Focal Point Founder Anders Lillevik LIVE on Global Startup Report (1 July 2022)

Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome, welcome. July 1st, 2022. I'm your host, Martin Martinez. Welcome to another episode of the Global Startup Report powered by Founder Institute. Coming to you live from Austin, Texas, back in my home studio. Last week I was at the Dell campus working with our great partners over at Dell Technologies. Now I'm going to be here. I'll be here for the rest of the summer heading into Founder X to wrap up season 2. Founder X, August 2nd through the 4th, our global community event for the local— our local leaders, our mentors, and of course our amazing graduates from all around the world. Really excited to bring that back on the virtual stage. It's invite only, so if you're watching this, you may have a chance to attend, uh, but we'll be learning more. Sign up for updates, make sure you're subscribing to our newsletter for ways that you might be able to score one of those exclusive tickets. We're featuring a whole bunch of really amazing keynotes, investors all around the world, more to come there. We'll chat a little bit more about that stuff, but Until then, I want to bring up to the stage our awesome producer behind the scenes, Dustin Betts. Well, so we can get into some news before we meet our featured guest for the day, kicking off live strong. How you doing, my friend?

I'm doing great. Yeah, excited to be here. Uh, our special guest— so we're going to share the quick news stories here at the top, and I'll drop them in the comments on LinkedIn. But our special guest for today also actually, uh, had a big funding announcement for their seed round yesterday. So I'm gonna, we're gonna get through these opening stories really quickly. So we'll be talking about a different funding round for most of the day. But the first story here from this week, it was announced Kangaroo Time, which is a Founder Institute Los Angeles portfolio company, raised their $26 million Series B. The company is now headquartered in Buffalo. They were a part of the 43North program and relocated to Buffalo. The founder and FI alumni Scott Wayman also previously then became a leader for Foundry Institute Buffalo in a program there. But what Kangaroo Time does is it's a leading childcare software services provider. So all the backend stuff that goes into running childcare facilities, the software that makes it happen, that's what Kangaroo Time does. And yeah, they're going to be moving to a new HQ office in Buffalo. So huge congrats to Scott Wayman and the team at Kangaroo Time for this big announcement.

Yeah, that's nuts, Dustin. I think just in last season, you know, season 1, just 4 or 5 months ago, we were just talking about the last round that they had raised and some press that they had gotten. So they are moving. $26 million Series B, that's a monster right there.

Yeah, yeah. And growing very quickly, especially in Australia. So going into international markets. So yeah, Kangaroo Time, definitely a child tech sort of company to keep an eye on.

Definitely a lot of movement in that space. Uh, but yeah, let's keep moving on the, on the news for this week. Um, coming out of FI Sydney, Checkbox, uh, new global growth leader to head U.S. expansion. So they got some hiring on here. Uh, the alumni founder Evan Wong— basically Checkbox is a no-code app builder, uh, and raised, uh, $6.3 million Australian dollars, uh, in a Series A earlier this year from Sequoia. Big names out there. And just a side note too, FI Australia, the spring 2022 program is enrolling founders. So if you're looking to join out down under, head over to fi.co/australia. And side note on that too, I was actually just catching up with a friend of mine, Hugh Forrest, Chief Program Officer at South by Southwest, where I had a couple of friends on a panel talking about crypto and NFT space. And they just announced they're actually bringing South by Southwest in 2023 in October to Sydney. So they're going to be down there. It's going to be really cool. If you all remember from season 1, I did a whole South by Southwest thing and we also worked with Dell Tech, all that. So really excited for everybody over there. Lots of fun stuff happening over in Australia.

Yeah, down under where it's becoming springtime or we're looking forward to springtime.

I was confused for a second. I'm like, wait, spring 2022? Southern hemisphere.

That's right. That's correct. Southern hemisphere. Yeah. Third and final story before we get to our featured guest is just, this is a company we've talked about before on last season of the show, Isusu. They basically help renters build credit through their regular rent payments. It's a San Francisco Founder Institute alumni. They were featured in the Forbes FinTech 50, 2022, which is, you know, Forbes selection of the year's most innovative startups in personal finance, investing, payments, and crypto is what gets lumped into that FinTech 50. So yeah, Isusu also on a tear. I think raised their Series A a couple of months ago. But yeah, it's cool to see them featured in that Forbes 50 Fintech report. So yeah, congrats to the team at Isusu. And now I'll go away and you can bring on the special guest here for the day.

Fantastic. Thank you, Dustin. As always, we'll see a little bit later in the show. We're going to get— we have about a solid 20 minutes, so I may respect for our special guest time, but I'm really excited to bring this gentleman up. I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years. He actually was part of one of the very first virtual programs. I think the first Virtual program we hosted out of Austin, Texas at the start of the pandemic has really been just one of the most driven founders I've been able to work with to date and has been showing it very much so with Focal Point Procurement, the company that he's been building since I've had the chance to meet him. So let's bring Anders Liljevik, founder and CEO of Focal Point, up to the show. Anders, how you doing? I'm living, man. We are living. It's good to see you. And let's just rip the top off it. Congrats. You just made a big announcement, $3 million seed round that you just closed recently. Tell us about that. Congrats. That's big news, not just for the FI Texas community, but I'm sure for everything that you're working on right now.

Yeah, so we raised $3 million of money in a seed round led by Sousa and Amplo. And, uh, we had our pre-seed funding, uh, less than a year ago now. So we raised half a million dollars in pre-seed money, and with the pre-seed money, we were able to really, uh, get early start on product market fit. We got 4 large enterprise clients onboarded, and we were right at that inflection point that it was a time to, to really sort of put, put the pedal down and build a team around the product and, and, and get things moving. So we were very, very fortunate. We got in at a good time. We have a fantastic cap table, and I'm very proud of what we're building here and the partners we have alongside with us.

I hear that, man. So let's, um, let's, let's wind back a little bit for— I know we— I jumped the gun a little bit because, you know, I was just very excited for you and everybody in the FI Texas community. We, you know, we have a big internal Slack. Everyone's been cheering you on since the news came out. I've been aware of it for a little bit, but of course, this is, this is some really great things. But let's go all the way back to the beginning as far as you really want to talk. Where did you start out? Tell us where the kind of your origins, like, from your career standpoint, any past experience in the entrepreneurship startup space before which led you to founding Focal Point?

Yeah, it's interesting because I am a corporate guy. I worked for 25 years in the banking and insurance space in the procurement sector, which is obviously where we're focusing our product. Uh, I, I have been a senior executive in procurement, so like for me, I used to manage teams of 100+ in the global organization, and entrepreneurship was really not part of my, my DNA and makeup, right? So who goes from making a decent steady paycheck to making nothing, uh, and actually using your wife's money to bootstrap a company, right? It's, it's, it's a hard shift. But, but really, it's a, uh, it's a passion project for me where I really see that there's a, there's a need in this space where there's large monolithic or software companies that aren't really addressing, uh, the full end-to-end process. And that's where I'm going, that's what I'm going after by building this solution. And the penny drop moment for me was when I was consulting for a large company that you would all know, and I was helping them select their procurement software suite. And at the end of the project, my client was saying, hey, I'm so glad you're here because now we're finally going to get rid of all my spreadsheets to run the operation. I was like, well, that's not entirely true. I mean, you can do all the big stuff like pay bills and manage POs and store contracts, but your department is still going to be managed in Excel. And he looked me straight in the eye, and I'm cleaning this up significantly for the audience, Are you telling me I'm going to spend $1.5 million on procurement software and still manage all of my stuff in Excel? And that was the penny drop moment. And March 18th, 2020, right before the world stopped, I founded the company and started.

So, so, so yeah, this is— this was like a big aha moment. And seems like you're not going to really be going anywhere for a while. So you could spend some time actually figuring out if it was going to work. But for those of us that may not be in this, in this space, procurement, tell us a little bit more about kind of how that operates, especially— and we have a lot of entrepreneurs, VCs that may have not been in the corporate space, but this is a big, big deal. This is how money moves within larger, larger, uh, institutions.

Oh, for sure. So if you think about, you know, any company out there, predominantly the number one expense is going to be people. Yeah, so paying for salaries, paying for HR costs, and so on. The second to that are is the money that the company spent on goods and services, third-party rents, whatever. And sometimes it's almost 50 or 40% of the total P&L goes to third parties. So as a company becomes a certain size, they're putting through literally billions of dollars, uh, in expenses through paying for consultants, paying for space, data center, marketing, whatever it is. Someone has to make that purchase. And as you become large, things become more complex because not only do you have to worry about making sure that you pick the right supplier that's not going to go, go under the moment you pick them, you got to make sure that you have followed the process right to make sure you have regulatory requirements met. You got to make sure that you meet your supplier diversity quota. And now most recently, environmental and sustainability standards are becoming really important. So the land of procurement is becoming more and more complex. So you have companies, let's pick marketing. Marketing wants to spend, you know, half a billion dollars on a marketing campaign. You want to be able to slow them down and say, look, we got to make sure we do this right to make sure we got everything ticked and tied and that we can stand behind it and say we've done a proper due diligence process. So for instance, when I was a chief procurement officer for a large financial institution, we spent almost $12 billion on goods and services per year. And managing that from soup to nuts, it takes a lot of work and a lot of coordination. And really the infrastructure space has been left— has left this piece behind. So the major things, the things that go into an ERP, an accounting system, for example, is done relatively well. So an invoice needs to be paid and coded, has to— needs to have the corresponding purchase order or not, needs to have a corresponding contract or not. And that's taken off, taken care of pretty well. But everything that leads up to that point is done fairly manually today. And that's the thing that we address.

Got it. So that just— that, that's shocking, given how sophisticated it would seem these larger institutions, enterprise companies should be. They're still putting this all in spreadsheets and then hiring gentlemen and people like yourself to manage these spreadsheets. Uh, was there just like a day where, again, you, you— beginning of the pandemic, and that's when we all found each other, on the Zooms, you know, was there like an aha moment that happened overnight or was this a slow progression like, screw this, I'm gonna build it myself?

Well, I've always lived with it as a consumer of this infrastructure. So for example, just a crazy example where working for a large global insurance company, I had about 80 people working for me and every month we needed to report on progress to say, all right, this is how much money we saved, this is how many deals we finished, so on and so forth. And that was all Excel-driven. So we would send emails out to 60 people who would fill out the projects for the week or for the month. Then that would go to their managers to review manually, and then that would go to a pool of analysts that I had that would take that report and bring it all together. So it was basically a 3-month hair-on-fire activity to do something very simple like a KPI report, that how we got our bonuses measured. And like, it was 3-week process, manual, and rinse and repeat. So you're always in that mode of collecting and evaluating data. So you've lived to accept it. But it wasn't until, like I said, I was talking to my client who had now finally made the investment spending $1.5 million on a procurement tool. And he was just shocked that this is still how he would have to operate his business, like managing what people are working on, load balancing what people are working on, tracking compliance, all the stuff done manually. And he was not happy about it. I realized, like, I've just been living with this. But he sort of, he kind of put it so clearly, like, yeah, I gotta go fix this. And being a conservative person, you know, I spent 2, 2 and a half months sort of mulling this over in my brain. And I went to my wife after much, you know, consternation and sort of say, hey, look, I have this idea. I really think it can take off. And I have PowerPoint slides and the whole nine yards.

And she's like, you pitched your wife.

That was my first pitch, literally.

Clear.

I was like, you know, uh, we have some money in savings, we can use that. And but, you know, I think there's something there. And she said, if you don't do this now, you will never do it. Not knowing the pandemic was going to happen, of course, and all those things. But, you know, really, uh, I've been founded by my family the entire time, I guess, you know, uh, which has been great. So it's, it's an interesting story because we bootstrapped for the first year almost, uh, when we're talking to you. And working in FI. So it's been a good journey.

Yeah. And so yeah, I guess let's dive into that then just a little bit. You know, we got, you know, you're busy, you got a lot of things moving. So we got about like 10 minutes while we have you. Bring Dustin up a little later. But so what were some of those learnings then that were just either aha moments or just like, wow, this is really some practical stuff. I should have applied this much earlier in my career because you were coming from corporate. You were dealing with all the, again, processes and red tape. Now you're starting a startup, there is none, you're just moving. Yeah.

So the first thing I did was, I realized, like, I don't know what I don't know. And that's, that's, that's a good learning to have. Like, I really, you know, when I had a team of 120 people, if I needed a million dollars of extra funding, I just went up the chain and got it. And like, it wasn't a big deal. So startup world, not so much, right. So the first thing I realized is I needed to, to surround myself with people who have been there and done that. So I found, uh, 2 or 3— actually 2— advisors who are, who have been startup, you know, successful in startups before. And I would sit down and say, I'll give you guys some equity, I'll figure out how to do that, but I'll give you guys some equity and let's meet once a week. And let you know, you can, you know, I'll ask you questions, you'll answer questions. That's how it started. And essentially one of those advisors said, hey, have you heard of something called Founders Institute? I'm like, no, not really. He goes, well, I have. They have— they got a thing going on in Austin. I know it's not quite Atlanta, but it's close enough. How about that? And I remember I applied for FI and I answered your very, very long questionnaire, and out of that I got an offer. And to me it was an enlightening process because I have an MBA, I, I've done a lot of business before, but it's about thinking about how to actually set up a company from scratch, right? It's only me sitting in the basement, quite literally, like, why do I need values? Why do I need this? Why do I need that? And it was, it was nice to actually go through the steps of saying, like, here, here's what you should be thinking about. The priorities that you set for it are yours, but at least you need to start thinking about it. And to me, that was a, that was a beautiful thing. I knew the space, I know the discipline, I knew all those things. But having a bunch of folks teaching us how to do it, who have done it before, alongside peers who are going through it as well, was a beautiful thing for me. Startup— being a solo startup founder is a very lonely experience because you work by yourself a lot. And meeting once a week, meeting with a larger team, and then working in smaller groups was a good way of bridging that gap because we all kind of commiserated with, oh my Lord, how am I going to pay for this? Uh, some people had kids with them on the calls. Like, it's just a reality of people trying to start something from nothing. It's kind of cool.

Yeah.

And honestly, I mean, I remember that. I remember y'all's, uh, y'all's cohort too. I think it was the fall 2022, and, um, that was a great group. You know, we've, we've seen some amazing founders out of that group, your peers in that space. I know everybody's cheering you on too. Might even have a couple in the audience right now. And if you are watching wherever you're at, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, feel free to drop some comments. We can bubble all that stuff up. You have anything they want to say or shout out to honors? So that, yeah, that was just a really weird time for everybody. You know, like, all we were just living in these little boxes. We still kind of are to a certain extent. But, you know, you get especially out of your group, people were just moving and they still are. They're still building some amazing things. So tell us, you know, post-FI, you know, you've been off to the races, you know, you've been moving very, very quickly. What's been changing in your industry specifically? Is there— is this even more accepted and adopted, or do you still think there's a lot more that needs to be done in this space to just improve efficiencies?

So we're creating a new category of solutions, if you will. So educating folks about what we're doing and how we're doing it and why it's different has been sort of the biggest challenge as we're penetrating the market. Um, in terms of what's happening in the marketplace, like procurement and supply chain is still hot and it's, you know, continues to evolve. And I think nothing else, even as you roll from the pandemic into now, uh, what they call the recession, or if there is going to be a recession, procurement continues to have a lot of visibility because procurement expenses are easy to cut, much easier to cut than, uh, than employee expenses. So I still think there's going to be a continued focus on procurement software, and, and that's been sort of a boon for us because we are continuing to close blue-chip brands as a startup. And that's, I think, you know, that's fairly unique where none of our clients are SMBs or startups. They are companies that you have heard of and companies that most of y'all probably have used or are using. But for us, it's about continuing to build the product because it's such a target-rich environment, is what I call it. So we have a base product and now we have a 2-day planning session this week. And it's kind of like, guys, you know, what do we go after next? How can we branch this out? How can we provide more value for our clients and our prospects so that, uh, you know, we round out the software? And also, with the help of our, our investors, they have been absolutely tremendous. They've helped us a lot thinking about product-market fit, who to bring on board, how to go to market, how to secure the balance sheet, like all those things. So it's just Having your ears wide open and listening and really bringing it all together has been a great experience for me.

Now you're hitting some amazing points here, just how, you know, you need to approach things as a founder. Anders, I love this, man. And, uh, so, so for you, and this round's closed, you know, money's in the bank, you're— what are you excited about not having to do anymore so you can focus on the things you want to do?

Well, fundraising. One, uh, I mean, I think work— my job as a CEO is always going to be to fundraise to some, some extent, right? So we are targeting an A round probably a year from now. We know what metrics we need to hit, so that's, that's obviously good. Uh, the thing that I'm really looking forward to is, is having a lot of help around sales and marketing, because as a founder, I was product, I was, you know, marketing, sales, strategy, fundraising, all that stuff. So having hired a whiz-bang marketing person and two very seasoned procurement salespeople is really going to help me focus on what I need to do. I have no illusions that I can walk away from the sales process because I still think when our prospects talk to us and realize that we are procurement people and we sell to our own kind, that's very powerful. But I don't have to write every deck, I don't have to do every pitch, I don't have to set up every meeting. I think that's what I'm really looking forward to. And also now, as we're getting ready for A, our A round, like, we need to figure out like what is our sales and marketing strategy, what are the KPIs we're going to track. Same thing with, with sales, um, how are we going to set up our funnel, how we're going to track things down through the funnel, how we're going to track our win-loss scores. Like, I want to make sure that when we are ready for the A round, we have all the metrics there. So not only do we have traction, not only do we have crazy, uh, success with our customers, but we also have the metrics to show it. Because ultimately, I think even if the market rebounds, you're going to have to have all those things in place to get funding at a good valuation.

No, that's brilliant. Um, so while we still have you, um, I have a question I always like to, uh, posit at the very end of it. Before I do that, You know, what are some ways— again, it sounds like you're hiring, you know, what people are you looking for? How can they get in touch, maybe even put an application if they want to join that, the FocalPoint team?

So it depends on the role, right? So at this point, we are actually hiring. We have— I think we found everybody that we're going to hire in '22. So we have our sales and marketing people, we have an onboarding person, we have customer success. Now we have 14 people in development. So for us, it's like we're rolling. We will be hiring in '23 depending on how '22 finishes up. But really, I look for aptitude and attitude much more than I do, you know, unless of course you're coding. If you're a developer, please know how to code. But for a lot of the other positions, we are hiring for aptitude and attitude because you can't expect to work in a startup and say, all right, this is my job and this is all I'm going to do, right? So you got to be chef, cook, bottle washer, and take the trash out in the evening. You'd be willing to chip in wherever you can. And I think that's kind of the folks I'm looking for at the end of the day.

I hear that, man. Awesome. Well, while I have you, this final question I've been asking every single founder that comes on to the show for the Global Startup Report, and this one's going to be no different. But I always love hearing the answer because it's always a little different. If you, if you were talking to somebody right now, today, maybe somebody in the audience right now, and they want to start something from scratch, be it, what would be that first thing you'd recommend they do?

Talk to somebody who has done it before, just to get an appreciation for what it takes. And really, you know, find out what it takes to sort of at least get off the ground. Because some founder says, yeah, I'm going to raise $1 million to build the product. I'm sorry, that ain't gonna happen. No VC is going to pay for you to build your prototype. You have to do that on your own. So the question is, like, let's say that is your goal, to build a prototype. Well then, what is it going to take to get there? And are you willing to pay that price? Because the journey is long and arduous, and a lot of people stop because they realize the hill they have to climb. And, you know, do— not doing it is also okay. It's just you have to sort of put it mentally, put your thought into it and decide if you're in or out. But it can't be a— it cannot be a part-time job.

Oh, some wise words right there, my friend. Anders Ulvik, founder, CEO, Focal Point. Any final things you want to share with the audience while we have a little bit of time left with you?

Uh, no, I, I will give full props to, to Founder Institute. I think, uh, you know, it was very, very valuable for me as a founder the networking connections that I have with Martin and the other FII folks have been tremendous. And I think I want to give shoutouts to y'all because I still rely on you guys today and you keep cheering me on, which is a beautiful thing.

Hey, we're going to keep doing that until the wheels fall off, but I don't think they can. We're going to get some procurement solutions to make sure those wheels stay stuck on that.

That's right.

So thank you again, my friend, so much. So excited for the journey and the growth that you've been doing in just less than 2 years. Um, I'm really looking forward to the next few years ahead as you continue to build this thing and create a whole new market category for the space. So big props to you. Hopefully we'll finally see each other in person at some point in time and space. We gotta get to that, Texas. Uh, but yeah, until next time, my friend. Maybe we'll bring you back once you get that A done. Uh, we'll be looking on the— on from the sidelines as you continue to build. Uh, we're here for you, brother.

Thanks, guys. Cheers.

All right, man. Yeah, you have a good one. Let's bring Dustin back up to the stage. We can close out this Friday heading into the long weekend here in the US. Dustin, how you doing, man?

Hey, hey, excellent interview. Yeah, super excited to have Andres here with us. And yeah, I kind of try to share this exclusive about the funding round, but it was so interesting to me, especially what he said about the scale of their customers. This is an enterprise-level procurement solution, and how their investors actually, you know, with having those specific like big enterprise customers that the investors on his cap table were really able to bring value add. And, uh, and yeah, so super exciting stuff.

Yeah, and that, and that's something that, you know, in our work with Founder Institute, you know, running programs around the world, that's always a challenge. You know, you've run— and I see this a lot with, with entrepreneurs at large, you know, you're 10, 15, sometimes even 20 years in your career, you've— and you're getting really good at what you do, uh, especially if you're coming out that corporate route, and you've identified a major gap that's just not serving your needs. So you go and you build that yourself because you already have this personal validation. Your colleagues and peers in the space have this validation too, and you're seeing demand from the clients that you serve because they don't even realize that's what they need. It's very rare to, you know, if you build it, they will come kind of things without validating. But if you have this domain expertise that already validates it, you can invent that space, you can penetrate it, but it's It's a rarity to find that. So it's exciting to watch, you know, a founder be able to get into a market that sophisticated, that institutional, uh, and, and grow so quickly. Because that, again, that's a challenge. You have to go through procurement when you're working through— when you're trying to sell big enterprise customers. But if you're the software that makes it more efficient, um, it's just like, where— take my money and take my money. Um, so something— and yeah, yeah, something to think about for anybody watching, uh, that, that looking to maybe build some enterprise solutions, Anders might be a great person to bounce ideas from from time to time. But yeah, so, you know, if you're joining us in the US, it's going to be a long weekend. We got the Fourth of July holiday coming up on Monday. You got any plans this weekend, Dustin?

You're just going to kick it? Yeah, yeah, we're having a party, but on Sunday, the day before the real Fourth of July.

Everybody's doing a party on Sunday for some reason. Everybody's sleep on Monday.

I guess so. I guess that's the way. Yeah, we thought maybe people would have more important plans on Monday, but yeah. So, uh, but then on Wednesday, so after we come back from the weekend, um, we are having our co-founder networking event happening. Uh, this is an event that we run, I'd say like every other month, and, um, this one's open to the public. So we sometimes have private, uh, alumni and enrolled founder networking events. This is different. This is one anybody can join. So if you're looking for a co-founder or you're just, you know, looking to bounce ideas off of people, uh, you know, in your startup space, this is a good place to do it. This event is hosted on Airmeet and there's sort of virtual lounge with different video chat tables where you can jump around and meet other founders from all, literally all over the world. There's usually a good couple hundred people who show up. So that's the link down there where you can RSVP and come out and hang out with us on Wednesday. So, so that's for next week. And then you plugged it at the top, our other announcement that we're probably just going to keep harping on every single week here on Global Startup Report is upcoming Founder X. This is our big VIP gathering for the FI network, and that is coming up quickly on us, a little more than a month away, but we are getting excited for it now. There's a website folks can go over and check it out. And yeah, if you're somebody in the FI network, you'll definitely get emails about this to register.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to this, Dustin. I've been with FI for over 5 years now, and the very last Founder X was what, 2017? Right as I was joining the organization. And, you know, when we used to do these in person, this one was hosted in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we have a good amount of HQ representatives, staffers that help us support everything we're doing in Europe and eastward. So I'm excited about that. You know, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to bring it back IRL fully next year. I'm just going to try and convince John to see if we can bring all this to Austin and just make it central.

Get everybody central.

Everybody else, make it easy.

Nice central location, at least.

Yeah, we can do it that way, uh, you know, try to run it twice a year. But more to come there. We are going to be announcing, rolling out some keynotes. We've locked in a few right now, but we're holding on that. You'll be learning more. Stutson said we're about 30 days out now, so we, we are off to the race. You're going to be seeing tons of ways to, to participate— programming for founders, programming for our, for our directors, our mentors, the advisors, the investors. Work within our, uh, our community. And again, if you are interested in becoming a part of this family of ours and starting a company just like Anders did, uh, you know, you'll have the chance to it as well. But select invites will go out to, to the public. Just, you know, subscribe for our updates, follow this show. We may be able to, maybe we'll swing a couple, uh, free invites for those who engage and share, uh, week after week. Next week though, who do we have? Who do we have on the show next, next week?

That's a good question. I do not actually know off the top of my head, but I can, I can click in two clicks and see it. Okay, well, we're hoping to have Peerbee, possible potential to reschedule, but so we're hoping to have Dan from Peerbee, which is Amsterdam alumni. So if you can't join next week, we'll have him on for a future episode. But yes, this is a very— a European founder, obviously, from Amsterdam, and it's sort of a cool platform in the sharing economy, I guess, is what I would say about Peerbee.

I love that. Yeah. And then, oh yeah, the week after that too, another FI Texas grad, Ashley Connell, Prouse Project. I'm looking forward to that conversation. Ashley and I have known each other for a very long time and I haven't seen her since the pandemic either. She just had a baby recently too. So there's a whole beautiful story around it. I'm so happy for everything she's been up to. So we got some great, great guests coming up in the weeks ahead. Heading into July. July 1st, rent's due, y'all. Make sure y'all pay your rent. Welcome to July. Pay your bills, don't forget about it over the long weekend. But from, from all of us here in FI land, thank y'all for joining us again for another awesome episode. Great special guest, Dustin. Any other final thoughts before we let everybody go for the weekend?

For those, for those in the US, yeah, enjoy the holiday weekend. And yeah, for the everybody else, you know, welcome to July. We're definitely well into the summer now for if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. If you're down south, different. But yeah, yeah, thanks everybody. Yeah, enjoy the holiday weekend. Find us back here next week on Global Startup Report, and we'll see you then. Take care.

Absolutely. Y'all take care of each other, take care of yourselves, build the future. We'll see you next