Joe Bullock - CEO @ fastquery.ai

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Podcast. We have Joe Bullock with us today. Joe is building the context window of retail at FastQuery AI. He's been at that company since a year. His LinkedIn profile says San Francisco, but where are you, Joe, again? Tahoe? Lake Tahoe, right?

Yes, I live full-time in the Truckee area. It's kind of the gateway to North Lake Tahoe.

Nice. How far is it from San Francisco?

Uh, it depends. Um, if you time it right, you can make the drive.

Depends if you go in the Lambo or in, uh, a normal car.

That's true. I drive a Bronco, so it maxes out at about 70 miles an hour.

Um, not, not the Raptor version. Yeah, uh, you know, the Raptor goes pretty fast.

Problem living in a mountain town is, um, you know, it can take 3 hours to San Francisco or it can take, uh, 6. Yeah, depending on if the highway is closed. So it frequently closes when we get snowstorms. Um, it also frequently turns into a mess when the tourists are coming and going on the weekends. So I try and time it.

It's a pretty nice place. Well, I mean, San Francisco is a nice place as well, right? It's like top world ambition. I mean, like, AI superintelligence is being built in San Francisco. So you still do back and forth, or mostly Lake Tahoe for your own mental sanity?

Yeah, I'm back and forth all the time. Um, you know, our original customer, um, at FastQuery is, uh, based in the Bay Area, so he's got a handful of stores, um, kind of all along the peninsula. We've got a handful of other customers out there as well. Uh, my girlfriend also lives in San Francisco, so, um, you know, while I live here full-time, I'm back and forth all the time. I probably spend, you know, 40% of my time back in the city. Uh, I lived there for almost 10 years before moving up to Truckee. Um, a couple years into the pandemic, you know, we'd all moved to, um, remote work, so situations. And, um, I've been telling myself that I will move back to San Francisco, uh, one of these days. But, um, you know, every time the season changes up here, I get excited about the next sport, whether it's mountain biking climbing season or off-road rollerblading. Yeah, off-road rollerblading, which is on my shortlist to try.

Yeah, it's like brand new of today. I didn't even know it existed up until like 3 weeks ago, right? I was just like, anytime I go back visit my parents in Bromont, Canada, which is like a Lake Tahoe type of vibe because it's a ski town, right? Um, I, I have my old rollerblades and I'm a runner, right? So every time I go on, I have the options to either go run, either go bike. And Bromont is like road bike here in Oaxaca, it's mountain bike. Or rollerblades, which is a great other sport. And I was like, I miss rollerblading, so I need to try that, but I need off-road tires, right? And then I discovered that sport. Tell me about yourself and your career, right? You started in biz dev for quite a lot of time, believe, what, like 20 years? And then only recently you decided to co-found a company. What led to that decision?

Yeah, you're right. You know, I, um, so a little background on me. I mean, I have lived out in the Bay Area in California for, um, just over 12 years, I guess, now. But, uh, I'm originally from Oklahoma. Uh, my family, both my mom and dad's families, are from Oklahoma City and Tulsa respectively. So I went to high school in Tulsa, went to college there, started my career. Um, I was in the technology services space, for many years with a cool little company called Stonebridge. Um, we did most of our business in the upstream and midstream oil and gas, uh, industries. And, um, yeah, I kind of cut my teeth in sales. Um, and when I was 29 years old, I was, I guess, staring down the barrel of 30 and trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I'd always wanted to go get an MBA. I'd always had, you know, I grew up in the Catholic school system, had always had an affinity for University of Notre Dame. And so I decided to kind of make a pivot. I wanted to get out of Oklahoma. I wanted to go back to school. So I threw all my eggs in the Notre Dame basket and got in, you know, had a blast. I learned a lot as well, but, you know, it was— I made some great friendships and just had a lot of fun at my time in Notre Dame. And the goal was really to move out to California when I graduated. When I was a kid, I kind of lived all over the place. So between Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Santa Barbara, just a bunch of places when I was very young. And I'd always loved living on the West Coast. So, um, you know, took a job, um, in business development where I was, you know, pretty fluent already. Uh, worked for a couple interesting companies, worked for a startup company kind of right around the, um, the start of the pandemic, which, which blew up, totally blew up. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think you know, probably 2 and a half, 3 years ago, I just became disillusioned with, um, with the corporate grind. You know, one of the dangers of being a career sales guy is it can be really hard to break out of, um, that sales track, right? Uh, there's always a great job for a good salesperson, and I found myself kind of being stuck. And so, you know, maybe I manifested a little entrepreneurship in myself as much as anything, as a, you know, out of a desire to change my career. And so 2 summers ago, I started a small company with a former colleague of mine, We were kind of in the very early formative stages and we ended up shelving that, that project. So it was basically an AI-focused company built around governance and risk management functions at like corporate banks. Moved over and worked with some friends of mine from a previous life at their little AI startup until last May. And got involved with FastQuery when it was very, very, very young. So it's been kind of a roundabout, it's been kind of a roundabout road to entrepreneurship. It's one of those things that I think I always had fantasies about, you know, about entrepreneurship and building something for myself. But I think for many years I was scared. You know, it's a huge commitment of time. There's tons of risk. Things can go wrong. You know, even great ideas fail to really launch. And, you know, the last few years I've really just kind of stuck my neck out and you know, the devil take care kind of attitude and, um, you know, see if we can get something to work. So a bit of a roundabout way into entrepreneurship.

And FastQuery, I think they brought you on first as a head of customer success, or, or did you start that company? How and who's your co-founder? Give me a bit more info about the inception here.

Yeah, so, um, You're right, uh, I came on board full-time in October, and, uh, the founder of the company at the time— it was just him— um, the guy is an absolute brilliant, uh, brilliant, brilliant engineer. And, you know, I've had the opportunity, uh, you know, working in tech circles in the Bay Area for the last decade plus to work with a lot of really talented engineers. This guy is probably the hardest working, most thoughtful and creative, you know, product engineer that I've ever encountered. He has a very interesting background. He's originally from a very small town in Russia. He met his future wife who was from Ukraine while they were both you know, being young, being young adults out in the South Pacific somewhere. They wound up living in Kyiv in February 2022 in the lead-up to the Russian invasion.

Not the best place to be.

Yeah. And so they fled to Poland like the week before the war started in Ukraine. He and his wife eventually found their way out to New Jersey. And he was working for a private equity company out there doing a lot of their kind of core technology infrastructure work and moved to San Francisco to start a company. And he didn't know what that company was going to be, but he had some ideas around AI applications in retail settings. And I'll tell you this, if you knew the guy, Anton is his name, Anton Kulikov, Uh, he is, uh, a bit of an introvert. Um, I mean, he's a software engineer, right? He's not a salesperson. And, uh, showed some remarkable grit. For months he went around, uh, door-to-door in person, um, trying to talk to any retailers that would talk to him. And he stumbled into an Ace Hardware store down in Pacifica, California, which is just It was right on the coast, a little community south of SF, and struck up a conversation there with, um, with this guy Eric Hassett, who owns, uh, 7 hardware stores, uh, all along the peninsula. Um, they struck up a conversation, kind of, um, collaborated on what would eventually become the first version of FastQuery. And Eric told Anton, look, if you'll build this, uh, I'll be your first customer and I will tell everyone I know. So Anton was kind of running the show for, you know, the first 9 months or so that the company existed. He was also, um, you know, still kind of working full-time for his employer, right? So it was a, it was a side project. And I think he had instincts around the things that he could do, right? The things that he could build. I mean, the guy is He's a creative, he's a tinkerer, he's a builder. I think he's a visionary and, you know, realized that in order to, to really double down on the FastQuery mission and to make this a serious company, he needed someone to come and run the front of the house. So, you know, I basically came on board full-time in October and we had just a big backlog of customers that needed support, that needed to be onboarded, that needed needed, you know, training. And, um, we also had a very deep pipeline of people that Anton had talked to over the course of the, you know, 9 months or so that FastQuery had been in existence, uh, that, you know, needed some, um, they needed to be cultivated, right, into, uh, into formal customers. So we got busy, um, you know, in October last year Um, you know, saw some great growth through Q3 last year, or through Q4 last year and Q1 this year, and ultimately decided that, um, for all intents and purposes, I was becoming the face of the company, and we were starting to have really elevated conversations with, uh, with prospects. Right, bigger customers, enterprise-level customers and distributors in our space. And, um, you know, it was the natural— it's kind of the natural evolution, um, of my role as the face of the company to, uh, to be appointed as the CEO. So I think we formally made that announcement in, uh, like around June 1st, so it's only been a handful of weeks. And, um, you know, we're— the more time that I spend on this project, the more and more excited I am about the kind of value that we can bring to our customers, um, and what we can do with this company.

Yeah, it's pretty intriguing, um, hardware store niche, right? Like, I don't often see that niche, uh, being prospected, right? Like, or having products for them in itself. And I can see some demo on the website, looks quite useful, right? If I would own a hardware store, I would want to use you guys. It's like, it tells my team what product to advise a customer with a specific problem. It tells me the revenue, right? On a daily basis. I love it. It's a weird niche though. Like, why did you guys pick that niche? I—

it was, it was purely happenstance, uh, or serendipity, um, however you want to look at it, right? I mean, Anton was, was going door to door looking for, you know, looking for believers, and, and it just happened to be a hardware store, uh, owner was the first person that was willing to give him a chance, right, um, to build something and The original use case that FastQuery was built around was exactly that. If you think about a typical hardware store, there's 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 unique products on the shelves. There's all kinds of departments from plumbing and electrical and paint and power tools and lawn and garden. It's impossible to be an expert at everything. And, you know, Eric and Anton, the original value proposition was, look, we've got to have a tool that empowers our associates to sell the whole store, elevate the customer experience in store, drive conversion rate, attach rate, you know, customer loyalty, lifetime customer value. And we still do that, right? That will always be part of what FastQuery, uh, can do. What we've evolved into is, uh, I think a much more profound value proposition that has implications far outside of our core little niche in the independent hardware, lumber, building materials, DIY, home improvement space. Um, and you know, eventually we do aspire to tap into some adjacent retail markets We've had some conversations with some really big companies. Um, we gave a pitch to Costco a handful of weeks ago. We're talking to a retailer in the U.S. South with, you know, 650 retail locations, kind of in the general merchandise segment. You know, we've talked to like outdoor and hobby companies, so You know, we, we intend to do really well in our core market, and I think, I think we want to empower our customers in the DIY hardware home improvement space to really excel. And, you know, we're also looking to the future and how we continue to grow and scale the company and the value proposition that we're delivering. And trying to, you know, parlay that into some adjacent retail segments.

So how's it scaling so far? You guys raised some money not so long ago, right? Was it a million or two? Like, can't remember.

Yeah, we've— so we've just done a friends and family round. Um, you know, we've kind of been developing the, the product in flight, right? I think one advantage that we have, or that we had early on, is there's a lot of AI startups out there, and a lot of these companies I think are going to struggle because they're, uh, they're solutions looking for problems. And, you know, we very, very early on built a solution for a very specific problem, right? And had a lot of early adopters really see the value in that, you know, that nucleus of the value proposition. Um, so, um, forgive me, I lost my train of thought. Your question one more time?

Your fundraising.

So yeah, thank you. So we, uh, we raised, uh, a friends and family round, um, earlier this year. Uh, we've got plenty of runway to carry us into 2027. We're almost cash flow positive for the small little team that we've put together. We've got, I don't know, we're coming up on 40 or so individual customers. By the end of the year, I'm forecasting somewhere between 400 and 500 retail locations will be running on FastQuery.

Man, that's gigantic. Um, what's your main GTM method then? I'm guessing it's not door knocking and visiting each location. You have cold email going. Like, how does that type of scale happen?

So yeah, that's a great question. What we've discovered is that, um, this independent hardware space, uh, is a very, very small community, right? There are a handful of big companies, um, you know, there's 3 big— or there's 2 big cooperative distributors with Ace, um, Do It Best— Do It Best acquired True Value, uh, last year, um, and then Orgill are the kind of the 3 big distributors in our space. And, you know, between those, uh, those three entities, there's almost like 20,000 independent hardware locations in the US. Um, so, uh, forgive me, your question one more time.

End of the day brain break.

Um, GTM channel is that like this segment has, um, you know, a huge footprint across the United States. If you think about the hardware industry, it's kind of the OG, uh, US retail, um, business model, right? Like every small town in this country, uh, grew up around a church and a hardware store.

Yes.

And these people, uh, it's a very, very small world, right? Everyone knows everyone.

And then Home Depot came about.

Yeah, and look, the Home Depot, Lowe's, uh, some of these like rural supply companies like Tractor Supply, like those are in the independent hardware space kind of the, the big bad wolf, right? So there's this Walmart of the Walmarts of, oh Walmart, Amazon, right?

Like the Walmart of hardware is what I meant.

Ah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, all the folks that operate in this independent space are, you know, they're small business owners, they're entrepreneurs. Um, and so our growth has been almost exclusively driven by word of mouth. Oh my God, referrals. All the time. Like, oh hey, you should talk to Bill over at, uh, you know, XYZ hardware company.

And don't you do Facebook ads or TikTok ads, Meta ads, Insta ads? Isn't that like working? Because these guys sometimes hang out there, right? Or cold email campaigns, for example.

So we haven't done any cold email campaigns. We've never run a single ad. Um, you know, I've got a backlog of probably, I don't know, 100, uh, store locations that are teed up to onboard. So right now I don't have a demand problem, I have a fulfillment problem. And that's crazy, you know, we need to, we need to hire to keep up with, uh, with the demand.

I love that. What's your price point? Uh, what do they have to pay to use you?

So, oh man, what are they using?

What are their existing solution and their, their current price point of what they're paying?

If so, we don't really have a direct competitor, right? I think the business—

not even Salesforce, like, uh, or some silly old tool, uh, what's it called? It's RP, ERP thing, SAP.

Traditional software companies are built around deterministic logic and the ledger systems that they provide. The vision for FastQuery has become, we don't want to be the system of record for anything. We don't want to write deterministic code necessarily. Obviously we do for our UI and you know, some of the plumbing. But FastQuery does not want to be the system of record for anything. We want to shape the context window for everything that's relevant for our customers. I mean, in our universe, what does that mean? Well, obviously a lot of important context comes from your POS, from your ERP system, right? What is our, you know, what is our product assortment? What's our inventory on hand? What are our prices? What are our margins? Those sorts of things. Right, but there's a whole lot more that, uh, there's a whole lot more context that informs the consequential decisions that retailers make, right? What's happening in my geography? How are my competitors, uh, pricing, uh, their products? Um, you know, what are the kinds of things my customers are buying? Um, what are the products that are trending on social media, right? And so, you know, FastQuery has kind of become this central nervous system of curating all of this context that's important for retail precision and performance.

And what's the price of that? If I want to use you, it's a couple of hundreds of bucks per month?

Yeah, so we pride ourselves on being very transparent in pricing. It's one of those things that I think, uh, the software and SaaS industry has regressed on over the last few years, right?

Yeah, it's like pricing page, you go on pricing page and then there's no pricing.

Exactly, exactly. And you know, I think it suggests that you're trying to hide something, right? Um, so we publish our prices on our website. Uh, it's a very basic tiered system. For small format stores, $150 a month. For medium format stores, $250. And for larger formats, $450. We don't charge user licenses. And, you know, we think because our customers are right now predominantly smaller and independent retailers, right, delivering a product and a service that delivers a lot of value and is priced predictably right? I mean, these folks, these are people that, that live and die on their budgets. Um, so yeah, very approachable for even very small companies.

Yeah, it's type of day one ROI, right? If I can pay you $100 and, or even $250, and on day one, um, have my employees better guide my clients, which is equal to better sell, right? Because Dude, I cannot tell you how many times I've asked an employee even at a hardware store for something and they didn't have a fucking clue, right? It's like, it's a pity. You work there and you don't even know. But I can also understand the employee, right? Because I have been in their position and when you have so many SKUs, it's hard to diagnose like a customer problem and guide them to the right product, right? But if I can use your platform and day one my employees can sell more through using your products, it's almost like immediate ROI. Is this in your case? I mean, it's cool that you have a pipeline, but most of the time it's folks that are not technology literate, right? And it's hard for them to understand the platform. I guess it's easy to understand the value, right? But some of them don't even use friggin' emails, right? So it's like—

Yeah.

It can be hard sometimes to sell to those people.

I mean, I think you touched on one of the, one of the, like, key market dynamics. Um, you think about Lowe's and Home Depot and Walmart and, you know, all these big box companies, they've invested literally hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into technology sophistication and capability and platforms and applications and all these things. I genuinely believe that FastQuery delivers the same amount of insight and capability and sophistication to our customers that, you know, Lowe's and Home Depot have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in over the last 20, 30 years. I think AI, the opportunity for AI in the retail space is a great leveling of the playing field, right? And in fact, I would go so far as to say, from what I've seen from enterprise attempts at AI, my customers are better equipped to make the right decisions, move with speed and precision, optimize their retail operations my customers are better equipped than the enterprise retailers that are out there experimenting with AI things on their own.

I believe you. Where can people find out more about you and the company, Joe?

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Our company website is www.fastquery.ai. Yeah, we're an open book. We're easy to get a hold of.