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This is a Podcast dedicated to bringing entrepreneurs, founders, start ups together with angels, investors and venture capitalists. Anyone who is interested in watching the economy grow in a magnificent way!
Michael Conniff (00:01)
Hello again everybody and welcome back to the accelerator with Michael Conniff. That's me. I'm here with Kurt Long. His latest venture is Bunker. Um, but he has a long, long career, decades of, uh, successful startups. And I think maybe he can help us figure out how you can improve your chances for that. Remember where I first I should say welcome Kurt. Great to have you.
Kurt Long (00:25)
Thanks for having me on Michael, it's great to be on the accelerator.
Michael Conniff (00:29)
coming to us from St. Pete in Florida, St. Petersburg. So I also wanna let everyone know that we are a sub stack subscription service. You can get us sent directly to your email box. About 8,000 plus people do that. You can also find us on YouTube and Spotify with audio and video, and then on all the major audio platforms, including Audible, Amazon, Apple, and so on and so forth.
So great to have you. We've done over a hundred of these and Kurt is a multiple successful entrepreneur. Let me start first though, by asking you about Bunker. And I understand this is a venture you're doing with your sons, but tell us a little about it. And I should spell it B-U-N-K-R. So tell us about Bunker.
Kurt Long (01:18)
Yes. Yeah. And it's at B-U-N-K-R dot life. And the idea, the vision is to build the most trusted network of people in the world, people that are legitimate, law-abiding people, and through our design, patent pending technology, as well as our business processes, we have customers in 35 countries using the platform from entrepreneurs, physicians, doctors, mothers, fathers, everything you can think of.
And, you know, it's a relief from too many platforms that you use for messaging that interconnect, that have fraudsters and imposters and all kinds of crime and cyber crime associated with them. So the idea is that Bunker is the most trusted platform in the world for the public. And then we include things like Password Manager and Secure.
secure cloud so that people have that no matter where they go, whether on the bunker network or not, they have all their most personal information with them.
Michael Conniff (02:22)
So because I love the metaphor, so these are the people you wanna be in the bunker with, it sounds like, right?
Kurt Long (02:30)
Correct. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean, so that's right.
Michael Conniff (02:35)
So, describe those people to me. And also I think this, what's interesting about this is the selection process and who gets in and who doesn't. So, explain that if you could, Kurt.
Kurt Long (02:49)
Sure. We have most, it's really about people that care about each other. That's the common denominator. When we do focus groups, when we talk to people directly, we look at social media posts, it's always about I invited these people to join Bunker because I care about them. So when you think about that, a lot of times that's your family, it's your extended family.
with coaches and agents. We have coaches and agents on the platform. It's the people that they're coaching, they're players, if you will. It's people, it's the people that take care of you in your household. It's just the normal people that you care about in your life, your closest friends, the people you trust the most. What we've seen, if we can get people using Bunker and-
using mostly the messaging, but also file storage and password management. It's been an interesting dynamic to listen to them talk. We have, for example, I had introduced neighbors to it. They live in Switzerland. And when they went back to Zurich, we instantly had 22 customers in Switzerland. And we're like, Daniel, Renata, what happened? Well, we invited all these other people to join us because we love the product so much. And we want them to be protected as well. So that's a...
a really typical story that we get.
Michael Conniff (04:15)
So is it, would you describe it as a, is it a social media platform?
Kurt Long (04:22)
No, it's really a messaging platform. And if it is social media, like we'll create groups. I just, some people have hesitated in my extended family and I'm in my really extended family. When you get out there a couple of levels and they have come around to it. And we do exchange pictures, we exchange documents and things on it. So you absolutely can do that, but it's really meant to be kind of a private space.
where you can share the most important information of your life. And sometimes if that's pictures or videos, then absolutely, you share those with the people that you love. But it's not, I guess the distinction I'm making, Michael, is it's not for all to see. It's only the people that you've invited or they've invited you and you accept their invitation that you have connected. And that means you've known them before they're in your contacts or you met them and gave them your phone number.
Michael Conniff (05:18)
So with Bunker, as opposed to Facebook or any other social media platform where you're basically trying to build a following, you're trying to make connections. Bunker is, if it's limited to the people you care about, that's not going to be, you know, maybe it'll be 10,000 people. It'll be more likely to be 10 people than 10,000. So how, so what's the business model for that? How do you make money?
Kurt Long (05:41)
Yeah.
Um, we pay for license for it and there's a couple of different versions just to encourage, uh, just to encourage adoption. Right now we have a version that's 99 cents and then people typically upgrade to a dollar a month. So it's about $12 a year. And we have, uh, people get started on that 99 cent version and it's, uh, mostly storage, but there's other components of the, of the more expensive version that has them upgrade and it's worked out great.
Michael Conniff (06:13)
And how many, can you tell us about your user base at this point and how long you're going?
Kurt Long (06:17)
Yeah, a few thousand users and we launched it on the App Store in October. And, you know, for whatever reason it's, it's taken off in all these countries around the world, literally Africa, the middle East, all over Asia. I know Japan's part of that, but we have a big block of users in Japan and Turkey.
Australia, North America, South America, for whatever reasons, it's blossomed globally. And it's been a lot of fun.
Michael Conniff (06:51)
And so, so you can, is there any way that you can talk to people you don't know?
Kurt Long (07:00)
It's really meant for people that know one another, that you connect through your contacts and you invite those contacts. Now they can make introductions for you, but it's really meant to be secure and private. And that's why I call it the most trusted platform in the world. And we want to make it the biggest, most trusted platform in the world. We're on our way to doing that, but it's the most trusted platform in the world for people that care about each other and are legitimate law-abiding people.
Michael Conniff (07:29)
Law abiding seems to come up. Do you actually do police checks?
Kurt Long (07:34)
So with most of these secret messengers, and when I say most, all the secret messengers that you could think of like Snapchat has disappearing messages, Signal has disappearing messages, WhatsApp, they really don't cooperate with law enforcement and that also means that it attracts an incredible amount of criminal elements. So on these messaging platforms, the criminal element is
everywhere. It's pervasive. In fact, I would assert that in many of these platforms, they've taken over. Famously Telegram, for example, they have Russian Killnet running. I hate to bring that vibe to it, but Russian Killnet runs a big group, 100,000 people that brag about their terror. So you're kind of commingling with those people. And those people on most of these platforms can come right to you or your loved ones.
So when you hear a horror story, literally, a friend of ours, their child, eight years old, downloaded one of these secret messengers, started interacting with someone in the Department of Homeland Security came to the house and said, do you realize your child is interacting with a pedophile and has arranged to meet him? And that's a really typical story out there. And so bunker is the opposite of that.
Michael Conniff (08:48)
well.
Kurt Long (08:53)
And we're so by policy while we've never had to do it yet We will cooperate with law enforcement if there is a subpoena Or or a warrant if you will and by the time that you provide a phone number You provide a payment method even if it's 99 cents and you realize that this is for legitimate people law-abiding people The bad people do not want to be part of our network and they stay on the snapchats and the signal
the WhatsApps, the Telegram and these other networks that really criminals are flourishing on.
Michael Conniff (09:31)
You know, I used to teach social media at the Isaacson School in Colorado. And, um, I remember having students come in and say, well, you know, I have. 12 people, you know, that, that I'm connected to on Facebook. And I was like, you know, why so few? It's like, oh, those are the people I know. My response would be, well, you're going to have a really small Facebook group, but, but if you start out.
Kurt Long (09:35)
Yes.
Hahaha
Michael Conniff (09:59)
with that as the goal, then it seems to me that you can set this up to be sort of a meaningful communications platform. Having said that, and I know you're a smart entrepreneur and you've been successful in a lot of businesses, which we'll talk about, how do you scale this? How do you grow this? Does it just stay as effectively an email platform? What happens to it moving forward?
Kurt Long (10:16)
Mm-hmm.
No, it's got, you know, it has the password manager, secure cloud storage notes. And then on the, you know, on the B2B side, um, we're great fit for financial services firms and for healthcare, because in those markets, those are regulated industries. So what I described is kind of legal due process and those industries that's required. So the sec, the securities exchange commission has come in and find.
wealth managers, banks, financial services company that are using the secret messengers. Why? Well, because it's perfect for insider trading and they can't police that. And so they've literally fined them about $2.5 billion and Bunker is compliant with record keeping. So when you start looking at the business model, we've got this great customer base that's growing on the public side.
And now we can connect that with wealth advisors and healthcare companies in healthcare. It's HIPAA. So in the UK, it's things like the Financial Conduct Authority. These markets that have your most sensitive information, they require what I described. Otherwise you'll be fined. So we see it as a really great market for this idea of a trusted network. Well, when you're handling healthcare information or your finances, for sure you want trust.
We see it as unlimited because everybody's going to have health, everybody's going to have healthcare and everybody's going to have finances.
Michael Conniff (11:51)
Yeah.
You know, it actually reminds me of the way email got started, which I once did a, this is really going to date me, but in 1989, I did a big study about email use and adoption for Pacific Bell, a company that is Pacific Bell, still there. I think maybe it is, but yeah, it's one of the, one of the baby, the infamous baby bells. But.
Kurt Long (12:11)
Yes.
I think it might have got rolled up, but I remember Pac-Bell.
Michael Conniff (12:23)
And people were expecting that the usage would be copy, serve and source and online services that were kind of generally open to everybody. It turned out that email usage was almost entirely, was dominated actually by IBM profs system, P R O F S. Yeah. And the vast majority, which in apropos your company bunker, which meant those networks were closed.
Kurt Long (12:38)
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I remember that. I worked at IBM for a couple of years, so.
Michael Conniff (12:49)
Right? Not everybody could join them. They all ran on IBM, which meant you had to have an IBM and so on and so forth. So it's a little bit of a back to the future, but I wanted to ask you, Kurt, specifically, you've done a number of companies and I think this bunker is a great example of sort of talking to a very experienced entrepreneur about how you start something that at least, you know, has, has the potential for success. And so my question to you would be what.
Kurt Long (12:51)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Conniff (13:18)
What did you see about this opportunity that intrigued you? That was interesting. And also maybe tell us about the role of your sons in this process.
Kurt Long (13:31)
Yep. So it was, uh, we had sold fair warning, um, it sold completely at the end of 2019. So we were, uh, fair, fair warning protected electronic health records. And I invented patented software that secured patient information and electronic health records, um, way ahead of everyone else. In other words.
Michael Conniff (13:42)
Tell us about that a little bit. Fair warning.
Kurt Long (14:01)
kind of foresaw that cybercrime and criminals would hit healthcare way before others thought that would happen. So we wound up with about 60% of the US market in terms of patient coverage, hospitals, clinics. It was a great business, very profitable, grew fast. And after 15 years, our entire family was involved in it for the last 10.
Michael Conniff (14:16)
Hmm, what?
Kurt Long (14:30)
running it. And we sold that. And it went through a transaction to main sale partners out of San Francisco. We sold most of it and then in totality to Improvada and who's the PE there's Toma Bravo, one of the biggest PE companies in the software space in the world. And so that was what else could I share with you about that, Michael, that might be of interest to your audience?
Michael Conniff (14:57)
I'm just wondering, so you saw, you sort of identified a need. It's interesting. I think these are two different things because you identified a need, something you saw coming, you even patented software to address it. In this case, email is not a new idea. It's actually sort of the opposite. It's been around for really, at least since the eighties. If not going back to ARPANET, right.
Kurt Long (15:09)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Conniff (15:22)
So it's been around, it's been exploited to death, everything from Yahoo mail to WhatsApp and what Facebook and direct messaging does. But you sort of saw an opportunity because of what, I'm putting words in your mouth, because of what email wasn't doing anymore. Is that fair?
Kurt Long (15:22)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I would put, yeah, it's not just email. Email's inherently insecure. So like, it's not, you can't use it in regulated industries. Like that's not, you cannot send healthcare information with email, you really can't send financial information with email. So email's inherently insecure. So you kind of have, I'd call it just these ways to communicate and...
So I'm going to take email off the table a little bit and just say like texting. Texting, you're leaving yourself, you're still an open network. So every time that there is a breach on the dark web, whenever you, let's say you see there's a giant breach and like, what does that mean to me? And let's say it's a big giant hospitality, I won't name any companies, but just about all of them have been breached. What does that mean to me? Well, your data's in there.
and they take your name, your email address, often your cell phone number. And then if they have a password, uh, associated with the hospital, they'll say it's a hotel chain that goes to the dark web. And then they just attack you from the dark web. That's where you get these texts that come in. You're like, Oh, Hey, how did they get my text? How'd they get my number? Well, it's been, it's been put on the dark web and sold.
Michael Conniff (17:00)
Mmm.
Kurt Long (17:10)
And you don't have to have an invitation process or anything to receive communication on text. So you're just going to get all these different, anything from your Amazon package has shipped, all we need you to do is enter your credit card number, or you might say, well, why am I getting all these political messages? Chances are they've even been sold or even come through the dark web. So like the texting thing, that's just opening yourself up to like all these different imposter and phishing attacks.
And then it's also, you can't use that in regulated industries as well. And so there was no, I started using all those platforms after fair warning. And, uh, you have this realization like, Oh wow. So all of the messaging platforms that we use are either subject to like data collection and people would just collect our data, uh, or they're inherently insecure with imposters, um, or, um.
They're literally in use by criminals. And I wanted something that I could 100% trust. And we just built it out and knew that it's trust and no one's going to message me unless I knew them and accepted the invitation. And it's a 100% trusted network. And it's worked. People love it.
Michael Conniff (18:30)
And how many companies have you founded? What number is Bunker?
Kurt Long (18:34)
Four.
Michael Conniff (18:36)
And so before you started the first one, were you driven to be an entrepreneur? Did you have a day job? I'm sort of trying to get at, you know, sort of what are the qualities of a successful entrepreneur, because you've done it successfully now for a long time. And I noticed you use two tea bags in your tea. So I would recommend that everybody do that. But other than that, what is it that compelled you?
Kurt Long (18:58)
I do.
Michael Conniff (19:06)
to take, you know, presumably to take a gamble on yourself and become an entrepreneur. And why do you think you were successful?
Kurt Long (19:17)
Um, one thing is I like to solve problems, you know, so problem solvers up there. A second thing is, is that I like to solve problems for people so that if you can, if you can see a problem that people are having, then it's like, I could solve that for one person, I could solve it for many. If I can, or if it's B2B solve it for one business, I can solve it for many. Um, and then.
I have, I would call it obsessive. Like I don't actually, I'm not in love with the word passion. I think it gets overused. So people say I'm passionate. And I think what entrepreneurs have is something beyond that. It's obsession. Passion almost sounds like it's, you know, obsession is almost unhealthy. You have to realize like, okay, I probably should stop right now.
Or I probably should try to think about something else right now. It's not productive. Um, and I always, I think I, because I'm, I really mean what I say. Like if I said, I mean it. And I think because of that, I attract people that want to be a part of something that we're doing and, uh, I might not be always the perfect manager, but they know what I say is what I mean. I'm not going to BS them. So I tend to be able to attract.
certain kinds of high quality people, I don't appeal to everybody, but certain kinds of high quality people that'll stay with us on the mission. Those are some of the reasons. I'm sure there's others I hadn't thought about that a little bit, Michael, but I'm sure those are some of the reasons.
Michael Conniff (20:56)
What about before Fair Warning, you said there were four companies, what were the other two other, you know, before Fair Warning and Bunker?
Kurt Long (21:02)
Yep. So the, it was open network and we did a web single sign on security product for businesses around the world. That was in the internet. That was as the internet was breaking. And we had great customers. We had, you know, Anheuser-Busch and Progressive Auto Insurance and EMI Music and Lloyd's of London and just all these amazing companies around the world. And we were responsible for their customers.
signing on to the website securely and doing business. And you start calculating how like Halifax Bank of Scotland used our product to conduct about 40% of all mortgage business in the world. And you start realizing how much responsibility comes with a successful company. You know, whether it's in the public space or consumer space or whether it's B2B.
And it is so much responsibility. And I loved it. I love to be able to look out there and know that, you know, if progressive auto insurance, you'd see them on television or know that a person got a mortgage in Europe, or quite frankly, if they're drinking a Budweiser beer somewhere that you had some small thing to do with that. We had, I think we had 80% of all the Blue Cross and Blue Shield. So probably a hundred million people there. And so all of that.
Michael Conniff (22:20)
Wow.
Kurt Long (22:24)
resonated with me and as does Bunker today, like when I get to say, hey, we protect families in 35 countries around the world. And you think of Turkey, we're like, hey, we got customers in Turkey. That's pretty good. I like that. And so that's, I just identified something else. Like I love the idea of like being responsible for the success of it, of what you see on television or people that you meet, knowing that you are responsible for something positive in their life. I really love that.
Michael Conniff (22:38)
What in? I want...
and the fourth company.
Kurt Long (22:57)
The fourth company I left, that was a company called OpenWeb. And it was just like a software company that was building software components for websites in the very earliest days. And I sold that to, um, US web out of Santa Clara, California. Uh, in, and, uh, that one went pretty fast. Meaning I think that, I think I started and sold it in less than two years.
Michael Conniff (23:18)
Yeah, sure.
Wow. Well, what.
Kurt Long (23:27)
and then open networks sold to BMC software of Houston, Texas.
Michael Conniff (23:31)
Right, right. That's amazing. All four, all three so far. So I want to, you know, I always describe this as a friendly interview, and it is, but I want to ask you a difficult question because you raised, first of all, the emphasis on law abiding in what, of course, we still live in a democracy here so far, so far so good, though.
Kurt Long (23:55)
Yes.
Michael Conniff (23:58)
You know, there are questions being raised about it right now. But in countries like Turkey, which are more authoritarian, law abiding means could or raises the question, could bunker be used somehow against people? Or if you think of Hungary, if you think, you know, I mean, or you think of China, I don't know if you have any customers in China, but that.
Kurt Long (24:06)
Mm-hmm.
That's a great question.
Yeah. You know, we don't. That's an interesting one. China is one of the very few countries that you might hear of that we do not. But go ahead, Michael.
Michael Conniff (24:33)
Well, no, that's my question is like the great thing about technology is that when it works, it can make life much better and even more secure in this case. But it can also, you know, the tables can be turned if it's in the wrong hands. So that's the that's the AI question in spades today. But but it's also a question for you. It's like, what do you do if the president of Turkey says, I want to see the communication of my my.
Kurt Long (24:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Conniff (25:03)
Yeah, that's the hard question.
Kurt Long (25:04)
And no, so that's a great question. And so on that one, you know, we've had to think through this and I'm going to side, we're based in the U S and I would side with the U S state department. Like we're always going to have. I've always had businesses where I had to get caught. I've had a lot of responsibility over the years of securing all these businesses and patients and over trillions of dollars of assets. So I'm used to having lawyers around and I've had to be in compliance with regulations, literally around the world.
and you listen to your lawyers and you, you know, I'm going to lean toward the US State Department and I'm going to do what the US State Department says to be forthright with you and that's where my loyalties lie and that's the best I can do.
Michael Conniff (25:46)
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that gets you out of the conundrum because if, if for example,
Kurt Long (25:53)
Oh, we can, I mean, you can always off platform them, right? I mean, you can off platform people. If our US State Department, I have sufficient legal advice to say, listen, off platform them. I have no problem. I mean, that's what has to happen.
Michael Conniff (25:57)
Yeah
Yeah, yeah, that's a longer conversation. I do want to ask you finally, we got a few more minutes and you've done some really interesting philanthropic work. Once you succeed like you have, you get some options. And I know that you're pretty deeply involved with two different academic ventures that I wish you would describe for us.
Kurt Long (26:09)
Yeah.
Yes.
So I've got a handful of them going on right now. And you're right, we have done a lot of philanthropic work, but I'm just gonna stick to the ones we're either engaged with or evaluating right now. One is with a group of people out of Denmark. It's a company called Voluntis. And I've known these ladies and gentlemen for seven, eight years. They measure meaningfulness around the world. I just spoke to one of them Monday.
he had gone to Kiev to measure, to work with UNICEF, to measure meaningfulness in war-torn country. And I think he got the green light, we'll know later. And so now, how's that tied together? We're measuring the youth meaningful index from kids, directly from kids, not from their parents, not after they're adults, but directly from children.
uh, that are between the ages like nine and 15 and the results that have come back are deeply fascinating and we've applied AI to it as well. And it's things like, um, they get meaning out of, believe it or not, solitude and that what includes sleep or just being alone. And, you know, I, I didn't think of it until the results come out and make sense and they want to be in nature and they want to interact with animals. As well as just be in nature.
They call it like connection and connection might mean family and it also means friends, but then connection also means philanthropy. They want to do something for the greater good. So there's six components that we've discovered in this youth meaningful index survey across Europe, in India. We're bringing it to the United States. That's part of my job. And we're making that available through organizations like UNICEF.
perhaps the United Nations and other organizations that can scale this out so that in the classroom or at home or in a charter school, wherever it's happening, people are better equipped to understand what creates meaning in a child's life. So that's what I'm really excited about. And that's with Voluntis and some other wonderful people. So that's the first one. Any questions on that one?
Michael Conniff (28:53)
Well, we're sort of short on time. I want to make sure I ask you about you have an abiding interest in liberal arts and have backed a program in Florida, I believe, to facilitate that. Can you tell us about that one?
Kurt Long (29:08)
Well, we've not backed that one yet. We've not committed to that one, but it is something the University of Florida, it's ongoing, Michael. There is a third one I'll take off the table for brevity. But at the University of Florida, they're doing something super interesting out of the Hamilton Center. It's not just a study of Western civilization. The second leg of this is civil discourse.
And they have a course in civil discourse, which for those who say, what does that mean? Well, it really means that we can have a conversation and disagree. And even if we really, really disagree, we don't call each other names and we don't cancel each other, that we can talk to each other and be open-minded and close the gap. And they are moving toward teaching that course to.
every single student at the school that has a population of 55,000. So I find that a super intriguing project that we're evaluating, but just the idea that there could be 55,000 people entering the world having learned how to talk to one another without getting mad, I think is just in alone amazing.
Michael Conniff (30:21)
Yeah. In Symbol Discourse, you know, I spent 13 years in Aspen. It was it was core tenant of along with great books and great, great. I forget what they call them great discussions or things like that. But but it was all based on Symbol Discourse. Well, I want to I want to remind everybody you've been listening to the Accelerator with Michael Conniff or on all the major platforms, audio and video. Also make sure to subscribe to our sub stack.
Kurt Long (30:26)
Yes.
Is that right?
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Conniff (30:53)
newsletter so that you can get each and every one of our Accelerator and Angel podcasts. And I want to thank Kurt Long, now a Bunker, late of Fair Warning, Open Network, Open Web, a classic serial entrepreneur. It's been really interesting and great to talk to you, Kurt. Thanks for being with us.
Kurt Long (31:08)
That's right.
Thank you, Michael.
Michael Conniff (31:16)
And I want to remind you all out there. We'll be back with another podcast before you know it