Todd Gagne:

Today's podcast is with my cofounder, Mike Feder, a k a Mikey b. So this is basically our whole goal today was to talk a little bit about the 2 year anniversary of wildfire. A lot of this is what did we learn in that period of time? What were some of the themes that we kind of uncovered as as we've kind of gone through this journey? And one of the other things I thought was really good was we celebrated some of the founders, some of the people that have gone through, and some of the statistics of, how well have we done, areas that we need to improve, what we saw, what we learned from that whole process.

And then last part, we kind of talk a little bit about just what's the future look like. We've come this far. We've gotten a good foundation. And now, like, how do we continue to get better? What is the next things that we're going to really invest in?

And so this has been a fun conversation. I I've worked with Mike for a long time. This has been a great opportunity to kinda celebrate some of the wins that we've had over the last couple of years. And, I hope you really enjoy this conversation as much as I do. Mikey v.

What is up? Welcome to the podcast, brother.

Mike Vetter

I'm back for season 2.

Todd Gagne:

That's right. Better than ever.

Mike Vetter

Man, since I was on here last time, you have gone from a podcast doobie to a veteran. Season 2, How do you feel? How's it feel to be a podcast veteran? Or is it are you a veteran yet?

Todd Gagne:

No. I don't think I'm a veteran yet. I'm still making rookie mistakes, like closing out your browser right before we get on. That's, like, perfect. It's, like

Mike Vetter

Well, I have enjoyed being a listener and have learned a lot from the podcast, so thank you for your work. It's great to be here again today.

Todd Gagne:

Well, Mike, I appreciate it. Not only that, but I'm appreciative of kind of the journey we've been going on, and I'm pretty excited today to just talk a little bit about, we we are celebrating our 2 year anniversary at Wildfire Labs. Mike Vetter, my cofounder, and I, that's what the theme is today, is we're gonna kinda review, 2 years in review. And I think we've got kind of an interesting, and exciting. I think I'm pretty excited about this one, Mike, so it should be some fun.

So we

Mike Vetter

gotta go all the way back to the beginning before the podcast, Todd, when you and I were thinking about this idea, drawing it out on paper to figure out what we're gonna do. You remember those days?

Todd Gagne:

I do. And I I one of the things I think was pretty cool is we looked at this from kind of our founder's standpoint. Right? We looked at it and said, what would we want in a solution, if we had just gone through this? Right?

We had struggled through a bunch of different startups. We had made a bunch of mistakes. We got some things right. And I think we went back to our cocktail napkin, and we designed in excruciating detail, not really, what we would want in in a program. And I think that's where we started, so that's kinda fun.

Mike Vetter

It is fun. And it's interesting, though, even though it has gotten way more detailed, it's not on a single piece of paper. It's turned into this whole system. We had a structure, and it feels like that sort of held up. How how do you feel about that, Todd?

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. I I agree. Our original premise from, like, a direction standpoint really did. As you said, there's way more detail to it. I think there's probably 3 or 4 elements to that.

One of them is we need some structured content. Right? We need a methodology to walk people through so they know exactly what the expectations are. I think we heard both from even from our own standpoint and others, like, we needed some development resources. Right?

I think we saw people get burned or just, like, flame out when they came to, like, actually building product. I think that there's a bunch of CEO skills that doesn't get taught anywhere. And I think we kind of thought, hey, look, we gotta add this to our program. And then I think the last piece of it is maybe one that maybe I underestimated to start with that's becoming a larger and larger component of our program, and that's community. Right?

That's, like, not you and I from a mentoring standpoint. That's about a larger community really helping each other. And so I think these four concepts really, were started on the cocktail napkin. They're blown out in way more detail, but I think the north star of how we started this actually resonates pretty well.

Mike Vetter

Yeah. It it has. And it's been fun to see some of those ideas turn into real stories and real things that happened to us and real things that we saw happen in the lives of the entrepreneurs in our program. So I think it'd be fun to dig into that. So, Todd, top 3.

What do you think for the first one? What what what are some things that are exciting that you've seen happen this year?

Todd Gagne:

I mean, I think, like, basically, founders from outside South Dakota applied. Right? I think that, we knew that there was talent in South Dakota and even Rapid City. We knew a lot of them, but I think what we didn't have a sense for is could we attract talent from outside the region? And I'm gonna tell a story of the very first application that we got from outside the state.

I was it was a Saturday or Sunday. I think it was a Sunday. I was driving back from Omaha from a soccer game or soccer tournament with my son and my wife. And I was on I-ninety by preshow. We had just passed preshow.

And I remember getting the alert that said, hey. We got something from out of state. And I was like, I called you. And I was like,

Mike Vetter

you never really had cell phone service. You're in the middle of nowhere. There's like a Saturn. I'm like, what is going on? I'm on a cell.

Todd Gagne:

Why are you calling me? Why are you calling me?

Mike Vetter

Preshow. Nothing happens there.

Todd Gagne:

And so, yeah, the the the back end of that story that was even funnier was once I called the the the the founder candidate, I said, how did you find us? And she says, well, you were on, like, page 7 of Google search. And I was like,

Mike Vetter

we got

Todd Gagne:

a long way

Mike Vetter

to go. We had some work to do to get going. We had

Todd Gagne:

some work to do. Yeah. But that led to some other things, right? I mean, it's like, then we had a team from Minneapolis. Mycroft and Matthew, they came from Minneapolis.

They came and visited us. I think they had a great visit, and they decided to move their company from Minneapolis to Rapid City. And to me, that was kind of like, we can do this. Like, we have something that's unique. We have a game plan and a set of principles.

And, you know, to be totally blunt, man, we sold on personality. We sold on vision, on kind of Well,

Mike Vetter

in the beginning, that's what we had. We didn't have all these things that we have now, so we had we had to do

Todd Gagne:

that. Dude, we had that little cocktail napkin. Don't forget that. That was super important. And I remember telling Mycroft, he was like, he he was like, I like where you're going.

I just don't see all of that yet. And I was like

Mike Vetter

because it didn't exist. Some of it didn't exist. It didn't

Todd Gagne:

exist. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the my number 1. So but what about you?

Like, what would you say the the maybe number 2 is? Like and if that one's the first one, what's number 2 for you?

Mike Vetter

Well, I'd say it it was it first of all, it's all about founders. And so I agree with what you said that making a difference in founders' lives, whether they're in South Dakota and also nationally, was really fulfilling. One thing that I wasn't expecting initially was getting noticed by the national community of of accelerator networks. So, we started off with talking to the Battery, which is based in Silicon Valley. They saw a lot of value in us helping candidates that may not be ready for their program get ready.

That was really interesting. And then doing the same thing with builders and backers on the opposite side, working with Kathleen and the team there at builders and backers to find candidates that had gone through their program, had an idea, but didn't yet have a product and maybe an audience for that product yet, helping them take take it to the next step. And then, most recently, generator. So just a shout out to Stephanie from Wyoming. We recently started to work with generator g beta, which is a little bit of a early stage program that's in the in the region.

And it was a little surprising to me how early that we found our niche, of not being just another startup accelerator, because those have existed for a while. That's not a new concept, but really hyper specializing like we did and then creating a really clear process to take a founder from idea to revenue and having that be something that's really unique. So I think that has been really fun to see us serve in a really clear role nationally and then be able to partner with some of these other organizations to just help founders go through that process from idea all the way to raising capital.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. Yeah. I I I I totally agree with you, and and that's not to be trivialized. I mean, I think some of these programs are pretty established. And if we can add value to help this ecosystem and ultimately the founder, and I think get a bit more and more exposure.

I mean, that's what really this whole thing is about is basically plugging into other networks so that good candidates, that are a good fit for us go through this. And so, that is super exciting to see. Maybe the last one I will do is is maybe the team. Like, you know, I think when you and I started, one of the things that I think drew us together was, a common belief about, a, how to treat people, regardless if it was with founders or not. But I think, like, when it came to working with entrepreneurs, we wanted to make sure that we were behind them.

We were not in front of them. We were basically there to help them, promote and and be successful and and really coach them. And so we were trying to be behind the scenes, and I I worried that we couldn't find enough of a team that basically bought into that philosophy. It's not about us. It's about them and really being entrepreneur first.

And, over the last 2 years, we've gone from the Mike and Todd show to a full blown team. And, you know, we picked up Aaron. We picked up Eric. We've got somebody in Seattle and Mark. We have Priya, in India, and recently, we picked up Tom.

And I couldn't be happier about the culture that we're building and that every single person believes in doing the right thing for the entrepreneur, right there's just no question about it. It is never about us. And I just I think that's unique. I think that's not always easy to do from an ego perspective. Almost all of these people have had success in their careers, and they're working with people that are trying to have success in their careers.

And so I'm proud of that culture that we've been able to preserve. And it just feels like a lunchbox, kind of bring your lunch and just go work on it. Right? Like, we're we're gonna roll up the sleeves, and we're gonna get her done.

Mike Vetter

Yep. And and it's been fun to see, our team grow also with just how we work together because the the Todd and Mike show was was just not gonna scale.

Todd Gagne:

It was doomed if that's all it was.

Mike Vetter

Yeah. We have our strengths. We have our passion. We have our areas that we really excel in, but we were just there's too many things to go do. Some of the things that needed to get better, we just didn't have the depth in to really scale it.

And so we had to do the same thing we tell founders, that we had to find people that have the same, work ethic and attitude and culture that we did, which I agree is hard to find, especially when you're working with people who have had success. But this team is just outstanding, and the program is a system and it is scaling, because of this team. It's been just wonderful to see them grow, and it's been wonderful to see them take on things and just just run with stuff, stuff that we had started but needed it to be built out, and they just ran with it. So it's just wonderful to be a part of that team.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. And I think we just gotta keep reminding ourselves, we are a startup, and we are dogfooding everything that we've talked about whether really, everything.

Mike Vetter

And we that's a good example for a lot of our founders when they talk about how do you bootstrap something. That's what we did. Yep. And this is what we're continuing to do.

Todd Gagne:

Yep. Yeah. So pretty cool to see. It's amazing how far this has gone and how much it's changed. But like we said, the north arrow is still the same.

It's just continuing to build it out. So, it's it's, it's been a fun journey so far.

Mike Vetter

Alright. So it's all of that work has turned into some additional velocity in the program, and we we don't usually talk about numbers on the podcast of our own, but I think we're gonna do that a little bit today. So, some of this has been Todd's work, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take this piece because he's done a bunch of effort in this. And we've we we launched the podcast. We're now in our 2nd season.

And the 1st season, it was slow. We didn't get a lot of downloads. We went and we started celebrating the the the dozens of downloads, and pretty soon, it was 100. And and, Todd, you're up you're up over 66,000 downloads. I just checked, the stats.

And so congrats on that. That is wonderful to see the founders that we're helping. So keep keep doing the good work. I know it takes a lot of effort to coordinate these things, and, and it's it's it's it's showing results. What we've done though is we've we've started to turn that into other types of content.

So for those of you who are listening that have not subscribed to our Substack, our Substack is currently free, so anybody can subscribe, and we post a few articles a month. I think right now you're at 2 week. Right? You're at 2 weeks?

Todd Gagne:

That's correct.

Mike Vetter

Yep. So you're gonna see a bunch of content focused on helping founders to grow, and we, just crossed, I think it's 6,000, followers on our on our substack, and that's continuing to grow. We get, actually, dozens of new subscribers a week right now, which is really fun to see. And that's turned into a lot more applications to our program. It's already over 300, and we now have, 26, people in the program that are actively working on startups right now, and that number is gonna continue to grow just because of our our volume of applications.

We only take the best applications, and so it's not easy to get into Wildfire, but we're continuing to see founders with great ideas, apply to the program. Another interesting thing that's happened is that we are seeing the number of founders continue to be strong in South Dakota. So we're proud to help founders in our home state, but we are now seeing a lot of those founders from outside the state. So we have of those 26, 16 are actually outside the state, and, 10 of those, have moved recently. So there's a whole bunch of founders that have moved to Rapid City to build their start up, and we're starting to see some of that community piece that Todd mentioned earlier where there's starting to be these collisions in coffee shops.

And when they're co working on some projects, they're able to help each other. We had another one last week where we had a founder who was working on customer discovery and just struggling to set meetings, and founders were able to help one another. So that's been really interesting. And then the last thing I'll mention about the numbers is just, we had a a real, I guess, thesis that we wanted to help the best entrepreneurs build their businesses. And what we've seen is there's been a a high amount of diversity in that group of people who wanna work hard and wanna get things done.

So we have, 56% of our founding teams have at least 1 woman on the team, and 43% of our founders have at least 1 minority founder on the team. So that is a much larger representation than our, peer, accelerators that we see. So, Todd, why is this?

Todd Gagne:

Well, I'm not sure I know. I wanna put back some context on this, though, Mike. I think it's pretty cool. Like, I mean, when we tell you, say, 56% are women, the average in tech is, 12, 13%. Right?

So that is not a small, you know, delta from that standpoint. When you look at minorities, 75% of, tech start ups are white male. And so, again, like, that's awesome to see. And so it it does make you think, like, what are we doing? Like, I don't think either one of us are going, we're dialing in, and we're just looking for these people.

I think we're building, you know, what we think is right, and I think the the right people are surfacing. And so I I guess my hypothesis on this, Mike, would be something along the lines of we focus on people that wanna listen. They want to, are coachable, and they're willing to execute. And I think, you know, you just mentioned it's not easy to get into wildfire, and we basically you know, you submit an application, you get a call with us. We usually ask you to do a little bit of research.

We have some questions, we want something sharpened. And I think through that process, we vet out people that do not fit in our program. And so I think we look for people that are like us, that fit our kind of mold and what we think is a good entrepreneur. And so I think people, bail out at various points, but what's left are some of these people. Women, I think, make great entrepreneurs.

I think the data shows that they're better in some cases than some of the trending data on men. Minorities, when I think about immigration, I think, like, this country was built on immigration. And you look a lot of the tech startups today that are successful, they're started by immigrants. And so I love this mix that we're having. And I know, like we said, it wasn't anything that we did from a policy or program standpoint.

Yeah. But I do think that it's

Mike Vetter

like customize our message or anything like that to try to get a certain group of people to apply.

Todd Gagne:

Right. Right. And so it's cool to see. Hopefully, these trends continue and continue to grow. And, ultimately, we want is successful businesses that are run by these people because I think our communities are better for it at the end of the day.

So I think that's pretty cool.

Mike Vetter

And just to put one other perspective on that, I think you you mentioned it, but hard work and execution are key. And I I think about the podcast over the past year that you've done and how many guests have talked about that, how you are gonna hit challenges, things are gonna go wrong, you're gonna have to change how you do things rapidly, and you're gonna have to be willing to go do the the hardest work. And I think what we have is we have entrepreneurs who are willing to do that, and they're in categories that are underrepresented. And I think that's outstanding that we can give people who wanna work hard, who do good work, a chance to go make something great. And I really feel proud of that, and and the the group we have is just outstanding.

So I it's just been fun to see that happen. So

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. I agree. What's also kinda interesting is, Mike, we had this hypothesis early on that, we built the program around what problems entrepreneurs actually face. Right? We we basically thought that there was a handful of issues that people look to accelerators and other programs to do because they have deltas.

And I I think some of that has held up pretty well. Right? If you think about it, I think one of the number one problems that we hear is everybody says, I need funding. And that may be a little bit of a catchall in today's world, where it basically thinks like, hey, if I just had funding, you know, there's not enough money out there. People don't see the genius on what I'm doing.

And I think maybe it goes back to your last comment, is what they're really looking for is execution that leads to progress, that leads to revenue, that leads to funding. And so I do think that, we basically have been able to stage gate the way we think about funding and helping these companies, but that's one thing that they really came to us and said that they need, and and we have a solution. The second one that I think we hear quite a bit is just needing technical help. Right? I mean, I don't know how many we we had one, recently that basically spent $280,000 of his own money and still didn't get exactly what he wanted.

And I think that's kind of a twofold problem. One of them was, did he do customer discovery and really a good beachhead, as well as managing the dev team in a way that was effective for the dollar amounts he had? You know, like, you know, we we're gonna help him. But, like, you don't wanna see that. You wanna make sure these people actually have, the resources they need to go do it.

And then the last piece I would say that I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs in their program that are coming in is just community. Right? We have a couple of guys come from LA, and LA is big. Right? LA has got a lot of resources.

There's a lot of entrepreneurs. But what they came and they saw was there's a there's a community here. I actually got to sit down and talk with a bunch of people that are solving the exact same problem as I am. We're sharing ideas, riffing off each other, we're doing best practices, and I think this has become a larger and larger issue. We had a guy come from, you know, Dyson's Corner in DC area.

Same sort of thing. Right? Can't find community. And to me, that's surprising, but, like, we're starting to build that kernel, and it's allowing them to say, we have a good solution on that front.

Mike Vetter

So I agree with all those 3, but I wanna drill into the first one you talked about, Todd. So the first one we hear and we probably hear this, I would say, the most when we talk to founders. I talk to almost every founder who applies. We're still able to do that, although we don't know how long we're gonna be able to do that. But right now, we talk to every founder who applies at least once.

And I hear that I can't raise money is the key thing. So when we talk to a founder about raising money or not having, access to money, you have to peel back the layers on that a little bit. Right? Because funding is needed, but it's needed at the right time, and it's needed with the right tools and the right business structure in place. So one of the things we've had to do with our program is to figure out how to match execution with funding.

So let's dive into that a little bit, Todd. We've we've actually started to embed, funding into gates or steps in our process.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. And maybe I'd even back up a step further. I think there's a macro trend that's, you know, kind of happened that has precipitated this to be a lot harder for entrepreneurs. Right? I think when there were 0 interest rates and money was awash, and people were looking for returns, I think whether it's VCs, angel networks, private individuals, we're willing to take more of a risk, with their money.

Mike Vetter

With no excuse and no revenue. Right?

Todd Gagne:

It's

Mike Vetter

a great idea.

Todd Gagne:

Right. Great idea. We'll fund you and see where you go. And so that macro environment, I think, has changed dramatically where you know, I'm part of the angel network, and if, you know, if you don't have a product and you don't have some revenue and some level of traction, like, why am I talking to you? And so I do think the expectations have changed, and maybe it's difficult for entrepreneurs to see that and saying, I you know, like and and I think sometimes they think money is gonna solve all problems.

Right? Like, I think that's the other part that I think is maybe a little bit of a break. But to build on your thought process, we don't give a bunch of money upfront and say, Go make it happen. I think we offer an apartment, which is an area where generally some of that money gets spent. And so we say, Hey, look, we'll give you an apartment so that you've got 6 months where you can spend, and you're not worried about paying the electricity bill, you're not worried about paying the water bill, you just have a place to work.

And the second part of this is based on where you are in the stage, we will grant you money along the way. And I and I just I feel like that's, and it's like, I would say it's almost a pay for performance type of a model. Right? Where it's Kinda

Mike Vetter

like kinda like life. Right?

Todd Gagne:

It is. It really is like life. Right? Like, that's how it goes. And so there is no free lunch.

We're not gonna guarantee you a $100 just to come in the program. That's not what we're gonna do. And I feel good about that. I I know that's not for everybody's cup of tea, but I think there's money there that if you deliver on what you said you're gonna do and there's traction, then we wanna invest in you to the next tranche or the next milestone. And so I think that, like, you can get out of almost any situation business wise if you could execute well.

And if we teach you the steps of executing well, I think you're going to be way better off than a lot of other founders because you can pivot and you understand the value of dollar.

Mike Vetter

And and do better than Mike 20 years ago raising money when I first started. I mean, the amount of money that I wasted, not, you know, not knowing how to deploy correctly and not knowing how to, measure results as I was deploying that capital, a huge amount of capital gets wasted. And it actually in certain cases, I raised later stage capital, with all kinds of clauses in it that were not good for me, because of the need for more capital. So that that's another thing we're seeing too. Coming back around to what you're talking about earlier, Todd, the the fundraising environment, as it gets more challenging, that late stage capital can have some real downsides when you start raising large large numbers in later stage capital.

Do you wanna talk a little bit more about some of the recent trends you've seen in that area?

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. I mean, I I think, I mean, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff there that you can tap into. Right? I mean, I think I think your comment about, basically being getting a bunch of money and then not allocating it well, you know, you're always looking and saying, if I raise a dollar, can I turn that into $2 or $3? If that dollar turns into 75¢, that's not gonna be a winning strategy.

And so you're giving up more dilution in your company to take this money if you can't allocate it effectively. And I I mean, I can look at almost every startup that we've worked with that has gotten some capital, and I could say that, like, they didn't have a very good handle on doing this. And we're gonna get to some trends later about, like, why in the VC world, why those things are changing. But I do think that your your comment about just being capital efficient is something that we stress heavily in this program because those ones will get funded if you're really capital efficient.

Mike Vetter

And as a founder, you stay in control, and you walk away at the end with control of how and when you exit. And that's it. We always wanna be founder first because we're entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs. So the more that we can help our founders stay in control of their company and be able to make choices based on what they think is best, not what choices that they must make at that stage, the better.

Todd Gagne:

Yep. Totally agree. Totally agree.

Mike Vetter

Alright. So speaking of founders, let's get back to real stories, real wildfire stories of things happening. So with 3 teams, maybe we could tell stories for hours, but let's do 3 because there's some fun ones in there that are are I think we should highlight today. So we gotta go way back to almost the napkin days and talk about Jared because he's one of the early ones, and, he's kinda flown the nest. So I'd love to hear kind of your perspective on that, Todd.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. So Jared was one of our first, entrepreneurs to go through our program. He he started a company called Signed Up Sports. You know, he had founded a company before this one. I I think he has a mentality of kinda just being a serial entrepreneur.

He he just has that kind of DNA. And from the very first time I met him, I was like, this is a guy I want in my, community. I think not only from just a quality of character, but from an entrepreneurship. And so he's got a lot of great DNA, but he was kind of rough. Right?

He definitely had, had a lot of the sales DNA that we were looking for, but hadn't done a lot of product management or had a lot of technology chops to to do it. He he had struggled on on his last, startup from that perspective. So one of the things that we ended up doing, with his team was we partnered with, South Dakota Mines, and their their computer science department. And so Brian Butterfield helped put a team together, and they basically, over a couple of semesters, worked through an MVP product for him. And I think this was super helpful for Jared to see how the sausage is made, really.

I think we played Wingman on that. We played some, you know, we we had the we had we were making sure he stayed out of the ditches. And, and, really, what we ended up doing was getting through to building an MVP. Those kids got their, you know, the grade for their class, and then Brian, who was one of the leads on that team, ended up joining the company. And so this was another resource from our region that didn't leave to go somewhere else.

They stayed at a startup and started to grow. And so now we have at least 3 people in the start up. We have Jared. We have somebody on the sales side, Jason, and we have a developer, that are in the process of quitting their jobs. They've generate they should generate their first $100,000 this year, and, you know, they basically have a couple partnerships that worked out really well.

They had a customer in in, like, in the Houston area, I think, that basically was a school district. And, you know, like, that school district, if they actually implemented a software and did everything that they were doing, could be a customer that generates 70, $75,000 in 1 year, and that's one customer. And so I'm super excited about what they've done. I feel like Jared has leaned into, our, you know, vision of what we're doing. We couldn't have asked for a better first candidate.

He got some bumps in the road, but I think he always rolled with it. He's been super supportive. We both learned some things as we've gone through this process, but I'm proud of what that team has done and the trajectory that they're on.

Mike Vetter

Yep. I agree. Alright. My my what I wanna talk about is Journeyman. So Journeyman, is another, couple of local guys who are already in the wildland firefighting industry.

So wildfire lab's perfect fit for them. Right?

Todd Gagne:

That's what they said.

Mike Vetter

So so they they came to us and said, hey. We we see a problem in our industry because we own a company that helps, you know, fight fires by finding firefighters who want our contract and and then they deploy them to a fire, to provide EMS services. There's a real problem in the industry of of these companies not being able to find the right talent and that talent not being able to keep the certifications that they need. And so, it was a great example of a a couple of founders in Tyler and Brennan have a marine background, just hardworking guys, not afraid of of of hard work, learning something new, solving problems, and they wanna solve this problem, but they had no technical, experience. And so they took used our program to not only build the product, but themselves gain some of that technical experience.

One of the cofounders, Brennan, actually did a bunch of the app, using some no code tools that we worked with them on. And and they're launching right now and have dozens and dozens of of firefighters that are on their on their beta test, and these guys are just just making it happen. And it's just great to see, somebody a group of guys just taking the platform, running with it, and then ramping up. So they're just a really fun team. So, alright.

Well, Todd, we got time for one more.

Todd Gagne:

Well, hey. I wanna go back. Like, I just I feel like, they're, just a a good example of just hardcore execution. And I think, again, appreciative. Right?

I I they he'd they just graduated from our program recently, and, you know, Tyler came to me and just said, you know, we wouldn't have been able to do this without your program. We wanna be able to give back. We wanna be part of the community that basically lifts up the next set of entrepreneurs. And so kinda going all the way back to our thesis of finding good people, that wanna participate, like, I just these are these are both just good people that we can continue to build around, and and I'm super excited to see their success as well. The last one I was gonna cover was Hyatt cleaners.

And so, you know, I think this one came from, Tulsa, and, it's just it's just a fun story from, I had a quick conversation with her, over the phone, and we basically kinda connected. I had some experience with a competing product a little bit, and she had done our builders and backers program already. And so she basically kind of said, hey, this seems like the right thing. She had some questions about, you know, loading her entire life into a U Haul and driving to Rapid City, South Dakota and saying, is this really for me? But, you know, I think we met her where she's at.

We helped her get set up. She felt, you know, valued in the community. And I think part of what we got from her was just a strong passion about helping this demographic. Right? Like, cleaners, her whole concept was, can we have on demand cleaners to help clean your house, your r v VRBO, your Airbnb?

How do we make that, a sustainable living for people that do that work? It's not something that's always easy to do, but it's certainly something that's a need, and then being able to connect people that need cleaner and with the cleaners and being being able to pay a reasonable amount of money seemed like a great idea. So she's built an app. She's got a ton of energy. She's really a good communicator.

You know, when you sit down and talk to her, you know exactly what's going on, and you're super excited to go on that journey with her. And so she's launched here in the Black Hills, and she's gonna launch, in Rapid City in the Black Hills, as well as Tulsa here. And here's another one that's got a lot of potential to, continue to grow and scale, and I'm excited that she's in our community as well. We're better off her up.

Mike Vetter

I like that she has a passion for not only creating a great business, but making a difference in people's lives. I love that. That's what we're all about. We we want our entrepreneurs to do well financially and have a great business, but we wanna see entrepreneurs that are are making a difference in their area of the world. And I think Kathy's doing that.

I think she really she's really doing it for the right reasons. So I like that one too. Yep. Alright. So even though we couldn't talk about all the entrepreneurs in our program, we had to pick 3.

There's been some themes. So it was fun putting together this list with you, Todd. But, let's let's drill into the 5 takeaways of the last 2 years of what we've learned. So do you wanna start?

Todd Gagne:

Well, I'd say we learned a lot, and I think, this list, you know, got was pretty long and then

Mike Vetter

It was hard.

Todd Gagne:

Keep pair it was.

Mike Vetter

We kept on pairing

Todd Gagne:

it down.

Mike Vetter

Out of 5. There's been so many things.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. And so but there are some themes, and I think one of them that I would say is the first one is just being entrepreneurial first. I think it's been a really good north arrow for us. I think we are the advocate for the entrepreneur no matter where they are. Right?

And so I think we'll tell them, you know, if they're not a good fit for our program and why. We're not here to make money. We're not here to, basically, you know, try to just get as many folks in. I think I think we want to make sure that there's a good fit. And and and we've seen people that are late stage that are really good people, and we'd love to help out, and we're gonna help them out.

We help people evaluate what they do should do for funding. Like, I mean, I think we're there, and we want to build that established, you know, brand of being entrepreneur first. We've been in your shoes. We understand the challenges you're faced with, and we are going to do the right thing for you full stop. Even if it's detrimental to us as investors, That's what we're gonna do.

And I just think that that has resonated, and I think that, you know, the more we continue to do that in every step of the way, the more credibility we continue to build with this program.

Mike Vetter

Yep. I agree with that. That's one of the things that we will carry with us no matter how many entrepreneurs we help, is that we are helping entrepreneurs, and that is the core of what we do.

Todd Gagne:

Yep.

Mike Vetter

Alright. So my first one, of the 5 that I wanna talk about is doubling down on understanding the customer problem. So one of the challenges you have as an entrepreneur is you're asked to look at a market, so your your total addressable market. And you you look at that and you go, man, I wanna launch a startup that can address all of the problems in that market. But what you find is pretty early, and we find this with so many of the entrepreneurs we work with, and I spend a lot of time on entrepreneurs, is actually going narrow so you can go deep and really solve a significant pain point.

So we actually spend a lot of time on the whole idea of a beachhead. What is the segment of the market that is the most in need of your solution, and then how can you mine for the most painful problems that that certain type of customer feels, and and and how can you change their behavior if they buy your product. And one of the things that we we ask them to do, and this has been really helpful for both them and for us to understand their startup idea, is for them to actually look at the problem both on a qualitative and a quantitative side. So qualitative is what is the pain and suffering they experience every day, and qualitatively, how much does it cost them that this problem exists? And that's those are 2 really clarifying things.

And if you could answer both of those, you have a really good understanding of the problem, but, also, it helps you narrow who you're gonna go after first. It doesn't mean that you you don't take on the entire TAM at some point, but that's not where you launch. And I think that's something that we've really has differentiated Wildfire is that 6 month goal. You can't launch a product into a huge TAM in 6 months. What you can do is you can launch into a very specific segment or beachhead in that TAM in 6 months and you can make a big difference.

And, also, one of the other things, this is on the flip side of that, is it also helps you find out really early if you find that you thought you had a problem and you thought you could build a a business, but it actually isn't isn't isn't a good idea. And, even even though it's not always a great thing when that happens, you feel sad if you're an entrepreneur, you could also be an entrepreneur who spent $200,000 of their own money and and have 2 years into it, and then they figured this out. So we feel really good about it. Example is was Mitchell Black. He's a a great guy, and he had he had an idea of of matching Airbnb hosts with with, you know, outings for their people who stay in their Airbnb.

But the problem was there's way too much friction, and there was way too much, disparity in how the markets were different. And what we we learned is is that it just wasn't worth pursuing. And on one hand, we felt sad for Mitchell and we felt sad that it wasn't gonna work. But, man, I felt great that we didn't waste a year on that, run through the entire Wildfire process, and then discover at the very end, after we'd all wasted a bunch of time and money, that it wasn't gonna work. And we figured that out quickly.

And so I think that's one of the clarifying things about a program that has discipline on the front end is you have to answer the the hardest questions first so that you can go to the easier things later rather than just hoping down the line that somebody will love your product.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. I think it's a super good point, Mike. I really do. And I think, this has been kind of a key component of what we're doing. And I think it's an area that sometimes is uncomfortable, to spend as much time on it as we do, but I think it pays dividends if you get it right upfront.

Mike Vetter

Yep. I agree. Alright. What's your next one, Todd?

Todd Gagne:

The next one is something that I think which is is AI. And what's crazy is in the last 2 years, we've been in the tornado of of AI. Right? I don't know. You know, it's probably been about 2 years since, like, chat and gbt kinda came out and basically took the world by storm, and was in the press.

There's all this technology. There's almost an arms race to, like, the different models and, you know, open source, not, how are people doing this, your sensitivity to your privacy. In some cases, that's been overwhelming. On some in some cases, you and I find it a valuable tool in almost everything that we do. And so and and I think it's got the ability to kinda transform a lot of what's happening, in our society as well as all of our start ups.

Right? And so I think what we're starting to see was more and more applications that basically had an AI component on it. Some were thought through more than others, and I think we found that, basically, technically, there's a lot of information out there, but we realized that it was difficult to kinda put a product strategy around that. And so I think you and I spent a bunch of time kind of saying, how do we distill this down into more actionable things? So when you have a business problem that's well vetted, like you just talked about, we have a beachhead, we understand the customer, we understand the pain, how can we make, AI kind of additive to that and and do it in a way that's cost effective, in something that fits within our kind of 6 month window?

Mike Vetter

So, Todd, why don't you unpack that a little bit on on this this sort of framework that you you mentioned?

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. So I think what we've kinda said was, how do we see the world kind of evolving as we go forward, and how can we put this into terms that, functionally, entrepreneurs could look at? I mean, obviously, we have some technical folks that understand the nuts and bolts, but, like, you have to understand how this is gonna really work. So we kinda had a 3 part thesis to what we thought. Right?

We thought the first phase of what, AI is out is really this kind of co model model model co pilot model. And I think Microsoft is the one that's basically leaned into this the furthest. Right? They're basically saying, you have Word? We'll help make Word better.

You wanna take your PowerPoint? We'll help you make your PowerPoint easier to do. And so we wanna do code reviews within GitHub, but we're gonna make that easier for you. Right? And so that idea of saying 80% of the of the effort is coming from you, the individual, and, you know, 20 to 30% is coming from a tool, that's basically a large language model that's increasing the quality and maybe the efficiency of what you're doing.

We think the next aspect of this that's we're already starting to see elements of this, and I think a good example of this, is, Apple is doing a bunch of work for their Apple Intelligence. Their release that's coming in October is going to have stand alone agents on the phone that are doing very, very specific functions. And so if you want a a function to be done, you can have a stand alone agent that just basically knows exactly what to do. It's modified specifically for it and optimized for it, both from a cost and size standpoint, and it's basically gonna do those things. And so that's probably in the mode of, I'm gonna give it a little bit of information, 20%, and then 80% of that's gonna handle on the actual agent itself.

And so, you know, like, things like, what were some of the examples? They were talking about, oh, my parents my parents are actually moving, and so I wanted to get the new email add or the new, address into my contacts. And so it's looking through my emails. It's looking through my text messages. It's looking through all this sort of stuff to try to find that and then embed it back into the contact to update it.

Okay. That's a very specific example,

Mike Vetter

but it's a state of the world. Early for for a stand alone agent, but it is an agent.

Todd Gagne:

It is. It is. And so that's kind of what we think the next kind of phase is. And then I think the 3rd phase, which is probably the one I'm the most excited about, which we'll see how this actually goes, is when you have multiple of these independent agents starting to work together. So we've kinda described that as kind of a mesh, right, where it's like they're kind of communicating and talking to each other.

And one of the examples I love about this, Mike, that, has been kind of near and dear to my heart because I've worked in travel and I've spent a lot of time working in travel is, like, you know, I basically had a trip that got canceled recently, and, and, basically, you think about all the downstream effects. Right? So I'm not gonna get to my location. I'm not gonna check into my hotel. Maybe I had, Uber that was lined up to go do it.

I had a meeting with a client, so I need to communicate to them. I also need to, like, take that open table reservation that I did and change that as well. And so that's a bunch of work. Right? And so if I had an a mesh of agents that were each like the Delta app and the Uber app and the OpenTable, and, you know, all of those starting to talk to each other that says this triggered the downstream effect to all of those, and I would basically make all of those shift to what I told them to do, that's a pretty interesting world.

And I think, you know, we're a long way away from that. There's trust issues. There's, you know, security issues to going to do that. But you can see a day in the future where a lot of these stand alone agents start to communicate with each other and solve much more complicated scenarios. And so does that make sense to you, Mike?

We've talked about this a lot.

Mike Vetter

Yeah. I think I think the the exciting thing about that is being able to focus on the really hard problems. And reorganizing your travel schedule is not a hard problem, but it can chew up a ton of time.

Todd Gagne:

Yep. A ton.

Mike Vetter

And so having have so having less of the and I think of how many things that you and I still have to do day to day at Wildfire that are just updating this and sending this over here. There's just examples of that all over the place, and we are not at a place where AI right now can do that reliably. But I think as we start to trust these AI agents more, we can start to allow them to work together to do things for us. And that's gonna be really exciting that we can spend more time doing the things that are interesting and challenging and less time just shoveling data around, which is a lot of what you just talked about.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. And I think there's a couple other elements to this that I would say is, I think you need to think about this a little bit different, right? Like, Chuck T. D. T is not Google.

Right? And so I've had so many experiences where people have tried to use it like a search engine. And so there is some rewiring of kind of your utility of that. Like, how do you do it? And so one of the things I think we've stressed with our entrepreneurs, and I think that you and I are pretty good examples of it, we tinker like no tomorrow.

Right? We're asking questions. We're figuring out how it works. Where are the limitations? And I think one of the things that you've set up in that last kind of comment you made is, what are the rope things that you can go do that basically are consistent and repeatable, and then when did they become good candidates to create workflow and automation around?

And I think you have to have that sort of idea, and I I think that that's part of the strategy that we're trying to, make entrepreneurs think about because there is valuable time that you could start pulling out of this if the workflow gets more efficient. The last part I'd say about this is, you know, it's one thing to say, okay. I want a cool pilot model. Then the next question is, what do I do technically to go do this? And I think, our conversation with Chris Grebes, I thought was a good one.

You know, he's an operator of a large organization, $300,000,000, 1500 peep 1500 people. And what he was really talking about was standards. Right? How do you build API integrations where you can leverage a lot of these large language models, validate that the market actually works for what you're doing? And it's probably more of a Swiss army knife than what you need.

But then once you get validation of it, then basically you can figure out how to use smaller agents for the specific problems you have and really optimize the cost from there. And so for most of our founders, you're in using you know, whether it's using a commercial version of, you know, chat GBT in their API, or now we're pretty excited about all the stuff that's coming with Llama and the quality that's there in an open source model. I think those are the places to start once you have a good product strategy that aligns with solving the problem in a more efficient way.

Mike Vetter

I'm I'm looking forward to the next 6 to 12 months of all the applications we have coming in where there's a a real discrete market problem that they see their customer has a pain point and working with founders to use AI to solve those problems in ways they just never thought of before. So we actually have a new tool. We're gonna be providing founders with, a tool to help them map their product strategy to AI. So the key thing is this is I think there's, like, a misunderstanding in the market that to be an AI start up, you need to build a large language model and spend $100,000,000 training it. There's actually more opportunities, in our view, of applying AI that exists to solve niche problems.

There is a ton of problems like the ones Todd's talking about that are waiting to be solved by AI that already exists, and there's a whole group of founders that's gonna use those tools and rapidly monetize solve those solving those problems and use it use existing AI to do that. I think that's gonna be really fun.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. It's exciting. I'm looking forward to it. So what do you think is next? What's what's your next one in your bucket?

Mike Vetter

I I think, kinda coming back to the money side of things, is the VC model is evolving pretty rapidly. The amount of capital that is available to start ups has contracted. There's no question. And some of the things that we talked about earlier about getting to revenue, about being capital efficient, all those things can help you. But, for some founders and many founders, raising a series a or a VC round is gonna be necessary.

And so we've just been looking a lot at deals and have have some of our own experiences where it's just really important, and we are starting to spend more time working with founders to make sure that if you do raise later stage capital, that you understand what that means. So, for example, if you're if you're in a niche SaaS company, do you need to raise venture capital at all? Can you bootstrap or use, an an angel round or a small pre seed round to to get to profitability, and what does that look like? So that's the first thing. Another thing is if you are raising VC money, there's just some things you gotta know about, that we wanna make sure everyone is educated about.

So one example is multiple classes of shares. So some of those later classes of shares can be usually are from the venture capital firm, and they potentially have a whole bunch of stipulations attached including when various classes of shares get paid out and, also, potentially, liquidation preferences. So one class of shares or one shareholder will will be made whole plus some significant percentage on top of that before the founder gets anything. And what one of the, I guess, the temptations as a founder would say is, well, none of that stuff matters because we're gonna grow at a crazy rate, we're gonna be worth tons of money, and it's not gonna matter. Well, the problem is there's a lot of things that are outside of your control and forecasts change.

And if some of those things happen that are negative, you can end up getting totally washed out of the cap table. And so those things are important, and, also, depending on the board structure, those decisions could be made for you and may not be made with you. And so you need to make sure, as a founder, that you have a clear majority ownership in the or control of the board. And and if you do have a VC, then it's a collaborative relationship, and not one of, you know, not one that becomes adversarial. Because if their alignment or their requirements of their fund are different than yours, everything is fine in the beginning.

But when you need to sell the company or you need to do some sort of a a liquidation, it can get very difficult. So, Todd, I'll I'll throw it over to you. Do you have any anything to add to that?

Todd Gagne:

I mean, a little bit, I guess. I I think what you're really talking about, I think, is education so that people go into this with their eyes wide open. You know, we've definitely seen some companies that have, maybe had a vanity number where it's like, I'm just more interested in what the valuation of the company is, and I'm willing to concede some of these, items to because the number is super high. Right? And so I think that's an example where you maybe don't see the full picture and you don't understand some of these expectations and how they can change.

One of the examples that I think we've seen in a number of startups is, you know, we went from valuations that were in kind of zero interest rates. Some of our SaaS companies that we had talked with were getting 12, you know, 10 to 12 multiples. One of them got, like, 50x, you know, from a multiple. And so on $1,000,000, they were worth post money $65,000,000 And so all of a sudden, then the market changes, and that exact same company the next day is now a 6x, you know, multiple on on their annual revenue. And so what does that do?

Now all of a sudden, lots of people could be underwater. These liquidation preferences come into effect, and maybe you're not growing as fast, and so the expectations are different. We're gonna cut back on how fast you're gonna grow. And so I guess the one thing I would say is being well educated on this, I think most of the people do not see all the components of this in in a way that basically balances the risk to reward. And so I think most entrepreneurs are aggressive.

They are optimistic. They want the best for you know, they believe that the best is gonna happen.

Mike Vetter

No, sir. Good things.

Todd Gagne:

They are good things, but you have to have a balanced view of it. And so and I think don't get so myopically viewed on just, hey, what's the valuation of my company? And I'm willing to let all these other terms kinda slide in that in that that that discussion. You need to have a pretty balanced approach of what are the things that could happen? What are the what are the, you know, margins of error in this equation, and what could change in the marketplace and impact me?

Mike Vetter

Yep. Alright. Number 5.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. So we've talked about this one a couple times, and I think, Aaron, on our team has really been kind of instrumental in building a lot of this out is really community. And so I think maybe I, maybe underestimated the value of this early on, and I think we built a lot of nuts and bolts. And I think, you know, we started to have these collisions where people are starting to help each other. And and really our ability to kind of formalize, that community, I think, has been a real big asset to us.

And so we've started mastermind programs, in our program, at different pinch points. Right? So we have these areas where, entrepreneurs have some, like, struggle. And as you go through the program, having, feedback from other people is really important. So we think the pitch points are, customer discovery.

So Mike talked about that early on. The product build, sometimes that's really complicated, going from basically Figma to working with a development organization, to going through alpha and beta to make sure that you actually have what you think you're going to do. The third one is really go to market and product launch. And then the 4th one is really scale and growth. And so I think each one of those, our mastermind program is really putting all the people that are in that same camp and creating accountability among each other, as well as the ability to learn, not only from the mentor and the facilitator, but from the people that are going through it today.

And all of them have different backgrounds. All of them have different experiences. And what I think has been really exciting to see is that collaborative sharing. Right? It's not like we've got all the answers.

It's not like we're telling you what to go do. It's basically we're asking and facilitating these people to share their knowledge, share their experiences, and then, basically, all of us get better at it. One of the things that I think is maybe slightly uncomfortable is we ask for some hardcore deliverables. We ask for, like, what are you going to do in the next 2 weeks? And we're gonna write that down, and it needs to be specific.

It needs to be actionable, and it needs to be meaty enough to to justify 2 weeks' worth of work. And if you're not willing to do that, you are going to sit in the hot seat. And I think

Mike Vetter

that's really important. There's some crunchy conversations that happen that are helpful.

Todd Gagne:

There are. Yeah. I think there are. And I think, again, this goes back to being just in the real world. Right?

We have to execute. And so if you need help on something, you gotta raise your hand and tell me you need help on something. But, really, this is an ability to provide visibility on what's next and what the expectations. It is not easy to get through our program in 6 months. So if you want to do it, you basically have to stay on schedule.

And I think this is a great way to, like, basically build rapport with these other people, learn lessons, and not stub your toe by yourself, pick up things from other people, and then basically create this accountability. The one I'm maybe the most excited about is I've always worried about, like, once you graduate, what the hell happens? Right? You gotta

Mike Vetter

fall off the street. You just you just get dumped on the street. Good luck.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. And I think we had this. We had a couple of guys who, like, felt like we just, like, kicked them out of the nest, and we're like, hey. Best of luck, dude. And I think, well, one of the things that we've done is once you once you basically graduate, we have these masterminds that are really about, like, the trenches of revenue and the types of problems that you're that you're struggling with.

Right? The first one

Mike Vetter

significant. Yeah.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. It has. And so, like, the first one is really going from $0, no customers to $100,000. And so that's really about finding your first handful of early adopter clients. Right?

That might be running your beta program. That might be launching, to a certain select group that are friends and family and really converting them. And so a lot of what we're talking about is the basics of a go to market strategy, and that is super important. You're talking about it with the same sort of people that are, you know, circling on the same types of problems, and you're sharing ideas, and you're saying this worked for me, this didn't work for me, but that accountability is there. Once you get to a $100,000 and you're going to a1000000, that's a different set of problems.

And we think a1000000 to, like, 5000000 is a different set of scale problems. And so now we're starting to create these groups that are basically working on problems that are very similar. They're all technology companies. Some of them are from wildfire graduates and some of them aren't, which is super exciting to me too. So we're actually drawing in other people that have similar problems in our community, and we're all sharing those things.

And so to me, this idea of community, I think, has has gone from a tangential item that I thought when we built the napkin, it might have been on the backside in small print, but it wasn't on the front side, to, I think, the backbone of what we're building going forward. I really believe that.

Mike Vetter

Well, I think it's it's the long term growth of the start ups that we are building. Right? It's not just getting you to revenue. It's now turning into, once you graduate, how do you scale this thing up and how do you do it capital efficiently? Some of the VC things we talked about before, the mistakes that we made, Todd and I made earlier in our careers when we had some of our own dumpster fires, we wanna make sure that our, founders don't raise their 1st round of capital, do the happy dance, and then find a way to spend it all and then not have the revenue to support it.

Providing a community that also helps them with those things is absolutely key.

Todd Gagne:

It is. I think that's a good point. Like so, we've done a lot of stuff over the last couple of years. I feel like we've made some progress. We've got some success.

But I think we have an attitude of treadmill's always running, brother. We're always gotta get better. We gotta evolve. And so, Mike, as a guy who's responsible for a lot of the execution in Wildfire and getting crap done, where do you think the things are going as as like, what do we wanna do to evolve and continue to get better so the next time we get on and we talk about this stuff, we got another couple pages of stuff to talk about.

Mike Vetter

Yeah. So I understand that, but now now it's now public accountability for It is. All of the Bring it, brother. Not not even just on our team, for the whole podcast audience accountable.

Todd Gagne:

Man Mike's name.

Mike Vetter

I see Mike's name.

Todd Gagne:

I see

Mike Vetter

Mike's name. This is why I could only be on the podcast once in a while. This is why. These kinds of things. Alright.

Well, we have a list, and so I'll go through the list. I'm actually excited about those. I'm excited about sharing it because we have a great team. We're we're gonna get this done. So the first is is we're gonna be raising awareness of this nationally.

So this is something you're a huge part of, Todd, with the podcast, Substack, but we're also adding an increasing number of of events, webinars, focused on helping, founders map their strategies to AI. There's a whole bunch of things that are coming this year that are are really exciting. So we we just wanna tell the story. We're excited about it. We're passionate about it.

We we we wanna meet more founders we can help, so that's the first thing. The second thing is, our message is our methodology is really hardening, in a good way. So there's a lot more depth to it, a lot more things like templates, examples, videos. There's just a whole bunch of depth, but, also, just rolling up all of these tools into velocity. So how fast are entrepreneurs moving through the program?

What can we do as Wildfire? Because, again, we wanna do everything we can to help them. But as we go through reps of doing this with with founders, what can we do to help them move through the process? So mastermind groups are part of that. So there's a whole bunch of things in our methodology that are just gonna grow in maturity.

We have a solid foundation, but there's gonna be a lot added to that. The third thing I would say is is what you actually just talked about, which is community. So, one of the things that we is different about Wildfire is that we don't have cohorts. In other words, if you join the program, we don't force a founder to to finish the program in a set number of weeks. And the reason for that is very intentional.

It's because if you haven't completed a key step like we talked earlier about customer discovery, starting to build major parts of your application when you haven't defined the customer problem just creates rework. And so because we don't have, cohorts, one of the questions we often get asked is, how can I be a community of other founders if there's no cohorts? Well, the answer is some of the things that you talked about, Todd. So adding more depth to Masterminds, Wildfire University events, even just collisions in Rapid City where entrepreneurs can help each other with things. As we've narrowed those, Mastermind groups into specific, areas that are are sticking points, there's been an increased amount of collaboration, and our community is gonna expand.

And as it expands, even more help is gonna be available to entrepreneurs, not just from other entrepreneurs, but also from Wildfire. So I'd say community is the third one. The 4th one I would say is other partnership opportunities. So we've just begun to explore partnerships with other accelerators, but there's also other national programs like I Corps that are helping founders, you know, get funding through customer discovery, things like that. So there's a whole bunch of other programs that we'll continue to collaborate with.

Again, we are not on an island. We are not running wildfire in isolation, and we view those partnerships and tracking entrepreneurs into the right partner at the right time is gonna be key. The last thing is it's all about, outcomes. We wanna make a difference that is quantifiable. We don't wanna just walk around talking about, you know, that we feel good about what we're doing.

We also wanna show results because we've been doing this for too long not to see outcomes. Not just inputs, not just making noise in marketing, but outcomes. And so throughout Wildfire, we are gonna become a more data driven organization. So

Todd Gagne:

Yeah.

Mike Vetter

Things like just data driven dashboards in each part of the organization internally, but, also, I think I mentioned this earlier, but, also, being able to track founders and how they're doing as they execute through the program, and what are the things that are are holding them up. Those are things that we wanna start tracking more granularly. And and and part of this is we need to model what we talk to our founders about and doing that ourselves. And back when it was back in the napkin, Mike and Todd show, and it was all their personality, we just didn't have the systems and the team to really become a data driven organization. But, but that's changed.

And so in the upcoming year, we're gonna see, way more depth than that. So those were the 5, I would say, that we're gonna work on this year.

Todd Gagne:

That sounds meaty. Sounds like there's some work.

Mike Vetter

That's the end of the quarter. Yeah. So I'm worried you're gonna bring me on in a year and then ask me exactly that because of these crunchy comp but you won't wanna do it just with me. It'll be on the podcast, and then I'll have to answer all, I guess.

Todd Gagne:

Sure. This is a mastermind right now. I'm writing that stuff down. We're gonna get what are you doing deliveries? Yeah.

That'd be all good.

Mike Vetter

That's a good podcast for, man. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. A mastermind session.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. Exactly. I don't know. Those those are all good. I I just I I guess, Mike, the the one thing I would say is we're building an engine, of of building startups and software, like, software startups.

I just like that. Like, that's that's a unique thing. We're not doing it one off. We're trying to think about scale every place that we do. We're we've got, people starting to be lined up to own areas, and have a high degree to ownership.

And I think this data driven component of it starts to feed into that where it's like, if I get dashboards, I understand what's going on. I understand what's working, what's not. I think that's pretty exciting, and I think it's a great evolution for where we're going. It's been a journey, man. I mean, I've known you since, like, 2008, and, and and you and I have had kind of a north star about, like, how we wanted to build something.

And this has been just a unique thing, given both of our skill sets, and experiences that we've had. And I feel like this is a great way for us to give back as well as build something we're passionate about and really proud of. And I just I say thank you. I I say thank you for, taking the time, taking the gamble, and, you know, 2 years, is is gone by relatively quickly. But but I'm really excited to see where, you know, the next 5 or 6 years go, because I I feel like we're we've accomplished a lot, and the tipping point is here where I think we can really make a difference in a lot of entrepreneurs' life, and and I really appreciate you taking that that that journey with me.

It's been fun.

Mike Vetter

Well, likewise. You you took it with me too. We had no idea if this was gonna be if this was gonna work. I remember, initially, we didn't know if anybody would wanna do this. We're like, man, we're we're gonna try to tell entrepreneurs you're you're gonna you're gonna give us equity in your company, and we're gonna give you a ton of work.

It will take months. It'll be the hardest thing you've ever done.

Todd Gagne:

Awesome.

Mike Vetter

And so I know there's many other people, Todd, who have been like, yeah. I wanna do that with you, Mike. That sounds fun. Let's make that happen. And and so I I feel the same.

It's been just it's just been a joy to work with you and and to build this with you. And, I've I've learned so much along this journey since 2008. You've been been somebody in my life who's been there to to challenge me, to help me to grow, and also just to to celebrate wins. And I think 2 years and this is a win. And, it's it's fun to as we were preparing for this podcast, it was just fun to look at the list and, and share some of these stories together because we get we get working on things, executing, right, making it all happen, and, and and we we don't stop to sort of celebrate the wins along the way.

So, it's just been a blessing to do it with you, Todd. So, yeah, I feel the same way. Thank you.

Todd Gagne:

Well, good. Well, we'll wrap it up there. We've taken a full hour of your time. We appreciate it. And, hopefully, you gotten something out of this.

So thank you very much. And I'm Mike, Mikey v. Thanks again for being on the podcast.

Mike Vetter

Thank you, Todd. Thanks for having me.

Todd Gagne:

If you enjoyed the podcast today, please just take a moment to like rate it or comment on it for us. This feedback really helps us and it helps us get the word out to like helping other entrepreneurs and founders. Thank you.