Todd Gagne: Welcome to Wildfire Tales, a podcast dedicated to exploring the startup scene in the Midwest. Join us as we dive into unique challenges and opportunities facing entrepreneurs in this region, you'll hear stories of innovative companies and individuals driving growth and creating jobs. So sit back, relax, and get ready to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.

Mike Vetter: That's great to be here. We've been thinking about this for a while it's fun to actually make it happen.

Todd Gagne: I agree. I agree. It's been, it's been great that we're actually here and doing it. So why don't we kick this off by maybe doing an introduction and talking a little bit about how we got here, and maybe just start with your entrepreneurial journey?

Mike Vetter: That sounds good. Well, I'll start with mine. And we'll go from there. So my name is Mike. And I'm from Madison, South Dakota. And my entrepreneurial journey started pretty much right away, I was going to school at Dakota State University. And I had a job working in the K 12 data center, actually. And I had the unfortunate job of rebooting the servers really late at night whenever they would crash and fixing them. And I said, this is not a career. So I was in school actually started my first business in my parents basement. So Todd, it really happens, man, people do that. So that's what I did. So I actually have some pictures of my basement. So I thought I'd show you guys because there's proof. There's proof. So here it is. Todd, can you see the proof? Is that Ferris Bueller? That's about what it looks like. Right? So that's me in my parents basement, and I was doing it service. So I thought more monitors was better. So I made a big pile of them. That's impressive. So what I did is this, I would I would service, you know, PC networks and businesses, and I would sell PCs, and then service them all around Madison while I went to school. And it was, it was actually a pretty good job, I made enough money that I went to Costa Rica once for three weeks, with with profits from my business, that's cool. But But this business had a little bit of a problem. And that was that I had to keep fixing PCs, if I wanted to make money. And I was way too lazy for that. So I decided, well, the way to do this is if I can if I can develop a service that people pay for. And at the time, all of these businesses, they have these these tape drives, they're like they look kind of like cassettes. Todd you don't remember what those look like,

Todd Gagne: Unfortunately, do I am that old.

Mike Vetter: Oh, you're that old? You remember that? Okay, so these, these tape drives, they would shove them in their servers every Friday and then, if it worked, they would have a backup. But the problem is they would fail, or they'd forget or whatever. So my idea was, hey, wouldn't it be great if you could take all your data and back it up on the internet. And so I figured the internet could also be my basement. So I invented a product called Data Sync backup, and it backed up all of my customers data onto the cloud. Well, let me show you what the cloud look like, Todd, this is what the clouds look like. This is the cloud

Todd Gagne: Still looks like your parents basement.

Mike Vetter: So so they didn't exactly understand exactly how this works. So what happened is it went via the Internet to my basement on this rack of servers, which I got from Gateway computers. Back in the day was a big company they had they went out of out of business, and they had servers that I got for cheap. And I would backup their data to these servers. So this is the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, Todd, it's a few years back from now.

Todd Gagne: Yeah, I like it. You got some light, bright and some other games to play during downtime.That's awesome.

Mike Vetter: Yeah, you know, and like if your siblings come downstairs, and they want something to do, rather than having them unplugged network cables and pick your system, well, you could play a game instead. That's good. So after a while, I got a little bit more serious about the whole thing. But the problem that happened this is my first big failure was that I didn't really pay attention to the competition, and Carbonite got like $30 million to automate online backup globally, and they drove the price down to the point where it really wasn't feasible anymore to to offer it. So that was my first big crater in my journey of entrepreneurship i learning, you gotta pay attention to the competition and what they're going to do to your customers. And once I got through that, I decided, well, hey, I new CRM, which is an app for helping you manage your customers. And so I decided to launch a business, kind of in tandem with this to help companies manage their customer base. And what I really learned through that is you really had to learn to talk to customers, and to understand what their problems were, when you're implementing software in a custom way, you have to really understand that something I've taken with me through the years is that you really need to pay attention to what customer's needs are, you can't just sell them a widget, and then tell them to like it, you have to really help them understand it. And during this time, I met Todd, we were trying to scale this business. But But the challenge is, is that when I met Todd and I started talking and building a service business is hard. It's hard to scale. And, and Todd, we had some real good conversations during that time about what is a scalable business versus what is a lifestyle business. And that was a big deal for me. So Todd, that was great that we finally got introduced so we can start talking through those things. And, and Todd really helped me to transition the focus from a real service based business to a product based business and we decided to go in and really focus on the ag industry, and we ended up building a really nice piece of software to help the ag industry with their sales needs. But but Todd, this is when you and I started to really build out some of the processes and experiment with some of the methodologies that we're using today in Wildfire Labs. But you didn't just wake up one day with all that stuff. You have a bit of a an entrepreneurial journey of your own that started a few years before mine.

Todd Gagne: And did it did actually before the internet. So you're talking about tapes like this is actually started before the internet.

Mike Vetter: I didn't even know that time existed

Todd Gagne: I know. There were some dinosaurs and stuff it was it was fine. But yeah, so mine started probably in the in the early to mid 90s. And so I had a bunch of guys from school mines, some people from college, and we got together and we had a decent idea. We were building some software that was kind of called edutainment. So it was kind of supposed to be fun. But it were supposed to be also educational. And, and so we built a decent product, we had a good kind of component of it, we were actually working with Gateway to do some distribution. But one of the things I really didn't understand was, how do you really build sales? And so it was, it was kind of a really tough experience for me, because we had some good talent, we had some good animation, we had some good feedback from our customers. And I just didn't really understand how to get this is a b2c type of offering to the people and get them to pay. And so I would make calls to Walmart or, you know, software places that would sell it. And they just really didn't move very far. And so we sold some to the state, we sold some through gateway. But we started to say, I'm not making payroll. And so there were some hard lessons here where it's like I said, Okay, fine, I still believe in the business. I'm gonna sell my vehicle. And I'm gonna, like, make payroll for a while.

Mike Vetter: So Todd, you are just not going to have a vehicle at all. That was your plan.

Todd Gagne: Yeah, my plan was to ride my bicycle, which if you know me, I like riding bicycles. And so I was like, hey, it's it's summer. It's not so bad. I can get around.

Mike Vetter: A good way to get exercise.

Todd Gagne: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, and I'm working all the time. So what's it where am I going? So that worked for a little while. And we thought we had some momentum. And we were having meetings put together and stuff. But then all of a sudden, I missed payroll again. And I basically said, Okay, I'll get out of my apartment. And so I moved into the office and like, literally was going to the YMCA for showers and living on the couch and made payroll for a while again. But eventually, you know, like, we just ran out of money. And so personally, that was really hard. I learned a lot of things and that I didn't just stop there. We did two more other startups, we got better at doing startups and understanding kind of certainly distribution and what to sell. We had some exits on the other ones. But out of this section, you know, where I did three startups, I think the biggest thing I learned out of that was not to fear failure. I think a lot of entrepreneurs today that we talked to just have this worry that I'm gonna fail, and it's like, and then people perceive me differently. And there's always this, like Nelson Mandela quote that I love is, I never lose, I either win or I learn. And I think that really speaks to me where I learned a ton and these experiences that I was saying, I will never do that again, or I need to learn and get better at doing these things. And so I didn't look at the first one that we did as a failure. I looked at it as a painful lesson, that I actually had some things to learn from him and kind of take from there.

Mike Vetter: Did you eventually got another car?

Todd Gagne: Eventually I did, but it was it was a while. I think after I think somewhere in the second startup, I actually got a vehicle again, but it wasn't something very nice. It was probably had four wheels instead of the two. But you know, probably in the $500 range. So it was it was not super nice.

Mike Vetter: It's important to note for both Todd i this stuff took years, it wasn't like we just did this overnight, this painful process of learning and discovery. It took years. It wasn't fast, but we learned a lot. And it was worth it. At least for me. It was worth it. Was it worth it for you?

Todd Gagne: Oh, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be here without it. There's no question about it. So the good news was I finished up the last startup, and then my girlfriend who's now my wife was moving out to Seattle, and she had gotten a job at Microsoft, and said, "hey, come on out there hiring anybody." And I was like, um, anybody. And so I literally kind of followed her out. And we started looking around for jobs. And I started with this company called Concur Technologies, which was where the bulk of my experience has come from. So I spent 19 years there. I was there relatively early. So you know, first 50 or so employees of the company. We are pre IPO. And so we grew with them, we went public, and we did a bunch of acquisitions, we learned how to go international. We eventually got bought by SAP, a large German software company in 2014 for about $8 billion. And I stayed I stayed for a couple more years, and then in 2016, I left but in that year, we did about $1.7 billion in revenue. So from the first year I was there, it was under 10 million and for the last year it was there was about 1.7 billion. I learned a ton about scale. Every year, it seemed like the business changed. And it was like you had to figure out how to be successful in that. And a key component of that was really investing in people. There was lots of people that were being hired. And they were really talented. But like, how do you put those people in the best position to win and to succeed and get the maximum potential out of them, so that they can have careers and not just jobs. And so that was super valuable to me, I, I traveled the world, I did all sorts of roles, from engineering to product management, to account management, sales marketing, had a couple of GM jobs where I owned p&l, that was probably some of the best experiences, businesses experiences that I could get. And in a company that was really kind of headed in the right direction. So and then, you know, in 2016, I quit. And I had been really kind of trying to build this kind of software ecosystem ever since. So I kind of joke that's kind of partly part cheerleader. It's a coach, it's a mentor, it's an investor. And really, it's a kind of a culmination of all the things that we've learned, where it's like, how do we build and see patterns in what we've done. And I started with a company called here Property Meld about seven years, six years ago, and they were handful of people doing $200,000 a year, and they started to grow. And you know, they started to cross the $1 million revenue, and then 2 million and then 4 million, and now they're getting to six, they're starting to raise money outside of our region, they're starting to create good jobs and our local economy, they're starting to attract talent to come back to the region or from the local colleges. And so we're starting to see patterns in this, we're starting to see that like smart coachable people that have a good idea. They just need some focus, they need to focus on the customer, they need to focus on sales, they need to focus on on on the product. And that's kind of what I've really seen over the last six years. And that's been kind of exciting to me, as this kind of chapter of my career has been going on.

Mike Vetter: Yeah, and some of the things you talk about are things that we both wish we had, we wish we have focus, we wish we understood the customer, we wish we understood sales, we just had to gut it out and figure it out. And it took forever. And we both about nearly went bankrupt and lost our minds doing it. And so we love the idea of helping other entrepreneurs do this with a little less friction. So, Todd, what why are we doing wildfire labs?

Todd Gagne: Well, I think you summarized and I think that we had some experiences in the past that we kind of stubbed our toe and got through it. But I think there's an easier way I really do. I feel like that we can help talented entrepreneurs with good ideas that are coachable, and really help them avoid kind of the pitfalls that we've made. And I think that one of the things that kind of resonates, and a lot of our discussions, Mike is it's just entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs, right? We can understand what it's like to be in your situation, we understand the trade offs of a tough employee or not making payroll or, you know, wondering if this business is going to work, because we've had some success, and we've had some failures, too. And so I think that's important. And so, and I think this isn't, this is not just about like, you know, us leveraging our experiences, I think it's building a package of like, how do we help them in a systematic way, so that it's not just one off. And I think that's important to kind of how we're thinking about it.

Mike Vetter: Another thing that's really important to me is until I met people like you and some others, well into my career, I didn't really have mentors that understood what I was going through. And I didn't have mentors that understood the context of what I was doing, they might have had experience in a different business or in a different time. But I didn't have mentors who understood the challenges of starting a business in software. And so that's a big thing for me with with wildfire is to provide mentorship both through you and I, Todd, but also through some others that are experts that can help entrepreneurs. It's challenging enough, when you're an entrepreneur, you don't want to bonk your head on everything. You want to try to avoid as many pitfalls and hangups as you can. And it really allows you to launch with less friction and focus on "what do I need to work on now, that makes a difference? What gets me to the next step? And how do I avoid working on things? Or Or how do I avoid forgetting to work on things that are going to be critical?

Todd Gagne: Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, part of this is about celebrating all these milestones along the way. I think there's an energy about entrepreneurship, there's a passion, there's a highs, there's lows. I think we're I think some people think we're just a different breed sometimes where you're kind of a little bit strange. But you know, I think there is some things about like celebrating, understanding the customer and really kind of getting that validation or identifying that pain point that you know that you can build a product around or getting somebody to sign up for even just the beta of your program. While you're doing it. Nevermind signing the first customer that's paid. I think all of those are milestones that are worth celebrating. And I think that's part of the fun of doing what we're doing today. Yeah,

Mike Vetter: It's my favorite part.

Todd Gagne: It is yeah, it is great. And so Mike, maybe kind of pivoting a little bit about saying what is wildfire, maybe talk a little bit about just maybe the offering, like what's included, like helped me understand, like, what's, how do you think about this this package?

Mike Vetter: Wildfire Labs at its core is a software accelerator. And the reason it's we say accelerator is because we're trying to help a company who is a person, an entrepreneur who wants to start a company that goes from a concept through to their first customer and prepare them to raise funding. But along the way, in that path, there are a few things that they need to do. They need to understand their customers, they need to design their product and wireframe it and prepare it for development, they need to develop their first version of their product. And they needed to launch it in a successful beta. And there's a lot of methodology and detail around that. So something that's a little bit different from other accelerators, such as Y Combinator and TechStars, is that we have a very methodical and milestone based approach that provides a lot of structure and focus for entrepreneurs. So you never have to be wondering what should I work on now. It's really laid out for you. And then we provide mentorship and people along the way that help you get there so that you're not having to do it all by yourself, you're able to do it with people. And what that means is, you can really take something that I think Todd and I have said it took years for us and we're compressing that into a six to 12 month program that gets you from idea to customer. And then the idea behind all of this is to prepare you for funding so you can really grow and scale.

Todd Gagne: And if there's more questions like going to the website, it's probably good because I think that kind of lays out kind of the entrepreneurial journey, and then it offers maybe some of the kind of incentive pieces that we have to So wildfire labs.io, if you go to that webpage, you can kind of get a sense of the offering maybe in a little bit more completion. So we've pulled all this stuff together. We've talked about it, we think that this is like some kind of like it's something valuable from our experiences. What are you finding so far with some of the entrepreneurs you're working with Mike?

Mike Vetter: Well, we've got some really fun businesses and entrepreneurs to work with, one of them comes to mind is Signed Up Sports. And it's an entrepreneur in the Black Hills region already, who wanted to build an app to help colleges make it easier to sign students up for their camps. And it's a really good idea. But he didn't have a lot of experience building software. So we were able to bring that to him. And in addition, we were able to match him up with a local student at the School of Mines that is interested in what he's doing, and is now going to be the lead dev on the project. And it's really interesting because both of these guys would potentially be be interested in leaving the region. But because of what we're able to put together, they're able to launch it right in Rapid City. That's pretty cool. Yeah, another another example is our first woman entrepreneur in Wildfire Labs, I was actually outside the region. And she had the idea of merging technology and crafts together. And she really likes what we're doing in Rapid City, and also the ecosystem of support, including students who can work on her idea, and just the level of support around her idea. So she's considering moving to Rapid as she launches this product in this business. So it's it's pretty cool. You know, Todd, this, this whole ecosystem goes beyond, you know, students and mentors. There's some other people that are involved in this that are key. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Todd Gagne: Yeah, I think you're right. You know, it's not just Mike and I trying to figure this stuff out. I think there's a wider community engagement and a bigger plan. I think maybe the first one is there's kind of this idea of an innovation district. So we have kind of a downtown that goes from, you know, kind of downtown to the School of Mines college, that's mostly, you know, it's mostly engineering and science related. And so there's a lot of innovation. There's a lot of good graduates that come from that. And so the idea would be how do we create high tech jobs in that region. And so we have an incubator, that's, that's generic, it's not software specific, it can be anything. And so you're starting to see things like chemical engineering, and some of these other kinds of niches starting to pop up with smaller companies, and then interesting intellectual property that's coming from masters, the H PhDs and other work that's coming from the university. The other part that's pretty big on this is elevate Elevate is our local economic development organization. So they've been really kind of leaning into this, they spent probably $20 million, building out kind of the incubator, and then part of what they're doing is they're helping support financially Wildfire. So we're getting an investment for the next three to five years to really continue this program and accelerate it. So can we find more startups that create jobs here locally, that starts to fill in this kind of innovation district that we're talking about? And so it's exciting. I feel like a lot of the pieces are coming together. We have a very active Angel Network here too. And so as these companies start to progress, and they're looking for, you know, two to $500,000 to really prove out their idea, we've got those types of resources here in the local market as well.

Mike Vetter: Are these people just here? Are we reaching outside the area when we bring people into fill to wildfire labs, well,

Todd Gagne: You already steal my thunder you told about the entrepreneur that's like outside the region, but I do have one that's as well. We have an entrepreneur that was in, it's in Minnesota, and he had gotten kind of wind of our program through the school. And basically, Mike and I had a bunch of conversations with him about kind of what we're doing. And then he did, he came out, he came from Minnesota, or Minneapolis area all the way to Rapid City and spent a day and a half with us kind of just talking to us. He met with other CEOs and other people in our program, he met with economic development, he met with the Angel Network, he met with a lot of these folks to kind of really say, is the story that these guys are talking about really real. And based on that, he kind of said, hey, look, I want to be part of this. I'm a small fish in a big pond in Minneapolis. And I feel like I can have value. And I can leverage the methodology and the infrastructure and the mentors that we have in Rapid City, and be part of this kind of innovation district that we're starting to build out. So to me, this is pretty cool. He's gonna move to Rapid City, and he's gonna work with Mike and I on building out his product, and hopefully, you know, continue to build a successful business here that becomes kind of one of the pillars of our startup community. And so that's pretty exciting. From my perspective, I'm pretty excited about that.

Mike Vetter: Yeah, I think it's a great story of what we're doing here, and also the other people that are supporting us along the journey.

Todd Gagne: Yeah. So I think that's the basic gist of what we wanted to cover today. I want to start a tradition about like ending each podcast with a question. And I think both of us will do it, not just the guest. And this one. The the, the question is, what is the kindest thing anybody's ever done for you? This is not an original. This is taken from a podcast called invest like the best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. I just, I really like some of the feedback, you know, we kind of talked about all the bits and bytes. And we talked about the excitement. And we talked about some of the challenges of entrepreneurship. But the other side of this is the humanity, and really just the compassion, and really realizing this is all about people. And so maybe I'd like to start there and say, Mike, you know, what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?

Mike Vetter: That's a challenging question. I've had some really wonderful people in my life. But the story that comes to mind actually ties back into my entrepreneurial story that early on, when I was still figuring out business. And like, Todd was talking about customers, and sales and all those things. I had spent a lot of money building that backup product. And I needed to pivot out of that. And I just did not pivot soon enough and effectively enough. And I had received a loan. I don't know why on earth, the bank did this. But they gave me Give me, they gave me a loan for almost $250,000. And I had most of it still on the line. And I did not have enough revenue to cover payroll. So Todd, I share your pain and trying to cover payroll. So what happened is, I was I was stressed out. I was I was, I thought I was gonna have filed for bankruptcy. And what happened is my my dad came in and he said, you know, Mike, I believe in you. Because I believe in your heart and what you're doing. And I want to, I want to give you $20,000, I want to invest $20,000, but but he said I want to invest $20,000 in you. Because I believe in you. And what that did was that that 20,000 effectively allowed me to bridge out of it and continue on. I never never did file for bankruptcy. But that gesture was kind both because my dad $20,000 was a lot for my dad, and he took it out of some retirement savings. But secondly, just the fact that he believed in me, when at the time, I was starting to wonder if I believed in me. And so that was a that was a big deal in my life. And I think it's it's, it's the kindest thing anybody's ever done for me. And I still to this day, appreciate it so much.

Todd Gagne: That is a good one. And it puts it in context, especially compared to where you are today. So that's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Mike Vetter: Well, Todd, how about you? What's the kindest thing someone's done for you?

Todd Gagne: You know, again, I think when I was thinking about this, it's not easy. You think about a lot of different things. But you try to find something that maybe is a kind of a pivot point in your life. And mine's a little bit harder to lay out, just kind of bear with me a little bit. But my best friend growing up, his parents owned a decent sized piece of land in kind of upstate New York, and they were trying to turn it into a park. So think about like just different flower gardens and trails and meadows. And so it was just basically a blank slate. And so I would spend a lot of the summers in the fall and basically a lot of my free time there building all these trails and developing all this stuff. And we would work pretty hard and it wasn't just me and my best friend it was a bunch of other kind of young kids too. And you know, we take all this direction we work hard, and then he would kick off about maybe three or four and he would say okay, we're gonna we're gonna go to Lake and so he had a small boat, and he took us all to the lake and we you know, row and motorboat around and swim and stuff. And then you take us back to the house and we'd have this barbecue and a lot of it was teaching and a lot of it was talking about lessons in life and kind of mentoring without even thinking about mentoring. And so you know, so those really informed it was really impactful to my life in general, just those relationships. But in parallel I was going through, I was in public schools, and I was probably doing okay, but not great certainly wasn't challenged. And so at one point in time, in high school, I transferred to a local college prep high school, and that was in the city. And this was an eye opener for me personally, just the diversity of kids, the, the being a college prep, high school, it had a lot different expectations. And so and so, you know, I just had to like get better, I had to get better at like, you know, study skills and all this sort of stuff. And so, I did find I graduated. But to pull these two stretch of the story together, I was walking across for graduation, and I was going to shake the president of the schools hands, and my friend's father kind of stepped in and handed me the diploma. And I thought that was going high. But and so at least he puts his arm around me, and he walks me off the stage. And he walked me back to my chair. And he says, Todd, for the last number of years, that you've been at this private academy, I have been paying, and I did it, because I thought that you have potential, I want to make an investment in your future. And I hope you make me proud. And so it was kind of a lot to take in from being onstage to walking back to your chair and just sitting down and going, wow. And so nobody had ever done anything like that. And, and, and so, and I think he's always encouraged me to, to use my intellect to basically get better and take opportunities as they see fit. And so he was a key mentor in my entire life. And so it wasn't just about this episode, it wasn't just about doing work on his property, all the way until he passed away. He was a pretty instrumental individual in my life. And so that's probably the kindest thing that somebody's done for me. And it's it's paid dividends over the years, and you hope that you've made them proud. Now that that made a huge impact on the whole trajectory of your lifetime. That's it. That's a really amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. Well, good. Well, we should probably wrap this one up. But Todd, do we have another one lined up? Well, the good news is we do. So we have the next podcast that'll be coming out. It's a gentleman named David Hanna. So David Hanna is a local entrepreneur. He's a CPA. He's been in kind of the FinTech arena for a while. And so he's a fractional CFO today, but he's got kind of an interesting story about kind of building his business. He didn't take financing, he self funded it. It wasn't super high growth. He didn't build a product he resold. And so it was super interesting to kind of talk with him. And so I'm excited to kind of talk about that. Also, he's a super passionate fly fisherman. And so he has a lot of pictures and interesting stories on that one, too. So I'm pretty excited about kicking that one off here in the next day or two.

Mike Vetter: Great. Well, I'm looking forward to that, Todd. Yeah, good.

Todd Gagne: So let me just close this out by saying thank you for joining Wildfire Tales. We hope you've enjoyed this episode and learn something new about entrepreneurship and creating your next startup. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Follow us on social media and stay up to date on all things Wildfire Labs. Until next time, keep your entrepreneurial fire burnin bright.