1 00:00:01,316 --> 00:00:03,507 Welcome back to Let's Get Digital. 2 00:00:03,507 --> 00:00:07,750 I'm Keri Charles, your host, and today I'm joined by Robert Bai. 3 00:00:07,750 --> 00:00:17,315 He's the founder and president of Zenture Partners, a company using data and automation to change how enterprises source and manage their networks. 4 00:00:17,375 --> 00:00:26,130 Today we're talking about why telecom still runs on spreadsheets, how AI fits in, and what it takes to modernize a legacy industry. 5 00:00:26,130 --> 00:00:27,923 So let's jump in. 6 00:00:27,923 --> 00:00:30,162 Robert, thanks for joining me today. 7 00:00:30,188 --> 00:00:32,659 No, thank you and Kerry, thanks for having me on. 8 00:00:32,930 --> 00:00:34,862 Yes, yes, well let's start with you. 9 00:00:34,862 --> 00:00:36,263 Tell me all about you. 10 00:00:36,263 --> 00:00:40,517 How did you get to this incredible place called Zinscher? 11 00:00:40,974 --> 00:00:42,594 Oh, I appreciate it. 12 00:00:43,314 --> 00:00:50,494 It's kind of scary when you start using the word like 20 years now of being in technology, the technology industry. 13 00:00:51,134 --> 00:00:55,394 2005, I started off at Exo Communication, student voice and data networks. 14 00:00:55,934 --> 00:00:59,474 And as I built up that business, I did extremely well. 15 00:00:59,474 --> 00:01:04,894 I wanted to transition to continue to learn to be more of that advisor for these large enterprises. 16 00:01:05,094 --> 00:01:08,610 I went to work for World Wide Technology, which is one of the largest. 17 00:01:08,610 --> 00:01:09,771 bars in the world today. 18 00:01:09,771 --> 00:01:10,700 They're amazing. 19 00:01:10,700 --> 00:01:18,636 I look up to them and I really got to understand what a bar is and what they're doing today to grow their business. 20 00:01:18,636 --> 00:01:28,080 And then from there, I transitioned to go build out a service provider practice for another reseller and really got to understand supply chain things with the suppliers. 21 00:01:28,121 --> 00:01:30,062 And this is when things started clicking in. 22 00:01:30,062 --> 00:01:37,550 uh I was working with large enterprises, working with the service providers, and one of my former clients had made the decision 23 00:01:37,550 --> 00:01:40,990 to go to Verizon for network as a service. 24 00:01:41,130 --> 00:01:44,150 And I picked up the phone, I called them. 25 00:01:44,150 --> 00:01:51,450 I won't mention who they are, but they're a large retailer that is, I don't know, they're very frugal when it comes to how they spend their money. 26 00:01:51,450 --> 00:01:54,030 And I was shocked by this decision. 27 00:01:54,030 --> 00:01:57,850 And I spoke with the VP of IT and I said, can you help me understand? 28 00:01:57,850 --> 00:02:00,290 How did you guys come to this conclusion? 29 00:02:00,390 --> 00:02:05,792 And I said, I am involved because I'm supplying the hardware for all the Versa. 30 00:02:05,792 --> 00:02:08,463 software that's going out for their SD-WAN environment. 31 00:02:08,463 --> 00:02:12,614 And he shared with me, he's like, Rob, we honestly want to be out of telecom. 32 00:02:12,614 --> 00:02:14,484 Like we're sick of trying to manage it. 33 00:02:14,484 --> 00:02:16,025 We're sick of the finger pointing. 34 00:02:16,025 --> 00:02:19,886 We just wanted to shift it off and we really want to focus on our core. 35 00:02:20,162 --> 00:02:21,346 I was like, wow. 36 00:02:21,346 --> 00:02:31,219 And, you know, as you start looking at it, like they had just gone to one of their two suppliers and the light bulb went off that enterprises are really now starting to look for 37 00:02:31,219 --> 00:02:35,510 new ways of handing certain things out there, you know, of their business off. 38 00:02:35,510 --> 00:02:37,050 including telecom. 39 00:02:37,071 --> 00:02:41,653 And I saw this huge gap that there's not information out there for organizations. 40 00:02:41,653 --> 00:02:52,547 You everyone kind of is reactionary to telecom and there's no one that's really trying to help change it because it's not, you know, this branded AI or the CX customer experience 41 00:02:52,547 --> 00:02:52,767 thing. 42 00:02:52,767 --> 00:02:57,249 It's telecom, which is not, you know, the sexiest thing in the world to talk about. 43 00:02:57,249 --> 00:03:03,782 So I decided that I wanted to go out and found Zensure to really help bring clarity and control. 44 00:03:03,991 --> 00:03:09,063 and access to data for enterprise clients so they can make informed decisions. 45 00:03:09,063 --> 00:03:12,860 And that journey started just almost four years ago now. 46 00:03:13,562 --> 00:03:21,262 So you don't call it a platform, you call it a capability. 47 00:03:21,262 --> 00:03:22,782 That's it. 48 00:03:23,237 --> 00:03:28,381 know, much like the internet wasn't a solution, the internet created capabilities, right? 49 00:03:28,381 --> 00:03:31,883 AI is not uh a product, it's not a service. 50 00:03:31,883 --> 00:03:33,404 It's just creating capabilities. 51 00:03:33,404 --> 00:03:37,007 And we wanted a platform that created capabilities for our clients. 52 00:03:37,007 --> 00:03:47,213 And the platform itself can do a lot of the basic things, know, inventory management, know, carrier access, know, access to fiber tools and other carrier tools that are great. 53 00:03:47,704 --> 00:03:51,597 Customers are always challenging us with like, could you guys do this for us? 54 00:03:51,597 --> 00:03:52,758 Could you create this dashboard? 55 00:03:52,758 --> 00:03:54,109 Can you integrate with this? 56 00:03:54,109 --> 00:04:02,676 And so we literally look at the platform as this true capability to kind of help transform how enterprises are looking at managing their telecom today. 57 00:04:02,850 --> 00:04:09,440 Okay, so let's say that I know nothing about telecom, nothing, I'm brand new to what you're talking about. 58 00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:15,852 I want you to describe Zinscher in detail about what you do and how you do it. 59 00:04:15,852 --> 00:04:17,203 No, absolutely. 60 00:04:17,203 --> 00:04:23,237 you know, I make the joke 20 years ago when I started at XO, I had no background in telecom. 61 00:04:23,237 --> 00:04:25,348 I came from a finance background. 62 00:04:25,348 --> 00:04:26,929 I was a trader in Chicago. 63 00:04:26,929 --> 00:04:35,835 ah And when I made the transition, trying to understand the basic things around telecom was it took me a little bit of a period of time. 64 00:04:36,076 --> 00:04:40,669 But for all of us that are out there, telecom today is traditionally voice and data, right? 65 00:04:40,669 --> 00:04:42,870 And we're going to focus primarily on the data side. 66 00:04:42,870 --> 00:04:45,838 So we all live in a world where we have access to the Internet. 67 00:04:45,838 --> 00:04:51,941 We have internet at our homes, we have internet on our cell phones, and so everyone's aware of what the internet is. 68 00:04:52,042 --> 00:05:01,926 The biggest challenge is that for enterprises today trying to manage their global telephony environment, there isn't a single source solution that's been made available 69 00:05:01,926 --> 00:05:05,269 where they can just go out and buy Comcast globally. 70 00:05:05,269 --> 00:05:11,492 So these enterprises that need internet, they look at it as a pure utility. 71 00:05:11,492 --> 00:05:12,933 It's kind of like electricity. 72 00:05:12,933 --> 00:05:14,924 You need it in order to work. 73 00:05:15,096 --> 00:05:16,307 but no one really thinks about it. 74 00:05:16,307 --> 00:05:22,973 But with internet, it is what gives you access to all your applications, be it up in the public cloud, in your data center. 75 00:05:22,973 --> 00:05:29,518 It's what's allows you to speak across your entire global network via Teams or other collaboration tools. 76 00:05:29,518 --> 00:05:35,764 And so the requirement is telecom is the lifeline for all businesses. 77 00:05:35,764 --> 00:05:42,289 And when we look at where telecom is today, it's a much different animal than it was 20 years ago. 78 00:05:42,289 --> 00:05:43,830 When we started looking, 79 00:05:43,830 --> 00:05:47,723 You know, in 2010 and MPLS was becoming this new area. 80 00:05:47,723 --> 00:05:59,501 And for you that don't know what MPLS is, it was a managed wide area network, which meant that you had selected someone like an AT &T or Verizon or whomever to go out and purchase 81 00:05:59,501 --> 00:06:01,422 circuits to connect all your locations. 82 00:06:01,422 --> 00:06:08,227 And it was the responsibility of that partner to connect all your locations to provide that network for you. 83 00:06:08,227 --> 00:06:12,878 Well, as we've shifted into SD-WAN, the ability to leverage internet, 84 00:06:12,878 --> 00:06:16,218 as these applications have started moving up to the public cloud. 85 00:06:16,318 --> 00:06:20,798 And again, another question of what is the public cloud is we can get into it. 86 00:06:20,798 --> 00:06:26,218 It then shifted the need from an MPLS network to this, we just need internet circuits. 87 00:06:26,218 --> 00:06:32,938 And because businesses rely so heavily on it, they wanted to have a primary and a secondary circuit. 88 00:06:32,938 --> 00:06:41,826 Well, if you're a global company that operates out of the US, you're operating in 60, 70, 80 countries, hundreds of locations, they're... 89 00:06:41,826 --> 00:06:46,517 There are so many providers around the globe that how do know who you can use in a location? 90 00:06:46,517 --> 00:06:53,659 You know, we don't have access to things like an Amazon or a Zillow where we can go on and say, here's where I'm at. 91 00:06:53,659 --> 00:06:55,990 Here's what I'm looking for and what's available. 92 00:06:55,990 --> 00:07:01,611 You're kind of left to either ask your primary provider in the U S who has no facilities over there. 93 00:07:01,611 --> 00:07:03,712 Like who can I use? 94 00:07:03,892 --> 00:07:10,254 Or you start asking your local teams to like, Hey, you're my operations manager for our site in Germany. 95 00:07:10,254 --> 00:07:11,662 need an internet circuit. 96 00:07:11,662 --> 00:07:15,681 Well, also we have one internet circuit and a secondary internet circuit. 97 00:07:15,681 --> 00:07:17,082 Things are getting mixed up. 98 00:07:17,082 --> 00:07:19,442 No one's managing it from an inventory standpoint. 99 00:07:19,442 --> 00:07:22,142 No one's capturing circuit provisioning details. 100 00:07:22,162 --> 00:07:32,462 And also now this internet that's at all your sites that is working has really caused a lot of risk because we don't have the true diversity and resiliency between primary and 101 00:07:32,462 --> 00:07:33,882 the secondary circuits. 102 00:07:33,942 --> 00:07:37,842 No one's capturing what the spending cost is and how it's being allocated. 103 00:07:38,102 --> 00:07:39,502 Things kind of just renew. 104 00:07:39,502 --> 00:07:44,942 And we built ourselves to be just very reactionary where it comes to, you know, telecom and internet. 105 00:07:44,942 --> 00:07:48,322 So, you know, if it's working, no one makes a phone call. 106 00:07:48,322 --> 00:07:50,382 Things go down, everyone screams. 107 00:07:50,442 --> 00:07:54,702 And that reactionary, you know, effort is caused tons of pain, right? 108 00:07:54,702 --> 00:08:03,182 If you're a manufacturer and you have a manufacturing site that's down for a day or two, it could cost millions of dollars in delays and just that manufacturing segment and what 109 00:08:03,182 --> 00:08:05,782 it creates downstream in the supply chain. 110 00:08:06,002 --> 00:08:06,902 So, 111 00:08:07,018 --> 00:08:10,880 We set out to go out and create the first global telecom marketplace. 112 00:08:10,880 --> 00:08:16,143 A location for a customer can go in, put an address and say who is available, right? 113 00:08:16,143 --> 00:08:20,445 So for the first time, they just want to know who can deliver service at that location. 114 00:08:20,445 --> 00:08:23,766 And then next, what is that global benchmark pricing, right? 115 00:08:23,766 --> 00:08:31,726 When we look at internet pricing, it is so great across the board, you know, for a... 116 00:08:31,726 --> 00:08:38,346 a gig circuit in the United States, maybe you're paying $700, $800, know, on average, you know, in tier one cities. 117 00:08:38,346 --> 00:08:44,886 If you go to Dubai or Saudi Arabia, that same one gig circuit could be 18 to $26,000. 118 00:08:44,926 --> 00:08:46,706 And that's a significant difference. 119 00:08:46,706 --> 00:08:54,866 And everyone, you know, is an understanding of, I being taken advantage of because we don't have local resources in sourcing or procurement? 120 00:08:55,106 --> 00:08:58,146 Or, you know, what should that actual price point be? 121 00:08:58,146 --> 00:09:01,518 And the only tools that sourcing procurement 122 00:09:01,518 --> 00:09:04,458 IT leaders have had is I need you to sharpen your pencil. 123 00:09:04,518 --> 00:09:06,338 But you had no data, right? 124 00:09:06,338 --> 00:09:15,038 And so we set out not only to provide access to who are those providers in there, but what is the current market rates in a trend pricing those out? 125 00:09:15,118 --> 00:09:24,318 And then, you know, just adding to that, you if you look at what we were spending for Internet three years ago, it's down 30 % year over year for the last three years. 126 00:09:24,318 --> 00:09:29,112 So, you know, everyone's using their pricing from three years ago to go, is that a good price today? 127 00:09:29,112 --> 00:09:31,133 Well, it's pretty close what we have on this other circuit. 128 00:09:31,133 --> 00:09:33,984 So yes, well, you do that over three to four years. 129 00:09:33,984 --> 00:09:40,026 Also, you're recognizing that you're spending today two to three times over what the market conditions are buried. 130 00:09:40,167 --> 00:09:44,288 So we look at, you know, internet and telecom as a commodity, right? 131 00:09:44,288 --> 00:09:46,409 Just, they're just an internet circuit. 132 00:09:46,549 --> 00:09:48,850 Customers are asking for three things. 133 00:09:48,930 --> 00:09:49,731 Who's available? 134 00:09:49,731 --> 00:09:51,151 How are you delivering it? 135 00:09:51,191 --> 00:09:53,632 What is your cost and how long will it take you to deliver it? 136 00:09:53,632 --> 00:09:54,913 That's all I really need. 137 00:09:54,913 --> 00:09:57,656 And we don't need someone to kind of help shape 138 00:09:57,656 --> 00:10:01,128 you know, the customer and what you need for a con activity or bandwidth needs. 139 00:10:01,128 --> 00:10:02,838 These customers are very intelligent. 140 00:10:02,838 --> 00:10:04,069 They're very smart. 141 00:10:04,069 --> 00:10:06,430 They know what they need because they have similar facilities. 142 00:10:06,430 --> 00:10:08,071 So I don't want to get into the sales games. 143 00:10:08,071 --> 00:10:09,872 Just give me that access. 144 00:10:09,872 --> 00:10:16,495 And we all live where if we want to order paper towels or batteries, we can go on Amazon and have it in two seconds. 145 00:10:16,495 --> 00:10:24,748 And in fact, if I'm on Amazon, Amazon is going to say, hey, here's Braun, but here's some other paper towel goods that people have bought and other price points. 146 00:10:24,854 --> 00:10:29,658 And so we live in a world that we want access to data to become informed buyers. 147 00:10:29,839 --> 00:10:32,061 It just doesn't exist in telecom. 148 00:10:32,061 --> 00:10:39,167 And if you try to rely on your primary provider, who's great fit in the US, they're just not the best fit for your needs globally. 149 00:10:39,208 --> 00:10:41,069 So we want to inform our customers. 150 00:10:41,069 --> 00:10:50,018 There's this massive gap and we've seen people jumping on and adopting, leveraging us faster than we can give them the attention they need. 151 00:10:50,810 --> 00:11:00,090 So it's interesting because I'm hearing that telecom sourcing and management is still very manual, right, for many enterprises. 152 00:11:00,110 --> 00:11:04,970 And you talked a little bit about some of the things that were broken. 153 00:11:05,330 --> 00:11:14,470 Is there anything else that is fundamentally broken or not working in this area that you're able to solve for? 154 00:11:14,496 --> 00:11:23,954 Oh, well, you know, I first look at what's going on with enterprises today is, know, we're, you know, every enterprise is being asked to do more with less. 155 00:11:23,954 --> 00:11:29,578 And when they start looking at what is truly transforming their business, what's enabling them, right? 156 00:11:29,578 --> 00:11:31,820 They're focusing on their AI. 157 00:11:31,820 --> 00:11:34,142 They're focusing on their enterprise software. 158 00:11:34,142 --> 00:11:39,667 They're focusing on, you know, security, you know, are those main things that they're focusing on. 159 00:11:39,667 --> 00:11:44,108 And telecom is as they look at it, it's just utility. 160 00:11:44,108 --> 00:11:44,308 Right? 161 00:11:44,308 --> 00:11:46,159 So it's, it's not transforming. 162 00:11:46,159 --> 00:11:47,780 It's not impacting their business. 163 00:11:47,780 --> 00:11:50,281 It's, it's just there to kind of meet those needs. 164 00:11:50,281 --> 00:11:54,452 Um, and so they're not putting any resources like they once had, right? 165 00:11:54,452 --> 00:12:05,477 There used to be telecom sourcing managers and telecom procurement teams and telecom, you know, network managers that took over those responsibilities, but it's kind of all gone 166 00:12:05,477 --> 00:12:07,768 from a team of 22, like a team of one. 167 00:12:07,768 --> 00:12:13,230 And that individual does not have the time or experience to go out there and suit those things. 168 00:12:13,358 --> 00:12:22,781 ah And so as we look at trying to manage how telecom works with, you know, auto renewals, you know, how do you get information from your sales teams? 169 00:12:22,781 --> 00:12:24,111 Who do you actually reach out to? 170 00:12:24,111 --> 00:12:35,104 You know, the constant sales pain points that we see with the average sales team having a life expectancy of only seven months for an enterprise customer. 171 00:12:35,104 --> 00:12:40,642 That means every seven months, you're getting a new account team who's now needing to relearn your business to understand. 172 00:12:40,642 --> 00:12:43,924 what opportunities were in the pipeline are real or fake. 173 00:12:43,924 --> 00:12:53,962 it becomes a painful environment when I should be able to at nine o'clock at night go onto my computer and say, here's the two sites I need, what's an option and I should be able to 174 00:12:53,962 --> 00:12:54,852 make a quick decision. 175 00:12:54,852 --> 00:12:58,935 ah So capturing that is key. 176 00:12:58,935 --> 00:13:03,387 But then I look at what we're really trying to do is taking them from those spreadsheets, right? 177 00:13:03,387 --> 00:13:06,320 Where this customer has had a spreadsheet that they've worked off of. 178 00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:08,521 We're taking that, we're visualizing it. 179 00:13:08,521 --> 00:13:10,382 But then we're applying our 180 00:13:10,598 --> 00:13:21,187 our dedicated account teams, our customer success managers, along with our oh AI to really go in and pull the data from the carriers for the data that's missing. 181 00:13:21,187 --> 00:13:28,323 So everyone knows I have a circuit with provider one at this site, here's my circuit ID, but they never captured the actual contract date. 182 00:13:28,323 --> 00:13:32,016 They never captured how that circuit was provisioned from the last mile. 183 00:13:32,097 --> 00:13:37,441 And it's not stuff that you can just instantly pull from your carrier portal or from an invoice. 184 00:13:37,642 --> 00:13:38,572 And so, 185 00:13:38,584 --> 00:13:44,718 Collecting that data is a lot of effort from our teams, but it really starts to provide visibility. 186 00:13:44,718 --> 00:13:53,765 And our entire focus around telecom is to go from this reactionary world where we react to, know, something's on fire to let's be proactive. 187 00:13:53,765 --> 00:13:55,546 Let's start looking at your environment. 188 00:13:55,546 --> 00:14:01,470 Let's start understanding what the other stakeholders are doing to create business outcomes versus just relying upon that. 189 00:14:01,470 --> 00:14:05,313 ah The driving down costs is simple, right? 190 00:14:05,313 --> 00:14:07,334 We're helping companies save costs and... 191 00:14:07,342 --> 00:14:13,082 know, telecom spend, you know, for most enterprises about five to 8 % of their overall IT budget. 192 00:14:13,222 --> 00:14:19,182 So, you know, having a 5-10 % reduction isn't really driving that much innovation. 193 00:14:19,502 --> 00:14:22,482 And so we really focused on the day two support model, right? 194 00:14:22,482 --> 00:14:23,802 How are you managing this? 195 00:14:23,802 --> 00:14:26,342 What is your cost if a site does go down? 196 00:14:26,342 --> 00:14:36,226 What happens when a new, you know, IT stakeholder comes in and says, we want to deploy this new PLM solution and it's going to require that we have a change in our network. 197 00:14:36,226 --> 00:14:37,467 Well, how do you plan for that? 198 00:14:37,467 --> 00:14:41,148 And how do we start getting ahead of understanding what those capabilities are? 199 00:14:41,608 --> 00:14:43,509 And we want to be able to provide that. 200 00:14:43,589 --> 00:14:46,070 And because no one wants to deal with salespeople, right? 201 00:14:46,070 --> 00:14:53,133 We've gone where I can get 90 % of the things off of the app is we're letting our platform provide this data to our customers. 202 00:14:53,133 --> 00:15:01,826 Here are the actionable insights that we recommend that you take, you know, this month or this quarter, and you can work with our teams, but it makes it very simple to say, here's 203 00:15:01,826 --> 00:15:05,848 a site you have, here's what you're spending, here's your utilization. 204 00:15:05,848 --> 00:15:11,961 you're up renewal in three months, we recommend doing a renewal and here's the cost that we recommend targeting for that renewal. 205 00:15:11,961 --> 00:15:17,503 Okay, we can take that on, you can take that on, it's up for the customer to try to leverage us the way they want. 206 00:15:17,503 --> 00:15:29,107 ah And so in there, we look at an industry where, again, there is no access to data, no one's hiring resources to manage it, where we can build this platform to create all these 207 00:15:29,107 --> 00:15:36,050 capabilities to say, how do we become an extension of your team without driving additional costs while we're actually driving costs down? 208 00:15:36,866 --> 00:15:43,293 So you mentioned when we talked earlier that you save companies sometimes millions, right? 209 00:15:43,470 --> 00:15:46,390 I mean, millions in actual recurring costs. 210 00:15:46,390 --> 00:15:47,050 Absolutely. 211 00:15:47,050 --> 00:15:52,770 I mean, we look at, you know, the challenges we have with telecom. 212 00:15:52,770 --> 00:15:56,490 And I was the salesperson, I can admit to this. 213 00:15:56,510 --> 00:16:09,650 But, you know, when clients have services, and I talked about the fact we're 30 % year over year reduction in cost per met cost, is clients who had a one gig in 2020, let's say 214 00:16:09,650 --> 00:16:11,470 they're spending $2,000. 215 00:16:11,470 --> 00:16:13,154 Now they want to move to a 10 gig. 216 00:16:13,154 --> 00:16:18,375 Well, that 10 gig cost is probably the same cost that they're paying for the one gig circuit today. 217 00:16:18,395 --> 00:16:22,197 However, the sales team only gets compensated on revenue increase. 218 00:16:22,197 --> 00:16:31,379 And because sales, for the most part, aren't doing their jobs, right, they're going to now try to make up for their shortfalls and charging three, four X over market rates. 219 00:16:31,379 --> 00:16:35,860 But for the customer, they're going, I'm going from a one gig to a 10 gig and I'm only doubling my costs. 220 00:16:35,860 --> 00:16:36,220 Right. 221 00:16:36,220 --> 00:16:37,761 Seems like a win. 222 00:16:37,761 --> 00:16:39,521 And so you keep doing that. 223 00:16:39,521 --> 00:16:42,282 But the problem is you're 224 00:16:42,318 --> 00:16:44,918 end up paying three to four times over that market rate. 225 00:16:44,918 --> 00:16:47,258 And it's only because of the sales commissions. 226 00:16:47,738 --> 00:16:50,578 And customers have said, there's no way this is possible. 227 00:16:50,578 --> 00:16:50,798 Right. 228 00:16:50,798 --> 00:16:57,118 And I'm like, well, challenges use our platform to pull pricing from AT &T or from Verizon. 229 00:16:57,118 --> 00:16:57,738 Right. 230 00:16:57,738 --> 00:16:59,018 And just sample it. 231 00:16:59,018 --> 00:17:02,558 And they're like, they're like, well, you must be providing a different solution. 232 00:17:02,558 --> 00:17:02,718 Right. 233 00:17:02,718 --> 00:17:04,138 I'm like, this is not Zenture. 234 00:17:04,138 --> 00:17:09,838 This is coming directly out of the pricing tools of Verizon or Lumen or AT &T. 235 00:17:09,838 --> 00:17:11,148 So you see that. 236 00:17:11,148 --> 00:17:20,222 And then we look at what just happened in December, Verizon laid off 13,000 people in the United States, 50 % of the direct sales force. 237 00:17:20,222 --> 00:17:27,064 And it's because direct sales teams, I mean, they come with a large salary, there's no guarantee to what they're selling. 238 00:17:27,064 --> 00:17:40,650 And it's this constant change of revenue replacement and the goal of the salesperson from a commission revenue perspective versus what is helping drive the customer's needs. 239 00:17:40,974 --> 00:17:43,874 All this change has caused us more pain on the customer side. 240 00:17:43,874 --> 00:17:47,114 You can look at the net promoter scores in telecom. 241 00:17:47,114 --> 00:17:51,474 It's the lowest out of all, you know, B2B industries, right? 242 00:17:51,474 --> 00:17:54,314 Healthcare has got a higher standard, insurance has got... 243 00:17:54,314 --> 00:17:56,454 Telecom is the lowest out of all. 244 00:17:56,454 --> 00:17:59,314 And it's because we look at it as a utility. 245 00:17:59,314 --> 00:18:01,554 No one is actually helping drive innovation. 246 00:18:01,554 --> 00:18:03,434 Everyone's doing what's best for themselves. 247 00:18:03,434 --> 00:18:05,734 No one is putting what's best for the customer's needs. 248 00:18:05,734 --> 00:18:11,138 And I think they just finally got, they threw their hands up and says, why isn't there a better way? 249 00:18:11,138 --> 00:18:16,790 Why can't I just go to a site and look up something like if I want to buy an airline ticket? 250 00:18:16,790 --> 00:18:23,366 mean, like there's nothing in this world that we can't just go out and quickly identify, be it a car, a home, travel. 251 00:18:23,366 --> 00:18:24,447 It's all available. 252 00:18:24,447 --> 00:18:25,647 Telecom? 253 00:18:25,948 --> 00:18:27,029 There's nothing. 254 00:18:27,029 --> 00:18:29,360 There is nothing that's available. 255 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:34,894 And so that missing piece that finally someone can go, well, how'd you find out who's available there? 256 00:18:34,894 --> 00:18:38,676 Well, I I asked my rep, right? 257 00:18:38,698 --> 00:18:39,437 Did you ask anyone else? 258 00:18:39,437 --> 00:18:41,162 Like, I wouldn't even know who to call. 259 00:18:41,162 --> 00:18:51,944 And so our goal is just really helping the customers understand what's out there, what are those possibilities, and then aligning to their goals um that meets their needs, not 260 00:18:51,944 --> 00:18:53,186 centuries needs. 261 00:18:53,810 --> 00:19:03,257 So, you know, we're talking about telecom is legacy heavy as an industry, uh typically at some points resistant to change. 262 00:19:03,257 --> 00:19:04,398 We talked about that. 263 00:19:04,398 --> 00:19:05,899 So what's been harder? 264 00:19:05,899 --> 00:19:08,240 uh Building something disruptive. 265 00:19:08,240 --> 00:19:16,806 I mean, this is textbook disruption with technology or getting customers to trust and adopt a new way of operating. 266 00:19:17,454 --> 00:19:20,557 oh Well, wow, which one is more challenging? 267 00:19:20,557 --> 00:19:32,947 um So our Zenture focuses primarily on large global enterprises and in there, those are organizations that have always worked directly with their account teams. 268 00:19:32,947 --> 00:19:37,151 And so they felt that's the way I get the best pricing. 269 00:19:37,151 --> 00:19:40,103 And we've had to educate our customers. 270 00:19:40,103 --> 00:19:45,277 So the education piece on that side has been a challenge. 271 00:19:45,806 --> 00:19:50,026 the model that we provide is there's no cost for them to use the platform, right? 272 00:19:50,026 --> 00:19:52,706 Like it's, you're not buying through us. 273 00:19:52,706 --> 00:19:54,326 It's not like you're buying things through Zensure. 274 00:19:54,326 --> 00:19:56,486 You're buying them directly from these carriers. 275 00:19:56,706 --> 00:20:02,226 And they're still scratching their head of like, well, how do you get paid and how is our cost down? 276 00:20:02,226 --> 00:20:07,446 And we go through it like, I'm like, I'm going to show you, I'm going to tell you how, and you're to move forward. 277 00:20:07,446 --> 00:20:10,566 And the next time you're like, is this going to be like this every time? 278 00:20:10,566 --> 00:20:14,380 And I had to kind of educate them where the markets 279 00:20:14,380 --> 00:20:15,290 moving to, right? 280 00:20:15,290 --> 00:20:20,522 And with Verizon's layoffs last month, it's just another thing that says they're moving towards automation. 281 00:20:20,522 --> 00:20:21,722 They're looking for self-service. 282 00:20:21,722 --> 00:20:24,773 This is all the things that telecoms are trying to build towards. 283 00:20:24,873 --> 00:20:32,075 And if you're a global company, you're going to be forced to try to manage through 50, 60, 70 different portals like that, which isn't efficient. 284 00:20:32,555 --> 00:20:36,717 On the other side is what we're trying to create in disruption. 285 00:20:36,717 --> 00:20:39,387 I look at it as the blockbuster versus Netflix, right? 286 00:20:39,387 --> 00:20:42,278 We all are used to operating on 287 00:20:42,542 --> 00:20:45,123 If I want to watch a movie this weekend, I'm going to go to Blockbuster. 288 00:20:45,123 --> 00:20:47,985 I'm going to hope the movie I want is in stock. 289 00:20:47,985 --> 00:20:49,926 We're going to rent it, maybe one more. 290 00:20:49,926 --> 00:20:53,498 And then on Sunday, we're going to freak out and try to return it before 11 o'clock. 291 00:20:53,498 --> 00:20:55,169 So no good hit with late fees. 292 00:20:56,570 --> 00:20:57,951 Thankfully we do. 293 00:20:57,951 --> 00:21:01,713 And then Netflix came up and they didn't change the movie, right? 294 00:21:01,713 --> 00:21:06,815 They said, hey, here's there's a better way of getting that movie experience at your home. 295 00:21:06,835 --> 00:21:11,660 And that disrupted that entire supply chain because you had groups that were all about 296 00:21:11,660 --> 00:21:13,432 you know, DVDs and DVD. 297 00:21:13,432 --> 00:21:16,233 Like there's so many things that are tied to it. 298 00:21:16,234 --> 00:21:24,330 And when we look at what we're doing, it's it's now telling a carrier, we want to be the exclusive partner for this enterprise. 299 00:21:24,330 --> 00:21:27,703 I'm like, but you do realize enterprises are smart. 300 00:21:27,703 --> 00:21:29,685 They're they're going to challenge you. 301 00:21:29,685 --> 00:21:31,846 They're going to go ask for other quotes. 302 00:21:32,087 --> 00:21:34,209 Customers want access to the data. 303 00:21:34,209 --> 00:21:36,210 So if you're fit, great. 304 00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:40,878 If you're not, you should understand you're not a good fit for delivering services in this market. 305 00:21:40,878 --> 00:21:45,838 you shouldn't try to deliver services in that market because there's no value there. 306 00:21:46,038 --> 00:21:53,858 And so the challenge of them, of us changing it, where we're giving the customer like the leverage, they don't like that. 307 00:21:53,858 --> 00:21:55,278 Like how do I fight with renewals? 308 00:21:55,278 --> 00:21:56,898 How do I start changing things? 309 00:21:56,898 --> 00:22:01,138 So, you know, the entire history of like, I'm going to give you a pricing schedule. 310 00:22:01,138 --> 00:22:06,718 Well, like I said, you know, over the last three years, pricing's down over 30 % year-over-year. 311 00:22:06,718 --> 00:22:08,781 So that pricing schedule from two years ago. 312 00:22:08,781 --> 00:22:11,961 is 60 % over rate than it should be. 313 00:22:11,961 --> 00:22:16,321 And they're like, well, we need commitments in order to provide these resources for you. 314 00:22:16,321 --> 00:22:22,761 Well, that was true until you started charging for dedicated resources and then you offshored all these resources. 315 00:22:22,881 --> 00:22:28,921 So the entire model is so broken that it's like trying to push water uphill. 316 00:22:28,921 --> 00:22:34,281 And so we've had a few carriers who have adopted with us that are 100 % lock in. 317 00:22:34,281 --> 00:22:37,976 Like this is a model where we can deliver the services that we want to deliver. 318 00:22:37,976 --> 00:22:43,807 we can deliver them at the margins that we want to keep, which is helping keeping costs down to the customers. 319 00:22:43,988 --> 00:22:45,866 And it works great. 320 00:22:45,866 --> 00:22:50,590 And then we have others who, you know, it's back and forth. 321 00:22:50,590 --> 00:22:58,252 So as the customers, you know, go through and do, I call it a proof of value and testing us and leveraging it, it starts clicking, right? 322 00:22:58,252 --> 00:23:02,326 And then they're like, why wasn't this available a year ago? 323 00:23:02,326 --> 00:23:02,589 Right? 324 00:23:02,589 --> 00:23:06,584 I'm like, well, it was, it took you, but. 325 00:23:06,584 --> 00:23:08,515 You know, but we say the same thing about Netflix. 326 00:23:08,515 --> 00:23:15,421 can I, mean, Mike, my kids, you know, lot of the people we work with industry never went to a blockbuster, right? 327 00:23:15,421 --> 00:23:18,854 It's very difficult to say this is how we used to do things. 328 00:23:18,854 --> 00:23:19,224 Right. 329 00:23:19,224 --> 00:23:21,686 And so it will change. 330 00:23:21,686 --> 00:23:32,815 And I believe over the next 12 to 18 months, it's going to change even faster than we're thinking about because the adoption to how customers are bringing in AI to do basic 331 00:23:32,815 --> 00:23:36,428 fundamental roles inside those businesses. 332 00:23:36,462 --> 00:23:38,824 They're now looking for smarter ways to do everything. 333 00:23:38,824 --> 00:23:48,700 And if this is a platform that provides the AI that does the automatic reviews, analysis, invoice reviews, provides them the guarantee and visibility to that data they're looking 334 00:23:48,700 --> 00:23:52,813 for, they can now shift and put more focus in other areas. 335 00:23:52,813 --> 00:23:58,957 And because we're not trying to charge an upfront heavy fee to work with us, that's the hard part. 336 00:23:58,957 --> 00:24:01,439 Like, why don't you guys charge for us? 337 00:24:01,439 --> 00:24:04,321 I'm like, I could, we absolutely could charge for you. 338 00:24:04,321 --> 00:24:05,742 I just don't believe we should. 339 00:24:05,742 --> 00:24:12,402 Like you don't pay Amazon maybe for Prime, but for the most part, we don't pay for those services, right? 340 00:24:12,402 --> 00:24:14,242 We get paid by the providers. 341 00:24:14,242 --> 00:24:20,702 Our goal is to provide a better experience for our customers to help grow that business with all those carriers. 342 00:24:20,722 --> 00:24:23,422 And that's why they're paying us on the back end. 343 00:24:23,422 --> 00:24:27,262 But they pay us a small fee to provide that reoccurring ongoing support. 344 00:24:27,262 --> 00:24:35,630 And it's again, it's just that transition from the way we've done things for the last 20 years to transition to something new. 345 00:24:35,630 --> 00:24:41,290 especially with something new that's massively disruptive to the customer. 346 00:24:41,990 --> 00:24:47,710 All those circuits that are being built globally, 50,000 invoices, it's fine. 347 00:24:47,710 --> 00:24:49,230 It's not going to change anything. 348 00:24:49,330 --> 00:24:51,270 Maybe it makes life of AP simpler. 349 00:24:51,270 --> 00:24:55,650 Maybe it makes life of our NOC simpler to do some things, but it's working. 350 00:24:56,130 --> 00:25:02,430 They're focusing on these bigger projects and that's our goal to say, fine, don't put any more time or effort in. 351 00:25:02,430 --> 00:25:05,430 Let us go out and just provide the data, the access and 352 00:25:05,430 --> 00:25:06,531 Here are the outcomes. 353 00:25:06,531 --> 00:25:07,202 And for you, Mr. 354 00:25:07,202 --> 00:25:08,794 Customer, you can say yes or no. 355 00:25:08,794 --> 00:25:13,088 I don't know why you would say no, but it's up for you then to take that action. 356 00:25:13,982 --> 00:25:21,860 So I talked about, you've talked about AI a few times, how does AI really fit into your capability, your platform? 357 00:25:21,952 --> 00:25:25,324 So uh there's two pieces of it. 358 00:25:26,845 --> 00:25:30,667 with regards to platform, the way we ingest data, right? 359 00:25:30,667 --> 00:25:35,990 if someone was, if I were to ask the typical customer, where's all your data set, right? 360 00:25:35,990 --> 00:25:37,391 Where's your inventory? 361 00:25:37,391 --> 00:25:40,002 It's going to be on spreadsheets or invoices. 362 00:25:40,002 --> 00:25:43,754 Maybe someone's got it in some dashboard, carrier portal. 363 00:25:43,754 --> 00:25:45,295 We can ingest all that. 364 00:25:45,295 --> 00:25:50,880 And we ingest using tools like Gemini, right, to convert. 365 00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:59,593 an Excel spreadsheet to a Google doc to ingest that data, which allows us not to do it manually, but through AI to ingest that data. 366 00:25:59,934 --> 00:26:05,276 Once the data sits in there, we've taught certain agents to do specific tasks within our platform. 367 00:26:05,276 --> 00:26:07,177 So one is looking at sites, right? 368 00:26:07,177 --> 00:26:14,600 So we have an agent that reviews services at a location to identify are there any challenges or risk scores, right? 369 00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:17,891 So do we have diversity at a last mile? 370 00:26:17,891 --> 00:26:19,446 Do we have diversity that pops? 371 00:26:19,446 --> 00:26:22,027 Now, AI is just reviewing it based on what's there. 372 00:26:22,147 --> 00:26:28,108 At the same time, if we don't have that data, the AI is coming out and saying, hey, we're missing data at this location. 373 00:26:28,469 --> 00:26:35,731 The bigger piece, though, is when we look at the global marketplace is creating a Agenic AI between venture and the carriers. 374 00:26:35,731 --> 00:26:44,153 And this is where we're to see how communication really transforms and how do we communicate with the carriers to get quotes, to place orders, to manage things. 375 00:26:44,153 --> 00:26:48,020 ah And so when we look at Agenic AI, 376 00:26:48,020 --> 00:26:51,332 It's having individual agents that have specific tasks, right? 377 00:26:51,332 --> 00:26:55,434 And then an overarching management structure that can build that out. 378 00:26:55,434 --> 00:27:03,639 So when we create a Agenic AI communications with say a GTT or Lumen, it's allowing us to have an agent that can pull pricing. 379 00:27:03,639 --> 00:27:05,325 has an agent that can place orders. 380 00:27:05,325 --> 00:27:07,511 has an agent that can pull data. 381 00:27:07,511 --> 00:27:10,343 So that streamlines that approach. 382 00:27:10,343 --> 00:27:16,312 Well, I'm no longer now having to go to a sales team and saying, Hey, here's this site. 383 00:27:16,312 --> 00:27:18,283 Here's the spreadsheet with all the sites. 384 00:27:18,283 --> 00:27:19,763 Can you quote this out? 385 00:27:19,763 --> 00:27:23,224 Well, all they're doing is taking my spreadsheet and putting it into their system. 386 00:27:23,224 --> 00:27:26,084 So we can remove that individual. 387 00:27:26,145 --> 00:27:30,886 That individual, I mean, isn't delivering it much of a value. 388 00:27:30,886 --> 00:27:36,087 So it allows us to help the carriers provide better margins on their services. 389 00:27:36,087 --> 00:27:38,728 Better margins means they can provide better support. 390 00:27:38,728 --> 00:27:40,709 We're getting quotes that are faster. 391 00:27:40,709 --> 00:27:42,499 We're also evaluating those quickly. 392 00:27:42,499 --> 00:27:46,178 So if we see something come back and it's outside the typical parameters, 393 00:27:46,178 --> 00:27:49,500 we're flagging it and it's requesting updated pricing. 394 00:27:49,661 --> 00:27:54,731 All of our quote requests are providing all those additional documents that typically get missed, right? 395 00:27:54,731 --> 00:27:56,256 Like how is this being delivered last mile? 396 00:27:56,256 --> 00:28:05,193 So the communication between Zentra and the carriers in this global marketplace, I think is what is going to just truly benefit the edge customers. 397 00:28:05,193 --> 00:28:16,014 uh And this allows again, like a Verizon who just cut off 7,000 salespeople to say, how do we continue to support our customers without it being painful? 398 00:28:16,014 --> 00:28:18,434 to get something as simple as an internet circuit, right? 399 00:28:18,434 --> 00:28:30,494 And so that piece of leveraging AI and how we communicate between the carriers, how we communicate with other procurement systems, how we use AI to do a lot of the reviews of 400 00:28:30,494 --> 00:28:40,114 services, to flag things, to start creating these actionable insights for our clients, takes it away from someone like our dedicated CSMs, who now are meeting with our customers 401 00:28:40,114 --> 00:28:45,912 not to pull out those things, is to say, how do we help make telecom a better experience for you? 402 00:28:45,912 --> 00:28:48,743 How do we create a better experience? 403 00:28:48,743 --> 00:28:49,764 We're not here to sell. 404 00:28:49,764 --> 00:28:52,365 We're here to help make your life easier. 405 00:28:52,365 --> 00:29:02,769 And that leveraging AI to do a lot of the tasks that would have been very heavily from a manual entry, data entry piece uh has been simplified. 406 00:29:02,789 --> 00:29:04,530 It's becoming smarter. 407 00:29:04,530 --> 00:29:09,611 Every three months, we're looking at what the capabilities of the AI agents we're using. 408 00:29:09,652 --> 00:29:16,074 And I don't want to say where I think it's going to be in a year, but one year from now, we believe 409 00:29:16,202 --> 00:29:25,264 our AI agents that reviews invoices, we'll be able to review it and tell a customer within seconds of that invoice being published, what's on your invoice? 410 00:29:25,264 --> 00:29:27,065 Are there any discrepancies? 411 00:29:27,065 --> 00:29:29,586 Are there new orders that are on there? 412 00:29:29,586 --> 00:29:34,647 If there are, do we have access to those orders just to let you know, like here's the order you placed back in June. 413 00:29:34,647 --> 00:29:36,928 It was now on your invoice in December. 414 00:29:36,928 --> 00:29:38,848 It matches up for what you agreed to. 415 00:29:38,848 --> 00:29:46,150 Where a customer now has a quick sheet that comes in, here's the invoice, here's what's on it, cause written in a telecom invoice. 416 00:29:46,158 --> 00:29:58,518 you know, is, it's challenging, you know, unless you can do, you know, know, lot of manipulation and that piece just helps simplify the workloads for those customers. 417 00:29:58,518 --> 00:30:03,978 So I believe it's driving down costs, it's increasing ability for innovation. 418 00:30:04,058 --> 00:30:12,958 It's allowing customers to really focus on their core capabilities and moving from that reactionary to, you know, proactive type environment. 419 00:30:13,796 --> 00:30:17,610 So let's talk a little bit about the future, more about the future. 420 00:30:17,871 --> 00:30:26,892 Looking ahead, how do you see enterprise telecom management changing over the next few years, maybe 10 years or so? 421 00:30:26,892 --> 00:30:33,309 And what role do you see that Zensure is gonna play as that industry modernizes? 422 00:30:33,922 --> 00:30:37,794 Well, so, and I think this is going to happen even faster, right? 423 00:30:37,794 --> 00:30:43,176 So I look at what the cloud has done to telecom, right? 424 00:30:43,176 --> 00:30:54,141 We've shifted all of our applications from our data centers, know, to our, you know, wherever we were housing our applications to now open the public cloud, you know, our 425 00:30:54,141 --> 00:30:55,291 emails up there. 426 00:30:55,291 --> 00:30:58,472 And so that shift was one, right? 427 00:30:58,472 --> 00:31:02,454 As we look at what AI is doing and what it's going to be doing from 428 00:31:02,454 --> 00:31:08,176 PLM solutions and IoT, you're going to continually need more bandwidth. 429 00:31:08,176 --> 00:31:18,619 And so getting ahead where things are now looking at how do we start creating this better way of using telecom. 430 00:31:18,619 --> 00:31:20,539 I want to use it more as a utility. 431 00:31:20,539 --> 00:31:28,201 So I want to be able to have access to up to 100 gigs at a location, but I want to use it like a utility. 432 00:31:28,201 --> 00:31:30,502 So if I'm using it, charge me for it. 433 00:31:31,342 --> 00:31:36,262 this new, I call it network as a service where things are going to be automated. 434 00:31:36,262 --> 00:31:43,542 Things are going to be able to be dialed up instantly based on internal requirements that can be all set by AI. 435 00:31:43,542 --> 00:31:53,422 So instead of us having to call in and say, this customer's got this site, we need to increase their bandwidth by 200 % or whatever that factor is, the AI is looking at it and 436 00:31:53,422 --> 00:31:55,282 it's doing it automatically. 437 00:31:55,382 --> 00:32:01,314 So the network of the service, which is kind of like a cloud, it's this very broad 438 00:32:01,314 --> 00:32:05,577 thing, but the way we look at it is I need a network that's a pure utility, right? 439 00:32:05,577 --> 00:32:10,021 So I need to be able to make things, changes immediately on the fly. 440 00:32:10,021 --> 00:32:12,683 Technology is being adopted and changed. 441 00:32:12,683 --> 00:32:14,264 I mean, so fast. 442 00:32:14,264 --> 00:32:22,721 mean, we, know, AI three years ago was, you know, doing some basic things and what it's going to do next year is going to be greatly different. 443 00:32:22,721 --> 00:32:31,008 So as customers want it to, or enterprises want to adopt new, new technologies, they need a network that can support that. 444 00:32:31,008 --> 00:32:32,059 instantly. 445 00:32:32,059 --> 00:32:38,034 And so as enterprises start leveraging, you know, AI to do things, so are the carriers, right? 446 00:32:38,034 --> 00:32:43,928 The carriers are building smarter networks that are going to be allowed to open up additional ports and streamline these things. 447 00:32:43,928 --> 00:32:51,555 And this world of automation and AI for the service rider to deliver a better connectivity to the customer. 448 00:32:51,555 --> 00:32:58,000 And then for the customer to have built that and getting those reports that helps keep them honest, right? 449 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,682 Because the very next challenge comes kind of like 450 00:33:00,682 --> 00:33:05,345 using the public cloud is sprawl, billing gets out of control. 451 00:33:05,345 --> 00:33:06,887 How do I know what I'm using? 452 00:33:06,887 --> 00:33:10,389 And that's where we're going to come in say, hey, we're managing this for you. 453 00:33:10,389 --> 00:33:11,950 We're going to keep it in line. 454 00:33:11,950 --> 00:33:16,773 We're going to help make sure that nothing's being done out of incorrectly. 455 00:33:16,773 --> 00:33:18,455 So we're here to have your back. 456 00:33:18,455 --> 00:33:25,760 But you now have a network that can allow you to scale and be as elastic as you need, much like the public cloud allowed you to do back 10 years ago. 457 00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:28,872 Your network can now enable that for you for the future. 458 00:33:29,750 --> 00:33:31,151 So Rob, one more question. 459 00:33:31,151 --> 00:33:40,018 When was the time where you had this idea and you thought, wow, I got something special. 460 00:33:40,018 --> 00:33:44,320 And when did you know that it was gonna work? 461 00:33:44,361 --> 00:33:46,101 When did you get that feeling? 462 00:33:47,892 --> 00:34:01,213 So there is a large partner of ours uh who had reached out, this is probably four years ago, and they were looking at trying to connect to a data center and they were like, I 463 00:34:01,213 --> 00:34:02,935 need two circuits, right? 464 00:34:02,935 --> 00:34:04,736 m And I was even their partner. 465 00:34:04,736 --> 00:34:08,219 They were like, do know who has access to that facility? 466 00:34:08,299 --> 00:34:12,603 Now, thankfully, most large tier one data centers provide a list of all the carriers, right? 467 00:34:12,603 --> 00:34:15,806 But this site didn't have any information. 468 00:34:15,806 --> 00:34:16,790 And this is 469 00:34:16,790 --> 00:34:19,011 an organization with over a half a million employees, right? 470 00:34:19,011 --> 00:34:21,132 So it's not like they're a small group. 471 00:34:21,132 --> 00:34:26,995 They might be one of the biggest IT organizations out there, but they don't have access to this. 472 00:34:27,176 --> 00:34:40,583 And I was just shocked that we live in a world with 15,000 ISPs in the world at $3 trillion industry, that there isn't any space for a customer to go to collect that data. 473 00:34:40,583 --> 00:34:45,065 And again, I think that transition on the cloud, we had an MPLS network. 474 00:34:45,065 --> 00:34:46,636 I had one vendor. 475 00:34:46,668 --> 00:34:48,679 you took care of my global environment. 476 00:34:48,679 --> 00:34:52,580 Well, now we don't need that same vendor to do that global network. 477 00:34:52,981 --> 00:34:55,182 And it's just shifted. 478 00:34:55,182 --> 00:34:58,203 And so you kind of rely on different things. 479 00:34:58,203 --> 00:35:03,225 And the fact that this group came out to me they're like, where do we go? 480 00:35:03,225 --> 00:35:06,866 Cause no one wants to send out 500 emails and wait for responses. 481 00:35:06,866 --> 00:35:07,267 Right. 482 00:35:07,267 --> 00:35:14,229 And then, you know, I've, I live on apps, you know, I've bought cars through Apple, I bought a home searching through apps. 483 00:35:14,330 --> 00:35:15,790 Why wasn't that here? 484 00:35:15,790 --> 00:35:25,970 Like it's just everything's had a touch of our fingertips and it's something I don't wanna say so simple, it's again, it's not the sexiest topic in the world, right? 485 00:35:25,970 --> 00:35:29,610 If we're talking AI and AI platform, everyone wants to have the discussion. 486 00:35:29,610 --> 00:35:35,450 You say telecom, people wanna fall asleep and just move on to the next spot, but it becomes that concern. 487 00:35:35,450 --> 00:35:42,550 And so because it's an important aspect, the way we look at telecom in the future is like air, right? 488 00:35:42,550 --> 00:35:44,950 We need it in order to breathe and function. 489 00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:50,174 But you and I aren't thinking about breathing this entire time we're on this phone unless I tell you to think about breathing, right? 490 00:35:50,174 --> 00:35:52,255 That's how the network needs to be. 491 00:35:52,255 --> 00:35:55,007 It is something that works and functions that you don't think about. 492 00:35:55,007 --> 00:35:56,838 It just delivers. 493 00:35:57,572 --> 00:35:59,886 How many times do we all? 494 00:35:59,886 --> 00:36:09,530 I mean, everyone who's listening to this podcast right now, how many times do we think of something and we think, gosh, why is it happening this way or couldn't it be better? 495 00:36:09,530 --> 00:36:11,131 That's really strange. 496 00:36:11,131 --> 00:36:12,512 It really needs to be this way. 497 00:36:12,512 --> 00:36:14,133 But we don't take action on it. 498 00:36:14,133 --> 00:36:19,095 We don't create from that and design and innovate and create a company. 499 00:36:19,095 --> 00:36:27,899 You're talking about all these people who were laid off and I mean, it's just unbelievable over the past couple of years what's happened to tech and telecom. 500 00:36:27,899 --> 00:36:29,880 And so I'm encouraging 501 00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,941 these people to say go start a company. 502 00:36:32,941 --> 00:36:37,322 know look look at what you feel like is being done inefficiently and create something. 503 00:36:37,322 --> 00:36:40,562 So I think this your message is so inspiring Rob. 504 00:36:40,562 --> 00:36:51,445 You and from the moment I met you I was so inspired and and I just think I hope that everybody listening to this is inspired about whatever that idea that you have. 505 00:36:51,445 --> 00:36:53,265 Go do it right. 506 00:36:53,265 --> 00:36:55,606 There's a place in the world for it right. 507 00:36:56,406 --> 00:36:59,566 You know, and I appreciate that. 508 00:36:59,566 --> 00:37:06,146 And, you know, had I tried doing this 10 years ago, the cost to build this would have been astronomical, right? 509 00:37:06,146 --> 00:37:14,946 But because of now how technology is built, low code, no code platforms, we were able to spin up the initial version in a matter of three months, right? 510 00:37:14,946 --> 00:37:18,766 That would have taken three years and a massive investment 10 years ago. 511 00:37:18,766 --> 00:37:23,626 So for all those who are listening, they're like, I don't think I can afford to out and build something. 512 00:37:23,626 --> 00:37:24,866 You're absolutely wrong. 513 00:37:24,866 --> 00:37:27,287 Like there are needs out there. 514 00:37:27,287 --> 00:37:29,398 People are looking for ways to facilitate them. 515 00:37:29,398 --> 00:37:41,103 And again, I'm happy I met my CTO, Grace Schroeder, who told me that there was a pathway to build it without having to go try to drive up millions of dollars in venture capital 516 00:37:41,103 --> 00:37:41,383 funds. 517 00:37:41,383 --> 00:37:45,024 So ah it's out there and I appreciate that. 518 00:37:45,562 --> 00:37:47,554 How can we learn more about Zenture? 519 00:37:48,108 --> 00:37:52,780 Well, you can go to our website, you know, www.centrapartners.com. 520 00:37:52,780 --> 00:38:03,835 We have a TikTok page because we're trying to do, yes, because we have a new group of individuals who are moving into the workforce who are used to gathering data in different 521 00:38:03,835 --> 00:38:04,505 ways, right? 522 00:38:04,505 --> 00:38:06,926 ah So we're on TikToks. 523 00:38:06,926 --> 00:38:15,050 There's media publications that are on our website, but, you know, there's a house of videos on the Centra Partners YouTube channel. 524 00:38:15,050 --> 00:38:16,216 I mean, what? 525 00:38:16,216 --> 00:38:20,978 However you wanna get data, you wanna read, go to our website, you wanna watch videos, check out TikTok and YouTube. 526 00:38:21,402 --> 00:38:22,094 Thank you, Rob. 527 00:38:22,094 --> 00:38:23,197 This has been incredible. 528 00:38:23,197 --> 00:38:24,681 I really appreciate you coming on the show. 529 00:38:24,681 --> 00:38:25,993 You've inspired me. 530 00:38:26,146 --> 00:38:31,977 Well, I appreciate it and I thank you for giving me the time and the platform to speak with you and your audience. 531 00:38:33,101 --> 00:38:33,942 Bye.