The AR Show: Hannah and Matthew Arevalo (Pinfinity) on Fan Commerce and AR-enhance Collectible Pins

11:58PM Feb 8, 2021

Speakers:

Jason McDowall

Matthew Arevalo

Hannah Arevalo

Keywords:

pins

people

company

business

hannah

create

caleb

world

experience

augmented reality

big

product

startup

ar

early

collectible

partners

day

physical

brand

Welcome to the AR show right dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall.

Today's conversation is with Hannah and Matthew Arevalo, two of the cofounders of Pinfinity an augmented reality collectible pin platform, enabling interactive experiences around our favorite brands. AR is seeping into many corners of our daily lives. And now it's coming to collectible pins, a category of collectibles popularized by Disney in the late 1990s. Previously, Pinfinity CEO Hannah Arevalo was the director of brands for several product lines at lootcrate. His subscription box business focused on fan culture. There she worked directly with brands such as Warner Brothers and Disney and lead a P&L of $100 million annually. She also helped the team garner more than a dozen industry awards around fast growth, great products and customer service. Matthew Arevalo was the co founder and chief innovation officer at Loot Crate, and has spent much of his career focused on developing brand, community and strategic business relationships. In this conversation, we focus on fan culture, the pin collectible movement, and how augmented reality fits into the bar concept Hannah and Matthew call fan commerce.

I've always had this interest in ways that technology can bring people together. And that's kind of what the that that start was. And today, you know, Hannah, and I kind of call it fan commerce, where it's this idea that unlike traditional transactional e commerce, unlike, you know, traditional methods of distribution and retail and even of building a business, that by taking a fan focused, as opposed to just a customer focus interest, you can kind of build these solid communities and infrastructures around around businesses that will allow you to succeed even when there's challenges because you have this symbiotic relationship with who you're trying to reach. And they support you through those endeavors.

They go on to describe some of the lessons from their previous experience in a hybrid subscription box business, and how they are applying them to Pinfinity. As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, thearshow.com. Let's dive in.

So it's it's really rare actually to meet a founding team. That's a married couple. It's a challenge in the best of times right to have a healthy long term married relationship, but to combine that with startup experienced business parents in general, but the startup experience, especially is really unique. How How did you two come together? Initially?

Yeah, we met in 2005. I was in college, and Matthew was consulting. And we met we both were living in Orange County at the time, I grew up in San Diego and Matthew grew up in Los Angeles.

Do, do you want to share that we met? He's an online Do you want to get to? Oh, no, no, no plug? Well, so there? Yeah, there was a there was a service called OkCupid. That was a very data driven matchmaking service, you would even take surveys and talk about like what you're, you know, pretty deep into your interest and everything. And that's how I initially had reached out to Hannah was it said, like, you guys are a good match. And so it's just kind of interesting that everything that we do now is very online, related, very data centric, and everything. But that actually was the spark of of how we actually had met, it wasn't like at a real life event. It was a good person or anything. Yeah,

yeah. And then, you know, similarly to how we work today, and obviously translated into our personal lives and how we sort of are these two halves to a hole as we like to think of it? Matthews, very creative, very strategic, I tend to bring more of the business and strategy and process to that. And so it, you know, translates both, not only in how we live our personal lives, but also then how we approach our businesses as well.

Yeah, it was really beneficial. We, you know, while I had had some experience in startups, just peripherally through consulting with them, I didn't really know a lot about that world, even being in Los Angeles and having the LA tech scene kind of sprouting up, it was always something I kind of looked at from afar. And Hannah and I were able to get our experience, you know, a few years later, as the first employees of the company that we had created that went on to become the fastest growing private company in the in the country. And all the experiences that happened through that from starting just from a small room definitely was something that brought us closer together, but also had had its own unique challenges and everything as well.

What do you couple going into that experience? Or were you just

you were married at the time?

Oh, you already married?

We had been married for about four years, when we started the last company. So we've been married now for 10 years. Right? Yeah, no 11 we just one year anniversary. Yeah. So so we have we've gone through most of our professional experiences married. So that's been super interesting. And then we had our first child, our first and only so far, about five years ago. And we did that at the last companies, the first baby, the the first child of that company. So it's been, it's been really exciting to see both the personal and professional run in this parallel over the last, you know, decade or so. And she's great, she lets me indulge in all of my fandom and interest and everything. And she might not have been as excited as I was when I met like Steve Wozniak, or Stan Lee, you know, through all these, all these adventures and everything, but it's always been great for her to be supportive, and everything, I

think we have a really great dynamic, because we have a really unique perspective on things, you know, there is a little bit of an age difference as well. So there's a different perspective on almost everything that we do,

we can spend easily an hour breaking down the dynamics between the two of you, and how you're able to maintain a strong healthy relationship when you are with each other all of the time, through personal and professional managing kids managing a really stressful startup sort of experiences now in your second super early stage company working together. But I think maybe we should at least start with this conversation around the details of what it is you're creating right now. And Matthew talked about this notion of fandom, which really seems to be at the heart of both the previous company, and now what you're doing at Pinfinity. Can you describe really the origins of this notion of fandom and how it translates to pins and pin culture?

Sure. So I'm 41 years old. So I was born in a time where computers were in elementary school rooms and everything, but it was generally something that was like one for like an entire, you know, like school to really kind of utilize, but I get it definitely. Well, I never consider myself an engineer. I've never been a developer. I've always liked tinkering with things. And I've always liked trying to find ways to use technology to create content, I was like the editor of my school paper, basically, just because I knew how to use print shot Pro, like I was the only one who was able to or had an interest in figuring out what people were doing other things. So I'd always spent a lot of time in fan culture, even in the days of dial up BBs is and on forums, I really gravitated towards this idea that, regardless of who you were, and where you were in the world, or what your interests were, you could find other like minded people to become part of that, that community. And it really kind of connected people together, by no means was not in a major metropolitan area or anything. But it was just, it was a unique time, I was never really an introvert. But I found that being able to express myself online, was something that came really natural, and my ability to kind of create community and get people interested around things and make connections was there as well, because I'm kind of a networker. So this idea of how the digital transformation of companies doing business online happened, that's a lot more why my early consulting was through my 20s was helping those companies do that. And as I was doing it, mostly on the tech side, I started to realize that it was very important to be able to also translate that to development of interesting kind of fandom that was that was coming together. So kind of a long way of saying that, I've always had this interest in ways that technology can bring people together. And that's kind of what the that that start was. And today, you know, Hannah, and I kind of call it fan commerce, where it's this idea that unlike traditional transactional e commerce, unlike, you know, traditional methods of distribution and retail and even of building a business, that by taking a fan focused, as opposed to just a customer focus interest, you can kind of build these solid communities and infrastructures around around businesses that will allow you to succeed even when there's challenges because you have this symbiotic relationship with who you're trying to reach. And they support you through those endeavors. And I think that was something that we really had strong development of and success with at the last company. And it's, it's part of everything that we kind of do today.

Why pins? How does that that notion of the fan culture ultimately translate to this notion of collecting pins?

Well, we should start off by saying that, you know, the three principal kind of founders of the business are Hana as the CEO, myself as the chief experience officer and then the inventor of the Pinfinity platform, Caleb Pallus. So Caleb is in London, and Caleb is our chief creative officer and inventor. He had been thinking about this idea of PIMS for a while and I had seen this online it looked interesting and I'd always have an interest in spatial computing and xR I use some of the early headsets you know development headsets and everything I was enamored with this world that you can not just have text communications with but gestures and emote emotions and, and things from the world of gaming but in a different environment. And so I came across Caleb and this project that he was doing, did put on my kind of technologist hat and kind of looked into what other people were doing in the space. And it wasn't dependent on the fact that there was a patent in place, right, Hannah, that was like a nice bonus, there was more, he had found this unique way of taking something that was highly collectible, highly desirable, can be applied to any brand any vertical.

Well, and keep in mind, also, at the last company, we had developed an entire pin program for all of the subscription boxes. So pins were already like a big part of what we saw, as this incredible value add to anybody's experience, you know, you can't wear the same t shirt every day. But you can put a pin on your backpack every day, you can wear a pin every day. So is this small, collectible portable product that we had already developed into this entire program at the previous company. And so, you know, what Caleb was doing was taking that really sort of everyday product type that is really big in the fan culture space, and elevating it to that next level by pairing it with augmented reality. Yeah, and

then the fact that the pins are something that has been alive for decades, I mean, as a way of showing your affinity, whether you're a member of that organization, or you're just a fan, and then we have to kind of admit that when we were looking, you know, so Ken and I have a company called Guile ventures, which is, in essence, a venture studio, where we use our experience, our network, our core competencies, and a group of advisors to find unique companies that have interesting products that kind of marry that fandom with a with a physical product, especially something that can be subscription based, because of what you can do around that, that subscription, both from a financial and a relationship with the with your customers perspective. So we do have to admit that it was it was the highly desirable component, I mean, but it was also inexpensive to ship a high margin item, something that has, you know, no sizing, no complicated mechanics or machinery to it. And so that also was something that that made us very interested. And then Caleb's personality. I mean, he's, he's just like us, he has that authentic, value driven perspective, that if you create an amazing product, and you listen to the customers, and you're not afraid to take some risks and do something out there, you can see a lot of success and it was just a good marriage of both of our skill sets, Caleb was able to allow us to be able to do what we do best. And he we were able to give him the creative freedom to be able to do what he loves as a as a full time job

now, in what is it that Caleb collectively with YouTube, what have you created How is what the confini experience is different from what a typical pin is, and I go to my, with my children Disneyland all the time, at least we did prior to COVID. And I would see as you wander into adventure land, there was always this group of I think that there Disneyland employees, maybe they're just super avid fans who had these massive books, outlays of these pins and people talking and trading talking about the physical product, which is itself, as you're talking about this kind of real physical attribute, this real physical thing that you can always have with you doesn't size and doesn't matter. It's always you can put it back that always carry with you this thing this culture already existed. But how is it being altered? How's it being upscaled with with new technology? Yeah, I

think that one of our main goals was to take that existing culture like you mentioned, and then really be able to create this additional emotional connection to the moments by using the AR to unlock a bunch of different features. There's also the idea that AR AR can be updated so you can have your initial experience and 30 days later, something new gets released and so it's creating this ongoing connection to fans above and beyond a physical product that is static and how it's initially built.

Yes the you know, one example that we give is we have done some some projects and some initial work with with some Disney properties and pins and one of the samples that we had created when Caleb was doing things with with Disney in the UK was the the mirror that the Evil Queen looks at you know the the who's the fairest of them Amir I'm sure you're familiar with and it starts off as an amazing pin. It's a mirror, beautifully detailed hard enamel, high quality, and in really beautiful text on it. It says who's the fairest of them all. When scan with the pin affinity app with the knowledge that this is a mirror and the pin designed to take advantage of making it look as seamless as possible. The interior the mirror then goes away and you actually see the clip from the film of the Evil Queen asking it and then having the respond, you know, you're the you're not the fairest of them all that audio, that video. And then the addition of a downloadable what still white wallpaper and you know the ability to listen to this note to link to the Snow White soundtrack on Spotify, to be able to take a selfie picture of you, with animals around you and everything and like a frame this with our selfie cam feature. All of these are things that allow a fan to just have that more direct connection to have it become a little bit more of an interactive element. And while it's true that some people just scan the pan on first initial purchase when they get it and may not see it's not something that's intended to scan, like every day, there are people who do they're looking for that little pick me up, they're looking for something interesting. So the same way, you can look at a Los Angeles Dodgers pin and be like, yeah, I'm proud to be a Dodgers fan and won the World Series. Well, with our patent pending platform, you can scan that pin and actually relive the celebration of the World Series championship, you can see the players you can see fireworks, you can do anything, we'd like an augmented reality, to take that digital content and those experiences that are all audio and video and animation based and take a previously physical product that was just static, and spin it in a whole new magical way.

And so for the avid fan, there's really a lot to it, it goes quite deep. And the other element that you talked about is that it can evolve and change over time, that this month's experience might be different than next month's experience.

Yeah, yeah, one good example of that would be our Dungeons and Dragons pin. So we were fortunate, very early on to have one of the top toy companies on the planet be excited, you know, they they have a lot of companies that do pan's right handed. And this is, you know, a project that Hannah worked on directly with them. And she can speak you know, kind of around the licensing and everything maybe here in a minute. But from a from a perspective of having a physical item be dynamic, our Dungeons and Dragons pins, which are flying off the shelves. One of them is a dungeon master pin and it's intended, you know, if you're a dungeon master, or you want to give it to a friend who's a dungeon master, it says we've roughyeds Dungeon Master, when you scan the pin, not only do you hear music from a band that actually has done the official Dungeons and Dragons soundtrack. So you hear this epic medieval music and everything, you also see this character come out of the middle of the pin that's based off of a creature in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, you see its stats, you see an anime, you hear the music and everything. And every month, we change out that content on the first of the month, to a new creature. And so even early on only a few months into this business about six or seven months in, we're seeing people that are like, I take that pin and I scan it. And when we do an adventure with our tabletop group, we're gonna make it like that's, that's the way that we just kind of decide what the creature is that we're going to be doing. So even early on, people are taking the the pins and and finding ways to enjoy that dynamic content. Another example would be, you know, on the, on the sports side, maybe a pan that celebrates that team's involvement in a tournament. But the same way that people rush out on the field, already wearing the Super Bowl championships hats because they have both of the hats made for either team. Depending on who wins, we can have both augmented reality experiences ready to go such that once that is a is official, and it's there, we can push that content. And now that pin that celebrates that tournament in that series can now also celebrate the team that won and have that kind of cemented in history

and love to explore to two avenues from from here. One is on the license side. And the other is kind of on the content creation side. We talked about this, a couple of very large brands here. Disney dungeons dragons who I'm not I'm not sure who owns who owns Dungeons and Dragons, by the

way, that's Hasbro so we were for Hasbro has given us pretty big IP that that thankfully in the entertainment world are is still going very strong and is multi generational. So that's Transformers Dungeons and Dragons Magic the Gathering Power Rangers, GI Joe and more. So that's that's kind of our main, overarching our IP, but we're in negotiations and final work with, you know, you name the brand out there again, we're very thankful to to be talking to them from Atomy. And, you know, children's kind of programming to international brands that are based off of characters that are very well known worldwide.

These are very large companies who are in the business of licensing their IP. But I imagine that they have very strict standards, strict requirements for engaging with a partner, how these license holders look for or expect from a young startup like yourselves, what do they expect from you, when you commit to them or they commit to you in this process?

The most obvious one is there's a financial commitment on on both sides, usually in the form of some sort of minimum guarantee, which is very, very standard when you're looking at licensing deals and agreements. But I think what was exciting to see He was, you know, being able to go to some of these people that, you know, we've worked with in the past, and say, Hey, we have this new project, and we have this new product, and we want to show it to you. And, you know, at its core, a lot of them are used to seeing pins, and then being Oh, no, but ours are even better and bigger than that. And there's a much larger opportunity with having them be paired with AR. And so we were very happy to hear you know, that support from licensors that they see what we're trying to do. They they understand the concept, they agree that like this is that next evolution of collectibles. And so thankfully, most, you know, I can't even think of a conversation that wasn't incredibly positive and people who were excited to work with us. And yeah, so we've we've been really fortunate that not only did we have the network, of knowing a lot of the people in the space from our previous company, but also just that there was a really great reaction, which frankly made you know, getting the licenses a little easier for us, then maybe your typical startup, definitely knowing who to talk to is the the biggest advantage. And we have started with unlicensed properties to begin with,

not that we were doing anything bootleg, we were just doing our own IP testing the market out we did a series of Tiki parents, because it's a big Tiki culture of people collecting pins of different kind of Tiki gods and fandom, you know, kind of traditions and stuff in the Tiki world. We did some hands with some prominent up and coming Instagram, artists and people who are illustrators, allowing them to create like an artist series. So we can try seeing what is it like when they go to their audience and say, Hey, do you want to see my art come alive, I'm working with this new company. So that's kind of how we originally started. I mean, Hannah is, is be very positive about the conversations, and they have been. But there there are definitely nuances that that she manages on a regular basis, because of just how unique the product is, we have to have multiple conversations, not just with people around, hey, we're going to create this physical pin right now. But like, we need access to content, we need you to be we need, you know, you're going to be approving things that might be different than what you are that are definitely different than what you would be approved. If we were just saying, Hey, we want to make really awesome pins and put them in the marketplace.

Yeah, because a lot of these license ORS the way they manage their content versus the actual products are completely different divisions. And so while we need a physical product license to actually create the pin, there's a lot of the times the secondary licenses that come with needing access to film clips or music and, and so navigating them in parallel and then having to go through the approval process. So it's a, it's a more complicated than, you know, we want to just make t shirts and and that would be a much simpler process. But the fact that they're very supportive of it, they've been very helpful in navigating all of those different paths of approvals. And even just getting the deals, you know, across the finish line that we've been very, very happy with the support we've gotten from the licensers. It's fortunate

that we also have a product that is so easy to demonstrate, you know, we're using Google Slides, you may not have audio on it, but we're able to show animated GIFs and like real examples. And I think Caleb's work in the UK working with Disney, we don't have the Disney license here in North America yet, that's still something that we're working with. But being able to see some of those Star Wars pains and say, Look, you know, Disney, even on a promotional basis. And then on these kind of samples, these are pens that were out in the marketplace. And this is Star Wars and Marvel, he did a number of Marvel pins, and then three Star Wars pins. putting that in our deck from the very beginning and saying like, this is what it looks like, you know, you scan, a pin from The Empire Strikes Back and you can hear Darth Vader breathing, and you can see concept art, even though those were very early kind of iterations compared to even where we're at now. It was easy for people to wrap their head around and we didn't overcomplicate it. You know, there's a lot of very, there's a lot of ways that we could have really touted the platform and all the technology and everything. And instead, we went forward with the content and the user experience. And I think that helped with some of these conversations. We didn't overcomplicate things with a bunch of technical jargon and everything we just said it's our patent pending platform. And this is in general how it works. Here's how simple the interaction is. And here's how people can use it. You just use our free app on iOS and Android and pointing out the pin, wait a couple of seconds and it loads and you're able to see it. I think that helped out as well as opposed to us maybe going to some of these companies and saying we got this brand new technology. And you know we really need to get your buy in audit and everything. I think once we got the buy in that they saw that we were creating great pins just from the very beginning because they have to be amazing pins just from the start regardless of the AR really helped us.

You talk about this, this notion of patent pending early on, you're talking about this notion that there are lots of companies who sell pins and they're trying to one up each other on our pin is better, it's bigger, it's somehow the physical embodiment of the thing is different in some meaningful way we think. But here you coming not only with a super high quality pin, but also this completely different add on extensive, much deeper experience. What are the risks that there's a copycat product that comes right behind you? Is that the patent, the IP that you have around it really protecting kind of the core uniqueness of what you created?

Yes, you know, we've they worked with us a great question, we worked with a really top tier patent firm, to take some of our initial research that we had done an exploration in this space, and determine that the way that the utility patent is structured and described is both, you know, covers what we're able to do today. But it's also forward thinking in some interactions we can do, and I'll talk about that in a moment. But they also looked at what companies as big as Lego and others, you know, how they've, how they're using AR with physical products, in different categories and everything. And it really for us, it is the uniqueness of the pin badge being the the marker. And you know, I obviously, it'll be public, at some point, people can look at it and everything. But to summarize, it is around the idea of the pin badges of any material and have any kind of, of, of kind of shape and form, coming to life through the use of being scanned, and then that action happening. So it's not tied to a mobile device. It's not tied to any specific type of augmented reality experience. And, as I mentioned, it's forward thinking, there's even this concept of when having two pins in view, having them both detected and interact with each other. So you know, for example, having a hero and a villain, and maybe when you scan them individually, they have their own quips and animation and everything, but put them in the in the frame together with the camera, and they'll actually interact with each other and have different dialogue and everything. So we've also been fortunate enough to again, you know, Hasbro and and and Henson studios, and, you know, these large companies, they've seen things, they have r&d departments and everything. And it really was some good social, not social proof, but good, some like industry proof that even in inquiring with them about things they've done in the past, that this was unique, you know, we had to share with some people like a watermark version of the patent who wanted like a little more information, just close partners and everything as part of it. Yeah. But

I think, you know, kind of to where your question was going, Matthew, and I spent a fair amount of time when we were looking at this originally with Caleb, and we had asked ourselves that, you know, kind of that same question of, you know, if if this isn't actually patentable, the patent doesn't go through? What do we think of this business. And I think we were still very confident that, you know, especially when it comes to subscription, there are very few people. And we can confidently say this, there's very few teams of people who can probably do what we can do in the time, we can do it. And the biggest part of it is, because we're not chasing the money, we're chasing the fans. And we're really doing it from a genuine perspective of wanting to put just the coolest stuff out there via these pins. And, unfortunately, a lot of people don't focus on that. And so regardless of the patent, you know, that's sort of our cherry on top, we are super confident that people probably underestimate what it would take to replicate this. And we're now far enough along thankfully, that it would be pretty difficult for somebody to kind of come up behind us on this, but not

impossible. But I mean, Jason, the fact that we're doing this podcast right now, is helping to kind of build that brand equity in that brand awareness, you know, by all means, after doing, you know, going from zero to $100 million in revenue with our last startup, you know, with our co founder and the team and the support of everything there and seeing that massive growth. We had a lot of people who were like, well, I that that it's just, you know, pop culture stuff that, you know, subscription like that should be really easy. the nuances of developing that relationship of understanding how to create those special moments on how to create a membership experience that goes beyond just the physical transaction. Those are the things that are really important to us. And, you know, we've had great exposure at the licensing show had COVID not shut down the world, we would have not had these massive booths, but we know the people that who already had the big booth so we would be able to authentically say we'd like to just do a special promotion for you. We'd like to work with you. So we would have been all over e three, Comic Con, and other places. You know, there's trade shows that deal with this, these things and we've made special pins for them to be the official pain of these trade shows. So while there may be companies out there as we could do you succeed, who are like, you know, I have the license, I have pins, I can do this, I can figure out the AR component of it, I think that it would all just be kind of people, we believe that we could establish ourselves with the name brand enough in this space, to still have comfortable growth. And we welcome competition, we welcome seeing what other people are doing. But we're also, you know, very, very happy about where we're at. And even only a few months, you know, we went public, with our website in April of 2020. And as of this, recording, it's, you know, still it's only early December, and there's just been a lot of progress have been made. So far, thanks to a great team and a great, you know, multi decade network of people that were able to tap into,

let's talk about this previous experience. And this notion of the subscription box, which, you know, at the start of the last company, was really a brand new novel idea. And you Matthew or a co founder there, Hannah, you're together the first couple of employees in this in this team. Where did this kind of perspective with this concept

originate? So it was during a startup weekend event, that people would come to find other entrepreneurs that over like a three day period, and on a Sunday present in front of some judges, their idea for a new startup. And the idea was to launch as much of it as possible at that time. And so my co founder was going around the room was talking about, Hey, you know, I've got this concept for subscription boxes aren't new, they've been some a lot, a lot of success in in fitness and beauty and, and you know, food and stuff like that. But what about like something for geeks and gamers, and I was like, I sounds like something I would sign up for. And I would do, and I happen to have a really big network of of creators and supportive advisors and people in that space. I think out of all the ones there were some pretty good ideas that were there. But there was nothing that was in this world of toys and games, and entertainment and film. So that's why I decided to sit down with him, we also got a couple of few other people who were there for that period of time, but didn't move forward with the business, sat down and built the business, I mean, Facebook pages, the website started taking Credit card orders, all of that happened in a 72 hour period. And because we had made the commitment that we're going to ship this, you know, like, it's not like just fake, we're just gonna refund or credit cards, we took money from people 30 days, laters, we shipped the box, and it was just boxes bought offline, with a hand stamp from a rubber stamp on the on the top, usually not very straight, because we were just like stamp stamp, stamp, stamp stamp. And that's kind of where that concept came from. But the values and the concept of when you interact with us, the three main things that we put down on the website, and that, you know, I was in charge of the experience and developing the brand, while my partner who ended up being the CEO manage the financials and other elements of the business, it was really my job on the spot, figure this out. And so I had to come up with a name for the community. And I had to like I started thinking every single person who joined like, thanks, James M for for being one of our founding subscribers. And I was just like, what would I want a brand to reach out to me? Well, how would I feel that personal touch. And I think that's what allowed us to have that success, it was three main things. And we use this today. inclusion and an active growing and very diverse community of people like you that you can become a part of, and be welcomed into exclusive items and experiences that you can't get anywhere else as a thank you for being a member of that community, and access to perks and benefits on top of the services and products that we provide from known and interesting partners who help when you think about that membership experience, unlike let's say a streaming subscription for Netflix or something. And it's like, well, what I get is Netflix, you don't really think about oh, I get this community of Netflix fan movie fans and TV. I mean, that's really not their value proposition. So for us, we we built it, where when you think about that money that you're spending every month, that is supposed you're supposed to be thinking about the connections you make with other people, the community, the traditions, the live streaming, the content, the perks, the benefits, and that's what's allowed us to be able to have a really high value proposition for a, a decent, you know, a exchange of money. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, Hannah, do you want to do you want to talk about Pinfinity plus and kind of how that's how that subscription is ultimately really kind of the biggest the focus of that direct to fan as far as,

right. Yeah. So we took that same, you know, concept and wanted to bring that over and Pinfinity and when we were having those early conversations with Caleb, that was a big part of how Matthew and I saw the success of Pinfinity could be would be through this subscription service. And like Matthew said, it's really about it's a membership and so that fee is A membership fee and with it comes physical product and in the Pinfinity case physical pins and a lanyard. But it's also just getting access to that whole ecosystem that we're building for everybody. So we were really excited to bring that over. And so we just recently launched in November, the Pinfinity plus subscription. And we plan on building out a couple of verticals right now. It's it's our sort of catch all, any IP, any genre that you might be a fan of will include there. And then, you know, we have some thoughts around gaming horror, sci fi, and some additional verticals as well as partnerships, right, you know, we worked with Marvel on the official Marvel subscription box. And

you know, we think of it as you you know, Star Wars, you could have an entire, you know, forever, you could go into Star Wars and have these series of pins that go. So we're looking at different partners for their specific verticals as well. So yeah, big we are big fans have subscription, both from a fan side, also on the business side, when you get that recurring revenue. And that's a huge, huge benefit for anyone, and the data that you get from from, you know, longer term relationships with customers, and, and then them kind of having that experience with you. They, if you're doing it, right, they feel like their membership fees, their support, is actually helping build the business. And they feel like they are a part of it. And as you are much very transparent about how their feedback actually impacts the business like, this is what we're doing. But we heard you, you know, Hannah, and I and Caleb and the whole team, and this is how we advise other companies as well is, the more that you can be agile and make those changes, and set yourself up to be able to make those changes and know what questions to ask and when to ask them, etc. and then back it up with actual change. That is something that that is an amazing connection and an amazing value for an end, an end customer,

we see it as we want people to feel good, just as good about their decision to interact with the brand, as they are with the actual products and services, they need to be proud to be a member and feel like it actually matters. And I know, you know that how does this all relate to augmented reality, or they will just every aspect of that goes into the technology, you know, from our technical roadmap and features that we're going to release to how what kind of interactions we do with the pins and how engaging and and interactive that they can be. You talked about these these characteristics, this notion of inclusion, having exclusive, being exclusive, having this sort of access, really connecting to the community, listening for that feedback, having a personal relationship with each one of these members. And actually being responsive to the sort of feedback that you're hearing are all kind of elements, these values that you're bringing forward, based on the lessons you've learned. Are there other other elements that you've experienced, that are necessary to create a successful company,

when we created a bit, kind of, it's kind of interesting, but one of the first email we created where we're like, Hey, you know, we people have questions, and there was no helpdesk or anything, there was no like, customer support. Yeah, there was, there was no software we use. And so I threw out there, like, why don't we make the email address, we love you. And so you have to actually type in we love you at. And like, that's how you first interact with the brand. Because that was our thought was, you know, if you're typing and we love you, you're already setting that expectation. Even if you're kind of frustrated, upset that like we're here for you, we're going to be here. And of course that permeated into packaging, and it was hidden, you know, is how we sign things and everything. And it was part of kind of our values. But Hannah, do you want to kind of talk about like how, I mean, Hannah did the very first support ticket and then led a team of like, dozens of people internationally to support half a million subscribers a month? What what what were some of the ways that you thought about delivering, like, customer experience and support to them?

I mean, I think at its core, it was that investment into the support and community, you know, and it was that we took the time to answer every single question and we helped every single customer and so just adding that extra layer of, we obviously don't want you to have any reason to need to contact us. But if you do our company truly values investing and making sure that you're getting the best you can get. And so that meant, you know, having pretty substantial teams on the support side and on the community side, and that we were making sure that we allowed those team members to answer questions and take the time and develop that that relationship with the customers. You know, our very first subscriber at the last company, like she would come see us she was in Canada but she would come see us at every trade show. She literally emailed us a hat she had knitted when we had our son like that. relationships that we develop with, with these subscribers. I mean, they are our friends, like they are people, we are the same people, and they are part of our community. And that

that translates forward into Pinfinity plus, I mean, the very first person to buy Pinfinity plus subscription, I pick up the phone, and I called them. And I think them and I said, you know, do you have a few few minutes, so we can talk about your interest in pins and why you know, our company doesn't exist, we've never shipped a subscription to anybody, and you bought a six month subscription off the off the go $100? Plus, like, what was it about it, and it was the things you want to hear that, you know, you guys seem to have a very, you know, strong customer support structure. You know, I felt that it was very authentic, you know, you guys are doing things differently. Obviously, he admitted that the augmented reality component was a key part of it, as well, he's a big pain collector, but it was having that conversation and kind of just discussing with it. And that's kind of what we do our ideas to create these core kind of founding members of some of our services that if they choose to, they can engage a little bit deeper with us. And we'll ask them questions beyond just how did you hear about us? And where do you collect pins, but more about when you need to find information? When you look to purchase products of this type? Where do you go online? And how what are your thoughts of what would be a perfect gift for somebody who is who is a very big pin collector, that isn't a pin and asking things so that we can think about how we can create an ecosystem around the augmented reality pins, and around what we're offering that really delivers real value. And obviously, that's not scalable, we're not going to pick up the phone and call every single person who comes on board. But we did it for the very few first dozen, and then it was email. And then we invited people to video chats, and it's really just a big part of it. Eventually, a couple more months in, as our community grows online, those conversations will happen in Facebook groups and in ways where we can kind of get a pulse of how the community feels and what they want to see. But it's really important for us to also educate them augmented reality is new, while lenses and, and things like that, you know, and Snapchat is very easy to understand. It's like you've been using AR all this whole time, right?

I mean, even myself, when when I was first introduced to this, you know, even I was like, Oh, I don't really know AR that, well, this is gonna be an educational I have to put myself through and it's like, but like lenses, Snapchat, all that. And I was like, oh, like, you know, even just educating and connecting the dots for people and letting them know, like you do actually use this almost every day of your life. You just haven't always put that name to it. Right? Yeah.

And I think I think it made us Mark made us comfortable. Some of our advisors and some of our early investors have had asked us like, why AR? Why not call it you know, like alive or this? And that, like, Are people really going to know that. And what we found out is that as companies like Apple, and Microsoft and Facebook are comfortable using the phrase and the acronym AR and augmented reality, that yes, they're probably targeting early adopters and people like that. But like, we seem to feel like that is a a competent thing to go out there and to say, because it does explain what our product is, you know, most directly.

Now, you have been through this previous startup experience, had an amazing rocket ship start, you're just killing it for several years. Where can things go wrong with this type of business?

I think it's mostly in an in its broadest terms, it's overextension. And that's really just across the board, I think it's you know, in your headcount, making sure that you have the right team members, that you're structured the right way to make sure that you're hiring for what you really need. And, you know, keeping your your teams as lean as possible, while giving them as much support as they need. Also, just on physical product, right, you know, making sure that you aren't over buying on inventory, and just all of these sort of over extensions, that that can lead to, to some of those declines.

Yeah, our co founder, my co founder and the previous business, it was also one of his first companies and he was a CEO, and there was a lot of education that was happening and all of us were learning at the time and everything and, you know, hypergrowth can can lead to a lot of different challenges. And it's, it's definitely something that we look back at and see the good times and the bad times, and everything that we try to do personally for HANA and I was to make sure that regardless what happened, we protect as much as we are able to have the influence to do so the relationship with the with the subscribers, and our employees and our partners. Unfortunately, when a company gets to a certain size, you don't always have that same kind of influence, and you might make some mistakes as well. So it definitely in that particular case, as we said the company was built in a weekend and then just didn't didn't stop right you know, the company He just continued to, to evolve, you know, like, so there wasn't an operating agreement. And we didn't sit down as co founders and have really in depth conversations around how we would structure things and everything. And so that I think was probably our largest challenge to face was, you know, and that's why today, we actually, you know, we are very thoughtful the Pinfinity was talked about in October, Caleb and I were going back and forth, just over LinkedIn Caleb's in London, we have yet to have met Caleb. But we have a stronger relationship, a more confident, leadership, group and perspective, because we took a few months to really explain how our decisions going to be made. What do we do, and we reach in this in this situation, you know, how are we going to make this scalable and do some risky things, but also have them backed by data, and cover each other's backs and everything. And so that's why we didn't really launch until April was we had, you know, all the legal and all the, you know,

even just getting to know each other, right? I mean, like you had said at the last company, you know, Matthew and our CEO, they didn't know each other before that weekend. And, you know, so to have Take, take all those lessons learned and going into a new company with somebody that we didn't have any history with, we did take those, you know, six months or so before launching the business to just get to know each other? And how are we all going to work together? You know, we knew we would be really be the three primaries doing almost everything, even day to day on this business. And so making sure do we work well together? Is there harmony and synergy here? And thankfully, you know, we do and we have it. So it was, it was a great, great, fine.

Yeah, I think, you know, investors when they're often looking at prospective startups that they want to support and invest in this notion of the founder, cohesiveness? Have they worked together before? Like, how have they built and structure that relationship? How do they behave, even in the meetings that you have with prospective investors, there's a lot to be said about how well those co founders work together in terms of that company's ability to actually succeed because there are no shortage of challenges and difficult conversations into very difficult days, weeks, months, sometimes you have to get through, if you don't have that sort of strength of relationship, there is a very good chance you're going to spiral out of control.

Yeah, and I think even as we saw rapid growth, we still were always in this bootstrap mode, this bootstrap modal. So it meant myself as the chief experience officer, and then the Chief Innovation Officer, there's a lot of head downs were head down work. And so yes, second largest shareholder, co founder of the business, but at the end of the day, there was a lot of other powers that be and people who had final say, and it was it was, you know, that dynamic was something that we had to learn over time. And sometimes it led to massive success. And sometimes it led to really challenging situations.

And I think one of the lessons learned was, you know, you guys had sort of created this division of responsibility, where what we think we're doing with Pinfinity is making them a little more cohesive at the top. So it's all sort of shared, while we have our specific, you know, disciplines and what we're best at and bringing to the table, everything is a lot more decision based as a whole team. And we really all sort of carry that ownership equally, a lot more.

Yeah. And in full transparency, I mean, obviously, as a private company, and everything, like our business structure and everything, but for the sake of people listening, one thing that was very important for us was we share equal ownership in the business with Caleb, as the inventor of the of the platform. And I would say that some people, when we spoken about that were very surprised, they were like, you know, yes, he's the inventor, but you know, there's some skills that he doesn't have, and and we're and there's some skills that you guys can lean in more on and everything. And what we ended up deciding, was, like, you know, for this to be as fair as possible, we need that balance of creative and strategy. And we need to, we need to have Caleb feel confident that as a, as a husband, and a father to a young son, like Hannah and I are are parents to a young son, like, on the other side of the country and outside the country, you know, in London, in the world, you know, like, how can we make that happen? So it wasn't just a Oh, let's just do the split this way. Because like off the cuff, you know, we thought a lot about it, but it seemed to be the most fair. And in our previous company, we didn't own you know, half of it, we we had our ownership. But ultimately, that meant that decisions were made in a very different way. The way we have it structured is Hannah is one of the managing partners of Pinfinity and the CEO, and Caleb is the other managing partner. And so, you know, as we build the business out with a board and all the rest of the transitions that we're making, as a business, they will continue to have that say with probably a third independent person and advisor or somebody on the board. But it's just a it's a good structure to have and it's something that we've learned based off experience in the past is how to do it. Now. We'll see. I mean, if it works out if everything is working out well so far, I think we're in a really good place.

So you've already talked about a lot of these things around this kind of cultural elements, these leadership principles that you're bringing forward. Some of them you got right in the previous one, some of them, you learned the hard way that you're now trying to correct in this new experience. Other other sorts of lessons learned that you're applying Hana as kind of thoughtfully defining upfront, what sort of leadership and cultural principles you want to bring forward independent entity?

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is that cohesiveness and being really extra thoughtful on the people that we bring into the team. And thankfully, you know, we have pretty significant networks, we're able to pick from people who we've worked with in the past, who we know we have good working relationships, who we know, you know, share the same values, we are a displaced team, you know, so to speak, you know, Caleb's out of London, one of our other team members, he's in Alaska, we're in LA, and so on the you know, that one of the few positives from COVID, for us has been that we built this company, having everyone remote. And so making sure that we have that added level of meeting to make sure that we can all work well together. But it also the fact that we've been built out of that has been an advantage, because we've had to solve those, you know, any potential issues around that from the get go

different time zones, different culture, I mean, like this, you know, obviously, we have our Chinese partners in China and everything, we are, you know, more of a holacracy than a traditional hierarchy. I mean, granted, there's like, six or seven, I would say, like eight people, eight kind of principle, kind of people that are working there, but we also are not building this business to go like we've had in the past from like eight people to 300, this business does not need 300 people to be successful. You know, we understand part of the reason why we've been able to, to get some of that early funding is, you know, Hannah, and I invested some as Google Ventures, and then we're not raising millions of dollars for this, despite the fact that there's, you know, these big brands and licenses, we know how to build businesses with very low overhead, and with the use of, of tech stacks and tools online. So as we continue to grow, I mean, that one of the people that we're working with now started off at the very, you know, just answering support tickets at one of our previous companies, and then became the face of it like communications and was in videos and went to shows and, you know, added so much from to the culture and like, ran a lot of the development of the culture there. Today, yes, he's also helping with support tickets with us and everything. But we're tapping into all of that knowledge and all that experience. And he will continue to grow through the business and anyone we bring on board, you really have the opportunity to lean in and kind of choose your own adventure. And I think that's something that's really important. We're less interested in like, Well, my title is this. And this is a lien I have to be in. And we're learning every day about those.

Yeah, I think, you know, for me, personally, it's really important to be able to bring people in and develop the skills that they're most interested in. And regardless of how you come into the team, having that really early understanding of what your end goal is, and what you would want to be doing, if this was a 500 person company, what would you want your your role to be? And so seeing how we can carve those paths for people, because I was very fortunate that I was able to do that, you know, over the past decade working with Matthew and I have been very fortunate to get to kind of determine that as well, I never imagined that I would be a startup CEO, you know, 10 years ago, and yet, here I am. And I've been very fortunate in the experience and support that people have given me in getting here. And so I obviously want to pay that forward. And as many people that we can kind of invest in developing through Pinfinity or any project we work on is just a huge priority. For me,

that is an amazing attribute for anybody who's young and ambitious and talented to find themselves in a role in which they get to help define exactly what they're getting out of the experience. But one of the challenges of doing that is that you still also have the set of things that need to get done, that you've defined like with an execution, the operations of the company, how do you balance those two needs of the company versus the the ambitions in the in the desires of the employee? Most of

the people we've been bringing on understand that and it's frankly just being very transparent about it from the beginning. And so you know, for example, Josh who is on our team, from the early conversations, we established where he wants to go and what he wants to do but I was also very clear with well here's the needs of the business and I know you have this skill set so here's what the business needs today. But if you can help us today you're going to be literally like I think it was employee number two, you know you will be one of the first people in here. We will get you there and I want you to get there I support you know that vision you have that skillset. And if it changes, and if it changes, yeah, you will have that opportunity like, so let's establish, you know, your five year plan, and let's make sure that we work towards getting you there. But here's the reality of where the businesses today and this is what we need. So if you want to come in, here's what we need to do. And I think just being really transparent and open with people, and just really kind of straightforward, has only served me in the positive. And so just, you know, that balance is really just being open with people. And here's what we need today. Here's the role as it is today. But what do you want to do? Great, I can help you get there, and we will drive you in that path. And we'll bring on, you know, when we do need to bring on additional people, we'll bring them on in that sort of supportive role to take those things off of your plate that aren't taking you on your path to where you want to go. Right,

what is it that when you're coming in, and you're thinking about what needs to be accomplished that day? What are some things that you're like, really have to kind of do this and that, that don't bring you joy and happiness that, you know, even? Right, you know, and so like, how do we do that, you know, my role in the company can change over time, you know, I, I've helped establish kind of the structure with the team. And we, you know, my, my responsibility has been the brand story and experience and the fandom and, and really leaning into the marketing and working with our partners who help us with with those elements. But you know, the same way that my world changed the previous company, from chief experience officer to Chief Innovation Officer, my role can change, and everybody's been is really open to what that looks like. And I think it's also important that no job is too small. Again, there's a lot of cliches that we're going to say but I mean, they're cliches for a reason is Hannah, and I pack the boxes ourselves. And, you know, Pinfinity now, you

know every part of my job as CEO is I go pack pins every day. And some

startups would be like, look at this traction, we're getting you know, we've we've done this amount of revenue, you know, there's multiple paths for for us to generate revenue to just briefly talk about them. One is obviously the direct to fan commerce via e commerce on our website and subscription. But we also are talking to distributors about being in retail stores and online retail. We also have projects we do some we can talk about some we can't because of where they're at. But we do projects for individual companies to do runs of pins to commemorate promotions, or marketing they're doing so there's lots of different ways to generate business with this with this concept that we have. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of flexibility about how we do that. And I think we've given people the opportunity to see how Hannah and I are like, Look, we'll send the email to other companies where I was going with this as other companies might have been like, we need to raise millions of dollars, because we need to have a fulfillment space. And we need to hire staff to come in to pick and pack or we need to pay this third party logistics company, we need to hire an agency to do marketing, we need to hire a social media company. Because we've done the big company like this, we've done hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue as the founding employees of our past company, we can just, we should just hire people to do this. And our thought process was like, No, I mean, that's not how we feel that we're going to be able to create this culture and this foundation that we're that's important for us to do. And thankfully, our early investors and our partners agreed, you know that, you know, we don't need to bake these large capital investments, it's more about human capital. And it's more about doing more with less,

you know, that bootstrap sort of approach this, this notion that you can roll up your sleeves, and you can get it done and be super efficient about it definitely bodes well to being successful, because as you have previously experienced, you noted, one of the one of the biggest risks is becoming overextended is hiring before you really need desperately need that extra person or choosing to do relationships or projects or commitments that kind of take you beyond what makes sense for where you want the company to go and where it is today. And I wonder if you know that you you know, 10 years ago was just started in this industry, you didn't imagine yourself being a founder and CEO. But now that you are you've noted that you'd launched officially the company spring of 2020. So April this year, have you been particularly surprised or experienced anything unexpected? As now the founder CEO,

I think mostly, it's just been how positive like not only my network, but also just, you know, people in my sphere have been and how supportive people are. I mean, a lot of the times you hear of how cutthroat businesses can be and I think just really the support that I've received not, you know, not only from my husband, obviously in our and Caleb, but really just across the board how how uplifting people can be and especially to other executives, other CEOs, especially when you're starting your own business as well. And so I think that has been this really incredible positivity that I've seen. That has just been really amazing and surprising, though, you know, maybe it shouldn't have been but I've been super fortunate. I have so much support. And that's been really amazing

when you've had to learn a lot about the nuances of working with people who are putting capital in the business, and how to balance, you know, their interest and their, their digging into the company and stuff like that, and having to really kind of solidify your reasoning behind the thoughts around why we're doing certain things, some ways versus others. And I think, again, to your point, you know, people have had their their strong opinions about like, Well, why are you doing it this way, and you've been able to confidently say, not always go back to because that's how we did in the past. Because that's not how we think about things, we don't look and say, we don't always point back. And that, in fact, you can tell we're fairly general with even talking about the previous company, because we don't really see it as that's, you know, base our value today, based on what we've done in the past. You know, we we obviously, again, learned a lot from that, and had some really great success. But I think it's something interesting to see that like, as you said, when you talk to some of these companies, we didn't exist, you know, months ago. And I think it speaks to Hannah's ability to always want to be confident enough in the strength of what we're doing, but also be open enough and collaborate enough with these partners, to want everybody to come away from the table. I sometimes think that she's fairly generous with some people, but then we talk about it. And she's like, Look, this is this is the long term vision. And if you don't mind me saying for somebody who is a younger CEO, and somebody who is new to this, that kind of foresight to say, let's go ahead and give a little bit today, let's make sure that they feel the other partner feels like they are definitely happy and that we're not really kind of running them through the wringer to make the best opportunity just for us, is very wise. And it's something that I really admire about Hannah and something that I'm I feel confident about having created a family and being with her is that opportunity to be able to, to see that as a value add to every conversation and every partnership

thing. Yeah, that's amazing. That sort of long term perspective, as opposed to a very transactional perspective,

I think very definitely given, you know, just the general you know, people's perspective, depending on generation and everything and like, you know, like, how can we have the, you know, the typical starters, right

millennial, how

can we start it? How could we start? How can we get the most today for us now, it's great, yes, customers, blah, blah, blah, but like, this is our business. And like, we've realized that we get by with the help of our friends, you know, we've had to, we could speak briefly on Disney. But yes, your Disney training program has been around for 21 years, we are fortunate enough to be working with somebody who is very responsible for a lot of that growth, and that development and that experience, to advise us and help us. And that was because of our network and being able to just, you know, be reliable that if anybody ever needs anything, we're there to help them. And that just pays, you know, just karma just seems to be working very well for us.

So where do you take the business from here?

You know, I'll, uh, Hannah, I'd be interested in how she would answer this. I mean, we talked about it a lot. Because look, there is that kind of being in the moment thinking about now and not being too, Pat, you know, looking at the past or too worried about the future. But, you know, I believe that, based off the relationships we're having now, and opening up more distribution among just the direct connection that we have, that as we start to be in more places that people are discovering the product, we're also working with a number of really big creators who have huge audiences who love what we're doing. And I found a way to use our platform to create really great experiences, I think we're gonna see a lot more awareness over the next few months, I think as the world starts to open up over the next 12 to 18 months, we are going to be integrated to a lot of the physical elements of the business at tradeshows. To be fair, these virtual shows, we are the provider of the physical items. For some of them, a lot of these people are like, Look, we can pay $10, get a ticket, but pay 15 or 20, and get a welcome package, get a T shirt, get a package, we're actively working with those companies, because obviously they're creating digital content for the virtual shows, why not have a physical collectible that they can then extend that digital content before, during after so I think there's a lot of future for us in being able to be that company, that physical collectible that can unlock either Exclusive OR already existing digital content for brands. And then while our backgrounds are mostly in, let's just say pop culture, entertainment, in the in the film and television, we're having wonderful conversations in the music industry, fashion, hospitality, sports. So I think that that's kind of the expansion as well. And we're going to have to be humble enough. And we I think we have been to say we don't really know the world of professional sports collectibles, we don't really know the music industry, Merchandising, and so we're bringing on some really great partners to help with that. Well, what would you say happened? This introduction.

No, I mean, I, I generally totally agree with you. And I think that, you know, while especially in the pop culture, space pins are a pretty big product already, that what I hope is that pin Pinfinity becomes synonymous with, you know, collectible pins across any genre, like you said. And so we started with pop culture, because that's, you know, what we know and love and where our most in depth experience is. But one of the we'll call it fun things I like to do with Matthew, when we look at these different opportunities is I like to run him through that challenge. And so I'll say like, okay, Kylie Cosmetics, how would you pitch her a pen like that kind of a thing. And we go through all these different industries, and there really wasn't a use case that we didn't see where it could make sense that this could be an incredible value add, not only for a brand's fans, but also for the brand itself. Well, you know, these can go in the Oscar gift bags, you have this augmented reality pen, and it unlocks the winner of the Best Picture, you know, like, there was just not a single use that we could find that didn't make sense for a brand or a fan, as how this could be a way for them to connect each other to each other. And so while pins might not be the biggest thing in sports, or makeup or fashion, we can help take them there. And so what I'm really looking forward to is really solidifying ourselves within the pop culture space and really being the leader of pins in that space. And then starting to go out above and beyond that, which, you know, we're already kind of doing through these brand relationships. But you know, that pins are just this big part of everybody's culture, whatever you're a fan of.

And, you know, we've seen the numbers, I mean, we did some of the data, I don't know off the top of my head, but this is an ever growing category. People are wearing their phantoms on their sleeve. I mean, our previous company was successful, I believe, because the year came out Avengers culminated, and you know, we, you know, this idea that you're not going to wear a Batman t shirt, or you're not going to wear a pin for your favorite anime character on your jacket, because that's just something that people are, who are hardcore into those comic books and movies are, you know, that is completely democratized now, and you don't, you know, there's specialty stores, there's high end retailers, there's waffle irons you can get of Death Stars and stuff like that. I mean, there's, there's so much that's out there, I think we're thankful in the fact that the way we think about Pinfinity is also not just tied to the mobile devices, right? As far as like a phone. So all this future technology that a lot of people listening to this podcast are probably developing and researching things like glasses, things like interactive displays, where you know, I could put something in front of a screen that's transparent, but when you put it behind it, it's being detected and coming alive. You know, all of those things, we're building using industry standard and forward thinking technologies. So that regardless of the device of regardless of what is being used to scan a pan and detect it, that interactive experience is a reliable, and we don't need to go back to the drawing board every time because of how we think about it. So I'm excited for the days where we are at extension in some kind of wearable, where, you know, it's just opening up Pinfinity app or running that, you know, scan pan, you know, some kind of voice activated thing. And that is how you're seeing it versus holding your phone, it's still a great, you know, we don't have any, anybody complaining about the current method. But I think that that's something that we're interested in as well, we're not going to just build the greatest mobile application for scanning pins, we want to create the best platform for being able to see a physical product come to life. And that starts with wanting to become and create with the strength of our community and support the world's greatest pin collecting community period. And that's how we sometimes explain, you know, our boilerplate, says that, and then talks about the technology part of it as being key to it. And I think that's, that's been very helpful with us in not just relating our valued members, but also to our partners who we are fortunate enough to be able to use their amazing creative IP, as part of our developing our experiences.

As you look out, over the next 12 months or so, we're coming out of the year of COVID. Hopefully, 2021, as you noted, is that here, we get to come back together, and maybe we'll have some of these conferences also in person, maybe near the end of the year. Is there something is there someone in this industry that makes you particularly nervous.

I'm nervous. I don't really know how we would.

I mean, I not to be like, too confident, but it's kind of like no, you know, like we our confidence in what we know we can do the confidence you know, and the response we've already seen. There are other major pin players there are, you know, people who do different types of pin types of things, but at the end of the day, you know, nobody currently really makes us nervous. I think if anything, we hopefully make other people nervous.

Yeah, I mean, you know that we do have the advantage that with our last company, there wasn't any any patented technology, there wasn't even any licenses to begin with. And we still were able to create this core base that would that bought into the community content and exclusivity of what we were doing. And so I feel that we can create a team and a culture in a way that there may be other companies out there that have bigger distribution than we do have just their pins. Regarding without AR, that they may be more of a household name when it comes to like, oh, when I want to buy a pin from my favorite franchise, I'm thinking about this. But for people that want to be part of a bigger community, to have exclusive things that are not just based off of style guides, but are little, they're very authentic, because they're made by people who have a passion for this space. So you'll find, you know, that weapon, that small ancillary character and everything and not just what's going to sell well, at you know, traditional retail on a shelf or on a website, you know, it has to be that main character. And then I think our pop culture, and overall just kind of knowledge of the space and the people we surround ourselves with will always help us be the most authentic brand when it comes to creating the pin designs and the experiences. But we're there's also room for more people in this space. And our our thought process is our our core mission is to drive value for our members, our team, and our partners and influence investors. And as long as we're doing that, and as long as we're able to continue growing that with the expectations that everybody has put in place, if other people pop up out there, great. But we will always be there with a welcome mat to say, here's how we are differentiated. And if you want to go on this adventure with us, even if you just want to buy the pins, because they're great. And that's it, but you love that our commitment to outstanding service and that you can count on us. And that will make any any issue you have right. Again, that idea of being happy about the decision you made to interact with the brand and not just ecstatic about the product you get. I guess Apple would be a good example of that, you know, I'm proud to be an apple community member and have been for decades, just as much as I love this MacBook Air that we're recording on right now. So there's definitely companies out there but an apple is not the only person out there making laptops and they're not the only people out there. Obviously they have their advantages. I can go on and on about macadam an apple fanboy. But I'm just saying yes, you know, the way that we look at it is is just like that, you know, but it'd be great to be the Tesla of pins, like they are the electric cars versus everything else. And I think even as other companies create amazing electric technology and automation and stuff like that, there will always be a test lead. So there's always our capability to be that different company out there. That's just a little bit different than everybody else.

Yeah, let's wrap up with a few lightning round questions. What commonly held belief about spatial computing? Do you disagree with?

Well, for me, I think it's that it's too early right now for online marketplaces to kind of exist I've, again, I've had some experience with everything from second life to high fidelity on at least the the online VR kind of interactions. I think people have seen the success of Pokemon Go and the Harry Potter experiences as far as AR and integrations, as being you know, things that are you have to have that major IP behind it to happen. I mean, I mean, Niantic who built Pokemon Go with the Pokemon Company, it was based off of a whole other non license, you know, amazing storytelling that they did around the world of, you know, that you're in this world where there's a whole other digital component to it, that's there. I think people need to be more bold like that. And think about that storytelling element in the elements of that and not be so concerned with the technology or having There seems to be a balance, I guess, it's a it's a really difficult question. Because in the in that spatial world, I think that there the misconception from people tends to be that there's a lot of capital necessary, that there's a lot of high technology and engineering, that's going to be necessary. Pinfinity has zero full time developers, Pinfinity has zero full time engineers. And yet we are in a space of augmented reality where we are creating some early things that will get you know, more complex and complicated goes on. And don't get me wrong. We will you know, from unity developers to animators, you know, there may be additional hires, but we've shown that we can be in the marketplace, get these major licenses. You look at our website, there's over 200 non incentivized reviews where the average rating is 4.9 out of five, we've definitely touched on something and I think some companies might have hesitated and wanted to have some other kind of foundation and footing beforehand and been intimidated by The technology aspect of it. And I think we're thankful in 2020, that there are tools that we can use and platforms that we can develop. And if we mix those all together and orchestrate them into something really special, we can get something that typically might have a barrier of entry that people have a misconception of, and kind of break past that to actually deliver a great experience. Yeah,

I agree. It's great.

Besides the one that you're building, is there some product experience story element that you wish existed that kind of leveraged AR,

you know, I think that there's there's definitely something in the world of expanding digital collectibles that we're seeing kind of a lot of companies experiment with, there's a lot of thought that's gonna be coming out next year, around this idea that you know, every this physical thing you buy, you get this virtual version, we've seen it with like skins and video games and everything. I think that I'd love to see. As much as I'm not a creator, I'm not an artist, I'd love to see a really solid marketplace that is just very balanced and fair to digital creators who are creating virtual experiences, virtual digital items, and everything. Some companies have tried it. And I think maybe they were a little early, I'm not sure why they shut it down this idea of blockchain so that like, say, Hannah's an artist, and she makes this outfit that a VR character can wear, and you want to make sure that like, she spent all this time and energy on it, how is it digitally signed, so that it's a Hana original. And if you want it, you have to purchase it using virtual currency that might be real currency. Again, I'm not talking about anything that hasn't existed, or will exist or currently exist. I'm just saying, personally, as someone who loves working with creators and seeing them make amazing experiences, I would love to see more investment in that space, I'd love to see more companies in that space. Because the tools today to create these things to go from what's in your head to something that can exist in a spatial world is becoming easier and easier and more consumer friendly. And so I'd love to see a world where artists can really have that marketplace and make a living, creating those goods. And I think we haven't really seen that kind of

like a just a really great leader in that space. Yeah. And that balance, correct? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great one. I like that. What book Have you read recently that you found to be deeply insightful or profound?

I actually recently revisited the Tony Shea book, you know, he just recently passed away, as we know, and I had actually taken my management team at the last company to the Zappos headquarters to do a tour because their philosophy on you know, Delivering Happiness as the book is titled, is so relevant and on point with how I like to approach not only just customer support, but really kind of company culture, in general, that idea of, you know, make sure you're delivering the best to the customers, and the money will come kind of a thing. That definitely is a philosophy that, that we try to have it Pinfinity and all the things we work on. And so, you know, after hearing that news recently, I just revisited that book, and it's always an amazing, amazing read. And they read it anyway.

And it's 10 years old. But I mean, you gotta love that subtitle, right, Delivering Happiness, a path to profits, passion and purpose. Yeah, you know, and so I think that's something when we talk about fan commerce, which is something that that how we describe kind of our core competency, it's always been important, that fan part shows that like affinity for creating something for fans of all types, maybe not just people who are like, I'm gonna buy this for you know, that, that there's a lot of different types of fans, but that were fan focused, looking at those moments that will really create experiences for them. But the commerce part is at the end of the day, this is also an exchange of membership fees of just strict e commerce, and that you have to have merchandise and experience and other things. And so I Additionally, I didn't know Hannah was in it. But I was also reading through it over the past few weeks, kind of just going through it, it's like shows you how much we work together. And even though we don't know, everything everybody is doing because you know that it's always important to have that kind of personal time. I also have been reading it and it was great to see that philosophy of you, you know, you commit yourself entirely to creating the most amazing experience for your customers. You deliver value and purpose for your partners and your investors. And the profits and the money will come at our last company, we just we were never focused on what's our valuation. Where are we at? I mean, at least, at least for me and my role, maybe maybe as a co founder. I mean, those are things maybe I should have leaned in a little bit more like I am today, but they're not what drives us. We have a plan. We have growth that we want to achieve. But we know the best way to achieve that is by committing just entirely all in on what is going to create the best experience for people We're taking their hard earned money, especially in a difficult time that everybody's going through now, and deciding that they're going to come to our website and spend sometimes several $100 on enamel pins for a company that didn't exist, like, how can we create that? We know that that profit, and those partnerships are just going to roll in? As long as we're hyper focused on the end deliverable? Yep.

It's great. If you could sit down and have coffee with your 25 year old selves, what advice would you share? Oh,

um,

thankfully, that wasn't that long ago, I would probably tell myself, be more confident, and you know, what you're doing and have confidence in that. I think that that was a big a big lesson I've learned over the last actually less than 10 years from 25. To now. And just really, you know, trusting myself that that my, my initial gut, you know, is in the right place, that I'm very thoughtful about the decisions I make and trusting that thoughtfulness and yeah, just having a more confidence, I think, if I could have gotten to this confidence level earlier, who knows what what might have been different, but I'm obviously thankful I'm here now. But that's, that's probably what I would have told myself.

Yeah. And for me, you know, at 25, I didn't know a world that didn't exist. That wasn't like what my I mean, my father was very entrepreneurial, and, you know, was also in the military as a medic, and just did a lot of different jobs and always moved based off of into different positions, and even industries based off of him coming in making things way better as an engineer, and then getting bored and moving on the next thing, I thought that that was at 25, I thought like, that might be my life. That because I've worked at Apple, I've worked at a company called Trend Micro Security company. And that's kind of how I thought about my life was going to be is that at some point, I will find a company where I'll hang my hat. And I'll be there like my 25th anniversary at this company, because I just believe in their values, I believe in everything they're doing so much. And I thought that I would just have a series of jobs to get there. And don't get me wrong. People are very happy in jobs in that in waking up and doing that. I think at 25, I could have just started my entrepreneurial journey. At that time. Had I been able to kind of tell myself like that there are other opportunities out there that you can take your passion, and turn it into something where it's not about having control, but it's about having options and the ability to express yourself. And I think when we started the last company, I was in my early 30s. I was 33, I think. And yeah, that 25 to 33. I did not learn as much as I did, you know, I did not have the great experiences. They were there because I think I was a little hesitant of what the world could be. I thought startups were like Napster and the end of the day they were,

sir. Wow, there's a

lot of stuff on that one Friendster that like that's the world of startups, I didn't know that there's this small and medium sized business kind of startup you can do where you don't need to try and make the next unicorn company that you can create success and wealth for your family and for your partners and your team by just finding a different way of doing things. So it was a really long answer. But yeah, that's, I think it would be and that's why I mentor people, even under 18 today, but also 18 and up entrepreneurs who have ideas for startups and everything, because I'm like, wow, I would have had somebody who could help me back when I was 1819 years old, about obviously 18. Today, they know a little bit more about the world of startups today than I did back in 1998, or whatever the world was in 1998. But yeah, I think that that would be what I would tell myself.

That's great. Any closing thoughts, you'd like to share

just that if anybody wants to learn more about kind of what we're doing, we're pretty much on every social media platform. And thankfully, we have a very visual product. So it's really easy to see what we're doing what what we're all about, we have an easy to use URL that's kind of a redirector to our website. That's pins.ar P, and s, ar. And that'll take you directly to our site. And then if you just search for pin finity, you'll see YouTube videos that we've done showing the interactions, you'll see gifts that we have on giffy that have millions of views of people kind of seeing what the what it looks like. And then yeah, if you're in the space of AR and this is something that's interesting to you what we're doing with this physical collectibles, and you'd like to offer advice, or you think there's an opportunity to work together, we'd love to hear from you. And we're thankful to be able to have this opportunity to be able to speak to you and thanks for Yeah, for taking the time. And yeah, you know, keep an eye out on our Pinfinity plus, because I think we're on the on the path to be able to create a really amazing membership subscription experience. And I think people are going to be interested to see how we're thinking about weaving our physical product into the current digital subscriptions and experiences that people have out there. And you know, the best is yet to come like our like Caleb had said that the possibilities are infinite when it comes to, to what we can do and Caleb Caleb's a great guy, hopefully, in the future, you know, there's an opportunity to talk more about the creative process of developing the pins and the thoughtfulness about how to create AR experiences for end consumers and working with licenses and stuff like that. It really would be great. I encourage you to, you know, reach out to him if there's an opportunity in the future, because he's, he's a really great partner and someone that we're really fortunate to work with,

to infinity and beyond. That's right. And then Matthew, thank you very much this conversation.

Thank you.

Before you go, I want to tell you about the next episode. in it. I speak with Dr. Adam Davis. Adam is the founder and CEO of amalgamated vision, and maker of wearable displays optimized for use as a reference display in healthcare and enterprise. Adam spent a career as a practicing physician focused on neuro radiology and regularly explore and push the boundaries of using 3d imagery to better understand each patient's physiology. It was from this deep appreciation for 3d medical imaging that Adam began developing a new type of wearable display highly suitable to medical environments. In this conversation, we dig into the technology and the unique perspective that's driving is development. Please subscribe to the podcast. You don't miss this or other great episodes. Until next time,