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.
00:39:54 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[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. [00:40:08] S1: Yeah. Yeah, it does. It feels great. It's it's amazing to see so many people together, pushing towards the same vision, aligned, and again, to a vision that's that's resonating with an entire ecosystem. [00:40:20] S0: Yeah. What... I I know you're a very modest person. What you've done for the industry has really kind of, you know, to your point, like disruption, but disruption in a positive way, you know, we'll get past the the conversation of, the early days of trying to sell through. Trust me, like, I jokingly say, like, I have more errors in my back than I... Internally than I do externally. But, you know, that had to have been a lot of fun just to sit back. I I think in my mind, in your career, outside of this acquisition, the early days, you being on stage at the O triple a, leading the moderation of the big three CEOs. Yeah, the big dogs with, you know, with, Jeremy Mayo, Scott Wells, and Lamar Sean Riley, and you're moderating that. [00:41:06] S1: Yeah, it's crazy. [00:41:07] S0: Yeah. But it... But the early days you could never have imagined, like fourteen years ago, Michael, they're like, hey, the whole industry is going to love you and accept you. [00:41:16] S1: Yeah, no, I would have been like, right. [00:41:18] S0: Yeah.
00:41:18 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:41:18] S0: Yeah. [00:41:18] S1: Get out here. I'm like, is there something about you have to enjoy being the outcast a little bit too sometimes? I think that's a little bit of the entrepreneur's journey. Yep. I'm sure there's a lot of companies that start and people kind of love the product from day one. They're excited about what's being built and you... Kickstarter is probably a good example of this. People do things in Kickstarter like you're only hearing about what people like who want to actually invest in what you're doing. You don't hear about the people who saw and then were like, this is fucking stupid. Don't to do this. [00:41:44] S0: Yeah. Yeah. [00:41:44] S1: Right. Like, you don't get that feedback as clear. But when you run a business like ours in B2B, people tell you very clearly, like, I have I have a bunch of old emails that maybe one day I'll release that are pretty amazing, that, you know, it's from the agency side, the owner side of people being like, this is dumb, don't email me again, like, never gonna happen. And it's like, I don't know if you if you've ever been a competitive person, right? Like we both were athletes, like, you just get fired up, you're just like, F that, like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna prove you wrong, I don't even know who you are, I'm gonna prove you on. This was a blind email, but I'm still gonna prove you wrong, you just get fired up, I don't know.