[00:00:02] David: But you found investors who let you do this.

So now how did that come to be and how do I knock you off and steal them? That's what I wanna know.

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host Join Per Usual, by Gary Voy.

Hello, sir.

[00:00:21] Gary: per usual. I've been taking over the hosting duties lately. So

[00:00:25] David: Oh. Oh. Is that true? That is true, that's true. Hey man, life is hard.

[00:00:30] Gary: No problem. I mean it,

[00:00:32] David: then you go to a conference that's what happens.

[00:00:35] Gary: when we have the listeners push back that they

wanna make me the permanent host, then you know, I'll have to relinquish control to you because

I know you know, you won't allow that. So

[00:00:43] David: it's true. It's true. There is a hierarchy here and you're on the bottom. Alright,

[00:00:49] Gary: out of two.

[00:00:50] David: there's more than two of us just at the podcast. That's all everybody ever sees anyway. Let's talk to the more important person we are here with Mark Sears, who is the CEO and founder of Sprout AI Studio. Welcome, mark. Thanks for joining

[00:01:05] Gary: Hey,

mark.

[00:01:06] Mark: Thanks for having me. I was, I'm happy just to keep listening to you guys. Just keep bantering, just keep going at it. I like it.

[00:01:11] David: Oh, that'll come up again 'cause Gary's useless. We like to start with a little this or that, a little icebreaker as it were.

We're gonna just dive in here. Are you a hotel or an Airbnb guy?

[00:01:24] Mark: Oh wow, that's super relevant. Spent all weekend planning a trip and I did a bit of both. So yeah, I'd say when I'm. When I am by myself, just business travel, I just like hotels dot com's, just clean as quickest

path.

It's family, it's definitely Airbnb. Just, getting a little more room, little bit more unique kind of spaces.

So yeah, I like to have a few tools in the toolbox. I'll use both. I guess that's hedging. I feel like I, I feel like I'm breaking the rules.

[00:01:55] David: Oh, hey, they're happy to take your money however you do it.

[00:01:58] Mark: Yeah, that's true.

[00:01:59] David: Sports, watch or play.

[00:02:02] Mark: Less of both than I would like the last many years, but I'll say play. I'll say play. Yeah. I, I need to

get out and do more, but,

[00:02:11] David: do you have a sport of choice that if you could play, you would go do it?

[00:02:15] Mark: I, so I'm reliving my volleyball years with my middle school daughter out in the front yard right now. So we've got a net

set up and, so yeah, that, that would be that and ping pong in the basement with my son. I don't know if that's a table tennis, that's a sport. I don't

[00:02:32] David: table tennis. Oh, hey, that's an Olympic sport. It

[00:02:34] Mark: Exactly.

Exactly. There you go.

[00:02:36] Gary: That's kind of funny. I,

[00:02:39] David: go ahead. Gary. Tell real volleyball stories.

[00:02:41] Gary: I started playing volleyball again with my daughter in middle school 'cause she got into it and David is a table tennis master.

[00:02:48] David: No, I'm not. Oh my gosh. No, I'm

[00:02:50] Gary: He claims

to be.

[00:02:51] David: do not claim anything

[00:02:53] Gary: He brags about it all the

[00:02:54] David: I do have a ping pong table in my house and right now it has a bunch of stuff on it.

[00:03:00] Mark: How expensive is your racket,

That's how we know is are we talking like. $25, $75, $150.

[00:03:07] David: a I think I this is TMI. So our ping pong table is actually our dining room table that we had custom made to be the exact dimensions of a ping pong table.

[00:03:20] Mark: Okay.

[00:03:21] David: So with that came ping pong paddles that were custom made with the table. So I'm a little, that's a little bougie. But

[00:03:30] Gary: And he, and he tried

to laugh me off, right?

[00:03:32] David: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. That did

[00:03:34] Mark: in deep.

[00:03:35] David: I'm in deep there. But I'm hor my wife is the one who actually plays, she's much better than I am. But I, we use the cheap ones outside of those few anyway. Excuse me. My volleyball story is very similar to yours except for my daughter wanted to play volleyball.

We went and bought her a volleyball. We played one time. She decided she didn't like it, and that was the end of volleyball. So it's a little different than y'all story.

[00:03:58] Mark: Yeah, that happens. That does happen.

[00:04:01] David: Alright, last one we're throwing back here. Are you a Nintendo guy or a Sega guy? Back in the day.

[00:04:07] Mark: that finally an easy one. Nintendo all the

way. Yep. All the way.

[00:04:12] David: You weren't, you were a Mario guy, not a sonic guy. Is that what you're saying?

[00:04:15] Mark: Yeah, I do Sonic, but yeah, no, we all the way up till today, we still have the Nintendo Switch and still get down for the odd family bubble four or Mario Kart kind of, uh, screaming

match. And so yeah, that,

that all the way back to the original Super Nintendo.

Yeah. Coke and

[00:04:36] David: I got you beat. 'cause I'm clearly older than you. You can always tell how old someone is by the consoles that they owned. I started with the in television and the Atari 2,600, which makes me old. Not as old as Gary, though. Gary started with stone tablets and wishful thinking.

Alright, so Mark, tell me about Sprout.

[00:04:55] Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That is, that's the new journey is Sprout AI Studio. And it is it's fun player coach season of life, of career for me. We are a venture studio, a startup studio, so it's a fairly new flavor where we are both an investor. We are builders, operators, and so we actually help co-found new AI ventures.

We're trying to do eight of them in four years, so we do about two or three new startups every year that we launch, and we do it as a co-founder. So we actually find great entrepreneurs and we bring them into the studio. And for the first year, we'll put in about 500 to a million, 500,000 to a million in pre-seed money. And then we've got a studio team that comes alongside to really help that first year to accelerate the initial build out. And so that, that model for me is just like a kid in a candy shop of, not just allocating capital and investing from a distance, showing up for a board meeting every three months, but also not having everything on your shoulders as the only entrepreneur for a decade. And so it's that. Sweet spot of can we, after going through and doing that for 20 years being an entrepreneur, can, we as a small team, there's three partners and we have a studio of 10 going up to about 15 as we get fully launched come around an entrepreneur and really help accelerate during that first year.

So yeah, we're having fun. It's a different model. Obviously just well timed. The idea of Sprout is. Sprout planting seeds at a key opportune time of this amazing new tool that we have to solve problems in ai.

[00:06:38] David: So what stage are the startups coming to you at? Are they just an idea? Do they have a prototype? Are they already on the market? Where are they at?

[00:06:47] Mark: They are anywhere between someone who is literally just in transition, so they know that they're probably leaving what they're doing now. They might be actively searching for an idea. They might be they have a problem space and they're ideating. They may have a prototype,

they may have taken a little bit of friends and family money, but we really, we get right from the very, very beginning, as early as we possibly can. And oftentimes we also are building internally too. So we have a series of ideas that we're starting to build out, and then we bring on a co-founder specifically for a venture as well. A lot of different ways, but it's all very initial.

[00:07:23] David: Correct me if I'm wrong, vent. The model of Venture Studios is you invest time, money, expertise, and you get a majority, if not vast majority, ownership of set idea and the. Co-founder who, or let's say it was someone not a one, that you grew yourself that came to you, that person now has a minority stake in the idea, but they get to ride along with you and your team.

Is that It's,

[00:07:55] Mark: That would be what's been fairly common kind of in the initial venture studios, maybe the last 10 years, but it's actually shifted. So we've realized that we take a sizable amount of equity, but we usually give the majority to the founder. It's not 10%, but it's also not majority.

So we, kinda have a pretty sizable amount. We take some equity as a co-founder and we take some equity as that pre-seed investor, and that doesn't usually add up to majority, but it's enough that we have a lot of skin in the game.

[00:08:25] David: So how, 'cause you're writing now, I know you're not writing checks, but you're investing,

500,000 to a million dollars. Is a pretty large initial round for a just an idea stage startup. What I have seen is most of those first rounds are 50,000. Maybe if I'm feeling a little spicy, you might raise a hundred thousand, especially locally, so you're going way north of that.

[00:08:58] Mark: Well, we aren't, we aren't always initially.

Yeah, we're not always initially, so we say 500, so we will often, uh, trach it. So sometimes it could be as little as 50,000. Um, it could be in two to 300, two to $300,000 checks as well. So it's probably that 500 to a million is really if you look at the end of say, 12 months. So yeah, we're, we're, we're doing.

multiple safe notes effectively to add up to that amount. The odd time

it, it, for competitive AI ideals, it's actually, it depends how you look at it, right? It's actually sometimes it's a really small amount of money compared to what some of our entrepreneurs are getting thrown at them. And other times, you're right. Coming out of the gate, with a pretty good check to just start running and not have to worry about, raising capital. It's pretty, pretty big advantage.

[00:09:45] David: I'm just trying to think of like most of the investment firms that I know of and am friends with, they make a lot of little bets, especially at the earlier stage. They make a lot of little bets and their hope is that one or two will keep going

if you're making. Sizable investments even. 'cause I'm thinking like if I come to you with just an idea and you're thinking, Hey, I'll build this for you, great.

That's a sizable investment, even if it's just time. So you can't make a ton of those bets.

[00:10:16] Mark: no, that's, that's kinda the difference of like a venture fund.

Yeah, that's right. exactly. So

a venture fund, like a pre-seed venture fund kind of spray and pray might be putting 30, 40. Smaller investments in one of their funds, right? So obviously it's really that power law of, hey, we just need really one, maybe two to hit. We're having much more precision with saying a fund of only eight ventures. But the idea is we believe that bringing the studio and experience behind that actually operating can help. Reduce a lot of that risk, a lot of the unforced errors and again, it's high risk stuff. But that's another way to de-risk things is not just by spraying and praying, but it's actually by really coming alongside and going deeper with ventures.

So that's the general kind of thesis around the Venture Studio is that you can also get some leverage cross portfolio. So if you focus in, there's things that you can bring in alongside that can also. Help leverage, speed up, de-risk, that kind of thing as well.

[00:11:18] David: So we have a little startup, so I'm in the middle of all of this. So I build startups with big pixel and we have a startup called Tela.

And what I have learned the hard way actually, is building's the easy part. Which is funny because most startups come in with no, they come to us as big pixel and they think building's the hard part 'cause they're not technical.

But when it comes to, if I step back and I look at what will determine success and failure, it's not the tech

[00:11:52] Mark: No. of the time. If you've got some wild, crazy, awesome idea, sure. But that's unusual. Most people are two-sided markets or whatever.

[00:11:59] David: Now what I have found, 'cause Tela in our case building's the easy part, right?

We built that, but go to market is way harder to be successful at, even if you're really good at go to market. Boy, there's just a lot of hurdles there. So do you guys bring that expertise as well? Or is it just the building side that you guys are good at?

[00:12:19] Mark: I think that certainly, the saying of first time founders focus on product and second time and beyond, focus on distribution. Fully believer in that. We as partners certainly have been through the grind on the go-to-market side. While that's not our. Seat at the table professionally, right?

Kind of representing product strategy and finance and operations. Really that first year, it's not necessarily building the go to market as you would think, right? It's much more on it, I think where you're going as well. It's really how do you test and validate if this is going to have the desirability, the feasibility, and the viability to actually continue. To have a shot to, to actually make it into orbit. And so you're thinking a lot about distribution. You're not only thinking about product but you aren't, we aren't actually, like typically we are handing off if they go to raise a seed round and then an a round, there're that's a point when starting to really think about building the capabilities of go to market, we're usually helping them only pick that first channel kinda after they have some signs of product market fit. And so yeah, we're just so early that. We do think about distribution, but not necessarily building the go-to-market capabilities yet.

[00:13:38] AD: We believe that business is built on transparency and trust. We believe that good software should be built the same way. Big Pixel is a 100% US-based fixed fee, custom software design and development agency built on transparency and passion. No offshore handoffs, no surprise invoices, just a team that treats your problem like it's our own.

UX and design are core to everything we do. Not a phase that gets handed off, but a discipline that runs through every decision we make. We bring the expertise to build what your business needs and the clarity to know when AI and technology help and when they get in the way, we provide our clients honest assessments of where they are and how they can get where they want to go.

Your idea deserves the right team. Let's talk plan and create something that truly works for you.

[00:14:33] David: so when I'm a founder and I come to you guys, and you guys now start doing the heavy lifting, what's my job?

[00:14:42] Mark: It's kind of you know a little bit of an existential crisis, right?

It's oh my goodness our competitor raised a ton of money in this space. We're using them as a comp. We're super excited, getting validation, getting ready to go raise money, and all of a sudden they completely pivoted out of our space and we don't know why. And so it's just like, how am I gonna actually go and raise money? So a lot of it certainly is they are the CEO, they're the co-founder, the founder that's leading this thing. We're there, to again, be there day to day, week to week, not just kind of month to month or quarter to quarter. So yeah, we're not running it.

We are just pretty heavy, skin in the game there. Helping wherever we can.

[00:15:22] David: So I have a few questions there. So what. I will transparently admit. I'm jealous. I had the idea, this was 13 years ago, maybe 12. I might have been a year into the business. At that point. I had the idea that what all I needed for big pixels to be successful is to find an investor. That would see the value that I brought as a quality builder and make an a, a relationship where I would say, Hey, investor goes to them and says, I'm gonna give you a $250,000, but you have to use Big Pixel as your developer because I want that quality.

And then so Big Pixel has this ongoing relationship.

And that sounded magically delicious. I still believe in that idea, but I have talked to many investors and not a single one of them care about that, and they'll flat out tell me that the technology is not important. It's all about the founder and the idea and the technology doesn't matter.

And I still think that's strange only because. To me, you're investing in that technology whether you like it or not. That's where your money's going in many cases. And so wouldn't you want it to be built well, rather than cheap? I'm wrong clearly. 'cause they all tell me the same thing. But you found investors who let you do this.

So now how did that come to be and how do I knock you off and steal them? That's what I wanna know.

[00:16:44] Mark: Yeah. No, it is, it's it is very different raising a fund, right? So raising money as an entrepreneur is already hard 'cause you're having to convince people both where you are, where you've come from, the traction you've made, and what the potential is moving forward. But at least you've got something to work with. When you're raising a fund, you have nothing, right? You're like, oh, we think we're going to find deals like this. And so you're really raising a blind pool of money, and that's very hard.

[00:17:16] David: Do you have a reputation?

[00:17:18] Mark: yeah, that's all, That's all you have? Yeah. That,

yeah.

It really, unfortunately that's really is, it's, we had opportunity with my previous business to return, quite a bit of. Capital a good return to some investors, and so it makes it a lot easier when you make that phone call and say, Hey, I'm doing something new. And that's pretty much what you have to go on. I wish there was a better answer, but Yeah. I mean, obviously, yeah. Yeah,

[00:17:41] David: I don't like it. My idea is solid. I just need someone to believe in it anyway, so the next question is how did this get started? I know it's a relatively new venture, but how did you get into this?

[00:17:55] Mark: Yeah, so it's hard to talk about Sprout AI studio without my previous adventure, which was a company called Cloud Factory. And so I'm Canadian. Me and my wife got married 2006, just actually celebrated her 20th. So this is like a, this is the

The 20 year origin story in two minutes. We got married and a year later went for her work to the Middle East. We were in Doha, Qatar and I was running my, one of my startups from there remotely. And we met some amazing Nepal friends. Friends from Nepal weren't expecting that, never been there, but we weren't married. Did have kids, sorry, we were married but didn't have kids yet.

We thought we could travel. It's be great opportunity. So we got to go to Nepal to meet our friend's family there for a two week vacation. And we were there and we're out in the village thinking how can, my wife is a, is an accountant and I'm a computer science, geek computer geek slash software entrepreneur. What can we do in this village? We have nothing to offer. We don't understand how to farm, but we come back to Cat Mandu and we're having. Pizza, ENC, Capmandu, Nepal. And he introduces me to some of his software friends and we start talking and I know a language that they know and had some advice on some of the deals that they were talking about.

And next thing I know, I extended my flight three weeks out, bought an iMac and started training these three developers half days. People started messaging saying, Hey, where are you? I'm like, oh, I'm still in DePaul. I'm training up some. This was Ruby on Rails back in the day, right? It was a new thing on Rails, and they're like, oh, could you do a project?

I said, sure. How much? How much? What's your budget? And next thing I know, we got a project and so extended it for three months and then we ended up. Staying for six years. We had our kids and cloud factory was really born out of that. And so it was not a, it was, there was no plan to move to Cat Mandu and start a tech startup, that's for sure.

But it, uh, has

been fairly synonymous with with our life and really just changed everything, right? Just the beauty of being there, starting a company. And we actually got our first seed investment from someone from Raleigh Durham, which kind of was the first time I came here.

And we ended up opening up our sales office here for Cloud Factory in North America. And the company grew and we brought in private equity and it was about two. Half years ago that I knew I needed to hand off and hire a professional CEO and get back to building. And so that led to the season of just getting my hands deep back into technology and AI and hands-on development and that LED Sprout.

Probably a

[00:20:35] Gary: I've always heard that the top three tech hubs are what? San Francisco, Raleigh Durham Triangle, and then Cat Mandu, so yeah. Makes

[00:20:44] David: That's exactly the order in which it is.

[00:20:46] Mark: very obvious.

[00:20:47] David: San Francisco straight to Raleigh,

[00:20:50] Gary: yeah. Than Cat

[00:20:52] David: That is right.

Yes.

[00:20:53] Gary: It's more fun to say

cat

[00:20:55] Mark: get it.

[00:20:56] Gary: though.

[00:20:57] Mark: Yeah.

[00:20:58] David: Man, I tell you, living the dream.

[00:20:59] Mark: So the idea is can we actually build ventures that are at that heart of, typically people will say social ai. How do you actually find these patterns of pushing people back into the real world and into human connection, into relationships.

So you're not trying to just suck them into your AI companion or into your attention stealing advertising, new startup. And so yeah just trying to really focus in that thesis is where we are, where we're playing.

[00:21:26] David: Can you talk about, are any of 'em far enough along that you can talk about them, about where they're at

[00:21:31] Mark: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:32] David: what they're, what they actually do?

[00:21:33] Mark: Yeah, so they're good. They're always good to get an example. So venture number one, again is cc, which is really just became not necessarily standing for anything. It's just the letters cc because it's text messaging. So it's actually a, it's a. It's just a number that you add to any chat, and it's an AI set of AI agents on the other side, but it's there fully to try and help you find things to do with your friends and help you plan and coordinate them.

So it is just optimized fully to be in text messaging, to try and get people to spend time together in the real world. Real simple. So all it does is just, it's there. It gets to, you do a quick onboarding and it's there looking, constantly looking for things for me, my wife, to go do for a date night or for my family.

You got two young teenagers to go to as a family or with buddies or colleagues, looking for things in those different group chats and just nudging, saying, Hey, I'm. Out there scouring everything happening. We're here in, in Raleigh Durham, so everything that's happening here, according to the group's preferences, trying to get you to, Hey, you guys might wanna check that out.

And then if you do, great, how do we actually coordinate? How do we find time to schedule and do things, the logistics around that, actually book it. So yeah, just fully optimized. No download, no app download. Just there to try and reduce friction in spending more time together with. To people in your life.

So

[00:22:58] David: So is the idea

[00:22:59] Mark: play.

[00:23:00] David: One of those people would be paying for cc.

[00:23:03] Mark: No, it's not actually. It's, right now the, like every consumer tech play. You're not sure exactly which business model will or won't work. Our best guess and where we're starting now is actually. It feels really aligned with the mission, and it's just simply we get commission affiliate off of things.

So we're sending links to Ticketmaster, right? We'll make a little percent if they book off golf tee times we get, a dollar for every open table we make, like 80 cents or no, actually less than that for Fandango movie tickets or, so There's all these sort of very small commissions. The whole idea is these are things that people are typically gonna go do anyways. Or maybe they weren't, they didn't know it was even happening. And I think we'll see where that, it's very likely there is some sort of freemium type model that emerges. But right now the idea is to keep it open and just try and get people go out, do things. They use our links. We make a little bit from that.

[00:23:58] David: Nice.

[00:24:00] Gary: That sounds really cool actually.

[00:24:02] David: Yeah, it does. Go ahead Gary.

[00:24:04] Gary: Oh, I was just gonna say I'm already thinking of all the ways it could, you said it only exists in chat now, but if there were like a higher tier model, maybe not something you'd have to pay for, but if it starts integrating with all the apps on your phone versus their phones and starts coordinating and planning things together based on your calendar and,

Stuff like that's,

Yeah.

I could see potential for that to be almost like your personal fun assistant.

[00:24:26] Mark: Yeah, that was good. Yeah, that's exactly, I would say our personal social concierge or, yeah, I like the fun assistant and yeah, we've got calendar integrated. It's pretty cool, honestly, just to see that negotiation behind the scenes and navigating that aspect of coordination is, is

[00:24:41] Gary: You got one teenager that's no, I can't. I'm busy. And then it's no, actually you're up. You're free Saturday. There's nothing on your calendar. So we're booking you.

[00:24:48] Mark: Yeah. Which sounds cool until it happens and yeah, so all that's what we're in deep right now. It's anything like getting these agentic systems

[00:24:55] Gary: the mission behind it is really cool.

[00:24:59] Mark: Everyone's feeling the strain of cold call is dead, cold email is dying. How do we acquire new customers? And so we're actually trying to bring back kind of the oldest school way of just getting people together to eat, to break bread, to get together for dinners. So how do you run exec dinners or relationship dinners? Just very consistently, mostly targeted at professionals from the law firms, kind of VCs, private equity investors a lot of different industries that are just very relational. Can you get a group of 10 people consistently around a table, around a topic, out at a restaurant. So really just built a platform and again, kind of an AI concierge just to really help make that super effortless. So that it can become a growth channel for a lot of those businesses. That's what we get excited about. You actually get back to a place where growing your business is like a real thing where you go out and actually meet and talk and drink wine and eat with people?

Wouldn't that be amazing if that was a way that you could grow your business? A lot of people do it. A lot of people find that it really does add a lot of value. It's hard to attribute, hard to measure it, it's hard to do it consistently 'cause there's just, it takes a lot of overhead to actually manage all that.

So that's what we've been again, grinding it out, building those tools with AI to say, how can you get people back, face to face?

[00:26:17] David: There is a local guy, you might know him, Parker Mays. Everybody seems to know Parker. No, he's a rally guy more than a Durham guy, but he is on this, quest to have a hundred dinner? No. Dinners with a hundred startup founders in seven different cities and it's all part of getting to know them and then potentially maybe, 'cause we're meeting and you like all this and they all kind of work together and business occurs.

It reminds me of what you're saying. It's

getting back to getting in person. I do think, especially in the younger generations, my son is 20, so I feel this, pretty acutely. There is a real strong desire to get away from their screens and do things back in, in the old ways, quote unquote.

[00:27:11] Gary: ebb And

[00:27:12] David: that you're gonna start to see a lot more of that.

That's just

A prediction, an obvious predict.

[00:27:17] Mark: Yeah, we're right there with you. I think that's like, where does this all trend? It's just feels,

[00:27:24] Gary: it is just gonna be bots talking to bots leading

[00:27:27] Mark: is, which is gonna create this huge, which

is gonna create this huge demand for that kind of embodied presence and just the things. Yeah. Anyways I love the stuff I know you guys geek out on as well, but it's

[00:27:39] Gary: yeah. We nerd out about it all the

[00:27:41] Mark: Yeah. It's just, it is. I mean, It's we.

[00:27:42] Gary: show actually.

[00:27:43] Mark: It's, it is just such a moment in time. And so as intelligence becomes like this commodity on tap, what becomes valuable? So what becomes what's more is more scarce is what's gonna become most valuable. And so we look at. Trust and presence and belonging and wisdom and all these things.

Empathy, right? And yeah, I think all of that does lead back to this desire for some kind of a presence economy. After an experienced economy, very likely. Um, we're seeing trends now. We think that's where it's just gonna continue to go, but we think it's a good thing.

[00:28:17] Gary: Mark, with your experience starting your own stuff and helping other people start their own stuff, what would you say are your top three pieces of advice for a new entrepreneur or founder?

[00:28:30] Mark: The first one I would say is do the hard work of testing things up front. I have skipped over that so many times. It's just so easy because it's fun to build. It's easier than ever to build, and so jumping in and just building is so tempting, and yet I've been through it enough, right?

Where the more money and people that get involved later on when you haven't actually really figured out the fundamentals of, again, desirability, feasibility, viability, right? That's definitely, I would say probably number one, two, and three in there. But we'll start with one. I think. Probably in some ways would go back to what we also said is product is really important, but distribution is, even more important. And thinking through distribution as part of that early stage is huge and often the one I think that's overlooked and becoming more and more important, is the, is that channel play. I think. I think there's so much opportunity of thinking about AI agents and channels and just the opportunity of like just building an agent with so many channels to market by really being a pick and shovel of other agents, is just a huge business opportunity. Then I think the third one is probably similar to that idea of before you put a decade of your life into something, is make sure you really understand the why. I always encourage. I mentor an accelerator. And then with our founders, we write a like a kind of a pretty deep narrative on the why are we, like why should this thing exist? What are we trying to do in the world? Thinking philosophically, thinking culturally, thinking like why does this thing need to exist? And it's just a little bit of that breadcrumb. I think that is good to come back to whenever things do get hard. 'cause obviously they get hard at so many different moments. It's just, there's. there's. something that you spend a lot of time to really play the five why's down to say why does this need to exist?

[00:30:34] David: Very good.

[00:30:35] Gary: Those are, yeah, three good pieces of advice, not the typical ones we get, which are very good, more diverse answer answers on this. And the philosophical why I think is a, is also a great one. So Mark, if anybody wants to learn more about you or read up and learn more about Sprout AI Studio, where's the best place for them to find you?

[00:30:55] Mark: Best to hit sprout ai.com or find me Mark Sears on LinkedIn. Probably two places. We're pushing most stuff out

[00:31:04] Gary: All right. We'll make sure we put those links in the show notes as well for anybody to just click on 'em.

[00:31:09] Mark: pretty

[00:31:09] David: you very much, mark, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:31:12] Mark: Yeah, I appreciate it guys. It is a lot of fun.

[00:31:15] Gary: David, can I open up a big pixel branch in Nepal? I.

[00:31:19] David: Will that get you far away?

[00:31:21] Gary: far away.

[00:31:22] Mark: It is far away.

[00:31:23] David: I could be convinced.

But I only pay you with yaks.

[00:31:27] Gary: Eh, mark, what's the what's the going trade rate on Yaks in Nepal? Do you know? Is that

[00:31:32] Mark: you

are actually not cheap. That's actually a pretty

good deal. You might wanna

[00:31:35] Gary: You heard it here

[00:31:36] David: half a yak

[00:31:37] Gary: No. No. You already

said yaks. Plu.

We're going get.

All right.

[00:31:42] David: How do you turn two halves into a plural? I don't know how that works. I'm not good at the math. Alright, on that note, we're gonna send Gary off and we're gonna say thank you so much again for joining us and we will be back next week. Thank you everybody.

[00:31:57] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Scott Bailey. I'm the lead dev over here at Big Pixel, and I know what you're thinking. I thought David did all the work. Well, not exactly. We have an awesome team of people to back in both. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, the US based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software.

This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or you can find out some Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.

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