0 to $9.5M Series A: Inside Guidesly’s Journey with David Lord

It was an amazing transformation over the last 10 years in technology. As I looked at it, I started to say, I know what my list is now. Way different than a younger founder. I don't want to have any assholes in my company. I don't want to have any asshole investors. I'm not going to be in the rat race anymore. I'm not going to do it the way Silicon Valley wants it done. I'm going to do it my way. It's really empowering. This is a problem I know. The solution is not easy.

Is that part of it?

Oh my God, you know what this means?

Welcome to Just Go Grind. I'm your host, Justin Gordon. On today's episode, we have David Lord, the founder and CEO of Guidesly. Guidesly allows you to book the world's best outdoor trips and experiences. And they just raised a $9.5 million Series A. They're an interesting company. They went through the 43North accelerator, which is as of this moment accepting applications into their next batch. And they use that and David's vast experience to grow the company over the last few years. And they have taken off like crazy, now implementing an AI solution to help guides as well. There's a lot to this story. Let's get to it. David, welcome to the show.

Hi, Justin. It's great to be here.

I am so excited to talk about all things Guidesly. And this has progressed a lot in the last couple of years. I looked at the story, kind of been researching about this. I'm always curious though, like, how did Guidesly get started in the first place, David?

Yeah, the infamous origin story. I sold my last company. I was thinking about retiring. My wife, we were empty nesters. I'm a lifelong fly fisherman, so it is my passion by far. And having run startups for 20-plus years, I have been— I've had to switch from being a great fly fisherman to being a guided trip guy. And I came to realize that, wow, I've been missing out on something amazing. But these guides had been, hey, you're a tech CEO, can you tell me how to do this, how to do that? And one recurring theme over this whole time and thousands of guided trips was everyone that I work with screws me. They steal my money, they take our money. I'm the only one who does anything important with the customer, and I get the least amount of money out of it. And it has bothered me my whole life. So when I sold my last company, I talked to my wife and I said, you know, I want to start a company to help fishing guides. And she goes, you've done this now 4 times. This is the only idea I agree with.

I love it.

And GuidesZoom was born. It was that moment.

You know, I, I want to dive a little deeper into that because I just talked to— I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, but I just talked to like John Andrew on Twistle from, from from Wander, and he always says like he has this whole like massive document of, of things he thinks about before starting a company.

Yeah.

What did it look like for you? 'Cause you've started different companies before, you've had a lot of experience. What were some of those things you wanted or even thought about as you were beginning to start Geisinger? 'Cause you, you have the experience, you have like the relationships. How'd you think about that at least?

Yeah, so I, I, I thought about it from the perspective of this is a problem I know the solution is not easy. And therefore it's an expensive solution, and therefore it hasn't been practical up until really vertical SaaS platforms. Stripe now offers marketplaces. You don't have to build any technology on the finance side. I mean, the technologies out there in the React Native world to take foundational packages that do half the work for you, it's a— it was an amazing transformation over the last 10 years in technology. So As I looked at it, I started to say much more reticently, hey, the availability is now. I know what my list is now, way different than a younger founder. I don't want to have any assholes in my company. I don't want to have any asshole investors. I want to do it my own way. I don't want to— I don't want to— so if these are the things that I want, can I go build a company? Can I just fund it myself, get a small team? Will some of my great teammates from my Pratt company come with me? And once I kind of got that core group together and they said, yeah, David, this sounds great, I was like, okay, I have my main mandate. I'm not going to be in the rat race anymore. I'm not going to do it the way Silicon Valley wants it done. I'm going to do it my way. And so it was Boston first. Which of course, that's all gone out the window. Then it was, I'm not gonna join the rat race. That's gone out the window.

So, you know, you get roped back in.

Yeah, I got roped right back in. The government came out with a big report on outdoor recreation. So there had never been a report. So nobody knew what guides were. Well, then they came out a report. It turns out it's a $50 billion market just in the United States, just for the guide piece. I was like, oh my God, you know what this means? All these thesis-based firms are gonna be putting $2 million into John, you know, 10 different companies. I'm gonna have 10 competitors in 3 years. So I was like, okay, gotta fundraise, gotta go build the engine. And that's how it started.

So that was the main reason for fundraising, is knowing there's gonna be competition in this space, knowing that you need to outcompete, you need some capital?

Well, at the point that I realized it was a $50 billion market, I realized now time to market is everything. We have to be first. And, but I stayed true to my word. No assholes. I've got, I've had some really good investors. I've had some great firms. But what I have now is just, I mean, I just, I look forward to talking to every single person. I really couldn't have it any better. And if you can pull it off, I highly recommend it. The first thing I say to every investor I talk to, I have a firm no asshole rule. So you should self-select. If I'm gonna call 3 of your former CEOs, and especially the one that, you know, didn't go well, and they say you're an ass, then you're not gonna be an investor. And I don't care. I really, I'll backfill whatever I need to.

Tell me more about that in terms of evaluating investors side of things. A lot of founders don't do, especially early on, founders don't really know you can do that. You have options in theory, right? So it's like, tell me more about that from your perspective.

Yeah, my cap table is really important to me. Managing it, making sure real investors who really care about your company. I'd never done angel invest. I'd never had any of that. Now I've got 40 of them from deans of, you know, the original dean of HBS, the guy who wrote the Entrepreneurship Handbook. And then I got the same person at MIT Sloan. I mean, Every time I talk to them, it's like I'm in a school lesson. It's like, wow, do these people add value! And they're not doing it because they want to, you know, they care anymore, right? They're all ridiculously wealthy. They only do things they're interested in. So you get a bunch of people around who actually generally care about the company doing well and the people in it, and it's just, it's really empowering. So I spent a lot of time on that research.

It's interesting you mentioned like that piece of it in terms of like things you're interested in. They're only doing things they're interested in now. I just read a, just read a piece from, uh, like Colossus and they have this whole thing on Kevin Kelly and he's like talking about his whole career and how it's been his crazy journey. He's formed like Wired Magazine, all this stuff. And he's like only interested in doing things that are interesting to him. And that's how he kind of drives his career over the last decades and decades. And those people become very interesting. It's just like, are you doing interesting things? cool things, unique things, and they want to be involved, and that attracts the right people as well.

Yeah, I agree completely. I've really— I've learned my way over these 4 and a half years, and I've settled at this place. I now know what my purpose is. It's about legacy. For me, this is endgame, right? There's no— there's not gonna be another company. Win, lose, tie, or draw, this is it. This is— my wife would never put up with another one. She's like, what? Why did we do all this? We were having a good life before this. And she's like, now you're stressed, you got work. It's like, but it's legacy. My daughter works for the company, she runs product. My college teammate works at the company. Tons of my former employees, the best of the best of previous companies work here. It's really collegial, but it's also about, I get to do a job. That we really haven't gotten to do. I tell everyone, you don't get to go home at night thinking, oh, there's some VP at a company and he might call me next week if there's a bug or something like that. These are middle-class working people, and if we have a problem, they may not be able to pay their bills. They may not be able to put food on their table. So if you want a job where it's really meaningful and where the people who use your product Really care, and it matters to you. Then that's what you're signing up for. But you're signing up for all of it, not just the good part. When you have a bug, man, there's no going home because that person misses three days, three days of trips, and that could be it. They might not be able to pay the bills that month. So you've got to be. This is a committed job. This is authentic. If you you really do have to be a believer to be at a company like this.

Is that the pitch? Like, tell me about the pitch in terms of getting people on board with joining the team, joining Guidesly, wanting to work with you. Is that part of it? Like, tell me more about that side of things.

Oh, it's absolutely part of it. Well, first you gotta love something passionate outdoors, right? This is— when I think of a fishing guide, I don't think of a, you know, this is not hiking, this is not walking for fitness, it's not going to the gym. This is your craft. And, you know, I'm a true Bostonian, even though we're in Buffalo now, but Uh, and when I think of craft, I think of Tom Brady. Every day he used to say, I'm honing my craft, every day I'm working on my craft. And I used to love the way he talked about that because craft is what I think of my fishing. Fly fishing to me is a craft and I want to perfect it, and every day I think about it. So I think of it like you've got to have that hobby, that craft in the outdoor recreation space to be meaningful in this company. Because, you know, whether it's fishing, whether it's scuba diving, snorkeling, people have a passion for something. Mountain climbing, could be anything, skiing. But you got to have that passion. So that's the first, you have to pass the passion test. And then secondly, you have to be committed to this understanding that this is a hardworking company and we expect hardworking. So we apply the no asshole rule to our own employees, and then the performance accountability. So no one gets a free pass here. You know how startups are, you don't have the money to have dead weight. Everybody has to— you owe it to the people at your company that everybody is working as hard as they are.

One thing I want to take a little step back. So you have this idea for this company, you have guides, and you're actually gonna start another company, which is like Like, you, you have many things you could have done in theory, but you started this particular company. How'd you think about that research process, talking to guides, understanding what the product was gonna be, at least at launch? Tell me more of that side of things.

Yeah, you know what's interesting? Well, I, I, I had sold my company and I had to spend a year, you know, essentially staying on, but my number 2 was strong. I had already, he was already gonna take, so I was essentially fishing all over that whole year. I was just basically, Fly fishing. So I was meeting with guys, you know, yeah, I'm toying with this idea. Well, you tell me, I'll join the platform the second you do it. You tell me. And then I went to— we had a brand conference, a brand, a global brand meeting for to rebrand an education brand we owned in England. We were in London and this company, this, this pitch firm was pitching about a company that did TreatWell. which was a spa, hair salon software, vertical SaaS, really big in Europe. And they were talking and they walked through their transformation of the brand from a software company into a services brand. And when they were done, I was like, holy— I was like, wow, I get it. Everyone was like, oh my God, did you buy the brand? I'm like, no, this has nothing to do with that company. Guidesly is born. I've just come up with it. I told my wife on the plane home. We, we bought Guidesly that, that, I don't know, 2 days later or whatever and filed even though I couldn't work, start it for 6 or 12 months. But that was the day I was so committed. I bought the URL, bought the form, the company. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Wow, that's incredible. So So with that, then building this out, because I know you, you started just with fishing guides as the beginning point, right? That was it. And you've obviously expanded since then. We can get into it, but when did you launch? What did it look like in terms of launch as well?

When we launched, we launched in '21. Um, and it was essentially just a website. So e-commerce marketplace, because we knew it was gonna take a year, year and a half to get the SaaS built. So we launched SaaS in '22. We were fully into the vertical SaaS. We've got the whole platform by the end of '22. So we've been fully in play for about 2, 2 and a half years. So it's been a steady state buildup.

What were the complexities with that? Because you have this like marketplace with guys and you also have— you're helping guys themselves with the stuff. Like, what are the complexities in building something like that? Because there's more than just one thing in that.

Yeah, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth when you're a vertical SaaS and you're a marketplace. The complexities were based on the— number one, it's difficult to differentiate from marketplace to vertical SaaS to a non-experienced software buyer. So that's the first. You have a hard time reselling to your prospective customers. Number 2, it takes a while to finish the platform, so you're selling pieces of a platform as opposed to a platform. You're getting someone to commit to the small things instead of the big picture. And we still have a lot of those early guides who just use the piece that they started with. So that, that was difficult. But building an entire vertical SaaS— I mean, we build their website, we take care of all their local search, we're doing all their marketing, we're doing all the payments, we're doing all the customer management. It's a lot of work. We like to think— we tell our guides You take care of the fishing, we'll take care of everything else. Um, and that's— and that's— and then you got to learn over 2 years all the crankiness and all the interesting, uh, novelties of a fishing guide. Oh, we got to solve this problem. Oh, we got to solve this problem. Oh, problems that probably don't exist in many other industries.

Yeah, very, very niche focus with that. One thing that comes up in my mind right away is, is, is geographic. Like, like, how'd you think about geography as with this too, because I'm sure there's obviously different areas that are more robust in terms of how many guides they have. You have a platform, so you have this marketplace. How'd you approach that in terms of the geographies you're going to go into?

Yeah, it was, it was really interesting. So we wanted to start in, you know, central, like Montana. I'm a fly fisherman. That to me is the mecca. But in reality, I'm down in Florida meeting with some guides. Florida is, hey, the boats are bigger, you're going out. Those guides, they've got secondary captains. That boat's going out 7 days a week, 365 a year. That business, those businesses are million-dollar businesses. A guide in Montana, he can only fish 4 months, 5 months out of the year. It's a whole different level of business. So we quickly became a charter company, you know, based on geography, really. Turns out Florida is just one giant coast, so there's fishing everywhere.

That's a great point.

Yeah, and it's warm every day. So it's, uh, you know, that, that is our biggest market, and we, you know, we go there all the time. I've been there twice in the last month meeting with our guides. Um, we're launching our first TV commercials, so, uh, getting our first brand campaign. So we're down there shooting commercials.

What did the early days look like in terms of customer acquisition? What was that approach then, knowing that you were—

Founder-led, as they say. Calling guides, talking to the guides you know, getting them to introduce you. But, you know, we've never had trouble getting guides. We're up to 1,500, 1,600 SaaS guides. We've got 4,000 guides on platform. We continue to add guides. We're just trying to scale the rest of the business. To support it, and we're almost there. Like, we feel like we're at our inflection point, which is exciting. In fact, I was literally just having a meeting right before this. Like, this is our breakthrough moment. We're at the point where a few little things and we're going to be on breakthrough. We're going to go over that magical 3x and be into that 4 or 5x, and those are the Once you start to put together quarters like that, then you're— then it's rolling.

What is it about the business that you feel like this is the time, this is the inflection point? Like, what is it about the company now?

Well, we're well-funded, we have great investors, um, we've built our entire platform, so most of our investment is on marketing, expansion, growth. So those are always exciting times. We've been testing marketing in small city regions to get it right. So we spent almost no money, but we think we have all the answers, or we have a lot of answers. So that feels very confident. We're about to launch our first— we've— we are fully eat what we hunt. So we, you know, we in the, in the outdoor recreation world, we're bow hunters. So if we can't see you, we can't shoot you. You know, all I've got is a bow and arrow. That's our sales model. We can only sell what we— what our direct sales force will get to. Well, as we launch our new inbound campaign, our new website, our new brand— we've never spent a dollar on brand, so it's all coming together. That launches in a month, and it'll be our first inbound, and we'll start going direct to the guides.

Oh, very exciting.

That is exciting. It's going to be great because we've got a great reputation in the industry. Our claim to fame is we have a 0.5% churn. So I've never heard of a SaaS company, especially a SaaS SMB, that has that low a churn. And that's, that's what we love.

Why do you think that is?

Guide happiness. We're good at 3 things. We sell pretty good. We eat what we hunt. We build great products. We are the best at guide success. So Not just customer service, but best practices. How do we help you build a better business?

I want to take a step back to one thing you talked about. You mentioned the fundraising side of it. Obviously, you're well funded now. You were in Boston, and now you're in Buffalo. Forty-three North. How did this come about joining the accelerator? How'd you hear about it? Like I want to know all about that because you experienced founder have options, obviously. Why even go through that? And how'd you hear?

So we go steelhead fishing every year. We go to Lake Erie and we hit the tributaries. So one of our friends lives here and we were talking to him. I guess we've just never talked about it. He's like, hey, what do you guys do again? This is our 3rd year of doing it since the company's been live. He's like, we're— we like, well, we do our startup. We build software for guides. A startup? Are you raising money? He goes to the 43 North competition every year. He lives in Orchard Park, and he goes, "You should do this. 43 North is great. Everybody talks about 43 North." So we're like, "Oh, all right, we'll look at it." You know, we're we're celebrating after catching all these fish. We bring it up on the computer. Like, "Oh, we'll sign up. We'll try." And he goes, "All right." We're high-fiving and all that. And next thing you know. We go through the process. First of all, I get to know all the people at 43 North. They're really good people. Buffalo's a great place. You know, we saw all the benefits of what that program could be, and so we went through with it, and we got lucky and fortunate enough to win with a lot of advice and people. And I can tell you this, a year and a half later, wow, am I glad we did. Smartest decision I've made. The group has been great. 43 North has been great. Buffalo's been great. We're building our, you know, we're essentially a remote workforce. Now we're all here and we've got this shared location. 43 North takes care of our culture. There's events every week. So it's, as a startup, you've got a bunch of young people who are in startups. It's kind of like Silicon Valley. You've got all the cultural stuff that they've already organized for you. And there's a lot of education and programming throughout the year. So I really thought it was great. And you're right, I would have— I've never once done any kind of startup competition. I've never done even a business pitch or anything like that. I look at it like, if you can't raise money, then you're in the wrong business.

Yeah. What was— what were you hoping to get out of it? Because I'm— again, you had options, like you necessarily have to Do it when you, when you start the program, at least, because like every— your time is so valuable as an entrepreneur. And obviously this process takes some time to go through 43North. Uh, it's a whole thing. You get $1 million for 5% of your company. I don't know if that was different back then, but at least that's what it is today. What were you hoping for, at least when you started? And obviously you said some of the outcomes, which is phenomenal. What were you hoping for even to join in the first place?

Yeah, when I started, we were just barely doing our seed round. So, um, I can't remember what we had raised, but So I extended the round to, to go around the 43 North. So if we won, great. And then I had to extend a little more because some of the judges and some of the local folks wanted to be in the round. And I was like, okay, if we're gonna move to Buffalo, I might as well take them all in and have a support base.

Yep.

I think what I was hoping to get out of it as we went through it is this is a really serious competition. There's a lot of companies vying for this. This will be good, robust discipline. For our group. So as we got into it, I thought, okay, well, if I'm gonna do one, this seems like a good one to do. It's very competitive, 4 rounds of judging, you know, let's, let's go see. $1 million, all right, it's not— it's gonna be a little bit under our value. We'll be given a few pennies. I guess I'll have to give those out of my share, so, you know, whatever. But, you know, I'm not in it for those things. I told you, I'm in it for legacy. Those things aren't driving me anymore. So, and then I met the people and I really thought, I think having a headquarters, having a place, having a home, hiring people in a place where they want to stay there, where we're kind of big fish, small pond, or have the potential to be that. We weren't at the time, but that all works. You know, I built a couple companies in Boston. I built one out on the West Coast. They all have their uniqueness, but there are some unique qualities here too. And if you take advantage of them— now that comes, you know, if there's one thing I would suggest to everybody who does the 40, make sure you know what the advantages are and that you would lever them, because they're great levers. They'll be very helpful, but you have to, you know, you have to lean in.

So yeah, take advantage of the things that are there for you.

That's right. You know, nothing is given to anybody.

What are the biggest ones in terms of that, in terms of the biggest levers potentially going through?

First of all, they support the network. So everybody in Buffalo supporting Buffalo from Buffalo. Some of the greatest VCs in Silicon Valley are from Buffalo. So they've— everybody supports. Like when you're going to fundraise, you're not fundraising on your own, even if that's not the group that ends up investing. It's a great support network. A lot of people to talk to, a lot of people to get intros to. It's just another feather in your arsenal as you go, as you go fundraise. The network locally, there are so many companies here who their first customers, their second customers, especially in the big spaces, are all in Buffalo. They got this big start, this big break because Buffalo wants to support them. support the 43North companies. So they get a big break and that really helps. And I think the other thing is the collegial nature of all the companies because there are so few startups in Buffalo that this whole, we're with it. You know, in Boston it was every man, woman, and child for themselves. If I gotta run over you to get my own success, that's the way it is.

Different, slightly different environment.

Slightly different environment, yes.

It is so unique because I talked to Colleen from 43North to hear more about the program and everything, and like, it is so unique and seeing how it's progressed. And obviously government-funded, $1 million and 5 teams in Buffalo, and it's been very successful so far. I had a company IPO. I've had companies obviously like Guidesly, for instance, do really well. It's like interesting to see how that model is going to play out like other places who are trying to do something like that. And I do think it takes a certain blend of buy-in from stakeholders to be able to do this and build the ecosystem. But now it's years in, it seems to be working very well, at least so far.

I have to imagine this would be impossible to get off the ground in today's world. That all the credit to them that they did, and they have something so robust and infrastructure around it. It feels to me like it's comparable to, you know, the Techstars and Y Combinator. You know, nothing's compared to Y Combinator, but It's got the same type of programming, the same type of system. Some big companies, whether it's, you know, your point, ACV, and, you know, the founder of ACV is my— that's who my mentor was. Everybody comes in, you're attached to somebody. Okay, that's a good person to be attached to. He knows everybody in town. He's from Buffalo. He lives here. So it helps the process. So I couldn't, like I said, I couldn't say enough.

Yeah, I think it's very interesting to think about founders going through, whether it be something like 14th North, other accelerators, like ultimately it's just like whatever helps you build your company, right? Like that's why you definitely want to give you a better chance of success at building your company is the whole thing.

Yep.

Whatever that may be for you. And I've also been fortunate to talk to Dave Fontenot at HF Zero. They're in SF doing very interesting things as well. Kind of a residency program for 12 weeks. And I mean, there's different programs that could start like this as well. It's all just like a different angle to help founders in some capacity.

100%.

Whether it be funding, whether it be resources. Yeah.

And the younger you are, the more these things are valuable. But listen, I'm older. I find it valuable from our, especially from our employee base. The 5 founders that came in were all tight. So you get a tight network. I mean, last night, one of the One of the CEOs from a previous year is going through some, some stuff. We're going out to— hey, want to go out to dinner? Yeah, let's go out to dinner. I know he just wants to talk, so my job is to sit there and listen and say, well, what do you think? You know the drill. But it's, you know, sometimes you need somebody to talk to.

Tell me about the progression of Guidesly after 42North. You raise more capital, you've expanded a bit. You've got AI things coming up. Like, take me through more of that. Let's maybe start with the funding side of things and raising some more capital, seeing the market.

Yeah, so we came in, I guess that competition was in October, so we had finished our seed round then. I thought, hey, we've got this million dollars, we got all this progression, it would be a good time to get the Series A before this whole year is over while we're in this program. So we started, I think, August or September to go after a Series A. We had already 2 or 3 that we were very— I've been talking to for years, or 2 or 3 years, who were kind of Series A or B, and ran a pretty quick process, pretty tight process. But we had a good— I mean, I've already talked to 400 people about Guidesly. So I've got a tight network that I keep I keep in contact with. I know the, I know the 5 that I want to consider leads. And one that I talked to for a long time, Aspen, they only do vertical SaaS, vertical AI. They're outdoors people, they fish, they hunt, they're, you know, when you know the problem, that's why software founders make great software investors. Because they know the problem, they understand it. Well, when you're in the fishing space, it's a unique set of problems. If you have never gone out with a guide, you will never get the problem that exists. It's just, it's just, you can't, it's hard to correlate. So having great investors, then the Yeti Capital came in. So the founders of Yeti, they're very similar stories, like, oh, got it, know exactly what you're going through, got to be in this. And then some, all of our current, most of our current investors all came in. Legion Park, who's one of the top sports investors, recreational investors in the country. Marquee, who is the owner of the Cubs, Tom Ricketts, that's his investment fund. So it's all DraftKings is in. So we've got a group around outdoor recreation, but, and then we added a couple of AI firms. 'Cause we wanted to, you know, kind of have some backing in that space. And then we added one of the big hospitality who works with all the hotels. So long-term, that's a really smart play for us. So I'm— I don't wanna say all of our investors are incredible, but they're all handpicked for a reason, right?

Yeah.

Managing the cap table for value as opposed to placards.

Yeah, I mean, especially if you have the ability to do so and you have your companies in a good position, by all means do that for sure, especially with the exits and other startups you founded. Like, this is like the opportune time to do that.

Yeah.

What did that mean for you in terms of using that capital and the growth of Guidesly moving forward? Because like I said, you started with just fishing guides and then your platform, look at it now, it is way more robust and there's more coming, like you said. What did that do for you after that capital raise?

Yeah. So first, more team, building out the team, trying to get that all, you know, well executed, train them all up. So that always takes time. We wanted to move into our second vertical, which we've done. I mean, we're in 5 or 6 verticals, but only one are we really big in. So we've got that going. We have a huge AI presence. That we're— that we had to finish building out, and we've just recently launched. So that's a huge investment thesis for us, uh, heavily supported by Amazon, and solves almost all of the major problems we have in our, in our sector. It's a really unique use case, and it gives us a— I would argue we got invested Because we made a big distribution deal and our AI that you know vertical AI is the play right the the hardware's the first wave is done vertical AI is the new is a kind of new frontier we're one of the first into it and we're the first in outdoor especially on the SaaS side there's some consumer plays those are a little tougher you got to put a lot of money into the game where on the SaaS side it's very focused on already paying customers. So we love it. And then the third thing is now it's time to go build brand. We haven't even started yet and we're up, I don't know, we're up about 400% from beginning of year. I think we'll end the year somewhere in that 4x, 5x year-over-year growth. And we really haven't even started any marketing or brand building or inbound or anything yet. We've got a little bit of momentum, um, and we'll see, we'll see, you know how it is with these companies. We'll see how it goes.

I wanna, I wanna talk about 2 things you mentioned there. Yeah, we'll start with brand first. What are you thinking about? Because obviously it's been growing so far, you've been very focused on the guides, and that solves a lot of problems doing that, and you need that to be the case. But now that you're thinking about brand expansion, marketing, how are you thinking about it for Guidesly?

Yeah, so first we gotta name it. We have to come up with what is the name of our brand? How do we want to? How do we want to describe ourselves? What are the? What are the? What are the the little things, the logos, the colors? So there's a SaaS brand, which we just called ourselves Guides Lead Pro on the SaaS side. We we don't have a website for it. We don't have any real content. So now we're launching a website that will all go live in the next month, and that'll represent okay to a guide. This is who we are. This is everything that you need to know because we've— like a lot of startups, we want to be top secret. We don't care that we're getting inbound. Fishing guides aren't coming inbound. So in the origin state, we just didn't feel it was necessary. And I'm a big fan of don't waste a single dollar on brand until you raise your Series A because you'll probably pivot 4 times and everything you invested in was just wasted money. Don't hire marketing people. Don't waste any money. Don't do any of of it. So we didn't. And that can be right, that can be wrong, depends on the company. I shouldn't say it loud.

No, but I love you saying that because everyone has a different opinion, right? And that's the best part about it. Depending on your industry, your company, your situation could be way different. Because you see startups now, like some people do invest heavily in marketing immediately, like a fancy launch video, which can work depending on the industry you're in.

It absolutely can. I mean, you see these companies now that go from nothing to Hundreds of millions overnight. It's, it's amazing. And probably I'm a little old-fashioned that way, you know. Oh, I don't have any social brand, you know. It's like our media company just yells at me every time we get together. But so I accept that my way of thinking may be old school.

Well, I mean, hey David, it's worked so far. Yeah, I think you've done okay. Did you think about doing that in-house or hiring outside of the company to be able to—

I thought about both, but, um, when Yeti came on board, they— we were going over Roy's origin story. Uh, Roy's the founder of Yeti, and Roy goes, well, have you met this guy yet? Has anyone told you about this guy? I'm like, no. He's like, well, if you want to know the true— one of the key components of the growth story of Yeti, that's the guy. So I immediately get off the phone and call him, and now that's our guy building our consumer brand. Love that.

Good to have those investors that are value-add.

Yeah, that's— I, I called him immediately after a couple of discussions. I'm like, oh my God, this guy has built all of the key brands in fishing and hunting. It's like, okay, that's, that's great. So we're really happy with that. So that's going to start next month. Um, the SAS brand is going to launch, uh, first week of August. So we'll start to have inbound. We've got our eat what we hunt down to a science, but there's nothing as, as we get out of fishing and hunting and into wider, there'll be much more inbound. And AI is changing everything. Even fishing guides are looking for AI solutions. So the one problem that we always had is we didn't have people looking for us because guides aren't looking for solutions for what they just don't. You have to call them to even get on their radar. But now they're all looking for AI and we have the best AI solution. So we're going to build our inbound around our what we call Jack AI.

Tell me more about that. Yeah. What's the plan with Jack AI? What does that do?

So Jack AI is the first kind of integrated AI solution. So our guides are really good at fishing, right? They take pictures. They don't do the things that they have to do. They don't update their websites. They don't put the picture. They don't even send the pictures to the customer. Number one complaint from customers: Guy didn't send me the pictures. They don't do the social media posts. They don't do the Google Business Profile. So we take those pictures. We run them through AI. We say, okay, what what fish is this? How big is this fish? How much does this fish weigh? What's the weather? You know all the peripheral information, and we build a big fishing report. Then we take all those images. We put them to their website. We post to all six of their social medias. Oh my God, you gotta go fishing. Then we post to Google Business Profile. Then we send it to the customer, a highlight video, kind of like a a Splash Mountain hero picture. Then we go twice a month and we take all of the best of those, and then we send CRM to all your past customers. So now we've got a full CRM AI solution, and the guy didn't do a damn. Thing.

Not one.

Perfectly automated AI solving all of the problems. We have maybe 1 or 2 guides that even sends an email to their past customers. And the crazy thing is all of the best guides, we call them legends. All of the legends, more than half of their business is book of business, repeat business. But they have never called or communicate with any of those customers. You got to do work to follow our guides.

That's so crazy.

It is crazy. So we're thinking, wow, that's gonna— matter of fact, we just ran our first test the last couple days of our CRM. It just came out. The Jack AI came out a few months ago and is fully live now. And the CRM component, the emailing to former customers, just went live Monday. And, uh, the first open rates and click-through rates are looking Very, very promising. So I'm sure these customers are gonna love hearing from them.

Well, I mean, of course, like, wait, you actually contacted me finally? I can see my images.

I mean, it's crazy.

That's amazing. What has the reaction been so far? What are people saying? What are the customers saying? Like, tell me more.

So the customers love it. One of the more common feedback we get from our guides, and this is when they really start to love us, is when they take a tech person out. And the person who's been repeat, hey, I don't know who you partner with or what, but wow, you have really upped your game. You've really—I mean—the communication, the technology. Wow, it's really impressive. And the guys are all, yeah, you know, I'm really doubling down on all that. I'm like, yeah, you're doubling down all right. You chose wisely.

Well, that's like. A product that is very well done, it just seems like magic on the front end to the customer on the front. It just seems like magic, right? That's right. Obviously in the back end, they don't know what's happening, but if it's a really good thing, like it just seems like magic. The products I use now that are AI, they're like, like Granola seems like magic. Whisper Flow seems like magic. There's these OpenAI sometimes just seems like, seems like magic. I just type some stuff in and just knows all these things. Like it is crazy. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's crazy.

Yeah.

How, how are you, how did you implement that? Like tangibly interested In terms of like the team, like who's going to handle that? Would you have to hire for that? Like, because this is like a big thing to kind of take that next step in terms of integrating AI. I'm curious about that for you.

Yeah, so we— it's a funny story. So we were talking some talk as we were starting our investment thesis, and I was talking to an investor who I'll leave nameless right now, and I know the managing director, and he He said, you know, why don't you talk to our AI partner? I'm going to tell him to treat you like family. And because you're way too small for us and we don't do anything less than 20, but you're going to get 2 hours. He's going to tell you and you're going to know. And he listens to the pitch and he goes, what is this? You know, he went through 5 things. I said, like, I didn't even know what 3 of those things were, never mind what the numbers were. I was like, holy macaroni. He goes, you don't know shit. You are what we would call a follower, and you think like you're an AI, you're moving to AI, but this is not what it is. And so he went through a whole, here's what I would do. And, you know, he didn't know phishing, so here's what he would do was not— but his slap in the face, I stopped all work for a week. I read everything I could read about AI. I went all the way back to the research reports and I was like, okay, we fired our AI person immediately. I was like, everything you just said was wrong. Yeah, I just got slapped in the head. I can't, you know. So now we hired a team in Buffalo. So we went and got master's and PhDs here in Buffalo because we have an office in India. We have a great recruiting in the local colleges, especially especially for anybody who's over here from India. It's like they've got this home base of safety. So we really out-recruit, we out-punch our weight. So we got some great, great employees. And we just went from the beginning. We said, okay, what's the use case we want? Can we build this tech? And then Amazon leaned in and said, I'll give you a team to help you do this. And then once we got that team going, that grew, you know, next thing you know, before you know it, it's a team of 12. We've got our team of four. We got a team of four in India, and now we got twenty people building this solution, and it started to take off. And yeah, so that was the the splash in the the splash of water on the face moment where I realized okay, we think we have something, but we don't. And then we retriggered it, and now that that was when we and then from that point forward when we explained it, everyone was like wow. That's possibly the best use case I've seen yet.

See, that's the part I'm always curious about, 'cause you see, and I casually read a bunch of stuff about AI as well, and like I see different companies using it and it's like that part I'm always curious about, like how much do they really dive in? What's that look like to implement? Because it's like, oh yeah, we're gonna add AI to our company or something, but it's like, what does that mean? Like you mentioned a team of 20 across different things and like that's a pretty big commitment to it versus some, maybe people have like a couple of Vibe coders. Like, that's not doing it. That's not implementing the right thing.

No. And once we started to learn, we started to realize, okay, we need, we need to separate all of these functions so that this invention team can do it. And now we've even trademarked all the terms, we've patented all of our AI solutions. We've really gone all in because we think that this is— we're gonna, we're gonna launch Jack AI as a standalone product for the industry. Industry. So we think, who's— who isn't going to want— we have the only SLM lexicon designed and solving speaking fishing. The LLMs suck at it because it's just too generalistic a term. They, they're terrible. So you really can't get anywhere close to the numbers. So we've got this. Who isn't going to want— you're in a whitewater rafting company, who's not going to want to just take pictures, slide them into a solution, and now you've got All of your daily posts, all of your communication, all your website updates, and your CRM already covered from just some pictures while you're out. Seems like a no-brainer. Pretty wild. Yeah.

Yeah. No-brainer for sure. Yeah. And there's no— it's like it's only progressing more and more in terms of capabilities and technology as well.

So who knows what else it could do for you. Yeah. Jackpot's about to come out. Ooh, so exciting.

Okay. What— as we, as we kind of wrap it up, I'm just One thing I'm curious about, because you mentioned at the beginning of the interview, you said this is probably the last company. Knock on wood, it's your last company, because who knows? You never know. Things happen. But what does leaving a legacy for you in terms of this company mean? What would you be— I guess, what would you be happy with or content with, with Guidesly? Where do you want this to get to?

I want it to be a Yeti-type outcome. I want it to be left behind where people say, wow, This company made a difference. Made a difference. Like when I go meet with a guy, when we're filming and we're getting guy testimonials and they're saying, I cannot tell you how big a difference Guidesly has made in my life. Like I'm emotional every time I hear that. That's what I want my legacy to be. It's not about me or, oh my God, we had a— this is not gonna sell to— wait a minute, I won't say that. My investors might hear this. Having the right outcome is important. That Guidesly persists and exists 20 years from now, and when I go fishing, I'll know that a guy that uses the platform is the best guide. He's got the best tech. He's committed to his craft, and customers using that are just going to have a seamless experience. And that's what I want. I want it, I want it to change the industry. I'd like to, you know, grow and build this mega outdoor company and be the number one company in the Outdoor Rec, but you know, I'll leave that for another day. But that's what legacy means to me. Something that I left behind that's important and something that's important to me.

These type of companies, uh, obviously a lot of hard work to make this happen. These are my favorite companies, uh, because it just seems like so aligned with people's— and it's their life's work. And that to me is like the most interesting thing ever. David, thank you so much for the time today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Justin.