From Aerospace to Tech Entrepreneurship: Innovating with John Conafay of Integrate.co

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started, all right? Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Special guest today John Connofay. John, thanks for joining us, man.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Thanks so much for having me Definitely feeling the energy right now.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Oh yeah, oh yeah, talking a little bit before the show about our poor accountants and the struggles that they have dealing with our taxes and all of our startups and everything else we probably got going on stocks, rental properties. I got all kinds of crap happening. But, john, you're joining us from a company called Integrateco is the domain name. It's a software company. You've been in a bunch of startups in the past and a lot of people, especially here in Cincinnati. I'm in touch with a lot of the VCs and stuff around here and I go and I talk to the startup people and I try to consult with folks and it just seems like the startup side a startup as a side hustle has kind of been maybe losing some of its steam since money's gotten expensive. Are you guys having that? Where are you located? Are you guys having that same feeling?

Speaker 2: 1:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We uh so, um, we're based in Seattle, uh, headquarters in Seattle, uh just got, just got new offices. We're seed stage company uh with, with a team in Arizona, some in California and one person in Texas. And, yeah, the crunch was real. I left my last job, which I loved very much, selling rockets for ABL Space Systems in March of 2022. And then I believe it was the next day that the market ordered, and then within another month, the next day that the market ordered, and then was in another month, the market halved. So you know, everything I, everything I anticipated uh or dreamed of living off of for the first six months of the company, uh disappeared real quickly or locked itself up real quickly.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Oh the struggle, bus, yeah that sucks man.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Yeah and uh. And then, um, yeah, so we were able to raise money. Uh, we went out to raise money pretty quickly and says like, okay, this became more of a need and the market's changing really quickly. Uh, from the boom cycle in 2021, or the spacketing is, as I call it, uh, with all the companies go in public respects, um and uh. And so we, so we raised some money and I think it was still okay in 2022.

Speaker 2: 2:54

And then 2023, when we were going out to raise our seed fund, uh, you know, you just saw the carta graphs, just do, I think it was something 30% or or 80 from the previous year. Uh, funding, seed funding was down 80 from the previous year, which, you know 2021 was psychotic. So can't really, uh, can't really bear much credence for that. But, um, and then in 2023 it was down 30% after being down 80%, and it was. I mean, everybody was just holding onto their money for dear life, no more, no more Zerp era. And uh, and you know, we really really had to make sure we had a rock solid plan moving forward.

Speaker 2: 3:40

But we, we made it out, um, by, by expanding our market from just the space industry, which, honestly, was inspired by some technical program managers that we met from Google and Apple, saying why are you focusing on the space industry with this software? This is like the technical program management software we've always dreamed of having our entire careers, oh, wow. So we were like, awesome, okay, great. And we went out and interviewed something like 50 to 75 more customers while we're in the middle of the raise and uh, uh, and they were like yes, like this, this is necessary. Uh, all the software that we're working with now has been built specifically for software and just doesn't have context, for you know, admob is pretty difficult when you have an 18 months lead time item that breaks on. Yet, you know, oh, yeah, yeah, so, uh. So we, we expanded our scope and then met some really, really spectacular investors. Uh, who, who uh got in, uh, at the seed round in Q2 of 2023, we were feeling it. I mean, the crunch is not. Crunch is absolutely real well, and it's in.

Speaker 1: 4:50

It's interesting when I read your stuff. Usually you think of software and hardware is two different things. Right, it's two different companies. But you're actually not. Let me get this straight. Are you doing project management for hardware developers?

Speaker 2: 5:04

yes, yes. So project and programming yeah for, yeah, for hardware specifically. So yeah, worked in four hardware companies, uh, um, specifically. Uh. Non-technical background outside of the air force where I was working in communication navigation mission systems on awacs uh needed a, a swift kick in the ass to get some discipline. So joined and for all intents and purposes it worked. And so just you got enough technical knowledge just to be dangerous, but formal educations in economics and design and then fell in love with the space industry from students for the exploration and development of space.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Had always been a nerd when it came to hardware and technology and all these things um and uh. And then worked at, interned at aspired global um, which is an awesome, now multinational company. It was 40 people, I think, when I interned there and they just sent up their first two satellites and went uh consulting into consulting at Bryce space technology out of DC. Um wrote some papers on closing digital divide before uh got picked up by Astronis when there were five people out of an apartment uh in San Francisco building satellites. I love it.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Yeah, yeah, I slept out of the apartment that they built the first satellite out of for the first like two months I was there trying to find a place in SF and and then went on to moved up to Seattle to work for a company that was bought by another launch company recently called Spaceflight, and we're just starting to build orbital transfer vehicles with some crazy fun sci-fi stuff, um and uh. And then my last job was selling rockets at abl space systems and I just kind of saw this, this thread of okay, we don't have any context, we start with tasks instead of uh, starting with actual hardware systems, diagrams and things for all of our program and project management. How do we match the mental model of hardware companies much better than you know, a project or smart sheet or anything?

Speaker 1: 7:14

That's wild. So a guy with an economics degree figures out how to create a project management system to help people that are much more sophisticated at hardware build hardware in a more efficient way using his software.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Yeah, that's, that's, that's the uh, the hope.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Wow. So I mean, are you just, are you you know, your personality type? Are you just the kind of the type of person that can kind of pick up on things like user experience design and I mean, do you just build mental maps and be able to like figure out what the next feature is you need to add, like I mean, is that just kind of the way your brain works? I mean, I know a lot of us we kind of take a step back sometimes and think you know what makes me good at what I do, right, like, is that just you know? Is it the military stuff?

Speaker 2: 8:07

Like what do you attribute it to? Um, I think a lot of perspective uh I've been able to benefit from. Uh, because I am about as social as they come you know from from the age of 14 through 21,. I was at a. I went to hardcore and punk shows five days a week. Okay, um, and you know, had new everybody in the in the ecosystem that I was in and would always talk people's ear, ear off, but also listen and just ingest. You know what are the problems going on, uh, when I first got to inspire I, you know, every time somebody was like, okay, happy hour time, I'd be there just to talk to the engineers and learn from them and became really great friends with them. And same thing at Astronis and other places. You know, go out for beers, listen to people that are expert in their craft and doing really, really spectacular things and how to move fast, how to you know how to get the job done. Complaints hearing a lot of complaints helped give me perspective on that's hard to do.

Speaker 1: 9:08

That's hard to do, listening to people complain about your stuff and not get distracted or distraught. That you know these people are, you know, taking a crap on your stuff, and I mean people in tech can be really hard on you. The personality types in tech are not they're not nice people, especially when they have egos.

Speaker 2: 9:28

yeah, yeah, it's uh. Luckily, the space industry is, is a pretty kind, kind place. Uh, I think, because the technology is so relentless, um, you know, you only get one shot, maybe two, maybe three, potentially four, which might be your last shot, which is the. You know the story of spacex, um, uh, and the. The hardware is so fundamentally brutal that people tend to be nicer.

Speaker 2: 9:53

I like to say it came for the technology and stayed for the people, um and uh, you know, so maybe a benefit from that significantly, uh, where, where egos can get shattered pretty quickly and pretty spectacularly. So you just got to pick yourself up and uh and dust yourself off, um, uh, but the yeah, just the just the real get shit done attitude. You know, people have said for decades you can't build satellites in our apartment and things like this. And then companies like Spire and Planet Labs literally started in the garage and started building these highly capable spacecraft and satellites that are imaging the earth every day or tracking ships and and planes. You know it's really incredible. So I think I just benefit from really spectacular people around me. They are out there, believe it or not.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Yeah, yeah. And in SF you can't afford an office and an apartment.

Speaker 1: 10:47

So you have to you have to figure it out, right, like I mean it just is what it is. So, yeah, I mean I have a kind of a soft spot for for Seattle because I mean we were, we sold our company back in 15 to Zillow and they took over our office here and then all of a sudden, all of our poor employees, who we were, you know, barely being able to pay, all of a sudden they had free Starbucks. They had free, you know, it was like a market. All of a sudden Zillow opened up inside our office and everybody got pay raises and they started donating money to the homeless shelters around here. It was like it was like a whole new thing, you know.

Speaker 2: 11:24

You hear that, stephen, he has his headphones on. Yeah, few people are at lunch right now, but I'm just going to take that clip for as a motivator.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Oh they got all kinds of stuff. I would go up there. So I, you know, I, my co-founders all went full time with it. I owned an advertising agency but I was downstairs from them and they'd always come down and bug me for like marketing stuff and design stuff and everything. But then every once in a while I just sneak up there, hey what's going on, guys, and just like kind of grab a couple of things you know and just you know. But but yeah, man, so you know I'm here in Cincinnati. Well, I'm actually sitting in northern Kentucky right now, but since I ride across the river there and I've, you know, we've got somebody once told me from Eastern Kentucky University all the way up to Dayton Ohio Wright-Patterson Air Force Base you're probably familiar with. That is everything you need to build a plane.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Ge, as you know, is breaking up into I think, three companies. Ge Aircraft has always been here, but now GE Aircraft is their biggest division and they are going to branch off. They're going to be their own Fortune 500 company and based here in Cincinnati, and you could tell you know Boeing's having some issues and things like that. So now you know GE is going to be like the thing and there's a bunch of other companies in the aerospace world, universities, a lot of stuff kind of happening around that you know. So you've got a lot of robotic stuff happening here. You've got a lot of 3d printing that's being revolutionized in the aircraft industry. You've got a lot of stuff just happening around that you know. So explain to people who may be listening here and in aerospace actually being a pretty big industry here kind of how you guys help with your software with your software.

Speaker 2: 13:13

Yeah, yeah, um. So I'm still kind of reeling from the thought that that G can split into three companies and one at least one of them still be a fortune 500.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Is it a wild? Isn't it wild, yeah?

Speaker 2: 13:20

Yeah, that's the my uh.

Speaker 1: 13:21

AT&T all over again.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yeah, one of my colleagues, yeah, yeah, one of my colleagues in Texas is going to hate that I'm saying this, but I lived in Alaska for the Air Force and it just reminds me very much of the. If you were to split Alaska in two, it would still be, you know, the number one and two largest states in the country. That's right. We have, from an aerospace perspective, what we you know, what we, what we help with is there are a lot of terms thrown around about innovation, theater or collaborative theater as something what we, what we help with, is uh, there are a lot of terms thrown around about innovation theater or collaborative theater as something that we, uh, that we talk about a lot. Um, you know, people didn't really fundamentally understand what collaboration on uh, on worksheets or documents or anything was until Google, um, googleets and all this came out. You can actually work together in the same document, side by side, and all this.

Speaker 2: 14:14

It gets a little bit more complex with project and program management because you have your production schedule and then you have your BD people that need to sell whatever's being produced, and then you have your customers. That's a grossly oversimplified way of saying it, but you have some subsection of these three sectors and you don't want to show your entire production schedule to your customers, but they need to see the highlights and there's some input from your customers that you need for what's going to be produced. And then, bd, sitting in the middle, was your statement of work for all the deliverables necessary from the company to the customer and the customer's payments to the company. So you have hundreds of schedules, especially at these large production suites, that that are being passed back and forth via Excel spreadsheets and you're just getting snapshots that are being passed back and forth via Excel spreadsheets. Oh rough, and you're just getting snapshots.

Speaker 2: 15:13

So what we say is it's akin to trying to conduct an orchestra by telling all the musicians to go to separate rooms and then texting them snapshots of the music every two weeks. Oh God, yeah, it's not going to sound great. I get it, and that's how we've been working for decades and it absolutely. You know it works. But also you know NASA sent people to the moon using slide rules, but not exactly how we want to do it anymore and not the most efficient process. So our software allows you to build an entire source of truth across your entire company Internal collaboration is super key and then be able to parse out pieces of that uh, of that schedule to your BD team, to your, to your external customers, to a supply chain, can feed in their lead times directly into your schedule. So it's not just wow.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Yeah, it's not just external partners too. Exactly yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:08

It's not just yeah, it's not just external partners too, exactly. Yeah, it's not just creating while keeping everything firewalled from each other.

Speaker 1: 16:13

So you don't give you know you don't give up your entire schedule.

Speaker 2: 16:21

They just see pieces. Everything's permissioned. Yeah, exactly yeah To the, to the subtask level. It's pretty intense Wow.

Speaker 1: 16:25

Wow. Are you utilizing any uh like innovative technologies? Are you using any kind of like blockchain stuff for some of the supply chain management? Are you using any AI? Yeah, Because nowadays it's like so hard to raise money unless you've got like AI integrated into your stuff somehow.

Speaker 2: 16:42

right, yeah, it's, it's oh, how do I, how do I navigate this one without pissing anybody? Oh yeah, without over committing your development team.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Whoa, whoa, whoa. When did we talk about AI? Like?

Speaker 2: 16:56

yeah, exactly. So we have not once publicly or in investor pitches said AI, and I think it comes from being way. Oh, we haven't once said AI, despite our chief architect and co-founder, our technical co-founder, having two degrees in machine learning. Oh my.

Speaker 1: 17:17

God, how do you even get that? How did he already get done with degrees in machine learning? I feel like those just came out.

Speaker 2: 17:24

It's been around for decades, you know, and it's just the new hot thing. And don't get me wrong, ai is gigantic, like it is absolutely spectacular for a lot of uses, but you got to have the right data infrastructure and you have to have everything actually built to be useful to people before just slapping AI into it or onto it. So we had some fundamental technology issues that we needed to overcome before we even approach what we do. You know, with risk management, ai could be really spectacular, but we have to have the data in place for people to for AI or machine learning algorithms to be utilized, to then pull out and say, hey, this schedule risk is very, very real, so we'll get there.

Speaker 2: 18:16

But this collaborative aspect, like the deep customer need, didn't lay in AI or blockchain or anything, and I think I'm just wagering a guess that it's a little bit too much. My own practical BS coming from the hardware world, um, and then entering the software world where, uh, you know I, I had to have a bit of an attitude adjustment as well, because in hardware, you know, you have these giant mechanisms that are moving and you say, hey, stop immediately to somebody, very, very directly, or, you know, with a few expletives in there and they know it's for their safety and it's like, oh God, ok, and it's just. It's just a part of it. People talk to each other that way all the time and whatnot. It's not necessarily the case with software. So I think, yeah, the, so the softer touch and the, the the lower tolerance for hype is, is kind of deeply ingrained in this company. So we want to be very practical and make sure we're servicing customers. Long way of saying that.

Speaker 1: 19:17

No, no, no, no. That's great. I mean, you guys aren't just like slapping a chatbot on your thing and saying hey look, there's AI here. Now we have a chatbot plugin that we just added into our software.

Speaker 2: 19:28

here we have a chat bot plugin that we just added into our software here. So yeah, we'll use it when it is practical and like a leap ahead for our customers For sure.

Speaker 1: 19:37

I like it. Yeah, you got to think about the right way to do things and I you know a lot of folks try to overdo it or they they follow that hype train to their own destruction. So you got to stay on task. You got to know what you're good at, what you can actually accomplish. The fact that you have somebody on staff with two degrees in machine learning is amazing. So I mean, if you guys needed to pivot, I mean if you guys needed a pivot or you guys needed to do something a little bit different, I mean you have that talent in house and you could say, look, investors, we got the guy, we're thinking about it, but we're not ready to implement that just yet. Which if, as an investor, I'd be like, okay, yeah, I get it. That makes sense. They're being responsible with what they're building and the customers are into what you've got.

Speaker 1: 20:24

Now Talk a little bit about and this is a big problem, I think, for a lot of people outside of raising money. I think preparing to raise money is the thing and it's gotten, like we said. It's gotten a lot harder because money has gotten more expensive. People are a little bit more cautious about what they throw money at. I got a friend. He was raising. He was raising a hundred. He raised 175 million, I think in 2021, at a 1.6 billion dollar valuation for his new real estate company and it was around six months. So there were some crazy, crazy things happening and people were just dumping money into anything. You know, money was so cheap, they were borrowing it or whatever. Uh, now it's very much harder and people are going to be a lot more skeptical. They're going to look for a finished product. Uh, before they invest even in that like angel round or the seed round. Uh, you know, do you have customers, do you have a product? When you guys started raising, maybe outside of friends and family, where were you at with the product?

Speaker 2: 21:31

yeah, that's uh. So when I left uh, abl, it wasn't um, you know, I had an idea of what I wanted to build and I really honed in on it and I was building. Essentially I was building it out of on bubble I think it was on a no code platform oh, yeah, yeah On a bubble.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Yeah, right, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:53

So it was essentially like how to move satellites around on a launch manifest or multiple launch fan of manifest, or really really zoomed in and I had built this and a buddy and co-founder, paul, looked over my shoulder and I was like, cause he was over for we. And it was like, uh, because he was over for we're about to go get beers, and he was like man, that looks like shit.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Can I just build this for you. Dude. It's always like the ideas I want to do, I I'm always like there's no way I could do this on no code, like there's no way this would work, like I can, the system just cannot do what I want it to do. And then the integrations you start having problems with that and and yeah, yeah, oh, I totally get it.

Speaker 2: 22:31

But you got a, you got a proof of concept kind of out there, right, absolutely, and I think we might have raised on that proof of concept, if not wireframes initially. You know the pre-seed level. It's definitely a team in the dream. It's who you know. Who do you know? Who do you have, do you have the capability of kind of the hacker, uh, hipster, hustler combination, which, which is very important very important pretty spectacularly.

Speaker 2: 22:56

andrew sloan, our, our other co-founder ran a digital brand agents or a brand agency for the space industry for for seven, seven years or so, uh, and had 10 years prior to that in software. This was, this was his third startup, um, and then, uh, uh, all our technical co-founder, as I said, two degrees in machine learning and all this and then whatever I do now, but I had all the startup experience and experience.

Speaker 1: 23:24

I was one of you. I was the, the, the guy who thinks about the new stuff that I wanted to build and like the original ideas and like how do we, what's the next thing? What's going to happen like five years from now? You know that's. And then going out and selling it, right that's. You know, developers aren't necessarily the best people at selling stuff, so they're introverts, things that I I am, I am not good at.

Speaker 2: 23:47

I want a super introverted developer.

Speaker 1: 23:49

I want a dude who's just like. All I want to do is sit here and write code all day. Great, okay, then you're not. We're not going to have to worry about you. You can just complain when we tell you we got this new feature and that's fine. But yeah, yeah. So how do you see yourself? What do you see yourself as?

Speaker 2: 24:03

Yeah, so you know I worked both the supply chain procurement. I was early on at the majority of these startups, so largely I did everything that a first non-technical hire would do at these. So it was business operations. So you know, I'm by no means going to say that I did accounting, but keeping an eye on cost and schedule and things like that Procurement supply chain, actually negotiating hardware deals and on top of it business, commercial and federal business development because, no matter what anybody says, space industry is still pretty dependent on federal business.

Speaker 1: 24:45

One hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 24:46

Yeah, and so.

Speaker 2: 24:49

So I just kind of did all of those things all at once, all the time, much to the detriment of my, of my health and sanity sometimes, but but I'm here, so, um, so, a lot of experience in sales, a lot of experience in navigating, uh, the government, um, you know, once you I guess it's same with everything Once you actually know, uh, how the government works, that government or people too is uh, um, it's, uh, it's a lot easier, less scary to navigate, um, and then, uh, and then, knowing the deep, the deep problem that we're trying to solve, for this is, you know, we're building an application again that I wish I had had at every hardware startup I worked at, or larger company as well, um, so, so definitely not.

Speaker 2: 25:34

Um, yeah, definitely in tune with with the core problem that we're we're trying to solve and the ability to sell it. Um, but sass is a completely different game than hardware. You know, 100 oh've sold really complex, crazy types of hardware, uh, before, and then I got to sass and I was like holy shnikes, the bar is is super high, um and uh, on the commercial side and and government side, and uh, and people want a lot of bells and whistles and a lot, of, a lot, of, a lot of parody, and it's perfectly reasonable. You know, we we go in just about every week or every month and test our own things out, putting ourselves in the mindset of a new customer, and yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Well, that's a skill too, being able to do that and being in a place like Seattle, which is well known for startups. I mean, you got Microsoft there, you got Zillow there. There's a bunch of you know, really popular, uh startups that have have kind of grown out of there. Did Slack? Was Slack out of there too, or is that a San Francisco thing?

Speaker 2: 26:35

Uh, I think that San Francisco one of the greatest pivots of all time.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Seriously, yeah, that's a great story, but uh, but you got a lot, of, a lot of money there, also because of the tech industry being so strong there in eyes on startups. But what is your feeling? Non-tech people what is the value in a place, in a startup for folks that aren't writing code? What skills do you have to have as somebody like you, who you know maybe can distill complicated things for investors or for salespeople, or you know what's what? What are the skills that you have to have to be a non tech person in a place like that?

Speaker 2: 27:20

I think top outside of grit and perseverance is constantly identified as the number one uh skill. And you know grit doesn't mean being pissed off and then keep going one day. It means over over years. But outside of that, the ability to deal with ambiguity is gigantic, because you're going to be thrown a million scenarios that you could have never imagined. You're gonna have great days, you're have terrible days, you can't ride the wave every single day, but the ability to deal with and be comfortable in ambiguity and practice that every single day run toward every fearful decision you make every day, and make a decision, because the only dead squirrel or the only flat squirrel is one that couldn't make a decision.

Speaker 1: 28:06

You know, yeah, it's true, there you go.

Speaker 2: 28:12

I'm going, you know, yeah, it's true, there you go, I'm gonna start using that, yeah, yeah, um, so the the ability to deal with ambiguity and it's a learning curve. Um, it's all the the will and want to learn, um in excess amounts, like the after hours going to bars, and we would just get into. You don't have to go to a bar coffee shop, you know. Just a long walk is great, um, but, uh, but something that you can just constantly be learning from other people or learning on your own.

Speaker 2: 28:41

When I was uh at the consulting company, I worked at nasa office, the chief financial officer and I think, um, you not to toot my own horn I didn't realize it at the at the time. I was kind of scared, shitless at the time, and I was just trying to figure out how I could level myself up to get to the level of all these incredibly brilliant people that I was working with. But it was. I was in Udacity all the time, learning how to code, script or learning how to script. I will not say that I'm a software engineer, but learning how to script.

Speaker 2: 29:07

I will not say that I'm a software engineer, but learning how to script so that I can wrangle data better so that I can put reports together faster and all these things, and it's that after hours work startups don't really have hours, uh, and I know that sounds yeah, yeah, but it's. It's a learning curve for a lot of people. They're like cool, nine to five, I'll get everything I need to get done and all the learning on top of it done that's necessary to to level up just isn't um, you know, can we can all look at that bosses and in silicon valley and be like they're assholes for driving people, but it's just a fact of life. It's what it is, man apple.

Speaker 1: 29:46

I mean, who's better than that, than Steve Jobs, at pushing people? My co-founder. It was his idea, our company. He knew how to get the most out of people.

Speaker 1: 29:59

He's calling me at 11, 12 o'clock at night asking for stuff like hey, I think we're going to go to this thing tomorrow, can you whip up a one-page flyer for the company and then I'll send it over and then one o'clock in the morning he's doing copy changes and stuff to it. It's just like that's the kind of team you have to have. And you know me being like an ENTP extroverted, you know, debater type person. You know, with someone who's more introverted I think there's a there's actually a startup company here or there's a there's a VC here you can't reach out to them, you can only fill out this form that they have and they will filter out everybody who doesn't have like four or five different kinds of personality types, like Myers-Briggs They've got their own right, but it's kind of loosely based on Myers-Briggs. But the I think the INTJ or the INFJ was like the number one. I don't know how much you are into myers-briggs and stuff like that, but it's kind of like the asshole personality type they are. They're the one, the relentless asshole like they are. They're the founder type, right, yeah, and I'm kind of like third or fourth or whatever, but it's good to have like me on the team, kind of like you know you would be hard to replace because you're extroverted, you're, you're good at taking this complicated information, distilling it down. You're a constant learner.

Speaker 1: 31:17

But I mean, you mentioned a little bit, you led into it a little bit with team. Explain a little bit of the different types of personalities. I think that you because it was very important to us I could tell you right now the different types of personalities really matter. But explain to me what you think is important.

Speaker 2: 31:35

Trust. Um, uh, that sounds like a cop out, but it's, it's true. Uh, I don't think. You know, there, there've been plenty of times and Paul's sitting right over here, so he knows all this but, um, there there were plenty of times where we, you know, we went at it, but I always knew I could trust him so we could, you know we could, we could make it through. You know, once trust is broken, it's pretty hard to recover. Same with Andrew, other other co-founder.

Speaker 2: 32:04

I just knew that I know that shit's going to get done when it says it's going to get done, and if it doesn't, there's a good reason for it, or we're so overloaded that we're like, okay, we're running the red and running so hot, so that's huge. Uh, also, what comes along with that trust is the ability to, to give and receive feedback. You know, I think at this point they, they trust that they can give me feedback and they know, you know, if I'm being, if I'm just outright being an asshole, they can tell me, you know, and vice versa, um and uh, and so me being able to learn and grow and and all of us being able to learn and grow together and, uh, not just say screw you when it's like, hey, you're coming in really hot, what, what else is going on? Um? So I think that emotional sensitivity is really important, uh, but it can be a double-edged sword, I get, you know, I some of the times that I get most worked up is when I perceive a slowdown or I'm worried about somebody and I didn't have the tools necessarily to to explicitly call that out or point at it and say this is why I'm actually pissed off.

Speaker 2: 33:18

Let me take a step back, let me go for a walk, let me breathe out. You know what it actually, what the core problem is and it usually comes out of caring, distrust or um or uh, being left in the dark, uh, and uncertainty, um, but being able to really really dig into that and be like what's the core emotion here that has me so, so frustrated, so lit up, so fired up, and then being able to bring it down and be like, okay, cool, you know, get to the root of what somebody actually meant, because the vast majority of people have good intentions, but if they, if they don't, you also have to or if they've shown you know my Angelo quote believe people when they tell you who they are, that's right, no, that's the first time.

Speaker 1: 34:06

That's right, man. I just watched a video on YouTube last night about a lady who won the lottery. She won that like $1.6 billion a while back and the type of people that were scamming that were coming out, that were knocking on her neighbor's doors trying to find out where she lived Like it's crazy. People can be freaking crazy, and sometimes what you've got to do to the people in your life, I mean if crazy. And sometimes what you've got to do to the people in your life, I mean if you're not in a stable relationship, if you're dating, you're running around doing whatever that can, kind of. I mean I had, you know, I was dating a girl at the time that told me the idea that we did was stupid and that I should just spend the weekends with her instead. And uh, you know, and then we sold for nine figures and it's like good thing I didn't listen to her Right.

Speaker 1: 34:45

But you know, it's just crazy things like that, that people that just kind of get in your way they don't necessarily want to see you do. Well, how much do you guys just tune out? It just become hermits sitting, just work and just sit in there and ignore what's going on with politics, ignore what's going on with you know, the homeless guy outside sleeping in front of your door. Like how much of that do you tune out and how much of that do you actually need to kind of break away sometimes?

Speaker 2: 35:21

Yeah, we were pretty empathetic bunch, which, again, you know, double edged sword, so it's pretty impossible for us to tune out humanity. Possible for us to tune out humanity, um, it, uh, it can be distracting and there's a lot of, you know, focused thinking about it. Getting rid of a lot of social media has helped, andrew. You know there there's been a lot of stuff over the past three years to get really, or two years that we had this company to get really pissed off about Um, and there there's some things that affected me so much that it was it was hard to concentrate and uh, and Andrew was like dude, delete this, the, the social apps, like get off of the. You shouldn't even know that this, this part of the thing exists.

Speaker 2: 36:00

It's one thing to be in tune and know what's going on in the world and be intelligent about it and and care and deeply feel it's. It's another thing to just inundate yourself with all of these crazy opinions in so many different ways. So block that out. So that's something. That was one of the best pieces of advice I got as far as people saying you know this or don't, don't do this, um, I always look to what they've built. Oh, and you know, and and 98 of the people that are like why would you ever do that? That's, that's impossible. Don't do that. I've never built a single thing.

Speaker 2: 36:42

You know, and, and that sounds, sounds like a big kind of asshole way to think, but it's, it's true. These things are hard and and the people that say you know you can do something generally have have fought odds and won the. The filter is pretty clear when it's when you look back and and you're like okay, what is this person built? How well do they know what it takes? What kind of pain, uh, unwilling to endure, what kind of background and history do they have that actually supports their? No, you know, um, and I don't mean to get dark or morbid, but it also comes from a little bit of pain. I think people that have experienced deaths close to them have a different outlook and a different drive and a different mentality about a lot of things. You don't have a lot of time, but you might as well swing for the fences.

Speaker 1: 37:42

Or if you grow up in a like I mean I grew up in a really bad neighborhood in Cincinnati and it's Rust Belt, you know it's. It can be real violent and the. You got to be careful too not to dehumanize yourself because you see so much of it and you almost kind of tune it out. It's almost like you play war video games. You don't think about all these. You know video game characters you're shooting all day. You know it's just like oh, it's just a video game, right?

Speaker 1: 38:07

that happens in like real life, like you start not even caring you. You know somebody got shot. Uh, you know, somehow I hear another story about this or that or whatever and you don't know, I mean it could be affecting you in a different way. You think you're just desensitized and it doesn't bother you anymore. But the shit will add up and it's. It can be, it can be a hot mess. And you know, I mean you're an economics guy. You hear the. You know you hear the saying never take financial advice from somebody broker than you.

Speaker 2: 38:35

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:40

And it's kind of like you know you've got the same thing going on with, with what you kind of said and it's, but at some point you just kind of you know you desensitize yourself to everybody who who's not on the same page or doesn't have the same trajectory in life that you have. And you know, I think once you make it though, like once you get that thing going, like once you guys sell, you got your thing happening, you're doing it Then you go back and be altruistic, then you go back and you help. Right, don't, don't stress yourself out, worrying about all these things. Stay in tune to what's going on in your industry and everything. But. But there's another saying don't set yourself on fire to keep everybody else warm.

Speaker 2: 39:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Yep, and that's sometimes you want to do that, you want to help and you see things happening and stuff, but it's like you can't. You got to make sure you're good first before you go help another people making comments on social media.

Speaker 2: 39:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah you can go help another people making comments on social media. Yeah, not, yeah. Yeah, so that's coming before. Before assisting others, yeah that's exactly it.

Speaker 1: 39:32

There's a bunch of them, right, you can, yeah, you go on and on. Well, you mentioned something about the government too, in in your industry. I just had a lady in here uh talking about grants, uh, in our co-working space here, and you know she was telling us about samgov, grantsgov. Do you, do you play in that space at all? Are you a startup that can also go after grant money?

Speaker 2: 39:53

Oh yeah, so we are our biggest customer and I think biggest customer in the world I don't like it's terrible to say is the US government right now. So we won a $1.25 million SBIR small business innovation research grant from the Space Force specifically that we're working, you know, working to make into a. The dream is always to convert it into an actual funded program and so we're working very hard to that, to that end, and we have some really, really spectacular government sponsors. Um, I, uh, I served one of our, one of my co-founders served. So we've never shied away from, uh, from you know, service, uh, service to the country and and the, the um, the drive there is strong.

Speaker 2: 40:46

Uh, when I got to Silicon Valley, this attitude and sort of saber rattling around defense was quite the opposite. It was one company I had to not hide but be discreet about the defense work that I was doing, one out of the four hardware companies, uh, because people hated it so much and hated the idea of ever doing anything with the government. Um, so so, yeah, we, we absolutely are our dual use, um, defense and and commercial use and in the space industry and hardware generally, uh is the you don't have to be but a lot um, it's a lot better to be.

Speaker 1: 41:32

So, wow, and now. So you got these platforms that I found out that you can if you have anything to do with government or you want to try to get some work from the government. There's this one, uh, this woman showed me called instrumental and it's TL at the end. I don't know if you've ever used that, but it costs money, but you can go in there and it just you could set up filters, you could set up alerts, all kinds of stuff for the types of grants that you want, and this woman, she writes grants for a living.

Speaker 1: 41:59

So she was telling me about that, I said hey look, I'm a white dude, I'm a middle-aged guy. You know, I'm a little Appalachian, so like maybe there's some Appalachian stuff out there, I might have some, you know. I'm trying to find anything. You know it's just like you gotta start digging around and trying to find what you can get. But I mean that could be a potential for you guys. And have you ever used any, any platforms for raising uh, for raising money? Have you Uh?

Speaker 1: 42:25

no, no, we haven't um the there's like that top doll, top tal freelance consulting or uh, they're freelance um uh uh consultants for raising money oh, oh yeah, no, we we we never um went that way.

Speaker 2: 42:43

um, uh, we we have some. Some investors are early and and I mean our current investors are still early investors Uh, we had. I'm just constantly blown away by, by the luck we've had with the, with the investors that we have, um, and how hard they work for us. Specifically, you always hear these horror stories of non-value-add investors and we're, I mean, I just feel, lucky every day for our team and our investors. Frankly and it might sound like lip service, whatever, I think the impression is probably that I'm not that way.

Speaker 1: 43:21

No, no, no, Are they mostly Seattle guys or West Coast? Yeah, west Coast say, are they?

Speaker 2: 43:27

mostly seattle guys, or west coast or, uh, yeah, west coast. So our earliest village global, um la and, and san francisco, uh. And then the two, the, the lead in our seed round, hyperplanes, actually out of boston, so they really understand the robotic space as well and have seen the problem that we're trying to solve firsthand. And then then uh, in that round as well, riots uh capital out of out of arrive, ventures out of uh out of LA, really really knows the software for hardware and the hardware space Uh. And then the guy that put in the first check from village global, uh, lucas, um, uh, started, started his own, his own firm called raveling capital, and he, he invested in the seed round as a follow-on as well and has just worked relentlessly for us as well. So we've just gotten uh insanely lucky with the, with the investors we have on board.

Speaker 1: 44:24

They're, they're, they seem very specific to what you do, like how do you put the word out that this is what we do and how do they find you in the first place? Like how did you guys get that initial kind of how'd you get the ball rolling?

Speaker 2: 44:37

Yeah, the initial bit came from my network in the space industry and reaching out to a bunch of space investors and even if they turned down, as long as you know, I hope I'm not not too much of an asshole, but as long as you're not too much of an asshole, they'll generally be willing to say you know, this isn't a fit for us, but you should talk to these, these people, and that's sort of got the, the, everything in motion.

Speaker 2: 45:07

And then, well, we got our first uh, our first check came from dear friend named kiri, uh, and so she put out a lot of uh you know she's an angel and she put uh, put out a lot of feelers, a lot of introductions for us. And then our angels really, really helped get the get the word out and make introductions. And then when we got village global on, they just kind of get the word out and make introductions. And then when we got Village Global on, they just kind of blew the doors open, changed the game. Yeah, they know every single investor out there and just were spectacular and helping us raise our seed round. And then same, well, you know we haven't had to raise from Hyperplane and after Hyperplane, ravelin and John Cavalupo, but I'm sure they'll be the same once we go out to raise again.

Speaker 1: 45:52

Well, and there's a lot of people who would love to be in the startup space. Like you, they'd love to go out and raise money, break away from that nine-to-five lifestyle. How important is it, do you think, to be on the West Coast or East Coast, where most of the money is? On the West coast or East coast, uh, where?

Speaker 2: 46:11

most of the money is yeah, um, you know when, if we we raised next, I'll be, I'll be sitting in San Francisco for a month and a half, for sure. I think it just in person. We actually had one investor just be like, yeah, you're okay, uh, on zoom, and I was like that doesn't sound right. And they were like you're okay on Zoom. And I was like that doesn't sound right. And they were like you're awful on Zoom. Oh no you're great man.

Speaker 1: 46:31

I'm sitting here listening to you, you're doing great, yeah, this is different.

Speaker 2: 46:34

I mean you know, it's not a pitch. You're kind of pitching, I mean yeah, yeah, fair, but I was probably over it by the time I got to these interviews oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:47

And they were like no, we met you in person, we just we loved it, and so I think being in person is great if you have the ability to be. I don't think you have to live there or be based there, but the talent pool definitely affects decisions. But you know, there's spectacular talent everywhere there's. You just mentioned five companies and everything you need to build. Build an airplane between two cities in the Midwest and Midwest yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:17

Yeah, cincinnati, northern Kentucky, kind of. Well, the thing is about Cincinnati is it's a, it's very much becoming a logistics supply chain logistics city. The second biggest freight broker in the country is here, tql. We have the largest Amazon hub in the world. I believe we have the largest DHL hub in America. We have the largest Wayfair outlet here, our hub here. It's got rail transport, you know, I mean it's established rail for a hundred something years, 140 years.

Speaker 1: 47:45

You've got an airport which is not even really a passenger airport, it's mostly a logistics airport. And, uh, you've got, yeah, like I said, ge's here, procter and gamble's, the biggest consumer package goods company in the world. They're based here. The largest grocery chain in the world's here kroger, uh, centos, which is a big supplier of like things to offices and all that. I mean dude, it's crazy, like I mean, the number of businesses and everything that are here. And you've got three large, relatively large, universities. I mean it's you're, you're, yeah, it's nuts. You're an hour and a half from Indianapolis, from Louisville. You're an hour from Lexington. You're an hour and a half from Columbus, ohio. You have three hours of Cleveland, five hours of Pittsburgh, four hours and four and a half hours of Chicago.

Speaker 2: 48:35

St Louis is four and a half hours. I mean you're a third, you're a day's drive from a third of the U? S population. So and then, um, it's not an anecdote uh, uh, related to that is one of the most successful space companies in the world right now rocket lab uh builds their, they, they build and fly their rockets out of New Zealand, which did not have a space or rocket industry before, and they pulled from boating and all of these different engineering disciplines. They might have moved to LA for aerospace initially, but you can build with enough grit, determination and, honestly, a healthy dose of naivety on how hard these things are I mean think about it.

Speaker 1: 49:11

I mean we're not very far from purdue, which is probably one of the top engineering schools in the entire country. University cincinnati's got a great engineering school. Uh, I mean it's, it's. I mean you're so close to so many universities and see, that's one thing that kills us in, uh, college basketball and football and all that is. You know, everybody wants to send their talent. Like, we got tons of high school talent here, but they can go to, they can go to Indiana, they can go to Purdue, they can go to Butler, they can go to, you know, university of Kentucky, louisville, ohio state, like Dayton, I mean it's all like an hour and a half away.

Speaker 1: 49:43

So there's no consensus here on on who you should root for, like there is in some cities. But yeah, but, man, john, this has been awesome man and I really appreciate your time and sharing some of these insights of, like what it's like to be in a young startup. You know, still raising money, still getting out there. Tell people how they can find out about you. Are you guys, are you raising around right now? Where can they access that if they are interested in investing or becoming a customer?

Speaker 2: 50:08

Yeah, yeah, we're heads down onboarding customers, uh, left and right right now, um and uh, you know, working working with government, uh, so not raising around right now, but uh, I think if you go to integrateco, uh, you're in for hopefully a hopefullya pleasant surprise. But we've gotten to get a 50-50 split on whether people love or hate the website. So come check out the website and learn about what we do and tell us what you think, because we have a bit of a pool going on on who's gonna love it and who's not.

Speaker 1: 50:41

And I'm guessing people can find you on LinkedIn John Conafay, c-o-n-a-f-a-y. Is there a bunch of John Conafays on there, or are you? There's one. Oh well, congratulations, sir. My name's kind of weird too, but for some reason there's a whole bunch of us on there, and I don't know why, but most of us are in Ohio too, so it sucks for me. Awesome, so many German people here. Anyway, well, john, thanks so much for your time, sir, and I really appreciate everything you've given our audience, and I'm sure they do too.

Speaker 2: 51:11

Cool. Thanks, so much, adam, all right.

Speaker 1: 51:14

Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests, now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.