How Squire Built the Ultimate Brand Experience - Dave Salvant Co-Founder and President

I used to have to get a haircut literally every other week, if not weekly. I was so frustrated because we had to spend hours in the barbershop on like a Saturday. It was not organized. It was chaos. You had to bring cash. You had to wait. If the barber or the barbershop owner knew someone, they were automatically taking priority over you.

Unbelievable. Dave Salvant, president and founder of Squire, the world's leading barber app.

Serving 3,000 shops and processing over $1 billion in payments in more than 1,000 cities around the globe.

We had raised a little seed money, maybe $250,000, We raised $300,000, and now the customer that was gonna implement it said they're not gonna do business. So we had to mortgage the rest of the money and said, hey, look, we're buying this barbershop. We ended up taking that barbershop that was deeply in the red and bringing it to the black.

I love it.

First, you have to do things that don't sell. I probably knew on a first-name basis our 500 customers. You have to get people to believe in you.

Is there anybody bigger internationally?

No, there's nobody bigger internationally that focuses only on barbershops. We got some cool things coming on. Book an appointment, ask questions. You won't be able to tell it's an AI at all. It fooled me the first time I called in and to test it out.

What does 2025 Dave tell 2016 Dave?

Stay the course.

Welcome everybody to episode 7 of the Zeitgeist Podcast. I'm so excited for today's guest. My very good friend Dave Solvante, president and founder of Squire, the world's leading barber app. Dave, welcome to the pod.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Steve. Glad to be here in Chicago.

It's so good to have you in Chicago. And you just came from Detroit real quick.

Detroit. Yeah.

You were there with the Endeavor. How was that dinner?

It was great. For those who don't know, Endeavor is a global organization of like top entrepreneurs. And they had the national selection panel, and I was honored to be a panelist selecting the best and brightest companies.

Awesome. Any anyone that was a particular favorite from this panel?

Yeah, there was a few. There's a few. There's one out of Miami that's basically doing remittance for businesses in Latin America. And as you look at the world, the world in LATAM and inflation, they really have a product that hedges inflation by tying crypto to fiat currency and allowing people to do cross-border payments. And it's a growing economy. They've grown like a weed. And it was very impressive what they were able to accomplish.

And even for you guys, as we were talking about last night, uh, having a big dev team in Argentina, paying people in stablecoin— tell everyone about that.

Yeah, we partner with Deal to do it, but I'm sure they have like a stable, uh, a stablecoin, uh, type of mechanism. Because in Argentina specifically, uh, inflation is 2% monthly, so 24% annually. So if we were to wire money in dollars, it would be converted to pesos almost immediately. And then 6 months later, it'd be worth 12% later, you know, a year, 24% later, a lot less. So, so I think the way, you know, those economies work is it's better to transact in, you know, fiat American USD. But, you know, you can't bring, you know, cash or whatever, you know, you know, you can't travel more than $10K. So it's like It's a way, it's solving a need. It's the hair on fire problem that they're actually solving for.

I love it. And funny story, I remember going to Argentina New Year's 2 years ago, and the first thing you do when they get there, they tell you, A, bring a bunch of $100 bills because if you bring $20, 5 $20s does not equal $100 when you go to the blue market to convert your currency. If you went to the official ATM, you would get something like 150 pesos to the dollar, but if you went to the blue market, you got like 300. It was because everybody knew that the exchange rate was bullshit because of the inflation.

Yeah, and 2 years ago inflation was 200%.

Yeah,

you know, so, so think about it like this. If you, you know, had $100, it would be worth like 1/3 in, in, in 24 months.

Unbelievable. All right, let's talk about the business. So for those that aren't familiar, explain Squire.

You know, Squire is the, like, it's the leading de facto number one software systems for barbershops. So think about it like the operating system, everything from point of sale, online booking, payroll, loans for barbershops. We operate in every state, the US, Canada, and UK. Australia, uh, even have some spots, some barber shops in Gibraltar, uh, because they use the pound. Um, yes. Oh, you know, we're growing pretty quickly. Um, yeah, so, you know, just, just happy. And, and, and, and, and, you know, what, what inspires me the most about it is like you're really helping small business owners, and small business owners are the, you know, backbone in American economy. I really believe that. You know, corporations, they have advantages that, you know, the mom and pops don't. And that's what I'm passionate about is helping these folks, you know, build better lives themselves, become pillars in the community that they serve. And, you know, add a huge— sorry, you heard that?

Yeah, we're

good. And have impacts in society.

So as you actually started thinking about this problem set, what were you working on? And you told me a funny story about, you know, being in finance, going to, you know, being in New York City and spending 3 hours on a Saturday to get a cut. Talk about what the system was like before Squire, and then what did you do to like fix it?

Yeah, so, you know, circle back 2016, you know, 2015, you know, I was working finance, uh, And I used to have to get my hair, it's obviously very short, it grows really fast. And I used to have to get a haircut like literally every other week, if not weekly. And I was so frustrated, you know, my co-founder and I, because we had to spend hours in the barbershop on like a Saturday. You know, you couldn't go to get a haircut on your lunch break, it didn't exist. And when you went to the barbershop, it was not organized. It was chaos. You had to bring cash. You had to wait. You know, it was one of those situations where if somebody, if the barber or the barbershop owner or the manager knew someone, they were automatically taking priority over you. And I felt that was an inefficient system, especially with the advent of technology. You know, Uber started taking off around there. OpenTable was starting to gain a lot of traction. And like, why couldn't that technology from an organizational perspective be in the barbershops. So that's kind of what was the impetus for that. But when we really started to unpackage everything, we realized it wasn't a consumer problem. It was a business-to-business problem because they didn't have the tools they needed to organize and be successful in their own right.

So you have this problem set that frustrates you as a consumer, but then as you mentioned, you really identified the B2B problem. And part of the way you did that was actually buying a barbershop and running it. Tell everybody that story.

So essentially, we realized the problem and we couldn't find— this is a lot of stories. I'll just go back. So we realized the problem. We had this one customer that was willing to test it out. So we listened to the customer. We went and identified his problems. And we were like ready to do this and we're going to test it out in his barbershop. And then the like literally 2 days before we were supposed to launch in his barbershop, he says, hey, I'm selling the business. So, so at that point, you know, we had raised a little seed money, maybe $250,000, $300,000. We've been building this thing for 6, 7 months. We have about 6, 7 months of runway at that point and

no customers at this

point.

Right.

They were going to be here. But first of all, it was a very janky experience. Like, we used to— because it was a consumer app, and the, the process was like, hey, look, you book appointment, the barber shop, you know, sometimes honored the appointment, sometimes they made the, the, the, the customer pay again in the shop. It was still the same problem because it wasn't organized and they were double booking. It was a kind of like a shit show. And What we understood is like if you don't manage the entire workflow of the business, then there's there's always going to be some room for like error. So what we what we end up doing is we end up going to this guy. He saw the problem. He saw the vision. But then he said, "Hey, I'm giving up. I'm losing too much money. I don't want to do anymore." So we were faced with the a problem. We spent all these resources. Building out this V1 product, and now the customer that was gonna implement it said they didn't want to— they're not going to do business, or they're giving up. So we had to mortgage the rest of the money, like literally out of like maybe the $60,000 we had, we took $40,000 of it and said, hey, look, we're buying this barbershop. So it was like we bet the farm. You know, and and I guess it worked out because we ended up taking that barbershop that was deeply in red and bringing to the black. We learned about the use cases that we didn't experience because because it's one time one it's one thing to listen to somebody; it's another thing to do it yourself and see the operational and the you know operations and actually build and solve for what. You would do as opposed to like getting feedback directly from the customer. And, you know, and that gave us a lot of, you know, insight that we didn't have before.

I mean, that's literally one of my favorite stories I've ever heard about any entrepreneur. And I can imagine you and Song, you know, sitting there with $60K in the bank. This opportunity comes up. It's like, do we put it all, you know, on the line and go take over a totally different business that you were gonna go do? Like what, I can't imagine the balls that took.

Yeah, it was tough. And there's stories on that. So basically, you know, we did everything. Like, you know, then I'm like 26, 27, you know, going out the night before, you know, then having to wake up, open the barbershop up on a Saturday morning and be in there all day, you know? And one of those times, like, so the barbershop was in Chelsea Market. If you're familiar with Chelsea Market, at that time Google's headquarters was up there. Facebook was around the corner. It was like where the tech folks worked and lived. And then one morning, one morning, I noticed, you know, working the desk, working the front desk, I noticed an @fb.com email address. And I was like, hey, Who's this guy? Older gentleman, and I was like, "Hey, I'm gonna talk to him." And I talked to him. I said, "How you like the product?" He's like, "Yeah, this is fantastic. I love, I love the, I love the experience. You know, it wasn't like this before. You know, thank you for this." And you know, started asking more questions. And you know, I'll say, "Hey, you know, do you, you know, invest in companies and things like that?" And he was like, "Yeah, passively, passively. You know, I do it sometimes, whatever." And if if you're in South— if you're in, uh, Austin for South by Southwest, uh, you know, I would love to talk to you. And I was like, yeah, matter of fact, I'll be there next week. And, you know, and we weren't planning to go.

Yep.

But, you know, we went to, you know, Austin, we met with him, um, and he ended up investing, you know, I think $150K from that meeting. Um, But if I wasn't there, if I didn't speak to him, if I didn't go to Austin, you know, Song and I went to Austin, he would never invest it. But, you know, that investor is Blake Channerley. He was the highest-ranking member at Facebook at that time in Austin. He became the president of TikTok globally, and he's been a great investor and mentor since then.

I love those stories. And so much of early entrepreneurship is just showing up, right? It's such an underrated thing. So, okay, now you've got this barbershop, you get it from red to black, so you're not gonna lose everything, but you still have to scale this business. Talk about how you got your first, you know, 10 shops. You got one, but then you literally bought this, you bought the barbershop just to get in there. But then once you learned the business, like how did that change your pitch? And talk about some of those So it was those early wins of, you know, getting those first handful of customers that really made a difference.

I mean, it was hand-to-hand combat, blocking and tackling. After that, we went to Y Combinator, we moved to the Bay, you know, and it became a little easier, but I'll tell you another story. So in Y Combinator, you know, you have, everything is about how you ramp up to like demo day. So you want to show up into the right V-curve, you know, type of growth. And, you know, we're getting barbershops and, you know, right before demo day, one of the system crashed, you know, the system crashed. We had, you know, about 3 barbershops, but they were growing fast. And we used the magic metric, which was, you know, appointments booked or whatever. Showed the highest velocity. And then, you know, one of the— our system just crashed, you know, it wasn't working. So I literally, you know, I think Song did, but we had to drive down to Sacramento, you know, and literally bribe the barbers not to revolt against the owner. And we had to give them each $500 cash just to stay on through demo day so it didn't look like we had, uh, inverse turn of our most high-velocity customer. So, so those are, those are the, uh, those are the things you have to do as an early-stage founder. You just have to do whatever it takes. And, you know, it may be frowned upon, but listen, you know, like, if you have— if this is your company, you got to be willing to, you know, run through a brick wall To to get it done, and listen. And this guy was livid. He was cursing. Like I'm like, listen. You know we're gonna pay you whatever you miss. Give every haircut for free. We got you. We got you. Just give it here. You're not gonna make five hundred dollars here. You know like relax. But they stayed on, and they're still on to this day.

What do you remember about your YC pitch, and who'd you pitch?

We pitched the the the the. So the YC pitch was crazy. So. And early on, we used to get traction and get customers from the consumer perspective. We used to bring a barber chair around to different WeWorks in New York. So we used to cut the members here in a kind of like conference room.

Were you cutting and Song was cutting?

No, no, no. You got a barber? We got a barber. Like, I can't cut anyone. If you get a haircut from me, you might as well—

Hey, good thing I got the haircut yesterday, even though we We have the clippers and, and we've got the, the barber smock, you know. I had to get fresh before. Yeah, they've screwed it up.

Yeah, so, so we used to carry the barbershop, we used to put a barber chair in an Uber SUV to different WeWorks around the city, and we used to— and people used to book through the app.

And would— was this a partnership with WeWork, or were you just showing up?

No, informal part. We were members of WeWork. Yeah, okay, informal. Yeah, we still have a partnership, but, you know, this is the heyday when it was wild. Yeah. Right there. You know, it's not like that WeWork here now, but back in 2016, it was a different, a different, a different energy there. But we used to bring the barber chair to the different WeWorks. And on Demo Day, we had a barber chair at Demo Day where people could book haircuts. So we brought the barbershop. We had a barber. In fact, Sam Altman got a haircut at, you know, Demo Day, and he found his barber for a while through, through, through Squad.

Through that app?

Yeah.

As I've found, you know, all of the barbers I've had for the last— since I've met you, you know, 2019, have all been— especially when I moved to Miami.

Yeah.

I didn't know anybody. All right. So you start So you're, you bring the chair, you're literally onboarding people, you know, one-on-one, but obviously the supply side in your marketplace is gonna be the most critical because having a barbershop say, hey, instead of sitting and waiting for 3 hours, right? If you download this app, you can go and book an appointment and pay through it and all that. Yeah. So talk about like the go-to-market strategy and how that evolved as you were going shop to shop. So you get to hand-to-hand combat, you got your first like So you started off with like, you know, 50 to 100 barbershops. And then what did you do to really scale it?

So, so I think our first thing, like, you know, first you have to do things that don't sell. So, you know, I probably knew on a first name basis 500 customers. Right now we have 5,000. And, you know, it's so much founder-led sales early on. You know, you have to because you have to get people to believe in you because they taking a risk with their business, their way of life, you know, how they feed their families. So they have to be really, really, really involved when you're not on proof, when you're on proving. So, so, you know, it was a lot of trade shows. I felt like I used to, you know, I think in 20, you know, 17, I was on a plane Every week, twice on Sunday. It was it was crazy. Just going to trade shows, showing up with like a pop-up banner, just doing the work to get people to know about Squire. And and and then you know we're able to find industry leader, someone who you know had relationships sold a lot of pomade and worked for this company called Layrite.

That's what I use for my beard. I love Layrite.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worked for this company called Layrite. We ended up hiring him and he, you know, had more relationships. And then it just scales. Like we were using, you know, a BS CRM and, you know, we were able to like hire account executives, SDRs. And the organization matured over time. And now we have our go-to-market is pretty locked in.

As you think about the early things that made the business go viral, because when we first met back in 2019, the business was emerging, but it has just absolutely exploded in the meantime, especially as you've gotten deeper into how You, you run everything at the shop now from payroll to bookings, you know, even like loans, as I understand. So talk about like those moments that really mattered that, that, you know, helped inflect the business.

I think, um, that's a great question. I think, uh, when you're, when you're running a business, uh, you know, it's resources, you know, resources. And capability and hiring the best people to scale the business. You know, we have a great, you know, leader now on like it's different. Like different people get you from different points, and you know you have to make sure you hire the best talent at that particular time. So I take it back like. Like take, you know, our finance department. You know, I didn't realize what a great CFO was until we had a great CFO. You know, like everything is just so locked in. Like, you know, when, you know, I was doing numbers, maybe numbers and maybe right, maybe wrong. I don't know. You know, we met cohorts, maybe right. You know, this looks right. Okay.

Right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But right now, I mean, we just, you know, We just passed our second audit by a Big 4. So it was just the capability is just exponentially better. And as, as a founder, your responsibility is to, you know, keep the lights on, maintain the culture, find the best talent, and delegate. That's your responsibility.

And as far as Founder, you and Song have an awesome partnership. How have you guys, how have you guys coexisted? Like obviously 9 years into the business, you know, so many times founder partnerships die because people, you know, have the same skillset. What was it about him that made him the perfect partner for you? And what's been the key to your, you know, enduring relationship?

I think the key is a genuine friendship. You know, I think that's the core. Like, at the end of the day, like, it's very— it's like a marriage. You know, like, you're going to fight sometimes. You're going to have disagreements. You're going to, you know, not see everything aligned. But if you're aligned to the mission and this is your child, the company, you do what's in the best interest of the company. You do. You put your feelings aside, and you subscribe to logic and reasoning. You don't subscribe to emotions. Like people get emotional. The data doesn't lie, you know. And sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes he's right. But we gotta try it, and it comes from a mutual point of respect. And I understand him, and he understands me. He's more pragmatic. I'm more A dreamer or like whatever, we're gonna try it, you know? And I think that's a good combination.

When you think about— when I— when people ask me about Dave, when they ask me about you, one of the things that I always tell them is that he's absolutely relentless. And for those that follow you on Instagram, one thing that they will see is how relentless you are in the gym. How is like your time in the gym and, you know, your streaks that you go on? And we could talk about what's the most days in a row you've worked out? 'Cause you live on planes, you're all over the place. Yeah. How has that impacted you as a leader? And, you know, what is that, you know, what is that, how does the way that you work out translate to the way that you work?

I think that health, I think health is super important. You know, what's the purpose of, you know, being successful? Because everybody aspires to be successful if you're unhealthy. And, you know, for a long time, I didn't prioritize it. But, you know, as you get older, you know, as you have, you know, I have a son, you just want to be around for a long time. And I feel like a lot of folks don't take care of themselves as much as they should. And you should prioritize it. You know, what is life if you don't have your health? It's very— that's important. You know, we went to a class at 6 AM this morning and after being out at 1 AM last night. So it's like, you know, but you just have to have discipline. You have to prioritize it and you just have to make time. And sometimes the hardest part is just getting there. The hardest part is getting there. And once you get there, factory settings take over because it's just the motion. If you— the hardest part is getting there. And once you accomplish that, you realize that you're proud that you made that sacrifice. You're proud that you went. You're proud that you showed up. And, you know, regarding streaks, you know, the longest I was like 500 days.

500 days in a row, guys.

Yeah. Yeah.

And like when I tell you this is a guy that Lives on airplanes. He's all over the place. 500 days in a row, didn't miss a workout.

500 days in a row. And sometimes the workouts were BS workouts, admittedly.

But you got in, you clocked in.

Yeah, clocked in.

Got that money.

Yeah, got clocked in. Sometimes it's on the StairMaster for 15 minutes. But at the end of the day, you showed up. I'm like on a 10-day streak now. But, you know.

Hey, but you made it today. And by the way, You know, he had to catch an early flight, so this is an early, early morning podcast we're recording today. Yeah, we were out late. 1 o'clock is very generous because I dropped him off at 2:30 in the morning. And all I'm going to tell you is when I said we can make the 5:55 class, he's like, let's go.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we did it and we got through it. And it was great.

It was a great class. Great class.

Studio 3 shout out. Um, you mentioned your son and you mentioned, you know, what's the point kind of being successful if you can't enjoy it? But One of the things that I think has been so inspiring about you, just as I've known you as a friend, but also watching what you do in Endeavor and for the larger community, obviously it's very well known that, you know, venture capital historically has a very tough time flowing to Black founders. Mm-hmm. And you and Song, not just coming through YC, but, you know, have raised over $200 million and have built this unbelievable business. Talk about how important it is for the Black community Because I love how much support you've given back, but also what they've given to you. Talk about what it means to be a role model.

Yeah, I think politics are what they are. You can't wait. You could do something, you could say something about it, but I think entrepreneurship is the ultimate meritocracy. No matter what happens, either you're making money or you're not making money. You're getting traction or you're not getting traction. And I feel like investors move out of fear and greed. That's the only thing that drives investors— fear or greed. And if you are successful, I don't care if you're blue, people are gonna invest in you. Because they will not miss an opportunity because that's the way capital flows. Now, it might be harder to get it originally. Like, it was a dogfight. You know, we only— we ran out of money. We did, you know, 30 investor meetings for our Series A. We got one term sheet. The terms weren't that good. But you know what? We got it. And, you know, somebody believed in us and we were able to achieve that. And then, you know, You know, and after the A, 18 months later, we raised $130 million. So, so it's, it's crazy. Yeah, a lot of that was, you know, into COVID. You know, we had tailwind, right time, right place. But now, you know, we actually, if we wanted to, we didn't have to raise money ever again because, you know, we took that money, we made the hard decisions. You know, we riffed people. You know, when it was we had those tough conversations, and that's what you have to do when you're when you have to be able to look people in the eye and say, "Hey, look, this is direction we're going, and are you coming or are you not coming?" And it's okay if you don't want to come. But you know, if this you know, if you know shit hits the fans one one day, you got to be willing to go back to. To zero. And a lot of people don't have that in them to do that. They don't like to be uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is uncomfortable. And you know what that means for, you know, the Black community is like, I've heard multiple times, you know, like, from close friends, from acquaintances, from folks that I, you know, barely know, that because of what I've taken the leap of faith. And, you know, entrepreneurship is not for everyone, you know, but at the same time, I've heard also, like, I've worked— I wanted to work at an early-stage startup because I wanted a change from, you know, traditional corporate America. I've heard it all. You know, I've heard people become billionaires. Barber is because of Squire, and they're like, "Hey, look, I want my I want to control my own destiny." And I think that's very inspiring for me. But the work's not done, and it's more to go. And you know, I think we're we're we're a teenager as a company now. I think you know, but you know, it's a long road, and you got to be willing to.

What's next for Squire?

What's next is we continue to double down on barbershops. I think we are going to be, you know, we're the de facto number one software for barbershops in the US, but our ambitions eventually is to be the number one software for barbershops in the world. And

is there anybody bigger internationally?

No, there's nobody bigger internationally that focuses only on barbershops. There are companies that are like broad, that are bigger, but no one with a focus on barbershops. But, you know, I think we got some cool things coming on. We got AI, we're leaning really hard into, you know, artificial intelligence. One of the products that I'm excited about is we have a a voice agent that basically it's so cool. So you can call the voice agent and, you know, book appointment, ask questions. You won't be able to tell it's, uh, it's an AI at all. You know, it fooled me the first time I, I, I, I called in and to test it out or whatever the case may be. You can even ask it like, hey, I'm having some relationship problems, so what do you think? And it will It will steer you back to the task at hand, which is booking an appointment. And you know, it's it's crazy what technology and where it's going right now. I think I think eventually, you know, everything is going to be like input. Like I want a haircut, you know, at like typing into like a LLM, and we're going to be the middle layer that connects everything with beauty. So I think that's kind of the vision is we want to be, we want to have the ability to run all the barbershops in the world with this technology layer.

So I know entrepreneurship's so passionate to you. And one of the things you mentioned earlier on the interview was that Every single barbershop owner is an entrepreneur in their own right. So you talked about the inspiration that you've been for people getting into tech, right? But but what's the inspiration been for those customers, those first 500 customers that you know by name? How have they reacted to kind of your rise, and has that inspired them to to swing bigger?

I think the great thing about it is like. You could touch and feel these men and women. You know, I've heard countless times like, hey, Squire saved my marriage. And I'm thinking like, how did it happen? Now I don't have to spend 6 hours, 7 hours doing payroll on my day off. Yeah. Now, you know, I can run my shop Now I can do everything from my phone. Now I don't have to— I only have to cut hair as an owner one time a week. Now I'm working on my business in my business. Now I've opened 3 or 4 barbershops where I'm making, you know, half a million dollars a year. Now I can make sure, you know, I don't miss graduations. I don't miss that. Family. Now I'm a better— I can focus on what I want to do, whether that's open a restaurant or something else. So it compounds over the time, you know, like, that's one aspect. Another aspect is like, yo, you know, like, you know, I was incarcerated. And, you know, this is the first job I had, couldn't hear. And now I'm a shop owner. And now I have employees. Yeah. You know, I, and now I have a systemized and operationalized, you know, my business. So now it's like, I run it, and I can go there and go to the bank or get a mortgage for my house, because I can show them how much I made, and everything is right there. Now, you know, I can, you know, you provided funding, so I can buy the actual location. I can invest in my business. I can switch from a booth rental model to commission model because it's easier for me to manage it now. So, so when you hear those stories countless times, when you hear the story, you realize what you're doing it for, you know? And I think purpose and mission is the most important thing about being an entrepreneur.

100%. That was amazing. Let's, let's have a little more fun right now. Who's the most famous person that you know that's a Squire customer outside of me?

Um, let me see. Uh, we have a, we have a lot of barbershops. Uh, I would think, you know, I don't go in and see, you know,

like, have you ever seen, you know, somebody tweet about it that you were surprised by? Or like,

I mean, we do have a lot of investors that are pretty cool. Like we have, you know, the 49ers organization, you know, we have Steph Curry. We have, what's this guy's name? The dude, the dude. South African late night TV show. I forget his name.

Oh, like on NBC?

Yeah. He's a South African guy. I forget his name. Who else we had? We had Marcus Stroman, Duke alum.

My

guy. One of my good friends now. Trevor Noah. We had Trevor Noah as well. Yeah, so we have a lot of like, you know, cool guys that invested. And I'm sure they all use the platform, but I don't know specifically one person. You know, I try to keep—

That's a hell of a list right there. Yeah. When you think about other consumer brands that you really admire, what are some brands that, you know, you enjoy as a consumer and you love what they're doing on a marketing front?

Brands, you know, I love Alo. You know, I think it's a great brand.

And in our workout class today, we see just how dominant that business is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Must have been 80% of the class.

Yeah, Alo. Yeah, I love— there's a coffee shop named Arabia that's around The office around the corner from the office. I love that. I think they do a great job of creating a physical space. I think when you a brand, when you Apple, of course, so much about a brand is the experience when you first are introduced to it. You know, and I think, you know, there's a, there's a, I'm into fitness, obviously. AG1 is a great example. Cadence is a great example of like brands that really speak to you. And, you know, I believe when a brand speaks to you, it becomes part of your persona. And they do a great job. I think Netflix does a great job of like the brand. Cameo, obviously, you know, does a great job.

We try.

Yeah. So, so that's, and you know, my New York Knicks, they do a great job.

They do do a good job. So one thing I think that's really interesting about your path as an entrepreneur is you really love being in third spaces, right? The barbershop for so many people is their third space. They got the home, they got work, and then the barbershop is such a cultural center. But you also have opened A bunch of restaurants and lounges. Like, talk about that.

I think one of the lounges I have in New York is called Saint. We have another one opening in Q2 of next year called Omni. You know, both myself and Song are involved in those projects. I think the lounge is more of a creative outlet, somewhere where people can.

What's up from the group YC alumni New York? What's the

vision for the Black City? Somewhere where people can feel home, safe space, you know, enjoy a beverage with their friends and just vibe out. Like, I think humans are social beings. They yearn for fellowship. And we have to create those spaces where no matter what's going on in their life, They can just get away for a while, and they can just come together in a setting where they're just having fun and loving the vibe. And I think you know life is hard, is stressful, and you want to create these third spaces, as you would say, where people feel warm and fun, loving.

What does 2025 Dave tell 2016 Dave?

Stay the course. You know, I think, you know, I stayed the course, but there were some times where, like anything, it's like you feel like it can't get any worse. But a wise man once said, like, it's the most darkest before the dawn. And, you know, keep focused, keep determined, keep your eyes on the prize. And be relentless. And I think even if you're not successful in your original pursuit, you'll be successful as a human. Like, people don't understand that. Like, you know, sometimes shit doesn't work out and that's totally fine as long as you learn from it and as long as you, you know, use that learnings to apply to something in the future. Because successful people, and this is what I see, equality, they don't get it. They just become successful and they just don't give up. And they just eventually, they get something. Eventually it happens.

Amen to that. I love it. All right. I know we gotta get you outta here. So the last question that we ask everybody on the pod, what's your death row meal? You can spend it with 3 people. You could also mix and match items from any place. You could host it anywhere. Maybe you'll host it at Saint, but what's your death row meal?

Like, I think my death row meal would be, you know, I'm Caribbean, probably some oxtails and rice and peas.

Is there a particular, uh, like restaurant you love in New York, or is, you know, one of the family members like really, really crush it?

I have my sister make it. Your

sister?

Yeah. And I think the people who I want to spend my last meal with would be my son, my sister, and my mom. Sisters and my mom. And that's because family is everything in life.

All right, Dave, thank you so much. What an amazing story. And for those that want to learn more, where can they follow you and how do they keep updated with Squire?

It's just Dave Salvant, D-A-V-E. S-A-L-V-A-N-T on Instagram, Twitter, X, sorry. And, you know, Squire, Get Squire, G-E-T-S-Q-U-I-R-E on all platforms, Squire Technologies on LinkedIn.

It's an amazing app. I use it twice a week, or not twice a week, every 2 weeks. And I think you guys will love it too. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Thank you.