Full Transcript
Jason Kirby: Hi everyone, this is Jason Kirby, founder and managing director of Thunder.vac and we have Peter, damn it, Peter. Brandon Peterson. All right, let me start that over real quick. I never watched that before.
Brandon Peterson: Hahaha!
Brandon Peterson: All good, man.
Brandon Peterson: Not right.
Jason Kirby: Hey everyone, this is Jason Kirby here, founder and manager, director of Thunder.VC and your host today, Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Brandon Peterson from GEOKE, joining us after successfully closing $2.2 million seed round. Brandon, thanks for joining. Awesome. Well, I would love for you to welcome the audience and give them a little bit about your background and what led you to founding GEOKE and what's been your entrepreneurial journey.
Brandon Peterson: Hey, thanks for having me.
Brandon Peterson: Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me here. So my background is I come from a serial entrepreneur family. Grandpa started businesses, dad started businesses, and I think I just had to do it. All we talked about on holidays was starting businesses and making an impact. So just kinda ran in our blood a little bit. So came from an auction company. I always said I would never do the family business. That later changed, which I'm so happy it did. Did things in 24 hour gyms, coworking spaces, real estate projects, some around today, some not. And that's just how it goes. Grandpa always said the only thing you can be married to is your wife, and we follow that motto. So, one of the ideas that is still around and flourishing today is Giochi. And I came up with the idea, went in the gyms. It was a key fob 24 hour. People were key fobbing in, it wasn't the paying member, and I said, oh my gosh, I'm losing money. No data analytics, lack of security, there's got to be a better way of doing it. So looked into the market at mobile access control because that's the thing everybody has on them. But I didn't want to be like everyone else where you're manufacturing your own hardware component and putting a cool app on top. Not an engineer, inventory can bring down companies, can I just be the cloud-based overlay for that controls all of them. So. So we did bootstrapped it, got a patent on using your location services to authenticate access, fancy way of saying your location opens the door, hence the name GeoKey, it's a geolocated key, and made some big partnerships. So Nokia, Access Communications, Port, the most recent one we're really excited about is Master Lock, we have Keri Systems and then a handful of them coming up that we're launching this year. So hardware agnostic platform and through a journey we started in small business
Brandon Peterson: eventually migrated into the multifamily housing space and controlling every door component, mixed and matching harbor manufacturers and creating this amazing smart community with this platform called Giochi.
Jason Kirby: That's amazing and I love the story of starting off in the family, well, trying to avoid the family business, thinking you're going to do it on your own and then finding your way back in. But you had some success participating in the family business. Tell us a little bit about that.
Brandon Peterson: Right.
Brandon Peterson: Yep. Yeah, you know, started. in the marketing department, dad had a national online auction company, and I said, man, you are killing it because all you do is postcards and emails for marketing, and you're a national company. I said, that means you offer a good service. Let me jump in here and expand this. So, learned pay-per-click, advertising, YouTube, video, social media, the whole nine, and then diversified from there into the sales department. Dad put me in charge of that call center into a full-time sales machine, CRM, leads, and then migrated up to a COO position and tripled the size of the company in about five years. And it's great processes and an amazing team. So I ended up loving doing that and it's still kicking butt today and amazing flourishing business.
Jason Kirby: No, that's phenomenal. That's a great success story. And it sounds like from what you said, you kind of had to teach yourself all those skills to be able to apply them to the business. So, you know, just kind of showing your ability to kind of quickly learn and adapt to an environment and pick up those new skills.
Brandon Peterson: Well, you know, I am a huge proponent of mentorship. I have. coaches all along the way. I found one coach out of Nashville and I just felt like I was hitting the ceiling. I was like, I know I'm meant to do great things, but I just don't know what the next steps are. So found him actually just hitting him up on Instagram and got back to me. He has a book called The Boxcar Millionaire and he came from Kansas. I'm from Nebraska and kind of those grassroots kind of helped us out. He's brought five companies public, has $300 million, $500 million company acquisitions, and I just said, coach me. I said, just teach me, and I will do it. And he has. I've been working with him for a few years now, and it's just been a phenomenal ride. So just huge proponent to mentorship and coaching.
Jason Kirby: I think that's something that's important for a lot of founders to realize about building strategic relationships early. A lot of founders kind of go in like, hey, I want money. Let's go out and start trying to build relationships. Usually investors will have a wall up or kind of defense mechanisms up. But when you kind of approach them from that earlier days of building a relationship, asking to be coached and mentor, those are the ones that often lead to much more fruitful outcomes. I'm glad you got to share.
Brandon Peterson: Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.
Brandon Peterson: I 100% agree and I think the biggest problem the CEOs or early stage founders kind of fall in this trap is I've got to know everything, right? I've got to know every department, I've got to know everything about raising money, I've got to know everything about... the markets and so on, and the reality of the situation is you don't. When people are looking to invest in you or mentor you or coach you, they just want to know that you're willing to learn, you're ready to put in the work, and they don't expect you to know everything. If you come in, act like you know everything, they're probably going to push you off. So if you say, hey, Jason, I really just love your journey, I respect everything about you and what you've done, can you help me with this? They're proud. They're excited about what they've learned they want to teach you. And so once you get into that mindset, it's just a game changer.
Jason Kirby: I completely agree. I think that's a viable point for just about any founder just to accept humility and be open to feedback and open to the fact that you might be wrong and that other people might have other ideas. Even if you're alright you don't know what you don't know and it could be very helpful. So let's go back to GeoKey. So you've been working on GeoKey for about what's it five years or so now?
Brandon Peterson: Ask us if it's like...
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, so 2017, 2018 when is the idea cultivated? And so from there it was bootstrapping it, finding clients, I remember the first client I called, we didn't even have a product yet, I just wanted to see if people would buy this thing, this idea, so I called this company and I was like, you know, you should put mobile access on there, you don't need any more key fobs or keys, and it's cloud-based and all that, and they're like, oh, love that, when can we get installed? I'm like, I gotta go build it.
Jason Kirby: I'm sorry.
Brandon Peterson: And so market data and just pulling that all together and saying does the market have a taste for this idea that I have, you know? And so from there, started building it. It was... less than an MVP, it was an alpha product, or you know, first stage product. And then I found another client that, this was the first install we did, they believed in it too, and it was a cigar lounge, and. They were just using it all the time and I got so much feedback. I mean, it was like, can you do this? And what if you did this? And I like this. And it was like perfecting the product before we went into full expansion mode. And then once we feel like we perfected it to a good sense and we're like, okay, we can go sell in certain markets, that's when we started bringing on Teams. And just found some wicked smart people. My CRO, you know, used to, he was the top in the world recruiting at Robert Half, my COO, 25 years in the security industry. I didn't know that stuff. I needed help. My cheapest strategy was in the real estate development world and so on. And so more people started coming in, my CTO, my director of marketing, who all like these this knowledge that I that I didn't have and then collaboratively we were able to just blow this thing up and and expand the company.
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Jason Kirby: That's phenomenal. So it sounds like you're able to really recruit some amazing talent at an early stage. When do you think things really started to pick up for you?
Brandon Peterson: Um, I would say it was probably end of 2021 was when things started picking up. And here's why. Um, we started in small business. I got the, I got the idea when we were in gym. So we, we sold a lot of gyms. Uh, we solved a ton of problems for them, but we didn't make any money. And so you got to have it. And that's the feel. So we said, okay, we have to pivot. I know it's where the idea came from, but there's gotta be other areas that we go to. So we went into, we had padlocks, we went into utility companies and manufacturing centers. And that was great. We went through FDA audits and passed them. So we know our technology is sound. but just wasn't quite right until I had a buddy who was building a multifamily apartment and he goes, can you control every door? I'm like, yes. And he's like, do it. And so we did and we got it done and we're like, holy smokes, this is. this is it, a lot of access points, we can make this happen. So we said, okay, sales, marketing, dev, support, everything, target it right down this industry. We will never turn away business, so if those past industries wanna use us, we fit great with them, but this is where our focus is, for us to win. When we would go to investors at an early age and say, we can do gyms and we can do lounges and we can do, and they're like, pick one.
Jason Kirby: Okay.
Jason Kirby: Yeah.
Brandon Peterson: And I had one coach one time, he goes, which industry are you first, second or third in? And we're just kind of like, we're stunned. And he's like, if you're not first, second or third, pick a new industry. And that was good advice. And that's when we picked the multifamily apartments. And when we picked it, we weren't, but as we enhanced our integrations and our features and those types of things, we are. And so it...
Jason Kirby: Thanks for watching!
Brandon Peterson: You just, what does it take to get there if you're not there right now?
Jason Kirby: I'm really glad you brought up that point of pick a lane or pick an industry, pick a channel. It didn't just come to you day one though. You kind of had to experiment and explore and figure out where the fit really is and when you found it, you went all in.
Brandon Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, took three years. Yeah, if you think about it, three years, that's a long time. And, you know, it's just a lot of learning and persistence and knowing that this is where it's going. But you're exactly right. And you have to, you can't be too proud. You know, it's just like, where are we gonna be most successful?
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Jason Kirby: And in that journey, so you're dabbling in different industries, you're trying to find your way, you know, at this point you've raised a total of 4.2 million as of today. Walk us through that fundraising journey from, you know, the first capital you raised and how you got it to your most recent round that you just closed.
Brandon Peterson: Thank you. Yeah, you know, it's bootstrapped, you know, friends and family, going to friends and family first and getting that done. That's some of the hardest people to pitch to because every phase that you go through, if it's pre-seed, seed, going into series A, you're pitching completely differently. at least in our experience. I remember our first financial performance, not even close, because we were too spread out, right? We're trying to sell into all these different industries, we haven't figured out our pricing yet. And so really when those investors, who they're investing in is just you, right? They believe in you, and they believe that this product is gonna get there, and do they think you have all the answers? No.
Jason Kirby: Mm-hmm.
Brandon Peterson: that you'll figure it out. And so that's where that first started. And then it's constant communication and saying, hey, you made a good decision and here's why. This is the successes we've had over the last month, quarter, six months, year, whatever it may be. And keeping that engagement is so important with your investors and your shareholders because they're proud too. They wanna go tell all their friends that I'm smart and I invested in this company
Jason Kirby: Mm-hmm.
Brandon Peterson: me money, you know? And so, good communication on that sense. Even letting them know, letting them in on your pain points. Hey, this is an issue that we're facing right now. This is how we believe we're going to get around it. If you've got any insight, would love that. And if you have good shareholders, they aren't, you're like, oh, you're dumb and this is what you got to do. They're like, hey, you know, I thought about what you said. Have you ever thought about this? And it's like, great. Lens, you know, I I never thought of it that way and so that's that's powerful as we've obviously we adapted Started getting in the industry as we built better performance Understanding better numbers getting our pricing down Understanding what's realistic from a sales perspective in a certain amount of time. It's taking all of those things into account and You know our most recent investor I said Why'd you invest in us? He goes I go, you got a simulator that you're running us through, that we mark your boxes? He goes, I do. Just three boxes. People, product, and profit. My due diligence is the people. Is anybody gonna be, is anybody gonna halt this growth? Is anybody gonna hold this thing back? Or is everybody coachable and ready to learn and ready to grow? How passionate is everybody? How agile is the team? So it's that people, what are your core values? Have you established those? What do you do in certain ethical situations? How do you strategize? Those types of things. Product. Is this a product that's gonna be around? in three, five years? Is this a product that people are paying for, that they want to pay for? What's the market say about that, you know, and digging into that? And the last one's profit. You might not be making money in the next year, two or three, but you're gonna be making great profit in five because you have market penetration. And you know your numbers enough to speak to those things. And so those three criteria, you mark those boxes, and there's no, you can't have two of them.
Brandon Peterson: and not the third, and expect to be a great company. You're going to have huge challenges. So it's only when you have all three that you'll be not only successful in your fundraisers, but successful in your business life cycles.
Jason Kirby: That's some great advice and I think that's applicable to just about any investor. They might not have the exact framework, but I think those boxes need to be checked in just about any scenario. And as a founder, if you don't have those boxes checked just quite yet, it's probably worth spending the time figuring those boxes out before going out to raise. Um, that's something that we try to help founders, uh, you know, figure out in their, their fundraise process. So I want to kind of go back and, uh, so you're based in Nebraska, correct? So.
Brandon Peterson: Yep, I'm out.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, so talk about being based in Omaha, where there's a little bit of a startup community coming up, but obviously, nascent in comparison to the coast and what's standard out in LA, San Francisco, New York, and so on. What's been the experience being out in the Midwest and trying to raise venture capital?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah It is it's both positive and negative at the same time. Midwest can be a little bit more conservative in their investment strategies. You have to go do a little bit more due diligence and you have to show it. You would go through the ringer, but they have a lot of confidence after that and they'll tout your name. When it comes to fundraising in the Midwest, being a Midwest company, that's been a huge positive thing for us. Midwestern values, trust, integrity. These are all things that I know us at, not only at GEOKEY stand behind, but in the Midwest, generally, that's most companies that at least I know and are acquainted with. So there's a wall that comes down, being in the Midwest and saying, hey, we're farm kids. And we've done everything. you know, working with our hands, but we love technology. I love the phrase humanitarian tech. You know, it's taking game-changing technology, solving a huge problem that people wanna pay for, but you have the humanitarian side of that. That means you're hardworking, you care for your neighbors, you care for your team, and you're all doing it together to make a difference and make an impact. And that's something, being in the Midwest, I think that's kind of innately in us, and that's been a huge platform for us.
Jason Kirby: No, that's great to hear. And, you know, having been, you know, working with a company out of Kansas city years ago and helping them raise capital, that was a sentiment that we also kind of recognized as well. Uh, when raising from, you know, talking to West coast VCs versus East coast VCs versus talking to Midwest VCs, there's definitely an inherent appreciation for, uh, just that Midwest culture amongst Midwest VCs, you know, we, you know, we ended up raising around from, San Francisco, Korean based fund, but because we're a gaming company, but still nonetheless, having those conversations and talking to those types of investors, there was definitely more of a, like the rooting for you, the rooting for the Midwest to kind of have more, big unicorns come out of it and whatnot. So that's great to hear. And, can I walk through some of the,
Brandon Peterson: Yeah.
Brandon Peterson: It feels that way. I think you're right.
Brandon Peterson: B.
Jason Kirby: difficult experiences that you had when going out and trying to raise capital. Where are some of the points that you struggled or took a lot longer, you got a lot of pushback? What are some of the tough points that you dealt with?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah. Totally, I remember some of the first early round investors, their advisors now, just awesome, awesome people. Me and my chief of strategy went out to go pitch to them, and we flew out, we're so pumped. We had every department head put together, you know, 20 to 50 pages of like SOPs of how they operate. I mean, this was like a hundred page book that was just so thorough and of our plans we're doing and just how operationally sound we were. And we were just so proud of it. And we go into this meeting and the book was basically just kind of thrown to the side. And they're like, but how are you gonna make money? And we're like, I wanna talk about the book. We put work on the book and they're like, no, no, no. The book's gonna change a hundred times over.
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Brandon Peterson: how are you gonna make money, and what's your strategy? How are we getting this all done? And we left that pretty defeated, and we were like, holy smokes, I thought I was gonna be way easier than this. This is an amazing, I mean, we know we've got something here. They told us we've got something here. This is why we're here. And they were like, yeah, I know you got something, but you still need these extra things. You know, you need to have a better performance. You need to be more realistic. You need to make better partners. And it's just all these things. And I was like, oh my gosh. You know, one of the things that came out of it was you need to get Master Lock as a partner. And I was like, Master Lock? Are you serious? They're like ginormous. How would I ever?
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Brandon Peterson: And I was like, you know what, why can't I? And I just bombard them. Hey, you don't know me, but I want you to. And I think we play really well together and they eventually picked up the phone. And now we have this amazing partnership with Master Lock and Fortune Brands. And it was looking back, like in the moment, you're like, geez, these guys are jerks. Like this, we believe in ourself, but. In reality, it was just tough love coaching because that's this world. And you just, you gotta be thick skinned. You gotta take a couple beatings and then get back on the horse and keep riding. And that was one of the biggest things I learned from that. And so come in, what you think is prepared might not be the definition of what that investor thinks is prepared. Ask them. Hey, I'm coming into this meeting. and I would say this is more early stage, but I'm coming to this meeting, what are some things that would wow you? What things do you want to see? Because everyone's different, and so I just wanna know what you think. Obviously we're in a pre-C round, and so they'll probably tell you. It's like, well, I wanna see this, this, and this. And so it's on you to prepare it and bring it to the table. And so that was one of the things I learned from the early side of raising money.
Jason Kirby: I think that's a really good point. Did you actually do that at meetings? Did you kind of reach out to them and ask what they wanted to see before you pitched them?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, I do now. You know, I've got, hey, and I usually start with like, hey, I've got Performa, Investor Deck, CapTable, P&Ls, Balance Sheets. Is there anything else that would really give you confidence in us that you would like to see? Because here's the thing about investors, they're not 100% successful. Not every investment they have has been successful. I don't know one. They've been burned. So... you learn things from being burned. So they might say, well, I wanna see your SOC 2 compliance, or I wanna see your risk mitigation plans, or whatever. They'll throw that out to you, and you just got an answer key that could perk up their ears a little bit more.
Jason Kirby: Yeah.
Jason Kirby: That's a great strategy. And I think that's something that will definitely kind of encourage. We always look for these types of nuggets to pass on to the community. And just that that's a great one. It just turns to like, what, before we get into the minutia of everything, like what's actually going to be worth the time to discuss that's going to differentiate us as opposed to just going through the motions. I think a lot of founders come ready with their very perfect, you know, kind of prepped pitch and they're like ready to go through the deck. And the most VCs like you're not plugging in your computer. You know, you're not, you're not putting up a slide deck. Like. self-conversation, we've seen the deck, like we don't care. And like, no, no, no, let me do it. If you fight as a founder to pitch your deck and go through like a 10 minute presentation, you've already lost them. I, yeah, I've made that mistake in my first, you know, startup and I always remember just seeing VCs fall asleep in the meeting and just like, but like pouring our hearts out but they just don't care. Yeah.
Brandon Peterson: Absolutely.
Brandon Peterson: Nope, doesn't matter. I'm trying to see if this dollar's gonna turn into two. So, I'm just gonna ask the questions.
Jason Kirby: More like 10. More like, can I turn this dollar to 10? So that's great input. And then just in your journey, as you went and did Friends of Family, you did Preseed, you closed your seed, you know, how many investors do you think you pitched over the course of that?
Brandon Peterson: Oh my gosh.
Brandon Peterson: Probably, I'm upwards to probably 50 or 60. Yeah, I mean, it's like sales. I mean, it is a form of sales. You've got your sales team, or maybe you're both, or you're quasi.
Jason Kirby: Okay.
Brandon Peterson: you don't close every deal you are trying to pitch for a client, it's the same thing with investors. It's a lot of averages, and so you gotta get out there. And also, here's the other thing. This is something I've learned is, when I was first pitching investors, it was like, do you got money? And they're like, yep. I was like, that's enough for me. And. And. And that's even evolved over time. It's, you know, investors say they can help with go-to-market strategy and hiring, but what stands you different from other VCs? You know, I love that question. You know, these are our goals to get here to this. How can you help increase our sales by 5%? What do you bring to the table to do that? Another question I like to ask is what level of communication is a good investment company to you, like from the CEO. How much communication do you want? How involved are you wanting to be? And so what you're finding out in this is you're dating. It's a partnership. They are going to own part of your company that you have worked so hard to build.
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Brandon Peterson: you should be selective too. And so it comes down, because the best partnerships, and I speak to all the shareholders that are on GeoKey right now, every single one of them works so hard to bring so much to the table, and it's a team. The shareholder group is a team alongside the GeoKey team. And it's just, it's a beautiful thing if done correctly.
Jason Kirby: That's well said and these are great questions and and perspective to have of more or less choosing your investors and when um When you go through this pitching process like well, how did you go about identifying who you want to pitch? You know, what resources or tools did you use to to get in front of them?
Brandon Peterson: So we took a few different strategies, friends and family, and then going to VCs that were in the PropTech space. That's been a strategy. You know, utilize your team. this last investor that we had, we had one of our sales managers contact a company, I already told our CRO, I was like, we need to raise money. And he's like, what about having a client be an investor? And doing a warranty deal, you can do that, why not? Other people have done it. And so we had... So we had a client, we had a sales manager,
Jason Kirby: Thank you.
Brandon Peterson: You know, reached out, sales manager contacts one of the property developers, property developer gets to the VC arm of this big company. They talked to my CRO, wow, I think this is a good fit. They pull me in and then the rest was history. And so it can come in so many different forms of how you think it would be best to structure it. That's why it's best to analyze what do you need? Do you need money? Or do you need strategic partnerships that get you to where you need to go? And it's just analyzing what do you need at that time.
Jason Kirby: Well, son, I think that kind of goes to the point of just diving deep within your network and looking beyond just, I need a million dollars, trying to figure out what would be the most impactful million dollars, what can have added value and why you're handing over a piece of your company to them. Okay, so gone through this journey, how did you manage the fundraise process while still building and scaling your company?
Brandon Peterson: It was a lot harder early on than it is now just because I have such a solid team. You're wearing a lot of hats at the beginning. You're doing sales marketing, you're doing QA for your software company, and then you're talking to investors and you're trying to make that all come together. I... Having we're big traction EOS company. We love we love to have that so having knowing what you don't do well, find that person to compliment you and do those things. Even if you have to give up a little bit, it's totally worth it. I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I said, starting a business now compared to starting a business 20 years ago is completely different. You could start a business 20 years ago and it would be like, yeah, I can do it myself and slow grow and all that. Starting a company now, especially a tech company, You gotta do it right, and you gotta do it right the first time. And so it takes being the best and having the best people surrounded with you and having people that compliment you and self-awareness in what you're good or not good at is like imperative. Like you have to know yourself to know the company to be able to grow it. It's just another league. We were joking about this. How come the 100 meter dash gets a new record every year? People get better and better and better. It's the same thing in business. People are getting better and better and better and they're utilizing technology tools and AI and they're continuously learning and you just have to be sharper and smarter and faster and stronger than ever. And then so that's organizing your calendar to building your team, to finding strategic partners.
Jason Kirby: here.
Brandon Peterson: It's a lot of work, but you get it right. Pays off.
Jason Kirby: And when you were building the company going out and pitching investors, what was kind of the, I would say like you pitch 50, 60 VCs investors, what was the most common reasons you got passed on?
Brandon Peterson: Um...
Brandon Peterson: One of the things that people passed on was a busy market, very noisy industry. There's a lot of prop tech, there's a lot of access control. They're not wrong, it is. But we believe with our technology being hardware agnostic and our patent, we stand out. And that's what we bring to the table. So it's understanding that if you are a noisy industry, what are your value propositions? How do you stand out? third and that's really important to understand that. The other one would be knowing your numbers. Just know them, study them. You should know it. I talked to somebody about this the other day I said okay you know if you can go on a vacation this year and you know how much you can probably spend on that vacation so you know your personal finances. You need to know your company's finances and numbers and performance just as much as you know that. and it's so important to get into that mindset.
Jason Kirby: I would agree, especially as you get later stage. You know, I think pre-C, it's good to have a good idea where you're going. You know, C, you kind of have to have some validation, some traction, some numbers. And then, you know, as you go on to your Series A, it's like heavy numbers, you know, and what LTV to CAC and a variety of other ratios that VCs like to run in their models to make sure you're going to have defendable gross margins, you know, to properly scale and, you know, put a dollar in, get three dollars out and so on. for all founders to dive deep into the numbers and be more and more prepared. You'd be amazed how many series A decks I see that just have a projection slide. And they're just like, no, you need to have hard numbers. Like VCs wanna take these, plug them into their model before they dive any further. And they wanna make sure these things pencil and they have staying power effectively. So you kind of talked about this a couple times. So you specifically chose to avoid hardware and enable yourself to just be a mobile app. So, you know, instant accessibility to any of your customers. You know, what kind of pushed you in that direction and how do you guys make money today?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, great question. You know, the original idea was the inventory and the capabilities of pulling that off. I mean, you're going into a market that people have been doing it for 40, 50 years making a phenomenal hardware technology. But the one thing that we realized going into the market is, yes, they can do software, but can they be as agile with the software to give the client exactly what they need in this fast growing prop tech world? We knew we could do that, but we couldn't do both. And so, and just like them, they, you know, it's the same thing. So that's when we took this methodology of partnering with these manufacturers to go into certain markets. And then people get to choose the hardware component they want, and then they have one solution to manage it. So they don't get the app fatigue. They have easy cloud-based management, and they can understand that their property is safe and it's secure, but it's also simple to use. And those two, simple and security, not really been together in the same sentence. And that's something that we're providing to the market today.
Jason Kirby: That's great. And as a person that believes in a keyless life, I am very much a huge proponent of not carrying keys. I sold my previous car to get a Tesla just because I didn't want a key. Yeah. No, I completely agree with that sentiment. And so, when you went out, going back to, oh, and so from a chart, how do you make money? Is it just a SaaS fee per end user? How do you guys decide on the business model?
Brandon Peterson: That's right, man. It's easy.
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, we do a sassy, so... not to dive in too technical, but we, if it's going to be a new build property, we do division eight, division 28, we help with spec writers on staff that help customize this, no properties alike, right? So we customize the access control solution to them that works with exactly what they're wanting to do. On the back end, if it's a retrofit, our existing property, we go in and say, what are we trying to replace and make this a smart building? Or is it dead bolts, mortise locks, are we went gates, elevators, and so then we go in and do it that route. And then we sell to them with a SAS fee and included in that we integrate into their... tenant management solutions, they're PMSs, which like yardie, and we can go control that all the way down to the tenant. And on top of that, we do 24 seven in-house support from the property manager all the way down to the tenant. If you can't get into your building and you're having troubles, you're typically upset. And so our team is there to help them out. So we are all about, and this is the humanitarian tech, right, technology that is game changing and makes your life so much easier, but there's a group of people behind it that's gonna take care of you. is the premise of Giochi.
Jason Kirby: That's well said. I see why investors are excited. I'm back in the team and just being able to hear how you are particularly explain your mission and where you guys are at and kind of tie it all together beyond just mobile access and kind of telling the broader story. And it also sounds like a much more complicated sales cycle than the average person might expect in terms of specing each and every building that you have to go into and who gets what access. It's quite a bit of a consultative sale to kind of get it down to the finish line.
Brandon Peterson: Absolutely. Yeah nail in the head. That was one thing getting into the prop tech space and multifamily How hard could it be? If you jump in there you're like, oh that hard. Okay, let's figure this out
Jason Kirby: Yeah.
Jason Kirby: Yeah. And then, you know, having kind of shared your story to this point, what would be your final words to entrepreneurs out there that are looking to follow a similar path of trying to raise capital, grow a successful business? What would be your advice to them?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, great question. My advice to them would be know your numbers, make sure you have a good team, do the three P's, the product, the people, and the profit. Make sure you check all of those boxes when you're going in. Ask the investors, what is an ideal investment look like to you? What do you look for when you're putting in there? And then just really, just understand that you're not gonna get money on one meeting. you're not gonna get money in 90 days. You know, it's gonna take a little bit longer and that's okay. So if you need money by a certain timeframe, plan for that. Like don't wait too long because then you're gonna be stressed and that's when companies go under. So plan for that timeframe to give you that comfort so you can also grow your business because you're having to do both.
Jason Kirby: Well said. And for the listeners here today, if someone wants to learn more about what you're doing at G-O-Key or follow you online, where would you guide them towards?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah, you can go to our website at gokeyaccess.com. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and see our journey. We've got some amazing integrations and partnerships, global partnerships that are coming up this year. We're so proud of. We have some awesome opportunities coming up that you're not gonna wanna miss out on.
Jason Kirby: That's great to hear. Brandon, really appreciate you coming on, joining us on the podcast, sharing your story, sharing your success story of raising $4.2 million as a founder out in Nebraska. It doesn't happen very often, so I imagine for those out in the Midwest, it's great to hear these success stories because I often feel they feel unheard or don't get as much of attention as the founders out on the coast. Really glad we got to have you on and really appreciate you got to share your story.
Brandon Peterson: My pleasure. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Kirby: Awesome. So I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording.
