Better Than Any Other Time In History

David Borish

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

6/9/2020

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The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

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this time in history is better than any other time in history want to be an entrepreneur you can you can have you can learn about any industry you want to learn about you I mean even if you talk about schooling you know people say well I don't have the right schooling I mean you don't need schooling you could go online and get download courses from MIT for free you could do the same thing with other public universities and and other than that you could just research and study any business you really want to study everybody this is Devon Miller welcome to another episode of the inventive journey I'm your host Patman trademark attorney and Miller IP law that loves to help startups and small businesses as well as well as being a serial entrepreneur today we have on an another great guest David boorish I will rather he'll do a much better job of introducing himself than I ever could so I'll let him introduce himself but he should be a great guest and we're excited to have you on our welcome to the the podcast David yes thank you Devon thanks for having me appreciate it our pleasure so tell everybody a little bit about your journey about your story of what you're up to where you're at and what's going on sure so I I guess I'll start you know as early as I can remember of being an entrepreneur you know I hear stories of you know kids selling baseball cards and I'm in school elementary school and that that was I was definitely that kid the name really sell baseball cards during school then I actually did not only did I sell the baseball cards but I had 12 years old my grandmother tells the story all the time at 12 years old she used to drive me to baseball card conventions really and we load up her car and this was in Queens New York load up her car she dropped me off at eight o'clock in the morning pick me up at four o'clock in the afternoon and I'd have a stack of money from the cards that I sold from the day and she's always talked about it for years of like you know this 12 year old kid was making more money than and you know the parents at the time hey this is not a battery now it now you just have to I was I always joked whenever my kids go out to like Halloween or get some like Easter that then they have lots of candy I always so and they have to pay dad tax which is give me a piece of candy so now your parents should have applied the same concept of now they're taxing you in order to be part of the household but like they were apparently a much kinder kinder parents that I have so let's fun again oh yeah yeah I was sure I had read a book your humor is Mark Cuban is one of them that did a lot of the same thing and they would they would go to the car training they wouldn't they would just go with like a tiny bit of money they would buy the cards and sell them at the same show and then they wouldn't they wouldn't even have to come with the cards they just stayed out that was another that was another hustle yeah I had a bunch of those same game hustles back then yeah you go to the to the guy who had the exclusive cards and if it wasn't you someone else buy the new packs you buy them out early in the show everybody's looking for them and then you're able to resell them throughout the show so yeah I did that as well all right well you're I don't remember which one I know I read in a book I don't remember which famous curses so you guys have here you stand in good company so that's awesome so so you started and I didn't mean to interrupt so go ahead and keep telling your story no no I did - by night I love I always loved talking about those times because it shows you know the the early starts of you know being an entrepreneur and everybody has those similar types of stories in especially you know people that have been entrepreneurs their whole life so I won't worry with every you know business up until you know my early twenties where I was when eBay was first becoming you know mainstream I used to go and buy like collectibles and things from garage sales and resell them and then I got a Dubai wholesale and then on the west coast they started opening up these stores called Eve a drop-off stores there wasn't really any in New York and I was living in upstate New York with my then girlfriend now wife at the time she was attending college and opened up a store her story did true well right early on it was just the right time right place and we ended up doing a number of stores and in franchising that so give me the first like retail real business experience in my early twenties from there we then for a number of years helped other businesses franchise so we used to partner with lawyers and other people in the ecosystem and find concepts and help grant Huffman franchise and then in 2008 we had the downturn you know nobody was lending money nobody was making money nobody was lending money or moving money around so I came up with a concept of aggregating multiple securities loans meaning having multiple customers and these were actually just started out being you know my own clients that needed help and we pitched a number of banks including Wachovia which you know now Wells Fargo under Wells Fargo but we told them listen we know you give higher net worth individuals better long-term rates what if we would aggregate you know let's say 5 1 million dollar loans which would give us my million-dollar you know high net worth loan and of course at the time they like well bring five customers over sure and we quickly you know took that model around to every single broker engine bank that would listen and almost all signed on but what ended up happening was we figured out that the model we created was was more along the lines of what mortgage brokers do but for the loan industry for the securities loan industry where you go to a mortgage broker and they have a number of different loans and they sort of figure out the best loan for the customer we pioneered that in the securities lending industry so we eventually became the first securities based loan origination company built the company out we had loan brokers around the country and then we required by rack Rockwood Capital Group a couple years later so that was sort of my first you know larger company venture exit I would say oh go ahead it's Gemma quad and side oh that's interesting so in because the I can almost see the banks going one of two ways one they could say is you know I'd rather have an a higher net worth individual it has five million dollars because he's more likely to pay on it or you can do the opposite of saying hey 1 million dollars so a high net worth individual I'd rather spread it over five people because more likely most of them are gonna pay her they're not gonna default so or the boat which way did the base view did they say hey we'd rather have the really rich people that will be able to secure it or with rather diversify well you got to think about at the time you know nobody was moving money around so if you want to call up let's say you were in JPMorgan and you went to call up Wells Fargo Wells Fargo would say are you a customer and it's they know well moving money over and then we'll tell you about our loan product and so we sort of put it inside to that we knew all the loan products we knew what we can get what's costing like what they didn't like so we use that like a proprietary model to our advantage but from the bank's perspective they were just happy to get into client they didn't really you know it was didn't really care or think about the loan I mean obviously these were asset-based loan so it's not like it was a high-risk loan to the bank so to them it was like well they don't pay we just you know take their securities yeah it was security it was secured so yeah so it from from adventure you know I was always you know int attack and had a couple of side ventures attack nothing I really ever took off you know between that time but from there I started looking at a number of you know different technique vestments and ventures that I wanted to start and we ended up starting the first if you think of like when you go to create a business plan there's like a business plan Pro and they teach you they take you step by step we created that software called business plan who is BP Wiz for the publishing industry and it was funny how the idea happened I was at a conference learning about the books and all he kept saying was your business play your proposal and your business plan and I went up to the guy at the end do you have an idea of a software I can use to write the book proposal when I'm ready no but that's a great idea and of course I couldn't go to sleep that night notes on the computer like this has to exist and they didn't and we ended up creating it so so that was a venture was around for a while we ended up buying something not a huge ethical they carried the site on for quite a bit actually just recently I think shut it down but but they had a quite some time so from there was involved with a couple of other ventures on the tech side one and crowdfunding and then I was on the train in New York this was you know from 2012 and then right around the time when beats headphones were sort of gaining popularity hmm and people were wearing these $300 red headphones and if you're anyone that knows about sound you know you know for the same quality by $120 pair of Sony's and so that would just just boggle my mind and I realize it was mainly because they had the it's not it's not only that it's the the quality but it's hey I've got the cool headphones type of a thing yeah exactly it was all it was a branding play but my idea was let's do that for mobile accessories and we're talking I phone for at the time you know pretty early on and we had some pretty cool a couple of cool products and yeah and it wasn't we didn't want to just pay a celebrity to endorse it we wanted to partner we wanted to co-found or like three brands actual companies and so we went down the line we ended up getting front of Nick Cannon into dog and you know we the closest deal we had was with Nick Cannon prior to what we launched we just didn't give up and eventually we signed a deal with Jonathan chairman who's now best known as through God he's like the Kardashians and Kanye West he's tied in with with that show and with them not to stop there because you dropped it up big babe so how did you you got the idea okay we're gonna get into the mobile you know mobile tech or the mobile accessories Chris can go find people that partner with us you know whether it's a Nick Cannon or whoever it might be big enough names you know or go to FUBU or go to whoever how do you start to even approach them so I'd say most people at least maybe you don't you know you grew up and do all these people but for me I would have no idea even how to go out and start to reach out to them or find them so how did you start to make those connections you know I I wish I had a secret sauce but the reality was I was pitching the idea to investors and I ended up getting an investor who later became my partner and good good friend to this day and without me expressing my you know full idea you repeat it to me I think you're onto something we should get celebrities involved and so again I think it's it's it's it's about having the passion and drive of wanting to do something and then just being able to you know get in front of enough people to help you execute that idea so I you know he and they're having the relationships one of the companies he was partners in worked with celebrities they ended up knowing a number of celebrities and people in the agency business so that's how we got in front of a lot of them and then Daymond John was one of the first celebrities we pitched and you know Damon's also from Queens as I am born and raised we had a little bit of connection there but we pitched in he said well you know I like the idea but I'm gonna pass for now you know let's you know basically come and let me know how it goes hmm but what happened was in the meantime we didn't get that brand started with Jonathan Trevin Jonathan was being managed by one of a man's companies and they saw that we scaled this brand really quickly and we got it on major we got a lot of press on what we were doing and the Kardashians took pictures and everything was just we did a lot in a little bit of time and then Damian was impressed by that and came back to us and said look you proved out what you're capable of so I got some ideas on a brand I want to create so we ended up our name from Daymond John from shark tank and that you know took us on you know four year journey of you know doing some really cool stuff we ended up getting involved in not only with mobile accessories but like virtual reality was really new at the time you had the first virtual reality headset ever sold on television on Home Shopping Network came and went on air and what's funny about that story is we had to convince we first of all we had to explain to them what it was Home Shopping Network it isn't they had never seen or heard of a virtual reality headset there was only one way you put the phone in and you could look around but it was still hard knew at the time was the first time anybody had seen it and they eventually you know got on board with us and put it on air we sold that out really quickly and you know I I always I don't like to only say highlight so I gotta be honest about that story what happened was when you sold out in 15 minutes and our customer service experience following that the sale of those 15,000 units was a nightmare and the reason is those 15 values were sold mainly to older people who didn't realize you needed a smartphone or most of our calls came in is like can I use a flip phone and well I don't have a smartphone I got to return it so you know we home shopping that was a success for them and its terms of selling but we they begged us to come back we went on with other but not like that one so we have the claim to fame of the first virtual reality headset ever sold on television but probably the most returns diverse on a Home Shopping Network as well so it's kind of you got both of them you got the best to the worst that's I mean I wouldn't even thought of that but that's a good point if you know you take it a little bit for granted but especially if you're talking to any bit of an older audience or once it's still that time we're using flip phones or anything it's gonna be well no you have this doesn't come and they'll add that is funny oh you know another thing was they thought it came with the phone they know the phone came with it I'm like for 50 bucks let's go buy that to get a new phone exactly yeah yeah so yeah so you know I so diving into that and I want to get into a little bit more of what you're doing now because it's you know relevant with covin 19 and some of the diagnosing diagnosis than that but jumping into that how did you so you have you know you go on QVC going home shopping netwerk go on you know all make all these sales and you sell to you know what would've been older audiences or at least audiences that didn't understand it came at the owner they needed it and then you have all this sudden a huge customer service problem how did you deal with that problem or how did you correct it or dis you correct it or what was it you know because that would be if I was in all of a sudden I'm saying yeah we got all these sales it's gonna be great and then the next day I turn around and everybody wants to return it or it's getting mad at me it's kind of a highest of the high and then right down to the lowest of the low so how was that well you know we since we were the first there was no market so we were creating a market so we had a really high margin on the product so even with the sales he was still profitable so it wasn't really with the returns I mean it wasn't really that bad in terms of that we did have a higher number of returns but the margins were really high so we were profitable at the end but yeah I mean every business I've been involved in throughout my career you know anyone that will tell you they start something and it goes exactly as planned from the beginning they're just lying I mean it's no that's not real that's not the way it works it's not reality of any business you're always going to take the and have to figure out something new a new way to do something a new way to sell something a new way to you know pivot the entire business the entire model I mean you know to this day one of so I'll bring it into the next business venture from the moguls and the brands of mobile accessories we decided after the market became saturated and you know all mobile accessories ended up becoming commodities meaning hmm you and you'll appreciate this being from the planet Trademark Office iPhone would come out in September you wouldn't know the specs until they announced it in September to this day they still do it this way and then they would ship in October so you had one month there was no way to create any real proprietary IP around any of the phones and this happens every year because iphone and android everybody comes out with a new phone every year so yeah even more IP on it it's like you don't even have time you'd be able to even get it the patent through the Patent Office theory onto the next product and so you're never gonna have a long oh yeah I can tell you we had people pinch us products all the time with patents but they would pitch us a knife or phone patent when iPhone 6 was out so thanks you know it yeah yeah there's a market it doesn't line up does not make sense to go for patent some of them and I'll be an evangelist and I'm biased makes great sense but you're right absolutely right I almost look at that as kind of like the Snuggie like Snuggie was an awesome one it took out and they made a lot of money off of it and yet it was kind of a flash in the pan you and out for a couple years everybody bought him and then Snuggie went away so where the patents really valuable and that no not really be friend was friend was a great one but if your patent wouldn't him would not have made sense I'm sure that's a lot the same with the iPhone experience essary market yeah exactly so we had a tough decision we were either going to raise a lot of money to compete with the public companies who were dominating the space with the commoditized business or we were gonna you know just just shut the brand so we had a great run we did a lot of amazing things and decidedly move on so from the experience with VR was I was really getting into virtual reality and looking at it as like you know of futuristic any time I showed someone just a VR headset they were blown away and so I was looking around what could be creating around the next venture our next idea was how do you control a video in a VR headset so you set out to do that and what ended up happening was we figured out a technology not only for VR but for mobile phones as well any touchscreen devices over the last four years neo 360 is a company that I've been building and we and just to go back to my point of hitting a wall and trying new things we initially thought this touchscreen control technology which allows you to control video just by swiping and touching the screen we were going to integrate with apps and all the apps we're gonna love us and we were on development plans for HBO Showtime all these big networks that never came to fruition for one reason or another and we ended up having to pivot 18 months later to go to broadcast where we finally hit a you know a stride where we like you know a license and a couple of leads and teams along the way but you know you just never know now with 5g coming out the mobile product actually is more viable because you could do longer live video and longer form video with using our technology so if we would have called it quits after the first run you wouldn't have saw the second one and then the second model we're building it's kind of a slow model cuz it's broadcast and it's not like there's millions of broadcasters you know there's thousands so it's a slow business but we we hung on there and now 5g comes along and now we could go back and have a much bigger way so you know one of the things that I did well there we did well was we didn't raise too much money too early and the reason is we did we would have had to be forced to scale to grow and imagine growing and scaling and then miss what just happened with Cogan 19 in the sports industry I mean we probably would have had default but because we we don't have that pressure we're you know we're able to ride the storm and you know get through this so just a couple of quick lessons you know along the way but we so 360 but I'm gonna hit out and I think that's a good point in because often times you're always too often and sometimes it makes sense but a lot of starts saying hey I'm gonna take in as much money or get as big investment dollars as I can without ever ever thinking through what are the kind of the handcuffs that come along with that and there are few and you hit on one another one that I see all the time is hey if we go in and get a huge evaluation lots of money it's hard to do another round of that so you have to keep growing the business bigger and bigger and bigger each time now if I go in and I get my evaluation my company's worth 100 million well I don't want to have a down round where you now take a lower valuation because investors don't like that they want to see their company be more valuable so now you have to make it worth 2 million or 200 million and 500 million and then a billion and if you're not ready to scale or you don't have the plan of scale or you're still working things out you can have a whole bunch of money and Yetta can be harmful to the company because you took so many so much money and earlier absolutely and and and by the way we could have taken money early more and we decided not to it was you know in hindsight a good decision especially that we didn't have product market fit and you know it was it was still some time till we did so yeah so neon 3:16 you know your audience can go to 360 neo calm and check out what we're doing there and then sometime last year you know I started thinking you know I wanted to be involved in in something a little more a little more you know meeting behind it and so I was looking at a couple of different opportunities was it looking to create a new company myself since I'm you know still active with neo 360 but I did have some time that were sort of licensing the model now and you know gave me a little bit of time to work on it so I worked on something else put some time in something else so a friend of mine had created a company out of Stanford University they were doing breath Diagnostics for cancer and I went and visited them last year in San Francisco and loved what they were doing and so we started talking this was you know late last year they you know wanted me to come on board as a strategy advisor so I took on that role and from the point that that happened to now the whole world turned upside down is everybody listening knows so the team has been working for last two years on his breath based Diagnostics they identify biomarkers and breath that could determine different cancers and they also further a future starting to be done with neurological diseases and also infectious diseases so when this happened one of the co-founders is one of the major hospitalists at Stanford he was on the front lines of this phone call with nineteen and one of the major problems he recognized was that patients would come in and just based on oxygen levels and x-rays it was still hard to determine how far or how much lung damage the patient had and therefore they didn't know whether they keep them or let them go and there's a lot of mistakes for me not necessarily by our team but around the world because doctors just didn't have that that right you know enough information to know how severe like for example if you have a 23 year old who seems like they're very sick and you have a 73 year old who seems like they're okay but they seem oxygen levels and this thing limb strains that the same what do you do right 23 year-old who I have one I have one you know breathing machine left who I put on so these decisions were were you know these tough decisions were made you know day in and day out at this hospital so the team went back and remembered some some of the research they were doing and there was a amino acid biomarker that that they they looked into and they quickly realized that this biomarker in breath could help determine how much cell damage the lungs have had so just just show you an audience understand what happens with codeine 19 is your it attacks the lungs and the cells die and if your immune system is not strong and your your stem cell system you know not reproducing then the cells die and it gets filled with collagen so collagen think of it as like cement so now you're gonna be holding your lungs and you've got little cemented pieces the more cement is in your lungs the less you can grieve and eventually you get among and you die so it's a it's a major major breakthrough to be able to figure out which one of those cells you know how much damage your insta mom's therefore you know who he keep who to let go and how long to keep them right because that's another problem the hospital keeps somebody on a breathing machine for ten days when they only needed to be there for five but they didn't know they're just basing it on just oxygen so oxygen levels so so they had this major breakthrough and so we've been all in on helping the company get this out there and get these studies fast-tracked and get this product in the market in your hands of the physicians as soon as possible so we just launched a crowdfunding equity crowdfunding campaign on fundable comm the company is called diagnosed early so you can just google fundable and you'll learn in one of the columns that's new and noteworthy but you can also just google diagnosed early we're gonna have that on the website as well diagnosed early calm and any credit anybody can see the information if you're an accredited investor you can actually request it give all the investment box and the further investment information and where we're giving the opportunity for you know outside investors to come in and take part in this groundbreaking technology that are being produced so we can get this to market as soon as possible all right and I definitely will share that with our audience under the angel investors or venture capital or others that are looking to partner up certainly a a needed field as well as something that sounds pretty exciting and promising so that's awesome so we are we're hitting up towards the end of the episode and I every ember so and I say the same thing of basically every episode so I guess I could just stop saying I always there's always so many more things and I want it that we want I want to talk about and dive into in details that we never get one or two questions one before I always have my last two questions but I'll ask you one more question before my last two questions and so we have everything almost by definition of a serial launcher I you went from eBay drops to franchising to bundling loans to helping book proposals to you know mobile phone and they're in doing that all that industry to mobile phone accessories you're doing you know touch screen and all of that now with the NFL and now you're in the co vid so it seems like you know one is you're all over which is the bad thing you sound very successful but you're kind of weaving in and out of all these different industries and that so how do you how do you pick your decide one where are your next ventures or whatever you know what you're gonna do and where are you gonna put your passion and time and effort on yeah it's a great question so yeah I like to answer that question first by saying you know Kay it does seem like like it's all over with yeah I just want everyone to understand these ventures were all super focused right like two to three years sometimes more where that's all I'm focused on so it all though the industries are multiple different industries I get a you know satisfaction on going into going into an industry that I don't have any preconceived idea about or maybe learn anything prior to what I want to learn or how I want to dive in and what I do is I like to take things that I've learned from one industry and bring them to another right so I've done this multiple times we didn't talk about some patents that I own but I you're not taking the idea and put that into a voice technology patent and I'm part of and I've done you know I've taken the concepts that I've learned and built and I brought them into different industries so for example with medical and what I did now I have the crowdfunding background the team I'm I've joined the strategy they had no idea about crowdfunding they had no idea what it was they didn't see it as an opportunity then I came in and realized that not only is an opportunity but we in this time of quarantine when you can't get out and meet the best here it's the way you could it's actually one of the best ways to do it right because you can get in front of it you know many people as possible without having to go face-to-face and and you know you could you could still navigate the capital raising so I it's just my personality is I like to dive into something new and fresh and learn as if I'm a new you know learning from from the ground up and then to end my you know sort of knowledge and twist what I'm doing and try to bring something innovative to whatever it is I'm working on no that's that's a good good point and so take the skillsets and knowledge and that you have and applying it to new and interesting something it an industry that you find here a project you're fine to be exciting you're fun or new and then imply that as there's a great way to choose or choose where the next path takes you so exactly yeah now we're hitting to the end of the podcast I am gonna ask for last twice two questions I always ask that the end of the podcast so one is what is the worst business is the Earth's our business decision you've made so yeah I made a lot of bad business decisions I think the worst one is is taking on the wrong partners for the wrong reason you know sometimes I think before you take on a partner you really need to get to know them know their skill set and know what they're willing to put in because a lot of time you and if you don't do that you end up putting in a different level of work effort skill you give up more you know then then Aparna so it's always good to make sure that it's really clear from the beginning and you know I've been lucky and did that successfully a few times but a few times I didn't so you know it's hard to have a team when it's when it's not all in by everyone right so I would say that's that's definitely you know has to be up there with the decisions okay so that's the one question worst decision is bringing on bad partners and I always flip the question say now if you're getting someone that was a serial entrepreneur wants to be a serial entrepreneur and hasn't quite broken into the industry anything yet what would be the one piece of advice that you give someone that was wanting to start to start on their entrepreneur journey or either jump into a new startup stop making excuses so we live in a time now where you know let me just give you the you know juxtapose these two times if you wanted to start a business in 1980 right and you went ahead you know 40 years ago and you said I want to start a business do you know how much harder it would have been to start a business in 1980 how little marketing you have maybe the yellow pages if you were lucky you know some local newspapers to get in to meet the right people to get educated to I mean it was so challenging this time in history is better than any other time in history to want to be an entrepreneur you can you can have you can learn about any industry you want to learn about you I mean even if you talk about schooling you know people say well I don't have the right schooling I mean you don't need schooling you could go online and get download courses from MIT for free you could do the same thing with other public universities and and other than that you could just research and study any business you really want to study and it's not you know you could start websites really cheaply wix.com $15 a month will give you a really professional website template you can plug it in with information you could find products or you come up with a product of social media channels that you can reach out to family and friends to buy your products I mean the list goes on so my advice is don't stop making excuses take the first step take one step at a time right we have if you look at how much time we spend on our mobile devices just going on Instagram and this and that in like wasting time everybody can go on there and figure out how much time you're actually wasting I don't know how many people really do it but if you want you can do that take 20 minutes a day save 20 minutes of that time a day right and news that 20 minutes towards your goal of starting a business doing 20 minutes of research a day that'll get you in a month you'll have more information and more you know ways to get started than than ever so there's no excuse I think just stop making excuses and just get started just do it I like that I think that that's probably what keeps people a lot of times that otherwise I don't have the education I don't have the money I don't have the experience on the background don't have the connections whatever your Excuse is just start doing it even if it's you don't know what you're doing figure it out along the way but get started I think it's great advice well thank you for coming on I it's been a really fun discussion it hit on a whole bunch of different topics always wish I had more time but that will wrap it up for today for this episode so thank you again for coming on for those of you that are meeting or want to hear journey started happy to help any way I can I do bands and trademarks with Miller IP law if you want to reach out to us there we're happy to help there if we can connect you up with anybody we're here to help and connect and any way we can we're really just here for the for the startups and small businesses that are wanting it going thank you again David blasting and we want to get you mentioned at the beginning I'll give you your time and then we'll wrap it up people want to get it or contact with you they want to reach out to one of your projects or they want to support your your company with doing the Copa diagnosed so that what's the best way to reach out to you so David Morris that's vor is H at David Morris on Facebook Twitter Linkedin I have a my website is Davie Porsche com so it's really easy to reach out to me I'm always willing to help with questions if anyone has any questions or advice they need diagnosed early comm is our website and we're on fundable as i mentioned earlier and on baby board shock comm you'll find all links to the other ventures and everything mentioned awesome well we will certainly make sure to direct everybody there and hope everybody comes out and support you with all the different things you're doing thank you again for coming on it was great to hear your journey and it was a pleasure to have you on thanks Ted appreciate it English (auto-generated) All Sales Recently uploaded