Cody Barbo - Co-Founder & CEO of Trust & Will

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles Founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

Startups get the party. Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. Thanks to our friends at Cox Business for being an instrumental resource to our startup and tech community here in San Diego. As a partner in San Diego Startup Week, quick pitch and top tech awards, Cox Business has helped our ecosystem grow into the community it is today.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm really excited to be here in Nest. Co working, recording our pod. Got a co host today, Ashok Kamal.

Joining us on the mic, hanging out in the neighborhood. Thanks to be back.

Thanks for stopping by and really excited to have Cody Barbo, CEO, co founder of Trust and will here in the house. Welcome, Cody.

Hey, thanks for having me.

How about that intro song?

That was pretty hype. That was hype. I was just bouncing, vibing. I was like, can I get that track? Gotta pump that.

If you know Cody like we do, he's a rap guy.

Oh yeah, yeah.

We had to have our own San Diego hip hop.

His endorsement means something.

Yeah, definitely.

Big hip hop fan. My top playlist on Spotify this year was all hip hop.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Well, this year I've already ruined my Spotify Playlist because it'll be that opening song over and over and over again.

Is it on Spotify?

It will be tomorrow.

Good, Perfect.

Well, anyway, thanks for being here. We really want to talk about a little bit about your background, but like hear what's going on. Trust and will. Because there's a lot of excitement going forward.

Yes.

So let's dive back a little bit. You grew up in Southern California?

Yeah, I grew up in Huntington beach. So for me, despite being tall and short and, well, tall and short haired, I was short and long haired growing up as a surfer. It's hard for people to believe, but like a lot of my photos from middle school and high school, I looked very different than I do today.

Okay. Yeah, but you grew up into a strapping young Aztec. San Diego State. Shout out.

Die hard. Aztec basketball team's been killing it.

We don't know when this will air, so we can't necessarily say, but they're undefeated right now.

Still undefeated.

Yeah.

15 0.

Yep.

Yeah.

Hopefully when this airs, they still are.

I hope so too.

But you had a really active and engaged undergrad experience. You weren't just a student, you were the president.

Yeah, I was self described, shy, quieter kid going into college. But I wanted to break out of that shell. And I naturally gravitated towards a lot of leadership roles in oper opportunities. But the one that I'm definitely most proud of is student body president at San Diego State, which is a pretty unique role. And currently every year you have a CEO along with four other executives that serve as C levels to a $30 million nonprofit umbrella organization to the university, 80 full time employees, thousand part time. You have seven on and off campus facilities, including $100 million student union that they're managing. And to be 21 years old and to have that level of exposure, it kind of rewires your brain in the best of ways. So I'm really happy and grateful that I had that opportunity.

Did someone nudge you to do that or what was the thinking behind that?

I think twofold. One, I had great student mentors. So students that were older than me, that were in leadership roles that I was inspired by, that I kind of naturally wanted to follow in their footsteps. But I also had my own frustration as a student that people could go four or five years at a school like SDSU and not take advantage of any opportunity to get involved, whether it was Greek life, student government, even just a job on campus. And knowing how much that opened up my network and my mind and possibilities, it's almost just It's a discovery of self by taking on those roles. And I felt that it was just a way for me to kind of become my true self versus who I was.

Yeah, really exciting. So what else were going through your head being student body? Like, did you think this is going to elevate me or bring me certain skill sets for blank in the future?

Yeah, public speaking. I guess I'll take a step back. Even before I was elected student body president, there was a campaigning process. There was four other people that were running. It was incredibly competitive and basically going out and pitching yourself and your vision for the role as president and for my counterpart as VP on what we wanted to achieve that year. So there's a lot of parallels I can draw to startup life. But what was unique about it is that you're going and pitching every type of student organization, from Aztecs for Israel to Aztecs for Palestine, from Democratic student organizations to Republican student organizations, from fraternities to sororities and everything in between. And you almost have to adjust the pitch. You have to be adaptable and still being true to yourself, still pitching yourself and the vision that you have for the role, but adjusting the conversation to the audience that you're catering to. And that's the same parallel that I can draw as an entrepreneur, is that you're sometimes still pitching your company, but pitching to an investor versus a customer are two very different things. Pitching to a potential partner versus pitching to who you're going to choose to bank or do your corporate counsel with are very different things. So I think that over the last 10 years since that role, I've just basically kind of continued to build on that foundation, which is why I was very happy that I got to experience it.

And you weren't just sharpening your sword through student government, but you were quite literally a student entrepreneur from what I recall. And I've been following Cody for years, since I moved to San Diego. The prior episode of this podcast, I talked about my story, but when I got here, I got involved with SSDSU and the zip launchpad. And I remember one of my favorite stories, one of the other administrators telling me that you used to hand out flyers in front of the computer science classes looking for coders and people to help you get an app off the ground. And you can talk a little bit about that app. I don't think it necessarily made it way outside of school, but that experience in building a company was formulated while you were in school, right?

Oh, man, that's what a fun memory to bring up. So very first startup was called Niche. Niche, and I'll tell a little story about the importance of naming and finding the domain and social handles to your company. But the first app was Niche. Think Pokemon. Go for social content. You go to a place to unlock the content, the photos, the videos, whether it was your favorite bar or a music festival like Coachella, or just even your house, and you throw fun house parties. I was 21 at the time, so clearly my mind was in different places than it is now. But the concept was unique in the sense that at the time, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter were the only social networks. Snapchat had just come onto the scene as. What was it called before? It was. I'm blanking on the name, but Snapchat, I think, was Snapchat's original name. And just looking at the landscape and knowing that there was an opportunity to, instead of limiting the time of content, to limit the location of content, we. Which is why it was such a cool opportunity to pursue. But, yeah, one of the things that we did, my co founder, Ethan and I was stood outside of the engineering classrooms for mobile app development and literally hand out flyers to try and recruit people. And we ended up getting two engineers that were great. They're super nice, but they weren't that skilled or proficient.

There's a hack for you if you think you can't find a technical co founder. Get into the local university, go offline.

Go offline. Yeah, it works.

But I think that spirit of, like we said in the song, SD's Full of Hustlers, that's the epitome of an SD hustler. You personally were not necessarily a developer by training, but you're a product person and you know how to recruit people and build people and evangelize your vision. And you were doing that even when you were thinking about parties and festivals.

Yeah, it was fun. I mean, we knew we needed to get something done and get something in development. So to stand outside the engineering classrooms and hand out flyers, it actually worked. And we had the startup logo. Like, we got the One99 Designs logo for super cheap, and we're like, oh, we got a cool logo. We got two confident guys on the team. We need some engineers to build. Kind of worked. It was good.

That's awesome. Where did Niche end up?

So that's the fun story. Naming trademarks, domains. So there's another company called Niche spelled the exact same. They had niche.com, and Twitter bought them for like $30 million in 2013ish. I want to say 2012, just for the domain. I think so. But it was like an influencer marketing platform, something along those lines. Before influencers were what they are known as today. And it was so funny because my inbox exploded. Exploded. Email inbox, LinkedIn inbox. And I was like, this is the most random day of my life. What is happening? And that's when I figured out that there was another startup that got acquiring. Just for the listeners. We got a dog in the background.

Shout out to Scooter in here.

My dog, young Scooter, fourth co founder, the fourth co founder, the intern. So yeah, Niche got acquired by Twitter. We tried to pivot into some other names and domains and that's when things started to fizzle out where we're like, there's not a business model here. There's not a lot of interest from investors or they couldn't understand it. It was a little too forward thinking, pitching a bunch of 40 to 60 year olds on a social media app that was geared towards 18 to 24 year olds. And that's really what it came down to. So shut up shop on Niche. It was a good learning experience, but it led me to industry, my next startup, which we had some success with, which is great.

Yeah. So when was that? When did you start up industry?

So started like kind of working on it in 2013. I was working at Seasons 52, some kind of fine dining restaurant, just to make some money because we hadn't raised any at Niche and I obviously wasn't paying myself and I knew that I needed to bring some income in. So I was working in this nice restaurant and I was just so surprised that even a big restaurant Group like Darden, 200,000 employees across the country, across brands like Olive garden, Red Lobster, Seasons 52, Eddie V's Capital Grill, weren't using anything but Craigslist or their legacy internal recruiting software. They weren't using LinkedIn. And I'd seen a couple vertical networks doing professional Network like a LinkedIn for the military, for farming, for medical, that had raised a lot of venture dollars, had built a really strong community and that was the inspiration. Could this work for service and hospitality, an industry that employs 1 in 10 working Americans who don't use LinkedIn, who stick to paper resumes and Craigslist, but yet have such a visual storytelling approach to how they communicate their skill set. Chefs show their food, bartenders, their drink, front of house, through their hospitality. We wanted to capture that through photos and videos added to the resume. And that's what kind of kickstarted the journey on industry in 2013 into 2014.

So a niche LinkedIn is what you were building.

Got it. Okay. They all connect. They all connect.

I mean let's talk through a little bit of that story. Built it with co founder, raised some money for it.

About two and a half million.

Yep. How long did it take to actually.

From start to raise your first money in was 50k from a family friend investor. That was about six to nine months. Because we had strong conviction because our co founders, we had all had some experience in hospitality and the family friend investor had worked in hospitality. So it was like emotional connection. Like one in three Americans has worked in a restaurant or bar at some point in their lives. Mostly when they're in high school, college or right after. And then from the 50k, we built a very band aided beta off two developers, got off of like fiverr. One developer, one designer, very junior. Before these awesome coding bootcamps existed and we built something, it was like a, like a duct tape airplane. Like it kind of worked, but not that really well. And we went down, walked, just like the hustling of handling out the cards on campus. We went walked up and down Gas Lamp in Little Italy and we're like talking to every restaurant and bar owner. It's like, please try our product. We're startup entrepreneurs, we just come out of school and we'd love for you to try this and see if it's a good fit. Better than Craigslist was kind of our mantra at the time. If it's better than Craigslist, we have something here. And for a lot of the bugs that people ran into, they were very forgiving. But in some cases we actually were able to deliver great candidates that got hired that those restaurants and bars were very happy with. And they said, hey, like can you improve this or can you do this a little bit differently? So we started taking in all this feedback and actually making the product better. And we're like, hey, we should go raise a little bit more money. Went and pitched some angel investors, one local, one up in the Bay area, one in the east coast. And then we raised a quarter million which. A quarter million when you're 24 at the time, that's a lot of money. And we recruited our CTO.

Left season's 52.

Left season's 52. I'm gonna pay myself a little bit cover rent, but I feel like you.

Were a full time pitch competition winner. I feel like that was like the role for us.

That was the other part. We won a lot of pitch Competitions doing that.

That's a strategy for raising some early money.

Yeah, well, it was interesting cause sometimes pitch competitions like Quick Pitch is great. Cause it's cash, it's super helpful. But some of these pitch competitions, one we won, I'll leave the name out, but it was $100,000 prize. We got first place. We were blown away. Like I got one of those big, big checks like quick pitch for 100 grand on it. But it was $100,000 investment on terrible terms, like horrible terms. Lower than what we had raised the 250 on and required us to relocate to another country for three months. And it was just like really weird. It wasn't, it wasn't for us good fit at the time, but optics, it showed a lot to the network and that's what gave us a little bit more visibility in the venture community. Because the pitch event was in San Fr. Were real VCs up in the audience that day looking at Food tech, which is the kind of focus of that event. And that's what led to conversations that over the course of the next year led to US raising a 2.3 roughly million dollar seed round.

Okay, awesome. Let's jump ahead a little bit to the eventual. And I can relate to this too, the fallen out breakup with the co founder, which I've had as well with.

My first startup, which yeah, I mean it's something that I'm comfortable talking about now. So company was going great. We raised our seed round in October of 16. Over the next six months we really improved our product. We started growing new markets. We really understood our unit economics to launch a market. So we were going out and traveling to Chicago and Portland and Seattle. It was such an easy product to sell. You go into any restaurant or bar, talk to the bartender, the hiring manager. This is a constant problem that they're facing. They'll try anything. So it's a really fun business to go out and sell. Plus we got to meet some amazing people, try incredible food, some good drinks. What kind of twofold answer? So I'll go to the hard part first. June 15, 2017. Walk into the office. I knew our investors were coming to town. I thought it was to review finances. Came in that morning, did a sales call, popped in the boardroom wasn't to review finances. I was handed a stack of papers, termination papers. Last day with the company super confused, blindsided, caught off guard. It was very quiet and I basically just kind of wanted to know why this was happening. Why hadn't this come up in the previous three months? From our last board meeting through today, why couldn't we transition someone else into the role? Why couldn't we have spent time recruiting someone from the outside to the role? Like the failure on leadership as much as it is on you as a CEO and holding that responsibility, it falls just as much back on the board into not communicating that feedback that there's areas of weakness or opportunity that the founder is experiencing. Why are we not helping he or she? And that's something that didn't happen.

See, we work still happens today.

Exactly. So it sucked. 30 minutes went by. I kind of parted ways in the sense that I was like, hey, I think I should get an attorney. Which I did. And there was some stuff that we worked on to get closure. But about a month later, I announced it to my network and it was liberating, but also really scary because I love that company. My entire identity was attached to that company for three and a half years, as you guys know. And to not have that anymore, it hurt.

Yeah.

But there's light on the dark side of the tunnel. I mean, basically led to some amazing job opportunities up in Seattle, up in Oregon, here in San Diego. And I think I really just wanted to take some time for myself. I was a couple months out from getting married, which is the tie in to trust and will. And just for quick context, the company tried to launch an ico. They rode the cryptocurrency craze in kind of the tail end of 2017. The crypto market bubbled and crashed. The ICO never launched, and they fell back to the core business, which is a great business as it is today. And as much as I don't talk to the founders of the business, I still have equity position in the company, so I want them to do well.

Yeah.

And in two years later, they're still operating, so I wish them well. But in the two months from departure to starting to talk about what was next, it was just so weird that. Sit down with my now co founder, Daniel Goldstein, who was a friend at the time. We started at coffee shop at over in Liberty Station somewhere, talking about digital assets, talking about crypto. And literally Daniel's first thing was like, yeah, you know, like, I've done pretty well in crypto. Like, I have no, no idea what would happen if I got hit by a bus, let alone if my family would know what to do with my coinbase or my hard, hard wallet storage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's been so long since I've cared about crypto, but it was, it led to this discussion on digital assets. What happens to your Facebook, your Gmail, your photos? How does your family get access to these important accounts? And that led to just this two month deep dive into what does the trust in the States market look like? It's $180 billion a year revenue industry with almost 200 million people that have not even touched these documents or thought to touch these documents. Over half the adult population. Who's servicing them the way that a TurboTax services 40 million Americans. And it was about the same time that I sat down with both of you and kind of talk to you about what this next chapter could look like. So I'll pause.

No, I completely remember that we were at the mission having breakfast. I think I had actually had either day before or day after, had lunch with Daniel, ghostbusting. And we were talking crypto then because this was like summer of crypto 2017.

It was a fun time.

Yeah, it was great. And him and I were nerding out hard. But he's also like, I'm thinking about this idea, you know, and I think I'm going to try to get Cody to do it too.

Yeah, Timing was perfect. And Daniel was one a handful. I mean, like, you were kind of in that bucket too. There's like a handful of people in town that if they're a free agent and you're a free agent and there's even some spark in a conversation around pursuing something that it's just, it's right. And Daniel was that person so super happy that that kicked off this wild pursuit.

I vividly remember the conversation too. It was at Lofty's in Petros.

Yep.

And you were kind of in the just thick of the, you know, scenario that you just described and, you know, sharing the idea. And it's one of those things that made sense immediately when someone, you know, told it to me. Especially that someone being Cody, who, you know, can get a product off the ground sort of by any means necessary. And I remember at the time at tca, we were working on launching Quick Pitch, our annual pitch competition. And you had been in Quick Pitch the prior year with industry. In fact, you were one of the winners of Quick Pitch. And we were getting ready to set the new application and thought, well, maybe toss your name in the hat. You didn't even have a logo at the time.

You moved so fast to get.

You're wearing a Trust and Will shirt right now with the logo, I think at least a version of that logo you mocked up just to drop in your Quick Pitch. Application.

Yeah.

So we had. So, so funny. Our designer from industry, she actually designed the first trustimal logo. So that's the logo that we had ready to go that we put into the slide deck for the Quick Pitch. And we just fast tracked as much as we could to get the website up and running and to start collecting those beta signups by the time that.

We'Re on st. And then fast forward a few months from this initial coffee conversation. You were again one of the winners at Quick Pitch, the only person who's a multi year winner of Quick Pitch. And then fast forward to what I'm sure we'll talk about now. Things have just been a rocket ship.

It's been fun.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible to watch that.

So fall 2017, quick pitch, October of 17. It was a forcing function because we, I think we had to make the checkout to Daniel so we could pair developer. And we had techstars approach us, we had several angel investors in town approach us. And it literally was the forcing function to incorporate, start collecting checks, start, really start to ramp up development. And techstars happened as well, which was amazing.

Yeah.

So that was January 2018 timeframe for Techstars.

Yeah. Two years ago.

That's probably right around the time I invested, I think too. Is that's the time?

Yeah, yeah.

I would have gotten sooner if I could.

As soon as you could.

Yeah.

And techstars obviously was like transformational for years.

Yeah, it was super unique. So we went through the techstars Anywhere program run by Ryan Cooter, another local guy, which is fantastic. But the program itself is designed to allow startups that are located anywhere around the world. Although the first couple batches have been North American startups, to take advantage of the techstars program and success without having to relocate. And for a lot of founders that are married or married with kids or are just really deeply ingrained into their local community that aren't in the Bay Area or New York City or Boston. It gave a tremendous opportunity for you to go through this world class program, accelerator program without all the relocation logistics. And for me personally, but also for our team, one, it was a huge credibility booster for us to be as early stage as we were. But it took everything that I had learned with industry and it just elevated it by a couple notches. Really honed in on my fundraising tactics, really honed in on my BD partnership pursuits and just understanding how to take advantage of a network, being vulnerable, being okay with exposing your weaknesses to new team members, new mentors. And that's why techstars was absolutely incredible and why we're still involved today, two years later.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I know your ethos is mentorship, so I'm sure you're giving back in many more ways than you think. But I think immediately you get part of that techstars network, and that's for life, it seems like.

Which is the best part. I mean, it really. Their whole mantra is give first, and which is kind of already was ingrained in my mind. I love. I love giving. I don't have the money to give back because I haven't had an exit. But I mean, like, in the smaller capacity, giving back time and wisdom is I find really fulfilling, especially with entrepreneurs, regardless of age, industry, type of business, because it's basically, how do I help someone not make the mistakes that I did, or how do I help someone really be very tactical in certain things that are very hard to do? Fundraising is not a milestone to celebrate per se, because it's like you have to then go pursue revenue goals, product goals, partnership goals. There's a lot to do after the round is closed. But fundraising still, in my mind, is one of the single hardest things founders will have to do. Without a doubt. It's so difficult to do. And despite how much capital and how many seed funds and pre seed funds and angel investors there are, having a tactical approach to being 100% ready to fundraise before you even start the process really makes it go a long way. And that's something that I really try and help entrepreneurs understand.

Yeah.

So two years. Wow. Since that. Time flies, take us through some iterations. I mean, I know you've. At first, it was a, you know, last will and trust. You've added quite a few products as well as iterated that product itself, too.

Yeah.

So the first product we brought to market when we finished techstars was a last will and testament. Most people know what a will is through family or pop culture, it's this document you catalog, who looks at your kids, who get your stuff. It's pretty straightforward because you've either experienced it or you've seen it in a movie. Like grandma's leaving you out of the will, or Dad's leaving you out of the will. And for us, it was a quick product to get to market. But the complexities of state planning are state by state. So we just launched with California and Texas to start. So our whole goal for 2018 was how do we get our will product live nationwide, which is what we invested the entire year doing. But we're called trust and will trust. A little more complex, a little more handholding throughout the process. We knew that we wanted to bring that product to market next. But there was something that was happening and it was really helpful for us to understand this. And it was the fact that most people are setting up or thinking about a will or trust because they're a parent. You have kids, you want to appoint guardians for your children. So in case that one thing, something happens to you, you have someone that can look after them instead of the courts deciding who. And we worked very thankfully with one of our angel investors, Melanie Spiegelman, who's a member of TCA, who spent 10 years on the TurboTax team. And she would come in monthly for product strategy sessions with us. And she was one, one meeting in particular I'll never forget. She goes, hey, a lot of my friends are becoming grandparents for the first time. They would love to buy this for their grandkids, their grandson or granddaughter, but there's like all this extra stuff you have to do when really they just want to protect the kid. And I was like, I'll never forget. I was like, why don't we just launch a product called Guardian that takes everything else out. Who looks after your home and money and investments instead of caring about if you're going to get buried or cremated, let's just focus on the one thing that matters, who looks after your kid. So when we launched our trust In January of 2019, we launched Guardian, which for us is our top of funnel product. It's 50 bucks instead of the 129 for the will or the $500 for the trust. And it's really a great starting spot for people to get their foot in the door and to check off that box of peace of mind if they're a parent.

And you launched around some pretty cool content marketing as well.

Yeah, we've done some really fun commercial spots. The one that we did earlier in 2019 was called do it for Me. It's this super cute little kid. Her goldfish dies and it's spoiler alert, but it's not like a Netflix special. But her goldfish dies. And she asked mom and dad, hypothetically, what happens to me if you guys die. And we put her through four different scenarios of these crazy family member friends who are definitely not competent guardians, like her like Hell's angel aunt on a motorcycle. And like mom's friend Chelsea, who's like a little scandalous and inappropriate. And dad's friend Bill or dad's brother Bill, who dresses up as a cat. Kind of fun, a fun play on it, but that content kind of gave us a brand and personality when effectively we're selling death documents. So we wanted to create a fun approach to what we do every day.

So it's not surprising that you've gotten traction in the product because you're scratching your own itch and an itch that other people can relate to. And that's sort of going back in your story from niche when it was how to party better to industry to how to get a job easier to trust and will. How do you become a more responsible family person? That's always been your framework and it makes a lot of sense. But you've also overcome the Series A crunch. And that's a valley of death that a lot of startups, even if there's some demand for their product, can't get beyond. Because as you said, fundraising is still one of the hardest things to do. So can you talk a little bit about how you were able to get some real tier 1 VCs involved, how you made the connections with them and what that pitching process was like?

Yeah.

So for any entrepreneurs that are listening in, that are thinking about fundraising, I like to preface this with saying you don't have to fundraise. There's plenty of success stories where you've never raised an outside dollar and if you can do it that way, do it. It's fantastic. But if you are going to play the game of raising from angel investors and institutional investors, like, know that you're going to dilute yourself, but know that you have, if you run a proper process with great investors that have a track record, you have people that are going to champion you and support you every single step of the way. The whole approach with fundraising, especially at the Series A, is you're friend raising every single day. Every new person you come in contact with at a conference, over a call, through LinkedIn, through Twitter, which are the two best networks to connect with institutional investors. It's literally their job to take meetings and calls with entrepreneurs is building out that pipeline all the time. And you can be very clear with setting expectations like, hey, we're not fundraising now, like, really focused. Neil, I'd love to add you to our investor updates. I send out a monthly update with all of our core metrics. Would you be okay or open to being on that list almost across the board?

Yes.

Every angel investor and institutional will say yes to that. Now what you're doing with that is you're setting expectations that Every single month, you're incrementally improving the business. You're either increasing your growth, your revenues, you're launching new partnerships, you're hiring new team members. It's an opportunity to thank people that have helped you in your network. It's an opportunity to ask for help if you need it. And it's basically a track record of success. So by the time that you are ready to fundraise or starting to think about fundraising, there's your funnel. And if you know the right investor, who's the decision maker at the right fund that's at the right stage. If you're going out to raise a Series A, and you know a Series A fund is 100 million million to $400 million fund, you know the partner that's doing deals, in our case fintech, and you've had them on your updates for a year. The likelihood of them wanting to take a meeting when you're saying, hey, we're ready to come pitch you for our Series A, we'll be in New York. These dates would love to take time to sit down. Almost across the board, they'll say yes. We sent out 50 emails to tier one firms, all names you would know. Those 50 emails led to 40 partner meetings. Those 40 partner meetings, we traveled to New York, the Bay Area, Louisiana spent a full week doing remote calls for markets like Chicago, Texas, Seattle, kind of the ancillary markets because we didn't have that much money to go travel to 20 cities. But at least knowing that they also operate typically in a zoom like setting for those first initial calls. And then out of those 40 meetings, which all took place in relatively a three week period, you're getting everybody on the same timeline. And getting everybody on the same timeline is essential because over the next two to three months, which is how long it takes to fundraise, you have everyone on the same timeline. You're not bringing people in three months at the end that are the most excited, but you've already gotten one or two term sheets and then you have to go tell that person that what might be the perfect investor, Hey, I got two term sheets that it's really hard to pass on if you're getting the right offer from a good firm versus waiting another two months for that dream firm to come through. And it's just all about communication. You have to control the timeline. As a founder, every single week you have a check in. If you're not hearing back on those weekly check ins, they're probably not that interested. If you are hearing back, you've given access to your data room. You're digging deeper on unit economics, product strategy, partnerships. They want to due diligence in talking to your existing investors, existing customers. That's as clear of a sign as you can have in terms of getting towards the goal, which is getting that term sheet. And we were very fortunate to have a couple offers come through, all basically within a week, week and a half of each other. And the firm that we ended up going with, Link Ventures, was such an exciting opportunity. It's a new $100 million fund out of Boston. They're a team of data scientists and former operators. They have incubated companies for the last couple years. Some have gone public and we were so blown away when we went out to visit them that when we sat down with the team and we kind of talked through the two offers that we were seriously considering, it was overwhelming that Lync was the standout to us and not just the co founders made the decision, but the team. We made a decision collectively and even touch base with some of our institutional investors on why we felt it was a good fit. So they've been fantastic to us. We announced around December 17th and here we are at the start of the year, just like heads down, focus, just ready to shoot the rocket ship off with some new products and new hires and some fun stuff in the works.

Yeah.

What a way to end the year.

Yeah.

Certainly congratulations are in order. I'm always happy to see coast to coast connections, especially my home city, Boston going on. But just unpacking briefly some of the things you talked about. Cody, as far as fundraising goes, one, it's a cultivation process. It's that line, not dots that you're drawing between an entrepreneur and prospective investors. It's also a cadence in your communication. I know that you're religious about those investor updates because I get them. And finally you talked about getting timing right and controlling the rhythm of the communication to get to close. You can't do a fundraising process forever. You have to get it to a head. And that takes some careful sort of massaging.

Yeah.

And getting to the term sheet is the deal's not done until money's in the bank, all wires and documents are signed. So it's like it takes time to do all this stuff and it takes a lot of moving parts. I mean like shout out to my team for being ready to go. Anything that I needed that was high level, finance oriented. Daniel chimed in almost immediately. Anything I needed product related, it was our, the co founder Brian, or head of engineering Eric Any customer interviews that the investors wanted to conduct, it was to our head of member success. It's a team effort to get it not just to the term sheet, but from term sheet to close. And then simultaneously, you're communicating with all of your existing investors, your corporate counsel, your bank. All these moving parts have to come together all under a pretty strict timeline, to make the close as smooth as possible.

Well, it's a pretty big year just finishing wrapping a fundraise. But you are also about to become a dad.

Yes.

The other startup.

Yep. Yeah.

And we have a recent, recent new dad here. This should be the dad pod.

We could call it the dad pod.

Yep.

Dad's tacos and tech. Three of my favorite things. Eating tacos, talking about tech, and being a dad.

Being a dad.

I mean, a lot to be excited for in 2020. What. What do you. What does that feel like going forward here for the company and family?

It's on brand. I mean, like, we're literally marketing our product to parents. Like, 70% of our members have minor children at home. Super excited to be a dad. It was something they were, like, planning for, so it wasn't a surprise. But to be starting the year off with the fundraise gives me some personal financial security, which I'm happy about. But more importantly, we have a bunch of parents on the team and parents to be. And I love the fact that we can look at our company and journey through that lens, that we're not just a team of attorneys, a team of engineers. We're also a team of spouses and parents, and in the future, caregivers. Caregivers to our parents and grandparents. It's like, it is such a real and emotional experience that we're building our product around that it gives us a tremendous amount of confidence that 2020, as we bring new products and partnerships to market, will be just really tightly correlated to just being stoked to be a dad. So I'm pumped about that.

Yeah. And doing it in Little Italy, right where the office is.

Yeah, offices in Little Italy. We're right around the corner from Crack Shack Dangerous. Yeah, it's super. We go there, like, almost every week. It's. It's super good. But we got a great spot right in between India and Kettner on Laurel street. And there's 11 of us on the team right now. We're hiring for six roles, and that'll probably cap off the team, at least for the next six months. But really, really happy with the team that we have and the team that we're Recruiting for what kind of roles? Let's give a shout out.

Yeah.

Lead UI lead ux. We got a QA lead. We have a member success specialist, so anybody with a customer success background. We have a paid media manager to help us with our Google Ad spend and acquisition who will be working under our new head of marketing and then working alongside directly with me is a channel sales rep. We're going to be exploring the B2B side of our business, working into financial services, insurance and taxes and really looking for somebody who can help grow that channel with me. So we haven't announced the product publicly yet, but it's going to be pretty cool.

Okay, awesome.

Don't forget babysitter.

12Th babysitter.

Yeah.

Anyone that wants to watch my kid.

Trust me, I know.

Dog sitter.

Yeah.

Oh, last position. We are hiring for an office manager role, which sounds simpler than it actually is, but it really in my mind is an engagement manager in the sense that we have this incredible network between our team and we are looking for someone who really wants to take full advantage of working with the best investors in the world, the best partners, the best team and anybody that wants to help elevate our presence through that role. It's a lot more than just the title suggests.

That's awesome.

Yeah, that's a cool role.

And in fact, I think a lot of us are fans of Mark Suster and his blog. A guy who mega vc, us, San Diego, connections from ucsd. He wrote a blog once that sticks out to me of having an administrative leader person be one of your first hires when you raise that, that big venture round, an office manager, executive assistant, et cetera, all of the above.

I think of all the amazing connections that we have. I mean we're local so we're in the same community, but folks that are up in the Bay Area or in the East Coast. I've tried to get much back into the habit of doing handwritten letters, but to have handwritten letter ready to go but not have to take care of the actual delivery parts, addresses written out. I have a cadence for check in three to four times a year with that person through handwritten card, knowing their birthdays, anniversaries, stuff like that really matters. And as the network grows and as time becomes constrained with a growing team and a growing family, having someone who can help unlock that superpower like Mark's blog post, it would do us wonders.

Speaking of Little Italy crack shack, there's got to be. There's amazing food right around the corner there. Yeah, but this is the Tacos and tech pod. We got to know. What's your favorite taco spot?

Favorite taco spot. Man, I was so sad when a little Mexican spot down India street here, India beach, closed down. They finally demolished it. That little shack was the best. $3.67 breakfast burrito. Best in town. Best tacos right now. Kind of a surprise maybe to some in Old town is Tohona To Hona's, a mezcal bar and they actually have really great little street tacos and they're right next to the cemetery and I think they have the number of bodies in the cemetery as mezcal bottles. But it's a super cool little spot. Great tacos.

Okay, good to know. Cody, it's been awesome having you on the podcast. You're prolific at Twitter. Like some of us, we like to spend some time there when we're not together.

You can see his dog, Scooter. If you're wondering, you can get the.

Preview of the podcast rap song opener that went out last night.

Yep, exactly. What's your Twitter handle so people can find you?

First name, last name Odybarbo.

Awesome. Well, congratulations on a lot of success and a big 2020. Thanks so much for being on the pod.

Yeah, thank you guys. It was an honor.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast with Neil Patrick Bloom. Thanks again to Cox business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eealbloom as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos and tech pod on Twitter too.

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