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On Freedom and Glory: Tales of American Spirit, hosts Liz Morris and Bill LuMaye talk with John Newberry and Tom Vols, co-founders of Gopher, a community-driven gig marketplace sparked by a golf course moment and built to bring fairness and transparency to local delivery and services. They explain how users post what they need and set what they want the worker to earn, while Gopher adds a small platform fee, and workers can accept, ignore, or counteroffer with instant payment after mutual ratings. The conversation covers categories like delivery, moving, junk removal, rides, and age-restricted items with ID safeguards; worker verification tiers (identity, background checks, driving record, licensed/bonded/insured); marketplace “chicken-and-egg” challenges; product pivots to improve UX; organic growth centered in Raleigh/Wake County; fundraising needs; and plans for expansion plus business-focused features through Gopher Connect and future merchant integration.
00:00 Worker First Pricing
00:08 Meet the Gopher Founders
01:10 Golf Course Origin Story
02:30 How the App Works
04:28 Categories and Use Cases
05:25 Solving the Marketplace Chicken Egg
11:31 Fair Pay Mission
14:35 Pricing Model Breakdown
16:04 Why Lead Gen Platforms Fail
18:04 Trust Safety and Worker Levels
23:06 Growth Timeline and Metrics
28:48 Age Restricted Deliveries
29:52 Small Decisions Big Impact
30:29 Early Pivots and Partners
31:30 Hard Calls With Developers
32:40 Staying Platform Focused
34:37 Co-Founder Chemistry and Trust
36:52 Making Tech Invisible
38:04 Values Over Ego
40:45 Marketplace Vision and Leadership
43:31 Tribute to Michael Yori
47:32 Fundraising and Investor Reality
51:44 How Gopher Works in Practice
55:25 Beating Delivery App Fees
57:04 Expansion Plans and Wrap-Up
Creators and Guests
Guest
What is Freedom and Glory - Tales of American Spirit?
Welcome to Freedom and Glory: Tales of American Spirit—a podcast celebrating the heart of American craftsmanship, resilience, self-reliance, and the power of disruption. Through inspiring stories and authentic storytelling, we shine a spotlight on individuals and communities who embody these values, proving that small, determined efforts can spark meaningful change.
Join us as we share personal tales of triumph, innovation, and hope—moments that define the American spirit and shape our nation’s identity. Whether you’re seeking motivation to pursue your dreams or a reminder of the power of community, Freedom and Glory offers a powerful dose of inspiration rooted in resilience and determination.
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[00:00:00] Default_2026-03-03_2: What our pricing model is hinged off of is how much do you want to pay the worker? And then the fees move that way, not in reverse.
Welcome to Freedom and Glory Tales of American Spirit where every flag tells a story, and so does every person who raises one join Liz Morris and Bill Lume for conversations with people making a difference in their communities, reminding us that even the smallest actions can spark lasting change.
[00:00:36] Default_2026-03-03_2: Today we're joined by John Newberry and Tom Vols, co-founders of Gopher, a community driven marketplace, born from a golf course conversation, um, and built to bring more fairness and transparency to the gig economy. Will you tell us a little bit about your app? Yeah. We technically started it.
And I use the word technically because that's when we registered to make sure we could get the name. I wish technically that we, we didn't do it that, that soon just for financial reasons. But yeah. So we were on the golf course over at McGregor Downs Country Club and as was, you know, most days on the golf course, beautiful afternoon, I was overserved a little bit.
And when the occasional cocktail would enter my body, I would also want a cigarette every once in a while. And do you want, do you want this story or should we edit? That's the tell the truth. This is the truth. This is the god, gods honest truth. This is how Gopher started, right? Front nine had a rough front nine, you know, we've all been there and medicated a little bit heavy.
And no car, like I said, no, nothing and wanted a cigarette. When I, when I have alcohol or when I used to have alcohol. A, a cigarette just went with it. So, anyway, long story short we were able to get a pack of cigarettes driven up to the back of the 11th hole, which was you know, about 20 minutes from when the first call was made.
And I, we realized right then, like, so wait, somebody, we just offered somebody X amount of dollars to go get this on top of, there's nothing out there like that. And, you know, we chewed on it for a while. We vetted it, we, the, the original design of gophers, kind of nothing what it, what it was, what it is now.
But no. It's an app designed to give empowerment to the users. So, you know, whatever you need you throw out what you think is a fair price for someone to either go get it or perform a service, whatever that is, and it'll connect you with a group of gophers or people that have downloaded the app to do the work.
They can either accept it. Ignore it or they can counter offer it.
We wanted to have like a unique delivery experience because there was already food there was some, um, hints of age restricted, but not very many. But it wanted to be things that, um, you wouldn't ordinarily think of or, or even have the means to find somebody else to do it, especially for a consumer pricing type model.
So at first we let people title their re their requests, and that was a blessing and a curse because, you know, a lot of people don't follow rules. So the title was my name or you can't type like me either, like big fat fingers and voice to text. And there's only so many characters and all that. But, um, so we had already established a value proposition for the workers.
You're gonna see exactly what's needed. You're gonna see exactly how much they're offering you, which is exactly your take, and then you're gonna get paid instantly. So lots of people would gravitate towards that, that are also doing other gig jobs we have that going for us, and then now you start to see, well, can somebody come and take this refrigerator outta my garage?
The city won't get it for a week and I need it done Now pay 50 bucks. Whereas if you call or just brow your traditional junk moving companies, it's a little bit more expensive than that because they gotta pay for the truck to enter the dump, whereas Joe, with his truck next door can come pick it up, take it there for free.
And so, and then there was moving, moving and you're hit like $150 flat fee no matter what. Every time it's like 1 75. So there's, and then it was moving, can, I don't need you to take me across country, but can you help me move this couch up to the bonus room? I just need two strong people, but that kind of stuff.
So we started to figure out, okay, well let's make this user experience a little easier and give them an opportunity to have categories. And so that's what you see today is I want delivery. And then here's all your subcategories. I want a service. Here's moving junk removal, home services, landscaping, and all that kinda stuff.
I need a ride. And then of course we have an other category, which is kind of like the. The original, you know, what is it that you want that obviously you couldn't get anywhere else. Just make an offer and we'll find you, we'll connect you to a gopher. Can't tell you how many times we have a show. And I go, why didn't I think of that?
This is another one of those I thought you were gonna say and you want some sushi or something. Well, I do have some things and get the app because I got some got after that. But logistically, how do you put this all together? Because it's, I know they're very community based. I mean, that's kind of your thing, but how do you get the gophers and the people who, who need these items or services together and, and grow it?
I mean, how do you make that happen? So the chicken and the egg question for marketplace. Kinda think, because if you have nobody to provide the services or enough people. So, um, this is obviously an answer that I'm gonna give you fairly quick, but it did not. It wasn't that fast to find out what the recipe was.
So we realized that we had backed ourselves into a very good value proposition for workers. And wherever you go, you just let the, depending on what your communication, whether it's social media or if you're doing outreach or something like that, then you've gotta set the expectation is, Hey, we're coming and we'd love you to be a part of the environment beyond the platform as a worker.
And so here's how it works. And then obviously the onboarding materials are pretty self-explanatory. They're attractive. So you have workers on there that aren't automatically trying to defect because you don't have a job form today if you set the right expectation. So, and we didn't at first, full disclosure.
And so you get a customer that wants an, oh, I love this idea, and then there's not a worker available. So our game plan is moving forward. So we'll fast way forward, but when we go into new markets, which we already do, have a lot of organic adoption from this. But when we strategically go to a new market, it's great that we'll already have workers there, but we'll also set an expectation of here's what you can expect, here's when we're coming.
And then get our worker platform dialed in so that when now we start advertising for requesters or customers, then we've got people that are ready to enabled to do those requests. At first, the imbalance was a, was a real struggle because we can sell you on the vision, we can tell you how great this app is for so many different things that don't exist today.
And you're gonna tell your friend, well, your friend lives in Idaho, which is not in Boise, it's way north. And they go, oh yes, I'm gonna do this. And the, there's no worker. Right. That's what I was gonna say. I mean it, I know it sounds crazy, but for a startup, um, you know, we wanted to make sure that. We had everything in place to support the long-term strategy, right?
So, you know, the beauty, the good and bad of being on the App store is anybody can download it anywhere, right? So instead of, and, and, and I know it sounds crazy, but we really wanted to keep this kind of contained here for a while so we could work out all the user experiences and make sure that, you know, when we did have this, you know, kind of mass marketing approach that would be, you know, in targeted markets or nationally, whatever, that, you know, we had, we were ready for it, you know, and, and I guess the good and bad is, you know, every, I don't remember the first time I heard about Uber, you know, it was such a, like a, a, a different concept, right?
And we're seeing the very similar energy. The first time that somebody hears about Gopher, it's completely reversed what the gig economy is used to. So we're, it's very disruptive. So the good and bad with that is when people hear about it, they instantly, oh man, I can, I can throw out a price on what I think is fair for this.
And me as a worker, I get paid instantly. All, all these real differentiators. So when they hear it, they instantly jump on. And, but again, like they, they go try to put a request out in somewhere that we just don't have gophers yet. So, you know, we've, we've done a really good job, I think, of organic growth and maintaining that without too many people abandoning the platform.
Can you try to use it once and you get no response and Sure that mentally it does something right. So, you know, with this, this current raise and stuff that we're doing, that's our, we're gonna, we're gonna attack that head on. We could draw a map around Wake County or even the state of North Carolina and just use that as our metrics.
I mean, we're, we're, our plan is to take what we've done there, pick it up and duplicate it In other markets, we're going to deal with some casualties of you know, just geography. Um, but, you know, there's, there's no, no full algorithm that describes how to solve that chicken egg. But when you step back for a second and you realize, um, how the app can perform no matter where you are, neighbor, one is the customer, neighbor two is the worker.
If they both have the app, anything can happen. So getting the word out quickly that, hey, listen, no matter what you ever would want to use the platform for, jump on there. And then if you're a worker, especially because a lot of these people have, are doing food delivery or grocery delivery, I mean, we, when we go outta town, no matter where it is, we'll gonna go for like this because we'll do food delivery or we'll do grocery delivery or whatever, and then we'll say, did you any other apps?
Yeah, absolutely. Of course everybody does. Here's your next one, and I'll be your first customer. Download the app, add that person as a favorite, request 'em for the whole week or weekend or whenever it is. So, I mean, it works very, very quickly to adopt customers. And then now it's just getting the word out strategically.
Obviously, you can't just get the word out because it's just like energy, right? Like it only goes so far if it's not transferred again, so it'll just disappear. So that's why we'll be much more strategic about making sure that we take care of Raleigh first first market and really let people know because there's still people that don't.
And, you know, we take responsibility for that. Trying to manage, burn, manage development, development is, as anybody that's in the startup world and that has a technology platform, having the right developer is essential. And so we've went through, you know, a couple and we now have the right formula. We, we now have the right partner.
We got some untangling to do, if you will, but that takes care of some immediate challenges that we had before. And then now the other challenge, the two most significant ones, obviously the development, and the second one was just kind of like the, the marketplace mismatching. And so we feel very good about that too.
And now it's just about you know, we have a couple other things too that we're, that we're super excited about. So if you had any, anything like entry level stuff, you know, we can finish that off. And then we'd love to tell you too about you know, two, um, initiatives that we have that kind of support gopher's overall marketplace.
Yeah, I'm, I'm interested in, I mean, I think it's a, or my understanding is that you're really trying to pay workers like a fair. A fair shake in this. Mm-hmm. Which to me feels like, you know, that's where you're differentiating yourself from, like an Uber or something, one of those big apps. So was that, um, like a business decision?
Was that an ethical decision? It's a how did you combination of kinda Yeah. I, I, I think it's a combination. I think, you know, personality wise, I think we both aligned similarly in, you know, we, we love the underdog, we love people, you know, I mean, we, I've, I've made a career out of people and, and, you know, being relationships, seeing especially, you know, economic times being what they are fluctuating, you know, these other gig economy apps, they sold everybody on the efficiency of them, right?
Oh, I can, instead of waiting for a taxi, someone who has their own vehicle, I can hop in, whatever. But, you know, as, as time went on and people started to use these food delivery apps, all these different things, the common theme that you kept, we kept hearing was that the workers were, you know, not being treated fairly.
The people that were doing there and using their equipment to get these things done, and, and, um, you know, they're getting like six tenths of a affair, you know, on dr. And, you know, that's how kind of the magic of Gopher came together when we realized, hey, we're not greedy. Like, I don't, I don't wanna make fees off someone.
I want whoever, if someone is willing to pay X amount of dollars for someone to go pick something up and bring it to them, I want them to make a hundred percent of that. On the flip side, the, the consumer, if, if they really want someone to go perform this, that, or they, they're unable to do it themselves or they just don't feel like it, you know, let's, let's make sure that they pay the premium for lack of better term.
Or, you know, they're the ones that are gonna be have money taken outta their pocket. So, yeah, I think just from a personality standpoint, just from a, a morality standpoint, you know, we, we want everybody, it's a, it's a, the best of both worlds. So you find a, a happy. Customer base. That's one thing. You get a good staff of people and you have happy employees, even though they're not employees of Gopher.
But when your workforce is happy, everything else just works better. So if you're fortunate enough to have created a business plan and never made a pivot, then you're brilliant and, and you're lucky. There's no, you're not one or the other. You're both. So that's not us. One thing in our business plan though, that has remained the same is the worker centric nature of it.
And so I, um, we've had partners along the way and, um, that have had their hands in other businesses as well. I started go for full-time and have remained, I haven't done anything else. It's like been my job. You know, I work a nine to five, obviously as a startup, CEO. So, you know, I don't want anybody to feel bad for me on that regard.
But we have definitely, um, or I have specifically worked for multiple platforms as a worker, as an independent contractor. I could do a job that was a hundred dollars to put a couple outdoor furniture pieces together. The customer paid a hundred rather. I found that out afterwards, after a good conversation, um, I made $40 on that.
$40. Mm-hmm. So $60 goes to the platform for what the platform operates, almost identical to Gopher. So on Gopher, if you put out a hundred dollars, you're gonna pay about $9 or so. If you don't want to pay over a hundred dollars, then you're gonna pay $90. Or and then it's gonna net a hundred, but the gopher is gonna get a hundred.
What our pricing model is hinged off of is how much do you want to pay the worker? And then the fees move that way, not in reverse. So what's the, you're, we get you thinking about how much do you want to pay for this service? It's going straight to the worker. And we'll take our small platform fee to operate, which you can, we can put up against anyone's.
As far as you know, it's the lowest out there. Our long-term play as a horizontal app, you know, you, a food delivery app typically isn't gonna find you a handyman. A ride share app isn't typically gonna find you a landscaper. So when you come on our platform, no matter what it is, now you have the opportunity to see the value from all these other services too.
So it's a strategic play long term as it, the CAC on it is zero. One of the most frustrating things, and I've been through this 'cause it's my 10 year curse where everything seems to break you and you have to find a plumber, you gotta find whatever. Mm-hmm. And you go online and then what you're stuck with there are, um, giving a phone number out to what you think is a site that's gonna help you.
And then you get inundated thousand. Yeah. That's a lead gen platform. Lead sharing it called lead gen platforms. Oh. Worker. You know, who gets calls, text, dms. I I mean, it drives you crazy. Yes. The work sounds the opposite. It is. And unfortunately in that environment, and I'll let you touch on this too, but it, the, the worker gets screwed in that environment Sure.
Because they, they join those list companies, whatever it is, and they pay for these leads. Mm-hmm. So when, when you have a request that you submit through one of those platforms, it goes out to all the workers, all the workers are charged a, a, a fee basically for that lead, but only one of you is gonna get it.
Right. And, and that one person that does get it, then that doesn't stop people from calling you. It's just. It's completely backwards in, in our opinion, but yeah, go for perfect software. I, I wanted to move a car from point A to point B, you know, driving across country. I did that and this was years ago. I'm still getting calls and texts on that one.
Oh yeah, I I mean, I'm serious. You added back soon. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it, yeah, I, I learned that I, I, I had something, 'cause early on, you know, we were. Kind of testing out a bunch of other apps anytime that someone would we would mention go for some. Oh, is it kind of like the blank app or the blank app and you're like, I hadn't heard of that one.
So, you know, we, I got to understand just about every app that's out there and I signed up for one of those and, and just decided to see, kind of put it up. We used to do like these trials, like see who would get food delivered faster, all that stuff. Mm-hmm. And same thing, I, I had like a fence post or something that needed to be dug and I mean, it was just absurd.
Yeah. You almost feel bad for the homeowner that like, actually, you know, used the service. 'cause it's just, and then you realize like how many people that did call you that got charged and didn't get the job. Yeah. All that time wasted. Yeah. Can I ask, um, how do you police this? Um, I mean as far as the workers and that sort of thing, because people are looking for whatever.
Mm-hmm. How do you make sure those workers are what they say they are? Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's multiple different ways we do that. And then each, so I'll give you the step. If you're a standard gopher. You're gonna come on the platform and you are going to have to submit your social, your, you're basically gonna have to prove your identity.
Then if you're a Gopher Elite, then you've taken a full criminal background check. If you're Elite Plus you've done that and you have a good driving record, and then if you're a Gopher Pro. You are going to be licensed, bonded, and or insured. And so depending on what platform, and I don't wanna let the cat outta the bag too early, but we're gonna have go for connect, which is basically go for, for businesses.
It's just going to have some enhancements that make a little bit more sense, like you probably. If you, you know, doing some yard work and you'd like someone to help spread mulch, you probably don't need three people that you want to pay $30 an hour and you need 'em at seven o'clock tomorrow. And there's lots of businesses that do need that type of stuff.
You know, you have a container coming in and there's time. It is time sensitive to when that thing gets there and when it needs to be gone. And if you're late, there's significant fees. So we're gonna provide a platform to where you can, you know, request X amount of people for X amount of hours, for X amount of dollars and when you need it, and boom.
So the Gopher app would be a little bit difficult to do that as our consumer app, which is what we're talking about currently. That is a new addition. And then also with deliveries, like you typically you want point A to point B. Well, we have some delivery partners that have a warehouse and then their clients that are renting beach equipment.
There's five of 'em. And so the warehouse houses all of their equipment. So you just have one request to go pick up the stuff at the warehouse and then drop it off at location one, two. Yeah. A lot of delivery services are white labeling the gopher, gopher connect. Yeah. We're just trying to make it to where we can perfectly connect consumers, businesses, merchants, which I can get into in a second too.
And then obviously workers for fair price labor. And in addition, just to add to context to, to your question, outside of all the different levels, we early on we had some technology, some intelligence built into the app where, um, instead of like if you go to Google reviews for a company's business, he can send out a note to all of his friends and say, Hey, give me five stars on this.
Right. That, that is a, a very common practice with Gopher, um, through, as you use the app more, you, you develop a real. Rating. So every transaction, the both the gopher and the requester are both given a rating at the end of the transaction. That's what releases the payment. The instant payment. And this is real, real in the moment.
Feedback on, on how someone did so as opposed to, you know, something that you can manipulate by sending it to all your friends on Facebook and asking them to give you five stars. Our ratings are, are based off actual interactions and if you don't carry a five star gopher rating, we're trying to promote people to be professional, to be communicative, to, to be professional when they show up.
Only five star Gopher c requests for the first piece of the request. So it helps promote people to, to, to do good, to do good, and to be honest. So. It's amazing. All with a little drink and some cigarettes. That's that. Just amazing. Yeah. Well, a lot of drink, a lot of drinking. Okay. I'm curious what, um, did you have other ideas on the golf course that didn't make the cut?
Oh, I used to have a otter for when he was Oh, so I, these your hair, your dog hair thing for the stairs. Yes. It was already, oh my God. There's 70 of those already. So that's that's kind of how he and I gonna join forces early on. There's context. So we played golf together and I, you know, I have the worst A DHD of anybody you've ever met, if you can't tell already.
Um, there's a, it's a gift and a curse. Sometimes the creative juices get hyper flowing and I would always use John as a sounding board for some of the ideas. I've, you know, I've been an entrepreneur. I've had mul, you know, several different technology companies in the area, whatever. I've had some really good ideas and I've had some just absolute bombs and.
He has been the throughout the course of our, our friendship has been the one to be the most candid. And I mean, no, no punches hole, just you're an idiot. Yeah. Just flat out that's the dumbest thing. And this one, that's how you took it. I know I didn't say it that way, but if I show you on Amazon that this product you wanted to already has 80.
So yeah, there was one particular clearly that didn't make it his favorite story. My dog. My dog. Yeah. That's, that is a real problem. It is a real problem. And I'm telling you, listen, the market's probably not saturated there still, but thank you. Thank you. Wow. Finally, someone gets it. We have four dogs at my house, so it's, it is a problem.
Okay. My wife would love to have some type of nifty invention around that, but yeah. Well, you, you, you're focusing on Raleigh right now. Although, as you said, it, it, it's available everywhere. How's it going? I mean, it would seem to me that I understand the premise and kind of the business model that you have going.
I mean, if you want it to work, man, that's attractive to be able to keep more of your money. I, I would seem you'd almost be a big competitor to those that are doing these other Ubers and Yeah, all of that. And, and then of course for the people who, who need it. So how has it grown for you and how, how long have you been doing this?
I, I guess I should have asked that from the beginning and how is it growing in that time? Yeah. So far as, um, how it's going. That's let me try to back it into where you can, you can answer how it's going, but, so like we said in 2018, we came up with the idea, right? And then by the time. You know, let's say that we had the business plan together and then we started searching for developers.
We're well into 2019. And then once we decide how we're gonna deploy the first tactic, you know, beta, if you will, it's two neighborhoods. Took a year of pounding the payment. Hey, of this two platforms, which one do you think you'd use it for? I'd be a customer, I'd be a worker. And then getting that sorted out and then getting the app to function the correct way and all that kind of stuff.
Now we're fast forwarded to 2021, late 2021. Um, and so from there to 23, lots of learning, lots of, we need to change the development. Like I said, we were doing titles. You title your own request, right? We gotta knock that down real quick and help you with, get what you really want with a couple clicks. Just a yeah, instead of having a, a very long user experience, just make it more efficient, more click you.
Densify the whole process. Yeah. We would like to ultimately be like, just like a large language model, just type in what you need or even say what you need and we'll find you exactly what it is without having to click anything. But, so then you, um, fast forward to 2024 and we've kind of partnered up with a couple different local business people and consultants on taking a little deep dive into, you know, what is our, what's our acquisition, um, what's our acquisition cost, what's our repeat user, all of these different things.
And then from there, that's where we started to really see like going from, you know, at that point, 13,000, let's call it submitted test requests to 50,000 from, 40, no, not even 40, not even close. Like 20,000 users that had joined the platform to today. 125,000. Wow. So, um, which sounds great. Half of those are customers.
Half of those are workers. Ironically, I don't think it'll stay that way. Exactly. Half it has kind of trended like that. But right now, what our number one focus is, is completing this raise so that those use of funds go to absolutely getting the platform's technology from a user experience dialed in to where all of the things that caused a little bit of adversity or lowered the completion percentage are wiped clean.
So that, let's call it 70 to 80% of people that submit a request, get it completed. Now you would think a hundred, but just so you understand how the app works, it's not auto fulfillment. So if you just came from Food Delivery Company D then and you offered $2 to your worker to go get a gigantic order and take it 15 miles to your house, you're gonna get that order completed.
That's not cool for the worker. They lost money on that job. Right? So with Gopher, if you offer that, that will sit there until it expires or somebody counter offer it. Now they can counter offer it. Correct. But if you came in there with a $2 mentality, then you might not accept a $10 counter offer or whatever you should.
We hope you do. We hope in for the worker's sake, but we understand. But inside that 70 to 80% is a whole lot of happy customers and a whole lot of happy workers that can then use the app for non-delivery. Services and so on and so forth. Now, if they want to use the same thing, let's say it's delivery, they can also have their gopher be their favorite gopher and now just request them by name every time.
There is a couple platforms that have kind of adopted the, but there's just mad disclaimers on it. Like you can only use a favorite go for if it's scheduled a week out or something like that. Well, that's not really letting me have my favorite Gopher on Gopher. I have a delivery today. It's like that night.
I want somebody to, or I want that person to be the same person again. No problem. Make your offer. We'll connect it to 'em. Now if they're available, that is, it'll still go out if it's not available, but at least we'll give you an opportunity and then that's good for the worker too, because now they have a trusted platform that will always take care of their payment, that will always make sure they're paid immediately after the requests.
So it works. It works very well for both people, both parties. That's brilliant. Really is. We think so. We think so. Yeah. It's it's wanna golf this weekend. Yeah. I, I I actually am playing golf. I bet you up, up. Yeah. No, it's, that, that is truly amazing.
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[00:28:47] Default_2026-03-03_2: Been fun is there's been fun. Age restrictions. Yeah. So, alcohol, because you can get anything, right?
I mean, you can get anything. Alcohol. If I need whatever, six pack of beer delivered, obviously you have to be a certain age to accept it. How does that work? If you can go buy it right now? Yep. Goer can help you. Alright. So we have safeguarding, we have as sophisticated as safeguarding as you can get.
You're gonna prove your identity initially when you submit the request. You we're gonna tell you contactless delivery is not available if it's an age restricted item. When you get there, you're gonna have to show that ID that you already submitted. And the worker's gonna have to be our backup as the eyeball test.
Like, looks good, looks good, looks good. And then now the products changes and afterwards, then the customer says, yes, I got what I needed. So that part is done now to, you have to be 16 to be on the app. So you, you looking for your kid to maybe not be stuck to the, the gaming console all day. Mm-hmm. Then get 'em on Gopher and have 'em pick up some of these groceries or dry cleaning or what have you.
Yep. Well the, the, this podcast is based around the idea that even a small action can produce a lasting change. Um, so like as entrepreneurs, you know, was there anything at the beginning that kind of was a decision that you would say that's really what made this take off or, you know, that really had a huge impact?
Hmm, that's a great question. That is a good question. Um, I would answer that. I, I've come from a background, um, been an entrepreneur. I made my first exit about five years ago. Been in the technology space. Um, I've learned personally, like the, just, this is a completely different type of business. You know, this is a completely different type of infrastructure.
Looking back, early on, the trust that, you know, I had in John and our team to make the pivots when they needed to happen. Um, we had a, a development partner early on. I think that was the biggest lesson learned so far. Um, that moving, moving in a different direction there, I think is kind of what catapulted us into this growth that we're seeing now.
I think just having, um, having the right people in the right places and, and having partners that understand the vision, understand what we're trying to do. Um, I think getting away from. Some of the early mistakes sooner than later really helped put us on the right path. But I I'd love to hear your, no, I think that's, oh, I'm sorry.
I think that's a significant one too. Yeah. Um, especially since both Tom and I are pretty loyal and to a fault to where we contract with you and really wanna see you be succeed for on our behalf as well as yours. Um, and so it's always tough when you have to, this just isn't working the way that we had thought.
And it is a very tricky process. Even great developers may fail a client or two because it's really about you taking the responsibility to articulate your vision, and then they've gotta put that on some sort of a program or interface. I know that's not easy. I have been the point for development for five years with Gopher dealing with.
Everything from creating the wire frames, the user experience up to everything but the coating. And I know how difficult it is with very capable people. Um, so when you have to, to move in a different direction, that's, those conversations suck to me. It's almost like if you're, you know, firing an employee that was trying.
Mm-hmm. And it's not like they, they didn't, you know, firing somebody that's not trying is easy. When they're really trying hard, it's not. So that's one. And I think another one too is, um, staying on course. So not making pivots, but staying on course when one particular category might be outperforming another significantly at a given time.
And that's not who we wanted to be. We wanted to help, we wanted to provide a platform for you where you can get anything done. And so if we go down the lane of whatever it is now, we're drafting somebody that's already there. And even if we do it better, it's gonna take us a long time to catch up to that person.
Or we can not be that one category or vertical, if you will. And we can be a platform that can help anybody with anything for the price that they think is fair and we'll validate if it's fair or not by off whether the worker decides to to help you or not. And I think that there's ult, there's, there's other benefits to that too, which is obviously, um, a strategic play for us is we'd like to be able to, um, you know, help people with that maybe don't know that they could benefit from other things on the app.
And, and people's behaviors kind of help with that. Like, I mean, we're ready to, we're gonna have a platform to where we integrate with merchants. And we aren't currently, now we're not gonna do it like everybody else, which basically takes 70 cents or takes 30 cents of the dollar from the merchant. We want all merchants to be on the platform, and if there's a way we can help you, we'll parlay that into a delivery or an assembly or something like that.
So now we would really get the attention of the community when we're helping not only the community members, but the small businesses and even the municipalities in those communities as well. Good answer.
I feel like, um, so I mean, you've mentioned like pivoting or not pivoting. Yeah. Um, I feel like maybe Tom. Brings a lot of that, that energy to the, to the duo. Is he, you know, bringing in ideas and stuff and within the business as well? And Of course. Um, sometimes sometimes, but I'll, I'll tell where he's, he does sometimes when he is not even trying to, you know, he'll, he'll come up with like marketing.
I'm always throwing stuff at him. Like, you know, we're just for whatever this we did, we just didn't get the message across for some reason. And he'd come up with something like, well, what if we, you know, just did this? And I was like, what if I get a tattooed on my legs? Because that happened? Yeah. Well I have a gopher tattoo that goes down my leg.
Oh, wow. Large. Now I, um, I think that's, you know, why we compliment each other and that's why, you know, I'm very proud, um, humble brag on this guy for a minute. Like, I'm very, very proud to call my business partner. We, I'm chaos. I know that, like I, I am, I have another business partner, um, in, in a consulting firm that, that has, you know, taken off really, really quickly.
And, you know, the ideas are one thing, but you have to have executioners that are, that, I've always said this, you surround yourself, and this is, is us surround yourself with people that are great at what you're bad at. Let 'em know that they're appreciated. Give em autonomy to, and the trust that, that you have full confidence in them, and then you get the hell outta their way.
Right? And, and that's kind of I think why we've worked, you know, but because he's been so entrenched in it, you know, this is full-time every day, all day. It's not my, I'm not, you know, 24 7 because he's become so entrenched in it. He, his vision. Like he has the, the long-term strategy and he has the long-term vision that, that I fully trust.
And so it's, it's been kind of a, a, a roll of role. The initial concept has now, you know, become his brain and now he's able to see this roadmap that he's describing to us, and it's like, yeah, dude, just go with it. Like he's, he's got full, full control. Well, that's way too much props. But I will tell you that, that one of my roles is to communicate with customers and they're the ones that are steering us this way.
It's not necessarily my brain. My brain is just not ignoring the fact that customers are saying, yeah, I would love this, but I need to be able to have workers in my area. So now our job is to get people to them. But again, right now, what our focus is, is to fix. Get the technology buttoned up to where your experience is flawless.
And we can do that. I would like our dev to be invisible, which basically means that like, what'd you go to Gopher for? To get connected to a great worker. You got connected to a great worker. How? Like, I don't really know, I just use the app or I don't even want you to be able to articulate it very well because it just wasn't significant.
We made it so easy that you don't really need to talk about this feature or this gadget or whatever. It just happens effortlessly. Even though the feature like a favorite gopher is very, very popular. And once you have your favorite gopher, you're gonna use 'em forever. But people don't even really talk about that that much.
They just do it. Sure. And I'd like all the features to work like that as well. We're getting there. Sounds like you guys have kind of taken away an old business model. See, I'm old enough to know there was a time where. Um, companies actually tutored their employees very well. They valued 'em, you know, people used to shop locally.
For instance, there was a community kind of a thing, you know, dad would work here. The sun would follow kind of an atmosphere. And in the industry that I've worked in, the last thing you'll see is what you've said is getting people to work that are actually better at what you do and surrounding yourself with those people.
I've often seen that, and it works very, very well, but for some reason, human nature doesn't, doesn't allow that. So why, why is this not an issue with you guys? I agree. I mean, I obviously, you must be very assure of yourself. I think that's a, that's a deep, deep question. I lived my life a very particular way for a long time and didn't have, um, what was really important in life at the center of, of my focus.
You know, I, I always thought, you know, I grew up in a Jerry Springer episode and I always thought that, you know, if one day I had millions and millions of dollars and my life would be so wonderful, and, you know, that I was fortunate enough to sell a business and that that thing happened and I was more miserable then than I ever was, right?
And so it kind of changed my perspective on life and what it's all about. And again, tying back to what I said earlier, John and I, I think we just have a very common, I love for people and, and we understand, like we've, I've been through a lot in my personal life, John. Everybody has, everybody has stuff going on, right?
And, you know, with everyone, so. Focused and, and the media and everything that comes at you from all different angles today, it's all just bad. And it's all just, eh, and like, why not? Why not just be the good guy? Like, why not just stand up for, you know, we, we want people making money. You know, I, I don't want people sitting at home and having the government pay you like, no, I'm, I'm not for that at all.
Right. But we do provide an opportunity for people to earn money on their own time with whatever skills they po Everyone's born with gifts. Right. And, you know, I'm, I love the, the idea that we're able to, to provide something that people can work when they wanna work, do the jobs they want to do. You as a consumer, you're paying, you know, what you think is a fair price.
No one's trying to gouge anybody. You know, everything that is just shoved in our face 24 hours a day is just about money. Get more, get this, like, I've, I've seen there, there's, there is such thing as like enough, you know, and, and that's, it's not greedy. And we, we like everybody to, to. When? When everybody's happy, the world's just a better place.
My goal is when we get to a point to where we've accomplished these short term objectives that we've. Fully implemented, go for connect that we've fully implemented, integrating merchants and small businesses onto the platform so that other users have a reason to go on there and we'll let them offer deals and all kinds of stuff.
And it'll be an interactive marketplace that again, can parlay into any service. But my also, but also my most significant goal is to find a CEO to take my spot that can take us to a level that, that I can't, like I, my experience will not let me go and raise 10 million, which we'll have to do multiple times if this marketplace takes off, especially if it's anywhere similar like to an A NGI or an Uber or DoorDash or any of these super large marketplaces.
If we want to be the super marketplace, then that's gonna take multiple raises and lots of people are gonna make a lot of money along the way. But it's gonna take people that you know, have much more bandwidth than I do. I do feel like I've got a place on the platform, and when it comes to workers, I've already seen and can start to kind of roadmap how gig workers can get benefits on the platform as well.
And I know that they have them in some capacity in some different ways, but they're third party upsell. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in to where, you know, we can make it more affordable than anywhere else. And if you compare apples to apples with, let's just take one category of delivery right now, you take the average delivery earnings from a gopher worker and you take it from any other one of 'em and they make a lot more.
And so if we can do that, then I'm positive that we can also find a way to integrate benefits into here in which they pay less too. So, I mean, we're not trying to do anything half-assed here. We're trying to give you a reason to come on the platform, give you a reason to be proud, to be a part of the platform.
But that's, like I said, that's something I think that I can work really hard on to get done while, you know, our next commander in chief is running and gunning, getting this thing to, to new heights. 'cause I'll tell you what's most exciting about, it's like every 15,000 new users that come on the platform, something else, something really cool happens, like something, a new revenue stream.
That, and, and quite honestly every revenue stream benefits both parties involved. Sure it's just volume. But other things too, like different perks, different, um, you know, a new user comes on and says, Hey, why don't you guys do this? Great idea. Our favorite gopher came from literally Tom and I's favorite Gopher.
He passed. He passed on Halloween last year, and he was the greatest person on the planet. That's why we, and he had done 3,500 and some on requests and he had five stars. He had never ever had one star less than perfect. He was the best after 3,500. Like I really gotta, if I could find time, fact check that somewhere against whoever the greatest gig worker on the planet is.
Yeah. With a 3000 minimum. Like it's gotta be him. His name was Michael Yori and that's why we changed. Favorite gopher to my gopher kind of fits as my gopher, but it's capital M and y and it stands for him. So he's always gonna be embedded in the platform. No, she does, but he, he was somebody that's a worker on the platform that inspired us to now, and everybody loves that.
That feature. So somebody else is gonna come on the platform, whether a customer or a worker with some great idea or some great behavior that we can immediately implement and scale. I just got choked up. Am I gonna lie? It's hard not to. Yeah. He was such a great person. He was like, I have a video of him for his last delivery and he was unwinding my flag in front of my house.
'cause it was tangled up from the wind. Yeah. Brings the doorbell, goes and does that. And then, Hey John. Mm-hmm. Hey, Heidi. He it's crazy. He is, yeah. It's a little tribute, obviously, putting my, but I mean, he is really largely responsible for the growth that we had, like. He, but, but when you find people like that, that are just go-getters, you know, and he, he, he had so much fun doing it just because, you know, he was a part of it and it was just exciting.
But when you find people like that, that, you know, this perfect storm of opportunity with you being able to, you know, dictate, ah, I, I can do that for this, or, you know, I'll counter off whatever. And I think, you know, tying back why, what's been fun about this whole thing, I've, I've been involved in a lot of different things, but this one is by far like, from literally on a golf course, you know, standing on a tee box to, to where we are download in all 50 states, hundreds of thousands of use.
Like it started, you know, with literally the, the first step, um, to come to where we are. But us having this common outlook on and understanding, and I, I, I don't wanna say there's no egos here, right? And what I mean by that, like. There's no visions of Grand juror with me. Yeah, I've been an entrepreneur, whatever you wanna call it, John, same thing, but there's no, no ego here when the, the right team comes in to so we can step out and let somebody take and run with it.
And we have no, no problems with that. And I think that that's very important because a lot of times you get into these, especially in, in, you know, growth high growth, high excitement. I mean, this is very exciting. You know, we're, we're a part of something that is potentially life changing for us. And sometimes you can get egos and I want to have my hands on this and I wanna have control of this.
And I think the reason that we are still here, we are still fighting the good fight. And anybody who has had a startup understands what that means. Raising money. You know, after a while you exhaust who you know. Right? And, and, but now it's like every time that we have one of those 15,000 user milestones in some way, like something we never saw presents itself, and whether it's the data or, you know, a different way that we can monetize things, this, that presents itself and there's this level of excitement, there's, there's no desire for any of us to, to own it.
You know, it's like, hey, let's, there there's no this is my way and this is how it's gonna be. It's a very collaborative, you know, environment that's gotten us to this point. And our investors too. We have a really good group of investors that, you know, we, we listen to their feedback. We don't have a non friends and family round.
We have a friends and family, a seed and a post seeded round by category. Yeah, it's a friends and family round. It's a extension one, extension two, extension three. That's what it's, but hey, we, I'm proud. We're still, we're still plugging along, you know, obviously cash is king. Funding that, that's the biggest lesson I've learned from all this is the businesses I've been involved with in the past.
And the one that we sold was bootstrapped, but it was service-based. Um, technology integration. This is something that, you know, to his point, Uber, I think they just posted their first profit not too long ago. Not too long ago, and they've been in business 20 years. Like, it's just that being in that environment is completely different.
And you know, the importance of fundraising and how you, you have to be doing it constantly. You know, I've, I've learned some hard lessons there, you know, 'cause I've dropped the ball on, on staying active and getting in front of people. 'cause I get so excited or lost in. You know what we're doing that, you know, yeah.
Cool. But this costs money to do, so you, you gotta go raise the next little bit. Yeah. Marketplaces are definitely expensive early. Um, the high risk and where you, you know, look at a traditional business, like what's your margins? And I mean, you're looking at liquidity here. You're looking at what's your repeat usage, what's your user acquisition, what's your cost to add a customer?
You know, all these different variables that are much different than a traditional business. And, um, it's definitely a grind initially, especially when you're trying to figure out, like I came at your question about the chicken and the egg and you know, very confident it's the worker. I was not very confident early on.
Like we found out very quickly. It was not the customer first. Okay. But what is the balance and all that kind of stuff. Sure. And so just getting, you know, people that understand that risk, but also that understand the marketplace behaviors and. Um, you know, it's been a learning for all of us, but we have finally hit that, you know, inflection point, especially since majority of the transactions have come from the triangle.
And then, you know, we have so many that are all across the nation too. And then you look at those metrics versus Raleigh's and Raleigh's performs very, very well. No, no. It's like such a, I'm sorry to interrupt, but No, you're good. It's like such a pain when we're pitching. I'm sorry, we're supposed to be talking about this.
I don't know. But when we're in a pitch or something with no, don't us 5 0 6, no, but when we're in a pitch, you know, it's like when we're pitching to somebody and I, I would do the same thing. I take the same approach of like, if I'm putting my hard earned money investing in this, I wanna see what kind of return, what gonna, and that's why I said earlier about I wish we would've filed later because that all works out from 2019 to 2022, basically was.
Those numbers don't really count, I guess. I mean, they count, but whatever. We've been in business that long. But that, that putting a fence around Wake County or North Carolina, because to the point like when someone hears about it in Arkansas and we don't have somebody in that particular piece of Arkansas and they put a request out, it goes against the number, like the numbers that the investors wanna see.
There's nothing we can do about it. But it's just finding the right, you know, investors that, that do understand that we got a little trick play to help close that gap between the, just downloaded the app in the middle of nowhere. Um, but we gotta fry the biggest fish first, but we'll, we'll make it to one day where maybe we even do some partnerships with some search engine type recruiting companies that.
Feel like partnering with the gig workers and not just exclusively looking for permanent jobs and stuff too. 'cause there's a massive play there, huge play there. We, I don't wanna say a name of a company, but we were taking about 8,000 users added to the platform a month for free, and then it went to zero.
And then I didn't get any answers for a while after multiple calls. And then they said, well, marketplaces can't use our free version anymore. You're gonna have to pay and even paying right now. Bless their hearts. And I agree with them, but it's still so easy to adopt new workers on the platform because there's just so many people that I wait.
So I don't have to necessarily declare any schedule and I'm gonna see exactly what I'm gonna make, what I need to do and when I need to do it. And I can accept that if I want. Yeah. I'll, I'll be on that platform. Mm-hmm. Heck yeah. Yeah. You obviously want people in the triangle to download or, or download music?
Yeah. Yeah, download music. I mean, it's. If we printed out a list of all the to date applications that gopher's been used for, I mean, just rattling off obviously your ride sharing is one. Alcohol, tobacco, you go anywhere in the country and you, you search for alcohol, tobacco, gopher's, pretty much the first thing to come up, someone used it to get a bunny taken to the vet flat tire just now.
So the person didn't have AAA obviously, or you know, roadside assistance. Can you come and fix my tire please? 15 minutes. Obviously it was done so fast that that's just, that means that they located a neighbor that was like, sure, I'll come over for my pump and help you out. Yeah, like it's just, it's not anything c crazier, groundbreaking, but it's just a platform that's a lot easier.
Like, let's say that, you know, people, depending on where you are, use nextdoor a lot for that. Well, I mean, people aren't just on Nextdoor looking for like, oh, can I help somebody? You know what I mean? Right. Although they do have a Legion platform, and we'd love for people that are on Nextdoor to try Go for just, because remember earlier we were talking about not getting all those calls and those dms and haggling and all that stuff from those legion platforms.
Well, nextdoor has a component of that too, where they're paying, you can pay for leads when somebody wants an electrician or a plumber, whatever. So what we're trying to do with Home Services is we're gonna connect you to the same exact worker for the same exact job, except for you are going to pay less and they're going to make more relative to all the other platforms that are out there.
So you'd have to give us a try, right. And then we can prove it to you the very first time because you are the one that sets the price. And if they accept the job, then there you go. It's that easy. But when you see customers, so a customer puts out, I need somebody to hang up these three new ceiling fans.
I got these new bladeless ones, they're fantastic, but I don't know how much to offer, so I'm gonna make a big jury's out on this. Jury's out. I do like 'em. Um, they look cool. They're quiet, man. They're quiet, but, and they only blow if you're underneath them. But I get it. So I put out, I don't know how much it is, so just make me an offer.
And now all the bids come in on your interface organized so and so, here's 150. Oh, lemme look at their ratings reviews, work history. Okay, that one's good. Then I keep doing that. And then I'm like, okay, well this looks to be the best match. Let me just ask 'em a quick question. How many of these have you done?
Or whatever. And it's, you control the communication cadence, not randomly getting all of this stuff. And frankly, those people that are calling you, they don't, there's not a way to vet those credentials. Like, for example, you're called a fave on nextdoor. I can ask you three to please, which you better have already done, but can you please fave Gopher on Nextdoor?
Well, if you haven't used Gopher, then why? What's the fave? You like the guy that asked you to fave it? Is that, does that, is that Lynn credibility? If you're on Gopher and you see someone did a hundred jobs and they have five stars, they did a hundred jobs for a hundred people that paid them and said their service is five stars.
So that now we, we'll let people that are new on the platform come in too, and they don't have any reviews to start with. We'll let you poured in your next door, your Google business reviews and all those, but nothing will ever surpass the Gopher rating, which is, you know, the paying customer that says you did great.
So it makes it easy for everybody. Mm-hmm. It's terrific. Yeah. Have you guys downloaded it yet? No, I haven't. Well, it's the Go for Request app and it's the for the customers, and it's the Go for Go app for the workers. Okay. You notice how I go for Go and go for request? Well, I'll definitely download. I'm a big grocery I, I can use that's for work deliver person, show all up and you know, like all these apps, and this is the last thing I'll do.
But, you know, you get DoorDash and, and Instacart, all these things, you know, DoorDash, the, the concept is brilliant. I don't want to get up and go get this food and this, this restaurant doesn't want to pay to have a full-time delivery staff. Right. But what happens is when you go on and you, you find your restaurant that you want the pricing that you're getting, you click on a, a burger, it's the menu price with probably 30% markup or whatever, maybe not that much, but a lot of markup.
Yeah. And that restaurant, when you place the order, that restaurant gets hit with a commission. So it, they're already working off tight margin. So those apps are sheer volume and, and you have to do a lot to, to make it worth it. As a restaurant, we're paying more as a consumer, whereas, you know, with Gopher and the stuff that we're, we're tying in, like, we take all that out.
We're not making any markup on the restaurant's food. We're not charging the restaurant or anything. We're putting it solely on you as the consumer. By the time all the fees and stuff, your gopher's gonna be the more economical. Choice anyway. So if we do it right, but that's our goal. Mm-hmm. That's our goal.
Mm-hmm. So thank you guys for Well yeah. Thank you so much. This is really interesting. Yeah. Fascinating. Never a dull moment. You gotta learn how to play golf. Come on out pace. Say, you know, that's where all the big deals are caught. Come on out. I think we're right. I'm terrible at it. They're also obviously looking for, you know, investors.
Yeah. You said you wish you had this idea. Yes. I also said I'll probably get a job with that. Probably not the guy you're gonna come to for, for investment. We're doing a proud fund before too long. If I did, it would be well worth investing though. It's a brilliant idea. Thank you. Just last question. Um, how quickly do you think it'll grow into something beyond Raleigh and the triangle?
Any, any ideas? Yeah, I think that, and, um, you know, it, it's all gonna hinge on fuel. Okay. And so I know that we've beat that horse to death because, but that, that really is, is like we, we've gotta execute our last round here. Um, and I think that we have plans to go into five new markets because we already have thousands of workers in the locations that we have in mind.
So, Nashville, Philly, Atlanta. Sorry. Atlanta. Perfect. So good sports places. Yeah, absolutely. Because we haven't spent a dime outside of Raleigh and we have these pockets now if we're spending in five pockets. How does Atlanta communicate with the rest of the country?
How does Nashville, how does Jacksonville, how does, you know, that's the wild part too, is like when I travel a fair amount and as soon as I land, you know, in some new place, I always try to just. Put a gopher request out to see if it get, if it gets accepted. And it was wild. Like I remember we used to do that outside of Raleigh.
Like we'd go to Winston-Salem and try to put a gopher request and then it would get accepted. And then now, like I was just in Vegas and put a gopher request out, got a ride from the airport to, to the hotel. So that's a really cool feeling. Like something that we started on our golfboards. Yeah, that's, that is the best.
But I mean, to that point though, you know, it, it's wild. This thing that we haven't spent any money on marketing outside of this. What we're trying to find our pilot market here, and you look at the download map and I mean, it's the, you know, all, all 50 states and there's like these random pockets of places that I have no idea.
Like Lake Charles. Shout out to Lake Charles, Louisiana because I have no idea how, but it's like gopher's Gopher's, like a household name there. So it's been fun. It's been fun to watch. Wow. Yeah. It was a pleasure meeting you. It was a pleasure for having us on, for sure. Yeah, very much. Very much. Really cool hearing your story.
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