John Pestana

I think when you have an Enterprise sales company the problem is that you can build really bad product yeah because you have this guy who's just convincing somebody to buy something so then you think your you actually mistakenly think your software is actually good and you actually have Market fit because you happen to sell let's say a $100,000 software package to some person but I actually am of the belief that you don't really know if you've made a sale until the second sale with that person when they actually renew is when the actual sale happens I actually think the first sale in a staff is a paid trial yeah yeah it's basically they're they're saying you know what we're going to try this out we're going to see if we like this enough now they maybe did a true free trial with you but normally that's not big enough to really know if it works right so then they pay you 10 or $20,000 and then they're doing a real trial with you yeah and if you don't have them then sign up that second time you've never really made the okay everybody welcome back to the startup ignition podcast we are so excited for our guest today I'm Tyler Richards this is John Richards your host and we are super excited today we have we call him JP we went over this before the podcast no one else really calls him JP and we figured out why it's because you're John he's John my brother's John so we have to differentiate somehow it is interesting sometimes when we go golfing the the four some three John's and a Tyler there we go but we have John pastana with us today and I have a little intro and John is a seasoned entrepreneur also our very good friend best known probably for his co-founding of omniture right a web analytics company that was that went public in 2006 right 2006 and it was acquired by Adobe in 2009 for 1.8 billion and I think that was Utah's first over a billion dollar acquisition in the history of Utah right I believe so in the tech world yeah I think so and um he's currently CEO of observe Point um which is a leading data government com company um but beyond his business ventures John just does more than that serves as a chairman of the board for liberas institute uh advocating for Liberty and free market principles uh in 2022 uh you were inducted into the Silicon slopes Hall of Fame which we attended which was an aw deservedly so very deservedly so you know the first billion dollar Tech acquisition in Utah that be better be in the I'm going to interrupt this incredible Rosie because it's not Rosy enough JP John pastana if Lehi would still be Sage Brush if it weren't for him yeah he he you hey you Pi off the tech there's been a lot of great people viewers it's true go look at the history it would be Sage Brush and it's now a incredible City with hospitals Porsche dealerships skyscrapers the center of Utah's Tech scene because of this man right here well and so lots of great people but not only that he's an allout fun guy hilarious guy smart guy and just all around good dudes so let's welcome to the podcast John pastana thank you thank you thank you for saying name right I was going to say it's pastana like banana not pastana like banana it's but you did say it's liberus oh liberus not libert that one you I don't know we say it all the different ways but yeah it is funny everybody always wants to say pastana but we say pastana yeah yeah I remember like it's banana because of Spanish you want to say past pastana but when you said banana pastana I never forgot that keeps it okay so JP or Johnny P or banana JP's great um so we always start the podcast off just to get everybody loose we like to do like an icebreaker event and so like we do like a little we do like a little fun back and forth game usually it's just me and my dad on the podcast so we do like a father son thing but today I'm going to do a start am I your first external guest uh yes well you we'll see which one we release first but you are one of two first guests that we have we're yet to decide which one we're going to release first but we're going to play a startup Edition so that means that's pressure on me to perform there go there go you got to get us views you got to get followers subscribers um we're going to play would you rather and so we're going to do startup Edition and I I have some pretty good ones but uh you know AI is this him only or me too no you everybody all of us okay but mainly you two and then I I'll put in some two cents if it if it calls for it okay are you ready yeah would you rather raise a100 million VC around but lose control of your company or bootstrap your business and grow 10x slower yeah for me it would be bootstrapping bootst bootstrap bootstrapping yeah every year I have friends get fired from their own companies by their investor so yeah it's funny that you say that because that's actually how I always think of it too it's like I tell people when I when you own because obviously have people call me all the time for mentorship and I always say the moment you raise money you're actually have a boss yeah you're a you have a boss so that's that a lot and I think a lot of URS don't realize like how big of a deal that is like because they'll raise money so fast like even that couple hundred grand from somebody it's like well you have a boss now there's one person you got to pick up the phone and talk to yeah two two three episodes ago we talked about is you know raising money the uh Holy Grail and Entrepreneurship and a lot of startup Founders that are are uninformed and very budding entrepreneurs think it is and it's like it's not I always describe it as it's like getting a loan on your house was that good or not how it depends how you utilize it right and there's also the science behind it once you take money you're beholden to the business model you have told them and you will not want to tell them you were wrong so you won't pivot properly to the winning business model I would but that's okay but but but that but that's a problem for a lot of entrepreneurs because you start the concrete starts hardening around exactly what you're going to do and if you take too much too soon you can blow it totally totally okay now we have we have four of these so's get quicker we want to talk to you we gave some good Insight yeah that was great okay number two would you rather relive the do crash or the housing crash with what you know today would you rather relive the do crash or the housing crash with what you know today and I'm asking you two because you know you actually I was in the I was 13 I suffered through both yeah that's why I'm asking both of you well I'll get i'll first and just say you know econ the the markets play a big role in entrepreneurship here so but but the it depends if do you want to do live relive the whole era both would be fun because we could capitalize knowing what we know now because the which one would you but even if it was just the crash we now know what we would the time to invest is in the down market so taking all that in consideration which one the or would relive the housing crash just because at that point I already had a lot of money so I could take I could take advantage of all goinge made my money inom so I agree the housing CR and the housing crash things got really low the Dow was at 5500 in March of 200 what today I think we were just looking at it this morning it's it's tens of thousands I look it up but just I'm just saying I agree with JP on that one yep okay so and by by the way the Dow is at 44,000 yeah 44,000 that's insane um I had no idea I I own only one stock in the whole wide world what is that what's that just Domo cuz Josh I'm on the board and Josh Josh co-founded it or founded it so so okay here we go would you rather work on a startup solving a huge problem and super innovating or build a company in a boring industry and make millions quickly so easy business model making lots of cash and easy or solving a huge problem and super innovating that's a tough one for me they both honestly they both sound super fun yeah so I I've never had any issue with like a boring thing cuz to me taking care of customers and just being involved is really fun building value like we've all I'm in right now was a little boring we all listen to the all- on podcast with Nal from angelist he talked about this very topic right what he was working on what he likes to work on and that so I think it's a coin toss that's totally 5050 for me me too for me I would I would honestly rather work in a boring and easy and growing Market than I would probably super innovating because I don't like the word easy cuz I don't don't mind like well I don't mind the challenges too actually I love like really pushing my mind and trying to solve complicated problems so I think I think the reason is cuz if you've got if you've had an exit and have enough money not to have to worry anymore then you're probably more inclined to say it's 50/50 but if you're saying I want to make another pile of cash you might go on the boring one that's easier to make yeah okay last one and then we're going to cut to the real part of the podcast here and get into JP's head and talk and have some awesome conversation around news that's happening today but last one here we go ready y would you rather go back in time and change one decision from a past venture or fast forward to see the future of your next venture so go back in time and change a decision about a past venture or fast forward and see the future of your current or next venture probably go back and change something and change something wow would too for sure yeah yeah I mean because you guys liveed through the dot era a lot of high stakes and value being created and opportunities that you might have seized on and you might not have seized on I could see that for me I'm thinking future I'd love to see what's coming and what I could do or you know what I could but one or two critical changes in the past could have changed mistakes or people's other people's fortunes my fortunes I was thinking like for me I was specifically thinking of like even our timing of selling omur with two possible because the economy was just and we were kind of forced a little bit to do that yeah we'll talk about this later but like on omniture you guys got like a 6X and later on qualtrix got a 20x well let's let's let's move let's that's a great segue okay thanks for the game great Icebreaker okay this is a safe place this is where we can talk about whatever we love hosting the podcast with guests and having differentiating opinions but let's move into before we get into anything critical thinking like that let's talk about your history cuz I want and I think my dad has a huge history with you and I've known you myself for 15 20 years and he's known you for probably more uh so we just have a really rich history with JP and we know a lot of parts of your story that probably a lot of people don't know um because yeah I mean your dad's definitely one of my closest friends yeah in yeah in in history so it's right back at you like so let's go all the way back to JP intera active and probably when you met my dad yeah yeah well even before I mean I I I know the history so I want you to start hey see you call yourself JP we can call you JP JP interactive I might have written that though okay I actually signed all my emails JP JP yeah there we go let's go back to Lyn Mel's class oh yeah yeah okay and you had started JP interactive by yourself by then so tell about the story in the class and how the and and how you recruited help but and JP interactive also want to hear the wedding gift story oh yeah so I mean how I got kind of started in the tech world I actually served a Mormon mission in Brazil and I was a music Major when I left on my mission I was actually a vocal performance major at Rick's College like a like sing yeah to singing oh so um I loved singing awesome and um I was kind of the plan was like become a choir director or something like that but my mom had actually told me I needed to make more money I think her exact number is like you need to be making at least like $250,000 a year yeah and which is funny today that doesn't sound like much but back then it was like saying $2 million yeah and um and so I was on my mission I was just like man I got to figure out a way to make more money and that's when I decided to change to business and computers and so I came home and I started getting involved in the internet and I went and joined the internet Club at BYU which was kind of more like a Unix users group really back then and um so I was in Information Systems to a one class and I was participating in this internet Club so I already knew a little bit about all this stuff and um the teacher uh Dr Mel he had said a few things that were just a little out of date not like they were just totally wrong but just a little out of date and I corrected him in class the first day and at the end of class he said hey there's going to be some group projects well this guy comes down at the end of class goes hey can I be in your group and that was Josh James yeah he was basically in the last row tilting in a seat not paying attention he used to yeah he used to call me Front Row Joe cuz I I just learned early that I don't think I have like crazy ADHD but I have a little bit of that you know and and I always found that if I sat in the front of class I could pay attention way Le better and learn better so I'd always sit in the front row in every class I was ever in yeah yeah so so Josh came and we ended up building websites I basically built his Jeff scalin who's actually you're not saying though why Josh ran up to get to you is because he goes that guy knows more than the professor yeah yeah yeah Josh is a smart guy and um and I didn't for sure don't know I know different things than what Lyn Mel knew and um and so at the so I helped them throughout the semester well I ended up getting married in April and um I my ex-wife now Heidi and I sold all of her presence and we had some savings and we bought our first computer to basically start the company um which called JP Graphics at the time wow oh really first one was JP gra Graphics so I was starting off just doing Graphics design and just helping people design things and then then uh designed their websites and I changed it to JP interactive and this year what year was this when this was 19966 April of 96 and so then same year Netscape went public the birth of the internet right and then changed it to JP interactive when we started doing more actual programming and stuff like that and this is just like months later yeah and Josh came on board um he basically moved down to La I think or was doing some acting or something that summer he was a theater major yeah he was a theat I don't know if that was his major I think he was actually entrepreneurship was his actual major okay but he loved doing and Theatrical stuff he was actually young ambassadors and so he he came back after that summer and we were always talking business like always sharing ideas he had some business ideas when he came back and said hey well why don't you just join me and why don't you sell uh websites and I'll build them and that's actually how we got started and that's when we I think that's about the time we changed to JP interactive and then instead of having it be John pastana it was now James pastana that's what we just started telling everybody but yeah the JP originally was just John pastana and then it made it easy we didn't have to change the name of the company it just I just start to tell people something different so F so okay okay so then you two were doing websites how did you come and just to set for our listeners and viewers at the time the worldwide leader in measuring performance of websites was a company called Web trends that was a and they were even honestly still pretty young and geted I mean even Lots like my first tool I ever used was a tool called analog which would look at a server log and analyze it and web Trend at that time was a server log company too so after a year or two of doing websites so somehow you came up with the idea let's make a webbased analytics company is that right yeah it was the first real like SAS analytics company and one of the first SAS companies ever and like right yeah and we were inspired because there was counters out there and there was a couple other minor an analytics applications out there but did you have a need to offer your website clients analytics no actually how it came about is my friend Jeremy Young if you guys remember Jeremy Jeremy was one of the co-founders of servers with Steve Jenkins and I had built their website for them so that's how I knew them so Jeremy came to me and said hey um I have this idea well the idea was actually he had seen a a site called free stats which was actually started by Matt Heaton here locally wow and it was a basic stats application uh that had like five reports and he showed it to me and he was like hey could you do something like this I'm like oh that's interesting and we had always struggled with getting analytics also for our own customers so I definitely related to the problem right yeah and so then I basically uh with my team uh built you know this stats application in just like a week and then we just started re iterating like crazy you know so you had other people out there that were trying to do something like this free stats company but we were just iterating so much faster you were just smaller quicker yeah movie well you know at that time you know especially who's actually one of my neighbors now uh he had other things going on he was doing Computer Warehouse and those other companies here and he ended up doing blue host here locally so he's a super successful entrepreneur oh wow yeah um and so we were just we just focused in on that stats and just started building it like crazy W and just to again we got a lot of viewers mostly going to be entrepreneurial and they want to know about the Venture ecosystem so what was going on was web Trends though was you had to take their heavy software and load it on your servers and it would be loaded on your servers you didn't actually load it on your servers you loaded it onto a desktop a desktop but you took the logs off of your server and postprocess logs Post process so like basically at the end of every week or every month explain the difference when you came up with like a one pixel on every page and all yeah so we came up with the concept of like let's put a pixel on the page and I mean really these other guys came up with that concept but then we took it to the next level of aggregating data with a lot of JavaScript script of trying to like see every piece of data that we could gather by putting JavaScript so JP interactives which turn in you can share the names that came through later you do that but your first idea you came up with the idea and your clients would literally just have to put a one yeah so difference pixel or something yeah so they'd put a one pixel image basically on their website that had JavaScript associ in it that would send us data now the reason why that was so different inov it was real time so like as you logged into our application you would literally see your visitors hitting your website ANS Google analytics is completely a playoff of what we did completely no it's bottom line is instead of post processing a log from yesterday or last week you're seeing realtime results as fast as our one thing we took a lot of pride in as fast as you could sit there and hit refresh you would see those data in your in your things that so that was so how did you know moving from JP Graphics to JP interactive to super stats to everything how did you know when to leave or move on from one business model and make the jump into the new products well you know it's kind of interesting because we skipped we skipped quite a bit there because as we were doing J Graphics we actually you know Steve Jenkins was a good friend of mine and and he I remember Steve once to me he said John I'm making money while I'm sleeping right because he he had these different websites that were making him money and I had built and designed a lot of his websites for for him and I'm like yeah I need to come up with something where I'm making money while I'm sleeping and so hence we we tried a few different things and they didn't really take off but one of the ones I did I made a little website that was called Script search yeah and it was all the CGI scripts that kind of back and make up the internet well I uh Josh and I we made that website and um we invested maybe $3,000 into it and then like 6 months later we sold it for $200,000 to to uh meckler media Corporation who did like CNET and all that and um so once we sold that we're like man we have some money that we can now invest into our stats because we had already started the stats application it was starting to grow really well too and we just saw that growth it was growing like crazy because what we did is we exchanged stats for a banner on your website so it was actually all ad driven at first what do you link exchange except for if you wanted stats about your website we would actually put an ad Banner we were an ad server and we' put an ad Banner on your website at the bottom of your website or top wherever you put it and then we'd exchange give you statistics about your website as long as there's an ad Banner on the website so you would get you'd be promoting third party businesses we were just promoting us you were promoting yourself so you had huge verality so the verality was massive I mean I think you know we were got to like 100,000 page views a day like within a month yeah uh and so and it was just growing exponentially I mean we went from zero to like 2 million customers in like a matter of two years so when did you flip the model to actually be a paid service then that was during the internet crash yeah so but but bottom line is for a few years and you got up to several million dollars of Revenue in an ad supported web million in a web analytics company 4 million dollars web analy company but then you realized you might be capped out a little yeah I mean I don't think I think that could have kept growing in some ways um if we had tried to figure it out but we had time you Chang from JP interactive to the name superstats yeah and my computer and my computer.com that's when I invested we actually start I mean this is this just this my computer was after superstats it take a long time to explain but we basically had the stats application and then we started we changed to my computer.com and we started just having all these tools that you could use on your website whether it was a guest book whether it was a polling system whatever you need on your website you could stick a piece of JavaScript and it just showed up on your website right so let's tell my story when I met you cuz it was superstats before you became my computer because it went through the name changes which just kind of evolve the products you had too right so superstats I heard about you I was up in Seattle my company had gone public and I flew down here Provo Utah went to a second floor office on Center Street in little downtown Provo and uh walked in and I met you and Josh and we talked and right then and there I got my checkbook out and wrote you guys $110,000 check thank you and then we just wasted it no but yeah I think it turned out all right yeah and I and telling the story I I'm open about it because um it was A110 a share so I got 100,000 shares and it's fun to see how it goes maybe later when you tell the public story I'll say what happened to me but yeah yeah yeah I mean obvious viously it was a long road we we had um all these different products that we started to launch at my computer.com but one thing that we realized was that um these small businesses would just come and go really fast and we'd call up somebody like hey why did you cancel superstats like why what did you not like about product out of business yeah they're like we loved your product but we just went out of business yeah but then we had some big companies that were using us and they loved us and they just kept buying more and kept using us and so then we decided you know what let's get rid of our small business offerings and let's just focus on just the Enterprise analytics yeah and so that's what we ended up doing and that's when really the lights like turned on for us and we just started growing like so changing from Advertiser supported to subscription model yeah so so you you had that well that even happened earlier because when the internet crash happened just everybody stopped buying ads yeah so we actually ended up having to uh switch to a paid M we even had to let some people go um I think longterm it would have ended up working out because people kept yeah buying ads but like everybody lost interest in ads for like two years the CPM the cost per thousand of impressions of banner ads crashed crashed yeah and so we sent an email out to all 2 million users saying pay us or be gone basically and we had about 30,000 switched to a paying account and what what did you first charge for that product like you remember it was $10 to $29 a month a month yeah yeah and then what point did you kind of switch into that Enterprise focused mode so we already had a few Enterprise customers but we that was then uh we just decided that we needed to finance the company better so we decided to sell off that the small business people and then we took the proceeds of selling that off which was about $4 million that we sold I believe we sold it for 4 million honestly all this has been so long yes switching to Enterprise I mean what year are we at right now this is post crash this is like 2,000 is 2002 probably something like that well yeah um so kind of so we did miss one story though um in there and I don't know the timing you're switching from ad supported to Enterprise subscription model was a huge inflection point when was the sale of the company that fell through and tell that story a little bit oh yeah because we had at one point that we had had a company an acquisition net objects actually if you net objects was the name of the company yeah they were a website builder um software they wanted to acquire us because we were all these additional tools actually it was really smart for them because they were like oh we help these people build site but your tools allow us to get more if I remember the timing just for our listeners and viewers to understand this was an interesting time the year 2000 from December 99 to March of 2000 the internet went B Zer valuations 10x on almost every company the amount of money being made those four months was insane beyond anything we've ever seen even the crazy stuff of the last few years in 2020 21 that four months was crazier yeah unfortunately we were in Utah so we didn't necessarily feel all that although we were getting a good Val but what happened was March started the crash of the dot era yeah I think your deal was going through around March April 2000 was it and honestly when you really look at it you know we were only4 million in revenue and we got an offer for $60 million 6065 to buy the company 60 million well unlike that ad supported subscription but we were growing like crazy we were growing like crazy so but but here and so lit I flew down for the announcement the big announcement we were all here and we announcement and then because this is what happened in that dotcom era and I could tell many other entrepreneurs with the story announced deals partially deposited deals fell through like crazy and what happened to you tell what Happ it fell apart and ended up uh the next day it was yeah literally was like a day or two it fell apart and and all of a sudden we had to figure out what to do cuz we were burning money we we ended up having to let go of about 70% of our staff basically that led to what you've told me and I don't know if you you if you don't want to talk about you don't have to but you consider it the worst day of your business life yeah I mean that was really rough I mean the hardest day really was letting all the people go because we had already scheduled our company Christmas party and Josh and I knew we were going to have to let all these people go but it was literally like the next day so we decided to just smile and let the company Christmas party happen like they could have one last thing cuz all paid for already it's like what were we going to do yeah and so we basically did it and then like the next day or two we let me get this straight between your Christmas party in December and Christmas day you had to let 70% go yeah yeah and that was not fun and we had no money so we couldn't do any Severance or anything and um I mean to roll forward we ended up paying all those people's Severance years later when we this is the most amazing story don't let's not wash over that so you and Josh and Josh has told me the same thing one of the wor the worst business experience of his life right right before Christmas but years later after you two are Mega successful you went back and did what we sent all those people Severance checks amazing yeah amazing I seriously incredible well I I mean I think both Josh and I um are I think empathetic people and we care deeply I think sometimes Josh gets a bad rap sometimes as not being that person but he is I think he just has a lot more attention than I get sometimes so he gets drawn by so many people Josh James has never been anything but nice and respectful to me in my entire Decades of knowing him yeah yeah and and that is Josh that's who he is um and so you know he absolutely wanted to do that I was always supportive of all those things cuz I'm the same way yeah yeah I don't know if you know after I invested Josh and then you had I I'm trying to remember their last name he was the son of a prominent BYU professor that was one of your head of sales they would come to Seattle with me because you were trying to close deals in Seattle come to my house Mentor with us and stuff it was yeah who was it probably was Jeff scin yeah scowen exactly sorry sorry Jeff couldn't Jeff's actually with Josh at he is that's yeah so Jeff and Josh they came to my house I had just built over there and visit with me and we would Mentor a little bit I was that those were the days anyway so my my question to you is is obviously we talked about the acquisition of of omniture to Adobe for 1.8 and so you went through this tough time then you started coming out of it and you know selling those Enterprise clients focusing on those big boys that were writing big checks that were steady Freddy's yeah at what point did you know you were going to sell or at least like the value that you were creating and like you know when need you maybe even figure out the actual dollar amount of that kind of deal and where were you like what were you feeling I'm wondering before we do that let's go from changeing Enterprise and what I was experiencing what you the most exciting things that were happening from when you went to Enterprise and before it was when we got rid of the small business stuff and we switched to Enterprise and it's funny how finding your right Market just really makes Market yeah product Market fit has to be there it it's kind of ironic because like we had a great product like people loved it but wrong Market it was still just the wrong people it was kind of yeah it was kind of tapping out so when we switched into the Enterprise it really was just like the lights turned on and we started doubling every single year you know what I I you personally came to me say John we had 9 million Revenue last year then you go and then you'd come back a few months later we're going to get 26 million this year then you came back and said 72 million this next year and then you came then it was 120 million and then you know now we're getting close to the sale and the Adobe and then you went public well I think and then Adobe come out but well we had done 300 something million the year before and then I think we were almost on like a $500 million run rate when we sold so but those from changing to Enterprise it was so fun you know I had the experience of the Arc of an experience of going public with my own company and then this was an experience as an investor a venture investor early stage watching a company go from the full Arc from two guys to going public and then being acquired by one of the largest software companies in the world and seeing you and it was just so fun your excitement coming reporting what was going on it was so fun yeah I mean I think being part of like high growth is really exciting and it's it's obviously getting that right formula is so difficult yeah but the Enterprise piece of it is like every entrepreneur that we're mentoring or that that are in our ecosystem like Enterprise sales is super hard like making that jump from like well because it's it's changed you know I think we keep thinking you can operate the same and and I see this right now because I see a lot of people who even used to work with me and feel like they understood that whole sales model and then they go into these new companies and it's just not working anymore because I think we have seen more the consumerization of enterprise software I think we're seeing much more that plg motion and everything that people are expect and they I mean think how many people call you now verus used to call you you know back 20 years ago yeah we well that's also Tyler and I have you know we're doing the Venture fund which you by the way are major investor in it we really appreciate you and you serve on our limited partner advisory committee so you know all about that but we meet with a lot of people and it's just so fascinating right now to see what's going on with some of these companies because like there was a Sasson with the 2022 rate interest hikes right and people were not just laying off or companies were not just laying off people they were laying off SAS companies and so one time we were asked we were at a meeting and they go somebody had to analyze what was going on and they said came into about a aund million uh company you know valued at 100 million maybe 10 20 million of Revenue or maybe maybe it was more Revenue than that but and they go and they just asked us guess how many SAS subscriptions that company has and so I knew it was going to be high cuz they were asking so I went 105 and it was 270 different SAS subscriptions so they got in a conference room and said we got to cancel 25% of these yeah it's funny because I also love them like we use tons of SAS software right at observe point and it's so great like but selling now is harder because you the moniker is deserved on omniture one of the great first SAS businesses there's no doubt that's true worldwide yeah yeah but I think the overall principle is if you actually create value in a good product people want it so here's here's something I've been thinking about a lot because I'm going through a lot of this transition at at observepoint right now because observepoint has been a very Enterprise sales company we're starting to go a lot more plg a lot more self-service yeah and um I think I think when you have an Enterprise sales company the problem is that you can build really bad product yeah because you have this guy who's just convincing somebody to buy something so then you think your you actually mistakenly think your software is actually good and you actually have Market fit because you happen to sell let's say $100,000 software package to some person but I actually am of the belief that you don't really know if you've made a sale until the second sale with that person when they actually renew is when the actual sale happens I actually think the first sale in a stoft is a paid trial yeah yeah it's basically they're they're saying you know what we're going to try this out we're going to see if we like this enough now they maybe did a true free trial with you but normally that's not big enough to really know if it works right so then they pay you 10 or $20,000 and then they're doing a real trial with you yeah and if you don't have them then sign up that second time you've never really made the we call true engagement renewal of and this and and just again for our listeners viewers this applies to everything let's take the mobile app world instantly mobile apps now the real question for an investor if they're going to go in a mobile app company is they say oh yeah we're getting people sign it's downloading the app putting in some data that you give to get registered and you use it the first day and I want to know how many people came back a second day and used it and the number of apps that achieve that is minuscule well if you think about the the self service model right and and Enterprise software is moving to this too because I think everybody wants this like I always say no how many of us talked the AWS rep yeah you know we just started using it and then yeah here we are yeah um but we have to like look at that like I'll go to like a SAS website and the very first thing now they're even doing is like just create an account and I'm like I don't even have enough trust with you yet to even give you my email like like I need to see a little bit of your product before I'm even trusting you with an email because we all know the moment we give them an email the moment we give them any kind of phone number it's like the you're getting bombarded I'm going to get bombarded from adms calling me right yeah and so I think we're still figuring this all out but I laugh when I see a lot of these super successful plg companies add that Enterprise button on their on their thing because they talk to some person well we got to do it this way why why didn't you just make it so that person could pay a million you know and again I pay edws like a half a million dollars a year and I've never talked to any of those people yeah you have to spend one billion dollars to talk to a real person at I actually do think they reach out here and there but yeah I actually use this as an example goog by the way let's not leave Google ad you'll hear people always say like oh no they like to talk to our CSM and they want to implement I'm like if if I worked with a piece of software where they wanted to do a every single month with me all I'd be thinking about is how do I get rid of that piece of software like it's it needs to and the coming by the way the coming Generations how and I talk about this all the time the coming Generations are used to doing a lot of business and interactions without one-on-one personal Interac well ever since Co you know and and we've built observe point now you know my my current software company that I'm doing uh Without Really visiting people you know and we have accounts you know that are I mean our our biggest accounts are under just under a million dollars a year and most of those people I actually don't know if we ever went and visited any of those people on premise it's possible they came to our user conference or we saw them at Adobe Summit or something like that but I'm pretty sure we never went there right hey let's get back to your acquisition but first what was it like going public I know we're like squirrels yeah like let's talk about going public and then let's talk about the acquisition then we want to get into some non omniture non- business stuff okay right so going public yeah I mean well my question was when did you know that you had created enough of value and enough of a business to actually go public and or then later be when the banks are talking to you and they guide you right is it a gradual process they want to see a certain amount of Revenue they want to see a certain amount of growth all those kind of things and if you're hitting those numbers then you're a huge candidate for it yeah and we you know we were just barely there right I mean think we were like 120 million and the macroeconomy has to cooperate 05 and 0 you went public 06 I think right 05 and 06 were boom times Well no I think when we eventually went public I don't think there had even been a tech IPO for like 12 months really okay yeah but you you you they you know if you're if if you're a great company but there's no IPOs going out it's I think you are right that 05 I think it was really hot because when we went they originally thought we were going to go out at like $12 a share yeah and we ended up going out at seven 6 or 650 I can't remember and and what happened and again just remembering because obviously as a shareholder I was very into it but the interesting thing is is yeah it actually had cooled down a little by the time you got through because there's a process months long tons of money way more accounts and attorneys than you ever want to spend time with right okay and then by that period it was cooling down a little so you guys actually went from 12 down to 7 650 or 6 I think yeah I can't remember it wasn't s but you got out and then what happened but but the whole experience how did you like going public the process well I didn't personally do a lot of that right cuz Josh Josh always handled that side of the business I I I wouldn't like it right like that's not me I just want to keep building stuff and working with customers like that's what I love your role the whole time throughout arure was CTO correct eror was the CTO I was actually president president and then when we actually went public we changed my title to EVP of customer success I think what I was so let's talk about okay that process there but after going public then your numbers were so good your stock went did what yeah yeah I mean we started going up like crazy I mean I think we at one point I think the highest who hit was $40 a share wow and you literally acquired your previous number one competitor is that right yeah yeah we and we ended up acquiring quite a few companies but there was a company called website story who was like our biggest compe competitor we ended up acquiring them yeah uh we en acquired another analytics company called visual sciences and then right about this time I think while you're still public you retired yeah you know quote unquote well I think I think because I'm just saying because one of the greatest parties of all time in Utah was your retirement yeah and I think the more people know me that won't surprise people because I'm not super money driven I'm very uh philosophically driven and just principle driven and I you know I I was tired and not tired of working I actually don't mind working really hard but I was just didn't feel like I was in that fun environment with my co-founder that I had started off with you know you were 10 years into it and I feel like well and I wasn't being treated like a partner in the company anymore I think you know Josh and I have had a lot of conversations about this you know that um I I sat back and I said to myself you know what it's more important for me to stay friends with Josh than it is to be here at this company yeah and you know again I'd already made 100 million whatever Plus money and so I was just like I'm going to pull back so I can stay friends with Josh and stay friends with Brett and which is actually kind of funny because actually I haven't even seen Brett in years and years and years well he he went with Adobe for a long time right yeah Brett I don't think oh Brett ER you I thought you saying Brett I thought you were talking about Brad sorry no Brad I mean Brad would came on board very late who who ended up becoming you know uh the general manager of the omniture business unit yeah um so it was just a decision of like you know what I'm just going to be on the board I'm just going to let you guys do your thing you know we were so big at the time that I don't think all my product Direction was quite as necessary even though I had I had worked with the product team and given them tons of ideas which I saw them Implement over even like the next four or five years after I'd even left right um so yeah it was just it was time it was just time yeah you you you I wish it wasn't I mean I wish we could have stayed there and and it was just dumb little things you know that I think could have changed so how how much time were you actually there for in the life of the company you were there 10 years years 13 years was total time from Total yeah I I think a lot of entrepreneurs just don't understand how much time it actually takes what's crazy is now I see tons of people kind of retiring from over there at Adobe who you know we had hired originally and they were like oh finishing 18 years at Adobe or 20 years at Adobe it's like which they mean omniture and Adobe but I was like oh you were there a lot longer than me yeah well as a as a member of the Venture ecosystem generally and here in Utah which is just a great environment just I think what you've accomplished is amazing and you know not as saying that just as a friend just you I meant what I said it'd be Sagebrush in the tech center of Utah if you hadn't done what you did and led the way with and Josh and you were a great combustible we have a lot of of great companies that you know have come from former omniture employees you know a trickle Utah's history going back to actually hiring uh science which was a thing gave birth to Noel and then word perfect and then that was like the first generation of Great Tech companies in Utah you were the leader of the second generation omniture gave birth to the next and propelled everything forward and it's a virtu cycle right I mean we definitely broke a lot of ground in the internet World here because nobody really respected Utah um that's why we start so Josh and I started silic and slopes right Josh came up with the name really it was mainly Josh's project but it was all funded out of amateur and to bring attention to Utah to bring attention to and make Utah a place where people want come work cuz we needed to import Talent at the time right yeah so very good but but outside of being a legendary entrepreneur you are very passionate about also just advancing personal freedoms free markets Liberty with your whole initiative with Liberto I'm definitely a volunteer you know in my whole personal philosophy and helping a lot of people I I'm going to tell you a story that'll lead into this so you can talk about some of the things um I've done charity things too and one time I was at an event at the same table with John with you and I was talking to a person over here and I was talking about this charity I'm doing and helping young entrepreneurs and I saying yeah we're just $10,000 short of our goal and we just need that and and then I think we can just have it go really well and you were like three two or three seats over this way and you said John what was that and you asked me about I don't know if you remember this he said and you said what was that what are you working on I said well just we're doing this and you know for these Collegiate entrepreneurs and we're 10,000 short on our goal and you just said you got it where do I send the check and I go are you serious and and you and you say yep you're there it's there no problem I'll do it yeah and you you know a ton of people got blessed from that and a lot of things happen because of you and that's just the nature and the generosity and I'm not you know wanting to make your head big or just pump you up artificially in any way you seriously are a genuinely good and nice person and I can say that and I'm going to say it I've said it and um you there's so many stories I could tell like that but that one was just like I didn't even ask you and you you overheard something and made it happen yeah so where do where does that come from like what what are these personal initiatives where like where does this belief system come from or like why is that assum it just came from my parents and how I was raised and you know I definitely have a belief that you should be doing good um I think what's interesting to me is I look at a lot of people and I laugh when they think they're doing good because they're asking somebody else to do good yeah you know and that's how I think about the government it's like somebody feels generous because they voted to have the government use Force to steal from somebody and then give to somebody else right type of a thing because the government doesn't actually create productivity yeah and I think you know the number one thing is look at yourself and saying what am I doing to solve problems in the world and what am I doing to help those around me you know am I really a kind person who cares about homelessness if I'm not willing to have a homeless person even live close to me you know because I don't want my neighborhood to look bad yeah um and and I think this will be a funny little story I'm going to I'm going to this involves John let's hear it so John you know ran Google Fiber here for a little while and um and I've been very obviously I'm very political overall and fighting for Freedom I'm actually never trying to get the government to give me anything I'm just trying to get the government out of people's lives to let them take care liberus is a Libertarian organization yeah so my sister moved to Provo and she had this house and we couldn't get internet because Google was saying um we're just not doing any more installs right now and we're like well what else we do we're extending the network and building new fiber yeah there like they're not doing anything yeah I think it was even just installs yeah okay because um and we're like What well what else we use they're like well there is nothing else we're like okay so we just can't have internet and I'm like this just this is messed up so I'm like my sister calls me he says this I'm like give me a second and I call up John I'm like John what is going on my sister is here in Provo and she can't get Google Fiber turned on yeah there's some they're just not allowing new customers right now and he was like give me a second and then he's like oh she actually even has it like we can just turn it on like and I'm like well can you do this like well don't tell anybody that I did this for you and he turned it on like and she had internet like basically that day yeah and and it was just so funny because this reminds me of politicians all the time it's like I've always had the governor's phone number and I've always had the other people's phone numbers and I can make these calls and it I can't tell you how much it bothered me yeah that I had to make a phone call and pull some kind of favor to make the obvious happen that nobody should happen and I've always wanted to fight for those people who can't make the phone call right right it I can't even tell you how much it eats me up so with that in mind like what what is your take on the current presidency and what's happening on a more macro country level right now like where I love trying to get the budget under control so you're all about the Doge effort I'm so I this is a safe place safe place with everybody um I've always been that person who nobody I ever vote for wins right because I'm always voting very libertarian very freedom-- minded you know um kind of the ROM pesque you know just believe that those things work themselves out like I truly believe getting the government out of most things and just having them be referees and not playing in the game helps everybody it will Elevate all the poorest of people and just make everything better but a lot of people misunderstand that because I'm also like anti- patent anti a lot of things where that's protectionism by the government for big corporations and people like that I actually don't even think we'd have a lot of big corporations if we didn't have a lot of that stuff yeah that doesn't mean I think that somebody should be able to steal completely from somebody and I don't know what system we can come up with that could work well for that but the middle grounds yeah some kind some kind of system but but I I just sorry now my head's all over the place um what were we where were how did we get to that just just on what do you think of Doge and The Cutting of the government all yeah so it's like layoffs I want to control and get government all these things and we unfortunately live in a situation where they've use the budgets and all these things to buy basically favors from people I mean I actually think it should be criminal for a politician to sit up and say if you elect me I'm going to do this for you like okay and what's the other thing they always do they're always like don't worry if we want to have something happen in our city all the people who can't vote in the city are going to pay for that and how that normally happens is like like I own buildings and Provo well I can vote as a citizen but as a property owner I actually don't get a vote on the like my building that I own so they'll say oh well if it's your primary property let's say on property tax you'll only pay half a percent but everybody else pays 1% and none of those people can vote against it right and so there's like there's all this taxation without representation happening all over the place and um I don't know we have to figure something out like I I definitely would love to see us also switch to like a fair tax or something like that to take power away from generally speaking though uh I think you would agree we would all agree and there's you know we got to do things right and take and be careful with people and all that but the federal government is bloated oh actually I I remember what I was saying I was mentioning that because like I always vote very very libertarian and um this was the first time I actually was feeling like maybe I go a different way because and it was mainly because of Elon Musk being involved and being willing to help I actually have it's funny how many people are attacking him right now but I think it's the people who are getting basically paid you know or exposed they're being exposed that are not wanting this I'm I'm very confident that Elon musk's motives are that he just wants to help the country and and I always I'm laughing right now too because everybody's like he wasn't elected I'm like well yeah he's not doing things like all these organizations none of those people were elected he's on 18 month he was given 18 months it terminates in 18 months well he's a consultant no different than any other Consultants like most people in the government of the millions of employees weren't elected and and I keep thinking about like let's just take NASA literally he is doing things in space at 1 1,000th of the cost of NASA know isn't that who we want to run some programs yeah well and and it's fascinating how and tighten them up yeah you guys read the article that was talking about how we basically had four software Engineers that went in to start analyzing the St analyzing all the receipts so amazing and and and and uh I was like can you come to Provo and do that too I know did you did you see the latest thing though about the social security ages and and how they're marked alive or dead and there's like 12 million people in the country right now that over 120 years old and he's like on Twitter he's like he's like oh man maybe Twilight vampires are real people do live it's hard to know like even what's real like to comment on they saw that treasury thing too that they just posted yesterday or whatever like the $4.7 trillion dollar in the treasury that they actually have no accounting for yeah well did you see his Oval Office interview that where he was in the Oval Office with Trump I mean it was like a 45 minutes of his first talking since being you know actually starting the Doge initiative since like inauguration and man that just everything he was saying is like look this is just common sense stuff like we are overspending we're it's not issue it's about just our federal government is taking our money and Taxation we want it to be as low as possible if you're an average regular person right we don't want to fun boondoggle crazy stuff just operate efficiently that's all we're ask need to figure out Common Sense legislation on like even environmentalism and things like that cuz I'm a huge environmental person like we should not be polluting this world we should be taking care of it but we need to Common Sense things because can't we're still polluting the world even if all of a sudden we're just like Outsourcing pollution to China or something like that you know it's like we need to figure out oil and our oil pollutes the world the same yeah yeah exactly you know eventually we're going to damage the Earth and we are damaging the Earth on things so we need to figure that out and I I hope that one thing I do like about Trump even though there are so many things like I was I would never have voted for him before ever yeah um and there's so much I dislike about the guy yeah yeah um just more personally like how he carries himself his Showmanship and just like be more real yeah um where I I loved VC I actually liked his authenticity felt way more real and I actually Elon I feel is very authentic like you know exactly where the guy stands you know in Trump lots of cases you do too the Tariff stuff scares me a little bit because I do think that's just more tax on all of us as people like did you see did you see what Trump did say about the tariffs is going to be reciprocal he's going to say he's said anything that that that their other countries are tariffing us I'm just going to tariff them back that's actually really fascinating because I've I've thought about that a lot and I always thought well if I was President that's what I would do I'd actually say look we don't do tariffs but if you tarff this we will also tariff you and that was yesterday he literally announced that yesterday one of the things I've learned because of tariffs all this talk about I decided to study a little bit and one of the things I've learned about tariffs though is actually tariffs don't cause inflation generally and they're actually just a great NE negotiation leverage point but just take the coffee thing where they was going to do Colombia the actual thing that would happen is if we did a big tariff on Colombian coffee yes Colombian coffee would not be coming to the United States because it' be so expensive but all the other coffee producers around the world and there's many of them the countries that export coffee as a main export they will say oh let's go grab the 8% Colombian market share and grab it right now and let's offer discounts to win that market share we actually could have it go down it's more it's more I think for me it's more of the principle of just the government making those decisions meddling but you know cuz you remember back if they do it to protect us because another country is doing it to us maybe that's okay well and and I think that if we would let states do it states would also put tariffs on to try and protect their citizens you know so like where do you draw the line and these are complex issues and I generally also really like what you're doing with liberatus and the libertarian and like I have one big question on technology cuz I know you think about this energy is one of the most important things to make the future and make this world go in modern you know in the last 200 years Energy's been super important right MH what's your take on nuclear power as a solution we should have been embracing it years ago it's gotten so much safer yep and yeah and I think again this just the government we had fear there for a long time um but I think it's really one of the only solutions for like clean energy footprint is low waste and pollution is low yeah just everything about it and then I actually have always thought like if we Embrace that even Embrace a lot more desalinization too we could have more water more energy than we'd ever need do you think the Energy race is as important as everybody's making it right now like I do as with AI and with the electrical power nuclear discussion you know that I think there is we'll bring you back for a big AI discussion that we only got a couple minutes I thought what we do is you and I can I make one final just political thing cuz I think I mean obviously this is more about startups and I think I think the one thing that we need to make sure is that what all of us want is just ability yeah I actually think even if you just froze the laws right now exactly how they were and we knew what it was and we just knew and there was no changing it how much that would help the startup ecosystem just businesses because you just know what you're dealing with I mean what I'm worried about is four years from now when the next president just decides to reverse everything and then we're like oh my gosh what do we even do as a company right you know so you're just saying every four years it's flip we need stability and we need to just know the rules of the game that we're playing so that we can have confidence in where we matter of fact let let's end on two things then one thing is thank you thank you for liberatus being such a big player in getting the sandbox legislation in Utah Utah is a leader now because and what and to our viewers and listeners you should know that sandbox laws mean startups and entrepreneurs can actually break regulations and laws with approval with the sandbox laws in place for a while to see if what they're doing that's technically breaking some regulation or law is actually better for society and then they prove it out and then those laws that were prohibited in it get changed and you and liberatus are a chief reason why that exists in Utah is that correct and liberus is also a National Organization now we actually so if anybody wants to go check it out but yeah we did the Sant box regulations and that has been lus.org yeah has been mimicked throughout the country now in different environments we said a lot we've won numerous awards from a free markets you know think tank and that's really important entrepreneurship because a startup being wondering oh am I going to get in trouble for this or that and a matter of fact we love the all- on podcast as well and I just listened to it and nval was talking about how he tried to do something Innovative with angelist and the SEC and all that came down on him like crazy and then he had to go spend time Washington DC and they changed the laws because he figured out a better way so it was you guys probably ran into this when all the Bitcoin stuff you know all these cryptocurrencies i' had all these people pitching me on all these things and I'm looking at them going you people are ignorant I'm like it really is about who controls the laws in this it doesn't matter what you think you can get away with and we see this in the libertarian movement a lot because they get all super principled and I'm like all that matters is who has the guns I mean well you can think your Bitcoin secure but if like somebody shows up and points a gun you you're probably going to give them your key because you don't want to die you know so we talked about that hey let's end on something really interesting no no just to wrap that up much wrap it up you and I are uh in the same friend group and we have traveled the world together true true okay and so we have a lot of fun with that and we've been to many many places together and done lots of things I just want to ask you what's your very favorite place to go visit travel or experience what is like if you had to rank them on the combination of I love going there it was fascinating stimulating what would you put at the very top well I'm going to give you two answers my very fa place to go is just to go someplace warm and golf and enjoy some pool time yeah so I love Palm Springs that's like my very favorite just like go to just go have a great time my very favorite place that I've ever traveled was with you and when we went to India yes and it was interesting because wow I've heard pretty negative things about yeah yeah so this is what's interesting half of our group just absolutely hated it half of our group loved it and the group that hated it was because they just it is dirty and it's like just so different than here and I think it's the society at every level of a culture it's the culture most different from ours yes and and so I think a lot of people just you know when we go into like a and like we're being inundated by people and the noise and the smells and all this kind of stuff a lot of people that was like just too much they couldn't handle it I was fascinated by it yeah like I just thought it was a beautiful people and a beautiful anal stories we came back with and like I would I haven't been back since you know you and I went but I would totally go back and experience more but why were you f what what was the fascination so much Fascination but like what that's a whole podcast unto itself but like but I mean I actually was fascinated by like the diversity in their culture like from the super wealthy down to the poorest of poor I'll give you quick samples and you don't have time for this but I'm going to anyway like it's okay the cow thing's real yeah more real and more sincere and more serious than you ever thought yeah the har krishnas which I used to think of as just kind of strange people at an airport growing up are actually one of the nicest most reasonable charity service oriented religions I've ever seen yeah I mean that just two those two things we don't have time to get into it but sounds like we should go back there we go looks like I need to go let's go let's thank John yes I am so happy you came and I'm happy I just hope this made sense for anybody else who was listening to us like well it's just like we film honest you guys have seen into like when we go golfing the three of us we are this is what happens the whole round and and but a lot of entrepreneurial Adventure principles were in this episode and it's always back to entrepreneurship startups how the ecosystem is impacted by our conversations but and I hope you guys the listeners and viewers got a little bit out of this podcast and it wasn't just bro conversation between John TY but I think a good thing for them is to think about how they're getting like a full plg process in the software World mixed with Enterprise sales you know a great that's good among many others today yes wrap it up wrap it up we're wrapping it up and thank you so much for watching and thank you to JP for coming out and we kind of dragged him here he was a little bit sick and we said come on we need you on the podcast so we're very thankful for that but like subscribe share and hit us up with any questions let us know in the comments what you're thinking what we can help you with this has been the startup ignition podcast follow us Y and thank you so much and again thank you to JP thank you you rock rock rock