The Exchanges

Q So help us, so where's Cardhook now? What does it do, and why do people pay you?

A Sure. So the idea is that people spend a bunch of money on user acquisition. Uh, they, they're doing retargeting. They're sending, they're spending a lot of money driving people to the landing pages, but 70% of people who add something Into a cart, abandoned. Um, it ranges, ranges, uh, by sight, but that, that's more or less the industry standard, is that over 70% of all people who add a cart, add something to their shopping cart, abandon it. So our software basically takes the people who've begun to check out, um, who've added something to their cart, have begun to check out, and then stopped for whatever reason. We, we send them an email, uh, email campaign designed to get them to come back and complete their purchase.

AI assessment note: “our software basically takes the people who've begun to check out... We send them an email”

Q Um, and to find working, I mean, were you doing like 10 grand a month in ticket sales? What was the revenue?

A Yeah, if I recall, like, it's been a while, um, but we got to a point, yeah, it was like 10 grand Per weekend, right? So if you did an event, um, and that's, that's not profit. That's just revenue. And a lot of the money, um, again, as I'm going off my, off my memory, but a lot of the money would, would go to, to pay for events. I'm sorry, the event space. We'd get a little bit of stuff, uh, subsidized by sponsors. We didn't pay ourselves anything. Um, initially it was really focused on just like, we wanted to create an environment where it was like, we wanted, we were really the target market. Um, We were like, we want to be an environment around people who really want to, who are curious and want to understand how to build businesses.

AI assessment note: “we got to a point, yeah, it was like 10 grand Per weekend”

Q And what was the acquisition offer for? I mean, was it for like, 50 grand, 60 grand?

A No, so it was actually one of those things where I basically lost money on it. I, I gave it to them. I was, I knew personally that I was, It's just too exhausted. I would not be able to do a good job. And so we found a venture backed company that we felt would be able to take, continue to take care of the customers. We were a B to B product. So, um, my perspective or our perspective, quite frankly, was we want these companies rely on our service in order to serve their communities. YC was using it as a way to connect all of their members. Um, you know, It felt like if there was a, if we weren't going to sell for a bunch of money, quite frankly, the next best thing would be to at least have a good story coming out of it, and to take care of the people who had, who had, who had, uh, taken that initial risk in working with us.

AI assessment note: “it was actually one of those things where I basically lost money on it.”

Q All right. First question. What's your favorite business book?

A So, uh, it's actually, it's a, it's not a business book, but it is. It's called Thinking and Systems, a primer by, uh, Danella Meadows, and it's about symbolic systems, which is, like, sort of the top level of it. It's really about understanding the cause and effect between, um, you know, Seemingly unrelated things. So within, within organization, it might be the effect that, um, you know, the amount of time people are spending in the office and the effect on productivity and how that ultimately affects some other element of your, of, of the, of the system. It's basically that is looking at everything, every organization, everything as a system and understanding what the different levels levers are and what influences what, because oftentimes with any company, There's the thing that will have a disproportionate impact if you touch it or if you mess with it, and so early on, um, same is true with marketing. Early on, it's about identifying what's that one, what are those, what are those levers, and what are the effects?

AI assessment note: “It's called Thinking and Systems, a primer by, uh, Danella Meadows”

Q So what's, tell us where you are now. So you found a soft landing for Alchemy Labs. What's next?

A Yeah, yeah, yeah. So about a year ago, I connected with my now partner, Uh, Jordan, Jordan Gall. And at the time he had started sort of a side project. He had just sold an e-commerce store and basically he, he, he, he looked at his experience running an actual e-commerce store that had physical products. And he was like, I want to build a software company cause it's, you don't have to deal with a film. You don't have to deal with a lot of, a lot of the sort of technicalities of, of, uh, physical stuff. And he looked at all the tools he'd been paying for and was basically like the abandoned cart app that he was using made him a bunch of money every month. And it was quite frankly a piece of crap. And he was like, I bet I can do this really well. Well, it's a simple ROI. And so he actually, he, he, uh, hustled and built together an initial sort of MVP, got paying customers. Um, I basically took a year, uh, to sort of be really spend time and like careful around what did I want to work on next? Had done a bunch of projects with different people and had a much clearer idea based off my past companies of What, who would compliment me well? And, and, you know, quite frankly, who would I be a good match for from a skill set and just, uh, uh, expertise. Um, and what really drew me to, to Jordan was that he's a great marketer. Uh, he has hard marketing skills and as a technical person, …

AI assessment note: “about a year ago, I connected with my now partner, Uh, Jordan, Jordan Gall.”

Q So what did WeWork? What did WeWork pay you on average in a month?

A Uh, early on it was probably, So quite frankly, it originated in the labs, WeWork labs, and this is back when, before WeWork was even big. So I'm not even, I think we had a letter of intent from them, but we ultimately didn't even charge them. Co-working spaces ended up not even being our target market eventually. Uh, we were charging at the bottom line. We started at like a hundred bucks a month. Um, the, the comparison that we would often see was, you know, was it like Salesforce would charge like five to 10 dollars per user per month. We never got to a point where it was real that we could, uh, that we would be able to, quite frankly, we never found anyone. We didn't sell at the enterprise level. We got into one enterprise and, um, they, they would have done it for that much. But we didn't, we raised some money.

AI assessment note: “I think we had a letter of intent from them, but we ultimately didn't even charge them.”