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With millions of listeners a month, Building the Future has quickly become one of the fastest rising nationally syndicated programs. With a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and more, the show showcases individuals who are realizing their dreams and helping to make our world a better place through technology and innovation.
Welcome to Building the Future, hosted by Kevin Horek. With millions of listeners a month, Building the Future has quickly become one of the fastest rising programs with a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and more. The radio and TV show airs in 15 markets across the globe, including Silicon Valley. For full showtimes, past episodes, or to sponsor the show, please visit building the future show dot com.
Kevin Horek:Welcome back to the show. Today, we have Will Robinson. He's the CEO at Encapture. Will, welcome to the show.
Will Robinson:Thanks for having me on, Kevin. Glad to be here.
Kevin Horek:Yeah. I'm excited to have you on the show. I think what you're doing in the AI kind of machine learning bank and lending space is actually really innovative and cool, but maybe before we get into all that, let's get to know you a little bit better and start off with where you grew up.
Will Robinson:Yeah. Sure. I'm a I'm a Texan. I grew up in Dallas and went to school down at Baylor, which is Central Texas, big family school for for me. And, you know, it's funny.
Will Robinson:I I kind of I was a I was a finance and econ major, like, in the business school and kind of, you know, thought I wanted to kinda go down this finance career. And I moved to New York City and, worked in finance for 4 or 5 years. And I worked a lot with tech companies and really just fell in love with with technology and software and felt like it was going to change the world, and thought, hey, I would love to I would love to be an operator in this space for my career. So, that's how I got into what I'm doing now. I I worked for a big tech company before here in Dallas, before joining Encapture and kind of being on the ride that we've been on for the past 5 years.
Kevin Horek:Very cool. So what got you passionate about finance at an early age and made you wanna go into it at least to begin?
Will Robinson:Yeah. That's a good question. I I've always been kind of a math and numbers guy, and Okay. I thought it was interesting to kind of learn how, companies raise money to go do things Sure. Showing the financing side of that.
Will Robinson:And so, and candidly, I had a really funny experience. I did a summer abroad, one summer and I was talking to some, some other American students. We were at lunch one day and I remember saying, hey, you know, next summer is the, is kind of the last summer of college, and what are you guys gonna do in the summer? And they all said, well, we're gonna move to New York City and do investment banking. And I I had no idea what that meant.
Will Robinson:And so I remember going back to my dorm room and, like, googling what is investment banking and and why you know, if if all 3 or 4 of these guys wanna do that, why is it? And and kind of thought that, hey, this could be a really interesting start to my career and a place where I can learn a ton. And and it was. It was a great it was a great start, and I felt like it's really propelled me to to do what I do now, albeit with a different background.
Kevin Horek:Got it. Makes sense. So walk us through what exactly is Encapture, and, let's dive into that.
Will Robinson:Yeah. So encapture is a machine learning platform. And and by the way, I'm gonna try to stay away from a lot of buzzwords, and if I use them, we'll talk about what they mean. Sure. But we, have the ability to help process documents as part of kind of these really paperwork intensive workflows at banks and lenders.
Will Robinson:And so specifically, our machine learning can read a document and it can understand the system can understand what type of document it's looking at, and then it can pull out the important information off of that document and use it for a variety of different things. It can put it in another system. It can check the data across multiple documents
Speaker 4:to make sure that the data is consistent. It can check
Will Robinson:the data against a third party system to see if there's any discrepancies. And really what we are eliminating is a lot of manual data entry and a lot of kind of stare and compare processes at these big banks and lenders. So a simple example I use is something that a lot of people, if you've ever bought a home, you can relate to this when you're applying for a mortgage. You You know, you you're talking to your loan officer at the lender and they're saying, okay. You know, Will, you're gonna buy this home.
Will Robinson:We need to see how much how big of a mortgage you can afford. So I'm going to need to collect some documentation from you, a recent pay stub, maybe a couple of years of your tax returns. I'm going to need to make sure you're real. So, you know, send in a copy of your driver's license or passport. And so the lender is collecting all these documents to kind of make a credit decision.
Will Robinson:But a lot of times in the background, there's people there manually reviewing these documents or putting this data, you know, trying to figure out how much money does Will make a year, what's his income, how much does he have in the bank, etcetera. There's a lot of room for automation around that. And so that's where we play kind of in the back office, helping process these incoming loan documents, pulling out the important data, and making sure that the bank can do something actionable with it.
Kevin Horek:Interesting. So how did Encapture or Encapture come to be, and and what made you guys actually decide to build this thing?
Will Robinson:Yeah. It's a it's a good question. The company itself is 25 years old. So
Kevin Horek:Okay.
Will Robinson:We I joined this company about 5 years ago. It wasn't even called Encapture at the time. Okay. But I joined as part of kind of a private equity investment that the company received. And, we had historically been a kind of a professional services consultancy on behalf of some really big software players.
Will Robinson:And we would come alongside these software vendors and we would help them sell their software. It was all around workflow automation and kind of this back office document workflow review. And we would come alongside them. We would help them sell it. We would implement the software.
Will Robinson:We would, you know, we just charge kind of an hourly rate to do that. But the company, gosh, maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago started building their own product called encapture to help collect the documents upfront, just make sure that the that the, you know, the end customer kind of had everything that they needed, as part of the workflow. And so the company would kind of resell, you know, their vendor software, but then sell a little bit of encapture as well. And, when I joined about 5 years ago, the strategy was, well, it's gonna be a lot more interesting for us as we think about growing to invest in our invest in our own product more, invest in Encapture. At the time, machine learning was kind of just coming into its own in terms of its capabilities around meeting documents and extracting data.
Will Robinson:And I felt like we would be better off as a company to really pivot away from the professional services and these legacy partnerships and instead become more of a pure play software company. And and so, obviously, that's that's easy that's easier said than done. Never said. Yes. I don't, I don't necessarily recommend that as a default strategy for for most businesses.
Will Robinson:A lot of businesses try to do that, say, oh, we've been a we've been a services company. I I want to be a software company now. It it's taken a lot of work and effort and blood, sweat, and tears to do that, but but we're thankful that we've been able to do it.
Kevin Horek:No. Very cool. I I wanna cover that a little bit before we dive a little bit deeper into what you're doing today. Did obviously, you used kind of the consulting side though to build a product, like, to fund it, I mean, or or did you raise money or or walk us through that.
Will Robinson:Yeah. Good question. So the consulting side, that was kind of our cash cow at the time. So that's where we were making all of our profit. That was, you know, the historical business model.
Will Robinson:And so, you know, we didn't just turn that off overnight. And that's what was so challenging about kind of rebuilding the company and and and pivoting the company while you're still trying to, you know, do the thing you've been doing for a long time. And so we use the, you know, the profits from our consulting to really reinvest into, into our our software platform. And that was a very incremental process. It took I mean, candidly, it took us, you know, 3 to 4 years to completely, kind of let go of all of our legacy consulting business, and become kind of this pure play software business.
Will Robinson:And so I'm thankful my investors were were comfortable with that strategy and approach. You definitely have to take kind of a long term vision to be able to do that.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Will Robinson:In in terms of raising money to do it, we decided that we just wanted to fund this, organically. Okay. We you know, there were pros and cons to both, but we felt like we felt like in the long run, it would be better for, mechanically better for the shareholders and and better for us as as leaders of the business who also were shareholders. We felt like we could create more value over the long run by doing this ourselves versus going out and kind of following a traditional venture capital model where you you go raise a lot of money and try to go really, really fast. So that was our approach and, you know, it was a really hard decision to make, especially a couple years ago when we were starting to have success and the software world was was going just absolutely insane from a fundraising perspective.
Will Robinson:We intentionally kinda sat that out and said, hey. You know what? We're comfortable with the growth we have and the progress we're making and the way that we're funding that. Hindsight 2020, that was a very wise decision for us. I feel like we're in a much stronger, healthier spot as a company, and, you know, we're not having to make some of the hard decisions that that many others are at this point.
Will Robinson:So that's the path we've been on, a bit nontraditional, but, we felt like the consulting, you know, allowed us to fund our own things. And then also, it it kept us really close to the customer and their pain points. And so as we as we developed our product and really built out and capture, built out the the AI side of it, we felt like we always had a really good sense of the problem we were trying to solve. And I think that allowed us to to, not make quite as many mistakes. Still made plenty.
Kevin Horek:No. I I think that's really good advice. And and the company that I ended up being a part of that got acquired, we did the same thing. We were kind of a software company, and then we were building a product, and then we eventually kinda switched to that. But yeah.
Kevin Horek:And to your point, it's it's hard, but doing a startup is hard no matter how it's funded. Right?
Will Robinson:Yeah. No. It is. I mean, it's yeah. It's kind of the grass is always greener.
Will Robinson:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know,
Will Robinson:there are days that I wish, man, if I had just done this as a start up, I wouldn't have all this legacy, culture and legacy kind of mindset and legacy business model support. But at the same time, I I had enough of a starting base in terms of customer base and relationships with customers that provided me a really solid footing to kind of grow off of that and and and grow the software. So, you know, wherever you are, whether you're in a a true start up or you're maybe in a business that's trying to transform, I think really leaning into, whatever strengths you have at the moment is really important. And and and honestly, I wish I had moved faster. I wish I had been a little bit more bold in terms of that that transition away from the legacy.
Will Robinson:I think I hold on a little bit too long to a few clients, a few projects, a few people, internally, that I thought, oh, these people are gonna be able to make transition with me. They're gonna be able to be part of kind of the new vision, the new culture. And, you know, unfortunately, many of them were not. They they were just very much accustomed to the way things have been done, and it was better to kind of start fresh with a lot of roles. So had a lot of turnover on that front, which was not, not necessarily plan A for us and definitely hard to go through.
Will Robinson:But ultimately, we're a much stronger organization now because we have, you know, the right people in the right seats.
Kevin Horek:Interesting. Okay. I wanna dive a little bit deeper into that. So I'm curious, did you use or did you get to leverage some of your current consulting customers into kind of the SaaS company that, you know, in Capture is today? Or or how did you leverage that and start getting some early customers?
Will Robinson:Yeah. That was a that was a big part of our strategy. We had a we had a we kinda had an initial set of customers. And remember, these are customers that had purchased Encapture a decade ago, and they were still using it. Now they were using it in a way that we didn't see as, you know, necessarily the vision for the way forward, but they they had the product, they were they were working with us already, they were getting value out of it.
Will Robinson:And so we were able to start with them and then say, okay, what else can we do for you? Or here's our vision for where we're trying to take the product. How does that, marry up with with what you guys need in your organization? And candidly, you know, selling into selling into banks and lenders is very, very hard. It's a very traditional group of buyers.
Will Robinson:They have a, they need a lot of social proof, and so having logos, established logos Ah, yes. Was a huge help for us, and being able to kind of point to case studies and say, well, look, this is what we're already doing for a peer of yours. That really allowed us, I think, to accelerate our growth versus starting from scratch. And so we definitely leveraged them. Now, I will say we got to a point probably 18, 24 months ago where we did have some legacy customers that were not really buying into the vision of where we were going as a company and where our product was going.
Will Robinson:And we have this choice of, well, do we continue to support kind of their legacy use case with the legacy product? And and for many of them, we we chose not to. They chose not to as, you know, Mutual. And we kind of said, look, if we keep supporting this legacy customer base, that's just going to distract us from what we're really trying to do. And so we, you know, we parted ways.
Will Robinson:And again, it's hard to hard to do that, to have churn and say, hey, well, you know, customers are leaving, but ultimately, those customers were a really big distraction for all of our teams. And there wasn't there wasn't growth in those accounts that we needed to see or we wanted to see. So ultimately, even though it was a bit of a reset, from a revenue perspective, it was I I I feel like our portfolio customers now is a lot healthier, and it's a lot more aligned with our vision as a company.
Kevin Horek:No. Makes a lot of sense. So let's dive a little bit deeper into what exactly Encapture is. So what was it and what is it today?
Will Robinson:Yeah. That's a good question. So it started as a it started in the old days where if you wanted to get a mortgage or a loan, you know, and I I've mentioned the example of a loan officer asking for documents. Typically, the way you would do that is you would walk to you would go into a local bank branch, and you would have, like, a stack of your tax returns, or you'd have your driver's license, and that branch employee would make copies of of, you know, your documents, or they'd even keep keep the kind of the documents you brought. And they would, have, like, a FedEx truck come by, pick them up every single night, and they would courier those documents to some sort of central processing facility, usually in the middle of America, and people would, you know, open up your file, open up your, you know, your document set and they would start looking through it.
Will Robinson:And if there were any issues, maybe you didn't provide the right documents or you didn't, something looked off, they would then call the bank branch and say, hey. You need to call this borrower back, have them come back up, and submit additional documents. So as you can imagine, it's a very, very, laborious, time intensive, long process. I mean, it could take several weeks for those documents to make their way. And so, the product started really as an integration into the big scanners, the big multifunction devices that we all kind of have in our office buildings or that you have in a branch.
Will Robinson:You know, it's the big scanner that copier machine that's, you know, several feet high. And, what we would do is we would sit on we would integrate with that machine and so when you scanned or copied a document, you would hit a little button on the LCD, you know, display that said send to encapture. And so we would digitally ingest that document and we would put it in the right workflow so that you didn't have to courier a document to a physical location. So it's kind of this digitization of of documents in a very, very basic way that was our original use case. There was no, you know, there was there was nothing smarter than that other than just sucking documents off of a scanner and and sending them into the right workflow, you know, someplace across the country.
Will Robinson:You know, where we are now is we've kind of built on that foundation of capturing documents. We can capture from a lot of different sources, not just a scanner, but we can capture from your email, from a fax machine, from a, you know, a customer portal online. It's all API driven, so we can really kind of ingest, suck in documents anywhere. But the secret sauce now is the AI. And so that was something we didn't have that we built out, And the AI can do 2 things.
Will Robinson:1, it can identify the document, that the system just received. Am I looking at a driver's license? Am I looking at a pay stub? Am I looking at a tax return? There's hundreds of documents we can we can look at.
Will Robinson:And then based on that, can I pull out the important information? You know, driver's license, it would be somebody's name or date of birth or address. If it's a pay stub, it's, you know, how much did they get paid and what's the time period on that. So I can kind of create a calculation of your annual income. If it's a bank statement, what's the date of the bank statement?
Will Robinson:How much do they have in their bank account? What are the debits and credits in in that account that, you know, a bank will use or a lender will use to kind of determine your income? So it's pulling all these key pieces of data, and that's really what we've evolved to. And that's where there's a ton of efficiency gains that these lenders have because they don't have to do that, sit there and do it manually.
Kevin Horek:Very cool. It it's it's fascinating to me. Maybe banks well, I don't know this for sure and you can correct me or you could tell me your answer is banks aren't traditionally known for being kind of cutting edge on technology, but the the I've had some people kind of in the Fintech space recently on the show, including yourself, where banks are actually leveraging a lot more kind of machine learning and AI, whether it's, like, from a third party vendor like yourself or they're building it internally than I ever had, like, ever thought of, which is awesome. I'm I'm glad that's the case. So I'm curious to maybe dive a little bit deeper into some other real life use cases because right now, AI is the hype.
Kevin Horek:You know, Apple calls it machine learning because AI is scary to a lot of people. It's arguably the same thing or, like so where where are we at and kind of what is the state of kind of Fintech and banking leveraging some of this technology, and then how are you helping with that? Yeah.
Will Robinson:That's a great question. There's there's a lot to unpack there. I would say at, like, a 50,000 foot level, we are kind of peak hype peak hype cycle around NI broadly broadly speaking. I mean, there's just so much talk about it, and it's really been generated by this sorry for the pun, but it's been generated by generative AI, Gen AI, the chat gpt type technology that has really come to the forefront of the market in the last year. And I think that's been this is one of the first types of technologies that I think from a mass consumer perspective, people go, wow.
Will Robinson:This is really impressive technology. That that Gen AI is not, is very, very, very early stage at at banks and lenders. Really, I think across many industries. I think people are still trying to figure out how good is it and where can we use it. You know, banks so and I say that to say there's a lot of different types of of, and techniques of AI and machine learning that, you know, that exist and that have existed for several years.
Will Robinson:For example, our our, you know, our AI and machine learning is really under this kind of natural language processing and computer vision type technology. So it's a bit of a different approach from, the Gen AI chat GPT approach, but and it has very different use cases. And so, I think I think a couple of things. Banks are very much wanting to lean in to AI. They feel like there's a need for efficiency and automation.
Will Robinson:Just like every other other industry, banks struggle to hire and retain good people. And so Sure. It's expensive just to throw bodies at a problem, and there's a lot of process in banks. There's a lot of regulation that drives process. You have to do it right, but they're very open to using technology to solve that.
Will Robinson:But they want proven technology. They want they don't wanna be bleeding edge. And and they also don't you know, they're very wary of having technology interact with the end customer. Banks
Kevin Horek:Makes sense. Yeah.
Will Robinson:Banks pride themselves on on that relationship. Right? A lot of banks talk about this. If you talk to a banker, it's like, hey, we we pride ourselves on the relationships and providing great customer service. They're not sure AI can do that.
Will Robinson:And so, you know, banks are looking to invest in places like where we play, which is more of the back office, where customers don't see it, borrowers don't see it, but it helps them be a lot more efficient, in terms of processing loans or generating reports or doing, you know, certain compliance functions.
Speaker 4:Nope. Makes a
Kevin Horek:lot of sense. So and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, is you guys have been using kind of AI and machine learning for years well before the chat GPTs of the world kind of popped up and became, you know, trendy, I guess, for lack of a better term for
Will Robinson:Yeah. We have, you know, and that's, you know, we've tried to call it different things over the years, to kind of almost shy away from the term AI because Yeah. You know, it it kind of made people's head spin when you say AI or machine learning. They don't really know what that means or how it works. Sometimes they just think it's like this magical thing, that just magic you know, it just just solves all the world's problems.
Will Robinson:And so there's a lot of AI. Yeah. There's a lot of AI, like, proven AI technology that exists today that is not Gen AI that you can utilize in kind of your existing businesses or if you're a if you're a software entrepreneur or developer that you can incorporate into your product that I think is a lot more proven. It may not look as cool and sexy as some sort of chatbot that can just talk to you. But at the same time, it can provide real value for, for your, you know, either your business or your customer base.
Will Robinson:And so I, you know, I that's kind of where I encourage different people to start is, like, yeah, Gen AI is cool and it will continue to get better and better. But there's other, you know, technologies out there that that can provide real proven value today where there's a body of case studies, that that you know you're gonna get good value out of.
Speaker 4:No. That makes a lot
Kevin Horek:of sense. Well, and you're you're using it in a way that's how do you how do you say it? Like, that is is useful to companies. Right? Like, I I'm not saying a chatbot or something simple like that isn't useful, because they are.
Kevin Horek:But you're solving, like, a real business problem with kinda machine learning and allowing, like you said, the back office to be more efficient. Right? And that's what companies are really paying
Will Robinson:you for. Yeah. I mean, if you think about any sort of b to b, you know, software company, thankfully, you typically, you know, you you typically have a buyer that's trying to make a rational business decision. If I'm gonna spend this amount of money with you a year on your software, what sort of business return am I going to get? And being able to articulate that clearly, whether whether you're helping them, you know, grow their revenue or cut costs or, maintain, you know, compliance with certain regulations, those are like the big three that that a bank would think about.
Will Robinson:You know, you have to be able to demonstrate that, as part of your sales process. And so there's, you know, there's many different ways to get there, but ultimately, you you have to build confidence through the sales process that whatever you're selling them is gonna work. And and so, whether, you know, whether they see that through a demo or through social proof with with, other peers of theirs that have done it already and can provide a referral call or you can, you know, have a case study. Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of avenues to getting there. But, ultimately, it's got the jet the spin justification, has to stand on its end 2 feet.
Speaker 4:No. That that makes a lot
Kevin Horek:of sense. So I'm curious, how do you integrate with other technologies that current your current customers are using? Because I think that's also really powerful about what you guys
Will Robinson:do. Yeah. I mean, it's critical if you think about, you know, us kind of in the background looking at all these documents as they come into a bank and pulling out the data, that that data all has to go somewhere. And so we have a bunch of integrations with, a bunch of the the key systems that that banks and lenders use. I will say this, in terms of just general strategy for whatever industry that that you may be in, having the integration solves several several problems for any company.
Will Robinson:1, obviously, there's the technical side of getting data from your system to the other system that the company needs. But it also creates some brand identity and brand, I don't know, positioning alongside those partners where a buyer is gonna say, well, okay. Well, if your software at Encapture integrates with this system, this system is kind of the the leading player in my space. And so if they're willing to work with you and you guys are willing to have a if they're willing to have a partnership, you must be a legitimate software company. And and allows you know, that's been one thing that's allowed us, I think, to grow our brand is by positioning through these technical partnerships we have, position our brand alongside some really big players in the banking space, and it it builds up a lot of credibility for us.
Will Robinson:So that's an important part of of of any, you know, soft and again, I'll speak for for a software company, kind of making sure that you fit in the ecosystem and that people your your buyers or prospects see you as, like, a credible player in their ecosystem is gonna be really important to to to customer adoption.
Kevin Horek:No. I I 100% agree with you. I think just the fact that you leveraged your consulting clients to become customers of your SaaS business, and then you also leverage the fact that you've worked with these big brands to help sell your your your new, you know, your new platform. And then on top of that, you leverage integrations. I I think nobody talks about that as much as I wish a lot of people did because it's not really any different and but some people think that you have to start from scratch and say, like, well, we've never done anything for that.
Kevin Horek:But it's like, no. No. These these people have been customers for years now, and, you know, we're just moving them you're just effectively moving them to a different system or product. They're still customers. Right?
Kevin Horek:Like and then your to your point is allowing those integrations does validate your product.
Will Robinson:Yeah. It's it's it's a critical part of the journey and, you know, this world the world is becoming more and more connected and there's Yeah. You know, there's there's more and more systems at these organizations, so you have to be able to play nicely with others.
Kevin Horek:No. It makes sense. So how did you manage the road map of when you were building it early on and and to what now that it's, like, a living, breathing product that has customers. Because let's be honest. You have some very well known banks on there that, you know, could easily say, we'll give you a couple $1,000,000 or whatever the number is to build x, y, and z.
Kevin Horek:And you might say, yeah. Okay. I think that makes sense. We can roll that out to all our customers and they would benefit. Or you could say, like, that's not really in our product road map or maybe parts of it are.
Kevin Horek:So how do you kinda manage that? Because that can be really tricky as a start up.
Will Robinson:Yeah. There's there's no easy answer to that. I think a lot of it depends on, how much clarity you have in your vision and, you know, funding is obviously a huge a huge piece. If a big company is gonna give you several $1,000,000 to take the the product in a certain direction, that's a hard that's something that's gonna keep you up at night, you know. Is this where I wanna go with my product, and is this gonna work elsewhere?
Will Robinson:One of the things that we really focus on here and and have and and try to do a good job of is just always taking, kind of the, the customer feedback and relate it back to the business problem and saying, okay. What's the business problem that you're trying to solve? And getting a really clear view of that, And then we will try to really influence the how we solve it for you. And what that allows us to do is validate the problem with other customers. Right?
Will Robinson:If a really big customer is throwing us a lot of money to to go solve something, is this a problem that other, you know, for us, other banks are gonna have? Is it just other big banks or small banks gonna have the same issue? And if we feel like it's something that we can go sell again and again and again and kind of solve similar problems, then we're gonna, you know, we're gonna probably have a pretty strong point of view of how we go build that and and not necessarily want the big customer to tell us how that works. So there's some give and take there. I think as long as when it comes to customers, it's keeping a clear, clear side on what is the problem you're solving for them.
Will Robinson:And and also this kind of bucks probably, maybe some more traditional design thinking, or or product thinking. I wouldn't always rely on your customer to to have the best view of how to solve that. I I think that part of what makes companies great and, you know, you can use an extreme example like a like a, like a Steve Jobs at Apple. Like, he kind of, you know, would say, hey. Like, people don't know what they want.
Will Robinson:Right? Like, if people ask me what they want, they would never ask for an iPhone or an iPad or, you know. And so I think there's a little bit of of, you have to go create the vision and create the dream, and you're probably not going to get that from your customer. And so I wouldn't there there's a balance. Right?
Will Robinson:There's a balance of of understanding their problem, but also being confident in yourself to go build what you think is gonna elegantly solve that even if it may be different from what they say they want.
Speaker 4:No. Makes makes a lot
Kevin Horek:of sense. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on because you've been in the the Fintech space a long time, what advice do you like to pass on to kind of founders or maybe people that are struggling in the Fintech space or that have, you know, that you wish you would have known, you know, maybe earlier on in your career?
Will Robinson:Oh, that's a good question, Kevin. I man, where do you even start? There's there's there's so much so many battle scars, I would say, from doing it. I think I think if you're a founder regardless of of industry, whether it's Fintech or or elsewhere or you're you're running a business, This sounds so cliche, but it's so true. The people you have on your team, are everything.
Will Robinson:I mean, that's everything. And, you know, I used to have people give me that advice, and I kinda just roll my eyes and be like, okay, that sounds really fluffy and, you know, whatever. I you know, I'm a smart guy. I can go figure this out. But, you just get to a certain size and scale.
Will Robinson:There's no way you're gonna be successful unless you have the right folks with the right mentality and right skill set on your team. And, and that's been a big thing that we've we've, I think, learned from as we've gone on our journey here in encapture. And that's probably been the the one common theme I can point to when I look at our successes here, as well as our failures, is is the people that were involved in that. And not to say that that that great people don't make mistakes. We have all made many mistakes in our journey, but but really great people learn from that and can kind of push through and figure out how not to make that again or how to, you know, build a more resilient company.
Will Robinson:And I think people who struggle are ones who who can't see, how to get themselves out of that, and they kind of feel like they're just overwhelmed by the, you know, by the the mistake or the pressure. And so that's that's a big thing is as you get going, whether you have, you know, 3 employees or 30 or 300, really being intentional about the type of people you have, the culture you're trying to build. And when I say culture, I mean kind of set of core values and attributes of your team to create a high performing team. Being very, very intentional about that is gonna serve you well even if it even if you run off some people in the short term that you may think are really critical. You know, I've I've had people here who, when I started 5 years ago and they were existing employees at at at the company, I would have said, man, if if this guy or this this girl leaves the company, we are screwed.
Will Robinson:Like, there's no way we're gonna make it. And you know what? Like, those folks have left and we're doing better. We're doing better because it wasn't it wasn't their technical skill set that was holding us back or keeping us afloat. It was, it was their mindset and ability kind of be part of the team and the vision we were trying to do.
Kevin Horek:Interesting. Now I I agree with you. I like, yeah, I I think especially nowadays with, like, people being remote more and more, not everybody's remote or it's hybrid or whatever, But just having that kind of team, it's very, very challenging to build a really good team. But if you can get it, you're so lucky, really.
Will Robinson:Well and, like, I would I would challenge it and say the mark of being a good leader of a business Okay. Is your ability to attract and retain the right kind of people and build that build that environment where they can be successful and you guys can be successful as a company. And that looks very different, you know, based on the type of business you're trying to build, you know, specific values of that organization. And so, you know, if you're if you're sitting there as maybe a technical leader or a technical founder who's who's got a really great idea for a product and maybe can build a great product, that is certainly important, but you're not gonna go very far, if you if you can't surround yourself with people that can help push the overall vision forward. And so I I I see it as like a must a must have where, you know, you're you're just you're not gonna be successful unless you have a good team.
Will Robinson:You're just not gonna you're not gonna break through.
Kevin Horek:No. I 100% agree with you. That that makes sense. I'm curious then, but how do you try to retain that talent? Like, how do you basically get out of their way and let them do what you hire them to do within obviously parameters, but, like, to make sure they're successful and they're happy and they stay long term?
Will Robinson:Man, that's a that's a that's a $1,000,000 question. I think there's several I think there's several parts at it. 1, creating clear expectations upfront of, the type of person that you want at your company as part of your recruiting process. Okay. And setting clear expectations for that individual of what the the role and responsibility looks like.
Will Robinson:That's where I I think most organizations go sideways, get sideways with their with their staff is it's never really been super clear on what what good looks like in the role. And so sitting down and really defining that is pretty important. It's also incumbent upon the leader to set clear vision for the business. This is where I do think, like, you know, the CEO kinda earns earns his paycheck or her paycheck is is not only recruiting a good team, but setting a very clear vision of this is where we're trying to go as an organization. This is what we're trying to this is the problem we're trying to solve.
Will Robinson:This is the mission that we're on, and making sure that that people understand that. And and if you have the right type of person, they'll be able to buy into it and kind of come alongside you in that journey. So, you know, setting people up for success is is the best way to ensure success. And if you have clear parameters around that, you'll learn pretty quickly if if someone's gonna be a good fit at the organization or not. Doesn't mean they're gonna be, you know, completely value added if they want, but if they've got the right mindset and attitude, and and they're buying into what you're doing, you're gonna see them be a lot more productive and valuable to the organization than someone who's just got a set of technical skills, that maybe looks at the job in a more transactional way.
Will Robinson:So, you know, those are the big things. Obviously, I mean, you know, things like compensation and and and parts and benefits, like, I think those are things that you kinda just have to get right. I think it's kinda like I I heard it described once is it's kind of like, you know, comp and benefits is kinda like brushing your teeth. There's a, you know, not brushing your teeth enough is a problem, and and then brushing your teeth too much is also a problem. There's just kind of the right amount.
Will Robinson:There's kind of the right amount and right setup. That's the sweet spot. And so, you know, I don't think you have to have every every perk imaginable or try to, you know, outdo kind of the, you know, the Google way, if you will. But if you look at your company, your team, you know, your financial constraints, you you can look at and say, okay. What's important to my people?
Will Robinson:What's important to us? And let's just get it right so that people don't people who don't, you know, you don't have a situation where people love your business, love their job, but then have to feel like they need to leave because something's not right on the comp or benefits side.
Speaker 4:No. That that makes a lot
Kevin Horek:of sense. I also find that not well, not everybody's motivated by money all the time too. Right? Like, more it seems more and more people actually care about, you know, adding value and feeling valued and learning at a job. And if they're making, you know, a little bit less than they would somewhere else, if you give them that, like, some people value that a lot more than, you know, just making the most amount of money, and they're fine hating their job.
Kevin Horek:Right?
Will Robinson:Yeah. I I try to stay away from from that mentality because those folks and you can identify them in your recruiting process, the ones who are kind of trying to maximize the money side because they'll they'll they'll have job hopped a lot. They'll kinda have hopped around, and they won't really have stayed anywhere long enough to, like, I think, truly grow themselves. And and this is something I tell a lot of our our junior people is, like, look, if if you wanna make good money in your in your job, that's fantastic, and and we're here to support that. The best thing you can do is is really invest in a business where you can grow and develop your, you know, your leadership capabilities, your skill set, because that's ultimately gonna set you up to find jobs that that that that do provide that level of income that you want.
Will Robinson:And, you know, if you're always hopping to another job that pays 20 k here more, you know, 30 k more here, like, you're gonna look up in 5 years and have had 3 or 4 different jobs, and you really won't have grown and you'll just kind of plateau out much at a much lower, you know, call it comp level than someone who's really invested and grown. So, I I think that's something to to really look out for. And I would say too, like, even in the more, call it, compensation focused roles, like like revenue related roles or sales roles, obviously, you know, that's a big part of of of, I'm making a gross generalization here, but that's a big part of many, many sales reps is kind of what sort of money can I make here? But I think you need to see if that type of person is so transactional that the minute they get a better offer somewhere else or maybe times are tough at your business, maybe they have a slow quarter or whatnot, they're looking to bail versus kind of lean in and say, okay, hey, how do I make this better?
Will Robinson:How do I invest in the business? Because you're just gonna get a lot more out of this out of those folks.
Kevin Horek:No. I I think that's actually really good advice. So I I'm curious because you've been in kind of the machine learning AI space for a number of years now, where do you where are we at? What do you see happening? Any predictions for the future?
Kevin Horek:Or or or maybe even, just any other ideas on how people could leverage this technology whether they're in the Fintech space or not?
Will Robinson:Man, I'll give you just some hot zingers here.
Speaker 4:Sure. Then we
Will Robinson:can unpack if we want to, but I think AI is very much gonna be highly disruptive over the next 5 to 20 years
Speaker 4:Okay.
Will Robinson:Yep. Of our economy. I think I think in the next year, I think people will still be kinda dabbling with it and try figure it out. But I think 5 years from now, you'll really start to see AI have penetrated certain industries and use cases that fundamentally change the way that companies operate. And and so I'm a big kind of believer in the the power of AI.
Will Robinson:I I don't have a super here's my next Zinger, I guess. I don't believe it's gonna be this, you know, Skynet take over the world type situation. I don't I don't think our AI is nearly capable enough to do that nor is our compute power on the hardware side, there yet. Now that could change, but, at this point, I would I'm more in favor of let's let's give more more people the ability to access AI and use it and build it versus try to over regulate it. I think that will do some some long term damage.
Will Robinson:And I think every industry is going to, you know, every industry is getting disrupted by by software and technology, and that that will continue. But I think it will accelerate with with AI. And so if whatever industry you're in or business model you have, I think sitting down and looking at how can AI help. And and candidly, you don't have to be an expert in all the different ways that AI works or use cases today. I would just start with what problems would it be really nice to solve within my current business model or my current industry.
Will Robinson:And then and then there's probably a way for AI to do it. You can go search for that, you know, secondarily, but I would start with with solving big problems. So that those are kind of my kind of my high level takes on on on AI and kind of where the world's going.
Kevin Horek:No. I I agree with you. I I don't think it's all doom and gloom. If anything, I think it's gonna and you're already well, Captured built a whole business around it. It's basically getting rid of the kind of boring, mundane, kind of time sucking tasks.
Kevin Horek:Right? And I think if you can leverage AI to do some of that stuff for, you know, yourself and your team, and they can work on some of the funner parts of their job, it frees them up to to do and grow and and probably maybe even stick around longer because, you know, they're not going through some manual stuff that a computer can do nowadays with, you know, machine learning or or whatever. Right? Is is that fair to say?
Will Robinson:Yeah. I mean, people wanna have look. Everybody I mean, this is gonna get philosophical. I think everybody's searching for meaning and purpose in their life. Sure.
Will Robinson:And, you know, whether or not you think your job is part of that, you spend everybody spends so much time doing their job that Yeah. That if if it's a soul sucking experience, no matter how much, you know, meaning or purpose you get outside of your job, I don't I don't think you're gonna be, you know, I just I think you're you're leaving yourself short on that front. And I think as a as a leader in a business, I think it's our, candidly our our calling and mission to provide high quality employee experiences at the organizations that we run and that we lead. And so if you wanna if you wanna keep great people, you know, making it to where they feel heard and valued, is is critical. And part of that is providing them the tools and resources they need to do their job.
Will Robinson:And if you can eliminate the, you know, the boring, mundane tasks out of their day, generally, they're gonna they're gonna enjoy it more and feel more connected to your ultimate vision. You know, I would say this too, like, one thing that we've embraced at Encapture, you know, some people can get really excited about helping banks be more efficient, but a lot of people and if you even ask, you know, our employees, there's a lot of them, like, yeah, okay, whatever. Like, that's cool. We help banks be more more efficient. But, like, that doesn't get me out of bed every morning.
Will Robinson:What we've done though is we've been able to take our technology and work with a nonprofit, called BED, which helps kind of third world countries, a lot of countries in Africa and Latin America kind of manage their, kind of their their orphan and institutionalized children population. So there's a lot of kids that are orphaned or maybe abandoned or or run away from home. And these countries in their foster care systems are trying to, you know, take care of these kids and and either, you know, reunite them with their family or maybe find an adopted home for them to be in. But, you know, that's a very, there's there's incomplete documentation or paperwork. A lot of these kids don't know don't have their, you know, don't have a birth certificate or don't know where they're from.
Will Robinson:And so this nonprofit, BEB, BEB, is helping to solve that by using their own software to kind of create these digital identities for these children. And we're able to partner with B. E. B. And help them process, all the, all the paperwork that they have to process to kind of create that digital identity.
Will Robinson:So for us, it's a really cool way to use our skill set and our expertise and our technology in a way that we feel like has a direct kind of social impact on the world. And that's been a really fun project and partnership for our people to get involved in and say, hey. I'm making a real difference in a way that that brings me a lot of value.
Kevin Horek:That's awesome. No. That's really great. That's that's cool. But we're kinda coming to the end of the show.
Kevin Horek:So how will we close with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself, the company, and any other links, and maybe mention the nonprofit as well so people can check that out?
Will Robinson:Yeah. Absolutely. So, you can, you know, check us out online encapture.com. You can check us out on LinkedIn. I'm there as well.
Will Robinson:The organization is called, beb, and the website is bebglobal.org. It's a great nonprofit. Again, especially if you're in the software tech space, they're using software to help, take care of these children, and to unite them with family. And, you know, there's not many nonprofits who have leaned into using technology yet, and so it's a really cool organization. So I I highly encourage you to to check it out.
Kevin Horek:Very cool, Will. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day, man.
Will Robinson:Awesome. Thanks so much, Kevin. Enjoyed it.
Kevin Horek:Thank you. Me too. K. Bye.
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