[Leadership] Selling your company and what comes next with Bill Arteca

I think in my genuine opinion, from a business owner perspective or an entrepreneur perspective, I think we're in, quite frankly, probably the greatest time in history to have an idea because the barrier of entry from idea to product is a matter of days at this point.

Hey, Bill, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you here.

Thanks. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah.

All right.

So I know we share this stuff ahead of time. So we always start with the same question. Give us a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

Yeah, I think the craziest thing that ever happened to me was at my prior company that I started, I had to sell samples to Singapore and Singapore and essentially I sell human biospecimens and Singapore is very, very cautious about receiving specimens that are not collected ethically, uh, and I've never had to do this before, but to complete the sale, I actually had to sign a document as the sales rep that said if they find out these samples are from China or are from an area that is not ethically sourced, I am a fugitive of Singapore and will never be allowed in the country. And if I am, I will be arrested and sentenced to life in prison. That is a real document I had to sign to complete that sale.

And you're not in— wait, are you in Singapore right now actively? Uh, no, not in the US.

I'm up in Massachusetts, but, uh, I have had no plans to go there. I think I can go there. We didn't do anything fishy, but it is a little sketchy. Don't get me wrong.

That's pretty wild. Anything to close a deal.

Exactly. The dollar amount was high enough and I figured, well, we, you know, our, don't, don't get me wrong. Our samples are always ethically sourced. We had nothing to hide, but yeah, it was, I've never had to look at a document like that before. It was very, very interesting to sign away potential international freedom for sake of closing a deal.

Yeah, well, how are you going to top that one? Well, first off, I would say I would love to have you share a little bit about your background. I know you recently, you know, started a company, sold the company, working on, you know, maybe some new stuff coming up, but would love to, you know, share your background and then we can dig into, you know, some of the details around, you know, what it's like to start a company and sell it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll kind of give you a little 60-second background on myself. So I started off in the laboratory. I'm a classically trained molecular biologist. I was in drug discovery working on Alzheimer's and diabetes for quite a bit. And there were some other lab positions prior to that, but they were mainly just lab tech roles, night shifts. When I was in the lab, we ended up developing a compound that actually cured Alzheimer's in mice, if you can believe that. Now, to translate that from mice to humans is about 12 to 15 years of research and a lot of potential for failure. And that is kind of when I had that moment of, am I going to sit in a lab with the hum of instruments for the next 12 years? Or am I going to, you know, potentially leave and and really start to take advantage of the career potential that I had. So what I did is I ended up leaving the lab and then I went to the commercial side of science. I started selling basic equipment, things that I knew, centrifuges, benchtop equipment, vortex mixers, and then did that for about 2 years, really built up kind of that sales muscle, you would say. I then transferred over to really where I am now and where I've been for the last 8 or 9 years, which is biospecimens. I was at a company, Sanguine, where I really helped— I was an early employee there, really helped launch them. I think they started— I was employee 30. Ended up leaving an employee, 135, um, with $110 million valuation there. So that was a great achievement. Ended up going over to Abrok and actually launched their biospecimen, um, uh, offering. Ended up taking them to about $100,000 a month, uh, or monthly recurring revenue, and they were at zero beforehand. So that was a big accomplishment. I think quite frankly, once you do that, um, you really have an itch to do it for yourself. Um, so what happened was, uh, basically after about a year of that, we had some success and Abrok was left in a great space. They had, um, they had all the different systems that were built and are still in place today, but I ended up taking a step back and starting BioSample Connect at that time. BioSample Connect was started in June of, I believe, 2024. And essentially what BioSample Connect was, was I identified a niche where other countries such as India or Ukraine were providing biospecimens that were as good as a quality as the ones here in the United States, which really has not occurred over the past 10 years and only started happening over the past year or so. With the development of these countries and the implementation of biospecimen governance. So as a result of that, I was really one of the first to market to partner with these companies and effectively, in a weird, weird, in a weird way to put it, import human biospecimens into the US from these countries and then sell them to the major pharmaceutical companies here. We had massive success, or at least I would consider it a massive success. We grew pretty quickly. Within about 10 months, we had over $1 million in bookings. I'd say about 95% of the sales were from large pharma. We did have some small pharma in there. And then after that 10 months, we had a couple, a couple of potential buyers that reached out. We had about 3, some larger private equity backed, some a little bit smaller, ended up going with one of the smaller entities, which was JoinBio. And then over the past year, I've basically been integrating BioSample Connect into JoinBio. And then about maybe 3 weeks ago, the 1-year mark hit, some contract clauses were enacted. And then that's when I ended up taking a step back to really just kind of close out the sale. And as of right now, I'm exploring what's next and kind of diving into some additional projects. Um, but that's kind of the, the 60-second elevator pitch.

Yeah, it's a, uh, great background. A lot of, a lot of stuff going on in there. Maybe before we jump into the company side of things, what, uh, what got you into commercial sales side of things rather than, um, I don't know, anything else that you could do, uh, either in the lab, out of the lab?

You jumped ahead of me, but then maybe that's just my geekness. I wanted to dive into the neuroscience and the molecular pathways that were involved in that drug, but I think maybe that's a different, that's a different conversation. So, um, yeah, yeah. How did How did you get into commercial?

Yeah, of course. So essentially, because of my days in the lab, I was essentially a lab manager when I was at the drug discovery company. And as a part of the lab manager, I ended up interacting with all of these different companies. And you'll notice all the names: Thermo Fisher, VWR, Corning, all of these companies to be able to get these tubes and these reagents in. And then as you know, when you work in a lab, there's 100 reps that, that pound pavement and walk into the lab every day. So I ended up becoming friends with a lot of these guys and essentially I ended up kind of seeing myself in that role. So it was more of an exposure aspect where it was like, wow, I didn't know I could use my degree for something outside of a laboratory. So once I saw individuals with a similar background to mine doing something that was a little bit more, I guess, personable, you would say, or a little bit more social. It was really, I wanted to take that risk and I figured if it doesn't work out, you can always go back to the lab. It's not like if you spend a year out of a lab, you forget 8 years of schooling. So it's more, it's more the, it's more I wanted to take a shot, ended up working out and I really liked it. I really enjoyed it.

Did you like interview other people to kind of like get an idea of what the role was like or did you just kind of take a shot in the dark and hope for the best?

I'll be honest with you. I tell everyone who has asked me like, how'd you leave the lab to go to enterprise? I am very transparent here that I got pretty lucky. I went to a company, they're owned by Mettler Toledo, they're called O-House, and they were launching a line of lab equipment and they wanted someone who was young, hungry, and knew how to talk about lab equipment. I happened to fit that mold at the time. Now it's a little bit more difficult. I know, you know, a scientist going to the enterprise side, there's a little bit more involved. There's a lot more background involved and a lot more competition. But I kind of got lucky where I just right place, right time. I happened to interview for them and they actually put a lot of trust in me and gave me the entire line to launch. With very limited commercial responsibility. So it was, uh, kind of serendipitous, I guess you would say.

Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting thing, and this is something we tell people all the time too that are thinking of making that jump, is look for a company where you have a unique set of experience that they need. It's like if you have a specific, if you have experience using that equipment, go to that company and see if they'll hire. Like, who's better for selling that thing than the person who's used it before, right? or if you have specific experience working with specific types of disease models, like go to a company that is CRO that is making those types of disease models, right? Like, I think that's like a low-hanging, I feel like it's an easier way to get in the door because you can like stand out that way. But, um, yeah.

Basically the first ever job I got was commercial. I, I've told the story about how I fell into it, but the bit I probably don't tell much is that I was currently working as a stem cell iPSC specialist in differentiation into neuromodels. And the company I went to work for sold iPSC-derived neural models. Like, it wasn't a coincidence that they thought I was a good fit for that, having never sold before.

Yep.

And, uh, and I'll say one thing that I think a lot of, a lot of people in the lab might not realize until they start interviewing. And that is that, and this was something that I always tried, I was a professor at the time as well. Um, and I used to always tell students who were going into industry that what, that you get so used to being around other scientists that you don't quite realize how much you know that is not science related, or that is that someone without a science background might not understand. So for example, even using something like a centrifuge to someone who's classically trained in science, that is a no-brainer. That's an everyday tool. To someone who's never taken a science class, you could spend an hour teaching them how a centrifuge works. And I think that's something that, um, I think if, if your listeners take anything away from this specific part, if you are someone who's in the lab looking to go to enterprise, I would say, as you guys said, find something you know, but also don't underestimate what you know. If you're going to a company that sells something that you've spent, and that you've spent 10 years getting a PhD in, there's a good, there's a high likelihood you will know more than most of the people at that company once you come in and will be able to make an immediate impact, or maybe not know more, but know as much to be able to make an immediate impact. And definitely don't underestimate what you spent, you know, your life studying or what, you know, your college years studying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people have the belief that you have to be an expert in the exact niche of something to be able to be a part of a conversation. I don't think that's relevant. Like not necessarily the case. You can, you can have a good enough knowledge, right? And feel like an expert in that room.

Uh, precisely.

I, uh, as a side note, I went for a medical procedure a little while ago. Well, semi-medical, semi-cosmetic. Um, when I was in the room and, uh, they had to take blood and spin it down. And, um, I guessed the RPM and it freaked the nurse out because she didn't know I was a scientist at the time. So I guess the RPM would have said—

what'd you say? Like, uh, was it 1,300 or 1,350 RPM? It was $1,200. Yeah. $1,200.

Yeah.

That's fine. I do this. I do the same thing. And they always look at me like, are you a phlebotomist?

That's great. Yeah. It's a, you were making that move into commercial. Obviously it's, it's a leap for people. Um, but as, uh, I think all of us here will say it was probably the best decisions any of us have made. Um, uh, because it's just, I don't know. I love it, uh, so much. Yeah. Now, okay, when you went to go start the company, you identified that there was this gap. So there was all of these different, you know, biospecimens that could be sourced from all of these different areas. And then because of sort of like these trends converging of these other markets were, I don't know, like higher quality, higher standards now. And so they could meet the standards, if not go above them for what might be needed here in the US.

How—

well, one, how did you like identify that? And then two, I'm sure this was a bit of a novel concept to people that you're selling to. And so how does that— how did you kind of navigate that as well?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I guess to answer your first question in terms of identifying it, the biospecimen industry over the past 8 years kind of went through like a renaissance where it was very much— I was kind of lucky in a sense where I joined an industry that was at the early stages and has grown tremendously over the last decade. So as it was growing, other countries, other institutions, and primarily, quite frankly, hospitals started realizing we have 1,000 samples sitting in the basement. We have no idea what to do with them. Let's start reaching out to people in this industry and seeing if they can sell it. So I started getting random emails, random LinkedIn messages during and over the course of, you know, 3, 4 years while I was at these companies essentially saying, hey, if you're looking for a vendor, please consider us. And I kind of built, I kind of, every time I got one of these messages, I wrote them down in a book and kind of kept that as a potential to go with them at another date. And effectively what happened was, once I left, I kind of figured, you know what, we have about 30 of these institutions. Even if I can get 2 of them to produce high-quality samples that are similar to the samples here, we can provide it. And this is the largest aspect that I didn't say before. The samples there are about 80% cheaper than the samples here, and the quality is the same. So that, and that also leads to the second question, which was, okay, now how do we get customers to accept these samples? Because there was that mental dilemma of these samples are so cheap, are they going to be good for my research? And the companies that we were selling to were all large pharma. So for them to, for them to get a bad sample and then lose 6 months of research, that would dramatically affect them. And quite frankly, from a sales perspective, they would never talk to me again. So there was a lot of element of providing data upfront, and that is something that I'm really big into. I have nothing to hide when I sell to my clients. So with that aspect, if they ask for data upfront, I'll give them data upfront. If they ask for how it's collected, I'll give them the method. I'll give them everything I possibly can, and I will tell them upfront, I'll give you everything I possibly can because I understand your research is so important that you can't really mess around here. So we did have a couple hesitant clients that we were able to get over the line with pilot projects. Now, keep in mind, these pilot projects were so cheap compared to what they were normally paying, it was almost a no-brainer for them to at least test it out. So that was kind of the strategy to get in there. But then once we got in there and they realized the samples were the same quality, then it becomes essentially almost negligent for them not to consider this because the cost savings were so dramatic. And that's kind of what I was able to take advantage of to radiate through these companies and start to sell through, you know, well, you know, the old saying, penetrate, then radiate. We penetrated with one or two clients and then essentially radiated through the cost savings through the rest of these organizations.

Is there an element of this too, of like genetic diversity as well with these samples? Because you get, you can get them from the US, but was that like a selling angle or is that even interesting?

That was probably, uh, you hit it right on the head. Um, that was probably one of the things that I spoke about the most. And that was where, um, if a, if a large pharmaceutical company is doing research and they want a primarily Caucasian population, obviously that's a little bit difficult to get at India. And that's where I would look at a country like Ukraine. So as a result of that, it was, um, we had to piecemeal some of these solutions, but that was also something that we discussed. But then on the flip side, because they never really had access to these populations before, or at least high enough quality samples, there was also an interest in receiving these samples as well to test it on these specific demographics. There's also diseases, for example, dengue fever. We don't have that here. Whereas in India during the monsoon season, you can get 100 to 150 samples a week. So there's different aspects there that they were able to look into that they just never had before. So it was a little bit of convincing, but also a little bit of curiosity on the client side, I'd say.

Yeah, that's fascinating. So yeah, I mean, yeah, you really found this like emerging trend, latched onto it, went all in, get to a million in revenue, and then all of a sudden people just started knocking on your door and they're like, hey, we want to buy you. Is that how it goes? Yeah.

I'll be honest with you. I had, I did not talk to anyone else. I did kind of that whole, like that very tropey that you see on the internet, like put your head down for 6 months. Don't talk to anyone. Don't go out and just work. And I kind of did that. And then I looked up and all of a sudden I started having these offers come there that I never reached out to. Um, and that, I don't know, I don't know if that's the normal process. This is the first company I've bought and ended up taking into, I mean, that I started, ended up taking into acquisition. But at least from the perspective of if you build it, they will come, in my opinion, at least in my experience, there was some truth there where if you build systems that are repeatable and clients at these levels are, are talking about it, eventually other companies will hear and want to at least have a conversation with you. Now, given everyone was in the biospecimen space, there was a little bit of a more niche industry. There's not many players here, but it was definitely like an if you build it, they will come scenario. I just so you know, I had no intention of selling as well. Like, not that I had no intention, but I did not expect offers. In fact, my fiancée even said to me, she goes, man, I kind of wish they came like a year later so that you could have enjoyed owning the business a little bit longer. Um, so it was kind of everything happened very, very quickly.

Yeah.

When they come to buy, bought by you, the, there wasn't anything truly proprietary, right? But you'd built a system and ecosystem that was valuable. Is that right? Like, what was it that was so interesting about your company that made somebody want to buy it? Because there's a lot of, a lot of companies out there that are easily reproducible. So people aren't, they say they're not sellable, right?

Yeah, no, you're entirely right. And, um, so, and I'll give you the exact words that these companies said to me. And a lot of them were, they said directly, um, at least two of them said, we can reproduce what you built. It will take us 3 to 4 years and we don't necessarily have a guarantee of success. So it wasn't necessarily that they couldn't replicate it. They absolutely could, especially one of the companies was private equity backed. If they put a team of 10 guys on this, absolutely. The difference is, uh, or I guess the, the proprietary information were the sources of these samples. And that's where there's over 1,000 hospitals in India, probably way more than that. Um, and that's where you essentially have to talk to every single one of them to get the one vendor that, or hopefully get the one vendor that I had, or you could just acquire the company and have all of those key contacts, because the way it works in the biospecimen industry, just like in the CRO space, there could be 10 hospitals that provide samples. Only one of them is going to be able to operate at a commercial capacity that can really drive revenue. That's really the key IP. And then the second aspect was also the ability to sell and also the marketing aspect. We actually, I only spent, I spent less than $2,000 on marketing. So a lot of it was relationship-based and just knowing these people in the industry. So they were also the IP of the connections and and being in the physical systems of these companies, because sometimes that could take, you know, 6 months to a year.

Yeah, they're basically purchasing the extra— yeah, it's like, we could do this, let's say 4 years, but why don't we just buy the company? Then we have access to this and then we can grow it using our resources that we have that maybe you didn't get from like funding or things like that.

Yeah, 100% correct. It was just, it's essentially a major shortcut for them. And it all, you know, ended up working out.

Yeah, really interesting. I'm, I'm thinking, I'm trying to think through too, like, because, okay, let's say you kept, you, you kept rolling it, right? You kept rolling with it and going for it. I wonder, I imagine too, because it was a hotspot and because there was clearly this interest around it, I imagine a lot of competitors would've popped up pretty quickly. So it's almost, is it, there seems like there was this really nice timing piece of this where it's like, not only did you get onto the trends of like what's going on in the industry, which you had to be there for in order to identify, in order to make it happen and have the wherewithal to like start the company to actually do it and like the courage that can do that. So it was like, people will say, oh, it was lucky. It's like, no, no, no, you had to like do all of that stuff first. Like there was all these prerequisites that you had to do, then that occurs. And then there's like, okay, now maybe the more serendipitous point is cool. Now you're getting to this point where there's a lot of revenue, there's eyes on it. They're seeing that this market is real. Almost like get out while you, not like get out while you can, but kind of, right? It's like, hey, this is where you can, let's let them go make this bigger, um, versus like then having to go compete with like 5 or 6 other competitors.

You're, do you, uh, it's funny, Harrison. Uh, yeah, you have, you have a better understanding of the company than most people. I've spent hours explaining it to you. You hit it directly on the head. Um, I actually, I, I tell my friends when they kind of ask about how it started, I use the phrase I caught lightning in a bottle. Essentially, it was exactly, there was definitely, you know, starting the company itself. And I'll be honest, I threw up every day for like a week quitting your job. When you quit your job and you don't have revenue and it's on you, that's a whole different element of life. As you guys know, you feel like a cowboy in the wild. You know, it's, it's crazy. But you know, once you kind of got, got past that, as you said, everything kind of grew so quickly. And it's funny, if you Google biospecimen providers right now, you will see companies that have almost identical websites to BioSample Connect. and all of them launched within the past year. Uh, it's actually those private equity groups that call and interview people. Um, I guess the secret's out. I get, I get those calls all the time from people wanting to invest in the biospecimen industry as well. So as you said it, it was kind of like a, if I wanted to continue competing, I think right now I would have been a mid-sized company in the biotech space or in the biospecimen space, but it would have just been a day in, day out grind of competing with all the other companies in the space. So as you said, it was kind of catch lightning in a bottle. Get the exit under your belt, get cash equity, and move on to the next big thing.

Also, I imagine there's not that many samples or not that many hospitals in all these places that you could source from, right? Like, you get a partnership with one, I imagine it is a, like, huge switching cost for them because they only have a certain number of samples that they can even ship out. So yeah, yeah, the, uh, mover advantage here must be huge.

Yeah, the first, it's, uh, it's also, it's, um, it's one, the samples, but it's also the commercial ability of the hospital. And I think that's the largest thing in this, both this industry, but just in any CRO industry that you end up working with non-commercial entities. So even, even in clinical trials, I've seen this difficulty where you can work with a hospital, but if they're not, if they don't have someone who's enterprise-minded or they really don't care about, I guess, quote, closing the sale, for lack of a better phrase, then you're always fighting an uphill battle with people with essentially your own internal vendors because you have to explain to them, hey, we have to move fast to be able to make this money. So that was kind of the, that was the key was finding those hospitals. Um, because every hospital has samples, it's finding the ones that work well. Those are the ones, that's those, those are the moneymakers.

One thing, um, Harrison said about it, and I think there's underappreciated, is like when people think, oh, you got lucky, right? That kind of phrase, you got lucky, you got whatever. There's a quote that I like, which is, uh, the harder I work, the luckier I get, right? So you said to start, to start with, you sat in a room for 6 months without looking up, working your ass off to try and get to a point where some, and then suddenly somebody noticed you. So the difference there is, is the idea, the guts to go do it, and then the tenacity to sit in that room for 6 months just going at something whether you know it's going to work or not, right? And I think that, uh, that's like that quote, harder work, luckier I get.

I 100% agree. It's, uh, it's funny because people think that because it's this biotech and people hear the word biotech and a million dollars, they think I had an office and all this crazy stuff, and it was just me in my bedroom with the laptop, you know what I mean? It's not, it's not as grand as, as the internet or whatever makes you think it is. It's It's just producing, just produce as much as you can.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of producing as much as you can, uh, we were chatting about AI before we jumped on, uh, this call. What are, uh, what are, huh?

Couldn't let that pass, could you? We had to bring the answer.

No, we gotta do it. You gotta do it. But, uh, so talk us through some of the, the stuff that you're thinking about with AI. How, how are you approaching it? Like, Also curious if you were to go back and if you had to like restart the company again, how would you think about AI, you know, being a part of it?

I'll, uh, I'll answer the last question first because I think about it all the time. Um, if I had the VIBE coding tools, so when BioSample Connect was started, I don't know if ChatGPT was, I, I think it was, but it wasn't the ChatGPT that we know it is today, or it wasn't the AI that it was today. It was kind of, I think it was in the infancy years. So it was definitely helpful and I did use it, especially for like contracts review. But if I had the ability to do a, a Vibe-coded website now with an AI bot attached and have automated emails and automated outreach, I think it would have been a much different game. And quite frankly, I think I could have moved even faster than I had moved just because of the tools that I would have had. And I also would have liked to give the clients a little bit more of like a, like a portal. Like for example, we had a portal, we had to pay a third party to have them sign into that portal to track their studies. I would have loved to have been able to build that myself and really beef it out and give them more upsell opportunities. So I think about it all the time. Um, I think in my genuine opinion, uh, from a business owner perspective or an entrepreneur perspective, I think we're in quite frankly, probably the greatest time in history to have an idea because the barrier of entry from idea to product is a matter of days at this point, depending on the product, you know, there's, there's some things that might take longer. Um, but for example, uh, I'll give you a stupid example that I'm working on. Um, I got really into gardening in my time off. So after I left JoinBio, I've just kind of been relaxing and I've been really into gardening. I've never explored it, but I, I want to grow lettuce. I don't know why. Um, but, but regarding that, I ended up, I ended up kind of, I was working with, um, topsoil and I was like, oh, this is a good topsoil that mix that I made. I was like, you know what, screw it. I'll see if I can sell it. I threw together a website in a day, tied in a Stripe payment system and was running ads by the next morning. Um, and that's all through Lovable, or I'm sorry, that was through Base44, but that's all through these Vibe coding apps. And that's a bad example. I haven't sold any soil, but I just want to give you, give you, I give it a, a example of kind of how quickly you can go from idea to launching something with these apps.

Yeah. Sounds like a pretty dirt idea. Yeah.

Oh God. So on that note though, I was reading something the other day, um, Harrison shocked because he still thinks I can't read. I can't spell, I can read. Um, so, uh, I was reading something the other day and it was basically saying we are past the point of where building a thing is the company. Like, so you have an idea and you build a thing, whatever that may be, um, a website, an idea about a process or a piece of software for like, uh, lab equipment to integrate, whatever it may be, that, that, that is no longer a business because everybody can do it. The business is how you run it, how you implement it, how you drive new products to market. And so I think actually that initial piece has become way easier, but the additional steps are harder now because of that, because anyone can compete with you very quickly.

Yeah.

And I think, um, I, I 100% agree there. There has to be a differentiation. Like, for example, if you type in background remover, there's about 500 different websites that were vibe coded to remove picture backgrounds. And I get it because it was an easy thing to build. Uh, but I think Nick, I think what you said before, Nick, or before we started, which is you can really get sucked into building too much here. And that's something that I've also, I've seen with these AI tools is it, it, it turns people who are really fast builders into long-term developers without them even realizing. Um, and you end up, you, you, you code something, you go to bed and then you wake up the next day and then it's like, okay, I'm going to code 4 more pages. Then you think about it and it's 4 more pages and then it's 6 months went by and you haven't shipped anything, but you have a really, really cool app that you work on every day. Um, so I think that's, that's also the downside of this is you can, you can end up spending a lot of time trying to optimize with AI. Where a brute force approach of just hooking up, you know, the, what the old, I guess the older mechanics would probably be quicker and more reliable in, in some cases, not all.

Yeah, it's, um, it is interesting. And then there, now there's these, um, platforms, like there's this one that just came out called Paperclip. And what it basically is, is a, it's a way to organize your agents into a company. So you essentially create a top level agent, which is like the CEO agent. You give it the company an objective and then you have sub-agents underneath it, which are like the CMO, the head of product, like the designers, et cetera, for all the things that you would need. And they all have their own individual sets of skills and their own, you know, properties for how they actually function. And then they all coordinate through essentially like a task board, right? So they're all like basically working off of the same task board and you can monitor and everything. But it, the concept is basically an autonomous company. So, okay. So you come up with the idea and like you give the CEO the objective and then that CEO will spawn different agents that can then go and execute specific things. And this should, this just runs. Now the token cost is going to be absurd. However, so not like it's going to be free, but it is a really interesting way when you start to think about like how you can leverage AI is like, It's going to be pretty wild what happens. And then they're coming up with this like idea of a marketplace where you basically download companies. So you can go and like one-click install a company with like a set of different agents and stuff. So like, it's going to be pretty interesting because like it got me thinking of your soil idea is if I wanted to go launch, like there was probably going to be this like an e-commerce. Like company template that you could launch and like you could go in there, click launch. Here's my soil product. Here's the information about it. Go create my website. Go launch it. Run paid ads.

Yeah.

Do content, whatever, make videos, all of it. Um, and I should be able to start doing this for you.

So, yeah, I, I, you know, what's funny is, uh, I can give you an exact application of, of, uh, at BioSample Connect, one of the things that was the most burdened was updating clients on collections. So if we had a project that was 100 samples being collected over 6 months, anytime a sample got collected or a small batch of samples got collected, we wanted to let the client know. That is something that if I did today, I would absolutely without question have a bot track that. Email the client or notify the client when things are collected. And that takes, quite frankly, what was originally an entire position or what would've ended up being a position and moved it into a bot. And I'm not advocating for the destruction of jobs, but it's just an example of, of really just an immediate impact that I could see that saving at least 10 hours a week. And there's a bunch of different scenarios that I, I would've implemented in. So I 100% agree. I haven't heard of paperclip. That is absolutely insane. But I do believe it, um, have from what I've seen these, these tools do. I think, I think Claude has a vending machine that operates itself in their, in their office. And I think it's profitable.

So that's pretty wild. Is that true? I haven't heard that one. Yeah.

Yeah. Go on, uh, go on YouTube. If you go on Claude's account, they have an entire video about it. Um, it actually ended up losing money to start and then they, then they, it appointed a CEO, another bot as a CEO of the vending machine and then ended up diversifying labor and now it's profitable and it's just a part of their economy. Yep. It'll even order exotic things for you. Like you can say, hey, I want to try this thing from Japan. It'll order it for you and ship it in.

That's cool. Oh, I want this.

What a great— We want that.

I want one.

Yeah. Right?

Oh, that's awesome. All right. Well, I know we're like pretty much right up on time here, but, um, any other stuff that you might want to share with the listeners, uh, you think they might find interesting?

I think the only thing I'd say is if you're thinking about starting a company, take it from someone who has never taken a business class in their life. You can do it. It's definitely difficult and there's a massive learning curve. And transparently, I talk about selling the company with confidence, but that was one of the scariest parts of my life. I had these contracts were more intense than anything I've ever seen. We had to get lawyers involved. And, you know, with that, there is, you can, rely on expertise and rely on people who are professional in the space, but just know those tools exist, especially with AI. You can learn anything now. So that'd be my largest part. My largest piece of advice is if you're thinking about quitting and doing your own thing and the timing and money aligns, go for it. You never know in 2 years, you might not have the opportunity because of the way life circumstances are and you don't want to, you don't want to get older and think you never, you never did it. So just that'd be my piece of advice. If you're thinking about it, go for it. Now is the, now is the time as we were discussing.

Seriously. The one piece I'd add on to that, because I completely agree having us two started a business as well, is that it's less cutthroat than you think. So many people out there willing to support you and help you actually, that it's quite surprising that you can build a nice network of co-founders and friends and people that will actually help you grow.

So, yes, do it. Even competitors in the industry. It's funny, when I started, I thought every competitor would be like, hey, screw you, Bill. We're going up against you. All of them were anything you need, you know, we can help you out. Even other sales reps were excited to watch the growth. So I 100% agree, it's a lot less cutthroat and quite frankly, it's a fun community. Once you kind of get into like a founder entrepreneurship community, the conversations are really exciting, kind of like today, it ends up being, you know, really fun conversations.

Yeah, that's great. I love it. Well, Bill, it's awesome to chat and thanks for sharing your story and everything. Yeah, we'll talk soon.

Of course. And I absolutely love the new website for SuccessionBio, by the way. I absolutely love it.

Thanks.

Thanks for the plug.

Succession. Sorry, it's a great, great new website. If you haven't seen it, go check it out.