Making Event Organizing Easier and Engaging Using the Right Platforms With Chris Carver and Josh Parolin of LENND and Classy Live

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, Tacos and 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, the 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 hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host Neal Bloom and I am thrilled to have you here on the Talkers and tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in every Tuesday and interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbrewedtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode, man. An episode that I have been waiting to do for a while. Got the co founders of lend on Josh and Chris. Guys, welcome on co founders of Fondi as well too. And Josh in his newest role with Fondi acquisition, the VP of engineering and general manager of Classy Live. Hey guys, welcome. Welcome to the pod.

What's up man? Good to. Good to see you. Good to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah, it has. We go back quite a few years. I think the actual first introduction between us was all in Evo. Nexus. Yeah, like 20, I don't know, 14.

13 sometime around then 15 or 101 West Broadway.

Yeah, exactly. You know, RIP Downtown Evo. That's for sure, man. It's been awesome to. To watch and kind of be a little bit. Have a little more than just an eye on what you guys have been building. You know, lucky enough to invest at a small amount. So thank you guys for having me part of that.

I will say you, you have been one of the best investors in opening up doors. I'll give you a shout out there. That's. It's especially early on. It was awesome, so I appreciate it.

Thanks, Chris. I didn't pay you to say that, so.

No, I know, I know.

But you guys have deep roots in the San Diego ecosystem, building multiple companies, nonprofits, like some movements. I want to get to know that and tell that story, but just from a high level. Chris, you want to give a quick one minute overview of what Lend is?

Sure. So Lend has evolved over the years from our days at evo, but essentially today it's an onboarding platform as a service for event organizers to streamline the onboarding process for any of their key constituents. So you can imagine if I have speakers at a major conference, usually I have to collect, you know, 10, 20 different pieces of information from each. So If I have 100 speakers, I have to collect a thousand to two thousand pieces of information. You can imagine what a nightmare that is. So Lens streamlines that process, whether it's a speaker, sponsor, exhibitor, artist, vendor, staff, crew, all of the above.

Awesome.

And, you know, I think we should do a woman overview. Also the same of Classy Live. Josh, you want to give that one?

Yeah, absolutely. So Classy Live, formerly known as Fondi, which we'll get into, is the go to solution for managing as a nonprofit your virtual events, hybrid events, and in person events. So really heavy focus on fundraising around your events. A full auction suite, for example, text to donate, and a number of other tools built in, integrates and sits on top of the core Classy platform. So whatever classy campaigns you create, you can easily have full event functionality around that. So obviously important in the environment we're in. And then kind of as in person events really start to come back.

Yeah, incredible piece of tool to help our nonprofits, which is so important now more than ever, especially in the backdrop we're in right now with what's going on in Europe, Eastern Europe and Ukraine. Like, how do you connect and, you know, do things remotely. Not to downplay that whatsoever, but let's go back to your roots because you guys are passion driven builders in that regard. And maybe, Josh, you should start with kind of your background.

Yeah, yeah. Well, my passion starts with moving from Missouri. No, you know, no bad love toward Missouri, but to California. So I applied to seven colleges in California. I was destined to be by the beach Went to San Diego State. I was there for a year. And so that's really what started my journey in San Diego. Got involved with a non profit called Invisible Children. This was back in 2005. Invisible Children was based out of San Diego, then in Spring Valley at the time. So started getting involved, got involved with the Global Night Commute, their first big event. And then ultimately during the summer of my freshman year, went to volunteer as one of their initial guinea pigs for their volunteer program in Uganda. And so I flew to Northern Uganda, you know, after my freshman, freshman year of college, and wound up spending the next two years there. So dropped out of college, moved to Uganda with Invisible Children, and started building databases and so databases, then a lightweight CRM to manage sponsored students and. And sponsorships to make sure schools weren't taking advantage of double sponsorships and double payments. So some of that work was used by different UN agencies over there. That's really kind of how kind of my journey in the nonprofit and tech space really developed. It was 19, 20, 21 during my time there. And then from there, my journey took me into politics. I worked on a number of different political campaigns from a technical perspective. Oversaw the voter database for the state of Missouri, which is interesting, you think about CRMs, but this was for voter data. And then ultimately boomeranged back to Invisible Children and oversaw the web development, most notably during Kony 2012, working with our amazing team at 1:50 and 50, which is a local agency, but also Invisible Children. And that's where I met Chris. So it's kind of my journey for how it all comes together on my end.

Yeah, man, we remember that KONY campaign. It was like life changing for a lot of people. Right. I mean, obviously, because you guys met over it, but just the way of building engagement and activism and I don't think many people knew it was happening, you know, here in San Diego, which.

Is kind of cool.

Absolutely.

Chris, I think you were at Invisible Children a little bit later. Right. Then, Josh, you met there. So you, you've got some background roots in another storied company in San Diego too.

Yeah, I got there in 2010. When did you get there, Josh?

It was 2005 and then came back kind of after the political stint in 2010. Yeah, yeah.

And I remember having this idea and I'll get into it in a little bit, but having this idea and be like, that guy knows his stuff. I need to buddy up with that kid. And yeah, so I guess my background, especially in San Diego, it's probably going to age me A little bit. But my background in tech really started back in 99 with the active network. So I spent 10 years there. My role there was essentially starting and building new businesses. So, you know, I started their camps business, helped start their nonprofit business, I helped start their education business. And you know, that was also my as my first introduction to the nonprofit world. So got a chance to build their fundraising platform at the time. And then in 2010 I went to Invisible Children, which is where I obviously met Josh. But I think the cool part of that, there's obviously so many stories that came out of that, but that's where I was really on the buyer side of tech. So when we started to look for a way to raise money online, you know, I already had some experience and a good idea of what we needed. And funny enough, I ended up going with this little ragtag startup out of San Diego who needed their first client. And that company was called Stay Classy. So it kind of came full circle over the past year and a half.

Yeah, another ragtag. But you say ragtag because a few reasons. And we've had Scott on the podcast a few times actually. Like started as just like a pub crawl. Right. And turned into a whole software stack, which is kind of cool that they all grew up in the roots here together. Yeah, you know, active. Let's not downplay like 10 years at active building businesses there that I think it eventually went public and everything and then got acquired as well too, so. And even bigger than what happened to the business is how many people who've spun out and have done things, started a next company. Like there is a strong active mafia that I think is pretty important. And I think we wrote like a 10 piece article on it actually for fresh brewed tech ones, trying to track down the little pockets of people who went on to the next thing.

Yeah, I actually think probably the most influential aspect, I mean there are so many. But how many not just entrepreneurs that came out of it, but like senior level executives that are now. I mean, you know, I can think of the CRO at Calendly and you just go down, down this list and it's pretty nuts.

Yeah, absolutely. So you guys met, you know, working at Invisible Children. When did the idea for Lens start creeping into your brains then?

Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about Invisible Children too. The large driver for activism behind Invisible Children was events.

Right.

We're putting on events across the world at one point, but really across North America. And so all of these different screenings of videos and that's really, what drove Invisible Children? The growth of it. And so, yeah, we met and then, you know, I think we had some very early ideas for. For what lend was. I think early on, it started as even this idea of lending each other your talents and maybe things in your garage. And then it evolved over time into events and the idea that you could, as a event creator and as event contributor, contribute your talents to help the events around you. And sort of really early marketplace concept, I think, was the MVP, Chris, like, of 2011 is what if that's like the actual starting point of it and then it evolves. You know, we. We did a stint in weddings. You know, we started out in weddings, and then we evolved, I think, into 5Ks and endurance from there and then from there. Chris, how did it.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. We. We started out with this concept of there's no LinkedIn for events. I mean, events are just super fragmented. And it was like we kept. We always had this mantra. It's like, if I needed a lighting guy in Wichita, Kansas, what am I going to do? And so we chose weddings. We thought, oh, this is a pretty niche space. We need to focus, and blah, blah, blah. And that had its own kind of issues and things of that nature. But we ended up landing in the festival world, the music festival space of all places. And that's where we spent another, you know, our first five or six real years in really streamlining the operations for many of these major events like Outside Lands and Life Is Beautiful and Governor's Ball and the New Orleans Jazz Festival. And it's actually, it's a cool industry to talk about, but it's one of the tougher segments of even the event world to. To talk about. So as we evolved over time and had the opportunity to move in and start doing work with the NFL and the PGA and the usga, it became a little bit more refreshing because. Just because it's more consolidated of an industry. And then as we'll talk about in a little bit, as we get into the conference space, it's even more professionalized in some degree. But it's been a journey, that's for sure.

Yeah, I think just to highlight that journey, I mean, we've talked to the biggest events in the world, from the Olympics to the World cup to, you know, everything we've seen, the craziest spreadsheets, you know, that you wouldn't even believe that some of the biggest events in the world are powered by. So it's been. It's all been an incredible journey.

The thing that always blew us away was, you know, in the corporate world you have these internal databases, you know, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, you know, these workflow tools and you have the biggest events in the world just running on spreadsheets, you know, still to this day. And it's like there's real reasons why, because 99% of the workforce is so fragmented and they start a day before and two days before. So there's no way you're going to train them up on, you know, a major platform like that. And so we always, we really landed on Pre Covid on the idea that we can truly be this kind of internal database for events of any size. And so that was once we started really catching on to that, you know, as we started to think about it, how do you onboard all of these people? That was a way to collect all of the data. And if we can streamline that, then you can really be the central point.

Of all of this.

Yeah, it sounds, I mean, kind of a. I wouldn't, I don't want to say typical, but a startup journey of especially going from SMB to enterprise to a certain regard as well too, from the festivals to the bigger events. In that regard, working with some, you know, bigger established companies. That doesn't mean that their needs are like you said, they're all still using spreadsheets. They're just a little bit more is on the line maybe and can use more of your tools. So take us through a little bit of just what was happening pre Covid because I think that's when you started to work already with some of the bigger brands and then started tries and pivot a little bit once Covid happened.

Well, it's interesting when you think about the tech space in Pre Covid and then Covid and then somewhat post Covid and you know this obviously, Neil, since I mean you're, you know, big part of what you do is events and meeting people and all that. But from our perspective, or at least from mine, the industry was Pre Covid super siloed by their specific markets. And as a result in the tech space, you know, tech supporting, that was also super siloed. So there were very few companies that worked across those segments. You know, you had C Van in the conference space and you had Eventbrite in ticketing and in certain areas and then you had Ticketmaster in certain areas and you could really go through. And then you had, in my experience at Active, we had to be this kind of software company for all of these different types of events. We ended up acquiring, I think it was like 32 different companies over the course of 12 years. And the reality is that, you know, the market and the money in the space for the last 25 years, the venture capital and private equity, they saw the money in ticketing and registration. Right? And that's where the money flew. You know, it just, it went there. And what they didn't realize and always blew my mind, and Josh and I would talk about this a lot, is that they would get caught up on where that money was at, but they would forget that or they didn't know that you had to create different systems to be able to support all those. So the TAM that I think they were being presented was just, you know, a little skewed in some regards, because how you manage a camp or how you manage 5K or how you manage a nonprofit, like a team in training, registration, or going to a concert or a festival, completely different. Right.

But like you said, like, all the money was just going into like the sales funnel of an event, which is just a tiny little piece of putting it the whole thing on.

Because everybody's like, oh, if we could just get, you know, 2% or 5% of that, of every transaction that happens in the space, then you know, it's a huge multi billion dollar business. But it's interesting, as you look back, you look how the industry formed, where you had Cvent in one place and you had Black Bot in another, you had Ticketmaster. And then it became really clear to me when Eventbrite started to break down. Eventbrite started to break down Pre Covid when they spent 200 million to acquire Ticketfly. And they tried to take this venue ticketing system and merge it into the event database and they probably lost another 200 million on the deal. So from our perspective, you know, pre event, Pre Covid, you had a lot of these people focus on these silos, and then you had these big companies that really create a lot of almost a monopolistic environment. Like, you know, you had the C band of the world that was the mainstay, and they had the lock on all. And so this was a big part of us saying, well, wait a minute, if you actually focus on the operations, the underlying layer, you can actually work across events because. Because the logistics and operations is pretty similar across the board. And from that perspective, we were trying to educate this market for like five or six or seven years or however. It was long, long it was. But yeah, it's been an interesting way to see where you went from Pre Covid to Covid and what happened in. During COVID it really, it just normalized everything. During COVID meaning no longer did you have these different types of events. Everybody was like, I need to just manage virtual, right? And from that standpoint, that's where I think it gave the market the opportunity to take a step back and say, wait a minute, let's reset and what's important, right? And reframe why events are important even. Or what you also saw during COVID is events became more integrated as a part of the marketing function. Whereas pre Covid, the event team in a company was kind of this redheaded stepchild that was often, you know, just kind of doing their thing. It was hard to actually figure out the attribution of people going to events, hard to figure out the roi. People knew it was important, but with COVID it kind of pulled it all in one place and said, oh, wait a minute, this is more of a marketing function than we ever treated it as. And so I also think what happened with COVID is that it kind of forced the old guard out of the way of thinking, right? And then the new guard, the, you know, folks that were really marketing background, digital background, it gave them an opportunity to experiment on how to do virtual the best or virtual in a good way. Right? And then the third thing I think that happened during COVID was that it completely flattened the competitive nature in the environment. I mean, the competitive barriers were gone, which is why There was like 500 different companies created during, during that time. And so I think what's interesting is what's happening now as we get back to in person. The complexity is starting to come back and sink back into it. And those 500 plus virtual first companies, they have a major challenge in front of them. You know, they have to figure out how to make the jump from virtual to back to in person. And so I think what you're, you're seeing is that many of them are starting to realize that we can't do it all ourselves. We have to actually have this platform first approach. We have to integrate with best of breed. And that in what Josh and I kind of talk about all the time, is how we end up now positioning lend as this platform as a service where if you're any of these players and you need a way to onboard all your speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, why would I create that when there's this badass technology out there that can streamline that for me and allow me to compete with some of the bigger guys that may have an older system so it's been an interesting journey from that regard and from just watching how tech has evolved in the event space.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting, too. I think if we go back and look at Lind in late 2019, and, you know, we were probably deep in planning for the 2020, like, festival season, live event season, and it was fascinating to sit there and each week just see a light go off. Right? Be like, oh, there's another one, there's another one. And we were waiting. It probably wasn't until March or April 20th when it. Or maybe a little bit earlier, Chris. But it was when it started to become very clear, okay, we're going to have a silent period here as the world figures itself out and take a step back. That's really kind of where Chris and I started talking and said, well, we have this period. There's no live events. We know what we know. And so our background was in nonprofits, obviously, like we talked about. And so it kind of gave us an opportunity for one, how can we scratch our own itch? Right? So we talked about what is a platform we would use for virtual events? And then two, how can we gear this toward helping nonprofits? And so out of that, we had a solution that solved for marketers and nonprofits. And it started out as lend for virtual events was see, you know, very clever naming. And then ultimately that morphed into something greater as we found product market fit within the nonprofit space. So that's really, you know, we took an aggressive channel sales strategy that Chris built, and we were in the door with every major NonProfit platform from CRM to fundraising software and kind of that what Chris just mentioned being that platform and that really focusing on integrations, like, we don't want to do everything, but we want to do virtual events for nonprofits really well. And so through that, we built integrations very quickly. We were in the door and had relationships with folks across the nonprofit sector. That's really what how Fondi came, I think Chris and I were talking about, okay, you know, for whatever reason, we wanted this to live as its own brand. We were getting some confusion with our core festival customer base and live event customer base didn't make sense. You know, two very different customer types. Nonprofits and marketing teams are not our core lens user. And so we split it out I overnight, we actually built a new brand new website, shout out to Squarespace logo builder, and we launched a new brand the next day. And so Chris and I both have roots in Italy through our own families. And Fondi roccolata. It's like, you know, you start searching for names and what can we do? So to raise funds in Italian. And ultimately that's where Fondi came from.

Yeah. So I'll give you my perspective because I think it's actually a little funnier, especially for folks who do the startup stuff. So, Josh. Exactly correct. You know, we had this experience in the nonprofit space. We were looking at what's happening in the event world on a day to day basis. But it was super interesting to us. I remember those early conversations saying, how come these nonprofits or these fundraising platforms are so slow to adopt what is happening right over here in. In the virtual event world? It's almost embarrassing. And you know what, we sat there, we started talking about it, and we started looking at some of the solutions that they were putting out, and it was pretty bad. And so we said, okay, if we do this, like Josh said, we're going to say super niche. We're going to just essentially focus on nonprofits. We said it has to be incredibly simply to use. Of course you would say that. Right. But we, to his point, we weren't going to rebuild the fundraising piece. We were just going to integrate, as he mentioned. And like he said, it had to be its own brand. So that was Thursday. That was a Thursday, I think. Right. See, this is the real story, Josh. So he sends me a slack on Monday of this really clean, simple website that highlighted the key things that we had just talked about. Literally this is four days later and it's focused on nonprofits. And at that point, for the first couple minutes, I'm thinking, damn, somebody else is doing it. So, you know, it's like that first when you have this idea and then you start looking and there's other people already doing it. And then he slacks me and said, hey, what do you think of the name? And I'm like, what do you mean? I don't. So I google it. You know, it. It means funds in Italian. I'm like, okay, that's cool. And then he's like, wait a minute, no way. It that he created. This is ours. And then I'm like, all right, we're in the game, let's do this. And so luckily, though, Lend had a lot of core pieces that we had preexist in the preexisting interface to really get it going fast. But that was the pivotal time where I don't remember when it was, there was another piece to this. And I'll get back to the story too, but there was another piece that we were about to close a 350k deal even during COVID for a large company that wanted a piece that we had talked about for three years building. And we knew that if we build it, maybe Covid will kind of go away and we'll have this by next December. Perfect timing for the market to, you know, come back. But, you know, we ended up saying no to the company and they were kind of bummed, but they also were dragging their feet too, a little bit. But the reality is, if we would have gone down that path, we would never have created Fondi and or had the resources to create Fondi. So it was also a bit of strategy of saying no to the wrong things.

That's hard to do.

Yes.

It's really hard to say no sometimes. There's a lot of power. A lot of power.

Insane. No. Yeah. And luckily we also had a pretty solid network in the nonprofit space. I mean, literally, I think we had our first beta customer in week one, because I just made a phone call to a guy that I knew would be interested and he was like, yep, I have an event in three weeks or whenever. It was Josh. And there Josh goes in the team. And, you know, survival of the fittest in that first three weeks. And then luckily we had our next event. So that we had this conversation. October 1st event, November, our next event, which really was, you know, the eye opening point was giving Tuesday. There was a guy who, he wanted to have his little ticker going across the screen and we're like, this is it, we're going for it. And then immediately, like two weeks later, we did a 12 hour bike race of team of teams of four, raising money over the course of 12 hours. And that was just another indicator. And then that's when.

Out of the uk too.

Yeah, out of the uk. And then that's when we said, you know what, let's start talking to these other fundraising platforms. And, you know, we had conversations, I think we had conversations with five and four were ready to go. They knew it. You know, it was funny. They all were like, well, we're thinking about building it. And they're like, we're like, no, I've been in your spot. You're not going to be able to build it fast enough. We can. And they're like, yep, you're right. And so it just so happened that Classy, you know, Scott and the team and Chris Himes over there were, were really starting to push it hard. And just for the fact that, you know, they were pushing it hard, we had a relationship with them. We kind of doubled down on the integration partnership first, and then it just. It made more sense for both companies to, you know, talk.

We'll talk through that a little bit further, but let's talk a little bit more.

Just.

I mean, you've given some scrappy stories, but you guys are scrappy. Like, during this time, especially proven it. Like, we've glossed over two other products I think you made during. Well, like managing, I think the PGAs, you know, press conferences and everything else too.

Well. That's what. So, so we did the media, the virtual media platform for the pga and it. It was a great success for them. And then the USGA started using. But that was the first tool we use this virtual media hub to be our first virtual event platform for Fondi. So, yeah, it, it was an interesting time, but you had to be like, we know nothing else.

We're just, you know, our mascot is the cockroach Neil.

So that's it.

We. We had T shirts. We. We know how to stay alive.

Absolutely. But also listen to your customer. Right? Like, you may have built something that was done. Like, you may have built the whole product from Thursday to Monday, but you didn't invest a year in that time frame. And you went and listened and dialed up and said, what do you guys think? Right. To and. And build and iterate. Kind of always that startup mentality.

That reminds me, I got to give Alexa Ray at San Diego Startup and. And you, Neil, a shout out because you guys and Alexa were a pivotal piece of all this too, and giving us feedback and using it and things of that nature. So absolutely. We. I think no matter how big lend gets or whatever, I think I'll always talk to customers because you just. You learn something every time.

Yeah.

I think to that point it's easy to forget, right? It's easy to forget. Like, things don't have to be so complicated. Stop and make a call and talk to people, people and get back to problem zero and the why behind it. And I think also that. And, you know, eight years in, when Fondi happened, it's. You have to have a short memory too, which we became very good at too, and just starting over and, you know, we go back to our early notes and it's just day one notes of talking to folks about the virtual product and getting their feedback, whether it's you or Alexa Ray and anyone else.

And you, Josh, like being on the line, like for that entire event, like being customer service, tech support, you know, like that part you can't Just build tech and walk away if people don't. And this is actually like the whole story of events in general.

Right.

With the story we were talking about before. You don't just buy a ticket and be like, well, they're already in. Like, you gotta delight them. Which kind of leads to why, you know, you're now the GM of this entire product, in a sense, almost a company that class C is taking over. So take us through kind of that evolution. So classy says, you know, we're seeing a need obviously for all of our customers for not just tech, but for really helping close the donation fundraising gap here. Why? For them to invest in this.

Yeah. So I think it was interesting how the transaction came about because there were other conversations too going on. But it was fascinating because we had this experience from the event world that the event world, it felt like, was two or three steps ahead of the fundraising world for events. And so we were getting this information from, you know, five or six different potential fundraising platform partners of what they are hearing in the market even. We did worked with Salesforce on getting their feedback and things of that nature. So when we went into these conversations, we kind of knew the business better than the platforms knew it themselves, because their events are. We're new to them. They've been processing donations and managing fundraising for a long time. So a lot of it was, you know, when the initial talks came about, it was just like, how do we view. How can. We gave them an idea of how we think this should be done. We actually even had a conversation with GoFundMe about how we think they should integrate virtual into their platform. They, you know, they didn't listen to us, I guess, but maybe they did with the acquisition. But I think we came in with a lot of knowledge, Josh, and we were getting constantly four, five, six times a day from all of these different folks where these bigger companies were just trying to catch up and figure themselves out.

Yeah. And even, I think on the nonprofit side, even now kind of being however many months into on the classy side, there's so many shared workflows between festivals, live events, the biggest events in the world, and then, you know, galas and 5Ks and nonprofit events, and they're all. They're different, but the same. And so it is just, to Chris's point, a lot of that, you know, years of experience around the workflows.

We even see it when we look at the future. Like, you know, you're going to have all these big associations that are nonprofits that are hosting their Conferences, and they're going to end up having a need to onboard their speakers, sponsors and exhibitors. So it's so intertwined into the nonprofit space, the event space, and the nonprofit space that I think we also were able to come with a leverage point in just knowing the business so well. And so when we initially started talking, I've done these partnerships enough to say, let's not talk about the future, let's just talk about what can make this partnership really solid at this first step. And so usually, and this has happened a number of times with Lend and with Fondi, where people come in pretty quick and they're like, hey, are you interested in M and A? And we're like, we haven't even partnered. We don't even know what that experience is going to be like. So we both agreed that we would focus on the partnership first and get a couple of wins under our belt and really understand what is needed from each other. And they had a ton of knowledge that they shared. I don't want to say they. They had a ton of knowledge to share on the auction side of things. And the team is great over there. You know, there was just a really solid synergy between the two teams as we were talking about how to mutually go after this opportunity.

Yeah. So classy. So take us through what their evolution was like in just like seeing the need for nonprofits. Because obviously, yes, we used IT Startup Month. Right. And you had a number of others. So during that partnership, they were in a sense, kind of like a customer, like using the platform for some of their clients or users of the software.

Yeah. So with Classy. Well, all of our nonprofit partners, but especially Classy. Yeah, I think on top of campaigns. Right? Campaigns are a great vehicle for events and lacking some of the virtual event technology, you know, especially kind of when the transaction took place. And so what Fondi provided was that immersive virtual experience that you could map to your classy campaign, sync in all your registrations, make it super seamless for your attendees to log in and experience. This event also helped you expand your reach. So now it's not just attendees in your area, it's attendees all over the world. And so you're broadening the base for your cause and overall organization as well. And so on top of that, working in fundraising widgets. And how can you. How can we help you convert your attendees into donors ultimately? And that led to the development of the auction suite and building auctions into the virtual venue, and now, you know, a full fledged fundraising suite on top of the event experience within Classy Live. So that's really how the relationship developed. And to Chris's point, a shout out to early champions within Classy that kind of helped just, you know, fed, fed us feedback along the way for us to iterate.

Yeah. With having. So Classy was already like the operating system of a nonprofit. Right. You know, how they run their day and now it's how they run their events in a sense as well too. What are some unique use cases that you've seen it already been used Classy Live used for?

Yeah, I think. Well, an upcoming use case is broadcasting from underwater out into the virtual venue. And so being able to film something and through in a hybrid event setup via rtmp, you can broadcast into your stage into Classy Live. So we've seen a number of different larger events where you're now widening your overall base like I was talking about, to a global audience and allowing people to experience, you know, they can chat with each other, they can watch in real time what's going on, they can donate, they can bid on things in real time just as your in person attendees are. So there's been a lot of unique cases like that that we've seen. Yeah, overall the excitement's been pretty incredible across customer base, but also just in.

Class C. Overall, that event underwater was never going to happen in person anyway with or without Covid. So there was a use case and remote has just shown that, you know, Hybrid works. And it's unfortunate we needed Covid to show us that. But like you said, we've widened the audience, widened the exposure to these causes around the globe, which is pretty amazing.

Yeah, Hybrid works. And I think kind of overall the. What we've seen across any virtual platform is that Hybrid works, but it's not a one to one replacement. You can't just attach it to every single event. And so that's really the evolution of not just Classy Live and Classy and all the virtual platforms, but it's how do you build communities around these events? How do these events really go beyond kind of the four hours that the events are allotted for and carry you in and make you a participant in this overall community with you throughout the year. And so that's really, I think the direction that a lot of the post Covid events go when you think about virtual and hybrid.

Yeah, I think one of the challenges that the industry is trying to figure out is, you know, we've experienced the power of virtual. Right. Of all the things that Josh has mentioned. But when you get back into in person, you have all of the operational logistical challenges of putting on a physical event. But if you want both, you still have to do all of the operational challenges of integrating content essentially into virtual content, into an in person event, or vice versa. And so I think the challenge is going to be that the cost that events have historically had, whether they were in person, it's going to get merged and I think it's going to take bigger teams potentially. If you're going to do both, you may have the point where people have to separate. You know, you have one aspect is just virtual, one aspect is just in person. But it's easier said than done. And I think that's where the market is still trying to figure itself out.

Absolutely. Yeah. I got to look at though, just what's happened magically in the nonprofit tech world right now. Just thinking about that, of thinking both of your guys backgrounds building in Active, which you said was in the nonprofit space, also Invisible Children. But think of what's just happened with Crowdrise, Go Fund Me and Classy and now Fondi as well too. All under one roof. All happening in San Diego. It's pretty remarkable to see all the teams and technology come together under one roof. So that's got me feel pretty good to one because everyone has been mission driven and that's unique. And I think that's a San Diego thing, that the kind of things we work on matter and to say we're better together for real as a business now is pretty incredible. What is that already like, Josh being part of that?

That's incredible. I mean, yeah, you think about Classy, you think about GoFundMe. I mean, what better pair can you think about there, you know, especially from a business standpoint, but ultimately organization, the people they serve and organizations they serve. Right. Just independently and so already. And that's exciting on its own. And I think just for me personally, I've been pretty heads down in the classy Live world. So I'm just excited for what comes of that down the road, you know, later on this year and into next year. Overall, I, you know, I was thinking about it before this call even. It's like, man, if we would have had Classy Live or Fondi during Invisible Children, the things we could have done, it's like we would, it would have been incredible, like global reach for distributing our media and doing everything else and fundraising. That's really was a missing piece back then. And so the fact we have it today and just the organizations we're able to work, it's incredible. There's no shortage of challenges, right? Especially as we get back to on site and you know, the workflows that come with every event and things in between. But yeah, I mean, exciting.

We talked about a lot when we were building Fondi is, you know, it's not just a tool to be a front facing fundraising tool. But imagine, I mean, what we're doing here you could do with your constituents, current donors, you know, like with Invisible Children, we had all of these volunteers, 150 volunteers every semester. This would have been the ideal tool to, you know, work with individual teens virtually to better educate them, better communicate with them. So from that perspective, it makes the whole organization better. And I hope, and I'm so focused on the event world and less so on the nonprofit world now, but I hope that organizations are catching on to that. For sure.

Yeah.

It just made the entire market so much more accessible, especially to things that are happening on other continents, like you mentioned then and now in terms of connecting that regard. So kudos to you guys for not just riding that wave, but being a part of it, right? Like building the tech. That's that. Which is sometimes the hard part. Like you mentioned to Josh, right, there's tech problems, but you know what you're after, you know what the end goal is like, and the tech is just a way to get there. So pretty remarkable careers to have gotten here. And it also just feels like we're just getting started as well too, right? So absolutely. That being said, all things under one roof in San Diego includes tacos. And tacos are a mainstay of what we do here. Do you guys have a favorite taco spot?

Go ahead, Josh, you first.

Yeah, I've got to go with Tutano's Taqueria now was in San Isidro now over in Old Town, but pretty anything there. Highly recommend.

And I would say I have two. So my first one is the fish tacos, potentially octopus tacos at Mitch's Seafood in Point Loma. Ideally for the ambiance. You know, you sit there with a Corona and you're out there watching the fishermen and all that. It's the best way to end a long week. And then my second one, I don't even know that the shop's name, but we've been down to Northern Baja for a few company retreats. And that taco stand at K58.

Yeah.

Is I don't know if you've been there, but man, it's nothing like having a beer after a surf. And a few of those tacos that's for sure.

We love it. We love the unnamed places. Is that's how you know they're good.

Yeah, for sure.

Oh, these are excellent. These are three new to the taco database, for sure. All three of them, by the way. So we appreciate that. And it sounds like we need to catch up in person over some of these. Maybe as well. Maybe it's a Mitch's. I think it's Mitch's.

That we gotta do soon. Absolutely. Let's do it.

Well, guys, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, but even more building, building with purpose, having fun and doing something meaningful. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Neil. Appreciate it.

Of course. Thanks for being on the podcast. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also, follow Fresh Breedtech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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