Before joining ATDC, Adam Gautsch spent most of his career helping to run a website development company in Greenville, South Carolina. For fun, he helped start and run different organizations and events in the tech and entrepreneurial sectors. These included a co-working space, a social entrepreneur meetup, an idea collection website for cities, an app tracking the Greenville trolleys, and Startup Week Greenville.
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Should I locate my business in an incubator or accelerator?
What’s the difference between an incubator and an accelerator? Should I locate my business in an incubator? What are the factors I should consider? On this episode of “Decision Vision,” Host Michael Blake speaks with Sanjay Parekh, co-founder of Prototype Prime, on these questions and more.
Sanjay Parekh, Prototype Prime
Sanjay Parekh is a co-founder of Prototype Prime. Prototype Prime is a 501(c)3 non-profit hardware & software startup incubator. Their mission is to provide startup companies with the support they need to launch and scale. Funded by the City of Peachtree Corners. Prototype Prime is a regional affiliate of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, and is located just 30 minutes north of Atlanta.
Sanjay Sanjay a co-founder of Prototype Prime, a non-profit incubator and a serial technology entrepreneur. In addition to co-founding Prototype Prime, Sanjay is a co-founder of MailMosh, a startup focused on making email a better experience. He is also the co-host of Tech Talk Y’all, a self-proclaimed tech comedy podcast.
Previously Sanjay launched Startup Riot, a conference for startups which pioneered the three minute, four slide presentation format. Prior to founding Startup Riot, Sanjay was the founding CEO of Digital Envoy and the inventor of the company’s patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. At Digital Envoy, Sanjay led the company to raise $12 million in angel and venture funding. Digital Envoy was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.
Sanjay holds an electrical engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company
Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.
Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Brady Ware & Company
Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.
Decision Vision Podcast Series
“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by Business RadioX®.
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Show Transcript
Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service, accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.
Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome back to another episode of Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.
Michael Blake: [00:00:37] My name is Mike Blake, and I am your host for today’s program. I am a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.
Michael Blake: [00:01:03] So, today’s topic is about co-working spaces, accelerators, incubators, and there are probably three or four other names for these kinds of places that I’m not even familiar with yet. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but they have popped up like dandelions all over Atlanta in the last five years. And even in my hometown of Chamblee that has, I think, a population of about 30,000 people, we have, at least, two co-working spaces, accelerators, of which I’m aware. And I happen to be a member of one of them. It’s a nice place to kind of hang out. It’s at the airport, and a place we’re allowed to have meetings. They do a good job.
Michael Blake: [00:01:42] But for the most, it’s very likely that if you can listen to this podcast, there is a co-working space, an accelerator, an incubator near you. And you might be kind of wondering, does it make sense for me to be in one of these places? What’s it all about? Why are they generating the interest and the buzz they are? Why are some of my competitors there? Why are a lot of startups there? And is it right for me, whether I’m a startup or a more mature company?8
Michael Blake: [00:02:11] And today, we are joined by my pal, Sanjay Parekh, who is one of the true OGs of the startup community here in the Atlanta area. Unlike me, who’s basically been one of the world’s ugliest cheerleaders for about 12 years or so, he has actually started companies, had exits, ran a very important organization called Startup Riot about the same time as we were doing Startup Lounge. And I’m proudly wearing one of the Startup Riot T-shirts here today. And Sanjay has been about as active as anybody for as long as anybody in the startup community.
Michael Blake: [00:02:50] And one of the hats that he is wearing at this point is he is co-founder of Prototype Prime. He is a serial technology entrepreneur. He’s currently founder of MailMosh, a startup focused on making e-mail a better experience. And maybe we’ll get some information about that. As I mentioned before, he’s co-founder of the startup — not really so much a startup anymore, but an accelerator – I guess. Sanjay will probably correct me – called Prototype Prime that is in the northern Atlanta Metro area, about three miles north of where I live.
Michael Blake: [00:03:21] He’s also the co-host of his own podcast called Tech Talk Y’all, a podcast covering technology with a Southern flair. And if you haven’t, I listened to a couple of episodes. If you’re into technology, and you want to understand the local, sort of, southern, the Southeastern startup scene, because it is different from other places in the country, you really ought to give it a listen.
Michael Blake: [00:03:41] Previously, Sanjay launched Startup Riot, a conference for startups, which pioneered the three-minute, four-slide presentation format. And that was an extremely important event. I think they got up to hundreds of attendees and was eventually holding these things downtown. And the thing I loved about it was that Sanjay was not afraid to use the vaudeville hook either. If you went 301, you are done. And think about pitches that if they drag, man, they are tedious. And Sanjay made sure that didn’t happen.
Michael Blake: [00:04:12] Prior to founding Startup Riot, he founded Founder Fables, an off-the-record conference for founders. He was also the founding CEO of a company called Digital Envoy, and the inventor of the company’s patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. At Digital Envoy, Sanjay led the company to raise $12 million in angel and venture funding. Digital Envoy was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.
Michael Blake: [00:04:36] He holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. And weren’t you on also one of those special European study grants? Was it called the MacArthur grant? I’m trying to remember.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:04:50] No. It was actually the Marshall Memorial Fellowship.
Michael Blake: [00:04:52] That’s what it is, okay.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:04:53] Yeah, yeah. So, that was in ’04, and it was a month-long trip. It’s a fantastic trip. They take Americans to Europe for a month, and Europeans come to the US for a month. And, really, it’s about building better transatlantic relations between. It’s really, kind of, a gift back to us. It’s from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. It’s a gift back to us from the people and government of Germany for the help that we gave them during the Marshall Plan post-World War 2.
Michael Blake: [00:05:17] I wonder if that program’s still going on today?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:20] It is, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:05:21] Okay.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:21] And it’s still a pretty strong program because it’s an important thing. I think between Europeans and Americans, we need to understand each other better.
Michael Blake: [00:05:28] More than ever today, right?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:30] Yeah. And you realize as you travel that Europeans are different, right? You’ve got the Eastern European, versus Western, versus Southern. It’s all very different in their mentality. I had a very different experience based on the places I went to.
Michael Blake: [00:05:44] Yeah. As you know, I lived in Eastern Europe for a number of years.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:47] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:05:47] And that kind of experience does change you, I think.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:51] Yeah, absolutely.
Michael Blake: [00:05:52] And for me, that kind of experience led me to look at kind of what is the other person thinking.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:59] Right.
Michael Blake: [00:05:59] Not just sort of have my mouth open, which is what I normally would have done before I went over there. But instead, what is the other person’s viewpoint. And the best way to do that is to actually kind of be in that room, right.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:10] Right, exactly. And be receptive to the feedback and their perspective of what you’re doing. Like, we got railed on. I mean, if you can imagine 2004, and the things that we were doing, and what was going on in the world, we got kind of blamed for a bunch of stuff that we didn’t necessarily agree with, and because our country and our government was doing those things. And so, it was hard.
Michael Blake: [00:06:30] Yeah.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:30] I will say when we went to Poland, that was a nice respite from all of that because those Poles, they love us.
Michael Blake: [00:06:37] They do. They do. I’ve been to Poland a little bit. And you’re absolutely right. They roll out the red carpet.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:42] That is a great country for Americans. I really love my time there.
Michael Blake: [00:06:47] So, let’s jump in. So, we were talking, and I was talking in the intro about this advent of co-working, and accelerators, and incubators. And so, Prototype Prime was not the first in by any stretch of the imagination.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:05] Absolutely not, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:07:05] So, you saw all these other co-working spaces, all these other — I’m just going to call them spaces because it just takes too long to go slash, slash, slash.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:15] Right.
Michael Blake: [00:07:16] Right. All these spaces, what made you think that we needed frankly another one? What’s the differentiator? What was the market need?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:23] Yeah. Well, so, for me, I definitely saw a need on the northern arc of Atlanta. There’s a lot of stuff going on inside the city, inside the perimeter, but not as much around the kind of northern arc. But honestly, I was not really looking to start one of these. I was on a panel that ATDC was doing probably about three years ago now.
Michael Blake: [00:07:43] That’s the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:46] Right. And our mutual friend, Jen Bennett, was running it then. She was GM. And they’d been asked by the City of Peachtree Corners to come up and do a panel to, kind of, figure out the appetite of doing an incubator there. And Jen was like, “I know you live up that way. Would you mind doing this?” And as most things, when somebody asks me to come and speak, I’m always happy to do it, with the caveat that they should know that, look, I’m going to tell you things that you’re probably not going to agree with or be happy about me saying, but it’s because that’s what I believe. You don’t have to listen to what I say. You don’t have to do what I have to say. It’s just that’s what I believe.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:08:21] And so, I did exactly that on this panel. And then, afterwards — and I laid it out. I told them like, “These are the things that are wrong here, and these are the things that you need to fix to make this all work.” The mayor’s wife, Debbie Mason, came up to me and said, “I love what you had to say. Let me introduce you to the Mayor.” Introduced to Mike Mason, who is still currently the mayor of Peachtree Corners. And we started this series of breakfast, and it was really just me unloading on him all the ideas that I had that he should go do.
Michael Blake: [00:08:48] That sounds like your dream conversation.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:08:50] Absolutely. Like, “Let me tell you everything you should do, and I’m not going to do any of it. You execute it, and I’m going to just cheer from the sidelines.” But by the end of that, he was basically going, he’s like, “Well, obviously, I want you.” And it wasn’t obvious to me. “Obviously, I want you to come in, and help with this thing, and help start it up.” And so, I actually have never told him yes. I told him no a bunch. I even went to his house and told him no because I was busy at Georgia Tech at that point. And somehow, still, I ended up managing to be involved with this thing and helping found it.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:09:21] So, that’s how that whole thing happened. And I’ll tell you, it’s been a great experience. The city — it’s a non-profit. Prototype Prime is a nonprofit, standalone. The city funds it. So, funds the budget every year. And they let me do a lot of crazy things. I believe a few things strongly about Atlanta that we’ve got great art, great music, great film, great startups, great corporates, great non-profits, but these things don’t talk to one another.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:09:44] And I think that’s a challenge in almost every city out there where you have got these great silos of stuff, but they don’t cross-pollinate. And so, if anybody is out there in another city, if you’re thinking about what you can do better for your city, it’s trying to figure out ways for that to happen, that cross-pollination happen.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:00] So, one of the things that I did is I engaged with Atlanta artist to come and do artwork on the walls, right. So, when we started, it was a depressing building. It was white walls everywhere, very echoey, nobody was there. And now, there’s a lot of artwork. People walk in and they feel the energy. They feel the vibe of the place. And it’s been great for us. That’s not the right answer for every place, but it was the right answer for us.
Michael Blake: [00:10:23] So, when you were telling the mayor of Prototype Prime and-
Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:28] Peachtree Corners.
Michael Blake: [00:10:30] Sorry, Peachtree Corners, what they needed to fix what, were some of the top three or four things you thought needed to be fixed and done differently?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:39] Yeah. One of my top things was, and still is, is transportation. So, we’re in Gwinnett County. We have MARTA. The closest MARTA stop is Doraville, which is maybe a 10 or 12-minute ride.
Michael Blake: [00:10:52] It’s closer to me in Chamblee than it is to you in Peachtree Corners.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:55] Right, exactly. Now here’s the thing. So, there is a Gwinnett County bus, that is in Tech Park, that will take you to Marta. So, I said it’s a 10 to 12-minute ride by car. It will take you over an hour on that bus.
Michael Blake: [00:11:07] And you just had a referendum, unfortunately, on joining MARTA. And it was surprisingly strongly defeated actually.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:15] Yeah. There’s a lot of discussion about that, and why that happened, and the timing of it, and all these kinds of things but-
Michael Blake: [00:11:20] Read the editorials in ajc.com for that.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:23] Right, exactly. But I think that will eventually change down the line because the makeup of Gwinnett County is changing. And it’s the largest county in the Metro area, and there’s so many jobs, there’s so many people commuting in and out of that county that if we’re going to actually fix and address the transportation issues across Metro Atlanta, it’s got to involve Gwinnett County and be a part of that puzzle.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:42] So, that was one of the major things that I told them that needs to be it. But the other parts were we’re really kind of being engaged with the startups and really helping out in a lot of stuff. So, one of the things that I asked them to do is something that passed in the City of Atlanta where we did this thing, or the City of Atlanta did this thing where the business licenses for early stage startups are waived for the first couple of years. And so, that’s an ordinance in the City of Atlanta.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:11] I think it’s absolutely great. I think all of the cities and municipalities in Metro Atlanta should pass the same exact thing. I asked the Mayor and the City Council of Peachtree Corners to pass that. They basically took the text of the City of Atlanta ordinance and passed it as well.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:24] So, that was one of those things like, okay, I understand you’re going to do this, and you’re going to put money behind it, but you’ve got to show more of that support than just, “Hey, we set up this thing, start companies, and have them be here,” right. It’s got to be that whole messaging. And a couple hundred dollars a year is really not going to change the calculus of a startup failing or succeeding, but it sends the message.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:46] And so, right along with that, having City Council folks and the Mayor in the space, around the space, just around, even if they’re not meeting with teams, it’s important because it sends that message that this is something that they care about, and this is something that they support.
Michael Blake: [00:13:01] Now, you mentioned the geography. And geography is important everywhere. But Atlanta has a strange geography. There’s this emotional barrier of our Ring Road 285.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:11] Right.
Michael Blake: [00:13:11] You feel like you need a passport to kind of cross over. I sold my company and joined a firm that’s up in Alpharetta. So, I live inside the perimeter now. I occasionally commute outside the perimeter. And the thing you don’t realize until you do it, and you probably do know this, I’m sure you know this, is that it’s actually very different communities. Like if I go to startup events in Buckhead, Midtown, the usual suspects, you know most of the people in the room.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:39] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:13:39] Alpharetta, I know two people in a room full of a hundred. And until you do that, you don’t realize how different those communities are, and how important that geographic segmentation is.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:51] Yeah. And that kind of goes back to that same idea of we need these things to cross-pollinate, right. As a metro city, we’re not going to continue to improve our startup community unless those communities are cross-pollinating, right. I mean, we should be able to go into an event in Alpharetta or wherever and know more than two people. That’s not good.
Michael Blake: [00:14:12] Yeah. And yeah, that’s right. So, you’re trying to fix this a little bit now with Prototype Prime. Other than the geographic location and the message you’re trying to send, what are some of the other differentiating features in your mind?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:14:26] Yeah. So, number one, it’s a nonprofit. So, my view on this was this is not something that is associated with me as a name. This is something that I’m building to be a long-term asset in the community. So, I often talk about as of this year, the 81-year plan. How do we get to the year 2100 with what we’re doing right now? I don’t really care about the next couple of years. I really care about Prototype Prime being around at the turn of the next century and still helping people.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:14:57] So, that is my focus. I have a concern about other facilities in and around town, and even across the US that are these for-profit places. I don’t really know that they’re going to be around at the turn of the next century. Is Prototype Prime going to be? I don’t know. I hope so. That’s what we’ve been building for. And that’s the message that I keep sending that we’re focused on the year 2100. So, we’re trying to make decisions that are based on the long-term, not on the short-term with the space.
Michael Blake: [00:15:25] And how do those kinds of decisions differ? How would a decision maybe you’re faced with, if you’re thinking of a five-year horizon versus a 2100 horizon, what’s the difference?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:15:38] Yeah. So, I think part of it is being a nonprofit. That builds in that idea that this is going to pass from hand to hand. It’s not going to start with a founder. And then, when they’re tired of it, it’s going to shut down. This is definitely going to live on.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:15:51] The other part of it is some of the moves that we’ve made. So, recently, we got granted $1.8 million by the Federal Government to buy the building that we’re in. We were leasing it from a landlord, which was not the city. We, now, own that building completely. So, 25,000 square feet owned by the organization. So, it has a home. It’s not going to go away from that home, or maybe down the road, it well when it sells that building and moves into another building.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:16:15] Alongside of that, we’ve been forging these partnerships. So, we’re building this advanced autonomous test track. So, a vehicle test track, 1.4-mile loop inside of Tech Park, where vehicle companies can come and test out their vehicles on this dedicated track that is dedicated, but it still interacts with the public. So, there’s that interaction. Alongside of that, Sprint is coming in and doing a 5G deployment inside of Tech Park, starting from our building. So, it’s called Curiosity Lab. And that’s an opportunity for this next stage of startups to be able to use next-generation communication technologies.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:16:50] So, it’s trying to build in all of these things that really create an excitement. And the fact that we’re in Tech Park, which used to be the hotbed of telecom, kind of, innovation in Atlanta that’s kind of gone away, but we’re trying to bring it all back. So, it’s not just telecom. It’s a bunch of other things. It’s vehicles, it’s software startups, it’s all of these things. And hopefully, they’ll graduate from our place, and then move close by, and so we can still be involved with them.
Michael Blake: [00:17:15] So, a common theme that I can hear from, at least, the Sprint and the car track exercise is that those are prototyping resources.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:23] Yeah. Essentially, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:17:24] What do you know, Prototype Prime, prototyping resource.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:27] Right, Prime being the first place that you do your prototype, right. That’s your call.
Michael Blake: [00:17:30] Is that deliberate? Are there other prototyping resources as well, maker spaces, things of that nature?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:35] Yeah, exactly. So, we’re one of only two spaces – the other one being a TDC in Atlanta – that has a design and development lab. So, we’ve got a lab. We’ve got a handful of teams that use that lab. One of them has grown tremendously with us. Trellis started with two people. They’re now, I think, 16. And they build all their products in our lab. So, we’ve got 3D printers. We’ve got soldering stations. I mean, you name it, we’ve got it.
Michael Blake: [00:18:01] So, I want to come back to this 2100 description because I think that’s fascinating. So, I’m going off script a little bit. The typical space model is you help a company for some period of time.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:19] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:18:20] And then they “graduate”, right?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:22] Right.
Michael Blake: [00:18:22] You slash encourage them to leave, kick them out, whatever.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:25] Yeah, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:18:27] Is the fact that you’re, kind of, designed for longevity from day one, does that mean that that part of the model changes too, or maybe you’d love it if a company stayed there for 10 years?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:37] Yeah. So, no. We don’t want companies to stay there for long term.
Michael Blake: [00:18:41] Okay.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:41] Really, the goal is to help them early, early stage when they’re just fledgling companies, get them to the point where they’re starting to scale. So, our three tag lines are dream it, build it, scale it. That’s what we help entrepreneurs do. So, dream it when they’re just starting out, figuring out what to do. Build it when they’re starting to build their company, and then when they’re starting to scale. But as they start to scale, that’s the time for them to get pushed out.
Michael Blake: [00:19:01] Okay.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:19:02] So, we actually had one team, that was our second team in. So, Trellis was our first team in, grew from two people to 16 now. Our second team in site grew from a single founder to, now, I think, it’s about 18 or 20 people. And they were actually getting to the size where I was starting to talk to them about it’s going to be time to leave soon. And the founder said, “Yeah, we’re not going to leave.” And I said, “”No, no. I’m not kidding. I’m serious that you guys are just getting too big.” And this was only when we had the downstairs. And so, they said, “No. We like it here too much. We don’t want to leave.”
Sanjay Parekh: [00:19:35] And so, with the upstairs, City Hall used to upstairs, and they left, that opened up the possibility for us to take over the upstairs. So, we ended up taking a third of the space upstairs dedicating it to them. And so, we have a different relationship with them now. But I think that was a one-off. I don’t think we’re going to do that again. When they leave in a couple of years, that space is probably going to get reclaimed and be just regular startup space that people are coming in, there for a little while.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:01] My plan has always been three to four years, at the most, that we would hold onto a team. We want teams to graduate from us, and then move on to the Atlanta Tech Village, Switch Yard, Flat Iron, Strongbox, Atlanta Tech Park — Park Tech — Tech Park Atlanta. Tech Park Atlanta.
Michael Blake: [00:20:20] Yeah.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:20] Yeah. I always get that confused, 22TechPark. Like any of those places. The Alpharetta. Any of those places. We really view ourselves as the early, early stage. And we’re going to help the companies get their feet under them and get going, so that they can graduate to these other places. And the other places don’t have to worry about the viability of those teams. They know that they’re going to come in. They know what they’re doing. They’re going to continue to grow. And they’ll probably, at some point, outgrow those spaces as well. But I think that’s good.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:49] And the reason why we view ourselves that way is that, again, to that 2100 view, this was an area that I saw was lacking, and all of those places that I mentioned are run by friends of mine. And I didn’t ever want to compete with friends of mine because we have so many challenges and every city has challenges. Like why try to compete over the same things over and over again. Figure out something new and something different. And that’s what we decided to do with Prototype Prime.
Michael Blake: [00:21:16] In that respect, it’s like Startup Riot and Startup Lounge all over again, right?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:19] Yeah. No, exactly.
Michael Blake: [00:21:19] We need to be careful that we weren’t marginalizing somebody else inadvertently.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:24] Right.
Michael Blake: [00:21:24] Because the goal for both of our organizations was put ourselves out of business-
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:28] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:21:28] … which, thankfully, we did.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:29] Yeah. Exactly, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:21:30] So-
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:30] Although everybody still keeps telling me that they wish that Startup Riot would come back. And I tell them that that boat has sailed at this point.
Michael Blake: [00:21:37] I have to say the same thing about Startup Lounge.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:39] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:21:39] But everybody wishes it would come back, but they also wished that I would do it. And that’s not happening.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:44] Yeah. I say the same thing. I’m like, “Yeah, if you want to do it, I’m happy to give you all the stuff. I got stickers still. I would cheer you on.”
Michael Blake: [00:21:52] We’ll give you the nuclear launch codes to the website, everything.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:55] Exactly.
Michael Blake: [00:21:55] No, man, I got too much stuff going on.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:56] No, no, no, I’m too busy. I e-mailed 3000 people saying, “Who wants take it over?”
Michael Blake: [00:22:01] I remember that.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:01] Crickets.
Michael Blake: [00:22:03] I remember that. And that’s the evolution of the market.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:08] It is. And truth to be told, like you know this as well, events are hard to do. And I don’t blame anybody for not taking it up because it’s a painful exercise, and I don’t wish that on anybody.
Michael Blake: [00:22:19] Yeah. I mean, you got to love it. And neither of us got paid for it either.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:24] No, exactly. Yeah. Labor of love for both of them.
Michael Blake: [00:22:26] Definitely. So, where does Prototype Prime fit, in your mind? It doesn’t sound like it’s really co-working space. Is it an accelerator? Is it an incubator? Is it a hybrid? Is it something else? Maybe the distinction is not meaningful. What bucket would you put it into?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:45] So, we call ourselves an incubator. So, to me, an incubator is a place that helps companies like this but doesn’t put money in. To me, an accelerator is a place where you have a structured program, as well as money that’s going in as an investment.
Michael Blake: [00:22:59] Okay. So, GT Flashpoint, for example, was an accelerator.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:03] That’s an accelerator.
Michael Blake: [00:23:04] Because they had money in the wings kind of for-
Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:05] Absolutely, absolutely.
Michael Blake: [00:23:06] Okay.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:06] Yeah. And it might not be money that’s directly from the program, but it might be a side fund, which is what Flashpoint was. And I don’t know if that’s changed now. But Atlanta Tech Village, to me, is more of a co-working space than it is an incubator-
Michael Blake: [00:23:21] I agree.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:22] … or an accelerator. So, for us, an incubator is that we’re still pretty heavily involved with teams. So, we’re around, we’re meeting with teams. I was just there yesterday chitchatting with a handful of teams, talking about their problems, giving them ideas, things like that; whereas, in a co-working space you don’t necessarily have that.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:39] And all of these though, you do have the serendipity, the casual kind of interaction that ends up happening. You’re running into folks and you might find the aha solution to whatever problem you’ve been struggling with. So, that’s, I think, the benefit of doing any one of these. But as an incubator, I think we’re a little bit different. We don’t have a deadline that says, “You’ve got to get out by then.”
Michael Blake: [00:24:00] Right, okay. So, what kinds of companies do you think incubator — I’ll focus on incubator and accelerators. What kinds of companies you think do best in those kinds of environments?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:13] Yeah. So, for an accelerator, they usually have a target kind of market niche that they can help with. So, I would focus on that. Incubators are, often, the same way as well. So, we are a hardware and software incubator. We are not a lifestyle business incubator or anything else like that. So, if you’re starting up dry cleaning stores or barbershop, you should not come to Prototype Prime. We are not going to be able to help you. And it’s not that we don’t love you, it’s just that we don’t have the skills to help in that environment.
Michael Blake: [00:24:38] That’s not your thing.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:39] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:24:39] You don’t know anything about running a dry cleaning business.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:40] No, not at all. I have no idea. I don’t know the issues you’re going to face or anything else like that. Your best to go to a place where you’re served and helped by people that understand your space. So, that’s, I think, number one that you should think about.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:55] The other thing is that somebody that’s actually willing to be coachable and listen to feedback. All the feedback is not going to be dead-on accurate. You’ve got to figure out for yourself what’s right and wrong, but you’ve got to be, at least, open and willing to listen to it.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:10] And I’ll give you an example. I was interviewing an entrepreneur just not too long ago. So, we screen all the companies coming into Prototype Prime to make sure that, first of all, we’re a good fit for them, that we can help them with the things that they’re working on, but that they are also a good fit for us, that they’re going to be somebody that we want to have in the space, that makes sense, that we’re going to actually be able to help because they’re listening.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:31] This particular entrepreneur, I said something, they only had a handful of customers. and I said, “You know what? I think what you need to do is probably go out, and get some more customers first, and drive revenue before you start deciding to build custom products because I don’t know that you necessarily know what your customers want.” Well, this ticked off the entrepreneur, stood up halfway through the meeting. At that point, shook my hand, and said, “Well, thank you very much.” And stormed out of the meeting.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:56] That’s not the right personality. Even generally, if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to have a thick skin. People are going to call your baby ugly. That’s just what it is. And so, you’ve got to have that conviction. You’ve got to have that understanding and that drive to be able to take it, and take that criticism, prove them wrong, but do it in a way that doesn’t burn bridges either. Like that entrepreneur, if he ever asked me for help, I’m going to be like, “Yeah, no.” Because I’m not going to introduce somebody like that to somebody I know and burn the bridge that I might have with them.
Michael Blake: [00:26:26] All right. I got to share this story with you.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:30] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:26:30] So, as you know, I’ve done office hours for a decade or so.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:34] Yeah, absolutely.
Michael Blake: [00:26:34] And years ago, a guy came and wanted my opinion on his business. In fact, I didn’t say it was even a baby, it’s more of like a wombat. I mean, they’re just so far off in left field. And he was upset, got up, left, and didn’t even paid his check. I wanted him to cover his check.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:54] Okay.
Michael Blake: [00:26:54] And then, about six months later, I got a handwritten note. And basically, he shut down his business. And he wrote me a note apologizing, had a $20 bill in it, cash, and said, “I’m so sorry. You were the one person who was honest with me. All my friends and family were cheerleading because they thought I was the supportive thing to do. They would have helped me more had they said my baby was really a wombat. And I wouldn’t waste all this time and money.” So, sometimes, you get that sort of delayed gratification, but for people that invest so much, it’s so hard for them to hear that.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:33] It is.
Michael Blake: [00:27:35] And maybe the first time somebody has ever said that to them.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:37] Right, absolutely. And I always try to be honest with entrepreneurs, and probably just like you, in a nice way.
Michael Blake: [00:27:43] Yeah.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:43] Right. We’re not going to do it ruthlessly, but-
Michael Blake: [00:27:46] We don’t go Simon Cowell on them.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:47] Exactly. But we try to do it in a way that is helpful to the entrepreneur because I agree with you. And this is why I always ask people when I do presentations or anything else, I want you to tell me what I did wrong. That’s all I care about. I don’t want to know how I did right because, obviously, I tried my best. I wouldn’t have come here and done anything if I wasn’t trying my best. So, I want you to tell me all the wrong things.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:10] And I think a lot of times, people need that permission from you to be able to tell you what you did wrong. But that’s generally what I do. That’s did on that panel for Peachtree Corners. I’m going to tell you what I think is wrong, like what you’re going to mess up on, and what you’re messing up on right now because that’s the only way to get better.
Michael Blake: [00:28:28] So, you’ve had a long entrepreneurial journey.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:32] I think you just called me old.
Michael Blake: [00:28:34] Nope. You called yourself old. You’ve had a long and storied entrepreneurial journey. And a lot of these places just did not exist back in ’07, ’08, and the ATL
Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:45] Yeah, yeah/
Michael Blake: [00:28:47] How would your journey have been different? Wouldn’t it have been different if there had been things like this available back when you were a pup?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:54] Yeah, I think it absolutely would’ve been different. I remember starting my first company. So, I came up with the idea for Digital Envoy in ’99, went full time in 2000. There, basically, was nobody as a mentor for me. There was nobody to learn from. Went to a few events that were technology-oriented around town, but they were basically wall-to-wall service providers just trying to sell me stuff. There was nobody trying to actually help.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:29:19] And so, I think, from kind of the capital of perspective, if there had been places like this, my costs would have been a lot less. I probably could have raised a lot less money, and been a lot more effective. But on the other side of it, I think I could have gotten to a point of solving things and getting the right answers quicker.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:29:39] I’ll give you an example. It’s kind of a minor example, but when we had our first office, me and my two co-founders, we’d never started a company before. This is the first -time starting a company. I was, at this point, 20 — having our first office, 25 years old, 26 years old, something like that. And a guy from the Better Business Bureau came in to sign us to operate. We’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’ll sign.” It was free. So, we’re like, “Yeah, sure. We can do that.” And so, he’s filling out the paperwork right there, and then he asked us – and we’d been in this office for a couple months at this point – “So, yeah. So, where’s your business license?” We’re like, “It must be in the mail. We haven’t got any yet. It’s in the mail. We’ll let you know that once we get it.”
Michael Blake: [00:30:19] Of course, you have business license
Sanjay Parekh: [00:30:21] Yeah. So, that very same day, our CFO ran to the City of Duluth and got our first business license because we didn’t know we needed one. Nobody tells you that. And look, it was a minor issue, even if we’d gotten caught and fined, it probably wouldn’t have been that outrageous. But, still, it’s those little things that just helped you along that process and speed you up in terms of making things happen that had we been in a space like that, we would have just not had to worry about some of those things. We wouldn’t have to worry about which accounting firm are we’re going to go with, or which law firm are we going to go with, or who do we use for X, Y, and Z, or how do we do benefits. Like all of that stuff would’ve been solved, and all that stuff is just the cruft garbage stuff that you have to do in starting a company, but it adds no value. It’s not the thing that you’re around for.
Michael Blake: [00:31:08] It’s like stock options valuations.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:09] Yeah. You’ve got to do it, but it doesn’t add any value.
Michael Blake: [00:31:15] No, it does not. I mean, it’s a distraction.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:17] It is, absolutely.
Michael Blake: [00:31:19] So, one last question. I know we got to get you out of here. I know you got some other stuff you got to do today, as you always do. But I want to ask you one other question, as a new — I don’t know that it’s a new concept but a new term called a colliding space. Have you heard that term before?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:33] I’ve heard that term people talk about. Yeah. Serendipity, collisions, and things like that. I don’t know exactly what a colliding space is and how that’s different from a co-working space, but I think all of us are essentially built for that.
Michael Blake: [00:31:47] Yeah.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:47] I was at Prototype Prime yesterday and randomly happened to see – you might know – CBQ, Charles Brian Quinn, with Greenzie, the robotic lawnmowing company.
Michael Blake: [00:31:56] I know of them, but don’t know him.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:58] Okay. So, CBQ has been around Atlanta for quite some time, and I was surprised to see him there. He was like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to be doing some,” because we’ve got the autonomous advanced vehicle stuff. It’s like, “We’re going to be doing some autonomous lawn mowing alongside of all that.” I was like, “That’s kind of cool,” right.
Sanjay Parekh: [00:32:17] And having those random collisions. And then, I saw he was meeting with the Trellis team, which is monitoring water usage for farmers in their crop fields. And so, having those kind of serendipity, kind of collisions happening, I think, that’s a great thing. That’s a great thing for Atlanta. It’s a great thing for any city. And so, if governments are listening to this, anybody that’s in a municipality, if there’s one thing that you want to try to help do is create those collisions between people that are doing innovative stuff because you never know how they might be able to help one another.
Michael Blake: [00:32:49] So, we’re just about out of time, but we, obviously, can have a three-hour conversation on this, and then some. But if somebody wants to ask you a question, maybe follow up, can they reach out to you? And if so, how best can they contact you?
Sanjay Parekh: [00:33:02] Yeah. The best place always, for me, is on Twitter. So, I’m @Sanjay, that’s S-A-N-J-A-Y. I’m pretty responsive on Twitter. You can @ me, and my DMs are open, so you can private message me if it’s something you don’t want to plaster publicly on Twitter.
Michael Blake: [00:33:17] Okay. Well, very good. That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Sanjay so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us.
Michael Blake: [00:33:25] We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear decision when making it. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider leaving a review through your favorite podcast aggregator. That helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.
Opportunity Zones
What is an opportunity zone? How can operating within an opportunity zone help a business? With numerous opportunity zones across the country, what are the differences entrepreneurs and investors should be aware of? In this edition of “Decision Vision” host Michael Blake, interviews Vishay Singh, Co-Founder of The GlobeHUB, a coworking space located in an opportunity zone in Chamblee, GA.
Vishay Singh, The GlobeHUB
Vishay Singh is Co-Founder of The GlobeHUB. The GlobeHUB was established in 2016 by Kevin Henao and Vishay Singh when they felt a calling to make a lasting impact on the startup community. They had a vision to not only inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs but to provide them the community, funding, mentorship and ecosystem that every business owner requires to succeed. Globe’s coworking spaces offer plug-and-play memberships to accelerate business growth. They understand the power of the tech community and aim to facilitate meaningful connections across our unique member network. The diversity of people and ideas make the world better and makes companies better. It’s time to put your big ideas into motion. GlobeHUB is a tech community that promotes high energy, hard work, and creative innovation. There is no better place to launch your business. Get involved! For more information, go to www.globehub.com.
Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company
Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.
Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Brady Ware & Company
Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.
Decision Vision Podcast Series
“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by Business RadioX®.
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Show Transcript
Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.
Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome back to another episode of Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we’re discussing the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we’ll talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.
Michael Blake: [00:00:39] Hi. My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is also sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.
Michael Blake: [00:01:04] So, I’m going to apologize to listeners right off the bat. In Atlanta here, it is the height of allergy season. And, generally speaking, once the pollen count gets above a thousand, the air becomes toxic. So, I’m on a combination of cocktail to, sort of, keep me off my feet. And I don’t have a cough button, but I will try to turn my head if that happens. And if you don’t suffer from allergies, feel blessed that you you don’t suffer from that. But I’m a launch panel guy. We play hurt, and we’re going to continue on through this podcast. We’ll get through the episode.
Michael Blake: [00:01:41] And today, we’re going to talk about opportunity zones. And opportunity zones are newly created, tax-break-driven investment areas that are designed to promote private investment in economically distressed communities. And they’re an interesting topic because – and this is a personal ideological view – I think, anytime we can harness market forces to promote social welfare, I think, that’s a good thing to do. There are actually many of these across the country. And as it turns out, I’m very fortunate to live very close to an opportunity zone. So, I look forward to seeing how that leads to some development of my own community.
Michael Blake: [00:02:20] Joining us today is Vishay Singh, Co-Founder of the Globe Hub, which is Chamblee’s premiere co-working and entrepreneurship facilitation space located a Peachtree-Dekalb Airport. And for those of you not in the Atlanta area, PDK airport is Georgia’s second largest commercial airport. So, when Super Bowl 53 happened here, and all the other billionaires came in on their jets, that’s where they came in.
Michael Blake: [00:02:43] The Globe Hub was established in 2016 by Kevin Henao and Vishay when they felt a calling to make a lasting impact on the startup community. They had a vision to not only inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs but to provide them the community, funding, mentorship, and ecosystem that every business owner requires to succeed. Vishay is a successful serial entrepreneur, whose current venture MapMeLocal. And maybe if we have a few minutes at the end of the podcast, we’ll get a chance to learn a little bit about that as well.
Michael Blake: [00:03:11] Globe Hub’s co-working spaces offer plug-and-play memberships to accelerate business growth. They understand the power of the tech community and aim to facilitate meaningful connections across their unique member network. The diversity of people and ideas makes the world better and makes companies better. They’re a technology community that promotes high energy, hard work, and creative innovation. On a personal note, I’m very proud to say that Brady Ware is a member of the Globe Hub, and I personally find it an excellent resource for my own professional needs. Vishay, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on.
Vishay Singh: [00:03:41] Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it.
Michael Blake: [00:03:43] So, we have a lot to talk about but let’s, sort of, dive right in. Why did you start the Globe Hub? Why do you feel there is a need to create a new co-working space? We’ve got a lot of these things right in Atlanta now. Why do we need a new one?
Vishay Singh: [00:04:04] Actually, I think, for me, it was probably the second step to my needs. It was Kevin, my co-founder, who actually came up with that vision because he spent a lot more time in that building. And the building is in a prime location, as you’re aware. And it is outdated. It had the ’80s look. And Kevin was in a poky hole upstairs, small office, and always had this vision of, “Man. I wish I could just have a bigger space, have larger boardrooms, share it with everybody, and keep my rental down while I’m growing up my business called SameDay Printing.”
Vishay Singh: [00:04:48] And when I got there, I was in Marietta, Georgia, and I had met a bunch of entrepreneurs that wanted to expand with me. And we were like, “Man, we can be in Marietta Georgia. We should get somewhere to more of the inner city, and be where the hype is, and be closer to more millennials, and where the excitement is.”
Vishay Singh: [00:05:08] So, we started looking. And then, when we found 1954 Airport Road, we stumbled upon Kevin, and what he was doing, and we immediately fell in love with it. And, sometimes, entrepreneurs go with gut feel versus just the pure science of why co-working, etcetera. But I think, what we saw instantly, the differences was with that location was you could drive in, you could park, and it was all on the ground floor. You had no hassle of worrying about how to get upstairs or how to get to you office, and how do you park your vehicle, etcetera. You can eliminate all those thought processes and hurdles, as I call them, from your thought process because you’re so focused in what you’re trying to do.
Vishay Singh: [00:05:56] So, you just want to get into a space, and you want to be inspired, and you want to be with a community, and you want to build a business. So, that’s how we decided just to say “Okay, let’s just take what we have and create a Globe Hub,” but we understand that co-working, potentially, could be the red ocean. I think, there’s still a lot of space of it, especially we’re going to talk further about opportunity zones and how our strategy would differ.
Vishay Singh: [00:06:21] But the long story and the short story of it, I always felt that, and I’ve always been passionate about helping entrepreneurs. I just couldn’t figure out whether thinking too small. So, I needed to think bigger, and I needed to think and dream a bit bigger on how to do this. And I think that’s potentially coming together. But that’s when we decide, we said, “Let’s just do it. Let’s just create the space first. Let’s crawl before we dream and drink a lot of beer, and we make nothing happen,” right?
Vishay Singh: [00:06:49] So, we did it. Baby steps first. We got 10,000 square feet. We’ve told community. We’ve flushed that community as well to get more and more of the right entrepreneurs there to be able to, then, create an ecosystem that starts to support itself. And like you said, a system that we’re each another could help each another. We even crowdsource to each another. We crowdfund to each another. When somebody’s stuck and really can’t get any angel money or something, we become the angels. And we all chip in whatever we’ve got in our pockets to help that person get the next contract or the next deal, so that they can get to the next level.
Michael Blake: [00:07:22] I didn’t know that.
Vishay Singh: [00:07:22] That’s exactly what’s goes on in the ecosystem. So, we don’t like — again, it’s not about sitting and waiting. If somebody needs something, and we can’t get it from an outside source, all the guys look in and say, “Let’s see how we could just crowdsource it ourselves.”
Michael Blake: [00:07:37] In a way, it’s kind of a microcosm of the Chamblee area, right? I’ve lived in Chamblee since 2005. And in the last three or four years, somebody figured out that Chamblee has a Marta Station, and it is right at the intersection of 285 and 85, And, of course, the airport there. Chamblee is booming, right?
Vishay Singh: [00:07:56] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:07:57] Is that part of the calculus? Was that something you’re excited about with Globe Hub kind of being in the middle of that renaissance that Chamblee’s enjoying now?
Vishay Singh: [00:08:04] Absolutely. I mean, I would say right place, right time. Nothing more than that. A lot of things can happen by accident. I mean, we went into downtown, we went into midtown, we looked at other places before we landed up at the Globe building and met Kevin, as well as the building entrepreneur who owns the building, Robert Muller. And decided, “Man, this is the right place.”
Vishay Singh: [00:08:31] And then, you slowly start to discover, well, it’s a hub zone. And then, what is the hub zone? What does the hub zone mean? And then, next thing is we figured out, there’s this press release and the meeting downtown about opportunity zones. And by the way, we looked on the map, and, boom, we are on an opportunity zone. What does that mean? And how does that potentially help us and help the he entrepreneur within us?
Vishay Singh: [00:08:52] But Chamblee is blooming. That’s another thing that we — It’s as a consequence of Brookhaven being overfull, and Buckhead, and that overflow that’s happening. It’s just a natural consequence, I guess. And I think it’s bound to spread into Doraville and places like that. So, I think that’s exciting to have all that and to see all that flourishing around us, as well as to see the potential of the hub zone area, which is the PDK area and the three-mile radius around it, which needs to now come up with a strategy and a plan on how that’s going to unfold itself and become or join into that overflow of where the Whole Foods is and this building across of Clermont, etcetera. So, very, very exciting stuff going on there.
Michael Blake: [00:09:46] You talked about the serendipity of real estate. So, we moved into Chamblee back in 2005, and I had zero to do with that decision. We just moved back to Atlanta, or I moved to Atlanta, my wife went back. She’d been here. I know nothing about real estate. I’m not even very good of monopoly. So, we’re very fortunate that we happened to move into the right place.
Michael Blake: [00:10:10] And your commitment goes beyond just sort of cheerleading. I mean, you’ve put in us substantial financial stake in this. In making that investment, do you see that as a business opportunity, as well as a social project, or do you see it more as purely a social project?
Vishay Singh: [00:10:28] I think it’s a hybrid. I think the environment does lend itself to being profitable. And it’s not as if we’re not profitable. The ecosystem and being full, we had capacity, we can grow upwards by virtue of membership and monetizing other spaces by being creative. So, we have reached that level of profitability.
Vishay Singh: [00:10:54] Is it highly profitable to just have one of that? Absolutely not. I think it’s the great American model where, typically, like franchises and/or similar sort of businesses where you’re doing one well, you need to duplicate it in order to reach good revenues and reach good valuations. Sometimes, when you look online, and you look at the evaluations of WeWork and Industrious, it’s amazing that they’ve got those numbers, and they’ve got those valuations. So, from that perspective, there’s definitely an opportunity.
Vishay Singh: [00:11:33] And I think, on the other hand, it’s helping entrepreneurs. So, I don’t know if that’s social, but if we look at helping entrepreneurs, the way we do it and by no means, we are in absolute shock triangle. We are having a huge purse string, per se. But with our micro funding methodology, and bootstrapping, and working with entrepreneurs, if they succeed, we succeed.
Vishay Singh: [00:11:59] So, from, that, that’s how we’re landing into – and we’ll talk about it later, I guess – the Founders Institute and why we’re doing that. It’s just tying that up into a mechanism where they could be that risk, the risk of investing time, investing money, and then being rewarded with upsides of one or two of those startups becoming successful in Chamblee.
Michael Blake: [00:12:24] So, you found Globe Hub in 2016. You’re at 1954 Airport Road. A little over a year goes by, next thing you know, they slapped an opportunity zone basically right on top of you.
Vishay Singh: [00:12:37] Absolutely.
Michael Blake: [00:12:38] And you’re right in the middle. It basically covers the Peachtree Dekalb Airport, that mini industrial complex there. Did you know what an opportunity zone was or was going to be? Do you have any idea that was going to happen or is that just you, sort of, woke up one day, and it was like a big present?
Vishay Singh: [00:12:55] That’s exactly what it is. It’s the latter. It just happened. I’ve always been aware of economic zones or development zones. And the opportunity zone by definition means the same thing. But it’s a positive effect. It’s it’s great to be in that. It gives us a larger opportunity because as I was just trying to look online and trying to look on how many opportunity zones actually do have incubators, and so far, possibly may have found one that’s a veteran on somebody up in Virginia that’s fallen into that space, and so have we.
Vishay Singh: [00:13:31] So, it looks like we are one of two that are in the zone, which actually complements and lends ourselves into the strategy of how we were thinking of expanding because what could make us different is our plan now of, actually, working the dream of building entrepreneurs but, perhaps, what we could do is build these further hubs in opportunity zones and work in those cities and create a sustainable environment for startups that are funded and, also, help with the marketing of main streets.
Michael Blake: [00:14:13] So, there is this opportunity zone, and I have to confess, I don’t know a lot about it until a few months ago. What is an opportunity zone? For whom is it an opportunity?
Vishay Singh: [00:14:25] Absolutely. So, I keep this piece of paper here because it’s kind of technical, but we won’t get into technical jargon. But the bottom line, the opportunities is on the left and the right side. So, the left side is taxpayers, and people that have capital gains events, and/or postpone capital gains events because they just simply don’t want to pay the tax on it. It’s an opportunity for them because, then, they could liquidate their position, be it a stock, be it a partnership, be it a sale of a business. And that the gain that they’re supposed to pay immediately could not defer through a 1031 exchange, I think it’s called, for property. If they could not do that, they have this chance now to invest it in an opportunity zone.
Vishay Singh: [00:15:17] And that investment could go two ways. It could go in into a property and enhance a property, and there’s rules sets against that, or it could come into a hub like ours and be invested into startups, in our case, and/or it could be invested into small to medium businesses, even if it’s a restaurant, a mom and pop store that’s doing really good and needs that extra capital. That money could be used. So, on that side, that’s the advantage.
Vishay Singh: [00:15:47] On this side, the opportunity is for entrepreneurs to maybe get out of their basements, and start thinking bigger and bring out the ideas, and really have a good opportunity of having some, if I may call it, venture fund or having some access to angel money that could help them get the small businesses or startups and ignited. And the whole idea is, then, to uplift that community, uplift the environment, and create a sustainable environment that makes it a retainer. It retains entrepreneurs and retains the younger audience, the younger people to stay back home versus go to Silicon Valley and other places.
Michael Blake: [00:16:35] So, this, I think, is a very important point because I’m an economist by training. So, I’ll apologize to everybody for that now. But one of the things that they teach us in economics, at least, until you get to the graduate level is that you, sort of, set taxes aside. All the models assume there’s no taxes, right? And if somebody knows of a place where there’s actually no taxes, please let me know, I’d love to go there. But it calls into focus, the fact that taxes do matter. And I think the way this works, your basic and deferred capital gains for up to 10 years, if I’m not mistaken. Correct?
Vishay Singh: [00:17:10] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:17:10] So, that increases the return on the same investment, whether you’re making the opportunity zone or not, at that level of risk. And therefore, it’s going to be more attractive. And it’s not just attractive to the investor but the entrepreneur. I imagine on a certain level, an entrepreneur can make an investment in their own business, right? And that means they get to defer or somehow offset their own capital gains as well.
Vishay Singh: [00:17:39] That’s right, yes. As long as it’s done in the zone, and they’re improving that zone by the definition of those regulations, which is still pending final publication, but it’s almost there, you can absolutely — I think that’s absolutely doable.
Michael Blake: [00:17:55] And any kind of business, it could be an e-commerce business, it could be a service business, it could be a software startup.
Vishay Singh: [00:18:01] Absolutely. From where it stands right now, it seems to be pretty clear that that would be covered. There is pending clarity on the regulations with the IRS. So, we were expecting to be published end of March, but it hasn’t come out as yet. We anticipate hopefully now, May or June. But that was pieces of the actual discussion by the forums that took place in DC, where interested parties went and lobbied further to have clarity that it can cover these broader spectrums.
Michael Blake: [00:18:37] Well, if it gives you any comfort, we have about 50 accountants back in my office, they’re tearing their hair out because the IRS has not even published final guidelines on all of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act at the end of 2017. So, we’re still guessing. And even if you do Turbo Tax for your own taxes now, the program says, “Well, this is what we think it’s going to be, but the regulations aren’t final yet.”
Vishay Singh: [00:19:02] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:19:02] So, IRS has a lot of regulations to write. So, are you seeing this impact to Globe Hub? Are you seeing an uptick in interest, in activity? And if so, what does that look like?
Vishay Singh: [00:19:13] Definitely. I mean, we’ve seen a positive impact on it. I think that’s how. I think it’s also contributed us to being at full capacity because it’s definitely encouraging a lot of startup entrepreneurs and a lot of businesses to want to think about how they could be part of the zone, how could they get access to capital. And strangely, a lot of the businesses that come in, it’s not purely just looking at, “How could I just get access to capital?” It’s working out, by definition, complementary to what they trying to do.
Vishay Singh: [00:19:49] So, like Chamblee is growing in that film industry. It’s growing in leaps and bounds with studios and the like. So, we’re finding a lot of inquiries that those entrepreneurs are saying, “We want to set up a studio. We want to set up an office there because we want to launch films. So, we want to raise funds for creating films in Chamblee.” So, we’ve seen quite a bit of that. We’ve seen other entrepreneurs in tech and non-tech come through and make inquiries because they’ve learned or heard about the OZ. And we have the double whammy where you can, also, if you’re in our zone, you’re also a hub zone, which allows you to get some extra points when you qualify to do government contracting as well.
Michael Blake: [00:20:38] Oh.
Vishay Singh: [00:20:38] So, there’s that advantage too.
Michael Blake: [00:20:41] And doing some homework before our conversation today, I looked on a map, and there are lots of these opportunity zones all across the country, right? So, for our listeners that are outside of Atlanta, outside of Georgia, chances are very good. If you live in the United States, you live close to an opportunity zone. Is that accurate? Did I read that correctly?
Vishay Singh: [00:21:01] I think that’s quite correct. If you just Google it and just put up “opportunity zone map,” you’ll get the maps that come up, and you’ll see all the brown dots. It’s spread out throughout the US. And chances are if you are in a major city like Atlanta, there’s one near you. I live in Marietta, and there’s several zones in Marietta, and really good opportunities for building acquisitions and/or rejuvenation of certain buildings, which will turn Marietta around in the next 10 years from what I can see.
Michael Blake: [00:21:38] So, in order to take advantage of an opportunity zone, do you have to apply for a license? Do you have to file anything, or do you have that level of knowledge, or do you just check a box? How do you sort of tell the IRS, “Hey, I’m in an opportunity zone, so give me these benefits”?
Vishay Singh: [00:21:54] Sure. I think it’s not about the — yeah, it’s about a process. There is paperwork, but it’s nothing that I can see that’s a special application. It’s more, “Who is that investor? And does that investor have a capital gain event? And is he or she investing in your business?” And then, there is a form that the investor will fill in and file with the IRS return. And there’s a simple methodology that that could be a partnership or whatever in which they put the money into. So, it’s just transactional like as if you’re investing in any other business.
Vishay Singh: [00:22:33] And then, from you, as a business owner, it’s the basic requirements of, “Do you have an LLC, or do you have a company, or do you have a partnership? And do you have a business license in in that area?” And I think the business license will help confirm that you are in the zone and, perhaps, a lease agreement, or, in our case, we have the membership agreement coupled with a lease agreement, if both are needed. And that’s only for purposes of your accountants, auditors having that to satisfy them.
Vishay Singh: [00:23:01] I don’t think the IRS — the IRS seems to be quite lenient with not being too red tape about this. I think they understand this is a process for entrepreneurs. And I think, finally, America’s getting to understand that entrepreneurs need less red tape and get easier access to money, so that they can run with their business ideas or, at least, one business idea.
Michael Blake: [00:23:27] Yeah. I’m sure there’s a forum for that. I don’t know what the number of the form is, but if you just go to irs.gov, and you do a search for opportunity zone, chances are very good. There’ll be links that pop up, and you can see what the form looks like. And it’s comforting to know this is not a place the IRS is really digging in and making it a massive bureaucratic challenge.
Michael Blake: [00:23:48] So, a lot of listeners, when you hear something like an opportunity zone, you’re creating a tax incentive to invest in a certain area, I think, in many people’s minds, I think, with some fairness, it evokes, “Well, if you have to offer an incentive to invest in a particular area, it must be a disaster area. It must be rat-infested. It must be gang infested. It must be dilapidated,” whatever lousy adjective you have, right? Is that necessarily the case if I’m going into an opportunity hub? Do I need to be prepared to walk into a disaster area?
Vishay Singh: [00:24:25] I think, I’m smiling because, I think, every time when I drive around with Kevin, because he grew up in the neighborhood, and until you’ve lived there, it’s like, that probably aptly describes what Chamblee, Brookhaven was many, many, many years ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the privilege of seeing that. But having grown up in South Africa, I’ve seen a lot of that.
Vishay Singh: [00:24:44] So, almost many areas start off like that. And, eventually, the right ideas come about, the right ways of cleaning up a city, the right ways of creating good sustainable economy or businesses in there to sustain the environment, and bringing on better homes, etcetera help build up an area.
Vishay Singh: [00:25:07] So, I think you’re absolutely right, there are those areas. They are definitely part of it. And I think it’s a long, long-term vision in terms of this process that that would happen. And it’s possible that certain pockets of that will happen.
Vishay Singh: [00:25:24] The opportunities within the opportunity zone is what I call the sandwich zones. The sandwich zones are the zones that are kind of like us where we are somewhere in between, where Chamblee is booming, Brookhaven is full out and is doing well. Chamblee is booming, and there’s these pockets in Chamblee that are opportunity zones, and that can be turned around, and compliment the entire ecosystem. So, there’s those.
Vishay Singh: [00:25:53] So, what you have to do is just put a magnifying glass on and look for those because those are going to be easier for you to start a business in and have direct access to a more affluent community or more affluent buyers just around you in the eight-mile radius, right?
Vishay Singh: [00:26:10] And then, those that have, I would say, the entrepreneurs with grit, and gut, and maybe deeper pockets are going to go for the other areas, which could be as bad as what you describe, but they still see a longer-term opportunity in that. And they would come out on the other side and probably redevelop it, or create something about it, or create a new form of sustainable buildings, et cetera, or homes or properties because those things are included.
Vishay Singh: [00:26:40] So, by definition, the IRS has included apartment living or anything to do with some form of commercial mix like live, work, play, etcetera, seems to be covered. So, I think those really deep areas, let’s call it poverty-stricken or crime-ridden, that could be cleaned up could absolutely be done as well.
Vishay Singh: [00:27:05] There’s a lot of that in Macon Georgia. And I’ve been traveling to Macon Georgia back and forth and doing a little bit of spec projects there. And we would love to get into the main streets. Our target, our focus is going to be main streets of Atlanta because we have this whole theory that main streets are sick and we can help fix it by bringing in a Globe Hub into each main street. Maybe not as big as what we have. Maybe a smaller model an express model. But then, collaborating working with those businesses and the city to create some form of digital marketing altogether in one single platform. And that’s where we’ll probably talk a little bit later with the MapMeLocal software.
Michael Blake: [00:27:44] Okay.
Vishay Singh: [00:27:44] Yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:27:44] Good. So, you mentioned in passing, I do want to touch on this. You’re involved in the Founders Institute.
Vishay Singh: [00:27:53] Correct.
Michael Blake: [00:27:54] Am I correct in saying you’re creating the Atlanta Chapter of Founders Institute?
Vishay Singh: [00:27:58] Correct.
Michael Blake: [00:27:58] Is that correct?
Vishay Singh: [00:27:58] Correct, yeah.
Michael Blake: [00:27:59] It’s the first presence in the area.
Vishay Singh: [00:28:01] Correct.
Michael Blake: [00:28:01] What is that? What’s the elevator pitch for Founders Institute?
Vishay Singh: [00:28:03] If I had to just say it simply, it’s designed for people coming out of corporate environment and/or startup entrepreneurs, maybe the one vice versa. But it’s designed for people like that that are thinking about entrepreneurship or wanting to become an entrepreneur, and they just need a way to understand how that entire environment works, and understand what hurdles they will face, and understand, basically, the Founders Institute will give you a really good platform to get you through that.
Vishay Singh: [00:28:45] Founders Institute, basically, in Atlanta, having gone through the process now, by definition, what we’re going to be doing is pulling together very experienced entrepreneurs in Atlanta, in our own environment, from larger companies to smaller companies that have experienced even from bankruptcy to building 100 million companies to come share the experiences with these want-to-be or wannabe entrepreneurs in a 16-week program. The program is well-defined, but it’s the experience of the entrepreneur that’s already gone through it coupled with the theory behind it that will be shared in evening classes to these startup entrepreneurs.
Michael Blake: [00:29:35] So, essentially, that’s the first stage. And the second stage is if you get through all that, you know you want to become an entrepreneur, you don’t particularly drop out, you get through that hard phase, and you know what you’re going to be in for, and you really want to do it, then you go to the next stage of going through the funds instead maybe going up to Silicon Valley and/or looking within the Globe Hub for funding and getting your startup up and running.
Michael Blake: [00:30:00] It’s an interesting approach. You touched upon something that I do when I advise people to the think about entrepreneurship. I feel like I do people the best service when they say, “I think I want to start my own business,” by trying to scare them out of it and try to show them how ugly and how terrifying it is. For every Jeff Bezos out there that is glamorous and is, obviously, enormously successful as a transformative business, there are others that are not that. And even though they may not fail, it’s a slog. It’s probably harder than the day job that you just left. Certainly more stressful than the day job that you just left.
Michael Blake: [00:30:41] And it sounds like you take that approach where, “Hey, you want to be an entrepreneur, great. But before you take the plunge, let’s give you a sort of a little look as to what you’re really signing up for because it’s not all what they publish in Fast Company, for example, or on the magazine.”
Vishay Singh: [00:30:57] Absolutely. It’s an absolute window. Actually, Founders Institute encourages you to keep your day job. Therefore, they put the program on 6:00 in the evening and run it for two hours once a week, so that you can get kick started. Once you go through the program, in that process, you’re then encourage to, “Do you want to incorporate?” And there’s a lawyer that will come, and show you how to incorporate, and get you to take that step.
Vishay Singh: [00:31:19] So, you can take those baby steps towards heading to where you want to be successful. But it is about the truth of it is we want to get you to a point where you don’t — like most of us, entrepreneurs, went through a lot of pain. Even though we did our MBAs and stuff like that, we still go through a lot of pain in growing a business. And that pain is a consequence of maybe not understanding the entire landscape and not having had sufficient coaches, mentors, experienced entrepreneurs like yourself, Michael, and everybody else around us that has had gone through a couple of ventures to say, “You know what, this is what happens. This is my experience. It may not happen to you, but just be aware of this.”.
Vishay Singh: [00:32:06] The academic side is great, but when you get through nuts and bolts, it’s all about you. And entrepreneurship, for me, is, by definition, entering within. That’s how I see entrepreneurship is the moment you become an entrepreneur is actually entering into your own self and challenging your own self into how you’re going to break all these barriers and create a successful business.
Michael Blake: [00:32:31] You mentioned the MBA. So, I have an MBA myself. And I’ve started a couple of businesses. And I found, frankly, the MBA did not teach me a lot of the blocking and tackling. It’s fine. My MBA, at least, would teach me, if I want to go to Wall Street, I want to work for Bain or McKinsey, Home Depot’s corporate department, lots of tools to help you there.
Vishay Singh: [00:32:55] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:32:55] That was 20 years ago, my diploma is in a cave painting in France somewhere. But nevertheless, the basic MBA doesn’t necessarily teach you how do you send an invoice, how do you negotiate, how do you set a fee, how do you create a proposal, how do you become an amateur graphics designer, so you’re not just sending dense text things to everybody. And how do you deal with the stress, the loneliness, the thing about you might have a panic attack because you’re not sure how you’re going to make payroll the next four days.
Vishay Singh: [00:33:27] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:33:27] So, I think, it’s so real. And even for myself or somebody who has done it, I mentor, I teach entrepreneurship, I’ve helped people in business planning competitions. Even with all that, it’s still punch me in the face and was jarring.
Vishay Singh: [00:33:40] That’s right.
Michael Blake: [00:33:40] So, to whatever extent that the Founders Institute can prepare people for that, for that first punch, if you will, I think that’s going to make all the world a difference because, personally, I felt it. So, I went on the Founders Institute website, again, preparing for this interview, and it turns out the Atlanta part says coming soon.
Vishay Singh: [00:34:05] Sure.
Michael Blake: [00:34:05] So, you can’t necessarily sign up yet. You can’t get on the mailing list, which now I’m on. When do you think you’re going to launch? When are you going to open for business?
Vishay Singh: [00:34:13] The official launch will be May 16th. We’ll have an invitation. We’ll send an invitation. We’ll run some ads as well, adverts and email as you mentioned. And put it on our Globe Hub digital assets. So, 16th of May, we’ll have the first gathering. And then the website and signing up on the website should be, I’d say, after next week. We, ourselves, have to graduate and totally understand how it’s a large portal, and it’s a large organization. It’s a great brand.
Vishay Singh: [00:34:47] Adeo Ressi’s pretty phenomenal entrepreneur himself, the CEO of Founders Institute. And he takes personal pride in making sure it’s him or his COO that works with each new city that comes about. So, we had to go, my team had to go through a six-week process with them. And every week, we had to go through kind of funny assignments that felt like we were back in MBA school, but quite practical and quite relevant because when we finished off, it was like, “Okay, we got it.”.
Vishay Singh: [00:35:18] It is more about understanding the depth of the portal, understanding the depth of an intensity of making sure we communicate the right things to the people, and then making sure that we make an environment that’s going to be exactly what you described. It’s going to be an environment with the right entrepreneurs, sharing the right experiences to people that want to become entrepreneurs in that way.
Vishay Singh: [00:35:40] They’ll have that fail safe. They’ll have the mechanisms to help them achieve success faster even if it could be a small business. I mean, of course, everybody wants to have the big tech idea or the big innovative idea, but if you’ve got a good solid business that you know it’s going to make you 500k to a million, nothing wrong with that.
Michael Blake: [00:36:01] Nothing. And I call those meat and potatoes businesses, right?
Vishay Singh: [00:36:04] That’s it.
Michael Blake: [00:36:04] They’re not necessarily sexy. All they do is make money.
Vishay Singh: [00:36:06] That’s it. That’s it. Nothing wrong with that-
Michael Blake: [00:36:08] Nothing wrong with that.
Vishay Singh: [00:36:09] … because that’s what turns economies, that’s what changes cities, and that’s what creates employment.
Michael Blake: [00:36:15] All right. So, I want to give you a chance to talk a little bit just about MapMeLocal because I know that’s the big venture that you’re involved in now, before we wrap up here. What’s the elevator pitch of MapMeLocal, and kind of where are you with that?
Vishay Singh: [00:36:28] So, yes. It’s pivoting, and it’s growing. MapMeLocal has always had success in the — I would say, the immediate goal was to help small entrepreneurs or somehow help small businesses, especially businesses that had bricks and mortar. We focus on local search and we focus on getting Google My Business right. And besides the Google My Business, a lot of entrepreneurs just don’t stand that behind that, there’s some little piece of SEO work, the little secrets that need to be executed. And then, the calls start to happen, and people start to get this.
Vishay Singh: [00:37:07] So, we’ve always been doing that. And we’ve had success and failure in it. And that’s a good thing because what we’re achieving over time as the service is vertical is to make sure that we are able to help small businesses, and succeed at it, and get them the right amount of local searches that they need, which is their digital billboard at the end of the day.
Vishay Singh: [00:37:34] And that ecosystem is completely changed from your yellow pages, to putting up a billboard sign, and sending out pamphlets, and doing that. Basically, that service is working well but where we pivoting to and we’ve always been getting close to this is we’re building a software that literally pins and maps out events, festivals. And what we want to do is map out main streets in America.
Vishay Singh: [00:38:01] So, that’s MapMeLocal and the idea was first conceived was to how to build something that we could map it out better than Google would and privatize it. In other words, it’s, then, focused for the city, and the city would have absolute control over it, and they’d be able to use it as a marketing tool. And so, with the small businesses, be able to use it as a marketing tool without having to go through spending lots of money to try and get found online.
Michael Blake: [00:38:34] And I’m going to go off the script a little bit because it brings up a question I find really interesting. Local search has been around, has been a topic for, at least, 15 years, and a minimum since the iPhone was introduced, and probably even a bit earlier than that. Why has that been such a hard nut to crack? Nobody’s really figured that out yet. Why?
Vishay Singh: [00:38:57] It’s as a consequence of the evolving technology and the very fact that everything evolves. Just like your website has evolved over time, and people evolve, and people’s behavior evolves as well.
Michael Blake: [00:39:11] Stupid people.
Vishay Singh: [00:39:14] So, everybody changes the way they want to do things, and people want more. Don’t make me think IoT systems ,right? Internet of Things system. So, when you look at your device, the device has grown from typing in something to, “Hey, Siri, tell me where I can get my nearest tacos, or give me the address to RadioX.” That’s how it goes these days. So, voice just changed the environment.
Vishay Singh: [00:39:38] The landscape of local searches has changed, but I wouldn’t say drastically. I would think that because Google is the godfather of it right now, they have their methodology of changing algorithms, and they have the mentality of wanting to do things better every time. So, that kind of impacts on where you’re at.
Vishay Singh: [00:39:59] And then, it’s just broad. The depth of it is just not about Google My Business. It’s about that, plus it’s about your web page where you have your contact us, and you have your pin. And then, it depends on your business. It could be, then, about OpenTable, it could be about Yelp, it could be about Citysearch. So, there’s all these directories, right? And then, there’s these godfathers of the directories as well that enforces axiom, that control data. And it spreads from this.
Vishay Singh: [00:40:28] So, everybody has a role to play in it. And when you think about it as Brabys or the Yellow Pages, that’s why the Yellow Pages existed because nobody could really control it until it got together and published it into one publication. It’s the same thing that’s happening in the internet. So, it’s a question of how do you manage of that? How do you get through all that to make it successful for your business?
Michael Blake: [00:40:55] Okay, I will look forward to seeing the evolution of the post pivot MapMeLocal.
Vishay Singh: [00:41:02] Okay.
Michael Blake: [00:41:03] All right. It’s about time to wrap up. How can people contact you or follow you to learn more about opportunity zones, Globe Hub, Founders, and all these things you’re interested in? How can people follow you?
Vishay Singh: [00:41:12] Absolutely. Just contact us or visit us online at the globehub.com. You will find our social, that’s stable at Instagram. We’ve got Facebook. We’ve got Twitter. I have also mapmelocal.com. You’ll get my personal Facebook and Twitter through mapmelocal. You’ll find me through that. So, those are the best ways to try to contact us or just e-mail me at vishay@theglobehub.com.
Michael Blake: [00:41:45] All right. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Vishay Singh so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us.
Michael Blake: [00:41:52] We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us so that we can help them. Once, again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.
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If you are in search of a new, used, or certified pre-owned Honda, why not shop at a Honda dealership? With an extensive selection of Honda vehicles at low prices and a customer-first mentality, Milton Martin Honda is the place to shop for a new Honda near Atlanta, Buford, Cumming, and Dahlonega. They offer a large inventory of new, used, and Certified Pre-Owned Honda vehicles. Their full-service Honda dealership also houses a Honda certified service center, as well as a parts department to serve you. Milton Martin Honda would like to be your one-stop-shop for Honda auto sales and service near Atlanta, Gainesville, and beyond.
Dr. Carroll Turner/Business Incubator at Brenau University
The Business Incubator at Brenau University fosters market success, student learning, wealth building and job creation. They work with startup companies, inventors and entrepreneurs to develop great ideas into sustainable, standalone businesses. They foster market success, wealth building and job creation. They increase the prospect of a client company’s commercial success in the marketplace, train and educate the business and community leaders of tomorrow, and contribute to the economic development of Northeast Georgia, Gainesville and Hall County.
Beau Henderson/North Georgia Business RadioX
Business RadioX helps local business leaders get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, their community, and their profession. They support and celebrate business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignores. Some media leans left, Some media leans right. Business RadioX leans business.
