00:33:30 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
Now full circle, we're talking about carrier data again, but the the idea of using movement data to understand statistically the patterns of consumers and using that data to tie back to attribution and measurement, that was game changing for the pitch, game changing for the industry, actually being able to bring ROI to clients on the brand side. I mean, that that was a massive milestone for us. [00:33:52] S0: Yeah. And to be able to look, act, and behave like other media. Exactly. It's key. [00:33:57] S1: Yeah. I mean, you want to feel like a unicorn, you feel special and stuff. But if you're if you're... You know, people don't know where to put you at an agency in terms of buckets of money, you just get kicked out. You've got you got to fit into something that makes sense. And audience based buying was how most online media was bought. So Right. If we could fit into that, that that was... That proved to
00:34:19 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:34:19] S0: be really productive. Yeah. So I've I've said this statement a hand, quite a few times, but, you know, the importance of employees, the importance of people, one of one of the things that I've loved from day one, even in in that office that you guys were running, you really kind of have set the standard in culture, culture in the workplace, which, you know, oftentimes it can kind of be this fun little cheesy word that people say, and part of their mission statement, and they may have a podcast and their HR department may talk about culture all the time. But, you know, one of the things that I've always seen and has seen an evolution as well within within your organization, and obviously it goes back to people, but the culture that you have at Vistar is... It's fun. While you guys still continue to, like, grind and innovate while you're working in a relatively, like, traditional corner of advertising that is out of home. Like, explain that. Because you guys all of a sudden become, like, if I'm gonna coin the phrase, you guys are all of a sudden, like, really cool kids where it's like, wait, that... Yeah. These are our tech friends. And it's like everybody wanted to be friends with this. They're like, yeah, it's my guys. [00:35:24] S1: Yeah, that that that coin flipped. I mean, it wasn't always like that. [00:35:27] S0: Oh, without a doubt.
00:35:27 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:35:27] S0: Oh, without a doubt. [00:35:28] S1: You know, I mean, you remember those days, but, look, I think we were left a little bit in a corner from the early days, so you had each other, and so we were very close knit team, kind of did everything together, and, we were also very young in our careers at that time too, so you just had that life of living in New York, living in Philadelphia, and, obviously those are massive cities where it caters well to that age group and that lifestyle. And yeah, I mean, that foundational relationship that we had with most of now people who are in leadership and management roles, the company, kind of trickled down. They passed all that kind of behavior and culture down to the next level, the newest people that work here. So people know what the company is about. And just again, we just had an off-site, a global off-site of the whole company, 300 people, or two fifty came. But, it was it was amazing to see. It was almost like we never missed a beat. It was the same culture, even at this size, people having a blast, no one taking themselves too seriously, and it was really amazing to see that we were able to kind of persist that over all these years through so many new hires.
00:36:37 · Ian Dallimore
[00:36:37] S0: Yeah. And as a leader in a in a tech startup in the early days as opposed to now being a air quote grown up business, it's... Yeah. Yeah. Mean, that's... That can become tough because it can can be like, oh, all fun. But what I've always loved about it is everyone, even probably within which I would love you to talk about is everyone within the walls of Vistar, they're comp... They're competing for time and resources as well within each other, while at the same time, it's like, if Keira isn't doing her job in producing the products, then maybe Eric Lam and his products aren't working and Christian and his products aren't working. So it is a unique...
00:37:14 · Michael Provenzano
[00:37:14] S1: It's intense. Yeah. It was weird because you're friends with everyone, but you're in these very tense situations all the time. Because, yes, something, you know, might be delayed and it's trickled down and affected multiple teams. And it's like, well, I always ask, like, what's the what's the result? Like, you know, who what's like, what does accountability mean? Is does it mean we're gonna slap someone on the wrist? Does it does it mean someone has to get fired? Right. That extreme? Like, what what's the answer here? And typically, answer is like, we need to have a retrospective, we need to sit down and make make it clear that we can't let it happen again, and here are the things we're going to put in place to make it not happen. And so yeah, you have to switch from kind of friend mode all the way down to like, this is a very annoying and serious conversation, like people's jobs are in line, people's clients are on the line, right? Lose a client because you don't bring something to market in the right timeline. So yeah, it's been, it's interesting. You have so much more to lose later on as well. That's another pressure cooker point. Early days, you know, you don't have any clients or you have very few clients and the risk of losing or risk of anything is very low. So if people mess up, kind of like, alright, well you can try again guys. Now it's it's fairly large business and it's like, oh, wow, mistakes cost lots of money. Right. There's an error in the code for transacting media, you know, $60 can go out the door in five minutes and you're like, whoops, like... Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, is it the engineers fault? Is it QA's fault now? Is it, the product team's fault for not seeing that come out? It's interesting. Like the issue has just become way bigger, way faster.
00:38:51 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:38:51] S0: But at the same breath, it's from a culture perspective, it's without each other all clicking as one. So that's a fun side of it as well. [00:38:59] S1: Yeah. Well, yeah. And if we didn't have that, and to your point kind of earlier in in the conversation, like, if we were this, like, very robotic group of people, we didn't know each other, we were remote all across the world and have never never been friends, never knew each other, like, I'd imagine the conversations between each other would be pretty intense. [00:39:17] S0: Pretty blind. [00:39:18] S1: A lot of f bombs, a lot of anger of, hey, you're the cog in this wheel that's causing me trouble, I want to get rid of you cog. Right. And, you know, that doesn't happen because people know there's a human on the other side and that human's one of their friends. So one could argue that maybe that's not good for business. Maybe we could be more profitable. Maybe we could be better. But I I don't think anyone at Vistar wants to work at a place like that. [00:39:42] S0: Yeah. And I think it's... Last time I saw you in New York in the office, it was kind of fun because I think you guys had everyone there. [00:39:50] S1: Yeah. Go full blast. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like the default again, which is great to see. [00:39:54] S0: And I I ran into you coming, coming in and out of meetings and I kind of made the comment to you because I I wasn't there meeting you. And I I made the knowing what was going down with you. And I said, this has to make you so proud. And you just kind of looked across.