Eric Smith

So 100% of a $10 million company or 5% of a $500 million company. Bootstrap versus VC. I Why are you guys thinking? I I I'm just thinking when I do it probably because the percentage gain on the smaller venture could be higher. So I'd probably take you stick with the 100% if I if I maybe not at my age right now, but if I was your age, yes. What do you probably say the same, but if you actually look at my track record, I'm the other. Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely done I've raised over 400 million in venture in my career. And that's that's another thing that's really interesting about um Eric and his partner Will West. Um they go down as probably the most prolific private company fundraisers in Utah history. So at least venture. I think if you get mezzanine finance guys beat us. Let's talk about venture. But I think we've I think we have raised the most venture of any entrepreneur team. Just your first three startups probably raised over a billion dollars. Yeah. Rock it back. Next to rock it next to it. Welcome back to the Startup Ignition podcast. Thank you so much for joining us again. We're so appreciative of everybody listening and commenting and talking about it. Um, I'm Tyler Richards. This is John Richards. We're your co-hosts. But today we have a very special guest that we're so excited to dive deep into his background and everything that he's done and accomplished in his career. Today we have Eric Smith joining us here today. And I have a little bio for you, Eric. So, I'm going to read it real quick here and then we'll get into the podcast. So, today we're honored to have Eric. He's a visionary smart home industry leader. Eric is right now currently the CTO of Oliver IQ. Is that right? Almost. We just merged with another company. It's called Savvy IQ today. Actually, two weeks ago. Oh, wow. That's new. New new. Okay. And um that's where you lead out like the development platforms and the the the connected services and everything that you guys do there. You are also probably famously known for your co-founding of Control 4. That was a company that you took public back in 2013. 2013. Um, you sit on the board of CES. We were just talking about before we kicked off the show. The Consumer Electronic Shows, for those who don't know, it's like the biggest consumer electronic show in the world down in Los Angeles. The biggest trade show in America. Yeah. Yep. And uh and obviously that's cementing probably your leadership as an industry leader within that whole kind of smart home arena, right? And uh you hold a bachelor's degree from Brigham Y Young University. Was that in CS? I I think I saw CS. I was double E for the first three years. Oh, really? So why why CS then? Why did you finish up with CS? I was on the digital path for a basically I want to be an electrical engineer and I was on the digital path where you design computer chips and I realized not computer chips but you design computers and I realized every design I would do in my classes we just stick an FPGA or a microprocessor. Yeah. So in the end the magic of the circuit was in the code, not the actual circuit. The circuit was a power supply. Yeah. And and so in the end, I wanted to be doing the stuff that did the magic. Not the I just wanted to be doing the power supply and the signals. I wanted to be doing the stuff where the magic was. And all the magic was in code. Yeah. And uh he pulled up in his blue Tesla with a a BYU sticker and logo all over it. And I said, "Man, that that that just shouts BYU. So you're diehard BYU guy." Absolutely. That's awesome. Go Cougars. And uh but you're also father of seven children. And I got to assume at this point you're a proud grandpa. I have five grandchildren. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's awesome, too. My dad says that those the grandchildren are better than children. So they are. If you could skip the one you just go straight to grandb babies. I don't know if that's possible, but hey, you know. But anyways, so welcome Eric. Thank you so much for joining us. And uh to start off the podcast and Yeah. Did you cover everything in his background? No, but I mean we want to take two hours there. It even goes back farther. He was doing a number of things, but I guess in the home automation arena, you were an early leader and had a company sell to AMX called fast and then you were leader in connectivity with uh you know the the companies that sold to Ibon, right? Was STSN SDSN just rebranded as IBON, so we didn't sell, but yeah, we basically kind of invented that internet and hotel rooms for business travelers. Yeah. I'm just saying he's a living legend. Yeah. I just I don't know. I can juggle. I didn't want to tell say he was the grandfather of smart home. And now that I know he's got five grandkids, he's even more of a legend. He's entered the great state of life. Hey, but hey, he's still got you by a couple years. So, anything we talk about age, you can just shove it back to him. So, but to kick off the podcast, we always like to do like a quick icebreaker. Just a fun little startup game before we actually get into your background and like all the topics that we don't want to talk about today. So today we're going to play a quick game and I want both of you guys to participate and I'm going to lead it real quick here. It's going to take like five minutes, but it's a quick would you rather startup edition. Okay? So I'm going to give you two scenarios and you tell me which one you would rather have. Okay? Ready? Here we go. I'm going to read the would you rather and I just want you both to say your responses. Okay? So, first one, would you rather own a 100% of a bootstrapped $10 million startup, the value $10 million, or own 5% of a 500 million VCbacked company? So, 100% of a $10 million company or 5% of a $500 million company. Bootstrap versus VC. I Why are you guys thinking? I I I'm just thinking why I do it probably because the percentage gain on the smaller venture could be higher. So I'd probably be taking you stick with the 100%. If I if I maybe not at my age right now, but if I was your age, yes. What do you probably say the same, but if you actually look at my track record, I'm the other. I've definitely done I've raised over 400 million in venture in my career. And that's that's another thing that's really interesting about um Eric and his partner Will West. um they go down as probably the most prolific private company fundraisers in Utah history. So at least venture I think if you get mezzanine finance guys beat us. Let's talk about venture. But I think we've I think we have raised the most venture of any entrepreneur team. Just your first three startups probably raised over a billion dollars. Lots of money. Yeah. Yeah. Something that. So that's interesting that you say I'd rather have the 100% bootstrap startup. But you actually your whole career has been the other. What I've done is the other. Yeah. Why is that? Uh I don't like them when they get big actually. My the first three I left within the first three years. Yeah. Yeah. I stayed at Control 4 to year 10 just cuz it stayed pretty interesting and and but at like Ibbon which did again we people were doing dialup internet back then and I don't know how many people even know what that is anymore but it was terrible. It was even worse in hotels than it was in your home. And so we thought people would happily pay $10 if we could share a DSL line up into their into their hotel room. This is before DSL existed in homes too. Right. Right. And and it proved out to be great but it grew so fast that you started bringing in these executives from telecom companies and it became that kind of corporate political structure feel about it too and I hated it. And at Control 4 we kept that kind of tamp down for longer. Yeah. So it was easier to stick around and be there and live it out. But otherwise I had left every company within the first three years just cuz I couldn't take that part of it. Well that's okay. That was the first one. We got three more. So here we go. Ready? Would you rather be the founder of Google search in 1998 or you know laying the foundation of modern internet? Okay. Or be the founder of open AI in 2023 ushering in the era of AI. Google search or open AI? Google search 100% for me. Google search the money is clearly already there. Yeah, it's a it's a proven model. But but the AI is very very interesting to me for sure. I I just we know that Google became the strongest monopoly in business history. Yeah, I believe that is a true statement. Um the only business model I think is stronger than Google search might be Amazon's AWS because of its dominance. But hold on, hold the phone here. Open AAI was the quickest quickest startup to a million users ever. Absolutely. Yes. But it's facing immense competition. Yes. Immense competition, but still the Google never hadition. I mean, people tried. Microsoft literally spent spent 10 billion in two years launching Bing and got 2% market share. It's insane. Well, Google had the algorithm, right? So, they were so much better than everyone else. I mean, there were there were constant articles about people how many much money people had lost shorting Yahoo because Yahoo would never go down and people would make fun of people that were shorting Yahoo. And then Google came in with a better algorithm and it changed the entire Yeah, it was amazing. So, you So, two Google searches then? Yes. Okay. I and I I happen to know Sergey and Larry fairly well actually. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. And I I kind of structured these would you rather because I do have some Yeah. You know, we'll say seasoned entrepreneurs in the room, right? Love to hear how he met Sergey and Larry. Yeah, that's a good story probably. Okay, next. Would you rather? Are you ready? Here we go. Okay. Would you rather create something you're super deeply proud of that only a thousand people use or create something you're kind of embarrassed by but millions of people used? That's a tough one. I'd probably say the first one just because my driving motive all along and what makes me a very different CTO than most out there. Passion is my favorite part of everything is building something that people see and just love. And in the end, that's why I do so much on the sales side because I like to be there when the customers are using it and touching it. I couldn't just be in the back running the engineers and driving the stuff and staying back at the office. I have to be out there. You get satisfaction from uh satisfied users. Yeah, I love it when people say, "Oh my gosh, I love Control 4. It's the coolest thing ever." Or people would walk into these hotels saying, "How did you think of this? Internet was so terrible. This is the best thing ever." I'm going to agree with them because actually I'm feeling that the one that got millions of users and I was embarrassed of it probably was something fattish and probably would die off anyway. And I don't want the embarrassment to be coupled with something that tailed off. So anyway, okay. Yeah. Okay, that's good insight and I actually agree with that. You know, I remember watching a video back in the day of Paul Graham saying something of the fact of like, it's better to have a hundred people absolutely diehard love you than a million people just kind of like you. So, that's what drives growth. So, okay, here we go. Last one and then we'll move on and actually get into the podcast here. Eric's like, "What is it? Are we just going to do this the whole time? Do this." So, last one. Here we go. Would you rather have been a founder during the dot bubble and get to an IPO, right? or have been a VC during the.com bubble and participate in multiple crazy IPOs. Would you have rather had the money to invest or be the founder? Be the founder. Be the founder. I'm an operator. Start to finish. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking maybe having multiple participations in IPOs and and seeing that craziness grow up and you know, imagine being a VC kind of pioneering that era. I I think the difference for me boiled down if I had to think about it was as the founder you have more control over your destiny. Yeah. In other words, you're not relying on others as much as much as you are. Yeah. I I totally agree. And I've been asked actually after IBON and after Control 4, I had multiple VCs from the Bay Area say, "Would you be willing to help us start an office in Utah?" And Yeah. Yeah. And I think I just too quickly want to get in and operate things. When I saw a business I really liked, I just want to be part of it. Well, I am sitting next to two guys who have gone through IPOs, so that that might be a little bit of a biased question, but yeah. Okay, cool. That's great. Thank you so much. This has been great icebreaker. That was a great icebreaker and thank you for the insight. Okay, Eric, I want to really dive into your background and your entrepreneurial journey because I I know you and I've met you many times and obviously through association of my dad and you know him, you guys go way back, but at the same time, I haven't really heard a lot of it. So, I wonder if we could even just kind of start at the beginning, the early ventures, like what did you do after you got that CS, you know, degree from BYU? Where did you go? How did you get into where you are today? You know, I'll I'll even go back a little farther. I think it gets interesting. I uh I in middle school, you could take shop or home economics. You had to do and it was like wood, metal, shop, and you had to choose one of those two classes in seventh grade. And I didn't like either of them. I I would have rather probably done the home, but I wasn't excited about the sewing, but the cooking I thought was pretty cool, but I don't didn't want to be the one guy in homeck. And so there ended up I found out there was a science teacher that ran this thing she called mind benders. It was another class that that that you could do instead of that. It was like if you've seen Malcolm in the middle, the Krellls, the like the really really nerdy kids. Yeah. And I thought that might be more interesting. So I went there and she mostly had us doing puzzles and stuff and it wasn't that interesting to me. But she read about the Apple 2 coming out, which was really the first personal computer. And she said, "Let's do a fundraiser to get one for the school." And so it had just come out. We did that. We got did a fundraiser. We managed to get the money. We bought one for the school. And I immediately learned everything about it. And I was I just loved it. I mean, I literally would go to school at 6:00 a.m. cuz they had this when the doors opened and I had a key. And I'd work on it. And then as soon as school got out, I'd stay till 7:00 and have my mom come get me. I asked for the programmer's reference manual for my and I just love that thing. So, I finally got one for myself. And then I had an uncle who was electrical engineer who did um he he said, "Well, he said, "Would you like a computer for Christmas or what? Like learn how to build one?" And he sent me the chips and taught me how my microprocessor worked. So, I built my first computer and wrote my first operating system at like 14. Wow. And and in the meantime, I learned how electronics generally worked and how digital circuits worked. So, I figured out how to build cards that could go in my Apple 2. So, I built a thermostatrmister card that could take a certain kind of metals that you could wire up and put under the sheetrock and you could tell the temperature in a room. And I did a relay card that could actuate things, lights, dampers, even turn on and off the furnace. And I did a uh a contact sensor board on it, too, so I could take motion sensors. And so, I built a system that would turn on lights when you walked into a room, only heat rooms people were in by controlling dampers, and and actually ran my furnace in my parents house. I I messed things up pretty badly a few times. Oh, wow. But I I I thought so I thought I'd invented home automation and I thought it was really cool. So when I got to school I uh there weren't really the whole startup thing that exists now and I mean you had a ton to do John with making that world what it is today um wasn't there. Mhm. But I was talking to a guy who was a finance major about this idea for smart home because I and I didn't know anyone was doing anything else with it. I thought I truly had invented the concept and uh and this guy, this finance major really liked my idea. Says, I really like your idea. I'd love to get involved. Then I thought, okay, this slick finance guy trying to steal the idea from the engineer. And and so I but but I ended up finding out he was a trust fund kid and had quite a bit of money. And so we started a company and we we built a product and we started showing it to builders and electricians and HVAC guys. And looking back now, I was so immature and had no idea how things really worked. I didn't understand how industries worked. I would have run away from me, too. But they all ran away from me. Okay. Yeah. No way. There's no way I'm going to put one of my homeowners into something like this. Yeah. But so we just put it on ice. But but a year later, he was building a home for himself down in the river bottoms, pretty close to where you live. And he went up to a high-end audio shop in Salt Lake City to do a home theater. This is back when the, you know, those projectors were about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle on the ceiling. And he wanted to do that and and the guy there says, "Hey, we're starting to get into home automation, too. Could we do that in your home that's going to be in the parade?" And he says, "You know, I'm not sure I'm interested in that, but I have a home automation company. We don't know how to where to sell the stuff." And so, we got together, and that was Will West. And that's how I met Will West. And and so I was still a sophomore at BYU when we started this company with the backing of this friend of mine from BYU. and Will West as my, you know, my partner. And so I actually, we had built that company up and sold it by the time I finished my undergrad. Oh, wow. And uh so I kind of started earlier and when I first met Will, I was thrilled and pissed. Yeah. Cuz I found out I didn't invent home automation, right? But I was thrilled that there was an actual channel of of dealers and there was about 100 dealers around the country doing that kind of stuff. And I thought, "Wow, at least there's a channel. We can do something with it." And we turned it into a real business. What was the name of that first company? We called it Synergy. Okay. Synergy. Yeah. Okay. So, so you met Will West. And did you go on to do more with Will? So, we we built that company up. We ended up selling it. Yeah. Uh and uh right as I graduated. So, I I literally moved to Dallas to go work for that company. Will stayed here. Uh we sold the company. He stayed to the acquiring company. To the acquiring company. I had to go. I had a two-year deal where I had to go to that company as part of the deal. uh I moved down there and ended up running all their software at this company and uh he stayed here. In the meantime, I also got a a variance with that company that they didn't allow internal employees to do programming for dealers in the market, but I got a deal where I could for Will's dealership I could do their programming for their homes. And so I moved down, continued to program all the homes they were doing these they were doing all these high-end homes up in Bald Eagle, up in Deer Valley and stuff like that. and and we stayed in touch and uh after a couple years my time was up down there so we ended up starting that's when fast started that's fast but Will stayed here I I got sold as part of the deal fast was an acronym what did it stand for practical home automation systems technologies h a s yeah I didn't love it honestly it was it was a will name I wanted to call it ensemble I thought that felt more sophisticated but we found an ensemble speaker company that did inwall speakers so it was kind of in the same market trademark infringement trademark Um, and eventually what so what happened with fast then and how long were you at? Fast we grew very I mean we spent about a year on dev and then we started shipping and within the first eight months of shipping we were at 3 million a month. Uh so we grew it very very fast at a $36 million run rate. It was a hardware sales company. So I was going to say what was Fast's main product? We made an audio switcher. We made audio amplification products. We made keypads that went in walls. We made touchcreens for your home theater. We made what you think system. It's very similar to what Control 4 is today. Yeah. But um didn't you have a non-compete from Synergy Selling? We didn't. Actually, what's really funny is when I was leaving them to go do this that company, they the CEO said, "Don't you have a non-compete with us?" And and I said, "No, we don't." He goes, "Remind me to fire my lawyer." Really? Cuz Yeah. Anyway, that's how you were able to start fast then. That's how I was able to start it. Yeah. Wow. So, you went from that one that you sold to Fast and what and what ended up happening with Fast? into that that so we sold we sold we sold that one for a nice that was my first kind of helped me hit my first goal which I had a certain number of goal I wanted to hit before I was 30 and I was 29 when we sold it and I was able to that was a good exit for you it was a very good exit for me. Yeah. It wasn't enough that I could retire in the Caribbean on an on my own island but it was enough that I didn't really have to worry anymore that much. Yeah. But Fast sold to AMX. Right. It did. Which was a major leading home automation. Yeah. Major leading home automation company. I'm not familiar with AMX. They've kind of disappeared. They're owned by Samsung. Inside of Samsung, Harmon exists and then under Harmon is AMS. But in the in the mid to late 90s, they were top of the game. They were bigger than Crestron at the time they bought us. They were the big guy. Wow. And Crestron was the number two. Wow. Yeah. I remember Crestron. I I'm just not familiar with AMX. Still going. Yeah. And Crestron's does well. I mean, for a while they were they were almost two billion in revenue at one point. Crestron was Yeah. So AMX was huge. But they did give you a non-compete because because of that non-compete is why you and I met. Yeah, absolutely. I had a non-compete. I did do the hotel internet thing in between. Oh, I forgot about that. Oh, wait. So, yeah, but you got a long non-compete, which is a long years. It was a long 5-year non-compete. So, we That's right. Tell us about the 5 years. We decided we were going to automate hotel rooms cuz we had it was in consumer electronics. We thought if we automated hotel rooms, there'd be no problem. So, we thought we have these automated homes at home and then we go to hotels and we have a crappy thermostat on the wall with a crappy TV with maybe 20 channels and we thought we could make we could create a better experience in the hotel room for people. Oh, yeah. So, maybe it knows based on your merit rewards idea what temperature you like the room. Maybe you like to wake up to the news coming on the TV rather than your phone buzzing. Maybe we have the blinds open. So, we built this system that we could uh and had wireless devices, but we did need to get the signal to the room. So the so we started looking for how we could get a signal to the room to talk to all those devices. And the only thing you could count on in a hotel room, hotels wire vertically, right? They don't wire horizontally. So every room kind of backs up to each other. They mirror each other. And so they just run coax up the center behind the TVs in the two rooms adjacent. And they just do it every other room. They run run up. Well, way more efficient, right? Yeah. And they do the phone wire the same thing wherever the desk is. Yeah. And and so the only thing you could count on in every hotel room is a coax cable and a single pair of twisted for the phone. Sometimes they had two pairs, but just one. So there's nothing for Ethernet. There was nothing for any of that. And the coax was owned by the movie providers. Back then it was lodget and on command. Exactly. And their business model was they'd give the hotel the TVs if they could put their movie system in. And it was a pay-per-view movie system with cable channels. I didn't know that. They paid for the TV. They got free TVs. They paid for them and and so but it was they did have pay-per-view movies that you could pay seven bucks a night for a movie. It seems silly in the Netflix world that we have today and all this stuff. I remember those that would have been cheap. I remember $14.99. Yeah. But most of it was paid for by the porn. So they also put porn on those things and that's cuz the margin on the porn they could buy a title for every time they ran a new movie. They'd have to pay five bucks for that run movie and they charged you nine or something. Yeah. But the porn they paid like $50,000 for a title and they could run it as often as they wanted. So their margin was all there. As a matter of fact, when Marriott finally did the contract to let oncomand come into all their hotels, they carved out the Provo and the Salt Lake City Marriott so they would not have porn in them. Bill insisted that these two there were only two Marriotts in Utah at the time. This is way back. Yeah. Way back. Yeah. And so we we we figured out that the twisted but that one was owned by them. Yeah. So the twisted pair of the phone though was there. Yeah. It was on command. I remember on command were they the bigger one for a long time. They were bigger was smaller. But then Yeah. And I and I was in the middle of all that happening actually. I remember those days. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, there was a twisted pair for the phone and we had to leave the phone wire there. So, we started looking for technologies that allowed you to put data and voice on a phone wire and we found DSL. It wasn't being deployed to homes yet, but the DSL existed. We thought we could bring in a T1 line to the hotel digital secure. No. What What does the DSL stand for? I don't remember. Yeah. Either do I AT&T invented it in the 60s. Yeah. But it was a way to put higher speed data on the phone wire with voice existing. So that's what we did and and and we So the original point though was just to get the signal to the room to do the home automation, but we thought, wow, you could plug your laptop into this box and get a high-speed connection. Yeah. So we kind of came this other model. We went so we got permission from Marriott to right next to Marriott headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. There's a Marriott suites right next door to the building and we got them to let us out a suite with the whole home automation and the highspeed internet. And we did that and we brought the whole executive team through. Bill Marriott and his brother Dick and the whole crew came through to see our thing. We showed them all the smart home stuff and at the very end we said and by the way we can also do this thing which we think will be interesting. We can charge 10 bucks a night for highspeed internet and we think business travelers will happily pay for that. And uh Bill looked us at us after about an hour. We also said you can remove the porn because what we can do is we can do digital ad insertion on the TV channels here locally in the hotel and we can get enough revenue from that to get rid of the porn. and he loved that and he says, you know, I I like that, but 500 bucks a room to do smart home, no, not going to happen. Yeah. But charging people a new amenity as long as you'll do all the we were very interested in that. And in the end, we just pivoted the business to just doing the internet. Yeah. And I remember those and it became a very big business and just a cash cow. We as And I was traveling for business a lot in those days. I used your product all the time. a little beige box on every desk and and we ended up getting all the Merit brands, all the Ritz, Carlton's, all of the the Hilton and all their brands, most of the European brands and Asian. We ended up being the dominant player for a long time and it was just providing internet to hotel rooms. Yeah. But our business model was we paid we subsidized the rooms. We paid all so it was a debt. It was like we were like building carriers. It was very capital intensive. But we'd spend $300 or $400 per room to deploy this. But then we had a seven-year contract where we'd share them 10% of the revenue. We got 90%. Yeah. And in the end we figured it out. We need about one CSN became IBON rebranded Ibon. IBHN internet highspeed was a German word for highway right by and uh but it literally we figured it out 1.7% take rate is all we needed to be profitable. Yes. And it was quickly within the first 13 months it was over 5% and then it was 20% and then it was and so it's just as a cash cow. Now but as I remember cuz this is when I started meeting you. you were uh about four or five years into that and the dot crash happens. Yeah. And you were imminent to IPO. Yeah. And then that got pulled, right? And we had What? Tell us that whole thing. We had Leman drafting our S1 in 2000 in 2000. And for our listeners and viewers, an S1 is the first version of your private placement memorandum or disclosures when you intend to go public. And your first S1's called a red herring. And then you uh and you the when the S1's drafted, it's getting very serious. Why is it called a red herring? Because there's red letters in it. The first one has a lot of red and it's really stuff. I don't know why. It's kind of funny because Leman was there too and you know the economic in 2008. Leman was the first bank to die. Yeah. Exactly. But but this So you were around circa 2001ish, right? 2000 2001's when we were in the middle of working on that and then the dot crash just pulled a stoppage to all the IPOs. Yeah. And so we we had to stop that. We had to figure out how to Our business was still pretty good. Yeah. But but just we weren't going to be able to raise money. The path of going IPO and then having it pulled that's also a little bit like air out of the balloon shock you know. Yeah. What was this company called again? This one that was imminent to IPO and the Hilton. It was called STSN at that time still. It was called Ibon. But then we changed it name to IBON eventually after the IPO stopped. But after that happened and IBON like the German word for highway. But but it my my memory and you just got to tell me if it's right. STSN was expected to be which in those days was a very big amount about a billion dollar IPO. Oh yeah. Easily. And uh and we had a buyout offer later for even more than that eventually from one of the big carriers. Yeah. And uh so that that that was fun. We did that. We backed it off. We actually were counting on that money to keep operating the business. So we were installing about 70 hotels a month right now because you were capital intensive. It was and so all of a sudden we had to slam on the brakes and and figure out how to recapitalize a company. We've got some big debt instruments. I just came back from a solar conference and this is facing the solar industry. Yeah. It's very hard to fund them now and it's super capital intensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we we figured it out and we continued to grow and turned it into a nice business and our competitors all just died and we were able to kind of consolidate them for pennies on the dollar. And so it it ended up being fairly good for the business. Yeah. But but in the end what ended up happening is we got through that uh our board came to us and said, "You know what? Neither of you have ever even worked at a telecom, let alone run one." Yeah. Yeah, and we think this is going to become just a normal telecom with lots of partnering deals and and network sharing deals and seems like we should bring in a telecom executive and so they essentially gave us a golden parachute and asked us to move on. Really? So you just we left. Yeah. And we started Control 4. Wow. Like within within a few weeks and that's when we met. So uh you guys were waiting for the 5-year AMX to go and as that was getting really close to being over. Yep. Then you and I met and Will wanted to really go to the last day and then I helped you with some things. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean living room and what year is this? Where are we at here in 2003? Late 02 early 03. Yeah. And I remember I sat in your living room. Your mom was making cookies and I I I remember just you were 14 and I No, but I I I just a pristine gorgeous kitchen and she comes out and just beautiful outfit, puts on a beautiful apron, has her stuff all laid out neatly. I thought, "Wow, that is the that could be on a TV show." She Oh, yeah. His mom's awesome. There's no doubt about it. I was going to say that sounds like my mom. And uh and then uh we looked at some office space and that was the beginnings of Control 4. It was cool. Cool. So we hadn't picked that name yet then but it was the beginnings. So tell me the beginnings of that then. How did control 4 come about and you just knew you wanted to do something? We knew we wanted to go back. We felt like we didn't get to finish the job. We sold that other company and the biggest sad thing is when we sold um fast the acquiring company told within a year told all the engineers they either needed to move to Dallas or they didn't have a job anymore and not one of them moved. Yeah. Utah. We bought a Utah company from Seattle once and I was tasked with the job to have them. It was um actually Roy Banks was running it was um Oh my gosh, the payment gateway one. Yeah, I know which one you mean. Oh my gosh, I'm having a brain burp. John Bodin worked there, too. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, um that's terrible. Authorized.net. Authorized. Thank you. John, how did I know that? And you guys didn't know that. Authorized.net. And so we bought authorized.net met and uh I was tasked with trying to convince the Utah folks to move to Seattle and I said never going to happen. Yeah. Well, none of them went. Some of the support guys did go but none of the engineers went and the engineers in Dallas didn't want anything to do with it. Yeah. And so they basically killed the product which made pissed off a lot of dealers actually because they like the product. Yeah. And they basically they they adopted our core networking technology and our core control stack and they rebranded it Netlinks and to this day AMX's control technology is Net Link. So really that was invented here in Utah by us, but they still use it today. Well, I think one answer to Tyler's question, you tell me if I'm right or wrong, is also as the do crash was coming up and we were coming out of that, there were huge advances in wireless technology. Absolutely. And so what happened was all of the stuff you did earlier was wired. Yes. Okay. But you got excited about Z-Wave, ZigGB, and the different protocols for wireless communications. And that's where control 4 was going to be the real forerunner of wireless home automation. Is that right or absolutely and and it really served us during the economic crisis in 2007208 because we had come out with the very first smart home system that could do everything wireless. So you didn't have to it could be retrofit. Yes. And we said and that you that was the thing almost all home automation had to be new construction because of wire or a major remodel. It had to be one major remodel. I mean, but it the remodel to do an existing home, you might as well, you know, tearing off sheetrock. So, our pitch was we're going to come in low enough cost because we undercut the cost of the other guys in the market by like we were a third of the price of Crestron in just the core hardware. Plus, we made the programming simple. It was all drag and drop and fairly simple. So, we could cut all that expensive coders. Home automation back in those days, literally, you'd have to have a software engineer type come out and reprogram your home automation system at 100 to 150 an hour. Here's what I, by the way, so I told you earlier that I had that caveat where I could program for the the dealer here in Utah that Will was at. I was making 30 to $50,000 per job programming these houses and doing about six of them a year while my base pay in Dallas was 55K. Yeah. So, I was making 200k a year back in 1996 programming these actually 1994 programming these homes. But that's what you had to do is we took that out. So, we then we undercut them even more. So, we were like one sixth the price of a Crestron system. Yeah. But the other thing we did is we made it retrofitable. We said, "Look, first of all, instead of just selling to the top 1%, you can tell us sell to the top 10%." Yes. So we 10x 10xed your market, but also you can sell not just to the rich people building a new house, but all the rich people who have existing houses. And so at that time there were 100 million households in the US, about a million homes built a year, hundfold on the market. Yes. So he said, "Your market just got dramatically bigger. you can go target a lot more houses and make a lot two big changes control for retrofit because of wireless and then the ability for the homeowner themselves to set up and program. Absolutely. To do their own technical support or even just the dealer himself could do it without hiring a program or the sales guy connecting devices without having to have a coder. Exactly. That was the innovations there. So the funny thing is we were growing about 100% a year. Wow. It was quite It was just in residential. In just residential. Yeah. And we were growing like crazy. And and when 2007208 hit, we we went from 100% growth to about 60% growth. But we but we gained market share cuz we had this retrofitable product and the competitors. You were pretty recessionp proof relatively speaking. We were. So it was we just which is funny because you would think home automation like that is definitely like a not must-have type product. It's a nice to have product, right? But in the high end, everyone does it. Everybody wants it. The high the high end, the wealthy are wealthy. Yeah. You're not going to if any high-end homes were being built from 2008 to 2012, they were going to have homem automation. They absolutely were. Y and uh so it it went very well. We went from seven to 23 to 48 to 90. I mean the numbers just went but we did 7 million in our first half year. Wow. So what what kind of put control on the map that consistent growth or was there like an inflection point within the history of the company that was like okay the the biggest deal was we we were able to it was a little challenge cuz when we went back into the market the existing dealers that had their established businesses and all the high-end interior designers and architects used them. They stuck with Crestron and AMX cuz they had they they made more money on it. They had 50 point margins on it. They they made more money programming. Super overpriced. Super overpriced stuff. Right. So what we ended up doing at first is we started picking up these secondary guys that wanted to get into the business and they started using our product but before you knew it they were competing with the others and people were saying wait a second this stuff costs one6 the price and does all the same stuff why should I pay for that but once that started happening all those other dealers had to pick up our product too hey I have a question at the time it was the biggest construction project in the United States which was down in Las Vegas and they were building multiple mega hotels together in one project and you landed that deal for automating those hotel rooms. Was that a one-off or did you make that a part of your business or how did that work? We actually did quite a few other hotels. So, we ended up building a hospitality division that was totally accidental. But I mean that story thousands and thousands of rooms like 14,000 rooms. It was the largest deployment of wireless devices ever on the planet on a single site. 148,000 wireless nodes on a control system. Arya, Vidara, Cosmopolitan, all that. Oriental and they're all You landed that job. We landed that whole job and it was actually accidental. I actually got asked to go speak on a panel at a show called Bill Con and I thought it was a homebuilder show in Palm Springs. So I fly down there. I get there. I get out I go to the convention center. I find out it's a commercial building uh technology show and we have nothing for that to do with commercial. And and I was so busy. The business was growing so fast and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go tell them I don't have a product for this market. it doesn't make sense and just tell him I'm going to go home. I I thought I'm just going to turn around and go home. And but then I thought, no, I committed to do it. That'll be bad. That's bad form. So I went on the panel and I got up there and spoke and it was all about it was like Seammens and Johnson Controls and it's all that kind. I'm like going and they said, "What do you do?" I said I said, "Well, you know what the truth is? My stuff doesn't have much to do this. We do residential control systems for like rich people. I'm not sure how this applies, but we have these Ziggby wireless light switches and thermostats and touchcreens and we can control motorized blinds and audio and video and all this stuff, but it's it's fun stuff and you know you should have it in your boardroom but uh you know and at the end of the thing a guy walked up and he said I don't remember his first name now Campbell's his last name and he walked up and says I'm the CIO of MGM Mirage and we're building a new property. We want it to be the most automated property ever and we're actually looking for a just what you have. that sounds exactly like what we need. And he says, would you be willing to come present to the board of MGM Mirage next week? And I'm like, sure. Yeah. Was that your single biggest deal ever? It was. Yeah, it was. It was $14 million on that one contract on one installation on a single I I because when I saw the size of those hotels and know and then I went in and saw that your stuff was in every room, I'm going, "What in the world?" And we ended up doing a bunch of the Trump Towers. We ended up doing a lot of the Montage Hotels. The one here in Deer Valley has our stuff. We ended up doing that big green brier back in the in the on the east coast. We have quite a few hotels. Yeah. But it's People didn't realize that one project was one of the biggest construction projects in history for single construction and at the time was the big it took years. Yeah. It was it was massive, right? The hardest thing was we had an integrator that was supposed to do it that said they had the scale and they ended up failing and bailing. Oh man. And so it was all hands- on deck. our whole company, we literally had almost every employee, even the counting people were down there helping install stuff. There was an integrator that was actually supposed to do it and you had to they bailed and we had to do with our own staff and we didn't have installation staff. We were a product company that shipped products to dealers and so we literally I mean our accounting people were down there. We were rotating people in and out of that hotel to get that thing done. Wow. I I I just got that a project of that could sink a company. Absolutely. Yeah. And and you know for relative scale I think the rest of our revenues that year were 32 million and so 32 plus the 14 got us to 40 48c or 46. Right. So is that not right closely after that? Is that when you kind of started gearing up for the IPO and doing this whole we started it was a few years later before we did that. We had to wait for the recession to get over. We had to wait for the recession to get over for the window to open. But you were one of the first IPOs after the window the window closed for a long time. It was kind of fun. We were the we were the very first pure play uh home automation company ever. When was control 4 actually founded? Like when was the entity created and you started that company? Uh the L the actual I think it was an LLC at first but we quickly converted to Delaware CP but it was basically March of 2003. Yeah. So 2003 to 2013. So 10 years between founding to IPO and we were you know we were a couple hundred million dollars in revenue at that point. Everybody thinks overnight successes, but there's no such thing as always take longer than you thought. Yeah. But so so you kind of missed that window with fast and with no you sold fast, but then with the um sorry the Ivon company, you kind of missed that IPO window, but now with Control 4, it was your second chance. The beauty is just after we left, Ibon did have a buyout offer that was north of a billion and they turned it down. Oh my gosh. And unfortunately they, you know, that guy they brought in to replace us slowly presided over a decline over the next 10 years. They just lost revenues from hundreds of millions in revenues to 60 million in revenue and in receiverhip 10 years later. Seen that movie many times. Yeah. Yeah. So you got you got to the IPO stage with with Control 4. Tell us a little bit about that and your experience with that and how that was a thrilling experience. Right. If you are a tech entrepreneur, ringing the bell in the NASDAQ is the golden ring. There's no it is it that that is the Oscar award. That is the And you know if you do a second one that's great but it's not it's not nearly as big as that just getting that one and and it was it was a pretty exciting experience. It did feel a little bit dirty honestly. I I didn't love how the banks basically make sure their buddies get all the shares and I didn't like how the pricing worked. I didn't like how that stuff worked. the New York Financial Committee. And this is something, you know, maybe we shouldn't say on a podcast, but it's it's different than the culture we're used to. Yeah. Yeah. I I uh and you know, for people that don't know how this works, but you usually your goal is you do a road show just before the IPO. You're going to have a certain number of shares the company's going to sell before the IPO to raise money for the company. Then after that, it's just a publicly traded stock. And and you can do later issuances, but that's how it works. And you you try to figure out the pricing. And the goal when you're doing the road show flying all over and talking to big retirement funds and you know things like that and big investment companies is to get you know five times overs subscribed. So you five times as many people come back after you meet with them tell you how many shares they like of the deal. And you want to have fivefold of that and and you also decide ahead of time what your pricing range is going to be. You're going to be and we decided our range was going to be from um 15 to 18 would be the pricing range for the for those shares that they bought before we would go public. and we were 25 times overs subscribed that day, the night before we went public. And so we're sitting in the room trying to do the pricing. They said, "Yeah, 16's the number." I'm like, and that didn't personally matter for me because I wouldn't be selling my shares till later, so I'd still be able to get But for the company, it meant we got $2 less a share for the shares we were selling if it's compared to going for 18. And I'd like, no, we're 25 times over subscribed. We should be 18. Yeah. And they said, "No, no, it should be 16." They said, "You'll trade it more on opening day on and you don't control it." And we don't control it. We had to take what it got. And it all and and most of those shares go to just the friends of the people at the big banks. And what what what happens is for the viewers and listeners is the shares are sold to mutual funds and to others, not private, not public transactions. They're private. And then when it goes public, those people then start selling and flipping it in the first minutes, hours. Absolutely. Okay. and make a hoorde of money on any movement up which IPOs are exciting so they go up and it's just an incredible game. Uh, and we all had to wait. It's all about money and money is important. I get it. But still, it's a different world. And anyone who had shares before that IPO had to was locked up for 18. You have a lock period. We have a lock up period. So, we can't touch it. None of our shares are going out. And so, they're all making tons of money. And we traded clear up to 21 on opening day. So, it was a good day. We had a good IPO. We said we did the bold thing. We rang the closing bell, not the opening bell. It's kind of a wussy thing to ring the opening bell cuz yeah, you don't have to stand up there stock up behind showing what it did. down. If you shoot the closing bell, it could be down, it could be up. And we've had lots of companies we know, even here in Utah, that traded down on opening day. And that's kind of embarrassing when you're ringing the bell, but your stock traded down. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's really cool, though. Yeah, but that's funny you bring up that, but we'll that's that's an interesting process. And and uh maybe for a lot of entrepreneurs out there that don't know about this process, just sharing the cost. How much did your company spend with bankers, underwriters, everybody, printers, everything total? What do you think? by the time you pay for all the a couple million dollar just to pay workers contractors to do the process of going public. Yeah, absolutely. And and then you know and we have to fly the Merryill jet to everywhere and we pay for all the hours on that jet and everyone stays in the Four Seasons even though that's not where we would stay. Yes. But we're paying for everyone's rooms in the Four Seasons. All the bankers and all the guys are going with us and you got to try to get analysts to cover it and you know all the wooing. I mean it's just a game, you know. Yeah, it is. And so it did feel a little dirty, but it was very exciting, you know, and there's the moment when after we done the thing, we done the initial cross of the stock where actually the first trades and that was good. Then we went down to Times Square and and they had camera crews following us. They're broadcasting us up on all the billboards all around the time square. That was pretty cool. People looking at us wondering who these nerds are and why they're up on the billboards. And uh Were you CEO at that time or what was your position? CT. So in all of our deals, I've been CTO and Will's been CEO. Okay. And Will was CEO at that time. He was actually he was not. He had just stepped down a little bit before cuz I've heard a lot of stories of where they actually replace management right before an IPO. He though was chairman and he was executive chairman. He was very involved and he was very involved in the whole thing and he was on the road show the whole time. Did did the underwriters have want that change to happen or No, it had nothing to do with that. It had more to do with personal things for Will. Okay. Got it. There were some personal things for him that made him step down because so he would not be the CEO at the time. Yeah. I mean yeah you just have such a rich history in home automation alto together. So, how long did you The IPO in 2013. How long did you stay there? I stayed That was October. It was August 2nd if that's a day I remember. It's kind of like a birthday or something. But, um, I stayed till the end of 2014. Okay. Basically, end of October. I mean, right around that time. I feel like we were starting to hear the whispers of like Amazon Alexa and all the Google. They were starting Well, Google Nest was out for sure by then. Ring was out by then. It wasn't Google Nest though. It was Nest. I mean, they acquired Nest. Tony Fidel and Matt Rogers who started that. I knew them well. I knew Tony before cuz he had control for in his house in Tahoe and he told me my thermostat sucked and he says I think I'm going to maybe build a better one and he's like he goes and does nest. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, right around that time like what started happening around that landscape after the the whole world changed. It was kind of interesting. This was actually a very prominent thing cuz our our valuation on opening day was about 620 million at the when we closed at 20. That's where we were at at the end of that day. And I then it's hard when you're in that lockup period because your stock's going up and down. you watch your own net worth and you can't do anything about it. You just got to ride the roller coaster and I've seen some people have it crash before they can sell% and uh and it's going to crash because the insiders are all going to sell the on day 180. Yeah. And that's so so I was nerv nervous about that and so our lockup ends. I definitely wanted to pull some chips off the table. I had fortunately done some there's some companies that will do that. I take some chips off the table but even before that just so I'd have those things there. But uh it's going up and down mostly staying in the price range kind of going clear up to 19 sometimes dropping to 14. It's just kind of playing that range. But our lockup was going to expire uh first of the next week. And on Friday of this week, just Friday before our week of trade, Google announced the purchase of Nest for 3.2 billion. And we were the only Pure Play home automation thing in the market. And so our stock went just shy of a billion in the 900 million range right when our lockup ended. And we were very hot that next day. So Oh, wow. So, I just said, "You know what? I'm I told my guys, you know, don't crash the stock, but I want out." Um, so they use dark pools and all other kinds of trading strategies to get me out without crashing the stock, and I was able to get out at a So, our stock went clear up north of 30. Wow. And so, I was able to get out in the high 20s and it was nice. Fantastic. Great timing. Yeah, that's amazing. But yeah, so so Google actually helped you. The acquisition helped you. It made that helped us a lot because everyone was looking for how do I invest behind this trend? Yes. and and we were the only thing that was out in the public markets you could do that with. And I I just remember them integrating the voice controls and all that stuff. Yeah, they did really cool stuff. Yeah, it was crazy. So, but you you were supported by all that. Absolutely. Help. We we actually integrated into Control 42. I wasn't there at that point. Yeah, cuz that was more like 1617 when those things really started coming out the Alexexas and the But but we just adopted it and said let's like make it work with our stuff too. So, so where did you go from there? You took a break from home automation for a while, but now you're back into it. Yeah. So, I took a break from it, but but I I kept looking at the market. I thought, "Okay, there's there's there's Philips Whiz, there's Lutron Cassetta, there's Levitton dimmer, there's all you can go to Home Depot and buy a smart dimmer for 40 bucks now." Oh, yeah. There's Ring doorbells, there's Sonos speakers, all the TVs are smart now. Appliances are smart. I bought a Pebble Ice machine the other day and it has a Wi-Fi connection so you can like, what on earth would I want to know about Siri? Start my Pebble Ice. I couldn't even figure out what you do with that. But everything is connected now. Yeah. And with Alexa prediction made 20 years ago, what's going to happen? With Alexa and Google, we thought, okay, this game's played. Someone's going to figure this out. But what we found is in in late 2020 and early 21, we're kind of looking at this market and saying, you know what, the problem is most people do have a folder of apps and they have a few smart devices in their home. Mhm. But what we were doing with smart home clear back in the '9s was integrating those things together. So when you push a good night button on your nightstand, the lights turn off, the fireplace turns off, all the TVs turn off, the audio turns off, the doors lock, the security system arms, the, you know, everything kind of shuts down and it works together. My alarm clock for decades has been telling my thermostat to go to the morning set point 30 minutes before whatever I've set my alarm for, so I don't have to reprogram the thermostat. Yeah. The lights come up gently. I have mirrored windows in my bedroom, so I have the shades come up so natural light comes in and I have a Sonos playlist that comes up and plays some nice music. That's a really great thing to have. Having your home welcome you home and do things and having things like when there's a fire in your home, turning off the HVAC so it doesn't circulate. You're saying we moved away from that because of all the different products and the different protocols and so people don't do that integration. We thought most consumers don't know that they need that. But the high-end's been doing it for years. Wonder if we could build a product that could fix that problem. And we figured out the biggest challenge there was having some kind of service provider in the mix. So we said let's let's let's build a pro a smart home product that is as good as any of the Alexexas and Google's and maybe and smart things and or wise and make it even better and and but build it so that it can be managed by a service provider. So let's give it CRM integration and ticketing and scheduling systems integration so you can monitor them and see what's going on. Let's build it so it automatically monitors the firmware versions on all your smart devices. So if if if your Ring doorbell takes an update and maybe they change the API a little bit, the driver in the system changes so it still works and doesn't just break. Cuz with Alexa, if you do that, if you if you load the skill for your Ring doorbell and Ring changes their firmware, it just stops working. You don't know why. That's the exact setup I have. Exactly. So you need to figure out why doesn't it work? You go look at the skill and the truth is after it happens four or five times, you just quit trying. Y but if it's a managed service, we believe that becomes interesting. And then the really interesting thing that happened is generative AI came along. And we thought, wow, think of what consumers could do if they could program their home by just telling it what they wanted to do. And we do that today. You can just literally say, "Hey, Olly." We've called our guys Olly because it's all over IQ. Create a good night scene that turns off all the lights, arms the security system, locks the doors, uh, closes the blinds, shuts off all the AV, uh, and tell me if a garage door has been left open. And if I haven't told you to do it by 11 p.m., just do it automatically at 11 p.m. And you can literally talk to it like that. Or like, hey, I don't want the garage the light the lights in the garage be more than 30 minutes ever. And could you make sure the lights are on anytime I go into the garage? And it will look at it and say, "Well, you've got a motion sensor in the garage. You've got a door contact on these two doors going in the garage. So, I'm going to put a 30-minute timer on the garage. I'm going to have these these doors and things trigger the lights to turn on." So, what are Okay, you use Ziggby with control 4, right? What what is this wireless completely? The beauty of this one is we do Ziggby, Z-Wway, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, we whatever. So, we we've adopted all of them. All of it. Okay. And we don't make generally we don't make the products. They're out there now. So, we'll just make all the stuff you're already buying work together. You're the system controller and integrating it. And our main model is to go to like a carrier. Go to Verizon and say, "Hey, you could put our software in your router and it will autodetect all these devices and just tell people what they have and make them work together seamlessly. And then you can offer it as a managed service." We even have a model where if they'll put it in every router and just pay us for every router, kind of like they do with some wireless stuff they do, we can get down to 50 cents a router per month and they can literally just make it an amenity to reduce churn, but then they can go back and upsell cameras and security. So interesting. And so Oliver is now what happened two weeks ago now? So I've been on the board of another company called Savvy Controls all this time that does the same kind of it's audiovisisual automation for commercial venues. Mhm. So, excuse me. You're good. So, uh, like every Top Golf has Savvy in it, managing all the audio and video in it. Uh, even the little signs that have the numbers on the bay, that that's made those are made by Savvy Controls that change colors and do stuff when you're in the bay. Um, uh, Dallas Cowboys Stadium, every suite, the TV's in there. So, if you want if you want to watch a different game in the suite from the game you're watching out there, you can go to the touchcreen and do that. That's Savvy Controls. I've been on their board. I've been an owner for years. We actually started looking how much stuff we were doing in common and we realized the control system technology was very similar and so we decided just last Christmas time that to merge the companies and we just finalized it just recently. Wow. And so the merge companies called Savvy IQ basically the same two product lines. We're just merging them together and leveraging the scale of the two companies. Wow. Did that change your role at all? No, I'm still CTO. Wow. And uh but but their COO is our COO, their president is our president. Will is our CEO. And so we've have kind of different members of each team kind of running the portions of the business that that make sense. Well, that's exciting. Yeah, that's super exciting. Did you do a press release or is this breaking news? We did. We did do a press release here on the Startup Ignition podcast. First to know. Yeah, first to know. You heard it here first. No, that's awesome. That's that's quite the timeline. I feel like your actual career really integrates with the actual timeline of home automation overall, right? It has been an interesting ride and it's been, you know, one of my favorite things ever is in two years ago there's an organization called Cydia which is for the high-end custom home automation. It's the custom electronics designers and installers association and I didn't go to the first year they did that but I went to the second year they ever did it. So it was an early organization. It was originally six dealers that were trying to sell electronics to do custom install in homes and they couldn't get any of the manufacturers to pay like Sony or any of those manufacturers wouldn't pay attention to them. So, I thought if we maybe come together, we can get them to sell to us because they literally had to go buy from electronic store to go put it in your home. They couldn't buy it direct and get a wholesale price. And it's turned into this trade show that has 35,000 attendees. It's the biggest trade show no one's ever heard of, but they gave me and Will their Lifetime Achievement Award a couple years ago. And that I remember early on going to that show when they give it to these other guys and I would sit there in the audience going, "Wow, maybe someday that could be me." And that was kind of cool. And then just last year, the Consumer Technology Association, which is the organization that runs the Consumer Electronic Show, gave me their smart home award. Oh, really? And and that was another really kind of Well, congratulations on all that. Pretty honored. Well deserved. Welld deserved. So is how did you get involved with CES and that they just reached out to you and said, "Hey, way back they said we really want different kinds of companies here and they had a board called the TC. It's the technology committee. It's the top technical committee of of of in that organization." They said, "Would you be willing to join this?" And I've been on that one for 16 years. And it's like think the CIO of Ford and Vince Surf is on that board and he's an amazingly interesting guy. I mean, people laugh and maybe this dates me pretty bad, but Al Gore said he invented the internet. Yes, Vince Surf invented the internet. He's a fellow at Google now and he really did invent the internet and uh really interesting guy and it's it's a fun board to be on. And then after a few years being on that, they said, "Would you be willing to come on the board of industry leaders, they call it?" That's awesome. We have about 5 to 10 minutes. What you What do you want to cover? I I got a couple things. Yeah. Well, you keep going. Yeah. So, let me So, fantastic. Incredible career. Thanks again for being here. But I want to know, you've also been super generous with your time over the years as you've become more of an elder statesman in the venture ecosystem of Utah. I've sent a lot of people to be mentored by you and just and you've always been very giving you your time and mentoring with them and letting them bounce things off of you. So where do you see the state of entrepreneurship in Utah? I mean the 2000s were incred you were in the '9s here in Utah then the 2000s were incredible but 2010s were even more incredible and then and each one is marked we believe a lot in you know you're actually an investor in our venture fund and we believe in the cyclical nature of these things right and there's troughs and peaks and it seems like um you've had runs up as we come out of the trough that happened starting in 2022 it's now 2025 because we had the 10ear year runup, the longest in history, and now we've been in this trough. And as we come to the next, where do you see things heading for Utah? Where do you think things see things heading just generally? What I just think we're primed to do amazing things. And it's amazing what's happened along the way. And I mean, you know, when I first tried to raise venture, there was one VC in Utah. There's Drifus, right? Yeah. Jim and Utah, which is now UV partners. But you know we had to go to the Bay Area and and I would argue that you know the big I'd argue some of the big points and one of them is you absolutely but that I was very involved in the fund of funds to get Utah to invest in back a venture fund to put money in VCs that would come here that happened like in the 2000 2001 2002 time frame but boom startup I think was an amazing thing that helped get that going. the entrepreneurship center at BYU during the the Golden Years did a lot and just watching all this stuff and then the Silicon Slope stuff that's been done by Josh and and the guys there and and and it's just been amazing to watch but there's just such an ecosystem and everyone knows what it is and it it's just like the barrier. It all feeds on each other and it just creates do you agree? It's kind of like a virtuous cycle cuz the the the word perfects and nolls of the '9s led to then the birth of SAS in Utah with Omnature coming in and being SAS and what you were doing at home automation and then the 2000 were great and then we went through the you know great recession of 2008 2012 and that just thrust forward. Now when we came out of that trough it was amazing the next layer of software companies the podiums the divvies the you know all these ones these guys finding a niche and building the perfect solution for that niche and they're young students and making and they're young students absolutely think I mean think of I mean they're in college and creating multi-billion dollar companies you know and then Ryan Smith helps his father sell the product of Qualrix which had been around for 10 years and then Ryan says I know how to sell this the rest is history. I I often tell I I still speak at universities I spoke at BYU just last week again and uh I speak to these guys and one of the things I I say is we're in a very unique time in history. Yeah. Where up until now I'll give you the one caveat, but you could not start a business at all without some capital at least. Yes. Um the only way you maybe could is you could knock on people's doors and say I'll wash your windows, but you need to give me the window washing supplies or I'll mow your lawn with your lawn mower. Yeah. But even to do a lawn mowing business, you tend to have to buy a lawn mower. Yeah, but if you knew how to write software, especially with the advent of the app store, you could literally write a piece of software and post it on this thing and start making money with nothing but your time and your mental capacity. That is a unique thing that didn't exist until just even a hot dog cart. You had to buy the card, you had to buy the hot dogs and the condiments. Yeah. No, we talked about this and also and like two episodes ago on our podcast that the cost of a startup is coming down dramatically. And and and I I think you know from the year 2000 you'd spend millions on a server farm and then all a sudden AWS makes it you just fill up inexpensive ones, right? And then now AI AI is driving all these costs down. It's it's amazing. Yeah. There's never been a better time. Yeah. Yeah. And you just think about what you said about how you can, you know, just blood, sweat, and tears and you can start making money. It's incredible. And also you think about prior to 1996 and the advent of the internet there was one way to sell stuff. Move physical goods with trucks and get them to a store and try to sell to and try to get them in the wholesale retail chain and stuff like that. Now physical tangible products have so many different channels. Look at Taft shoes. Yeah. Yeah. Without going through the department stores and creating such a big brand. Yeah. Just it's just amazing. And you think about and then you have Amazon, but then also we've got Shopify that allows 2 million plus entrepreneurs to throw up a store in what 3 minutes. Exactly. Yeah. So to a lot of our listeners for this podcast are budding entrepreneurs like they they have businesses but also they're looking about about getting into entrepreneurship, getting into a startup, getting into business. What advice would you give to maybe the entrepreneur in today's age that might be looking to get into home automation or the product business or the tech business? What what advice are you giving to them? The the first thing I always tell them is the best companies come from actually being out doing something and finding a real problem, right? And then building a solution to that problem. The best companies come from that. The worst companies come from someone finding a technology like I really like generative AI. I'm going to try to start a company on generative AI. That's the wrong direction. Yeah, find a problem that needs to be solved and then figure out what tech solves that problem and we teach that in our boot camp. It's one of our core teachings and also to get past the finish line. The passion often is needed that comes from you also feeling the pain yourself. The best companies when someone says I've got this pain and instead of hoping somebody else fixes that problem, I'm going to fix that problem. And the other thing I talk about is just you need to have some passion around what it is. If you don't because that's what will make you push through it when it gets hard. And every company gets to look at your passion. You were a teenager and you were working at home automation. Then you started uh one out of while you're in college and sold it. Then you started fast, sold to MX, a legendary company. And then as soon as your 5year occupy was over, you were back in the home automation business. Let me ask you, do you have passion around home automation? I have passion. And I'll tell you what, every business I've ever had, there's been a moment where all logic said you should just fold up the cards and go home. It's not going to work. Everyone has had that moment. And um it's those people that push through it that get through and not I tell people all along the way, you're going to feel that way. I said the day before we went public at Infospace, I was worried they were going to find out we weren't as cool as they thought we were. Do you ever have that feeling? Absolutely. I'm a total fraud, but no one knows it. I know. It's just a crazy feeling and and that's natural. Those are the best entrepreneurs that are all of us sleeping with one eye open and worried the whole thing is going to come crumbling down. I heard a quote from someone who was in the White House in staff. I think it might have been a Biden staff. I don't know who it was, but they said they always assumed there was these really smart people that really knew how to run the country that was doing it and all of a sudden they were sitting in the room and they realized they were them. I think every entrepreneur has that moment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I you know I was an investor in Josh and John at Omnature Josh James and John Pastana and the first four years of that company they raised money in the dotcom era the tail end like 11 million which was a lot back then got down to a few hundred thousand in the bank and and they almost died 10 different times. It wasn't until their fifth year that the inflection point hit for them and they figured it out. And that's just, you know, half of success is being passionate and not giving up too soon. Don't give up. Just keep going. Even your even your credentialed past, it's like, man, you did home automation after home automation after home automation. You were just so passionate about the industry. You kept finding the problems with the industry and providing that solution. So yeah. Hey, I now this comes back the advent of wired because I you remember my history with yellow pages. So I was in the telecom industry but in that realm but the wired copper wire world in the infrastructure build all that and then the advent of wireless I just what's what do you see for the future that's going to happen in that cuz that's a huge thing it even impacted your going from you know like I always think backlash or Myanmar as it's called now right they never even had copper wire wired they never had any communications that's what kept that country down then all of a sudden now they can stick up cheap towers and have devices connected by wireless and be brought into the modern world, right? Stuff like that, right? And that's what you did in this. Where do you see what's the next 10 to 30 years look like in we're just going to see dramatic changes in all the devices that are connected and the sensors that are connected and what those can do for us. And I don't think we've even thought of all the things. I've seen some technologies now where just the Wi-Fi signals in the house uh by putting a few sensors around the house and sending packets and looking at uh signal strength and stuff. You can know where people are in the house and you can do those kinds of things. I'm even seeing some really interesting technologies where you can even know who is where and and so you could have things like music follow you as you walk around the house. You could have the uh you know you could have the house know where you are and find you when someone else needs you. You could there's some really interesting things you can do there. healthcare. I've seen some technologies that can actually just by using Wi-Fi signals see how strong your heartbeat is at night and how how well you're sleeping. Wow. Without wearing a sensor on your body. Yeah. There's there's going to be amazing things that come from the technologies here. Clear. Back in 2000, Nicholas Negroponte, who's a futurist, wrote a book called Being Digital. And he talked about they called it the Negroponte flip. He said, "All the things we take through the air are going to go through the ground. Everything that we do through the air is going to go through the ground is going to go through the air." Yeah. And back then all of our TV signals came over the air. But that flipped to cable. Yeah. In the ground. And even today, it's really on internet, which does come to your house through the ground. Yes. And phone was the thing that was on the going through the ground. And pretty much all phone communications and those kinds of communations go through the air. And so he was absolutely right. Yeah. That is really interesting when you put it that way. That is fascinating. Well, what a great treat to have. I mean, you know, I did not say it in any form of gest. You are a legend in your industry and in Utah entrepreneurship. And we thank you. I think for your friendship over the years, but also just for what you've done to the ecosystem. It's amazing. I think you've propelled a lot of Utah and I know we talked about the future of Utah, but what about even just the future of home automation and like I feel like you're seeing boots on the grounds all the what's coming around the corner. You were part of the past. It's just it's been it's been a privilege to be in that industry. One of the times my one of my kids asked me cuz they saw me on a TV show cuz I did a couple PBS shows about home building shows but but they were doing smart home stuff in and I was on the shows and my kids are like are you famous there? And I said in a very small industry I am kind of famous but they're all nerds and it doesn't really matter. Yeah. Somebody called me the father of internet yellow page and said that and a dollar could get me a Snickers bar. But now it's not even a dollar it's $2. Yeah. No and $2 inflation. That's great. Yeah, it's fun to be here. No, thank you, Eric. And we're going to wrap it up. So, that's it for this episode of Startup Ignition Podcast. Thanks so much to Eric for coming by. Thank you for all you guys who've tuned in and listen. Like, subscribe, comment. Thank you for tuning in and we'll catch you next time. I know bike next rock next.