Founders Focus

Going Global: Ask Amos Anything

Episode Summary

Amos Winbush III is back for an awesome session where founders ask questions of Amos and his experience as a Tech Founder.

Episode Notes

Founders Focus welcomes back Amos Winbush III for a session where founders ask questions of Amos and his experience as a Tech Founder. As a Black man, he’s also experienced some other challenges that may be familiar for some entrepreneurs and eye opening for others.

Amos Winbush III is CEO of AW3 Media Group and Co-Founder of Forbes8.

Dive deeper into the episode here: https://bit.ly/3bfIUIN.

Have feedback? Connect with Scott Case on LinkedIn.

Visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions, watch past sessions, and see what topics are up next.

Episode Transcription

Scott Case  0:00  

Welcome to Founders Focus, a podcast made for founders by founders. I'm Scott Case, CEO and co founder of Upside, and I created Founders Focus to help share free resources and actionable advice. Together, we're building a community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and founders to come together to tackle today's challenges. This podcast is powered by my awesome team at Upside. Please visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions or to catch up on past topics. 

Scott Case  0:27  

So I'll give him this straightforward one, which is Amos Winbush the third is a dear friend of mine, and he's the co founder and Forbes8 and the CEO of AW3 Media Group. Which if you didn't know how that how that spelled, you can see it behind him on his virtual screen he's super excited about. With that Amos why don't you tell us a little bit about you, why you're so excited about that logo, and we'll kick kick things off. 

Amos Winbush III  0:54  

I'm not really that interesting. I like long walks on the beach and a nice pina colada every once in a while. I'm no, I'm a I'm a serial entrepreneur, I love innovation, I think innovation drives community. And is is key to, you know, relationships. So, yeah, my first company CyberSynchs was all about keeping connected to your data. And the new company, AW3 that I launched several years ago is all about advancing into your, your calling and your purpose. So how do we do that within AW3, we create compelling content and we release it with robust technology around the world, in a format that allows people to access it anywhere which is on your mobile device. 

Amos Winbush III  1:47  

So long story short, my passion is creating access to opportunity. My vocation happens to be technology entrepreneur.

Amos Winbush III  1:59  

Sooner or later that could change. But as of right now, that's my focus. And I'm really excited to sit down and chat with all of you. Hopefully, that was good Scott. And you're on mute.

Scott Case  2:15  

It turns out that I say, I just had a lot of nice things about you. But now I'm just going to move on.

Scott Case  2:22  

So we will, we'd love to engage everybody. I'm going to ask a couple of preamble questions and we'll dive into some of the ones we got. But I, I want to talk a little bit about about your background, you talk about CyberSynchs and AW3, but you have taken a very different approach than a lot of US based entrepreneurs in that you, you you from the outset, thought globally and in particular, in I don't know what the words of the day are developing markets like Sub Saharan Africa. And I just love for you to chat. 

Scott Case  2:59  

Just talk a little bit about like, why you chose those markets, what your experiences were like, and, and so where the opportunity lies there because I think it's something that we don't think about enough. And so I'd love for you to just share a little bit about your experience there.

Amos Winbush III  3:14  

Yeah, I think the reason why it shows are fully engaged and they chose me and we chose each other with international markets is because typically when, you know, US based companies or westernized companies create a technology, they think about the consumer being Western. And they completely forget that the world has over 7 billion people.

Amos Winbush III  3:44  

And I wanted to create a technology a solution with the intentions that everyone around the world had the exact same problem. And that was not having access to your data because of some catastrophic events to your mobile device. 

Amos Winbush III  4:00  

And this was in 2007, before iCloud, before Google sync, before any of those platforms were in existence. And I knew that with the proliferation of smartphones hitting the market that they would eventually go into these markets outside of the states and outside of Europe. And if there was no solution to support these individuals who overwhelmingly use their mobile devices for everything, it could be really detrimental not only for their lives, but for the community as a whole. So the intentions was always to take a product within with the with the focus of finding ambassadors all around the world to use it. 

Amos Winbush III  4:50  

My experience in international markets was really tough. Um, you know, here I am not knowing any of the regulatory, you know, concerns and operating in a market that I had never even visited.

Amos Winbush III  5:07  

You know, but I am a quick study, I hired a really great team, a law firm, by the name of Johnson Brian really supported the mission that I had with CyberSynchs, and helped me guide every step in every decision that we made.

Amos Winbush III  5:27  

For the success of the company, what I did realize is I never thought CyberSynchs was successful. I didn't, I didn't actually realize the company was successful into my fourth company. Um, so when I was in it, my intentions were always to create a pathway to bring people into community authentically, and that was through, you know, mobile.

Scott Case  5:52 

So you, you extended from there and I want to, I'm going to come back to AW3 and some of the stuff you've done around thinking about the mobile device, as a leap frogging technology for a lot of these markets. But before we go there, you weren't always a tech entrepreneur. Now, prior to CyberSynchs, you had some other passions that you pursued. And so one of the questions and it's kind of to break into two parts, because I think in order for you to answer the the question that was asked, the background will be helpful for everyone. So I'd like you to share a little bit about what you were doing before CyberSynchs and what your experience was there and then talk a little bit about how you how you made the leap into into starting that company, like what was that transition? Like, what resources did you use, but first, just give a little bit of background about your, your pre CyberSynchs career? 

Amos Winbush III  6:50  

Yeah, so pre CyberSynchs I was a singer songwriter, I moved from Shreveport, Louisiana in 2003 to pursue a career in music, and I struggled for a really, really long time, and I was blessed enough to have an entertainment attorney at Greenberg charak, who let me crash on his couch for pretty good, you know about time in order to save up some money in order to move. And through that relationship with my law firm, they introduced me to a fellow producer, who was roommates with John Legend, and good friends with John Legend and Ryan Leslie. And his name is David Liang. And David and I, I received a call from David and he said, Hey, Amos, I have this project. It's called Shanghai restoration project. And I would love for you to be a part of it. Now, I just got over the flu. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to do that man. My voice is kind of shaky. But nevertheless, I went into his homemade studio, jumped in the shower and started singing the song called Babylon of the Orient. And little did I know it would be one of the biggest things that I'd ever done in my music career. It was downloaded on SanDisk mp3 player or preloaded. And for those who are of a particular age, like me, you know, mp3 players were pretty dope back then.

Amos Winbush III  8:25  

So my song was one of 10 and lo and behold, it's sold a bazillion you know, copies and I receive royalties from it, and it turns into like this, this cult following. And you can go to YouTube and watch people doing like, you know, choreography routines to the song, um, and in 2008, the Beijing Olympics, place it in their opening credits. Um, so I was able to like save up some money and through the process of saving up that money um, you know, I'm being a singer songwriter, I was going to use it to, you know, do my first album, my first CD. And I was in a recording studio on my mobile phone crashed and maybe three weeks before my mobile phone crashed party man he and I exchanged information and

Scott Case  9:28  

oh, speaking of crash, 

Amos Winbush III  9:30  

I was devastated. So I'm like, yo, how am I going to get this big? I don't even know my mom's cell phone number. So the reason why I created CyberSynchs

Amos Winbush III  9:43  

Can you guys hear me can 

Scott Case  9:45  

Amos we lost you there for a minute. You're frozen. Your face is frozen. You're still a good look for you. But I don't know if it's a if you're stuck somewhere. You're there?

Amos Winbush III  9:59  

I don't know. If you can is it? Is it my internet? 

Scott Case  10:02  

Yeah, I think everybody else seems to be good, but you're better now. All right, cool. I didn't know who's who's who what famous person did you put in your contacts before it crashed? 

Amos Winbush III  10:12  

Russell Simmons. You know, the famous, 

Scott Case  10:18  

I think it's interesting that you prioritize losing Russell Simmons phone number over, you didn't know your mom's cell phone number. I'm gonna just want to emphasize that so I can take that particular clip and send it to her.

Amos Winbush III  10:31  

I'm sure she will find that particularly interesting. Given the fact that they were like bankrolling my existence in New York City. 

Scott Case  10:41  

So you lost your phone What happened? 

Amos Winbush III  10:44  

And I was just frustrated. And I thought of an idea. I actually had a dream of the idea of creating this technology that would wirelessly synchronize your contact information, didn't know how to do it. It had never been done before.

Amos Winbush III  11:01  

But I put an ad on Craigslist when it was free, because you know, now Craigslist, it's like $25 to put ads up, put an ad on Craigslist and interviewed a gazillion people and found a software engineer. And that was how it all started. You know, I blurred out everything that I needed in the technology. And he kind of put it into a structure and we started the company from that.

Scott Case  11:28  

That's awesome. So I want everybody to understand that background because the question we got was, in those first few years, what how did you sort through the resources to support you what, what resources did you find most helpful, which, which were the dead ends? Like there's a lot, there's a way more out here now than there was 10, 12 years ago. But what advice do you have to somebody who's just starting out about how to filter out all the all the noise and find the signal that's most relevant to you?

Amos Winbush III  12:00  

Yeah, even now, there's so much noise in the marketplace. And the problem that I was running up against in 2007 is that there was no startup community in New York City, there was none. So there were no communities that you can tap into. And lo and behold, we created that just by, you know, finding each other. Um, and once we found each other, then we were able to like book these small bars and these karaoke spots, that's when we would have like these open mic nights to pitch each other's ideas off of off of the group. But resources were limited. Most of the information that was in the marketplace, either came from reporters or other you know, one sided entities that focused so much on the end result. Oh, they raised the zillion dollars, okay. Yeah, but what did they do before they raise that money? 

Amos Winbush III  12:58  

Um, and it stayed there and it was so one dimensional that the way that I learned was falling, getting super bloody, getting back up, trying something different, falling, getting super bloody, getting back up. And it was trial by error. And it was really, really difficult. And nobody knew anything. Like we just didn't know anything. And even now when you think about it, the reason why I started AW3 Media and the entrepreneur network is so that there could be a cohesive platform where people could come and see real life experiences from entrepreneurs on the ground at every stage, not just from the perspective of Oh, you raise money therefore you are successful. No, it doesn't work that way.

Scott Case  13:44  

So I want to talk a little bit about your you your Craigslist adventure, you found somebody a software engineer, did did they become a co founder? This is a question from one of our from our audience, did they become a co founder and if so how did you make that decision? 

Amos Winbush III  14:00  

Yeah, so I made that decision by giving them equity. I didn't give them the co founder title because I didn't even know anything about the co founder title. But I gave, I gave him a substantial percentage of equity more than 10% in the company.

Amos Winbush III  14:16  

And what also was really tough in that those early days is because there was nothing to gauge my experience on I was really territorial about the idea. So I led from a place of fear and fear also led me to have an overbearing, you know, management style leadership style that was very micromanager-esque. And, you know, one day my team came to me and said, Amos, like we're deathly afraid to talk to you. Because we don't know what you're going to say. And we're afraid that you won't listen to us. And that started a process of me really humbling myself and removing all of the baggage and the damage that I had accumulated over time to get to a place where I could be vulnerable, and listen and hear to have a relationship with my team. But until that happened, it was it was really difficult.

Scott Case  15:19  

Yeah, that's cool. Thank you. I'll keep an eye on the questions. So if you've got questions, please, please post them. So the next one is more oriented towards your your background. He talked about being born or grown up in Shreveport, Louisiana and then moving to New York. And there's a question about the current context, being a tech CEO. So as a black founder, what changes, if any, have you seen in the tech industry in the last, you know, two, three months that you think will stick and have a long term impact? So have you seen any changes that that you believe are heading in the right direction from a from a person of color founder type or under under estimated folks, what changes? Do you see that any has been made? And if so which ones you think last? 

Amos Winbush III  16:10  

Yeah, I think we are currently in the pseudo community phase of the evolution of where we are. It's, I think, the the part that is heartening is that there are a lot of individuals talking about it. And that is, that's cool. And that's great.

Amos Winbush III  16:31  

But we've been talking about it for a while. And in order for us to move out of pseudo community, we have to talk about it and then get really, really uncomfortable in changing it. And we see some changes happening slowly but surely there are more executives coming on board of directors. And the problem that I have with C suite onboarding currently with the tech world is that because of this hyper sensitivity toward inclusion, you see a lot of black and brown leaders going into Chief Diversity Officer positions. And that's cool. And that's great. But those positions don't have any power. And more importantly, they shouldn't be aggregated to one particular person, it should go across the entire leadership.

Amos Winbush III  17:22 

And I think it is, it's a fallacy to believe that one person can change a culture in a company, they just can't. It comes with everyone bringing their authentic self every single day to the table. And the other person saying, Oh, I never realized that. It makes sense. I don't understand it, but can you help me walk through it? So I am hopeful that those pseudo community conversations can move into authentic communication or authentic community with you know, with time and a lot of pressure from the public to say, I'm no longer Okay, being uncomfortable in your comfortable environment.

Scott Case  18:11  

I think that's key. I want to pile on one thing there. And then I have a question about your going back to your co founder.

Scott Case  18:19  

There's a capacity thing. So on your chief diversity officer role, I think one of the things is that they've got to be enfranchised to actually build capacity to support the rest of the organization, not just like you said, a single person because it is on everybody. And I know as a CEO, I've wrestled with, you know, we want to we want to distribute the load among all of us to take our own responsibility on and do and at the same time, there are, there's work to be done that everybody else has ever has got a day job. And one of the things that I've been sensitive to is, as you pointed out, not only might they get promoted in that role, but then there's, oh, well, let's create a committee right we'll have a bunch of people to join the diversity Task Force and, and of course, who shows up? It's a bunch of the black and brown people. And they're looking around and going, like, I already live this life like I can have some, you know, how do we have some help here?

Scott Case  19:12  

So, I'm curious about to your point, you know, that pseudo community, how do you? What are strategies that we can take to kind of invite more people into that dialogue in an authentic way? And have you seen things that are working or things to avoid?

Amos Winbush III  19:30  

I think the invitation is always open. The invitation has always been there, it's now actually requiring voices who have the power to change the structure to be at those in those chairs.

Amos Winbush III  19:51  

It is. It is a process that, you know, yes, everyone has their own day job. But in that capacity of how you execute your roles and your responsibility, the intentions behind you, every decision that you make, or even every decision that you contemplate making should be, does this supports the diverse landscape of my consumers?

Amos Winbush III  20:28  

And if my consumer pool looks very different from my executive pool, then that's the first signal that something is off. And companies then have a responsibility, leadership, middle management associates have a responsibility to speak up and not call out. I believe that calling out puts people on defense, you know, into defensive mode but call people in to having a robust conversation that can be ugly, and setting that expectation in the very beginning. This isn't going to be pretty, this is going to be really uncomfortable. I allow you to make mistakes, please allow me to make mistakes. My intentions are true, even though my words may not reflect that, can you help me, you know, evolve, we should be having those conversations, at the refrigerator, in the office, by the water cooler, outside of the bathroom, wherever it is, there's no right place or wrong place to have those conversations. Because what you want for your life is what I want from my life. I want to be heard, I want to be seen, I want to be valued, I want to be honored. And I want to be called into my better self. And if my relationships aren't doing that for me, then there's something wrong with me. So those are the introspective looks that we have to do and those are the external conversations that we have to have.

Scott Case  22:02 

I really like the the construct of calling in. There's something about especially when you're working when you're with your colleagues, it's like we're, we're, we're together to accomplish something together. Let's, let's, let's recognize that and engage each other as opposed to, you know, calling people out because it's, as you said, it puts people on the defensive, and it doesn't get us where we need to go. 

Scott Case  22:26 

Yeah, So this is going to be a very difficult question for you to answer. And as you know, I never use sarcasm. So we have a question from one of our audience members here. As a woman entering in tech, I feel like I'm often discounted or not taken seriously. Did you have that same experience when you were starting out? And if so, do you have any advice to overcome it? 

Scott Case  22:52  

Yes. And yes, the expectation is that you should always think that when you go into a room that you are the underdog and your job at that particular point is to shake up the environment. Because once you're in the room, you're in the room. And, and oftentimes, you know, you don't have a seat at the table, but that's okay. Pull up a stool. And then if no one is acknowledging you sitting on that stool, stand on a stool if no one starts acknowledging you standing on that stool stand on the table, because as long as you have space, to articulate what is truly in your heart, and to help that organization move forward, it's valuable. And it's it's it's important, and your perspective adds to the bottom line. It's a new viewpoint that someone may not have thought about. It's it's a different way to look at a problem that could bring a solution for generations of individuals.

Amos Winbush III  24:01  

You know, I, you know, the way that I've walked into those rooms, oftentimes in the early part of my career was I was just happy to be in the space. Oh, I'm happy to be in the space. No one's talking to me. Okay, yeah, who cares? That changed that shifted to me being in the room and then sucking up as much of the oxygen as I possibly could to require the people in the room to look at me to talk to me to engage with me. And if, if that didn't happen, then I was just in the wrong space in the wrong season.

Scott Case  24:39  

So to pile on there a little bit, you talked about, Hey, you know, you got in the room. So take advantage of the fact that you're there. What blockers or extra hurdles did you have you observed or experienced and just being able to get in the room.

Amos Winbush III  24:56  

Oftentimes, if you have, let's say, let's take this for example. If you have a house, and the real estate agent says it has four bedrooms, three and a half baths, right? And then you walk into that space and there's a door that doesn't have a doorknob, you see the door, it's part of the listing for the home, but you're unable to access it. And because you're unable to access it, you don't know what's going on behind it. You know, it's there. That's the same thing that, you know, many people of color go through and especially, you know, when you take a business, you know, look at it, even if you, you know, talk about minorities across this space, gender or people of color. Yeah, we know that the conversations are happening. But that door doesn't have a knob on it. And as much as I knock, it's not going to open so the question is, how do you get into those rooms and into those spaces.

Amos Winbush III  26:07  

And ultimately, I'm still trying to figure that out myself. There are, you know, there are situations where I'm still unable to get into those rooms, but it doesn't stop me from, you know, busting down the wall and building my own access point.

Amos Winbush III  26:23  

It just causes it requires more time and it requires more resources. But that doesn't mean that it's not possible. So hopefully, that answers that question. 

Scott Case  26:35  

I think it gets it definitely gets at it. I'm going to play into it a little bit. We did have a question come in. That's related. And I'm going to deal with the persistence issue. So starting companie is already hard, you've got you know, a an imbalance. To say it gently. But there's sort of an it there's a systemic racism and and a bias that's baked into the journey. How do you balance, like overcoming all of that stuff in your daily life and in your startup life? And and not just give up? What have you used? Or what things have you found for yourself to kind of keep you going so that you can power through?

Amos Winbush III  27:26  

That's a really deep question. I think, early on in my career, it was the, the newness of it. The discovery was what kept me going and not knowing. You know, my limitations, was a driver. And then from there, what kept me going was the discovery of me. It was the discovery of who I am, what I'll accept and ultimately, how I viewed the world that I walked in. And what kept me going at that particular point wasn't the money or the influence or the access, or any of those external things. It was calling and purpose that drove me to keep going. And calling and purpose doesn't care if you're happy, has nothing to do with you being happy. It has to do with you walking in your authentic truth. And if you're able to walk in your authentic truth, then you're able to find purpose in those difficult times. And I was able to just to find purpose in those difficult times, which kept me going. And then lo and behold, you'll get a person that says, I was really down but I saw something you said or something you wrote. And it brought me up and those little small wins, allow you, you know, that extra push to just keep going.

Scott Case  29:00  

It's a, there is something about those tiny things and being tuned into them and saying, you know, I might have, you know, a terrible day or things didn't go what I wanted to or whatever, but this good thing happened. And so there's something about just carrying that little that little light with you to the next day can pay it pay off.

Scott Case  29:21  

I'm going to turn another question that came in. I'm going to summarize it a little bit because I think the core of it is, I think you'll have a point of view of. So you mentioned that you were going to use your words is my words, a little paranoid about your idea and sharing it and having control when you're doing CyberSynchs? You're obviously we're up against a lot of other big players. And so this question is from an entrepreneur that it's who's joined us today, around, you know, they've got an idea. They've built a basic, they've got the capability to build an MVP, but in order to go to market, their risk is they may not have the resources to really launch the thing before a larger player comes in and sort of takes the idea or copies it from them. And so, you know, how did you how did you think about that with CyberSynchs? And and did you ever feel that threat? And if not, you know, why didn't you and then what advice would you give to someone who is feeling that pressure? 

Amos Winbush III  30:19  

Yeah, so I definitely felt the pressure of launching something into market in a way that made a robust noise that I felt would prevent someone else from doing it. But in all actuality, that's that's just not the case. Um, you know, competition is just part of life. And I've ultimately welcomed it. Because what someone else is doing, you know, allows me to see that my vision had was validated and then you could see what they're doing. To make what you're doing better, or, you know, you could say, Oh, that's, you know, that's cute. God bless them. That's, uh, you know, they tried to do it, it didn't. It didn't work, but you know, cool. Um, but I never, you know, I would say for the first four years of me launching CyberSynchs I lived in a period of fear, okay, now Google is going to do it. And you have to think about this what I love CyberSynchs, there was no iCloud. There was none of that stuff. But in the midst of launching it, and four years later, there was something called iCloud that came into the world that synced all of your Apple devices and this that in the third and then you had Dropbox that hit the marketplace that, you know, raised a bazillion dollars, all these players that played their roles really, really well and ran their race really well and I had to acknowledge that my race is authentically mine. And where I am and what stage I am is where I'm supposed to be and what somebody else has is for them. So I had to, you know, go through the difficult times of realizing that I needed to keep my eye focused on CyberSynchs and not you know, iCloud or Dropbox or sugarsync or any of that stuff

Scott Case  32:21  

That's a big, it's a big thing I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs make  the mistake of kind of keeping their idea to themselves when in reality in order for it to get better you actually have to share it and you have to you have to take some risk and there are very very few truly winner take all overnight markets. And so you know, thinking about to your point, hey, let me run my race. Let's make sure that we understand what we can win and you can learn things from competitors and from your market but they also can be unbelievable distractions because

Scott Case  33:00 

In your case, you were looking at Sub Saharan Africa and you were playing off of a different a different set of use cases, even though you were inspired by your own, you just change the market, different market different opportunities, way more people in Sub Saharan Africa than there are in America.

Amos Winbush III  33:17  

So, yeah, and then when I had to realize is, is to release the reins of control, because a company is like a thumbprint. You know, yes, I'm the founder. And my job is to put that initial print in the sand. But then every person that I brought on the team, they had a responsibility to add their thumbprint on top of mine, and that's, that's what made CyberSynchs so unique and so forward thinking and really groundbreaking and in many aspects, you know, we patented I patented the idea, before there was anything remotely around Internet of Things like there was no set there was no conversation around Internet of Things. But I had the forethought to know that the internet was one day going to be in your washer and dryer and your refrigerator and your golf carts and your lamps and all of those things, and even your digital camera. So I spent close to a million dollars on on intellectual property, you know, patenting those ideas. So now I own intellectual property.

Scott Case  34:27  

Got it. Alright, so we're going to, we're gonna, I'm gonna ask you one longer form question that I have some, some speed round questions for you. So here's the longer form one, and it's from one of our member of our audience right now. The question is around, you know, being allowed in the room as long as you play as long as you play along with the rules in the room. And and how do you as a, as a black or minority, you know, founder How do you navigate the backlash from maybe asserting yourself, either around diversity and inclusion or social racist racial justice, and the references to Michael Jordan getting criticized for saying, hey, Republicans buy sneakers too, instead of stepping out on things. So it's like, if you stepped out, you get, you get backlash. If you don't step out, you get backlash. So how do you navigate that?

Amos Winbush III  35:29  

Um, I think you win when you don't navigate it. I think you win when you stay true to yourself. And everyone who has an opportunity to speak out, doesn't have a requirement to speak out. You have a requirement to get educated. And once you're educated, then you have a requirement to speak out. Just because I'm in the room doesn't mean that I'm first in knowing what to say. So I may say the wrong thing, just because I'm in the room. And a lot of a lot of credence is given to black and brown people who are in the room and especially, and even, you know, women that are in the room with the roles of being an advocate. And what we have to do is to not convolute the two, just because you're in the room doesn't mean that you're an advocate, it also doesn't mean that you're equipped to be the leader in that space. So we as as executives and leaders in our own right have to be so in tune with our ability and who we are to say, I'm standing up with moral authority to say this doesn't work. And not just because it doesn't work for me, it doesn't work for you. And if it doesn't work for you or me, it's not going to work for the greater good. Because, you know, diversity is not a civil rights issue. Diversity is a moral issue.

Amos Winbush III  37:16  

And if you look at the moral authority attached to it, then you will remove the political nature of it. And anytime that you can politicize something now ego is in and now there are winners and losers and it's not that at all diversity is is is honoring every person for who they are and what they can contribute, whatever that may be. So I say don't navigate it, but be at a place where you're open to become educated. And then once you have that education, then you dive into it if you feel that you're fully equipped

Scott Case  38:00  

Very good. Thank you. All right, so lightning round you get like 30 second answers you ready?

Amos Winbush III  38:07  

Okay. Let's see if I can do that.

Scott Case  38:10  

Did you given that your software, the software engineer, you hired CyberSynchs did a lot of the software development. Did you have any IP ownership issues with that or did you have a contract in place that had you own everything they got bill?

Amos Winbush III  38:26  

Nope, didn't have any IP issues in it had a contract in place that said everything that was created was created underneath the company.

Scott Case  38:35  

Cool. Okay, next one. When you think of a habit, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Amos Winbush III  38:44  

Growth mindset means the ability to think outside of your direct advantages and oh no, Can you guys hear me? Yeah. All right, cool. Um, your direct advantages. So growth mindset means I may feel a lot of pain today. But you know, a year down the road, I won't feel that pain.

Scott Case  39:12  

Did you raise any, any capital for any of your ventures? And if so, what? What was your go to source? How did you do that?

Amos Winbush III  39:21  

I did raise capital for my first company and my fourth company, my first company, I had to hire a CFO because I had no relationships with investors. My CFO, then brought in his relationships to raise a seed round, and we raised around $1.7 million in 2009, which was in the height of the recession, and gave up like 5% of the company. So it was crazy. But I also had a partnership with Sun Microsystems at the time, so that valuation allowed me to justify the raise. Yeah, I think that's it. All right.

Scott Case  39:57  

Last one, you were 26 years old as a founder, if somebody did the math, I'm assuming that that the math was done right. ish. Was there any ageism issues for you at such a young age in your 20s starting a company?

Amos Winbush III 40:16

Yes and no. No, not from peers because all of the engineers that we were bringing on board were coming from banks at the time and they were much older than us starting out. And, yes, from the media perspective, the sad part about it was that it actually came from a black publication who wouldn’t give us any sort of press whatsoever until Inc. Magazine named me 30 under 30. And then they gave me press. They felt I was too young and undeserving of it, so someone else had to authenticate me in order to get that media coverage and it sucked.

Scott Case 41:06

Well you showed them. Well, listen, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us again. I really appreciate it, and thanks to everybody for joining.

Scott Case 41:22
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Founders Focus. What did you think you got any feedback for us got a topic that you'd like us to discuss, or maybe a future co host? We'd love to hear from you. Just hit me up on LinkedIn at T Scott Case. And join us at foundersfocus.com to stay up to date with the latest episodes. And join us live every week at our Founders Focus sessions. Hope to see you there!