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.
00:26:18 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:26:18] S1: We weren't scared of our office. [00:26:20] S0: It was a little frightening. We won't go into detail there. We'll just say that the door at the time hit the conference room table and we've had to get to shimmy yourself in there. But but again, I think it goes back to what, you know, what I've always loved and admired about you as a as a human. It's... You were so passionate about it. And I was like, I can't... I'll never forget. I came back, talked about it. Shout out to Brent Neal. He believed it on the IT side. He actually asked for a shout out and that just worked in perfect as well. But, you know, I I love that because I came back and I was like, look, I don't know if this company is gonna last long, but they are run by leadership and they have tech. So, like, what's the worst thing? So let's learn together. Yeah. But... So the question is is you're a you're a tech guy in our... You're a coder. I love the fact that when CEOs are like, don't talk to me. I'm... I gotta code. But you you have this vision and you don't deviate from the platform. How do you add that as... At the evolution of of the company and as you started to grow and get momentum, you get buy in from a lot of bigger out of home companies, the Lamar's, Clear Channel, the Outfront, and some of these larger place based companies. How do you start to, like, balance resources? [00:27:33] S1: Oh, god. Yeah. Still a problem. Sure. First of all, I'll just note that I'm a wash up and it was always a bad coder. So I just wanna clarify that for the books. That was great.
00:27:33 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:27:33] S1: Oh, god. Yeah. Still a problem. Sure. First of all, I'll just note that I'm a wash up and it was always a bad coder. So I just wanna clarify that for the books. That was great. [00:27:42] S0: We're trying to give you props though.
00:27:42 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:27:42] S0: We're trying to give you props though. [00:27:43] S1: I did like it. I did enjoy. I like the next slide. Yeah. Look, prioritization is is like the name of the game with a business, especially at this size. Like this is what we deal with all the time. How are we going to prioritize resources, whether that's sales resources, engineering resources, which things are we going to build in what order? You have to realize we operate in 25 plus countries. And guess what? Each of those countries want something different. Yep. And so how do you which one matters the most? Is it the one that's biggest? Is the one that we just released? So prioritization, the role of product usually, and Kira, for example, who leads product, it's a really hard job. You know, I joke with Kira, I'm like, who's going to hate you this quarter? You know, because someone is you're going to give something to and they're going to be very happy with you or potentially partially happy, but you're going to give them something. But 20 other people, you're not giving what they want. Yep. And they're going to hate you. And they're to bother you all quarter for the next thing. So really prioritization and allocation of resources are probably the probably the one of the hardest decision making that you have to do day to day when you operate these businesses, especially to your point, as you get a lot of clients who have more requests or requirements in order for you to even operate their businesses. Right. And that that gets, it gets stressful.
00:29:06 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:29:06] S0: Yeah. And you you could make the wrong decision by chasing money. Yes. And pleasing, you know, client x. Yeah. While missing the vision. So, you know. [00:29:17] S1: Yeah. Well, common problem that we see, especially on the competitor side is like, people will get one client and then they'll sprint to the next. Right? And they don't keep the client they want happy. And then so a year, I mean, we were at, were in it for the long game, right? We've been doing this for fourteen years. So when a competitor wins a client and then they are rushing to the next deal, but the current client they got, they're not keeping happy, they're not building all the things they promised. Well, guess what? That contract probably ends in a year or two, we're there to catch it. That happens a lot in business where I think people are just trying trying to promise and save the next thing and vaporware sell their way to the end. [00:29:57] S0: Yeah. And and you can't can't trick technology. You can't trick the evolution. Over time, it's eventually gonna catch up or it's gonna cost you... [00:30:05] S1: Gonna bite you at [00:30:06] S0: some point. Yeah. It's gonna cost you a significant amount of money. Yeah. And I never stopped to think about, like, you guys never you never went off off course.
00:30:06 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:30:06] S0: some point. Yeah. It's gonna cost you a significant amount of money. Yeah. And I never stopped to think about, like, you guys never you never went off off course. [00:30:14] S1: No. You know, we looked at mobile many times because there was always that tie, as you guys know, and that was we partnered, right? Instead of building it, we always partner with mobile companies. That was a thing that made a lot of sense buying mobile and out of home together, reaching the on the go consumer, all that, all that fun stuff. And we, we thought about it many times like, wow, imagine our own mobile bidder, imagine we could have mobile and out of home in the same interface. Like, it's a no brainer that people would use it. And you realize from a product market perspective, it's it isn't a no brainer. The buyers of out of home and mobile are different, and they probably wouldn't log into the same account to do both. And, of course, there are omnichannel DSPs where that does happen, but the majority of buying is still not like that today globally. [00:30:57] S0: Yeah. So what are... Do you... Over the years over the years, fourteen years, key milestones that have kind of helped shape the journey? Maybe some of them kind of Yeah. A hiccup made you realize like, yeah, that's a... That's the wrong path. But... Yeah, definitely. Does some kind of come to your mind?