So the big question, right? How How I ended up being, um involved. And then the founder in now chief executive of Star is actually a reasonably long path. Thio to maybe highlights some of the key moments. Um, one I've always been involved in entrepreneurship, creating businesses, selling products, things of this nature. Really, Since I was a child from, you know, adventures with garage sells to, um, selling things at school. Uh, you know, all the way through middle school, high school and university. I just always, really just naturally gravitated towards this. Um, ultimately, I got my education and management information systems. I went to the University of Utah, my undergrad and masters. Um, it was really funny. So I started in mechanical engineering view, and, uh, it just it was kind of a weird time for me. Eso I had this internship in a really wonderful company called L three Communications. I was a scholarship student, uh, learning mechanical engineering, But things just kind of worked clicking. And, um, when I was 18 actually was a loan officer right out of high school. I started doing loans on bond. It kind of changed my relationship with money on DCI changed my perspective on what I wanted to get out of life. What I knew is that clearly didn't want to do loans. But I also kind of learned that, you know, being a design engineer or engineering team lead probably wasn't for me, either. So, you know, kind of hopped around internships to jobs. I worked auto leave. And then, just as it so happened, I ended up getting a design engineering job at this industrial out company. So there's about 30 employees businesses, about seven million in revenue. But it was the first start up I ever worked at e even know, like, really what it started meant and I don't think dealt, available to call themselves started looking back on it. That's clearly what they were. Eventually, that business went on. Um, you know, we had over 100 employees and we were acquired by Curtis, right corporation. Um, that moment fundamentally changed my life for a couple reasons. One. I stopped studying mechanical engineering and I went thio information systems because I saw where my strengths where even within the CAD tools, were using solid words, I was spending most of my time deploying, um, administrative tools. PDM works on by product lifecycle management rather than doing design engineering work, Eh? So I changed my education, started focusing on systems and tools and kind of my life had a little bit more direction from that point. So from there on out, finish my masters and I asked, I moved to the Bay Area, uh, work for a company called Arena Solutions that was eventually bought out by private equity on Guy was a product manager there. When I took the job, I didn't really know what product manager Waas and I had to spend much time in San Francisco, but it was really transformative as well. Eso kind of a big high level thing is, I found one where my skill set was most useful in most influential. And I was around, you know, digital technologies operations on day. For me, personally, I was more effective. That smaller enterprises, um too. I found that I just loved the world of startups. Um, So when my wife and I had our first child, we decided to move back here to Salt Lake City in Utah and I wanted to give back, so I found the way I started teaching at the University of Utah and I s on now adjunct professor of entrepreneurship, the marketing and having done a bunch of startups, most of them in enterprise software. I was talking to a colleague of mine and we were looking at this fundamental problem of like, Why did you have to move to San Francisco? Why'd you have to move the Bay Area? And it was really kind of troubling to me because I've been teaching for a few years now, and so many of my students had the DNA had all the right ingredients to be wonderful entrepreneurs but maybe didn't have the resource is that they needed and have the ability to move like I did. So we got to talking about it and we came up with this concept which waas what if you could provide all of the, um, fertile environment for an entrepreneur to flourish but doing a very purposeful way in a very purposeful environment? Um, and take all the really cool things that we learned as educators. Eso my business partner, Troy D'Ambrosio actually built this facility on the University of Utah campus called Masson Studios and We looked at that in the success that it had in terms of encouraging entrepreneurship and in 2019 way decided to make that solution a market rate with solution that anybody could access. So what what really like if I was going to sum it up? So that's the story. The summary kind of piece of insight for me is there's this thing I've always been passionate about. I always care about, always think about in like if I could spend all day doing it and no one would bother me, I would do it anyways and I just kind of found a way Thio make a career of it first by just be involved in startups. And now I'm not a startup that is in the business of helping and nurturing and creating other startups. Uh, that's kind of how it started. I think that crosses most of most of these awful list. How did I get where I am today? What were the major incidents that shaped my path? Um, maybe, you know, the inspiration for the startup idea really was around, um, my own experience and my part of my business partners experience and just how important it is to have community s o the category and the problem that we solved. Um, you know, always any time to talk about our business. I really want to cut to that question is what problems do we solve? If you've ever had the intention toe hustle, create a business work on a startup? Where's your community? Where do you go? Right to go to the Chamber of Commerce. Do you show up that we work? Do you hang out, Industrias? Do you try to get into a university program? How easy do those things to do And how easy is it? Just show up and be around other people that are trying to do what you dio. Easiest way to do that is get on a plane and go to the Bay Area in New York. Um, that's not really that easy. So we're just trying to solve that problem is give people this access to resource dense community. The term that we use is creative density. And you know, this is what was happening in Florence during the Renaissance. This is what was happening in Austria and Germany during the explosion of these wonderful composers. This is what's happening. Um, in the Bay Area around digital technologies. This is what's happening in L. A. Around fashion and entertainment. So what's happening in New York? Around theater in the arts? Eso We're just trying to product eyes that and say All right, how do we create a creatively dense environment? Purposefully, Um and oh, by the way, I've been rambling here for a second, but I'll finish with an important thought. That's empirical. Um, when we implemented, um, this kind of thinking when try implemented at the University of Utah created Masson studios, the student population didn't change. The psychographic profile of the students didn't change. Um, and the access to whatever other facilities they have didn't change. The year that Lasagne Studios opens up the number of start up companies being attracted to you. Start up teams form goes from 100 to 300 just because it's building opened. And then at this point, it's over 500 teams per year. So we know that there's people out there that want to do this, and many of them without this type of facility, just won't do it. So that Zo, that's kind of the learned experience and a little bit about my background that got me here

awesome. Yeah, I clearly had had these questions in my mind already because I jumped. I have a little bit, but no. The elevator pitch is this, um, one. If you want to be a part of a community on dya. Wanna have the, um, corollary resource is and network and access. Um, oftentimes, you don't have a lot of control whether you could be a part of that community. So, um, this isn't a part of the elevator pitch, but something I'm saying just to frame the conversation. So elevator pitch for star is there's people that want to hustle everywhere. Um, they're not just on the coast. They're not just in, you know, the top two or three major metropolitan areas. Um, they're all over the United States, And truth be told, there all over the world eso what does it take toe unleash the creative power of these human beings. And the reason we're so very passionate about this is because if you look around the world that we live in right now, um, that's dominated by news of what Amazon is doing and what apple is doing and what Tesla and space X air doing this forms are reality. This this is the key construct of how we exist in the president, which means the future that we're gonna live in 10 years from now 15 years from now, 20 years from now is a function of the entrepreneurs coming up with cool ideas. And the business is coming up with cool ideas. So if Onley folks in certain areas or with certain exceptional talent, have access to doing this, we're missing out on a lot of creative individuals. Um, and that's what we were going after. The way that we thought of the problem to solve was if these people exist everywhere, what is it that they need, um, to to succeed? And here is like the ah ha moment is, um, playing golf can be a hobby. Um, playing the guitar could be a hobby. It's very difficult to have entrepreneurship as a hobby. It truly if you're immersed in it is a lifestyle. And when you look at it from that lens that look, people that care about this thing want to be immersed in a lifestyle. The category that we're trying to create becomes very obvious, which is housing you housing ends up being one of the key components to how we execute and, um, you know, navigate our lifestyle. So the category that we're trying to create that I don't think yet exist is on demand. Um, easy access, community based housing, where we're starting is we're starting with the community of entrepreneurs and creatives. Um, and I'm remiss because I've been using one word rather than the other keeps saying entrepreneur. But truly, we're focused on creatives because in a way, anybody that's a musician is an entrepreneur. Anybody that painting pictures or chipping rock is an entrepreneur, whether they know it or not. So we use the word creator and anybody that would kind of self identify as a creator. Our goal is to give them, ah, holistic solution and one So currently there are alternatives. Um, if you look at the nature of how if you're a creator, maybe just coming out of your underground or you're still in your undergrad neighbor in high school, what do you do? The first thing is, you do a lot of Google search and you look for events and communities and you might found find one million cups you might find startup grind, you might find some local events Chamber of Commerce types off. You might find some startups in the area that air throwing events for developers. What have you None of this is really well knit together in Salt Lake City and in the Wasatch Front way have kind of this thing called silicon slopes that does this. It's more of a media company in the lifestyle company. But at least like there's something in silicon slopes those events in many markets, there's nothing eso After you do your Google searches, we try to connect with people. Maybe you look at what? Getting into a class. So you gotta Khan Academy. You go to YouTube and you start trying to learn maybe you signed up for university classes. The next thing that that you may well do is, um, try jump on, linked in and try meeting people. Goto Angels list hop on crunch base. So all of these little activities give you, um, if this is the whole picture, you see, like this part of it or that part of it, this part of it on Ben, eventually you still have to live somewhere, and then you think about? Well, where am I gonna work out of? Well, I wanna live in the city because if we look at the best psychographic information that we have, we're seeing our market wanting to move towards urban centers. That may change with co vid. We don't have good empirical evidence yet that that's going to change. But the best data that we have suggests folks that air right for starting a business wannabe in an urban center can't afford it. Um, it's increasingly expensive to live where they want. So they're staying at home with Mom and Dad on Ben. They try to rent co workspace on. That's where they try to find their community. One of the things that they run into when they go to these co work spaces is there's only a few people hot desk actually being sold to enterprise because the economics of Coworking lend itself to being more of an enterprise. Hell at the moment. So what we do is we just put everything together, show up in a start with your clothes. Um, it's a fully furnished resident walk in short term leases, so you don't have toe commit to us for you know a year of your life. It's much shorter commitment. Fully furnished housekeeping is included. WiFi WiFi is included. Utilities were included, your workspaces included. Events were included. Working collaboration and leadership is included. And then because we put this creatively dense environment together and it's not just 10 people on bits, not just from 9 to 5 or 9 to 10 it's 24 hours a day. It attracts other other people into the orbit of the building, like venture capital like, um, accelerators, incubators, service providers. Um and oh, by the way, we're taking a small portion of everyone's rents pulling that together and actually investing, um, in the residents are building. So, you know, while every other apartment on their billboard would say We have an awesome infinity pool, we have this badass Jim on our billboards that says, Come here. If you want to get fun to come here, if you want to start a startup and those are the amenities that we provide, um and oh, by the way, we do it at the absolute cheapest price possible. Eso you could live in downtown Salt Lake and for the cost rent just the cost of a start unit with all of this stuff included versus just the unit cost of a studio apartment were about 30% 20% cheaper if you factor in all the other things that were, uh, including WiFi utilities, events, furniture. We're about half the cost, so we make it very economical. That's how we create access. And we stayed true to kind of are, um, passionate value problem.

eso I actually share a pretty fun story, e. Like I said, my background is in product management. Um, you know, I've read most of the, um, standout literature in the space. At least I believe I have. I'm sure there's more that I haven't, but, you know, understanding how toe execute a very fast experiment to validate an idea with the resource is I have at my disposal that I could do quickly was my first motivation. So a time before we started start, I was the chief product officer at a company called Blink. See, And what we did a blank C was we did movement analytics and connected and autonomous vehicle infrastructure on bond. I kind of got to the point where and it was time to move on, and I started thinking About what? What did I want to do? Next on, Bond? This idea around start my co founder Troy approached me with it is like, you know what did this thing Atlas on? We have this, you know, mutual passion, background you've learned so much about. You know how how to get a start up off the ground. What? We try something. So what I did was I called up 20 of my students students that had either lived Atlas on or not, but we're aware of it. I sat down with them for lunch, and as far as they were concerned, we were just having lunch. What I was doing was I was executing kind of minimum viable product experimentation. So I sat across the table from a student's asked him, Where you living? Are you working on a start up? Um, where would you like to live? How much are you paying for Coworking space? Anything and kind of a key question. I got two is. Would you ever live in another co living environment where you have to share your kitchen or your lounge space? Of the 2012 of them said yes, which means eight were like No, and those eight had, like bought a boat on the home, didn't like the experience. I just had a good reason not to want to live in that experience again. But 12 of them said yes. So for those 12 I described what we generally envisioned the problem to be. So I asked them, I'm like, Where do you go to find your community right now and they belabored on like, Well, you know, I try this and try that I planted the seed of Is that a problem? And they agreed that it waas s. I said if I could solve that problem and you could live with us a star and that building was built, would that be something you're interested in? The 12 already given me some confirmation. So then I asked this. I said we actually have a deposit system set up. We're gonna have 300 beds. And what we're gonna do is we're just gonna take the 300 largest deposits and those people get to live in our building. All the deposits are non refundable. What would you give me a deposit? It could be $0 and say I'm not interested anymore. It could be whatever you want. Give me a million dollars. You'll almost certainly get a room. But you give me $1. You almost certainly will not. What would you give me? Of the 12 of my 12 people that I interviewed, most of them were between like 50 and $500. Ah, fewer like four or 500 bucks. But then I asked them, Give me your credit card. I could run that on my phone right now. The numbers went down because there was like, Oh, shit, this guy's actually gonna take my money. It's not just he's giving me a hypothetical situation. Um, but those 12 people, all of them, still would give me something. Most of them are around 100 bucks. At that point, I had a sense that look, there's a sufficiently large market for this, um, errors that I know I introduced in my own experiment. One is the sample size was terribly small. Two, There was a massive selection bias and who I reached out to on Day three. There was a component of salesmanship, whether I liked it or not, that I was adding into the experience. But knowing that more than half handed me their credit cards that I want This was enough for me to get the project kicked off. Um, so really, the first few weeks after that, we raise capital. We got some institutional investors, um, onboard Cem, Cem angels as well. And the goal in the first really first period of work was not. It was too. Stop. Press the brakes fully on. What is the product? What is the solution? And to go back and say one? Why are we forming this team? And what do we care about? Like what, Troy? Why? Why do you and I give a shit like, why are we here? Um, to, um What is the purpose of this business? Like, if we had 100 products and all of them pointed toe one thing that we were trying to do, what would be the theme? That all 100 products, Um uh, say, um and really, that culminated in the development More of a brand book and a mission and a vision and a core purpose values on. During that time, we were not. I wasn't doing any product development. It was really understanding this key factor of who are we What's gonna keep us motivated? And when we tell our story, um, you know, what can we authentically say? So, really, in my mind, it was developing the factor of what is your company? Um then after that, once we had that pretty well done. We had a board meeting around it. Everybody that was a stakeholder involved all not in their heads. And they're like, Yes, this is what we want to be doing. The second thing we did was identify who we believe, the market waas. And this was based on psychographic ethnographic demographic research, persona, development. Onda We kind of took the looking at the world through start size off, and we started saying, Let's look at the world through our consumers eyes and get statistically significant data about one of these people care about how much do you know how much income to the ass on and so forth? So developed personas and had very detailed information about our market where we could truly be actionable and empathetic for what they care about having the benefit of having been that person. At one point, my life helped. Um, Then what we did was we said, All right, we have this hypothesis for a product we believe that we want to do housing. How do these two things intersect and doesn't make sense? Um, e think with most businesses, um, we found that it did, uh, there may be some confirmation bias there because this is a business we wanted to digital, but we also have done this in some ways before at the University of Utah in other parts of our career. So we felt strongly we had sufficient data to suggest yes, this product should work on, but we've spent the last little bit, um, in the last few months, really? Is developing the partnerships and values really necessary to bring that product to market? Um, this is a fairly large endeavor we're trying to generate. You know, uh, 403 104 100 resident, um, you know, almost 100,000 square foot building a za newly minted operator off that type of product. Eso There's some challenges in terms of how do we make the economics work for our partners? Developer landowners? Um, that financers so on and so forth. How do we make it a safe investment? What kind of credit enhancements do we have to provide? So that's just been getting up to speed on becoming a zest. Can experts in the industry, maybe more importantly, finding experts in the industry and having them join our team and work with us? Um, but there's one other big shift. I think that's so important in our story and all of this is gonna be fine. And, well, if the business is wildly successful. If not, maybe this is a cautionary tale. But eso We launched the business in 2019 2020 most of 2019. I'm working on financial modeling towards the Q three Q four. Financial Marty modeling architectural design, legal work, organizing the business. So we have a compelling story and a t the end of 2019. Someone actually passed away in the entrepreneurial community here in Salt Lake. Andi and I didn't know for, like, a month and over Christmas time it just, like, hit me that here I spent two quarters declaring what my core purpose waas And then I'm not actually doing at all what I said our business was about. I wasn't actively engaged in it. So the beginning of 2020 we had this, um, riel important soul searching moment, which waas um we're endeavoring to provide this one particular solution and bring it to market. But on a daily basis, are we actually doing the thing that we care about? And we weren't eso we fixed that problem. So in 2020 we kicked off our start community campaign and the goal. This was our internal goal for everybody on the team. Help a creator every single day. At the end of the day, you haven't helped another creator. You're not doing your job regardless of what other what other goals or objectives you have within the business. You need to run a social media campaign dope, run that campaign but help a creator today. Eso We started doing events. We started doing meet ups. We created a slack channel. Andi started growing. The community were actually in the process of kicking off something new. And maybe by the time someone sees this thing, this is actually the first time I will be talking about public publicly is kicking off an event, sir. It's called founders Fridays. And what we're doing is, um, it's an application only process where if you're a founder entrepreneur, you can apply to attend totally free to you. And what we'll do is put you together in a curated group of other creators, musicians, artists, venture capitalists, successful kind of influence are CEOs, and we'll get you guys together in a group of 6 to 12. Um, provided that it's healthy and safe and go do something on Bill. Do that every single week and we'll pay for it. And we're finding now all of a sudden there's all these sponsors that want to be part of it, but we're kicking that off. So the real epiphany kind of as the second thing that happened. Waas, um if you have, if your product is necessary to deliver the value you intend and you can't deliver it without it, you need to take a second look at what you're doing. And what realized is having a building amplifies what we could do. But we sure can do some really interesting things developed community right now. And, by the way, what it actually lead to like from management MBA kind of perspective is we actually built a new markets playbook based on our community development methodology in Salt Lake. Because anywhere we go, we're gonna have to develop our market, and we now have a playbook of exactly how we find partners. Do sponsorships throw events all the above to open up in the market? Uh, so that's that's some of the stuff that's been going on recently