Speaker 1: I went down and found them at the office and
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, I know what you're about, your
Speaker 1: full shit like and he's like no, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: like that, I don't want to hear any of that.
Speaker 1: Maybe gave him like two or two thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: was like, you're running that back right now.
Speaker 2: Like right now.
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't have any cash. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go to ATM. So we walked.
Speaker 2: I walked him to the ATM.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
Speaker 3: most influential brands and the teams that built them. If
Speaker 3: you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
Speaker 3: power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
Speaker 3: as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture, because
Speaker 3: the only way to truly understand success is to look
Speaker 3: at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
Speaker 3: a Will Packer Media podcast. In twenty fifteen, song Laurn
Speaker 3: and Dave Salvian found at Squire Technologies, a software company
Speaker 3: for barbershops. In the years that followed, Squire would grow
Speaker 3: from a simple booking app to a full service barbershop
Speaker 3: back end software with evaluation of a whopping seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty million dollars. But along the way, Squire would
Speaker 3: go through several literations, raise money from a variety of
Speaker 3: unlikely sources, fall victim to scam, and even be forced
Speaker 3: to buy a barbershop in order to save their only client.
Speaker 3: On this week's episode of All Angles, we talked to
Speaker 3: founders Song and Dave, headed product development Armridium, and head
Speaker 3: of Engineering Troy Payne to hear the unique story of
Speaker 3: how they came together to form Squire and how together
Speaker 3: they've revolutionized the barbershop industry. But before any of that happened,
Speaker 3: years before they were to enter the y Combinator, was
Speaker 3: secure sixty million dollars in funding. Song Laurn was just
Speaker 3: a kid running around the streets of New York City.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a relatively unconventional type of household.
Speaker 1: Both of my parents were were artists, very artistic. They
Speaker 1: actually separated when I was about two, so I don't
Speaker 1: have any memory of them being together. Both of them
Speaker 1: were very much in my life as a child. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Manhattan in New York in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I was a real New York City kid, we
Speaker 1: moved around a lot. I lived in like so many
Speaker 1: different neighborhoods in the city, from Harlem to downtown near
Speaker 1: like fourteenth and six. My mom actually had a workout
Speaker 1: studio there, so she was artistic, but also she used
Speaker 1: to work as a personal trainer, and she was I
Speaker 1: would say maybe the first or one of the first
Speaker 1: black owned exercise studios downtown that she ran.
Speaker 2: When I look back at it now, I.
Speaker 1: Think that may have influenced me as an entrepreneur. Seeing
Speaker 1: that experience her create her own business and run it early.
Speaker 2: On, I'm sure had an impact on me. In the
Speaker 2: middle of eighth grade, my mom wanted to move to
Speaker 2: La so packed up and moved in the second semester
Speaker 2: of the eighth grade.
Speaker 1: That was a big change. It was a big culture shift.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the height of the East Coast
Speaker 1: West coast kind of dynamic. So it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: But I ended up really having a great experience in
Speaker 1: La as well.
Speaker 2: I knew I.
Speaker 1: Really really wanted to be successful and whatever that meant.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be port I wanted to be
Speaker 1: financially well off. I didn't know specifically what that required
Speaker 1: was that entailed I gravitated more towards humanities, writing, reading,
Speaker 1: you know, debate.
Speaker 2: Those types of classes to me made sense. The law
Speaker 2: was a good option.
Speaker 3: While in school, Song had a career in law and
Speaker 3: IVY League on the brain. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, another
Speaker 3: Squire partner was also walking the halls of Los Angeles's
Speaker 3: Westchester High.
Speaker 4: Song and I actually went to high school together.
Speaker 3: This is Troy Payne, head of engineering at Squire.
Speaker 5: So back in LA his locker was next to my locker,
Speaker 5: the year younger than me, but I knew him from
Speaker 5: Jaron Hallways Sharon Lockers. I remember he was a class
Speaker 5: president and I remember him doing like what class president do,
Speaker 5: some sort of a speech.
Speaker 4: At the time in high school, I was pushing burn.
Speaker 5: CDs, so out a CD burner when nobody else had it,
Speaker 5: and I would buy blank CDs and ripped albums that
Speaker 5: weren't out yet, like Lil Wayne's four hundred Degree. This
Speaker 5: made me a lot of money because I had it
Speaker 5: before anyone else had it.
Speaker 2: I could charge double.
Speaker 4: So I was selling CDs.
Speaker 5: I was helping people chip their PlayStations so that they
Speaker 5: can burn the games that I was also selling.
Speaker 3: While Song pursued political science, Troy was into the science
Speaker 3: of technology, from illegal downloads and burning CDs to coding
Speaker 3: and developing apps. Troy fell in love with computing.
Speaker 5: My first computer was given to me by my father
Speaker 5: when I was eight. Used to play video games for
Speaker 5: the most part, not a type really, I just knew
Speaker 5: how to use a joystick. One day we installed AOL
Speaker 5: because back then it used to just pretty much deliver
Speaker 5: them everywhere in the mail free. We signed up my
Speaker 5: brother and I and we were on it. We were
Speaker 5: participants in a chat space called Black Voices. We're at
Speaker 5: this at this point, I'm about eleven or twelve, and
Speaker 5: I'm in a BV team chat talking about things that
Speaker 5: twelve year olds talk about. And there are other people
Speaker 5: that are that age as well from other parts of
Speaker 5: the world Black as well. There were people from Oakland
Speaker 5: and people from down South, and it was interesting to
Speaker 5: be able to connect to these kids that were my
Speaker 5: age and had similar interest within computers.
Speaker 3: Troy's fascination with the World Wide Web continued to grow.
Speaker 3: It was a blank canvas and he was obsessed. Song
Speaker 3: knew of Troy and was vaguely aware of his interests,
Speaker 3: but at the time, they were just locker neighbors passing
Speaker 3: like ships in the night.
Speaker 1: It was a year headitor, but we kind of knew
Speaker 1: each other, knew each other were running in the same classes.
Speaker 1: We weren't, like, you know, in the same crew. But
Speaker 1: I always thought it was cool. He was quiet, you know,
Speaker 1: quiet guy. I had no idea that he was a
Speaker 1: codeer or a hacker, or was getting into trouble on
Speaker 1: the rush from the law or whatever was going on.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Troy was never actually on the run from the law,
Speaker 3: but by the time he reached high school, his computer
Speaker 3: skills had evolved substantially, and he did find himself immersed
Speaker 3: in the culture of hacking, which maybe led him into
Speaker 3: some gray areas as far as internet legality goes.
Speaker 5: I started playing around with creating my own stuff using
Speaker 5: something called Visual Basic three point zero. It was a
Speaker 5: great tool because it was simple enough for you to
Speaker 5: self learn. It was powerful enough for you to do
Speaker 5: all the things that your imagination wanted you to do.
Speaker 5: The software was new, it was full of exploits, and
Speaker 5: everyone was pretty much exploiting all of the exploits. From
Speaker 5: a happening perspective, From a software perspective, That's what really
Speaker 5: sort of got me interested in software engineering and development
Speaker 5: in general, is because I was just trying to look
Speaker 5: for the next edge for me to do what I
Speaker 5: was doing as a kid, you know, things that kids do.
Speaker 5: Instead of doing it on the streets, I was doing
Speaker 5: it on the internet. So my skills developed really developing
Speaker 5: products that I made a piece of software called trigger.
Speaker 4: Happy, and it had a viral effect.
Speaker 5: Back then, AOL had email, and so you could make something.
Speaker 5: You can brand it, you can package it, and you
Speaker 5: can distribute it, and it could go viral because people
Speaker 5: started to share it. Every time you launch it, it
Speaker 5: would advertise in the chat room, you know, trigger.
Speaker 4: Happy has been activated or something like that. People would
Speaker 4: see that and say, oh, you know, you know, it's.
Speaker 5: Sort of like a fear fact that people would know
Speaker 5: that you're about to do something malicious to and back
Speaker 5: then it was like either terminating your account or kicking
Speaker 5: you off the internet. I remember I was in a
Speaker 5: chat room and someone used trigger happy and I had
Speaker 5: no idea who they were, and that was like that
Speaker 5: was it right there. That's when I fell in love
Speaker 5: and I'm like, wow, I can make something like this
Speaker 5: that's distributed that people that I.
Speaker 4: Don't know can get a hold of and use and
Speaker 4: they love it.
Speaker 5: And ever since then, my focus has really been on
Speaker 5: sort of chasing that feeling.
Speaker 3: Troy was down the rabbit hole, and we'd spend the
Speaker 3: next several years coding, creating games, apps and websites. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Songs still had his eyes fixed on law school.
Speaker 1: I had in my mind at that point that I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to law school and if not be
Speaker 1: a practicing lawyer wherever, at least get a law degreeks.
Speaker 2: I thought that would open a lot of doors.
Speaker 1: If you grew up in la like everybody's one step
Speaker 1: removed from entertainment. I didn't talk about my dad, but
Speaker 1: he was mostly an actor growing up on Broadway and
Speaker 1: did a lot of plays in theater, so I was
Speaker 1: somewhat familiar with that world. So I thought, you know, entertainment,
Speaker 1: law could be a good option.
Speaker 3: Song went to UCLA for undergrad and then to Yale
Speaker 3: for law school. He got the Ivy League experience that
Speaker 3: he had dreamed of and also got his first taste
Speaker 3: of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1: Junior year of college, one of my best friends and
Speaker 1: I we used to do tutoring on the side.
Speaker 2: We started seeing that there's a lot of demand for it.
Speaker 1: So we ended up starting a tutoring company and hiring
Speaker 1: other college students and matching them with the families that
Speaker 1: we knew were in need of tutors, and then like
Speaker 1: charging a percentage as well as tutoring ourselves.
Speaker 2: So that was my first taste of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3: Upon graduation, Song moved to New York City to pursue
Speaker 3: his career in law.
Speaker 1: So I was doing with M and A like Murders
Speaker 1: and Acquisitions law, where I would work on these big deals,
Speaker 1: multi hundred million billion dollar deals. All the lawyers would
Speaker 1: celebrate when the deals were closed. But like, I saw
Speaker 1: who was really getting patient these deals. It wasn't the lawyers.
Speaker 1: And I felt like the guy's on the business selling
Speaker 1: weren't any smarter than us, weren't working harder, and they were.
Speaker 2: Making millions and tens and hundreds and millions of dollars
Speaker 2: on these.
Speaker 1: Transactions, and you know, we had our salaries and our bonuses.
Speaker 1: I was like, why am I on the side of it?
Speaker 1: So I knew I want to do something be on
Speaker 1: the business side. I just didn't know what to move.
Speaker 3: Was at the same time. Dave Salvin, co founder and
Speaker 3: president of Squire, was also in New York City working
Speaker 3: in finance.
Speaker 6: Grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Mom was a single mom.
Speaker 6: I worked a couple of jobs so you know, get
Speaker 6: us through. Went to college in New York at the
Speaker 6: University of Already.
Speaker 7: Entrepreneurship was something you think about, but you don't know.
Speaker 2: Exactly what it is. It wasn't a goal.
Speaker 7: I think growing up was like, Hey, how do I
Speaker 7: make money?
Speaker 6: And the folks that I saw make the money were
Speaker 6: lawyers and doctors. After I finished college, I started working
Speaker 6: at a market Firman in Rocket County, part of the
Speaker 6: Info group. I started hanging out in New York City.
Speaker 6: It was like a wait nine, and I saw this
Speaker 6: level of wealth that I didn't see before, like young
Speaker 6: guys with a decent amount of capital, and they looked
Speaker 6: like me. These guys worked on Wall Street in finance,
Speaker 6: and I was like, Hey, this is where we can
Speaker 6: make them some money. And then I decided to be
Speaker 6: in finance. Actually moved to the Bronx and I started
Speaker 6: applying for jobs in New York City and I was
Speaker 6: lucky to get a job at Dakeon Morgan and the
Speaker 6: job was personal banker or type of thing, but it
Speaker 6: was at one of the more affluent bad branches in
Speaker 6: New York.
Speaker 3: With Dave working in finance and Song in the adjacent
Speaker 3: field of corporate law, it was only a matter of
Speaker 3: time before the two cross paths at a downtown happy hour.
Speaker 1: Dave was also young black professionals and finance. We would
Speaker 1: go out a lot with a party a lot and
Speaker 1: then at some point I think we both were feeling
Speaker 1: versed in there, like this is just like a rat race,
Speaker 1: doing the same thing over and over again, and we're
Speaker 1: working at these corporations that we're like, don't care about this.
Speaker 1: Guy's more life than this. And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling the same way. So we would start brainstorming ideas.
Speaker 6: We spent so much time and effort basically going out
Speaker 6: and having fun, why don't we channel that some of
Speaker 6: the effort, even a small part of it, into trying
Speaker 6: to start a business.
Speaker 1: We were like, what can we do this better than this,
Speaker 1: that can be more impactful. They could create a legacy,
Speaker 1: and that was the process.
Speaker 6: We actually went to Columbia on Saturday. Columbia had a
Speaker 6: public library. Well, we don't know it's public or not,
Speaker 6: but it was public for us. And we went into
Speaker 6: the library and we got into one of the classrooms
Speaker 6: and we used to just sit there for hours on
Speaker 6: end and think about ideas we can create this song,
Speaker 6: and we would actually go through the motions. And the
Speaker 6: third or fourth session of that idea of square came about.
Speaker 3: Song and Dave were determined to come up with a
Speaker 3: business of their own. After settling on barbershops as an
Speaker 3: area of opportunity, the two went to work figuring out
Speaker 3: exactly how they would break into the market.
Speaker 1: We stumbled on this idea of barbershops. It was really
Speaker 1: born out of both of our experience.
Speaker 2: Havn't gone to barbershops, you know, since we were kids.
Speaker 2: You love it, you feel.
Speaker 1: Great, you get a fresh lineup, whatever, But like the
Speaker 1: process was just so antiquated. Sometimes they waited an hour
Speaker 1: or two hours, sometimes not. It was very painful cash
Speaker 1: space businesses at that time, and it didn't make sense that,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: This is like twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: There's already Huber out there, there's already YELP, there's already
Speaker 1: all these.
Speaker 2: Software that are improving our lives.
Speaker 1: When it came to getting a haircrat there was no
Speaker 1: innovation enough technology. That was an interesting idea and we
Speaker 1: both were like, wow, that's true, Like I've had that experience.
Speaker 1: You've had that experience, Like this is something that I
Speaker 1: think would resonate with a lot of people.
Speaker 6: And thisial idea was finding a way for customers to
Speaker 6: book pay. Here go into a barbershop and you pay,
Speaker 6: you walk out.
Speaker 7: See what experience.
Speaker 6: The ideation of this was solving for what we thought
Speaker 6: could work for ourselves.
Speaker 7: And then the real opportunity came was like.
Speaker 6: When we started applying it and seeing the feedback and
Speaker 6: seeing how users engaged with the platform.
Speaker 1: We started trying to learn as much as possible about
Speaker 1: our customers. So had the idea then started trying to
Speaker 1: seek we could validate it. We go walk in the
Speaker 1: barbershops and just like try to talk to the barbers,
Speaker 1: talk to the owners, talk to the guys sitting in
Speaker 1: the chairs waiting to get a haircut, and just see
Speaker 1: what were their paying points, what do they want to
Speaker 1: improve on, like what.
Speaker 2: Could we solve for them? And then we started getting.
Speaker 1: A picture that painted it was pretty clear that there
Speaker 1: was a lot of frustration on both sides. On the
Speaker 1: client side as well as the barber side, and we
Speaker 1: started trying to figure out how could we solve those frustrations.
Speaker 1: The hard part was building the product because neither one
Speaker 1: of us were our developers a coder as a technical
Speaker 1: so we looked at our network and thought of who
Speaker 1: could refine to help us build this and that was
Speaker 1: a struggle that took almost a year of just back
Speaker 1: and forth and failing until we eventually were able.
Speaker 2: To find somebody that could actually build the first version
Speaker 2: of the product.
Speaker 3: The vision for Squire was coming into focus, but they
Speaker 3: needed someone to help them bring it to life. The
Speaker 3: two had no experience in technology, and that learning curve
Speaker 3: was leading to some costly mistakes that would threaten to
Speaker 3: end the business completely.
Speaker 7: It was a shit show.
Speaker 2: We were hustling and we works.
Speaker 6: We met a guy that worked for us startup, but
Speaker 6: he ended up being a total fraudster.
Speaker 1: Neither Dig or I are technical, so we immediately started
Speaker 1: trying to think about how we could find somebody to build.
Speaker 7: It for us.
Speaker 2: We wanted to recruit someone and sell them on.
Speaker 1: The dream and get them to be part require and
Speaker 1: be like our CTO. Essentially, we would go to meet
Speaker 1: up a man's startup events try to meet people.
Speaker 2: We met this guy that like seemed really interested in
Speaker 2: what we're building. He was an older dude, older.
Speaker 1: White guy, and I think he actually was at CTO
Speaker 1: at a company that was working out every work pretty
Speaker 1: at that time, established company that had raised a lot
Speaker 1: of recent money.
Speaker 2: And he was like, you know, I really.
Speaker 1: Love what you guys are doing. I want to help
Speaker 1: you guys. I've got my full time day. But on
Speaker 1: the side, I think I can build this app. It'll
Speaker 1: be pretty easy and I'll work with you on it.
Speaker 2: And he was like, and I.
Speaker 1: Might even want to invest, So of course, you know,
Speaker 1: that was our He is fast forward. This is probably
Speaker 1: like weeks now. We're working with him. He keeps saying
Speaker 1: he's building the app. We're talking about our ideas and
Speaker 1: our vision and what product we want. But funny enough,
Speaker 1: he would never actually show us if he was working
Speaker 1: on He was just really good at kind of bullshit it.
Speaker 7: Stuff wasn't added up, you know.
Speaker 6: He would say he would invest, so say you'll get
Speaker 6: an office space that we were. He also said he
Speaker 6: would use the connections to build and he was working
Speaker 6: on it, and then nothing was happening after the sixty
Speaker 6: to ninety days of this stuff. We gave him twenty
Speaker 6: five hundred of our money to work on this, and
Speaker 6: then he didn't produce.
Speaker 1: Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into you know, maybe
Speaker 1: months of him just giving us the run around. Obviously,
Speaker 1: at a certain point start getting more suspicious, like what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: By this time, we really started like.
Speaker 1: Looking into everything, and it became clear that he was
Speaker 1: this total fraud. We actually did some research and found
Speaker 1: other articles that had been written about this dude. His
Speaker 1: picture of a different name, he had present, pretended to
Speaker 1: be a.
Speaker 2: Doctor, he pretended to do all kind of shit, but
Speaker 2: his job was real. The job at this tech company
Speaker 2: was real. They were getting defrauded too.
Speaker 1: He was boosting him and actually had a CEO RO
Speaker 1: at a real tech company and they didn't know it.
Speaker 2: So at this point I'm pissed. Once I find out,
Speaker 2: I actually wanted to see all that company was like, Yo,
Speaker 2: you're dealing with a fraud.
Speaker 6: We actually got him fired from his job and he
Speaker 6: actually got busted for this.
Speaker 1: I went down and found him at the office and
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, I know what you're about. You
Speaker 1: your full of shit, like and he's like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm like that, I don't want to hear any of that.
Speaker 1: We maybe gave him like two or two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I was like, you're running that back right now, Like
Speaker 1: right now. He's like, I don't have any cash. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go to ATM. So we walked. I walked him
Speaker 1: to the ATM, took out the money and gave it
Speaker 1: to me right there, and I took him from.
Speaker 2: Him, took his mind. I was like, yeah, like I
Speaker 2: never want to see you again. I never saw him
Speaker 2: again after that.
Speaker 7: We got out twenty five hundred dollars back and he
Speaker 7: went on away.
Speaker 3: After their encounter with a grifter, Dave and Song looked
Speaker 3: to their own network to find the next key hire
Speaker 3: for Squire. They reached out to a ram Irridim, who
Speaker 3: Dave knew from business school. Has a rom learned more
Speaker 3: about Squire, it became a parent that he might be
Speaker 3: the peace that could help build Squire into the global
Speaker 3: business that they all imagined.
Speaker 8: Most immigrant families, you are either going to be a doctor,
Speaker 8: an engineer, or a lawyer. At least that's what your
Speaker 8: parents want for you. So I studied computer science.
Speaker 9: Believe it or not.
Speaker 8: In undergrad I was good at it from an academic perspective,
Speaker 8: but I just didn't see myself as being someone who's
Speaker 8: going to, you know, write code twenty four to seven.
Speaker 8: I just figured I wouldn't be able to compete with
Speaker 8: those guys that were really really into coding and then
Speaker 8: writing games and creating games.
Speaker 9: I decided to go to law school.
Speaker 8: I graduated from law school, and I practiced law for
Speaker 8: about five or six years. During that time, I was
Speaker 8: living in New York and Harlem, and that's when I
Speaker 8: met Dave and Song. Song is also an ex attorney.
Speaker 8: We were working at similar firms and had mutual friends
Speaker 8: and just coming of age, if you will, in New
Speaker 8: York City. Together they started the company. I didn't even
Speaker 8: know that they did. About a year in is when
Speaker 8: I decided to leave law, and I was really just
Speaker 8: looking to stay busy.
Speaker 9: I knew I wanted to do something else.
Speaker 2: Aramas real lawyer, and we had a lot of common friends.
Speaker 2: You know, a Raamas real character.
Speaker 1: He's from Russia originally, but grew up in Brooklyn. You know,
Speaker 1: all the friends are black. So we had like a
Speaker 1: lot of similar a lot of similar friends come you know,
Speaker 1: growing up this around the same time professionally being attorneys,
Speaker 1: and we just all hang out a lot in the
Speaker 1: same same circles.
Speaker 2: And then he was leaving his firm and there was
Speaker 2: an opportunity. You know, he was a super smart guy,
Speaker 2: the slight cap.
Speaker 9: I didn't know what it was going to be.
Speaker 8: I spoke to Dave and he said, hey, listen, you
Speaker 8: know we're working on this project working out of Rework.
Speaker 8: Why don't you just start coming in. There was office space.
Speaker 8: It will be easier for you to figure things out.
Speaker 8: This way, you'll get to hang out around other people
Speaker 8: doing cool stuff. And at that time we were at
Speaker 8: the headquarters of we Work believe it was seventeenth Street
Speaker 8: in Manhattan. We Work at that time had had this
Speaker 8: program called we Work Labs. This was sort of the
Speaker 8: first class, if you will, and it was just a
Speaker 8: bunch of desks in a room I think ten or
Speaker 8: twenty starups working on whatever it is that we're working with.
Speaker 8: So it literally just started by me coming to the
Speaker 8: office and my personality is I just can't see sit
Speaker 8: still and whatever. I'm hearing a discussion about a problem
Speaker 8: or a debate about what, you know, what should happen.
Speaker 8: I can't help but get involved colon nosey, if you will,
Speaker 8: And so I think that's how I got involved with Squire.
Speaker 8: Little by little daves and songs. Problems and concerns became
Speaker 8: sort of my problems and concerns. Shortly thereafter, you know,
Speaker 8: we made the mutual decision that I should join Squire.
Speaker 3: Arom joined the team is the head of product, helping
Speaker 3: craft Squires ux and optimize this consumer experience. As they
Speaker 3: were rounding out the team, the guys would have a
Speaker 3: chance encounter at we work labs that would change the
Speaker 3: trajectory of Squire forever.
Speaker 7: I was working late one day and I.
Speaker 6: Saw some guys at the headquarters, you know, I was like, Hey,
Speaker 6: these guys looking for it. You know, I might as
Speaker 6: well tell them what we're doing. And you know, come
Speaker 6: to find out, one guy founded we were labs.
Speaker 7: Another guy was a.
Speaker 6: Cheap accountant off for sure, and we were able to
Speaker 6: parlay that meeting into an investment. So we actually end
Speaker 6: of June got about three hundred thousand dollars and investment.
Speaker 3: Initially, Squire was built to be uber for barbers, and
Speaker 3: the product worked well, but getting the buying from the
Speaker 3: guys actually cutting hair was more difficult than they anticipated.
Speaker 3: Why would barbershops digitize a cash based business model that's
Speaker 3: worked just fine for the industry for literally hundreds of years.
Speaker 3: So the Squire team took it back to the lab
Speaker 3: and focused on listening to the real needs of barbers
Speaker 3: and implementing them into the app.
Speaker 9: I like simple businesses.
Speaker 8: Simple businesses make sense to me because I could literally
Speaker 8: figure out exactly what everyone's intent is, and that makes
Speaker 8: it easy to digest, right because one of us for
Speaker 8: barbershop owners, you know, none of us have barbers So
Speaker 8: from one perspective, it's like, well, what do you guys
Speaker 8: know about building.
Speaker 9: Software for barbershops?
Speaker 8: But it's a business that is natural to understand how
Speaker 8: it works. We all set in barber chairs before we
Speaker 8: all spoke to our barbers. We understand how they get paid,
Speaker 8: We understand what lives they live, we understand the culture
Speaker 8: behind barbering, and I think those aspects made the company
Speaker 8: itself exciting to me. Being with David Song, we were
Speaker 8: all pursuing our careers in banking and legal space at
Speaker 8: the same time, and just to see how much they
Speaker 8: believed in this project and what they were willing to
Speaker 8: risk to execute on. It was truly inspiring and that's
Speaker 8: exactly what I needed to be around at that time.
Speaker 2: First product we built was a mobile app.
Speaker 1: The way it was referred to by some people as
Speaker 1: like Uber for barbers. You're a consumer and you're down
Speaker 1: on the app and find a barber, book, pay to
Speaker 1: everything seamlessly and now on the business and for the
Speaker 1: individual barber to manage his or her schedule and payment
Speaker 1: and whatnot. So that was the first product we had
Speaker 1: just through you know, sheer Hustle. We were able to
Speaker 1: do some barbers to try it out in New York,
Speaker 1: but we we learned pretty early on that like that
Speaker 1: product was not a great product for the market. The
Speaker 1: feedback that we were getting was like, this is cool.
Speaker 1: I'll use it if you guys send me customers, they
Speaker 1: can book on Squire and I'll cut them cool. But
Speaker 1: they weren't using it for all their current customers and
Speaker 1: that was the missing piece, Like we couldn't get them
Speaker 1: to say Squire is going to be my system of record,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a Squire to manage my business.
Speaker 2: And then when we asked.
Speaker 1: Why not, you know, they were like, well, you know
Speaker 1: I have a point of seale system.
Speaker 2: Can you integrate with that?
Speaker 1: I have inventory I'm selling retail like can your app
Speaker 1: do any of that?
Speaker 2: And the answer is no. So we kind of had
Speaker 2: to go back to the.
Speaker 1: Drawing board and started working on a full and then
Speaker 1: system for the entire business.
Speaker 2: Instead of an app for individual barbers, they.
Speaker 1: Needed something where they could see all the barber schedules
Speaker 1: in one place, like like a central platform where they
Speaker 1: could manipulate appointments and change things. And importantly, they needed
Speaker 1: an integrated point of sale system. So often they were
Speaker 1: using like one thing for point of sale and then
Speaker 1: something else for booking, and that was that it was
Speaker 1: very disjointed and now that was causing a lot of frustrations.
Speaker 1: So we identify early on we need to build a
Speaker 1: point of sale and that took a while, but that
Speaker 1: that was something that we knew it would be very
Speaker 1: very important to provide a much better experience for that.
Speaker 9: It's the chicken and egg problem.
Speaker 8: Do you build sort of the supply first, or do
Speaker 8: you build up the demand first, or do you build
Speaker 8: two of them together. Since most men are very loyal
Speaker 8: to the barbers, we don't actually need to build up
Speaker 8: two sides of the marketplace. We can just build something
Speaker 8: that barbershops and barbers would like, and just by virtue
Speaker 8: of knowing how that relationship lays out between a barber
Speaker 8: and a customer, because we were all customers of barbers right,
Speaker 8: we sort of knew that of felt confidence that the
Speaker 8: customers would use it. So if your barbershop starts using Squire,
Speaker 8: then even if a customer will complain about having to
Speaker 8: book an appointment now versus texting you or calling you,
Speaker 8: ultimately the customer will do what their barber is telling
Speaker 8: them to do.
Speaker 9: And I think that that was one.
Speaker 8: Of the biggest and most important pivots that we've made,
Speaker 8: you know, I think it really led to our success
Speaker 8: that we realized this early on and we made the
Speaker 8: pivot and we started building software for the barbershop.
Speaker 3: With a product in hand, Dave pounded the pavement looking
Speaker 3: for customers. Barbershop after barbershop listened to Dave's pitch, but
Speaker 3: they all politely declined. Eventually, through sheer Will, Dave was
Speaker 3: able to get one barbershop to sign up for Squire.
Speaker 8: So we build this first version of a booking management
Speaker 8: system for the barbershop right, theyve you know, the greatest
Speaker 8: salesman on earth basically sells it to this pretty nice barbershop,
Speaker 8: Chelsea Market in New York City, right like, this is
Speaker 8: not your ranking dinky shop somewhere Brooklyn or Queens Now,
Speaker 8: this is Chelsea Market, beautiful shop. He sells the system
Speaker 8: to them. When I say sell, he didn't sell it.
Speaker 8: They weren't paying us anything. He basically sold them on
Speaker 8: using it, which I think, you know, it's the first
Speaker 8: battle we must win as a tech company. They start
Speaker 8: using our system, and the owners, you know, they were
Speaker 8: all over the place. They weren't necessarily seasoned barbershop owners,
Speaker 8: and we started to feel that they are actually maybe
Speaker 8: considering closing the business, which would be a disaster for us.
Speaker 3: Squire was finally in a barber shop, but now that
Speaker 3: shop was on the verge of closing. To save that
Speaker 3: shop and their only potential revenue stream, Squire decided to
Speaker 3: explore buying the business.
Speaker 8: We sat down and we'd literally just crunched the numbers.
Speaker 8: We figured out that if we ran the barbershop we
Speaker 8: would break even, and so we just approached the owner
Speaker 8: and said, look, it doesn't seem like this is something
Speaker 8: you want to be doing anyway, let us take over
Speaker 8: your lease. You tell us what you need. Thankfully, the
Speaker 8: owner was really just trying to get out, and so
Speaker 8: we negotiated the purchase and we ran that barbershop I
Speaker 8: think for about three to four months. At that point,
Speaker 8: a bigger brand took over the barbershop, but those three
Speaker 8: four months weren't valuable as far as to knowledge the
Speaker 8: experience that we were able to gather.
Speaker 3: Squire had saved their company by buying the spot in
Speaker 3: Chelsea Market, but more importantly, now they had an inside
Speaker 3: look at everything that goes into operating a barbershop.
Speaker 1: We actually took over and operated it because we couldn't
Speaker 1: get anybody else to use our business management software like
Speaker 1: we were our own first customers.
Speaker 8: From a product perspective, it is pretty much what every
Speaker 8: product manager would dream of, right that is, an ability
Speaker 8: to just be your customer for three months as part
Speaker 8: of your job. It really just made us understand exactly
Speaker 8: how a barbershop functions, not on paper, not on theory,
Speaker 8: but in real life. I think that just tatapulted our
Speaker 8: software to another level.
Speaker 3: As the team operator a legit barbershop doing everything besides
Speaker 3: cutting hair. They learned the ins and outs of running
Speaker 3: the business, and they were able to figure out firsthand
Speaker 3: what Squire's customers needed from their product. Also, the shop
Speaker 3: brought new people into their orbit, some of whom had
Speaker 3: extremely advantageous connections.
Speaker 6: We had a front desk person called out on this
Speaker 6: Saturday morning, I'm not coming. We have an appointment. The barber
Speaker 6: shops have to open, so I have to get up
Speaker 6: out of my bed. So I go to a barbershop.
Speaker 6: I opened a barbershop in the chair, just running operations.
Speaker 6: One of the people that came I noticed had an
Speaker 6: fbing email, so obviously they worked for Facebook, and I
Speaker 6: just wanted to ask that person, you know, how you
Speaker 6: like a service or a startup. You know, we took
Speaker 6: out the barber shop and that person ended up being
Speaker 6: Blake Chandily.
Speaker 3: Blake Chanley is currently the President of Global Business Solutions
Speaker 3: at TikTok. At the time, Chanley was VP of Global
Speaker 3: Partnerships at Facebook, where he'd worked for over twelve years
Speaker 3: as a tech startup. There was no one more fortuitous
Speaker 3: that the Squire crew could meet.
Speaker 6: He says, if you want to talk, he'll be an
Speaker 6: awesome south By Southwest the next week, and I said.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're going to go there anyway, but we weren't going.
Speaker 6: To go there, but we went down to pitch him
Speaker 6: and he ended up investing one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 6: dollars and Squire.
Speaker 3: With the additional funding from Shanley Squire was beginning to
Speaker 3: turn some heads in the explosive world of tech startups.
Speaker 3: At the same time, Troy Payne songs Old Locker Made
Speaker 3: from La had moved to New York to launch his
Speaker 3: career in software engineering.
Speaker 5: I was building just basic car or check out experiences,
Speaker 5: that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Nothing too crazy.
Speaker 5: Facebook was hot at the time, so I was building
Speaker 5: Facebook apps. My wife and I visited New York and
Speaker 5: you know, fell in love. I had a condo at
Speaker 5: the time, sold it dropped everything moved to New York.
Speaker 5: When I moved to New York, Song was the first
Speaker 5: person I saw that I knew randomly on the train
Speaker 5: and I'm like, Yo, what's up where you get your
Speaker 5: haircut around here? Because that's the first thing you asked.
Speaker 5: When you move to a whole new city. You don't
Speaker 5: want to just go to anybody. You want to go
Speaker 5: to people that are like you and get advice from
Speaker 5: people that are like you and recommendations. It's crazy, how
Speaker 5: what we're doing together right now?
Speaker 4: And it had nothing to do with that question.
Speaker 3: Troy and Song reconnected and kept in touch, but wouldn't
Speaker 3: join forces just yet. Troy still had a few apps
Speaker 3: to develop and a few codes to break.
Speaker 5: I changed jobs started working at Guilt but the travel
Speaker 5: subsidiary Jetsenter.
Speaker 4: I was hired based on a game called what Movies
Speaker 4: Just from?
Speaker 5: What we would do is we would send out a
Speaker 5: movie quote and the first person in reply with the
Speaker 5: correct answer would We would send a DVD too. And
Speaker 5: then the iPhone came out and I said, this will
Speaker 5: be a great game on the iPhone.
Speaker 4: We made it this iPhone game called what movie Is
Speaker 4: this from?
Speaker 5: And it was the first asynchronous game that instead of
Speaker 5: you playing it, it played you. So it'd be in
Speaker 5: your pocket and get a notification or something that says
Speaker 5: that you know, we're going to be announcing a movie
Speaker 5: quote in about ten minutes or something. You open a game,
Speaker 5: you see a time or countdown, it shows a quote
Speaker 5: and then you can respond with the answer.
Speaker 4: It shows a leaderboard, et cetera. And it had some success.
Speaker 5: It was number three and all of the trivia games,
Speaker 5: and we had some people paying attention. One of the
Speaker 5: people that worked at Jetsetter, who went on to start
Speaker 5: buying ultimately, was working at Blockbuster at the time, and
Speaker 5: when I interviewed at jet Setter, they was pretty much saying, hey, man,
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know this, but Blockbuster's been
Speaker 5: copying everything you can do it. And I had no
Speaker 5: idea that it's great to hear from a kid like me.
Speaker 5: I've built this in my dad's living room for three months,
Speaker 5: and I'm able to get the attention of these big brands.
Speaker 5: I'm beating these these gaming studios at their own game,
Speaker 5: and I'm doing it all by myself.
Speaker 3: Another one of Troy's endeavors was an early social media
Speaker 3: platform called Cosmos.
Speaker 4: I decided to take a little break and start working
Speaker 4: on something else.
Speaker 2: I was working on something called Cosmo.
Speaker 5: Cosmo was like Twitter, but instead of random tweets, everything
Speaker 5: started with I want to And so you would put
Speaker 5: these cosmos out into the universe of what you want
Speaker 5: to do. And they're one directional, you know. It's not like, hey,
Speaker 5: does anyone want to hang out today? It was I
Speaker 5: want to hang out tonight, and that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 5: It could just go off from to the ether, or
Speaker 5: somebody could say, yeah, I want to hang out tonight
Speaker 5: as well, and a conversation could happen around these sort of.
Speaker 2: Desires or once.
Speaker 5: And that also sort of further my strength and design,
Speaker 5: my strength and product development. And I got a taste
Speaker 5: of fundraising, pitching to billionaires, pitching to whomever would listen,
Speaker 5: trying to raise capital and ultimately failing, but realizing my
Speaker 5: strengths and now knowing exactly.
Speaker 4: What to look for as far as partners go.
Speaker 3: As Troy learned everything about fundraising and pitching for his
Speaker 3: own apps, the Squire team was headed out to Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley in search of additional investors for themselves.
Speaker 1: Man, it was amazing, one of the best experiences I've had.
Speaker 1: If you ever watched that show Silicon Valley and HBO, like,
Speaker 1: it really felt like.
Speaker 2: That the characters, the amount of.
Speaker 1: Obscene wealth that you have proximity too. It was totally
Speaker 1: new to me and I really loved it. We didn't
Speaker 1: just apply to I See A getame. We applied three times.
Speaker 1: One time we got rejected, the second time we got in,
Speaker 1: but not to the main program, like to this small
Speaker 1: version of the program and the third time we got
Speaker 1: in and moved there. But addition to y see, we
Speaker 1: had previously applied to just about every accelerator that exists
Speaker 1: that knew about, and we got rejections from all of them.
Speaker 2: I don't even think we got interviews from both of them.
Speaker 1: So this has been like over a couple of years
Speaker 1: of really trying to insert ourselves into the tech ecosystem
Speaker 1: in New York and then eventually in the Ballet and
Speaker 1: just being projected from every angle.
Speaker 2: So when we did get accepted, it was an incredible.
Speaker 1: Validation for us, and we really wanted to make the
Speaker 1: most of it to embrace the experience as much as possible.
Speaker 1: I think we did a good job establishing ourselves, like
Speaker 1: we were pretty well known in the bash. We brought
Speaker 1: a barber to demo day and we were giving people
Speaker 1: haircuts there and they have to book on the app.
Speaker 1: We definitely created some buzz that I think helped us
Speaker 1: kind of put our name on the mat where people
Speaker 1: had heard of those Squire guys. That's what they used
Speaker 1: to always call it. Hey, those Squire guys. Yeah I
Speaker 1: heard of those guys. Yeah, I saw those guys.
Speaker 6: We got into a Series A program with Y Commador,
Speaker 6: So we did the Y Company cores and then we
Speaker 6: were able to you know, parlay that into Series A program,
Speaker 6: which was January twenty nineteen.
Speaker 7: We went on thirty or show.
Speaker 2: Meetings doing that process.
Speaker 6: We got thirty or so knows and the last meeting
Speaker 6: we got a yes from Trinity Adventures.
Speaker 1: Our first institution around proper Series K led by a
Speaker 1: BC fund, Trinity Adventures, and that was for eight million dollars.
Speaker 2: And that was the twenty.
Speaker 3: Nineteen With Series A funding in hand and plenty of
Speaker 3: publicity to go with it, Squire was now making headlines.
Speaker 3: Troy caught winded the rise and decided to tap Song
Speaker 3: to see if he could get involved. Too. Little did
Speaker 3: he know he was reaching out at the perfect time.
Speaker 2: He reached out.
Speaker 1: When he heard about Squire, I said, Yo, I know
Speaker 1: a song. You know, I'm an engineer, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: what's up? I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. Cool,
Speaker 1: and then we reconnected. At that point, he came at
Speaker 1: a trivial moment where we honestly probably would have not
Speaker 1: succeeded had he not joined the company when he did.
Speaker 3: At the time, Squire had another partner who was serving
Speaker 3: as CTO. Unfortunately the relationship with sour and soon both
Speaker 3: parties would want out.
Speaker 1: After the count Artists incident, we still continued trying to
Speaker 1: find the right person to join our company, and then
Speaker 1: we actually ended up finding the Cocoon.
Speaker 2: The CTO, and he built the first person of the product.
Speaker 1: He kind of like had the keys of the kingdom
Speaker 1: as far as the technology goes, like he controlled everything
Speaker 1: new everything without him, like there's no company from from
Speaker 1: a product standpoint.
Speaker 5: So they had a CTO at the moment, I didn't
Speaker 5: know it, but they weren't very happy with progress that.
Speaker 7: Was being made.
Speaker 5: And I came in as a contractor to work on
Speaker 5: some iOS stuff. I think the CTO was saying that
Speaker 5: we need to bring in someone to port over our
Speaker 5: app to the new back end that they were working on,
Speaker 5: and he had estimated it would take three months and.
Speaker 2: I did it in three weeks.
Speaker 4: They were impressed by that.
Speaker 5: I had no idea at the time that they were
Speaker 5: unhappy with the CTO, but they pretty much said, Troy,
Speaker 5: we're gonna let so and so go, we want you
Speaker 5: to step in.
Speaker 1: When Troy came in, he basically took over everything and
Speaker 1: kept the lights on and even improved on what we
Speaker 1: had had he not reached out, had we not had
Speaker 1: to locker together, had all these like random occurrences not happened,
Speaker 1: I don't know what we would have done at that
Speaker 1: time when it didn't work out with the former co founder,
Speaker 1: like we you know, probably would have failed.
Speaker 2: And what's the odds, you know, like one of the
Speaker 2: odds to the same high school.
Speaker 1: Now, had we not had lockers in the same place,
Speaker 1: I would have not known like we would like there's
Speaker 1: a big school, like you know, thousands of students.
Speaker 2: We never had a class together, I would have known
Speaker 2: who was.
Speaker 1: But they would have it that we did share lockers
Speaker 1: in the same place. So I knew him, so he
Speaker 1: knew me. And then all these years later it worked
Speaker 1: out joint schore.
Speaker 3: With all the pieces in place, Squire transformed from Uber
Speaker 3: for barbers into a full service back end app for barbershops,
Speaker 3: and in doing so, became one of the hottest startups
Speaker 3: in tech. Incredibly, only a few months after raising their
Speaker 3: Series A, Squire received a twenty seven million dollar Series
Speaker 3: B investment, and just in time, because although they didn't
Speaker 3: know it the COVID nineteen pandemic was just around the corner.
Speaker 6: So we did a twenty seven million dollars series B.
Speaker 6: The last five million came in a week before the pandemic.
Speaker 6: Everything sat down, so fortuitous timing to say the least.
Speaker 2: Revenue went to zero. We're flying high. We had this
Speaker 2: growth chart, you know, up to the right. We did around.
Speaker 6: Six or seven million in March, and then in April
Speaker 6: it went down to like one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: That's how drastic the drop off was.
Speaker 10: We were instructed to take PvP longs and we did not, said,
Speaker 10: you know, we don't need it.
Speaker 7: We had at that point thirty something million dollars in
Speaker 7: the bank.
Speaker 10: We didn't think it made sense for us to you know,
Speaker 10: take money that was meant for our customers.
Speaker 7: We didn't take the money.
Speaker 2: We hunkered down and say, hey, we're going to get
Speaker 2: to this. It's not gonna last whatever.
Speaker 7: And it didn't.
Speaker 6: And you know, we saw this robust growth out of
Speaker 6: the pandemic.
Speaker 11: We really focused on the product and we get focused
Speaker 11: on the customers. During that time, we built four or
Speaker 11: five products that just were dedicated to the customers. We
Speaker 11: created a virtual waiting room.
Speaker 10: We created a way for our customers that are applying the
Speaker 10: PPP loans. We created a way for folks to make
Speaker 10: wireless not point sell pay me so I didn't have
Speaker 10: to touch the cast register. We made it way for
Speaker 10: folks to donate to the barber shop that was down
Speaker 10: and then actual barber So we created like a gift
Speaker 10: card product, all within six to eight week span. So
Speaker 10: we were like ray, focused on getting stuff out that
Speaker 10: made sense for our customers. And because of that, we
Speaker 10: saw this huge growth coming out of the square, like
Speaker 10: this huge influctual customers.
Speaker 2: It was a wild time.
Speaker 1: It's going to be crazy to just think that we
Speaker 1: all lived through this because they impacted every business. But
Speaker 1: our customers are shut down. When the government calls, our
Speaker 1: businesses shut down and they started reopening going into summer
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And while they were shut down, as a company,
Speaker 1: refocused on how we could help them, how we could
Speaker 1: help keep them afloat, provide them with capital, launch futures
Speaker 1: that will allow them to reopen safely, and I think
Speaker 1: it was the right decision for us.
Speaker 2: We also waived subscription fees for.
Speaker 1: The whole year, even for the following year because we
Speaker 1: didn't want for them to have an additional overhead during this.
Speaker 2: Really challenging time.
Speaker 1: It was the right thing to do just morally, but
Speaker 1: I think it ended up being the right thing to
Speaker 1: do as a business as well. And when they reopened,
Speaker 1: we started getting more customers than ever. And I think
Speaker 1: part of.
Speaker 2: It was the shift to digital.
Speaker 1: A lot of businesses started really understanding why they need
Speaker 1: to embrace technology and accept card payments and all that.
Speaker 2: And then some of it was because of the good
Speaker 2: will that we were building.
Speaker 1: An industry and really leaning into how can we help
Speaker 1: our customers.
Speaker 2: So we saw a lot of growth in the second
Speaker 2: half of twenty twenty going into twenty.
Speaker 3: One, a lot of growth. As Song puts it, is
Speaker 3: this a severe understatement. From twenty twenty to twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: Squire raised their Series C and Series D funding, putting
Speaker 3: over one hundred million dollars in their coffers. Their Series D,
Speaker 3: led by Tiger Global, came in at sixty million dollars
Speaker 3: and earned a company a whopping seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million dollars valuation.
Speaker 5: I think we're just scratching a surface, which is crazy
Speaker 5: to think about considering our current valuation and considering the
Speaker 5: number of shops that we have on our platform.
Speaker 2: One thing we.
Speaker 4: Do have is high our pool.
Speaker 5: You know, our shops pay for great service, and they're
Speaker 5: happily paying for a great service, and so we don't
Speaker 5: have just a bunch of shops that are barely paying.
Speaker 5: We have a handful of really great shops that are
Speaker 5: paying for the value of it. We're in three thousand
Speaker 5: barbershops in the US.
Speaker 4: And the UK and Canada.
Speaker 5: There are fifty thousand in the US alone, probably two
Speaker 5: hundred thousand worldwide, maybe more. We're still sort of doing
Speaker 5: our time right now. I know in Europe is becoming
Speaker 5: even more popular. I think from that perspective there's a
Speaker 5: lot of room, but there's an even bigger sort of
Speaker 5: space that if we can capture every barbershop, we can
Speaker 5: start marketing to the consumer where I think it gets
Speaker 5: really really interesting.
Speaker 4: Similar to with Uber has done.
Speaker 5: Uber has created this household name part of world culture
Speaker 5: where you don't think about how you got to someplace.
Speaker 4: They sort of blurred the lines between getting from A
Speaker 4: to B.
Speaker 9: You just took an Uber, you booked an Uber.
Speaker 5: But there's also a whole other set of consumers where
Speaker 5: they don't know what barbershop to go to. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of people on Earth, a lot of of them
Speaker 5: have here, and that's the market that I look at.
Speaker 8: I think what's next for us is we are going
Speaker 8: to continue scaling. We're going to continue grabbing market share
Speaker 8: in the barbershop space where now in five different countries USA, Canada, UK,
Speaker 8: Ireland and Australia sort of both English speaking countries that
Speaker 8: we're concentrating on those for two reasons. Obviously the software
Speaker 8: is in English, but also, you know, we want to
Speaker 8: make sure that we always have processing payments for our
Speaker 8: clients because I think it really makes for a very
Speaker 8: unique offering.
Speaker 1: Think about running a company, particularly a tech company that's
Speaker 1: growing fast. Is scaling is a tension between the necessity
Speaker 1: of short term thinking and planning and then also like
Speaker 1: long term vision and thinking three to five years out.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the two can seem like their attention because
Speaker 1: what's better for the company than long may or may
Speaker 1: not seem like the best thing to do, you know,
Speaker 1: in the next six to twelve months. Since the economy
Speaker 1: has changed slowed down, the fundraising capital marcuts environment is
Speaker 1: totally different than it was I think it's actually put
Speaker 1: us in a better position in terms of company building,
Speaker 1: and I'm actually, you know, weirdly kind of like excited
Speaker 1: about this opportunity in this time because it's going.
Speaker 2: To allow us to really focus on building an amazing company.
Speaker 1: And part of that, in my opinion, is like actually
Speaker 1: thinking about profitability being a company actually generates cash while
Speaker 1: also thinking about how that growth is important. It's not
Speaker 1: the only thing, So I'm looking forward to that. For me,
Speaker 1: what I think about is continuing to build up Squire
Speaker 1: and really define like as a category leading, category defining company.
Speaker 1: We are, I think the only company that is a
Speaker 1: barbershop management platform, and we empower our barbershop owners and
Speaker 1: barbers to run their business better, to improve their operations
Speaker 1: and added out laser focus.
Speaker 2: We're at the only company probably in the world. I
Speaker 2: can say that.
Speaker 3: Squire's story is one of ambition, curiosity, and adaptability. Though
Speaker 3: they both got their start on the corporate ladder, Song
Speaker 3: and Dave were born entrepreneurs with a shared goal of
Speaker 3: manufacturing their own success, and they also shared an ingenuity
Speaker 3: and a willpower to engineer that success through innovation and
Speaker 3: an excellence of product. Once they identified barbershops as a
Speaker 3: white space open to disruption. They studied the landscape relentlessly,
Speaker 3: and they did their diligence naturally. As the business progressed,
Speaker 3: they hit no shortage of walls along the way, but
Speaker 3: they were never deterred. They processed the challenges, added the
Speaker 3: right team members in Arom and Troy, and pivoted with Finesse.
Speaker 3: And as their team product and true marketplace opportunity came
Speaker 3: into focus, the financial dominoes just started to fall one
Speaker 3: after another, and now as they approach unicorn status, the
Speaker 3: much sought after billion dollar valuation despite a rapidly changing
Speaker 3: economic landscape, the options for how they grow the business
Speaker 3: appear limitless, and Squire remains a cut above from Idea Generation.
Speaker 3: I'm Noah Callahan Bever. Thank you for listening to The
Speaker 3: All Angles Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't
Speaker 3: hesitate to like, comment DM or tell a friend to
Speaker 3: tell a friend about Idea Generation and the All Angles Podcast.
Speaker 3: We can't do any of this without your help, and honestly,
Speaker 3: your support means everything. We do this for you, and
Speaker 3: we can't do it without you. This episode was brought
Speaker 3: to you by Will Packer. Executive produced by John Valachik
Speaker 3: and Helena Ox, original music by Valentine Fritz, edit and
Speaker 3: sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and hosted by me Idea
Speaker 3: Generation founder Noah Allahan bever Idea Generations. All Angles is
Speaker 3: a will packer media podcast