San Diego's Finest - Startup San Diego and ITEX

Foreign. Welcome back to San Diego's finest business television show. And I'm Radio Jack, your host. And you notice my hat? I've changed it to Radio TV Jack. So I just want to call people's attention to my new hat. In the meantime, we're going to have a couple of great guests on today. We're going to talk about San Diego Startup Week. So if you're thinking of starting up a business, I have a couple of gentlemen here that probably can help you. And first of all, I'm going to introduce Neil Bloom. Neal is the lead@hired.com or is it Hired Inc. Hired.com Hired.com and I also have Austin Newdecker, and Austin is currently running product@rev.com, correct?

That's correct.

And if you want to know what Rev.com is, I think you need to go to the website. Same way with Hired.com, but we're going to learn a little bit more from you gentlemen. So why don't we start with you, Austin, and tell us a little bit about Startup Week.

Sure. I'll back out and start up with Startup San Diego. Startup San Diego is the organization that we put together. It's really an organization by entrepreneurs for. For entrepreneurs, for them to get the resources that they need to start a high tech startup. And what we're really trying to focus on, and we want to make a distinction between just starting any business, like let's say a restaurant or a laundromat, and starting a company that has the potential for extremely high potential growth or exponential growth. So we're looking at companies that are doing apps on the Internet, everything from drones and products to biomedical devices. And we try to get them the resources they need to get going.

So when you talk about high tech, you're really high tech. I mean, you're talking about companies that invent robots.

Yeah, I am. We actually have quite a few great robot companies here in San Diego that we help out. Clever Pet is an awesome example of that. They build a tool that people play with their pets to make their pets smarter. But as an example of that, that's a type of company that, that when you put out that product, it scales at a rate faster than you need to hire employees. So it's not like you have to have a new location or 10 new employees to serve hundreds of new customers.

Okay, so let's switch over to Neil. And Neil, you wanted to talk a little bit about San Diego convergence. Is that what it is?

Correct. So we as an organization started Startup Week A few years ago, Austin, being one of the founders, a week of celebrations of the best companies in town, giving talks, helping each other out, enjoying social environments, and really just kind of celebrating the businesses that were growing here in town. Now, when we looked back a few years ago and realized the time of year that we were doing it, it was in June, and we realized the student population wasn't really getting involved. And so we thought, let's do another event during the school year where we can get students to come down and really get to know the startup ecosystem that we are growing. And so we've started that as of 2015, it's a few days downtown, and then we bring the event to campus. So we bring it to UC San Diego, and we just had it last weekend. So really great event with doubled attendance from last year, connecting students, getting them hired almost on the spot for internships. So great event that's come out of the startup ecosystem.

And then do you go to any other campuses in town?

Yeah, we actually have events at multiple campuses, but we're really trying to get the students to come out of their campus environments and come to the cluster that we have built downtown and some of the other surrounding areas. Then we believe there's about 500 to 600 startups in downtown San Diego. And we're trying to be a community organization that kind of raises the tide for everyone and builds bridges between existing organizations to try to build a better community here.

Okay, so how do they get ahold of you?

Yeah, so you can go to startupsd.org, again. That's startupsd.org and that has a calendar for all the different events that we have. It has information about the upcoming Startup Week in June. That's June 12, that that will come out. And it also has other ways to get involved in different, other programs that we run on a more regular basis.

Okay, during Startup Week. Now, I'm trying to get the picture here. During Startup Week, you do the Convergence, or is that a separate event?

Yeah, so it's a separate event. Startup Convergence, which Neil just ran, is kind of a mini version of our larger Startup Week, and it's targeted more at the students as well. Startup Week, which will happen in June, we started it about four years ago. It had about 300 attendees at the time, and it's doubled every year since. So that last year we had just under 2,000 attendees. This year we expect somewhere around 4,000.

Okay, so what does it look like? What does the event. What's going on there?

So we split up about 80 different events into different tracks. And it's targeted at what stage you are in your life cycle of being a company. Whether it's just you have an idea or you're looking for some co founders, or maybe you already have a minimum viable product and you're trying to get it to scale or raise some money, or perhaps you've already raised some money and you're trying to hire a salesforce or you're trying to get out into new markets. That's the kind of tracks that we have built up around those stages. We also have now Biotrax, we also have defense tracks, a couple other things that are industry specific.

Okay, and so do you actually have product there? I mean, does anybody bring product?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of demo nights that happen where startups get to come up and give a pitch and then get feedback from the audience. There's usually a community event where everyone is out at booths and tables showing the community what they're working on. So, absolutely. It's all about showing off what you have.

That would really be fun and interesting to see. What was the most interesting thing you saw at the last one?

I think it's always our crawl where you get to. We call this a downtown tech crawl, where you get to go on a path through four different startup offices. I think it's always really interesting when you get to see how different startups spend their days and the kind of environment they like to be in. And so we put on a crawl that goes four different paths. Four different companies in each one. So 16 different companies. That's always the best. I think that's probably gets the biggest attendance of all of our events.

I just recently had the opportunity to interview the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and they were here promoting a 3D printer. And do you have people working on 3D printers?

Yes.

So a great example of that is a company by the name of Astroprint here, and it's currently being incubated out of one of the accelerators in town called Evo Nexus, where I'm actually a mentor in residence there. And they're building the software that sits on top of all those printers that do the 3D printing. Wow.

Well, that sounds like fun. I just like to see that these guys were talking about printers that could print human body parts.

Yeah. There's a whole biotech sector that I think San Diego has an extreme advantage in, just given our proximity to UCSD and some of the best biotech researchers in the world.

Sure.

And so there are live printing machines now. That are coming out and companies that we try to help build into our community.

That's crazy. I can't believe that's crazy. And I heard recently on television that someone had already printed a car with a 3D printer. Do you know anything about that?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely technologies throughout town that can print any kind of material that you can think of now, from body parts all the way up to aircraft.

Aircraft parts. And another really interesting sector I think is both Neil and I are involved in startups that are we call demand marketplaces or marketplaces where we've got a certain set of people that we're trying to build up on both sides. So we have both customers. And in my case we've got stay at home moms basically that are working out of their own house to earn a living while they're doing transcription or video captions. Neil's company does something very similar.

Yeah, with Hired, we're also kind of an on demand hiring platform for software engineers and people interested in doing sales at these high growth companies. Almost like a dating site where they get matched with startups who need help right at the moment.

Wow. Well, I like dating sites. That's a good concept. But especially in technology, that's pretty interesting because there's a lot of people that are looking for work and if you can match them with a company that's looking for their particular expertise, that would be a good thing. So now that's@rev.com hired.com hired.com excuse hired.com and rev.com what do we find there?

At Rev.com, we have an army of oftentimes graduate students or like I said, an example of that is stay at home moms who are trying to get flexibility in their life and they want to log into our website and do one of the work tasks that we have available to them, which is often audio transcription. So for a dollar a minute you can have any piece of audio transcribed. Also for a dollar a minute you can take any movie or video and get captions built into the bottom of the screen. So they get to stay at home, watch movies and type them up and get paid to do it.

Now I'm curious and I know my wife would hit me if I didn't ask this question about the. You talked about something about games for animals or.

Yeah, sure. I was giving an example of Cleverpet, which is one of the favorite companies here in San Diego. They've just launched and they've got a module that you leave at home when you leave for work. And your pet can push different buttons to release treats for them. And they have to do it in a certain pattern so they get smarter.

Unbelievable. That's just awesome. I can't wait for your event to come. Now, the event, let's get the dates again and where we find more information about them.

Yeah. Startup Week is coming up June 12th through 18th of this year. The tickets aren't available yet, but you can still go to startupsd.org and all the information will be put up there. You can sign up for our mailing list and you'll get all the information you need.

Okay. And our producers are going to produce some video because I understand we were at one of your events recently. So you'll see some clips from their event that they recently held here in San Diego, I presume.

Yep. Okay.

And I wanted to ask you, are you looking for more participants? Are you looking for volunteers? So let's put out the request if you are.

Yeah, definitely. We are growing the event, obviously trying to double our size. So absolutely want to touch more of the community. We also are looking for event organizers. So if people want to give a talk or be on a panel through our website, that's absolutely the way to show an interest. And then we can put you on one of our tracks or schedules.

Okay. We also have a strong Hispanic listening audience and viewing audience. And are you looking for bilingual people? People?

We are. I'm actually proud to say that the San Diego startup community is one of the most diverse startup communities in the country. We have a much better balance between the sexes and races than I've seen in any other community I've been involved with. And also we're building better and better bridges to the Baja tech community. So there's a startup scene down in Tijuana, and we have some startups that go cross border. And some of our best startups utilize a good workforce in Tijuana and are using that to their advantage relative to other places.

Excellent. Well, this has certainly been a fascinating interview. Thank you, Austin, for coming on the show today. Thank you, Neil, for coming on the show today. We'll be back with more right here on San Diego's finest business tv.

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Hi, everybody. Welcome back to San Diego's finest business TV Today on the show. In this segment, I have Rhonda Scher, who is an expert on LinkedIn. She's a public speaker, and she's also a member of IText, and that's why I invited her on the show today. Hi, Rhonda. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Jack. Nice to be here.

Yeah, it's great to see you again. We wanted to know a little bit about the cashless business of itex. It's a way to buy things without using your cash, right?

It is. It's actually barter, and it's a great way for businesses to grow, actually using excess inventory. For example, for me as a speaker, I used it to actually advertise events that I was putting on to bring people in. They have a lot of good newspaper companies that actually use itex. So, as we say, barter is turn your trash into cash. You can do anything from taking a week of a timeshare that you're not going to use and actually getting barter dollars for that. And then take those barter dollars, go get your car fixed. You can get business cards made.

You can get on TV and radio.

Absolutely. You can get your hair done. You can get makeup. I know people that have put weddings on just using ITEXT dollars. It's an amazing resource.

Yeah. And congratulations, you're getting married again. I understand, but I won't quiz you too much on that. Maybe you didn't want to bring that up, but ITEXT has been a help to me as well. And tell us how it helps new.

Businesses for new businesses. A lot of times they want to get the word out. And because itextandiego has such a large basis of people, over 1800 members, the email system of just letting people about your product or service. So a new dentist, for example, an accountant, a chiropractor, just selling the gift certificates or the restaurants. Imagine you want to hold an event and you really need to get people to know about you. You can take a certain amount of itex, and what happens is a lot of those people convert into cash customers. And that's where the magic really starts to happen.

Yeah, it gets the business rolling, you know, it does.

And I remember at one point I used ITEXT to actually have my car fixed because I didn't want to put it through the insurance. And they did such a great job that I actually referred them to two or three of my friends who were not ITEXT members. They were cash. So it does drive the cash business. Absolutely.

Yeah. And in today's society, it's always good to have the ability, because if you're in business, you buy things wholesale.

Right.

And have the ability to exchange that for other goods and services at retail, Right?

Absolutely. And it really is retail. Retail. So for those people that do have excess inventory, one of the things I love about itex and you probably have gone, is the fair. They have usually at the end of the year, and they rent out this huge haul. You go with your ITEXT dollars. And now with the electronic app, it's so easy. You could do all of your holiday shopping, literally, with ITEXT dollars. And at the same time, as a vendor, get rid of all your excess inventory. Take a vacation, plan your wedding. The uses of it are just absolutely endless.

They are. And the director of ITEX here in San Diego, Art Khalil, he's such a personable guy, fun to work with, and he really helps people. I know people that were just starting businesses. They had no connections in town. Art Khalil knows everybody.

He does, and he connects everybody, which is great. And part of what's really great about ITEXT is if there's somebody you know that's not part of it, you can bring them in. So you get to use your barter dollars. They actually give you some barter dollars just for bringing in new people. And the monthly fee goes away when you bring in a member. So I bring in people all the time just because I love it. It's great.

Yeah. That really helps the bottom line.

I mean, even some of the restaurants that you would never think would accept barter. Amazing. And gift certificates. I mean, really massage. Can you imagine?

Oh, yeah.

And it's chiropractic. Yeah.

It's endless.

It really is. And even stores. There have been a couple of stores that have gone out of business that were ITEX members, and literally, you know, it's cash they wouldn't have had. Right, right. And they can turn that ITEX money into vacations, into a million different things that could come on the show to tell about their new business. It's incredible.

My wife likes to use it for window cleaning. There's a window cleaner on there. But they have a whole directory of San Diego businesses.

Don't they, they do, they have a website and you know, like I said, you can even call art and tell them what you're looking for. I remember one of the greatest times that I used ITEX was actually when I rented out the Carlsbad Theater years ago to do a workshop. And we wanted to fill the theater. So we sold some tickets actually with itex and ended up getting a couple of really high paying cash events from people that were in the audience. So you never know where that next customer is going to come from.

No. And I think that we should mention that it's so large, it's on the stock exchange. This is the largest barter exchange company in America. At least maybe the world. I don't know.

It is one of the largest. And what is really amazing about it is there really isn't a product or service that you can't use on itex. You know, you can pretty much find everything except to pay your rent or your utility bills.

Right, right.

But just about everything else you can get, which is great.

I know we're planning a vacation coming up. I know they have vacations on the website as well and on their directory of pleasures.

Absolutely. I've even sold weeks of my timeshare that I haven't used and gotten ITEXT dollars for that. Yeah. So it's amazing because typically the buyer and the seller are only paying 7% in cash. Everything else is itex except for the tax.

So could I get a public speaker like Rhonda Scherman?

Well, you could. You might even have your LinkedIn profile done by me potentially using iText. And for me, why that works is because in addition to that, I'm selling term life with living benefits. So when I'm actually talking to somebody, I'm never going to sell life insurance using itex. But you would not believe the number of clients that I've actually gotten for the living benefits life insurance just because I got to know them using itext doing something related to marketing or LinkedIn.

Yeah. But it's really amazing all the different uses there are. And I just think that it's a phenomenal idea in this day and age when we're all concerned about money and the value of money and it's an alternative source of money.

Well, it is. And you know, again, a lot of people are just getting started. That was one of the things that you mentioned. And if you think about it, the massage therapist, the hairdresser, you know, they can actually say, I'm going to take the first three clients with I text. And then after that, guess what?

They pay cash and they can just write a check. Itex gives you a checkbook.

They do. The app is even easier now. You just pay with a click of a button. That's how simple it is.

Yeah, I haven't used that yet.

Oh, my gosh.

You know what?

Don't tell your wife about the hair and eyelashes, because that's incredible. Using itex. Oh, yeah.

And what about nails?

There's really just about everything that you can get on itex. It's amazing.

Well, she's out in the audience there somewhere. I hope she's not listening. But anyway, and pet sitting. I mean, any business that you can.

Absolutely. And I think the real power is in the advertising. ITEXT will even match your advertising dollars if you put ITEXT into the ad. So that's a real huge benefit. And the other is just their email blast system. They're such an efficient organization that you let them know what you have, put a flyer and they will blast it out to all of the members. I've had great photography sessions done with itex. Anything you could possibly think of.

That's fabulous. So listen, I really appreciate you coming on and giving us your story about itex. And I want to encourage you to contact Rhonda if you need a public speaker or help with LinkedIn. How do they reach you?

The best way is actually at 760-515-2822 or just at my email, rhonda lshurmail.com.

Well, thanks for watching San Diego's Finest Business TV. And Rhonda, thank you for representing ITEXT here today.

Thanks so much, Jack.

And we'll see you next.

Sam.