00:20:49 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:20:49] S1: If you don't, you're know soon. [00:20:51] S0: You're gonna know real fast. But, you know, that's that's difficult in the early days to build a team because just like finding your inspiration, now you need people every day that's going to take your innovative crazy idea [00:21:05] S1: Yeah. [00:21:05] S0: Believe in you, run with you at a crazy speed, and I would probably guess fourteen years ago you guys weren't paying what you pay now.
00:21:15 · Michael Provenzano
[00:21:15] S1: No, definitely not. You know, look, you you could sell people on a dream and what the vision in the future will be, and they have to be able to kind of push through the wall every time it's brought to them. I remember we used to go to events, you know, AAA, like when, you know, I don't know ten years ago and no one wanted to talk to us, You know? It was like, don't talk to those guys. Those those crazy guys on the computer trying to do something we don't wanna do. Mhmm. And you just have to believe that they don't... People don't understand what we're trying to do yet, but they will understand what we're trying to do and and we'll get them on board over time. But it just it was our ability or our inability to explain ourselves to people. It's all you're doing right at the end of the day is like, you know, you're not hoping for bad things happening. You're trying to show people, hey, there's this future out there that we believe is going to be healthy for a win win for everyone, buyers, sellers, data providers, etc. But you know, we have to prove to them that this is going to be better. And so just that incremental month by month, a little bit more revenue coming in. There's a little more opportunity here. There's better results this month. Like all those little wins just kept piling up and that's that's really what fuels the train and also gives your employees that that that that sense of reality and belief of like, oh, this this vision is kind of coming alive. Like, we are seeing little signs of of faith here. So I think that's another... The big thing that keeps people going is that you can show those incremental wins.
00:22:42 · Ian Dallimore
[00:22:42] S0: Yeah. So you're you're kind of touching on that, but the Vistar Evolution. So from day one, when you first got into the space, you sell Invite Media, you take some time, and then you have this vision. I know season one we talked about this a bit, but maybe kind of give like a high level, and then I really want to dive deeper into like, from the original vision to where it is today, could you have ever imagined?
00:23:04 · Michael Provenzano
[00:23:04] S1: Yeah. Funny enough, we we actually had an off-site, the other week, and this is one of the things we talked about that was kind of interesting is like, both the vision and the mission of the business hasn't really changed. The, our ability to be concise with how we describe it, you know, shout out to Leslie who leads marketing for Vistar. She's the best. You know, she's a much better writer and a communicator than I am. And, you know, we've, we've been able to really, condense down what it is that Vistar does and what we're trying to do. And you know, when you, when you go back to it, it's like, you know, the mission was to allow marketers to communicate effectively to consumers, and make a value exchange for both the buyers and agencies and the media owners. And, I think we continue to do that, prove that. And then on the vision side, was to power and enhance every transaction in the global out of home industry, and we still do that. We just weren't as eloquent at the time explaining what we were going to be doing, but we didn't... We never built a piece of software and then completely deprecated it. In some way, shape or form, everything we've done has been just adding to the stack, adding to the stack, getting bigger, doing more of what we've always said we were going to do. So that is one thing that's pretty unique because I think a lot of startups do start and then, you know, they pivot and they pivot and they do something totally different. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But it is unique that we said we were going to do this and we did it. How what do you how do you
00:24:31 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:24:31] S0: think that that... Was it a lot of it was the buy in from out of home people? Was it... [00:24:37] S1: Probably not that in the early days. Probably just stubbornness, honestly. I don't know if you just... You have conviction, you just are like, there's no way in hell this can't happen. Yep. Like this has to happen, this has to go this way. And you just, you know, you just have to try different ways to convey your message. I mean, that's one thing we did iterate on quite a bit was how we pitch the market, how we message the products. It's the same software, nothing changed, but the way we talked about it changed. You know, the go to market changed, right? And that's what led us to a product market fit at some point. [00:25:10] S0: Yeah. And that's unique, right? Because a lot of not only do people pivot and because they're they pivot out of necessity, but you guys were pivoting more because there was a significant evolution from fourteen years ago. Yeah. Look, I I had to sell through. Should we tell the funny story about when I first met you guys? [00:25:26] S1: Yeah. Do it.
00:25:26 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:25:26] S1: Yeah. Do it. [00:25:27] S0: Yeah. I mean, it was it was probably thirteen, fourteen... It was fourteen years ago. And I was tasked to fly up to New York, learn a little bit more about Vistar Media and meet this guy, Michael, and handful of other folks. And, you know, I've seen plenty of startups. We'll give shout out to John Laramie at Adstruck, company that you guys purchased. Shout out to Michael Damiani at Blue Byte. So I've seen this startup world and, you know, I'll be honest, it was just... I think it was the passion and the belief that you had and, you know, luckily, not saying luckily you met me, but luckily I met you in the sense that it was like, yes, I... That's what I agree with as well. Like, need we need automation. We need to tap into this net new revenue. How do we get there? How do we use data? How do we transform without disrupting the entire industry? And, you know, flying up there and... [00:26:18] S1: We weren't scared of our office.