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Who doesn't love seeing all of the amazing innovation happening in Canada's Startup world? We connect with Canada's best startups to learn about their business and the amazing people behind it. Follow along and hear some of the most interesting ideas and top elevator pitches from across Canada!
00:04.20
mike_flywheel
What's up everybody. It's Mike we're back here on the pitch please podcast and today I've got dwayne cofounder of mantle they're an ai based platform for founders to help manage their cap tables a whole bunch of words in there that maybe you don't understand so we're going to unpack it today. But Dwayne over to you give yourself a quick introduction and we'll talk a little bit about your amazing experiences that have led up to being the cofounder of mantle and then I'd love to make sure we dive into a bunch of these things demystify cap tables today some of the challenges behind it. Why and where your technology fits in super excited. But let's learn a little bit about you before we go any further.
00:40.00
Dwayne
Yeah, no thanks for having me great intro. Wow um, yeah I'm Dwayne. Yeah I'm the cto and cofounder over at mantle. Um, been spending the last hour of. 20 plus Twenty five plus years coding solutions um have made everything from application platforms to your favorite mobile apps to now managing people's equity. So. Kind of started off like my my parents were actually financial planners and actually my first application that I'd deployed to production helped with their backoffice stuff and it's almost like doing a full circle all the way back to helping companies organize their their equity and and finances in this way. So um, no no I love to dive into it and. Talk about any or all of it. It's great.
01:30.95
mike_flywheel
Um I I love it. So maybe let's start there. You're talking about you know I guess you always kind of had some technical aptitude since it sounds like even as a child you know your parents were in financial planning investing and you were helping them build some applications right from the getgo. Did you always think. You were going to be an entrepreneur or was this just like the builder in you looking to solve problems like that that obviously was you building to solve a first problem but maybe how did that come to be in. Did you think you were going to be an entrepreneur.
02:02.91
Dwayne
Um, no I don't I think I kind of like backed into it I've always been a ah problem chaser. So I think that's where it came from. Um I think listening to people and listening to. Are going deep on a somebody situation and pulling out the right questions and pulling out the right problems that are worthwhile like solving for that person. Um, you know people always describe me as a good listener. So maybe that's how I land there? Um, but no like back in high school. Um. Actually ended up. You know, picking up Php. My parents were trying to help pay franchisees and my mom had these like spreadsheets on spreadsheets of doing calculations like every month and I'm like I'm pretty sure I can make an application. To solve all of this for you and there's a whole portal where everybody like every office put in their numbers. We automatically did the calculations. It would print it out. My mom didn't have to do all this work. Um, so my my coding career kind of like you know, dovetailed out from there. Just yeah, just searching for these problems.
03:04.28
mike_flywheel
So that's wild and I love that that you started with that story because like now and it comes to something we're talking about a bit before the show. A you are probably a unicorn and to your own right because technical cofounders are super rare. They're hard to find I've talked to a lot of founders looking and and searching for that perfect match. Um. But even the things you were talking about now. It's so cool that now how far we've come in terms of application buildings. You could probably do that with low code or no code solutions. But you know that was your first venture and it wasn't that easy back then I'm like saying it's a lot easier now. But it's crazy how far we've come.
03:33.11
Dwayne
Um, yeah.
03:39.91
mike_flywheel
To enable more and more people to to build things with way less technical background. Um, but it's cool that you started there. You helped them build that. But then you ended up sort of working at you said you know over 2025 years and in startups and and that type of thing so you went to school. Take me on the journey where where did you go next and what sort of led to where you went into that startup world versus like something else as you were kind of looking for these problems.
04:08.31
Dwayne
Um, so I actually ended up ah not going to University So ah, after building that thing for my parents actually got another job at ah at a startup and it was actually a really good lesson on.
04:11.72
mike_flywheel
So okay.
04:25.20
Dwayne
Startup timing. Um, so first of all my my Miami family's from the caribbean like education is everything so when you tell you, you're not going to school. They're like what are you doing with your it wasn't an easy conversation but like I just want to work and you know if I ever get to a place where I need the the piece of paper.
04:30.70
mike_flywheel
Or yeah, yeah, how did that go down.
04:44.43
Dwayne
I'll go back and get it. But until then I want to work and kind of like really understand what I want to focus on before going into school because I you know I like this coding thing I'm like I don't know if it's great. Um I I like solving these big problems with it. But I'm not sure if it's really for me.
05:01.84
Dwayne
So I went into the startup it was one of the first companies that was putting screens into restaurants and almost like elevators too. Um, so I made a whole backend that would serve the advertisements and menus and everything else to these screens from a central location. Um the the problem with that startup was it was too early. So forgetting like an eighteen inch flat screen back then was like a thousand dollars like $1200 and they weren't the most stable things they were kind of thick and they would overheat. Um, so we didn't have the runaway to really ah see that startup really run into its own right? It wasn't until like. 5 maybe eight years later that I started started seeing them show up in restaurants and everything else I would message the founder and I was like oh we just too early. It was a great idea and he was like yeah but timing is everything no.
05:50.46
mike_flywheel
That is crazy though, right like that that is a good lesson in timing because like as you were saying that I'm like holy shit like that's everywhere you were part of that you're like well I was but like ah a little bit early and and it's interesting that you isolated the challenge to being like it was actually the hardware limitation on on. Um. Costing and implementation the software capability sound like they were there is it's tricky so is there anything from that learning that you know you would take away as the hey more more energy on the Mvp or managing what your economics might be or maybe you're like hey just. It's learning on timing you you go until you find out there is that type of a blocker and that's all you can do.
06:33.51
Dwayne
Yeah I think it was kind of like a um yeah revenue versus cost lesson and then also the timing on hardware like just the understanding that like hey you can have a really valuable solution but like if I am taking you know. Gen one of mini led Tvs which are right now are like really expensive if you wait you know a while you kind of watch the curve of that cost going down versus what your revenue projections are there is a point there where you can really jump on a bunch of solutions. Um, and if you jump on it too early. oxy'vejumpingittoolate. somebody else has probably like jumped on it. So it's like really watching those trends and curves. Um, especially like even now with Ai right? like it costs a lot to run an ai model. Especially if you want to do a large batch operation like you know transforming code from one language to another like a whole code base. Ah, can add up to a lot of time and effort. But you know all of those processes are going to get a lot easier over the next year or 2 and there's going to be an inflection point where a bunch of new innovation is going to happen just from running things more efficiently. Not even creating something new.
07:35.31
mike_flywheel
I Yeah, it's interesting and and we've obviously talked Hardware. We talked about like software processing capabilities. It's like kind of that joke Meme I don't know if everyone's seen it, but it's sort of like the you know they've built an ai solution. And they've like whitelabeled something that's like just sitting on like openai consumer grade and like someone's like well how much is this costing us and how much are we selling it for and like you don't want to know just get users. And but in the same regard.. There's some people I've talked to in the in the legal space which maybe even some of this impacts What you're doing but there's like some changes that were impacted specifically through Covid around the ah. Ability to do certain elements of legal transactions in a virtual way which the law society until Covid It was absolute zero. No So their idea literally could not even existed fundamentally before Covid and that changed that and so unless you knew the mechanics of that first. The timing was so critical to that inflection Point. So. It's super Cool. We haven't talked about the timing as much on the show lately. But it's cool that you've got like a story around that around hardware consideration software consideration processing capability and obviously like there's legal consideration. Probably so many more? Um, so from there like.
08:54.14
mike_flywheel
That didn't work out sorry man that that was brilliant idea though you guys are working on some cool stuff where did you where did you go from there.
09:02.87
Dwayne
Um, I joined another startup that was with um they essentially adopted a model out of Australia they were doing um pretty much coordination around wsib compliance in workplaces. Um, which is not a place I would ever. Thought I would end up but I ended up meeting one of the founders and I'm like oh that's cool I can check this out for a little while and um it was a great business. Nothing exists like it in Canada um, you know the the founders have built up. Ah a great business. And we're ready to take it more into a digital realm more automated realm and I was um, going to help them with that. Um, but it it unfortunately ended up being a lesson in um, ah. Or I made sure that I now I make sure that the founders have a really good relationship before joining a company. Um and it turns out in in this but with themselves. yeah yeah I think a lot of.
09:59.80
mike_flywheel
Um, like with themselves as ah as a founding team.
10:03.98
Dwayne
Ah, maybe like first -time founders or anything else when they're when they're starting their company I don't think they realize how much ah of a relationship you will have with the other founders like day and night you're messaging each other. You're going to be. You know, inviting each other to christmas but also like during christmas dinner you might message each other and be like hey this thing popped up and you like you're going to answer. So you you essentially enter this relationship with another person and it's going to have everything else from a normal relationship with all the ups and downs. Um, and you guys continue to work through them. But in this particular case, the founders were married so they were in an actual relationship. Um, and it. It ah, they were going through their ups and downs. So it. Ah yeah, yeah, so.
10:45.59
mike_flywheel
On 2 fronts. Apparently just so deeply tied. Um, okay so from there that was like hey that startup shut down or just too tumultuous and you're like I got to leave or what was sort of the scenario and where'd you go from there.
10:57.92
Dwayne
Yeah, that that was becoming non producttive for the the company. So I'm ah I'm a person who really wants to make forward progress and there was a bunch of this socialist things that were in relation toal things ever holding it back from there. Um, from the previous companies and from like my parents I noticed like a. Ah, like ah ah, a similar problem across all of them where people needed to coordinate their workforce and a bunch of operations in the Business. So I kind of made kind of like the lightweight version of like Google Sheets drive workspace for businesses before that like. More for like contractors and you know people with franchisees and you're like hey what are your company cycles. Who do you remind me to remind people about this or that. Yeah so I noticed about that overall problem all of the previous companies that I worked with were my clients. Um and I did that for about like.
11:40.10
mike_flywheel
So kind of came back to what you were helping your parents with yeah.
11:53.38
Dwayne
Half a year it was me and I had 1 other person helping me it wasn't that big. Um, so that was ah fun to just build something new I didn't get into the whole you know hard equity problems at that point I registered business and just went for it. Um, and then I got tricked. Tricked into my job at Extreme Labs I always say that putting it on the record I was tricked but it was a great trick so I love it.
12:16.27
mike_flywheel
Tricked tell us about the trick. What was extreme labs and what was the trick.
12:19.53
Dwayne
Yeah I had um a buddy from high school that had been kind of keeping up with me during my journey and he was this like hey you need to come check out extreme labs and I kind of brushed him off for a good like four months but he kept on trying and he just like hey we're going to be playing some Fifa at the office. You should just come hang out and I'm like.
12:36.38
mike_flywheel
Oh shit.
12:39.23
Dwayne
Um'm like oh yeah, okay, cool. So and was like if I they bugg me for a while I'll come to play games and they they took me into the games room we're playing games where we're having drinks. Um and then as I was playing Fifa they started asking me technical questions. Um.
12:52.70
mike_flywheel
Like midgame like trying to throw your game off so was that was it like ah, an interview or are they just trying to like mess your Fifa game up, you know you never know with people these days.
12:56.81
Dwayne
Yeah, yeah.
13:04.44
Dwayne
Yeah, so like at at some point I had to put down the controller and start answering their questions I'm like oh these are curious and then um, you know, eventually the the founders came in and talked to me and then um, that was the Friday and they were like hey we need you to start on monday.
13:16.41
mike_flywheel
So wow that.
13:19.45
Dwayne
So I started talking to a few folks there. Um, it was the first time I have encountered pair programming. Um, where 2 people are working on the same machine on the same problem I always been solo so figuring out things by myself was um, you know I could always do it but I was like oh this is a really curious thing. It was really cool projects. They're working on you know mobile had just become a thing. Um I just bought my you know first iphone the first one and like this is a new computing platform I need to check it out. Start building some stuff and they already had some large projects doing it so I was like okay I'm going to learn a ton here. Um, you know I usually try to strive towards so you know. Learning while building. Um sos like yeah I am going to join this company and then I was employee number 8 or 9 or something like that there at extreme labs and then over the next four four and a half years I think we're 350 so.
14:02.36
mike_flywheel
Wow.
14:12.83
mike_flywheel
Wow. Well, what's interesting is like I personally haven't heard about extreme labs. Um I'm sure some people might have but I think what happened next is pretty interesting because more people will start to hear about these names so you were working you were like employee like 8
14:13.85
Dwayne
Yeah.
14:28.60
mike_flywheel
Whoa who went down in extreme labs first.
14:31.29
Dwayne
Um, ah so we were kind of the premier mobile shop for North America so we were consulting our engagements would be anywhere from like years to to months really? um, but it was really cool to be. You know. Kind of in my you know, mid 20 s you know, learning all this new tech but also working with you know, like Hp and working with Cbs. We did the the Mba app we worked on Twitter we worked on Facebook like working with all these brands traveling to these companies working with them onsite traveling to the West Coast New York everywhere else. Um.
14:57.78
mike_flywheel
So at sick.
15:07.51
Dwayne
And we also did like ah pretty much all the banking apps in Canada for Blackberry and ios.
15:10.70
mike_flywheel
So you're like a super like mobile first dev consulting team that would come in and help brands that no idea their head from their ass this new world of mobile and what these like at that time would they have been cloud native apps.
15:19.99
Dwayne
Yeah.
15:25.79
Dwayne
No yeah.
15:27.81
mike_flywheel
They were still like no, they're still like vm-based monolithic apps but but needing to reach out to multiform factor like that was actually like a breaking point where people realize you couldn't just have website anymore is that like multiform factor multi-screen scaling like that was like a big moment.
15:39.91
Dwayne
Yeah, um.
15:45.32
Dwayne
Yeah, so we're helping people wrangle with this like new computing platform and that led out to making you know backends and Apis and and everything else because those all need to coordinate with the mobile apps but that was a really fun ride. We ended up doing like a few government jobs like we did the the bid for the pan am games.
15:46.28
mike_flywheel
For people.
16:02.91
mike_flywheel
Oh Wow yeah.
16:04.75
Dwayne
A project I worked on um and at some point like Delta Mcginty came in and did a speech in our office because we're scaling so hard and we're we're doing things so it was a lot of fun.
16:14.92
mike_flywheel
That's cool so where did you go from extreme labs since you got suckered in during a Fifa game this sounds like ah you stuck around for a little while longer after that Fifa game huh. Okay.
16:23.21
Dwayne
Um, yeah, we got acquired by pivotal. Um and pivotal was making a cloud application platform. Um, and I switched straight into r and d and and straight into that that part of the the company and um, ended up becoming a director of the the toronto office. Um, grew that from believe it was 17 or 18 people up to about 80? Um, and then they gave me more offices so I ended up managing the New York and Denver office ah for pivotal and ah.
16:54.42
mike_flywheel
Wow.
16:59.87
Dwayne
Running around doing way too much traveling. That's when I learned ah you can do too much traveling I used to like you know, ah crave it and then after a while I was like oh I want to be home. But you know if you had to travel to 2 places on a regular basis like Denver and New York are not bad at all. So I'm not. And complaining too hard.
17:19.18
mike_flywheel
Good good to know actually before we even go too much further in a pivotal because I think there's ah a contrast piece here so you employ a grew to like 350 you said what was like the best part and the hardest part of that because I know a few people that have been in this situation and now they're in like series c series d companies.
17:26.11
Dwayne
Yes, yes.
17:36.70
mike_flywheel
I Always just think it's It's cool to reflect on that experience of like what did they enjoy about that because you know you see it. You know glamorized definitely in shows. Ah, but you see pros and cons what what was sort of your lived experience. Yeah.
17:48.44
Dwayne
The best part and I think it's different if you're a product versus a consulting company. But I think the best part was being in a place that would challenge you every like six months or every with every new engagement.
17:54.29
mike_flywheel
M.
18:07.62
Dwayne
Essentially um because once you finish a project. You're like what's the next one and the list would be all these big brands who are trying big ideas you know other like Moonshots or you're working on something like you know that's something that has millions of users every day. Um.
18:10.38
mike_flywheel
And.
18:26.70
Dwayne
So from a consulting shop that has that kind of volume and that kind of um, you know reputation that was by far the the best experience. Um.
18:34.72
mike_flywheel
And that pride ties back Well to the part you talked about earlier which is like you love just love solving problems and looking for these challenges. So this is like every six months you got a new one. You're like yes, how do we figure it out.
18:40.31
Dwayne
Yes.
18:47.66
Dwayne
Yeah there's actually ah there is an internal There's an and there was an internal tool at ah extreme labs where c ibc ah came to us to make ah an app called home advisor on Blackberry back when black bayry was super popular. And they were like hey we want to have a full map. We want to overlay this data that data you know all this crime stuff and and everything else and um, eventually a lot of people are saying that you can't do that like blackberry maps back then they allow you to put one pin and like 1 line of text and that's all you could do with the map.
19:22.89
mike_flywheel
So.
19:22.99
Dwayne
Like it just wasn't in a place where you could do anything any kind of overlays. Um and I asked for like three weeks two 2 or three weeks of extra budget in their contract and I'm like let me take a stab at this and um, ended up making a full map solution from scratch. Um.
19:38.45
mike_flywheel
Um, wow.
19:40.42
Dwayne
Got coined as duane maps and in extreme labs and it ended up into a groupon the Groupon app aquewether and up and like every other app that we made after that that had maps we we use that that technology so like those kinds of problems are really interesting to solve the thons that like people don't want to.
19:47.43
mike_flywheel
Yeah, yeah.
19:55.80
Dwayne
Tackle that provide a lot of value. But like if you spend the time you could really figure it out.
19:58.58
mike_flywheel
Um, that's cool. So then then um, you went to pivotal software which is obviously I think a lot more people probably have heard of pivotal software fairly large company. Um, how early because so extreme.
20:04.79
Dwayne
My.
20:17.41
mike_flywheel
Extreme labs got acquired by pivotal and so then you joined pivotal you were growing out the toronto office then helping grow out. Ah Denver New York you were saying um, how big were they when you started and and sort of what did they grow up to and what were were you guys offering there.
20:35.56
Dwayne
I'm not sure I think pivotal was around maybe like a thousand folks when we got acquired um and then towards the tail end is closer to 5000 I believe definitely between in between 3 or 5000 for share I think it's closer to 5000
20:37.27
mike_flywheel
Okay, okay.
20:43.60
mike_flywheel
Wow Big numbers.
20:52.81
Dwayne
Um, but yeah, that was a different part of the journey going from consulting to making a cloud application platform that you know eventually you know pretty much like 80% of that fortune 500 ended up using so these aren't this goes from making mobile apps and you know. Fairly simple straightforward apis you know we still need to get them through. Um you know bank compliance and everything else to like now there's governments using our our application platform which means we have to go through fedramp Google's really it's like security compliance things worry about cves. It's a different engineering mode to be in. Um, both super valuable experiences I think um I credit those 2 experiences to make me like very well-rounded as ah as an engineer um, by yeah, like another really interesting. Super valuable experience. Um and turned on learned much about ah management. As well managing those offices.
21:48.20
mike_flywheel
Yeah, was that like um like the structure of it like when you go from that company size to near 5000 like the structure like 1 of the things I've heard before and correct me if I'm wrong in this but some people that have grown up. Ah, in in fast- growing startups and been early on the ground and are maybe more technical in nature like yourself or something else is the the challenges you sometimes face are not being as handson as you used to be because now you're managing. Teams and you're a little bit more arm's length and and that some people enjoy that right? you because you talked about this piece the management element and your skill development there but some people are like hey I don't get to do what I used to really love doing what did that look like for you and and and talk us through that that transformation of like.
22:31.29
Dwayne
Number 1
22:42.78
mike_flywheel
Sub thousand to near 5000 big numbers tough.
22:46.39
Dwayne
Yeah I think ah managing a larger group. You definitely got ah a sense of that. Um I think the way I saw it was I Myself was not focusing On. Building the product like you definitely wanted to like talk to customers make sure right feedback was going to teams and everything else. Um, but then the the product almost turned into the org itself for me. So as my teams were you know, having trouble coordinating or.
23:13.88
mike_flywheel
E.
23:21.49
Dwayne
As they needed to move around projects or like hey this product needs to be deprecated and then a new version needs to come out or you need to make a new version of the Api doing all the coordination in between all of them is a is almost like designing a system that needs to run smoothly almost like a codebase. Um. But then there was also the fact that for all of these little in between coordination pieces. It actually benefited a lot when I was writing code for them. So I obviously was still writing code as a leader to get all of my you know performance numbers or help teams um understand the metrics that are making us smooth move smoothly as an organization. Um, I was writing all of that code. So no matter what I know no matter what problem space I'm in I always find a way to de code something.
24:07.36
mike_flywheel
That's cool. You guys set out to to roll up your sleeves and so you're there for a while um, actually like couple but like 5 so five six seven years so
24:15.36
Dwayne
Yeah, we got acquired October 2013
24:20.42
mike_flywheel
So make sure to send me a note by the way whenever you're joining a company because I'm feeling like it was like acquisition aura that you use you send some acquisition vibes and I'm liking it? yeah.
24:30.98
Dwayne
Yeah I mean I don't know if I should you know pick up a lucky rabbit's foot or something I don't I don't know I don't know. But yeah, we've been super super fortunate and blessed in this regard. But yeah, 2013 and then ah. I don't pivotal. It's either Emc or Dell Emc bought picked up pivotal and then dell bought emc um and then vmware acquired pivotal. Yeah.
25:01.84
mike_flywheel
You got it? Okay, so Interesting. You don't have to tell me like you know how many private Jets you now own, but this is going to come into the cat table bit I think which is like you are early employees in these in these companies. Was acquisition of these impacting you was it not impacting you did did you know? Um, Obviously there's the bid around like transformation of roles. But at that time did you know about a cab table.
25:36.41
Dwayne
No, and I think um every time I have we have co-ops we always into. We're always like heavily involved in the like waterloos co-op program. Um, and at pivotal we went into queens and and uft but we're small enough right now that we're just doing Waterloo.
25:43.91
mike_flywheel
Yeah.
25:53.70
Dwayne
I Hope to expand that soon. But I Love bringing in co-ops into our company. Um one because we're a really small group but we're really experienced so they actually gain a lot from from the experience with our pair programming because. You know I don't think there's too many other co-op opportunities where you're sitting right next to somebody who has the energy experience that we have and um, you're learning directly from them. Usually you're given like a side project or or something like that. Um, but also I love teaching co-ops or like you know people really earlier on in their career about. You know options and cap tables and how this stuff all works because I had no idea throughout extreme labs and pivotal like they used to try to educate us and they'll be like yeah okay I'll deal with that later. Um, but it's not until later where you're like oh I should have paid attention to.
26:40.31
mike_flywheel
You yeah because you're on the other side of that right? like you join a company and they're like oh you know your early employee we're going to pay you in in french fries and we're going to give you like you know 2000 of these options or shares like the even then like what is an option. What is a share like.
26:44.10
Dwayne
Yeah.
26:59.21
mike_flywheel
But at that point you you don't really know what that means or what that translates to or should you be asking questions. So at that moment you were kind of just on the flip side of it. Whatever they're sending your way like yeah I got it cool. Thanks.
27:09.39
Dwayne
Yeah, and there's been enough success stories that people are like Okay, yeah now I should look into this a little bit more but the education around it is still I find you know lacking all the way from the employee up to the the founder a lot of people are sharing knowledge through word of mouth. Um, not necessarily through like you know institutions educating people on it. So.
27:29.48
mike_flywheel
Yeah, well I'd love to learn a little bit more today and and I think from there that kind of brought you to Mantle. So I think we'll talk a bit about that. but but I have to know because I don't have a lot of technical co-founders especially with like the rich experience that you have got. On on the show I you know I'm probably pulling a number at top my head but like seventy thirty eighty twenty in terms of like non-technical versus technical cofounder I'll want to hear the origin story about mantle but from a technical cofounder perspective. What are you looking for in your cofounder because I always hear what they're looking for right and and it's it's be interesting to see what are the things technical cofounders care about and look for for many people that might be looking for 1.
28:18.00
Dwayne
Oh interesting I think um, that's a good question for me personally and I think it's going to be different for every person again. I kind of like see these things as like relationships like it depends on your personality and how you want to be balanced out. Essentially. Um, you know over the years I kind of I know my strengths of weaknesses like I know I can get passed by weaknesses especially like ah you know public talking like that was like a hard thing. You do like all of the was it. Toast masters all the practice and everything else and um, you know. You can get through it. But it's not like a natural affinity. Um I for my cofounders I looked at what I want to what my natural weaknesses are and what their natural strengths are and. Try to bring those together. So like as a package we're just almost like a superpower. Um, also. Ah it is really nice to work with people that you've worked with before especially through hard projects. Because you know how they're going to handle stress you've seen them. You've seen each other at your like best and worse like we're working at like midnight or up until like 3 a m trying to get a project done. Um, ah you know, funny story at extreme labs we got was at the world wildlife foundation where they w w e by then.
29:42.95
Dwayne
Came to us on a Friday and like we need to have the app on Monday so like some of the people that I'm working with today were like on that kind of like project. We kind of cranked through and got it done. Maybe want something done for Earth hour um so yeah, like after you've been those through those experiences with your founder and you kind of know your strengths weaknesses and you know how you how well you work with each other. Um, it just clicks and it's it's a really good experience because all the social dynamics of trying to figure each other out and you're like first engineering group if you haven't worked with them before. Um there's just no surprises and you're all just focused purely on the problem and the the product.
30:18.30
mike_flywheel
So cool. Well I'm going to want to learn more about what brought you then to to mantle or this was an idea sparked in your own head. But you know, let's maybe start going down that journey a little bit which is um, you know where and how did the journey of mantle itself. Ah start. Ah, from because I think from there you were we kind of left off, you were at Vmware last ah, which got ah which acquired pivotal um, software and and now you're a mantle. So what was sort of the inspiration for that that part of the journey. But.
30:51.12
Dwayne
Yeah I kind of came together a little bit like haphazardly um I won't say haphazardly I think it's a collection of of experiences that I never realized I had until we kind of like stumbled upon the problem space. But I remember. I remember being a manager at extremelabs and you know having to do you know option grants or like raises and everything else. Everything is done in a spreadsheet. Um and then I was like okay we're a small company so spreadsheets are probably fine. Um, and then um, like it has to be better at all. large I'm sure large companies don't do this and I went to pivotal and pivotal went up to 5000 people I'm like wait. It's still in spreadsheets and you know the the problem with spreadsheets of well is like spreadsheets work fine. Um, but it's just like 1 there's no checks like checks and balances and make sure things are actually accurate like you know 1 bad thing in a spreadsheet and everything can kind of collapse. Um, so that at pivotal there was actually a ritual the managers had where we would open. People's offers letters to make sure the numbers were correct and then close them again because people would take our spreadsheets like spreadsheet from my group and hr person would take that. And like copy and paste the rows into a larger spreadsheet to make sure the numbers would add up but the problem is they would like delete rows or get values wrong sometimes.
32:08.44
mike_flywheel
Oh shit I can see all the fail points I'm just looking at spreadsheet disasters and sewn writes over a cell or like something doesn't copy or there's like hidden rows.
32:16.27
Dwayne
Oh yeah, the worst is the tell like telling somebody that like hey this person that you gave me in my spreadsheet isn't in my group anymore they actually transferred to the west coast so they're like oh the spreadsheet that you finished halfway I need to give you a new version now so now I need to like copy and paste my value like it. It gets really really bad really quickly and then I went to vmware and vmware actually had a bit of software but the first step of getting your data into that software was a spreadsheet so like it. Like across the board is just a hard. You could see it was a hard problem. Nobody wanted to manage the stuff planning and that was just getting the numbers in the planning around. It was just word of mouth like how many options do I have for my people like I don't know like. Ask for some and if you get told? No, then there's not enough kind of a like there's just it was a lot of that. Um I've talked to a bunch of other like Cfos Ctos of different companies. They all have the same kind of gripes like hey you know somebody laughed that will happen to their options I don't know some hr person will tell me my budget eventually but like I don't know if I'll ever see that again.
33:18.58
mike_flywheel
Yeah, like did they vest did they not vest.
33:23.52
Dwayne
Yeah, so after going through experience like that going through experiences ah through pivotal and extreme and all my previous startups after I left vmware I was you know a bunch of people wanted me to be their cto and I I learned be like hey. What is your cap table like you know what is the relationship with founders but also like you know what is the percentage ownership of the the founders like what what is the actual cap table makeup or equity makeup of your company and the amount of missteps I would see in startups. They're like hey we actually gave away you know too much of the company or we didn't do reverse vesting was our First. Ah, oddly enough their first technical co-founder they like they made v one and left with a bunch of equity and we can't get that back kind of a thing. Um. That is a high percentage where people would have these missteps to the point where you would look at their cap table and be like okay, there's no room for another exec or you know a lot of employees coming in so this is going to add up to a bad situation unless they do something major. So that was actually a major criteria for me like figuring out my next thing. Um, and then one of the the cofounders ammer varma he he got rid of his golden handcuffs from Ford um, that that group went to autonomic and then acquired acquired by Ford and um.
34:47.15
Dwayne
You know he was kind of reviewing his investments and noticed like he was in all these funds and everything else, but there was no system to keep it all in 1 place. Um, so we eventually landed on this like hey we need to start at the cap table. We're noticing. It's a problem pretty much everywhere. Um, people running into these disaster scenarios especially as we we're deeper in the startup ecosystem now. We're talking to a lot of people. Um, we're noticing some like weird weird stuff back then and still now and we just want to make the whole space better. Um, and it's great that we get the dog food as we grow.
35:14.76
mike_flywheel
So this is just like ideating where you had both kind of reached this moment simultaneously in your career Journeys where you were on the flip side of like having a little bit of freedom and space to be like yeah we've we've been parts of companies we've been grinding we've had some options and stocks or different things through those oh shit. What did I actually get through all that like there's some money in my bank account and but like now everyone on the other side of this is like we didn't pay as much attention as we should. Now our eyes wide open trying to pay attention. We're looking at what we got and we're like this is a mess like should we solve this mess that's sort of like where where you got to first.
35:54.90
Dwayne
Yeah, and I had the like perfect Venn diagram of like our skills and experiences and then also um, like us knowing go through the experiences we had the network to know that like hey that we can really drive some change forward in this particular space. Um, so yeah, yeah, this is what we're doing oh gosh. Ah so for any founder that has to manage their equity. They know.
36:13.81
mike_flywheel
All right? So let's talk mantle your on a show called pitch please so Dwayne. The first thing we're gonna have to do is get your best pitch. Please.
36:30.25
Dwayne
The the trials and tribulations of dealing with all the paperwork dealing with lawyers. Um, but also they know the the fact that they can't get insights properly So There's a lot of paperwork in getting burn down charts scenario planning for your exits. Um, you know doing hiring plans everything else against your equity and Mantle just gives you all that automation so you can just focus on your business and leave all that stuff to us.
36:57.39
mike_flywheel
That that's so simply put maybe super wise here will be to actually talk and I think we might as we're going through this I'm I'm realizing we're have to go do a whole other episode just based on your background and experience. Where we we just call it damn episode cap tables because I think most of people don't even know what a hell a cap table is never mind the complexities of managing one and that is a challenge right? For first time founders or even second time founders like you've learned a couple things but until you've like triggered something that went poorly. You just might not know you just.
37:17.37
Dwayne
Yeah.
37:33.21
mike_flywheel
Hey Dwayne you want to go out this? Yeah I man and fifty fifty cool yeah we're good hey some investor wants to give us some money. Okay, they want 20%. Okay I guess it makes this like forty forty and they take 20 like it gets way more complicated than that and then you don't know. Do you turn to your lawyer. Do you turn to your accountant. Do you turn like who. And and so um, maybe let's just give like the light version which is like what exists other than spreadseets like what exists in this space and like where where do cap tables fit in is is it the legal document. Related to you know how equity is split up. Do I talk to my lawyer about a cap table like where who's in charge of this damn cap table the the cfo who's really the founder talk to us about this space.
38:17.33
Dwayne
Ultimately, it's either.. It's going to be your lawyer. That's in charge of a cap table if if you have a lawyer. Um, otherwise it's going to be the founders. Ah,, there's ah, there's platforms out there like us you know carta is like the the big incumbent in the in the space where people keep their cap tables. But. Find as we talk to people. It's ultimately the lawyers and a cap table is going to be pretty much the summarization of all of your legal documents where you've dealt with the equity and ownership in your company. So as you give yourself you know founder shares or give employees options and everything else. That will change your cap table so you can see line item by line item who has your fully diluted ownership of your company. Um, so you can keep track of who actually owns what in your company.
39:05.61
mike_flywheel
And God it's sort of like automatically like as dilution happens. It'll Auto Update: Everyone's numbers and in some way. So um I guess as ah as a rollback to this you know you talked about like lawyers are oftentimes the ones who may if you're using a lawyer have.
39:09.86
Dwayne
Yes.
39:21.45
mike_flywheel
Ah, perspective on your cap tables but like they're not highly invested I haven't seen in the mechanics of that they're like yeah, you've got this many shares who do you want me to issue them to do you kick in before that during the actual incorporation journey or hey I've got an incorporated company. Now I Want to start to dish this stuff out or maybe it's both. Yeah.
39:46.10
Dwayne
We're we're looking to partner with somebody for the incorporation cycle because that's like a whole other whole other business and it's ah it's a rabbit hole for sure. But yeah, after you have an incorporated company. You can come to us and just give us your documents and we'll umbarge you onto the platform.
39:47.90
mike_flywheel
Okay, so.
39:58.54
mike_flywheel
Got it so it takes your documents imports your new Baseline and then you can start managing that cap table or shareholders elements are those also parts of this like shareholder agreements. Ah, acceptance of shares got it. Okay, this sounds way better in excel table.
40:17.32
Dwayne
Yeah, yeah, we essentially like have a whole bunch of templates for people to deal with the documents because like a lot of people when they are like hey I want to do you know a share agreement or an option agreement The first thing is like oh I don't I don't even know what document like what's the legal so that's when your lawyer comes in. But. We also provide templates if people want to use ours. They're pretty much the standard. Um, we'll get from law firms or from y combinator and everything else you you're doing safes um, but yeah, essentially in the platform when you want to issue shares or options instead of emailing your lawyer you can do it in the platform. Um, will help you model it give you like you put in the draft mode tell you the effects of it before it actually happens. Um and then you can say like hey you can coordinate with your lawyer in the platform on when to do it and how to do it? Um, but yeah, that's pretty much like a lot of the workflows that we we help with.
41:12.91
mike_flywheel
Cool. Ah, can we talk for a second just on what are the ways you slice and dice a company like we've talked. We've dropped a bunch of words that maybe not everyone's as familiar with like Safes and shares and options and.
41:29.40
mike_flywheel
What is like the difference between these and you know let's talk about it from the founder side but also from the employees side because maybe that's where people are familiar with it right? Maybe they're working at a startup or working at a larger company and they have some of these things. Um and you know we're going to have to go do it the more I'm realizing we're going to need to do a whole episode. Just on this but maybe at a high level just explain what some of those elements of what you're managing ah of those paper you know splits are.
41:55.17
Dwayne
Yeah, an important part of this world that I realized throughout my journey is that there's almost no rules as well. So There's a lot of like common ways of distributing equity so you have like you shares or you have like your safes and Like. Saves our convertibles. Um, and we're going to get. We can get really deep into convertibles. But um, essentially saying that like hey it's ah it's a promise for future Equity. You know once you companies a certain amount of a certain value like you'll get you know this much money essentially putting it plainly. Um. You have things like options that you'll give it to your employees at certain strike prices and you're saying like hey we're going to hope that the company's worth a lot more than this price that we're giving you but here's our like our promise is a certain percentage of the company at a certain price and you know if we do Well it goes great. Um, then ever usually talk about ah the. The other case where it goes down but that's a whole other thing and that's handled in in different ways at different companies. Um, and that's part of the like the employee education side of it too. Um.
43:01.44
Dwayne
But yeah, there's almost infinite ways for people to slice up their their company and us making a platform that has like you know, certain parameters and like this is how you do things. It's interesting to come across paperwork where people have accepted terms where it's just like hey if my bark. If my dog Barks 3 times then your interest gets reset by this percentage and you're like what there there are some really interesting, especially through um Covid and then through the downturn there have been ah terms on Safes or you know term sheets where. People have been getting a little bit creative. Um about what they put into these agreements. So. It's always great to have a lawyer to to look over them to like double check. But also we can help out as well.
43:34.61
mike_flywheel
And.
43:44.58
mike_flywheel
Got it and so to to bring us back so you don't focus on the setting up of an incorporation that do with a lawyer and you guys will partner on there. You don't deal with the signing of the paperwork related to where and how shares and options are cascaded but you're the in-between and kind of. You you basically take in the snapshot. Let's call it a snapshot of someone's equity structure and allow them to track all of the elements of what that is and then future changes then plinko across all of it and then model scenarios hey I want to give. 10% equity to dwayane. What does that do for everyone. Um is that sort of the high high level of it and and then based on that like what's cool about what you're saying is I'm trying to imagine it now. So maybe walk us through it. But It's just as valuable to the founders I guess as potentially the people that are getting options or shares are you built for both sides to be able to have better education and transparency around this or today are you focusing on 1 of those two sides.
44:51.65
Dwayne
Ah, right now we're focused on the founders in the next year we want to really beef up the employee side. Um, but your your summary was was bang on I'll say that we also do do the signing in the and the in the platform.
45:06.13
mike_flywheel
Okay, cool on the on the not the front end not the initial setup of the incorporation but the cascading of shares and options and those types of things. Wow.
45:09.54
Dwayne
So if you want to actually give.
45:14.92
Dwayne
Yes, everything passing corporation. We can handle in the platform. Um and instead of you know, ah creating a pdf. So. It's funny. A lot of founders will have like with that 1 word document. That's their option agreement. They'll go in there and they're like all I need to get is prison options. They'll like. Will find and replace for the date sometimes miss the second date and replace the first date which is always an interesting problem to have because you have to redo the whole document um to make it clear but ah, they'll put in the name and then they'll email it to the employee or like maybe do a docusign but they have to keep track of all the stuff right? So we've had cases where founders have set. Sent employee agreements or agreements to employees and they haven't signed it. They forgot to follow up and everything else like we'll handle all that workflow in the platform. We'll give you reminders. We'll tell you who has hasn't signed anything and um, make sure that all of that is tracked in 1 system. And then as things are signed and completed and the lawyers agree to it and the employee agreement or shareholders agree to it. It automatically adjusts your your cap table.
46:13.56
mike_flywheel
That's cool and now how complex like you said startups. But I imagine like most companies could value from this and there's different complexities of their multi-tiered intricate corporate structures. They've got like head companies and if. You know, different branch arms can basically any business use Mantle. Okay, yeah.
46:36.81
Dwayne
Yeah, any any private company I would say Public's a whole different beast. Um, but any private company can essentially you know has these problems at at different scales and and in different ways. Um, but we're set up to handle any private company in reality.
46:52.59
mike_flywheel
That's that's amazing and so maybe let's learn a little bit more about how you how you charge like it sounds like your platform and it's for founders and it helps for everyone else is this like ah a one-time fee an annual fee. A monthly fee. Know you have to share the price if you don't want to or you can I don't know how that works. But how do you How do you sort of Use Mantle once you bought into the vision of this platform which it sounds like it's going to save people a ton of time and mistakes and those probably cost a lot of money and time with lawyers and and so avoiding that one massive piece of value. But how do you sort of. Set up and start using mantle as a founder for.
47:32.76
Dwayne
I mean right now we have ah a promotion for you know 1 year free so it doesn't really cost you anything to get started. Um, after that um for everything that's before like a series b will do like a hundred dollars a month so it's.
47:38.30
mike_flywheel
Wow.
47:49.32
mike_flywheel
Wow, It's way cheaper than any of those mistakes that we just talked about huh.
47:50.38
Dwayne
Not too bad compared to some other solutions in the space. Yes, yes, oh gosh? Yes, um, but um, what we do is we'll collect a company's data room. Um, which if you're just starting. It's probably your incorporation document. Maybe a few founder shared documents or if you're a large company. Well you can take you know hundreds. We had one company come to us with I think around four hundred documents. Um, and we've actually made ah the way our tool works and a little bit of a differentiator for us. Um, but it's a huge differentiator for the the people actually using the platform is we use Ai to analyze all the documents in the data room. Um, and we make sure that the values in those documents are actually represented properly in the platform. Um, so that means anybody who wants to onboard with us. They kind of just give us the documents and within minutes we come up with a cap table whereas um before that you know depending on how many documents you know that the company has 400 documents a lawyer or a founder would have to go through document by document and manually create that.
49:02.80
mike_flywheel
Yeah, and this like kind of cleans up your house too right? like it'll point out if there's some mistakes in all the paperwork. You think you've got in order but theoretically because you're bringing this all together in a centralized manner. You're catching. Potentially some mistakes along the way or some.
49:03.60
Dwayne
Ah, cap table from scratch by you know, typing in the numbers and the dates. Um.
49:11.59
Dwayne
Um, yeah.
49:22.86
mike_flywheel
Gaps that need to be resolved first.
49:24.27
Dwayne
Yeah, yeah, it's funny I went to um, a meet up. Um probably about a month ago and this is really experienced cfo there and I told him what we're doing and he's like thank God. You're doing that Work. He's like I've been the cfo of 10 not small companies like theyre medium size companies and he's like every one of them once he took over their cat table. They were all wrong and they all had to like redo the cap table goes through every document and get it up to. Ah, speed again because it'll those drift over time. Um, but yeah, it's It's awesome to see our system catch you know and gets it sees or mistakes from the documents to the platform. Um and just like tell people like hey you know just this catch up on this before it becomes a real problem.
50:09.67
mike_flywheel
Yeah, so.
50:17.28
mike_flywheel
So talk to me a little bit about the space then um and you don't have to you named Carta. But I guess there there are some competitors in this space some of them being spreadsheets. But um, you know what are sort of the things that are different. Let's focus on the difference in the the. Value add and you mentioned a bit of it before but where mantle stands out versus others in this space.
50:37.37
Dwayne
Yeah, we find that like a lot of other a lot of other solutions in the space are kind of used as a record of truth after the fact so in terms of actually doing the work around the cap table and equity.
50:48.10
mike_flywheel
And.
50:54.31
Dwayne
Um, they won't do it in the platform themselves. They'll do it off to the side in spreadsheets and then once they're done all the work and all the calculations then they'll put it into the platform. Um, so we find that with a lot of other platforms founders never log into them. Um, they don't use them as the source of truths because they always assume that the lawyer their email is filled with something that is like in progress. So. It's never the most up to date picture. Um, so we find when people come to our platform they they feel very refreshed that they're like oh like this is all the work in progress stuff. This is all the stuff is in Draft. Um. I can accurately do some future looking work. So a lot of other platforms. Don't really have a lot of the the future looking tools that we're providing um and a lot of it is is insights that are driven by you know board and investors asking these questions like you know.
51:39.37
mike_flywheel
Yeah, yeah.
51:42.27
Dwayne
Like what's your burndown chart for your option pool look like right like okay, a founder needs to stop what they're doing look at their spreadsheet probably make some pivot tables and then like put in a planning thing and like try to get that done whereas we just have that in the platform if you have the options of the platform we'll show you the burn down over the next few years. Could just copy and paste it and give it to um, you know, ah a board member or investor whoever's asking and um, you know, get it signed and moved on with your day instead of spending you know a few days with the pivot table going back and forth the Yada Yada yada.
52:13.73
mike_flywheel
Got it So you really focused on being the central source of truth and I guess the other unintended benefit is you digitize all of their legal documents because I think that's the other thing right? You're like ah where's that signed copy of something and then moving forward you you manage that in a digital way.
52:30.44
Dwayne
Um, yes.
52:30.83
mike_flywheel
So The the record is there. It's not in a damn binder at someone's house that no one remembers who took it home and that confusion goes away because there's a digital footprint of this past and forward looking which seems super valuable because if you can. You know own it end to end like you're saying including dishing out new shares or you know options that record is is centralized and continues to be updated in a digital way because you're not to your point on the side hey go sign this paper bring it back to me. Oh and then you Upload. You're owning it end to end after that. So.
53:06.27
Dwayne
Yeah, a really important like that whole flow is really important to optimize because that takes up a ton of time from from people's kind of like day-to-day like hey I need to get this document signed. It's not sted yet and now your four nine a valuation is expired like what do I do then like you get to make a new document. All this stuff. Whatever. Um, but it's really important a really important aspect of our platform is that we always for every operation. We always jangoate or generate a bespoke document for the company. So we have the digital version. It is digitized as tract but we always generate. Ah, Pdf that has your lawyers format or whatever format you put into the system attached to every operation that happenss in there. So if there's an amendment you need an an amendment document if there's an agreement or an issuance you need that issuance document. Um, because at the end of the day if you get audited they will look at the documents they won't look at the platform. So. That's why we like working from the documents up. Um, because again platforms that don't do that. Um, your platform can say whatever you want but when they want the documents and they can't find it then you're you're in a lot of trouble you have to do a lot of legal work.
54:16.88
mike_flywheel
Got it well man this sounds so useful. Um, what sort of the the next year ahead have in store for mantle and and what are sort of your your ambitions around where and how this is going to kind of unfold in 2024
54:32.44
Dwayne
We're going to go deeper into the employee space I think there's a ton of education to do there. Um, you know there's always ah, we're always trying to figure out how open companies want to be because I find through my experience like some companies were very open about talking about. You know options I could and some of them were a little bit. You know they kept it closer to their chest. Yeah I Never know if it's intentional. Maybe it is but like you know how do you reason about that you want educate employees but also you know respect the the wishes of the the company. So That's something we're going through but that's something that we definitely want to ramp up.
54:50.81
mike_flywheel
And intentionally vague.
55:07.91
Dwayne
Um, again me going through some of my early experiences and being like I don't know what this monopoly money options thing is I'll leave it till later. Um I don't want other people to have those experiences at least ah give them an avenue to learn about it and reason about it especially in real time with their own data instead of like as an app abstract concept. Um. Yeah, just going through like exit scenarios and and reasoning about that would be very very cool. So we're going to invest in that. Um we have a whole bunch of tools for founders and lawyers. We're going to keep on pumping out more planning tools and um, you know versioning and and everything else on the founder side. So. Have a ah lot of features and we have a new versions of our price round calculator. We have the waterfall calculators more full-featured waterfall calculators coming out. Um so you can see exactly down to per employee on your exit scenario if you sold for. Fifty Million one hundred million dollars you can say this particular employee will get this much money so you can plan ahead and and do things so a lot of really cool visualizations and planning planning tools coming out.
56:09.32
mike_flywheel
So does Mantle technically then help me as an organization Forego at least some of the overhead related to to the legal costs associated with the the issuing of shares like once you've formulated the new company. Everything you do after that instead of paying a lawyer for every single edit sounds like to be platform generated and there's still a legally binding document that comes at the end and then is stored right.
56:36.15
Dwayne
Yeah, and it's interesting to talk to so we're we're talking to a bunch of different law firms. Um and kind of going into these conversations I'm like well they're billable work. Um, so I think we're a little bit like mm. You know how much are they going to really care about automating this part of it right? somebody would message them. They like I need a burn down chart or I need to know this information. They'd end up charging them for that that work. Um, so I'm like you know are we taking away billable hours from these law firms and everything else and as we talk to like we're talking to some of the the biggest. Ah, law firms and in North America and there's ah, a very unanimous like hey we don't want that work like like we're kind of tired of companies bugging us about these little things like we want all the big work we have like a backlog of these big operational things. We actually want companies to be more effective by themselves in this right.
57:12.63
mike_flywheel
Yeah, that's not where we want to spend our billable time. So.
57:26.25
Dwayne
So they're actually like super interested and in everything that we're doing um in those conversations on going really? well so I was I was surprised about how how engaged they were and making these problems kind of go away and just having everybody just work in ah in a better way.
57:41.84
mike_flywheel
That's cool. Well um, obviously at this point we've probably peaked some people's interest and say they want to find out more either as maybe an employee of an organization that wishes their organization use this or as ah, you. Ah, new founder because I think this is like day zero type stuff whether you're just when you're starting a company The second you're going to bring on even with 2 co-founders like get your stuff in order right away or maybe you're a bigger organization that just needs to clean house. Ah and get things kind of cleaned up where should people go. Ah, to find out more or to sign up for.
58:14.67
Dwayne
Ah, is with mantle.com you can go there click on the demo link or you can just reach out to me I'm on x we call it x or Twitter can I call it Twitter I'm on Twitter. Ah, yeah.
58:24.40
mike_flywheel
I don't know. Yeah, it's like going to Costco right? head of the sky dome. So.
58:32.44
Dwayne
Yeah, on Twitter linkedin usually more more active on those 2 But um, yeah, withmantle.com click on the demo link and just set up a time we can go through the platform talk about what you need. Yeah.
58:43.52
mike_flywheel
I love it and ironically you have a badass domain because you actually have mantle dot com. There's no like weird spelling I run is it's literally just MANTLEDotCom which is pretty sweet. Ah ah with mantle.com close
58:52.58
Dwayne
Oh we're actually with with mantle dot com. We couldn't get mantle dot com. Yes.
59:00.73
mike_flywheel
Close so wizmantle.com. But we're going to make sure everything's linked in the description. Anyway, it sounds like they've got an amazing offer for anyone for their first year to start using this and it sounds like you'll see the value. Um right away Dwayne we've like talked about so many things I'm taking up if you're good to give invest a bit more time I would love to do an episode just on understanding. Cap tables the dos and don'ts the simplification for people accepting options or shares as an employee which it sounds like might even fold into something you you have in the roadmap for the year but also on the other side like I feel so bad because so many first time founders because you're doing so many things. Everyone just. Move forward with the assumption. They spit words at you and they make you feel like it's bad to ask questions and so I think it'd be great to have an open dialogue around that sometime over the coming months. Um, but any kind of parting thoughts or words you've shared so much advice I've loved it so far I've learned a ton myself. But I always want to make sure that we we close off on any thoughts from yourself before we kind of wrap up. So.
01:00:00.50
Dwayne
Yeah, ah, no I think a follow-up conversation. Be great. Um, and just like the the parting thoughts I keep on thinking about this one interaction we had I think about three weeks ago we were talking to. I think the incubation group for uft there is this ah student who was creating a startup. Um, they're getting a bunch of money and they're like ah or the the incubator was like hey you should get on this platform. They ended up talking to us. And we're explaining like hey you know here's your cap tables option shares safes yada yada yada and the blank stare that was coming through the screen was like is like I was like oh i. Like I think they are really focused on like their problem and creating the startup and all these stuff that's being thrown at them. You can see. It's like really overwhelming so we kind of slow down the conversation where like hey you know as you go through this is like okay I really like this is a lot to process. He's like I need to have a follow up conversation later after I do some research. Um, but we're just trying to to help with that shell shock of like hey what is with all of these terms. How do I reason about it. You know if everything is done through word of mouth that means everybody is doing something a little bit different. Um and we're just help we're just.
01:01:20.84
Dwayne
Helping people reason about all of those different variations of managing equity in a company and bringing light and is telling you like hey what is this tangibly mean for you at the end of the day either now or in 5 years that's the platform that we want to be for folks so you can focus on your company on the problem and. Really spending your time on delighting your user base or customers. Whatever you have um and less time on being like you know, confused or perplexed by all these like terms and and concepts so we've been getting really good feedback thus far happy to have anybody and everybody on the platform. And yeah, looking forward to creating a bunch of new features and delightful things for people over the next year it's it's been great thus far.
01:02:05.17
mike_flywheel
I love it definitely helping keep people get things in order before money starts flowing in and I love that you're doing some great work even on your blog to help simplify some of this stuff down for people I think that's like even something that that I deal with it at my job at Microsoft is just. At some point companies need to focus on the problems that they're solving and where they add value and not try to be everything and so whether that's augmenting with external partnership help whether that's like stopping trying to focus on running a data center and updating security patches like that's where cloud native fits in and. Whether it's legal or finance and accounting like where do you have to invest as a company and where can you just like augment um and simplify and it sounds like Mantle is truly fitting into that for everything related to your cap table shares equity options all of that world of. Pain that probably lawyers and cfos are are just cringing at the way some things are set up and you're trying to help also make sure that it's better and people on both sides of the fence have have extreme transparency um can't wait for for that next episode where we have you on and we talk just cap tables.
01:03:14.32
Dwayne
Yeah.
01:03:22.19
mike_flywheel
Um I like I said I know some stuff but at the end of the day. There's a whole bunch of stuff I don't know and there's so many things that are you know until you've dealt with it. You don't know all the gotchas. So I'm I'm curious to learn for myself but on behalf of others too. I love the work you're doing with man to love your journey again, let me know where and when you're going to go to a company because it seems we get that like acquired aura I'll Just'll I'll come join you? Um, but but thank you so much for for joining on the podcast today Dwayanne I really appreciated the learning experience today. Thank.
01:03:55.66
Dwayne
Yeah, thanks for having me on I Love the conversation and yeah I'd I'd be happy to come back anytime. Think the platform is great I Think the show is great. It's awesome.
01:04:04.18
mike_flywheel
Love it and to anyone that join make sure to catch us on the next episode and keep your eyes out for one where we dive deep dive into cap tables and everything related to equity splits again. Thanks joining in and on pitch please podcast catch you guys on the next episode.