CodeLaunch 2023

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here the place is buzzing. It’s Buckhead Theater, Atlanta, Georgia CodeLaunch, Atlanta 2023. So excited to be talking to my first guest today, Isaac Carter with Contollo, who is a sponsor here today. And he sponsors CodeLaunch around the Country. Welcome, Isaac.

Isaac Carter: [00:00:41] Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:42] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about your firm, how you serving folks.

Isaac Carter: [00:00:47] Well, I believe very strongly in that technology should be an opportunity both for the companies that leverage it and for the people that are doing the work there. So we work with universities throughout Latin America, especially in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, and we train the students there on how to leverage skills in mobile app development and cloud computing and help with internships and then get them jobs with US firms. Allow the US firms to take advantage of really high quality talent and also some cost savings and availability to talent that is just typically really hard to find here in the US.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] Well, what’s the genesis of the idea? How did this come about?

Isaac Carter: [00:01:28] So I started doing work with my church group back when I was 12 years old. We actually built an orphanage in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. My dad’s a master electrician and have been staying in touch with these folks through the years and was working with an orphanage down in Managua, Nicaragua, just outside Managua, and was thinking about moving down there and becoming a missionary. And the people there said, Hey, you know, we love our missionaries, but we really need jobs. What can we do to get some jobs here? It’s they were going through some pretty bad political unrest at the time. And so I started interviewing these folks and they had tons of certifications and they were exactly the kind of people talent that we were looking for with our clients up here in the US. So we opened an office down there and started just doing the connections.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:14] So you had a business in the US providing services?

Isaac Carter: [00:02:18] Yeah, I was acting as a big data cloud consultant, but just by myself and started just hiring some folks down in Central America, training them on using big data, things like Databricks, Google Public Cloud, using Looker Studio and BigQuery, and a lot on the Azure framework as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:37] So you were taking like skills you knew that folks were hungry for here in the US and you were just saying, Hey, is it possible to train these folks who are motivated and have the desire to do this, but maybe they don’t know exactly what skills to be focusing in on?

Isaac Carter: [00:02:54] At the time, there were people with Azure Cloud certifications working in call centers like they were. They had masters, so they had the.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:00] Right skills, but they just didn’t have no one was connecting the dots to give them the opportunity.

Isaac Carter: [00:03:06] That’s exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:07] So then when you come in there is were you getting traction like at go? Was this one of those things where you were like, you just unlocked this thing, you know, a treasure that people didn’t realize existed?

Isaac Carter: [00:03:18] Oh, yeah, because that’s how business works.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:20] Well, look, it doesn’t work like that. But you found a pool of people that had the right skills that were probably taking jobs well beneath what they could be making if they lived in the United States.

Isaac Carter: [00:03:32] We were very methodical about it, so we started updating their skills. Maybe they had the skills, but they didn’t have experience. So we started doing our own hackathons and started doing internship programs for these folks. And it was it was a journey. But yes, absolutely. With some strategic growth, we were able to get them in with folks. It was not an overnight success story by any means. But yeah, we were able to bring them in, train them, get them the skills and experience, and then start ramping up with clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:01] Well, and when you mentioned earlier that now you’re working with universities.

Isaac Carter: [00:04:05] That’s right, Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:06] So that was a slight pivot from the initial.

Isaac Carter: [00:04:09] Yeah, absolutely. And then getting with universities, training the professors on what skills were necessary, they were still teaching folks MySQL, which is great, but not for enterprise classes, right? And so teaching, getting the professors to use the right technology stacks and teaching them to use flutter and angular and the modern technology that’s that’s really used and.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:30] Keeping them abreast of everything that’s changing when it changes. So they’re ready instead of lagging.

Isaac Carter: [00:04:35] Yeah. And also really focused on the language skills, because even if you can work in a call center and do tech support for Netflix, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can communicate accurately with cloud data or mobile technology terminologies.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] So your team helps upskill them in those kind of areas that they need in order to be kind of a perfect provider for your clients in the US. That’s right. And then so what has been the biggest challenge? It sounds like you there are a pool of people that fit the bill here if they’re trained properly.

Isaac Carter: [00:05:08] Yeah, yeah. A lot of the challenges at first especially were around language communication skills and then a lot of folks try they work on on site onshore and then they start trying to get. The nearshoring or offshore offshoring and start realizing that they’re just not getting the result that they want. So just learning how to really leverage and maximize the experience with nearshore resources was a challenge for us because you need to know how to turn. Like it’s not like you and I are sitting together right now, and if something’s not right, you can signal me with your hands or with your eyes, and I.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:45] Can point and you.

Isaac Carter: [00:05:46] Can write. You can point or use an iteration from an illustration from a movie that they might not be familiar with. So learning how to communicate and also teach them to communicate more than just the language, but make sure that the the folks know what they’re working on and how to be successful with that. And a lot of companies, even on site, like for the last 15 years, Forbes has said that 78% of all tech projects fail. So if you’re failing when you’re working at the same cubicle with somebody, what are you going to do? If they’re working in a different country.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:19] And they speak another language?

Isaac Carter: [00:06:21] Yeah. Or yeah. So that was that was a challenge. But that’s a challenge that you would face anywhere when you’re sitting next to somebody making sure that you’re working on something that has the business impact that you need is is a skill all on its own. And and that’s.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:36] Why they partner with you because you’re helping kind of minimize some of that and alleviate some of that pain because they’re dealing with you, not them, directly.

Isaac Carter: [00:06:45] Right. I help them devise a strategy myself and I have some other architects that we’ve trained. Right, Your team. Yeah. And we can come in and create a strategy before you even start coding. You get the requirements and then you develop a strategy around how are we going to leverage the cloud? Because a lot of people like to take what they’ve done on site and do the same exact thing in the cloud and next thing you know you’re running $3,000 a day in cloud hosting and you’re spending because there’s.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:10] More efficient ways to do.

Isaac Carter: [00:07:11] Yeah, if you know how to design it that way. So designing the strategy and then designing exactly what your what your protocols and what your best what your practice is accepted practices are. And then you start ramping on your teams either if they’re in the US working on the desk with you or if they’re in Central America or Pakistan or wherever your teams are located, you have to have the strategy first. And that’s where a lot of people historically have been failing, is that they just start working and hope the strategy catches up with them and it doesn’t work that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:44] So why was it important for you to partner with Code Launch?

Isaac Carter: [00:07:48] So the last couple of years I’ve been really thinking a lot about how we lack some leadership in our company. And my mentor was talking to me and he said, Hey, what are you doing to foster leadership in your company? So what kind of opportunities are you giving your team to lead besides just giving them a task and expecting them to do it? And especially in Nearshore with managed services, they work for me, but they also are working through a partner for somebody else a lot of the time. So we need our own internal culture and I need the ability to to have something that we can all work on together, even if we’re working on six different projects. So code Launch has just been amazing at giving me the opportunity to bring people I believe in up, give them the opportunity that I’ve got five people here with me from Central America, Nicaragua and Honduras. They led the teams this year. They were face to face with the with the startup. They were taking the requirements. I was here to make sure that it was successful because I’m always going to make sure my team is successful. But they come up, they work together. When we won in Dallas, man, it was huge. We had people begging us to come work. For us, recruiting became a non-issue.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:55] A lot easier, huh?

Isaac Carter: [00:08:56] Yeah. And then we get leads. We’re on target to close a little bit over $2 in sales from our Houston outreach just from that one event through the partnerships and relationships that we made during that event, which is amazing for us. And we see the leadership, we see the culture growing since our coming into the end of 2022. We were concerned because of inflation that we might start losing staff members. And as soon as we won that belt, we we have not had an exit since then in November. And we’ve had people continuously coming in and wanting to be a part of what we’re doing and really engaged and the people that are the most engaged to get the most certifications, they’re the ones that come up and travel and get the.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:40] Right they get the goodies, they.

Isaac Carter: [00:09:42] Get the goodies. We took them to a Braves game yesterday and face to face work with some local companies that are that they work for. They’re on contract with a local company and they met with them, worked with them face to face yesterday. And so it’s just opportunities that because of code launch, it’s helping us grow our internal culture, helping us increase our communication and network and helping us create a more of a leadership and internal culture. That’s just really been amazing for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] Now, what advice would you give somebody who who hasn’t done code launch but has heard about it? What would you share to them to get the most out of doing it next year.

Isaac Carter: [00:10:22] You mean? From a sponsor or from a contestant.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:25] You you’ve got to sit on both sides of that table. So you tell me. Yeah.

Isaac Carter: [00:10:30] So if you’re coming in as a contestant, know your market, know your edge and know your monetization strategy. I’ve been this is my third event right now that we’re doing. And every event people are here on the stage or coming in wanting to be finalists and they don’t know how to communicate, how they’re going to make money. So if you can’t communicate how you have an advantage over somebody else and the other competitors and you can’t communicate how you’re going to make money in a way that’s believable, and I we can agree with, you’re not going to be successful and you’re not going to be successful in business either. So and then on our side, from the sponsor side, let this be a part of your culture. Let it be an event that you use to reward folks that deserve it. Or if you have people that you want to move into leadership positions, use it for that, use it for man. Every cold launch, our social engagement is through the roof. My LinkedIn profile goes from 50 hits to a thousand hits a day for a whole week. All of our engagement through our websites, through all of our our networking is just through the roof. So make sure you’ve got messaging out there that that allows you to leverage that and then come here, talk to the other the other participants and don’t come here trying to do business, come here trying to meet people. Don’t come here trying to win. We won Dallas. We went to Houston, not ready to win, but just ready to engage. And that engagement has brought us Dallas. We left with the belt. Houston. I left with 12 leads that I converted into four contracts. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:08] And we know which one you want more more of moving forward, right? That’s right. Both So if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more about what you got going on, what’s the website?

Isaac Carter: [00:12:19] It’s cantalo dot net control. L o dot net.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:25] Well, Isaac, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Isaac Carter: [00:12:29] Thanks so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:30] All right. This is Lee Kantor Broadcasting live from Code Lounge, Atlanta 2023.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from the Buckhead Theater. This is CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. I am with the winner, the champion of the night, Taylor Ri’chard, and he is with CASTU. Welcome, Taylor.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:00:38] Thank you for having me. It’s exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:40] I know. Exciting stuff. And have we interviewed before?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:00:44] I’ve interviewed with Business RadioX before for one of my films, so it’s very good to be back. I like you guys a lot.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] We’re good luck. Thank you. We’re good luck. You are. So tell us about cast you. For folks who don’t know, what is it? You have an app that.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:00:58] Yeah, so cast is a mobile app for people in the industry, entertainment industry. We connect talent with productions. We connect productions with investors. So the idea of cashew is that we allow or help you serve as a one stop shop. If you’re breaking into the industry or even if you’ve been here long, helping you stay employed, helping you find gainful opportunities and really kind of moving the needle for productions who need investment.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So you’re helping the talent find opportunities and you’re helping the people who have productions get the investors. Absolutely. Yep. Kind of complete the loop.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:01:35] Complete the loop because that’s usually the problem. People will get access to making the films, but they didn’t have to deal with it after. So we’re hoping to make this whole thing a unique circle just to make sure we can help everybody.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:47] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did you come up with this?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:01:50] So I’m a filmmaker. That is what I do my my day job. And really, we created this idea to solve our problem because we had a problem finding the right talent problem, finding money and those things. So I said, What if we created a uniform app that solved all these problems? I’m sure other filmmakers were struggling with this and it looks like it was true.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] So now is the app available here for the Atlanta area?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:02:13] It’s going to be worldwide. So in six months we have a launch in the United States. And in February 2024, we’ll go international on the App Store and on the I got to learn that the Android marketplace for iPhones.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:28] So now how did you get connected with code launch?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:02:30] So we were at an event and met Jason Taylor, who told us about code launch and how it was a great way for, you know, startup tech companies to really have a launch pad. And so we applied. I kind of feel like a Cinderella story, to be honest, because this is our first year. And I know some people have been coming back and forth, but we applied and here I sit.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] And here you sit. So why do you think that you made it to the top? What was kind of your secret sauce on this?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:02:57] I think what I did is I focused on the truth, right? Everyone dreams, Everyone believes in magic, right? And so that’s what I focused on. And I just told our story and told the story of so many countless people out there who want opportunity but are barred from access by Hollywood gatekeepers. And so we’re going to put the power in their hands.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:20] So now part of this competition is successful entrance and people who have won have had some monetization plan that was important component. What is your monetization on the app?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:03:32] So we are going to be free for the users. I’m sorry, free for the production companies because again, we are disruptive, so we want to get the industry to come aboard, put their jobs and put their opportunities at no cost to them. And for low fee, we’re going to charge the users $9.99 to access all that a month.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] And then so the users can then go on board. They can create a profile for themselves. Absolutely.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:03:54] So it works like an Instagram. So think of Instagram meets. Indeed. So it’s a social platform. You can go there, you can post, you can comment, you can put your resume, you can send messages, you can apply to jobs. And if you are on the other side of the house, the industry, the truest saying, but you can source talent, you can find opportunities for you to invest all in the app in a one all all in one stop.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:20] So now if the talent are you defining talent as the actors or this could be a sound person or a videographer, anybody that is is kind of involved with the production is talent.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:04:33] Absolutely. So it’s talent. It’s below the line. It’s above the line. Directors, writers, grips, pays. And this is just our entry way. Eventually, we want to solve the problem for the entire entertainment industry. So if you’re a sports writer, newscaster all of those things that are defined as media and entertainment, you can find your job in Kasshu.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] And then how? So I put my profile in, say I’m an actor, I put my profile in, and then I just hope somebody sees it. Or is there anything I could be doing to kind of pinging people to.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:05:04] Say, Absolutely. So the good thing is that actors can empower themselves by buying a package and they can advertise so they can post their reels, they can advertise themselves because we have a get discovered section so they can advertise themselves and get discovered where productions will get emails sent to them. Hey, a new entrant, a new talent, something like that. That puts them at the top of the list. So if someone. You know, filters out like I’m looking for an African-American female. You paid for advertising. You’ll be at the top of the list.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:29] And then if I’m a production, I can search for African-American female. And then I will have a.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:05:35] List spit out to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:36] Yep, absolutely. And then, like you said, it’s like Instagram. I can just scroll down and see who catches my eye.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:05:41] That’s exactly it. That’s the concept.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:43] And then how what was it like with the the partners that you had with launched.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:05:50] My deaf team. Right. Improving Atlanta. They were amazing. They really latched on in the beginning. They understood what we were trying to. Are you a.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:57] Technologist at.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:05:58] All? I am not.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:59] So you are a non tech? I am not.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:06:01] Founder at all.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:03] So you haven’t explained people what you wanted? This is how I want.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:06:06] I walked them through my loose idea and they framed it up. We went through the hackathon, the hackathon in two days and I felt so good because not only were they excited about getting to work on it, they believe in it and they like it. And so that made all the difference. There was a lot of good energy in that room, so it’s no doubt that we’re able to have that same energy replicated on stage.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] And then you’re excited about moving forward?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:06:31] I am very excited about moving forward, especially with this on my arm, this belt. So I’m very excited.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:36] So if somebody wants to connect with you, learn more about the app, what is the coordinates?

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:06:42] So you can find us on Instagram at Cast W X2, or you can follow me at at Taylor, Richard T LRC Ricard.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:54] Good stuff. Taylor. Congratulations. Thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Taylor Ri’chard: [00:07:00] I appreciate you guys love it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:01] All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few at code launch, Atlanta 2023.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here live from the Buckhead Theater CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. So excited to be talking to the presenting sponsor, Lee Mosbacker with Cyrannus. Welcome.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:00:35] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about your company, how you serving folks.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:00:41] Well, Serena’s identified some problems early on the last couple of years in VC, where it just seemed that young or unexperienced investors were making mistakes around basic technology. And so I formed Serena’s to be sort of a due diligence blog initially, but now we’ve kind of pivoted to be a due diligence or I guess a rating system for startup ideas and then connect those with qualified investors.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] So what is the harder part to find the qualified investors or the vetted ideas?

Lee Mosbacker: [00:01:14] You know, the idea is we one of the reasons why we’re sponsoring Code launch is because we get access to a lot of great ideas. The investors, you know, it depends on the type of investor. If you’re an active investor or you have a fund, you know, you may want to do your own due diligence and that’s fine. The type of investors I look for are individuals that want to syndicate due diligence with the world’s leading edge technologists, with the with the best marketers with imagine you can put together a dream team to evaluate a deal and eventually we want to turn that into an automated system where it’s sort of the the chat GPT for, for venture funds. But it’s kind of easy to find both. You know, we’ve we’ve got 10,000 experts signed up. We’ve got eight VCs that are working with us currently and with with Code launch, we’re getting an access to 3000 ideas a year. So it feels great.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:05] So how long have you been with Code? Long.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:02:07] I’ve been sponsoring code launch for about a year. We’ve done four events. This is our fourth event and we’re signed up to do two more.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] Now. When you first started with them, was that something that you you kind of were betting on and hoping and or did you feel pretty confident from Go that this was a good fit?

Lee Mosbacker: [00:02:27] You know, we really aligned. So we did we did a test in Columbus, Ohio, and I got a chance to meet Jason Taylor, who runs runs Code Launch, and him and I have sort of the same idea about what makes a successful business. If you’re a Jordan Belfort and you want to go pump and dump a startup and you’re that type of VC, that’s great. Go do it. You probably won’t last for long. But if you want to build real businesses and you want to invest in good people, hard working people with great ideas, that’s what Code Launch is about. And Jason and I really, really carry that mantra for both Sarantis and Codebench.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:04] But there’s lots of people that do kind of similar events as code launch around the country. Are you working with all of those as well, or are you just kind of locked in on code launch and that’s where you spend your time?

Lee Mosbacker: [00:03:15] Yeah, you know, code launch is interesting because it never takes anything from founders and it only gives the founders. There’s a lot you’re right, there’s a lot of noise in the startup space. But I think the ethos around Code launch matches my own personal like goals around how how America, you know, keeps its lead in the world, how how we fund viable businesses, how we help founders.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:39] So you find that there’s a lot of organizations that are pretending to serve maybe that community, but they’re just taking from it.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:03:48] And yeah, I find like, you know, they they do it through services or they do it through, you know, like or it’s their own thing. They’re taking fees. It’s, you know, to me, like because that.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] Group is vulnerable, right? Because they have big hopes and dreams and they might have something. But if somebody is kind of picking at it too soon, too quickly, you can destroy something before it even has a chance to flourish.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:04:13] Agreed. And, you know, I think they’re in six cities now. We’re trying you know, I’m trying to push Jason to put this in to be a worldwide 25 city event. You know, you know, a couple a month. We’re trying to scale this. I know that he’s probably gonna get mad at me for saying that, but, like, I just think that their their focus is to elevate ideas and to help founders. And one of the reasons why I was so anti a lot of the venture capital that’s been going on in the world is that it’s not about helping founders. It’s about how do we how do we how do we create a wealth transfer from A to B and how do I get my 20% or my 2% fee? And to me, with my venture fund cobalt, we don’t take any carry. We don’t take fees. I put my own money in it. And that’s the kind of people we do business with. And Jason and improving and code launch are all together in that same mantra.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:06] Are you getting enough of the founders from these underserved communities or is that part of the equation when you’re doing things like this?

Lee Mosbacker: [00:05:14] You know, I’m a big I’m a big proponent of overlooked founders. And so my venture fund cabal, we focus primarily on on Overlooked. That doesn’t mean that we don’t that we draw lines, you know, around sex or gender or race or whatever. We just look for scrappy founders and they just happen to be female founders. They just happen to be minority founders or they just happen to be founders that, you know, grew up in a in a tough environment. You know, I come from a I come from Appalachia. You know, my my dad passed away from an overdose a year ago. My mom was a single mother on welfare. I was always I grew up extremely poor and I didn’t have an indoor bathroom. Right. So when when I’m out there funding with my success, when I’m out there funding founders, I’m looking for scrappy founders that, you know, some some person that grew up in the Bay Area, a VC that went to Harvard and graduated, he doesn’t know that person exists, probably discounts them. So I’m in it for the little person. Yeah, for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:18] So if somebody wants to connect with you, what is the best way to do that?

Lee Mosbacker: [00:06:23] Just go to arancio or Lee at arancio is my email. I’m happy to to, you know, to respond.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:30] All right, Lee. Well, I appreciate what you’re doing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work.

Lee Mosbacker: [00:06:36] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:37] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’re back in a few at code launch, Atlanta 2023.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here live from the Buckhead Theater CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. So excited to be talking to my guest right now, Karen Sammon, the CEO with Conscious Capitalism. Welcome.

Karen Sammon: [00:00:36] Thank you. Thank you for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] I am excited to be chatting with you. For the folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Conscious Capitalism, what it is and why it’s so important in today’s world? Oh, it’s.

Karen Sammon: [00:00:47] Such a great question. Thank you. So conscious Capitalism is an organization and a movement that is focused on elevating humanity through business. And it is so important in this day and age because we are a big tent and we we bring in CEOs, presidents, founders of businesses of all states and stages to convene and connect around the philosophy of conscious capitalism, which is based on our higher purpose to elevate humanity through business conscious leadership, building really strong, conscious culture. And the fourth tenant is our stakeholder orientation, where the ecosystem is healthy. So we believe in conscious capitalism philosophy that when you focus on the ecosystem, your team members, your suppliers, your customers and your investors, the community, the environment, whoever those stakeholders are in your business, when they’re healthy, the business thrives.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:53] Now it seems like the movement has been, I don’t want to say attacked, but there’s people poking at it from all different fronts that historically hadn’t really been poking at it at all. I mean, when it first came out, it was such a noble gesture. It was eye opening. Everybody was like like it was common sense when I first heard about it. And now it seems like there’s people poking from one side, people who are kind of questioning capitalism and then another side where they’re questioning, should we care, you know, about the community where it’s just about the, you know, shareholders. How how has the movement kind of managed through this turbulence? Yeah.

Karen Sammon: [00:02:34] That is also you know, it’s an area where we focus. And I said that we’re a big tent. We are secured by our tent poles of higher purpose culture, leadership and and stakeholder orientation. We are open to diversity of thought, diversity of ideas. We welcome all leaders regardless of their political orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of anything. If you are aligned with our tent poles, we welcome that diversity. So that’s how conscious capitalism is able to navigate the political, you know, the politicizing of capitalism, of diversity, of ESG, all these all these things that tear us apart. We bring different voices into our community to have real conversation as leaders. We can’t we we shouldn’t we shouldn’t pick and choose who works for our company. We we can’t have we can’t have just one thought process in our organizations. We need to welcome all different worldviews into our organization. And as we do that, when we are when we have a foundation of trust, when we have a foundation of inclusion and belonging that creates creativity and innovation. So it’s we think it’s really important, especially now that conscious capitalism is of the philosophy that should be integrated into businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:04] I agree 100%, and I think that America is uniquely suited to be kind of the place where this happens. Being the melting pot that we are, that we bring together so many diverse groups in one place for a common kind of good. How do you kind of help other people kind of spread the word about this path, about considering, you know, making their organization kind of along the lines of a conscious, capitalistic organization? Is there a ammunition you can give them? Is there research, is there data that supports that businesses that kind of go along this path, you know, have less turnover, you know, more successful things like that?

Karen Sammon: [00:04:45] Absolutely. So so, you know, you mentioned that, you know, conscious capitalism should be adopted, especially in America, where we’re a melting pot. Conversely, conversely, we’re also a nation that is highly polarized when when you look at the Edelman Trust barometer and they they focus on the world, they look at all all, you know, who’s trusted? Business leaders, government NGOs, media CEOs are trusted more than anyone else. So right now, we have this opportunity to be able to bring CEOs, presidents, founders together. And the way that we do, we bring them along is. There’s of course, lots of literature out there. Conscious capitalism, the book was is out and available. The public is written back in 2014 by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia. There’s a a companion book, The Field Guide, which is a kind of a how to but the organization, Conscious Capitalism, brings our community together in different events, whether it’s our CEO summit that’s in October of this year or through our chapter events where we convene locally or through conscious capitalism, senior leader network, where we bring we bring leaders together to have conversation around issues that are impacting our impacting business leaders. So they span from things that you just talked about. So we we’ll we’ll talk about employee engagement and how conscious companies with conscious cultures can outperform and reduce turnover. We talk about longevity and consistency of our customer relationships and how the philosophy has enabled, enabled our community to be be more successful in maintaining, maintaining their customer base without churn. And we, you know, we talk about how they are able to communicate the impact that they’re having both on the both both in terms of their financial reporting and the impact they’re having, whether they focus on sustainability or wherever they’re putting their attention.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:47] Are you finding that young people and maybe some of the leaders of underserved communities are embracing the tenets of conscious capitalism? Is that kind of a good fertile ground for new and up and coming conscious capitalism, you know, people that are believers of that?

Karen Sammon: [00:07:05] I do. I do think that it’s an interesting question because there’s a lot of young people who have kind of turned away from capitalism. So I believe that we have a really important role to be able to demonstrate that there is a better way of doing business, that we can we can because capitalism has lifted so many out of poverty. And that’s that’s why we focus on elevating humanity through business. And so when you bring next generations through, you know, into the conscious capitalism conversation, whether they’re in business school or undergrad or through their their parents, they’re able to see that capitalism can be a force for good. And so our role, our role, our job, what I am doing is working to change the practice and perception of capitalism. And so getting to that tipping point that Malcolm Gladwell tipping point of. Getting to past the center of the bell curve so it becomes the norm of doing well and doing good, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:08:05] They go hand in hand and I would think the young people would embrace that if they were if they could open their mind to capitalism not being a four letter word that is a force for evil when like you said, there’s so much data that supports it. Capitalism is the biggest driver of good in the history of man. It sure.

Karen Sammon: [00:08:24] Is. And when when young people get into organizations where they’re feeling valued, it starts, it starts to the flywheel starts with them, and they start to understand that the companies that can can live their values. But it’s up to the leaders. It’s up to today’s leaders to demonstrate to the next generations of leaders of the ways that we can we can elevate humanity, the way that we can bring bring the next generations through and become the next best leaders for for the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:55] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Karen Sammon: [00:08:58] Well, we are we are we have a focus on a million conscious capitalist leaders. We feel like when we get to a million conscious capitalist leaders that we will have have the conversation that is very natural and organic. So we are we’re, you know, things like code launch today. This is a way that we can amplify the message of conscious capitalism. Improving is one of our partners in the movement of conscious capitalism, and they have integrated the philosophy through their whole organization. They focus a lot on on how they can they can support their ecosystem, their stakeholders. And through that they they have this code launch, which is an amazing event where they’re they’re showcasing what their company can do and they don’t do it for an expected return. They do this because it is it is going to be able to proliferate what they know is a better way of doing business. And on the back end of that, there will be a better return. And so this is a demonstration. So how you can help is we can do more of these these kinds of discussions. You can I can give you a long list of great leaders to interview so we can learn more about how they bring the management philosophy into their own organizations. And that will help that that helps us all spread the word.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] If somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on the team, whether it’s here in Atlanta or anywhere in the country or I guess the world now, what is the website?

Karen Sammon: [00:10:25] Their website is conscious capitalism. One word.org.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:31] Well, Karen, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Karen Sammon: [00:10:35] And Luke, it was great to talk to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:36] All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few at Code Lounge, Atlanta 2023.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here live from the Buckhead Theater. So excited to be working with CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023 one more time. And I have with me the judges champion Tim Butler with Fund Hub. Welcome.

Tim Butler: [00:00:40] Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, congratulations. First and foremost, this big win, judges choice. That’s not the people’s choice. This is the people, the smart money in the room choice.

Tim Butler: [00:00:55] Yes, it is.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] So tell us first what Fund Hub is. What’s your service and how you serving folks?

Tim Butler: [00:01:03] Fund Hub is the premier AI powered fundraising platform where we connect grant seekers with both grants and professionally vetted grant writers all in one place. So what we do is we help businesses and nonprofits who are challenged in accessing capital get high ROI funding by focusing on founder education.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] So now what was the genesis of the idea? How did this come about?

Tim Butler: [00:01:32] So essentially, I have been a certified grant writer for 20 years and worked historically in nonprofit and education. I felt devalued and decided to just launch out into the deep step out on faith and start my own fundraising and consulting firm. Writing grants started off very small and a spare bedroom in our home on an old funky laptop. Slowest Christmas and we’ve been blessed to level up on our direct services side over six figures and we’re in route to seven figures. So because we are a social enterprise where we value not just profit but purpose, we found that connecting with founders in our ecosystem consistently grants were a recurring thing and we can only do so much as a direct services company serving folks who need grant services. So we got the idea to take tech, marry it to the knowledge that I have in the grant writing space and then automate it and serve the masses.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:38] So let’s educate some folks a little bit about grants. Some people maybe there’s a lot of businesses out there that could benefit from grants that they just even didn’t even know about or didn’t consider. Is that true?

Tim Butler: [00:02:51] That is absolutely true. So, for example, in America, the grant making market is $1.2 trillion annually. So that money is available for businesses and nonprofits. Essentially. The problem is, is less than 10% of all applicants that actually apply get funded any grants. And the main reasons are they don’t know where to find the grants. Their companies or organizations are not grant ready their ask in those grant applications are more often not aligned properly with the funders, and they usually need the help of a professional grant writer because for federal grants specifically, they take on average 125 up to 200 hours just to complete. And then also drawing a comparison, there are approximately 1 million working engineers all across America. There are only 10,000 freelance grant writers nationwide. So finding a good grant writer can be hard. And then you also have the piece that adds insult to injury. For Bipoc founders, they have even more unique funding barriers due to racism in the form of inherent bias. And so we’re trying to address that. And then overall, just in the grant writing space alone is highly fragmented and the tech is very, very outdated. And so our platform solves all six of those pain points.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:28] So now, are you a technologist? Do you get involved in trying to build your own app before you got involved with code launch, or was this something you had an idea, heard about code launch and said, You know what, let me have my dev team handle that, that part of this.

Tim Butler: [00:04:44] No, sir. My, this, this is I cannot take all of the credit for this because this is a joint venture. My wife and I actually are co-founders of our company and I do have a team. We are non-technical founders. So tech was not in our wheelhouse. What the thing that we came to the table with, we knew how to get and keep a customer and make them satisfied, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:10] So you had all the brainpower but you didn’t have it in the phone?

Tim Butler: [00:05:14] No. And that’s where our lead UX person Truce and Doherty and other coders on our team come in to take the vision. That we cast and then carry it out with the technology.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:26] So now, was it difficult to build your team because you know that you know there’s not. You said there’s a lot of engineers, there’s not a lot of grant writers. But to find the right match is not that easy. You might have to kiss some frogs before you find the right match there, right?

Tim Butler: [00:05:43] Yes, that is true. We like to take the slow were purposeful approach. So we as a social enterprise first and foremost, we are born again Christians and everything that we do, we know Jesus gives it to us. So for us, we pray about everything. Our business was birthed out of prayer and purpose, and so we prayed about who to connect with and we feel like God brought us the right people to be able to make this happen. One of the things that was that’s universal about everybody on our team, they have a heart for people. It’s never just I just want to make money. It’s always about purpose for this because this is our ministry in the marketplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:28] So now how did you even hear about Code Launch? How did that even get on your radar?

Tim Butler: [00:06:32] So in searching for grants for both our company as well as our clients, I come across hundreds, actually thousands of hits as I search Cold Launch came up in the hits. And so I decided to apply for Cold Launch Houston last year. And I well, we made it all the way down to we made it to the semifinalist round, but we were not selected, but we were encouraged to still come back and apply for Atlanta. They felt like it would be a second chance and a better fit. And so after thinking about it, really counting up the cost of it, we decided as a team we were going to do just that. And so we did. And when we lean in, we sink our teeth into something. For example, even though we were not selected to go on stage at Cold Launch Houston, I still committed to exhibiting. And so I drove overnight on a shoestring budget from Tulsa all the way down to Houston, and I slept in my car just so that I could show up and be a man of my word. It was suggested that I come and I’m glad that I did because when I got there, I was able to get the lay of the land, so to speak, and really see from the inside perspective how cold launch runs and what it really does take to win this competition. And that was not something that was unfruitful because voila.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:57] Here I am. Here you are an overnight success, right?

Tim Butler: [00:08:00] No, it has definitely not. Not in it. No, it has not been an overnight thing. But because it has been a four and a half year journey for us in doing this. But I wouldn’t take anything from my journey now.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:12] So now what’s next?

Tim Butler: [00:08:14] Now we are currently developing our clickable prototype. And so once that is ready, later this summer, we’re going to start rolling out our first phase of beta testing. Because one thing about it, I’m not going to try to talk too long, but one thing about whenever you’re building a technology platform, and I would even say this still goes for building any business successfully, you have to be married to the problem and not your solution. So you want to build whatever you’re going to build completely with the customer in mind, making sure you solve their problem. If people are not touched enough by your service or your product to reach in their pockets, grab their cards and be willing to spend money, you need to go back to the drawing board. So we value understanding our clients at a granular level and rendering the utmost highest value that we can to them. So we want to hear their voices, get their input on our tech, you know, look at what they like, what they don’t like, let’s get the bugs out of it. And then after that phase is over, then we will move towards market.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:24] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Tim Butler: [00:09:27] So what we need are we have two sides. We have a direct services side in addition to the tech from the direct services side right now is funding the tech. So we need new grant customers or clients. So if you or any folks out there in radio land are in need of any grants or grant writing services, please by all means connect with us. You can find us on LinkedIn, you can find me Tim Butler, Tim Butler. You can also look up Fund hub Tulsa on all social media handles, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook and you will be able to connect with us. Another thing that we’re we are still recruiting for beta testers. Beta testers go into our pool and if they’re selected, they qualify to receive free limited grant services. So if you’re interested, reach out to us on social media and we can get you signed up. It only. Takes three minutes. And then last but certainly not least, though, we have been blessed to raise 118 K non-dilutive. We know that we’re still going to be able to connect with VCs and we’re looking to form those relationships because it’s going to make more sense as we continue to grow to look for those types of investments. But we only want to connect with those VCs who both understand and align with our vision, profit and purpose. So we’re looking to connect with social impact investors and start having conversations and more and forming more relationships.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:01] So now you mentioned that you’re open for business for businesses or nonprofits that are interested in grants.

Tim Butler: [00:11:09] Absolutely, because there’s a misnomer for some folks. They think that only nonprofits can qualify for grants. That’s a myth. That has never been the case. Nonprofits historically have had been able to qualify for more grants, but there are grants that are allocated for businesses, and they always have been.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:28] So in order to work with you, they can find you online and they can go to website for.

Tim Butler: [00:11:33] Yes, you can go to our website, Capital fundraising.co. It’s literally spelled exactly how it sounds.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:41] And then they can go there, have a conversation with you, explain their situation and you can is that free to have a conversation with you to kind of see if it’s if there are possible grants for somebody?

Tim Butler: [00:11:52] Yes, it is. It is free. I offer free 20 minute intro consultations with those clients. I do vet and screen clients up front first because I want to make sure from a direct services standpoint, there is synergy first because I get a myriad of requests and some businesses and nonprofits, frankly, are just too early to really get in the crux or the sweet spot that I call where they can really level up and get grants. I would rather them focus on getting grant ready first. From there, if you are further along, at least generally for our direct services side, we work with businesses and nonprofits that are generally two years, at least two years old, up to ten years old because they’ve by that time they’ve already had some market traction in general and they have raised some funding and they’re looking for their next funding milestone. However, our fund hub tech platform is a social enterprise that’s open to everyone. We use our profit to underwrite the cost of the grant match, making it free to everyone. We just charge for the premium features and the upgrades.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:01] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on the victory. Congratulations on the momentum thus far. And one more time, the website. If somebody wants to connect.

Tim Butler: [00:13:09] You’re going to go to capital fundraising.co spelled exactly how it sounds capital fundraising.co. You can also find us on social media at Fund Hub Tulsa Fund Hub is all one word fund Hub Tulsa.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:28] All right, Tim, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Tim Butler: [00:13:32] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:33] All right. This is Lee Kantor. Back in a few at code launch, Atlanta 2023.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the beautiful Buckhead Theater for CodeLaunch Atlanta 2023. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here live from Buckhead Theater. This is CodeLaunch, Atlanta 2023. Another winner here. We have John Ruzick with Improving. Welcome, John.

John Ruzick: [00:00:36] Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] So exciting. Holding the belt. Feeling pretty good about that. I feel.

John Ruzick: [00:00:41] Great. Repeat champion from code launch Atlanta 2021. So glad to bring it home again here in 2023.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:48] And then you were working with Taylor with Last.

John Ruzick: [00:00:51] Correct? Yeah. Taylor with Cashew. Great bunch of folks. We had a pleasure for a whirlwind 24 hours developing an app for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:59] Now, John, when you’re your tell us about your day job at improving.

John Ruzick: [00:01:03] Yes, I’m a principal consultant with improving. So I help clients realize their objectives with application development, infrastructure, architecture, etcetera. So it was just brought in to lead a team on a something that’s a little bit out of my wheelhouse with mobile development, but put together a team that got some kudos on stage and I’m happy to talk about that. And so I’m really excited to be able to deliver for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:26] So but you’re part of improving is kind of serving the community through these programs like Code launch and then encouraging the developers to get involved with Code launch. Is that how that.

John Ruzick: [00:01:38] Absolutely. So improving is a big sponsor of conscious capitalism. So we try to give back to the community and code launch is just one of the most visible ways that we do that. So all the developers on the team just donated their time 12 hours on a Sunday, 12 hours again on a Monday to really just put together and hack and code and help one of these startups get from kind of infancy to a product that is closer to release in the market.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] So for you personally, is this, you know, part of why you’re part of improving doing things like this? Is this things that you would have done on your own had you not had this opportunity to to work with through code launch like this?

John Ruzick: [00:02:19] Yeah, Improving just really encourages that. They encourage you to lead out in areas that you aren’t necessarily completely comfortable. So I’m a developer, I’m an IT guy. So a lot of times you sit back and just code, right? But these through improving really get you to put yourself out there. And I was able to get together a really good team of folks that again are more behind the scenes but lead out say let’s go put yourselves out there and really give something back to the community. And improving is just amazing and encouraging that for everybody that works for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:52] So how do you get connected once you raise your hand and say, I’m in to be involved with the hackathon like this, how do you get paired with cast? Who is that just kind of luck or do you how does that happen?

John Ruzick: [00:03:04] No. So I mean, it is absolutely luck, but I was part of a draft. So there’s a draft. Yeah, absolutely. So so a couple days before the finalist reveal the six dev teams that have signed up to to sponsor the event, donate their time, get a list of in this case, it was 12 finalists. We had six dev teams. And so we got to look at their technology stack, look at what they were trying to accomplish and and draft being the host sponsor, I was last in the draft and it just so a lot of luck in that cast you kind of was still on the draft board if you will.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:43] Excited about when you heard about the concept because Taylor said he’s not a technologist.

John Ruzick: [00:03:49] Yeah, it was. It was the vision and being here local in Atlanta, we see how vibrant the film and entertainment industry is. And I don’t have aspirations or certainly don’t think that I’m going to be a part of it, but this was a way to get into it or get connected with it. So that was really, really attractive to us.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] So then you kind of read his vision or see his vision, and then you’re saying, I can add to that. There’s stuff my skill set can really make this come alive. I can create that marketplace that he envisioned.

John Ruzick: [00:04:21] Yeah, absolutely. So there vision is is wide ranging. But at least going into this and I will say this Sunday morning, they had mockups and diagrams. Monday at 9:00, they had an app that they could load on their phone and show some of their functionality. So just the ability to make that quantum leap from nothing to something they can show investors or partners in the industry to generate more excitement. The ability to play some small role in that is just unbelievable. And I relish that opportunity with my team through this through the code launch.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:01] So now how are you seeing technology evolve in your years of being involved to be able to do that in that short period of time? You couldn’t have done that, what, five years ago it been five years ago.

John Ruzick: [00:05:12] Would have been would have been.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:14] Tough, right? It would have been very difficult to to pull off something similar.

John Ruzick: [00:05:18] Absolutely. It would have been it would have been tough. So there’s there’s a lot of resources out there. And I. Was laughing as everyone went through the the presentations, everyone mentioned AI and Chatgpt and all that, and I almost yelled out bingo at one point because I thought everybody had hit the AI buzzword. But absolutely, through the development process, there are tools and technologies that you can use to accelerate that development this day that didn’t even exist. Heck, six months ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:47] Really? So you were using things on on his app that weren’t available six, 12 months ago.

John Ruzick: [00:05:54] Just just learning techniques and different ways to get answers to questions and tips. If I don’t know how to do something, there are new ways to find that answer and new resources to go go poll to try to get get you over the roadblock that you’re currently facing in the development process.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:14] Now, how does going through an event that’s this, you know, time compressed? Right. You’re getting a lot done in a short period of time. You know, a lot of time in your work. You’re working on projects that could be months, years in the making and things are slow and grind and it’s hurry up and wait and here you are just like cramming, you know, information and technology into a mobile app as fast as furiously as you can.

John Ruzick: [00:06:37] Yeah, absolutely. So as part of this, there is a showmanship part of this event, the.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:45] Belt and the hat. There was there’s some clues there, some showmanship involved. Exactly.

John Ruzick: [00:06:50] So even even in the development process, when you get there late on the second day of the hackathon, they know they’ve got to be up on stage in front of hundreds of people displaying it.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:59] It’s got to be some jazz hands There is.

John Ruzick: [00:07:02] So the goal when we’re developing this is to set them up foundationally with something that they can build upon. And as you get late in that second day, make conscious decisions of where we’re going to make things look beautiful, right? But when they get their funding, when they get their that venture capital interest, it’s a minor lift to make it 100% functional. It’s not a rewrite of the application. So we have set them up.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:31] With foundationally, you invested a lot of mental energy to give them a strong base to build on.

John Ruzick: [00:07:37] Exactly. Yeah. So the first the first day and a half is setting them up with the technology and infrastructure that right, exactly like you said li to build upon that is not going to put them into a negative space. And then the last day is is make it look beautiful for the event.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:56] Right. Because at the end of the day, that’s what people are voting on, right? They want to see the pretty app do the the cool thing.

John Ruzick: [00:08:02] And even on stage, one of the judges mentioned that the UI looks amazing and beautiful. And so.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:09] So you’re all high fiving in the back, right?

John Ruzick: [00:08:11] We are. And my team, Daniel Brown, Mark Bantog and Nate Short, who’s our UI UX guy, just ran with it as we were building out functionality. He was just making it really look esthetically pleasing and making decisions of how a user would use this from a user experience standpoint that is just going to wow their customers when it hits the app store hopefully very, very soon.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:34] So now how do you take this experience in the belt and leverage that to help your client? You know, you’re paying clients. Is it something that you can take some learnings or maybe next time we can do more with less? Or like how do you kind of take this as a learning block for future endeavors?

John Ruzick: [00:08:54] Yeah, I think it it really shows kind of what we can accomplish in a in a compressed amount of time. But I don’t want to get too far over over her skis with some clients that say, Oh wow, you built this mobile app.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:08] Make me a mobile app tomorrow.

John Ruzick: [00:09:09] Yeah, exactly. I’m about 24 hours and I want this in the store. That’s that’s not it. They are the this is still a kind of long not that far away from being production enterprise ready. But two days doesn’t get you there that being said, it’s really a showcase of the expertise within improving Atlanta and all of the improving enterprises and really shout out to all of the other development teams that partnered with the other startups because the work they did over the same compressed time frame is just amazing. It’s just the capabilities that we have to show. And when you invest and partner with a company like improving and give us more than 24 hours, then the sky’s the limit. Yeah, the sky’s the limit is exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:51] Now, does it help you when you’re working with a group on a project like this to go, okay, next time when I have a bigger project, I want Mary on my team. She’s killing it. You know, I’m getting to see people in a stressful situation kind of perform or not perform. So you know that in future projects and work, you can build the team that you can trust.

John Ruzick: [00:10:14] Yeah, it was it was an absolute blessing to be able to pick this team. A couple of the folks on the team that I’ve worked with quite a bit. So I. Knew their technical prowess. I’m excited to do it again. And I would pick a completely different team, to be honest with you, because it also depends on technology. Seeing what their goal was in the mobile space and.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:37] The right talent.

John Ruzick: [00:10:38] Exactly. If the next person came in with a data project, I’d pick a different group of folks. Sure. You’d have to. Yeah, you would absolutely have to. That being said, the group that that I have, they’re just it was the willing to run through a brick wall mentality that. Oh, it’s mobile today. Great. I’ll figure it out. Let’s go. And that type of mentality over to make it happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] You got to have that make it happen mentality.

John Ruzick: [00:11:06] Yeah. Because if somebody walks in three hours in on a 24 hour hackathon and goes, I don’t really know this technology, I’m out. You’re you’re screwed. So I need someone that is going to take a look at it and say, I’ve never done this before, but I’ve got a wealth of experience. I’ll know what I’m doing. Let’s go. Right. And of course, brings a level of professionalism and and experience, like I said, to the project.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:31] So what’s next for you on this? You just go back to work tomorrow like nothing happened or what goes on.

John Ruzick: [00:11:38] Tomorrow won’t be like nothing happened. I’ll probably feel it tomorrow because we’re going to go celebrate a little bit with this win. But yeah, we just go back and reflect on it. I know there’s huge plans for code code launch in 2023 in different different cities around the US and internationally and certainly with 2024, we were blessed to have improving, nearshore, participate as one of the hack teams in this event. Right. And maybe there’s an opportunity that improving Atlanta provides one of the development teams for one of the international events or something.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:12] I wonder who they’ll pick. The two time winner. That person’s got to go. Right?

John Ruzick: [00:12:16] We’ve got a nice we’ve got a nice track record following us. So but I’m willing to put the belt on the line any time because it’s just fun. It’s really good. And like you brought up the conscious capitalism. Everybody wins at this event, getting those people on stage. I’m in the audience. Certainly I’m rooting for my team, but I’m really paying attention to really wowed by all of the startups and their presentations and the problems and industries they’re about to disrupt. So really excited to see what’s coming out of in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:46] So if somebody wants to connect with you at improving or LinkedIn, what’s your best coordinates? Yeah.

John Ruzick: [00:12:50] So John Ruzek or K john.ruzek@improving.com I’m on all the social channels LinkedIn reach out and I’ll get you connected either with stuff that I can personally help with or improving nationally or internationally has resources to cover all of your bases. So get in touch with me. I will get you in the right place and improving. Just it’s amazing place to work and we love being partners with our clients, not just a just a company for hire.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:23] Good stuff, John, thank you so much for sharing your story. Congratulations. You’re doing important things and we appreciate you.

John Ruzick: [00:13:28] Thanks, Lee. Really, really a pleasure to be here. All right.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:31] This Lee Kantor back in a few code launch, Atlanta 2023.