The following interview is a conversation we had with DeVaris Brown, Meroxa, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $19M Raised to Empower Engineering Teams with Better Stream Processing
DeVaris Brown
Brett, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Brett
No problem. So to kick things off, could we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
DeVaris Brown
Yeah. I’m currently the CEO and Co-Founder of a company called Meroxa. I started off my career as a software engineer at Microsoft and throughout my entire career I’ve just built platforms that have helped developers do their best work. And so this led me to being product executive places like Zendesk and Visco, Heroku and Twitter. I guess it’s x now. And ultimately co founding Morocca with my Co-Founder Ali. So yeah, a little bit about me, originally from south side of Chicago, like socks over cub Chicago, everything on sports. Just because I moved to the Bay area does not mean I’m a bandwagoner. All those good things.
Brett
Now, if you think back to when you were maybe 1516 years old, did you think at some point you’d end up being a Founder and an entrepreneur? Or where did that drive come from or that concept come from for you?
DeVaris Brown
I mean, honestly, it’s going to sound kind of weird, but yes, I did think that I was going to be an entrepreneur. The drive came from a couple of places. One, my grandparents. So my granddad was one of the first execs at us steel. And because of discrimination and things like that, he wasn’t able to rise to the ranks. So he started his own company. And so I used to go on trips with him and my little baby zoot suits and we would go and do some meet execs and things like that and all these wonderful places like and Detroit and things like that.
Brett
Right?
DeVaris Brown
So I saw it there and my grandmother was an artisan and she had her own storefront. And so that was like my very first experience with entrepreneurship. But then my mom actually got a job in the first dot. Boom. So when I was like 1314, I saw back then in 97, 96 and 97, it was just the wild west. And I was seeing teenagers come up with ideas and being millionaires and things like that. So I actually wrote out a business plan for something that I wanted to do. And it’s funny because when I started Moroxa and we got funded and all of that, my mom found that I didn’t know she had kept it, but she laminated it for me and she was like, you always had it in you. So the answer is yes.
DeVaris Brown
I always knew that I was going to do something in this. I just didn’t know what it was going to be, but I knew it was going to be something in software and it was going to be a startup, but I just didn’t know exactly what it was going to be.
Brett
Now, a few other questions we like to ask, and the goal here is really just to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder and as an entrepreneur. First one is what CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
DeVaris Brown
CEO that I admire the most? There’s a couple of people. One is this guy from Chicago, Eric Lipkovsky. This dude at one point had, I think, three or four public companies that he had founded and he was still involved with them at the time. And I was just like, man, this guy’s got his finger on the pulse with guys. But just understanding how to build great teams, learning how to take your ideas from a piece of paper to execution, and just really working a niche.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
That was something that I admired from him. Quite a, and I think for me, some of the other ceos that I admire, one of them is a guy named Dave Stewart. He was the Founder of company called Worldwide Technologies. When I was growing up, I used to read a magazine called Black Enterprise and I would see pictures of him and there were always these other ceos that were doing things outside of tech. But he was the one person that was very successful in tech industry and just I’ve gotten to be adjacent to him and see the kind of company that he’s built, how it’s had the staying power, how it’s been kind of growing and all those things. And so for me, those are the two people that I admire.
Brett
And what about books and the way we like to frame this? We got this from Ryan Holiday and he calls them quake books. So he defined a quake as a book that rocks you to your core. It really influences how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quake books come to mind for you?
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, two of them, actually. The first one is a book called the Peter Principle, and the reason why is that is, in my twenty s, I was a really good engineer, but I made sure everybody else knew that I had to be the best. And really what this book was telling you is like, look, you won’t ascend because you think it’s all about your work output, but it’s really, how did you make the people around you feel right. And so if I would have learned that in my 20s, man, I feel like the bars you see could have been a whole lot better. But once I read that, I understood it, and then my career benefited from that. When I was in corporate America, the other book that rocked me to my core was extreme ownership by willing and beyond know the military overtones.
DeVaris Brown
It’s really about how do you operate autonomously in a large bureaucratic organization. Sounds like corporate America, right? And so for me, it was just really about taking ownership, doing the things that are within my scope, but really having agency and pride over the things that I can do. And then how does that filter down as a CEO, right. How do you enable and empower people to act autonomously in service of a larger mission? I think those two books are really like anybody that gets into leaving college or is at a crossover their career. I always recommend those two books.
Brett
Yeah.
Brett
Jocko Willock is a beast. That’s one of the scariest looking people I think I’ve ever seen before.
DeVaris Brown
I mean, it’s crazy, right? It’s just like this dude, you know, can kill you in, like, 50 million different ways, but he’s just, like, very matter of fact and talking kind of like a thought leader. We’re in the bay, right? He doesn’t have a Patagonia vest or the horn rib glasses. All right. It’s so interesting receiving that wisdom and knowledge from somebody that, you know, can do the things that he can to you.
Brett
Have you gotten his newest? I don’t know when it came out, but he has another book, actually, it’s on my desk in front of me called discipline equals freedom. Have you read that book?
DeVaris Brown
Oh, I have not, but that is something I will definitely put on my list.
Brett
You got to get it, man. It’s so good. It’s more like, kind of like a coffee table book. It’s not, like, broken up by chapter, and basically each section is just like a little quote or a little paragraph and some just good advice from him on discipline. And it’s a fun read. It’s really entertaining.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, I mean, that’s absolutely an interesting topic. Man. It’s funny if you ask me about ceos that I admire, and a lot of them are very principled, and a lot of them are very great, disciplined.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And it’s like that rigidity, just kind of knowing what your day is, it does take away a lot of the uncertainty. So that’s actually a really good point. Yeah, I’ll definitely check that out.
Brett
Nice.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, you have to let me know.
Brett
We’ll know what you think about it. Now, let’s switch gears here and let’s dive deeper into Moroxa. So can we just maybe start with a high level overview of the problem that you’re solving and how the solution solves the problem?
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, definitely. So, very simply, we help people move data from one place to the other with code. And the reason why that’s super important is that currently, to move data, you have to have a bunch of these different systems that you have to kind of Frankenstein together. And with us, it’s just like, look, you don’t need to have an expert at each one of those systems. Your engineers already know how to write code, to pull data from places, to get it in a format that’s usable or whatever, and then to be able to distribute that wherever it is that you want to extort, wherever it is that you need to.
DeVaris Brown
So for us, doing it with code, it saves a lot of headaches around complexity, saves a lot of headaches around hiring folks, because you literally are giving your everyday software engineers data engineering superpowers to ingest, transform it, and kind of orchestrate data as they see fit. And that’s really the problem that we’re solving, is like, look, this world is going to get increasingly more and more real time, right? Like, you want to get an Uber, do you want to wait ten minutes to find a driver? When you sit down for the weekend and you want to watch some Netflix? Do you want to wait ten minutes to get a recommendation? Absolutely not.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Consumer expectations are like, we want our thing and we want it now, and we want it personalized and contextualized for whatever it is that for our preferences. And so really what we’re doing is we’re building the rails and the framework to make moving that data a lot easier. And by focusing on developers, it broadens the amount of people that can do that job. And so for us, if we’re successful, that means that there’s going to be a lot more. I shouldn’t say if, but when we’re successful, that means there’s going to be a lot more personalized applications and experiences driven by real time data. And I think that’s really the ultimate goal.
Brett
And looking at your LinkedIn, I want to ask about the timelines here, because I imagine it’s a pretty good story. So you leave Twitter in December 2020, and then you start Moroxa shortly after that. It sounds like you started Moroxa, right as the pandemic was starting. Is that correct?
DeVaris Brown
Oh, absolutely. It’s funny. So went through an accelerator, village global. It was just absolutely fantastic. The people there just Dwayne, Sam Kirschner, Eric Thornberg people, those types of people helped us out on our journey. And I remember sitting in, we had our first cohort orientation week, and then the next week it was Covid. And it was like, no, I don’t know how we’re going to have an accelerator. But everything ended up working out how it was supposed to.
Brett
Yeah.
Brett
I’ve talked with a lot of founders where they have similar stories of starting the company. You take the leap of faith. You’re like, all right, I’ve accounted for everything that could go wrong. I’m ready for this rocket ship. And then hope it happens. No one could ever predict that would possibly happen. And that was like a scenario that could even exist. So I really admire founders who started companies at that time and were able to push through, because then those first, like, what, four or five months of the pandemic, that was just a gnarly time. Obviously, things ended up turning out well for tech companies and the money started flowing again. But there was that period of just insane uncertainty where no one knew what the hell was going to happen.
Brett
And I think it was hard for companies to really push through that period.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah. I mean, for us, we benefited because everybody was at the same spot. It gave us a point where we can just focus and concentrate without a whole bunch of noise.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
To do the things that we’re doing and look FPS we do on the platform. We just needed time to concentrate without a whole bunch of distractions that, I think it was actually a benefit for us. And then the other thing, it taught us how to work within constraints.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Like whatever it is to strain the capital mobility, like all these things, were born out of that, right. And so going forward, everything looks kind of rosier. Yeah.
Brett
All about perspective there, right?
DeVaris Brown
Absolutely.
Brett
Now, when I was preparing this interview, I was looking through the customer logos that you have on the site, and I also saw something you shared. I saw NASA that you’re working with NASA? I’m a big space nerd and I have been my whole life, so I was very excited to see that. How do you land a company like NASA? How do you as a startup get a company like NASA or an organization like NASA to really just give you a shot?
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, I mean, it started off with the air force and space force. Those were our first government contracts and we did great work for, and obviously there’s adjacencies around some of the work that we do with space Force and NASA. But look, everybody has data. Everybody’s trying know, analyze data faster and do these things. And we’ve just shown time and time again that we can handle very complex, esoteric data formats and things and do it in real time and get it into formats that machines and humans can leverage to go do their job. And NASA is not any exception for that.
DeVaris Brown
How we got that, the easy answer is like, look, we just show them, you know, you think government, you think bureaucratic, large, stodgy, slow, but there are people inside of the government that want to do better and they want to preserve our freedoms and democracies and use the latest and greatest technology to go do that because they know it will literally save lives. And we’ve just shown time and time again that we can just take on very tough problems, turn them around very fast and do it at a very high quality. And I think that’s what has given us the ability. I mean, funny enough, a couple of people that we’ve met is like, you guys are government contractors.
DeVaris Brown
And they said that to us because it’s like we’ll solve things in a couple of weeks when other companies will quote like multiple years and all this resource and things like that. And it’s just like we have this perspective that all that time literally is costing lives and that is driving our work in that arena and that drives us to do the best high quality work that we can. And so other government agencies have been able to come to us and throw their problems at us and we’ve been able to solve them. I mean, I’ll admit every kid at one point wanted to be an astronaut, right? I think that’s one of the coolest things. And just being able to say, like, we’ve worked with NASA, it’s pretty cool.
Brett
Grip and it has to just give you a lot of trust and credibility, right? I think all startups struggle with trust in the early days and customers, especially enterprise customers, wonder, can the startup really deliver? Having the NASA logo is probably like one of the most powerful logos that you can possibly have, I think, to build trust, right?
DeVaris Brown
Oh, absolutely. I mean, my thing is, know if you worried about, like, we have to do this stuff for our armed forces and department of Defense, right? Like, if you wonder about scale, a single flight generates so much data per second, we’re handling billions of records a second, right? I mean, not a second a. So, like, that’s the thing where it’s like, you can’t fake scale, right? You can’t fake complexity. And if I can do it, and we had talked about extreme ownership, if I can do it in this large bureaucratic organization like the government, I definitely can go do that for a bank or do that for a CPG company and those types of things. And I think that’s really been the benefit for us is that transference of capability, that transference for knowledge.
Brett
Now, a few months ago, I was watching a documentary, and it was something like the secret history of Silicon Valley. And it was a little bit dry, but a lot of good information in there. And it was talking about how Silicon Valley was really rooted in defense and supporting the military in the earliest days. But then Silicon Valley kind of got away from it, and tech companies didn’t want to work with defense. They didn’t want to sell their technology to defense. Now, that conversation seems to be changing a little bit. So for you, was that an easy decision to work with these government agencies and to sell to defense? And what were your thoughts going into that? Did you have any concerns that members of the team would push back and say, hey, we don’t want to work with these types of clients?
DeVaris Brown
Absolutely. Elephant in the room. I am a black CEO, so there’s a lot of things from a defense side that could get stodgy, but a little dodgy or whatever. But look, man, for us, we talked about it as a company. We said, like, here are lines that we can cross and here’s things that we don’t want to go down. And I think we’ve done a good job in explaining to keeping that bar high for ourselves, explaining it to the company. But it’s like, look, man, nobody has their hands clean in any industry, right? And you can go down the list of things that people have done, and it’s like, yeah, should we stop using Google and Gmail because of some of the things that they’ve done? And it’s like, where does it stop?
Brett
Right?
DeVaris Brown
And so for me, it’s kind of one of those things where I run a business and I got 30 some od people that I got to take care of. And do we have things that we won’t do? Sure. But look, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that this isn’t a nonprofit exercise.
Brett
Right?
DeVaris Brown
Like, we have to go make some money. Yeah, I love that.
Brett
That’s such a good mindset. And I think that’s something that a lot of founders could benefit from learning and hearing from, because I hear that from even some founders I’ve interviewed and I’m hearing these conversations or having these conversations, like, man, you’re crazy. You need revenue to survive. Like, you’re being this picky and choosy at the start. There’s a good chance your startup is not going to be alive in a year. So probably shouldn’t be that selective when it comes to who you’re working with.
DeVaris Brown
I mean, you can’t be, but you have to know the trade offs on the other side of it, right? I think a lot of what we are doing is like, look, we’re real. It’s like, as a black Founder, am I going to stop dealing with any bank?
Brett
Right?
DeVaris Brown
Because I’m feeling that dogmatic about what the banks have done as far as redlining and high interest rates and the crash that wiped out the generational wealth for over 80% of the people who identify being black african American in this country. I could go that route, but it’s like, or I can run a business, right? And we just have principles of things that we will do and won’t do and just be very transparent about it, right? And that’s the thing where I feel like a lot of founders, they’ve never been in these circumstances before, where they have to have their morals and their kind of moral fiber tested on a day to day basis, counterbalanced with like, hey, I need to run a business as well. And I think for me and my Co-Founder, we’ve been doing this our entire lives.
DeVaris Brown
So it’s not really like a far leak for us to justify these things.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode and something I hope that’s okay to ask about. So obviously the horrific murder of George Floyd that happened in what, summer 2020? I think tech and venture capital firms and really everyone was making these statements, making these promises and launching these initiatives aimed to really change things.
Brett
So from your perspective as a black Founder, have you seen any change? Are you happy with some of those outcomes or.
DeVaris Brown
No, I mean, listen, man, a lot of it is. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really expecting a lot of change to happen.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Because again, a lot of these corporations just aren’t equipped to knowing how to do business outside of the majority and to do these things. So was it great that they made overtures? Sure. But any type of thing that is initiative that is looked at as not as a cost center and not a revenue center, right. Those things will always dissipate. Remember when green jobs was a thing and sustainability and all that stuff? These things come and go. I hate to be so realistic about it, but it’s like, this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard like, oh, we’re going to double down on DEi and triple down on it because of this thing. Am I glad that there’s more awareness? Sure.
DeVaris Brown
But I knew that these large Fortune 1000 companies that all kind of meet these performative overtures, nothing really was going to cover that. I mean, we have seen some good things here and there, but for wide systemic change, none of that was going to happen because a lot of people see it as in order for me to make things equitable, I have to live without. And a lot of people aren’t comfortable with that. Instead of saying like, look, equity is us growing the pie together. And that means that if we grow the pie together, everybody eats right. And until we can change that mindset, none of these initiatives are ever going to be successful.
Brett
Do you have an opinion or perspective of what can be done to bring more black founders into tech and to really try to equalize things? Because when I looked at the numbers, they were just fucking depressing. The numbers hadn’t really changed and it was awful. But what’s the answer? How do we fix this?
DeVaris Brown
There’s a long time for that. I don’t know if we got enough time for that. But I mean, listen, the short list is we have to get more black middle managers at these bigger companies that can give you a name brand because there’s been a bunch of studies to show that DEI initiatives die at middle management, especially on technical roles, because there’s no opportunity, opportunities aren’t granted. All the glamour projects and things like that, they’re not given, right. And so that’s one thing. The other thing is, too, you have to have more funders, vcs that are not of the majority, right. And so you get more people that have these funds that are in specific niches, they will fund black founders, and then those black founders will go on to be successful, hopefully, in starting companies and hiring other folks.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Like, it’s a bunch of different things that you can go do to make it more equitable. It’s not an apples and oranges things because I don’t want to sound like downtrodden ghetto youth, but the other part of it is a lot of people that could go and be black founders. We’re in these roles that are BP and above or these things, but we’re basically our family’s 401K.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
In my family, the person that makes the most money is like the leader of the family. And so anything that pops up, you got to go take care of it. And so that means I got a lot of phone bills in my name. That means just a lot of little different things. And so we have to stay in these jobs that pay us the salary and we can’t go take a startup salary to go do that.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And so there’s a little bit of that that goes along, too. We just don’t have the risk tolerance as a community to go do these things. And that’s something that precludes us from being just jumping in the startup gap. So there’s a lot of different things, but I think systemically you give people opportunities to shine in the jobs they already have, then that improves their Founder market fit. Then from there they can go out and raise money. But you got to raise money from people that can understand your problems and the problems that you’re trying to solve. And then being able to have kind of the economic upside as well so that you can offset your risk, that’s a big thing, too. And that’s a loaded question.
DeVaris Brown
I hope anybody that’s black that’s listening to me that’s like, yes, I know I could have, but we’re time constrained and I’m trying to summarize and do the best I can.
Brett
Yeah, and they’re complex conversations, so hopefully I can just throw that on you and maybe we can save a dedicated podcast. And I’d love to dive deeper into this and better understand the problem and do what we can to try to spread around the ideas of what actually needs to be done to solve it. But we’ll have to save that, I think, for part two. And if you’re cool with it, let’s switch now and dive a little bit deeper into some of the go to market related questions.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, absolutely.
Brett
All right, so finding product market fit isn’t easy. I think every Founder struggles with that. What was your journey like to find product market fit, and do you think you have it today? Does it feel like you’ve reached product market fit?
DeVaris Brown
I would say we’ve reached product market fit in the government’s fit. So, yes, commercial and enterprise, we’re still searching for that, if I’m being honest. And I think for us, I would say the hard part is, and this is for any entrepreneur that’s out there making sure that you have people around you that can augment your shortcomings as a leader.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
So me and my Co-Founder, best in the world at building, don’t. I don’t think that there’s anybody walking this planet that can do a better job than Ali and I and the team that we have. The thing that we’re not great at is selling.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And so for us, it was just really, you have to find people around you that have the same hustle mindset, that have the same work ethic, that have the same intellectual curiosity to go out and do those things, that have expertise in the area that you just don’t possess. And I think that’s something that a lot of founders, we buy into this call the personality that we have to be the last stop for everything. But really, it’s like your job is to build the best team possible to get the objective done. So haven’t you found product market fit? Yes, in that area. And as we kind of move into other icps and other areas, we’ll develop that muscle, and I think we’ll be.
Brett
Stronger for a few years from now. What do you think the percentage of revenue will be compared to commercial to government? Is it going to be like a 50 split, or do you eventually envision that it’s majority commercial revenue?
DeVaris Brown
Honestly, I think it’ll probably be in a couple of years. I probably say it’s probably 60% to 70% government, 20 to 30, or whatever the math. What? I said 30% to 40% commercial. And it’s just because, man, the government is such a good place, especially Department of Defense, as a source of business. There’s so many problems that could get solved, and there’s a big pot of gold at the end of every one of those rainbows.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And so we have the ability to build multiple billion dollar verticals in the commercial enterprise space as well as the government space. And that’s not something that a lot of companies, especially, we’ve technically only been in market for like a year and a half.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And so just to go to have that as a channel where we’re competing against some of the largest incumbents in the world and beating them, I think it would be foolhardy for me to say, like, we’re going to focus solely on this or we’re going to have a kind of imbalanced revenue perspective.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
I just think that the avenues that we have and opportunities that we have on the government side are just greater and they’re getting greater by the day. And then as we build up the commercial enterprise motion, that’s also going to be a very good source for us as well.
Brett
What have you learned from working with the government and having the government be a customer? Any takeaways that other founders listening in who are maybe considering going down this path should be aware of? Or maybe they can learn from your journey?
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, it just takes time. It’s more paperwork than you probably have ever done in your entire life, but at the end of the day, it’s all worth it.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
And if you do a great job, they will be your biggest advocate for you. And I think that’s really the thing that we’ve learned over time is just like, just get in and do great work and don’t pay attention to timelines and what other competitors are doing and things like that. Just go in and do your job and do it at the best levels because it’s literally a faucet that never stops drinking.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
It never stops flowing. So that is one of the things. And then to be honest, the government isn’t just defense.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Department of Energy, that’s at the federal level, right? Like there’s state and local and municipal and county. There’s so many different ways that you can get involved in it. But just realize that once you get signed in as a vendor on an appropriations bill or whatever it is, it’s like you have the ability to start bidding on a ton of other stuff. So you can go from three letter agency to different departments and things like that. All of them are looking for advances in technologies to make their lives easier, all the way from city all the way up to federal. So don’t discount this as a channel just because the paperwork is stopped.
Brett
Yeah, that’s helpful that here, because I.
DeVaris Brown
Think it is daunting.
Brett
Right.
Brett
Or that’s what founders have told me is staring up at that and some of the process and the hoops you have to jump through to work with the government in the first place can be very difficult and a little bit overwhelming. So that’s good to know that there’s some light at the end.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, man, it is. It really is. At the end of the day, I’m grateful for the people that we are servicing in the government because I know it’s making their lives easier and we’re helping save lots.
Brett
Now, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 19 million so far to date. What have you learned about fundraising?
DeVaris Brown
Let’s see, there’s a few things I’ve learned about fundraising. I would say telling a story is one of the most important things.
Brett
All right.
DeVaris Brown
I mean, the thing about founders, because I also angel invest and the thing that I always want to tell them is on the other side. Look, you’re selling yourself as much as you are this product and this company. So don’t be shy about interweaving your brilliance, your excellence, what got you here and all this stuff into your story? Because at the early stages, right, your ideas can change and all the other stuff, but you just want to invest in people that you think are going to be able to weather the storm. So being able to do that and recognize that’s going to help you a ton.
DeVaris Brown
The other thing that you want to realize is like, look, when you’re building a company and you’re starting out fundraiser and you’re telling your story, investors really, I guess they care about the product, but they care more about distribution.
Brett
All right?
DeVaris Brown
And they want to understand, like, yeah, you built this thing, but how are you going to get into the hands of the people that matter? How are you going to do it cheap, right? Like, yes, I can get 1000 customers, but if it cost me 20 grand to get 1000 customers, that’s not really the best way to go through the 20 grand each, right? So you want to figure out what is your distribution channel, what is the advantage, and have a hypothesis and inform hypothesis around that. I think the other thing is you hear this on every book, every podcast, is like, make sure you have leverage, right? And being able to get that momentum flaw, once you get somebody that’s like, oh, you go find a lead, we’ll throw in some money for you and it’s like, cool.
DeVaris Brown
Can you be a reference for that? And can I get you on paper to say that? And really it just kind of cut out bs because once you start building momentum. And once you start getting some names around the table, everybody in this industry has got a monkey see, monkey do, right? Like, once you have leverage, once you build momentum, everybody wants to jump in. Which also leads me to my next point of like, not everybody deserves a meeting, right. You need to be smart about who you’re pitching to, why you’re pitching, and what value that they can bring to your company. Everybody’s going to tell you at the earliest stage. It’s like, oh, we can help you with hiring, we can help you with go to market, we can help you with this, we can help you with that.
DeVaris Brown
Not times I tend to be it, right? You’re going to be on the hook for all of that, really just thinking about like, all right, well, talk to other founders and ask questions, founders that have had success with that VC company, founders that have not had success with them, and see how those investors have behaved and all that type of stuff. But just remember, not everybody deserves a meeting just because they’re interested.
Brett
Let’s imagine that you were starting the company again today from scratch. And based on everything that you’ve learned so far in the journey, what would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to yourself?
DeVaris Brown
Number one piece of advice that I would give to myself would be trust the experiences that you’ve had. Because there are some decisions that we made earlier on, early on, because I was kind of looking over the fence and kind of looking at what our peers were doing, and it’s like, you know what, the place that we’re at now took a circuitous route to get there. But if we would have just trusted our gut in the beginning, we would have been there a lot faster. And I think that’s really the thing is being able to fail fast is such an underrated skill, right? Like, being able to set up experiments is such an underrated skill.
DeVaris Brown
And if I would have just leaned back on my experience and those types of things and not try to kind of fit into what my investors are asking me or asking me to do and all these other things, I think it really would have changed things. The other thing too is listen to your customers, right? It seems like it’s such a simple thing, but it’s like they’ll tell you exactly what they want and what they need.
Brett
All right?
DeVaris Brown
And sometimes as founders, you get this humorous like, oh, I already know what they want. I already know what they need. But you need to listen to them with an open ear so that way you can build the thing that will again get, like I said, we’re not running the nonprofit here.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
You got to generate revenue. And I think that’s the thing. We’ve been lucky in that regard, but that’s something that I would tell myself again to go through. And other thing I would say is build the ancillary team around me faster. Right. Me and my Co-Founder, were trying to do a lot of things ourselves, and we should have been able to build the support around us a lot faster, and that would have helped us a lot in the earlier days. I mean, there’s so much stuff, man. I’m just sitting back thinking like, man, don’t use trident. I don’t care about name dropping because I’ve had the worst experience with them, but don’t use certain HR platforms and things like that. Don’t use certain payroll providers. There’s so many things that.
DeVaris Brown
So many headaches that we had on in the early days, and it’s just like, I wasted so much time dealing with things that should have just been handled automatically. Yeah.
Brett
And you can’t be the first Founder who says that, right? I think that’s every single Founder’s journey is. It’s painful and it’s a grind and it sucks a lot of times.
Brett
Right.
Brett
In those early days, as you’re getting things going, there’s going to be decisions that you look back on and think, shit, I wish I would have made a different decision there.
DeVaris Brown
Oh, absolutely. But the other thing is, I hate to sound like an Instagram meme, but it’s like, there’s no losses. There’s only lessons. The only time that you experience a loss if you make the same mistake twice.
Brett
Right.
DeVaris Brown
Because you didn’t learn from the first time. And I think we’ve been good at that, where we’ve learned along the way. And thank God we’ve had good investors and made money, and that’s bought us time to basically recover from those early learning points. But are there things that we could better? Sure. Are there things that we could have reduced pain?
Brett
Sure.
DeVaris Brown
But I think those times have made us more resilient, and it gives me the ability to talk about it comfortably to help other founders so that they don’t kind of make the same mistakes that we made. Everybody looks at this as such a competitive sport, but, like, look, man, we’re all in this entrepreneurial game together, right? And so if there’s anything I can do to espouse any knowledge to help people not bump their heads against, I feel like that’s my duty in the kind of Founder fraternity that we have.
Brett
Well, hey, that’s our whole vision for this podcast. I really feel that founders learn best from hearing from their peers and learning from founders like them. And what I see is a lot of founders go and they get advice from someone who’s built a billion dollar company or from someone who had an exit 20 years ago and wrote a book about it. But I think you can really learn much more if you’re hearing directly from people who are maybe a little bit above you in terms of company size or funding. That’s where you can really learn a lot from, and that’s where those tactical lessons are much more actionable. So that’s our entire thesis for the show here.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, man. I mean, that’s a great platform and that’s the reason why I came on. Just like, look, I’m a grizzled veteran, right? But I’m like the udonist Haslam of the startups, right? I can tell you what to do, I can tell you what not to do, but hopefully you can go be successful and then pay it forward to the next group of founders that you can influence.
Brett
Right?
DeVaris Brown
And I think that’s really what we have to do because the other thing about this is, and what nobody really tells you about is that this is the loneliest position that you’ll ever have, right? Like who are you going to go talk to about a lot of this stuff? A lot of founders don’t have executive coaches. They might have a therapist, they might have a spouse or significant other, but they just feel like the embarrassment that, oh, I should have this figured out. And it’s like, nobody really does. All right, and so go talk to people and you’ll find out. I found out myself that I’m not the only one dealing with a lot of this stuff.
DeVaris Brown
And I’ve been fortunate to have a great coach and then be able to be a part of organization like Ypo and just be able to commiserate with other people doing it at a very high level. And honestly, it’s been game changer for me. So if this podcast is the conduit to doing that, I hope more and more people listen to this and take heed to especially existing founders and up and coming founders.
Brett
Amazing. All right, man, we are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap here. Unfortunately, I think we’re for sure going to have to do a part two and maybe a part three at some point deeper on some of these topics. But hey, thanks for coming on. This has been so much fun. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. I really learned a lot from you. And I think other founders who listen are also going to learn a lot. So thanks so much for taking the time.
DeVaris Brown
Yeah, no problem. Thanks again, Brett.
Brett
All right, man.
Brett
Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
Brett
Our way.
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