days without human touching it. 

[00:11:49] David: It's remarkable, but it does take, it is the next skill to me. It's, if you go 15 years ago, there was this term of Google fu, right? And when that was, how do you search with Google? And some people were really good at it and some people weren't. And it was a very early stage prompting, and that was a real skillset.

Now Google got smarter and you didn't need it as much. And that will happen again with ai. That was a skill for a couple, few years that you could separate yourself, and I think right now that's where we're at.

[00:12:19] Oz: And there's still probably 97% of the people that don't realize there's the whole advanced tools thing inside or advanced search inside of Google that you can really refine and say, show me only PDFs, or Show me only image. You can really get specific, but they don't even see that button or ever clicked it.

[00:12:35] David: Yeah.

[00:12:36] Gary: Yeah, I had to become quickly acquainted with that as a graphic designer looking for imagery and PDFs online, like the only way to avoid all the ads and nonsense was to really fine tune that advanced search button and all the filters. Yeah.

[00:12:51] David: So you've mentioned that Future Proof was your seventh startup,

[00:12:56] Oz: Helping build, yeah. Seventh, yeah.

[00:13:00] Gary: Oh, seventh. Oh, okay.

[00:13:01] David: so with seven six under your belt on your seventh. How has startup, let's take it. Doesn't, the easy answer is AI, and I wanna put that to the side a second. How has startup changed over that, those six startups that you have done? 

Sure. 

[00:13:20] Oz: Every time it's been different 'cause it's been over 20 years helping different companies over those years, it's like you can't take. All, especially now, it's like none of the old playbooks really apply anymore. So it's okay, what worked then? And I think that's part of the biggest challenge is to question the assumptions question.

Any success you've had to say, is this still whole true? Because if you go in with the lens, okay, that worked for us in the past. It may not hold true at all where we're going in the future. The just from go to market, from marketing, marketing channels outbound all those things have gotten so saturated. I was talking to a founder the other day and he was just telling me, he's man I really hate clay just because it's given access to so many people to just bombard me with inbound. It's just so much noise. So now that it's okay, how do you stand out? And that's become probably the key challenge for most companies is like, because with all this AI adoption, there's so many builders and nobody really knows how to, cut through all that noise to find something that's actually meaningful for them at that point in time.

[00:14:27] David: What strikes me as interesting, and the reason I thought of the question was 20 years, but ultimately. The goal of starting up in entrepreneurship and all that hasn't changed. It's to go from zero to one, no company to company and all and that process of create the company, build it, whatever that means, whether you're doing soap or software, right? You've gotta build it, you've got to market it, you've gotta find your first customers. All of those things are still true. Those five eight steps are still 100% the same as they were 20 years ago. How you do it? is completely

but it's interesting you, this is one of those things that it's the same process.

If you started a company 20 years ago, finding that first customer was still painful.

Completely different reason why it was painful, but it's really interesting. It doesn't matter the time those startup guys were talking about, the noise back 20 years ago,

because it was different, 

[00:15:21] Oz: different noise. 

[00:15:21] David: Different noise.

But everybody's man, I can't get my guy anymore 'cause I knock on the door and he's not answering 

right. Or I call him and he's not, or whatever the problem was 20 years ago. We always have those same problems, but they're different. If you could have taken mass marketing and sophisticated as it was 10 years ago, you would've murdered. You would've just murdered because no

one was ready for it. You would just mop up the floor and now everybody's sophisticated. And

[00:15:46] Oz: 15-20 years ago Google ads you could get, a lead for 10 cents. It was just crazy.

But that's one of the reasons accelerator programs have become so timeless, because most of them, at least, ones I'm involved in stuff, they're all fundamentals. So if you've never done business. If this is your crash course at understanding fundamentals of business, how to do customer discovery, how to think about product, legal structure go to market any of those kind of key fundamentals of business, they hold true to your point. It's like that hasn't changed. The how keeps evolving, but the functions that need to be done still stay the same.

[00:16:20] David: What I have been struck by with Tela, 'cause I built big pixel from nothing. I've been very blessed with that. We have, there's 12 of us now. We're not huge, but we're, we've been around now 13 years and building that co people are like, oh, this is your second company. Yeah. They couldn't be more different. Like I, every thing I learned building big pixel. Has nothing to do with building Tela because service versus product. 

Massive difference, and that's always been different. And I've said that a thousand times in various scenarios. I can learn the widget and sell this, and I've always said selling services is harder. I what I'm intrigued to see if I'm gonna eat crow by the end of this, because now I am selling a product. I have a widget, right? It's a software program. I can find a sales person who can learn my software as opposed to learning the service is very hard. But I imagine at the end of the day, I'm gonna eat Crowe because. It's probably just as hard, just completely different, and that's what I'm not sure. I haven't done that yet. I don't have my first sale. We're all in pilot mode and beta. 

[00:17:24] Oz: Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, I think s Sales always comes down to storytelling. When you're selling services, it's the story of what you're going to be able to achieve through using your service, using your people, your talent to fulfill whatever it is you're trying to fulfill. So that storytelling, I think, stays the same, that you're using that product.

Why am I getting an iPhone instead of a flip phone? There's a story behind that, what you're trying to achieve and from u utility to status to whatever it is that's fulfilling for you. There is a narrative to go with that. So I think that stays the same. It's just a matter of what you're plugging in out is it is a risk, is it a product?

[00:18:01] David: Let me poke on that a little bit because storytelling, I understand and I also understand if I'm selling a big pixel project, I'm sitting down with you, you're interested in some software. My whole song and dance is my storytelling. Me and you. I'm gonna tell you the story of why Big Picture, and I have this large surface area in which to tell you my story, right?

It's either one-on-one or whatever. We're zooming it, whatever. But I, me and you, I get to tell my story for a very long time. It's very personal. That's services. How does storytelling work in a product environment where I never get to meet you, right? Is it just my website that's telling the story? Is that the equivalent.

[00:18:39] Oz: Over time though, you've built the big Pixel brand, so that brand is telling that story. You're just getting to be that spokesperson at some point when somebody sits down with you. So that brand is still out there telling that story for whatever it is that is delivering. So you've got testimonials, other people talking about if you are wanting to use that service, go talk to these guys at Big Pixel.

They know what they're doing. They can deliver this on time, on budget. So that whole narrative is, floating around that brand. Same thing with product. Whether you're selling, barbecue sauce or you're selling a SaaS product, there is a whole story around that brand that's going to, that you're going to market with. So it takes time to build that brand and to get that story to start being told by itself or through other kind of channels. So you're not the only person telling that story, but initially you're always the first person to start telling that story starts with you and then it spreads and becomes contagious, hopefully.

And then others start telling your story.

[00:19:34] David: So this is what I'm gonna use my podcast as free consulting. How do you go zero to one? You've done it several times and that's the hard, you're talking about seven digits to eight digits, right? That's a different problem, but I've always been told that those first few users are the absolute hardest because the, you don't have that story.

I have no brand. I've got nothing. You got founder-led sales. I get that, which is probably very similar to my service sales, but how do you go get those first? You've done this several times. How do you get those? Is it just a matter of tapping your network? Is it making one the most magical ad ever? Like where do you find success for that zero to one.

[00:20:15] Oz: I think the I'm trying to think back a bit now. It gets easier because you have a network. I have a network. We've been in business long enough that, or in the ecosystem where you can tap into those. But I'm thinking somebody that if you're totally starting off, 'cause that's what some of the challenges I, you hear from founders.

Okay, I don't have a network. You know, I don't, same thing when you hear about people that are trying to do angel fundraising, it's I don't know a bunch of rich people. I don't know how to Cora that. So it's like you have to have a network to start that. And honestly I think there are vehicles like and if I was like a SaaS person, if I didn't have a network, first place I'd go is go join a co-working space. So you start building your network. You can talk to other founders, get some use case conversations, going understand some problems depending on what it's, if you're saying, I'm gonna go start something and I'm gonna go after the enterprise market. Really should be thinking twice, because a lot of times that's gonna be much harder to do if you don't have a network, you don't have a background to achieve that.

So if you're like, okay, I'm gonna, some, I just saw somebody has a, they're building just like a one page site and you're basically selling that as a product that you go to sign up for our stuff and you just get a one page site for a landing page site type thing. Great. Go join a coworking space. Go talk to a bunch of different founders, service provider, whoever needs a landing page, and understand kinda what their use cases or problems are. Get 'em to test it out because you're already tapping into a space where that mindset is like, yeah, they're collaborative. I wanna help people.

Coworking is a good space for that. I'm sure there's other pockets of places you can go to, whether it's different meetups and stuff that those pockets exist. Raleigh Durham Startup Week could be another place to meet a lot of folks. That's here. But now there's startup weeks all around the country.

There's New Year starting up. There's a bunch of these that are gonna be kicking off, go meet a lot of people. It's easier to meet people now that are similar it's just try to, fi finding the tribe. There's a lot more people assembling. To be, that tribe is coming together.

Just tap into those tribes and you can find those people. Like when we're doing like the previous two the last startup was e-commerce focus, and we found out there's 50 different meetups around the country for e-commerce. So we just started hitting, attending those and me getting to meet those folks and understanding the ecosystem, the players and who's having what kind of problems. So I think it's easier than it's ever been before, 20 years ago there's a lot less social media there. There's a lot less of any of this to try to find the people. Finding is a lot easier now is just getting out and, doing one of the challenges I think most people have, builders like to build. And part of it is, distribution, getting it out there, talking to people rather than just being behind the computer building.

[00:23:05] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:23:32] David: So one of the things that happens a lot of times, and I find myself doing this a lot with Tela, is you'll find not a bug, but you'll find something, a little rat's nest hiding somewhere and you're like, I'll clean that up later. When does that become dangerous?

[00:23:47] Oz: There's cleaning up later from a code standpoint

and you're developing technical debt. There's another, from a financial standpoint, which I see a lot of people are like it's amazing how often people think they don't have a real business until they have revenue. So they just say, oh, I'll deal with this later 'cause I don't have revenue. But if you incorporated, you got an EIN it is a separate entity. It actually has its own tax liabilities. Everybody wants their, ounce of flesh. Got, they got, you gotta do your franchise taxes or your other taxes. You gotta do your tax return. All that still applies 'cause you incorporated. So the moment you did that, all that still holds truth. Most people don't think that way. They're just like, oh, I just incorporated. 'cause I can get an LLC going for a hundred bucks or something. But it comes with its own set of kind of consequences and ramifications. And they won't think of I don't have a real business because I need, I don't have any revenue yet. And if they incorporate last year, they still have tax liabilities in Q1 basically right now. And they're not thinking about that. So cleaning up later just is a compounding effect, just like with tech technical debt. If you're not remember talking to somebody about PHP they're saying that okay, they needed to get to PHP, whatever, 8.4, 8.5, and it's like they could only get to 7.2. 7.4 and it's like they, they're working on it for 12 months to get there without just breaking everything. Because they didn't do that, they were like sitting at 5.2. So it was like they waited so many years and it's compounded now. So there's a price to pay for that. 

[00:25:18] David: A horror story related to that. So we took over a client. This isn't the start of. Story, but we took over a client years ago and it was built by someone else. We were inheriting code and we learned the hard way. Unfortunately, we learned that the way the guy built it, he was old ancient PHP. I think he was like five something in the latest at that point was like seven. And the way they had written it was that if you rebooted the server, this is 100% true if you rebooted the server. It would crash the system because everything was done in these variables that would be flushed when you rebooted. Like it was just so bad. And because of that, like the guy knew it, he knew what he had done and he's we can never upgrade the server. This is not maintainable, dude. Never reboot like that was, and there was a time when we were just taking that over and we were like, 'cause we didn't know the first time we did on Produ, it was time they had something had bad had happened, we had to reboot. We didn't think about it. And then everything fell apart.

We were like, it was like the longest weekend ever because we had to go put this thing back together because it was duct tape and bailing wire. And he was like, yeah, we're gonna stick on five, four or whatever it was forever. I'm like, this is software dude. Anyway, so that totally. No, that's good advice. You are super involved in accelerators, and I want to pick your brain a little bit about that. In today's world, are they more important or less important?

[00:26:43] Oz: I'd say they're more important just because there's so many people. That are exploring entrepreneurship than they ever have, I think in the past. So the barrier to entry is very low compared to it's ever been, and that basically means a lot of people are going to market with something and they have zero clue actually how to run a business. And most people, so I'll give you an example from e-commerce. So about we're 20, 26 now, so almost three years ago, I think the stat was about 3,200 companies per day were launching on Amazon and about nine. And about 90 to 95% of them were gone instead six months because they just saw an Instagram ad or TikTok, Hey, it's easy to go, do this, and this, and go launch on your e-commerce business on Amazon. That's one little piece of the whole what it takes, that you build a company, build a brand, build a product, just all the in systems processes, people look at it, it's okay, this is the easy way. Rather than, what does it mean to actually build a company? And building company is a lot of work. Building a product may be easy. You can say, okay, I'm gonna just take one product. I'm gonna ship it. But then you're like, okay, I'm gonna just be a solopreneur. I got 1 1 2 page site. I go sell a product. That's fine. Digital product creators great. That's a different model than to say, I'm gonna go build a company. I'm gonna, there's event costs. There's just so much more to. Building a company, the employees that you're gonna need, that the people, it takes the path of taking that. Are you gonna raise money, bootstrap and where do you plan to go through? So there's a whole journey that's involved, that has a lot of steps in that.

So accelerators help you just understand it more holistically. What all is involved in a business, like for future proof? We did I did 50 founder calls, had discovery calls before we wrote a single line of code. I told the CTOs like, we're not doing anything until we just identify and understand the problem, make sure that we know what we're building, what we're solving for. So that, that type of stuff, you learn that accelerator programs just don't go build because A, it's so much easier to ever build. But are you, what are you building for? Who are you building for and what problems are you solving? Oftentimes I hear people like, Hey, I've got a great idea.

Let me run that by you. Very rarely do I hear somebody say, Hey, I've uncovered a problem. Can I share this with you? Because they're sorting for an idea? Then start looking for the problem to solve that idea that, to apply that idea rather than uncovering a problem and figuring out how to go solve that problem.

[00:29:09] David: So on that note, so we're thinking of accelerators. I'm gonna ask this in two parts, but I want. To cover both sides. So Teela is an unusual situation where we're not asking for money, which absolutely bifurcates the accelerator slash mentoring world because a lot of those accelerators, Y Combinator being the Grand Puba, but the their model and everyone's copied that model is we're gonna give you a pile of money, big or little, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. We're gonna take a little equity and then we're gonna invest in you to make your company successful. That's the standard accelerator

[00:29:40] Oz: Yeah. 

[00:29:41] David: So I'm wondering, based on your experience. If I am going that route, the traditional I need money route. What are your favorite accelerators that you would recommend?

People's research. Let's say it that way, and then the second part of that question, if you're not, now you're in my well world. Where would you go if you weren't looking for money? That's probably a smaller list, but I'm just curious. Let's start with the traditional one where you're much more familiar.

Where would you I'm a new founder. I got a great idea. I've done the basics. I'm I know a little bit about business, but I'm a standard startup guy. Don't know a lot, but I got a great idea and I think I got something to run with. Where would you tell me to go?

[00:30:19] Oz: So the big three around the world is yc, Techstars and Founder Institute. Which I run the North Carolina chapter for Founder Institute. And they're focused on different things. YC is yc. Getting in is very hard. You also talk about moving there. If you're gonna be either remote, you're gonna be in different cities. Techstars and founders that you probably the two big other ones you hear about Techstars is a seed accelerator. Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed accelerator. So it helps to know where you're at in the journey and then finding the right program based on that. Whereas, founder institute's focusing on Prese from ideation onwards we're actually probably the largest feeder into Techstars.

So people who gone through the Founder Institute program, if they're not ready to go fundraise or take them just, launch, get the company going, then they move into something like a Techstars and the chances of getting into Techstars goes up considerably. Just 'cause you're a lot more prepared. So knowing where you're at in the journey makes a big difference to which program to apply to. Foundry University is another one. J Cals has another program that goes through Systematically Launch Back. Greenville is modeling their whole program around that from South Carolina. And they've got four or five cohorts now. Down there as well. I would also explore universities. NC State Andrews accelerator program has a great program. I'm sure a lot of other universities are doing similar stuff. I don't know.

Yeah, I just don't know what the university structure is.

Meaning if this shared IP with some universities and stuff

[00:31:44] David: I

know because I've been a judge on the Ex Andrews accelerator. If you're not associated with NC State, either alumni current or using their ip, you can't do it.

That one's limited. 'cause I would, I have a lot of, I'm like, that's one of those bummers. 'cause I know everybody in there and I can't touch it. But the other one is I think UNC launch. You don't have to be involved

[00:32:07] Oz: Okay. Yeah, Emil. Yeah, so there, there's explore a lot of other programs like the university stuff. If you're saying, Hey, I'm not looking for funding I'm not going through that kind of channel. Let, but I just need to structure and help and understanding kind of some of the blind spots explored. Those type of avenues. And there's funny enough you bring this up. So I just brought, we just launched last week accelerator hub. So if you go to like accelerator hub.run futureproof.com, it's a aggregator of all the accelerator programs around the world.

[00:32:37] David: Oh wow. Okay. No, we need to put that in the show notes. That's

[00:32:41] Oz: yeah, it just

launched this week. So it's but the whole idea is there just so you're not missing it.

So you're getting all the deadlines. You can just add it to your calendar and it'll automatically feed to your calendar as this new accelerator programs emerge. 

[00:32:51] David: That's very cool.

The advice 

[00:32:53] Oz: and a free 

[00:32:54] David: give the new startups when it comes to this is. Meeting people is almost more important than anything else early on, unless you've already got that network, like you're saying. I lo there's so many in the Raleigh area and I imagine every major metropolitan area has this, there's tons of things happening.

There's supposed to be one tonight that's a brand new thing. And it is probably canceled because of the weather, which I'm really

bummed. It's like the first one. It's gotta be such a bummer. But they're, they're more and more being made and. If you haven't found them, you got tech talent.

I'm trying to think of the, what is the one that Chip Kennedy runs? Why is that bothering me? 

[00:33:31] Oz: The the tech night?

[00:33:32] David: tech Knight. Yeah. Raw triangle, tech Knight. That's it.

There's tons of them that are, they're free to go and you're just gonna meet people and boy, you can never be, you can never do that too much is all I'm saying. It does take a lot of time though.

[00:33:44] Oz: Yeah and also goes back to intent. So am I go, am I looking for money? Am I looking for education? Am I looking for networking? Am I looking for kind of true mentorship? It's, there's each one. You need to know what your intent is going into it. And then this way you have a much better idea of what you, are you getting what you're looking for.

And then also looking at, does that program give me that kind of result? Am I tapping into, what is yc? So I heard recently like ycs, 40% of YCS customers are YC alums. 

[00:34:14] David: Oh, So

it's like a big circle.

[00:34:16] Oz: it's like a big bubble. So you don't really know if you have a good product yet because only people that are buying it or other YC alums. So it skews your perspective on what's real validation. But at the same time. It's nice to have an ecosystem that's supporting you. So it's great to get that initial feedback, get the jumpstart of that flywheel. Then hopefully you use that to go outside of that flywheel network and find additional customers. So I, it would be good if more accelerated programs did that. But at the same time, it does skew some of your data. 

[00:34:49] David: Yeah. Yeah. You need to, that's a great, I'm thinking launchpad, but at some point they gotta let that go. You gotta fly on your own

or not. And

[00:35:00] Oz: Yeah.

That's why a lot of times investors will ask, in San Francisco's okay, you did this in San Francisco, but go, show me a proof point from some other city. 'cause

it really is, yeah, you can literally do things in San Francisco, you won't be able to do anywhere.

New York may also be another place like that. It's like things just work in those two cities that just doesn't scale anywhere outside of those areas.

[00:35:20] Gary: Yeah, actually we've talked to a couple of founders that are basing their digital products on a lot of ag, agricultural and I guess you could say clean tech that works really well in some areas, but has almost no reason to exist in others. Yeah, that they're going through the local startup system too.

But so you're saying that if I just watch the YouTube video guy that says, with these five prompts, I could be a millionaire overnight, that's not gonna work.

[00:35:48] Oz: it's a good starting point, right? So

if you get, a dollar richer than at least you got a dollar richer, uh.

[00:35:54] Gary: No. 

[00:35:55] David: those guys are, I find those some so disingenuous because the only one making money on that is the dude selling that course and that they're

just not honest about that.

[00:36:03] Gary: And they're not making money from the course. They're making money from the sponsors on the video because everybody wants to get a million dollars from five prompts, so their engagement numbers are high. That's it.

[00:36:12] David: It's rough. It's rough.

[00:36:14] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:36:15] Oz: Look at the end of the day there, it goes back to, what's your in intent as a founder, if you use that and you got basically five different ways of prompting that you didn't know about, and you are using that for other things you're gonna be doing. You came out informationally richer. If that was your whole intent can I go do five prompts and will I become a millionaire? Then you're gonna go onto the next five prompts guy.

[00:36:38] David: That's

[00:36:38] Oz: So you know, it's who are you first, and then you know, then look at all the different resources that are available to you, and then you'll go find the gem in every one of those potentially.

[00:36:50] Gary: Now, this is the first time I asked a joke question. We got an actual, thoughtful, real answer from it. So thank you.

[00:36:56] David: Normally Gary, and we just dismiss them, but

well 

[00:37:00] Gary: Speaking of Gary's questions, I only have one more for you. From your experience with all the startups that you've had and. All the accelerator programs that you've been involved in. Could you boil down three top pieces of advice for a new starter?

[00:37:14] Oz: Number one I would say is

know your numbers. That's probably one of the key reasons for building Futureproof was really how can we help stack the deck in a founder's favor, there's enough stuff that's on their plate. David, you're going through this with deal. It's like how many things you have to learn, how many different hats you didn't realize. You've you start off with your sense of kind of expertise, but then it's like all these other things you have to learn that you didn't think about having to learn. And it's okay, can we take either some of that stuff off your plate, automate some of that, and more importantly, show you the things that's gonna be critical, which is cash flow. 'Cause that's the thing that most people miss. It's like, how much runway do I really have? How far can I really go with this? Knowing the numbers and knowing your kind of runway and cash flow is probably number one. The next thing would be question. Your successes. Successes are probably your biggest blind spots because you, when somebody's successful in whatever they're successful in, to stop asking questions around that area, and that becomes where it usually catches them off guard, meaning that, so from past experience, like one of the companies I had. My background was a lot more in sales, so that was my comfort zone. So I approached it from that lens of sales. I really should have been approaching it from a lens of marketing because with that type of, it needed to be a lot more of a PLG strategy than a, like a sales set strategy. But that was my kind of go-to. That's where I know I can be successful, and that's where I have competence in. Marketing is less so the product led less so I erred on the side of what my strengths are and that became the blind spot. What does the business really need at that point in time? So question, anything that you've had some successes in to really pay attention?

What does it this business need at this point in time? Number three would be just ask for help there. There's so many resources this day and age. No one should ever feel like I have to go at it alone. Be between all the resources, mentors out there, accelerator programs. Literally it's like I can't imagine the stuff that's available now.

That was, none of that stuff was available like 20 some years ago.

So how much of the ecosystem that's been built up. That can make you successful. I think anybody that's just saying, okay, I'm gonna go do this on my own, it's just the chances of failure are so high already. It's like, why not do anything?

You can't stack the deck in your favor. I.

[00:39:36] David: Very good.

[00:39:38] Gary: Yeah, solid pieces of advice. Now, Oz, if anybody wants to learn more about you or about future proof, where is the best place to find you?

[00:39:46] Oz: I'm probably the most on LinkedIn. It's just Oz Merchant on LinkedIn. I think the only one on there, Oz Merchant on there. So it's

easy. And yeah. And the futureproof is just run futureproof.com. 

[00:39:57] Gary: Cool. And we're gonna put the link to the other, you said the aggregate for your accelerator 

[00:40:02] Oz: correct The

accelerator hub.run futureproof.com. Yep.

[00:40:06] Gary: Okay, cool. 

[00:40:07] David: Thank you so much, Oz. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate

[00:40:10] Oz: Yeah. Appreciate it guys. Thanks David. Thanks Gary. I.

[00:40:13] David: and on that note, we are out. We will be back next week. See you next time guys.

[00:40:17] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Scott Bailey. I'm the lead dev over here at Big Pixel, and I know what you're thinking. I thought David did all the work. Well, not exactly. We have an awesome team of people to back in both. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, the US based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software.

This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or you can find out some Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.