Daniel Summers | Electronic Lab Logs

Daniel Summers | Electronic Lab Logs

[00:00:00] Welcome to the amplified CEO with VC and serial entrepreneur, Richard Stroupe with today's guest, Daniel Summers. He's the CEO and founding partner of Electronic Lab Logs. It's a cloud-based platform built to help labs reduce errors, streamline operations, and stay compliant.

[00:00:25] Richard: Daniel, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate it. No, 

[00:00:28] Daniel: thank you. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:00:29] Richard: [00:00:30] So we met on, uh, via Jim Roberts. We did, yeah. Jim Roberts. Are, are you super connected with, uh, his group and what he does as far as the meetings down in Wilmington? 

[00:00:39] Daniel: Yeah, I am. I, uh, I, I can't, can't help but de once you're in, you know, if you're not there, you get even get called out.

Thanks, Jim. You know? Uh, but no, it's been great. I'm, I, I do as many of the events as I can and, you know, I'm not naturally like an extrovert kind of person, so mm-hmm. I have to do things like that to keep connected and stay, you know, stay. [00:01:00] It's good. 

[00:01:00] Richard: Well, it, it's good that you have somebody like a champion Yeah.

For people like us. Oh, for sure. You know, business owners and investors to kind of come in and network Right. And learn from one another because I mean, like, like you said, we get very siloed in our work, and whether we're extroverted or introverted, it's, it's, you know, we need a, we need a reason to come outta the house, especially, you know, when you have, uh, family obligations.

[00:01:21] Daniel: Yeah. A hundred percent that, 

yeah, that's right. Yeah. I, you can. You know, you can get lost and get, and, and for right reasons. You know, you have a lot to get done or you have whatever. [00:01:30] So it's good to stay connected and stay, you know, go to the meetings and get different perspectives. Like the one thing I really appreciate about his events and others like it, or, you know, you'll get more sometimes from like a plumber.

Then you will a software guy. I'm a software guy, but I'd get more from perspective from like a fencing guy or whatever. Right. You know, from industries you wouldn't expect, I would say. Yeah. And, uh, so that's kind of the cool thing that you get. So, yeah. Yeah. I've enjoyed it and, and enjoyed Jim's events and, and it's connecting us to you, so it's been great.

[00:01:59] Richard: Yeah. No, it's been great. And 

[00:01:59] Speaker: [00:02:00] speaking of plumbers, I attended, uh, this meetup of real estate professionals. Did you at, at the CIE, it was a couple weeks ago. Oh, no way. They invited me to do a presentation. Okay. And, uh, very interesting, because you get to meet not only the, the finance people, but you, you meet contractors.

Sure. You meet flippers, you meet investors. Yeah. From all walks of life. They must have been like 70, 80 people there. 

[00:02:22] Daniel: I did not know. Did you know my wife was in real estate? 

[00:02:24] Richard: No. 

[00:02:25] Daniel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she, she sells real estate, so pretty cool time for us. You know, I've [00:02:30] been doing my business. She's been building hers.

Mm-hmm. So Jennifer Summer's real estate team, so she has a team. And she's always done real estate her whole career, but has recently, you know, branched off. So she hangs her license with Keller Williams and Keller Williams in that. Yeah. So she, uh, yeah, so she's in that world too. She, okay, so 

[00:02:46] Richard: does she serve as all of Wilmington?

[00:02:48] Daniel: Yeah, the whole, kind of the whole coast especially, um, and, you know, south port, the whole, the whole area, yeah. Mm-hmm. So the coast is her specialty and she, she, she does well. She has a great team of some young [00:03:00] energetic gals that help her sell as well, guys and gals, I should say. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's been great.

So yeah, real estate, fun and challenging on its own level, you know, different. Yeah, for sure. Has different, 

[00:03:10] Richard: especially like today's 

[00:03:11] Speaker: interest rate. 

[00:03:12] Daniel: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:03:14] Richard: But this market's always but a cool 

[00:03:15] Speaker: market. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always very energetic and hot with the Absolutely. The yeah.

Properties and things. 

[00:03:21] Daniel: Yeah. So we've, we've enjoyed that world and actually when we first came in, we had talked about here in Hampstead and you know, we found really [00:03:30] everywhere we've lived has been to her credit and her finding, you know, good spots and cold properties and that sort of thing. So yeah, it's been awesome.

[00:03:35] Richard: No, that's great. You're from Georgia? 

[00:03:38] Daniel: Georgia originally. Yeah. Okay. So I grew up in a town called Pike County, which is Pike County. Yep. So it's south of Atlanta, kind of. We're squeezed tucked between like Macon and Atlanta, kind of right below the racetrack area. Uh, so Pike County, Georgia, kind of a rural, small high school I grew up in.

Right. Uh, I was one of six, so we were a big, yeah. Wow. That's a big family. Big Catholic, you know, [00:04:00] six children, family, yeah. Awesome. Fun time. And we, so I grew up, uh, in Georgia. And then, um, had had fun learning, like hard work in construction industry through my father. He kind of taught me that, and then eventually went into software in Georgia also.

Mm-hmm. So as I was like learning construction and all that, I was also like, man, I don't know. This is what I want to do for a living, you know? Right. So, yeah. So eventually, uh, grateful for the work ethic that was learned, all of [00:04:30] that. But I remember the day I was in, um, this is a true story. I was in Georgia digging.

Like in the, the Red Clay of Georgia, if anybody knows. I was digging footings for this huge concrete tilt up building and I was think, and that was my senior year in high school, just gotten into learning computers and I was like, this is interesting. And I was like, this is not what I wanna do for a living.

I think this computers thing is a great idea. So I went, that's officially when I was like, I'm gonna go this route. 

[00:04:56] Richard: Okay. 

[00:04:57] Daniel: Uh, so then I, uh, took a job [00:05:00] with a company called Flight Line Software, which was my first foot into the software world. Okay. And that was, um, they did like bidding software for flight attendants and Right.

Uh, pilots and that sort of thing. So. Did that and was super lucky to really grow into that career through great mentors and connections there. Mm-hmm. That, uh, eventually brought me to where I am now, so, yeah. So 

[00:05:22] Richard: did your dad own his own construction company? 

[00:05:24] Daniel: Well, he did. He always did. Um, he was originally like a brick mason, right?

Mm-hmm. So he, [00:05:30] he started there. They moved from Pennsylvania to Georgia and had, um, me and the other kids here in Georgia. Okay. Uh, so two, my two oldest were born in Pennsylvania, and then my sister, me, my brother, my other sister, we were all born in Georgia and he, uh, he did construction, moved into eventually big tilled up concrete buildings and eventually large commercial stuff.

But that's really what he does now. Mm-hmm. Later, uh, later stage in life. But at the time it was everything [00:06:00] from big commercial, you know, whatever, whatever was, uh, uh, he was involved, was all hardworking, commercial construction. So that's what we learned in. It was great. We, I loved it. 

[00:06:11] Richard: So even at an 

[00:06:11] Speaker: early age, he got you guys up and said, let's go to the site.

And 

[00:06:14] Daniel: Well, it was also his way, dude. He was a great dad. It was his way of, um, connecting, connecting with each of us. So we all took turns going to work with dad, you know, and so the girls, it was like, you know, you'll sweep or you'll do whatever for, for me and, uh, my brother, I mean, we worked, you know, [00:06:30] and so a lot of it was, you know, holding the hammer, holding the tape measure or whatever, you know.

But eventually we were real working and. Um, my brother, fast forward today, he has a real successful electrical contracting company, commercial, and Okay. Uh, dad's still in the industry and I went the software route, so. Okay. 

[00:06:46] Richard: Are you the only one in the family that went to the software route? 

[00:06:49] Daniel: I am, yeah.

Everybody else? Uh, yeah, I'm the only software person. Yeah. 

[00:06:54] Richard: What, 

[00:06:54] Speaker: what, uh, professions are your other brothers and sisters? You said your brother's an electrician? Yep. 

[00:06:58] Daniel: So from the oldest to the [00:07:00] youngest, my, uh, my oldest sister is very, um, artistic and she's always designed like purses and that sort of thing.

Really good with that sort of stuff and design. My second sister, Marsha, who I mentioned, is coming to town this week. She's excited to see her. Uh, she's, um, she's a mom of four kids. Her, her and her husband live in, uh, south Georgia. Okay. On the border. And they're like a Chick-fil-A family, so he owns a Chick-fil-A there, and, uh, they're awesome.

Then my other sister is, [00:07:30] uh, also in Georgia, and so she travels with her husband in RV life. So they lived that life and homeschooled their youngest now? Yeah, he's about to leave, and then I'm here with my wife and my oldest, uh, my only, uh, son. He's 17 years old or about to be 17. Mm-hmm. Um, and then my brother is in George also.

He, he has a couple kids and then my youngest is, was in the Navy, so she's the only one offshore. So she's over in, uh, the UK now and like south, south of London. Right. Uh, on the [00:08:00] coast. Yeah. With her husband there. So yeah. Spread out. Uh, but it's awesome. Yeah, 

[00:08:04] Richard: it's, 

it's always interesting 'cause uh, I love to talk to entrepreneurs and successful ones who, uh, who've had some mentorship early on.

Yeah. And it always, it's either a family member, almost every person we've talked to has says either it was an aunt, uncle, mom, dad, somebody there provided that inspiration and kind of the, yeah. The early steps of, you know, this is kind of how, how it'll work as a, well as a family. 

[00:08:29] Daniel: Well, it's my dad a [00:08:30] hundred percent.

Well, it, from and on, multiple fronts. So like, he was a hard worker first of all. Mm-hmm. Always modeled that, always took care of us, always like provi. It was great in that respect. Taught me hard work, as I said. Right. But what was interesting is as I went into software and later, he was still in the construction industry, he started doing software for him.

Yeah. And so he built his own site for his, for the clients he was managing to check up on his site. It was really cool. It was like before Facebook was really a thing and posting and I was like, [00:09:00] man, this could be something. Yeah. So it was fun. He literally would hard code HTML, you know? Right. And do that.

So yeah, that was my launch pad into software for sure. Um, and then getting into that and, and connecting with the folks in, um, in Fayetteville, Georgia, and mm-hmm. In that kind of software world and getting into the startup scene, you know, doing hopping from contract to contract was, it was awesome. I loved it.

So. Awesome. 

[00:09:23] Richard: And how many years did 

[00:09:24] Speaker: you do that? 

[00:09:25] Daniel: My whole career. So I started, I mean, it's been 20 plus years now. Okay. Um, so I've done everything [00:09:30] from, like I said, the, the pilot software. To, um, to different, you know, websites and front end, like when flash design was a big thing. I learned all of that. So I was kind of a toggle between front end and backend development.

Right. Um, but then I eventually started doing more startup stuff. So we did a big, um, competitor to Zoom, which was, uh, my, uh, a conferencing company, the conference group. That was a real fun project. Before that was a guy who was starting a sport, so he was Okay. Uh, doing a [00:10:00] social media platform around that.

Um, so it's kind of all over the place. Yeah. But then eventually my friend talked me into lab logs, which became, you know, yeah. What it is today. 

[00:10:10] Richard: So 

[00:10:11] Speaker: your company lab logs that, that's the first company that you've launched as a founder? 

[00:10:15] Daniel: That's my first, my, my official company. I mean, I had like software Yeah.

You small website. But my first real company launch was lab logs and, uh. That was, it started, you know, a friend of a friend who had, you know, you always have, and if [00:10:30] you're in software you have, everybody's like, Hey, I have an idea for an app. You're like, exactly. And so you always, you're like, yeah, we'll have a coffee.

You know, whatever. Right. Well, this was another one of those, a friend of a friend who was like, Hey, I think you might have something here. You might wanna hear 'em out. He worked at the hospital and he was a lab guy and he explained that, you know, they have still a lot of paper processes mm-hmm. For tracking all of their quality control documents, all of their compliance data, really.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so he asked me if I could build 'em a software that he could put on a disc and use. That's what he said, literally. [00:11:00] And I was like, well, we could do software a little differently than that. But yeah, I, I couldn't believe it was such a shared need across the whole industry. And, you know, fast forward, you know, you know, in healthcare sometimes there's pockets that are just a little bit behind in technology, and I think the lab was one of them.

[00:11:14] Richard: Is that because of like regulations and laws? 

[00:11:17] Daniel: A lot of it's regulations, yeah. 

A hundred percent. Um, and a lot of it is, we're still coming off the heels of. The requirement mm-hmm. Of like EHR data, you know, [00:11:30] it, the mandate from, you know, say what you will about some of the Obamacare type stuff. But one of the things that came out of it with the mandate for, um, you know, your electronic medical records was really good, right?

Mm-hmm. But people came kicking you screaming, you know, so because it, you know, we all see the benefits now, but it was a lot of work. Um, and so that's come far and there's a lot of, it's still a lot of issues, but it's come really far. Yeah. The lab hasn't really gotten there on the compliance side, so there's a lot of instrument, what we track [00:12:00] specifically.

Is you have to prove that your tests are accurate, right? Mm-hmm. How do you do that? You say, we know that they're accurate because we tested all the equipment regularly, we trained all our people on how to test it regularly, and we have proof of all that. That's what we track. 

[00:12:12] Richard: Okay? 

[00:12:13] Daniel: Currently that's all done on paper.

We do it electronically, but start doing that electronically. You can see where that goes. Oh yeah. Right? Yeah. So you have a bunch of good data. You also have it scale, right? Management stuff that the C-suite really appreciates and can benefit from. So we kind of struck gold in that, [00:12:30] in that sense, on the data side, right?

Um, it was, can we make this a business, right? And so, so luckily we were able to do that. We partnered with some folks that eventually helped 

us do that. 

[00:12:40] Richard: So the data that you're collecting and monitoring, is it on the equipment or the samples? Like for example, blood work, right? You know, or all the above?

[00:12:48] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And it's, uh, very common question. We don't do anything PHI. So all the results is what you would typically. Think of when you think of like, you know, what you're testing and [00:13:00] equipment is true. They, the, the whole point is you test somebody's blood or whatever sample to get a result.

We don't deal with that data. Okay. We deal with When you did that, how do you know that result was real? Well, well, okay. You know that because in order for this. Machine to correctly calculate your hemoglobin, you have to run QC a positive and a negative twice a day. And we record that. You do that. Okay.

The person that did it was trained properly. They have documentation of that. And so we have a suite of your compliance data. Okay. In the lab. [00:13:30] The catch is, why does this matter? Well, of course it matters. We all want real things, but it, they have to prove it or else you'll literally get fined even shut down as a lab, right.

If you are not doing this stuff. Yeah. So it's, it's real important in lab techs get it, they understand why it's important. Yeah. And they actually, in a lot of ways love the process of documentation of it, so, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:13:49] Richard: Very 

interesting. 

[00:13:50] Daniel: It's very cool. It's, yeah, I had no idea what I was getting into. Uh, I thought a lab was a lab was a lab, but, uh, you know, it's, it's a cool world and it, it, I've really [00:14:00] enjoyed it.

And so it's cool to see where it's, uh, come and where it's going. 

[00:14:03] Richard: So I, I imagine this is applicable to other, for example, you know, academic research institutions that are doing. Uh, analysis on Sure. Samples, not medical, but could be something different like chemical. Yeah. Uh, or even in law enforcement, like your DNA type stuff.

Yeah. 

[00:14:20] Daniel: Like 

chain of command, chain of custody stuff rather. Yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So, so in the early days, you know, we did the shotgun applies where it was [00:14:30] really, whoever would give us money, we'd take it. You know, if you're right, you wanna be a client of ours. Sure. You know, and so the truth of it is we're trying to find our market and it, it is pretty applicable almost everywhere.

Right? So anything clinical mm-hmm. Data. So anything that touches patient testing. Right. Really that's our sweet spot. Mm-hmm. So when people think big lab stuff, they think PPD, like all of these, like clinical trials. We actually do a lot of that too. But where we shine is in the late stage. [00:15:00] 'cause you're now into clinical.

Okay. So in the early stages, when you're testing process and you're documenting your log books, all that, that's a whole different can of worms. We, we care about, you're on the patient side now, are you sure you're doing everything right? Mm-hmm. 'cause it matters now. Right? Right. So that's where we come in.

So one of our biggest, you know, uh, clients. Um, to date is we work with St. Jude and some of our other big cancer research. So there's a lot of that. We have a lot of academic research labs, um, both, uh, university labs and other, um, so it's applicable everywhere. But again, where we [00:15:30] started was back of the hospital labs, reference labs, like your send outs that you would send off mm-hmm.

Um, to other private labs. That's where we started, but it, you know, our, yeah, we kind of sprayed it all. Interesting as far as the market is concerned. So 

[00:15:43] Richard: once you've identified a need and you met a friend of a friend who said, Hey man, we could really use your help over here. Yeah, yeah. What was the next step To build like your MVP to get some early validation, 

right?

[00:15:54] Daniel: Yeah. So this is where the journey began, right? Yeah. Well, so the early days we're sitting around and we're [00:16:00] dreaming, right? And saying, is there, is this real? Like is there something to this? You know? And so I remember the day where we all sat in the living room, you talked out and there was something to it, and finally we realized, okay, there is something to it, but.

How the heck do we do it? We need some help. Right? So we reached out to, um, another gentleman that was a friend of a friend, uh, still a partner to date, Randy Long. Um, and he helped really guide us in the early days on how do you literally, how do you form a company, right? Mm-hmm. How do you do the bylaws?

How do you everything? Right? And, um, [00:16:30] he was instrumental in helping us get there and connecting us with others that were there. And so one of the first things we, he did with us is we partnered, we put the company together, partnered with it, and we got somebody to really do full market research to make sure we weren't wasting our time.

Right, 

right. Um, and see is, is there really something here? 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, and we, and there were legs, you know, we found out there was something to it. And I'll never, so practically how it started was, I'll never forget the conversation where I, where we were in our, uh, [00:17:00] coworking space and I brought Randy and our other, uh, Jeremy Sikorski.

He's the one who started this thing with me from day one. Uh, and he and I sat down with our other, uh, friend, Josh Harkes. It was a four of us starting the company. And I shared the software because I'm a software guy, I'm, of course I'm gonna build the prototype, right? I'm gonna build the MVP and show that it works.

Mm-hmm. 

And so I walked them all through a demo and me and Jeremy are glowing and we're like, oh my gosh. You know? And so we all high five, we shut it down. I'm literally like turning the lights [00:17:30] back on and we're about to walk out and. And Randy says to me, he's like, oh, that's great. I was like, you know, what do you think?

Kind of attitude. And he's like, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be interesting to see if we can turn it into a company. And I said, Randy, did you not just watch we, I just showed you it works. And he's like, no, no, no. I mean the company. And I was like, oh, you know, it was a complete reframe for me. 'cause I was like, oh, I didn't think about the structure and the, all the stuff I didn't think about.

Right. Right. So [00:18:00] I very much went into this not knowing what I didn't know. Probably a good thing. Right, right. That, that I went in, uh, a little bit blind. It protected me, you know? Uh, but it was good. I had great partners along the way. He, he and others that, um, we, we brought on a seed round, um, ear early on.

And so. We raised, um, uh, the C round first to help get us to the kind of the next, uh, phase of the business, which was taking my MVP and really making it a real [00:18:30] product. We, uh, brought in a CTO to help me do that, really make it enterprise ready. I I had not done anything that full scale yet. Right. I could architect that he, he could really build it and we build it for a couple years and then, uh, ran it in Jeremy's lab here, um, actually in New York.

So he had at the time, moved back to New York. We ran our beta in his three labs in, in New York. So that was our test case. Right. Got it. That was our pilot. 

Okay. 

[00:18:53] Richard: And you launched it here from Wilmington, or? 

[00:18:55] Daniel: Well, we 

built it here in Wilmington. Yeah. And so our company's still here in Wilmington, [00:19:00] North Carolina.

Um, Jeremy at the time was here in Wilmington. Yeah. Um, he's, he's now in upstate New York. Uh, but yeah, we're based out of here. We have a lot of remote workers too, but our. Sales team and, uh, success team is, is here locally in North Carolina. 

[00:19:13] Richard: Okay. 

How big is your team? 

[00:19:15] Daniel: Uh, we're still quite small, which is great.

Um, but, but we're also growing, so we have a team of, uh, eight full-time employees and about 10, um, contractor or r and d uh, folks. Okay. Yeah. And so, um, you know, 18 [00:19:30] ish or set, um, but, uh, we're also excited that we're at the phase where we've recently raised an A round, so I told you we did a seed round.

Then we recently re raised an A round with, um, uh, new partners of ours, Rockmont, who, uh, who led that round. It gave us the ability to kind of scale so that we're in the stage of like, Hey, we figured out the market. Uh, we brought on a VP of sales, uh, Matt Kenny, who's been amazing to help us figure out okay, what do we have here and how do we make this sales [00:20:00] process repeatable?

Right. Right. Um, and, and we're in an exciting time where we're building that up and we have good, happy, referenceable customers that we can point to. That's great. And do that. Yeah. 

[00:20:09] Richard: After you built your MVP Yeah. And you had some early validation Yeah. And you're kind of running it up in, in this lab. Mm-hmm.

Um, when you guys were seeking your initial seed funding, um, did you tap any. Resources here in Wilmington? 

[00:20:24] Daniel: It did. Okay. It did. 

[00:20:25] Richard: How did, how did that work? 

[00:20:26] Daniel: I also, again, being pretty green to the process, I just [00:20:30] didn't know even, so there were things that I'll, I'll say if you're gonna do what I did learn early on, who invests in what.

Mm-hmm. 

Right? And so I didn't know the difference in like a VC and, uh, you know, PE and an angel investor. I, I honestly didn't know I just saw Shark Tank and I just knew I had, I had an amazing idea. Yeah. And I knew it wasn't quite like Shark Tank, but it had to be close. Right, right, right. And so, 

yeah. 

Um, but I, so I wasted a lot of energy and time.

It wasn't wasted. Look, you always learn. I get it. [00:21:00] But I wasted a lot of, I could have been better directed on if I would've gotten in front of the right angel investors early on who ultimately became our early investors. Right. It's some angel investors. And guys that, you know, were able to stick their neck out there in the early days mm-hmm.

And be rewarded for it later. Right. Um, and then once I had built a little bit more than an MVP and I have a little bit more than a napkin, you know, math on financial plans and that sort of thing. 

Yeah. 

Um, then, [00:21:30] then we moved into the later stage. So yeah. So I did the seed round first. Uh, and did that mostly out of angel investments.

Um, I also was lucky enough, um, you know, we launched, uh, right before COVID. Oh wow. Lucky for us. So 2019, it was the official like go live. Mm-hmm. The end of 2019. Well, 2020 was our famous year. Right. 

Yeah. 

Well, perfect timing on my part, but it, it ended up being a really good, good, interesting thing for us.

'cause we, you know, had [00:22:00] one customer that we were able to really, um, focus on directly and, but then we eventually, you know, came out of it so. We, uh, started in COVID and then did the seed round and we got a grant though in COVID during the COVID time is what I was, um, getting to that, the, um, NCID grant.

Yes. Which was a Yeah. A 50 K thing, which was a ton of money for us at the time. Right. 

[00:22:21] Richard: Oh 

yeah. 

[00:22:22] Daniel: And 

so it really helped 

[00:22:22] Richard: non-dilutive. 

[00:22:23] Daniel: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And non-dilutive. Exactly. And so, uh, by the way, for anybody thinking it's [00:22:30] one of the best, not just resources, but processes out there mm-hmm. For refining what you're doing and, and, um, you know, thinking through the business plan and all that kinda stuff.

So, so that and the capital with it helped us get over that CO hump really. Okay. Um, and then from there we started getting slowly but surely some traction and people came out of the COVID slump. We had the attention of, uh, a, a real market. So that gave us, once we had a, a few more labs under our belt and a little bit of [00:23:00] success.

Um mm-hmm. After raising yet another note round, uh, that would convert into our Series A. So we did our seed round, which about 670 I think. And about the same amount was in a note round for our what would become our series A, which was recently raised 

[00:23:16] Richard: where the initial angel investors here were local in North Carolina, or 

[00:23:20] Daniel: almost all of them were North Carolina.

Okay. There were a couple, uh, there was one in Virginia, um, but most of the other ones were, uh, here in North Carolina. Yeah. 

[00:23:28] Speaker: Okay. Yeah, 

[00:23:29] Richard: because I was gonna ask you if you, [00:23:30] if you went up to DC and Boston and did some of the pitching up there, some of those angel groups? 

[00:23:34] Daniel: Uh, I didn't go to Boston or dc I, I most mostly stayed southeast.

Okay. I did a lot of, um, you know, uh, Atlanta, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, that sort of thing. Eventually ended up in Nashville, um Okay. And, uh, had some, uh, Texas interest, um, yeah. But n nothing that ever, I, I didn't spend a lot of resources there or have a good, a lot of good connections there. But yeah, ultimately, yeah, it ended up [00:24:00] being, uh, rockmont.

Partners out of Nashville led our series A. 

[00:24:04] Richard: Okay. 

[00:24:05] Daniel: Which was syndicated by a all the other southeast um, investors. So, um, gray Ventures for example, and Venture South, uh, came in on the round as well as some others. From 

[00:24:15] Richard: how much The Nashville area Much. How much, how much a RR were you doing at the time that you closed your, A round?

Was was, 

[00:24:21] Daniel: yeah. 

We were not quite at a half a million, which was early for most, you know, for an a round. That's, but we had real traction and we had real, we were on [00:24:30] that tipping point. Right. And I credit to, you know, the guy Brian Fox and Beau Bartolo me, the guys at Rockmont really saw that I, we had something, yeah.

Saw that there were things we needed to clean up, of course, process wise, but we were on our way and they really got behind us and, and helped. Both get us connected to the industry, well get us, you know, all of our, uh, business processes refined Well, exactly. You know, what you would hope out of a partner.

So, yeah. Uh, so that's been great. 

[00:24:56] Richard: That's always been the magic question, is when you're talking to founders, like, oh [00:25:00] my God, I need to raise money. I need a, around how much a r do I have to have? 

Yeah. 

[00:25:04] Daniel: Yeah. We were not quite a half a million. Um, and then, you know, we've fast forward, we're over a million now, but we've, um, it, it took us a while.

That's that hard part. That's that slump, you know, that half a million's, a big milestone. The million's the real one, right? Yeah. For me, it felt like the real one, right? Yeah. Um, so, so for us that, again, we passed that this year, um, to brought on VP of sales, you know, started [00:25:30] getting, uh, our message, our value prop, right?

Mm-hmm. And really just sharing what we're doing well, and it, and it's working finally. So, yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been great. 

[00:25:39] Richard: What have been some of the advantages of you launching your business and supporting it here in the Wilmington ecosystem versus another major hub? Like mm-hmm.

Atlanta or DC or Boston. 

[00:25:48] Daniel: Yeah. 

You know, number one on my list is lifestyle. Mm-hmm. Um, early when we, so we started on paper years ago. Mm-hmm. I don't, I don't remember if we talked about that or not, but we founded a company, sat on it for a while. 'cause [00:26:00] I was doing the other conferencing gig and my partner was doing his thing.

So I sat on it for a while. Right. At that time there weren't a lot of people in when, this was 2013. Not a lot of, there was more, it was, it was starting, nCino was popping up. Live Oak was becoming a thing, but there weren't a ton of development talent here. And I was hoping that it would, that would change.

And fast forward to now, and there's a lot of good resources right here and talent wise, and we've proven now with COVID, we can do a lot of remote stuff. Well [00:26:30] Right. And so, um, that's to our advantage too. But for me personally. We moved here just for, simply for the lifestyle. And that's translated well into just culture and, and lifestyle for the business as a whole too, is I, again, need the grounding.

I can go way too deep sometimes in, into my projects and just get stuff done right? And I look up and, you know, where'd the time go or where the whatever go. Uh, so I, I need to, I need balance and I need the good. So whether it's spearfishing or you [00:27:00] walking the dogs, or you name it, just hanging out and spending time on the beach with family.

It's a good, good, healthy environment here. Mm-hmm. Um, and I've al I always noticed that from. Day one when I would just visit Wrightsville Beach, where I met, met my wife here, you know, and Right. Um, I just love the energy and the vibe of, of Wrightsville Beach and the Wilmington area. So we love it. Uh, we have no plans in changing this as our hub.

We love it here, so, yeah. 

[00:27:26] Richard: Got it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:27:27] Speaker: Very interesting. I I love it here too. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's [00:27:30] really nice. Yeah. But when you said access to talent, so you, you, you believe access to talent's getting better? 

[00:27:35] Daniel: I feel like it is. 

You know, I, you know, again, a lot of big, uh, encino's, live Oak, aperture, um, anytime those, you know, big companies come to town and, and, uh, they bring with it kind of a swell of talent.

Right. And, uh, I've seen it personally. Um. Whether or not we've taken advantage of it in full, you know, and connected with all those [00:28:00] resources. Like I could, again, I'd love to do more, but yeah, I absolutely think there's a lot more development resources here than I've ever seen. Mm-hmm. Um, and I don't think anybody really even thinks of it as not having that now.

Yeah. Um, I think it's very well known that this is, that kind of become a tech startup scene, you know, for, for the coast, so, 

[00:28:17] Richard: right. Yeah. 

[00:28:18] Speaker: Yeah. Between Heather and. What she's doing at the CIE. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's phenomenal to see this entrepreneurial ecosystem Yeah, yeah. Grow and of course, what Jim Roberts does on a continuing basis.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:28:29] Daniel: [00:28:30] Yeah. 

No, it's been great. And so yeah, we, we definitely want to continue to chant that message and share it. 'cause it's true. I mean, Wilmington's great and it's definitely continuing to grow and, and grow in a good, healthy, cool way too. So, yeah. It's, it's nice. 

[00:28:42] Richard: So before you chose to raise a seed and eventually an a, did you bootstrap at all?

Did you put some own capital? 

[00:28:48] Daniel: I should have said that, huh? 

To no small point. Yeah. Quite a bit of founder capital. The reason, um, so Randy and I, um, we were lucky enough to be able to invest to some of our own personal funds. [00:29:00] Yeah. So to date, we've put about a million together. Yeah. Um, uh, and, and to of Founders' Capital in addition to the other capital that we've raised to date.

Right. So about, um, in a total, there's been about. Four and a half million in outside capital, and then a million million in total. So, so 5.5 

[00:29:18] Speaker: total. 

Right. 

[00:29:19] Richard: Yeah. 'cause a lot of founders don't really get that because they'll, they'll bring an idea. 

[00:29:22] Daniel: It's an unfair 

advantage. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. Um, because IE even now I know of a couple folks that.

You know, they [00:29:30] have great ideas, but how do you get that? How do you get it started? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And um, and again, I was lucky enough to it's, look, it was nerve wracking ask my wife at the time, but I had literally just made the decision and pray. You know, we did the whole thing. We prayed over and we, we were like, this is the right move, we're gonna jump.

And I finally stepped, you know, walked away from the conferencing company, did this full time, and then COVID hit. Yeah. 

[00:29:54] Speaker 3: So 

it was comical. Uh, but no, it, it, it was great. And so it, it is been rewarding [00:30:00] for us and, uh, and, and we've enjoyed it. So, yeah. 

[00:30:02] Richard: Were there a time where you weren't drawing an income where you left one company to do?

[00:30:06] Daniel: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

For the first couple years I didn't, didn't take anything. Take anything. 

[00:30:09] Richard: So basically you were living off one, one income. 

[00:30:11] Daniel: Oh, a hundred percent. My wife, you know, again, blessed to have her and do well in real estate and really care us through a lot of it that gave us the ability.

From both her and I, you know, previously we did well. We're able to fund that and her carry us cash flow wise through the season we're in now. And, um, been great. 

[00:30:28] Richard: I think that's the biggest [00:30:30] challenge been It's hard, right? Yeah. When you talk 

[00:30:31] Speaker: to founders, they're like, okay, I need access to capital. I need to put my own capital and I need to vote my full time, but at the same time I need income.

[00:30:39] Daniel: It's a 

hundred percent the hardest 

thing. 

[00:30:40] Richard: Yeah. It is the hardest mode to follow. Yeah. 

[00:30:42] Daniel: And I don't, there's not a blueprint, you know, because for each person it is different. Again, we were able to, to use some savings, use some outside resources, and. Have, you know, my wife be able to help us fund the rest of it along the way.

And that was, you know, an unfair advantage, like I say, that most people don't [00:31:00] have. And so I, I appreciate that. Mm-hmm. Um, but the biggest windfalls have come from the real partnerships and the, you know, the angel investors, uh, from day one that came in, and even through the, the recent ones and then the connections that that opens up and all the other things.

And so mm-hmm. Uh, yeah. We're very blessed and we're, we're appreciative. It's a, it's a really fun time for us right now, you know? Yeah. So we're loving it. Yeah. 

[00:31:24] Richard: So what are some of the lessons learned on Raising capital? Yeah. Both seed and, and a for other founders. 

[00:31:29] Daniel: [00:31:30] Okay. I think one of 'em we already mentioned, which was make sure you're talking to the right people at the right time.

Mm-hmm. Meaning if you're going to raise your, your se your seed round mm-hmm. Talk to angel investors, the right folks that invest in early stage, you know, have a fund that's set up properly for that. Right. Right. Um, if you need. You know, half a million dollars and they only write a $2 million check, or 5 million to 5 million, probably not the right person.

Right, right. Now the other part of that is [00:32:00] I always heard, but you always hear these things and Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you always hear that this is a long-term relationship. Yeah. Conversation with all these investors. And I was like, no, y'all don't understand. This is a great idea for me. I'm getting this thing done quick.

I'm gonna sell. You know, and so I almost, it was almost, you gotta stop being transactional, you know? Right. 

[00:32:20] Richard: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:20] Daniel: Build relationships, stay in communication with these guys. 'cause those guys that maybe weren't right for you at that $2 million check phase mm-hmm. Early, later might be. [00:32:30] Right. Right. And so if they're like, Hey, I remember your message.

How's things now? Right. Um, you can have those conversations and you can have them if you're, if you stay honest, uh, open, like you stay connected with them through that. Um, so that's been cool to have some folks that. You know, some of them still never invested, but I had great insights or they connected me to other investors.

Right. Um, but then the other thing I was gonna say about that is like, be cognizant of when you're approaching these [00:33:00] investors, um, both you and they, you should, and they will remember what you say. So as you say, oh, it's crazy and we're, we're killing it, we're gonna make, you know, a million next month. And, and then by then we'll be, you know, the fly will be turned.

They're gonna be like, so how'd that million come out? You know? And I've had that conversation a couple times. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, it's a, it's a learning process too, is, uh, it's part of accountability and learning to, you know, use your investors as resources. And all that sort of thing. [00:33:30] So that's been a big part learning thing for me.

And, uh, it's been great too, you know? Mm-hmm. But it, it wasn't something I was used to for sure. Right. Yeah. 

[00:33:37] Richard: Yeah. So you have to give up not only your equity, but seats on your board, and now you have accountability to these Alzheimer's. 

[00:33:44] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. And we did, and you know, it's, again, I welcomed it. I, I knew what I didn't know, and I knew that.

Even early on with small decisions, like we made a dumb tax decision. 'cause 'cause we had bad advice, right? Mm-hmm. And it almost cost us a lot of money. It cost us money, but it didn't cost as much as it could have. Mm-hmm. And [00:34:00] I remember like, hey, if, if you need a tax advice, go to a tax guy. If you need, you know, uh, uh, development advice, go to a developer, you know?

Yeah. And so I was real okay with sharing, you know, and, and asking for help in those areas and, and getting it, um, you know, influence and help where I could. So it was good. 

[00:34:20] Richard: Remind me again, how much money did you raise at seed? And then again today you said it was total 4.5 total? Yeah. 

[00:34:25] Daniel: Yeah. So 6, 6 70, uh, in seed.

And then, um, we had some [00:34:30] convert into which became three point, uh, three point. Seven or 3.6 for Series A. Yeah. Okay. Pretty over subscribed, but we were okay with it. Again, we had a lot of great partners. 

[00:34:41] Richard: Did you negotiate your own valuation or did you have to accept their valuation s or, 

[00:34:46] Daniel: uh, 

we did. It was an interesting setup.

So I, I'll talk about the structure. Originally we had started at a valuation, uh, venture South was actually our lead. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and I love they, they're amazing and [00:35:00] everyone there, they got it, right? Mm-hmm. And so we loved all of, um, we met with a lot of their members. They were initially helping us get syndicate and, uh, and it was going well.

But in that process, we ended up meeting with Rockmont and they became our lead, um, which, which was awesome. And in that process, um, is where we really, uh, connected with all, all of the other syndicates in the area. So the Southeast, um, so Rockmont led around. And, uh, they put 2 million in and the [00:35:30] rest was led by, um, the, uh, like I said, venture South, uh, gray Ventures and some other, um, other partners in that round.

Mm-hmm. The structure though, was quite interesting. So the way we got outta the valuation hump or hurdle is we did have a valuation in mind that, uh, that we and, um, our original lead investor had kind of agreed on. Mm-hmm. Rockmont was like, I'm not sure that we're there yet. You know, uh, I also think you might need a little more money than you think you need.

And they were right on both [00:36:00] fronts. Yeah. Um, but we, we structured it uniquely in that we agreed on a valuation. And then said, as long as we, we, so we put some warrant protection in it. Got it. So as long as we hit our milestones by the end of the year, then you'll convert into the valuation. Otherwise there's a deduction.

And so we could, you know, lose a few points if things convert lower Right. Than our a RR projections. Right. Got it. So again, remember what you're gonna say and project and where your things are. 'cause you're gonna be held accountable for it. 

[00:36:29] Richard: Right. [00:36:30] Absolutely. 

[00:36:30] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That was smart on. 

[00:36:32] Daniel: So that was the structure.

It's a, it ended up, I was like, hold on. What? You know, but it ended up being a good structure. Um, interestingly too, we also t tranched the deal. 

[00:36:40] Richard: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:41] Daniel: Wasn't familiar with that, but, um, except for our seed, actually our initial seed grant was tranched. Um, so we got that in stages, but this one was in two tranches, so we got our initial half.

And then our second upon our a RR milestone. Got it. So, yeah. Yeah. So that unlocked the next, 

[00:36:57] Richard: that's very, very common now. Yeah. Is is [00:37:00] either milestone or tranche or the tranche. Yeah. Yeah. Where those, 

[00:37:03] Daniel: uh, I wanted it all up front. Course. Of course. You sure. Of course. They wanted the opposite. So, uh, and so good.

That's kind of the negotiating balance, right? Yeah. And that's, that worked. 

[00:37:13] Richard: That's one way they control risk. 

Yeah. Making sure, okay, if I'm gonna give this guy $3 million, he doesn't Makes sense. Take it to The Bahamas. Makes, yeah. 

[00:37:19] Daniel: Yeah. We'll, we'll buy it. But, you know, let's see. Yeah. We'll buy it kind of.

Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, it worked out well for us. 

[00:37:24] Richard: How instrumental has your investor partners been with opening up connections for [00:37:30] new customer traction? 

[00:37:31] Daniel: Can't even describe the change, you know, when Well, just knowing the industry being really well connected. So, Brian Fox was, um, came from FinTech. He was our, um, one of the guys from Rockmont and, and now since on our board mm-hmm.

Uh, Bob Bartholomew also came from the healthcare side. Perfect little combination right there. Um, but Bo really has connected us to, um, his whole network of, uh, you know, Nashville is a, just a [00:38:00] hub. He came from the HCA world and that's, you know, a whole everything branches it feels like out of that. Right, right.

[00:38:06] Richard: Yeah. 

[00:38:06] Daniel: Uh, and it's been great to have, um, not only his, his like being able to open doors for us and that sort of thing, but also kinda show us the way and like we've learned a lot from, you know, his way of doing things and he also runs, um, uh, other companies, right? And mm-hmm. And we've, so we've learned from both their experience as well as their connections.

So they've been great partners as well as, um, [00:38:30] same with the other syndicates. We've had a lot of, uh, good connections from the Great Ventures, uh, side, the Venture South folks. So everybody, look, we all wanna win. We all know that there's a lot of value here. And so it's been cool to see. Everybody really get behind it and, um, and, and help us in this journey.

So yeah. Yeah, we're super good. 

[00:38:47] Richard: That's awesome. Yeah. 

[00:38:48] Speaker: Yeah. 'cause I mean, you, you can get capital, you know, I mean, if you have a good idea, yeah, you can eventually you can. Yeah. But it's the smart capital. It's the capital that can open up doors and you, you got it. New, new customer opportunities. 

[00:38:59] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. And [00:39:00] I'm, I appreciated their, we were aligned on perspectives on what, what you just said reminded me of, you know, Rockmont and I felt aligned on perspectives of we don't want to keep.

Raising to raise. Mm-hmm. Like, we, let's not pump the valuation. Like let, maybe we get profitable, huh. Yeah. You know, and then we start scaling on that. Right. So it's like, don't keep on raising forever and have to be in that debt mode. Right. Like, let's get a little bit of leverage, get some profitability, show that we can scale.

Yeah. Right. It's almost like they've done this before. Right. So, uh, so [00:39:30] that's kind, that's the path we're on and I, and I appreciate that. Yeah. So that's, that's, uh, it's the right way. Yeah. 

[00:39:34] Richard: Oh yeah, for sure. So tell me about the company culture. You as a CEO founder. 

Yeah. 

[00:39:39] Speaker: I know you, you're balancing both fundraising, customer traction development, r and d.

Sure. Uh, but tell me a little bit about your company culture. 

[00:39:46] Daniel: Yeah, yeah. So we're still, you know, a, a small family I feel like in a lot of ways, but also. It's, it's a cool team because everybody brings different strengths. Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, again, we work out of, [00:40:00] actually the CIE offices is where we do.

Um, I, I have my office in our sales guys as well. 

[00:40:05] Richard: Okay. 

[00:40:05] Daniel: So we do, um, when I go into the office, that's where I'm headed. I'm at, because I gotta get out the house, you know, of course I'll work from the house some. Yeah. But, you know, I'm, I'll get Kevin Fever. 

[00:40:14] Richard: Yeah. 

[00:40:15] Daniel: So we get, we work there and, uh, and it's great.

And so we ha um, we've had a, a fun time both growing the company but also everyone kind of pitching in at this stage, you know? 'cause we're still kind of all wearing multiple hats. You know, we're not quite to wear. We have [00:40:30] every. Every position and every stage set up. Right? Yeah. But, um, but that's also cool because we're all learning the pieces where other others really, uh, provide value and everything.

So we've got a great company culture that's growing and as Matt's bringing on other salespeople and Yeah. Uh, and, and Joanne, our success manager as she's bringing on other folks for her success team, we're real picky on who we let into the fold or say, but we're also real like, happy that [00:41:00] there's a lot of folks out there that want to do this kinda work.

Like it's a fun job. Like it's, you know, especially if you're a lab tech and you've been behind the bench for a while and you're kind of looking for a new thing, you know, you, part of being a lab tech and, and I'll, this is true about every one of our success folks, is we, we, from early on made it a point to only hire folks with lab experience for our success team.

Mm-hmm. Meaning if you implement with us, you're getting a lab person to do that process. Right. It's real important for us. Right, right. Something about those people though is every lab [00:41:30] person I've met, they have a heart of like, they will lay their life down for the job. Mm-hmm. And it's just, you know, they're not stupid overpaid.

They're not like this. They do it for the love of the job. 

Yeah. 

That translates really well into this too. And so. You know, Joan Ann was actually one of our first customers from day one, became one of our, uh, one of our first employees. Now our success manager now building a team for us. It's really cool to see that.

Yeah. And that culture really comes from her in that wave too. Mm-hmm. Um, so [00:42:00] I, I give a lot of that credit to her and her team and. As we build out sales team, we're gonna continue to share that. So it's, it's been great. We, we've really appreciated it and we've been lucky enough recently to have partnered with, um, dual boot Partners.

[00:42:14] Richard: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Dual boot. Yeah. So yeah. Parker 

Wilson. 

[00:42:16] Daniel: Oh yeah, Parker, absolutely. Yeah. And, uh, she's wonderful. Yeah. I met them years ago again before really, I thought there was anything that we could do together. Yeah. Um, and same with Todd, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, he was super helpful in the early days of just [00:42:30] connecting me with investors.

And I remember him even slowing me down. He was like, Hey, you don't have to keep promising. You use us one day. Just, I'm trying to help you. You know? I was like, thank you. Okay, fine. But then it turned in. We, it's been amazing. So they ha when we were scaling early, we had an offshore team, um, that was real affordable and did well, killed it for us.

Mm-hmm. But then we needed a bit more structure, A bit more what Right. A, a team like dual boot brings. Yeah. They have absolutely crushed it. And so that big r and d team Yeah. That they feel like [00:43:00] family in a lot of ways to us too. Yeah. 

[00:43:01] Richard: Do they handle all your development and currently qa? 

[00:43:05] Daniel: Currently 

we're doing all, um, both support development and, um, new development.

Okay. Um, with that team, it's gonna split. We're, we're pulling out, this is, um, kind of part of our new, uh, new structures that we're gonna split the teams a bit for support developers and Right. You know, traditional r and d. But yeah, they, they do the whole thing. And then we're, we'll have a few of those in-house now as we're moving forward, um, [00:43:30] yeah.

To, to help run them. But dual boot's amazing. Every one of every person on that team's been great. Yeah. So, 

[00:43:35] Richard: yeah. Yeah. I always enjoyed meeting a Parker. 

[00:43:37] Daniel: Parker's amazing too. Yeah. So shout out to Parker. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:43:42] Richard: So tell me a little bit about the technology stack. And I, I was, I was gonna talk about it early, but we kind of got into the business side.

That's okay. Yeah. But yeah, I'd love to learn more about architecture. 

[00:43:49] Daniel: Oh yeah. This is where we can get nerdy and this is fun for me. So, yeah. I'm a so again, software guy, so shut me up if I ramble too much. But I, so we're an AWS shop. Okay. Um, [00:44:00] serverless is, you know, through and through, um. We've done most everything with like TypeScript node, um, and Angular as, as far as the stack is concerned and mm-hmm.

Uh, AWS Terraform, you know, scripted stuff. Finally we're, we're there. So that's again, a lot of the architecture that dual boots helped us mature. Right. Um, 

[00:44:20] Richard: been has lower AWS been AWS based in Yeah, it has. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So 

even your offshore 

[00:44:26] Daniel: Oh yeah, a hundred 

percent. I mean, we, again, I, uh, that's to Chad's [00:44:30] credit, Chad Harts was our, is our, you know, he wast our CTO that is still a partner in the, in the firm and he, you know, knew how to build it from day one.

Right. Um, and so yeah, he built it with, uh, that serverless architecture of mind. Mm-hmm. Um, and it paid off for sure. Uh, so they built upon that. And then we, dual boot has continued to actually really mature that 

for us. 

[00:44:53] Richard: Okay. Are you building in any features for AI or any type of, um. Modifications or, [00:45:00] or recommendations using some of the, yeah.

Thought. 

[00:45:02] Daniel: Thought you'd never ask grief. Jeez dude. 

Yeah. This is the AI world. We gotta get ai. 

[00:45:07] Richard: Yeah, of course. 

[00:45:08] Daniel: Yeah. So yeah, we absolutely are. You know, look, you gotta be thinking about it at multiple levels, right? At least as a, um, a leader. And so I am knee deep, of course, in a lot of fronts. Um, and I'll talk about a pet project I have, but as far as lab logs is concerned, we've seen it.

Even operationally, like, just think of it [00:45:30] as like a glorified secretary. Mm-hmm. You can use touch EPT or whatever, pick your flavor of LLM for a lot of really cool stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Let's say it's a first pass on a contract. You can do a lot of that kind of stuff. That's really cool. To me. It's helpful, but what I was trying to think, how does, how does Labis get affected at a high level?

Like where would AI fit as far as either our internal processes or our client's needs and that sort of thing. Um, so we experimented on a couple fronts and I'll spare you the details on things that didn't work. I'll tell you about the things that did work. [00:46:00] So one of the things that we did as a quick Yeah, sure.

We'll turn that feature on that we didn't expect to go far. Mm-hmm. Um, I mentioned Joanne, she's our customer success manager, right? She leads our success team and again. For whatever reason, out of that whole success team, we, we started using, um, llamas for our logos, right? Mm-hmm. And, and it came out of the way we were tracking our clients.

Every client was represented by a llama. And then once they, we graduated into the llama [00:46:30] farm, it was, it's a whole thing. Still is, right? Yeah. Yeah, so the reason I bring up the lamba is, so for the, uh, first thing we did was we use a, um, a web-based, we're a web app, right? Mm-hmm. And so we do a web-based customer success, uh, portal for most of our first touch.

So they'll reach out and they'll say, Hey, I'm having a problem. Can't log in. Can you help? Or, Hey, this log doesn't look right. Can you help me modify it? 

[00:46:54] Richard: Mm-hmm. 

[00:46:55] Daniel: That's how our clients interface with our customer success team. And so we [00:47:00] turned on a feature that's called Larry, and it's our, it's our age, our AI agent that Larry shows up as a llama before it gets to Joanne and her team.

Yeah. And Larry says, Hey, what's up? What do you need help with? It sounds like you can't log in. Did have you tried this? And so it'll front load the first thing, and you, you have the ability to say, no, I just wanna talk to a person. Leave me alone. Right? Yeah. We did that and we turned it on and, and it links to our knowledge base and then our, we can tie all of it right.

I was like, dude, if it helps anything, do it. [00:47:30] Right? And so we turned it on and we had, like, in the first couple weeks, 20% of the answers were, were answered by AI, by Larry, right? Yeah. Then fast forward today, and it's like 80% of our calls are front loaded by Larry, and as we, we document and we, he learns more and more and more, right?

So that's one practical way. 

Mm-hmm. 

The where we took it further was the part I was most excited about. So we've recently done some work on our implementation side, so same [00:48:00] also with the success team. For us, our big lift on launching, right? Mm-hmm. We're a software company. We want people to be up and running and profitable, right?

The bottleneck is that implementation, right? So get 'em through that phase as quickly as possible so that they're now a paying, uh, uh, customer and it's not pulling from our resources. How can we do that? Where, where can we focus AI to help us in that process? So. We started breaking down our processes and where we think we could see impact and the biggest win is on our [00:48:30] ingestion point.

Mm-hmm. So right now, if you think about, so if you used the piece of paper on the table there as a paper log in the lab and you have to get that to me, what are you doing? You're literally, they're literally scanning logs and sending 'em to us. Mm-hmm. Sometimes they'll send us a PDF version, whatever. Right.

That process we've always taken electronically and our success team would go through, they say, oh, you have this, we already have that. Oh, we don't have that instrument. We'll add it. You know, that's kind of the process we do behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. We used AI for that and it has absolutely started to nice [00:49:00] be a game changer.

So. But it goes beyond just, Hey, we can mirror what we're doing now and make it faster, right? Mm-hmm. So yes, we can take the logs, AI can scan it probably better than a human, give you a few choices. It can link to our database and say, Hey, we know from these choices, but we, we even took it a step further and we're like, Hey, let's zoom out.

If you're doing that on the front end, right? Mm-hmm. Then AI should also be able to take a pause, right? As a, as another agent and say, let's [00:49:30] look first to see if this is really the right way. They're even supposed to be doing it. Mm-hmm. And refer to the compliance bodies, you know, the manufacturer's recommendations, where all this stuff is defined anyway, and so that's where we're headed now.

So we're trying to make a glor a very canonical, uh, compliance database. Yeah. And that's where we're headed with this. We already have most of it anyway. It's how do we normalize that data, right? I've kicked that normalization can down the road for so long, and. Now we have AI to help us. I'm like, ah, perfect.

Right. So that's one of those [00:50:00] beautiful things that AI is absolutely changing the game for 

[00:50:03] Richard: us. Yeah, yeah. Yes. In addition, not only recommending different instruments, oh, you don't have this instrument, but your competitor does. Or most people in this area have this instrument. You should buy one 

[00:50:12] Daniel: or 

take it, take it a step further.

Hey, there's an FDA recall. Do you realize, you know, do the vendors have a platform to push out notifications? Yeah, they do now. Right. And that sort of stuff. So yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. We're, we're excited about it. 

[00:50:24] Richard: So what's the future look like for lab logs? 

[00:50:26] Daniel: So we're, we're looking for partners, you know, [00:50:30] everything.

I've always had the dream that I could one day stand in front of somebody and say, look what I've done with this. Like, I didn't even know what I was doing. And look what we did. Yeah. Like imagine what you could do with your resources. Right, right. That's the dream. So there, that day will come and there's a lot of partners that I feel like would be a good potential exit for us.

And, um, but think. I think either, um, folks that are already in the market is my point. Mm-hmm. Folks, you know, we could go door, knock in [00:51:00] healthcare and, you know, knock on it all 365,000 CLIA certified labs, or we could partner with folks that are already in that space. And that's what we're doing now. Okay.

So we're partnering with folks that are either connected at the instrument level, like the, um, the, you know, connecting to the devices. The other side of that portion we don't really do. Right? Well, this is a good compliance layer for them, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, the manufacturers themselves, the instrument manufacturers, there's a lot of reasons for you maintaining your equipment and our stuff is not just what you can track, but all the things you [00:51:30] can't track, right?

So there's a lot of potential there, but right now what we're trying to do is say, Hey. There is so much green space like this, we've finally figured out the model. Mm-hmm. We know that people will not only pay for it, but they'll keep paying for it, like almost no turn churn. Right. Right. Um, and it's very repeatable and profitable.

Mm-hmm. So if we can get, get it moving and, and so our big go to market strategy is we've seen the big wins from the big IDNs, right? Mm-hmm. So the go-to market trade, you get in with a [00:52:00] big acute core lap, and then they, you crush it for them. And that's what we've done. And they see the need at, at standardizing their whole suite and then it rolls out even to their clinics.

So our big thing now is like point of care clinics and walk walkin, um, things that we all go to like a testosterone clinic or a Right. You know, a, um, you name it, med, med, uh, walk-in. Those are all now under our umbrella as well. Okay. Because patient testing, right? Yeah. And so we're seeing that people who.

Have these core labs also own these [00:52:30] clinics. And so that's also now another part of their, um, their umbrella that they're using lab logs for as far as tracking. So that's where it's headed for sure, um, is we just wanna be the OneStop shop for compliance and really be the place that you, you track all of that.

Yeah. 

[00:52:44] Richard: Yeah. Well, 

[00:52:44] Speaker: it sounds like you found a really nice niche. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's cool and it, it executed really well. 

[00:52:49] Richard: Yeah. 

[00:52:49] Speaker: Yeah. How many customers do you have and where are they? In the United States? 

[00:52:52] Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're mostly spread out here in the us so we have, um, a couple hundred labs across the US from, most of it, surprisingly, [00:53:00] came from, there's a lot of cancer labs up in the, um, in the northwest in Seattle and that kind of area.

We have a ton of, um, clients in that area. A lot of Texas, a lot of New York, obviously, you know, no surprise in the southeast, you our home. Uh, truly spread out. We have a couple offshore in, in some other countries and we're heading in that direction, but we know this world now. Right. Trying not to get too distracted by the offshore stuff, but there's obvious reasons to do that.

Yeah. Same needs different people. 

[00:53:25] Richard: I would 

imagine the instrument companies themselves, the manufacturers would also [00:53:30] wanna promote using you Yeah. For data collection and recalls and adjustments and things. Nature. 

[00:53:35] Daniel: Yeah. For 

sure. E exactly. That's, that's the thought. And well, it's not just the thought. I mean, we, we've had interest and we've had conversations with all and, and everybody's, everybody wants data.

Everybody wants to be able to have access to it. And so how can we all get this data into one central location? That's kind of what we're all trying to figure out and, you know, we have part of the solution. Yeah. And so we're happy to, to be part of that, so That's great. Yeah. 

[00:53:58] Richard: So if you had [00:54:00] to offer one piece of advice to a founder sitting there thinking about an idea their SaaS or health tech Yeah.

Or whatever, what would that be? 

[00:54:07] Daniel: Find good partners. Honestly, your, your partners are somebody, they're with you for a long time. Mm-hmm. Right. And, and it makes or breaks it for you in, in my opinion, like I've, I've been blessed to have really good folks that have walked with me, not just through the business side, but even at a personal level.

Like you're, you know, [00:54:30] when you do something like a startup, you're, you're with these folks for a while and so, you know, finding good people that you can trust and partner with early on. Yeah. And they can also just help you sanity check a lot of your stuff. You know, I can get, like, I have all kinds of ideas, right.

Somebody needs to pull me down by the ankles sometimes. Yeah. You know, so that helps. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, partners I think is, is really huge in finding the right partners and, and getting that set up from the get go. When it comes down to it, somebody's gonna be pulling away, you know? [00:55:00] Yeah. You gotta, you gotta all be, you gotta surround 

[00:55:01] Speaker: yourself with, uh, like-minded people.

Right? Exactly. 

[00:55:04] Richard: Yeah. 

And where, where would you recommend folks to meet folks like that? 

[00:55:08] Daniel: Uh, we're coming full circle, aren't we? Yeah. Honestly, this really is where I think things like Jim Roberts events, the CIE, but all these networking events here locally, even, especially the triangle, has a lot too. Mm-hmm.

Um, that's where you start connecting with folks. That's where you start getting your head up and you, you're reminded of getting, getting a touch for the pulse of the community. And not just the [00:55:30] community, but the industry too. Right. Um, so yeah, that's a hundred percent key. 

[00:55:35] Richard: We talked about looking ahead, uh, for your business, but what are you, what are you doing outside of your business?

I know you talked about astrophotography and 

[00:55:42] Daniel: Yes. Very passion projects. I have a couple. Astrophotography has always been, um. Literally a dream of mine as a kid. Mm-hmm. So as a kid, my dad got me into Astronomy Magazine. Right. And so I had look at the stars and all that stuff and Matt, and just be like, wow, what in the world?

But in the back [00:56:00] there were these telescopes that I would always look at and be like, man, one day, you know, because they're so expensive, like thousands of dollars and probably for telescopes that aren't even close to what they are now, right? Yeah. But I just remember, and then, you know, fast forward to today, my son's a baseball player.

Um, so he pitches for hoggard that, that process of baseball, we did motocross together. We did skating together. That gave me excuses to buy camera. You get into photography. Yeah. And, uh, and when I finally [00:56:30] got into that route that led to Astro Photography, which was a whole wormhole of using telescopes now for doing long exposure, you know, multi-hour photography and that, that's a cool passion of mine.

Um, but it's certainly its own science and, and everything else. Um, it's just a cool, cool mystery. Uh, aside from that, we're big. We're also, I've told you watermen, you know, we, we do a lot of, uh, spend a lot of time on the water. Um, whether it's, you know, just going and doing our daily walks [00:57:00] at Lee Island on Yeah.

You know, on the beach or now, uh, spear fishing. We do a lot of spear fishing, and my son's getting into that recently too, and he's nice, his buddy, so that's fun. 

[00:57:08] Richard: Yeah. 

[00:57:09] Daniel: And then the last thing I'll say as far as a passion project is this, this recent thing that I'll go ahead and spoil it. It's called StarDot, and this is a completely different thing.

This, I haven't even told you about this, so I'll, I'll share it with you now, but it's a, it's an AI project of mine. Okay. And so the thought is, uh, these agents [00:57:30] and language models are here to stay. And, you know, with compliance being top of mind in mind, how do we get that compliance and safety? Applied to the interaction of our LLMs with our APIs.

Right? Right. Because APIs were not built with this in mind. They were built with you and I accessing APIs or another API accessing the api. Right. And so there's a lot of tools built on protecting that. And there's not, I don't see any good frameworks for [00:58:00] fully protecting, um, your interaction with, uh, your, your agents interacting with your APIs.

Mm-hmm. There are some things like, uh, MCP and some of those other technologies that formalize the calls, but it doesn't do anything. Instead of audit, tracing, traceability, you know, true, um, uh, protection in that guidelines, in that guardrails, in that regard, I should say. Yeah. Yeah. So star.is my attempt at formalizing a standard honestly, of.

Of [00:58:30] that. So it's a, it's basically a light json layer, json layer for defining your interaction with an API, um, if you're an LLM. Mm-hmm. So can't come through my APIs unless you, we know what your profile is, what your, um, expected, uh, output's gonna be. What are your potential hallucinations and how do we protect against them?

Don't spend too much money on credits and spin out, so. Mm-hmm. And also in that process, do you separate it out Protectively? So. Huge [00:59:00] undertaking, but really cool thought. So our engineers have started using this internally as a pet project. Yeah. And our goal is to roll it out into something that, honestly, it's just more of a standard that we think could help others and see where it goes.

[00:59:12] Richard: Yeah, sounds cool. 

[00:59:13] Daniel: And it's pretty cool. It, it's been really fun. So yeah, it's start out.ai right now is where we're putting some of the documentation and, and we're playing with it, so, yeah. 

[00:59:21] Richard: Does 

your son also share the same passion with technology? 

[00:59:24] Daniel: Man, I've tried. 

He, well, with tech, but not with coding Computer.

Not with coding. It's not there for him. [00:59:30] No. He's, he's baseball, all sports, all he's connected in other ways. Very not, it's not a computer thing for him. Yeah. 

[00:59:37] Richard: What 

[00:59:37] Speaker: colleges is he, he, is he even thinking about 

[00:59:39] Daniel: wherever? We'll 

[00:59:39] Speaker: let him pitch. 

Okay. Yeah, he's, he's full on in baseball right now, 

[00:59:43] Richard: so he wants to play baseball in college.

[00:59:44] Daniel: He really, he would love to. Um, but you know, he's open to it. He, last night we were talking about college and he said he wanted to go to Florida. Me and my mom, uh, me and his mom looked at each other like, I was like, well, you better be careful 'cause she'll follow you and I don't want to go to Florida.

Yeah. So we were joking about [01:00:00] that, but, uh, yeah, we'll see. He's, he's a junior this year, so he's figuring it out. 

[01:00:05] Richard: Yeah. My daughter's a junior and she 

plays volleyball and 

Okay. She's been 

recruited by a few schools. 

[01:00:10] Daniel: I mean, he'd love to go to state or he's talked about ECU. Yeah. Uh, him and his buddies. We'll see.

[01:00:14] Richard: Does he participate in the camps? Because I think with volleyball you have to go to the camps. 

[01:00:18] Daniel: Um, he's done some 

of the baseball ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's done 'em over the year. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:00:22] Speaker: That's cool. 

[01:00:23] Richard: Did you play baseball in high school or? 

[01:00:24] Daniel: Well, I played in middle. I played when I was younger, but I was actually, I didn't really grow physically like till [01:00:30] way later I hit my growth spurt, like after high school.

So I loved baseball. I wasn't good at it though. Yeah. So it was cool when he got into it. 'cause I, I always loved the sport, knew a lot about it. He was actually good at it. I was like, oh, this is cool, you know, so, yeah, we, we've been doing baseball since uh, you know, he was eight or nine or something. Right.

So it's been super fun. That's awesome. Yeah. 

[01:00:52] Richard: Well, I really enjoyed, uh, meeting you today and getting to know you personally Same and learning more about your business and 

[01:00:57] Daniel: Likewise. Yeah. 

[01:00:58] Richard: And obviously we'll be rooting for you guys [01:01:00] on the sideline from here on out on fundraising and expansion. 

[01:01:03] Daniel: Yeah, I appreciate that.

Definitely. Thanks for having me. And thanks for Jim for connecting us. Of course. Absolutely. 

[01:01:09] Richard: Good old Jim. 

[01:01:10] Daniel: Yeah, that's right. Um, and yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah. 

[01:01:13] Richard: If there's anything I can do to help reach out, lemme know. Okay. 

[01:01:15] Daniel: A hundred percent. 

[01:01:15] Richard: Thanks. 

[01:01:19] Amplified. CEO is produced by Topsail Insider, edited by Jim Mendes-Pouget, and sponsored by Cape Fear Ventures. For more 

[01:01:30] information about Amplified CEO Richard Stroupe or Cape Fear Ventures, please contact Christa at (910) 800-0111 or christa@topsailinsider.com.