Fun-loving, exciting things. We are gonna make a ton of mistakes, but we are gonna go as fast as we possibly can. I would much rather close 50% of the right customers, Uhhuh versus like a hundred percent of the wrong customers. This is a huge opportunity that is ripe for innovation. It's already what we do.
We're gonna blow doors off this. Is there any other advice you'd have for startup founders out there as they're on their journey? From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get IN, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation.
Before we dive into today's episode, a quick shout out to our friends at NCW, the team that's been building one of the fastest growing staffing and recruiting companies in America for over 25 years. They specialize in the skilled trades, but here's the thing, they're also growing their own internal team.
If you or someone you know is interested in recruiting sales or just making businesses run smoother, you'll want to check them out@teamncw.com. This isn't just another job pitch. NCW has been voted A top workplace by the IndyStar, landed on the IBJ Fast 25 list and made the Inc. 5000 list multiple times.
I'll tell you, I've got plenty of friends who work there and they all love it. Go check out teamncw.com. Now let's get into the episode. My guest today is Ben Forrest, the founder and CEO of Olio, an Indiana based healthcare technology company. That is transforming the coordination of complex patient care.
Under his leadership, Olio recently raised $11 million in Series B funding to expand innovation and market reach. He's a lifelong Hoosier undergraduate of Indiana University. Ben is passionate about building companies that improve lives while keeping Indiana at the center of innovation. Today we're gonna be talking about the early journey of Olio that started right here in this building.
So before this was the, the global headquarters of Get IN. That's right. This was the global headquarters of Olio. Uh, we're gonna talk about the success you guys had, the landscape of tech and Indiana, and innovation and all the fun things, Ben. We're welcome, uh, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
I'm a huge fan. I, I think what you're doing is important. I think this, this, uh, content. Is needed. Uh, the exposure to our state has been phenomenal. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me. And those aren't just words that, that Ben says just 'cause he is here in the sea. Mm-hmm. I recently realized that you saw one of our videos Yeah.
And put some action behind it. Yeah. So we posted a video. Gemini, Ooz Deir came on and talked about Eli. That's right. Coffee. Yeah. Being like this awesome up and coming hustler. Mm-hmm. Uh, that serves coffee up at Oswell. Yeah. And you brought him in to the Olio office. Yeah. I mean, it's a testament to like, you know, spotlighting good things and, uh, yeah.
I saw, you know, one of your, your questions and I was like, well, let's try that. And so we had a board meeting. I was like, let's bring this guy in. And it was great. My board came in from Atlanta and Ohio and uh, we had all the, all our employees there and Eli there was there rocking it and it was amazing.
Does he not make some of the best coffee like his It's wild latte mocha stuff. It's kind of, uh, it's a little overwhelming in a good way that you're like. I don't know what to order. I don't have a clue. But how cool is it that he's got a, a flare of uniqueness that, that from a professionalism per perspective brings this card into your building and you're like, our team was like, what is up today?
So it was great. You could just like, and you can just create this, uh, this memory. I, I'm reading a book about, uh, moments. Mm-hmm. And it's all about like, how do you create more like, memorable moments? Yeah. So it's like, basically this is, this is a little side tangent, but I love it. That's cool. So it talks about, think about, uh, if you had to rate the top 10 moments of your life mm-hmm.
Of like what you remember and how so many of them come in the first 30 years. Oh. And then once, so it's like, you know, graduate high school, get your driver's license, turn 21. Mm-hmm. Get married, have a kid. Like, all that stuff happens like in those first 30 years. Yep. And then you get past 30 and it's like.
I don't know, turning 50 and then retirement. And so it's like how do you create more of these memorable experiences and build that into your life and build that into your routine on maybe monthly or weekly or whenever you can do it. And like, you know, a day that a bougie coffee cart comes in and serves, like, everyone's like, wow, it's not just an average Tuesday at the office.
Love it. That's right, that's right. Um, well I want to talk about, uh, your journey with Olio. Mm-hmm. So I've known about Olio, uh, I would say since a year after inception. Okay. So, uh, one of your early, early employees was the same class of, Orr Fellowship as I was so Meg Stewart. Oh, shout out. Oh man. The legend.
And uh, I mean, I just remember her talking about she might have been an employee like six. She was our first female employee. Employee, yeah. Maybe sub five. I'm actually excited about me. She's moving back to the Midwest. She's in Boston now. I'm moving to Chicago. So we'll get to see her. It's easier for her to get down.
Let's go. She was in our office. She was local to us for four or five years. Yeah. But yeah, that was kind of our first foray of the, Orr Fellowship and, uh, rockstar. And you guys were like a true tech startup, right? Yeah. It's like six employees. Yeah. You're working out of an old church. Yeah. And you're just like making it happen.
So talk to, we were screwing things up on the daily. Well, talk to me about like what, where this idea came from Yeah. And what you guys, what you started doing and then where you've really found, uh, some traction. You know, where things started was, I've always been in healthcare, well since oh five, so 20 years of my career is been in some way, shape or form in healthcare med device.
And then I, it just gave a me a front row seat to a lot of senior leadership within healthcare, all exclusively in the state of Indiana, you know, big health systems, uh, a lot in the, uh, orthopedic surgeon community. And, uh, just kept hearing the same problem over and over. Like I'd love to be able to that guy to go.
Hey, I just had this desire to be an entrepreneur. It was, it wasn't that, uh, I wanted to be successful, but I just kept hearing this problem. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs get consumed with something they think they can solve, and that becomes the driving force, and that's how it was for us. Isn't that crazy?
Mm-hmm. Like when you really become obsessed with mm-hmm. A piece like, like we're so obsessed with content. Yeah. We're like, oh, we want to Yeah. Shine light and do, and then it all starts to like work. Yeah. Versus I feel like for, you know, years I was on the sidelines of like, oh, I want to build a company.
Yeah. And I want, and it was like not focused on solving, like seeing this need mm-hmm. And filling that need. Mm-hmm. And then it's like, once you start doing that, it's like the, the dominoes start to go. It starts to go because at the, you know, basic principles, supply and demand. Well, if you're solving a lot of people problem, a lot of folks have, I don't care what it is, the supply is there.
So what was the problem that you solved? The landscape of healthcare is changing. That patients are getting, you know, obviously everybody knows boomers are getting, they're booming, uh, into their later years. And, um, people providing care needed to be more coordinated. Um, they need to be in the know, they needed to have a process and a workflow.
And I just kept hearing the same things. Like, we don't, we don't work with these people. Well, we don't even know who to work with. Uh, and I know that sounds crazy and you would think that that's not a thing. But now eight years of being obsessed with that problem, we're barely scratching the surfaces of solving it still.
So that was the kind of thing that I saw. And. Went out to sell to, uh, try to solve for. Okay. I think a lot of times, um, the, the common person can get jumbled in tech companies. Yeah. Right. It's like ai, this Yeah. And transformative innovation. We're doing all this. Crazy. Yeah. But like, what did that mean?
Like what was the core problem where you guys launched your MVP mm-hmm. And said like, this is a problem that we're going to solve within the healthcare industry. Yeah. I'm a bit of a thief. Uh, if, if, if a, if a lawyer ever asked me that, I'll deny it. But, uh, you know, we saw as like we could solve this with technologies that kind of already have been designed right.
That, that, that the world knows. And it was almost like a CRM is a basic tool that brings the right folks within a business together to discuss a client, right? Yeah. Why should patient care coordination be any different? Right. The problem is, is that not everybody works at the same place. Right. Dude. So MVP was kind of that.
Let's take a CRM look and feel from a UX design. Make it super simple so that multiple users could come in and work together without having an extensive training. Right. Yeah. And that has been a core philosophy since day one. We didn't hire one person in healthcare with a healthcare background for like our first three and a half years.
We literally lean on, leaned on heavy on the Indianapolis Tech community. Shout out to Mike Reynolds and the Innovatemap team, uh, Lacey Lavy, uh, from Innovatemap, and we were like, let's make Olio this healthcare application that has a lot of like tried and true software bones Yeah. And foundations. Well, that is the crazy part.
Um, just like healthcare in general today. Yeah. Is. There's not tech people, right? Like there are people that get into this business. Yeah. One, the two sides of it are interesting. One, the providers that go in there mm-hmm. Do so because they want to serve people. Right. They want to help people. That's right.
They want to make healthier people. Then they realize that, oh, the, like this is a business. Mm-hmm. And like sometimes that looks like, you know, working on your bottom line Yeah. And doing all these things. That's right. And then somewhere in the pro like insurance comes in mm-hmm. And all these different things.
Yep. That make it really, really hard to provide top level patient care. Mm-hmm. At like an affordable price. No doubt. You know, I mean, it is always present. Mm-hmm. Um, you mentioned that keyword, bottom line. We're seeing it right now. I mean, it is what it is. Administration changes. I mean, I, I, I say this, I said this internally at Olio last week.
You know, Olio's not had successive presidents in its history. Well, that means administration, CMS changes, guidelines of all the boring things of healthcare. But what that really means is the market shifts. And bottom lines change. And then the people that are set up that deliver healthcare get impacted by, uh, P&L.
Yeah. So take me through, because you were work before Olio, what were you doing? Uh, med device. I was the Indiana distributor for Stryker Spine for for Stryker, which is a phenomenal job. Yeah. You know, like killer. Like you could do that for a career. Oh yeah. And you could have a lake house. Yeah. And you could be chilling, you know, like for real, right?
Like it's, it yeah. It could be good. Yeah. So it's like, what got you from this? I mean, I would say pretty cush. Like not, and you're making, you're doing good work. Mm-hmm. Like everyone at Stryker. Nothing but respect. Yeah. But like, you could do that job 25, 30 years or whatever. Mm-hmm. And retire and be doing very well for yourself.
Yeah. Why did you wanna leave a stable, tried and true or even career to go start a tech company? Yeah, I mean, I remember sitting in this very building when the pandemic hit, wondering. What did I give up to be here now with the, the adversity we all, uh, kind of held had at that time? Um, back to that obsession thing, me and my, my business partner, uh, Matt Goard had had employees.
Um, they were doing great work. Um, it afforded freedom to kind of look around the corner, see what was there, uh, to more to grow that business. And it kind of goes back to that obsession around the problem that I kept hearing. Wait, from, from within Stryker, you, yeah. So, so Stryker Award awarded me and a business partner, the distribution rights.
Oh, so, so you were kind of like running your own Yeah. It's kinda like, uh, entrepreneurship on, uh, training wheels. Oh, that's nice. So, so you got this big brand you get to represent. You're your own party. You sell their products, but you don't have the fear of like, you don't have near the pressures that, you know, a standard entrepreneur has.
Yeah. Okay. So you were doing that and Yeah. You know, doing all right. And that gave you the ability to look around and say, what are the problems that you need to solve? Yeah. And you came up with this, uh, coordinating patient care. I started out as a consultant type of idea. Like, oh, we'll consult these people we know very well about some of the things they may need to consider.
And it quickly turned into, no, we could build a product here, and then you'd have to do the things that you do. You know, I had to have conversations with my business partner. I'm spending too much. I mean, as folks are creating opportunities for themselves and others, uh, sometimes you gotta break up with where you are, you know?
And so having tough conversations with my business partner and coming to an agreement that like. I am obsessed with trying to build this thing, this new business. I need to sell my shares to you. And, and, and we need, let, let you go do this thing that we've been building for years now. And so when did that moment come where you went all in on Olio?
Yeah, it was, uh, February of 18 was, was like the official drop dead. Like I had sold my ownership for my, my existing ventures. Like, 'cause you can't raise a dollar if people think you're out there side hustling and this is that and that's this dude. Isn't that crazy? Mm-hmm. I probably spent the first five years of my career uhhuh, like always having a side hustle, always like dab like learning, failing, like figuring.
And then it was like, once you find the thing mm-hmm. And you're just like, this is it. This is it, dude. Cut it, get it out, strip it, strip it all down, and, and, you know, timing everything too. I was, I'm 46 now. I was thirties, eight. It's like if I'm gonna shoot my shot, it's now. You know, and then it was just like blinder time.
Like, okay. Yeah. So you get out of the med device space. Yep. Yep. And what did, like, what, what does March, 2017 look like? It's knocking on Barry Worm's door. Barry, what a guy. And going, um, Hey man, I, we need to create a PPM. Is that right? Yeah. To go out and raise some money via convertible notes. I know the legal documentation.
I can't bootstrap this thing. You know, digital healthcare has a lot of, uh, compliance et cetera that like, you know, you can't just write code. Did you know anything about raising money venture? Nothing. Purely just a dummy. I mean, when I say like, if you like, that was probably one of the most difficult parts I could sell.
The idea and the vision. It was like the terms of a convertible note, like your discount, your interest rate, when's it gonna convert to equity? You have to read the Brad Feld book, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you're just grinding it and you know, you do some dumb ass pitches and it doesn't go well and then you start to figure it out and it is what it is.
How long were you on that? Like, and then what were you looking to raise? Mm-hmm. How did that first, that's funny you ask that. 'cause like we've raised $31 million now, and I vividly remember saying, oh, we're only gonna need like a million and a half dollars to get this thing to like cash flow positive.
Like, and that was an absolute joke. So yeah, we set out, I think the first time was like, we're gonna raise a million and a half dollars. That turned into seven, uh, from Angels. Oh wow. So people believed in that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Early on, like when we subscribed. That's crazy. We started cranking and it was three different tranches that got us to seven, but we, before Series A we signed UnitedHealthcare.
Uh, we signed IU Health. So there was a heavy belief, like why would, was it, who was on the team at that point? The, the original crew? I think the logos are really what at first million and a half it was, you know, a lot of, uh, Eric Ner is a close friend, college roommate, still involved in the business on my board today.
Uh, helping piece together kind of f folks from our med device background. Orthopedic surgeons that understood the problem, kind of lived the problem to some extent, could throw and, and had the, the liquidity to, to invest, if you recall, like pre, pre 2020, the market was really good. Uh, and even the Indiana tax credit does a huge help to, to, you know, yeah.
The vci. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal. If you have the opportunity to, Hey, look, write us a check for 50 grand. You're, you're getting 20% of that back. Day one on a tax credit. Um, that's, that's a pretty big advantage for an early stage company. Trying to raise a little bit of cash. You get a million and a half in mm-hmm.
To start. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mike Stewart comes on. The world changes for us there. We what is, and that puts you at like five employees. Yeah, probably. Where did you the building? Um, so this was actually stop two, uh, we had a little shop in Carmel. We probably were somewhere around 10 employees, I would guess.
Ben Forrest: Myself and a couple buddies bought this building.
Nate Spangle: what was it before?
Ben Forrest: It
Nate Spangle: was, obviously it was the church. Church.
Ben Forrest: It was the church.
Nate Spangle: It was a, so the church went under and you guys purchased it?
Ben Forrest: Church went under, um, we got a great deal in the building. It was awesome.
Nate Spangle: Locations killer. It was a little bit like, like what did that first, like, were you like removing pews when you started?
Ben Forrest: Oh yeah. Like ba uh, baptismal pools, the whole deal.
Nate Spangle: Like this thing had, were you a little bit like, oh father forgive us
for that
Ben Forrest: it was a little weird, I'm not gonna lie. Like, you're like, is this okay? Um, and then there was actually somewhere around the corner, there's a, a coworking space That was a church as well.
Yeah. CoHatch CoHatch, yes. Down there. Uh,
Ben Forrest: and they were kind of going through the same thing. We're like, well, if they're doing it, the Lord's gonna be all right.
Nate Spangle: Yeah,
yeah. Like, come on. Like, the lord knows we just raised our seed round. Right. Like, come on. And, you know, we were real passionate about, um, you know, just giving our engineers a good place and fun place to work.
And we have been always been fortunate that most of our technical talent has been local, almost all of it still to this day. So we're like, let's, let's make this happen. And I will say for like the start, like the true startup vibe, you're, it's tough to find a better place than this. No. Like, you're right in the heart of Broad Ripple.
You're in an old church. Like if you go upstairs, like, so Dan Han and this company, they're upstairs right now. Yeah. So like, they're rocking and rolling up there, Uhhuh like, we've got down here. I'm gonna have to knock on that door on the way out. Oh yeah. It's, it's sick. Uhhuh. And, and it's, it's very fun. So how, how many employees did you guys roll grow through this space?
Ben Forrest: We actually let the employees participate in the ownership of the building. If they wanted to, they had to write a check, but they got to go on the cap table, make Olio a tenant. We got, we were literally distributing to our employees as a member and ownership of the landlord, uh, of building ownership.
Right.
Nate Spangle: So that like our kind of, some of the people have been with us a long Why?
Ben Forrest: Because we thought it was a cool thing to do. We needed a space to work in. They participated at a much smaller scale than others.
Nate Spangle: Yeah. But even if you put in, you know, yeah. Two, three, 5,000 bucks or whatever, like, I mean, some of those people that did just that got a check for 25 grand when we sold the building.
Yeah. Shout out. Has he? Yeah. Come on dude. Exactly. And so, um, yeah, it just, it would seem like a good idea. Well, you had bought that like in 2019. That sounds exactly right. Yeah. I think we bought the building 2019, moved in pandemic hits. This place was basically dead for us for the first nine months. So we did all this work.
We have this old church, super cool, great vibe, and then it was empty. Lucky you guys.
Nate Spangle: Yeah. Right. But it is what it is. And then we got to the point where if, if you've been anybody that's been in a church, one thing that's hard to do, churches are built so that you can speak and it, the, the sound goes through the building.
I don't know if you guys deal with that. You probably not so much down here, but if they're doing, somebody's doing a call upstairs in the main sanctuary of a church, everyone hears it, you know? And so as we started to really have, like we had, we had to tell people to be quiet too often. And that's not fun, right.
To be like, guys, let keep it down. Or you're eating your lunch and we need to, we got a big call on the west coast or whatever. And so it, we outgrew it more from a vault of, uh, audio level Yeah. Than we did, like people getting in each other's way.
That's super fun. So, so you go through there, you got the building, Uhhuh, you grow in the team. Yep. But explain the MVP product. Mm-hmm. That. Got you your first round of customers. Yeah. What, what did it do? Technically I'll use IU Health as an example. IU Health, uh, discharges patients to 300 or so skilled nursing and home health providers on a daily basis. Okay. So someone ends up in the emergency room or wherever Yeah.
Old lady falls, breaks their hip. Yep. Right. Everybody knows about that. Yeah. Everybody's had somebody's head. They, and then, you know, they're, they got a broken hip. They got their hip probably surgically repaired. They get discharged. And let's say they're from, um, Bloomfield, well, they're not gonna leave the hospital and go next door to the nursing home, to the hospital or the, to get intensive therapy to hopefully get back home.
They're gonna go back to where they're from. Right. And so the problem is, is that hospital team is usually fairly disconnected from, say. Whispering Meadows in Bloomfield, Indiana. Right. I love that. You know that. Well, that's a fake name, but, but it, it sounds good. Doesn't that sounds legit. Like I was like, holy, he pulled that out.
I know all the high school mascots and he knows all the skilled nursing facilities. There is a chance. I know a lot of them, but not all of 'em. But anyway, so the point was, is like, how are you, how are you gonna work with that team inside Whispering Meadows? If you work at IU Health, right. You're calling them, you're trying, you don't even know who to call.
Frankly, you don't even know that grandma is at Whispering Meadows. And so we built the platform is effectively to build that connectivity, not necessarily integrate, but to fill a void that it otherwise didn't exist. You're telling me that people's medical records like don't just like flop back and forth.
I mean, that's not surprising to you. I it probably will happen sooner rather than later. There's a, there's a lot of work being done there, but I wish it were even that simple, like all of our customers. Across the country. We didn't unseat a technology that existed ever. Like we've never done that. We're actually close for the first time with a big deal working out on, out in Utah.
Um, where they're choosing us over something they've tried before. Yeah. But it's usually like, I use the analogy, my team hates it, but like, we're more like, you didn't know that software could get you a ride from work today to the bar later until Uber brought those people together in a technology, right?
Yeah. Because before it was like you had to call like it wasn't a tech technology solution. Exactly. So similar deal, if you work at Deaconess in Evansville and you got a patient in Vincennes in a nursing home or getting provided care from a home health provider, you, before Olio shows up, you gotta track down where did we discharge this patient to?
Okay, it's been 10 days, let me go find them in the ether. And you go call and you go call and dial for dollars and try to find, you know. Wilma that's working on, you know, and, and the only reason you would call would be because you want to provide good care. Like, yeah. You don't have to call. You don't have to call.
And that's where the, the evolutions of healthcare are changing and where now, like health systems and insurance companies are heavily incentivized to be more involved in the patient's journey. Beyond Yeah. Just the, the, the hospital. That's crazy to me. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's pretty unbelievable. I've always thought, like, you know, oh, we're going back and like clicking and clacking on your records or whatever.
It's like, how is that all not connected? You know? You would think it is. Uh, and it's gonna get connected. I don't know that the people will get connected though. That's what's interesting, meaning that the stakeholders that actually provide care to complex patients, they, the data might come through, but what do you do when you have the data?
Right? I feel like you should almost have like an Apple wallet. Yeah. For all your, like my eye records. Yeah. And my medic and my, yeah. You know, I don't know. I got sick or I broke. Yeah. Like, what am I allergic? Like I should be able to just like click like one tap and it fill out all the. Prior conditions and stuff.
Yeah. Based on like my internal record. Oh, that'll happen. I mean, it's, it's not, we're not far off from that type of amazing stuff going. I mean, there's, there's announcements every day. Okay. So, so you guys set out to just connect that and Yeah. And help when you're discharging patients out to different places.
Yep. We're gonna help make sure that, that there's a seamless communication. Yeah. That's effectively all things are coordinated. Just simple process to work through. I mean, that IU Health example, that's 350 spots and the amount of activity is pretty unbelievable. Who was the first customer, uh, first customer ever was Central Orthopedics in Anderson.
How did that feel? You go in there and you're pitching this idea. Yeah. You have an MVP at the point, got the first customer using PowerPoint slides on what the software would look like. Literally like, just like every software company. And I encourage it, like gave it away just to see if we could get some like traction and learn what we had.
We were already all in, so we didn't like. Like the, the, we were off the dock, like it was, we were gonna be in bad spot if, like the users hated our technology. And so we got that first customer. And the thing that was really not fun was it took like three months for them to put a patient in the product so they had access, we're ready to go.
And I remember the patient's name was Norma. We'll, never, it'll never not be like lore within Olio. We're sitting around waiting like, when is this gonna happen? It'd be like if you opened a pizza shop and it took three months for somebody to come in and order some damn pizza, you know? And so finally Norma gets put in and the users popped off pretty fast.
It was just like, whoa. And we've always grown our business off of these users that work in the community. Like everybody knows about IU Health and about community health and United and Anthem, but not many people know about the team at Cardon, which is a, a, a really nice, uh. Long-term care provider in the state.
Those are the folks that were like, this really works. And they told Deaconess and they told IU Health, and those were customers, number one and or two and three, like literally Norma went in the product. We made like a month of back and forth. That was good. Like Norma goes in and you guys are calling like, Hey, everything.
Oh, we were showing up with pizzas at the place where Norma was to be like, did what worked? You know, like, was this good, bad, whatever? And it was a bit of unicorns and, and rainbows type of talk. And uh, and that just goes back to like the, the Uber analogy. Like, Uber's so great because it works, you know?
Yeah. And, and we were just solving a problem. These folks wanted to work together and we made it easy. That was it. That's all we did. And so what were the tests they were able to accomplish by putting Norma into the product? Yeah. They were able to understand like, who am I working with? That's at Whispering Meadows to use that.
Yeah. You know, I know who now I, instead of knowing, not knowing where Norma is, I know Norma's. At Bethel Point, that's the actual place she was. I know that Tammy's helping care for Norma. I know that, uh, Rhonda is the social services coordinator that's gonna help get Rhonda home at some point. And when I want to talk and work with these people tomorrow, they're gonna be there inside this software product called Olio and we can discuss these things.
What, uh, I love that. That makes sense. Uhhuh. So it helped just get communication between Yeah. Where she was Yeah. Where she's at and where she's going. Yeah. And like, just simple things like that team inside that facility was able to say, Hey, everything's going good here. You don't need to worry about it.
Like, simple thumbs up. Like, it's crazy how like people think the medical record needs to be all these things. And it does, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it's like, Hey, we're doing a good job over here. We need you guys to know everything's going good. Yeah. And, and that's what we did. Heck yeah. Yeah.
That's So where'd the name COhatch come from? We, uh, wanted to be cool if we're being honest. Heck yeah. Uh, again, brutal honesty, like. We use a phrase inside Olio, which is not a uncommon phrase, like, call your baby ugly. Like sometimes I think it's very important we talk to our customers and tell them very real how we see their business could go forward if they heard some news about their own business, right?
So we, we kind of had that philosophy internally at Olio and that was born out of Mike Reynolds at Innovatemap saying, Hey, our original name was episode 360. And he was like, your name sucks. And uh, shout out Mike. Yeah. And I was like, you're not wrong. It, you're probably right. This episode 360. Yeah, it was kind of episode of care and it's like 360 view to it and it made sense.
And, you know, everybody was doing 360 things back then, if you recall. And, uh, he's like, your name's not good. And, uh, one of the best business decisions we made. Is changing our name because it's, I mean, in Indiana and particularly in central Indiana, I think people think we have a tie to Olio Road and, and we don't.
It has nothing, has nothing to do with that. We do more business outside of Indiana. That name is sticky and it just means the, you know, suffix for collection, a hodgepodge of things. You know, you think about a portfolio or a folio and we're like, we're, we're hodgepodging together. The patient stakeholders that these complex patients like, and it'll fit on a, a, an app inside a mobile store, app store.
And so it just worked and uh, it's been, it's been really good to us. Heck yeah. Folio. We episode 360. It does not have the same ring. Does not, I let you know. It is sticky. Yeah. The name Olio because everyone here, it's gone through two new tenants, uh, this building has, and they still call it Olio. No shit.
The, all the crew at at MetaSource when they were sales. Yeah. They, oh, we're going over to Olio. That's awesome. We say like, oh yeah, we're in the old Olio building. Like, very good. This is not getting, it's still the Olio building all, so, all right. Well, you talk about it being sticky. You got it. Well, breaking news.
I'm hoping that, uh, we can get our name on top of a building over, behind, uh, the Fashion Mall. So, hey, maybe that'll quickly turn into the next Olio building. The new Olio building. The new Olio building. Yeah. This will always be the old Olio building. That's right. Okay. So, so take us through that. You know, you start getting customers on mm-hmm.
People are talking, it's working. You're growing. Yeah. You expand, you grow out of this building. Mm-hmm. Like, take us to getting to a, a huge milestone, which was you've raised $31 million. Yeah. There had to be a seed round. Yep. There had to be a Series A in there. Yeah. And then most recently, an $11 million Series B round.
Yeah. Like our fast start was quickly met with a lot of adversity. Not to bore everybody, but COVID was not good for our business. We had some good breaks come our way. Then we came out of it and we raised a round, and it was not easy for us to get a Series A done because like Okay. At that point, how much did you raise?
We'd raised like six or 7 million all via angels. It all converted to what effectively became our seed round. Yeah. Where did you in the process realize that you were naive at first thinking, oh, we'll be cash flow positive so soon, like we need a million and a half bucks. It is awesome how ignorant you really are.
Like on all things. I mean, everybody that's confident, you know, I think you do need a certain level of arrogance to be a a startup founder. 'cause you gotta power through some things that you think you're gonna be awesome and you're not. The sales cycle in our world is 18 months long and the cash need to just work through that long of sales cycles pretty heavy, you know, so you don't actualize revenue until you've, you know, like we're working on deals.
I got a deal in Texas right now that has been in legal for nine months. You know, and so that was, but you have the verbal, like, they're gonna work. Oh yeah. They're like, you're the vendor of choice. We're good. We're moving on this, we, we like this, this is good. Let's ship it off to legal. And that's like in your sales team.
Yeah. Your sales team's like, oh yeah, that's, that's a win. That's a win. Like, we got that going through and then, but in your finance team, you're like, no, it's not a win like that. That's not a win. No. Even worse, the board, you're like, no, no, we've pretty much won there. But then, you know, no you haven't. And so, no, that's what we like, it's like fun and like vanity, like, oh, we've closed this money.
But it's like where like the contract signed and the money is like wired over, right? That's right. So it's, uh, I mean these are arts contracts are pretty good size. Yeah. I think that was the realization of like, to keep innovating, building new features, listening to our customer, watching the market move.
Move the ball forward. It was gonna take a lot of cash and that, that kind of, that, that epiphany came pretty quick. And honestly, once we embraced that, when I do this all over again, like, you should be working towards cash to get cash sell, create revenue, all the things. But like I think sometimes in the Midwest, we get caught up on this bootstrap idea and that cash can be like, selling equity is a bad thing.
Um, I wasn't there, but now I'm much more like, look, every time we raise capital, we get to grow the value of the company. We get to impact more, more customers, et cetera. And so that's where, kind of where we are. Mindset. I feel like that also is like overcorrected a little bit. Yeah. Like for a while there everyone could raise on a slide deck and good ideas, stuff that's a hundred percent true and like didn't really have a great core business.
What's weird is, I don't know if I was doing something wrong when everybody was getting rounds done, we couldn't get around done to save our life. It was bizarre. We had UnitedHealthcare as a customer. Big names, uh, CVS subsidiary Oak Street Health. Oh yeah. They're popping up all over. Yeah. And, and could not like no interest.
And part of that was cap table jujitsu, as I would call it. Um, and that's a thing, it wasn't until like you, you know, the, the market corrected and like, investors started to really look at like, what's your path to profitability? What, what kind of business are you running? Let's look at your P&L versus growth rate or like that shiny widget, which I know undoubtedly is gonna happen with the AI boom here as we're, we're working through it.
But, um, it wasn't easy for us. Uh, and, and, and we didn't do real well after Series A, so we learned a lot of lessons. Really. What do you mean by that? Uh, I think that when you have resources, and I, I, that's probably been my most critical myself on our journey, uh, almost eight years now, is like, you know, we did a $13 million Series A, it's kind of unbelievable to watch cash like that.
I mean, we got, when we were in this building, we had days, we were sub 30 days cash on hand. And then you get, boom, you got, you got five years cashed on ba hand based on the, the current headcount. And we went out and we kind of did a hiring spree. We did what you do when you get that type of, of gas in the tank.
And, uh, I don't know that we had, we made the best decisions for our business as far as like adding to our team. And it just took us a while to get off the starting blocks. I think maybe a year slower than I, I would, I would like, and uh, eventually we got our footing and started to go again. But, uh, isn't that crazy too, where it's like you get the most money?
Yeah. I don't know. Like, I don't know. Unless you just like grew up. Incredibly wealthy. I did not. Right. It's like quite the opposite. You know, it's like you, you get 11 million, no, $14 million. 13. 13. Yeah. $13 million comes into your company bank account. Uhhuh, at one point you have 30 days cash on hand. Yeah.
You're like trying to figure it out. Yeah. Like in a six month swing from like broke to, oh my god, there's a lot of money here. And you have the pressure. It's like, you need to spend this money. Yeah. Because they don't wanna invest in you to just let it sit in your That's right. And earn six per, no, not six, like 0.6% interest.
Yeah. In a, in a savings guy, they want you to invest that into your company to grow the business, to make more, uh, what do they, to make more shareholder value. That's right. That's right. And so you almost are like, oh, I gotta spend this, you know, in the word scale, everybody, scale, scale, scale, scale, scale.
You know, so what were a few of those hiccups and what if there are other founders out there listening or like a current founder, like yeah, like what mistakes, what landmines did you guys step on that you could uncover for us? Had I gone back in time, like as a founder, you're your best salesperson. I don't care.
Doesn't matter what you're the founder of, you have the most belief. And, and this is not news to anybody. You're your best salesperson, you're your best storyteller, right? There's no doubt when you're in front of somebody that you want to be a customer. Early stage. I should have stayed much closer to the storytelling even.
I didn't necessarily have to be the sales leader, but I needed to be good at, at stewarding the story, if you will. I didn't do a great job with that. I kind, I hired a resume, built kinda revenue leader, CRO, thinking it was just gonna happen for me and Olio based on, um, their ability to get trained on the product, go sell it, right?
And I think that was a little naive, uh, while they could get trained on the product and go sell it. They didn't know how to ask discovery questions or get to the root of the problem and some of the basics. And, and that takes time. And so that's really interesting because there is this whole piece, like at some point you do have to like, like the buttons pushed of sales.
Like can't all come from a founder. Like getting outta founder led sales is important of growth and terribly important, very, very important. But being able to distill that mission mm-hmm. And be able to distill what you're actually like. 'cause that service, it's like, it's a CRM for Yeah. Medic. Like, you know, like that's what it does.
Yeah. It's what it does. That's not what you're, that's not what Olio is. That's right. And then if you sit, if me and you are, if you're a potential customer, me and you were having a conversation, it wouldn't look like a sales call. I'd be asking you questions about your operations and what your, your vision for your organization is versus feature dumping for about my product.
Right. Yeah. And that's the thing that, that it took a. A little bit of time to get to mature. I think that's an interesting piece too. Especially when you're early on in a business, obviously you want to close every deal you sit in. Mm-hmm. But when you're the founder, you can kind of see, like, you can start to like pattern, recognize different conversations.
Like even if we got like, that wouldn't be like the right customer for us. Right? Like, and you can be like more of an abundant mindset, right? Versus if you're a quota carrying sales person, you're like, yeah, you're just trying to get your number. Anyone we got like, we need to get in the door. Like, like I want to close every deal that we ever talk to.
That's right. It's like you actually, I don't know. As a founder, I'm like, I would much rather close 50% of the right customers, Uhhuh versus like a hundred percent of the wrong customers. And there's this ton of truth in that back to our struggles. I mean, I think that, uh, when I went to our board in January, I was like, look, we're gonna do this one thing and we're gonna be the best we possibly can.
It. And we're gonna put kind of blinders on. And even being somewhat diligent with our sales team, I'm like, no, you don't. We don't do that. We don't sell that. This is the, this, these are, these are your prospects. These are not, you know, that's hard to do. That's, that is hard. Mm-hmm. Because you're like, especially too, it's like you're thinking of the future and how quickly everything's innovating.
It's like, well, what if we did that? I know. We could, we could make some That's a, that's a pretty good payday there. Yeah. And then you just end wasting your time. It ends up like, well, look at your niche. I mean, you guys are laser focused on this state in my, yeah. That's it, right? Yeah. Like it's e somebody from Columbus, Ohio could call you tomorrow.
They, they do. And then guess what? You're, next thing you know, you're no longer get in, you're get Midwest. Yeah. Right. And it's like, it's so tempting if like, oh, we've cracked this code to Yeah, but we haven't tapped out. We haven't like gotten all that we can do. We haven't done all we can do in the state of Indiana.
That's right. So like, I'm not even thinking about other, it's like we have to be laser focused on what's winning right now, and then one day we can figure out what the next move is. That's right. But very smart once like the systems work here. And that, I will say, I don't know that we were that good at that.
And I, that kind of, that blame falls solely on my shoulders. Their innovation at some point has to stop or have some boundaries and guidelines core to your customer. You really can go get Yeah. If you're building a business, because I mean, all entrepreneurship is gonna give you headwinds. Yeah. Like there's gonna be friction.
No doubt. And knowing I think that one of the greatest skills that founders can have is knowing the walls they have to break through. Yep. And just like keep ramp and knowing the like, ugh. Like we need to pivot and move around that. That's right. And we need to like, you know, and being not, uh, shiny object syndrome.
That's right. Right. Like, oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. You have the dog chasing cars. Exactly right. I mean. That is a hard fundamentally to do even now. Like we have a team that works and they're kind of our innovation team and I still daily, I'm like, y'all stop thinking of what could be, go deeper where we can.
The interesting give take there. Today's episode of Get IN is brought to you by Cowpokes Work & Western, a local Indiana shop that has built its name on quality clothing and boots that fit your American lifestyle. They carry trusted brands of boots, hats, and clothing that work just as well for everyday life as they do for a night out.
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If you're ready to upgrade your boots, your wardrobe, or even just your go-to jacket Cowpokes is a place that we send people to check out today. Yeah. Uh, obviously. I just saw the closing of a Yeah. Of an $11 million Series B round. Mm-hmm. There may or may not be some celebrations that were had somewhere around the country.
I, I won't never tell. I don't know. I don't know anything but congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. How did we get there and what made that, I mean, especially in a time where one, it's hard to close around. Yeah. It's like, you know, raising venture isn't easy mm-hmm. In 2024. 2025. Yep. What were the milestones that got you there?
Mm-hmm. And why was that the right decision and what's coming next? Yeah, thank you. I mean, I, number one, I think we made a series, took, chose our Series A investor, and we chose a, a absolutely amazing partner. Fulcrum Equity Partners based out of Atlanta have been phenomenal to us. Uh, even in the times where we were messing things up, uh, they were critical, don't get me wrong.
Um, but they were supportive and they, I got a great question. In a board meeting, what would you do with, you know, 10 million bucks? How would you grow the business faster, quicker, go deeper where you're having success? And we built a game plan and kind of pitched that and it wasn't, we could have, we could have went outside and probably raised around pretty easily.
Frankly, we were growing at 65%, our retention rate was 125%. Oh boy. Yeah. So the number you had the metrics, we had the metrics we, and, and, and we weren't big enough yet. And there was still room on the cap table for a B round to be interesting thing for a lot of investors. And, you know, it just made sense, like, let's turn around and, you know, let's do this thing with the people that brought us here.
And, and Fulcrum led again and, uh, did a cool thing. We're able to, you know, even reward, uh, early partners and folks at Olio, like Meg Stewart, if they wanted to sell some shares they got to take to take some chips off the table. So. Uh, it was a really exciting time in our company. We, we did, uh, we did a company kickoff in, in Arizona, and we had a ton of fun one night.
Oh boy. Uh, maybe too much fun. No, no. We had one employee that slept in the airport that night. But that's the, those are the types of memories you're trying to create. Yeah. And like one day, one day you'll become a big corp. Like you'll become a bigger corporation. You, and like, you won't, it, you'll never remember or you'll never be able to close a Series B again.
That, that's right. And I mean, like, not for Olio, right? Like it's done. It's done. That's a, it's like we talked about those moments. Yeah. Right. We talked about in those journey, and it's like, I feel like startups, right? You have like, you know, MVP first, customer seed, pre-seed, like blah, blah, blah, blah. Series A, Series B.
And then it's like you just become big and you're like, you just, and, and it, it can happen fast. I mean, it's wild. But, uh, so what's next? I mean, one, I'm very interested in substance use and severe mental illness. Oh. It is like the thing that has the same disconnected, siloed problems. That some of our kind of traditional, which is more like elderly care folks, you know, have an event at the hospital they go to to, yeah.
To long-term care. We started, we got in that space about a year and a half ago and it's very interesting. So we're gonna put some things to work with. Well, one, like obviously people are talking about their personal journeys with mental health. Yeah. And, and you know, talk about substance abuse. Yeah. Like, uh, more than ever.
Yeah. But also like you might have a psychiatrist mm-hmm. That is the one prescribing you your medicine. Yeah. But you also have a therapist and you also have all these different, like there are different parties involved in this as well. Yeah. I mean, kinda, you know, the cash runs the healthcare as much as, I don't wish that was the case, but as more insurance companies get involved in managed Medicaid, which what I didn't realize it was new to me is that a lot of these folks that are on these Medicaid plans walk into these inpatient psychiatric hospitals.
They're homeless. They're on, they're heavily addicted to, to drugs and they, they do the hard thing about and walk into a hospital that takes some guts, right? There's something going on. We had someone from Wheeler Mission on mm-hmm. And he talked about like how, I dunno, a large majority of homelessness isn't just like.
Okay. We ran outta money. Yeah. And now we're on the street. Like imagine if, if like everyone cut off all of your money Yeah. Would there be someone to take you in? Right. Like 95% of people have someone that, that would like, give them a couch to sleep on and help them get back on their feet. Yep. What happens with this, and especially within our, when our, with our city is there's this just constant cycle of whether it's drugs mm-hmm.
Or alcohol or whatever it might be. And it just like withers away all of their relationships and then they're left there. And like, that is a very hard thing to do. Just, I have no other options. Mm-hmm. I have to figure out this root cause of all the pain in my life. Yep. I have to walk in the door there.
That, and so we, we do a lot of business in Arizona and warmer climate. There's a lot of that. We started working with Banner Health, big health system out in, in, uh, Arizona, and they asked us, Hey, everything you're doing with us, with these nursing facilities, we have patients discharging from these psych hospitals to detox centers or to residential treatment, facilities.
And we need to coordinate with those providers in those, you know, you're, you're trying to get somebody to stay through treatment that is dealing with some things. Yeah. And so we started kinda looking at that thing and it was, we didn't have to write any new code. We did some front end UX work, we deployed and boom, it was humming.
And now I'm like, wow, this is a huge opportunity that is ripe for innovation and just, it's already what we do. Back to like not chasing the shiny widget. Yeah. And let's just give this a try. So now we're, we're, we're, we're pretty scaled in Arizona and now we're gonna take that thing national. I'm, we're gonna blow the doors off of that deal.
Let's go. And that was that. Like, Hey, if we close the Series B, like this is what we're gonna go run down. There's a couple things we knew we could do really, really well and be fast. Like I, that's my, at Olio, I'm, my leadership team probably gets really frustrated. I want to be the fastest. At everything. I don't care if it's paying our bills.
Like it even drives me crazy. We found a check here in this office. 'cause I'm like, that means the books weren't clean, you know? And so, uh, we're gonna go hard at that market and, um, that's a big part of that round. What can the community, what can the state of Indiana do? What are you looking for? Are there like, I mean, uh, one of the big pieces when you raise capital, a lot of that goes to, I feel like staffing.
Oh yeah. Like human capital. A hundred percent. What? So we're almost, we're at 50 employees. Uh, one in every five of our employees is an Orr Fellow. No way. Yeah. I think we're at 10. I mean, let's go, shout out what, what can state of Indiana do? I mean, I think there is just such an opportunity. It's hard to say this, but if people inside healthcare or, or, or even any industry that's hard to break into, give early Hoosiers a chance.
Like, uh, Dennis Murphy's, one of my mentors from IU Health, they gave us a chance. James Porter, down in Evansville, CEO, or President Deaconess. They gave us a chance, they're, they could have chose any vendor to do anything. We got to where we are and we don't get there without those two systems that have all the cash in the world, frankly could choose any big enterprise solution.
Yeah. Uh, and they gave us a chance. And so I think, you know, we gotta take care of ourselves a little bit and, uh, that might, I'm not saying, you know, put your business at risk, but if there's an opportunity. To let a company that looks like it's being run efficiently and can execute, give 'em a chance. That is a big thing, I think in Indiana too, is your reputation, like your reputation or whoever the founder.
Mm-hmm. You know, you start to, I think early on it's heavily reliant on that. Yeah. Like, are you a person? Even if the, the solution, the product thing doesn't deliver doesn't over deliver the way that it's going to, if you're working towards that and you have a reputation for delivering mm-hmm. And being someone of your word, like sticking to that and doing your best, like I do think you can, some, those opportunities can't open up.
And then it's your job as the, the owner, the founder, right. To deliver on to over deliver on that. Over deliver. Yep. Yeah. Just crush it. That's, and then you're gonna get chance number 5, 10, 15, 20. Yeah. Wow. What about roles? What kind of, what kind of people are you looking for? We are pretty, we're pretty, I mean, this is the most basic thing, but if you're smart as hell, we will find a spot for you.
I mean, I know that seems nuts, but like Amen. We hired an Orr Fellow, former Orr Fellow Emily LaMayer Troyer, uh, and I don't know if she even knew what job she was accepting, but she was like, I'm smart. These people are smart and she's crushing it. She's now working inside our finance department and helping with board prep and all these types of things.
But specifically, we're gonna continue to hire engineering. Um, I have no doubt we're gonna need more QA engineers. Almost every piece of our development team is local, uh, in our office, uh, five days a week, killing it. Marketing's gonna continue to grow and we will definitely add to our finance team.
There's no doubt. Heck yeah. I love that. Well, we're gonna round up the show. Yeah. We're gonna talk all things Indiana. Let's do it sound like a plan to you. Uh, first off, where are you from? I grew up in Evansville Evansville, west side of Evansville. To be specific West Side. Are you a Castle High school guy?
No, that's east side. That's east the east. You know, east you, oh wait, east, west, west. Yeah. So if, you know, Evansville doesn't have a south side 'cause that's the Ohio River. Yeah. East, west side is a big deal. Like you, you are or you aren't. Well, west Side does the Fall Festival. Yes. The nut club. Yeah. I grew up about a mile from Franklin Street where fall festivals.
Wow. Okay. Uh, what high school? Evansville Reitz. Right? Yeah. Okay, okay. Okay. I love that. Uh, when did, and then you went to iu Yep. And that's where you, then you ended up in Indianapolis. Yep. So lifelong Hoosier. Yeah. I, I was born in New Orleans. My parents split up, was moved, made it to my, uh, my grandpa was a founding professor of University of Southern Indiana.
And so my mom grew up in, in southern Indiana. And we came back. Well, my parents split up. Uh, she's a teacher and are retired now. And, uh, but yeah, I've been in Evansville since I was three years old, or, uh, in Indiana since I was three years old. This next question is brought to you by our friends at J.C. Hart.
They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond. Check them out at homeisjchart.com. My question for you, Ben, why do you call Indiana home? Obviously heartstrings are a big deal. I'm a passionate sports fan. I actually even think about like my retirement years being centered around the time zone that I can watch Indiana sports.
Isn't that wild? Like, like Pacific time zone might be better because I'll be older and I'll be able to watch IU basketball at an appropriate time for a 70-year-old person. Yes. You know, like you won't have to stay up till like 11. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah. That, that could work. You know, you know, five o'clock to get over by eight o'clock.
Yeah. But so my wife went to Florida State and so she was, it grew up a Hoosier, went to Florida State and like had an appetite to move, get around, but like. I have lived in Indianapolis since 2003, 2003 and I love it here. I think this is the coolest city in the country. It pissed me off when all that pacer stuff and all the, the national media talking about Indianapolis in a negative, or Indiana in a, in a weird light.
And, uh, I just, it's a great place to raise your family and, uh, I'm gonna be here forever in one way or fashion. Uh, as an IU grad, what's, uh, what's your go-to spot in Bloomington? Where do people need to check out? BuffaLouie's is the joint, you know, so have you been heading up the car or not? I can't, I mean, I'm a, I mean that DoorDash builds heavy on those.
Uh, definitely Buffalo, Louis, um, Dagwoods is the go-to back in the day just for the hangover food. What's cool about, like, my wife just went back to Florida State this past weekend and it's all brand new developments and I was like, so they don't have like a Kirkwood going down anymore. And she's like, not really.
And it, you know, they've got a million brand new, I'm sure awesome bars and restaurants, but like Kirkwood with, you know, Upstairs Pub and Nick's and Kilroy's. They're all still the same as they were in 1999. Kind of. I mean, they've, they've got new pieces to it, but the logo's the same. Yeah. It is what, it's new spot, you know?
Yeah. It, it's unique. It's cool. Yeah. It's so cool. Mm-hmm. Very, very, that that whole little stretch is Yeah. Is sweet, uh, and our friends, uh, Connor Hitchcock at Homefield. Oh yeah. They, they just opened like a retail, their first, a retail spot down there. They do good work. Oh, phenomenal stuff. Yeah. Okay. So today you're a startup founder.
Mm-hmm. You know, you just raised your Series B, you got 50 employees. Yep. But what was your dream job as a kid? Professional baseball player? First and foremost, we're being honest. At what age did you realize that wasn't in the cards? Uh, 18. Oh, what, so it was still in the cards till 18. I had a little bit of ta I had high school talent.
That's what I say. Yeah. It was a good high school player. Then you realize, like, you, you see what a, a person better than a high school player is, and you're like, I'm not that. Yeah. Right. And genetics is probably the, the thing that's the, the, the killer for all of us. Right. But yeah, I realize then like, you know, it's not gonna happen for me.
And, um. And then I don't be totally blunt. I, my, I grew up in a family of educators. Everybody's a teacher. I just thought I'm gonna be a teacher and a coach and make it happen. And, and I went to IU with that kind of mindset. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then, and when did you realize you were gonna get into business?
Yeah. Best part about IU is the network you create. I mean, it really is. I mean, shit, half the people on that early stage round is all IU network sitting in, I was doing like your student like observation thing as a ed ed major. And I was like, ah, I'm not cut out to teach high school. I hate these kids in this class right now.
Yeah. I just realized I'm not, I'm not patient enough to be a teacher. Uh, and that's when kind of like all things, and, and back then, like if you recall like there was, uh. I people wanted to get in pharmaceutical sales and med device became a big deal. And I I, in college it was like that. I think that's what I wanna do.
Yeah. So as you've grown, right, you guys are at 50 employees now. What is the secret to maintaining great company culture? Mm-hmm. While also scaling headcount. We are really intentional about hiring people that fit who we are. Like we are gonna be doing fun-loving, exciting things. We are gonna make a ton of mistakes, but we are gonna go as fast as we possibly can.
Mm-hmm. And so we hire like-minded, we interview that way and everybody says these things, but what, what, what you know is when it's not right. Right. And it's not fun to talk about letting people go if you are really intentional about hiring people that, that have the same vision, mission, values as you do when it's not a fit.
You gotta do that thing. And I think one of the things we've been really good about and just killing it right now. Is we got 50 people that are all in. It is exciting. It's fun. We quit work at one o'clock on Fridays. I mean, everyone's quitting work at one o'clock on Fridays. That's right. Like, like you're either, you either own it or you don't.
Yeah. Like, but like, it, it's the dumbest, I as a, as a lifelong person in the sales channel, this is a officially, we hired a new CRO, uh, in, in May. I have always have revenue responsibility, but I don't have it the way I've ever had it in my career. But as a salesperson, like our week should be done by one or two o'clock on Friday.
Like yeah, if you are grinding out sales calls at four o'clock, like means you're probably not hitting your numbers. So that's how I look at it. Right? Yeah. And it's like no one is gonna answer at four o'clock on Friday anyway. No. Okay. So like, once you get past, like, we don't post anything Friday afternoon.
See, no one's, no one's reading it. No one's doing it. Like, and, and so let's embrace it and like, let's make it a part of our culture. Like there's two types of companies out there, the ones that quit work at one o'clock on Fridays and Liars. That's right. Yeah. And, and it's like you might be hanging out, like doing some stuff, maybe prepping for the next, but you're not.
Actively like doing a bunch of like hard, especially like outbound research stuff. Yeah. Like, and, and be selfish. Like you're running your business. Like, what do I do? I wanna really wanna be sitting here like as the, as the, uh, the founder and like a leader in the company. Do I wanna be sitting here making sure people are working at three o'clock on Friday?
No, I want to, I would love to spend time with them. Let's go get a beer. Yeah. Let's four o'clock, you know, let's get to know each each other. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you have to like leave. Like I also think there's other side of that too, where it's especially early on in companies where it's like you don't nec like you don't have to hang out all the time, right.
But it's like, oh, well let's, we don't have to be working, but let's like hang out and become friends and all this stuff there. Yeah. It's interesting. It's, what's really cool is it's not intentional, right? It's not scheduled, it's not on anybody's calendar. Yeah. And uh, you know, it's becoming a little bit of a challenge.
We've got a lot of Pacific time zone, uh, infrastructure employees now. Uh, 10 or so and so it's only 10:00 AM when our rest of our team is se lavie. And so no is all, yeah. So that's, appreciate you, that's creating a little bit of problem, but we'll fi we'll work through that. Yeah. It's no big deal. Uh, okay, so you've been doing this whole startup, well not a start, but like, you know, tech company growing it, doing the whole thing for eight years now.
Yeah, eight years in February. What's one book you'd recommend that every founder needs to read? Oh dude, this is my favorite one. Uh, and it found, I found my, it's actually an entertaining read, uh, Shoe Dog by Killer. Fantastic. Yeah. Blue Ribbon. Blue Ribbon shoes, right? Yeah. Like going to Japan and doing the whole thing.
It's wild. Like that. That book helped me. I bought it. This was like, I think I bought it for our leadership team when we were sub. It was like me and three people. Um, I was like, guys, this is pretty cool. It basically is a permission to, to see how a company that. Insane. Insanely successful, screwed up a lot of things, you know, and it's entertaining.
It's fun. It's an easy read. But yeah, that's the one. It's, it's so interesting too now, like, uh, there's like a quote, maybe it's from like Batman or something, but you like Die Hero or See Yourself becomes like, that's, that's Nike's journey, no doubt. Like now everyone's like, oh, big Nike, blah, blah blah. Yeah.
And it's like, but if you read Shoe Dog, you're like, I love him again. I love, yeah. Like it's such a cool journey. It is. Phil Knight story is Uhhuh like all the shit and like how hard he had to grind to, it's like, will this shoe company to, and the sport of running in general, like when they go through the bart where Steve Prefontaine like, guy, like, it's crazy.
It is. And like, even like I find myself like, you know, Phil's pretty open about employees early on that he like, thought were terrible and like goofy and. W he thought or considered firing several times and then they become like an emerging star of this organization over time. And you're like, wow. As a founder you can see, like you, you're constantly assessing your business, right?
And if the levers you wanna push or pull and the things you can task or hope that people want to help you get to the next level. And I've seen that play out in our company where folks, I'm like that person. I don't know. And they're now you're like, how amazing are they? Yeah. And so that kind of, I, I find, I find myself drawn to those experiences in that book.
Did you watch the, uh, the movie too? You talking about air? Not like, I mean it's like a similar, it's kind of like post book, right? So it's, it's, it is similar, but it, it puts Phil Knight in a kind of not great light in that scenario. Yeah. It's kind of funny. But it is good because, uh, the whole thing is like, it's fake Jordan too.
Yeah. Like they never show its actual Jordan's face. It's pretty funny. Yeah. Um, I love that. That's a good recommendation. Is there any other advice you'd have for, you know, startup founders out there as they're on their journey?
Ben Forrest: The number one thing I would say is a solid C plus at a quick pace can get you to a milestone quicker than that.
A
growth and speed perspective. I'm like, look guys, let's, like, what I've learned is like you can get a lot of traction with B work, you know, B effort. If it's at a quicker pace, and I don't want that to sound too confusing. It's choose pace over perfection. Yeah. And that,
Nate Spangle: I agree.
It's like you're moving. Mm-hmm. And a lot of times, like if you just take forever, it just gets like,
Nate Spangle: like that's
like
Nate Spangle: the whole thing of like not being corporate. It's like we can make stuff happen quickly.
Ben Forrest: Yeah. Like you're killing this podcast with an iPhone
and A, and a,
Ben Forrest: and whatever. Right.
Nate Spangle: Yeah.
Right.
You know what I mean? Like you didn't have that. You have it now. And I'm not saying you can't have perfection and can't have the things that seem perfect,
Nate Spangle: Well you'll get quicker.
You're instead of like taking a long time and being slow to get to perfection. You'll actually get to perfection quicker.
By starting to go. Yeah, that's right. And just like putting it out and then being like, okay, let's iterate, let's go, let's go, let's go. Like, it's like I'm banging on my dev team right now, like we're about to launch some AI features. And I'm like, doesn't have to be perfect. Just get it. Let's go.
We'll see what the users think. Even if it breaks, we'll say it's free, whatever. Let's just see what happens. And so yeah, I, we just choose, I choose pace over perfection. Pace over perfection. There it is. That might be the title. That's a good one. We've come to the part of the show, these are the same three questions that we ask every guest who comes on here, all about the state of Indiana.
First thing. You guys do a lot of work out in Arizona, Uhhuh, you know, growing in Utah, all across your investors are from Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but what's something the world needs to know about Indiana? All right. I don't, am I allowed to have some fun with this question? Yeah. Okay. So I think it's important growing up in southern Indiana, and I think this is Indiana universal is if, if, if you're gonna do business with somebody from Indiana and they schedule a meeting with you, Hoosiers love the double E at the end of the day of the week.
So we're here on a Tuesday. It's funny, like when before I had kids, somebody said, when you see a stroller, you're gonna start seeing like, you didn't realize there's strollers everywhere. Now that I've like opened your, your ears to the double E. Anybody over 45 or 50 that says, Hey, let's have dinner on.
It's gonna be on a Friday. And so, or or a Saturday and, and, uh, Tom Allen, IU football coach. I couldn't do a press conference without saying I can't, we can't wait to play ball on Saturday. We Saturday. Yeah. We would always talk about, uh, we had a coach, well actually he was the IU coach for Bill Lynch.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, he coached us at DePauw. Oh, right on. So Jalen and I, yeah. And he would always get better Tuesday. Yeah, exactly. Get better Tuesday. And if somebody's coming into our state, and I kind of joke around it now, like, let's, let's have a. Let's have a nice Tuesday. Yep. There it is. That's something you need to know.
You need to know the dialect. Yes. There we go. That's right. That's right. Uh, next, this is your opportunity to let us know something across the state mm-hmm. That more people need to know. Not enough people are talking about this. Yeah. What is a hidden gem in Indiana? I've been thinking about this. This has been a conversation around our office for a month or two, and it's stressed me out.
If you haven't been to a Friday night at the Reitz Bowl, you have got to do it. It is what? A a, a driver. Half a mile from the banks of the Ohio River seats 10,000. The community treats it like Notre Dame football down there. People will their tickets to their families. It's, it's Reitz football. And even they share the stadium with Mater Dei.
They will, their tickets down a hundred percent. Pickup trucks back up. Uh, it is, it is a big part of the culture. Of the west side of Evansville is Reitz football. As I looking back on it, I'm like, how did I not participate in this? I mean, holy smokes. That thing is sick. It's unbelievable It like the, because it's big cement it.
I think Bowl, I think I could screw this up. I think it was originally built as a retention wall for flooding against the Ohio River. And they were like, look, let's just build this stadium inside it. And when you see that wall, that's the home section. So when one, when Reitz are Mater Dei and, and I'm a rights guy, so it's usually Reitz is rolling.
They will pack that sucker. Oh, I love it. It is fun. Unbelievable. Okay, listen to the history of the Reitz Bowl. Uh, the Reitz Bowl was born by accident. It was originally planned as a retaining wall for the new fj Reitz High School foresight by a school member noted that with some small changes, a football stadium could be made too.
Yeah. In 1921, the first year in which Reitz High School was fully accredited by the North Central Association, the 10,000 seat Reitz Stadium was completed. The first two years was a reserve schedule, and then in 1921, Reitz began varsity play working here. You get, you run around a lot of cathedral people.
Uh, shout out to the Hasbrook who, who bought this church from us? They're big cathedral people. But I remember, uh, telling some Cathedral folks that were cathedrals going down to play Evansville Reitz in the Reitz Bowl, and they had Kofi Hughes and some studs. And I'm like, they're gonna get rolled.
'cause they're not gonna know what it's like to run into that many fans that are gonna be just as juiced as you are. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and they did, I think they got beat by 50. No way. Yeah. It was a route. That's why the Reitz Bowl. Yeah. Uh, is it interesting too, are both. High schools in Evansville. Isn't one Evansville or F.J. Reitz.
Yep. And one his Reitz memorial. Yeah. So Catholic and pub and, and public. So, uh, Reitz is the public on the west side. Evansville uh, Reitz Memorial is Catholic. Who was Reitz, there's a Reitz home, I assume. He is a, a philanthropist of some sorts. Back in the day, Francis Joseph Reitz, 1841 to 1930 was an American banker, civic leader and philanthropist in Evansville for more than 50 years.
He was a leading figure in the Evansville business life, retiring in 1924 as president of National City Bank. Ah, uh, Reitz was the director of the bank for more than 40 years, president for 31 after he retired. He's a rich guy. He devoted his time to. Uh, to philanthropy. Yeah. Uh, he gave away disposing of the vast wealth he had accumulated.
Uh, wow. Okay. So he gave millions of dollars to various charities, churches, and educational organizations. Wow. Yeah. You see that name quite a bit. Right. Obviously two high schools in Evansville. I mean, he had to given a lot of money to get two high schools. Yeah. You get two high schools and they still can't pronounce the guy's name.
Right? Yeah. I I presume he's Catholic. 'cause one of 'em is a Catholic school. Yep. He is a Catholic guy. Yeah, that's true. Wow. I mean, interesting guy. Someone, if anyone has any fun stories about the, uh, about Mr. Francis, Joseph Reitz, let us know. We have the Reitz home, the corner of First and Chestnut Streets.
Mm-hmm. In Evansville. Yeah. Now the museum. Yep. Look at that. Yeah. The more you know, now you know who Francis Joseph Reitz was. That's right. And I'm serious. Check, go check if you, Reitz Bowl is a, it's a vibe. I wonder if there's a home game I'm going down for, uh. They're all, I think there's a home game every Friday because they share with Mater Dei calls it their home.
So I think it's almost guaranteed. Yeah. Okay. Well I'm going down for Fall Festival this year. There you go. So I'll be down there. Are you gonna eat a brain sandwich? I am. I think they're gonna make me yo. Alright, final question for you. This is where we find new guests or other people in the state that, that we need to know about.
Who's the Hoosier we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things. I'm, I'm gonna go with John Wortman. Uh, Valeo. Yeah. John is the, one of the founders of Valeo. I think his title's president, I could be wrong there, but he is wicked smart. Um, he's nationally connected, but he brings it back to Indiana, uh, as much as he can, like, helped us so much in the early days from some of the most basic things, like a lot of the infrastructure that is in and around our business is through his network and, um, they're not just, he's not just a financial advisor.
He's a connector of people and that's a big deal. I would, uh, I would say, you know, they just opened a new headquarters in Carmel. Um, their reach is pretty big. I know their business is gonna continue to grow. They, he's got an investment fund with Scott Kraege and Mike Reynolds. So they're putting cash into businesses, a great human, and, uh, a good friend, John Wortman.
Mm-hmm. I referred a lot of good things. Yeah. I, to him speaking an event. Yeah. You should have him on. He's down to earth. Great guy. Probably has killer founder stories too. You know, those money guys tend to know a lot of things. They do know a lot. You know, you want some inside baseball that, that's the, that may be one of the guys.
Yeah. I love it. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. You show. Thank you for having me. Thank you for sharing about, you know, taking the leap, leaving a stable career and going to just chase down this obsession right back in 20 17, 20 18. Mm-hmm. You launched this thing in our very bill. Well, I guess you ended up, yeah.
You know, second stop in our building for the most part. And just like the way you talked, the way you present the company, like, and you're just. I know very relatable, especially in the thing of, of healthcare where it's so hard, it's hard and there so many different things, like to be relatable and have personality and like explain it in a way that us normal people over here can understand.
I appreciate that. It, it was so much fun to learn about the journey from. Yeah. From here and a couple employees. Mm-hmm. To through Series A to now at $11 million Series B where you're going out and growing. Mm-hmm. I'm really, really excited to see what the future looks like for Olio and uh, we'll be rooting for you from back in the old hq.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode of Get IN. If you'd like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations@sweetwater.com.
If you want a behind the scenes look at everything we're doing across the state. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Hoosier State. Great. We'll see you next time here on Get IN.
