Cache Flow Brian Dainis

Dive into the dynamic world where corporate meets creativity with Amer, a serial entrepreneur with five startups and a vision for shaking up traditional business models. Explore the high-stakes thrills of entrepreneurship and discover how AI is revolutionizing video production—all in this invigorating chat loaded with lessons and laughter.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

The tough transition from corporate to founderBuilding five companies with two successful exitsPioneering short-form video contentIntroducing AI to modern video productionThe balance of tech and human touch in business
Resources:
LucihubCurotec 
Connect with Amer Tadayon:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
03:26 - Well, I think that you do one of two things. Either you realize you just can't do it and you move on and you go back into, you know, corporate America or you say, okay, let me see if I can do this again and not relive the same lessons. And that's the hard part, I think, is to remember the mistakes you made and not apply them a second or a third or a fourth time for me. I had to learn the same mistake a few times and then finally, finally not apply it. 16:38 - I think that's a really, I think that's the future of a lot of these SaaS companies because everyone's, you know, all the product categories that can be fully automated I think have already been done. It's hard to do things new that, you know, haven't been done before. And, you know, kind of taking human component, integrating humans into your product experience, but delivering it at a SaaS product, I've seen a lot of businesses do some really cool things.15:46 - It's human. It's human editors. Now we leverage a ton of AI tools to accelerate it, but at the end of the day, you know, I always say, you know, design and what we do is subjective, and subjective is always gonna need a human touch. So, you know, there's a lot of hype around AI replacing editors and filmmakers and all of this stuff. And, you know, I think it's gonna accelerate things, but I just don't think, our who we are as people is, you know, you're not gonna let technology tell you what looks great. 27:40 - I don't think you can stop innovation and the progress. I think you're gonna have to figure out how to work with it, right? And that's what we're trying to do. We're saying, Hey, how do we do this? And, you know, we're not eliminating people by any means. We're actually just accelerating the work and being able to do more with less. And I think what's cool about being a startup in this day and age is AI is woven into the fabric and into the DNA of this business, right? We started AI at our core. And so, you know, we embrace all of this. 37:05 - I I think they're either gonna have to find a way to leverage technology to be more efficient, or they're just not gonna get business anymore. I mean, it's the reality of it you know when I had my production company, what is it, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was harder to do this. So you could justify charging a lot more for it. But the tech is really democratizing a lot of this, right?And so we talked to an agency last week in LA who said, our client will is willing to pay us one 10th of what they used to pay us two years ago to do this, these videos. And we stopped doing them because it just didn't make sense. 

Join us as we unravel the inspiring bootstrapping saga of Sana Kumar, Founder and CEO of Kovai.co. With a gripping tale of growth from niche product programming to leading three booming SaaS products, Sana shares wisdom on entrepreneurship, the challenges of multi-product focus, and leveraging AI for innovation. Tune in for a hearty blend of tech talk and founder foresight!

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

Bootstrapped a niche SaaS to 300 peopleCreated LinkedIn content as a CEODiscovered a gap in Document 360Killed a product after 4-year runEmphasized scaling current products
Resources:
KovaiCurotec
Connect with Saravana Kumar:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
03:51 - The problems typically what large companies face at some point, they all need to talk to each other. You might need a customer data from your SAP system into your Salesforce. And from Salesforce, some data need to go into your workday and all these things. So that is where the specialty of this Microsoft product, sits in the middle, it connects everything together and helps you to build that kind of integrated systems.20:49 - There's kinda like two ways you can think about a SaaS product, either verticalized or horizontal and like a Calendly or you know, like a Document 360 or you know, a QuickBooks. Those are like horizontal SaaS products. And you know, I think once you kind of feel like, I think horizontal focus, like just purely horizontal focus worked, a decade or two decades ago better than it does now. And I think in order to go to market, well with a horizontal product, you kind of have to like put it into verticals. So you have to say, you know, even if the product itself is horizontal, you still have to like market and sell it as, you know, healthcare focus or tech focus or maybe construction or whatever the vertical is. And then if you've got a verticalized product, like a product that's initially designed for one industry, then I think the expansion opportunities you have to like figure out what other sort of similar industries you can move it to.11:24 - So they're talking about Lotus Notes and they're comparing Lotus to Microsoft and they're saying, you know, Lotus, Lotus's advantage in the market is that they're creating, they're the first groupware products that is, you know, serving the enterprise use case. And they're like, this is probably gonna give Lotus Notes a competitive advantage over Microsoft for years to come.31:51 - So let's talk about bootstrapping. I think it's super awesome. Like anytime I hear about, you know, SaaS companies that have achieved scale and especially bootstrapping it, you know, it's, it's certainly very hard to build a SaaS company because there's a ton of upfront RND and then when you do start getting customers, typically it's like small chunks of money on a monthly basis. It's not like you're selling a big consulting contract where you have a huge down payment. So you know, it takes a while to kind of get the steam engine going to be profitable. So like why, why did you bootstrap, why didn't you raise capital and, you know, how did you fund the company? Like how did all that get going?36:48 - And nowadays you just spin up like, you know, you just install Node JS or Laravel or Ruby on Rails and you've got like a full application scaffolding to like,  you can write, write an app in like, a couple weeks if you're really good and fast and you know, simple app and so like technology's no longer remote. I think the moat nowadays, unless you have like some super difficult to get data that's core to your application, you know, the technology itself is not the mote, but the mote is distribution of the technology, the ability to acquire, acquire customers 

Dive into the fascinating world of HoldCos with Brent Beshore, the mastermind behind a 15-company empire. From untangling the definition of a HoldCo to exploring the gritty details of CEO transitions, this episode uncovers the delicate art of building a lasting business conglomerate. Join us for an insightful blend of strategy revelations and Brent's personal entrepreneurial journey that's anything but linear. Don't miss this masterclass on nurturing small giants!

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

What exactly is a HoldCo?HoldCo vs. Private Equity specifics.Unpacking the 'adolescent phase' of a business.The challenges of centralizing business operations.Insightful strategies for hiring CEOs.Adapting to unexpected business conditions.Balancing cash flow and reinvestment decisions.
Resources:
Permanent EquityCurotec 
Connect with Brent Beshore:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
02:14 - The nature of what a HoldCo is, you know, by nature it's usually there's no terminal end date to a HoldCo versus a private equity fund usually as a 10 year lifespan. So we're kind of in the blend of between you know, we've got a 30 year initial term. We can also renew, we can go longer than 30 years if we want to. So we have a lot of the functionality of a HoldCo, but technically each fund is its own private equity fund. I mean, private equity broadly just means you buy equity and private company. So technically a HoldCo is also a private equity firm in the sense that it buys equity in private companies.36:39 -  Brian: They're not ever fully responsible for their own failures or successes. But, you know, especially failures, specially failures, which is what you want. You want people to own their success and their failures and be responsible for their success and failures. And it's, you know, it makes sense that the way that works in a single company applies when you have a portfolio of companies. So it kind of, I had to hear it from you to fully soak in the why part, but it, it makes total sense at that point.Brent: Well, here's another one that's kind of like this, that's an insight that's hard earned. And when I say it initially, you're gonna say, wait, what? Because I would've said the same thing, which is, small businesses don't have access to good talent. And you're like, no, wait a minute, is that making fun of or is that poking fun at at small businesses?28:59 - We should see clear opportunities and we should be able to clearly see the lids on that business that's been holding it back. And then we're really honest with people, Hey, these are the things we wanna do after close, this is what we want to help you guys with. This is how we wanna be operationally involved so that we all win together. And they're like, great, we don't know anything about that stuff. So help us. We need help. 25:19 - So John Malone, the cable industry was his thing. He didn't care about anything else. He wanted to be in the media, cable business, and he was gonna go as deep as possible as he could do it. And he built an incredible business based on that. He used a tremendous amount of debt. He was able to finance a lot of it through pre-tax dollars. It was brilliant, right? I mean, he actually created the term EBITDA, right? So the term EBITDA we used, like John Malone actually created that so that he could get banks to understand how to finance his operations. That's how smart he was.50:35 - We don't always hit home runs. We're hitting a lot of foul balls and we're hitting a lot of ground and rule singles, you know, I mean, so it's not like this is not an exact science and we don't have it all figured out. So just as you know, take everything with a grain of salt. We've done this for a long time. We've worked with a lot of CEOs and I would say we keep getting humbled over and over and over again. And I think this is just, look, the thistles and thorns of operating business

Dive into this exhilarating episode as Ignite!’s CEO Jessica Sliwerski returns to unpack an extraordinary year of 5X growth, pivotal Series B funding, and a seismic impact on student reading. Discover how Ignite! Reading is changing the game for kids nationwide. It's a heartfelt saga of innovation, human-centric tech, and a mission to mold the future of education.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

5X company growth in just a year.Over 16,000 students served nationally.Raised a game-changing Series B.Honestly human-driven teaching success.Rigorous tutor certification process.
Resources:
Ignite! ReadingCurotecE33: Solving the Reading Crisis in America with Ignite! Reading’s Jessica Sliwerski
Connect with Jessica Sliwerski:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
11:22 -  It's not because anyone is evil, it's because the system isn't designed in a way that is going to make “the main thing” the main thing. And so nobody's really, it's like if no one's accountable and it's not the thing that every single person is obsessing about, then yeah, this is gonna keep happening. So that's one part of the problem historically.25:48 - So I often feel like I'm such an imposter because I run a tech company and I can't even, you know, figure out how to make Netflix work on my television in my living room. And so the answer to your question is that in terms of the experience for the customer, it is a deeply human experience because it's tutors that are, you know, video conferencing through our secure platform meeting one-on-one with kids and doing direct instruction that is synchronous, there is no app per se. And what we figured out how to do adding ignite reading that is unique in our space is how to scale something that is so human intensive. And typically in EdTech, what you have are a lot of software products and it's pretty easy to scale a software product, but the problem is that you can't get the quality of outcomes because the act of learning to read is hard.26:59 - Humans don't like to do hard things. And so when you put an asynchronous app in front of a little kid in a classroom and you say, do this for 15 to 20 minutes a day and that's how you're gonna get extra support to learn how to read, that's not gonna work. It's gonna work for a very small percentage of kids who are hyper compliant and for whom learning to read is not hard. So they're just gonna do the app, but for the vast majority of kids, it's going to look like a head on a desk and them just pressing buttons and not otherwise engaged. And so what we've had to figure out is how to scale something that is so heavily reliant on humans and what our flywheel is for the recruitment, the development, the ongoing performance management and the quality control of this tutor force that as of today is, you know, about 1300 part-time employees.28:04 -  It's like a classic like entrepreneur problem where you know, you have this idea, I wanna help all these kids learn to read and I wanna teach non-educators to be tutors and they're gonna meet virtually and it's gonna be amazing. And then you start building it and you're like, oh sh*t, these are people, there's a whole HR side to this that is no small thing that we have to figure out. And we now need to back into all of these pieces around how do you recruit and not just recruit but recruit a diverse tutor force because we want kids to be able to see people who look like them or, you know, affirm their identities and cultures or speak their home language. 58:30 - I've always been someone in like building companies that's, you know, been one of the first employees and I thought it was cool when we got to 30 people and I thought it was cool when we got to 60 people and now we're at a hundred people and it's still only just the beginning and it's kind of wild to think about where we could be this time next year. And there's this part of me that is like, can

Dive into the podcast world with Grain CEO Jeff Whitlock as we unravel Grain's AI-driven meeting evolution, the merger that molded its future, and the star-studded story of Mike Adams. Get an insider's look into raising VC funds, the trials of startup life, and the riveting roadmap that Grain's cooking up, all topped off with some candid Silicon Valley talk.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Grain's AI Transforms Note-taking.Grain and Startups’ Merger Insight.SaaS Frameworks vs. Intuition.Raising VC Funds: Pros & Cons.The Future Roadmap for Grain.
Resources:
GrainCurotec 
Connect with Jeff Whitlock:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
05:00 - Yeah, we had  fun, fun that we thought that was fun. We joked to Mike, you're famous, you're old startup was mentioned in this show, but in his experience he kind of realized we're doing a lot of these remote learning sessions. To be honest, this experience around recording them is not very good. And so that was kind of the initial gist of the idea. So it started, grain started off just very much as this idea that all these meetings are gonna be moving onto from kind of analog conversation, digital conversations, and there's a lot of value in these meetings. We should make it a lot easier that for them to be, a lot easier to record and make them accessible and useful.8:16 - And so, we made some tough mistakes I think during that period. Really important lesson for entrepreneurship is like, money doesn't solve your problems. You know, I think we raised probably, I think when I first started entrepreneur, it was like, hey, if I can just raise that big round, success will be there and learn that that's not true. In fact, too much money can cause its own problems. It causes you to kind of be a little lazy and try to cut corners and hire people to solve problems. And I've just learned, and we've just learned time and time again that like the founders have to at least come up with a solid V one on most most things. It is really hard to sort of outsource that.10:33 - So we've had just a huge, huge number of new competitors join in that are kind of more like 2 to 3-year-old companies, whereas like the original ones like 4 to 5-year-old companies. So that's been interesting to try to compete with them. And they often have like new fresh blood, fresh capital and, we're still kind of going on and, that's been a really interesting to kind of think about the strategic and market dynamics of our industry and one with like obvious value but not great moats. And so that's been really interesting and not necessarily enough network effects for like there to be obvious winner take all quickly23:16 - I would be much more, I'd say cautious in taking VC money. I think, I think when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I just like, this is the way you do it. You know, get an idea, you get a little bit early traction, you sweat equity and then once you can raise money you should raise money because then you can pay yourself and grow and blah, blah, blah. I think there was like a very much like this is the path and I didn't consider many other paths. I would say if I were to do it again, obviously I think this time around I'd be in a position where I would have a little bit more starting capital and people who would maybe, maybe invest, but just as like, friends, family angels, which I didn't have the first time around.44:25 - Yeah, so the way I think about it is at a high level, well first of all there's a strategy and the strategy is essentially, in my opinion, it's defining where are you playing in the market and what's your theory on how you're going to capture the opportunity or win and that strategy should inform all your decisions then. So that's kind of at the macro level. And we could talk more about strategy if you want how I think about it then you have, at the micro level, I have some kind of like broad based heuristics

Dive into the cutting-edge world of real estate with Stash Geleszinski, Co-Founder of Nëdl – the data platform predicting property transactions before they hit the market. Discover how Nëdl is transforming brokerage with predictive analytics, empowering players to anticipate and capitalize on upcoming deals. Expect stories from the trenches of the commercial real estate industry and insights into the tech that's shaping its future.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

Data drives real estate's future.Nëdl predicts market moves.Stories of commercial real estate.Tech intersects with property deals.The rollercoaster of brokerage life.
Resources:
NëdlCurotec 
Connect with Stash Geleszinski:
LinkedIn
Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
Linktree
Quotables:
13:01 - Well, no, the loan comes due, right? Like you've gotta do, when a loan matures, you've gotta do one of four things. You can refinance it, you can sell it, you can pay it off, or you can give it back to the bank depending on the situation. So there are only four potential outcomes.27:36 - So how do we get into those markets?  I think it starts with just looking and identifying what the patterns are and it's like if you look at the deals that trade, they'll tell you what. And then, so if you look at the deals that have traded and then you look on their history for the past six to 12 months, you can figure out what the tells are and then you can extrapolate that forward on the rest of the properties in that market or sub-market. And that's really, you know, what we're doing. So each property is gonna have its own functionality or difference of operation, but the data will tell you if you know where to look.38:29 - There seems to be a certain set of buyers though that they have found a way to exploit the system in that way and that's the business model. And occasionally they will buy a deal, so you will see them in the property records. So you're like, okay, they're legit. But then you get into bed with them in a transaction and it's like, oh my God, this is terrible. What are we doing? So I don't know, we've had a couple of those and so when we see them in our CRM system, it's like, do not call this person. Do not, I will disown you if you call.43:31 - Stash: I've heard of lenders not showing up to closings and buyers almost being delusional thinking that they are going to do it and then they end up not. But I've never, and I've talked with others, nobody has ever heard of a lender showing up with their funds, but then the buyer failing to show up with their funds.Brian: So what, what'd you do to send the money back to the lender and cancel the deal?Stash: Yeah, the escrow or the lender pulled it back through a CH, I guess, or a wire and you know, I think we gave him like a week like, okay, get your money together and then we can, you know, everybody was on the fence because everybody lives on fees, right? Lenders live on fees, brokers live on fees, sellers live on fees, you know, what have you. So we're all trying, you know, we all have a vested interest. Buyers live on fees, we all have a vested interest to get this deal done. Well, a week came and went and you know, the relationship is no more, but it was just the strangest thing.44:50 - The best deals actually are the ones where you go out, you get the purchase price, you do your marketing, you have a bunch of tours, you have a competitive bidding process. And then once you've agreed on price, on price and terms and the letter of intent, then you just hand it off to the attorneys and then they take it from there.