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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:05:10 Speaker 1 Have you ever struggled with all the physical loyalty and membership cards getting lost?
00:00:05:10 - 00:00:11:17 Speaker 1 But what if there is a way to achieve zero printing costs, zero plastic card and zero frustrated customers.
00:00:11:17 - 00:00:16:01 Speaker 1 Today we sit down with Brian Pham, the CEO and the founder of Litecard,
00:00:16:01 - 00:00:21:07 Speaker 1 and learn how they help businesses across retail hospitality, go completely digital,
00:00:21:07 - 00:00:23:06 Speaker 1 their global expansion,
00:00:23:06 - 00:00:27:10 Speaker 1 and why they believe the future of customer loyalty isn't just digital.
00:00:27:10 - 00:00:29:13 Speaker 1 It’s sitting right in the customer’s pocket.
00:00:29:13 - 00:00:30:17 Speaker 1 Let's get started.
00:00:30:17 - 00:00:38:21 Speaker 2 As a brand and a retailer, you would definitely have a problem in the next 10 or 20 years around where to spend your media to acquire and retain a customer.
00:00:38:21 - 00:00:46:24 Speaker 2 So we thought to ourselves, if we really wanted to make this powerful, we should make a platform that's made for agencies as well as these brands
00:00:46:24 - 00:00:48:02 Speaker 2 sort of groups.
00:00:48:02 - 00:00:49:14 Speaker 2 I think that everyone.
00:00:49:14 - 00:00:57:01 Speaker 2 That's involved in your startup in some shape or form, is looking for a way to take something from you,
00:00:57:01 - 00:01:00:11 Speaker 2 or from the business. And that may not always be a bad thing,
00:01:00:11 - 00:01:09:08 Speaker 2 if you look at sort of the hyper technology trends across the world, you see that Australia has been a release point for a lot of us and UK based companies.
00:01:10:01 - 00:01:20:24 Speaker 2 I mean there's very like a fine line between being an optimist and a realist, but for me, everything that we learned along the way shaped our business as we are today.
00:01:20:24 - 00:01:27:12 Speaker 1 Would you rather lose your biggest customer or your best employee? Oh Jesus!
00:01:27:12 - 00:01:34:10 Speaker 1 What one thinks about early days of building Litecard that you secretly missed and one thing you never want to relive?
00:01:34:12 - 00:01:36:02 Speaker 2 Like contests
00:01:36:07 - 00:01:40:06 Speaker 2 One thing I wish I would never have to do is in the business.
00:01:40:06 - 00:01:44:20 Unknown Hmmm...
00:01:44:21 - 00:01:46:18 Speaker 1 Welcome to Founders in Motion.
00:01:46:18 - 00:01:54:11 Speaker 1 I’m Daniel your host today, and I'm happy to welcome Brian Pham, the founder of Litecard to the show tonight.
00:01:54:12 - 00:01:55:18 Speaker 2 Thanks for having me.
00:01:55:20 - 00:02:06:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, I'm going to style a little introduction. So, for those who do not know who you are, can you share a little bit introduction about yourself and like, at least about.
00:02:06:01 - 00:02:09:17 Speaker 2 So I'm Brian, I am, a witness.
00:02:09:17 - 00:02:17:01 Speaker 2 Person born in Australia, and I grew up here as well. Doing university, mostly in Australia.
00:02:17:01 - 00:02:21:17 Speaker 2 And then after working in, like a number of corporate jobs as well as consulting jobs
00:02:21:17 - 00:02:25:06 Speaker 2 I decided to start my own venture called Light Code.
00:02:25:06 - 00:02:42:00 Speaker 2 And what like that is in a nutshell, we call it a wallet led marketing platform and wallet, meaning Apple and Google Wallet. So you use that every day, sort of for bank cards and boarding passes. And we found that it was an amazing opportunity for brands and retailers to use it as a media channel, as well.
00:02:42:00 - 00:03:02:24 Speaker 2 It's definitely the first, I think, like as an entrepreneur, you probably have a lot of different ideas all the time. And then, after getting enough data points, the sort of feeling and I think a number of years ago, maybe three years ago now, I had that gut feeling. I was like, this is going to be something I want to dedicate, like a big portion of my life to and potentially my life's work.
00:03:03:04 - 00:03:03:12 Speaker 1 Yeah.
00:03:03:12 - 00:03:11:05 Speaker 1 So can you walk us through how you build like that and how you land in your first stint with an agency?
00:03:11:07 - 00:03:12:04 Speaker 2 So,
00:03:12:04 - 00:03:35:00 Speaker 2 as a marketing platform, we usually sell we try to sell to brands and retailers because, we say that they have a lot of problems around media and marketing. So like as a brand and a retailer now, it's tough to reach an end customer because if they send SMS like you might think that it's spam and many countries don't send SMS for marketing.
00:03:35:02 - 00:03:57:07 Speaker 2 And if you send an email, it doesn't go into your inbox anymore. It goes into your social, you know, promotions, inbox. And so as a consumer, you're bogged down every day with all of these different emails, SMSes, or you're asked to download an app. And if you think about other media channels like social media, YouTube, Google, Facebook, they're also becoming more expensive by design.
00:03:57:09 - 00:03:58:24 Speaker 2 And so we thought to ourselves, like,
00:03:58:24 - 00:04:07:06 Speaker 2 As a brand and a retailer, you would definitely have a problem in the next 10 or 20 years around where to spend your media to acquire and retain a customer.
00:04:07:06 - 00:04:15:02 Speaker 2 And if we sell to a brand and retailer, a lot of the times, maybe the brand and the retailers aren't even executing their own strategy.
00:04:15:04 - 00:04:36:10 Speaker 2 It's the agencies they work with, whether it's a media agency, marketing agency, commerce, Shopify, you know, full digital service, like there are so many different agencies and partners out there that serve the brands and retailers. So we thought to ourselves, if we really wanted to make this powerful, we should make a platform that's made for agencies as well as these brands
00:04:36:10 - 00:04:37:13 Speaker 2 sort of groups.
00:04:37:13 - 00:04:44:08 Speaker 1 how do you plan on your you know, first, you know, if you try to pitch for to an agency.
00:04:44:10 - 00:05:06:15 Speaker 2 So I think like after talking to so many different brands and retailers out there, we realized that even some of the leading brands that they think it's a great idea and they want to push the budget towards it. They made us work with the agencies that they work with anyway. And so for some of the agencies that we ended up working with, we realized that the agency thought it was a really good idea and they wanted to sell it to their clients as well.
00:05:06:17 - 00:05:16:09 Speaker 2 And we thought to ourselves, that's great, like we just did with one. So like another ten sales. So how can we create that as like a default? You know, scenario.
00:05:16:09 - 00:05:32:14 Speaker 2 I think like our first real media agency that we started to sell with, was when we started working with North Face. And so when North Face, we went live in Australia, they said, you have to work with our media agency in South Australia, that's an external agency.
00:05:32:16 - 00:05:54:02 Speaker 2 And then, we started to implement with them and talk to ourselves. How can we make this process like out of 100 clicks, ten clicks, you know, and build a platform around that? And then that sort of shaped how we work with all the other agencies now as well. And just like understanding, you know, what each agency needs and how they differ from each other.
00:05:54:04 - 00:06:18:18 Speaker 2 Some agencies are very technical and they like to do a lot of the integration themselves. Some agencies are very sort of media strategy consulting focused, and they want to do mainly the execution and have the tools and not have to do any engineering. There are some agencies I want to do both. So I think just understanding that from having all those conversations after working with the North Face and then it moves on to all the other agencies as well.
00:06:18:20 - 00:06:23:01 Speaker 2 And then how that changes within each country as well, because every country has their own,
00:06:23:01 - 00:06:26:15 Speaker 2 attributes, when doing business as well as running an agency.
00:06:26:15 - 00:06:29:04 Speaker 2 what we found was that,
00:06:29:04 - 00:06:46:10 Speaker 2 solving the problem for sort of media saturation and let's call it like advertising and engagement in Australia was very similar to all the problems that we saw in, you know, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, like a lot of European countries, US and UK as well.
00:06:46:10 - 00:07:05:13 Speaker 2 And What's like amazing about the Australian agency ecosystem is that once you work with an agency in Australia that does really well, they usually talk with an agency in like Thailand or Singapore, Hong Kong especially, you know, in the Shopify ecosystem, in the media ecosystem, because it's quite like a lot of them are global agencies as well, with
00:07:05:13 - 00:07:28:12 Speaker 2 different headquarters, but a lot of them have alliances across the world. So like your strongest brand and retailer agency for e-commerce in Australia will most likely know the ones in the US and UK, in Singapore, because they have people that have worked in similar companies move across, or they just sort of like found us connecting. So yeah, that's helped us expand into different countries.
00:07:29:03 - 00:07:44:14 Speaker 2 And then just figuring out, you know, what, different pricing because obviously the different countries might have the same problem, but the value of the problem might change within each country. And then starting to study and understand those data points and then make the right decisions to sort of execute and expand in that region.
00:07:44:14 - 00:07:49:18 Speaker 1 as you start starting to model brand and retail and agency during those early year,
00:07:49:18 - 00:08:01:10 Speaker 1 what was the most common objection you were facing? You mentioned about like like technical. Some agency preferred technical multi-core like data and some was more like for facing.
00:08:01:10 - 00:08:29:08 Speaker 2 I think, you know, Early days, the biggest objection that we would face was like, as a platform, you know, providing a product into the mobile wallet and then using it for advertising, at a beginning of our journey there was too much, sort of coding and technical integrations needed. And then as the product evolved and we started to work with more retailers and brands across the world, we just evolved it.
00:08:29:08 - 00:08:33:14 Speaker 2 So that it required less technical integrations at all.
00:08:33:14 - 00:08:38:24 Speaker 2 To the point now where, like if you're Loreal or you’re Mars or Jack Daniels,
00:08:38:24 - 00:08:47:19 Speaker 2 You could go to a Chemist Warehouse or Dan’s Murphy and buy like 100,000 barcodes. You can put them into our platform, customize the whole user journey experience,
00:08:47:19 - 00:08:55:01 Speaker 2 and then put that into your social media so you could click on the social media ad it added into your wallet, and you can come and scan in demo fees immediately.
00:08:55:08 - 00:09:00:02 Speaker 2 That whole process and our platform now takes sort of like 1 to 2 minutes. You don't have to do any integrations.
00:09:00:02 - 00:09:11:01 Speaker 2 So it's like just evolving it from that sort of, you know, previous cycles and iterations to a point now where it's powerful enough that a brand or retail or agency can just like, do it fast and without coding.
00:09:11:01 - 00:09:18:05 Speaker 2 So our usual objections went from like technical and security to, like, now there's nothing really to worry about. And you can do it yourself.
00:09:18:05 - 00:09:23:07 Speaker 1 So when you talk about like you add it to your e-wallet and mobile phone.
00:09:23:07 - 00:09:25:18 Speaker 1 So when you when you first create like a
00:09:25:18 - 00:09:32:02 Speaker 1 but you'll be doing like a on platform or you already think about integration with Google Wallet or Apple Pay.
00:09:32:06 - 00:09:34:24 Speaker 2 Yeah definitely the latter because,
00:09:34:24 - 00:09:42:14 Speaker 2 am a big fan of sort of studying the history of other platforms and how they evolved over time.
00:09:42:14 - 00:09:53:08 Speaker 2 And what I found was that, like, if you look at Microsoft Word, you look at Gmail, like the main reason that they had such an amazing critical mass of users was because it was easy.
00:09:53:10 - 00:10:10:00 Speaker 2 It was easy to go into Gmail. You didn't have to log in to like live MSN and all these other random like not random, but, you know, different, email platforms with user experiences that went as fast, and were like less cost effective, for example, and accessible.
00:10:10:00 - 00:10:27:20 Speaker 2 And I'm seeing the same thing now with, mobile wallets. So if you think about like applications, if you go to JB Hi-Fi, for example, you have no idea how many points you have, how many vouchers you have, how to spend them when they expire, how much you need to spend to get to the next,
00:10:27:20 - 00:10:28:11 Speaker 2 tier.
00:10:28:17 - 00:10:37:00 Speaker 2 Unless you if they had an app, download an app, log in online, look through your email, SMS like there's no other option as an end customer.
00:10:37:00 - 00:10:43:16 Speaker 2 And this app is actually really expensive to build and also manage. Like people don't understand how expensive it is to just manage the apps.
00:10:43:16 - 00:10:50:22 Speaker 2 And so it's like my customers are looking for a better way to experience my brand, and I'm losing them because there isn't a better way.
00:10:50:24 - 00:10:57:14 Speaker 2 And so we're finding, like the demand came after that sort of convergence of technology being disparate everywhere.
00:10:57:16 - 00:11:11:21 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's interesting when you mentioned actually hi fi, you know, because like, normally when I go to job, I find that they ask for like my mobile number, I just give it to them. But I don't know if they have any, you know, if you have any car or anything. Yeah.
00:11:11:21 - 00:11:14:03 Speaker 1 Yeah. Like there's no way to track it.
00:11:14:05 - 00:11:22:17 Speaker 2 Yes. And it's like if you knew that rather than spending $50 at the Body Shop front desk, maybe you spend $100, right, or $200. So there's that missed opportunity.
00:11:22:17 - 00:11:23:13 Speaker 1 so with the,
00:11:23:13 - 00:11:25:09 Speaker 1 international expansion.
00:11:25:09 - 00:11:27:15 Speaker 1 how do you decide which market to enter?
00:11:27:17 - 00:11:54:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. So, we did some pretty deep analytics across the whole world. I think, like after 12 or 18 months in the market and just understanding which customers we serve and how we serve them, we broke them all into different data segments. So because like brand groups, consumer packaged goods, fast moving goods, slow moving goods and all the different retail sub segments as well, you know, fashion, grocery, pharmacy and all the other different subsegments.
00:11:54:15 - 00:12:17:08 Speaker 2 And then we categorized that across the world. And so how many, you know, grocery stores were in Central Europe compared to western north south Europe and then the US and UK and then Middle East and and Australia and Southeast Asia and North Asia. And so we started to really understand that Australia, such a small region in terms of like consumer brands as well as, you know, your retailers that you got globally.
00:12:17:10 - 00:12:34:00 Speaker 2 And then we started to study other things like how much is an SMS, how much is an email, how much is it push notifications in each region. And then we sort of fed that into an algorithm and went like this is a strong region that has potential because Google and Apple Wallet is available there and there are like users in the region already.
00:12:34:02 - 00:13:04:16 Speaker 2 And then we thought of ourselves like, is the Philippines or is Indonesia like a good target? Like, do we know people there? Do we have shop for agency connections? And we did so after speaking to those and sort of validating those points and continuously testing them. We did the same things we did in Australia that worked to bring a lot of value for these agencies and brands and copy that as much as possible, taking into account like different things like price, sales cycles, buying habits of these enterprise customers.
00:13:04:18 - 00:13:16:12 Speaker 2 And then we used all of that to make a decision, on where to go, how to go, how much resources to put there, who we should be talking to, who should we be training, how often and sort of what resources they need.
00:13:16:14 - 00:13:19:10 Speaker 1 So doing the initial chat before,
00:13:19:10 - 00:13:26:00 Speaker 1 You mentioned that how Australia is a perfect testing ground for Litecard when you first start. So is there a reason why?
00:13:26:02 - 00:13:36:11 Speaker 2 Yeah, I think if you look at sort of the hyper technology trends across the world, you see that Australia has been a release point for a lot of us and UK based companies.
00:13:36:11 - 00:13:43:13 Speaker 2 For example, Apple and Google Wallet, some of their latest releases after the US come to Australia first, like a majority of the time.
00:13:43:15 - 00:14:04:06 Speaker 2 And I think it's awesome because Australian people, are very advanced and forward thinking in the way they think about mobile technology and shopping behaviors. So even example like in Christmas, Black Friday, like we used to have a lot of people that just stay home and shop online, right? But if you look in Europe like everyone goes into the store and that's because it's the culture, it's the tradition.
00:14:04:09 - 00:14:12:06 Speaker 2 And I think like because Australia is such a young country with all the different cultures, we're sort of mixing together and just using data to find what's best for everyone.
00:14:12:06 - 00:14:14:21 Speaker 2 And so in Australia we see that
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:21:19 Speaker 2 In terms of point of sale companies, there are 30 or 40, 50 in the market when the US there might be less than ten, but they have ten times the amount of population
00:14:21:19 - 00:14:28:12 Speaker 2 we have. And so it's a very crowded market in Australia, especially for marketing platforms, fintech, new innovation.
00:14:28:12 - 00:14:42:08 Speaker 2 And so it's a lot of people trying to sell the same thing. So if you can come out on top of a lot of people trying to sell similar things, then most likely, you know, from a data perspective, you have a strong chance across the rest of the world as well, is our hypothesis.
00:14:42:10 - 00:14:53:23 Speaker 1 Yeah, I find that , you know, there's a lot of international brand tried to come to Australia and kind of like fail. So I think like if you are able to do it in Australia, then you definitely able to expand your.
00:14:53:23 - 00:15:06:19 Speaker 1 help of the recent new that you expand to Europe with the first office in Amsterdam, would there be any challenge when you go into Arab markets in a different to the other?
00:15:06:21 - 00:15:13:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, definitely. So Al Regional Director, this starts when one hour after we finish. So that's a big one.
00:15:13:02 - 00:15:19:07 Speaker 2 But I think the Europe has been an amazing country always because such rich culture, there's a lot of,
00:15:19:07 - 00:15:30:21 Speaker 2 people in the region as well. So a high sort of economic, variables for us to understand. But the reason why we went into the European market is because we had partners and customers.
00:15:30:21 - 00:15:31:16 Speaker 2 They already,
00:15:31:16 - 00:15:50:10 Speaker 2 and because the region is so large, it was hard for us to sort of, you know, speak the same language as all the different like, agencies inside the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy and so on and so forth. So we found that it was best to have a person that was on the ground there.
00:15:50:10 - 00:15:57:15 Speaker 2 And I think, you know, very similarly as well, we were probably going to see more clients in the UK, in US and in the Middle East, and
00:15:57:15 - 00:16:04:06 Speaker 2 But I think, you know, with all experiments it's, you know, one variable at a time and you sort of measure it and understand it.
00:16:04:12 - 00:16:13:06 Speaker 1 Was there any market you thought would be a perfect fit? But that turned out to be way harder than you expected.
00:16:13:08 - 00:16:16:22 Speaker 2 I think, to be careful. So.
00:16:16:22 - 00:16:29:21 Speaker 2 I think it's it's sort of like a like a, like a pretty good story. We looked at the Philippines for a while, and, almost everyone told us that it was a great market to go into because it was,
00:16:30:03 - 00:16:38:12 Speaker 2 Very rich of, like, multiple cultures as well. And the shopping habits of people in the Philippines are very similar to the shopping habits of people in America.
00:16:38:12 - 00:16:47:07 Speaker 2 And what that meant was that, like, there are a lot of coupons, there are a lot of sort of digital transformations. People were trying to shop more, go into shopping centers.
00:16:47:09 - 00:16:53:05 Speaker 2 Brands were trying to expand like it was a great time. But we figured out that, like, we didn't know where to start.
00:16:53:05 - 00:17:06:14 Speaker 2 somewhere in our network, someone introduced us to a brand family within the Philippines, and they own the distribution rights of over 100 brands in the Philippines. And they also have their own brands and shopping centers and all these different businesses.
00:17:06:16 - 00:17:27:02 Speaker 2 And they also have their own marketing agency. So they have a marketing agency that sells to the brand. And we talked to us. I was like, let's form an alliance. And they saw, you know, the potential immediately and became a partner in the region. So, you know, I think we're glad that we keep an open mind and we're lucky enough to still be agile to make these decisions.
00:17:27:04 - 00:17:34:16 Speaker 2 And, you know, dedicate our resources towards supporting new developing markets outside of Australia, for our business. So, yeah.
00:17:34:16 - 00:17:41:14 Speaker 1 What one thinks about early days of building Litecard that you secretly missed and one thing you never want to relive?
00:17:41:16 - 00:17:43:06 Speaker 2 Like contests
00:17:43:06 - 00:18:10:07 Speaker 2 I think I secretly miss not needing to do so much work. I think at the very beginning, it was so fun to just sit there and go like, how? How crazy could we dream? And you know what sort of amazing products could we build and who could we sell it to? And I think just the early days of learning how to crawl and walk was so enjoyable, because when you fell down, you didn't really think about the consequences.
00:18:10:09 - 00:18:23:19 Speaker 2 But now it's like we have multiple publicly listed companies in so many countries relying on our platform in the next, you know, 6 to 12 months. We sit there, go, maybe we need to dedicate our resources to support that.
00:18:23:19 - 00:18:38:02 Speaker 2 And so you don't have that fun and excitement as much anymore. It's still there. And I think strategically that's what we'll have sort of like retreats with the leadership team every six months or 12 months to try and stay 24 months ahead and do these enjoyable things.
00:18:38:07 - 00:18:42:06 Speaker 2 One thing I wish I would never have to do is in the business.
00:18:42:06 - 00:18:56:05 Speaker 2 I think it's the same with everything, right? It's like everyone wants to cook, no one wants to wash the dishes. So there's all these sort of financial legal reports all the time and investor reports that you have to continuously do, which I enjoy because it keeps us healthy as a business.
00:18:56:07 - 00:19:04:05 Speaker 2 But it's not something I enjoy nearly as much as building, you know, going out there and building the brand even in the strategy. So yeah.
00:19:04:05 - 00:19:15:10 Speaker 1 so with the current technology train with AI is everywhere now. How do you see it shaking up the retail media, especially when it comes to keeping the customer engaged?
00:19:15:10 - 00:19:39:22 Speaker 2 I think AI revolves a lot around data, and it's about how much you can gather. Data from a customer has been what's influenced us the most. So, for example, like, there will be many brands out there like L'Oreal that run a promotion or and have no idea, like, you know, who's seen the promotion and what the customer demographic is.
00:19:39:24 - 00:20:12:08 Speaker 2 So our platform allows them to, you know, click on a promotion and then fill out the details and then get an offer. And these details are so important in understanding the customer behavior, because the brand would have no idea when Daniels looked at the advertisement, when he's gone in-store, how much time in between and then like where he's going to purchase, and then the ability to pre-purchase him after and understand these buying habits allow for their marketing, of a business or retailer or even like an agency to make the best decisions in terms of delivering media to where and to whom.
00:20:13:07 - 00:20:37:02 Speaker 2 But in terms of our business, like we look at AI in a lot of different ways as well. Our whole like customer onboarding journey is like how driven? So if you're a partner, you sign up with Litecard. So that's like any question you would ever have. The AI will be able to answer it. And, you know, even things in the future where it's like, you know, it might take 100 and 20s now to create an intent brand.
00:20:37:04 - 00:20:49:22 Speaker 2 Experience. But like, what if it took 30s in one click instead of like 20 clicks, right? And so using AI to speed up these things and like, even experiment and explore them, something that we're, I'm always looking to do.
00:20:50:13 - 00:21:01:22 Speaker 1 So you already mentioned that you using the AI chatbot for the onboarding. Are you able to consider any other AI technology to your product at the moment?
00:21:03:13 - 00:21:29:08 Speaker 2 There's a lot of AI data visualization things out there as well. I think it's like as a brand, you want to see how many people interact with this new like channel for media. And if you think about like Salesforce, right. And HubSpot and MailChimp, the generations of personalized email and SMS have created the national brands and retailers we have today in every country.
00:21:29:10 - 00:21:56:14 Speaker 2 It's been the strategy to really engage the customer and create that, you know, they bought the first time and they continue to buy all the time. And now what we're seeing is because SMS and email is saturating, this is the new generation of sort of personalized wallet or personalized mobile, and we're trying to continuously enable that. And so if we can create better customer experiences, really we want to be able to track, measure and display the data in a way that's going to be useful to the end customer.
00:21:56:16 - 00:22:21:24 Speaker 2 And so what we're looking at is like, how can the definition of useful front end customer evolve? And we're continuously, you know, training data to do that, asking customers like is this useful information like is this how you want to do campaigns? Maybe. If not, how can we improve that experience? And then continuously feeding that back into our business and creating, you know, some sort of algorithm that does that properly?
00:22:21:24 - 00:22:33:05 Speaker 1 So you mentioned you live in many places before, like Japan, Australia and work across many global markets. What is the best place to start a business in 2025 and why?
00:22:33:07 - 00:22:36:20 Speaker 2 In 2025? The best place to start a business? Yeah, if I was to do it all again.
00:22:36:20 - 00:22:53:05 Speaker 2 Australia was a close second to be honest, but from what I've seen across the world, it seems like Silicon Valley is the closest you are to America is the generally, like you said, is the fastest is what I've seen. So yeah, that's what I would.
00:22:53:05 - 00:22:56:17 Speaker 1 if you able to start Litecard again,
00:22:56:17 - 00:23:02:13 Speaker 1 would there any lesson, or way that you want to change to
00:23:02:13 - 00:23:04:23 Speaker 1 make it to where it is now, today?
00:23:05:16 - 00:23:16:23 Speaker 2 I mean there's very like a fine line between being an optimist and a realist, but for me, everything that we learned along the way shaped our business as we are today.
00:23:16:23 - 00:23:28:00 Speaker 2 And we wouldn't have understood how obvious a lot of these opportunities were unless we, figured out how difficult the other opportunities were.
00:23:28:00 - 00:23:36:02 Speaker 2 And so if I was to do it all over again, I would decide and study the data faster.
00:23:36:04 - 00:23:58:14 Speaker 2 I definitely, you know, as most founders do, get excited about the technology and try and figure out the data after and make, I guess, pragmatic decisions after they get excited. I think if I was to do it again, I would bring that back as early as possible and go, okay, this is a really cool technology, but
00:23:58:14 - 00:24:03:14 Speaker 2 in terms of money dollar value, where am I solving a problem?
00:24:03:16 - 00:24:17:04 Speaker 2 How big is the problem? Can it be bigger and is a global problem or not? I think if I just ask myself those questions at the very beginning of the journey, may be able to speed it up 2 or 3 times.
00:24:17:04 - 00:24:20:05 Speaker 1 what is the best advice? Have you ever heard.
00:24:20:07 - 00:24:38:18 Speaker 2 So I, I spoke to an executive from Apple maybe like a year ago. And he was awesome. Like, he helped us build inside the Apple ecosystem, introduce us to the right people and the culture, which is amazing. And then we finally got on a call after speaking sort of on email and LinkedIn for about 6 or 12 months.
00:24:38:20 - 00:24:57:06 Speaker 2 And he said something that stuck to me and I, I asked him if I if if, you know, you have any advice for any startups and ventures out there from all your decades in the industry, what advice would you give them? And you give me anything around like data and science, anything. You just told me one thing he said, never go to sleep.
00:24:57:06 - 00:25:08:12 Speaker 2 Curious. You said anything that you ever think of, just try and figure it out. Like, don't go to sleep. Curious. Don't you know, sacrifice, sacrifice, sleep for that?
00:25:08:12 - 00:25:09:05 Speaker 1 Yeah.
00:25:09:05 - 00:25:28:22 Speaker 2 And it stuck to me like I, I thought to myself, like, I don't go to sleep curious. And I think, you know, building like, hard having the first idea was when I was nodding off, going to sleep, and I was like, this is a really good idea. I'm going to write it down and studied a bit more and I did study the book one More Time is essentially a full time job, like a year or two after.
00:25:28:22 - 00:25:29:16 Speaker 2 And that's it.
00:25:29:16 - 00:25:31:06 Speaker 1 That's a really good advice.
00:25:31:06 - 00:25:33:21 Speaker 1 sometime I get really overthinking
00:25:33:21 - 00:25:42:07 Speaker 1 And I could check spend the whole night and, you know, can't sleep and just think about all the potential of the outcome that like, it's true that, you know,
00:25:42:07 - 00:25:45:12 Speaker 1 sometimes you really need to just stop thinking about those
00:25:45:12 - 00:25:46:20 Speaker 1 and then just start doing it.
00:25:46:22 - 00:25:48:14 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:48:14 - 00:25:53:18 Speaker 1 What is something you didn't pay enough attention to early on and learned the hard way?
00:25:54:12 - 00:25:56:09 Speaker 2 Well,
00:25:56:09 - 00:25:57:24 Speaker 1 take your time and think.
00:25:58:01 - 00:26:03:13 Speaker 2 This, this one for me. Something I learned the hard way.
00:26:03:13 - 00:26:14:06 Speaker 2 I think that everyone. That's involved in your startup in some shape or form, is looking for a way to take something from you,
00:26:14:06 - 00:26:29:06 Speaker 2 or from the business. And that may not always be a bad thing, but it's a thing, you know, because they want to spend time and you want to spend time. And I think when a lot of people aren't conscious of that exchange, it becomes difficult.
00:26:29:06 - 00:26:32:20 Speaker 2 when you work with people from a startup perspective,
00:26:32:20 - 00:26:52:09 Speaker 2 not to burn down all relationships and make them transactional, but you really have to go, like, is this person right for the job? Have they done the exact same thing before? And we're working with our business and bringing them in, the better for them or worse for them?
00:26:52:09 - 00:26:53:07 Speaker 2 And why?
00:26:53:07 - 00:27:17:10 Speaker 2 And then like from the math. Right. Okay. Well, if I'm going to potentially help them earn more money or learn more, like is that realistic or not within our business? And like if it's not, then you sort of have to go, well then why am I doing this? And it's the same whether the person is like a sales person, an engineer, H.R, legal board member, investor, even.
00:27:17:10 - 00:27:51:07 Speaker 2 You know, it's like as an investor they invest into you and your business. It's like, well, why would you do that? But like having to then question that and understanding of why do they invest? Like do they like it? Do they have some sort of like method or ethos? Do you use it? That method and then like working with them to go through, you know, the relationship and sales cycle essentially to, to create like a better, you know, working relationship is is something that I wish I paid a lot more attention to in the early stages.
00:27:51:09 - 00:28:00:22 Speaker 2 But again, definitely wouldn't have been able to make those decisions and, you know, respect other people's time as well as my time. And unless, you know, you make those mistakes.
00:28:00:22 - 00:28:10:20 Speaker 1 So we formed wrapping up the podcast. I have a few rapid fire questions. Yeah, I just have a bunch of questions and you can just answer as quickly as possible.
00:28:10:20 - 00:28:11:05 Speaker 2 Go for it.
00:28:11:10 - 00:28:13:03 Speaker 1 So the first one is,
00:28:13:03 - 00:28:19:09 Speaker 1 Would you rather have a rockstar team with a meh product or an amazing product with an average team?
00:28:19:11 - 00:28:21:03 Speaker 2 Rockstar team.
00:28:21:05 - 00:28:27:12 Speaker 1 Would you rather scale fast but burn through cash or grow slow but stay profitable?
00:28:27:14 - 00:28:29:05 Speaker 2 Faster cash.
00:28:29:05 - 00:28:35:18 Speaker 1 Would you rather lose your biggest customer or your best employee? Oh Jesus!
00:28:35:22 - 00:28:39:21 Speaker 2 Depends, but right now, biggest customer.
00:28:39:21 - 00:28:42:04 Speaker 1 you definitely value employee much.
00:28:42:06 - 00:28:43:06 Speaker 2 It's a team. It's a family.
00:28:43:06 - 00:28:44:21 Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a team effort.
00:28:44:21 - 00:28:46:17 Speaker 1 thank you for coming on the show, Brian.
00:28:46:17 - 00:28:47:03 Speaker 1 I'm
00:28:47:03 - 00:28:54:07 Speaker 1 wishing you good luck with your venture in the future. And definitely looking forward to more news from Black Hat.
00:28:54:09 - 00:28:55:17 Speaker 2 Thanks, Daniel. Thanks for having me.
00:28:55:21 - 00:29:07:02 Speaker 1 That's a wrap! If you liked this episode, please hit the subscribe button. It helps us bring on more awesome guests. Lavoie production and drop new series you'll want to watch. See you in two weeks.
00:29:07:02 - 00:29:13:05 Unknown Hmmm...