How Voxpopme Reached $10M Revenue on $16.9M Raised and Reset Equity for Its Go-Forward CEO (Interview with CEO Andrew Barraclough and Chairman Lonnie Mayne)

Introduction and Voxpopme Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, watch out for BoxPop. Me. They're capital efficient raising just call it $1,516,000,000 bucks to grow revenues to 10,000,000. So they've been efficient, obviously, working with a lot of different groups of providers. We're excited to have funded them with $750,000 at Thunderbath on a twenty four month term. But more importantly, we were able to work with the chairman of the board and Lonnie and the go forward CEO, Andy, to reset some of the equity chunks of

00:21the business to incentivize the go forward team. Andy, in day one in 2012, owned only 2% of the company. We wanna get him up to where he needs to be now as the go forward CEO. We weren't able to do that without him and Lani's support on the board. The full story was a good one. Enjoy the episode. So we're thrilled obviously with Andy. Andy and Lani today. They're running a company called VoxPopme, and we first

00:43started speaking in terms of founder path and VoxPopme. Guys, this is crazy. It's all the back in February, actually. February 7 was my first email in my email inbox. But why you introduce yourselves really quick? Lottie, what's your role at Voxpotme? Andy, what's your role?

Andrew Barraclough

00:54>> Yeah. I'm chairman of the board. I've been on the board now, I think, around four years, five years. So yeah. So that's my role, is to do what Andy tells me to do.

Andy and Lonnie Introduce Themselves and Their Roles

Andrew Barraclough

01:03Hey, Andy. Something like that. Yeah. My role is now CEO. I was founder and originally CTO at Voxpop. Me, and I moved into the CEO role about seven months ago. So, yeah, it started off in yeah, end of twenty eleven is when we kind of originally founded the company, so I've been with it ever since.

Nathan Latka

01:25And take us through a bit of the sort of company story after you give a teaser on what product the does? Because you're in a very exciting space. Andy, how would you describe the product?

Andrew Barraclough

01:35Yeah. So we work with kind of large businesses, Fortune 500, helping them really understand their consumers a lot better through video. So companies doing research, either one to one interviews, focus groups, similar kind of setting to what we're in now, or launching video surveys and connecting with their consumers to understand their thoughts towards trends, spending habits, maybe new product ideation, right throughout the kind of research flow and really helping them to analyze that at scale and

02:04understand their research centrally as well across the company and drive kind of customer empathy and change within the business. So it's been a super exciting journey from the start and initially kicked off with the idea of, yeah, we all had our phones in our pockets and everyone was getting more comfortable recording video and how could we connect brands to people and build an app and launched it that way as the kind of first kickoff point, and

What Voxpopme Does: Video Research for Enterprises

Andrew Barraclough

02:31grew from there, understanding the kind of research space more and more from a couple of, you know, technical founders who didn't come from market research originally, so we've learned a lot along the way.

Revenue Reveal: $10M with 80/20 ARR Split

Nathan Latka

02:41I want to go back and learn about day one and your co founders and the original team and then Lonnie getting involved, etcetera. Before we do that though, Andy, I don't want to bury the lead here. Are you guys comfortable sharing what revenue is today or revenue range? How have you guys scaled?

Andrew Barraclough

02:54Yeah. So total revenue wise, we're kind of sitting around the 10,000,000 mark. We're primarily ARR revenue from that. It's kind of about an eightytwenty split.

03:06And, yeah, it's kind of,

03:09you know, I think looking at a few interesting opportunities moving into this following year as well. So closing out this year, and we can kind of get onto that story a little bit in a while as to how we kind of progressed our relationship. But Mhmm. Yeah. Looking forward to a good year of expansion into a into a new territory moving forward next year as well.

Day One: Founding Story and Early Equity Split

Nathan Latka

03:29So take us back to day one. When did you guys write the first line of code for the company? And, Andy, how did you decide to split equity with your co founders?

Andrew Barraclough

03:37So, yeah, was, I mean, it was an interesting start to the company. So I was actually working with guy who founded the company with Dave Carruthers, and I was working as a technical director at his company to begin with, and then we started

Nathan Latka

03:51What year was this,

03:52>> by the way?

Andrew Barraclough

03:53Sorry. This was 2012. So, yeah, about 2011, 2012, joined him. And that company was helping to bring in seed investment for, you know, we'd we'd have people come in with ideas. They wouldn't have the technical background. They'd be looking to fund. And so we were kind of incubating product startups from that point. We'd had some that ended up being pretty successful at the back of it, others that were very hit and miss. And so when we

04:21came up with the idea around video and thinking about how we could connect with brands through that, we decided to kind of split off our own way and kind of took some of the learnings that we'd had from how the companies had been formed through that process, and that's how things worked out there. So, equity split was actually quite interesting because we kicked off with so first lines of code I was writing in the kind of

04:47when would it have been? November 2012, I think it was. And so because we had these angel investors that were already familiar with everything that we were doing, we kind of went straight into that route and actually did some fundraising pretty early. And, yeah, that's kind of took an equity split based on that and a few of the roles that we kind of kicked off the company with at the time.

Nathan Latka

05:11Are you comfortable sharing, Andy, sort of like percentages there? You know, Dave was about X percent, you were about Y percent, investors were about Z percent.

Andrew Barraclough

05:19Yeah. I mean, was So at the time it was interesting because it was We'd actually formed it with number of people that we decided to kind of kick off from who were originally in the previous company. And so at the time, like, as a percentage, mine was pretty low. I think it was around like 23%.

05:40So there were a few of us that took that amount, and actually a lot of people dropped off within, you know, probably within the first year. And so I was kind of always super passionate about everything that we were doing and have, you know, stuck at it for the long haul because I've been excited about the technology that we've been building and the opportunity space that we've been in as well. So, kind of probably at a

05:58bit of a lower end from what you typically see within, you know, maybe some typical product sales startups as well from an equity standpoint.

Nathan Latka

06:05Well, know, 2%, 3% in 2012. Now, twelve years later, you're the go forward CEO. You're the leader of the company. We'll talk about equity later on. But, Lonnie, let's introduce you to the story. When you came in and you said, let me look at the product. Let me look at the the team. Let me look at the equity split. What were your first thoughts?

Lonnie Mayne Joins the Story via InMoment

Andrew Barraclough

06:20>> Yeah. Yeah. So we were at at the time I was president of a company called InMoment, a customer experience platform. And we were growing rapidly and competing against some of the bigger CX platforms out there like the Qualtrics, the Medallias and, you know, those types. And so we needed something that was gonna differentiate us even further. And we started talking about video as an executive team. Our country manager in London called me one day. Was on

06:44>> my way there and he said, found the company. I found the

06:46company we need to

06:47>> talk to. And they're good people. They're good humans and good our culture.

Nathan Latka

06:49You wanted to acquire them at the start?

Andrew Barraclough

06:52>> No. We just wanted to we didn't know. We didn't know if it was an acquisition or if we're gonna just integrate, you know, the technology. Andy, just walk you through into the platform. So I went to London, had a meeting there. And then one of the co founders with Andy flew to Salt Lake. And we met pretty much all day. Poor guy. We had 30 people in the room and just him pitching, you know, kind of

07:15>> what Andy just walked you through. So then I had a chance to meet Andy and meet the team and we love the technology. And so we were one of the first back then to integrate video into our CX platform. And through that, we, you know, created a relationship

07:30>> and just continued to work together for for a number of years. Then eventually I stepped

Nathan Latka

07:34that money, that meeting in Aspen.

Andrew Barraclough

07:37>> When was that? Yeah. Gosh. Andy, can you remember when that was?

07:42'17? Yeah, was probably something around there.

07:46>> Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Late sixteen, Then, early

07:50>> you know, it was cutting edge too at that time. It's still cutting edge, but it was cutting edge and it had great, you know, sex appeal to it. And we were getting all kinds of meetings with the Nikes of the world. And, you know, it was really a lot of fun. And then again, to figure out how we were going to integrate that in an elegant way into the platform. And so eventually I stepped out after

08:11>> eleven years in InMoment and wrote a book and doing some things like that. And then, Andy and team came to me and Dave came to me and said, hey, we'd love to have you on the board. And this was just right before COVID, if I recall. And we had the team over from The UK. And I remember that board meeting specifically because as soon as everybody was getting back on a plane, we said, hey, we might

08:35>> want to talk about this COVID thing. Spent about ten or fifteen minutes talking about that. Of course, we all experienced it together around the world. So, yeah. So I've been on the board and then chairman of the board now for a number of years. And I just love the first and foremost, I love the team. Andy Andy's leadership, I've always appreciated. And clearly And

Board Composition and Equity Challenges Over Time

Nathan Latka

08:55how many folks today are full time?

Andrew Barraclough

08:57>> We have 70.

08:59Around 60. 60 ish now. Yeah.

09:03>> You know, and so we've in the last couple of years we've really managed, you know, costs and have been on a path to profitability. And now, you know, everything's really starting to turn with Andy's leadership and actually starting to invest back into the company, which is really exciting. And so, yeah, I just had great belief in in this company's opportunities and growth and and they work hard and and, you know, they I always say every day

09:27>> with Andy or the team is a is a good energy day. You know, they're they're not downers. They they have smiles on their faces and they move forward. And I think in today's world as hard as everybody works, that's a big deal.

Nathan Latka

09:37Hey, folks. If we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latka. I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it, which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies. Thank you so much for that. After the book, I launched this show and went on to create founderpath.com. I raised a large fund to do non dilutive deals with B2B software founders. So far,

10:05we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the interview. Andy's cutting up the code. He's the product guy. He's in there doing the work. And now it's just like, okay. Now you're CEO. Now you're talking to customers too.

Co-Founder Departures and Nonoperational Equity

Nathan Latka

10:30Right? You're doing all the customer calls. Right? Or or hanging out with the customer team. So that's exciting. I don't wanna skip over a key part of the story though, Lonnie. So you joined the board in 2019. I wanna understand sort of how you guys thought about equity early on and what the board structure looked like when you joined. Was it two, three, five, seven people? What was the board composition?

Andrew Barraclough

10:46>> We had what do we see, Andy? What do we have? I think we had six Okay. Time roughly. And, yeah, I think, you know, even back then, as Andy referenced, you know, his own equity, there was always a conversation about it within the board and within the group, and wanting, you know, to get more and just with the makeup, the more money we were taking on, of course, dilution was starting to happen and

Nathan Latka

11:09How much had you guys raised?

Andrew Barraclough

11:12>> Andy, at that time?

11:14So that time we were probably

11:17so we went through I mean, I guess we were probably somewhere between the 15 and 20 mark at that Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:24Yep.

11:24The Series A in 2019 was with Origin Ventures, think, for about 9,000,000, right? Something like that?

Andrew Barraclough

11:29Yeah. Yeah. So we had we originally, yeah, raised some funds through Mercia, then Mercia followed on with Origins at that round, and then a stage later as well. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

11:39So Mercy and Origin have been fantastic partners based on everything you guys have told me. I've had the chance to chat with, I think, one or two of them and was really impressed. But I guess, Lani, when you joined the board and there was sort of all floating idea on the board agenda of like, hey. What should the equity split look like for the go forward management? Why wasn't sort of anything like like, you know, we

11:58obviously pushed that once FounderPath came in, but why do you think that didn't happen ahead of time or before that?

Andrew Barraclough

12:03>> You know, I think that at that time, just with the investments that were coming in, there was a lot of protection of those investments. And there was some equity that was being, you know, rolled out, but not to the point or level that you guys had recommended in an effort to raise, you know, the capital with you. And so there definitely was a push from the leadership team. I think we just had some some level of

12:24>> protection from the board at that time and saying, hey, let's let's take everything we've done here and invest it and let's move forward and let's really get this thing growing. And so I think there was just a delay. I don't believe it was ever we don't want to give more. It's just let's now that we're on the playing field, you've got the equity. Let's see how you play. I think that was pretty much the deal during

12:45>> that time.

12:46And I think it's always tough as well because you're going through those stages of trying to raise. And at the time, I think we were concentrating so much on what we wanted to do with that within the business. We were not necessarily, like, thinking about it from our perspective at that early stage when we were going out to do that raise. And that's something that chatting to a lot of the other founders and things, having that

13:05intention to go in. So you've had those expectations set up front. And so I think we're often coming out the back of those conversations and then trying to negotiate for things. And it becomes more difficult to do at that stage because you've gone through all the excitement of everything come out the other side. So, you know, things just kind of, you know, nudged on and nudged on at that time, and it wasn't through, yeah, anyone trying

13:24to, you know, do anything untoward or bad towards us. It was just it was just the makeup of, like, how we went into that. I think that's something that I've definitely learned, you know, through that time. And I've and I've I've heard from other founders who have gone through the same same kind of struggles and and how to be more purposeful in that at later stages.

13:42>> And Nathan, I think to the question too later on, you know, I'd say in the last three years, I remember one of the meetings I had specifically with one of our investors and, you know, the tone was now changing into what do we need? Who do you need? Who do we need to make sure, you know, is still flying the plane? So we have those conversations. Obviously, Andy was at the top of that list and we

14:02>> had a couple of other people. And so we, you know, there was an openness to it with both of our lead investors actually. They were saying, okay, we've done a lot of work, you know, and we've made some progress. Clearly on the profitability side, we've made some significant process. But now how do we take this to the next level? And so you came in, you know, sometime after that. So I think the appetite was open even

14:23>> more and we were talking about percentages and what could we do for Andy? You came in and blew that out of the water in a positive way. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:35Look, so picking up at that part of the story from Founder Path's perspective, when we got the original data room from you guys, there was a couple things. Number one, we loved the business. We know the space pretty well. We know some other M and A activity in the space, and I also know the other products in the space really well. And when I got the product tour and talked to one or two of your customers,

14:51I said, woah. This product is already feature parity with much larger companies in the exact same space. These guys just gotta get sales and marketing done and right? And you're gonna see the growth, and you're seeing that now. But one of the things the biggest risk we saw back in February when we were diligencing the Voxbot me deal despite loving the product was and I'm gonna generalize here because I don't remember the exact numbers, but when

15:14I asked Andy and Lani Yu, hey, what is the go forward management team? Who's gonna take this thing to the next level? And you guys listed, you know, your key names, right? And there were several of them. And I then went back to my team and I looked at the cap table and I sort of looked at how much equity those names had. And I don't know what the exact number was, but it was something I

15:31wanna say was like maybe something between like eight and maybe 15% of sort of like, this was the group that you guys said was gonna change the company and drive off future growth and they were already diluted down to like eight to 15 ish percent. And it was something on the order of like four to nine people, right? And my guys, wanna make sure I'm not misspeaking or something like that, right?

Andrew Barraclough

15:47>> I think that's right. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Think that's right.

FounderPath Diligence and the Equity Reset Proposal

Nathan Latka

15:50Yeah. Was right in that range. And so I saw this as an opportunity. I said, ah, the board doesn't maybe the board wants to put in money, maybe they don't or the the investors. I said, but we FounderPath can align with management here and use our capital coming as a forcing function to get a board resolution done to reestablish a new ESOP pool and then reissue those shares however the board wants to the go forward management

16:13to increase their equity. When we propose that, Lani, Andy, what was internal communication like at the board level and the management level? What were you guys thinking?

Andrew Barraclough

16:20>> You know, we well, what I was thinking and and, Andy, I'll let you talk to this too. But what I was thinking was refreshing. How refreshing is that? You know, you you're talking to an investor that actually wants to put more equity back in the hands of those that are going to take this to the next level. And how do we do it? And I knew at that time we have a very, I would say, communicative

16:39>> and cohesive board. You know, it's not they're here to support. We may not get everything or the company at that time might not get everything they want, but they're open to it. So we had created a really nice culture with the board. Prior to that, I think we had a little more of a hostile culture with the board and and maybe a typical type old school board. But this one has been very supportive. So I thought

17:01>> it was refreshing. I believe when Andy, you know, and I started chatting, he thought it was refreshing. So I started working on the board side of it with the investors and just, you know, open to the idea. So if you go back to that three year period, we'd already started saying, hey, we need to get more. And what you were talking about was more than what I had at least suggested to the board. So I thought

17:22>> it was refreshing. So as we got into it, we had one board meeting, where I was still I stepped in for a period of time as acting CEO, in transition, you know, as we went through a couple of changes and I, we had proposed as an executive team something different in terms of looking at founder path and basically got the nod to go ahead and move forward in continuing to talk with you guys. And so I

17:46>> think and I'll stop there and let Eddie take it from there. But we had you know, it was a really refreshing approach. And then we were geeking out a little bit, Nathan, about you personally and the work that you've done in your company and how you do it and your podcasts and your knowledge. And, you know, so we were kind of communicating back and forth with everybody. And I think everybody was was really eating that up.

18:09>> So, Baron, I'll let you speak to it, Andy.

18:12Yeah. And I think I think that's

18:13>> yeah.

18:14That's right. And I think it was obviously kind of there were conversations that, yeah, Lonnie would have with the board, you know, on one stream of things and kind of I was thinking about the kind of broader team as well. But, yeah, I think it was the combination of the excitement of kind of working with with you and the team at Founder Path, Nathan, and kind of, yeah, you have knowledge in the area. The work that's

18:33going on there is like, how can we learn from that and help the team bring the team along on that journey as well? And so, yeah, did open up the chance to have that opportunity. And I guess an outside perspective coming into it, which maybe we hadn't had before, right? Because the conversations are all happening internally or from within the investors', you know, own, you know, meetings that they're having and things like that, having an outside

18:53perspective coming into that and saying, hey, this is really where it should be, you know, help to kind of facilitate those conversations moving forward and get us into a better spot.

19:01>> Yeah, it was fresh.

Nathan Latka

19:04So Fresh is a good word. Fresh is a

19:06good word.

19:06Yes. So just for you guys listening on the podcast, basically what we effectively said, and I'm sort of paraphrasing and summarize here, but we basically say, hey. Look. We'll fund the business with a million or a million and 0.5 or whatever it is. But at at the funding date, we also need to see a board resolution that establishes a new ten, fifteen, whatever was ESOP pool, and a chunk of that ESOP will immediately be reallocated sort

19:26of to management go forward. And we were able to sort of bring all these things together and get it done. Andy, Lani, one of the key pieces of the story that we skipped over, but it happens to so many founders and you never read about it in the press because everyone is really shy and they're not sure how to talk about it in a positive way. Anytime you have more than one co founder and a company's

19:43been around for more than ten years, you're gonna have co founder conflict. It doesn't have to be bad conflict. You're just gonna have diverging interests and diverging priorities, and eventually, you're gonna maybe have one co founder that leaves the business. So you have a big chunk of equity that we call nonoperational, which, you know, maybe they deserve it, maybe they don't. That's besides the point. But you guys have only said really great things about the founding

20:03team. There was never anything negative mentioned, just the fact that diverging priorities. Talk a little bit about sort of how the company ended up with so much sort of equity nonoperational sort of outside the business and why that happened.

Board Reaction to the ESOP Reset and New Capital

Andrew Barraclough

20:16Yeah. I think it was I mean, when we yeah. Me and me and Dave kind of start start up the business, and and very early on, we had another guy, Tom Williams, joined us kind of five, six months into the business. And so we we made him a a founder as well and and kind of saw it as, you know, a great kind of unit between us in order to kind of drive the business forward. Tom

20:37was focused purely on the revenue side, Dave as CEO, and me from a technical and product side. And we always, you know, as I said, like those initial years and everything, it was like, it was lot, but it was like we had great fun doing it and everything. Dave then moved over to The US because we realized that we've got a huge opportunity there, and that gave us a good split of someone revenue focused in both

21:01areas. It was great because at the time, InMoment actually gave us some office space at their office in order to sit ourselves in a spot in The US. We were trying

21:11to keep it close.

Nathan Latka

21:13Smart, Lani. Smart.

Andrew Barraclough

21:16I think, yeah, like, as time went on, yeah, there are different approaches and different thought processes, everyone's kind of coming at it with a slightly different perspective on things, you know. And it definitely there's, tension that can build there between founders. As I said, it's a long journey to go through and not have those tensions and those things happen.

21:40Tom had left the business during COVID, his time.

21:47It's a long journey for anyone to go through, and you've got to be all in. Dave got to the same point where he felt like it was his time to move away from the business as well. But together we've driven that business forward and done a lot. And so I think everything is deserving to those folks. And, you know, I literally texting back and forth with with Dave just prior to this to this call as well.

22:14So, you know, we went through a tougher period, definitely, and have kind of built things back up. But it's great to now kind of have that, you know, support as well from those that were in the business, that continues to drive forward. Same with our previous CFO, we've seen him out in Park City, and kind of extend your network and your reach into other areas as well. So although they're not within the business, like, there's always

Co-Founder Departures: Tom and Dave Leaving the Business

Andrew Barraclough

22:37someone else to call on, it's great to be in that position because it could so easily go a different direction, I think, with with when these things happen.

22:45>> And then I'll just add, Nathan, if I may, a little color to that as well. It followed Andy all the way through that. I remember that all those days and as we were going through it and I think all the way back to Tom, you know, Tom had felt like he had run his course with what he had contributed to the company.

Nathan Latka

23:00What was Tom?

Andrew Barraclough

23:01>> He was the CFO?

Nathan Latka

23:03CRO. CRO.

Andrew Barraclough

23:04>> CRO. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's those different stages of the company where, you know, a founder or an executive comes in and says, okay, I've taken it from zero to 10 or whatever the case may be and who's going take it to 10 to 20 and what does that actually mean? And I think that's part of what we saw. And then when Dave decided to step away from the company, it was good for his

23:24>> own health. He had some other ideas and recognized, I think, respectfully that maybe, you know, there was some different leadership that was needed to move on from there. And then also the CFO at the time, within a thirty day period or so roughly, it also kind of come to that same conclusion. I think the message of that is is that that's why culture is so important and, you know, working with teams closely is because we work

23:48>> hard and it can wear people down, you know, over time. And both of those individuals, actually, all three of those individuals are succeeding and flying and doing different things. And Dave's just started a new company and he's excited about it and everybody communicates and connects. But it was time even for me to step aside and step back into the chairman role, let Andy go. And Andy has just taken things in the last seven months, you know,

24:11>> to a new level. So it's it's I feel like a proud dad, but it makes me feel old. He's done all this by himself and, of course, with the team, but he's really doing a remarkable job all the way down into getting, you know, the relationship with you. So

Nathan Latka

24:24Well, yeah. And we appreciate I appreciate you guys talking so openly about this. You know, Lonnie, you sit on a lot of boards. We diligence a lot of companies, and this happens, like, literally 95% of the time is there some kind of cofounder conflict like this, and there's a variety of ways to solve it. Right? You could pay cash to buy out on you know, and this is this is all this could also be early angels.

24:43Right? Or, you know, just nonoperational nonoperational equity. You could raise money to then go buy out those and do a secondary. You could reestablish a new ESOP pool with board approval that effectively dilutes the whole business and then gives more incentive to go forward management. Lani, have you seen any other effective strategies to incentivize go forward management when there's a big chunk of unoperational equity?

Andrew Barraclough

25:02>> You know, I think we've done some things along the way even, you know, through kind of a tough three year period, if you will, just with the economy and everything kind of shifting to the left and right. So short term stuff, bonuses and, you know, things like that is. So it'd be more on a lower level scale if you will. So if we couldn't get the equity there and you know what's interesting too, I one time

25:24>> wanted to give equity to an executive team, another organization that I was there and everybody was grateful for it. But one guy and he came to me and said, hey, I've got two kids in college and I'm trying to get through that and cash is more important to me now than it will be in the future. And we sat down as a team and, you know, worked with HR to make sure we were we were above

25:44>> board doing everything correctly. But we did something completely different for him that kept him in the seat all the way until, you know, like five six years later when the company started to transition. So I think sometimes what motivates us is not always what we think and, you know, Andy's case, clearly he's been there from the beginning. So being able to do what we've done, what you've done for him, and we were able to prove has

The $750K FounderPath Deal Terms

Andrew Barraclough

26:08>> been a really big, you know, boost to him. So nontraditional stuff is still very effective and we've used it from small to big.

Nathan Latka

26:16Let's wrap up, guys, the last three minutes here with just sort of the Founder Path experience. So are you guys comfortable sharing what deal we ended up doing together, the amount and maybe the term or whatever you're comfortable sharing, Andy?

Andrew Barraclough

26:27Yeah. So we ended up doing seven fifty ks, so over twenty four months. We

26:39looked at a few different ranges with that, and we started off smaller,

26:46sat somewhere in the middle because we had a very strategic plan for coming into this next year that we want to be able to utilize those funds for, and have kind of earmarked that for some areas that we know we've got some success coming. We've had a lot of companies kind of, you know, transitioning from other tools coming to us, saying that they want to use us and from a completely new buyer set. So we were

27:10like, alright, this is something we need to go after because it's not often these things kind of land on your doorstep in this way. And so recognizing that, that's something we wanted to move quickly on. You know, again, we've been having the conversations from February, right? But I think there was a lot of back and forth in deciding what we wanted to do, and you were extremely supportive in that period of time.

Nathan Latka

27:29What a rush. We wanted you guys to love your pro form a, and Skyler, your CFO is very talented, and it was clear you guys were crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's, which we appreciated.

Andrew Barraclough

27:39Yeah, no, but when when the decision was made and we moved forward with that, it was, like, it was extremely, extremely quick and, you know, very supportive on that and kind of moved fast, and the team have been phenomenal. And I think it's that mix of kind of, you know, the the supporting team there around it. And I think the again, we we got a chance to catch up in London, kind of, you know, talk products,

27:58talk the know, that aspect of it from us, like going to raise from somewhere else. Like, that was something that is is completely unique to Founder Path and to you guys. And that was what made it important for us because we knew there was a relationship there we could build on, and there'd be more that you'd be able to support us on things moving forward. So, yeah, we were always like, this feels extremely right for us,

28:24and of moved that forward with the board and got to a great position and excited now moving forward.

Comparing FounderPath to Other Capital Providers

Nathan Latka

28:29Feel the same. Lonnie, take us home here with last thoughts. You've been a part of a lot of companies. I'm sure you've seen all kinds of capital structures outside of equity, you know, debt, you know, factoring, you know, things like founder of app, etcetera. Can you compare and contrast a little bit? And negatives are okay too. But how did you and the board analyze sort of our process, our deal compared to any other conversations you were

28:48having or what you've seen in the past with banks and other debt providers?

Andrew Barraclough

28:51>> Yeah. And I think that we evaluated that too when we were chatting, you know, with you. And Skyler and I spent a lot of time together, and I know Andy and Skyler, you know, at the hip to hip now. But we looked at other alternatives and you start to look at things and I think Andy probably said it early on. You want to work with somebody that actually can bring value to you. So it's not just

29:11>> about the equity and the way it's structured. It's also, you know, we felt like you could be a big part of our team at whatever level or the founder path organization. And then you look at time, time to money. You know, we were looking at that and and I mean, we knew we could go get some other money. Then in fact, I'll tell you, we've had, you know, current investors come back and say, hey, wait a

29:31>> minute, you know, and I'll give Andy the kudos here. Wait a minute. We now think we may wanna jump back in here and this and that. Andy held firm. Yeah. Andy held firm on it. We had a meeting and Andy it it all happened pretty quick. So for us, what we're getting is more than just, you know, the equity. And we we discovered that with you and your push to get, you know, the the go forward

29:52>> team, further down that path with additional equity. And we knew we were getting a team, you know, whether it's you or your extended team and some knowledge, and then support. I've worked with bad boards that, you know, pretty much just slay and beat and drag people through a process on the front end and in the back end, and it's just arduous. And what everybody needs now is lift. And I think that that's what you've created for

30:15>> Andy and team is some lift.

Voxpopme's New UX Research Offering

Nathan Latka

30:17So We're excited about what you're doing. I wanna also use this opportunity to promote you guys because you have launched a new UX tool, is directly targeted audience listening right now, which are software founders that might wanna do UX testing. You know, we mentioned some of the bigger players in the space that have since consolidated user testing, user Zoom. They're too expensive. They're bulky. I've tested all of them and frankly, I think Voxpot Me is ahead

30:36of those folks in terms of feature parity on some of these angles. Andy, take us home here real quick. If people wanna test your new UX offering, where can they find it? What's the URL? How can they get involved?

Andrew Barraclough

30:46Yeah. Just jump onto voxpotme.com. Get in touch through there. Can, yeah, we can help you launch at kind of multiple different scales, but make sure that, you know, everyone's putting the customer and the consumer front and center in all of their business decisions, which is something we always talk about so much and often don't do enough of, right? And so we make that a hell of a lot easier for everyone to do. So, yeah, excited to

31:10be working with a bunch more people in that space.

Closing Summary and Call to Action

Nathan Latka

31:14Guys, watch out for BoxPopme. They're capital efficient, raising just call it $1,516,000,000 bucks to grow revenues to 10,000,000. So they've been efficient, obviously, working with a lot of different groups of providers. We're excited to have funded them with $750,000 at FounderPath on a twenty four month term, but more importantly, we were able to work with the chairman of the board and Lonnie and the go forward CEO, Andy, to reset some of the equity chunks of the

31:35business to incentivize the go forward team. Andy, back in day one in 2012, owned only 2% of the company. We wanna get him up to where he needs to be now as the go forward CEO, and we weren't able to do that without him and Lonnie's support on the board. The full story was a good one. Enjoy the episode. Lonnie, Andy, thanks for taking us to the top. Appreciate

Andrew Barraclough

31:52>> it. Thank you very much.

Nathan Latka

31:53Good spending time.