long story. But, you know, I started out in academics. I did undergraduate and master's degree in in literature and philosophy, started teaching at the university level and then decided to try my hand at music. So I moved over to Europe and ended up playing music there for five years with the band. Um, and then I got a little tired of that and decided to go back into academia. A za teacher for the University of Maryland. Um, because I was over in Germany, there is an opportunity to, uh, teach soldiers. It was during the 2000, So they're the wars going on in the Middle East. And so I started teaching for University of Maryland. Um, basically, all my students were soldiers. I taught down range for a while in Kuwait and Afghanistan. And after that stand, I decided I wanted Thio. Yeah, I kind of changed directions and get some formal learning about business. So that's when I ended up going to MBA school at the University of Utah, and that was, Ah, good experience. While I was there, I I was a I can't remember the title of it, but I worked at the University venture fund there in Salt Lake City. And that's really where I got my first taste of startup. Startup world. What? What? What? A start up is what it means to create create a startup, launch a startup, And what venture capital is had no idea what any of that stuff was. So I learned that. And then, um, finished my MBA and really, uh, the summer after I finished, I decided I wanted to do something online. Some kind of online business. Um, I started doing some marketing stuff, and that led me into this is right When Facebook pages, This was about 2000 summer of 2010. Uh, Facebook pages were kind of becoming very popular for businesses. A lot of businesses were getting on and, um, you know, almost even seeing them as a za kind of secondary website for their businesses. Eso I started helping some businesses to create facebook pages and, you know, get on Facebook basically, and I quickly realized that that was kind of agency work where very inefficient and time consuming and just not really what I wanted to dio on DWhite. I kind of learned at the same time is that software was the way to go. Um, instead of, you know, being an agency where I had clients and had to, like, kind of be at their beck and call the and also not being able to scale that beyond what I could do. As you know, the agency. Um, I, you know, noticed that software was kind of much different than that. It was infinitely scalable. Basically, if I build a tool that any any business could use for social media, then, yeah, the sky was the limit. Could make a lot more money, could scale to a lot more customers. I would have customers instead of clients, which I highly recommend. Clients are very time time consuming. And the work you do for clients is not scalable. Whereas customers, if you have a digital product, um, they are, you know, it's infinitely scalable s. Oh, yeah. I quickly decided that that's not the way to go with the agency. I decided I wanted to try something in software in early 2011 and I reached out to, and I think my stories interesting for, you know, the MBA students that to you because you know I I did pay attention, and I got good grades after you, but, um, you know what? I learned that the U wasn't directly, um, so applicable to me launching a startup. Okay, that's what I mean to say is that anyone could have done what I did without the n b a or with an MBA. Andi, here's the story. I I decided that I wanted Thio create a tool for publishing posts on Facebook scheduling posts on into the future. And I knew I needed someone to who was technical, who could help me with that. And so I reached out. Um, e kind of looked around online, and I found a guy on Facebook who had built another application that I was also interested in doing. And I just reached out to him, and he was he happened to be in Bulgaria and I reached out to him, friended him on Facebook, started chatting with him on I asked him, You know, are you doing anything with the software that you have? I have some customer. I have some customers, some potential customers. What if we partnered up and tried something together and you know one thing led to another, and eventually we became co founders of what became post planner, which is the business that I that I run now. We launched it in early 2011 and I'm kind of the point there is that, you know, it really just in this in this day and age, to create a digital product, whether it be a nap location or something else. Um, it really it really takes a lot of common sense, hard work and just reaching out to the people that you might wanna work with. Um, if you're not a technical person, if you don't know how to code Ah, just take the initiative and go out and try to find someone who does. And, um, you know, just propose something to them on if you have a good enough idea, Um, that is not not in the sense that you have a great idea. That's gonna be a killer business. But do you have a great idea that that commits is someone else that you know, they want to try something with you? Then you know, maybe they will and and it's possible they will. And you could build from there. Um and especially another good example of why Post Planner is a good example. UH, about really not doing anything that's special is because there were other competitors in the space and there still are a ton of competitors. There's a lot of APS that published posts to Social Media that help you schedule posts on social media. We have differentiated in different ways since the launch, but you know, it's really easy to kind of look out there across the landscape in the in the application space that b two B application space specifically, and look at a place. Look at the kind of niche that's doing well. A nap location, Um, that has many competitors, and it seems like it's a big market, and a lot of a lot of the business is doing it. Are doing well if you if you see that you can pretty much replicate or or make a kind of a version of what they're doing and make it a little bit better in some certain ways and start selling and trying to get customers and you don't have to think about some crazy new never thought of before idea. Um, it's kind of My point is you can go out and you can look at what's working for other applications, replicate it, do it a little bit better in some ways and just start trying to get customers. It's really easy toe. I mean, it's easier than ever. Even even 10 years ago when I started, it's much easier today on cheaper to build applications. Um, you know, with all the all the all the b two b APS out there that help that make it easy stuff like AWS um, get hub, um, intercom we use for customer service and outrage. Hub spot, All these kind of things. They're really not that expensive. And you can get off the ground and get a business going pretty cheaply and yeah, so that's kind of long story, how I got where I am.

Yeah, it's real simple. I reached out with this idea that my co founder sloth and I said, You know, I just wrote up a summary of what the the initial kind of M. V P application would be, and he quoted me a price which was like $2000 which is, you know, super cheap. So we built the M. V P. Of Post Planner for $2000. I mean, I paid him $2000 to do it. It wasn't clear at that point that we would become like, you know, partners or we become co founders. It was really just a more of, ah contractor relationship where I paid him to build some stuff. But then we quickly realized a Xeni one will, if you build software that you don't just build software and, you know, launch it out and then it's done. You have to constantly debug and make improvements and take feedback from customers. And, you know, it's it's a you have developers or constantly building and improving the app. I didn't really know that at the time. I thought I could just get this app built and launched out in the world and then I could kind of, you know, run it myself. But yeah, in those first couple of weeks, he built it. I mean, he built the M v p. E Think it took him, I don't know, maybe three weeks to build it. So it's quick and yeah, And what was the second part of the question? How did that change? Yeah, I mean, we got traction really quickly. We had some public Cem Cem articles written about us in various publications. And so we got some customers on Day one when we launched. It was a really cheap product at that time was, like five bucks a month. It's been like that. We still have, ah, cheaper plan at that price point. But then we only had one plan and we got customers, and it just started kind of working. Um, it definitely wasn't enough for, you know, toe to pay my bills or anything. But it started working, and and then I just, you know, went went with the flow and tried to make, you know, tried toe, communicate with customers and tried toe listen to what they were asking for and tried to make the application better on more dependable in all those ways. And then it just continued from there

this is really simple because we never got funding. So way were funded, as I like to say, by customer credit cards, which is the best way. Um, yeah, we we you know, I I was lucky enough that my wife had a good job and we had plenty of, you know, money for our family. We didn't have a lot of expenses s Oh, you know, I was several months when I didn't really make much money from Post Planner, but I had other things going on. Like I said before, I was kind of doing the agency stuff where I was doing work for my my clients. So I could continue to do that while I did the while I launched Post Planner eso. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have any any funding on and within, Let's say, by the by the fall of 2011 so, you know, six months in, there was some steady revenue coming in, and within another six months, I had enough to pay myself a nok salary. Not a great salary, but enough to that. I could start to drop, um, my clients and not do that and go full time on post planner, So, Yeah, I can't I can't give you much information on funding because I kind of avoided it like the plague, which I would recommend any startup Dio, uh, that can I mean, obviously, there's some startups that need funding, and and they have to have funding. Andi, it's definitely a great way to go. Especially the scale. Really big. You're gonna have to have funding, but if you want to do more of a I don't know, my my business is more of a lifestyle business. At this point, I have 10,000 paying customers. Um, and, you know, I just, um, service them and try to make the apa's good as possible. I don't I really learned over the last 10 years that I don't want have any people. Um, I don't wanna have any bosses. That's kind of how I got in tow startups in the first place because I didn't want to, boss, I didn't want people telling me what to dio. Now, of course, your customers become your bosses. That's kind of the way you know that it works, you know, they're they're the ones paying you, and they're the ones you have. Thio keep happy but much better toe. Have 10,000 customers paying, you know, I don't know 20 bucks a month, for example, Um, than to have you know, one V C or two or three D C. S who have, you know, control over your company. Onda. How how are watching over you and making you shoot? Sure, you do everything, and it's just not something that I wanted, So that's just a choice I made. And it's it's something that you should think about if you're really, seriously thinking about getting into a startup because, like I said before, you know it's so so you know, it's such it's so inexpensive to launch a business these days on def. You do the kind of business that I do it kind of ah, normal B two b business that, and you don't want to, like, turn it into a billion dollar, you know, unicorn or something like that, you can easily create a business that get you way helps you. You know that you make way more money that you would make in the corporate world with way more freedom. And you don't have to get funding to do it if you if you do it right