What The Funk?

0:00 It's time to party with Marty. What's going on? Marty Dietrich.

0:08 Jeremy, thank you for having me on. My pleasure in Houston, the hot Houston. Not so hot today. Well, that's good. Did I say your last name correctly? I feel like it's last name that people

0:19 must screw up.

0:22 People screwed up a lot. Dietrich. Dietrich. So I think what happened, my family, when they came over, usually they changed it from wise to the IE and failed to do so. Right. So now they

0:36 screwed up every other generation and spelling and how do you spell it? How do you pronounce it every single time?

0:43 Where did your family come from and come into the US?

0:50 So the Dietrich side I think is Czechoslovakia. And then the other side is Ireland,

1:00 and then Spain, believe it or not.

1:04 I don't see the Spanish as much for those watching this podcast. No.

1:12 My brother though, my brother's like six, three dark skin, tan, I got the red hair and the freckles. So, here's what it is. And you hate him every day for it 'cause you're not six, three. No,

1:28 I'm five, 10 If, hopefully, five, 10, right? Getting shorter with age. Seriously. Well, at least you're honest about that. I've said forever that I'm six feet tall and I may have been six

1:41 feet tall at one point, but my 13 year old daughter just straight up kept calling me out. You're not six feet tall. So, they measured me recently. I'm 5'11 and a quarter.

1:55 And it goes downhill from here. I know, it killed me I swear there was a point where I was six feet. And she's like, no, you're propping it up on your hair. That's not right. You're not like,

2:05 yeah, but with shoes on, I look like I'm six one. Like, and I think it's funny too, Marty, like during COVID, especially because we're just on like all these calls, right? Online, you don't

2:16 meet people in person. You start to like develop an idea of how tall or short somebody is. And I was always shocked when I'd then meet somebody in person. And I always say the wrong thing. I'm

2:26 like, dude, you're so much shorter than I thought you were And they're like, that's not nice. Like, don't say that. Or wow. So that's to me. They're like, you're taller than I thought. Like,

2:37 I guess

2:39 we had that one of our investors is in Kansas. And so we invested in us and we never met in person ever. And then we flew him down to meet some other investors and to get to know the industry. And

2:54 he pops out of a hotel. He's like six, eight I'm like, whoa!

3:01 Yeah, no idea. That is not what I thought, so. Well, of course you have investors out of Kansas, the technology investment hotbed of the state of Kansas. Right? That's so random.

3:17 Yeah, that's cool. It's a lot of people who invest these technologies in the middle of the country, so. Interesting. We'll get into all of that. One more comment about names, and then I kind of

3:27 want to get into your background So obviously my last name's Funk, right? And people are like, man, that's like a really uncommon last name. It's actually a very common last name because what

3:38 happened is wherever the Funk side of the family came over from in Poland, they get on a boat, they go to Ellis Island in New York, it was Funk something. I should probably do research and figure

3:49 out what it was, but say it was like Funkovsky, Funkenstein, Funkowitz. And whatever they did, they explained it to the person that was there like, no, we're just gonna make it funky. That's

4:01 just much easier for you now. So so many people say to me, they're like, Oh, are you related to a Tim Funk in Oklahoma? I'm like, No, I get asked this all the time. They're like, It's such a

4:14 random last name. You must get this. I'm like, It's actually not. Because their family thought she also came over, got chopped, yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. I never would have

4:22 thought that.

4:25 Really interesting. Yeah, I think it means spark in

4:29 Polish or something like that, I don't know. That's what my dad told me, so I believe it. Never fact check that. Just kind of believe your dad when he tells you stuff, right? So, four minutes

4:38 in, usually I get to this a little bit sooner, but, Marty, you know, a question that I asked to everybody, it's the first question I sent you in the prep. Like, who are you, man? Who is

4:49 Marty Dietrich?

4:52 That's a great question. That's a question that a constant pursuit of answering.

4:60 It's a simple guy trying to do simple things maybe in a big way.

5:07 AI is simple now? It's becoming more simple. It's becoming more simple to

5:15 implement.

5:18 Now that we've got kind of our hands around it, I think it'll be easier and easier over time for a lot more people, that's for sure

5:27 You know, I have a lot of interest in talking to you about this because you are in the AI world and everybody seems to want to ask me questions about that. You know, what happens when you are in

5:38 tech in any way, shape, or form? And you've probably dealt with this a little bit. What used to happen is people are like, oh, you're in tech, I have a problem with my computer. Can you help

5:48 me fix it? I'm like, dude, I'm in sales. Like, I don't know the first thing about technology. I can't even log into my email half the time What are you asking me that question for? But now it's

5:57 shifted to, oh, you work in tech. Like talk to me about AI. How are you using AI? I'm like, okay, whoa, things have really shifted and changed with this one. So I wanna lead up the story to

6:09 how you got into AI. Like, where did you grow up? Where'd you go to school? What was your upbringing? And then what kind of led you to industrial data labs and like leaning pretty hard into AI?

6:23 I may take up the whole 45 minutes. So grew up in South Florida, West Palm Beach, family, both my parents owned their own businesses. So my dad owned an accounting firm and my mom owned a

6:37 bookkeeping company. And big Notre Dame family. So grandparents went to Notre Dame. So my grandfather and his brother, my dad and his brother went to Notre Dame. And so the only school for my

6:55 brother had to go

6:57 to was Notre Dame.

6:60 kind of did the whole Rudy journey through Notre Dame. So I applied at a high school, didn't get in, applied the, went to Holy Cross. So the school that Rudy went to, I went there for a year,

7:12 did not get in again. And then I did the whole, you could apply after your first year at a college. So I went to Holy Cross College. Then you could apply every semester after that. And you only

7:25 got three shots, right? So you can only change for in your last opportunities And after your sophomore class, right? So after my freshman year at Holy Cross rejection letter, and then I decided

7:40 it would be wise for me to make good friends with the admissions counselors. So I would go over there and meet with them and go, you know, what do I need to do to improve? And we formed a really,

7:51 really good relationship. So when it came time to apply during my sophomore year, I walked over my application. handed it to them in person. And then for us, which was a really big family moment,

8:06 was instead of them sending the letter, they actually called us and left the voicemail and we talked to them on the phone. So it was kind of a struggle to get there, but finally succeeded. So you

8:21 got into not Marty, Marty?

8:26 Exactly I had to, so did you spend two years, they already had a couple of years of school under your belt, so did you just spend two years at Notre Dame? I was there for two and a half years.

8:38 Okay, did you go to all the football games? Was that like a must for us? Of course. Yeah, I mean, it's - All football games, away games we went to, those fun. No, that's beautiful. I also

8:52 find it a little bit weird too, somebody that grows up in West Palm Beach, Florida And then you're spending all of - these formative years in Indiana, because that's what, because that's what you

9:04 felt like you had to do. But I do get it. I get the, the poll of Notre Dame. I mean, they're still on NBC, like every weekend. So it's, it's easy to make an opinion on them, right? You

9:16 either sort of love them or you, or you hate them. I'm fairly neutral on them, probably lean more to thinking just in general college football is better when the powerhouse programs are good So you

9:29 kind of saw that with Michigan last year, right? They were really good. And I think it was good for college football. You don't want the same teams, Alabama and then schools like that just

9:39 dominating every year. You need some of the other powerhouses to be good. So it's been a bit of a struggle. Probably they've come close. They're also not like really in a conference for football.

9:50 So they sort of just do whatever they want. Right. Which is a good school. Yeah. Oh, just the school is so globally or How can you really limit yourself to the conference? You know? Oh, wow,

10:03 okay, there you go.

10:05 I actually went to a Notre Dame game back when they had

10:11 Brady Quinn and Jeff Samarjo, if you recall those days. Yeah, I do. They played out here at Air Force and one of my good friends was just one of those like died in the wool Notre Dame fans. His

10:24 dad went there, but he wasn't smart enough

10:30 to get in type of thing And didn't have the persistence like you did to be able to eventually get in. So he just went to Colorado. But he loved Notre Dame. He's like, hey, they're playing at Air

10:38 Force. You want to come down with me to the Springs? And I said, yeah, for sure. And it was fun to watch. Like I think that 60 of the crowd was Notre Dame fans and Notre Dame one. And it was

10:51 just kind of cool to see like the vibe around it. And of course, Colorado Springs Air Force Academy. It's just beautiful down there. That's kind of my tie into it. It is a bucket list thing to

11:01 get to South Bend, see a game out there, maybe someday. I don't get to Indiana much. So it could be a bit of a reason to go to Indiana. Yeah, but it's like a really hard school to get into,

11:15 right? Like your experience is not totally uncommon. The acceptance rate is super low. And then it's hard once you get there, right? Yeah, it's getting tougher and tougher So it's kind of like

11:25 when my dad applied versus when I applied, my dad was like, there's no way I could ever get in. And then, you know, I'll eventually say the same thing to my kids. I mean, it's near impossible

11:39 right now. Yeah, yeah, we'll see that with my kids too. Like my wife went to Duke, which is awesome. That campus is beautiful And my daughters are now talking about how they want to go to Duke.

11:54 I'm like, cool, it's going to be like 100 grand a year and it has like three and a half percent. acceptance rate. So good luck with that. But maybe the legacy thing will help. I wouldn't mind if

12:05 they went there. I wouldn't mind going to Cameron and love the camaraderie of college. Beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful school. Pop school for everything. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. No,

12:18 no. Well, NC State did last weekend. So

12:24 that happened. So see you graduated from Notre Dame Right? You're a young pop. You're probably 22, 23 years old. At that point, then what?

12:35 So I moved back home to Florida for about two months, said I don't really want to live in Florida. Florida is more of a South Florida, but dominant businesses are finance, insurance, legal for

12:53 the lawyer profession, and that's not something I wanted to get into. One night, I kind of just decided to move to Chicago, literally packed up my car and started driving.

13:08 So, went from school to Florida to Chicago, maybe 90 days, convinced the buddy of mine to move from Pennsylvania and to be a roommate in Chicago. Awesome. And then try to figure things out from

13:22 there.

13:26 that's amazing. So Chicago was Chicago the airport that you flew in and out of for Notre Dame. Yeah, so you had a little bit of comfort.

13:39 Oh, okay. Well, we used to go for our families to go to Notre Dame game every year and we the process is you go to Chicago, stay in a couple nights at Chicago, drive in for the game, only an

13:52 hour and a half away, and then go to the game and drive back. And then my whole family's from Chicago, I'm on my dad's side. So Chicago is a great place just for our family and then it's a Notre

14:04 Dame city, right? So you graduate Notre Dame and then your next step most people do is look to Chicago. Absolutely. I love Chicago. Yeah, great city. Great city. I'm a, you know, I'm a New

14:19 England guy. I grew up in New Hampshire, went to college in Boston, die-hard Red Sox fan. So I've developed a tradition with a bunch of my college buddies, buddies from home, where we pick a

14:31 different city to go to for Red Sox road games every year. We've got a nice one. Yeah, thanks. Kind of coming out of COVID, I was like, I got to see my boys more, you know what I mean? Like

14:42 this. I haven't seen my people in years. And we're all mid-40s now. So I've never been to Wrigley And the first place that we picked was Chicago. And this was like around the 4th of July in '22.

14:58 And dude, the weather was just perfect. It was like mid-70s and people were out like on the beach. You develop a real appreciation for like the water being right there too. You don't really think

15:12 about Chicago as a city with beaches and water, but it is. You've got like the buildings right here, then you have a road, and then you've got a beach, right? and there's like concerts going on

15:21 out there.

15:24 I absolutely loved it and and I want to get back for sure. So Chicago to me when the weather's good is the second best city in the country, in my opinion. One number one, San Francisco. And I

15:40 know that you're a huge California tech fan.

15:46 I'm kidding. What's your favorite stadium?

15:49 For any sport or baseball? For baseball? I mean, Fenway, I've been to Fenway like a hundred times. I took batting practice there a couple times. Wow. Yeah, that was a bucket list item that I

16:04 checked at about 35 years ago. How was that? Oh, it was so cool. It was a perfect bluebird day. I'll send you a text of the video later. I had a ball to the warning track that in left field,

16:15 like it just to step into the box and see the monster right there. And I have my family come down and they give you kind of like free run of the stadium. I think they've locked it down more, but

16:24 they let us in the Red Sox clubhouse. They let us go on top of the green monster, like take pictures from the dugout and stuff. It was really like a VIP experience. Super cool

16:38 that I had that experience. So I'd say Fenway number one, but it's tough because like as I get older, I become a little bit more spoiled. I want more amenities. Fenway's a bit of a dump It's just

16:49 got a lot of like magic and history to it. So like the Oracle Park in San Francisco from like a newer park perspective is way up there. I also really like Coors Field in Denver for a park that's

17:04 only 30 minutes away. It's like 30 something years old. And every time you go into it, it still feels like it just opened that day. Like they've just meticulously maintained it. And with the

17:15 right seats, you can see the skyline, can see the mountains. The I have awesome is a here out mountain weather out there.

17:22 Yeah, that's true, that would be awesome. No humidity, tomorrow's opening day. I go to opening day every year. It's like the one day a year that Denver feels like a baseball town. So I would

17:32 say like for nostalgia Fenway for comfort, San Francisco, of course field is up on the list too and love baseball. So you've done like the warm weather thing. You've done the cold weather thing.

17:47 I think you're doing the warm weather thing again. So take me back to like early twenties in Chicago You needed to get a job. Like what did you do? Yeah, so I decided at that time I wanted to get

17:59 into real estate and be a builder, but not a builder of homes per se, but more commercial buildings. So what I did was I worked the late night shift at Kinkos. So I would work from 10 till 6 or 7

18:20 in the morning.

18:22 and then study for my real estate license in order to

18:28 become a commercial real estate

18:31 agentbroker.

18:34 And so for the next couple of years in Chicago, I just spent kind of hammering away at the real estate game and tried to figure that out and then got into the residential side.

18:47 really interesting. Yeah, I was there at the interesting time. So I found my way for working with a private but very big home builder in Chicago. And they had probably a lot of those master plan

19:05 communities. They built all over Chicago And this was 2005, 2006, 2007, around there. And I would manage part of what I did every Monday would be manage all the contracts that came in from the

19:21 weekend, right? So I looked through them and kind of make sure I audit them. And so over the course of time doing that, I saw, okay, these large down payment checks, 10, 000, 20, 000 tied to

19:34 the contract with, you know, 3 loan herb, whatever it was. And then all of a sudden there's a shift in it way. No down payment, no income, everyone's getting alone. And I'm like, what is

19:50 going on? So one week you'd get 10 homes sold that were coming on Monday. And all of a sudden it was like 40. And I was like, what is going on? And I could never put things, if I ever put things

20:03 together, I would have made a bunch of money, but I couldn't put together. Well, it's actually happening, but

20:09 it was wild. It was crazy So you kind of saw the impetus of the housing crash and the back bailouts and all of that firsthand. And then that must have shifted things for you, I would think, just

20:27 from a real estate perspective, like what did that do for you and for your career? 2008, 2009. So what happened to my brother at that time was, you played football at West Point, and he

20:42 graduated in 2000.

20:46 And, you know, once he graduated, he spent, I think, another year at West Point helping out their football team in athletics, and then he went to Iraq around 2006 or 7. And so what, you know,

21:04 at that time, I was like, you know, what am I doing? I'm doing real estate stuff, and my brother's over, you know, in war I'm like, well, I'm not going to go to war, that's for sure, so I'm

21:15 not brave enough to do that. But let me figure out something I can do here. And so I kind of joined,

21:24 I wouldn't call it political activism, kind of community. But I joined an organization to promote, you know, some set of values on college campuses And I was out in California doing that, so I

21:40 would do it at San Diego State, University of San Diego, and all those. college is there and I did that for probably three months and then ended up moving to DC after after I did that. So I drove

21:54 from Chicago to DC to do the training DC all the way out to California so San Diego and then once I was finished up there I drew all the way back to DC and then tried to figure out a way to get into

22:09 politics slash kind of the media industry at that time. So very very transient and in very like broad interests I would say this is this is fun. So you have no issue moving I guess it sounds like.

22:26 Do you feel like now and we'll get to like the next steps but you're in Houston now right? Yes. Do you feel like Houston's gonna be home for a while or is like you're gonna pack up and move to

22:40 somewhere else? My wife wants to move to Nashville. Nice. So that may be an opportunity. I think with what we're doing with the company, Houston's gonna be it for a long time. Just because our

22:54 customers are here, the industries here, we've got a network here, we've got good friends here, the community that our family belongs to, we're getting closer with. So it'll be hard to move out

23:07 of Houston, but I have zero problem tomorrow, if it's like, hey, let's go somewhere, I'm like, let's go. Why not, right? I guess, I don't know, like, you know, my former podcast partner,

23:19 Tim Loser, Rest in Peace, I'm not sure if you knew the whole story, but I, this used to be calledTripping Over the Barrel. It was myself and Tim, who's just an awesome guy, passed away from

23:30 cancer about two years ago. He, he and I had very different views on this. So I live, I grew up in New Hampshire, I lived there for 18 years, went to college in Boston, lived there for a year

23:41 after. So five years, then moved to Colorado, been here for 20 years. So I'm very much like, once I get to a place, like I'm there, and I think my wife and I agreed, even when we were dating,

23:52 like if we're gonna have a future together, like we're here. You know, like, we're not gonna move around for careers, we're gonna figure it out here, we're gonna stay here, and even with all of

24:02 our family in the Northeast, you know, she's from Pennsylvania, I'm from Northern New England, it's like, hey, if they wanna, you know, spend more time with us, they can come out here and

24:11 move to us, like we're not moving back there Whereas Tim grew up like as an Air Force brat and never viewed like anywhere as being permanent, right? He'd be like in Germany for six months and then

24:23 all of a sudden they're in San Antonio for a little bit and then they're living in Arkansas, right? And he ended up in Houston, but he never had this sense of like permanence toward Houston. So I

24:32 always find it fascinating like, I think people's upbringing is a little bit impact that, but I think it does get harder. Do you have kids? I have a little four-year-old. Yeah, so once your kids

24:45 gets into school, like, so they're about two years, two, three years away, it's really tough, right? To pull them away from their friends. Friends, yeah, and kind of a familiar setting. I

24:57 can see that. Kind of harm or stunt the development. Just like, it's hard enough to make friends when you're a little kid, right? And then you start developing close relationships and then you

25:10 leave Like, there are people who moved that I was friends with when I was nine, 10, 11 years old that I haven't had any contact with since that I'm like, man, I'd like to see what Brian de

25:21 Stefano's up to, I mean, we're friends for two years. I don't know, I can't find him anywhere. But I don't even know what we talk about. We were friends playing kickball at recess. Like, how

25:32 have things been for the last 34 years for you, Brian?

25:37 Thank you for inviting me to your 10th birthday party that was fun. But but anyways. So you're a Houston guy now, but there's still a couple gaps we have to fill in there. So you're real estate,

25:49 your politics, right? You're a Notre Dame grad. You've got some skills you're willing to kind of go anywhere. So what happens after the politics experience in DC?

26:01 I found my way working for trying to kind of break into media and media sales. And I was like, that could be interesting.

26:14 Environment to be in because one, you got kind of the politics aspect to it and then two, you're kind of involved in what's going on in the world.

26:24 So

26:28 I found my way to do none of those things. So I started working for

26:35 a company called Clear Channel Outdoor. So outdoor advertising. Okay. Yeah, so I sold billboards, and my market was DC, Virginia, and Maryland. The DC. And none of the billboards were in

26:50 Baltimore, but then I would go to these parties once a week, you know, it's called the Churchill Society. And essentially these parties were federal judges, congressmen, lobbyists. And the deal

27:05 was you bought a box of cigars, right? To this guy's house, who lives right off Capitol Hill. But box of cigars, two bottles of wine, and then a steak. And so you had to cook your own steak.

27:18 And then you could switch wine and you do cigar exchange. And you had 20 or 30 people sitting in this guy's house around a large dinner table. And just they would bring in authors to come in and

27:32 speak and talk about their book Those like a Tucker Carlson would go in there when he wasn't as popular.

27:41 kind of some new ideas and go and talk. So I was the only guy selling outdoor advertising where everyone else is.

27:50 Why am I here? How did I get here? Why do you let me in? I love that.

27:57 But DC is a really fun town. When you're young and single, DC is a place to be. I think so. I also think it depends what you're doing, right? I actually lived in DC for a summer Bethesda. So

28:14 not quite DC. And felt a little bit like on the outside 'cause everybody was like, you know, There are lobbyists and politicians, kids. It was very transient. There were a lot of lawyers or

28:27 paralegals. And I was like very early careers like struggling to kind of find a job. It's part of why I was only there for like two and a half months. But it felt like if you weren't in like one of

28:38 those, scenes. If you're in one of those scenes, it's amazing. If you don't quite find your scene, you just feel like an outsider the whole time. You know, so, so I agree with you in part, my

28:50 experience wasn't that, but if had I found like the right type of work or gotten or was a paralegal or something like that, it probably would have been awesome, you know, as a young person. I

29:01 think I, well, I got lucky with the group of friends I was around and then we play, I've had time to kickball was really big for like 26 year olds. So we played kickball right on the mall or right

29:13 by the Washington Monument, which was amazing. And then you'd have parties at the bars right across the street from

29:22 the Capitol building. And so that kind of life was, it was a lot of fun, work hard, I guess the essence of working really, really hard and then playing really hard as well. It's a fun town if

29:37 you can grind. and then it feels really good climbing the social ladder. Yeah, which I've never been good at, but I think

29:46 that that just feels so American, right? The way that you describe that it's like pride, you know? A lot of people were playing kickball out here too, at around that same time. And then all of a

29:59 sudden there was just this rash of people like tearing their ACLs playing kickball.

30:06 And I feel like it slowed down a little bit too So I was always sort of afraid to play, 'cause I'm like, I don't wanna get hurt. It was kind of weird, right? When you're like 26 playing kickball,

30:15 like competitively, recare. It was fun, weird, but fun. Yeah, for me it was slow pitch softball that I played really up until even last year, on and off. But my big thing that stunted that was

30:33 when I was about 33. And I was traveling a lot. work at this point. So it was almost like, you know, I we had double headers every Wednesday night. So I would leave on Monday morning, first

30:45 thing, do like a few days worth of meetings, eat like really salty, buttery food, drink a bunch, hustle to the airport Wednesday afternoon, fly home, and then just get to the game right on time.

30:58 And you know, as you can imagine, I'm like super dehydrated. My body was really tight. When I was 33 one night, I, I tore my Achilles going after a fly ball. And that really kind of set things

31:09 back. I'm like, okay, I think I need to like shift my priorities. I can't be. I got two young kids. I got a wife. I got a job where I travel a lot. I can't be like tearing my Achilles,

31:20 playing beer, drinking softball on Wednesdays. So it took a few years off and then, and then came back, but it wasn't uncommon and I'd see other people have that injury. You know what I mean?

31:30 And I'd just be like, I'm sorry, man. It's like, no, I think they'll be okay. I'm like, no, you're not, you're not okay. You need to go to a doctor and probably get that thing attached to my

31:41 man. I'm sorry So let's fast forward a little bit, right? So so when did you when did you get to Houston and when did you decide to like make this shift to being entrepreneurial? If you want to

31:50 fill in some of those gaps, too Yeah, so I made a bunch of money So now outdoor advertising fairly fast and then Decided I wanted to get in the music industry to develop music app for Live music so

32:12 how I kind of traveled that road But I still have this kind of media idea in my mind about you know How people could consume media differently and at that time like Hulu was coming out So there were

32:26 different plays for platforms in terms of media consumption, right? Maybe Netflix was kind of becoming popular at that time And I started to get into music and my travel to work every day at Clear

32:42 Channel. So Clear Channel is based in Maryland. I think it was land over Maryland or something like that. And I lived in Northern Virginia. So right across from DC. So I travel in and I got like

32:56 really hooked on Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. So I've listened to all like pet sounds I've listened to that entire album to work and then going work to home every day for a year. And so I just

33:12 started researching the music industry. And I was like, OK, how are people making money? What's going on with this kind of change in digital

33:21 consumption? How are sales going to change? And what I noticed was there's this big shift from small independent bands trying to make it big. via radio or trying to sell some sort of CDs. Remember

33:38 we bought CDs for like 20 bucks? Of course. All of a sudden these bands would go from doing a lot of recording and trying to sell music and playing live maybe a couple times a year to playing live

33:52 three, four times a week. And so you saw this live music scene just hop through the roof. And I was like, what's going on? So I looked at the market place There's a couple of apps out there, one

34:04 called like Songkicked.

34:08 That could help these bands kind of navigate where to play, you know, if they're doing a tour. And they started to do national tours where a small little band, which is nuts. So I was like, man,

34:20 this would be interesting to do.

34:24 Quit Clear Channel. Never been to Texas in my entire life. Got an apartment in Austin and then

34:33 drove to Austin. and then try to figure it out from there. Cool. Yeah. So you built an app?

34:42 What's that? So you built an app? Yeah, we were building an app called Dig the Gig. So it's gonna be a Yelp for bands like Performances and you can tip the band over the phone.

34:54 So that's kind of how I got introduced to more of the tech startup world and then learned a ton. Obviously you've never heard of Dig the Gig so you can imagine how it went, right? So

35:11 that's kind of my

35:14 introduction into the tech startup scene. Well, and Austin's cool. It was probably even cooler back then because it just, it wasn't as transient maybe. I mean, it's gotten a little bit crazy

35:30 just in terms of how built out it is the lack of infrastructure to support it. So you try the music scene. Now you've got a very diverse background at this point. And now you've seen a little bit

35:41 of tech. What year are we talking about here? And what did you do after Dig the Gig?

35:48 I have no idea what year, maybe 2012, 13, 14 around there. So Dig the Gig failed, started working for an advertising agency that was based in Houston, that was setting up shop in Austin. And

36:09 every once in a while, I would drive in from Austin to Houston to work and spend some time with a lot of the

36:17 developers and then the team that they had here in Houston. And the gentleman who owned the advertising agency used to run the ShellTech Venture Fund a long time ago. And one time I was in Houston,

36:31 he's like, Hey, take a look at these boiling gas. trade shows, they could probably use some help navigating this digital quote unquote transformation, right? True. And so I looked at one of the

36:45 trade shows that had like a thousand booths and did an assessment on every single one of those a thousand in terms of what I thought their digital presence was, whether that be internal or external

36:59 and scored them. And it was like 95 were a D Right. And I go, Holy shit. This is a huge opportunity. Move to Houston. Yeah. So that's kind of how I made it here.

37:16 And it also exposed you to oil and gas. Yes. Which you did. That's absolutely, absolutely love oil, I guess. And I'm disappointed that I didn't know about it growing up. Just because there's so

37:29 much you can do, it's global. You will never stop learning. It runs the entire everything that we do. I mean it runs whether that's getting water out of your sink is coming from you know the

37:41 industries that we're in to driving your car, right? Yeah, I mean look this microphone and Her phones and this computer and that light ring. I mean all of it right and of course the electricity to

37:55 power it I think that that that is in part because of where you and I grew up Right if you're in the Northeast or like way in the Southeast, you don't see wells, right? You don't see pump jacks,

38:08 so it's just not right there in front of you and You just start to think of it as something that goes on elsewhere and then product is brought to you But then when you start to dive into it a little

38:18 bit more. I had the same realization in 2008 9 10 I'm like man there's like Such amazing innovation and technology happening like miles below the ground yet I'm seeing real gaps in terms of

38:35 communication from the field to the back office, and even just within the tech that's being used in the back office. You have companies running complex accounting scenarios and reporting out of

38:45 QuickBooks. But meanwhile, in the field, you've got some of the most advanced tech in the world outside of sending people to outer space. So I'm like, all right, this is gonna have to catch up.

38:56 And it has, I think there's been substantial improvement in the tech that's used I had a great conversation earlier with a 2000 well company and they're a little bit newer. They bought some assets

39:08 recently. Just seeing the way that a new company attacks, bringing on tech, like it's leaning toward cloud. It's immediately thinking about data first, optimizing production and being very

39:22 methodical with how they are open about information and breaking down some of the silos that previously existed So I think with the younger generations that come in.

39:32 We'll start to continue to see some sort of shifts in terms of the types of technology and even just how companies operate, not in silos. So to get back to you, I really like your story. So now

39:45 all of a sudden you're exposed to Houston, you're exposed to oil and gas. And you're an entrepreneur at this point, you've had some wins, you've had some losses. What happened? You decided like,

39:55 all right, I see opportunity here You graded a bunch of companies and their digital presence was terrible. Where'd you go from there?

40:06 I actually met a group of guys

40:11 that invested in a company that was trying to be the Amazon for oil and gas. This is probably 2017, 2018. And the company during that time, the oil market wasn't so hot and the company was

40:26 struggling And so the CEO of that company decided that I kind of go in a different direction. And the investors were like, Marty, we think something's here. You know, see what you think and see

40:40 if we can kind of move forward with what we've got. And so I started really diving into what is happening with equipment, sales and sourcing and who's doing what and why do they do it? Where's the

40:58 information flowing, how is it flowing? And did a whole bunch of research on the various attempts that people have made trying to build the Amazon for oil and gas. And then the more research I did,

41:16 the more it's centered into how do we focus in one area and then expand out, right? And I don't know anything at oil and gas at that time So I'm like, okay, what do I know about oil and gas?

41:29 Up-stream market is good, down-stream market is bad, right? Kind of basic understanding of that. That's like, okay, if I was to start a business in this sales and sourcing kind of realm, how do

41:42 you do that? Well, you wanna protect yourself, right? So if one market's hot, one market's not, and you're in one of the other, how can I get into all three segments of the market, right?

41:54 Nice, yeah. Hipes, valves, fittings, and flanges are in every single one of those segments. And you can move beyond PVF into, you know, ancillary products really easily. So then just spend a

42:09 ton of time, kind of trying to figure this out, years.

42:14 And now it leads you to starting industrial data labs. It only took 42 minutes for us to give the first plug to your rapidly growing company.

42:27 Presented in Oklahoma City and apparently somebody saw the presentation and gave you a Wheelbarrow full of money because they saw the opportunity. I think it's super cool what you guys are doing So

42:38 why don't you tell the masses What the hell is industrial data labs man? What are you guys doing? Yeah, so that's a good question. So the problem that we're solving is the any efficiencies and

42:51 sales and sourcing in industrial markets, and so what we've noticed there's information traveling around and spreadsheets PDFs and emails and kind of the essence of the problem that we're solving is

43:04 each company is Reclussing a piece of equipment in one of those application with their own language There's a lot of manual data entry to understand that unique language or an equipment description

43:21 Translate it and put that a price and a delivery point on it And we're building. Now we're building a global data model that can understand any description Translate that into another company's kind

43:35 of description and then extend the capability to search ERPs to identify the optimal product choices based off of any company's description And it leverages AI to do

43:51 that

43:53 Yeah, so we fine-tuned I can we fine-tuned a an open-source

43:58 model with a lot of data that we received from our partners and the essence of the primary model that we built is that it one recognizes if something's a description or not and Then two if it

44:13 understands that it's a description It can understand the attributes within the description and And once you have that, now you can build software around it to do work. which is search in ERP,

44:28 organize a spreadsheet, and you can start chipping away at a lot of the efficiencies in the system just with this base model that we built.

44:39 So the biggest benefit and why companies are doing business with you

44:45 is you're saving them massive amounts of time, right? So what was previously a manual process is now something that can be done leveraging a bot, right? I mean, in short, is that accurate?

44:59 So by argument, so yeah, we're saving time but we're making people money, right? So if a lot of the money being made is dependent upon a time to respond to an RFQ, if you can shorten up that time

45:13 and make the options better, not only are you gonna win in terms of speed but you'll win in terms of margin, right? And so I think that's where our value lies The other thing that we found is

45:25 interesting. is the data traveling from a shell or an X on to a distributor. So if you can imagine those large spreadsheets, the data being captured for those spreadsheets, a lot of times is zero.

45:41 And then let's say if you're a distributor and I send you this large 1000 line item RFQ, well, 50 of the time you're not gonna be able to quote what I just provided you from your stock, right?

45:56 So you have to send out 50 of those line items to your suppliers. They need to price it. They need to deliver it and send it back. You know how much data is captured from the suppliers sending you

46:08 information back? No. Zero.

46:14 So now with our model, we can capture all the data down to the attribute level. And now people can start making decisions they can never make before. which I think is really interesting about what

46:26 we're doing. Yeah, so you've raised money, right? You're continuing to grow. You're seeing sales happen. You're getting booths at conferences and kind of really know who your target market is.

46:42 What's next for you guys? Like say you go and you raise more money. How do you deploy that capital? Is it to continue to improve the AI model? Is it branching out into different industries? Is it

46:54 perfecting the industry market that you're in? Is it adding sales? Like what's next for industrial data labs? 'Cause you've got a good idea, right? And you're executing on the idea, but you know,

47:04 it's just the beginning of this whole AI concept. Like what's next for you?

47:10 So if you look at our company, there's really three elements to what we're doing. So we're building kind of a base model that understands descriptions down to the attribute level. And we've got a

47:22 search model that can take that description, search and ERP, and come back with results, right? And then we've got a software application layer that, well, now people have results. Now they

47:35 need to do something with that results, those results we've seen. So for us, it's going to be really expanding the core model that we have, not only making it better, but advancing it into bolts,

47:48 gaskets, pumps, everything else

47:51 And then our question is like, how do we scale the search function of this technology so that more people can use it however they want, right? Yeah. And then the other is building software

48:06 capabilities based off of what these companies want to achieve. And who's like without naming names if you don't want to, but like, who are your competitors for this? There's got to be somebody

48:18 else doing this.

48:22 Our competitors are the existing kind of way things are done, right? Status quo, yeah. Yep, status quo, which works today, for the most part. CRMs, so if you have a budget and it's like,

48:38 well, I wanna go with Salesforce, so I'm gonna still have manual data entry into Salesforce. The problem is Salesforce lacks any intelligence in the

48:48 PVF industry, so you're just moving data from one application to the other in ERP, possibly as a competitor,

48:59 and then custom solutions. But right now, no one's offering kind of the capabilities and intelligence we offer for the industry that we're in. Yeah, I mean, to me, if I were to predict the

49:16 future, for you and your company, I would think that some of these CRMs and ERPs would start knocking and saying, Wait a second. We're actually thinking about building something like this, but

49:25 you've already done it. Can we either buy you or partner with you or something because this is good. And then it puts you in kind of a unique situation where you already know how to feed the data

49:35 into their systems. Right? You know how to pull data from their systems and make sense of it and you've got a software platform. Logically, I could see whether it's even on the big side in SAP or

49:45 Salesforce or some of the more niche players who I don't even know who they are that play in the industrial space that have more of that CRM or ERP capability. Which is cool. I love gap fillers and

50:00 this is a logical gap filler that applies intelligence that people like to see. Is there like a target size company that you go after or do you view this as anybody who is responding to RFQs.

50:17 and has like a massive number of SKUs to enter and respond to those RFQs with like small, big, or is it really anybody that does that? So our core focus right now is pipe valve fitting and flange

50:31 distributors and we'll work with some manufacturers. Not all manufacturers, but our core is PVF distributors. If you do anything outside of that, you know, we're not there yet So you have a

50:46 laundry list of other industries that are looking for this technology, but you know, we can't go fast enough right now where we're at. Yeah,

50:58 you got to master the domain that you're in right now. So like, how do you get business? Is this something where like, are you going out and like proactively cold calling people or are people

51:07 finding you like over the web? Like I'm curious about, it's very niche, which is good But how do people find you?

51:18 Well, of course with your help, right?

51:22 So

51:24 you and Ralph helping us out. But in Houston, there's a really good PVF community called the PVF Roundtable. So it's a charitable organization whose sole purpose is to raise money and then educate

51:40 some of the younger

51:44 kind of Houston members or people that want to get in the industry, really learn about the industry and stay in the industry. And so we've been really fortunate to really getting grained in that

51:54 community. And then it's just being a part of all the things that are happening in Houston. There's a huge community within the pipe valve fitting in flange world globally. It is amazing. You

52:06 would never know. I'm going to Italy, in May, for valve conference. And it'll be huge, but you would never know, you know? You're going to Italy in May to drink wine and eat pizza and happen to

52:21 attend a pipe valve fitting flames, come on, it's Marty, let's not be as too much here. But that's really cool, and I didn't know that, and it makes a ton of sense. I think it's super cool, so

52:35 we'll wrap up here, but I'm kind of curious, where do people find you, where do they find your website,

52:43 social media, things like that, if they wanna get a hold of you and say, Hey, I wanna see what you got going on.

52:49 Yeah, website is industrialdatalabscom. I'm on Twitter, I don't really post much on Twitter, but I read a lot on Twitter. And then

52:60 LinkedIn, yeah, Twitter is amazing, especially when you get down into the little niches, especially in this AI ML world. Oh my God, these people are putting together some scary things that are

53:12 rather amazing that

53:14 no one knows about.

53:18 Twitter. I love Twitter. Yeah. Time song. Yeah. Yeah.

53:25 I was telling somebody the other day, I don't know if I already mentioned this. So I'll read, I'll kind of treat Twitter like, remember our dad used to read the newspapers at night or in the

53:34 morning for breakfast, right? You pull out the newspaper and read it. I did too. The sports.

53:42 So I use Twitter in that way, right? So at night, I'll flip through and read a lot of the happenings on AI in the morning, right? And so I read what these guys are doing and I'm like, Holy shit,

53:52 I am so far behind what these people are doing are amazing, right? Then I'll hop in my car and I'll go visit a customer and I was like, Well, you know, how many people have adopted any form of AI,

54:04 whether it be Claude or Chachi PT? And they're like, Nobody. I'm like, Yeah. It's just a such a large gap between You know, when you're on Twitter, it's like, everybody's doing it and you get

54:16 out into the real world. It's like, no one is using it at all. So, except for our stuff, right? So it's amazing, kind of the gap there, what you think is true versus what is really true. I

54:31 think it's going to require some of the bigger companies to really implement it as part of what they do You know, so for my company, for funk futures, we used the Google G Suite and they just

54:44 recently added this Gemini thing and it didn't really add much value for me personally, at least for what I do, but I go to chat with GPT for like two real purposes. One of them is amazing for me

54:58 because I used to spend hours writing press releases announcing a new client or some sort of happening within our business and it would be like, I've never written press releases before. So I'm like

55:10 googling how to write press releases and then I'm you know, starting to analyze it. It was like writing a paper in college where you've got like, you know, this is the body and this is how you do

55:18 it. And this, oh yeah, I enter contact information here. I go into chat GPT and I tell them to write a press release. And I get like two or three different versions with different tonality that I

55:27 can then share with my new clients within 15 minutes. You know, it's like a massive value add for me. And then I go into MailChimp and I send it out or I post it on like, then it's amazing. So

55:39 that saved me a ton of time And second is just like,

55:43 and this information isn't always accurate. So like, people still need their subscriptions to embarrass an IHS mobile database and stuff. But it's like, tell me the top 25 producing operators in

55:53 the Permian Basin and how many wells they've drilled this year. Like, that's pretty powerful stuff, man. Because previously you had to go in and do a Google search and go one by one. And recently

56:03 heard about another really cool concept that I'm going to start using more, which is like a 10k Translator so you want to work with a public company right and you want to find out information about

56:13 them quickly. Chat GPT has an extension. You can go in and type in the company in 10K, and it breaks down all of the key metrics and information you want to have, which is like, as a sales guy,

56:24 when I'm selling to a public company, I want to pull out quotes and things that they've said and talk about their specific plans. Now I don't even have to read that. I just go to Chat GPT with this

56:34 plugin, and it gives me answers. So there are still use cases for people to like dip their toes in without going all the way. Well, I think what is

56:44 gonna be interesting, and if people figure this out, they can provide a ton of value to a lot of these companies, is everyone's captured by this generative AI, right? I put something in,

56:55 something come back to me, generated an text, a video, an image, whatever, right? Okay, that could be used for marketing, sales pitches, maybe some video creation, example, tutorials,

57:08 learning possibly things like that. Yep. Where the real value is. that people aren't focused on, but should be, is taking data from one application, PDF, and understanding what's in that data

57:21 and moving it to another application. Yes. That little gap is there's a ton of time spent there on invoices, that's how there's a lot of pipe that gets ordered incorrectly is for that reason. So

57:36 in these little small use cases that in these operations, there's so much value. And once people start figuring that out,

57:46 tons of efficiencies will be gained. And for startups, there'll be a lot of money as well. Yep, that's really well stated and it's not something I'm doing enough of right now but I'm thinking like

57:58 pulling data out of a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet and telling it what I wanted to look like in a PowerPoint presentation That could save me 10 hours a

58:09 month and that's worth it. lot to me. Yeah, the one thing that we're doing, and I know we got to run. So with these quotes come these thousand page PDFs, right? And they describe

58:23 the equipment. And there's like a valve tag on the PDF and these specifications on the PDF as well, right? And so there's an enormous amount of time copying and pasting that data from a PDF to a

58:37 spreadsheet. Well, if you upload it to chat to BT, it's not able to do that, right? Just because you're communicating with a language model who's trying to predict in essence your next word or

58:49 what the next word should be. But these models can now identify, if you do it properly, what text needs to be extracted in order to place it in that next part in that application layer or a

59:04 translation layer to now start searching your P's and I think there's that value that

59:12 A lot of startups can help a lot of these industrial equipment, manufacturers, and distributors with a huge. I

59:20 think that you, you need to go on a bit of a speaking circuit about this. Cause I think that this is a complex concept that people don't fully understand. And I, I think you do a nice job of, of

59:31 putting it in practical simplified terms. So I appreciate that. Marty, this was a ton of fun. I didn't know if we were going to go for 35 minutes or for an hour. I bet we could go for another

59:39 hour Um, but definitely check out industrial data labscom. These guys are doing super cool stuff. The demo takes five minutes and you can see exactly what they're doing. So keep crushing out there

59:53 Marty and building that AI community in Houston. We'll get there. Thank you for your time, man.