Rod Loges: Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast, Milcom Founders Forum. Today, we have Don Spies with us and Don, if you could just share a little bit about yourself and your business, it'd be great to thanks for coming on the show today. Excellent.
Don Spies: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Rod. My name is Don Spies.
I founded a company called Outrider Analytics. Outrider Analytics is a blockchain analytics company where we help trace Find and identify what is going on, on the blockchain or tracing virtual assets, and it's pretty exciting. I've been able to, I've really been fortunate enough to help start this company through a number of my experiences, which I'm looking forward to talking with you about today.
Rod Loges: Very cool. And what did you do in the military? What was your role in the military?
Don Spies: I was a career MI guy. So for those out there. Who think the utmost of military intelligence as an oxymoron. I truly get it. I spent about 13 plus years in, in the reserves. The joke that I like to say is because that was for a fear of commitment.
And that joke either hits or it doesn't hit to some folks, which I find pretty funny, but I was enlisted. I enlisted right after nine 11. I was an MI guy for that whole time. Went down the officer route. And it commissioned in 06 and got out in about 2013. Technically, I'm still in the
Rod Loges: IRR,
Don Spies: but there you go.
So I've been an MI guy my entire life.
Rod Loges: Fantastic. I appreciate it. It's a small world. I'm sure we've traded names. You would know some of the same people I do. That's for sure. And why did you, what background in the military, or did the military help you at all with this concept, or was this something you developed after you were in the business?
That's
Don Spies: So that's a great question. I can tell you that the military itself, I'm a poster child of what the military can do for you. You know, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. I had a job as a wonderful job right out of college. I, I challenged folks to look back in their career and say, was that the right job for you right out of college?
But it helped give me the direction. It helped give me the opportunities to help get to where I needed to be. And I'll answer your question and, um, a little bit longer fashion, which I apologize for, which is I was the XO of a company in a battalion and a sister company, the company commander was working.
Down at the Department of the Treasury, and I was able to, through those engagements, able to help get a job and secure a job down at the U. S. Department of the Treasury, working in their intelligence and analysis office, and then was able to run a small shop concurrently, a set of shops actually, concurrently at the department, and it was extremely enlightening.
And it was very rewarding and it afforded me the opportunity to not only grow professionally, but grow as a leader. And through those experiences, I knew I had the confidence to jump and do something like this and to found Outrider Analytics.
Rod Loges: That's fantastic. And when did you start the business?
Don Spies: About 15 months ago.
Okay, so October of, what is that, 2023 we,
Rod Loges: 2024.
Don Spies: Yeah. So about 15 months. That's right. Yeah. It's like,
Rod Loges: okay, we're getting ready for 25. Is it 24? That's right. Where are we? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, okay. And let's talk about, there's a lot of things I, I learned way back in the day when, when I was in the reserves, but what have you learned from the military that is applicable?
Into business concepts, ideas, relationships. Love to hear about that.
Don Spies: So there's a number of answers there. I can tell you that straight up, it is small team tactics, small team, just discipline, discipline itself, the trust to, and faith in yourself. To get a very difficult job done all the way up to budget and planning, resource management, recruiting.
There are all these very large concepts. That the military helped me understand a little bit of overlap here. I was able to do Through the department of the treasury go to a school the eisenhower school which is Over at ndu and dot mil and so as a dot mil One of the major things I took from there was the networking and I was able to focus on a business aspect and networking and to show that it is a lot about your network, which is wonderful.
And exploiting that network is a wonderful way to grow your business and to Recognize that turns out, you know, a lot of folks and you call them up and say this is what i'm doing Turns out people like hey, let's do something. Let's do something together. That's wonderful Yeah, that's been really great
Rod Loges: I think it's a great point and a lot of people say the military how that have to do with business and you know That whole point of investing in relationships is very true in the military You And in business, and if you're not pouring yourself into those relationships, investing into those relationships, they go away.
You either, it's, I always say it's like Pac Man, you're either growing and feeding that little monster of relationships or they go away. And it's, and I say monster in a good way. So how do you do that? That's very true. But let's take a step back. Tell us about. Outlier Analytics, besides having a great logo like you have on your shirt there, tell us more about that.
Don Spies: Well, Outrider Analytics was born from what I perceived as a gap in the nascent industry of blockchain analytics, and people were like, what the heck is that? And virtual, let's take a quick step back into understand virtual assets, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, Bitcoin, et cetera. And they have been touted as historically difficult to trace, impossible to trace.
And we provide tracing services. We allow people to understand what's going on the blockchain. So if If a, an event occurs and someone needs to know about where assets have been, we can help them with that. And that is, you can, one can see how that could be very interesting from an intelligence perspective or a law enforcement perspective.
And so not only from the national security perspective, but also from a traditionally financial perspective where investigations, financial investigations have. Typically not included this now that virtual assets are an asset class. You need to start including that. And so what we do is we help our customers understand what is going on the block chain in order to help further their mission, whatever that mission may be.
It's pretty exciting.
Rod Loges: Yeah, very cool. It sure is. It's still a little bit of wild, wild West. I think it's getting firmed up pretty quickly. I remember when the internet first came out and domain names was how do you, how's it going to be ruled on? How's it going to decide things? But so share with us success story that you've had with one of your clients.
And who is a good client for you?
Don Spies: We do take the anonymity of our clients quite seriously. And so we will, we will say we have private sector entities as well as our government sector entities, both national and international. And that, I don't know, that's not, I just want to make sure that's out there, but I can say that our company was born from the idea that the government sector was.
Underserved in a specific capacity. And I founded the company in order to specifically serve our us customers. We have since grown to whoever needs it, specific private sector, international entities, et cetera. But this gap. This product and vendor agnostic gap, which essentially is, we'll go down that route, but our customers really decided that they are, we're looking for this so much so that the moment we founded this company, we now are onsite supporting in very sensitive areas, doing very sensitive work.
And we're very excited about that. And we have already, as it comes to pass. Helped seize multiple millions of dollars and help disrupt hundreds of millions of dollars in nefarious actors assets, which is kind of interesting. And so without going too deep into the, any methodologies or mission sets, et cetera, we are doing our part to help with that mission, which is fun for two parts.
One, it's. Kind of need to still be around the mission because you get to poke bad guys in the eye. That's kind of fun still. But also help to grow an industry to help build the trust in virtual assets that I believe, as you said, it's a little bit of a wild, wild west. I don't believe it's a wild west. We are, you know, with major investors making billions of dollars.
Now, the need for this kind of analytic rigor is paramount in order to ensure the trust and validation in the industry. I'm really proud. Of helping establish that. And
Rod Loges: so fantastic.
Don Spies: And so we're pretty, it is pretty fun from that standpoint. And we're very proud of that support of our customers.
Rod Loges: Great, great.
Don, you were sharing with me a little bit about your new initiative with education. That you're doing. Is that something you're comfortable talking about now? Or do you want me to Sure!
Don Spies: It is still new. Be surprised when we announce this. Oh my gosh! Yeah, what providence. Look at this. Outrider Analytics is In an effort to show this product and vendor agnostic approach to blockchain analytics, really, we've identified that we need to show that the tools are very important.
There are automatic tracing tools, but there are ways you can go about this mission set without. Leveraging these tools. So Outrider Institute is going to come online shortly, probably within the next 30 days. Fingers crossed. And what we are going to offer is in person and virtual courses, as well as on demand.
We're going to have a suite certification, as well as just ad hoc courses that allow you to start at really level and get all the way through to what a grad school level to a point where you can, if you wanted to, say, apply to Outrider Analytics and join our team. And so it helps folks truly understand.
How and what to do in the industry and really understand at a core level, virtual assets all the way through to helping trace, trace what's going on. And so we're very excited about this. And so look for the announcement shortly. It's going to be great. I look forward to it.
Rod Loges: And will these be, will there be a fee associated with the classes?
Is that still to be determined? Will they be free? What's
Don Spies: there'll be a fee that we think a very fair fee. I'm not going to say names. There are. courses out there in the cyber security world that are five or 6, 000 for a course in in a progression that gets you to a certification. Our courses are going to be a fraction of them.
We want it to be affordable to everyone. Because this is a field that anyone from a local detective all the way to the highest levels of national security need to understand. We do not want this to be a barrier to entry. We want folks to understand and be accessible. Sort of a rising tide raises all boats moment, which is great.
We're based in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And we're working with our Commonwealth representatives in the Virginia's Veterans Office. I apologize. Um, we're still, we're very new to help get the necessary requirements to help us move towards getting post 9 11 GI Bill acceptance, which would be really wonderful for the community.
So if you have a certain allotment of funding, you can use it on training, like Outrider, which is
Rod Loges: pretty cool. That's very cool. That's very cool. I look forward to hearing more about that in the near future. Uh, let's see,
Don Spies: I will say we're more excited. I think for the, to get the online portion off the ground.
I think the, the GI bill portion is going to be an ongoing process. And the moment that happens, we will be bringing that into it. We'll let everybody know, but don't. That may take a little bit longer.
Rod Loges: That will take a little while. I have no doubt of that. That's for sure. So how do we learn? Well, you just answered that.
I was going to ask you, how do we learn about virtual assets? And I think it's through the Outlier Institute, which is very cool. And so, what's one obstacle or opportunity that you've had to power through that you think Other listeners, or if there's more, that's okay too. What's one or two opportunities or obstacles that you've powered through that was critical to, to building your business?
Don Spies: There is an inherent fear to start something like this. And there is the, on the army, there's the personal courage. And so really accepting that it's okay to fail. It is okay. Okay. Because that is a normal part of entrepreneurship. I'm not saying Outrider is going to fail. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is from a personal journey standpoint, when you step forward and say, I'm going to start a business and you realize.
That there are support networks out there, and there is this inherent fear, one, and once you get over that fear, two, is having the personal courage to take that step, to help go out and do that, and when you take that step, what blew my mind was the number of doors that opened up, one, from personal networks, like, hey, you did it, come on with me, now, now we're going to help out, which is fascinating, by the way, And I've heard that from other founders.
That's one, two, you know, who wants you to succeed? The U S government, aside from the fact that we help them in investigative and national security and intelligence standpoint, aside from that, turns out from an economic standpoint, a small business really helps the GDP, which then helps the whole other parts of the economy.
And so the small business administration is a wonderful asset. I have a meeting in a couple of days. With a representative who helps build and helps identify and helps amplify the work that we're doing as a founder. And there are some really neat programs that are out there. So it's pretty cool to once you do this, you're like, Hey, I can do this.
This is amazing. Yeah.
Rod Loges: Yeah. A lot of people want to help people succeed. And, you know, let's be honest, the U S government loves to see small business owners succeed, or as I call them, significant business owners. Cause Then we pay more tax, right?
Don Spies: The end of the day, it all comes down to that.
Rod Loges: That's right.
The thing is, I think you're starting getting started and you mentioned it is the fear of failure is you almost want to embrace. I heard the other day, just on a podcast, somebody else's podcast, but they were talking about be agnostic to the outcome, but go out and do the work, follow the process. Make it happen and have the discipline to do the things you need to do.
And if it fails, let it fail fast versus take taking the forever fail. The forever fail is so expensive to the whole everybody. That's right. The forever fail is so expensive. Yeah, that's right. That's for sure. So as we're wrapping up here today, what resources. Thoughts, ideas you have regarding your industry that you think people should be aware of.
Resources, thoughts, ideas, challenges.
Don Spies: Oh, wow. I think there's a couple answers there as it relates to business, small business. I think there's a couple other and just, I'll answer your question directly about the industry. We're very excited here at Outrider about what next year is going to bring. 2024 validated virtual assets as an asset class.
It went from this, you know, you do what with the coins and you do, what is this to, is that only for weird online transactions to buy nefarious things. No, but that does happen. By the way, that happens with cash and other things as well. We're not going to go down that route, but it moved it from these multi one, two, three, crawl, walk, run phase, if you will, the military folks out there where it went from this ambiguous thing to now it's a validated asset class.
And with 2025, and an apolitical comment here is the new administration has openly said they will embrace virtual currencies, virtual assets. And so, with that comes a whole host of subsequent requirements, subsequent mission sets that need to occur. One of them, is virtual asset tracing. What is going on in education?
What is going on in the blockchain? How do you do it? What's going on? And so we're very excited about this, but we see that as one of the big challenges. So there's this huge opportunity. nascent asset class. Like how often you get to say an asset class is coming around. And then frankly, how do you exploit it?
And at that age old thing, who was the first millionaire in the gold rush? It was the guy selling the picks and the pans that was an ancillary business. And we are in that sort of same type of field, ancillary business. We're not the ones. Though we accept Bitcoin as payment, we are not in the virtual asset business itself.
We're not exchanging funds, we're not trading funds, we're not gaining, building, etc. We are helping people understand what is going on. And so the challenges include helping folks understand whether that's it's still in the government, if you can believe it, as well as in the private sector that they are exposed.
To virtual assets, because most folks are now banks, credit unions, insurance companies, every lawyer that's out there now must have this as a part of this arrow in their quiver, because financial investigations must include virtual asset tracing blockchain analytics. Otherwise, they're encouraging incurring operational gaps.
And I really believe that's A lot of what I do is help people understand that there is a gap in their operations. And then they go, wow, we really do need you. Yeah, you really do need us. And so that's the biggest challenge I see is just getting the word out and the capacity. That is beneficial to the industry as a whole.
Rod Loges: Absolutely. I think it was a 23 or this year that the you're required on your taxes to actually report your virtual assets prior to that you weren't required, but now it's part of the form, right? Isn't that.
Don Spies: That's a really good question. And we can add that as a sub note to whatever the video is on whatever the date is, because I don't know off the top of my head on what year that was, but what I do enjoy is, and I do think is important and what that highlights is a thoughtful nature to the regulatory impact of what the industry needs.
And so just an acceptance that you own these. And what does that mean? And that means that they're now people understand. Government understands that this is an asset. So therefore you report that. That's the big takeaway. I see. I forgot what year it is. Yeah. It's one of the past 18, 24 months, something like that.
But it's the fact and acknowledgement that this is an asset class and it needs to be treated as such. And that's pretty cool.
Rod Loges: Yep. Absolutely. So, Don, as we're wrapping up here today, what any final insights or ideas that we should make sure everybody knows about here? About you, about the business, about the industry?
Simple questions I ask, right? Oh,
Don Spies: yeah. I was like, wow. Okay. Um, yeah. No, listen, I can say this. Virtual assets are, I'll just say this, Outrider Analytics is here to help. If you have any questions, please reach out. We're a wonderful team of highly motivated, pretty good looking guys and gals that are out there to really do the work that is necessary to help build this.
2025 is going to be a great year. If anyone has any questions about the industry, about what's going on, about anything quasi related to this, if not, just give a shout. We want to help and that's the type of company we're building, which is great. That's great.
Rod Loges: Well, thank you so much for your time here. I very much appreciate it.