948 - Christian Oswald (Rainf4ll) On Enabling The Digital Verification Of Physical Items

What is going on everyone? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forward Thinking Founders. I am very grateful to have your attention at least for the next 15 minutes of this episode. Forward Thinking Founders is a podcast where I interview pre seed and seed stage founders about their products, what they want to build into the world, and why we dive into how they spend their time, what's their vision, what's the origin stories, all these things so you can learn all about what's coming tomorrow. Cause these companies haven't hit critical scale yet. Most of them haven't hit product market fit. These are just early stage companies. And the big question is what can this be? And in this podcast we bring that out. So with that, I really hope you enjoy your time listening to today's episode. And I've already done 200 plus, so if you like this one, listen to some of the other ones like with Imadi Kund, Austin Allred, Leah Culver. We have great interviews, so check it out, enjoy the repository and for now let's. Alright, let's get into today's episode.

Here we go.

What is going on everyone? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forward Thinking Founders. I am very grateful to have your attention at least for the next 15 minutes of this episode. Forward Thinking Founders is a podcast where I interview pre seed and seed stage founders about their products, what they want to build into the world and why we dive into how they spend their time, what's their vision, what's the origin of stories, all these things so you can learn all about what's coming tomorrow. Cause these companies haven't hit critical scale yet, most of them haven't hit product market fit. These are just early stage companies and the big question is what can this be? And in this podcast we bring that out. So with that, I really hope you enjoy your time listening to today's episode. And I've already done 200 plus, so if you like this one, listen to some of the other ones like with Imadi Kund, Austin Allred, Leah Culver. We have great interviews, so check it out, enjoy the repository and for now, let's get into today's episode.

Here we go.

All right. How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Forward Thinking Founders where we talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future and how the two collide. Today I'm very excited to be talking to Christian Oswald who's the founder of Rainfall. Welcome to the show. How's it going?

Great, Matt, thanks for having me on and again, thanks for everything that you're doing in the, in the Phoenix market.

Yeah. You know, I appreciate you coming on. You know, I. I've been doing it for so long. I love it. You know, I love Phoenix. You know, it's a great place to live, so why not make it a great startup scene, right? Being a startup founder in Phoenix are also making it better just by operating in this town. So let's, let's talk about it. What are you working on? What is Rainfall? What is your company?

Awesome. Yeah. So, Matt, as you mentioned, I'm the founder of Rainfall. What we're working on at a high level, and we can certainly get into. Into more of the details, but what we've done is created a platform that allows brands and consumers to authenticate physical items. Right. There's a large counterfeit market out there. Whether that's everything from car air bags to fashion to, you name it. Right. There's a large issue with counterfeits, and it's actually a personal problem that we ran into, and I can get into that story later on as well, but we wanted to solve for that. So we've built a platform that does just that. And.

There'S a lot more to it. And if you want, we can certainly delve into those details, but at a high level, that's essentially what we do. And that's kind of the foundation.

And we're headquartered here in Phoenix, Arizona, as, you know, the MEC tech or the tech mecca of the world. We've got some folks in Australia, some folks in Europe, and some folks around the US but yeah, happy to jump in a little more as well.

Yeah, let's take that level deeper. So someone, you know, found out about Rainfall, you know, on this podcast, they wanted to use it, get the benefit out of it. Can you kind of maybe talk through maybe example of someone? You get kind of going through the whole experience from getting the product, actually using it, getting the value out of it. Can you kind of walk through an example there?

Yeah, definitely. So we, we take. So we work with brands initially. Consumers can definitely use the platform and onboard their own physical products, but how we go to market is working with brands. So let's say you're a fashion brand. You want to solve for a certain issue, as we talked about counterfeit. But there's a lot more than that. You essentially embed something that is able to connect that physical item to the digital world. Right. And that could be an NFC chip.

One of these little guys.

Right.

I know that'll focus.

Okay.

Yeah, totally point.

Right. So you can embed an NFC chip. A lot of folks say, oh, you're the NFC company. Well, we're kind of agnostic to the endpoint, right? It could be an NFC chip, it could be a QR code, it could be a GPS unit. We're working on image recognition because every physical, physical item, including ourselves, have our own fingerprint, right? And each item has its own fingerprint. So. So we essentially use one of those endpoints essentially to connect that, that physical piece to the digital world. And then on the digital side, again, we've, we've created a platform, so we serialize every single item. So as a consumer, you know what? I, I've got a prop. I'm going to show you a little prop.

These are special actually, and I get to these stories. So these are, these are sneakers, right? You might not know what they are or who they're for, but these are Italian leather, handmade in Italy. And if you notice, if you see it's an X, right? So these shoes are made for Elon Musk and they have an NFC chip, rainfall NFC chip in here. So as a consumer, right? You can take any item, you can get a little push notification, just tap your phone, get a little push notification. So as a consumer, this is how I would interact with physical item, right? I can see, you know, various details about the shoe. This one actually says it's honoring Elon Musk. This was a collaboration with an artist. So they designed the artwork that went on this custom shoe. It was commissioned by a list for. There's a whole series. So it was, it was commissioned by a list for, as a gift to the PayPal founders and the early leaders of PayPal. But you wouldn't have known that just by looking at these shoes, right? So this gives you not just, not just what the shoe is made of. Goat leather, you know, made in Italy, etc. You can see the full story. So the full story here. Everything from the manufacturing process. So basically you're adding. The brand can add rich content to the story of that physical item where this shoe is being made. You can see the artisans actually making this shoe, right? So we take it from, hey, this is just an authentic product, right? This is not a counterfeit, is not made in China to allowing brands to kind of tell a story. And that story can be told through any way they want, any kind of rich media, whether that's music, photos, videos, text links, etc. Etc. And it's very contextual, right? So take maybe a sports jersey, for example, right? Like maybe you have a Devin Booker jersey and you go to the Phoenix Suns game, right, that can be contextual where you can have the same concept embedded in that jersey. Now you can see content relevant to the game. If you own that item, you can also add your own content and your own story. So if you pass this now to your kids, they can start seeing those stories as well. So that's how a consumer would, would engage. It allows brands to also engage with the consumers and create like tighter relationship. Right, Versus a brand not knowing who bought something from Dick's Sporting Goods, you know, whatever the case may be. So.

On the back end, we've struck the partnership with Salesforce as well. So this allows, you know, opt in first party and zero party data for the brand to be able to be consumed and pushed into a CRM like Salesforce, you know, as an example. And you can start seeing a lot of data and they can take that data and then really personalize the engagement that they have have with, with their consumers. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. I think it's brilliant. I thought the first time I heard, I heard about this, it wasn't even from you. It's from, from our good friend Philip. He was just like, yo, this is so cool. And then it was cool. Then we met. I'm like, damn, this is sick. And even on the podcast, hearing about it from, you know, the second or third or fourth time, it is still sick. Walk me through the, like, how'd you get the idea? Where, where did it come from? It's a very unique idea. Very unique pov. So what's the origin story here? Why rainfall? Why this product?

Yeah, great, Great. Actually, that, that is a good question. And I don't think if I didn't have this experience personally, I wouldn't have come up with this concept with the. Before I jump into that, those are the shoes at night, so that X actually glows at night, which is pretty cool.

That's. How do I, how do I just like become an Elon lookalike so I can, I can get those shoes? That's actually the point. That wouldn't even work, right, because that's the genius of rainfall. It's so cool. That's sweet that they glow in the dark.

So a list and kind of who they partnered with. They did commission this for the PayPal founders and leaders. But you will be able to order these soon yourself. There's going to be a very limited quantity. Elon's getting the first one, one of 10 or whatever it is, but there are others that Folks will be able to order but the orig story. So, so just a quick, quick background on myself.

I'm a veteran. I've been in tech for the last, you know, 20, 20 odd years. Big tech, Cisco, Salesforce, small startups.

Never as, as a founder per se.

Probably in the mid teens. A veteran buddy of mine reached out and he's like, hey, I want you to come on board and help me with the fashion brand. And we're like, I have no idea about fashion. And he's like, neither do I, but let's, let's do this. So he started a veteran luxury fashion brand that was really focused for four veterans, right? And we handmade leather jackets in New York City. And I might have told you this, this story before, but it went kind of viral. Like folks like Mark Andreessen ended up buying a jacket. Bear Grylls General Mad Dog Matter. So went, you know, went kind of viral. But with that came a whole bunch of counterfeits, right? So these are close to two thousand dollar jackets. They're made in the US right? The kangaroo leather is very expensive.

So we started seeing a whole bunch of counterfeits hit the market. You know, these are like a hundred dollar leather jackets that were coming from Pakistan. They, they totally ripped off our product, right? Like our zippers alone on the jackets cost 100 bucks, right? And now we're making this whole thing for, for $100. So we're like let's, let's solve this problem, right? Like let's, let's see as a brand, as a fashion brand, let's try and solve for this. And we looked at, well, like, well, I'm sure Louis Vuitton and Coach, they have a counterfeit issue, right? Let's go out and let's find what they're doing. And we found that they weren't really doing much, right? Like they might have a little card that says this is certified or this is authentic in a hand. And we're like, well the counterfeiters can just create those things, right? Or they'll put in like a fake serial number or they'll buy a real one that may have a serial number and just copy it. Now there's a million handbags with the same serial number. And we're like that's, that's not a, that's not a solution to solve for this. So, so with the tech background, you know, we've been working with NFC chips and QR codes for a while. So we started, we started embedding the NFC chips into the labels. And we started out as an mvp and initially it was just, you know, this is authentic or not. We started building upon that concept because it's software, right? We're able to add the stories, we're able to add the marketing capabilities and as we move forward, more and more capabilities will be able to be added to the, you know, to the solution. So, you know, we've enabled everything from books to fashion shoes, even, even cigars, right?

So that's, that's, that's the origin story. So it was extremely personal to us, right? And we're like, we're gonna.

You know, we're gonna, we're going to combat this because it was so personal to us. We've always known that counterfeit issues have been an issue for a very long time, but it didn't really affect us, right? And now it affected us. So we thought let's, let's do this. So, so we've been building the, the platform since 2017, 2018 or so. We called it Rainfall based on.

Australia's Area 51. So there's actually a joint base in Australia between the US and, and the Aussies. And its code name is Rainfall. So we called it Rainfall.

But we ended up spinning the tech company out of the fashion brand just this year, just, just earlier this year because we, we knew that this was a solution that could solve a problem for a lot of brands, not just our own. So we ended up spinning the, the tech company out of fashion brand and now we'.

On the tech side of things.

So walk me through, through a little bit of like your vision here. Like, you know, you have a problem with this company, you build the solution.

But what does the next few steps look like? If you were to look out 5, 10, 15 years, what do you see as the big vision for rainfall and what direction do you see it going in?

The, the, the vision at the end of the day is where every physical item is rainfall enabled, right? Like, like that's the big vision, right? But how do you get there from, from here? And it's, you know, baby steps, right? It's, it's one step at a time. Best time to kind of plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time to plant a tree is now, right? So we've, we're focused just a handful of industries that we're like actually going outbound into, but we're also enabling inbound, right? So the cigars, for example, that was like an inbound, an industry that came to us that said, hey, we would like to solve a problem that they have, right. Engage with their consumers, et cetera, et cetera.

And, and it doesn't really derail us from our vision and kind of what we're building. Right. Like we don't have to build anything different. It's, it's the same concept, the same hardware, whether it's QR codes or NFC chips on and so forth. Right. So we've the lowest hanging fruit are things like fashion is low hanging fruit that we're going after initially. Alcohol is a big one as well.

So those are some of the major industries that we're going after. The relationship with Salesforce, so we really believe in a go to market through partners. Right. So we've signed a relationship with Salesforce. Their sales reps will actually get paid on our platform. So if they sell rainfall, they will get a commission for selling our platform. And it also pulls through a lot of what they're trying to sell. Right.

And that's, that's the way we're going to, you know, go to market. We're going to try it with, with Salesforce first and then there's obviously you know, a bunch of others that we could potentially partner with, whether that's Microsoft or Google or Amazon, so on and so forth. But that's initially where we're starting. They can walk us in the door of, you know, many consumer brands, right. Or even, you know, folks in a manufacturing who knows, right. Like airbag for a car or whatever the case may be.

Right.

What's interesting is that Europe is actually implementing something called a DP dpp. I think it stands for digital product Passport where all physical items will need to have something similar to this by 2026 is when they start implementing that. So it's just a matter of time before that kind of similar concept comes to the US and more and more items required to do that. Right. So that's our vision, right at the of the day is let's enable every, every physical item and let's start off one step at a time. The other part of that is enabling consumers to be able to add their own items. Right. So while we're initially working with brands, consumers today, while it's not a focus on our go to market, consumers today can add their own thing if they have a family heirloom, right. If they have grandmother's salad bowl, a didgeridoo or some metals or whatever, right. They can add their own products to the platform as well, add their own stories and show their family and friends stories about, you know, various family heirloom items.

It's a, it's an awesome vision. But in order to make the vision come to life and happen, you need some help, right? It takes a village to make a startup work and scale. So a question for you is how can the forward thinking founders community help? Are you hiring? Are you raising money? Looking for customers, partners? Like how can we assist?

Yeah, thanks Matt. I think it's, I think first, how can I help the community? Right. So if there's anyone out there that.

Needs help, certainly reach out to me and I'll try and help in any capacity. Right. So I think, I think first is being able to give back to the community we are raising. We're totally self funded so you know, if we're able to raise, great. If not, I'm fine with that.

Right.

We will hire when we require it. So if it's organic growth, we'll hire at the right time. The right people. Right. First, you know, first, first priorities are folks like CSMs, right? Customer success managers, sales, you know, obviously devs. If we raise a, a larger amount then you know, we'll be able to accelerate that. And then I mean those are the main things, right? Like how, how can I help you? Right. Is number one and two. Yeah, we are potentially looking at raising with the right partners. Right. And then obviously you know, every startup can do with more partners and more customers. Right. So any connection, it's a. Brands that may, you know, be able to take advantage of this, you know, certainly let me know.

And if any of those brands or potential investors or just like talent is watching this and they just want to connect and learn more, where can they find you? Do you have a website? You have a social media handle and email address? Where can people kind of learn more to plug in?

Yeah, probably LinkedIn is the best. And then Twitter, I'm not that active on Twitter but I'm more a consumer of content on Twitter. But I do check my DMs so on Twitter it's coswold79 and then on LinkedIn it's just, just Christian Oswald website is rainfall.com but the last A is actually a number four instead of an A. So it's R A I N F for the number, the number4.ll.com.

Cool.

Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I appreciate it and best of luck building this out.

Thanks Matt and again thanks for all the things that you do for the, for the Phoenix tech scene.

Appreciate it.