Rolling Fun #3: Q3 Portfolio Recap and Life Updates: Crafting, Smart Kitchens, the API for the Auto Industry
Welcome to the third Rolling Fun episode with Bo Fishback (aka Minister Fishback) and Al Doan (aka Mayor of Quilttown, USA).
We’ve been angel investing for a while and last year decided to form a fund called Rolling Fun. We invest in people building the next big tech monopolies. And sometimes, we save the world.
Today’s episode is coming to you from Hamilton, Missouri – the quilting capital of the world. Bo, Al, and I talk (and giggle) our way through some life updates and fund updates for you today.
Investors are now joining for Q4. Companies in today’s episode: Positive Foods Co, Omella, Ome, Drivly, and Glyph.
Links to Platforms:
Here’s what we explored in the episode:
Al is a genius. Don’t believe us? Go to Hamilton, and we guarantee you’ll be amazed by the quilting capital of the world.
Al bought a bunch of buildings in another town (Kingston, MO). And a puzzle company. He’s on a shopping spree.
Positive Food Co has a new model for delivering fresh food directly to shelves. They are the last company we invested in for Q2.
Omella co-founders are kings of customer-driven development. Omella is a platform for organizations, PTAs, micro schools, churches, etc., to manage and transfer info and money.
Ome tackling the creation of smart kitchens. They’ve developed what is essentially a Nest for your stove.
Drivly is building the commerce backbone of the auto industry. They are internet-ifying the industry’s data enabling new business models.
Glyph is the next company from the team behind Cricut. It is like the KitchenAid of the craft room: a 3D cutter, printer, shaper, and more.
Bo is now an ordained minister, so if anyone needs to be married… much like Frosty the Snowman, he can do the job while he’s in town.
Learn more about Al, Bo, and Rolling Fun:
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Episode Transcript:
Al Doan: We are pre rich. We’ve done it again. Home run after home run after home run.
Eric Jorgenson: You're going to be shoveling these things out the door in Hamilton, Missouri. Every lady is going to be leaving with one under her arm. The Glyphs are going to be great. I’m excited about it.
Al Doan: I should have to baked some exclusive rights into this.
Eric Jorgenson: That would not have been to our advantage at Rolling Fun. Keep your head in the game, Al. This is not the Missouri Star Quilt Company podcast.
Hello again, my friends, and welcome. This is the third Rolling Fun episode with Bo and Al talking about the early stage startup investing fund that we run together called Rolling Fun. These episodes are a ton of fun. We have been angel investing for a while and then made it a fund a little less than a year ago and love to kind of come on here and shoot the shit together and share with you what we're investing in. I hope you learn something. I hope you have fun. I hope you laugh a little with us. We try to keep this fun and open. And there's no reason to delay. Let's jump in.
700 pounds of podcast coming to you live from Hamilton, Missouri, the quilting capital of the world. Thank you for hosting us, Al. We've spent all day touring Hamilton, Missouri, which Al owns.
Al Doan: Yeah, yeah. Well, more so every day. No, glad to have you guys. You came up. We did the farm. I showed you a bridge I built that seemed unsafe to you, but I felt very safe on it and then walked around and came to the town. It's great.
Eric Jorgenson: Al’s been building a lot of stuff over the last 10 years and its Bo’s first time seeing all of it.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, my expectations were high. And this was way more amazing than I thought it was going to be. Anybody who's listening to this should immediately get on a plane, go to Hamilton, Missouri. It is a mind blowing experience, honestly. We were there 15 minutes, and I realized that I was in like the Disney World of quilting. And it's like actually that. All the old ladies love Al. If you walk in, they're happy to hug you. They'll take a picture with you.
Al Doan: Bo had like a 30 minute conversation with sweet Judy and Bernice.
Bo Fishback: Bernice is my home girl. And a 75 year old woman told me that she was an OG of Hamilton today, which just really struck me right. Honestly truly amazing. Like what Al and his family built in Hamilton is unbelievable. I told him when we were walking around that I felt like weirdly emotional and then I think I realized that it's because I was so proud of this thing that he made from I think pretty much nothing. It is a really amazing experience. It is a town that is built around quilting and the arts and attracts an audience of people who I think don't have a place that they identify with quite like this. And oh, it was amazing. I'm going to go to bed thinking about it. Seriously amazing. I now think that Al is a genius. I know we’ve been doing this for a while.
Al Doan: He was wondering what I was doing here.
Bo Fishback: It seemed made up. It seemed made up. Now it seems very real. And now I know he's a genius. So whatever Al thinks we should do, let's ride. I’m ready.
Eric Jorgenson: What is this, quote unquote, town? Truly seeing it is like very- you're kind of like, oh, there's some quilt stores. And then-
Bo Fishback: I grew up in a small town in Georgia that on a flyover of it would look somewhat like Hamilton. Like 1500 people live there. I grew up in the version of it that is like the very shitty poor rural version of a town surrounded by farms with maybe a bad hardware store and a farmer store. And some restaurants that could never quite stay in business. I kind of had that in my mind. You drive into Hamilton, and the buildings are the same. But what is in them, including the people, is completely different. It feels full of life and energy. And it's hilarious because the life and energy is coming from 75 year old ladies. But they're all so happy to be here. It honestly feels weirdly magical. It's amazing.
Eric Jorgenson: Bright colors and murals and music and flags.
Al Doan: We’ll do your town next, man. We’ve got to do your town.
Bo Fishback: It's beautiful. It's beautiful and amazing. And honestly, we just left the town a minute ago, so it'll take me a while to digest it all. But it is really, really impressive. I'm super glad we came here to do this today. It's amazingly cool.
Al Doan: That is very kind and gracious of you. Thank you.
Eric Jorgenson: It is so interesting too how the town and the ecommerce business work together too. It was very interesting to hear you kind of talk through that.
Al Doan: I mean, we think of ourselves as like a tech company, which it is weird to walk around a quilt company and be like okay, sure, buddy. But it's like, man, so much of the merchandising and the advertising and marketing that happens around this is like so much of the town exists for the tech benefit of it. But it ends up making this incredible experience that nobody would ever justify otherwise that just- it's just very, very great cycle to be in of like, oh, now we're going to treat you better. And then you treat us better and tell people about us. And then we're going to treat you even better. And yeah, it's a good cycle to be in, a virtuous cycle.
Eric Jorgenson: And you think of this, the whole town like a hospitality business.
Al Doan: I mean, it's content, commerce and community. And the community piece, it could be a Facebook group, but for us, it's this whole town that people come and land in and have that experience. That's our angle.
Eric Jorgenson: That’s so awesome.
Al Doan: Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for coming up. Its great to have you.
Eric Jorgenson: And it worked so well. Now we're sitting in the corner of the warehouse distribution center. I say corner, this is the boardroom above it. It's awesome. It's really cool. We’ve got to come back for the rest of the tour.
Al Doan: You're welcome anytime. Eric, and one of my favorite things, during the pandemic, he wanted to give Jeannine a date. And so, he brings her up here and calls me and says, “Hey, man, can you open up all the stores that have been closed for COVID for a year? Can you open them up for me, so I can give my girlfriend a private shopping experience?” And I was like, “Yes, I can.”
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that was for her birthday. That was awesome.
Bo Fishback: Also, just to be clear, that worked because last time we did a podcast, Eric was not married and now Eric is married. So, what was his girlfriend is now his wife.
Eric Jorgenson: Thanks to Minister Fishback. You may now address Bo as Minister Fishback.
Bo Fishback: Possibly, I don't know if it's true, but it might have been the greatest officiated wedding of all time.
Al Doan: I was there. I'll vouch for it.
Bo Fishback: It was great. It was awesome.
Eric Jorgenson: It was a great time.
Al Doan: It was full of cherries and goodness.
Eric Jorgenson: Honored to have both of you there.
Al Doan: What a great night that was.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That's why it's been so long since there's been a podcast just because I was busy getting married and then eating a lot of pasta.
Al Doan: Which you did a great job at, by the way. Success. Mission accomplished.
Eric Jorgenson: Thank you. We just celebrated our two month anniversary. So, so far, so good.
Bo Fishback: I was going to say don't commit to the monthly celebrations because you have a long life ahead and that’s a tough speed to maintain.
Eric Jorgenson: We're actually going to do decades, I think. Annual is too often I think to celebrate.
Bo Fishback: Smart, smart. Jeannine, I hope you're not listening.
Eric Jorgenson: She doesn't listen to this podcast. You crazy? She gets too much of me. I like that the town worked so well that you bought another town since our last podcast also.
Al Doan: Yeah, well, this was the thing. I feel like sometimes somebody else needs to be more of the gatekeeper in my ideas than me. Does that ever happen to you? Because I was driving home one day, and I was like, man, I wish there was an ice cream store on this corner. I 100% would stop and let the kids run around and go get some ice cream on the way home.
Bo Fishback: And he owns a new town, just like that.
Al Doan: And I said, there's nothing in this town. What if I bought all of these buildings and turned it into a thing? Because there's no- this town, it's like 300 people. There's no mayor right now because nobody accepted the position. There's no economy. There's no budget. There's no anything because there's nothing there. Like nothing, no commerce is happening. And so I'm like, well, if I did this, I wonder if I could maybe- step one, we bought the buildings. Step two, I'm trying to figure out what to do with them. And step three, we're rich, we're pre-rich right now.
Eric Jorgenson: Two question marks.
Al Doan: Dot, dot, dot. Question marks, dot, dot, dot, success!
Eric Jorgenson: Do you just become the mayor when you buy a sufficient percentage of a town’s real estate? How does this work?
Al Doan: You can either be the mayor or you can own the mayor. But if there's no mayor, I don't know who to- I don't know. We'll put a puppet in. We'll make it work. Something will happen. No, but I don't technically live in city limits, so I don't think I can be the mayor. I think I'm just an outsider.
Eric Jorgenson: Sounds like a season of True Detective.
Al Doan: Are you going to move in and be the mayor? You son of a B. Don’t you scoop me on this.
Eric Jorgenson: I was born to be the puppet mayor, powerbroker of- Yeah, that sounds great.
Al Doan: It's an option. It's an option.
Eric Jorgenson: That's good. I need options. Options are always good.
Al Doan: I did that. I got a puzzle company called wongopuzzles.com.
Eric Jorgenson: Will you spell it?
Al Doan: WONGO. The impetus of that was a buddy of mine had a dog and he would come home and say, “Hey, do you want to go to the park?” And his dog would get excited. And he’d say, “Hey, wanna go to the park?” The dog would get really excited. It turned into wongo. And his dog would bring him the leash and get really excited. So it is this word that elicited enthusiasm and excitement. Wongo puzzles. I don't know what I'm doing with a puzzle company.
Eric Jorgenson: How much was it?
Al Doan: Undisclosed amount. No, it was nothing-ish. But like because doing good creative deals is the way to do deals I feel like. I'm not going to pay cash for a puzzle company. I don't know what to do with a puzzle company. But share in success, absolutely. And I'll do my best. And then the caveat that we wrote in there was like in six months if you don't feel like I'm doing a good job, you can have it all back. All right, that's fair. A little motivation for me.
Eric Jorgenson: That's a creative deal structure.
Al Doan: So we're cranking away on that, man, putting a little- I got 10k I'm committing in capital to it. And so we'll see if I can make a puzzle company happen.
Bo Fishback: Will they get a shop in Hamilton?
Al Doan: Sure. It should have one I feel like.
Eric Jorgenson: It fits the theme for sure.
Al Doan: I mean, the economics on puzzles are interesting. Not super interesting, not worth taking a bunch of time here. But it's a capital intensive business because you’ve got to go and get like 500 made at once and any new design that you're doing, I mean, you could like-
Eric Jorgenson: But it's super high margin per unit.
Al Doan: Well, it is now. The guy that had it before was 2x margin, and that's not enough to run the business. And so, we increased our margins by increasing the price. I should be a marketing professor. This is every marketing class you ever took. If you increase price and keep costs low, you've increased your margin. Very good class, we are doing great. And that's what I did. And so we're building that. We've got three more designs coming out. And I reordered his out of stock bestselling designs. And I feel like I'm a wizard. So yeah, we are going to do great.
Bo Fishback: I told you early on in this podcast, Al is a genius.
Al Doan: Puzzled! Puzzled!
Eric Jorgenson: Reordered out of stock best sellers. Give this man a trophy. It's just about doing the simple stuff. When you first bought that or told me about that, I was like, Al, are you not busy enough? What are you doing? And you were like, don’t worry, I got an Athena EA. This is the bulk of their- this is going to be great. I was like, oh, clutch.
Al Doan: I’m trying to do it all through my EA. And she's smart and so she gets a lot of credit, but so much of it is me just teaching her how to do the simple stuff of ecommerce. But it's so satisfying to me because I'm never looking at the customer service messages, and she checks it all each morning. And she's excited to have this stuff going on. And she feels like she's building it because she is. And so, I'm leaning fully on her. But it's a weird muscle for me to build of like, all right, go turn on international shipping, and I'm going to watch Netflix. I know how to do it. I should just go and do it. It's easy for me to go and do it. But I'm going to tell her that she needs to do it and explain the pricing strategy and all that stuff so that she can go knock it out. And then I'm going to save myself 45 minutes of clicking around so that I can do nothing. And it's like a weird thing that instinctually I say I should just do it. But building that muscle, letting her take over, I'm optimistic that it's a sustainable outcome if it works where she runs it. She's excited about it. She's managing all that.
Eric Jorgenson: It's cool. You are setting it up from the very beginning to be that hands off thing.
Al Doan: Which I couldn't do unless I'd done it a few times. I had to be where I am to knock that out. But now that I'm here, it reminds me of a great word leverage that you use a lot. That's what I keep reminding myself, like I can't just go build a bunch more of these. I can't be the jockey over and over again. I've got to start using the assets I've built to do more.
Eric Jorgenson: Which is a different game.
Al Doan: Way different, yeah,
Eric Jorgenson: Bo, what have you been up to? Aside from becoming a minister.
Bo Fishback: The highlight of the summer was definitely marrying you. I mean, that was pretty big for me.
Eric Jorgenson: Confusing phrasing but yeah.
Bo Fishback: I mean, it started when you asked me to marry you over a year ago, and I didn't really know what that meant. And here we are.
Eric Jorgenson: I knew I shouldn't have got down on one knee.
Bo Fishback: Now you are married, and I'm married, but it's not to each other. So, it's fine. So, we had a great trip. All three of us were there, along with many, many other people in Michigan. It was awesome. We got back, and while Eric was in the midst of getting his Italian honeymoon planned, we had an impromptu opportunity, due to a late cancellation, to include him and Jeannine on a pre honeymoon to Costa Rica. So ducked down there for a while.
Eric Jorgenson: By the way, it turns out if you book an international flight within like 36 hours of departing on that flight that you are on the watch list forever, and you will never get TSA Pre and you'll get your bags searched like crazy. Yeah, when you fly now.
Bo Fishback: Congratulations.
Eric Jorgenson: Thank you. I could not figure out what was- I was like, why is this guy like tearing apart the lining in my suitcase on the way out of Costa Rica? And then we kept getting the random, quote unquote, random searches. And I was like, oh, that makes sense.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, I invited Eric and Jeannine to come to Costa Rica with my family and another family on a Thursday and then notified them that the flight leaves at 5am on Saturday, and their 36 hour turnaround to make it to Costa Rica was really amazing. And we had a really fantastic time there.
Eric Jorgenson: No regrets. We swam in waterfalls, high fived monkeys.
Bo Fishback: Caught some tuna.
Eric Jorgenson: Caught a lot of tuna.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, it was great. The house we stayed in had just been occupied by Will Ferrell.
Eric Jorgenson: That really adds a lot to a vacation, knowing that you are walking in Will Ferrell’s footsteps. That's a big deal for me.
Al Doan: You could have had a DNA sample touch you.
Bo Fishback: The previous person before Will that was there was Seal.
Al Doan: No, no hair. You went from zero hair to an abundance of hair.
Bo Fishback: I looked everywhere for it. I couldn't find any of Seal’s hair. We had a great time out there. And then, got the kids back in school and started to kind of like slowly emerge back into the real world.
Al Doan: Didn't you almost buy a chocolate company in Costa Rica? Because you were there for five days and you almost accidentally bought that company.
Eric Jorgenson: Most people look at real estate.
Bo Fishback: Well, also we looked at real estate, and the chocolate company owns its own real estate. It's a kind of tree to bar chocolate company that makes a really, really great chocolate that is very, very lightly distributed. I think they're only distributed in one retail store that they own and then a Four Seasons, but they've won a bunch of global awards and all this. And so we've been snooping around trying to figure out if there's an opportunity to buy a business like that.
Al Doan: Can you even own land in Costa Rica?
Bo Fishback: You can own it if it's titled to someone who owns it who will sell it to you. There's a Belgian guy who owns it now who had spent many years getting it set up like that. He is so generally apathetic about selling or not selling that the response time on emails are exactly what you would expect from a Belgian in Costa Rica. And so feels like it's going to be hard to get a thing done there just due to apathy. But it's also hilarious because we were like, “Hey, can you send us some chocolate?” He's like, “Yeah, you can just go to the website and get the chocolate.” And what we realized he meant was that you can go to the contact form and send an email that says, “Send you the chocolate.” And then he says, “Oh, actually, we don't send to US.” And so you can't even really get it here. And so felt like fun things to work on.
Al Doan: You are like I'm a genius. I’m going to ship chocolate.
Bo Fishback: I know how to sell things on the internet, so maybe we can do a thing here.
Al Doan: You can come open a store in Hamilton.
Bo Fishback: They would do great business, I think.
Al Doan: They would murder it.
Bo Fishback: Anyway, but it was knocking around trying to figure out if we should be shopping for businesses or if we should be starting stuff from scratch. And yeah, doing field trips to Hamilton.
Al Doan: I love that you guys got here at like 9:50. And we need like a full slumber party overnight to catch up. I have so many more questions for you.
Bo Fishback: I like this. Now that I've seen your apartment in downtown Hamilton, I know I've got a place to stay. Let's go.
Eric Jorgenson: We are going to be co-working in Hamilton. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of work to do too, like a lot to catch up on.
Al Doan: Real work too.
Eric Jorgenson: We had a bumper crop in the fund for the last quarter, I think. All these companies I'm super excited about and excited to kind of like talk through them all.
Al Doan: So Eric, you got married. Any other updates from you?
Eric Jorgenson: Not really yet. I'm like almost done with the book, but that'll be another quarter or two before I publish it.
Bo Fishback: I’ve got a draft copy of it at my house that Eric said I could read but no commentary on mistakes or grammar or anything is welcome. It is much more read it and tell me if you got bored or confused because we're at the stage where it's like maybe it sounds like information complete but no cleanup or something like that.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I feel like- well, there's professional like publishing and line editing is still a part of the process to come. So I just don't worry about- like second book, I don’t worry about grammar at all.
Al Doan: Tell me broad strokes.
Eric Jorgenson: I just want to know is pace good and do you stay engaged?
Al Doan: And was it though?
Bo Fishback: I'm only halfway through. I just got it yesterday, or the day before or whatever. So far good. I think it starts with very good bang. The questions that I've had as I've read have been answered on subsequent pages, which is good. Yeah, I mean, I think- scribbling notes on it.
Al Doan: I think you still need to sign mine, because I bought it from Amazon, my Naval Ravikant one. I was like, I need you to sign this. You're like yeah, sure, buddy, someday.
Eric Jorgenson: I need you to sign my cardboard cutout of Al. There's cardboard cutouts of Al's whole family all around Hamilton, Missouri. And there's none of Al, and we need to fix this.
Al Doan: Yeah, no.
Bo Fishback: That could be a whole shop, cardboard cutouts while you're in Hamilton.
Eric Jorgenson: What was the- it was a Dan Gilbert company out of Detroit. They did the life size wall stickers. I would 100%- I got so many photos of you. I could totally get it- I would love a cardboard cut out.
Al Doan: I gave a Christmas present one year to my entire family of a fat head of me.
Eric Jorgenson: How’d it go?
Al Doan: One, surprisingly well received, and two, very telling of where they put that fat head later on. Does it go up on the living room wall? Most no. He's always watching me. There's a lot of places that head ends up that I wish- I mean, if I could do it again, I would not give a giant head of myself to my family. It’s a bad move. You live and learn.
Bo Fishback: In house branding. It’s fine.
Eric Jorgenson: It tells you a lot.
Al Doan: I did it. When I was in college, I sent my mom a giant poster of myself.
Eric Jorgenson: I’m noticing a theme.
Al Doan: It got hung in the living room and I have seven siblings and they were very pissed off that I- and a bigger picture than Jesus if I can brag. I don't want to be that guy.
Eric Jorgenson: Well, you are bigger. It's just life size. It is to scale.
Al Doan: Yeah. How tall was Jesus? I bet he was no more than six foot.
Eric Jorgenson: I feel like everybody was short back then.
Al Doan: We're going to be way bigger than Jesus.
Eric Jorgenson: That's the podcast-
Bo Fishback: 700 pounds of podcast.
Al Doan: Rolling Fun: way bigger than Jesus.
Eric Jorgenson: We're going to be a huge, huge hit. Okay, so those are all the life updates. Let's do some fund updates. I feel like- we've had five-
Al Doan: When did we do this podcast last?
Eric Jorgenson: It was Q2.
Al Doan: We have all of Q3 to catch up.
Eric Jorgenson: We have all Q3 and the last one in Q2 was Positive Foods Co. So that one, it's been a minute since we made that investment but we still haven't done a podcast piece on that.
Al Doan: I love that Schuyler’s like- we had to make a very- our smallest investment because we're almost out of that fund. And he's like, “You guys really screwed my math with your tiny investment, you jerks.” And we are like, “We’re so sorry.” He’s like, “I'll let you invest the same amount, just make it a round number for like 39 more cents.”
Eric Jorgenson: He's already shopping for an A too, by now.
Al Doan: They're killing it. So again, that investment, those guys, they do like a hub and spoke model of like they make all their fresh food every day and then distribute it to like gas stations and grocery stores, so all the Grab and Go salads and sandwich sort of stuff they're doing, but like you said it great where you have a lot of these grocery stores, they give up a ton of this retail space to the kitchen so they can make this stuff, and then they have a lot of the waste that's built in with it and all that kind of stuff. So these guys get real nerdy about what's going to sell, which locations are moving enough, and so now some random gas station in the middle of the highway gets to have fresh, made that day, great food that are built and delivered by these guys and doing that across America.
Eric Jorgenson: That's like where the tech comes in too. Because when we first saw this, I was kind of like, cool I’m glad this exists, but is this actually a venture scale, is that a tech company? And once I talked to Schuyler, I was like, oh, this is actually really exciting because even the quote unquote fresh foods go through the same distribution channel. They go through normal trucking distribution, warehouses, multiple parties. And these guys go straight from their own kitchen, they shelf their own merchandise, they own their own cold chain distribution thing, and they track all of it including the point of sale so they know they can manage inventory. Their food waste is super low. It's really quite clever. And now they're kind of figuring out how to Amazon-ify that and turn out some of those offerings to make the market offerings. It is like a real tech company.
Al Doan: It is like 99% a logistics play. And if they can crack it for this, they crack it for a lot.
Eric Jorgenson: There's a lot of cool software involved there.
Al Doan: And if we can make fresh food available across the nation, like that's cool. I like that.
Eric Jorgenson: For cheaper and better, yeah 100% love their mission. And the team is really cool too, like the people that are in there. The chef used to like work in the-
Al Doan: There is like a Delta chef, like the chief chef for Delta, I think, or something, right? And he is one of the co-founders. You think about solving that problem and then bringing it to this, he's got to be loving life.
Eric Jorgenson: Actually, on my honeymoon, I had a fucking amazing meal on a plane for the first time in my life. Yeah, it was like legitimately-
Al Doan: It was an international airline?
Eric Jorgenson: It was Delta but it was like Jeannine hacked our way to nice seats for the flight and it was really impressively good food. Not just like, oh, this is better than I was expecting but like great.
Al Doan: Good work.
Eric Jorgenson: I hope it's the same guy who-
Al Doan: Compliments to the chef, my lady. Who is back there running the microwave? Would you please tell them Eric and Jeannine in 22A say fantastic.
Eric Jorgenson: So, if you live in California, please go eat Positive Foods. They're in a bunch of Whole Foods and Bristol Farms.
Al Doan: Yeah, they are taking over the salad bars for Whole Foods.
Bo Fishback: Every time I go into my Whole Foods, I'm like hoping they're going to show up there at some point. Which I know it'll be a while because they are West Coast right now but-
Eric Jorgenson: I was like Schuyler, when are you doing geographies? And he's like we're going to be all Cali for a minute because density matters so much to them, to their economics. So they're going to try to really saturate for a while.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, so they're also, I think, a little further down the road than a lot of seed compared to other things. I mean, this is kind of like a real company. It's a question of how big they get how fast more than anything else.
Al Doan: We snuck in when they had revenue and were already-
Eric Jorgenson: They are cashflow positive.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, they're cashflow positive. They're in the millions of dollars of business. Like they are a business.
Al Doan: I think they're working on their A right now. So we got in right before the window.
Eric Jorgenson: They did a really interesting rolling raise for a while too. So they just announced like a $7 million raise. But I think there's like tranches of slowly increasing valuation throughout there. So I think we're already marked up on that one.
Al Doan: The question is are we going to put in more money to round our number off? We will decide soon. You'll know.
Eric Jorgenson: I don't know what the like not tradeoffs are there, but to do a later quarter. We have different LPs all the time and the total exposure to any one company is relatively small. So a couple quarters later to do follow on, especially for our smaller investments, I feel like it's totally reasonable.
Al Doan: It's our smallest, I think. But we like them. All right, Schuyler, we'll let you know. We'll talk.
Eric Jorgenson: That's the last one in Q2. So for anybody who has subscribed then, they've got that. Now everything from here on is Q3, which this is the complete set of Q3. So we got Omella, Drively, and Glyph.
Al Doan: Bo, do you want to do Omella?
Bo Fishback: No, I want Eric to because I actually met them originally through Eric.
Eric Jorgenson: Did you invest before also?
Bo Fishback: No, no, I mean, we talked when he was like looking for a couple people Alpha trial people to use it. And they were in the kind of very early iteration stage. And I think as much as anything, this was like a team that you know you want to back, one. And two, every time you turn around, they just like had made more progress and found a little better fit for the market. I mean, they are impressive iterators.
Eric Jorgenson: Very. so Brett Kopf is the founder of Omella along with his brother David. I've known Brett since we were in college; he was a year or two ahead of me in college. He was the founder of Remind, which he started in college and is now used in like 80% of classrooms around the world. If you have kids in school, you are probably using Remind. He is the best person I've ever met or heard of at customer driven development. So he is like all day, every day, just like one on one conversations with customers, getting deep into their problems. And then at the end of the day, he like sits down with his brother, who's the software developer, and he's like, here's everything that I learned. And he's like, okay, I'm going to go start building that. So really fast iterators. They are always adding new stuff. And that is also a really- it especially worked well with teachers who knew each other. That's like an amazing distribution process also because you're constantly- you never even really sell. You're just kind of like always in conversation.
Al Doan: What's the product? What's their company?
Eric Jorgenson: Well, I told you about Remind because this company started as like an earned secret from Remind. So, Remind is all about communication between students, parents, and teachers. But they never really transferred into or added the capability to transfer money or structured information. And so that's what Omella does. It is basically a platform for organizations, micro schools, PTAs, churches, like not SMBs, but organizations to manage information and money and transfer things back and forth. So if you think about if you run like, Bo is basically a GM of a 10 year old’s basketball league, but like constantly needing jersey sizes, addresses, collecting money for different tournaments, different leagues. Micro schools are doing the same thing, field trips. A ton of money changes hands in these. And it's all spreadsheets and sticky notes and Venmo and cash and envelopes in kids’ backpacks. And this is like really powerful, simple software for all of those organizations to sort of have one person centrally manage all of it.
Bo Fishback: It lives roughly, I think, somewhere between Venmo and QuickBooks or something like that for these small organizations or even sometimes individual people who may have 500 clients of their own who they're training or they're running camps or whatever it is. And it has all been- none of it warrants quite like enterprise scale software, but also Venmo or Cash App or whatever is a giant untrackable mess. And so, this lives at like it's as easy to use as that but also there's a back end that can show who pays when, where are they, what did you need to do. And it's in the zone of that customer driven development. They are just like obsessed and where they found some early uptake, it's because there's actually just nothing in the space that serves those audiences well.
Al Doan: It is funny when you say Venmo and then QuickBooks, like there's a huge chasm. I mean, you look at payments, you're like, oh, yeah, no, you could just Venmo the cash. And it's like, what if that's not enough? And then you've got 10 miles to walk before you get to QuickBooks. And so what's in that?
Bo Fishback: They live right in that space.
Eric Jorgenson: How do you manage when a hundred people are Venmoing you?
Bo Fishback: There's no spreadsheet to download. And then as soon as there is, then there's a spreadsheet to deal with. And these guys have it set up where you can go right online, you can see it, you can sort it, you can push here to send a reminder, all of this kind of stuff that makes all the sense in the world when you see it. And it's also one of those things that is like every time I've looked at it, I'm like it actually kind of blows my mind that this doesn't exist right now given how much has happened in the payment space.
Al Doan: So if I'm a school, and we're going to do a field trip with 30 kids, and everybody's got to give me 10 bucks, this is that. And so, as the parents pay, they flip to green and I get to see that. Oh, that's a dream.
Bo Fishback: It is a dream.
Al Doan: Good work. My kids not- It’s funny because my kids are just under where I've never heard of Remind. I don't know any of these problems. But I do remember $10 in cash in my pocket and then losing it on the bus on the way there – losing it, I'm using air quotes. And you get there and they're like, “You can't go. Where's your $10?” You are like, “I'm sorry.”
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, so excited about Omella. Actually I, full disclosure, invested in that one personally when Brett was first getting started before the fund existed, but we followed on now. And I did a podcast episode with Brett too that is like a deep dive on Omella and his story and stuff. He is super nice.
Bo Fishback: Genuinely and permanently curious.
Al Doan: Those are great humans.
Eric Jorgenson: Uber mensch.
Al Doan: We should do a little- we should do a gathering, a retreat of Rolling Fun. No, nobody wants that. But I would love that.
Eric Jorgenson: Can we come to Hamilton, Missouri?
Al Doan: All the LPs can come and hang out with all the founders.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be amazing.
Eric Jorgenson: That would be fun. Al’s got a ton of beds here.
Al Doan: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of beds, guys. That didn't work in dating very well, but it works now. We can sleep anywhere. I’ve got so many beds.
Eric Jorgenson: Welcome to my bedroom. There's 30. Take your favorite.
Al Doan: It's Russian roulette. I'm in one of them.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay, that's Omella. Was that everything on Omella? I think that's everything on Omella.
Al Doan: It's exciting, man. Wait, so are they at a point where they need more customers?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, they are very much in growth mode. So more customers is good. Omella.com.
Al Doan: Who are they looking to be introduced to? Is it like PTA people? Is it getting teachers signed up to just use it?
Eric Jorgenson: Anybody can sign up and use it right now. The micro schools is one of their first niches that they are finding is really adopting them quickly and growing. So yeah, they're a few years in development now. They’ve got a small dev team, but like great long runway. It’s going great. And they're just building a really lean, kind of very focused organization. It's great to see second time founders rolling over lessons and building really cool stuff. Love it. They're just such nice guys, too.
Al Doan: Really good people.
Eric Jorgenson: We could spend another hour on how nice Brett is.
Al Doan: Let me tell you about Ome. So this lady Akshita, pretty sure I'm saying that right. I've asked her before, she said it's fine. But she's like a PhD brilliant woman with a PhD brilliant team that's building smart devices for your kitchen. So, they started as a Kickstarter. It's a knob that you replace your knob with, and all of a sudden, your range is Wi-Fi enabled, and you control it from your phone. And this is interesting for a couple of reasons. It's like insurance is a big play. They're selling into like entire living managed living facilities where you have like a thousand people that you're trying to keep tabs on, make sure they don't accidentally leave their stove on all night, that sort of thing. So they've got like an enterprise play there. And then they've got just the individual humans want to- you've got a stove in there. It's a pain to replace your stove. You're just going to buy these knobs and put them on there, and now it's a smart thing that you can start the oven while you're at church, and it's ready for the roast when you get home.
Eric Jorgenson: It is chili season. You’ve got to keep the low and slow, baby.
Al Doan: You just put that on the stove, whoop, it is a dial now. And it's cool because these are hard to replace appliances in kitchens. If you have a built in or you have a stove in there that like- I mean, it's a big investment to replace that. And so, we looked at it and said, man, these are hard to replace appliances that the technology is out there, but it's like very low adoption of Wi-Fi enabled ranges and stove tops and stuff. So we're excited about the entire market of just the knobs and then they're looking at the entire smart kitchen, doing this similar process but everywhere. And so home automation we think is really cool. We think it's really interesting. There's a lot in the space that's getting overlooked and not addressed. And Akshita is doing a great job. She's got a just incredible vision of the space. And so trying to, in terms of what they need, they're looking for intros to like VC arms of insurance companies or big manufacturers or retailers so they can do some strategic investing. But yeah, they did a great raise. And they're just building away right now. They have their Kickstarter that sold through, and they're reselling to those guys right now. So lots of demand for what they're doing.
Bo Fishback: And they are shipping product. I mean, they have a real hardware software integration. I mean, I think this is one of these that anybody who's spent a decade in tech has the thought process of like, seems like there should be way more things that are Nest for blank. The thermostat was the first thing, and obviously that story played out and they got acquired. But the kitchen is just such an obvious one. It's so obvious and it is so under tapped and it makes- things like safety for assisted living facilities makes all the sense in the world, but also convenience for people who just want to really lean into that. This one has a lot of great kind of tendrils and stories that I think could be really cool one to watch grow.
Al Doan: I wonder- Yeah, I can't wait until I can- my blender and my toaster and all that stuff is there. And I just don't know, like I don't know how it happens in its current iteration. But I'm glad to be backing somebody that is building that vision.
Eric Jorgenson: I mean, we've been talking for years about the automation kitchens, especially commercial scale stuff, and until seeing this, I hadn't really thought super hard about the home version of that. But it is really cool. You're starting to see standalone devices like the June ovens and stuff like that, that can kind of manage cooking. But Akshita’s just got a really cool vision for how that all kind of progresses and comes together. And kitchens just keep getting smarter and smarter and more robotic. It's awesome.
Al Doan: I went down a rabbit hole of like the Cafe X like make your coffee. It is like 240 grand to get one. And then there's a Blended that's like a smoothie shop. They actually did a partnership with Jamba Juice, where like Jamba powered by Blended, and it's just this automated power. They're a similar price. And I'm like, man, those might be fun. I'm looking at it for Hamilton. But I'm like, then once you can- 250 grand and throw- like that's just a fancy vending machine that’s going to push stuff out and once the economic start to work, that's going to be such a great experience. Automated everywhere. Give me robots making that food.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I can't believe- Cafe X feels like it should be way more places then it was. I remember seeing that first one 10 years ago or something and being like, oh, my God, these are going to be everywhere in four years. And it's still sort of not. I don't know what's up with that.
Al Doan: I think I've got like $2,000 into them in my AngelList account from 1994. You go back and look at some of those, you are like I backed 8000 companies through these syndicates, geez.
Eric Jorgenson: Well, I still believe that one will come through for you.
Al Doan: It's going to recover my entire $50,000.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, and a revenue already, like hundreds of thousands in revenue already, which is impressive for an early stage hardware company. Mad props to them for shipping revenue this early. They've been at it for a couple years also. I feel like that's- actually all, Positive Foods, Omella and Ome all kind of share that still feels early, but the organizations feel really tight because they've been at it for three to five years at least.
Al Doan: It feels like we're getting a good deal on those. Where most of the checks we're trying to write are like, what's Terran Robotics, with like we don't know, man, this guy's building drones that can build houses. It might work. That's good idea. Let's try it. That's the space we're trying to live in. And so when we meet these people that are great people that we love doing ideas we like that are all- they've already proved the business. It's like, oh yeah, I'll ride those coattails. Thanks, guys.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I like that we feel comfortable kind of doing that whole gamut, like being very first money in. I would love to find out we’re the last money before there's some explosive growth of some of these ones that are baked a little longer.
Al Doan: You know what I hate about being last money in? Nothing.
Eric Jorgenson: Just Indiana Jones-ing that hat right out from under the- So Drively, the next company, we were literally the last- yeah, it was just shoving money under the door. We were the last check into their round. There's like a great sort of-
Bo Fishback: They had some pretty serious investors.
Eric Jorgenson: Great seed round that was already led by amazing investors. So, I feel very lucky that we sort of got that in. So Drively is like a- they are like the commerce backbone of the auto industry, which is a very interesting thing to not exist yet. So, I wish we had an auto industry expert here to sort of do the fuller version. But basically, there's a lot of data silos and paper and general bullshit that happens in the auto industry now. And individual pieces of that offering are getting internet-ified. Like Carvana is crushing the delivery of vehicles. And everybody kind of envies Tesla's owned dealership models. But there's only little pieces of it that can get internet-ified because of how the data is managed inside the auto industry. And these guys are like combining all of the data and then turning it into APIs and monetizing those APIs at different layers for different parties. And I think it's going to-
Al Doan: Like a snowflake for the auto industry sort of thing.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think it's going to enable this renaissance of business models in the auto industry and that these guys are going to kind of like provide the infrastructure for all of it.
Al Doan: Give me an example of a business that will get to exist when these guys are there.
Eric Jorgenson: They have a ton of these examples in their deck that are like Instacart, that are like auto resale real time offers for your cars. There's a really interesting- And it's not just the car sales, but it's the stuff around it. So, there's all these periphery- It's kind of like when you buy a house and there's all these add on businesses around. It's like big brokerages own mortgage companies and title companies and insurers and inspectors and blah, blah, blah. These guys can provide a very new level of service and enable a new type of auto lending business, enable a new type of auto insuring business, enable a new type of- So, there's all of these things that can be liquid and real time and highly competitive and software-ified that haven't been able to before. And I don't know. It's a really interesting earned secret. The CTO of this is fascinating. I'm going to get these guys on the podcast at some point. But he became a licensed dealer himself so that he could buy cars at wholesale prices and then lend them on Turo because he's just like a motorhead and loves cars. And so he's got like 40 cars. He's like a Turo Pro.
Al Doan: He is buying them at auction?
Eric Jorgenson: He is buying them wholesale and then renting them out. And it is a really, really interesting story. But he's like, man, it sucks to try to buy cars at scale. There's no software for it. There's no pricing API. And there's a bunch of companies trying to do it that are competing to have their own proprietary stuff. But nobody's enabling the mass API of it. I give myself like a four out of ten for explaining the impact of that. But that's the best I can do until we get them on the podcast.
Bo Fishback: Yeah. I mean, look, the main thing that I know is that Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company counts himself lucky to be a co investor with Rolling Fun.
Eric Jorgenson: And Dan Gilbert of Rocket Mortgage.
Bo Fishback: They’ve got a great group of folks in there. And I agree with you. I think we were we're lucky to get in under the wire on that one.
Eric Jorgenson: Detroit money, baby. Yeah, really, really sharp founders. And I think one of those things that like huge opportunity that very few entrepreneurs would- the mix of talent and visibility of that opportunity kind of puts them in a pretty rare space. It was a fun problem to learn about, too.
Al Doan: I feel like a lot of that one was like, I don't know, man, you’ve got to invest the time to understand this. You’ve got to go talk to these guys because I don't know. But as any space, you don't know until you dive in, and then all sudden, the people that can see the opportunity there, those are the ones that win.
Eric Jorgenson: I went to talk to buddies that are in the auto industry for the same reason. I was like, man, I just like don't feel like I can- this could already exist and I wouldn't know. And so I went and talked to some friends. And they were like, yeah, that doesn't- it has been tried, the vision is sort of there, but nobody has nailed this yet. There's a reason to believe that the people doing it now won't be able to do it. And this is- if it existed, it would change a lot of things. That's 100% the thing that I can see getting acquired or wanting to be owned by a number of-
Al Doan: It could be a Hulu sort of thing where they all come together and say, all right, yeah, we'll do it as long as we get the money.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, there's a bunch of big, semi old- There's like era software companies that are really big in auto because it's like these entrenched dealership things and big enterprise contracts.
Al Doan: Everything programmed in Fortran.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. But I think this is due for a renovation. And I'm excited about that one. So we’ll see how they come together. They're about to have a public facing dev kit, so maybe I'll put it on this podcast, I'm not sure. But if you're just a developer that likes playing with new API's, you can go check that out.
Al Doan: If you like cars, you are going to love Drively.
Eric Jorgenson: Yes. .ly? Is it another URL? Al?
Al Doan: Oh, yeah. In the quilting capital of the world, let me tell you about a great new company building a great new thing. Glyph. I don't know if they will keep the name. I like the name Glyph. So Glyph, I would describe it as the KitchenAid of the craft room. This is a space that I know very well. And so these guys- this is actually the innovation team behind Cricket, which IPOed at $4 billion dollars. They did a good job. And Cricket is a cutting machine that crafters use to cut vinyl and fabric and stuff. This is sort of a three dimensional version of that where three dimensional meaning it's got a vertical axis, or vertical, horizontal, and a Z axis. Yeah, height axis. There we go. So, think of things like, I don’t know, put your cake on there, and it can decorate it, put a cookie on there and paint a face, stuff like that. So, it's a cutting cutter, printer, shaper, all the things. It's got a lot going on. And they're still developing a bunch of it, so I'm not going to box them into what exactly it's going to be in the end. But the big, exciting thing that we saw was like smart innovation team that has done this before, good distribution partnerships that they give us a lot of confidence in go to market, like the big box stores are excited to give them shelf space, and they're cranking on a problem that like the KitchenAid for the craft room is a gaping hole in that space where it doesn't exist yet and it should. And so having these dudes work on it, we are very enthusiastic about where they're going. And this one, we were first money in-ish. I think we were very early and led a round of angels. So, we can have credit for that. We did a good job.
Eric Jorgenson: I think you get credit for that because your status as a mogul in the crafting industry.
Al Doan: Moguls got to mogul, as they say. Moguls will mogul. Don said yes. All the money goes.
Bo Fishback: What is your take, as a worldwide expert of crafting, on the-?
Al Doan: Thank you. Can you endorse me for worldwide crafter?
Bo Fishback: 100% yes. -on like where they are at. They did Cricket, big outcome, whatever. They decided to get the band back together and go after something maybe more innovative, more cutting edge, kind of a new market. How early is early on that? How long does that take? How do you think about going from where they're at to market?
Al Doan: It's hard ware, it is tough. But these guys have already- they've got the factories they already love to work with over there. They've got their team across the whole space already done. And so- Oh, man, I got a sneeze coming on. Bless me, guys. Bless me, thank you.
Eric Jorgenson: Give us a second. I didn't know if you were a two sneezer or what. That was very efficient.
Al Doan: These guys, they've already got their relationships set up, their stuff going. So we're expecting to see a prototype by the end- like mid next year, a prototype that's like move into production-able sort of space. So they've already made a ton of progress on the software. And they're just working through iterations on hardware with a factory that already believes in them and is backing them too. I'm like, yeah, this is a real thing that's really going to exist. And then it's just a question of, is it reliable enough? Does the market want it? Can they message it well? Because the risk, I told I told this to the team over there, I was like the risk is that you're a little bit- you're a Cricket plus, and you can't be Cricket plus, you've got to be completely- you got to be different enough, more enough that like you're not Cricket. And so they've got a great form factor that we're excited about that makes them not Cricket and a bunch of other stuff coming with them that makes them not Cricket. I'm intending to help them. They'll get the full weight of the Rolling Fun behind them.
Eric Jorgenson: They're an exciting one. It's funny, I was not worried about them being not Cricket, Cricket-Cricket. The difference between- Cricket was the home cutting machine, and this is like home cut and print plus height, on a Z axis. The versatility of this is crazy. I can't believe they can- the price point that they're aiming at is like a couple hundred bucks, which is incredible. When I saw the drawings, I was like this is going to be a thousand bucks, like limited market stuff. And from a business perspective, it's exciting because they have a ton of ongoing software packages, they have accessories. KitchenAid is a great analogy in that way because it's an ecosystem.
Al Doan: Think of like a 3d printer that ends up being built for like a 35 year old woman, where it's like I can create anything, and it's that sort of idea. You bring it into a thing that's comfortable in their craft room, in their space that they know creatively, and say, yeah, we can make anything now. It's very empowering, very strong proposition. You just have to- the marketing thing is the bear of like, can you message that to people and make them believe that they can now-
Eric Jorgenson: I think it’s going to fly. I think it's going to fly. I mean, we have a Cricket. Jeannine has a Cricket, which I love. And it has always amazed me that you can just like put a thing of vinyl in there and it like cuts out. And we have all this custom stuff because she just will design something up. And it's like I think this is going to be even cooler, especially with the software that's out there now. So, I've seen- I can take a picture of your face. Apple will let me just like drag your face out of a picture and I can drop it in the Glyph and I could print out a sheet of Al face stickers and put them up all over my house. Yeah, it's amazing.
Al Doan: We are pre rich. We’ve done it again. Home run after home run after home run.
Eric Jorgenson: You're going to be shoveling these things out the door in Hamilton, Missouri. Every lady is going to be leaving with one under her arm. The Glyphs are going to be great. I’m excited about them.
Al Doan: I should have baked some exclusive rights into this.
Eric Jorgenson: That would not have been to our advantage at Rolling Fun. Keep your head in the game, Al. This is not the Missouri Star Quilt Company podcast. So that's the set. Omella, Ome, Drively, Glyph. That's Q3. And that's a full allocation for Q3. So everything that we're looking at now is Q4.
Al Doan: And Q3 is done. You can't invest in it. You guys can't get access to this unless you were already in, which you should have been. And you should have been in for more. Increase that allocation. Because now you're looking- like I'm doing the same thing where I'm like, man, Café X, I’ve got a thousand bucks in those guys, wish I would have put in a couple more.
Eric Jorgenson: Flash forward to January, imagine how great Q4 companies are going to be and then imagine that-
Al Doan: We need your donations, people.
Eric Jorgenson: This podcast will continue until you call in and get your canvas tote bag.
Al Doan: We should do the PBS fundraiser. Bo’s not coming down from the building until-
Eric Jorgenson: Real quick, maybe status updates on old portfolio companies. We don’t have a ton here.
Al Doan: Stablegains, go.
Eric Jorgenson: Stablegains is very honorably discharging their duties to stabilize the company. Yeah, they're doing well to update everybody. They're working with the regulators. They're figuring everything out. They are going to try to wind down and return capital and like TBD basically on what stage that is legally feasible and honorable. So we'll keep you up to date. But the founders are still working hard to do everything the right way and keep everybody in the loop. So good on them. That's a very hard job. Startups are hard.
Bo Fishback: Big props. Big props to those guys.
Al Doan: Lumo is doing good. This is the water- nest for water management. They got a couple- it is funny. He's like our big deals that we've been working on are like 50 units going out. And we had a guy call that was like, “Yeah, let me look at like 800 units and see what that looks like.” There's a lot of demand. They're getting very good reception in the market. They're getting ready to start building towards their A here in a couple of months, once they get their first couple of customers live and paying. And yeah, they're enthusiastic. Devon's doing a great job on the PR side. A lot of people are paying attention to them.
Eric Jorgenson: You sent me their clip on CNBC. It was awesome. It was this whole thing about like the future of agriculture. And it was like four minutes on Lumo. It was awesome.
Al Doan: It was pretty much about Lumo.
Eric Jorgenson: CNBC endorsed Lumo Yeah, they're real cool. I have no Dusk updates. I hope the founders are not on a beach somewhere spending our money and they're building cool stuff. I wish them well.
Al Doan: If your out there, please contact us. Does your email still work?
Eric Jorgenson: He is still tweeting so I know he is alive. That'll be fine. We're not high maintenance. I can't help if I don't know what's going on. But I'll just assume you got it until I hear otherwise. Terran received the first permit in Indiana for autonomous construction, home construction. So they’re crankin’.
Al Doan: Does Larry Bird sign those? I think he does.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, he does. He does.
Al Doan: Larry says if they can do that or not.
Eric Jorgenson: We just wanted the signature. The tech is coming along. They’re building their first house for Habitat for Humanity. Their YouTube channel is also really fun to watch because they keep posting stuff about whatever they're working on. And they're going to raise a seed round soon. So talking to the investors.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, I know they've had quite a bit of kind of early seed round investing and are trying to figure out who are the right partners for them and how much help they should be taking instead of just money and all that kind of stuff. They're on the grind and making progress.
Eric Jorgenson: As it looks like it may happen, if we get a deep pocketed multistage firm on board with them, I feel way better about their product. I feel like that de-risks them significantly over the long run because it's capital intensive and unpredictable thing.
Al Doan: Sounds like my marriage. No, she’s great. She’s great.
Eric Jorgenson: Dre is so lovely. None of it's true. And lastly, gently.com just announced their $2 million raise that we were part of back in the spring, but just announced it and filled out the round. A bunch of great investors. They hired a team of six. They're still growing like crazy.
Al Doan: It makes us look really smart, just like all the cool names that we're with. Cool by association.
Eric Jorgenson: They redid their product. They redesigned their emails, like got a whole website up there now. Their stuff is super, super cool. They've added a bunch of capabilities for shopping across all the secondhand marketplaces.
Al Doan: It's coming, man. I'm telling you guys. See, we had good ideas. We are creative. Just trust us.
Bo Fishback: I think those guys are showing very good pace. They are cranking. I mean, you said it, Al, you bet on the people on that one, and they seem to be cranking.
Al Doan: Yeah, they're going. I find his Twitter feed insufferable, but as a human, he's a nice guy.
Eric Jorgenson: You let me know later if you want me to edit that out.
Al Doan: No, I’ll stand by it. I’ll tell Samuel.
Eric Jorgenson: Sometimes you got to be insufferable on Twitter and good things come of it.
Al Doan: It builds an audience, it certainly does.
Eric Jorgenson: We’ve got to wrap this one up. I feel like we want to go a couple more hours as always, but we’ve got a tight timeline today. We will be back again. Yeah, we got to all the business and none of the fuck around-ery. Any final words?
Al Doan: That's it, man.
Bo Fishback: I’d just like to leave this one with Al is a genius. I've seen it firsthand. Come to Hamilton.
Eric Jorgenson: Al is a genius. We have four examples today of how Al is a genius. We’ve got Wearloom. We’ve got Lumo. We’ve got a whole town. Come see the line of 70 year old ladies to hug and take a picture with Al. You’ve never seen a bigger rockstar in the world.
Al Doan: Alright guys.
Bo Fishback: Much love.
Eric Jorgenson: This podcast is even more fun to listen to when you are an investor and getting equity in these companies along with us. If you want to be a part of it, you can join us through AngelList, super easy. We just do a minimum of 4k a quarter for accredited investors only. You can enroll through AngelList and go through their sort of ACH accreditation approval process. Nice and easy. We're enrolling now for Q4 and all the quarters going forward. A reminder that if it's not obvious listening to this podcast, startup investing is risky, uncertain, unclear, and highly illiquid. So do not go lightly. But if you want to learn more about the fund and the startups that we invest in, some of the stuff that we're hoping to invest in, or just follow along, there's more on rolling.fun. And there's also two previous podcasts with Bo and Al, a lot of fun. The first one is sort of getting to know everybody and about us launching the fund. The second one is our first portfolio update covering the first four or five companies that we invested in, and it is a great complement to this one. I hope you check out everything, appreciate the journey and the spirit that we offer this in. If you'd like us to take a look at your company or invest alongside us, you know where to find us. Thank you for listening.