00:04:26 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:04:26] S0: Right. And and also on top of it, like, your point, like, what's the fun of just building something and not having that human human element? [00:04:34] S1: Well, some people like that, you know, I'll be honest, like, there's a lot of folks on the tech sector that, you know, are are a bit less into Sure. Spending time with other people and partying and all that good stuff. And, fortunately I'm on that boat, so I do enjoy hanging out with folks and getting to know people. I've built some great friendships and partnerships over the years with folks. I'm excited to take those into, you know, the next phases of my life. Like a lot of my people I work with know my family, they know my wife. It's, it's really exciting to have that kind of mixed together. [00:05:02] S0: Yeah, I agree. So let's, I'm gonna read the headline, and it's why we're all here. I'm I'm beyond excited, you know, again, we've never had a repeat guest, but this one's [00:05:12] S1: just On Earth. [00:05:13] S0: Yeah, of course. You you were kind of fitting for that. Right? Hopefully, paint... The plane flight was worth it. [00:05:18] S1: I love it.
00:05:18 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:05:18] S1: I love it. [00:05:19] S0: But, you know, the the biggest thing before I read this headline is the human side of it. And, you know, everyone that knows the name Michael Provenzano and knows the name Vistar, there's a handful of faces that they see. And, you know, it's just part of business, being a CEO running a tech startup in the in the early days, like, you had to, to your point, like, just get it done. Right? And, you know, what I want to accomplish here today is just really dive into a lot of the chatter that's happening out in the industry within the out of home space, and now it's bleeding into the tech side. I I enjoyed so much whenever this headline I'm about to read happened and saw all throughout LinkedIn, people that aren't even in our space were making comments. And so hopefully today, we'll we'll kind of share that and and really kind of dive into the human side of of who you are. Not that you're like a cyborg or anything. Wish sometimes. Do. It'd be [00:06:10] S1: lot easier. [00:06:11] S0: Right. Alright. So this is why we're here. T Mobile to acquire Vistar Media fueling better ad experiences for customers and more effective products for advertisers. True. True. So that's that's from T Mobile. So Vistar Media purchased by by T Mobile, everything's a go. Congratulations.
00:06:11 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:06:11] S0: Right. Alright. So this is why we're here. T Mobile to acquire Vistar Media fueling better ad experiences for customers and more effective products for advertisers. True. True. So that's that's from T Mobile. So Vistar Media purchased by by T Mobile, everything's a go. Congratulations. [00:06:34] S1: Yeah. We're all go right now. Yeah. Depending on when this podcast gets announced, are we're driving toward close. Some people don't realize like you sign a deal and between signing and close, you can even announce a deal as we have done here. And then you actually have to close the deal, which is a bunch of fun legal work and a lot of money spent on lawyers. [00:06:55] S0: Yeah. But but I would imagine, and I don't want to go too deep into it so that we don't have to edit the podcast and have legal involved, but, you know, that it's got to make you proud too. We kind of talked about it driving over here, knowing the business that you've run. You know, you talked about people, talked about product. You have to feel good about where you are, where some companies, some startups are like, oh, god, we made some... Not saying you probably didn't make some hiccup decisions along the way, but you feel great about the product and the company, it's just like, let's go, here's the books, here's the here's the family. Talk to anybody.
00:07:29 · Michael Provenzano
[00:07:29] S1: Yeah, there's two two kind of big things I think. There's one, the legacy you leave industry. I think that's super exciting. I do believe what we've built will be here whatever the next thing, that places where programmatic media buying is. So that's nice to see that you built something that is long lasting that people are going to continue to use no matter what form or name it has. And then the other side, and we experienced this at invite as well, is what you do for your team and your employees. So we now have a group of people who almost have this badge of honor in their careers and in their resumes to say like, you know, I was an early employee, or I I was here during crucial years, and I helped build x y and z at Vistar Media. And Vistar Media, again, is known as a company that was very successful, was able to sell, and my friends are from the invite Google days, they they have all have great jobs. They started their own businesses, were able to raise money off of that concept, and it's it's pretty awesome to see that, you know, these businesses can enable people to have such an amazing jumping off spot in their careers. So we're excited for everyone, for their future years to come, where else they can take their careers.
00:08:36 · Ian Dallimore
[00:08:36] S0: Yeah. And I don't want to say carte blanche here, but a lot of startup CEOs, founders, co founders, they're just kind of like, yeah, that's the number for me. I'm out. And one of the things, again, without going into too much detail that I really enjoyed throughout this entire process, we're just walk... Watching you truly care about your employees, truly caring about your people. And over the last few weeks, having conversations with the Lucy's, the Christians, the Eric Lambs, Akira, everyone, like that, it's amazing to hear them talk about it, to your point, like, as exciting as you were, but more importantly, watching you make sure before this deal is inked, like, want to make sure, not from a monetary perspective per se, but also I want to make sure that there's something here for my employees to continue to innovate and build upon, as opposed to, I'm checking out, good luck to everybody, I'll be on an island. You and I have jokingly said like, you're like, yeah, there's no island to go to.
00:09:37 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:09:37] S1: No. And I like working, so it's maybe my own curse. But, no, you know, it's really important that everyone likes the home that we go to at some some point, right? So, you know, over the years we had talked to different acquirers, we talked to private equity firms, we went through the whole gamut. So my team's kind of heard from everyone at different points. And we were at a fork in the road where we did make it to make a decision to move forward with this deal. And, I did consult actually a good amount of the employees of, hey, like, you've been with me forever, this is going to be the next steps and forever. Are you excited? And they were. They were pumped about the opportunity. T Mobile specifically is a client. They're like one of our biggest clients because they use actually all of our products across the buy side, sell side, everything. And, so it's like, well, yeah, they've been a great client of ours. We we know them well already. It was a great place to be for them. [00:10:30] S0: Yeah. So let's kind of take a step back. So Lamar, obviously, knowledge, we invested three or four years back into the company. And for us, it wasn't necessarily just Vistar per se, it was we believed in the technology, we believed in programmatic, and we believed in your leadership. Sure. What did what did that investment mean to you and the company outside of just the money side of things?