So Thomas, you are in the payment space, and you've done amazing things to really revolutionize your industry. But take me back to the moment when you realized that there's an issue and there's a problem that needed to be solved. Because I imagine the payment space, it's kind of an old space. I don't see a huge amount of technological breakthroughs coming through many companies that have been doing it for a while. But what were you doing in that moment that made you say, this is where I need to go? Yeah, so I got into payments in 06. So I got into payments before iPhones existed. And back in the days, the old nufflebusters where you would have to collect and you would swipe the card. So it's obviously evolved pretty quickly. The pace of innovation just in payments and technology has grown really quickly. But back in those days, where my business was kind of like separated into two main sort of, let's call it segments. We had the traditional SMBs that we were selling everything to everybody. When there was a shoe store, when there was a lawyer, when there was a web store that was wanting to take payments. And then another half of the business that was helping software companies build payment infrastructure. So that started out in the early days. Why was the healthcare software able to tell you that you had a $50 copay? But then the front desk person had to walk to the other side of the room to collect the payment and pull out the manila folder, staple receipt your paper, put it back in, finally counter like didn't make any sense. So in the early days, it was like, why don't we put a payout button there and just swipe the card and do everything in one step. And it was like, even through like 2015, 16, 17, we were doing some of that stuff. And that evolved into online portals and patient portals and workflow automation. And so over the years, we just kind of built more payment infrastructure for other software companies. I was helping these guys build BuilderG and I didn't even know it. But then all through that time, we still had thousands of SMBs that were asking us for ways to connect our online portals and our terminals that were out of desk to QuickBooks. And why do I have to do the work twice? Why do I have to swipe a card on a terminal and then pay a CPA to go, you know, input it into my QuickBooks file? So we were trying to sell everything under the sun. We tried to productize other third party solutions. We tried to, you know, solve that problem. People were literally asking us for it. We tried to find what was out there and solve that problem. And we found that nothing worked, right? Like somebody that sent invoices, we could find the solution for, but if they were at the point of sale, it didn't work. Or if they were on QuickBooks online, you know, we were able to find a janky solution. But, you know, QuickBooks desktop, you need a degree in rocket science to try to figure out how to connect it. And like just nothing worked. It was like a bad experience for everybody. It was easier just to do the work twice. And a buddy of mine, I'll never forget, it was like 2017, a buddy of mine, a Spalltime property manager had, you know, 15, 20 doors that he managed. And he was doing that in QuickBooks. And I was talking about this integration that we had just done to this healthcare software. And he was like, man, if I had that in QuickBooks, that would be awesome. And I was like, boom, that's been the light bulb went off. I was like, wait a second, we're ready building this infrastructure. We're just doing it into other third party software. Let's build it in a way that's totally agnostic and agnostic to the software, agnostic to the payment, you know, networks and payment infrastructure. And, you know, we could solve the problem that we know people are literally asking us for and been asking us for, you know, for a decade and, you know, really build something that met the needs. So it wasn't like, you know, the software guy that woke up one day and had a new idea for a fresh game. It was, you know, it was like played up, you know, in necessity drives invention. So yeah, it seems like you kind of had to throw spaghetti at the ball in terms of what was your core service offering. So you, you had to get clients, you get these clients in, you kind of do the things that, that you can do for them. But it's not like we're going to be this one thing yet. Because I find like a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't really always know in the beginning exactly the exact service and offering you are is not really what you will become over time. It sounds like one of the clients had this need. And then you realize like, okay, this is the thing. So now you figured it out. Now you know what the company is. How do you then acquire the first companies? Yeah. Well, so I would, I would even say it kind of evolved after that, right? So like that was the first light bulb that was in 2018 or so we dropped the first line of codes like early 18. And even that was, you know, I came up with the idea on a Friday on a Monday, I put on that for developer the next Friday, we had some unhired the next Monday, we were running code like in hindsight, that's not the way to start the software company. But, you know, we first put the first product in to market. And our first idea was let's give the software away for free so that we can help drive the payments business. That's where, you know, I had spent the last 15 years of my career. So that was like the first, the real first idea was, you know, we're going to build software, we're going to solve this problem, we're going to give it away for free. And we put it out to market, we had, you know, pretty instant following, you know, we were getting picked up by some of the big CPA firms, my colleagues and, you know, kind of like friend of me's in the industry, people that were competitors, the friends that we met through conferences were, we're trying to resell it. And then the second real, you know, light bulb mode, which kind of turns us into what we are today and where the story really starts is the end of 2019, we had started doing a few awards and I actually met PNC, PNC Bank came over to us and so we love what we're doing. You know, there's, there's, you know, an obvious need for this, our business customers, you know, really are, are interested in what you've got here, but we're not going to sell under your tiny little brand, right? We're PNC, we're, you know, we have our own business. So that was when the second real light bulb went off and it was like, wait a second, this isn't a freeware, this is a SaaS business. And so let's, you know, let's kind of like decouple payments, decouple the payment infrastructure so that way we can partner with any payment provider and allow them to, you know, kind of augment their own real payment strategy. So, you know, that, that kind of like showed us the light in early 2020, which everybody, you know, remembers what happened in early 2020. That's when we decided we were going to change our whole business model and there's a whole, you know, story behind that, you know, we kind of, you know, a deep couple of they turned it to a SaaS product and really spent the better part of the next two years, you know, to really build the tools and solutions for partners who can use it to distribute and augment their own strategies. You know, that was really kind of like, that's the true birth of Bill or Jane, you know, early 2020. Yeah, it's crazy. I think it was like the six year anniversary a couple of days ago of the announcement of what happened six years ago has kind of been saying to think that was six years ago, everything changed. So I have this idea and I want to understand what you think about this. So the ability to create applications with vibe coding software, Claude, it's obviously coming down to almost next to nothing, right? You can vibe code software. It doesn't mean it's a hundred percent perfect, but you can create something that can be usable for almost next to nothing. I'm wondering how many companies have to take a similar approach that you did where their core offering is not the front end to the customer, but they provide like a free service to the customer. And then that kind of leads the customer then into the company, or maybe they get a percentage of something on the back end like, like payments. But I've been thinking about this lately, like, like creating software on the front end just to get people to kind of use it and always remember your name and or maybe that generates some sort of revenue, which is seems like a similar approach that you had to take in the beginning. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think, look, you know, AI is, is, you know, I think exciting and scary at the same time. Yeah, I have a few perspectives on just like, like vibe coding in general, but we've done it ourselves. I mean, I'm sitting here, you know, building tools for myself that I didn't think was possible, you know, years ago. But, you know, like there's, I think it'd be an avenue of like micro solutions, right? Like you could build small, little tools that help solve small, little problems. And, you know, maybe that becomes, you know, you give away, you know, in our world, you give away a free invoicing tool that helps to drive, you know, visibility and drive people in, solve some problems that where they don't need to, you know, build it themselves. But, you know, I think that there's going to be a world where, you know, the need for comprehensive SaaS solutions is going to shift perhaps a little bit more upmarket and, you know, the more sophisticated small business is going to maybe build, you know, if they just need an invoicing tool, they're going to be able to build a simple one, then solve it, I mean, it solves a small little need. But what we're seeing is that like the resiliency behind it is, you know, where you need the sophistication of like an engineering team, right? Like you could build a little app, but the second you change a, you know, a character from a, you know, a local case to an uppercase, the whole thing explodes. So like, how do you make it resilient? How do you make it like, you know, useful for the market? You know, I think that's a, you know, a whole, a whole different story. But, you know, I do see a world where, you know, SaaS companies are offering, you know, free tools to drive visibility and bring people in. But, you know, I think that, you know, the players that are going to win are going to create experiences like the days of just slapping on a, you know, an AI, you know, we could draft an email for you. I mean, that's like table six these days. Yeah. I think be able to do financial forecasting, like anything that's like written in a textbook, like that's going to be disrupted. Right. Like if it's in a textbook and an AI or a human could read from an AI, I could just do it faster. Anybody's going to be really able to build up. But to create experiences, like to make it real, like there's one thing to create an app that could send an invoice. There's another thing to log in and see, you know, Dan's face talking to you saying, like, how do you want it? What do you want it to look like? Let me help you create the invoice. Who do you want to send it to? How can I follow up with you? Right. So like the experience of humanizing AI and making it more of a, an interactive experience. I think the people that do that really stand to win. Well, I can't wait because I use, you know, when I invoice, I have to type, but if there was an AI avatar that talked to me, I feel like I would use it. That's fascinating. It might become my. I think I know someone that there might be Ken Elby with that. I'm afraid that might become my therapist. That's, that's what fascinates me about avatars. I feel like it doesn't really matter what it's used for. People will just as, as they feel they're more human like they will kind of move over. I was reading something. It was saying like it was an app about something, but people seem to use it as their therapist, but it's not, it's, it's just a chat bot, but they were as they, it's like they automatically go into this like, well, you know, I'm kind of feeling down today. Let me just talk to the chat bot because it feels like a human, but it's also not human, so it's not going to judge me. You know, how, what do you think about this? How we're interacting with AI? It's like we really, you know, technology moves faster than we can adapt. And we don't, I don't think we can really tell what's like human or not. Yeah, especially at the, at the pace right now, um, you know, the, the, the adaptation, I think is also going to be generational too. Right. Like we're, we're even talking about like, is there a, you know, a Gen X, the millennial and Gen Z, you know, sort of, uh, interface and you interact with it a little bit differently. So I think that, you know, that, that's going to actually evolve. But like, you know, the, the open AI is the anthropocryphal world that started to already lay the foundation just in the last two years of what it's like to, to interact with, with tools like this. I think it's just a natural evolution, right? Like I think that, um, you know, 10 years ago, we were watching back to the future. And if you ever said that you're going to have a flying car, people thought you're crazy and maybe we don't have flying cars, but we have a Tesla that could drive you, you know, across the world, you know, across the country without, you know, you haven't touched steering wheel. So, um, you know, probably if you'd asked people 10, 15 years ago, if that was possible, they thought, you know, you're crazy. So, um, you know, if we think about what five, 10 years from now could look like, um, I mean, I think the world's going to be a really different place. I was just watching Uber is just doing these promotional videos. It's starting in Dubai that it's coming to LA. Then I think New York city, I could be mistaken where it's a drone. It's like a helicopter drone that it can get you like 10 minutes would normally take two hours. It's unmanned and it's actually Uber. And they're like, you could, you'll be able to use the app to actually call this thing. And so they did a flight with it. It was, I forget what show it was on. They were like, they wanted to promote it. So they go in, the guy goes in and it takes them somewhere. I'm like, wow, like what a time to be alive. Yeah. I was in Dubai a year or two ago and they're like, they're building infrastructure in the roadways to charge the cars as the cars are driving. So I can imagine just like cart, the Uber never stops. It's just like, it's always on the road. Doesn't need to be recharged. So it's, uh, it's pretty wild. The world that we're, uh, that we're living in. I know the only thing is we move so fast that I don't know if we're recharging, right? That's the thing as human is like we, I, you know, I need to be healthy or sleep. But I need to recharge myself cause I get too wrapped up in things. But let's go to the, I think we've all had those scary moments as entrepreneurs where like you start to get momentum and then boom, the rug has pulled out. Something happens. It seemed, I mean, that could be like an every other day thing sometimes, but was there a moment for you where you were like everything with your cruising up everything is great, rug got pulled and you're like, I don't know if I even want to do this anymore. Man. So, so many over, over the years, um, I mean, more, more than I could, you know, more than I can count on remember, I think at all, you know, my, my story starts summer years where it's, you know, I was in, I remember my, my first business and in oh, six was in my closet of my two bedroom apartment in Miami. I ripped the walls down and that was, I had a CRT monitor and I was my first, you know, office. But, you know, look, you know, we, we rebranded the company. I told you in 2020, you know, we, we went out, we were starting to like think about how we raise some money. Do we, you know, do we do a seed round for only 2020, like January, February, we had like a little seed round that we were trying to raise for. It was all friends and family. Like those little my college buddies that were, you know, going to put, you know, 10 grand here, 20 grand there and, you know, try to raise some money that way. And then, you know, that Monday hit in March and boom, like everybody lost 50% of their, you know, portfolios overnight. It was like, Tom, like the last thing we could do is keeping money right now. So imagine like we, we started to try to, you know, raise a time that was just like, you know, just an impossibility. So we went from, you know, man, we got this round cover. We did this in two weeks. This is awesome. We're going to be able to run to like, boom, the next day is like, holy shit, we have no money. How are we going to, you know, grow the business? And, you know, that, that happened, you know, a few times over those next few years. I mean, I remember, you know, we, we are very proud to say we never laid off anybody. We never had a riff. We, you know, kind of held a couple little breaks that held us along the way. So we were able to like kind of maintain our growth. But there were a few times I remember there was one, like there was one Friday in particular where we were, you know, hoping to have an investment come in. And we were, I mean, we were down to, we were down to, there was no gas left in the tank. Like there was no money to pull from. Like I had no money left. My business partner had no money. Like there was just no money to pull from. If we were, you know, we were, we were basically like hours away from having to lay off half the staff. Like we had the letters written. We had like all the payrolls, like, you know, we had everything ready to go. And if we didn't get an investment in like, we think two hours, you know, like we said at Friday, five o'clock, if we can't, you know, if we don't have money in like, we can't pay people on Monday. And then, you know, fortunately, you know, we had an investment hit at like free 30. I mean, like, I don't think our staff knew that it was like 90 minutes away from having to change the entire business and turning it into a lifestyle business. You know, and that happened, you know, a few times throughout the time I remember calling, you know, a buddy of mine, you know, midway probably through like 21 being like, I can't make payroll money. Like can you spot me 50 grand? So that way I can, you know, keep the doors open because otherwise what do I do? You know, there's, there's, there's been a lot of stories like that where, you know, it's so Tom, so what do you think? I mean, because if you tell, if you took somebody, if you took Tom, you said, hey, Tom, you're going to start this business. It's going to be going great. Shit's going to hit the fit. Everything's going to fall apart 90 minutes before you're going to be saved. If you told somebody how the roller coaster was going to be, do you think you would still continue to be an entrepreneur? And if so, like, what is the drive? Like what do you think keeps people in it? Do you think it's the ignorance of not knowing what's going to happen? Or it's just because, you know, you just love pain. Yeah, good. I was going to say gluttony. You know, I, I don't know. Sometimes like I, I'm like, I scratch my head and I'm like, look, I don't, I don't think I'm employable at this point. Like I think it would drive anybody crazy that that's, you know, try to try to employ me. But I think that there's some just inherent drive to want to achieve, you know, it's like there's some, there's some thrill in the chaos. Like we, you know, we call it whack-a-mole. Like I feel like I'm every day I'm just like fighting to fight and I'm trying to like solve problems. And as soon as I plug one holes, like five more holes spring open and, you know, even like, I, you know, I talked to my, my therapist and I'm like, you know, and she's like, you've been saying every 90 days it's going to get better for the last five years. You know, like it's like 90 days from now, it's going to be better. 90 days to get better. Just 90 days, there's more problems. You know, so, you know, I think that there's a perspective where the, the, the thrill in the constant change in the constant movement and the fast pace, like some people love it. Some people are terrified by it. I mean, like I naturally, you know, enjoy that fast pace. I enjoy the constant pivoting. You know, I necessarily enjoy, you know, things coming out there in the next 90 minutes. And I try to avoid that as much as possible and try to build systems and processes to prevent it from happening. But at some point, you know, you achieve a homeostasis. Like what I found over my career is, you know, there's been like, you know, three or four times where I've gotten to a period of like things are calm, it's peace. There's homeostasis and what do I do? I start a new business and I just do it all over again. That's why I think, you know, there's always this thing like, are you born in Oxford or not? Can anyone do it? I think anyone can do it. But I think this, the character traits that you just mentioned are the ones that some people are inherently born with and they had. That's, that's my opinion. But Tom, this has been great. Man, I learned a lot. I love the stories. You've got to have you back on. I want to hear some more stories about what's happening. But if you want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? Yeah. You know, look, websites, billergenie.com. So, you know, anytime we're here, my personal emails to your onika at billergenie.com. Feel free to reach out. Don't have to connect with anybody. You know, we're here. We've got some cool stuff coming down the pipe. So, you know, maybe next time that we're together, you know, there'll be some more cool news to share. Awesome. Thanks, Tom. Thanks for your time today. Appreciate it. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.
