Ep. #245 - Jordan Weitz (Keychain)

[MUSIC] >> Hello, everybody. Before we jump into today's episode, we have two sponsors. We want to say thank you to for supporting the show. The first one is routine. You guys have heard me talk about routine, honestly, back from the early days of the podcast. And it's still a product I use every single morning. They have a prompt for me here. I'm going to do a little impromptu on this ad read today, because honestly, this is a product that I truly believe in. And so I'm just going to tell you guys exactly what I think in why. First and foremost, this is a stat that they shared. But when you sleep, you lose between a pound and a pound and a half of water. And most of that's just sweating while you sleep. I used to not know if that was actually true, to be honest. I felt like a pound and a pound and a half of water seemed like quite a bit while. I slept. 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So when I am good about doing this consistently, I will take one of those single serve packets. I'll throw in my mixer bottle and whether I also put in a pre workout or something with caffeine, or I just drink that separately, I try to drink that first. And the days I do that, I do genuinely feel hydrated and just have a different form of clarity all morning. A lot of people have tried to make their own homemade versions of routine, right? You see people making, they take a shot of the apple cider vinegar and they put a little sea salt, a little lemon and a drink. This is essentially that, but in a product that you can take with you on the go, have it ready for you first thing in the morning. I know me personally when I'm groggy rolling out of bed, the last thing I want to do is, you know, squeeze a lemon, cut lemons up, go get the apple cider vinegar, find my sea salt, I just rip this packet open, throw to my water, drink it and it's good to go. You can try yours today. 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I was like, do I really want to have mushrooms in my coffee? Well, folks, I will tell you when I use NeuroRost, one of the things that has stood out to me the most is in, well, I'll back up. People that know me know that I have way too much caffeine, typically. One of the things this year I've done a good job of is cutting out alcohol, not completely, but predominantly I don't touch a lot of alcohol anymore. What I think I've actually done the other way, though, is I added a lot more caffeine. So I do definitely drink too much caffeine that's something I need to work on next year as a term minimized. How much of that? But NeuroRost is something that has actually helped me because of the way they formulated their coffee, unlike regular coffee, which is still something I consume. But NeuroRost specifically doesn't cause jitters or crashes. Mushroom coffee provides a more balanced and sustained energy, allowing you to stay focused and productive throughout the day. So the times I do use NeuroRost, I'll be honest. I just don't feel that jittery like, "louh, I'm jumping out of my chair or standing here in my desk, jumping around and feeling." So give NeuroRost a try. They have some really good flavors. I'll be honest to the two guys that started NeuroRost are just really good dudes based out of New York and they're hustling. And hopefully they can get some people to try NeuroRost this holiday season by listening to this podcast. So for you folks who've been on the fence, I'm telling you, it tastes delicious. They've done a fantastic job of making this coffee not only be functional, but tastes fantastic. And if you want to try NeuroRost, you can use code Shane White. So it's super simple, just Shane White at checkout. You'll also get 30% off. So if you go to NeuroRost.com and once again, I have added that to the show notes. So just click into the show notes while you're listening to this episode. You can click on NeuroRost link directly. Don't forget to use code just Shane White and you'll get 30% off your order. Hope you guys love both these products. I'm trying to not only bring you guys products that I use, but that I believe in on the podcast. I'm not taking ad reads for any brands that I don't really believe in. So anyway, hope you guys love both those products, your routine.com and NeuroRost.com. I've added those links to the show notes. I hope you guys love it. And I got an awesome guest coming up right after this. All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Shane White's show. I'm pumped today. Jordan White's is on the podcast. Jordan, welcome to the show. How are you? Shit it. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. Excited to be here. I said I'm excited. I do feel like I say that a lot because I genuinely only talk to people on here that I'm pumped to talk to you. The power of having your own podcast, I guess. But we met at X-TOH. And when we met at X-TOH a few months ago, when I got explained what you're doing and what you're building, just from being in the CPG industry, not running a brand myself, but being so close to the front lines with a lot of brands, what you're building is awesome. And something, we've talked about off-air, something I'm passionate about. I think there's so much potential in. So for everyone listening, Jordan, not to pump you up too much there. What do you mind giving everyone just a little bit of a rundown of what you're building in the EJ? Yeah, 100%. And you want me to go into background too in case of-- Yeah, if you don't mind. I'm going to give everyone a little intro to you, just for your own album. Give me a little flavor of who I am and what I do. So by the way, I use that word flavor all the time during the day. I need to stop using it just because we're in the food world. I'm like, flavor. How can I come up with stupid puns that make people laugh? But I can't. Yeah, so my background, maybe even going back probably five years or so, probably more than at this point, I guess eight or nine years ago, was diagnosed with celiac disease going into my first year of college. And that is when I realized how unimportant food and beverage products are into the world, but two, products I couldn't cannot eat. So I became obsessed with the CPG realm. I was that kid walking in a grocery store, my headphones in, listening to a podcast about nutrition and ingredient. I wanted to figure out types of products I could and could not eat. And I think that's what really kicked off my fattuation for consumer products and health and wellness more broadly. So I always knew that I wanted to spend some portion of my career in this CPG realm. And ultimately, I ended up at a consumer fund that was investing in high growth consumer brands. Like Oli Pop is a better for your soda brand than I'm sure everyone here is of now. I've organic immunity shots. Poia is a plant-based protein drink. You name it. And then interestingly, what most people didn't know about what we did, moved down the supply chain to buy and invest in contract manufacturers as well. So I kind of had this unique barbell approach. The fund was called Monogram Capital. Great guys. And the very unique place to kind of continue learning about the ins and outs of kind of how brands are built, how things are produced, how products get on shelf. Because I was hearing pain points on both the brand side as well as the manufacturing side. Brands, you would ask them what their biggest pain point was. It was always their operations, right? How do you produce more? How do we innovate faster? How do we get out in front of all these trends? And then manufacturers, on the other hand, have idle capacity. Their sales guys don't know exactly who to call. These brands don't necessarily know where to go to find the right manufacturer. You go to Google, you go to broker, you go to trade shows, all kind of the legacy, kayaking, type ways of finding one another for arguably the most important piece of your entire business being your supply chain. So, I thought it was crazy. Frankly, I was like, oh my god, this is insane. We talked to a beverage brand and they have no idea where to produce. Or they're looking for this capability and don't know where to go. So, I started as a very small idea that I was going to create a website with some manufacturers on it that people could use just because I was doing my research at Monogram trying to better understand who was out there that could make sauces, right? In the same way that a brand doing marinara sauce was looking, I was out there trying to find the list of folks that we should go chase from my good position or investment standpoint. So, anyways, long story short, bridge into kind of keychain. But, you know, I actually sent a cold DM to one of my now co-founders, Oshin, on Twitter, basically saying, like, hey, at the intersection of this kind of archaic industry, he was running a business called Angees List at the time that I felt was a very interesting thing. parallel to kind of building a marketplace in very different industry obviously, but archaic in the same ways of take out your phone book, call down the roll-adex of folks that could come fix a light bulb in your house or clean your apartment for example. A very similar problem set that I kind of figured and identified here in the CPG realm. So we started meeting up more and more frequently. He got extremely excited about the idea. Umong, one of his co-founders from their prior business, got also extremely excited about the idea and, um, you know, we officially started keychain back in August of 2023. So about a year ago now, ish, um, to build a platform at the intersection of brands, manufacturers, one in your supply chain and anyone on the brand or retail side to help them find the right supplier faster than they ever have before. So cool. And I'm sure you've gotten this a million times, but this is the classic. If you're in CPG and then you hear that whole intro, you're like, how the fuck did I not come up with that? You already need like it's such a, because it's every what you're to your point, every single brand person in the space deals with that. And I vividly remember at our X to R even when we were expanding into other categories outside of bars, I remember sitting in one meeting with some of our supply chain folks and I'm going to put you this, but it was a similar process to what you're saying. I was like, how do we even find a manufacturer for that product? And they kind of said the same thing to like you kind of, we kind of like go to Google, we asked around. We was like, wow, okay. So it's literally just you searching like anyone else could search. There's not like a centralized place that everyone goes to to meet up. Pretty crazy. I mean, even the most sophisticated of brands, like the very exploratory phase in the early days. I mean, basically it's a, it's a no brainer for someone like Shane's cookies company that wants to start your own gluten free shop and you have no idea where to go. But it's also a totally different story for a company like Coca Cola or even Hershey's or Mongols where you would expect that a lot of these companies, the Rolex, they know everyone that can make everything at any moment in time. They don't, right? So yeah, yeah. Just everyone uses the same process and you know, I always like to use this one anecdotal example, but one of our largest retail customers right now, owned us by googling ice cream cake manufacturer on Google. You would think that you would know everyone that can make something he's looking to make. I mean, it's a top three retailer in the country. And you know, it was just crazy to me that someone like that was searching for, you see ice cream cakes a little bit kind of unique rather than it just being cookies, but you know, your first instinct was to go to Google to find websites that could help you identify versus it being kind of more traditional marketplace that could help you actually identify who you needed to work with. That makes a ton of sense. And you and I chatted last time too, you know, before we had the podcast, I remember vividly thinking to myself, for a lot of people listening, it probably comes off pretty obvious to the need today. You're exactly. If I wanted to start, you know, product XYZ, having something like this to go find out who could make it is a huge need. But then when we dove deeper into it, the one side I hadn't thought about, which, you know, obviously you guys are solving as well as, you know, these manufacturers, they're good at manufacturing. They're not necessarily great at inbound and just, you know, imagining a moment, you know, I'm always going to go back to the protein bar conversation. It's like if you're making protein bars, like how many people are probably reaching out to you with their ideas and they can only run some minimal amount, like that process has to be so convoluted and broken for the manufacturers to that you're, it's crazy that you found a problem that is actually like two-sided. Like the issue is both ways. It's not just, it's not just that people are trying to create products. It's actually the other side probably just as much if not more. It's a huge vetting issue in terms of knowing who can actually make what and I think it always comes down to like the processing capability level. It's not just that someone wants to make a granola bar, but it's, I want to make a granola bar, maybe like our X bar that would be likely made on a single screw extrusion machine, right? Oh, maybe like specifics like that. So or like a granola bar like a, I don't know, like very easy is one of my favorite granola bar brands. Interesting is I think a lot of people think that the manufacturing industry is kind of like hey, I want to make a soda or I want to make a granola bar, but I think what we've identified is getting down to the granular level of saying, hey, you know what, I want to make something that is co-extruded. I want it to be guillotine cut. I want it to be flow wrapped and I want it to be put into a cardboard box. It's a lot different than just saying, hey, I want to make a granola bar. So you know, our north bar is being able to kind of place brands, retailers, food service operators and projects down to a capability level. So that it's not just saying, hey, someone's looking to make a granola bar, but hey, these guys are the exact right fit for the capabilities and technology that you need to make that's a granola bar. If that makes sense. That's a great example. And I never thought of it down to that degree because I've never done that. So that's crazy. Yeah, the amount of specific things that I would assume if you're just a founder and you're building an Excel spreadsheet of people you're reaching out to, like the process of just going through, figuring out, okay, can you do all five of these things? Let alone understanding. If you're even in M.O.Q's, there's like 10 checkpoints that you're probably going to find out. You just wasted time on. Resign. It's funny. I mean, if you go to any manufacturer's website and, you know, I would say I don't want to kind of say everyone's website is not great and not detailed, but I would confidently say 85 to 90% of the websites that I've at least been to probably haven't been updated in 20 years. Don't necessarily reflect everything that you can do today, right? Which is a whole another crazy thing to me. But then also, you know, typically you have to get on the phone with them to actually understand exactly what they do, which is a waste of time for them as well as for you. Because you're having a lot of these introductory conversations without knowing exactly if someone can do what you're looking to do. And, you know, that's where we kind of want to position ourselves where if you are a manufacturer that comes on board to keychain, we need to have those up front calls anymore, right? We know what you can do and we know what the brands are looking for. You can know technically if you will be able to do it. All you have to do is decide if you want to work with that person and if it makes economic sense for you as well. That's, that's, that's wild. I'm just thinking of so many ideas and so many situations where this can help. I mean, it's funny. I would have to agree with you. You know, the websites I've always looked at and glanced at and even though I was doing research before this, it's so true that, you know, that's not what they're good at. I mean, I can even say on my own website for what we do. It's as you're saying that I'm thinking to myself, like, yeah, we probably were so busy operating the business that I don't, sometimes when we make pivots, I don't think to necessarily go to my website if we get right away. That's a really good point. So that, I think that's a great way to like lay the foundation for what Keychain is. Jordan, I think the beginning story, the zero to one is one of my favorite parts of the podcast and having you on here. So, you know, I, you're doing the research. You're making, you know, spreadsheets doing your research when you're working at the other firm. And then you reach out on Twitter. I think that's a, that's a piece I don't want to skip over too far. Too far. I think sometimes people, they downplay, especially today with all the different platforms, how connected we all still are. And like, if you really want to take a shot, you can take a shot. Would you mind giving the listeners today just a little bit more of a rundown, you know, how did you even think to go about that to not only DM him on Twitter, but I guess like, how you thought of what you were going to say, because there's all these concepts obviously around, do you send them something where you're offered in help? Did you ask him like, it seems like I'm assuming you probably didn't reach out and say, hey, you should be my co-founder of this crazy idea I have. You know, that's probably not what you said I'm assuming. But I think for people listening, that's a huge nugget today is just what a leap you took in general to reach out to someone you didn't know who's done something in the space that you're interested in and just took your shot because I think a lot of people just wait and don't take that shot. I mean, I have always been pretty shameless when it comes to reaching out to people. I never really think twice about sending a message to someone even if they're the Mark Cubans of the world and send them something pretty custom and personalized, but I would say that is probably, I don't want to say it's a superpower because anyone could do it. It's a mentality that you have to get in that if you don't get a response from someone, you have to forget about it and move on with your life. But I have always sent cold emails to people and I think that's a major reason for why I'm here where I am today. Obviously from a key chain angle, but you've a deconsent who I know, you know, well, actually, this is going back a handful of years now, but a senior year of college, I was listening to a podcast he was on, sent him a note and I heard what he was saying on the podcast. He started talking and then I ended up interning for him like during the summer, right? Wow. Oh, I keep getting these like little, you know, positive reinforcements that when you do send an email to someone, like sometimes they do respond and it can lead to great things. And for all the times that someone doesn't respond, that one time that someone does respond makes up for everything that you've done there after. So that's like a huge staple to kind of who I am as a person today. I pride in kind of the notes that I send to try to get people to respond. So okay, I love that. I went to the Twitter DM. It's funny because in the moment when I like think about it, I went back to it more recently just because I hadn't in a while. I was gonna say, you almost need to print it out and frame it. I know. That's like a dream. It's actually pretty cringey. I had this like picture in my mind that it was like this amazing message that was like, you know, kind of dangling the idea and like whatever kind of baby, but it was just kind of wild. I mean, it was a little bit cringey. So I probably would say if I were doing it again, I would probably tweak it a little bit, but that's also high. It's 2020. 100% I think I'm very casual. when I send messages to people. I think my general tone when emailing and texting generally is, I try to make it seem as if you're talking to me live, which comes across some ways as being like extremely informal and unprofessional sometimes, but I think it gets people to respond. So it doesn't necessarily need to be high, twice, great to meet you. My name is Jordan, and this is my, like, no one cares. I mean, some people care. Also, that's true. I've never thought about it, but I kind of put my guard up when I get this formal email because you feel like you need to like focus and then like formally respond versus what you're talking about, which yeah, you just fire something back. There's probably a happy medium between what I do and kind of what other people do. Are you Jordan's the class? Are you the classic? Like you said in the message as the title of an email? No body. Oh my god, no. I'm efficient from not that efficient, Shane. But, but anyway, yeah, I mean sending cold messages has always been a key part of who I am kind of as a business person generally. And I think a casual tone goes a really long way. Shane, you know, we were, I sent him a kind of a dangly-ish message saying, Hey, I'm in this unique spot sitting at the intersection of another industry that, you know, I believe has similar characteristics to what business you have run for the last call it 10 years of your life. And naturally, he asked what, what is that industry? And I gave a quick flavor again to use the word of kind of what the CPG landscape was. Again, not going into too many details, but enough for him to say, let's get coffee on Monday. This was like, I think a Friday. And we started meeting up immediately. So, wow, he's a great guy. I mean, I think when it comes to entrepreneurs and creative thinkers, especially if you've already solved a problem in one space and being able to kind of think creatively around how I can solve that problem again, the different space is kind of unique. My goal of the conversation, Shane, at your point, I didn't say, Hey, we should do this. Like, I honestly just wanted a better reason to not ever think about this idea ever again. Like a sweet good night. Or if I could, hey, like, just dumb. Like, is this, is this a dumb idea? And I say, ended up not being, which is, which is good because he was excited about it too. But that was the initial framing of like, Hey, I'm waking up in the middle of the night. I think this is a cool idea. He helped me sleep. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. No, I love that. No, it's a good, it's a good point instead of just trying to like hype yourself up and be an echo chamber type of thing where you're just getting all this positive, you know, and make, make someone feel as if they can help you out, as well as this was obviously potentially beneficial for them. So, okay. Yeah. No, I love that. And so, I always say this part of the story too is, is interesting. You know, you taking the leap, sending the message, huge step, no matter what. I mean, ultimately, that's some of the steps that people just never take. They might they'll talk about all day their ideas. So, taking the, I always consider the first step, the most important. It's like getting the ball rolling. However, you also, you know, you went to, you went to a prestigious school. Now you're working at a big firm. I'm sure you, you know, in all senses, senses of like your career and your family and everything you're like, you're doing well. Like this is your like Jordan's doing great to then take the leap to start something like this. Walk us through that part because that's a huge, huge component that I think again, there's always people that maybe then start talking to people and create a cool business plan. And they're talking all about all these things, but quitting your great-paying job or your career path to go start something over here. So, most people don't take the leap. So, what was that like for you? And would love to just hear the considerations and thought process you had as you were making that decision. Yeah. I mean, I think it probably plays back to my childhood, frankly, and kind of like who I am as a person. So, we were always at the dinner table talking about problems we had and ways that we can solve them. Very entrepreneurial father figure. And, you know, he started his own business and was always kind of coming up with ideas. We watched dark tank all the time not to be cliche, right? And we were always like talking about different things. So, I always had the entrepreneurial bug. I guess two quick examples from like things that I've done historically, just in case, I mean a lot of people actually don't know this, but I am freshman year of high school started a started it's not a company, but like a sneaker reselling business. I saw this on your link, did I want to ask you. Yeah. And I was really fun. I was absolutely obsessed with like Air Jordan's and kind of like drops and kind of limited number of pairs of shoes. And was able to get my hands on a bunch of them. And then I essentially started with about $800 that I got from winning a March Madness bracket pool, which was awesome. I was like freaking out. I was like, holy crap. Like $20 getting back 800. Like this is insane. I forgot what year it was, but I guess it was probably like circa 2011 or something like that. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to invest that $800 into kind of my shoe reselling business. And was just obsessed. I mean, this was my first foray and to kind of like talking to people I'd never have met even met before over like Facebook Messenger negotiating with them, like telling them why they should pay what price, creating a business, you know, or standing that I bought shoes for one price and then having to sell them for another in order to make profit. Like obviously the very basics, but it kind of gave me that bug of like, okay, this is my company. This is what I do. Like I'm creating profit for myself. And I like that. That was kind of the first thing. Second thing in college, I started a company with a few of my friends called Berista, which was, again, a lot of people don't know this. I don't even think I have it on my LinkedIn. But we went through kind of like an accelerator program at Yale. And the thought there was that we're going to kind of create a coffee subscription service for locally owned coffee chains in the New Haven, Connecticut. So, this funny is like Panera and all these groups kind of like came up with like coffee subscriptions, like shortly thereafter. And not to say that they weren't probably thinking about it at the same time that we were doing it. But our idea was how can we get students to have to pay less for kind of the coffee that they were consuming from these like locally owned places. So classical subscription model of like, you know, you pass 30 bucks a month, you get 30 coffees and the discount you would have had on however many coffees you would have bought would have been great enough and whatever. So we built a little bit of technology kind of like a text messaging service where if you were in the coffee store, you could send a text message with the coffee store's name, we would then send you back an automatic kind of like receipt that you would show the Berista. And then you would walk out the door with your coffee without like paying anything like actually there. A lot of people were like running around like delivering checks to the Berista's like every day because we had three coffees redeemed at one store and two coffees redeemed at another store. But yeah, it wasn't big money at all. Like we had a small like grant that we got from the school just because we won this like accelerator thing. But and like this was me and my friends sitting in a room with like a whiteboard trying to figure out like okay coffee's expensive don't have money to pay for it like how can we come up with a creative way to get more students in these local young coffee stores and at a discount. So it's a great idea though. I mean it's not funny. It's funny. I mean like I love doing that. There's a game where you can like just throw out your like your your funniest goofy's ideas. That's like a good one. I actually argue that it was a fun idea. I mean like we I mean it was very classic like again white boarding session that turned into something and yeah, we we didn't have a ton of people using it and it was like more of a side hustle project. But it reminds me though of even I mean this is a terminology but it kind of reminds me of how you know Facebook started right like even just at Stanford it was kind of it became popular obviously but like I don't know that's an interesting concept. I still think you could like copy paste that if you had the right technology across the country. I mean it's locally we wanted to support local cafes and I think one of the interesting things that we saw was that he has students had access to kind of like the calendar of when big lectures were getting out and like where those lectures were located. So we were like there's a local coffee store outside of xyz lecture hall being able to like push a notification on our end to all the students that were signed up to us saying that yz coffee shop is doing this type of program like there's a lot of things that we were trying to like leverage the being Yale students and having access to students calendars to be able to push that traffic to locally owned coffee stores but sure anyways I know that was kind of a tangent but I think this entrepreneurial idea that I've always grown up with so the leak generally was I mean it was tricky I mean like monogram like is the like truly some of the best people I've ever met and then worked with and the fund is doing great and they're awesome right so I always had known that I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and felt very it felt like the right time especially since I had Oshina new mong to do it with sure I mean they've raised a lot of venture money before they built a successful business sold it to a publicly traded company ran a publicly traded company and now one do it all over again I was like oh my god with you with you this is no brand right yeah yeah yeah yeah I was like okay this is crazy kind of a unique opportunity that you know I've always wanted to do my own thing and this is a great way to kind of learn from some of the best and get my hands dirty doing this whole entrepreneurial thing I also say to anyone who you know you know contemplating that for you to me that feels like you kind of had you had a softball like that that's kind of like God's like okay Jordan the stars are aligning here kind of situation the funny thing is obviously if you had a good relationship and you were doing well at monogram the other thing I always like to tell people is if you give it a shot and it doesn't work you probably can go back to doing what you're doing so there's not like as much risk as I think people genuinely think there is and I would argue too I mean in the entrepreneurial space you don't see a lot of people end up going back even if it doesn't work because they just they they realize they're so hungry for solving problems and getting things done they'll just jump to the next thing so it's a good thing I mean it really you know like yeah in a way that I was not expecting it to be and I mean look it's it's a lot harder later nights hard working and it's hard to really unplug I think that's kind of my biggest thing is that I'm constantly thinking about like tomorrow is even on like a Friday night or Saturday morning right like you're just you're responsible for a lot of people's lives just having people employed at keychain you're also responsible for you know making investors happy you're also responsible for keeping yourself sane like there's all these things that you just have like growing responsibility is that I think is this even harder but the awesome is that like the wins are unlike anything else the losses are also unlike anything else but it's that like same type of thing that you have one small and you're kicked back into motion and it's addictive it truly is that's such a good way to put it and I haven't heard someone put it that that concisely it was funny I know my mother-in-law recently I wish she was on the phone with my wife and she she's like how's your week going and it was Tuesday I think since it was last week and I was like I mean I've had like three highs and four super crazy lows so if any normal human it would be like just the most chaotic start to your week you've ever had but it's like a normal Tuesday for me so I do the same exact things like I spend a lot of my day doing like do a lot of our sales type of stuff at keychain so I'm grabbing a lot of the revenue through the gate and or our team is and yeah it will be on a call with the manufacturer who was like a very old school kind of legacy type of guy who's probably a lot older than any of us here right now and I'll be on like a call at you know 11am on a Monday be like hey how's your week going so far he's like what do you mean like I just woke up and I'm like oh yeah exactly you have totally days in a row yeah it's funny it's a totally different thing the other thing I know that's hard are you guys in you guys have an office like a physical office at keychain yeah I can not I can share some more about that too in case it's interesting right like I know you know a little bit about what I do you know being remote and I work from home so there's some in person things for sure but a lot of it's from home and so the thing you said about unplugging I think for any out for newer it's just so hard like when I back what I work for you know drink COVID when I work for for you to roll you just show your laptop and usually don't look at it again to open it the next day like it's kind of easier to do that but when it's your own you're just you know I've even tried to do better about like batching notifications and it's like there's little things that seem to work here and there but at the end of the day it's your baby so you're it's like anything else right if you're real babies trying you're gonna run and take care of it no matter what time of day it is so it's it's hard to explain to people who haven't been in the in the trenches of that it's there's things that come up that other people would not condemn that being an emergency that I think sometimes as a founder you just it's your baby so you just want it to be taken care of all the time. I also have like a philosophy that if there's something that needs to get done and I think about it like I just do it right then like I don't and it's honestly a blessing and a curse because I probably spend my time on like very small things that I'm just doing to like get done because I thought about it yeah yeah but anyway on the point about the office so yeah we have we have our HQ is in New York okay kind of been we're actually in one of the world trade center buildings downtown wow cool yeah and so our headquarters are here we have a banyish trying to think outside yeah about probably 20-ish people here we now have a new office that we actually just opened in Austin Texas as well nice it's exciting yeah grab four folks out of there and then we have another location in India which is where most of our software engineering team is so we have a dedicated office space there as well one of my co-founders who mong he's he's from India and goes back I don't know four or five six times a year so we decided to stand up our engineering unit over there just to make things a little bit more see for him as well when he's traveling to wow okay I had no idea that you guys were this expanded congratulations we probably have around 40-ish people at keychay now wow congratulations Jordan that's exciting in a year too that's that's something explosive growth yeah we have we had our six-month product birthday on a birthday I guess it's a half birthday but yeah I think it's all that yeah last last week which was awesome but yeah it's been since we since we raised it's been around a year-ish or so now so team has grown quite quickly yeah but I think a lot I mean in order to do what we're doing doing there it takes a lot of research and a lot of engineering to build a amazing product and now you've tried to over invest in best people that we can to kind of build the best product we can as fast as humanly possible I love that yeah make sense and so now we're getting into some of the nitty-gritty I'm excited to hear a little more of this too so you know jumping to this going full throttle after it the one thing that is very evident from talking to you today is the mentality and I'm sure this is helpful with the co-founders you picked is it sounds like it's like pedal down full throttle speed ahead versus something like slow and steady and take your time this is like a speed thing what would have been what what were at the beginning I guess like you jump what were some of like the tangible things happening in those first few months like I always like to ask this for founders like did you not get paid for a little bit where you guys or were you guys able like raised capital immediately and so you guys got to at least pay yourself a little bit to get started how did all that work is like starting a software company to me feels like number one I've no clue how much that cost I'm sure it's a lot more than I imagine and then to just starting a business like this with some successful people I'm sure there's just different dynamics like you know you're a guy who I could tell you know obviously you're younger in your career so they're probably having some sort of salaries helpful and then you work with people who've had some success so just different dynamics I'm sure also make it a little bit you know getting out the gate I'm sure there were a lot of conversations you guys all had to align on but we just love to know just you know even the first few months how you kind of navigated that and like I handgently made it work to be on your own keep changing because I think it's a tough thing most people like I said there's all these gates that I've mentioned today a big one that I've heard so many times is like I don't if I can pay for insurance and I always tell people I'm like well I mean it's expensive don't get me wrong it's not it's not it's not a cheap thing but it's not the biggest problem usually for for someone to jump ship and and make it work so we'd love to hear your experience yeah no it's it's the right question and on that piece we and very luckily we're able to raise as much money as we were out of the gates which helped a lot we we raised around 18 million in pre-seat funding uh to kind of take a big step on my head yeah it's it's a big swing it's a big step so we yeah no it's it's been great so um a lot of that Oshina Nguaong I mean there was a great story right I mean I come from the CPG background so I have like the the real tangible experience they've built a hell of a marketplace in a very different industry but again where I always kind of brand what keychain is it's kind of a quasi angi's list but for the CPG manufacturing world which I think just makes sense to a lot of people and then investors at that time as well but the beginning days of kind of what we built into the day like a lot of our asset is our data so we were initially thinking about like what are we going to do to start keychain the first thing that we were trying to build was a robust data set so the product was built is launched in February and we probably kicked off the data gathering exercise in late august early september okay okay the data structure and kind of how we were going to collect the data how we were going to figure out what manufacturers exist out there the types of products that all of them can make where they're located all that information of kind of taking much data that's available online around who exists the things they can do when research ourselves independently and all this type of stuff to try to create a base data function to then build a product on top of so the first few mods I mean we're really heads down doing that and a lot of Google sheet and a lot of Google Doc which was which is cool I mean like I think what I've realized is that you could have the best strategy ever laid out on a Google Doc but until you actually start doing things it doesn't even make any sense to go past like the first couple weeks right so okay in the early days we built like super robust document of like all these things that we were going to plan to do which was great from like having a conversation perspective but you know if you go back in reality kind of what transpired like we did the first thing and then we're like oh shit like maybe we should do that and then moved on to something else right so yeah angiably kind of what we were doing that I was spending a lot of my time trying to figure out like how are we going to create the world's largest and most detailed database of manufacturers in the country that was our number one goal and then once we felt good about that we would build a product on top of it which we started to do kind of in all in November December ish so work on that for a few months before launching it I think what was interesting about like that journey over that like December January February time frame and a perfectionist at heart okay realize doing this entrepreneurial thing and the startup thing you really can't be and I was always pushing back like hey like you know maybe it's not ready like someone's gonna log in and they're gonna have an error and like yeah I just wanted it to be perfect whenever someone logged in I you can't do that right oh sheen's philosophy I think specifically is that get it to a place where you feel comfortable talking about it and allow people to kind of jump in play around with it and then give you feedback so that you can learn how to iterate faster than you would before I think that's honestly a major reason for how we are where we are today even six months in the product pretty good I mean I think a lot of that was informed from people even in like the early February days that we're actually playing around with it in its first test case okay yeah that makes sense I mean it's no different than any product any service anything you can like sit in your office and chitchat about it and throw ideas at the wall until you get it out there and get feedback it's so true man it's it's a it's such an easier thing said than done I think but It's the truest of things, like the minimal viable product concept. It's the hardest that I agree with you. Like some of the things we've done, I feel the same way where you're, I'm the perfectionist for sure and on our team. And I've had to learn to let go a little bit and be like, okay, let's just, it's not my perfect, but maybe to someone else, it'll help us get feedback. Then it gets better faster also than just letting it be within the team and thinking the team can figure out every problem, like get it out there to the masses. So that's interesting to you. I didn't realize how early in the product journey you were when we even met at X12. I mean, you were like, I mean, this was like fresh out the gate. It was like just launched. It was like, we were in beta and we guys technically still in beta. But I mean, it was probably a few weeks into kind of like having our first people using the platform. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, we, that was kind of when we launched it to the public, the people for like a couple of months before then kind of using it kind of as an alpha customer, as you will, as we were trying to build up the feature set. But yeah, February 13th, I will always remember that day. I always remember that. That's so cool, man. And so it's up and it's it, you know, when you launched to beta, what was it like for you? I mean, was that like a big relief after all these months of hard work? Or has it also been like making you hungrier? And the answer could probably be both. But yeah, I'd love to know like right after that, once it's live, like, where did, where did Jordan Ted go? Once it's out in the public and and you're starting to get customers on both sides of the fence. I mean, it's just hearing people even anecdotally this day, like people text me to your point, Shane. I mean, like random people that I sometimes have never even heard about before have heard about what keychain is, right? And it's just pretty surreal that like, you know, a year ago we were in a room kind of thinking about like what this could become. And now we have folks like some of the largest retailers and brands in the world using it to find the manufacturer. I mean, it's been pretty cool. So I think like in that moment, stressed. I was like, I would see someone from like a brand that I recognize and even a person that I knew, which, you know, are early as customers were sometimes people that I would say, Hey, keychain.com just launched. Let me know what you think. And like, you know, being very anxious when they started typing back to me. I was like, Oh my God, what are they going to say? Like God damn, like they're typing something long. This is like what is it going to be? It's going to be roasted here. I think like one of my like biggest learnings to this is being able to kind of like take constructive feedback and not that as a way to kind of get disappointed around what you've built. But rather, how can we make this 100 times better for all of our users? So I think we're lucky to be in a space where most of our users already understand the value proposition. And we're still we're trying to figure out a way to just make it even better and easier for them. But yeah, I mean, it was it was pretty surreal. I mean, even that expo asked people had heard of keychain. Wow. And it was cool. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's awesome. I do think it's funny and I could be totally wrong. You're obviously way closer to this than me. If I if someone like flat out asked me, I would say, you know, the one thing that's difficult with CPG and it'll it'll be around forever. Obviously, I mean, it's not like I think I'm going to go away innovation. Right. I feel like it's getting harder and harder. I mean, there's just been in the last 10 years, there's been so many things in every category that are trying to innovate. But it does feel like there's still so much like rudimentary software solutions that like SaaS in tech has been solving for a couple decades now. I think I don't know. I think CPG is actually kind of a hotbed for a lot of potential things. I know in my world, what's interesting too is it seems like for what you've alluded to already is. There's so much organic word of mouth because of how big of a problem keychain is solving versus there are other things that even software is that I use today. And I've always I always try to think like how did I find that software? And it's tough. Like in a lot of a lot of categories, they're just overwhelmed with advertising. Like as far as you know, if I need a tool for Amazon, geez, like good luck. Go Google it. And there's like 500 versions of it that anyone and everyone's tried to create. But for you, it seems like, you know, not only was this something that didn't exist, which is huge, but also it just makes so much sense. So do you guys do? Do you have to do a lot of offense or is a lot of it word of mouth inbound on both sides of this? Yeah, brands and retailers know, you know, we do do some offense on the kind of demand generation side. I think a lot of if you typed into Google right now, popcorn manufacturer or any food product and then manufacturer, keychains probably showing up somewhere on kind of the first few results. Oh, I would say we definitely are driving traffic to the website. But I think I mean, you know, this better than I do at this point, but this industry, CPG generally, the people are amazing humans. They're good at recommending kind of great platforms. And everyone's trying to solve kind of a very similar problem set. So, you know, we found a lot of people just simply referring us to their friends, which is kind of the best form of marketing. Absolutely. Yeah, it is a free platform for brands and retailers. So there really isn't like a, a true moment at all, right? A lot of our brands and retailers don't pay our shock that we're giving it to them for free, kind of this basic version of it. And it does help us kind of create that demand and why we all I always on the brand and retail referral side. So it's one piece on the manufacturing side. Manufacturers haven't heard of us, right? So they're like, what do you mean you have a profile for us on, on keychain? It's kind of a similar model to the way glass doors is built. I don't know how familiar are with that. Oh, kind of. Yeah. Profile for every manufacturer that exists in the country, whether we've spoken to them or not, because we want to make sure that we're exhaustive. Yeah. Oh, wow. How did you guys? How was that? Like, I mean, was that just an immense amount of research to just scrape wholly cow? That's a recent. That was like what I was talking from that August to every single. And then how do you know when a new one comes on? If like, I'm like, I'm starting my muffin bakery tomorrow or manufacturer, whatever. It's an ongoing process. I mean, like we, and when I say all, I probably mean 95% coverage, because who knows exactly if we're missing anyone, but sure, yeah, I've been testing it for the last six months or so every almost every other day. Probably I send the message to someone on our team saying, Hey, do we have this manufacturer or I look it up and send feedback? And like I haven't there hasn't been one in a while that we didn't have, which is pretty awesome. So yeah, that, that's kind of how that part works. But a lot of manufacturers like have been so used to very old school ways of doing business, right? I mean, they have salespeople that literally aisle, gets to get on the phone with customers that aren't using a phone menu, right? Like it's, it's pretty archaic and manufacturers work when they, when we set up a call, it's typically their first time ever hearing of key chain, which again, hopefully should change as we continue to onboard more and more folks. But, you know, most manufacturers aren't using technology today. So it is kind of like a lift to say, Hey, this is why you should use us. And this is why we exist. I love that. I don't make sure we don't skip over that. I think for a lot of people listening today, there's probably a lot more of the retailers and brand type folks that are listening to this. So that's a huge piece. I remember the first time you told me it was like a light bulb in my head. So it's free for those folks. And then if you're a manufacturer, you pay a fee. And I'm the one question that I wanted to ask you actually was, this is just not knowing anything about developing software. And I'm actually over the years have become very fascinated. And I think it's a really interesting world. What I'm sure the very beginning, how do you, I mean, it would seem like it would be a lot easier to get retailers and brands because it's free. So it's like you could get all these users in, but obviously you have to have manufacturers. Do you at least need a couple? I would assume that are paying like, how do you get both sides of that equation? I think it's one like software related question I've never fully understood how, how software companies do that. Where you need both sides for it to work, but you got, you need one to pay first. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think like most marketplaces, you need the demand on the platform in order to get the supply really excited and interesting interested. So, okay, because we've been successful getting brands and retailers of all different types of sizes and some decent, like, decently big names that you'll, you probably go to their store potentially this afternoon, seeing keychain. It's very nice and easy for us to dangle. Hey, by the way, X is using our platform today. If you were not using our platform, they may work with someone that you don't want them to, right? Or they may be working on your competitor. So, yeah, we have a lot of demand on the platform. We have a lot of projects every single week that come in saying, Hey, I am XYZ retailer with 1800 doors. I'm looking to make a, you know, greens product. I need you to help me find a manufacturer to show them the, you know, they would use our platform to see the right list. If you are not part of our ecosystem, you will not see that that project came in. So, I think a lot of these facilities we talk to have access capacity, have a line time that they're wanting to utilize, get the feeling of kind of this fear of missing out that if you're not part of the ecosystem, you're just going to be missing those projects. And for them, the fee, sorry, I didn't get you off. The fee makes sense because it's sales funnel. And so they'll get business. It's something so much. Exactly. Yeah, it's, it's a tangible ROI on kind of the business that you drive through keychain. And it's typically cheaper than going to a trade show, hiring another, you know, a couple people to do kind of everything that we do already through technology. I'm not going to say it's easy, right? I mean, the people that we speak to are oftentimes, you know, 50 to seven year old people that have run the business for, it's been in their family for hundreds of years and they haven't kind of changed the way they've done business historically. I think it's been, you know, crushing to hear the excitement by a lot of these second generation people in the family that are excited about leveraging technology to use drive more business into their facility. So spending money on something to drive sales is kind of a no brainer for them. Yeah. That makes it time of sun. As we're winding down on time, Jordan, love to pivot a little bit to just these questions I love to ask the end. The first one is all around source of knowledge. So obviously, what you're building, I'm sure the people you talk to, the people you interact with, a lot of this comes in one way or the other. But for everyone listening, and I think specifically, with what you've done, I'd be curious if there's something you've absorbed, whether it's a book, a podcast, just something from a source of knowledge that you're like, hey, if you're someone who's listening to this today and you hear the story and it gets you excited about your idea, something you'd recommend. - Yeah, it's a great question. I read a lot of news, a lot of news. - Okay, don't hear that a lot. - I do, and actually don't read many books, want you more, but I read a lot of news. So, manufacturing, dive, and food, dive, food business news, I am constantly reading new articles to try to make sure I'm staying in front of kind of everything that's happening. So, I would say just generally news in the food beverage world is kind of, what were the two you just said? Can you say those again? - Yeah, manufacturer dive. Kind of under the, I think food dive might be the broader brand, and then food business news are two great ones. Nosh and BevNet of course are great ones that are more classics, but I'd find those other ones to be a bit more manufacturer or centric, which is where I kind of like to get my information. - Very interesting. - Yeah, when you said news my first, like also, I was flashing like NBC CNN, I'm like, huh, I don't get them very often. I'm like, what kind of news you listening to? Reading, okay, love that. New, it's funny, yeah, that's, I'm sure all those are those all paid, like you to pay to see all those, or the most free. - Totally free, yeah, it's great. - Okay, amazing, yeah. - Yeah, it's insane, I'm not to add that to my repertoire. I don't read anything from those typically. Like, Nosh and BevNet, I'll see articles, but I get the paywall, and I don't pay for it. So, I have to, I mean. - For BevNet and Nosh, there is a paywall, maybe there is a paywall for food, food dive. I honestly don't know exactly. - It's probably worth it. I mean, that type of news is probably great for all of us, yeah. - Yeah, I need to get better about reading books. The girlfriend gives me shit all the time for not ever reading. - It's hard to read because I'm like sending emails or whatever, but I have like physical books more lately. - Yeah. - I will tell you as, and maybe, this is not me trying to give you advice, but having to put everything down electronically and just pick up a book and read it is kind of nice. Like, actually, it's your brain just like, focus on a book versus when I listen, I love audiobooks and podcasts, but at the same time, it's like, I just have AirPods in, and I'm doing things in the same realm for fucking 20 hours a day, it feels like. - On the subway to work, not to totally tangent again, but the subway to work, I opened a book the first time in a while. Again, I'm making my sounds, my self-sounds as if like, I'd never read. It's more like a physical like book in my hand type. - Sure. - Situation, that's not like self-help. How can I get better at life type of book? Reading, buying an H-Mart, which is a classic and kind of the food and beverage world. I read three pages on the subway to work one day, and I like, felt so relaxed. Probably the best day I've had in the last six months, and it was like, just because I think, because I just chilled out, didn't think about anything for a few minutes, and then went on with my day. So. - Isn't that funny? You remember it too. - Crazy. - I've been reading this book. I'll send you a link to it. It's actually really good. It's called "Buy Back Your Time." Great for you to read, probably. It's all about, I'll send you a little thing after this. It's probably the, I've had two books in my life that were light bulbs in business, and this is the second one. So it's interesting for sure. The last one, Jordan, is my favorite question. Especially with the software company, I'm excited to see what exactly you say here. What tools do you use to map out and plan big goals, whether that's more than a year, your yearly goals, if you do that, all the way down to like, what's Jordan accomplishing this week? And ultimately, like, what's the shit you gotta get done today? Are you a pen and paper guy? Are you an apps guy? I'm very excited to hear what your response is to this, knowing you have a software company. - You cheated up, and I'm embarrassed to say this, but I send myself emails for stuff to do. - Okay, I'll tell you what's-- - It's honestly terrible because, yeah, it stresses me out that I could miss something, but I probably send myself 15 to 20 emails a day, which talk about like time suck, just like random things that I need to do. - Okay. - Yeah. - I'll go on my personal Gmail, send myself an email to my like, keychain email, and like, we'll go through things as a reminder of the stuff that I need to do. Honestly, I should just transition to a pen and paper such that I could just cross things out and kind of like, take five minutes to start the day or five minutes to conclude the day and like, map out what I need to do the next day. But now, I mean, my schedule is so, like, in a second, I'm on a sales call, another one I'm in an office meeting, another one, I'm like, you're talking to someone, I need to recruit them. It's like a whole crazy mess of trying to jump from one thing to another that I kind of have to trust that I'll remember it. Well, my process is sending myself emails and using that as my to-do list. - That. - You know, I'm embarrassed to say it. - No, no, no, it's funny. Most, I say this too much. 99% of people have on here are literally doing the simplest things. So I think there's something to be said about that. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate you taking the time to come on. Your story is super cool and you're just getting started. So we should definitely do this in the future. I think I'm sure there's huge things to come. And like I said, this is organically one of my favorite podcasts I've gotten to do in a long time. So I'm excited to be telling people about, okay. - I appreciate it. It was super fun and thanks for having me. Shane, really appreciate it. - Yeah, man, absolutely. Thanks for the time and stay in touch. (upbeat music)