EP25 Polished Transcript: Richard Stroupe and Matt Cimino

Amplified CEO - lightly edited transcript from WhisperX outputs

Source method: combined WhisperX provided the timeline and diarization spine; separated Richard and Matt WhisperX runs were used as references for wording and confidence checks. Proper nouns were corrected against source references where available.

Speaker Key

• Richard Stroupe - host, Amplified CEO
• Matt Cimino - guest, Managing Partner, Amped Ventures
• Announcer - show intro/outro

Transcript

00:02 - Intro and Local Roots

[00:02] Announcer: Welcome to the Amplified CEO with VC and serial entrepreneur, Richard Stroupe.

[00:11] Richard Stroupe: So are you from this area originally?

[00:11] Matt Cimino: Yeah, I am originally from Raleigh.

[00:11] Richard Stroupe: Raleigh, okay. I know you went to UNC Wilmington.

[00:11] Matt Cimino: Yeah, I went to UNC Wilmington, went back to Raleigh for a little bit, and then we realized, what are we doing in Raleigh? We have got to get back to Wilmington.

[00:11] Richard Stroupe: You did not check out NC State or Chapel Hill, did you?

[00:11] Matt Cimino: Growing up there, yes, I did. I thought I was going to go to Chapel Hill, but I was already focused on a business, and I really was not as focused on my grades as I probably should have been.

[00:38] Matt Cimino: And then I got into UNCW, and I am so glad I did. It was an amazing place.

[00:38] Richard Stroupe: So you were working on a business model before college - out of high school. What did that look like?

[00:38] Matt Cimino: All right, well, we have got to go way back for this. Maybe I will just tell how I got into all of this in the first place.

[01:04] Matt Cimino: When we were just young teenagers, we were into surf. Me and my buddies were into surfing and skating and snowboarding and all this stuff. And we wanted to make a website. And at the time, this was... What, if I was 14, this is 22 years ago, I am 36. And so 22 years ago, you really, if you are gonna do a nice job with it, you needed to code it. And so I said, all right, fine, I'll figure it out. I have always enjoyed math. I thought I was good at it. And so I said, I'll figure it out. And I actually loved it. I loved being able to create something. And we made what I think was a pretty great website. But then once people figure out that you can make websites at the time, they said, hey, can you help me? And I said, sure.

[01:45] Matt Cimino: Course and we had a family friend that had this happened to have a PE firm and he said oh we need a website for this business can you do it i said okay and i asked my parents well what do i charge for that and they said three grand i said whoa three grand you know you are 14 years old and and i i said okay that is a great price yeah and i told the guy and i said three grand oh it is a great price and i said okay

[02:10] Richard Stroupe: Because he was getting quotes for much more than that. And I did a great job, smoked it. And so then that turned into many more websites. 14 years old, other people are like delivering newspapers and you are billing websites for three grand a pop. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you got the bug early.

[02:25] Matt Cimino: Yeah. And I was like, this is amazing. And it provided a ton of value to him. He loved it, told all his friends, different portfolio companies. And so then I have too much work and I need to hire a team. Yeah. And so then you've got a marketing company and then you are then you are hooked and you just you see how it works and. Then once you learn to hook up database to it and you can actually make it do things. Oh, yeah. All right. Then now you can make applications and it just sort of steamrolls from there. So that was that was how I sort of fell into it. Yeah. And it was it was great. I had the bug at that point. that is a great story. So you and your buddies all from high school all were into this whole coding and websites and.

[03:03] Matt Cimino: Well, they were into still surfing and snowboarding and stuff, and they thought I was a nerd for a little bit. But I loved it. It was so much fun. So it was really me doing the marketing stuff. Yeah, that is super cool. Now, did your mom or dad, did they have their own business or did you have family members that were entrepreneurs? Yeah. So my grandfather was actually an entrepreneur. He just had a bunch of barbershops. But then at the time, I think it was everybody should go get with a big company, sort of my dad's generation. And so he was actually with IBM. And my mom was as well. There were executives there. They were always entrepreneurially minded. But yeah, I just sort of fell into it.

[03:43] Richard Stroupe: But obviously, you know, growing up in the Raleigh-Durham area, you are exposed to technologies with your parents and private equity with some of their networked friends and kind of like just nature took its course there. Yeah, absolutely. And some of the influences there, I mean, I think my parents were a huge influence and I can hear my mom now sort of, she actually just recently passed, but we were reflecting on a lot. Thank you. we are reflecting on this a lot. And

[04:09] Matt Cimino: It is fresh. And I remember her always saying, hey, you can do anything you put your mind to. Or she'd say, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. And she'd have all these things that she sort of kind of taught me along the way. And I did not even realize how much she sort of poured into me in that. Right. And even... To her credit as well, when I was in middle school, I was into all this business marketing stuff or whatever. And she did not know anything about coding websites or any of that stuff. And so she saw in the paper, this guy, his name was Ryan Allis. And he was this kid at the time at UNC. And he was starting this company called iContact. And I needed to do this job shadowing thing. And so instead of just shadowing somebody they knew, they said, hey, well, my mom wrote this guy. He said, yeah, why do not we meet? She drove me out to Chapel Hill to meet this guy.

[04:58] Matt Cimino: And he had a small team in a tiny little office, very small. And it was great. He was super welcoming. He said, hey, I'll show you what is going on. And so I shadowed him and I'd continue to go out there. And he showed me really what it was like to build a software company. And that was a really amazing experience. And I was still inspired even at the scale that he was at. But then I went off to college and we continue to stay in touch. But then I reconnect with him after my freshman year.

05:31 - Early Exposure and Entrepreneurship at UNCW

[05:31] Matt Cimino: And I went to his office and it was the size of my dorm room. Like I was in Galloway, which they've torn down now, UNCW. Right, right. He had this massive office. It was phenomenal. It had a slide in it. I was like, Ryan, how did you do this? This is amazing. Because I remember we, like my mom and I baked him a cake when he got 500 users and I was doing the job shadow thing. But he scaled that thing tremendously. And then- He was just a good mentor and friend. And then he ended up selling that thing for $169 million. And I said, wow, I got to see that from the beginning. And it was inspiring. And there is several stories like that. But I think having that exposure, you are right, of just seeing what is possible. And now, I mean, you can go on your podcast and listen to these stories or go read it in a book. But I think just being inspired of what is possible. Yeah.

[06:15] Richard Stroupe: Yeah. I mean, I tell my kids and others when I guest lecture universities, I am like, you've got to get exposure. You've got to get out in the field. You've got to walk the walk and figure out and find a mentor, find people that would just allow you to kind of shadow them because you can learn so much just being around that situation. Yeah. Props to you for seeing it early. You know, I mean, today's generation is hard because, you know, kids are addicted to their phones and, you know, social media and then video games or whatever. And it is like, you got to get out there and surround yourself with those type of people. Yes. You got to go take a chance. You got to go for it. Yeah, absolutely.

[06:54] Matt Cimino: Yeah that is been that is phenomenal yeah so that was fun so so out of high school you you you ventured down to wilmington unc wilmington and i understand you took some classes in entrepreneurship yes was that your major or it was okay major in entrepreneurship and actually had a business my freshman year that was working decently well as a vacation rental business and where i'd have property managers list their properties and then you could go on and rent it you could do the whole booking availability And it was working. And I thought, hey, you know, I'll sort of satisfy my parents wanted me to go to college. And maybe, you know, since I did not get in Chapel Hill or anything, maybe I'll do this UNCW thing. And then I really want to focus on that business. And then I got there freshman year. I realized this is awesome. I loved UNCW. I did not expect to go to UNCW because I thought, hey, I am going to go to Chapel Hill with all my buddies and whatever.

[07:48] Matt Cimino: I did not know what I was going to do. I thought maybe like architecture or even law or something. But then I got to UNCW and I was already pretty deep in this entrepreneurship thing. And then got connected with a professor there, Dr. Steve Harper, who was great. Really appreciated the way that he taught, which even being a freshman and sophomore, he welcomed me into a lot of what he was doing, even though I couldn't get into it yet. And it was not just the curriculum. He would bring in different leaders from the community, again, back to having that exposure. And they were already extremely successful. And they'd come in, tell us their story. And most of them would say, hey, if you have any questions or you want to get coffee, just let me know. Every single one of them, I'd say, yeah, I do want to get coffee. I do want to learn.

[08:29] Matt Cimino: Know i think that is like for the great entrepreneurs they had someone show them and so i think the really great entrepreneurs will always unless you are trying to sell them something like if you actually want to learn from an entrepreneur i feel like they're so willing to say hey absolutely i'll show you how i've done it and i found that to be true for all the really yeah and they're they're so easy to talk to it is almost like they want to share their story yeah they just want to find people who are interested in what they have to say yeah

[08:54] Richard Stroupe: You know? Yes. Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for doing your podcast. Yeah. I love, I love this. I love hearing stories of others. So, yeah. so you had a great opportunity to kind of expand on what you were building your, your foundation at UNC Wilmington. Now, before you graduated, I mean, did you, were you kind of like a Mark Zuckerberg? Did you have ideas that you were spinning out of your dorm room kind of thing or?

[09:19] Matt Cimino: Oh yeah yeah yeah i was trying to get my fraternity brothers to like do sales for one of them and all sorts of random stuff none of it really went anywhere okay and the last one at the end when i was graduating i had i was building an e-commerce platform and at the time you know just made sense because i kept the the marketing and building websites for people i kept that going indefinitely and i mean certainly i haven't done that in a long time but

[09:48] Matt Cimino: Everyone that wanted a store, right? At the time, Magento was popular. There was even like Yahoo Stores was still out. There was just a bunch of random solutions. Shopify was just really getting the initial traction. And I thought, hey, I can do this a little bit better. Bring some really good polish to the design of it. Maybe do some channel, like if it can list it on different marketplaces for them. And I got some customers on that. Turned out it was extremely difficult to do as me and maybe some contractors trying to make it happen and realized why Shopify had raised another $80 million because every store owner wanted a little bit different customization. Yeah. And so that was where after I got out of college, I said, Hey, look, I worked on that for a year after school and realized, like,

10:41 - Exit Intel, Product Lessons, and E-commerce

[10:41] Matt Cimino: I cannot keep doing this. And I actually worked with my brother for a little bit. He was doing some executive recruiting. I learned a lot there, got to see some exposure to some great companies like Citrix and some other tech companies. And then I realized, okay, well, I am still getting a lot of requests for particular solutions. And a lot of it around e-commerce was how are you doing retention marketing? And so how are you getting people back to continue to buy or nurture new ones? And so then spun up this company called it Exit Intel at the time. It was this exit intent software that scaled really quickly. It was novel and got some really big accounts. And it was a software that I created and then hired some contractors to help me with it.

[11:29] Matt Cimino: Built a team. We got it up to, I think, 15 people or so. We had some big brands using it, like at the time, like UGG Boots and Teva Sandals and The Knot was paying us like 10K a month to do this solution for them. But made a major mistake with that business where

[11:51] Matt Cimino: We got big customers quickly and we customized it. And so although I did not set out to create another agency, I essentially had an agency because instead of making that core product better and better and better to accommodate the different use cases, I had this one core product that I created and then we customized all these different

[12:11] Matt Cimino: Pieces for each customer. And then we just had this mess. We were never going to be able to fix it. And so that took a while. I mean, I ran that for a few years, learned a ton, but realized we had to kind of start from scratch. It was not going to work. I am just going on a tear here telling you a little bit of the adventure, but. Yeah, yeah. With Exit Intel, I tried to spin a company out of that called Ellie, which was more of like a conversion focused chat solution. At the time there was drift, it was decent, intercom was kind of complicated. And I think we were onto something there and then COVID hit. And I'd already put a couple hundred grand into this new product Ellie, because back then it was hard to code things, which we'll get to in a little bit.

[13:00] Matt Cimino: But COVID hits and I am distracted from Exit Intel. I know that it is just not going to scale. It had like a ceiling of about 2 million and you couldn't get past it because it was so linear in growth. We had to hire a team in order to service the customers. And it was not what I set out to build. I wanted to build a software company. And so was working on LA, COVID hits, and I think it was a time of everybody was kind of fearful. what is gonna happen? Do I have to lay these people off? I really care about these people. Right, yeah. And I have been distracted on this other thing.

[13:34] Matt Cimino: And then turned out that e-commerce did really well in COVID. And that was the customer we were serving with Exit Intel. And so then it continued to scale up, but it couldn't scale because of the scaling problems that I mentioned earlier. And so I brought the team into a room and I put this chart up and I said, all right, This is us right here. we are on this like rickety biplane, you know, old wooden plane. And then I advanced the slide and I said, okay, this is the trajectory of this business. It'll probably keep going, but it is probably not going to work. we are all frustrated. Nobody wants to use the tech we have internally. We do not even give parts of the tech to our customer. We just tell them we'll do it for them. And I was like, this thing's going to go down.

[14:18] Matt Cimino: Advance this slide. Here's what we need to do. We need to build a new plane down here on the ground. we are on this one. What we need to do is we are literally going to build this one, keep flying this one, take this one off, get it into the air. It was like a jet. This one was a junkie plane. Get this one up. we are going to literally jump off of here. I clicked it. It had a stick figure with a parachute coming off of that, jumping off of that plane, getting onto this one. This one crashes and this one takes off. And I was like, we have to do that. there is just no other option. We have to get off of this one. And so that was where we said we are going to build what we called Amped, which was a fully product ties built from scratch. And that team, those 15 people were too busy servicing the core business. And so I had to kind of go off

15:03 - Building Amped While Flying the Old Plane

[15:03] Matt Cimino: Design it up, work in Figma, brought in a UX firm to help with that, brought in some engineers. We had 17 people in Ukraine at the time working on it. This was before all the Ukraine stuff. And then we had a team of five in Poland and we just went so hard because we knew the solution. we are so close to the customer. We knew exactly what we needed. I could see it crystal clear. And then got that rolling. And then it just did not scale up right away. And I thought, gosh, what happened? And I realized that I had to make sure that I was really close to the customer too. Although I knew it really well, I was letting my sales guy take it or, hey, it is just the new thing. we are selling it cheap because it is productized. Maybe the intern will take it. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I have got to be so close to this customer.

[15:56] Matt Cimino: And so I was getting on every single call. I was reaching out to folks. I was talking to partners. And then

[16:03] Matt Cimino: My one of my coaches was like how bad do you want it i was like really really bad like i really want this to work and because i kept coming in like we got a couple customers we got a couple customers and you know then just by really digging in and getting really dedicated to okay i need to be so close to the customer and truly help them and then it then it slowly started to work a little bit but let me stop there i've been going on that was a really long journey there but i just wanted to

[16:31] Richard Stroupe: Yeah, no, going back. So in the beginning of Exit Intel, so you are working with your brother. What, what was the, some of the signals that you saw that prompted you to say, you know what, I am going to build this e-commerce platform. Like I see, I see a need and I met need needs to be filled. What was that moment?

[16:51] Matt Cimino: The e-commerce platform was easy. That was just because my customers were asking for it. The, when I was doing the marketing business, right. They wanted a platform to sell on and I would use these other tools and realize how they were inferior. So I was basically a user of those other tools, implementing it on behalf of those customers, like a jewelry site. Okay. And so I said, Hey, well, I think I can do this better knowing what I know about creating software.

[17:13] Richard Stroupe: So were you were you kind of moonlighting this a little bit on the side, still doing the recruiting business, but still also servicing some of these other small businesses? The e-commerce platform was out of university. And then that was where I realized that was not going to go the way I wanted it to without raising a bunch of money. Okay.

[17:32] Matt Cimino: And the Exit Intel piece was a different variation. That was what focused on customer acquisition, a much more targeted problem. And that was more so I just had people I was already talking to that asked me for it from the consulting and marketing. And then I realized, all right, well, you know, I could try this much More targeted piece, not try to solve every single problem, but let us just nail this one particular problem and then realize, okay, I can solve that problem really well and still have a tremendous impact on this business because I got to see from doing the marketing and e-commerce stuff what really drove the needle in terms of performance. And this one had an outside impact.

[18:12] Matt Cimino: So I focus on that one solution, which was customer acquisition. Then it was a valuable, valuable product. And so, yeah, I went up to Raleigh. I was helping him with some of the recruiting stuff and then got a couple of customers on this thing. And I told my brother, Hey, man, I got to go. I got to go go for it. And, you know, he's an entrepreneur. He said, Do it. Yeah. He said, What can I do to help?

[18:33] Richard Stroupe: And then so was it all bootstrapped oh yeah no no funds angels or anything yeah what what what stopped you from that because obviously you did mention that if we raised capital it could have scaled a little differently i i struggled the same thing running my own businesses i was bootstrapped as well but yeah what went through your process there on potentially raising capital

[18:57] Matt Cimino: I mean, I do not disagree with the whole raising capital and I am sort of getting into that world at the moment. But I think at the right time for the right business. And I think there were certain points where, yeah, I could have probably taken a little bit extra capital at the right time to go a little bit faster. But I think everybody's journey is a little bit different. I think if you...

[19:28] Matt Cimino: Why did not I raise capital? If that is the question, I would say it would have had to have been too dilutive. Cause if you are, I do not know, I do not know the answer to that question. I do not know why I just believed in what we were doing and just decided we are gonna grow. I sometimes go back, you know, cause you obviously you wanna learn from your past and try to improve your decision-making process to go forward. But like even my own experiences,

[19:55] Richard Stroupe: I'm like why did not i raise capital i could have i could have taken five ten million dollars could have used it to deploy and you know built a team and build these sales channels and you know kind of expand the the product market fit and you know maybe you could have scaled further yeah but but you just hindsight it is always 20 20 but i think i just did not know i was too busy servicing these customers and

20:18 - Bootstrapping, Team, Culture, and Customer Love

[20:18] Matt Cimino: Yeah, I think it would have been helpful. We probably could have gone even further. I am grateful for everything that we have done. Yeah. And I think it turned out great because it was...

[20:28] Richard Stroupe: Just bootstrapped, but at the same time it could have, it could have been, it could have maybe been bigger. Yeah. Yeah. So, so walk me through like, cause you, you were in your early twenties. It sounds like when you were going through this experience, how did that look like when you were building your team? So you had some customers, you had some demand and you had this idea. how did you find your, the teammates? So you, you talked about doing some offshore development.

[20:55] Matt Cimino: Yep. Which a lot of people do that. Oh, yeah. For call savings. Yeah. But did you did you build your own sales team here locally? And how did that look like? Absolutely. Yeah. And client success was probably the larger function for us. Sales, certainly. But

[21:12] Matt Cimino: And yeah, I think Eastern European countries are great for getting the early prototypes done. Now I think AI is also fantastic, which is kind of why we are doing this AI-native Venture Studio. But, you know, at the time you need to spend a couple hundred grand and, you know, get the prototype out the door. It was iterative, certainly, but it just took hardcore coding to get it done. And then when you hire your first couple of people, And I remember, you know, I knew a buddy, a guy by the name of Jeff Stocks. He was a great guy. He was in a Bible study I was in. I knew he had this huge office off Oberlin Road and he had sold his manpower business years before that. And I said, hey, Jeff, you got any office space over there? I am trying to hire some people.

[21:55] Matt Cimino: And he said, Matt, come on over. We'll figure it out. And he was a really good friend, turned out to be a great mentor. And, you know, he gave me an office and then I started hiring people. I actually hired one of my wife's now like best friends at the time. She was great, trusted her tremendously. And then, you know, I think... As you hire people each time if you are intentional you you keep getting a little bit better and those early people you are going to make mistakes but you've got to just really try to get the best possible people you can and then you as the leader is going to set the tone for the culture and the environment and i think we went through a stage where we had a great culture we hired the wrong people we had a crappy culture but also probably my own fault

[22:41] Richard Stroupe: You know, I think if you feel like you are walking on your business on eggshells, it is probably your own fault. Right. Well, you do not know what you do not know. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of you are trying to fly the ship at the same time, build it, you know, to perform over long term. Yes. Yes.

[22:57] Matt Cimino: You only know what you know. Exactly. And then, you know, I think by the end of it, we figured out how do we create a fantastic culture. And I think that goes a long way. A lot of people talk about it. Right. But when you really have it dialed in, you've got great people and great culture, great values. it is fantastic. And for us, what that looked like, too, was, you know, why was I even doing any of this in the first place? I think it was always to help people.

[23:24] Matt Cimino: We were helping these businesses with a website to help them do more, help them be successful, and they will be successful. And I think that is a core principle of even what we are doing with the Venture Studio is how can we help people or how can we grow and help people be successful? And in the process, I believe we'll be successful. So helping companies grow and achieve their potential is actually the mission. But at the core principle, if you can do that really well, then I think it works well. And so we had that in our team and we set our values. When we reset those values, the number one value was love your neighbors to yourself. And we would celebrate that and reward that if we saw that internally.

[24:06] Matt Cimino: To the point where we wanted our people to be making decisions that were in the best interest of our customer always. And to the point of it may not even be the best for us, but it was the best for them. And I think that then showed through and created the reputation that we wanted to have as a business. And just even things like where I wanted to also set that tone. And so when we had Ampton, it was growing really fast and we are scaling. We were going to try to love on every customer. And I think if you can really love on those customers, help them be successful, then they'll tell their friends. And even if you do not expect anything in return, just loving on that customer. And so we saw this one customer sign up and they had like a roller derby apparel business and the website was goofy. And, you know, it just did not look like a, we were working some huge brands, like hundreds and hundreds got into thousands, but,

[25:00] Matt Cimino: This customer is probably not our top customer that we have seen sign up. Right. But I went into their account and I saw it was busted. And so I turned on a loom video. I hopped in there. I said, Hey, just want to show you how to fix this. Here's kind of where this got messed up. I went ahead and fixed it for you. Just so you know, next time, this is how you do it. Okay. Like, Hey, just want to see you be successful. Like hope you crush it. All right, thanks. Sent it to her and she wrote back like, wow, no one's ever treated me like that before. Like, thank you so much. And then she said, oh, by the way, I am also a marketing director at this huge agency and we have 20 more customers we want to bring on. And then that turned into how we really scaled a ton is we had hundreds of agency partners and they'd bring 20 or 30 customers at a time. And it was like, we just treated them really, really well. We wanted to help them be successful.

[25:48] Matt Cimino: And then we knew we'd be successful in the process. And, you know, even these agencies we worked with, they would say, oh, well, you know, do you do a referral or an affiliate program? And I was like, look, I do not want to spend so much time trying to just send you a $20 check. And I said, hey, like, let us just help you be successful. And help your customer be successful. And then hopefully we are a trusted vendor for you. And, you know, we even had one guy that said like, no way, do you know who we are? Like everybody does affiliates for us. You have to pay us. And I said, I just continue to try to love on this guy. I was like, hey, really appreciate that. And congratulations on all the success. We just do not do it. But if we can help you in any way, you know, let us know.

[26:31] Matt Cimino: And then he came back later and then he turned out to be a huge partner, send a ton of customers our way. Yeah. And it was like, we do not, we would never consider doing that. And I was like, okay, like, but which is not what we are doing. Yeah. that is great. Stuck to your guns. Yeah. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah. You just, you just let, you just let your, your work speak for itself basically. Exactly. Yeah. that is, that is fantastic.

[26:52] Richard Stroupe: So we are talking Amped at this point. So when you, from the experience prior, you effectively created Amped and then you, what did you do? Transition some of the work over under the Amped umbrella and then kind of... Some was able to transfer. Yeah. Not all of it, but some was able to transfer. They were the same type of customer. So we'd say, hey, you know,

[27:13] Matt Cimino: You are on this old one and that is kind of more of like a done for you solution. We have this other one and it was cheaper, right? Like it was more of a self-service solution. Right. Yeah. And so what was an expensive account became not as expensive an account, which is not usually a great model, but we were going for scale. We wanted to really get something that scale. Right. Product. You have to have that platform. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[27:33] Richard Stroupe: So we are in the COVID era at this point. So you started seeing demand explode. Yeah. Because now- Ant was really just getting off the ground at the- Yeah. During COVID. Yeah. And through your affiliates. So they were bringing business to you in order to help their customers become more successful and more visible during this time of, you know, it was like a transformative period in everybody's lives. Yes. But it just seemed like the online business exploded because everybody was, that is where their attention was at the time. So walk me through how did that, how did you handle that growth? Like what did that look like?

[28:13] Matt Cimino: You know, we sort of missed what could have been a phenomenal growth rate in COVID, because that was when we said we were going to rebuild from scratch and go with this much more scalable, rebuild the product from scratch solution. So we kind of missed like the early like hockey stick, everything went through the roof. But it was the wake up moment of we need something that scales. And e-commerce continued to ride that high for a while, things cooled off, but we were still able to grow. And that was in the early stages of really getting amped off the ground. Because although we said, hey, we are gonna build this thing,

[28:50] Matt Cimino: Back then, you still had to code it all by hand. You had to have engineers do it. So it took months - probably nine months - to bring it to life, and close to half a million dollars to really get it going.

[28:50] Richard Stroupe: And you are still bootstrapping at this point.

[28:50] Matt Cimino: Yeah, still bootstrapping.

[28:50] Richard Stroupe: Oh my God. That is insane. What did your wife say about this?

[28:50] Matt Cimino: She was like, you are crazy. Half a million dollars. She is a saint. She is a freaking saint, man. And she was right there with me.

[29:15] Matt Cimino: She was in the business with me. She was all in. She was a huge part of the business. She was amazing.

[29:15] Richard Stroupe: That is rare. That is very rare. A lot of people get stuck in the nine-to-five route, making whatever salary per year. Then when you think about putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into your business, people say, are you insane? You could put it in the S&P 500. But you wanted to bet on yourself. You were investing in your own capability.

[29:49] Richard Stroupe: I am still all in, man. I am ready to go. I cannot wait to talk about some of the stuff you are doing now. You were going through this transformative period with Amped. You spent time on the platform, redesigned it, recoded it, and then the demand started coming in. Where...

30:16 - Acquisition Interest and the Intuit Process

[30:16] Richard Stroupe: When was it that you decided to exit? Did they come for you, or did you hire a broker? It sounds like you might have been in a situation where you were working 60, 80 hours a week, and that has a time limit. You cannot do that forever.

[30:27] Matt Cimino: We were not looking to sell. Toward the end, we had it dialed in. I feel like we got really good at curating a phenomenal team. Everybody was in it. Everybody was loving it. It was a little family. It was so much fun, and I am sure you have experienced that in your businesses. I thought we probably needed to get revenue well north of $5 million before really thinking about selling. We were just focused on growth. It was growing really fast, and we had one strategic partner we were already doing a lot with come to me and say, hey, what do you think about us doing something together?

[31:18] Matt Cimino: And I was like, yeah, we are already doing a lot together. Yeah. And they're like, no, like, what if you maybe came in? Like, we just raised $100 million. Like, what if you came over and joined up with us? And I said, all right, I'll talk about it. Sure. Went out to Aspen with these guys, spent a bunch of time. Really like these guys. They're great. And

[31:38] Matt Cimino: You spend so much time on that. And at the time, all right, so thinking back on this, if you haven't sold a business before, which I had not at the time, you are so nervous. We got this really great thing. These guys are really successful. This could be amazing. And I am calling everybody I know that is ever sold a company. Hey, they haven't even said they actually want to buy it, but we are sort of in this discussion. After every meeting out there in Aspen, I am going back and calling them like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What do I say? What do you do? I think, you know, that none of that was really necessary because really you are just having a conversation. Does this make sense? And I think if you've got a great, it is probably different stages of a company, right? Like you are, if you are growing like crazy, that is different than if, hey, I need to like, just get out of this business. But we were thankfully in the stage of, hey, it is growing like crazy.

[32:31] Matt Cimino: They were sort of dragging their feet. And then another company came out and said, hey, we are sort of in the same space. We just built an integration. Why do not we look at maybe doing something? We just raised $40 million, you know, and we raised that money to buy companies. And I said, all right, look, I'll entertain it, went out to Austin, spent some time with these guys, really like those guys too. And upfront with them, I said, hey, look, I am not trying to do just like an all equity deal with a private company. You know, we have worked so hard. This team is so capable. And so they kind of were saying, yeah, we'll do it. And that took some time.

[33:07] Matt Cimino: And then another company. So the third one came and they were sort of doing roll-ups. And so they were trying to buy this and this and this, put them together. Okay, great. Well, let us talk about it. And so each time you have that conversation, you just get a little bit better at it. You know, I had a data room. I had all my financials. I had all my projections. I had my customer list, which I'd have to update all the time. So I am like, oh, add another hundred. It was just, you know, putting more on the list. And By the time you do that three times, you are a little bit better. And then I got a cold DM on LinkedIn from this guy from Intuit. And he said, hey, want to talk? And I was like, is this just one of those like automated messages, like sales things? This is like a partnership guy. Right. Are you a bot? Yeah. And I look and it says Corp Dev. I am like, all right. So maybe. I do not really know that much about Corp Dev. I have heard and I have read, but...

[34:02] Matt Cimino: I'll talk to him. Talk to him. That guy's great. And hey, he says, look, we have been trying to build something like this for a long time. we have realized we want to buy. we are looking at a couple of different companies. And apparently they were asking all of their marketing agency partners who's got the best solution. And they kept saying was amped. And so he said, all right, you know. You need to meet the CEO. This meeting is just a head nod. Just get the head nod on this one and we'll go from there. Okay, great. So I think at this point I was much more confident, but also you could stay behind a good company. And so we had a great chat and the whole time I am just like, hey, this is what we are doing. Honored to be in the conversation. And he called me and said, hey, you got the head nod. I was like, oh, great. And so we had more conversations and

[34:51] Matt Cimino: It was nice that I had the others sort of open. This is over the span of several months. You know, this stuff doesn't happen overnight. But the two were still kind of open. One I closed the door on, but they really wanted it. And so it was nice to be able to say, hey, we are in the process with these guys. And you did all this without a broker.

[35:12] Richard Stroupe: Yeah that is phenomenal because usually you hire a broker and they kind of fish around to kind of gain up some interest and maybe put together a deal room and then have an auction kind of thing but it sounds like you kind of curated your own auction to some degree you've got you know multiple people who are interested in what you were offering and yeah that is great yeah yeah

[35:38] Matt Cimino: And look, I mean, I did not, like I said, I called every single person I knew that had sold a company and said, hey, just confidentially, I am in this conversation, what should I do? that is so valuable. It was great. It gave you the confidence. But also at the end of the day, it is like, we have a really valuable company. We had everything in order. Our books were in order, you know, thanks to our buddy, Chris Capone. We had all of our stuff in order. It was ready. And I think... At the end of the day, it is just you have to come to an agreement on what the value is. Right. And it is, I mean, you have to be on your A game the whole way through, but it is also kind of like dating. I think each company might be looking for different things and at the right time. So is there a perfect formula to selling a company? Maybe, but I think it is timing and it is what are they looking for? And even after...

[36:34] Matt Cimino: The, you know, selling to Intuit. Well, let us stay there for a minute, because I think you had a particular question about, you know, what was it, what was it like, or let me stop there. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear the process. So did they send you a letter of intent, or how did that work? Yep, we had several conversations before that. And, you know, I wanted to make sure that we did not get ourselves into anything too binding.

[37:05] Matt Cimino: And I think when we got to the letter of intent, it was we had already had very deep technical diligence. We had already talked to the CEO. And it was looking pretty good. And so, you know, they needed to make an offer. And I did not want to make the first offer necessarily. I do not know. Maybe best practice is use the right number if you feel confident in it. Not having a broker, not having done it before, I just said, hey, you've seen our numbers. You've seen everything about it. So we kind of know the ballpark of what valuations would be on revenue. And so I kind of leave that up to you guys of what do you think? And they came back and brought me a number. And-

[37:51] Matt Cimino: It was still life-changing. It was like an eight-figure number. And I am like, okay, whoa, that is crazy. But I kind of wanted a little bit more. And I thought the business was worth that. And it was just the fact that it was scaling at 500%, it was rocket ship. And so it is funny, I was having lunch with a buddy and they've had a big exit and he's just kind of direct and hilarious. And I am like, man, you know, I got off the phone with Corp Dev.

[38:27] Matt Cimino: They sort of threw this like soft number out and I just politely said, wow, like, thank you so much. I am so honored. But I certainly wouldn't want to make any decisions right now. Let me please, you know, I want to think about that and I am going to get back to you guys. did not seem too excited. did not seem disappointed. Just great. Honored. Thank you. Let me get back to you. And so I am having lunch with the guy. I am like, man, they just said this on the phone like minutes ago. And the guy, the guy from Corp Def said, you know, hey, just do not take too long because time kills deals. True. Time's the enemy of all deals. And I said, yeah. Okay, thanks. All right. Well, thanks. Yeah. And so I am having lunch with this guy. He's so cocky. And he goes, I told him that story. He goes, you know what else kills deals?

[39:11] Matt Cimino: Bleepy bleeping offers. I was like, what? And he sort of like shocked me out of like, oh my gosh, maybe I should just take it. You know, maybe I should just, I do not want to screw it up. This is a great deal. And I was like, you know, he's right. And, you know, I was like, we do have a great company. We do have, and I talked to more advisors and mentors and talked it through. And some folks who had been through this deal process plenty before, even some guys who are in the PE world who are really sharp with this. And, you know, Although I was afraid to come back and counter, it made complete sense to come back and counter because we had every right to. And so I came back and said, I want this. And they said, okay, great. And I said, okay.

[39:51] Matt Cimino: And then, you know, put some more paperwork together. And they were fast and quick acting. And, you know, the attorneys get involved. I had a good attorney through the whole process. But I was really hands-on driving through a lot of this. And... You know, we closed it. And then I was getting on a plane to, to go see them in Atlanta. They have a really big office in Atlanta. I think they spent about 500 million on it. it is insane. And so I am getting on this plane to go to Atlanta. We closed the deal that day. And I, I got a alert on my phone that the wire came in and I go, Oh my gosh. And the plane takes off. No internet. I am sitting there like,

40:38 - Deal Structure, Employee Outcomes, and Integration

[40:38] Matt Cimino: I cannot talk to anybody. I cannot call anybody. I am looking out the window. I am looking at the person beside me. I am just like, what is this? This is crazy. And that was a neat moment to sit there and be like, wow. All right, God. That was really, really interesting. Curious to see what is next here. This is interesting. Right. Yeah. So how long did that process take from LOI to close? Well...

[41:08] Matt Cimino: It just took a while to get even the initial, I think we came to that agreement on number over the course of maybe two months.

[41:17] Richard Stroupe: With talking almost weekly and then getting to the final close i'd say another three months maybe so i do not know maybe six months start to finish which is pretty quick yeah that is that is typical you know for a publicly traded company and sometimes it takes a little longer you know but for smaller deals i think the threshold's under 30 or 40 million 50. Yeah it is 50 now yeah so yeah i mean bigger deals take a lot longer go through the regulatory commissions and stuff but but no it is it is phenomenal congratulations that is amazing thanks it is fun so what when did this happen like this is about two years ago two years ago all right so you are still fresh off of the acquisition yeah did they was it do you have an earn out or was it completely

[42:08] Richard Stroupe: 100% upfront. I mean, obviously some deals have some escrows and things like that. Like, are you still having to work a retainer type of thing? so kind of, and, and it is also a caution to entrepreneurs of like, make sure you understand the structure of the deal. Yeah. Well, you, you mentioned getting a good lawyer. I mean, obviously you got to have a solid team that can walk you through all the terms because you really do not understand some of this stuff. Like, wait, what does this mean?

[42:33] Matt Cimino: I am grateful that it turned out to be a great deal, but also even some of those other ones when they were making offers of like, oh, it is gonna be this equity portion and this, and it is this valuation, but wait, where's the cash, right? And so some of it is common sense. And Intuit was just transparently half cash and then half in stock, which is great because it is publicly traded stock. There are restrictions on that stock. And I get it slowly over time.

[43:02] Richard Stroupe: And I have gotten most of it. there is still some. And that is been, yes, that is been good. So I, yeah, it is been very good. Now, did you share any of this? Did you have like a stock option plan with your employees? Did everyone participate in the deal? And are they actually now Intuit employees or did some of them get laid off? Yep. So I did.

[43:29] Matt Cimino: I owned 87% of it, and then the other was spread out between options with the team. Yeah, that is good. And so they did make some money, and everybody got significant raises and bonuses and tons of stock options, different things. They did hire everyone on, which was great. Yeah. And Intuit does, three types of deals. Each company's probably got different types of deals they do, but Corp Dev has kind of shown me their playbook, which is, you know, they're either going to buy an ongoing concern. So like a Credit Karma, Intuit's bought that, keeps it going. Or it is like a tech tuck in, they call it, where they want to buy the technology and the team, integrate it into the company. Or it is an acquire where they just do not need the tech and they're just going to hire the team in, which actually happens quite often. ours was the, the tech tuck in in the

[44:17] Richard Stroupe: So they're all fully Intuit employees at this point. Did you have any issues with transitioning your culture from, because I know my first company, I had that problem where I sold to a strategic and after six months, like the emails change, the website changes, your badge changes. it is like your benefits change. it is like, wait, what happened? So it is a little bit of a ruffled feather, a moment, you know, especially you get used to things. Well,

[44:46] Matt Cimino: Most of the benefits got better in terms of financial. Yours got better. Like, you know, we had good health care, but, you know, there is just so many perks with a big company. Like we had another kid and I got, you know, four there. They give like four months parental off and stuff like that, which was crazy. But they the culture was difficult. I will say just going from.

[45:08] Richard Stroupe: 20 people having a fantastic time growing this rocket ship to going into a much larger organization it is a bumpy ride yeah i do not think a lot of people understand how important that is yeah you know well they they underestimate it because they just assume that everyone's going to be happy like this is great more opportunities better experience and then it is like wait but we we are flying under a different flag right now yeah and that that feeling is just different

[45:38] Matt Cimino: And I think they did, you know, they did, they accommodated as much as they possibly could. it is just purely from 20 people to what was like 17,000 people at the time. It was like, okay, well, it is just, there is just going to be different rhythms. And I think the CEO and, you know, CPO, I think they did as good a job as they could have integrating it. And actually the Amped store is going to be more of like a bit of a case study of like a successful company. Acquisition where it is fully integrated a lot of times maybe the tech doesn't get integrated or doesn't go through and i think i worked really hard with them to make sure that the team was well taken care of and that they as smooth as it could be you know it and we still kind of reminisce on it you know i i talked to some of the old amp folks yesterday you know and i was like man that was so much fun yeah that that was not really maybe we can do it again in a few years

[46:36] Richard Stroupe: No, I know. Yeah. Edit that out. No, I mean, I think that is, that is fine. So what, what, what kind of non-compete they have for you? I think we'll leave that question. Okay. but, but what we, but we, we can say there is, you know,

[46:59] Matt Cimino: Yeah, I do not even think we need to get into that. But I think for the real story there is I cannot create something that is going to directly compete with them. So if I create another tax solution, if I create another bookkeeping software, we are going to have a problem. For a period of time. For a period of time. Yeah, yeah. Probably for the next like - Year and a half. Well, time flies. But I do not have any like tax planning or accounting or like email service provider offerings or credit monitoring solutions. So I do not feel like if I am to invest or help grow some companies that are not directly competing with them, then I do not feel worried about that.

[47:41] Richard Stroupe: Honestly, that is one of the reasons I sold my first company, because I was in my mid-30s. I had some different challenges than you did, but one of the things I thought about is I am still relatively young, and I can do this again at some point in the future. If I could just stay true to my course... Fulfill my obligation and get through this phase, then I come out on the other side, higher capital deployment, way more experience and higher value, you know? And so that, how could you not think about doing something down the road, you know? Absolutely. And I am so grateful for it too. Like, yeah, that capital piece is great because, you know, now instead of like,

48:29 - Corp Dev, Raleon, and the Full-Circle Moment

[48:29] Matt Cimino: Feeling so stressed about that, you know, you can make some strategic bets. So totally agree with that, but also the experience, right? Like being able to sell and integrate and come into an organization at that level and stay on with them to help them Do a successful integration. What does that look like to take your technology, smash it into this larger company? Yeah. Great learning experience. And then I always wanted to make sure I was treating it as if it is my own and doing a great job. I was never going to just try to mail it in there. And so They actually gave me quite a bit of scope and I was leading the whole Mailchimp product end to end specifically for serving e-commerce companies. And so we shipped a ton of great solutions. We shipped seven different features all across the application. It was fun to be able to get up there and like fire everybody up. This is what we are doing. And be there with the CEO, chief product officer.

[49:23] Matt Cimino: And then chief product officer said, hey, what else do you want to do? And I was like, hey, we we buy a lot of companies and I'd love to help us with some of that work, too. And so she said, great. Well, you know, go work from the product side with the Corp Dev team. And so they taught me their playbook. And then we I put together a thesis of what we needed and we went out and looked at 20, 30 different companies. And one of them being a really cool, full, full, full circle moment was The thesis actually lined up perfectly with a fellow Wilmington guy's company, Nathan Snell. It was Raleon. And he was actually employee number one at Encino. And really sharp guy, so smart. We had reconnected, I do not know, a couple years ago. And we reconnected because I said, hey, I am back in Wilmington and full time and whatever.

[50:16] Matt Cimino: Funny, he actually came to talk to my entrepreneurship class way back when with Dr. Harper. He came to class and came with Chip Mahan. And they came in and they said, hey, we have done this Live Oak Bank thing. we are going to spin out this technology thing called Encino. Nathan here is employee number one. He's going to figure out this technology thing. Yeah. And they obviously did ipo'd it and then nathan was doing this rayleon thing and he started really getting traction and it just coordinated perfectly with the time that i'm doing this Corp Dev work too but it was not even just he had the exact technology we needed and he was the exact profile on his team as well and so we acquired his company gosh i do not know maybe six months ago now and

[50:59] Matt Cimino: That was really a full circle moment to kind of be able to see it all. So, you know, I have done the startup, I have done the scale up, I have been on the other side of the deal table now. And now that is why I am so excited to do this Amped Ventures. Because I am like, exactly like you said, all right, I am so ready to do this again. And what a time to be a builder with what we can do now. And even just how deep I have gone on AI. And I have led a lot of different things inside of Intuit for how do we do a better job of that even to move faster. But if you do that in a startup environment, I mean, what did take nine months and half a million dollars or a couple hundred thousand dollars, now might take a weekend. I think it is still very hard to do all the things right to build a company. Reflecting back, we need the culture, we need the team, we need to hire well, we need to run the right processes, whether that is we implemented EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System, it is still gonna be really hard to grow good companies. But that first part,

52:01 - The Amped Ventures Model

[52:01] Matt Cimino: I think we can go a lot faster with AI. We gotta make sure we are pointed in the right direction, but also kind of having the experience that I have had now, I believe that I can really help early stage companies to make sure they're pointing in the right direction, make sure they're serving that customer well, make sure that they're actually solving a real problem for them, loving on that customer.

[52:19] Richard Stroupe: And then just help them go a lot further, a lot faster. Yeah. that is a phenomenal business model. So walk me through that a little bit. Like, how does that work? So you just recently launched Amped Ventures. Yep. Amped Ventures. So is it more of a fractional CTO type model where you are helping build an MVP for a founder's team or? You know, I think candidly we are open. Yeah.

[52:43] Matt Cimino: It is not like a consulting shop. it is more so we would either put some investment behind someone, build a team around them. But we also have like a couple internal ideas that, hey, I was gonna hire this engineer and this designer anyways. And if it is at this early stage where we are just experimenting, we go so fast with AI, Well, we'll work on these two and we can also help a couple others try to make it real. And then when they get to a certain stage, great. They need to have their own dedicated resources. But in the early stages, if we have got the playbook and we have got the team and we have got the capital, can we help spin these companies out faster? And that is the whole thesis and the whole theory. we are just getting going, but I am doing this anyway. The whole reason I said, hey, we are going to do venture studio is...

[53:29] Richard Stroupe: I was going to do it anyways i was already hiring that engineer and that designer i was like oh wait a minute there is other folks have great ideas yeah that i could absolutely help and so it just makes sense yeah is it is it more of an accelerator where you are you are bringing in maybe a founder and kind of nurturing their business models and their team and then kind of spinning them out to kind of maybe get to that seed or precede raise it is it is similar to an accelerator although different it is more like getting a co-founder okay

[53:57] Matt Cimino: It is not just an initial sprint. It is something where we are trying to quite literally help take these companies and stay with them operationally and take them all the way. So it is not just a single phase. Okay. That sounds really cool. Yeah. Are you working exclusively for Wilmington based startups or are you open nationwide? Like what is your regional footprint look like? Again, candidly, I do not think I am,

[54:21] Matt Cimino: Opposed to going outside of Wilmington, but I want it to, I do want it to be in Wilmington. I think we are living in a phenomenal place. And even if I talk to a founder right now, who's in Raleigh and say, why do not you come on down to Wilmington? The quality of life is fantastic. we have got some really smart people here. Yeah. I am really surprised. Like there is a lot going on here. Matter of fact, I was having a conversation with Jim Roberts over the weekend. There was an article that came out

[54:49] Richard Stroupe: Talking about Stanford and how venture capitals organizations start nurturing potential founders like freshman, sophomore year in college. And so they take this exclusive Population size, i.e. Stanford University, which is very selective anyway. And then they start nurturing these graduates, I guess you could say, these students, into molding them into potential founders. Are you basically doing something similar here where you are kind of working with young founders in the Wilmington area?

[55:27] Matt Cimino: Absolutely yeah yeah last week met with a bunch of young early founders and you know i think it is just really i want to make sure that we are not giving them feedback or advice that is not going to resonate and even just the simple fact of hey you've got this cool tech no this guy this week Hey, that is really interesting. Well, who have you tried to actually help with this? And it is going to sound cliche, but I think when you put it in that lens of like, who are you helping with this? And what problem is it solving for them? I do not want to sound like I am coming from a textbook, but truly I think it is that that is the blocking and tackling it needs to be done. And so, okay, great. Well, let us get you in front of some of these people. Go talk to them. Does this tech help? Or is it just a neat tech that you created? And so I think just being able to give that kind of feedback and help people really...

[56:16] Matt Cimino: Refine those ideas and that is that stuff i'm just doing because i love it but if it makes sense for us to get involved then great but i think i've got to have this conversation i'm sure you have a lot of those conversations you are probably at a later stage than the conversations that i'm having but i think it is

[56:32] Richard Stroupe: It is so needed, and I feel like I am doing exactly what I am supposed to do. I was telling my wife, I feel like this is what I am created to do. I think God truly created me to do this. You've been basically doing this since you've been 14 years old. Yeah. You kind of found a niche where you can help enable your customers, i.e. other founders, whoever it is, Fulfill their goal and their quest by helping them kind of collapsing that discovery phase. Because I always look at companies in two phases, discovery or acceleration. You know, yes, I like to focus on the validation or the acceleration phase where they need capital so they can run faster or harder and to just see how far that value can create.

[57:16] Richard Stroupe: Whereas you are stuck in discovery, you are still trying to prove your model, trying to prove your team and prove your customer set, which is kind of where you are operating out of in helping those companies overcome some of those challenges and hurdles. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you mentioned that is phenomenal. that is great. I mean, I think this market is perfect for what you are doing. I would probably recommend maybe, you know, looking at all North Carolina, maybe Southeast region, because there is a lot of talent, you know, outside Wilmington area. I have talked to Jim about this again. You know, we have to be able to connect with other like-minded organizations like his and

[57:57] Richard Stroupe: Up in Washington, D.C., one of my guys, Matt Gittleman, he operates this thing called VC in D.C., which effectively is kind of like new in Wilmington, but it is for that D.C. metro area. If there is one for Charlotte, Atlanta, maybe Austin or Nashville, it'd be great to kind of have like a collective where we can kind of like hopscotch all over the place and do some things that you are doing for other people. Yeah. That would be awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, again, I just feel so fortunate to live here in Wilmington. I am not, hey, you have to be in Wilmington, but I would almost say, why would you not be in Wilmington? In your opinion, what is missing? Because there is a lot of great things here, but there is also some things that could improve. What do you think could improve? Yeah.

58:50 - Wilmington, AI Builders, and Community

[58:50] Matt Cimino: Well credit Jim Roberts. I think he's doing a great job and very vocal about the region. He's fantastic. and gosh, what do we need here in Wilmington? I think there is money. I, I do not think we are in a place where there is not enough capital. You are here there is others here and i think if you've got a great idea you can find it i think that where maybe we can help a little bit with amped ventures is that early stage a little bit of guidance hey you've got an idea but did you consider this or who's that customer how are we helping them and i'd love to maybe even see more of the folks that are in town get activated in that space a little bit because there are so many people here that have been extremely successful

[59:31] Matt Cimino: And they're living the lifestyle that they want to live. But just how do we, they want to contribute. Like I said earlier, like these entrepreneurs, they want to help other entrepreneurs. How do we connect those dots? And I think Jim's doing a good job with it. You know, we have got this AI Roundtable that Jim and I are actually doing tomorrow, which is going to be great. And that whole thing is, Called jim i said hey we need to get we need to do this and i almost find it similar to you hear about the homebrew club back in the day in silicon valley which was they were tinkering with computers and they did not really know exactly where it was going but thought it was neat and it was cool and they were going to learn from each other and and that is the same thing i want to see us do here where we can say hey

[1:00:16] Matt Cimino: AI is just moving so fast. And it is not just the young guys. I am seeing all age groups come to me and go, hey, I just did this in Claude or I just created this or I have had this idea forever and now I can make it real. And I have got this agent doing this thing and I set up OpenClaw and I set up Hermes and I am doing this. And they're doing it here in Wilmington. And so let us get everybody together on a recurring basis and just share what is working. And it might just be, let us just trade some ideas. Like, hey, I helped my uncle create a new, or my father-in-law, he's got a life sciences consulting company. He's got like 70 consultants. His website was total crap. And I was like, well, let me help you just fix it. I did not charge him anything, obviously. And I just said, hey, I'll just make it, made it with AI. And then he needed a bunch of changes. He's got a lot of people involved. And so I put him in a three-way text chat with my

[1:01:05] Matt Cimino: Assistant open claw i said hey i'm introducing wells into the chat he's going to make all the updates for you he's just texting with it it is fixed his website yeah it is amazing i mean what you can do now is just mind-blowing yeah it is and so it is fun when i have coffee with these folks or meet with people and they just blow me away by their workflow hey i'm using this tunnel to get into this and this clot and this agent It is fascinating. And I do not know exactly where it is all going. I do not think anybody really does because tomorrow there is gonna be some other model that blows our mind, but let us at least get together and share what is working. And so that is the idea is we wanna learn from each other and there is, you know, I think we can find great ideas together or maybe found companies together, or maybe it is there is investments to be made.

[1:01:49] Richard Stroupe: Who knows? But like at that homebrew club, right? Like Steve Jobs showed up with like the Apple One. I was like, hey, look at this cool thing. And it is like, maybe that happens right here in Wellington. I love it. I mean, we have always had this desire to have more technology-based groups. You know, like minded individuals coming together, just creating a spark. Yeah. Talking about technology, talking about how, you know, it could change certain things or introduce new features. Yeah. We have to have more of that. So I am really happy that you've created this. Or even one guy's commercial real estate guy. Not technical at all.

[1:02:26] Matt Cimino: He showed me what he created. And there is a lot of complexity to looking at commercial property. What is the cap rate? What does this look like? What are projections? He's got all these formulas and these spreadsheets that he's had for ages. And he just made an application with Claude. He doesn't know how to code. And he showed it to me. It was actually pretty good. And you could take a property, evaluate it, put a whole cash flow statement together, puts it out as an output. Like you can do all these evaluations. And they were legit because he's been doing this. He's an expert in his field. So it allows these experts to say, hey, I have a deep industry knowledge and I know what I need and just make it real. And you do not have to spend all this money on an engineer. But that early part, I believe, is still -

[1:03:08] Matt Cimino: Like take that expertise, put it into this product. You know what you need as an industry expert. But to take it from there is also why I am excited about Amped Ventures because great, now he's got this thing. What does he do with it? And is it actually built right? I mean, but still AI can still fix some of that stuff. But how does he go from industry expert created this thing that is helpful for other people to turn it into something much larger? Because everybody's now basically an entrepreneur. Right. Right.

[1:03:35] Matt Cimino: Access to technology, especially with Claude, is exciting.

[1:03:35] Richard Stroupe: That is awesome. Very cool stuff. What else do you like to do outside of your venture studio?

[1:03:35] Matt Cimino: We have a boy who just turned five, a two-year-old boy, and a seven-month-old girl.

[1:03:35] Richard Stroupe: Congratulations.

[1:03:35] Matt Cimino: Thank you. So it is full throttle.

[1:03:35] Richard Stroupe: Three is a handful.

[1:03:35] Matt Cimino: Full throttle, yeah.

1:04:02 - Family, Contact, and Outro

[1:04:02] Matt Cimino: But it is great. They are super cute. We have a lot of fun. We love where we live - getting out to the inlet, anchoring up, or just doing whatever. It is such a beautiful place to live.

[1:04:16] Richard Stroupe: Do you live in Hampstead or Wilmington proper?

[1:04:16] Matt Cimino: We live in Wilmington.

[1:04:16] Richard Stroupe: Okay. That is great. Three kids, a new venture studio, and a whole head full of ideas. Lots to look forward to with you.

[1:04:16] Matt Cimino: It is fun, man. It is such an amazing time to be a builder. There is so much opportunity.

[1:04:41] Matt Cimino: It is kind of scary at the same time because who knows, is Anthropic going to come out with a new model tomorrow? I do not want to be competing with Anthropic directly, but I think these tools can enable entrepreneurs to go so much faster. Right. So we are not trying to go build the next model. I am not trying to create some model, but I want to leverage these tools in these businesses to make them AI-native so they can go much faster, much further. Yeah. Yeah. that is great.

[1:05:04] Richard Stroupe: So for any founders or people who are thinking about starting a company, how can they reach out to you and connect with you and your venture studio?

[1:05:12] Matt Cimino: Yeah, amped.io. You can go read about why venture studio, compare it against an incubator or VC, and see where it lives in that journey. There is some FAQ there to learn more. Then send me an email. My email is on there, and I am also on LinkedIn. I definitely just want to be part of the community. I think it is about genuinely leaning into, how can I help you?

[1:05:40] Matt Cimino: If we help other people be successful, I think we will be successful. I do not think we have to put deals together too soon. Let us just be helpful, and I think the deals will come together.

[1:05:40] Richard Stroupe: Oh yeah, for sure. Then, of course, attending your meetup.

[1:05:40] Matt Cimino: Yes. We are going to have this AI Roundtable quarterly. The first one has 50 people signed up. It is already sold out. We have another 20 on the wait list, and I know there are people who said they are going to show up regardless.

[1:06:07] Matt Cimino: It should be a good event. We have got to make sure we have enough drinks. We will do it quarterly. Jim Roberts has made it a new event under NEW, the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington. The AI Roundtable has turned out to be a really cool partnership.

[1:06:25] Richard Stroupe: We will just keep doing it quarterly. I believe there are going to be a lot of people looking forward to learning from you and what you are doing.

[1:06:25] Matt Cimino: I also want them to learn from all the other people in the room. I am still blown away by the stories I am hearing - you connected what to what? It is amazing. It is wild. It is cool to learn from each other.

[1:06:25] Richard Stroupe: Yeah, that is awesome. Well, thanks again for coming by.

[1:06:25] Matt Cimino: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was great sharing my story.

[1:06:25] Richard Stroupe: It was great learning more about you and your background.

[1:06:52] Matt Cimino: Thanks for having me. I will look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

[1:06:52] Richard Stroupe: All right, see you tomorrow. Thank you.

[1:07:00] Announcer: Amplified CEO is produced by Topsail Insider, edited by Coastal Carolina Network, and sponsored by Cape Fear Ventures. For more information about Amplified CEO, Richard Stroupe, or Cape Fear Ventures, please contact Krista at 910-800-0111 or Krista at TopsailInsider.com.

Editorial Notes

This transcript is edited for readability: obvious speech-recognition errors, repeated filler, capitalization, and verified proper nouns were corrected. Short backchannels and overlapping speech are retained where they affect meaning, but some cross-talk has been smoothed into natural podcast turns.

Key proper nouns checked during cleanup include Richard Stroupe, Matt Cimino, Amped Ventures, amped.io, Intuit Mailchimp, Raleon, Ryan Allis, iContact, Exit Intel, NEW (Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington), and AI Roundtable.