- Duration: 28 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JXG8ZK1ZZKGMGHMATNHVNJDN (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXG8ZK1ZZKGMGHMATNHVNJDN)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: the the No rush. [zwede hewitt]: Hey man, pleasure to meet you. Hey, good to meet you, man. It’s a super rainy day out here in Trinidad. Yeah, I’m currently in the islands. I’m in Trinidad and Todego at present. [zwede hewitt]: Where are you at? [Michael Houck]: I’m in Philadelphia right now. [Michael Houck]: I travel around a bit. Are you based in Trinidad most of the time? I think I saw that on your LinkedIn, right? [zwede hewitt]: Yeah, I live in Trinidad. I mean, I just travel a lot. So I used to live in the States and moved back after college and my previous career, which was in track and field. So I’m live here, based here. A lot of my businesses are centered around here, but I mean, I am a global citizen, as some would say. So I try to, you know, earn my dollars outside as well. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I saw you were at Baylor. I was actually, I was in Waco randomly like two months ago. [zwede hewitt]: Okay, nice. [zwede hewitt]: I’ve actually, I’ve been planning a trip back to the business school there to give a speech. I’ve been invited like three years ago and just never went, but yeah, I went to Baylor. I could, but let me just give you a quick, a quick background on myself. Um, I am, well, where do I go back? Okay. Um, previously I’m a former track and field athlete. So first and foremost, uh, my previous career, I’m a former professional track and field athlete. I competed at pretty much every level from division one at Baylor to went to the Olympics, world championships, Commonwealth games, and everything in between. Um, Winded down that profession in around 2017. We operate a family business here in Trinidad where we are major distributors of a couple international manufacturers. I started my own entrepreneurial journey in 2018, well, 17, 18. I wanted to build basically a super app for the Caribbean. Kind of taking for, are you familiar with WeChat? [Michael Houck]: I’ve spent a good deal of time in China. I’m very familiar with WeChat. [zwede hewitt]: Pretty much. I went to the Beijing Olympics back in 2008 and then just paying attention to trends and early moving technologies. I wanted to build a super app for the Caribbean. Started out in 2018, had some relative success, raised funding. I was the first Caribbean person, first Caribbean founder to raise funding for a Caribbean-based startup from Silicon Valley. That’s amazing. We were backed by Plug and Play Tech Center. We have partnerships with Timdre, I know Tim really well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: He’s a friend of mine. [zwede hewitt]: Oh, nice. Yeah. We launched that company in 2019. We’ve got some good partners in traction and I sold it in 2022. Thank you, man. Since then, I’ve been working for a company by the name of Canoopies, which is our acquirer. They are the leading fintech in the Caribbean and they are scaling exactly kind of like what we’re doing. It’s just a tedious task because we’re operating in the web too, so it requires a bunch of licenses and regulatory hurdles and compliance. So I left the money guys to deal with that bullshit. Real talk, you know what I mean? But it’s been amazing. I’m part of a really great team. It’s an honor to be part of that team. We’re building something that is revolutionizing one of the most underdeveloped regions in the world, which is the Caribbean territory. So it’s very important for us around the solutions that we’re building working on and you know just sort of like I would say our team’s modus operandi is really about building sustainable viable impactful solutions you know so I love that yeah yeah man so yeah that’s that’s where we are taking you know from the exit I’ve been able to be blessed to be an investor in various startups I’m an advisor investor and taking care of my two kids now so that’s what led me here I got connected to one of your guys around Voltari, which is a company I do advise. So we’d love to hear what you guys are doing, learn a bit more of your work, and see if there’s opportunity for us to collaborate. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, for sure, man. [Michael Houck]: Happy to talk about us and what we do and all that and how it could potentially help. So I can just jump into it. So I’m Michael. I’ve been a founder for a while. Before this, I was at Uber, part of the early Uber And then I was a help grow that then product manager Airbnb for a couple years after that And then in 2020 Founded my first company. We raised 23 million dollars total Like Andreessen Horowitz and some other great investors And ended up turning that into a venture fund So I’d least took a similar sort of track where ended up becoming more of an investor for a little while I’ve invested in a bunch of startups and then built this sort of bootstrapped holding company. So as I was building that last company, my personal brand started to blow up. I had, you know, between Twitter and LinkedIn, 100,000 followers and I had 200,000 on Substack. And so I was, you know, making all these creator connections through that world. And what I realized was that I was growing fast because a lot of those creators were were engaging with my social media content, right? And their audiences were getting exposed to my stuff and following me because it was interesting. But not a lot of people actually have those creator connections. And so what I did is I built this platform called Megaphone, where basically anyone can sign up and join, and they can partner with creators, either on engagements on their own social media content, have creators do product testimonials, or sponsored posts, newsletter ads and Twitter spaces and things like that. And so all of that, they partner with them on the platform, but then a lot of those people came to me and said, well, it’s great that I can partner with these creators. And so we started writing content for them too. And now we sort of have this two sided business where there’s like a distribution network and a content agency. And so we write content for third 30-ish, a little over 30, everyone from early stage founders to big billionaire VCs. And we do LinkedIn, we do X, we do AI digital twins for like Instagram polls and TikTok, and we do newsletters. So Beehive, Substack, either platform. And it’s very lightweight because we work with founders. So we’re not trying to put like a ton of meetings calendar, they’re all super busy. Small team, elite team, high trust people that I know and have worked with for a long time, like my partner on the agency is Blake Emahl, he has an even bigger audience than I do. And we’re the ones who are actually in the weeds. I’m the primary POC for every single one of our clients, and Blake is the editor-in-chief for every single one of our clients. And so that’s it. We try to keep things pretty lean. And, um, and that’s how we operate. Makes sense. [zwede hewitt]: Makes sense. Okay. So, uh, just in full transparency, let me give you an update of where I stand in the voluntary group and where the company’s at. So, uh, when your guy reached out to me, I work directly with the president, founder, CEO, et cetera. So I work directly with the two owners, the president and the CEO. I have really strong relationships with them. So I shared, I’m just, I’m explaining to you the exact flow of how things transpired. Sure of course guy messaged me on linkedin I took a screenshot of the chat and I have a group chat with the president and the ceo and I shared a screenshot of the group chat and I agreed right I agreed because um here’s quick context he he mentioned something very specific around the caribbean and again being a nation we live on small islands we are water bound we need boats we stand the most to benefit from such a solution because we are most impacted, for example, by negative climate effects that affect ocean territories, right? So, simple to put, when I came on board in the company, our group, we invested in the Voltari company, our acquirers, so I joined on the Caribbean advisory board just overseeing, you know, our interests as well as to support scaling the company in the Caribbean territory, leveraging my connections, right? The founder of the company, and this is important for you guys. So one of the questions was, does the company have budget? Yes. One of the company is wealthy. It’s not a startup. He owns what is the leading, he owns the leading beer company, one of the leading beer companies in Canada. It’s called Sea Missile Brewing Company. It’s a hundred million dollar revenue earning company per year. 26 years in operation. They manufacture the number one pilsner in all of Canada. So he’s a 26 year, veteran. He’s very successful. He’s wealthy. He’s self-funding a lot of this. They have raised capital, but money is not the problem to say the least. Um, what the challenge has been is that he is Caribbean oriented. So this company actually really started around 14 years ago when he was living in St. Lucia before Evie, before, uh, he was building a full carbon fiber. He wanted to build like a full carbon fiber race. That is powered by gas but throughout that process and timelines he got in contact with I can’t remember the name of the company but the founder of that company he acquired a company which was building at the time the world-leading solution that translates the power to provide okay let me explain to you so Voltari just quick context you don’t understand what sets ourselves apart is that they have created a world-leading technology that sustains high kilowatt output power through their battery system. So it allows them to rev at high RPM, which is needed for boats to push water to the side. Right. So he acquired a company which was building that solution, which is a propulsion technology that converts batteries to sustain high kilowatt output. And he he married the two. So he built a full carbon fiber vessel and integrated in technology, which he acquired. And it was a perfect match because again, you need really light vessels to be able to hold the battery power and all that weight and everything. So it started 14 years ago where he was just building fast boats out of carbon fiber in the Caribbean. Years later, he made an acquisition for a company that was building batteries that can work. And to know they have done, I mean, they have gone through so much changes over the past couple of years, but they have settled the company where they are at right now is we have officially, um, sold boats, uh, the Canada coast guard. Uh, we have one RFP from, um, border control in California. Our current clients are us military Canada military. Um, there’s Israel military interested, and then a couple of wealthy guys. So the company is in revenue. We have sold boats. We are not trying to manufacture these boats anymore. Where the company is that is we are aiming to now scale up our manufacturing? Manufacturing capabilities, so They recently acquired a warehouse in the u.s. It’s a Canadian company. It’s a Canadian company which showroom in Miami port ps-66 Fort Lauderdale They acquired a warehouse in Miami to scale up manufacturing capacity So they’re well capitalized they’re scaling up what they want to do is revert back to that original story of where it began in the Caribbean. That’s the context I wanted to give you 14 years ago. [Michael Houck]: I think having having the full story helps because, you know, that’s what we would be talking about through the content. That’s what we would be sort of, you know, sharing with the world and getting out there in the right formats in the right way that is going to resonate with folks. So whether that’s to build the brand, whether that’s to build his brand as like as the founder or the company’s brand, we I mean, with a story like that, we’d be able to do it for either one for sure, pretty easily. [zwede hewitt]: Definitely. Definitely. Yes. I think it’s important just to share that context with you. So he started 14 years ago, made a couple acquisitions. He acquired Pantera, which was a fast boat company out of Miami. He acquired the EV propulsion system, which is out of Canada and a couple of other companies. So put together what is Voltari now, um, the plans. So when I shared that with him, uh, they were open to have a conversation with you guys to learn more about the work as well as to explore opportunities. For us to collaborate in terms of telling that Caribbean story, but as well to, you know, driving the overall growth of the brand identity and presenting Voltari. What we would like to accomplish is a lot of people do not know, but Voltari is actually the world leader in this space. They have not done any focus really on too much on the marketing and pushing that loudly to the world. But I will share with you a link afterwards after this where the head of Porsche performance car, Porsche car, Andreas Persien, can’t remember his last name, but he did a full demo and review of the Voltari boot. And I would share that with you. So a couple of years ago, Voltari received an investment offer from Porsche, but they were too far ahead. And truthfully, again, the owner of the company does not need to change his company name from Voltari. To Porsche, to Porsche. So with that being said, that is just a high level overview of where the company is at. They’re doing a lot, a lot of great, great work. And what I would like to see in terms of supporting that Caribbean story is presenting a stronger awareness or more awareness to the positive benefits of Voltari. So again, there’s no gas deposits in the water. There’s no exhaust deposits. Uh, there isn’t oil and gas leaks. It’s as well as the noise pollution. So it’s no noise, no gas, no carbon deposits. So it’s amazing for the environment. I think that there’s a better story that can be told around that. [Michael Houck]: I mean, yeah, that’s, that hits some of the most important stuff when you’re, when you’re trying to build in this space. So it makes total sense. Uh, Yeah, I mean, look, we’d love to help. We’d love to help tell that story. I think it resonates with me. Personally, environmental concerns are, I lived in Miami for a long time, went to college down there. And so I’ve worked closely with some friends on some projects about what’s really going on in that. And so very, very cool. Yeah, we’d love to help out. If you want to send that over, I can take a look. But let’s all hop on a call either later this week or next And that is my plan. Yeah. [zwede hewitt]: More. Okay, cool. So what I’m going to do to prepare you best for meeting with the CEO slash with the executives, I’m going to send you some content that I think would be helpful for you to digest and get understanding. I’m going to let our, I’m going to let our founder know that we had a good conversation and I’ll set up a meeting for us for either later this week or early next week. And then you guys could take it away from there. I’m just the connector guy, just so you know, I’m just the connector, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, man. But no, it’s good. I mean, This sounds like a potential fit on our end, too. So we’d love to, yeah, let’s have that conversation and see their thoughts, and I’ll review what you send over in the meantime so I’m prepared and ready to go. [zwede hewitt]: Definitely. And here’s what we can do as well, too. Taken away from this, let’s have a first engagement with Voltari. I do have a portfolio of investments and startups within my network that I think can benefit from your services. I would comb through them to find the ones that do have budget, meaning they’ve raised Capital at least and I would make some recommendations for you. [Michael Houck]: Okay, then you that would that’d be great. I’d love that Let’s let’s start with Voltari and go from there. Definitely man, right? Cool. Good to meet man. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Talk soon. [Michael Houck]: Good to meet you, man Thanks for your time. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m looking forward right here. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Talk soon. See you