From Manual MVP to Building and Iterating an Online Marketplace - Josh Kim, Founder of The Cubby

Foreign.

I'm here with Josh, founder of the Cubby. Josh, how you doing today?

Good, good. How are you?

Well, first of all, congrats on the, the re. Recent acquisition. But before we dive into everything, do you want to give a quick introduction, introduction of yourself to people that may not know you?

Of course, yeah, I'm Josh, Josh Kim, founder and CEO of the Cubby. I guess ex founder and CEO of the Cubby now. And yeah, 23 year old Boston native finishing up school right now actually up in Maine at Colby College and have a, you know, finishing up my last semester, so coming fall and yeah, happy to be here. Big fan of, acquire, big fan of, big fan of you and your work that you do all over. So yeah, thanks for having me on.

Appreciate that. Well, congrats on everything. So you're, you're in college building businesses and selling them. That I was doing that. That's awesome. Start early.

What? The rite of passage, right? It's a rite of passage.

So what, so you're in school. What got you interested in entrepreneurship?

Yeah, that's a, that's actually a question I come back to quite often where I'm like, what got me going? What got me started? And you got the itch. Yeah, it's an itch. But I'd also be lying if I said like, you know, you know, in this podcast and you know, in other conversations I've had, like entrepreneurship will come up quite often as like the term and the umbrella of, you know, what we're, our conversations are around. But, you know, I really didn't think of what I was doing in the beginning, entrepreneurship or being an entrepreneur. There was definitely an itch, there was definitely like a hunger within me, but that was really one of curiosity and excitement essentially. I had not tried to do anything business related or entrepreneurial during my time growing up. And I'm not the classic lemonade stand kid in middle school or whatever. I didn't have any of those kind of early childhood stories. It was really, when I came to college, came to Colby College, I was really hungry for something outside the classroom. And I just attended school in Cambridge, Madison High School. And it was great, but it was also really intense and really, you know, really structured, really rigid. And I didn't really have that much autonomy and free will to kind of explore my own paths. And so Colby allowed me to really open up kind of my own exploration. And it was during my freshman winter, going into the spring when I started to, I actually really made, made a really faded connection with a Colby Alum a college alum from my. From my college, and he basically took me under his wing, and he was a founder of his own company at the time. And I basically just learned everything and anything under him and got started through that.

Right on. I have, you know, kind of a similar, you know, path. I started a company in college, got a great mentor.

Right.

So I think the lesson is, you know, the sooner you start, you know, because I always say the people who know the most about winning know the most about losing, start early. So. So you lose or make mistakes, which all entrepreneurs do. You know, it's. It's early, and you can, you know, you know, learn from them, actually, quickly.

If you don't mind me interjecting on that note, was that something that you kind of, like, fell into that, like, relationship and, like, that, you know, the world of building things, or was that something that you always knew you want to go into?

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was that weird kid who's like, you know, everyone's like, I want to be quarterback of this football. I was like, I want to be CEO Company.

Really?

Yeah. It was early for me. I was definitely like, commercialized lemonade stands.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I just. I just. I just love building stuff. I just love business from an early age and just kind of never look back. Right on.

Yeah. I mean, and the only reason why I ask is, like, you know, if. If four years ago, someone was to say, like, you know, I'd be on this podcast with Andrew Garzacki talking about starting and selling a business, a startup. I. I just. It basically never crossed my mind. It wasn't a part of my identity at the time. And I think that the maker side of me and the builder side of me, I think there's a side to everyone, and I think that that's something that I just tapped into and. And college is the perfect place to do that.

So. Yeah, I. I couldn't agree more. When I went to college, I didn't go to any. I graduated with a 2.07. And you can't get a degree below 2.0.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I've confirmed with Chico State, which is the Harvard of the west.

Which.

I got into with a 2.2 GPA in high school. I just. I've never been interested in class or anything like that, but I have the record for lowest gpa, and I'm going to go speak at their school.

That's a badge of honor right there. I get a sign. I get a sign. And may Market that anywhere you can.

That's funny. I actually have a sweater that I think is really funny. It says Harvard Law. And then just, just kidding underneath. Just kidding. And then I was, I was wearing it at the gym one time and this guy who definitely went to Harvard locking started asking me these like, Harvard questions, like, did you have it? And I'm like, oh, dude, look at the sweater. And he got super pissed and walked away.

He's like, like, you're gonna hear from my lawyers, hear from me.

I'm gonna sue you. All right, let's, let's dive into the cubby. You know, how did you think of the product or the idea? What made you want to start it? Tell me about the beginning.

So as I said a little bit earlier, like, you know, I, it wasn't, it wasn't something that like I set a goal and I was like, oh, I'm gonna reach, go from point A to point B. It was really just, I was curious and I was really wanting to learn kind of things that weren't, you know, like we discussed inside the classroom. You know, things that weren't like something I wanted to learn through experience. Didn't want to kind of lose myself in textbooks. And this college alum that I referred to earlier, I learned basically like, kind of like, I guess I was like a. All hands intern for him, you know, without the real official title or anything for like three months, you know, learned everything and anything I could under him, helped him run his business, you know, helped fill holes and you know, learn to wear all these different hats. And then three months go by and I basically like, at this point, like I'm putting in like three times as much effort into, into the startup scene than I am in my classes. So, you know, the, the scale definitely tips towards start, start tipping. And I noticed that and I really, I hadn't felt this excited about any body of work that I had accomplished prior to that. I reached this point where I was happy to help him, but I realized I wasn't learning anything new. And I brought this up to, to this, to this mentor of mine and he basically said he agreed. And he was like, the next thing is if you want to really learn how to build something, you know, helping is one thing, but the next step is to build your own thing. And the reason why I say, you know, I'm not saying I fell into this, but for me it was, it truly came out of learning. I wanted to just, you know, learn something that I couldn't and I wasn't fulfilled by What I was learning at the time in school. And so that led to the Cubby 1.0, I guess we'll call it at the time. The name that I came up with was Sklaza. SK L A Z A. And that's. That word alone is a trip down memory lane, but it's the first school plaza. It was supposed to be this creative, funky word and, and nobody ended up understanding what it meant and nobody could even pronounce it. It was, it was great. It was very German for some reason and didn't really work, but it was the name we came up with and the domain was available, which is the most important thing. And so sklaza came up when I started to like, look around my surroundings and think about the different problems that were going around in my life. And that was the biggest piece of advice I got. The best piece of advice I got to this day when I started to look at a product to build or a business to grow. The. The number one question that my mentor shared with me and that I came to over and over again, it was, what is a problem I can solve and what is the biggest problem in my life? It wasn't what is your idea? What is the business you want to grow? How do you want to make money? It's what is a problem that you can tangibly make an impact on and do your part to solve. And at the time, I just finished my first, first semester in college and I basically had all these textbooks. You know, as you're a college student, you probably know, I don't know, actually, maybe you didn't have textbooks if you, you know, weren't the biggest student.

I had a couple.

Yeah, you probably had a couple. You probably squeezed by, you know, one, one a semester and, and hung on to the, to the minimum requirement. But, you know, you know, textbooks are standard, you know, in college. I just finished my first semester and I even took an extra class to like, want to learn in the fall and nothing, you know, came out of it. So I had all these extra textbooks lying around. And at the end of the semester I was like, okay, I just spent like 500 plus dollars on these textbooks. Bought them all from the college bookstore. Surely they'll take them back or there's probably some, you know, used buyback program or whatever. You know, logically, that's what I thought. Came back to the bookstore after the semester, ended after finals period, and logged my textbooks over and I plopped them on the desk and was like, hey guys, bought these textbooks from you guys three Months ago, would love to sell them back. These are brand new, I haven't touched them. Like, you know, there's no writing in them. And they were like, oh, sorry, no can do. We have a strict policy where we can't buy back textbooks. This is honestly the classic college student story. And I think it was honestly just a rite of passage for someone like me as a first year not knowing what I didn't know. And college students get screwed by textbooks. That's I guess now the, the story that I come to learn. And as I was leaving the textbook, as I was leaving the bookstore, the employee there, you know, kind of shouted from the back and was, hey, actually there's a, there's a third party company who's come onto campus and they're buying back textbooks. They're currently in the campus center. Go there and you'll hopefully get some luck. And I was like, oh, that makes sense. Like justice is finally served. You know, I get to go and sell my textbooks to a different party, go to the campus center. And sure enough there are two, you know, older ladies with a white table, propped up table, and they're taking textbooks. There's a line of students coming in trying to buy these, sell their textbooks back. And I get in line and it's my turn. I give my textbooks to them and I still remember the exact amount of how much they offered for like my seven or eight textbooks. I'd given, they gave me a receipt and they're like, all right, here's $13.61 for seven textbooks. They're all like hardcover. Like, you know, you got like your linear algebra to your English lit whatever, like all these fat textbooks. And I was like, dude, 13.61. I like, yeah, so I still actually still have the receipt because I was like that, that, that receipt single handedly fueled my first year or two of like really gritty work of, of the cubby. And that's.

That, that, that's. I remember, I remember. Yeah, I would buy them used off friends because number one, I didn't have the money to buy them new. And then two uses, always cheaper than new. So you, you. I love this because I always like saying, you know, fall in love with the problem, not your idea. And it's, you seem like you came across a problem you personally experienced and it sounded like it hit you like, right, right, that moment. Like 13 for all these books.

Yeah. So it was, it was a big, big moment.

So based on that, what did, so what happened next? You go and you know, you, you fire up the cubby. You know, how did you get your first customers? How did you market it? How did you, you know, get it off the ground initially?

Ye. The first iteration of the Cubby, the Cubby 1.0, was a product that would directly solve this problem that I was experiencing with the textbook buyback. So I essentially, you know, built a marketplace for textbooks, specifically at the beginning, just textbooks exclusively. And we very quickly opened that up to all things college items. So we had like a fun acronym, ions. Ions, except for items only needed by students. So, like, you know, what's an ion? You know, a mini fridge. Only college, really, only college students use that. You know, textbooks, same thing, you know, and like, obviously there's certain things that like everyone use, like, you know, desks and chairs and, you know, like. But the thing is, like, nobody, like how many people use wall tapestries and posters and just like college items. Anything in your dorm room, Essentially, we sold on the cubby. And so that was the. The product that we were aiming for. Once we started building at that time, it was just me and this advisor. So I was running, you know, taking charge, running, running ship. And then the college alum was more of like an advisory role. And the first real step, after all the customer interviews and, you know, like the three months of just doing research, market research and whatnot, the first real iteration of the product was. I still, I still laugh to this day. It was a Google spreadsheet and it was a sheet that listed all these different items that I had gathered through my customer interviews, asking students, what do you have that you want to. What do you have that you don't need right now that you want to sell? And then the other question I would ask is, you know, is there anything that you need right now as a college student? And I wrote down, I put down a list on the, you know, the supply side and the demand side and wrote down all the things that each student mentioned and had all the student names matched up to them. And then I became the marketplace. So I like listening as it gets. Yeah, I list like 450, 500 students. And that's actually a quarter of campus. I go to a very small school, 2,000 person school, 2,200 person school. I like really capitalized on the student body. And so I was like, I was just this first year with this headcut off running around, asking questions, going up to seniors out, going to strangers, going to people in parties. Hey, man, like, great music. Like, hey, what? What do you have to sell? Like, it was just, it was A whole freshman spring, fall, first year, spring was. Was a blast. And so, yeah, I became the marketplace and for. For like two months, just became the chatbot. I was just, hey, hey, Francis, like, you mentioned that you want to buy this, and you need this. You know, you need laundry detergent. And here's Melissa, who's got, like, five bags. There's a lot of churches that her parents bought her because they, you know, are overprotective and want to. Want to make sure she has clean clothes and she has three bags that she doesn't need. So here. And then. And then I would connect the two people, and then, you know, we all had college emails, and so I could just search them up and easily find their contact information and just connect the two of them together. So it was. That was the first real prototype, but it was, like you said, as manual as it got.

That that is awesome. I love how. Because, you know, I think a big mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is they build out, like, the product way too much before launching when you could do all this manual stuff. And really what you did is you essentially validated that, you know, there's a market need here.

Right, Right.

And then you started capitalizing on it.

Right.

So I guess my next question would be, when did you know, like, you really kind of had product market fit. Like, when did it feel like, oh, this is like. It kind of sounds like maybe what you just described was the moment, but was there another moment where, you know, things started just kind of moving and you were like, oh, dang, there's something here.

So if I were to fast forward a little bit, because obvious, the first. The first stage, it feels like a blur. But it was like a year of, you know, the first half. First half of the year was like, doing research and customer interviews. And I'm also a big believer in customer interviews and user. You know, I think everyone really is, but taking serious time to make sure that the problem that you have is also real. So I would say that was the first step to really reaching product market fit is like problem market fit. Not. Not that I just made that up, but like, coming up with a problem that really is big enough and as is as serious to have market fit potential in the future. And so that was the first half of the year, second half of the year, you know, this. This go spreadsheet solution that I had, obviously, you know, once I started learning different things and, you know, realizing what the core necessities were to make this. To solve this problem, we built out the first website Iteration and honestly I got the first inkling of like wow, you have something here. When the janky can I curse on this pocket? I can probably. The janky ass website that we had was you. It was, it was shutting down because there was too much, too many users. And like I think that's, I mean, you know, that's a great problem to have and I think you might, I, I've, I've like seen this in, you know, different people's stories. But like it was a website that really shouldn't have worked and it worked, you know, it was functional. Yeah, it was, it was, you know, you could click buttons and it would bring you to new pages. Sure. But it was such a janky, you know, night. It was like early. It looked like it was like prehistoric. And it was mostly because I at the time was a non technical founder, you know, I wasn't, you know, coding up things on my own. And so I had received the help of a good friend mind and it was actually a friend and also also an alum of the, of the college and he built out this iteration. I again had no money. I was, I wasn't, I wasn't raising or I wasn't like you know, going to investors right away. And so I, I think I self invested like five grand at the time and that was almost all the money I had. But I like truly believed in it. And also I only invested when I reached a point where I was like, all right, there is definitely something here. And I was already gaining profit at that point without even having an actual product, you know, through the Google spreadsheet. Like I was making money and I was actually implementing manual transaction fees just to see. I, we actually played, I played around transaction fees to a point where I would get 50% transaction and it was crazy because like these students wouldn't care. And so I realized, okay, there's, I can make money on this, this can be sustainable. The five grand is truly an investment. It's not just something I'm just you know, spending away to, to build tech. And yeah, I'd say near the end, like the nine month mark, almost nine months to a year time period, we launched this, the website version of the product and the marketplace started really taking off again. Even in the janky form that it was.

I think, I think what's so awesome about what your story, and I wholeheartedly believe this is sales and marketing is so much more important than product in my opinion because you could have built the best product in the world. But if it wasn't for your hustling and talking to people. Like, follow me for more obvious startup advice.

Like, I mean, you. Hey, you do. You. You do better than anyone I know.

So, like, you know, just the basics. Like, just talk to customers. You know, it's okay to have, you know, a janky product. If it works, it works. And then take that and invest the profits, make it better. So that's a. That's a great story of just starting with something super manual. You validated it, and then you focus on sales and marketing. And then you finally built out.

Right.

What I would assume is, you know, kind of a product you were a little more proud to release.

Yeah, 100%. 100%.

So now I want to. I want to fast forward to the acquisition. Is that cool?

Yeah, real quickly, because there is a. Definitely a big step to the story. And then we can. And then we can discuss is. So we actually pivoted the cubby, and I keep saying the Cubby 1.0 because the current stage, and we'll call it the 2.0 version, is actually not a. Is not a marketplace for college student items during COVID Yeah. So this is actually the chapter that really kicked us into product market fit. And then to. To what I think is like real success and real stickiness to the marketplace place where basically. And I'll. And I can kind of cut to the chase. The marketplace we were running was great. There was a lot of buzz, but it was very specific in its seasonality. The marketplace was as hot as fire during the first two weeks of the semester. During the two. First two weeks of the year. It was also hot the last two weeks of the year. First two weeks of the year, Everyone was on the marketplace to buy things, to secure things for their market to the. For their bedroom, for their dorm, for their whatever, for their frat house, for whatever, their apartment. At the end of the year, everyone was on the marketplace trying to sell their stuff because they were all going away, going back home, going wherever. And I, as much as I did all the two weeks of the year, it was also hot the last two weeks of the year. First two weeks of the year, everyone was on the marketplace to buy things, to secure things for their market to the for their bedroom, for their dorm, for their whatever, for their frat house, for whatever, their apartment. At the end of the year, everyone was on the marketplace trying to sell their stuff because they were all going away, going back home, going wherever. And I, as much as I did all the customer interviews and research, I didn't Take the seasonality into account as much as I should have. And I realized that there were for the two, three months in between semesters, it was crickets. You know, there was very little activity because, you know, I think the moment I realized was when I, as a college student and also the founder of my own company, wasn't even going on my own website to go and look for two things to buy or sell because I was content as a college student. You know, unless you're a impulse buyer or, you know, you're a hoarder, like, you don't have copious amounts of things to constantly buy. And that's when we decided to pivot. And it actually coincided with COVID And Covid was the big thing as well, where the remote component of school really allowed me to grow the company and the team. And so for the first year and a half, I was working on the cubby solo, solo operator, you know, advisors and network here and there, but worked on it for. Yeah. By myself. And then when Covid hit, allowed the opportunity for me to work with other college students and other people from across the US and across the world, frankly. And that allowed me to really envision the products bigger than I wanted to be. And that's when we opened up the marketplace to the company that it is today, which is an art marketplace for college students. And there's a whole backstory there. I don't want to necessarily, you know, I don't know if we're. If we're tight on time, but.

No, I want to hear it. Yeah, Okay. I mean, I mean, seasonality when it comes to acquisitions is terrible. It literally is if a buyer looks at that unless the product, you know, is. Is typically at scale. But I mean, if you're selling like an E commerce store with fireworks or something like that. Yeah, I don't think you do that. Sure, sure. They say, you know, fireworks, 90 of the sales on like July 4th or 3rd or something like that.

Yeah.

So that's going to scare away a lot of buyers. So the fact that you've noticed that and changed it.

Right.

I want to hear more about it.

I mean, so that wasn't even something that I wasn't even thinking about buyers at that point. You know, I was a year and a half venture, you know, selling it wasn't even on my mind. I was just like, I want to build this thing as far as I can. And, you know, a business that runs three months in the year. Two really two months in the year in my case, you know, the first Two weeks of the semester. Last two weeks of the semester. You know, we're on a. You know, we have the fall and spring semester. So that's, you know, four weeks. Four weeks, eight weeks, two months. It's like, you know, two months in a year is not really. I mean, I guess it's a business, but it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't, you know, coming, you know, I wasn't being able to invest profits and, you know, make the business and venture bigger than I want. Bigger as big as I wanted it to be. And so, and so this is where things got really fun and interesting, where by this point, we were on five college campuses all around New England. Two in Maine and three in Boston, three in Massachusetts. And this.

This sounds like the Facebook story. You got. You got like two twins.

Honestly, I'm trying to.

Twins who are like. That was my idea. Do you have two twins doing you right now?

Yeah, I'll just get. I'll get a cease and desist letter or something after this podcast. No, the.

The Winklevoss.

Yeah, exactly. Just. Just anonymous New York address. Just come to this place. No, no, no, none of that. Yeah, I guess. I guess so. I guess it was college and then it was like, you know, one campus to the next, the next, the next. But really, for me, it was just like, I want to. I want to. I want to build a strong foundation. That was the idea behind it all. It wasn't to, like, necessarily, you know, make this an exclusive thing, but the Cubby, the big value prop for.

For.

For the Cubby, and the users of the Cubby were that they were exclusive for college students. So they're exclusive for college students who want to buy and sell. You know, there was Facebook Marketplace, there's Amazon, there's. Sure, there's all these other places, but they're competing with, you know, the rest of the world. And so to be able to keep a community within a specific demographic of people who need the same things was important to us.

And so I'm looking at this now. This is cool. This is. Would you describe this maybe as like, I don't know, like, Etsy for college students?

Yeah, that's the exact description I had for the new. For the new user.

So.

Yeah. So let me explain kind of what. Yeah, yeah. What do you think?

Yeah, go ahead.

I can see your eyes.

I mean, I see, you know, Freddie Mercury painting. Yeah. Yeah, it looks pretty good. You know, there's some.

There's some quality. I was. The product aside, I was just proud of the artwork that Was there.

But yeah, there's some like cool graffiti stuff. Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is cool.

Yeah. For the person. Yeah, for the. I feel bad for the listener who's not even, who doesn't even know I'm talking about. So yeah, I'll go into the pivot. So this is Covid now. This is fall of fall of 2020. I'm back at school. Miraculously, our school opens back up and we're actually like in person, but also hybrid. So I'm on campus, but classes are kind of remote. And it was around this time when. And I started bringing people onto the team now at this point, because it's. Because as I mentioned, Covid allowed for remote work for more collaboration. And honestly, just frankly speaking, just teammates that was teammates that were better than me building a team that was better than me building a team that was more skilled and you know, had specific backgrounds that I didn't necessarily have in my upbringing. You know, technical design, marketing, sales, you name it. And so by that point, we had A team around five during fall Covid, fall of 2020, fall of COVID And we launched the College Marketplace, the college item Marketplace. And same thing happened as the semester prior. First month went in, came in. It was business. Business was booming. We have double, you know, double digit transactions every day, almost, sometimes triple digit transactions a day. It was a lot. It was. There were a lot of transactions and a lot of business that we were doing on the platform. Second month rolls around, October rolls around. It's a sharp decline, Fall off a cliff. It's crickets, it's quiet. And this is where the community that we have built and the conversations that I'd had as a early founder, you know, the customer interviews, the, in the early stages that I had really came back to, to reward, reward the company. Basically. It really, there was really a gift that was given to us during that period or the customers. I just, you know, conversations with. And by that time our whole team was, you know, getting to know different customers from different colleges and whatnot. They started approaching us and coming to us, asking us if they're asking us for certain things in the product. And one of the biggest, probably the biggest feedback, customer feedback that we got from our product was whether or not we could, they could open. We could open up as the cubby, a category for student made artwork. So to give you more context, these are people, these are the students that we reaching out to us. We're all like studio art majors, woodworking majors, you know, they're, you know, mechanical engineers. People who actually create things and make things for their major, for their, for their work. And a lot of these art majors were coming, coming to school, building these things and then leaving them in the dust and there was nothing, there was no place to put them. You know, as much as they appreciate their art, you know, they're, they're churning out pieces day in, day out. And so we have painters, we have, you know, we have sculptures, we have woodworking, we have apparel on, on the, on the, on the website. You know, we have everything on the marketplace. And the best thing about all this was this was truly so customer and user driven. And this, I can't even take credit for the, the real iteration of the Cubby today. You know, as I said earlier, I believe I'm a big believer in problems. A big believer that every great product starts from a great problem. And the art part of things wasn't a problem I experienced. I wasn't a studio art major myself. I wouldn't consider myself a great artist, although I like to, you know, doodle and sketch here and there. And so when these customers started coming to, users started coming to us, you know, our team came together and we're like, all right, this is very doable. Open up a category, you know, do like a one, two week marketing campaign. And so we, we opened it up. We opened up late Aug, late October at that time, second month of the school year. And we called the student made. And that little category that was, it took five minutes to implement on the, on the pre existing product that we had blew up. And when I say blow up, I don't mean it just like from like a customer and user standpoint there we caught wind of so many, so many different, different institutions and like press that I never even imagined. It wasn't even on my radar and that wasn't even the goal of opening up that category. But immediately one of the schools that we were, we were alive at, Boston College, reached out to us like two weeks in to this launch and they were like, hey guys, like, we've been hearing all this buzz from our BC students about, you know, this art marketplace you guys have built. And this is the art department now reaching out. And they're like, because of COVID we can't do an in person, you know, exhibition. They can't do a gallery, end of the semester gallery, end of the year gallery that we always do. We wondering if you can host, if you guys can help us host it on your platform and we'll like, you know, find some partnership or whatever. And find ways to compensate and you know, figure that out. And I was like, do compensation aside, of course, like we, we were again, we were trying to solve the problem to the best of our ability. And at the time the problem was college student artists and college student creatives don't have a place to sell their work. But really the deeper problem though that I had realized was it is very difficult to make a transition from a college student creative to a full time creator. And to make that your actual job and to get paid, that was the biggest thing we wanted, college student creators to get paid. And so that was the new problem that I had found on my hands. And it was honestly bigger and a problem that was more fun for me to work, work on as a creative and maker myself. And so again like Boston College reached out. We had different, you know, we had an art institution in Maine called Mecca reached out to us. Maine College of Art. And then, and then schools started randomly reaching out to us as well. A lot of California schools actually, I know you're in California now, like, you know, usc, ucla, a bunch of UC schools reached out to us just like catching wind of this art marketplace. And because we were specifically, we were so target, we were so, let's say we were so in with the college world that, you know, you look up college art on, on Google and we came up and the SEO started really, really blowing up. And so again, it was a mix of everything Covid, you know, our team, customer interviews. But they all blended in so perfectly at the right time and allowed us to really make this pivot during that fall. And so we started slowly but surely transitioning. And By January of 2021, after that fall semester, we had fully pivoted to an art marketplace.

That is an awesome story. I'm looking at it now. I'm seeing a Kanye west picture.

Yeah, there's an artist I want to shout. Check out Sam Och. You've probably seen he's on the homepage a good amount. He has a lot of black kind of like digital art representation. And he's my favorite artist and one. Yeah, definitely one of many talented artists on the cubby.

Of course. Yeah, these are cool.

Like his work is incredible.

He's got a Scarface one, he's got a guy to do list things on.

He's awesome. Yeah, he's an old classmate of mine and what's actually great is, you know, he would have actually probably, he would have definitely come full time artist without me or the cubby's help. But now he's Living in Chicago. And he opened up his first gallery just a few months ago and obviously that wasn't.

I mean, look at, look at the impact you made. I'm reading his bio. Self taught digital illustrator from Nigeria, based in the United States. I'm currently a junior at Colby College where he takes studio art. So all of this art gave him an outlet to make money when you're in college, when everyone's broke. So I'm looking at these paintings, which are $35, right? But to a college student, that's like 3.5 million. You know, like, I love this story. Like it just kind of. I think it's just a good testament of number one, listen to customers. Sometimes they have the best ideas, right? And then just sticking with it. And sometimes, you know, there's that saying, like, if you hang around the barbershop long enough, you'll get a haircut. Whereas sometimes like something will just looks of that unless the product, you know, is, is typically at scale. But I mean, if you're selling like an E commerce store with fireworks or something like that. Yeah, you do that. Sure, sure, sure. They say, you know, fireworks, 90% of the sales. On the fact that you've noticed that and changed it.

Right.

I want to hear more about it.

I mean, so that wasn't even something that I wasn't even thinking about buyers at that point. You know, I was a year and a half into the venture, you know, selling it wasn't even on my mind. I was just like, I want to build this thing as far as I can and you know, a business that runs three months in the year, two really, two months in the year, in my case, you know, the first two weeks of the semester, last two weeks the semester, you know, we're on a go.

Right. That's why I'm a big proponent of just, you know, staying in the game and just continuing to, you know, iterate and you know, try stuff that, that you know, is new, it doesn't work. Grab it, try something else and eventually something's gonna land and it sounds like you found it. So congrats, man. Yeah, I mean, now, now I wanna, now I wanna move now.

Let's go. You know, we have the fall and spring semester. So that's, you know, four weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, two months. It's like. Yeah. So now the, now the, now the fun part, I mean, it's, it was fun the whole way through, but now the real exciting stuff comes together. So. Yeah. So again, year and a half in pivoted our Marketplace. And I guess one of the, I guess this, quick asides to add to this that did help with the acquisition was we opened up the marketplace to not just college students but now the every, the, you know, the everyday citizen, the, you know, everyone. Basically we opened up the marketplace to the public, the college. So it's still exclusive for selling art and selling pieces. So that's exclusive to college students. But now, but now the public can buy and purchase these pieces. And so the one liner that, that we had for the cubby now was the copy. The Cubby is the first art Marketplace that gives 100% of the fee. This is definitely not the one liner. This is whatever basically gave 100% of the fee to the college student and allowed them to showcase and sell their work to the public. And that slowly but surely started getting the interest of different people in the public. And that's actually where the acquisition start acquisition talks got really interesting where because then again another college student wasn't going to buy the cubby. They were still figuring out, figuring out their next meal, their next ramen or whatever. You know, we, we really start to open up these conferences with acquisition and you know, gather interest from bigger organizations when we opened up the marketplace to the, the general public. And so yeah, so by this point, year two transition to year three and now fall of 21 comes around 2021 and the Cubby is going as well as it could. It's, it's going smoothly. And we had, we, at that point we had some big press go out. We were shouting the New York Times, we were in NBC. Um, I did like a few video interviews with different groups and so I started getting interest, you know, the cubby started getting interest and you know, or groups reached out to us and it was, it was, it was exciting to see. But at that point I wasn't really ready, I wasn't really looking to sell and our team was still pushing ahead with the product. But the biggest thing that was frustrating for me was there were a lot of like one off conversations and a lot of these conversations were just you know, hey, like LinkedIn pings, like hey, like saw that saw you in this press, would love to chat, you know, have, have an interest, have an interest in potentially purchasing or you know, to talk about acquisition or other group would be like hey, like we saw you from this and you know, we'd love to potentially partner, like let's chat. And like the conversations are great but they, I think out of like the 30, 40, we might have had like 95% of them led to nothing, like just zero. Just, just like one conversation and I never have to see them again. And then, but, and that's, and that's when I started realizing the harsh reality of acquisition. I was like, okay, if this is the path I'm going to go down, I'm going to have to take. It's going to be a full time job. A, like that's being my main focus at that point. And then B, I'm going to have to find a way to truly organize and facilitate these conversations because right now there is just like FL hitting a wall and then just dying. Like there's nothing is stuck, nothing, nothing is sticking, nothing is, you know, moving on to the next step. And so then by the end of year three, so March of 22nd was when I really, you know, sat down. Was all right. I think AC makes sense now. At the stage of life that were, that I was in and the stage of life that the cubby was in at the time, I had taken a year off. I took a gap year from college to go full time on the cubby. So two years of the cubby in college and then the third year was, was, you know, when I was in taking my gap year. And that's when I found out about micro, about acquire. That's when I found out about, you know, a close advisor of mine. I was basically venting my frustrations and I was like, hey, I'm looking to, to sell the cubby partner. The cubby just basically handed off the cubby to a large organization, larger group. And I'm just having these conversations that are just leading me nowhere and I'm basically just going in circles and I didn't really expect anything from him, but he was like, hey, like I just checked this thing out on Twitter recently, Acquire by a guy named Andrew and you should check it out. And I was like, I don't even use Twitter that much. But I was like, all right, screw it, let's check it out. Twitter always has some gold mines, a gold gems hidden in the, in the dirt and so checked it out. And I think at the time users still micro acquire. But now you guys are obviously, you know, acquire, which is more fitting. But I went on the platform and instantly just from like a product standpoint fell in love with it, like design user journey, you know, just the flow and understanding as an intuitive individual. Like it just made perfect sense. I got signed up, took less than five minutes, went the whole process, you know, put up my listing and did all the descriptions and you know, you know, different requirements that you guys ask for to sell the company. And it was honestly so smooth. I forgot about it because it took, like, half an hour. I submitted everything, and then I just left it because it said, like, okay, the listing is going to, you know, take a few days, you know, a few days to, like, get approved. Approved. So I kind of forgot about it. I was like, all right, that's cool. Like, I have that somewhere, and it's floating, and hopefully someone catches interest and can reach out to me. And then I got an email said the listing was approved, and I got, like, more access to the marketplace at that point, because I could check out different things. And. And then I kind of just stuck around and I. And I. And I think the real thing that got me sticking was the first day we were approved had, like, 10, like, 10 to 12 different people reach out, like, immediately. And it was so exciting to see because I was like, you know, I had, like I said earlier, I had different people reaching out through different means. Prior. The amount of volume and also the way that it was organized within my acquire inbox was so clean that, like, there was no, I don't know, like, chaos and kind of frustrations that came with the process. And so even if someone, like, you know, hit me up and then never responded again, it's like, okay, archive onto the next. And I think you guys allowed me to do that. And the acquisition journey got much more exciting.

Nice. Well, I'm glad it all worked out. I guess my. My question now is, you know, what did you do to, you know, ensure that you pick the right buyer? Like, you have, you know, so many buyers reaching out. You built a great company. How did you land on the buyer that eventually acquired your company?

Yeah, I'll shout out the buyer, if that's called Quinn. Quinn's a great guy. Yeah. Quinn reached out at this point, to be fair, at that point. I've been on Acquire for a little bit now, not because I was frustrated, but more like. More because I was honestly just very patient, I'd say. So I would say that's the first thing was. Was to find the right buyer, I had to be really patient, and that wasn't easy. You know, I thought, you know, I didn't know what the timeline would look like. You know, I. I did all my research, I've done all my reading, and people can get acquired in two weeks. People can get acquired in two years.

I guess I answered that question for someone today. They were like, what's the average time to Sell your company. And I always say that's like asking me how long does it take to sell a car? Like, yeah. Is it like a beat up Camry or is it like a low price Ferrari? Like it just depends like.

Exactly. Hey. And sometimes the Camry gets sold fast in the Ferrari. You know, it's like, you know, there's, there's no, there's really no real rhyme or reason.

Yeah. Did you know, fun fact, I can't remember who told me this, but it was someone that does a, does a lot of acquisitions. Investor, like 98% of acquisitions are below $80 million. You want to know the reason for that? Why? Well, the higher price of any asset, the smaller your buyer pool. So you can apply it like homes too. So like a $10 million home. If you're a realtor trying to sell a 10 or $20 million home, you probably just have a list of like 50 billionaires, you know, like, who's gonna buy that? So once you get past like the 100 billion and billions and stuff like.

That, that makes perfect sense.

Your acquisition market.

Yeah, it just. Yeah.

If you, if you're a startup with a billion dollar valuation right now. Yeah. You got like five people that can, can buy you. And then you have to kind of hit the jackpot in terms of timing.

Oh my God.

And then you have to hit the jackpot in terms of their ability to acquire. For example, you know, if Salesforce is one of the five, if they just made a billion dollar acquisition, they're probably not going to do another one like soon.

Right, right.

Right. And then.

Yeah.

Yeah. So interesting tidbit there. So you landed, you landed on a fantastic buyer. Any bumps? Like any, I guess, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I, I would.

There bumps, Andrew, come on. Were there bumps? I mean, you around long enough or. I mean, I, I don't even want to hear. You probably heard like horror stories. I, I mean that's probably why you built a choir to, to avoid those. But yeah, of course, of course there are bumps. You know, that's.

I'm not here to make the biggest horror. Horror story that I hear pretty often. And we, we, we do our best at acquire to avoid this. But off market deals, so off market deals, private equity firm hits you up and they're like, hey, we love your business. Here's an loi. But they don't know enough about it to really make a common decision. So then they lock you up in an exclusive period. And then you go through intense due diligence and then they find one Thing they don't like. And they're like, oh, so they're not. They're like. There's a specific. There's a. There's a lot of groups like that just. Just to be aware of them. You know, basically sending you an LOI just to kind of get more information and maybe some of those deals will close, but generally not all of them. And so advice that I get founders on acquire is. I'm not sure if you got this, but it's something that we've been doing recently is we also have like a support team and a sales team now.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love them.

Oh, you shadowed them. Oh, nice.

Yeah, I chatted with someone from the support team briefly. But, yeah, I did notice that you guys, like, opened up more just general support. So he was like, all right.

Oh, yeah, you can. You can call us. We'll put together a full acquisition strategy. Yeah, yeah, we have this, like, new hidden course that basically how would I broker a deal? Because we were brokering deals for a little bit. But the one thing about the LOI is I always recommend a pre LOI call. We're just like, hey, Josh, like, I have other offers on the table. Like, can you tell me, like, how would this deal fall through? Can you tell me how you're going to finance this? Just. Again, I know we've talked about it. Right, right. Just give me some assurance in terms of where this deal might fall out. Because if you sign an LI and then, you know, you think the deal's.

Over, it's not really in it for the long haul. Yeah, yeah.

And then second piece of advice there. Sorry to keep interrupting. You guys gotta get this out.

No, no, of course.

When you sign li, don't stop selling. Do not stop selling the business. Like, you're gonna have all this stuff that the buyer months. Right. What you should also always do is record like a loom on how marketing works, how sales works, how showcase me. You know, those cool paintings, you know, get me excited. So when I find something I don't like, you just gave me all this other stuff that gets me excited and opportunities, growth, growth opportunities and that sort of stuff. Upside in the business. So just a little tidbit there.

I hear you. I hear you a lot in clear. I think, think. And these are also learnings for me too. Like, I, you know, like I said, it was like around six months it took me for on acquire. And the first two months, I would say, you know, I was lucky enough not to run into those, you know, whatever big Big bully giant companies or whatever that try to, like, you know, bully you into a loi and stuff like that. But I definitely did have, like, a bunch of buyers who were like, I like, you know, whether it was an loi or just, like, just like, real interest, they would just, you know, give me a lot of lip service. Like, we're like, we're. We're getting the papers together. Like, we're like, this is exactly what we're looking for. Like, we're gonna go through due diligence in the next week. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, great. And so for the first two months, whenever I talk to a buyer, like, I'd wait, I would just be like, okay, like, you know, you know, so and so from San Francisco, so and so from New York, you know, they're doing this due diligence. They're, you know, really. We said, we sent them, like, you know, two months in a year is not really. I mean, I guess the business. But it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't, you know, coming, you know, I wasn't being able to invest profits and, you know, make the business and Ventric bigger than I want. Bigger as big as I wanted it to be. And so. And so this is where things got really fun and interesting, where by this point were on five college campuses all around New England, two in Maine and three in Boston, three in Massachusetts. And this.

This sounds like the Facebook story. You got. You got like, two twins.

Honestly, I'm. I'm trying to.

Twins who are all.

The Facebook story as possible.

Yeah, that was my idea. Do you have two twins suing you right now?

Yeah, I'll just get. I'll get a cease and desist letter or something after this podcast.

No, the Winklevoss.

Yeah, exactly. Just. Just anonymous. This New York address. Just come to this place. No, no, no, none of that. Yeah, I guess. I guess so. I guess it was college and then it was like, you know, one campus to the next, the next, the next. But really, for me, it was just like, I want to. I want to. I want to build a strong foundation. That was the idea behind it all. It wasn't to, like, necessarily, you know, make this an exclusive thing, but the Cubby, the big value prop for.

For.

For the Cubby and the users of the Cubby were that they were exclusive for college students. So they're exclusive for college students who want to buy and sell. You know, there was Facebook Marketplace, there's Amazon, there's. Sure. There's all these other places but they're competing with, you know, the rest of the world. And so to be able to keep a community within a specific demographic of people who need the same things was important to us.

And so I'm looking at this now. This is cool. This is. Would you describe this maybe as, like, I don't know, like, Etsy for college students?

Yeah, the exact description I had for the new. For the new user.

So.

Yeah. So let me explain kind of what. Yeah, yeah. What do you think?

Yeah, go ahead.

I can see your eyes.

I mean, I see, you know, Freddie Mercury painting. Yeah. Yeah, it looks pretty good. You know, there's some.

There's some quality. I was. The product aside, I was just proud of the artwork that was there.

But, yeah, there's some, like, cool graffiti stuff. Like. Yeah, yeah, this is cool.

Yeah. For the person. Yeah, for the. I feel bad for the listener who's not even. Who. It doesn't even know what I'm talking about. So, yeah, I'll go into the piv. So this is Covid now. This is fall of fall of 2020. I'm back at school. Miraculously, our school opens back up, and we're actually, like, in person, but also hybrid. So I'm on campus, but classes are kind of remote. And it was around this time when. And I started bringing people onto the team now, at this point, because it's. Because, as I mentioned, Covid allowed for remote work, for more collaboration. And honestly, just frankly speaking, just teammates. That was teammates that were better than. Than me building a team that was better than me building a team that was more skilled and, you know, had specific backgrounds that I didn't necessarily have in my upbringing. You know, technical, design, marketing, sales, you name it. And so by that point, we had a team around 5. During fall Covid, fall of 2020, fall of COVID and we launched the College Marketplace, the College Item Marketplace, and same thing. Supplemental materials, pitch decks, you know, information they request. And, you know, we were obviously, you know, pretty secure about what we shared and what we didn't share. But it's like two weeks would fly by just waiting on them. Happened as the semester prior. First month went in, came in. It was, you know, it's like. And then you see. Have all these other people, like, messaging you on. In a choir or just, you know, wherever, and they're messaging you about interest, and you're like, you know, for the first two months, I was actually. I would actually say, like, hey, like, we have someone. We're kind of. We're like, close to finalizing thinking in my head, oh we're close to finalizing. But that wasn't. At least in this case. You know, maybe it is in some, in some cases but in my case this was booming. We have have double, you know, double digit transactions every day almost sometimes triple digit transactions a day. It was a lot. It was. There were a lot of transactions and a lot of business that was in the beginning especially they. They didn't lead to much and they were just a waste of time. I could be busy, you know, selling.

Yeah. So that's a, that's a great way to kind of weed out buyers is. Is making them perform. So yeah. You know, an easy way is on the first call just say hey, you know, we had a great conversation. Like it sounds. Sounds like you're fairly interested. Would you be open having another conversation.

Next week doing on the platform. Second month rolls around, October rolls around. It's a sharp decline. Fall off a cliff. It's crickets, it's quiet. And this is where the community that we have built and the.

And then give some homework in the middle where you know, send me over a list of additional questions that you know, maybe are a little more pointed.

Right, right, right.

You know, because on the first call I always recommend just building goodwill because acquisitions rarely close. If you ha.

Like it's a relationship.

Yeah. It's not gonna happen. So on the first call just get to know each other high like you know, tell me the story of your business, Josh. Like who are you? Why are you looking to sell? I'm Andrew. Here's how I operate and then we make commitments. So as a seller, what I'd recommend.

Is like job that I had as a early founder. You know, the customer interviews the. In the early stages that I had really came back to. To reward me, I guess reward the company basically. It really.

Gosh, great chat. Those questions and like what questions you have in addition. I'll. I'll work with my team at the W. Then let's have a call you know, same time next week and you just. I call it.

There was really a gift that was given to us during that period where the customers I just you know, conversations with and by that time our whole team was, you know, getting to know different customers from different colleges.

Book a meeting from a meeting. We just take the calendar invite and.

Just move it over.

But the point I'm trying to make here is if you see any indication of a buyer doing. And this also works for. It's a two way street. We recommend this to buyers too Right. If there's any indication of someone doing something that they, they said they were.

Going to do but didn't isn't whatnot. They started approaching us and coming to us, asking us if they're asking us.

That'S kind of a precursor under what due diligence is going to be like. And you know, so you want people that are prom to do what they say, otherwise you're going to sign an li.

And then there are certain things in the product and one of the biggest, probably the biggest, um, feedback, customer feedback.

That we got, we're telling you it's going to close, but they've kind of, you know, so watch out for that.

So it's really like, it's looking for, it's like looking for like a romantic, it's like looking for a dating partner. You know, my product was whether or not we could, they could open, we could open up as the cubby a category for student made artwork. So to give you more context, these are people, these are the students are reaching out to us. We're all like studio art majors. It's like, it's like you're dating, you're like speed dating. And it's like the biggest thing in any relationship is communication, right? So if they can't communicate properly or if they're not following through with what they're saying, I think that definitely is a, maybe not a red flag from the get go, but definitely like an orange flag of sorts.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, hey, I know we're getting, we're getting to the hour here, but I've really enjoyed this, this, this chat. Josh, this is awesome. I guess to just kind of close it up. If you had to just give, you know, three pieces of advice to someone looking to sell a startup, you know, what would, what, what are the three biggest learnings that you had going through this process?

I like simple pieces of advice, so I'm trying to keep this as concise as possible, man.

The basics are. You gotta have the basics and okay.

I'm gonna try to do this in order, but it might not be okay. Number one, know what you want. When I say know what you want, I mean be clear with what you're looking for and think and write. I highly recommend writing down woodworking majors. You know, they're, you know, mechanical engineers, people who actually create things and make things for their major, for their, for their work. And a lot of these art majors were coming, coming to school, building these things and then leaving them in the dust and there was nothing There was no place to put them. Them, you know, as much as they appreciate their art, you know, they're. They're churning out pieces day in day. Specifically, what are non negotiables, what are nice to haves, and what are bonuses? So, you know, for example, non negotiable. They must continue running the business that you, that you're running. They must continue the product that you're running. A nice have, you know, a certain, you know, you're looking for like, you know, six figures, you know, a certain amount, you know, you want 200, 300, whatever. Have a number. If it's a nice have is, oh, we would, we would do this number. And then a nice have is. If it's, if it's more. More than that, a bonus is like, if they allow you to like, stick around, you know, for, you know, as, you know, an advisor or let you, like, hang around the company after, you know, they acquire, you get acquired. So again, these are kind of like the things that were on my mind. But yeah, I would say, like, know what you want and really define that. And I didn't do that for the first two months of my journey. So. And so we have painters, we have, you know, we have sculptures, we have woodworking, we have apparel on the, on the, on the website. You know, we have everything on the marketplace. And the best thing about all this was this was truly so customer and user driven. And this I can't even take credit for the, the real iteration of the Cubby today. You know, as I said earlier, I believe I'm a big believer in problems. A big believer that every know what you want and the consciousness just gets so much faster and so much more efficient after that. The second thing I said this before. Be patient. It really is the long game. And even if you get acquired in a month, you have to approach it like the long game. Because if you're quick to act on every, Every conversation, every. Every excitement that comes your way, like, it's just gonna be. It's like running a marathon, but you're sprinting to like, every single corner until you get to the finish line. And it's like. And I. Well, I've gone really into running recently. I've lost a year or two. So now, like, I'm thinking a lot about this. Like, there's a lot like analogies of running that somehow makes sense in life. And it's like you could do that and you'll still get to the finish line, but if you're patient, you can just be so much More calm and composed and just keep a steady pace, not burn out in the process and just sustainably get to the, get to the end of acquisition. So be patient. Like you said, the analogy used of the barbershop, you know, if you stick around long enough, it'll, it'll come together and then the last thing, last thing. Be friend. Great product starts from a great problem. And the, the art part of things wasn't a problem I experienced. I wasn't a studio art major myself. I wouldn't consider myself a great artist. Although I like to, you know, doodle and sketch here and there. And so when these customers started coming to users started coming to us, you know, our team came together and we're like, oh, all right, this is very doable. Open up a category, you know, do like a 12 week marketing campaign. And so it ends with your, with the person who's going to acquire, with the group that's going to acquire you, whoever your main correspondence is. I don't know, this is probably not the textbook of piece of advice that one would get for getting acquired. You said it earlier, like, building a relationship is important but like become friends, become friend. At least friendly. Like you know, I think most people are, you know, nice people. And so, you know, if you're trying to get something from someone, you're probably going to be nice. But I don't think it hurts to be friends. You know, the, the, the individual I spoke with who, whose group acquired the cubby. Like Quinn was the, my, my main correspondence and like I'm friends with Quinn now. Like he's, I mean what. I'm 23. He's, he's like 20 years. He's got like 20 years on me. We opened it up, we opened up late Aug, late October at that time, second month of the school year and we called the student maid and that little category that was, it took five. He's awesome. He also runs, he also like exercise and works out. So we talk about like exercise and like instant implement on the, on the pre existing product that we had blew up. And when I say blow up, I don't mean it just like our next like you know, race that we have or you know, we talk about like things that aren't just like the work are from like a customer and user standpoint. There we caught wind of so many, so many different institutions aren't just the company, aren't just the acquisition because it's a long journey. You know, you start the conversation, you know, with interest and it takes like two months I mean, it took Quinn like a month or two months to like, from start to finish to, you know, signing off the paper. So I think if you can be friends with the person that you're with. And you know, like, thanks to that, like now I'm sticking around the cubby helping out as like an advisor of sorts, providing input when, when need be. And, you know, I get to get to go to bed at night and know that the person that is, is building out the legacy that I started. You know, they get to, you know, there's someone I trust and like, press that I never even imagined. It wasn't even on my radar. And that wasn't even the goal of opening up that cat, but someone I actually enjoy being with. And so I think we have to be friends the person here.

That's great advice, you know, but immediately.

One of the schools that we were, we were live at, Boston College, reached out to us like two weeks in to this launch and they were like, hey guys, like, we've been hearing all this.

Warren. Warren Buffett has a saying, you can't do a good deal with a bad person. So, yeah, I personally buzz from our.

Bot for our BC students about, you know, this art marketplace that gets it built.

And this is obviously, I've never seen it happen. I. If, if the two people are screaming at each other and just can't, like one person misses a meeting and then the other person fires out an email saying like, dude, what. Like, if you don't feel that. So like, trust and just kind of, this person's going to be easy to work with because you have due diligence, you have transfer, you have negotiations with terms, and if it feels like you're just, just something's off, trust your gut and go with the different. So that's, that's really great advice. All right, Josh. Well, we, we gotta have this one up this. I really, I really enjoyed this podcast with you. Congrats on everything, man. I like, I feel like you and.

The way that you think department not reaching us and they're like, because of COVID we can't do an in person, you know, exhibition. They can't do a gallery. End of the semester gallery, end of the year gallery that we always do. We were wondering if we can host, if you guys can help us host it on your platform and we'll like, you know, find some partnership or whatever and find ways to compensate in terms of building startups.

You started with a manual Excel spreadsheet.

And you know, figure that out. And I was like, dude, compensation aside.

Of course, like we, you listen to customers, you pivoted into a new product based on customer input. You, you found in like a mentor advisor as well, which is huge. Like, especially when you're in college. So when you're, when you build like, you know, a multimillion dollar business, will you please come back to acquire and we can do it? Of course, of course.

Yeah, no, I. Acquire is, I mean, I'll be sticking around. I'm not going anywhere with Acquire. And you know, there's some cool products on there too. So who knows, maybe on the. I'll be on the flip side of things or, you know, I'm exploring the investing world now and I've joined a group, uh, an angel investing group in Portland, Maine. Um, we were, we again, we were trying to solve the problem to the best of our ability. And at the time the problem was college student artists and college student creatives don't have a place to sell their work. But really the deeper problem though that I had realized was it is very difficult to make a transition from a college student creative to a full as well as like a program manager and just helping out here and there. So yeah, I think there's a other venture waiting for me in the near future and I am cooking something up right now. But yeah, I'll definitely be sticking around inquiring and time creative and to make that your actual job and to get paid, that was the biggest thing we wanted call.

You wanna. Do you wanna share what you're cooking up or you wanna, you say yeah.

It'S not a little more, it's, it's definitely a little bit more in stealth right now, but it's, it's actually less of a tech product and more of a podcast. So actually this is a great little segue. This. You know, we're doing a podcast right now, but yeah, I'm exploring like a, you know, a more adventure in an audio format, in a podcast format. And so yeah, I'm still, you know, building up the foundation I know which I think is the most important thing creates to get paid. And so that was the new problem that I had found on my hands. And it was honestly bigger in age of any venture. But yeah, I should by the fall, you know, it's July now, so by the fall I, I should have something public and yeah, excited to just start another adventure, another journey. Um, and I always be building things and thinking about the next thing.

To me, you got the itch, man. You're not, you're not going Anywhere.

Yeah, I'm not. I'm not going anymore. Anywhere anymore, so.

Right on. Well, Josh, I'm. I'm rooting for you if. If people want to find you online. Just, you know, learn more about a.

Problem that was more fun for me to work. Work on as a creative and maker myself. And so, again, like, Boston College reached out. We had different. You know, we had an art institution in Maine called Mecca reached out to us. Maine College of Art. And then. And then schools started randomly reaching out to us as well. A lot of California school.

Your story. Where do they find you?

So my website, Josh J. Kim.com is probably the best place to, like, just find what I'm working on.

You got a personal website. Damn, dude. And you're in college. You're going places.

Yeah. Ye. The world we live in today, man. You have to. I guess, you know, actually, I know you're. You're in California now. Like, you know, usc, ucla, a bunch of UC schools have some digital thing. So. Yeah, no, I had. I built that out recently as well, after the cubby. And. Yeah. So Josh J. Kim.com, obviously, you know, LinkedIn, you know, I guess you find me on Instagram reached out to us just like, catching wind of this art marketplace. And because we were specifically. We were. So if you want to see my adventures and, you know, I love traveling, so. But no, yeah, JoshuaKim.com is probably the best. Oh, Target. We were. So let's say we were so in with the college world, that place. And, yeah, I guess hit me up. I'm always happy to chat about, you know, what you're making. And also, I'm big on, like, just finding more teammates. I think that's one thing. That's a whole other podcast, but, you know, you look up college art on. On Google and we came up and their SEO started. Really? Yeah. Loved. And just always, always happy to meet new potential teammates. And just for me, any teammate is someone who's working on their own thing or buzzing about the next idea. So. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been. It's been great.

Yeah, this is awesome. Josh, congrats again on the acquisition.

And let's get really blowing up. And so again, it was a mix of everything. Covid, you know, our team.

You're back on here again. When you. When you got another one.

100. All right, man. Enjoy your Friday. Enjoy the weekend. We'll chat soon.

All right, you too. All right. Cheers, man.

Thank you. Customer interviews, but they all blended in so perfectly at the right time and allowed us to really make this pivot during that fall. And so we started slowly but surely transitioning and By January of 2021, after that fall semester, we had fully pivoted to an art marketplace.

That is an awesome story. I'm looking at it now. I'm seeing a Kanye west picture.

Yeah, there's an artist I want to shout out. Check out Sam Och. You probably, you've probably seen he's on the homepage a good amount. He's. He has a lot of like black kind of like digital art representation and it's. He's my favorite artist and one. Yeah, definitely one of the many talented artists on the cubby.

Yeah. These are cool.

Like his work is incredible.

He's got a Scarface one. He's got a guy a bunch of to do list things on.

He. He's awesome. Yeah. He's an old classmate of mine and what's actually great is, you know, he would have actually probably. He would have definitely come full time artist without me or the cubby's help. But now he's living in Chicago and he opened up his first gallery just a few months ago and obviously that wasn't.

I mean look at, look at the impact he made. I'm reading his bio. Self taught digital illustrator from Nigeria, based in the United States. I'm currently a junior at Colby College where he takes studio art. So all of this art gay gave him an outlet to make money when you're in college, when everyone's broke. So I'm looking at these paintings which are $35, right. But to a college student, that's like 3.5 million. You know, like I love this story. Like it just kind of. I think it's just a good testament of number one. Listen to customers. Sometimes they have the best ideas, right. And then just sticking with it. And sometimes, you know, there's that saying, like if you hang around the barber shop long enough, you'll get a haircut where sometimes like something will just go, right. That' why I'm a big proponent of just, you know, staying in the game and just continuing to, you know, iterate and you know, try stuff that you know is new. It doesn't work. Grab it, try something else and eventually something's gonna land. And it sounds like you found it. So. Yeah, congrats, man. Yeah. I mean now, now I wanna, now I wanna move now.

Let's go. Yeah. So now the. Now the. Now the fun part. I mean it's, it was fun the whole way through, but now the really exciting stuff comes together. So yeah, so again, year and a half in pivoted our marketplace and I guess one of the, I guess this quick asides to add to this that did let help with the acquisition was we opened up the marketplace to not just college students, but now the every, the, you know, the everyday citizen, the you know, everyone. Basically we opened up the marketplace to the public, the college. So it's still exclusive for selling art and selling pieces. So that's exclusive to college students. But now, but now the public can buy and purchase these pieces. And so the, the one liner that we had for the cubby now was the cubby is the first art Marketplace that gives 100% of the fee. This is definitely not the one liner. This is whatever basically gave 100% of the fee to the college student and allowed them to showcase and sell their work to the public. And that slowly but surely started getting the interest of different people in public. And that's actually where the acquisition start acquisition talks got really interesting where because again, another culture wasn't going to buy the cubby, they were still figuring out their next meal, their next ramen.