Jan Davis: Generation 1 Triangle Founder -> RTP Angel Fund + Carolina Angel Fund
00:00:03 - Jan Davis
I spent three years cleaning up a mess and doubling the size of that business, which was a lot of fun. I was able to build a great team and as you know, having the right team and people that work well together and have disparate skills but are willing to all pull together is just the best. Welcome to Triangle Tweener Talks, a weekly podcast by Builders for Builders where we explore the startup journey from the idea to the exit and all the lessons in between, with an exclusive focus on founders from the Triangle region of North Carolina. Tweenertalks is produced by Earfluence. Now here is your host, serial Founder and General Partner of the Triangle Tweener Fund, Scott Wingo.
00:00:49 - Scot Wingo
Welcome to episode three of Triangle Tweener Talks, an in depth discussion with Jan Davis. This episode is sponsored by Smashing Boxes, a Durham based lean design centric digital transformation company, Robinson Bradshaw. They are a full service business law firm with a passion for supporting the Triangle entrepreneurial ecosystem. Visit robinsonbradshaw.com for more information and special thanks to our friends at Ear Fluence who produced the podcast. Jan Davis is a North Carolina native who attended the University of North Carolina. She had an incredible business career including founding two companies in the 80s and one in the 90s. That puts her in my Triangle Founder framework. Officially as a Generation 1 founder, Jan exemplifies the pay it forward spirit that we are known for in the Triangle. She's a limited partner or investor in the Tweener Fund. She's also in Carolina Angel Network and she co founded and is on the board of the newly founded RTP Angel Fund. She's always open to meet and help founders with a particular fondness for female founders. I've always admired Jan and appreciated her commitment to our startup ecosystem, but never had the chance to sit down with her for a long period of time to hear her backstory. It was great to do that and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Hey Jan, welcome. Well, thanks for coming in today.
00:02:07 - Jan Davis
Great to be here. Always good to see you.
00:02:09 - Scot Wingo
Awesome. So this is exciting because I've known you for a long time but I've heard bits and pieces of your backstory and everyone looks on LinkedIn but I'm excited to hear kind of your entrepreneurial journey.
00:02:20 - Jan Davis
Okay, well I'm a native North Carolinian but and was lucky enough to go to UNC undergrad, majored in English lit, couldn't find a decent job so went back and got an MBA and then as one does I moved to Boston and went to work for a strategy Consulting firm. It was great postgraduate education. It was kind of weird. They. The only reason I got there was that one of my professors was college roommates with the guy who founded the firm. And they actually told me to my face. They considered me a risky hire for two reasons. One is I was a woman, and they had no woman consultants. And I had gone to a less well known school, so not Harvard or Sloan or Tuck or Wharton. And there were six in sort of my cohort. The rest of our guys, obviously. And I was just as well prepared as they were. So I salute the UNC Business School for.
00:03:16 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, the MBA served you well. Where in North Carolina are you from?
00:03:19 - Jan Davis
Thomasville.
00:03:20 - Scot Wingo
Okay. Yeah. So that's out a little bit west, like near Hickory and stuff.
00:03:24 - Jan Davis
And that's like, not that far. It's an hour, about an hour and a half from here.
00:03:28 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
00:03:28 - Jan Davis
And furniture. My dad was a chemist and plant manager for glue companies for furniture.
00:03:33 - Scot Wingo
Interesting. Wow. Yeah. That's old school.
00:03:35 - Jan Davis
Definitely old school. Definitely old school. Poor Thomasville's gotten kind of a little bit left behind, although they were working hard to try to bring it back.
00:03:42 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, A lot of those have turned into data centers because they had the power infrastructure for the furniture manufacturing. And now that can be reused for data centers, interestingly enough.
00:03:51 - Jan Davis
Yeah, it is interesting.
00:03:52 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And then, so what was the MBA experience like at that point? You know, I know now you go there and it's like entrepreneurship. Everywhere you look at that point, you probably didn't even have anything. Probably wasn't even mentioned.
00:04:04 - Jan Davis
No. Venture capital and entrepreneurship were not mentioned. They were not mentioned. It was really like Harvard and that. It was case studies. Everybody had exactly the same program fall of their first year. And I thought I was going to die.
00:04:22 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, because you came out of an educator. You'd never heard any of this stuff.
00:04:25 - Jan Davis
Nope, never had. Econ, statistics, accounting, finance. One man that became a really good friend, that the first time I recognized him as a person in the class was when he wanted to amortize a patent. And I didn't know what amortization was, and I certainly didn't know you could do it to a patent. So it was quite a revelation. It was tough, but I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed studying something that seemed to be so practical and really going after solving real problems potentially. And I fell in love with measured marketing. The whole idea of being able to predict people's behaviors in groups, obviously not an individual, and use that to drive choices that one might make as far as marketing channels and messages and so forth.
00:05:16 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And at that point in time, measured marketing isn't digital marketing. Oh, no, no.
00:05:20 - Jan Davis
That was mail and phone.
00:05:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Direct response. So, yeah, send a catalog out, send a postcard out or something and kind of see what happens.
00:05:28 - Jan Davis
Yep. Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:29 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Was that from a case study or you had a professor that turned you onto that?
00:05:32 - Jan Davis
Um, both. Both. I mean, it was the way that we studied. It was usually with cases. Yeah. I was also involved in a project that was developing a marketing plan for the Chevy Chevette. Remember those?
00:05:45 - Scot Wingo
I do, yeah. Is that one of the ones that exploded or was it.
00:05:48 - Jan Davis
No, that was a different one.
00:05:49 - Scot Wingo
Okay. You would hit it, you would rear end it and blow.
00:05:53 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, that was.
00:05:54 - Scot Wingo
That was not the Chevette. Okay.
00:05:55 - Jan Davis
That was not the Chevette. And our, our team, our UNC team won for best market research.
00:06:02 - Scot Wingo
Nice. Did you actually get to pitch Chevy?
00:06:04 - Jan Davis
Yeah, we had to go to. We got to. We got flown to Detroit and got to pitch Chevy. And not that I ever saw any evidence of anything we did, but it was, it was a good experience.
00:06:16 - Scot Wingo
Kind of a Dan Draper Mad Men kind of a moment there. Going to pitch the execs at Chevy.
00:06:21 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Well, we just pitched the market research part. So there were teams from other schools that pitched the branding and. And messaging.
00:06:28 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. At that point in the year two of your mba, did you have to do some specialization like finance, marketing or. It wasn't really set up that way.
00:06:35 - Jan Davis
They didn't really require that. I did more focus on marketing and finance just because I found it the most interesting.
00:06:42 - Scot Wingo
Got it. Okay. So then you're in Boston.
00:06:44 - Jan Davis
You're in Boston doing strategy consulting, worked with Fortune 1000 companies. They would tend to put me on the southern engagements because I guess they knew I spoke the language and knew the foods and. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was. It was really a great educational experience, but I found it kind of frustrating after a while to just give advice and then walk away.
00:07:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I kind of crave that now because I. Every decision I make, I own for life. So it'd be kind of nice to like make some decisions and things and then walk away. But yeah, I totally get that.
00:07:19 - Jan Davis
My life is much more that these days. I give a lot of advice. At that time in Boston, there was really a lot of ferment about computers, about personal computers, about all of the things that were precursors to what goes on now. So I took a job as employee number 10 in a venture backed startup, software startup. They were developing software to tie together all the departments in auto dealerships and one of the three founders owned car dealerships and it was three brothers. They weren't particularly good managers. But anyway, there was funding and after I was there for about nine months, the VCs brought in a professional to run the thing, as happens sometimes.
00:08:17 - Scot Wingo
What was your role there?
00:08:18 - Jan Davis
Well, started out running marketing. Oh, wow. And managing the documentation team. That was back in the day when there was paper documentation.
00:08:28 - Scot Wingo
Here's the manual.
00:08:29 - Jan Davis
Yeah, my first experience using a computer word processor. Really?
00:08:36 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Was it WordPress?
00:08:38 - Jan Davis
No, no, it was a precursor to that. It was. I don't even remember the name of it. It was something that ran on a mini computer because there was a mini computer there on site. You know, there wasn't. There really weren't the options to build things in the cloud at that time.
00:08:53 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. I don't know if you've heard this part of my story, but my dad was a COBOL programmer and we had a digital PDP 11 which was like a baby VAX inside my house when I grew up. So I had exposure to these mainframes and mini frames. It's pretty. Pretty wild era.
00:09:10 - Jan Davis
Yeah, it was a wild era.
00:09:11 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Was this tape storage or was this like on hard drives at this point?
00:09:16 - Jan Davis
The backups were tape, but the. Was on a hard drive. Yeah.
00:09:19 - Scot Wingo
And the hard drives would be like refrigerated and there was like a megabyte.
00:09:22 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:24 - Scot Wingo
Our phone, our phone has like, you know, a thousand refrigerator size boxes. It's like crazy.
00:09:27 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. It is nuts.
00:09:29 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:09:29 - Jan Davis
But when they brought in the pro to run things, Bill, he made some changes and the next thing I knew, I was the CFO in addition to head of marketing. I was the CFO and the head of HR and the head of admin facilities. All of that. Pretty much everything except technical development. And so after about 18 months we managed to sell that business off to AT&T.
00:09:59 - Scot Wingo
Nice.
00:10:00 - Jan Davis
Back when they were trying to be in the.
00:10:02 - Scot Wingo
So what is this? This is in the 80s, I imagine.
00:10:05 - Jan Davis
Yeah, this was in the 80s.
00:10:06 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So in the 80s you had a venture back startup and you'd had an exit.
00:10:09 - Jan Davis
Yep.
00:10:10 - Scot Wingo
Wow, that's crazy. Like who is the vc? Is it like someone we. Because there weren't that many VCs and they were.
00:10:15 - Jan Davis
They probably the only one is ARD, American Research and Development. Aegis was the leader, but they have since moved on.
00:10:26 - Scot Wingo
It's not like Draper Fisher, the old super like a Draper was. Tim Draper's dad is like the old Silicon Valley one. And there's like a Couple that didn't tell him. That's like the. The Silicon Valley equivalent. Okay.
00:10:36 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Yep.
00:10:38 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:10:39 - Jan Davis
So anyway, was that a good exit.
00:10:40 - Scot Wingo
For you or they. You probably. You may not have had equity back.
00:10:42 - Jan Davis
And then I'm not really sure they believe I got this much.
00:10:45 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:10:45 - Jan Davis
Out of it. But we made money for the VCs and bill and I had developed a great working relationship. He had. He was a. He was literally a rocket scientist. He worked on some of the early rocket launches.
00:11:01 - Scot Wingo
Neat.
00:11:01 - Jan Davis
And a real renaissance man. Yeah. Yep. So anyway, Bill and I went off looking for something else to do together. We found a venture capitalist who had a concept in the direct marketing industry. And so I put together. I used my MBA skills and the skills I developed in consulting and put together pitch deck and financial plans and got introduced around by. This was the Aegis funds. Got introduced around by those guys and raised money. Started the business, ran it for five years, acquired or merged with four other businesses.
00:11:40 - Scot Wingo
Wow.
00:11:41 - Jan Davis
And then crashed and burned. Yeah.
00:11:45 - Scot Wingo
That was called Smart Names.
00:11:46 - Jan Davis
Yep. That was Smart Names.
00:11:47 - Scot Wingo
Yep. And that was also in the mid-80s.
00:11:49 - Jan Davis
Yes.
00:11:49 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:11:50 - Jan Davis
Yep. It. It died at 91. So. First death.
00:11:54 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So you're in what I call. So I have this framework. You saw it today? I just released it. So it's kind of like the six generations of founders and I kind of have this kind of like, you know, the folks that were in the 70s, like pre 80s, the only one I really know in our area is Dr. Goodnight. And then there's. The folks in the 80s are still pretty sparse, but you're in that bucket. Which is pretty amazing because, you know, there was none of the stuff we're used to today. You're probably finding a lawyer to even kind of understand it like a venture capital is probably near impossible. No. Being in Boston, probably Boston was.
00:12:26 - Jan Davis
Yeah. It was all over the place there.
00:12:29 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:12:29 - Jan Davis
Meanwhile, I had met a guy on an airplane and we had gotten married and I had.
00:12:35 - Scot Wingo
On the airplane or like.
00:12:36 - Jan Davis
Well, later. A little later. But I had two children while I was doing the startups. The second startup.
00:12:46 - Scot Wingo
Wow.
00:12:47 - Jan Davis
And there wasn't really work from home, so I had a 10 day maternity leave with Kid 1 and started taking him to the office. He had his first bottle in a board meeting. The chairman, fortunately, really liked babies and fortunately he was a really good baby.
00:13:02 - Scot Wingo
But yeah.
00:13:03 - Jan Davis
So then we were both very, very busy because my ex husband was a venture capitalist and he was traveling and I was traveling and I was working startup hours and so we ended up hiring live ins because there Was just. No other way.
00:13:17 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So like an au pair type of.
00:13:20 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:21 - Scot Wingo
And then when you started that, so. So you were one of the co founders with Bill, who was the CEO that they bought into the pre. And then how did you guys split things at that point? Because you started to do a pretty wide set of skills at the car company. Yeah.
00:13:36 - Jan Davis
So it started out the same way. I mean, I was doing everything but technical development, including some of the early model development to predict response rates and conversion rates.
00:13:50 - Scot Wingo
Was that on sas? Like, how did you develop a model back then?
00:13:52 - Jan Davis
We used spss, but then we hired people, and like with most founders, you end up peeling off things to give to people who are better than you are. That's the goal, is to hire a guy who's got a PhD. One of the people we worked with as a contractor was Tom Maiazzi, who was part of Click and Clack, the car guys.
00:14:19 - Scot Wingo
The Tappet brothers.
00:14:20 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, the Tappet brothers.
00:14:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. On npr.
00:14:22 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Unfortunately, he's passed away, but he was. He. He was a professor at Suffolk University at the time and. And did some contract work for us.
00:14:30 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. My favorite part of that radio show is at the end, they would do the. The thank yous and it would be, like, to our lawyer who cheat him and how. Who he cheat him and how. And like, embedded, like, none of it was real. It was always like this, like, long string of jokes in the outro. And I'd, like. As a kid, my dad loved that. And I'd listen to it and try to figure out what is the joke in there. It's like, really cleverly done.
00:14:53 - Jan Davis
Yeah, very, very. So one of the companies that we acquired already had a CPA cfo. So handed that off.
00:15:01 - Scot Wingo
That piece came off.
00:15:01 - Jan Davis
Yeah. And we ended up with multiple business units. So I ended up being president of one of the business units.
00:15:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And how big did that company get before the.
00:15:11 - Jan Davis
At the peak, we were probably around 20 million in revenue.
00:15:14 - Scot Wingo
Awesome.
00:15:15 - Jan Davis
And we had raised, I don't know, five rounds of funding. Probably raised $20 million over time.
00:15:21 - Scot Wingo
Cool. And then what was the. What caused it to kind of tip over?
00:15:24 - Jan Davis
It was, as often happens, bad things happen kind of all at once. There was a recession. There was a big postal rate increase which whacked our customers. And then we had taken on too much debt with the last round.
00:15:42 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:15:43 - Jan Davis
And the last deal was one of those where there was a big debate about, should we do this deal? Should we do this deal? But we ended up doing the deal, and it was not a good One. Not a good deal.
00:15:53 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So you learn. You actually tend to learn more from your L's than your W's, I have found. Yeah, yeah.
00:16:00 - Jan Davis
Yep. And I think. I mean, Bill was a great mentor, both in terms of positive things that I learned from him and also things that I watched him do that.
00:16:10 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Oops.
00:16:11 - Jan Davis
In retrospect.
00:16:12 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Your gut was like. And then, like, it turned out to be right.
00:16:16 - Jan Davis
Yeah. At that point, he had. He's like 15 years older than I am, and he had so much more experience. I tended to trust him. But then looking back, you can see things that probably weren't the best choices.
00:16:27 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I had that. My first job. I was kind of like, this seems like a bad decision, but these guys. And I was like, oops. Yeah, it was. And that's like, maybe I. Maybe I am. Maybe I can do this myself. It's a kind of a confidence builder in a weird way to kind of like, you're playing with someone else's money to like, make someone else make and then kind of see if you're right or wrong.
00:16:43 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:45 - Scot Wingo
Okay. So those. That was probably a really harsh kind of period to go through that and have invested so much time. How long was that?
00:16:52 - Jan Davis
Five years.
00:16:53 - Scot Wingo
Five years? Yeah. So that's tough to come out of that. How did you. What was the arc out of that?
00:16:58 - Jan Davis
Well, I did some. Fortunately, somehow I had escaped with my reputation, and I'd gotten to know a lot of people through the direct Marketing association and clients and, you know, got a few phone calls. Can you come help me with this? Or can you come help with that? Or. And I ended up picking up a fairly lengthy consulting project with a company called Customer Development Corporation. And that was really a fun gig because I didn't have anybody reporting to me and I could go be creative because they wanted me to work on new products, new markets, new applications for existing products, you know, that kind of thing.
00:17:43 - Scot Wingo
So kind of like a strategy corp dev type of role.
00:17:45 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:17:45 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Were they a big company or.
00:17:47 - Jan Davis
They were, but they were probably around 40 million in revenue for. And they were a agency, a direct marketing agency that did everything from creative to database management to letter shop. So they actually printed and had a letter sorting machine that would co. Mingle mail. I mean, it's quite an operation. It's headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. So I got trips from Boston to Peoria fairly often.
00:18:15 - Scot Wingo
But that's a fun, fun journey to connect together.
00:18:18 - Jan Davis
Well, getting to Chicago was the easy part.
00:18:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, Peoria is not easy.
00:18:24 - Jan Davis
Yeah, it was always Changing planes in Chicago. So did that for a couple years. But meanwhile Bob, my now ex, had gotten excited about what was going on in Central Europe. And he came home one day in that sort of period when I hadn't started anything new yet and said, what would you think if I raised a fund for investment, investment in Central Europe and we moved to Warsaw, Poland.
00:18:52 - Scot Wingo
Wow. And you had kids at this point?
00:18:54 - Jan Davis
I had kids.
00:18:55 - Scot Wingo
How old were they?
00:18:56 - Jan Davis
They were, let's see, three and no, two and four. When he came home and asked that question.
00:19:03 - Scot Wingo
All right.
00:19:04 - Jan Davis
So I said, well, I guess it'd be an adventure. So it took him two years to close on the funds, but during which time I did these consulting projects and then we picked up and moved to Warsaw, Poland in the spring of 94 with a 4 year old and a 7 year old.
00:19:23 - Scot Wingo
Wow. That's quite an adventure. So it was. Was that a good place to be? Was he right or was it.
00:19:29 - Jan Davis
It really brought home to me how spoiled we Americans are. It was challenging. I really missed my career. I did part time marketing consulting there. I did some fascinating projects for Gillette and for Office Depot and for a Polish paging company. I spent more time being a mom because somebody had to take the kids to and from school and go to four markets every week in order to pick up the foods we wanted. Because if you wanted fresh fruits and vegetables, you had to go to the outdoor market and negotiate in Polish.
00:20:05 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So you did. You obviously probably didn't know Polish. Did you learn Polish at that point?
00:20:11 - Jan Davis
I got to be market functional.
00:20:14 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:20:15 - Jan Davis
And I could be polite. I could be polite, you know, how are you? And I had a housekeeper who spoke no English and so sometimes we would sit down and try to have conversations about her sick mother, stuff like that.
00:20:28 - Scot Wingo
And I'm not a geopolitical person, but they, I know like they had the Lenza and all that. This was kind of post that. So it's like pulling and kind of like separated and was like that was maybe your, your ex husband's thesis is like this is kind of the time.
00:20:41 - Jan Davis
To get time of. Time of change. Yeah. So the Wall fell in 89. The coup against Gorbachev was in 91. And at that point Poland started to come out of the whole Cold War and there were a lot of returning Poles who were bringing ideas back. The guy that built their equivalent of the SEC had been educated in the US and was an econ professor, I think at Cornell and modeled their sec, the transparency rules, all that around the stock market based on how Things work here. And so there, you know, it was, it was really coming out. But it was still a very much a cash economy. You couldn't use a credit card. You had to go pay your bills in cash. There'd been ridiculous inflation. So there were millions wadi notes floating around. Which was worth $100.
00:21:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, yeah. It's crazy.
00:21:42 - Jan Davis
Yeah, it was.
00:21:43 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. You start to appreciate the US dollar when you things are oscillating around like that.
00:21:48 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. So we were there for two years. I was really ready to come back and my deal with Bob had been, okay, I'll follow you over, but you had to follow me back. So I started working my contacts and ended up getting recruited to TransUnion in Chicago to run their list data and analytics business. So good old measured marketing continues to be a theme here. Still not so much digital, really. Not digital because this was in 96.
00:22:20 - Scot Wingo
96.
00:22:20 - Jan Davis
Yeah. And I know when the World Wide Web happened because it happened while we were gone. We moved in 94. We bought both sets of parents fax machines so we could send letters more easily than counting on the Polish mail and the US mail. And if it had been two years later, we would have bought them a terminal. Yeah.
00:22:44 - Scot Wingo
An aol.
00:22:44 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was pretty wild. I guess one probably really interesting story from that period was a project that I did for Gillette which was, which was a razor swap where people could bring in their grody old communist era razors and swap them for a new Gillette sensor.
00:23:07 - Scot Wingo
Interesting.
00:23:07 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. So we test marketed it in Prague.
00:23:10 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:23:10 - Jan Davis
And then rolled it out in Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland and swapped 100,000 razors in two weekends.
00:23:18 - Scot Wingo
Wow. And Gilletta is part of Unilever. Right. The big conglomerate.
00:23:22 - Jan Davis
It is now. It wasn't independent, was it? Out of the uk no, they had bought the razor manufacturer in Poland. Oh.
00:23:31 - Scot Wingo
So as a. Okay.
00:23:32 - Jan Davis
So they were running, they were running Central Europe out of Warsaw.
00:23:36 - Scot Wingo
Interesting.
00:23:36 - Jan Davis
Okay, yeah.
00:23:37 - Scot Wingo
Convenient for you.
00:23:38 - Jan Davis
Very. And the, the executive teams were, were so interesting. The, the head of the operation was Spanish, the CFO was French. My boss was South African.
00:23:51 - Scot Wingo
A lot of companies over there are like that. You'll meet. They're just like this, you know, huge melting pot of all kinds of people from all kinds of places.
00:23:58 - Jan Davis
It, it was a really good experience.
00:24:00 - Scot Wingo
What was probably good for you is usually a lot of times they'll standardize on English.
00:24:03 - Jan Davis
Oh yeah.
00:24:03 - Scot Wingo
It's like the one language that a lot of everyone knows. So it's kind of, kind of interesting. And you were There. And like, you're like, sure, I can do this English thing.
00:24:11 - Jan Davis
And then another interesting project was a sales manual in 11 languages, none of.
00:24:19 - Scot Wingo
Which for selling for different projects or for the razors.
00:24:23 - Jan Davis
For razors. But it wasn't really associated with the razor swap. And I learned how you do that is you farm it out to 11 different groups to translate from English into that, and then you hired different people to back translate it into English to make sure it hadn't gotten stupid.
00:24:41 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Interesting.
00:24:42 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:42 - Scot Wingo
It's kind of QA thing.
00:24:44 - Jan Davis
Okay. So I was really. At that point, I was really tired of eternal winters because I've been in Boston and now Warsaw. And I tried to convince the guy that recruited me to TransUnion to let me do this job from Atlanta because I knew that the best salesperson in the group was in Atlanta and she had previously worked for me. And so it's like, yes, I can do it from Atlanta. He's like, no, you gotta come to Chicago.
00:25:09 - Scot Wingo
TransUnion is like a credit bureau, like a Experian company.
00:25:13 - Jan Davis
And Equifax.
00:25:14 - Scot Wingo
Equifax.
00:25:15 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. The big three are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. So spent three years cleaning up a mess and. And doubling the size of that business, which was a lot of fun. I was able to build a great team. And as you know, having the right team and people that work well together and have disparate skills, but are willing to all pull together is just the best.
00:25:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Was there a. Did you work in the generic credit piece of it, Credit reporting, or did you do something? Was your direct marketing? Okay, it was all for. On the marketing.
00:25:49 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Marketing purposes.
00:25:50 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Were you marketing to businesses saying you should do credit checks on customers and use our product, or were you going direct to consumer. What was the angle?
00:25:57 - Jan Davis
We were. We were providing them with mailing list.
00:26:02 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
00:26:03 - Jan Davis
And then analytics to improve the responsiveness of the mailing list. We were building models based on the data that was available.
00:26:14 - Scot Wingo
Okay. Because you had so much consumer data, you could put together a list and say if you want to go after a consumer that has really great credit or something.
00:26:22 - Jan Davis
Yes.
00:26:22 - Scot Wingo
Okay, I got it. All right.
00:26:23 - Jan Davis
And we could do things like. Based on data that we purchased from outside sources, we could put it together with the data that we had and do things like we knew someone was homeowner because they had a mortgage dough. We knew that they were a new mover because they changed their address because they gotten a new mortgage. So there were. There was stuff like that that we could tell merchants that was useful.
00:26:54 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Even doing that in the mid-90s, is that where. Nowhere. Yeah, we're late 90s.
00:26:58 - Jan Davis
We're in the late 90s. Yeah, late.
00:26:59 - Scot Wingo
Even doing that in the late 90s was not trivial. Yeah. So you probably were using Oracle type systems or was it on an older platform?
00:27:08 - Jan Davis
It was on an older. Well, we were. You mentioned your dad being a COBOL programmer. A lot of the systems that ran the transunion data were built in assembler and cobol. Now we outsourced our database management because we would take a snapshot of the data in the credit database and clean it up because we weren't trying to necessarily predict creditworthiness all the time. Sometimes it was a new mover or a homeowner, things like that. And then we would append birth dates that weren't necessarily in the credit file in order to be able to help people determine who they should mail to or not mail to.
00:27:56 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. It would be so easy to do that today. But like doing that the 90s, not. Not easy. Especially if you have like. So now you've got all this technical debt of this company that's like got. And it's funny because in the world of E commerce we would run across like Sears, we would go do work for them and at some point an order that had an exception would rattle through and they'd have to print it out and a bunch of people in a room with a cash register would have to run it because like that was the infrastructure and they could never, they could never get off of that. Yeah. So these old, these big businesses have like had a lot of weird systems that you had to deal with.
00:28:28 - Jan Davis
Yes, yes. Yeah. Fortunately we found some really good partners that we could work with who were much more experienced in the direct marketing industry. So we would send them a snapshot of the database and they would manage it for us. Produce counts because people mailers want to know how many names they can get that fit their criteria. So there were a lot of challenges and there was a big mess when I got there because there really hadn't been contracts.
00:29:02 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. At this point you've had like five direct marketing jobs. You were, you mentioned the dma. I've actually that still exists. I've. My E commerce world. I bumped into that a good bit. Did you get to be on the board of that or anything? Because it seems like at this point you're probably one of the smartest people in the. Not not only the US but the world about direct marketing.
00:29:22 - Jan Davis
Well, did you I was on the Financial Services Council. I was chair of the Financial Services Council. But I was. I never aspired to be on the board of the dma.
00:29:31 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. You don't want to get paid for that stuff.
00:29:33 - Jan Davis
No. And I was pretty busy.
00:29:35 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:29:36 - Jan Davis
Because I still had, you know, I had little kids at home. I still was doing all of this. And then the guy that recruited me to TransUnion took early retirement and they kicked me upstairs and gave me his job.
00:29:47 - Scot Wingo
Okay. Wow.
00:29:48 - Jan Davis
So now I'm reporting to the CEO, which was nice for my status needs, but kind of bureaucratic and relatively boring. Had four business units.
00:29:57 - Scot Wingo
And your middle manager. You're a doer. That's a middle manager.
00:30:01 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, Harry was. Harry Gamble was the CEO. And I loved Harry. He was just. He was a really good guy. Fortunately, Harry knew that I needed something more creative and interesting to do, so he asked me to start the direct to consumer business. The whole get your credit report and score and credit monitoring online.
00:30:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:30:22 - Jan Davis
So now I get to become an E commerce merchant.
00:30:25 - Scot Wingo
Yay. Yeah. Yeah. So for, you know, for a direct marketer, E commerce is. And the Internet is just like nirvana. Right? Like, because you can measure. It's real time. You don't have to deal with the postal service. You can, you know, you got clicks and measurability. It's like what you guys have wanted forever.
00:30:40 - Jan Davis
Yeah. One of the things about mail, though, is because it costs a lot comparatively, you have to be more judicious about how you send out communications.
00:30:52 - Scot Wingo
Yep.
00:30:52 - Jan Davis
You end up with, I think, more discipline and less spray and pray.
00:30:57 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, it's. We're recording this during election season and I'm getting like a stack this thick. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure that still is the case today. But yeah, back then you had to like, you know, and people would. They would, you know, they would have to like, really spruce down what they were going to send out because, you know, it had to fit within a budget.
00:31:14 - Jan Davis
Yep, yep, yep. And had to spruce down how many that we're gonna send to.
00:31:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:31:19 - Jan Davis
That was really fun building that business. And we took that from 0 to 39 million in three years.
00:31:25 - Scot Wingo
Wow.
00:31:26 - Jan Davis
We did do a small acquisition of a company that had already built out some product. Cause it was just gonna take us too long. And our competitors already had product in the market. So we.
00:31:36 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. I was gonna ask was this reactive or proactive when you guys.
00:31:40 - Jan Davis
Well, we knew we needed to do it, but the credit bureaus had typically regarded consumers as an irritation rather than a market because they're always calling up and complaining and you've got my data wrong or you've merged me with somebody else. Having common name myself, I've suffered from that. When I lived in Boston, there was another Jan Davis who lived further out on Beacon street who didn't pay her bills. Yeah. So I can appreciate how that all happens. And actually coming out of the direct marketing industry where there's a whole lot of merge purge to try to eliminate duplicate records and match up people appropriately. And it's hard.
00:32:28 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:32:29 - Jan Davis
If you, you got juniors and seniors living at the same address, you know, all of that kind of stuff just really makes it very hard.
00:32:36 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:32:37 - Jan Davis
And you know, the credit. Credit bureaus are always being sued. There was a regular, you know, stable of 400 consumer lawsuits and then frequently a class action lawsuit on top of that. So it's just always something. Yeah, always something. I gotta say, living in Poland and understanding how things worked there really made me appreciate credit bureaus in a way that I didn't. There was a young woman at Gillette who was a Pole and she was so excited because this was the year that she and her husband could put windows and doors in the house that they were building with cash because mortgage rates were 32%.
00:33:19 - Scot Wingo
Holy cow.
00:33:20 - Jan Davis
Because there wasn't a credit bureau, there was no way to know for sure whether or not somebody was a good credit risk. Now inflation was high, it was running double digits, but there was still a huge interest rate premium because of lack of information. And if you look at what kinds of interest rates are available for people with good credit risks here in the US I mean that's. Yeah, that's all because of credit bureau.
00:33:47 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. You got to have a clearinghouse so the lender knows the risk they're getting into and can price it accordingly. And if you don't, you're going to least common denominator, right?
00:33:55 - Jan Davis
Yep, yep.
00:33:57 - Scot Wingo
Cool. So then, so you built the consumers. This was your first Internet experience. Was it, was it nirvana for a direct marketer, you know, to be able to, you know, I don't know, you probably didn't have Google at this point, so you were probably sending emails and just putting up a website, maybe doing banner ads, kind of Yahoo. This is like the Yahoo banner ad era.
00:34:15 - Jan Davis
Yep. We were doing banner ads. We were, we did direct response TV to drive people to the website, which.
00:34:22 - Scot Wingo
Is like that infomercial type thing where you kind of do a rev share of some kind on it. And it's like remnant inventory it's remnant.
00:34:30 - Jan Davis
Inventory but it's not a rev share. You pay cheaper prices because it is direct response and you have less control over where it can go. The car pay story, they started out doing a lot of drtv and you would see their testimonial ads on the ACC network where now there's moment of Zen because they didn't sell that space. So now it's a moment of Zen.
00:34:53 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:34:54 - Jan Davis
So that's the kind of thing we did.
00:34:55 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Cool.
00:34:57 - Jan Davis
And we did, we did email marketing. We partnered with financial services institutions like affiliate marketing deals so that if. And we would do kind of transunion inside for, you know, name your, your big bank brand who wanted to offer that as a service to their, their customers. And we had very interesting meetings with other credit reporting agencies, with Experian and Equifax to make and always with attorneys in the room because you can't. Yeah, we did.
00:35:31 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. You can't be colluding.
00:35:32 - Jan Davis
Can't be.
00:35:32 - Scot Wingo
No collusion.
00:35:33 - Jan Davis
No collusion.
00:35:33 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. They always give you these guides of like you can do this, you cannot do this.
00:35:36 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Can't talk about that.
00:35:37 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:35:38 - Jan Davis
But what we needed to make deals about was being able to put together a three bureau report so that if somebody wants to see the three reports stacked up next to each other.
00:35:49 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:35:49 - Jan Davis
We had to make those kinds of arrangements carefully.
00:35:52 - Scot Wingo
Well now the de duping problem is like cubed. So I can. Because you got yours to theirs. To theirs. And you've all been out here creating your own islands of data like getting all that lined up. Must have been. I can't even imagine what that was like.
00:36:06 - Jan Davis
Yeah, it could be pretty exciting.
00:36:09 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Wow.
00:36:11 - Jan Davis
So a really, really interesting experience and fun. Just like you were saying because you got such instant feedback when you're doing it with mail, it takes so long to figure out whether or not what you're doing is really working. And with digital marketing, if you change the subject line of an email and you do champion challenger testing so you've got one that's the best you found and then you run challengers up against that till you find something that's better and then you just keep doing it forever.
00:36:44 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So back. Let's, let's. So most people aren't going to be familiar. I'm on the edge of direct mail and you're like deep in the heart of it. So let's say you wanted to run. We're recording this in October so you would have to be planning for spring or summer at this point. Like, like let's say you wanted to do a campaign out in the future. In the direct mail world, you probably had what, a six, eight month.
00:37:04 - Jan Davis
Yeah. People would be planning in August for their holiday mailing.
00:37:09 - Scot Wingo
Right. Okay.
00:37:10 - Jan Davis
So if you're, if you're. If Christmas is your big season.
00:37:15 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:37:16 - Jan Davis
Then you would need to be figuring out your creative and figuring out what mailing lists you were going to use that far in advance because you'd have.
00:37:25 - Scot Wingo
Your, you know, design period, and then you'd have to have a print period that was long. And then you go. And then once it's printed, you would have to go to, like a sorter. I forget what this letter shop. A letter shop that would then, like. And then it takes X days to get to the mail. And then you always kind of have to do it in waves. They kind of like, tend to do different regions in different ways for various reasons.
00:37:45 - Jan Davis
Yep. And you would do things, particularly in the catalog world, where you would test different covers. The contents of the catalog are exactly the same, but the COVID is different.
00:37:56 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:37:56 - Jan Davis
And you.
00:37:57 - Scot Wingo
So would you do like a little run at the beginning, kind of like a test, and then see how it did, and then say, go with COVID B. How does that work?
00:38:04 - Jan Davis
Yeah. You know, you're talking about what my customers did.
00:38:07 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
00:38:08 - Jan Davis
And a lot of times it was. We didn't have that much transparency because they wouldn't always. Well, they would rarely share their results.
00:38:15 - Scot Wingo
With us because that's trade secret.
00:38:17 - Jan Davis
Yeah. They would. We would just know what was working on the data and analytics side based on what they bought more of.
00:38:25 - Scot Wingo
Okay, I see.
00:38:26 - Jan Davis
And on the list side, they would always do a test, test, rollout. So they would do a test of 5,000 names of the criteria they thought would work, and then they would do 25,000 names, and then they would take all available. So a million names.
00:38:42 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So for all you digital marketers, you don't know how good you have it.
00:38:45 - Jan Davis
No. You really don't.
00:38:46 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Because you just, like, go online and change it. Yeah. Or you can just let the Google Magic Machine pick the winner, which is its own. Should you do that or not? I don't know, but you can.
00:38:55 - Jan Davis
It's a good question.
00:38:56 - Scot Wingo
You didn't have that option back then.
00:38:57 - Jan Davis
No, we didn't.
00:38:57 - Scot Wingo
There was no Google Magic Machine.
00:38:58 - Jan Davis
There was no Google Magic Machine. It was all, you know, it was all. Thinking back to it, I mean, it was all pretty manual.
00:39:06 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:39:07 - Jan Davis
I mean, we were using. We were. We started out using all before Excel.
00:39:14 - Scot Wingo
Lotus 1, 2, 3.
00:39:15 - Jan Davis
What? Yeah, we started out using Lotus 1, 2, 3.
00:39:17 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:39:18 - Jan Davis
And there were some.
00:39:19 - Scot Wingo
There's a. In Boston. Everyone was like, I know you're not in Boston this part. But like they were like, really? Because it was founded. The founder of Lotus was there.
00:39:27 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:39:27 - Scot Wingo
And Lotus Notes, remember that?
00:39:29 - Jan Davis
Yes.
00:39:29 - Scot Wingo
Oh my God. That was the worst system ever. But everyone in like east coast had to use it in word. Perfect was pretty good.
00:39:35 - Jan Davis
Perfect was pretty good. Yeah. But that was it. When we were doing smart names. That was all in Boston. So that was.
00:39:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, you had to use that.
00:39:42 - Jan Davis
And then there were some specialized analytical tools. And that was when I first heard about neural nets, actually. And thinking back to what's gone. What's happened with. That's crazy. The roots of neural nets go back to the late 80s, early 90s.
00:39:57 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. I took a class at NC State and grad school on neural nets. Yeah. With Marshall Brain, who's still there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were not very useful as they are today.
00:40:06 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. They. They frustrated marketers because the marketers almost always wanted to know about why, you know, why is it this thing supposed to work?
00:40:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:40:18 - Jan Davis
So there was a lot of regression.
00:40:20 - Scot Wingo
And the AI told us.
00:40:21 - Jan Davis
Yep. Logic models. And remember Chade chi squared automatic interaction detection models.
00:40:30 - Scot Wingo
Nope, I didn't.
00:40:31 - Jan Davis
Okay. Those were kind of like tree models or root models. They would really kind of. If you visualize them, they would go down like roots and you're looking for the nodes at the bottom that were the combination of attributes that were the winners.
00:40:46 - Scot Wingo
Cool.
00:40:46 - Jan Davis
So all real interesting stuff for a English lit major.
00:40:50 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:51 - Jan Davis
Gotten fascinated by this.
00:40:53 - Scot Wingo
I like that you embrace it and aren't. Aren't scared of it in any way. You just jump in both feet.
00:40:59 - Jan Davis
Well, you know, I think about, when I think about what has worked for me, that being willing to say yes and take a risk. And if somebody asked me, do you want to go start a direct to consumer business or do you want to be the cfo? It's like, okay, I'll give it a shot. Yeah.
00:41:19 - Scot Wingo
Cool. So this part of the story, you're at TransUnion and I think you're in Chicago.
00:41:23 - Jan Davis
Yes.
00:41:24 - Scot Wingo
Still cold.
00:41:24 - Jan Davis
Still cold. Still cold. Still cold. And at this point I had all the stuff to stay warm. It wasn't how cold it got. I could. And I walked to the train from. We. We moved to a nice suburb because we had kids who needed to go to a good school and all that. And we wanted lots of kids per square mile. So I would walk to the train, which is about 12 minutes. And then take the commuter rail into the city and then walk about 10 minutes on the other end. So I would do that zero degrees because I had all the stuff that got really bad. I would bring out my ski mittens and wear those. I have full length mink. I had a felt hat with a scarf sewed to it that I could tie under my chin so it wouldn't blow off.
00:42:08 - Scot Wingo
Nice.
00:42:09 - Jan Davis
And then if it was really bad, I would tie a scarf so that. That was all that was really exposed.
00:42:14 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Hopefully you haven't broken those out of your closet lately.
00:42:16 - Jan Davis
No, no, I've pretty much gotten rid of all that stuff.
00:42:19 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:42:20 - Jan Davis
But what got me in all of those places was how long it lasted. So it's supposed to be spring and March.
00:42:28 - Scot Wingo
Yep. Yeah. I lived in the Northeast for 12 seasons, and, like, you would get this little bit of spring. You'd have a spring day in March and then it would, like, punch you in the gut with more snow. And I was just like, I can't take this.
00:42:37 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:42:37 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Being from the south as well. And then it's always gray, and I can't deal with that. Being from the south, I need lots of blue sky.
00:42:43 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Warsaw was the worst for that because it's significantly further north. And so it's cloudy. And the days are really short in the winter. And the light you do get is very oblique. So if you have seasonal affective disorder, it's not a good place to be.
00:43:01 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Cool. So why did you leave transunion?
00:43:05 - Jan Davis
I got a call from a headhunter, and she said, there's this company called Shopper Track that does pedestrian traffic counting using overhead digital video devices, and they're looking for a new CEO. And I said, oh, really? I didn't know that was a thing. I mean, it was. There was a whole little pedestrian traffic counting industry. Two competing technologies, digital video and then infrared.
00:43:34 - Scot Wingo
And they would count the heat signatures.
00:43:37 - Jan Davis
It would measure the heat signatures. And Shopper Track was the product of a merger between RCT analytics and Shopper Track. And Shopper Track had focused on retail. RCT had focused on malls. There had been a merger two years before. They were looking for this replacement CEO, and the company was a mess.
00:44:01 - Scot Wingo
And I actually know a little bit about this one. So their customers want to. A lot of times it's maybe like a Wall street analyst firm. And they're like, I wonder how many people are going to. I wonder if Macy's is doing well or not. And then they would buy this data to see is there an Increase in foot traffic or a decrease. There's a correlation between that and then the retailers would want the data too. So there was like several audiences for this data.
00:44:22 - Jan Davis
Well, that was, that was definitely the theory, Scott. But the Wall street people, the only data that they had really had access to to this point was mall data. And the mall operators got, who were the customers, got pretty mad because it was showing that that traffic at enclosed malls was declining year over year over year. And so.
00:44:46 - Scot Wingo
Which it was.
00:44:46 - Jan Davis
Yes, yes. And so they basically said, you stop selling that to Wall street or we're going to cut you off.
00:44:53 - Scot Wingo
So this is the mess you were parachuted into.
00:44:56 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:44:56 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
00:44:56 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:44:57 - Scot Wingo
And the head hunters never bring this up in death pitch.
00:45:00 - Jan Davis
And a merger that nobody had dealt with the overlaps.
00:45:06 - Scot Wingo
So how far past the merger was?
00:45:09 - Jan Davis
Two years. Two years past the merger.
00:45:10 - Scot Wingo
So they bought this company and then they really did. We need integration and then that a customer. So you're, that's what you're. You're in the face. Yeah. That's a couple big fires there.
00:45:19 - Jan Davis
Yes, yes. So on my one month anniversary, I eliminated five positions and four of them were VPs. And above that. It should have been done. Yeah, it shouldn't have been done, but it was just all kinds of crazy stuff that just really wasn't being addressed in every nook and cranny. The CFO was passive aggressive. If he didn't like the terms of a deal, he would just stick the proposed contract in his desk and ignore it. Yeah, he. He also wasn't making sure that the billings were being collected. So we had almost half a year's worth of receivables outstanding.
00:46:07 - Scot Wingo
That's pretty big.
00:46:07 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:46:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:46:08 - Jan Davis
Your DSOs were 150 days, sales outstanding when I got there.
00:46:13 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Not good.
00:46:15 - Jan Davis
No, not good.
00:46:16 - Scot Wingo
How long did it take you to figure out the CFO was problematic?
00:46:20 - Jan Davis
Well, as soon as I found out the DSO was 150 days, I knew there was a problem. And then in that first month, I went around it, interviewed everybody who was a manager above. And then I asked everybody that I talked to who wasn't a manager above was a key contributor. And I talked to all of those people.
00:46:44 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:46:44 - Jan Davis
So I don't know, 50 interviews?
00:46:48 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. How big was the company when you were seeing about how much revenue do you think it was doing?
00:46:52 - Jan Davis
It was doing about 15 million.
00:46:54 - Scot Wingo
15. So probably 150, 200 people?
00:46:56 - Jan Davis
No, no, not even that hundred. Maybe 100.
00:46:59 - Scot Wingo
Okay. Yeah.
00:46:59 - Jan Davis
I don't know. 75.
00:47:01 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:47:01 - Jan Davis
So we cleaned it up, ended up having to replace just about everybody at senior level. So you can't fire them all at once. It took almost a year.
00:47:13 - Scot Wingo
This was. Were you still in Chicago? Yep, yep.
00:47:16 - Jan Davis
Then you know, we kind of took off. We, we got it profitability the first year just by cleaning it up and collecting receivables.
00:47:27 - Scot Wingo
And there's an asset there of 150 days worth of receivables, like half your revenue. And if there's like $7 million just like sitting there waiting for someone to go pull it in.
00:47:36 - Jan Davis
Yep. And some of it of course you had to write off because that's part of the reason it was so bad. But we invigorated our distributor network in the UK and in Japan and opened a wholly foreign owned enterprise in China, which was quite an experience.
00:47:55 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, a lot of people to count in China.
00:47:57 - Jan Davis
A lot of people to count in China. We got a footprint in the Middle east, sent somebody to Dubai to open that up. It's really interesting. The primary customer base in the US is retailers and it's not the mass drug or supermarkets. Because if you think about it, if you're measuring traffic, it's just like measuring traffic to a website. And if you are Walmart, if somebody walks in the door, it's really rare. They don't buy something. Same with a supermarket, same with a drugstore.
00:48:34 - Scot Wingo
They don't have a bounce rate like we do in E commerce.
00:48:35 - Jan Davis
Yeah, right. And so our customer base tended to be the stores in a mall. And I used to say our price point was because they wanted to know.
00:48:47 - Scot Wingo
X people came in the mall how many came into Spencer Gifts and then.
00:48:51 - Jan Davis
How many bought and how many bought and then they looked at the.
00:48:54 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So they had a percent of a percent kind of.
00:48:56 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:57 - Scot Wingo
Conversion rate.
00:48:58 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:48:59 - Scot Wingo
Mall, mall to store, conversion. Store to purchase.
00:49:01 - Jan Davis
Conversion. Outside the US there was mall to store. In the US it was more just conversion into the store. We did do some measurement of pass by so who walked by your store and didn't come in. But a lot of it was who came in. And the three killer apps for that were labor scheduling because patterns tend to persist. Measuring marketing effectiveness because it's the job of marketing to get people to the store and then it's the job of merchandising to have the right stuff and the job of operations to have the right people.
00:49:38 - Scot Wingo
Got it.
00:49:38 - Jan Davis
And you can be fooled if any of those things are not measured properly. And then the last was this measuring and managing conversion rate. And our customer base ranged from I used to say Apple to Zania and Price Point from Payless Shoe Source up to Burberry or Zanya. We did things like we went from a monocular device that just looked for pixel changes to a binocular device that can measure height, which improved accuracy because it would screen out kids and shopping carts better than a monocular device could. So it was really, really interesting. And I think another thing that's been a key to the success that I've had has been being really curious and wanting to figure out, so how does this work and how can we make it better? So the devices would wake up shortly after midnight local time and either phone home with a modem or more and more with a. They would ride on the local area network.
00:50:48 - Scot Wingo
Yep.
00:50:49 - Jan Davis
So we had to do things like we, we had to change the communications protocol because we were a vulnerability for retailers. And that came to light after the big Target hack, which came through an air conditioning unit that was riding on their local area network. So we had to change all of that in order to make that work. And then we would manage the data for the clients, so we would make sure that the data made sense and that if it wasn't Black Friday, quantities of visitors doesn't suddenly explode. Or if they did, we would say, did you do something? Did you have this big sale or some kind of a promotion to drive people there? Or sometimes, since the store managers were sometimes bonused on conversion rate, they would get smart and do things like put a sticky note over the lenses. So if suddenly there's no data coming.
00:51:48 - Scot Wingo
Through, then you get to fabricate it. Yeah. Oh, we have a. We have a count in the store and yeah, 8,000 people came in today.
00:51:56 - Jan Davis
So we would, we would fill in holes just to. For comparable purposes, but we would actually call the store and say, it appears there's something in the way of your loons. And we could pull down short QC videos. We didn't really maintain video, we just used it to count.
00:52:13 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Kind of like a live look and you could kind of go live and see if there's a sticky note.
00:52:17 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah. And we would maybe take a 15 minute QC video to make sure it was counting accurately.
00:52:24 - Scot Wingo
Cool.
00:52:25 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:52:25 - Scot Wingo
Did you ever have to deal with the toughest retailer, which is pretty well known to deal with, is Walmart? Did you ever have to go down to Bentonville and pay homage to the Walmart people?
00:52:36 - Jan Davis
We did go to Walmart, but not with shopper track. They didn't need us because they could just look at their POS data to measure their traffic. That was when we Were doing the direct to consumer business because they were looking at offering a Walmart branded credit reporting.
00:52:57 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
00:52:57 - Jan Davis
Back at TransUnion. Yeah.
00:52:59 - Scot Wingo
Interesting.
00:52:59 - Jan Davis
Yep.
00:53:00 - Scot Wingo
So did you get to meet Sam Walton?
00:53:02 - Jan Davis
No.
00:53:02 - Scot Wingo
No. Okay.
00:53:03 - Jan Davis
No, they had. They had a digital operation. Their digital operation was actually in California. And so we. We met with them in California, and then we did go to Bentonville one time to try to move things along.
00:53:16 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Interesting.
00:53:17 - Jan Davis
But they do believe in everyday low cost, so they, of course, got all three of the cres bidding against each other for the possible price.
00:53:28 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Yeah. Did you guys win or.
00:53:30 - Jan Davis
No, we did not win. So anyway, it was a real educational experience, especially dealing with the murder. Because one of my observations with the Smart Names experience is that we really hadn't dealt with overlaps as vigorously as we should have. And a lot of research has shown that you shouldn't let it linger.
00:54:03 - Scot Wingo
Yep.
00:54:04 - Jan Davis
And so I took that lesson to heart, which was why it took me one month to figure out that we didn't need all these people at the top.
00:54:14 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Cool. So then what. What happened next?
00:54:19 - Jan Davis
Well, two things were going on.
00:54:20 - Scot Wingo
You're at Shopper Track.
00:54:21 - Jan Davis
You've been at Shopper Track. I was at shopper track for four years. We went from 11,000 monitored devices to 33,000 monitored devices in 59 countries.
00:54:31 - Scot Wingo
Wow.
00:54:32 - Jan Davis
And, you know, really transform that business. At the same time, I'd gotten involved in the Illinois Technology Association. It was kind of like CED. And I'd gotten to know a bunch of CEOs through that. I joined my first board of directors as an independent director while I was CEO at Shopper Track. And that was Showing time that does showing management services for residential real estate. And I ended up being on that board for 14 years, even after we moved down here, until it was acquired by Zillow for half a billion dollars in 21.
00:55:11 - Scot Wingo
That's good.
00:55:12 - Jan Davis
Great timing for that sale. Anyway, so in 07, we were. Chopper Track was starting to be affected by the leading edge of the recession. And I wish I'd had the visibility ahead a year later because consumer traffic at retail was just dropping off in 07.
00:55:36 - Scot Wingo
You could see it at the end.
00:55:38 - Jan Davis
Of 07, you could see it because.
00:55:39 - Scot Wingo
The great financial crisis wasn't until like late 08 and then 09. It was like.
00:55:43 - Jan Davis
But it was leading indicators. We had started working on the data strategy that you put forward originally to develop data that we could sell to people outside of the industry, as well as a lot of data and tools that. That the retailers could use to develop labor Scheduling models and all of that kind of thing. And that was why they had hired me. They didn't hire me because I knew anything about pedestrian traffic counting. So the, the board and who were the angel investors who had backed this thing took a big conservative pill and didn't want to do that and we couldn't agree about what to do next. And I did not win the argument.
00:56:24 - Scot Wingo
Got it. So sometimes a CEO, you, you put all your, you go all in on your chips. You don't win, you're no longer CEO.
00:56:31 - Jan Davis
Yes. But it was not a. Nobody left really mad.
00:56:36 - Scot Wingo
Just agree to disagree.
00:56:38 - Jan Davis
Yep. And they bought back my stock at an okay price and so I felt like they had treated me very fairly and I felt like they appreciated what I'd done to, to clean up the mess there and really grow that business. It subsequently was acquired by Tyco which was then acquired by Johnson Controls which is subsequently been acquired by somebody else. So it's, it's still a thing shopper.
00:57:07 - Scot Wingo
Track still out there. I didn't know it was like a sub. Sub, sub.
00:57:09 - Jan Davis
Yes it is.
00:57:10 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:57:10 - Jan Davis
And they've, they've rolled it up with the other traffic counting people like footfall out of, out of the uk.
00:57:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Now they, they count cars in parking lots a lot of times is another thing.
00:57:22 - Jan Davis
There's, they count all kinds of things.
00:57:24 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:57:25 - Jan Davis
They've, they've aggregated the counting world I guess counting biz. Yeah. They built Sensormatic which has proximity to see if people are standing near a counter. You know all of that stuff.
00:57:37 - Scot Wingo
What did you think about the Amazon just walk out technology?
00:57:40 - Jan Davis
I thought it was fascinating.
00:57:42 - Scot Wingo
Someone from the industry. Yeah. It's like the ultimate of counting. Right. You're like basically if you can count and see all this stuff with machine learning then why do you need it? Cashier.
00:57:49 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
00:57:49 - Scot Wingo
You just pick up stuff and carry it out. Yeah. I don't think, I think it was a little ahead of where consumers were mentally and I think the technology had to have a lot of supervision from people in a data center somewhere.
00:58:01 - Jan Davis
Yeah, I think so too.
00:58:02 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:58:03 - Jan Davis
I don't think, I mean I think it's going to come.
00:58:05 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:58:06 - Jan Davis
But it's been interesting to see how some stores are pulling out their self checkouts.
00:58:12 - Scot Wingo
Too much fraud people. I've had that several times where I'll go to. I see it a lot at Target where you'll go and it's still got the people, someone they didn't pay and they just like walk out and I don't, I don't know why they can't catch that with the, you know, I don't even should start blaring. I mean, you should know because there's no one on the screen and they haven't paid and they're leaving, but.
00:58:30 - Jan Davis
Right.
00:58:30 - Scot Wingo
I think. I think they've got some holes in them.
00:58:32 - Jan Davis
Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. So, you know, I took a deep breath after that four years at Shopper Track and thought about what I wanted to do next. I was on the alumni council down at Kenan Flagler and was coming down every six months for those meetings. And once didn't have to zoom back. I would stay. I would go over and see my parents who were aging High Point. And I would network and I met people like Brooks Malone and Merle Mason and Craig Stone. And I ended up after, I don't know, maybe three of these visits. So 18 months, I've had 30 contacts down here that were clearly doing things that were interesting. And it appeared that there was enough going on in this community that I could find good stuff to do and fun people to do it with.
00:59:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
00:59:41 - Jan Davis
So we just picked up a move down here in 2010. 2010.
00:59:45 - Scot Wingo
Okay, cool. So you've been here 14 years, but you're from here. So you came home.
00:59:50 - Jan Davis
Yes. Although had never really lived in the Triangle. But as you know, looking back 14 years, how this environment has changed. I mean, it's really been transformed.
01:00:02 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:00:03 - Jan Davis
There was no American Underground. There was no Raleigh founded or Hub Raleigh as it started. There was no Triangle Angel Partners or RTP Capital. Certainly no RTP Angel Fund. There weren't the university affiliated angel groups. It's really been something to see.
01:00:22 - Scot Wingo
It's been a. The flywheel is like gone crazy in the last even like the last five years. It's like up into the right. Like since COVID we've had. It's taken a whole nother turn.
01:00:33 - Jan Davis
Yes. Yeah, we. I mean it's been so exciting to see other people who didn't originally have roots here who put together their list and they come down here and it's like, okay, we're moving.
01:00:45 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:00:47 - Jan Davis
And I meet a lot of people from. Particularly from Chicagoland. Sometimes it's people that knew me from there that will introduce me to somebody who's moving here or have a 312 phone number. And people figure out that, yeah, you're.
01:01:02 - Scot Wingo
Definitely in the first 10 people. A lot of people land at. Yep.
01:01:05 - Jan Davis
So as are you.
01:01:06 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Yeah. Then you, you send them to me and then I'll send them back to you? Yeah, it depends on what they want. Like I kind of. I kind of anchor. Anchor you on the Carolina side. I think you live on this side of the Triangle though.
01:01:16 - Jan Davis
I live. Yeah, I live in Cary. In Northeast Cary.
01:01:19 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. But a lot of people are like, I really want to get involved and you know, being an active aluminum and then a lot of people want to get involved in can and you know, so let's talk about that. So. So you move back to the area and which startups and which things did you start to get involved in?
01:01:34 - Jan Davis
Well, I. The first thing that I did, I'd gotten to. I'd met a David Sterling who was running a list and data business. And I've met Chris Hively actually before I moved down here, had made a couple of angel investments up in Chicagoland, got ended up investing in showing time. I was a board member. I could see what was going on there. But generally I really wasn't very pleased with my deal flow or due diligence or anything like that. And then when we moved, I made an investment in marketview, which was David Sterling's business, and spent a lot of time at his office advising, helping, just, you know, really trying to help make that business grow. And then I heard that Triangle Angel Partners was getting organized and I thought, okay, an angel fund. That makes sense to me because there'll be better deal flow. There should be a better process if we've got a bunch of smart people working on due diligence rather than just me. And I'll get to meet interesting people who have similar interests. So I joined early then. That was fall of 11.
01:02:45 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So Craig. Did Craig do that solo or was he with.
01:02:50 - Jan Davis
He. He and Merle were two of the people that were really getting it organized.
01:02:56 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:02:56 - Jan Davis
Rich west and who else was in that group? The first executive committee. Geez, it's been a long time. They. Anyway, they. They were doing organizational presentations. Craig did a lot of those.
01:03:10 - Scot Wingo
Yep.
01:03:11 - Jan Davis
And we ended up closing on 2.8 million was our first fund.
01:03:16 - Scot Wingo
Awesome.
01:03:16 - Jan Davis
And I got elected president and spent two years as president of that and then joined a couple of boards through that Steeles, which became Epiphany and then Seal, which was water safety neck band for kids that are learning to swim. Both of which had bad Covid impacts.
01:03:38 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:03:39 - Jan Davis
And I served on a number of other boards. All private companies. I've never even worked for a public company.
01:03:46 - Scot Wingo
But were there any big wins out of that first tap?
01:03:50 - Jan Davis
The biggest win was Adzerk that became Kevl.
01:03:54 - Scot Wingo
Yes.
01:03:55 - Jan Davis
But that, that Fund did not pay.
01:03:56 - Scot Wingo
Back 100%, but Kevl still an ongoing thing.
01:04:00 - Jan Davis
Yep. But they bought us out.
01:04:01 - Scot Wingo
Oh, they bought.
01:04:02 - Jan Davis
They bought us out in two tranches.
01:04:04 - Scot Wingo
I didn't.
01:04:05 - Jan Davis
Yeah. And then we raised fund two, which was 4.8 million. And I sat back. I was kind of worn out from the two years of slave labor of run the fund and raising fund too. And at that point, I'd gotten involved with the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network. So I was one of the 15 EIRS entrepreneurs in residence that worked with a ton of really cool companies that came through there.
01:04:32 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, that one was interesting. It was like a great group of people. No money, though.
01:04:39 - Jan Davis
Nope.
01:04:39 - Scot Wingo
Lots of advice and. Yeah, so it was like more of an. A mentoring network thing. Yeah.
01:04:43 - Jan Davis
Yep. But one of the companies was I Scribes. So I got to know Jared Pello now Bionic through that.
01:04:51 - Scot Wingo
And with Robby.
01:04:52 - Jan Davis
Yep, with Robby. And I got to know NATO Keefe from Rubrik and Patrick Mateer for Seal the Seasons. And so written some checks into those companies. Got involved with Carolina Angel Network.
01:05:09 - Scot Wingo
Were you there at the start?
01:05:10 - Jan Davis
Yeah, I was there at the start and served on the screening committee for the first three years.
01:05:14 - Scot Wingo
Was Randy.
01:05:15 - Jan Davis
Randy was running it. Yeah, that was when Randy was here yet, or. Oh, yeah, Ted was here.
01:05:20 - Scot Wingo
Okay.
01:05:21 - Jan Davis
He was. Yeah. I volunteered in his class almost starting in, like, soon as I got here. Yeah, I've gotten introduced to him.
01:05:29 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:05:29 - Jan Davis
Pretty early. And so I've mentored in a lot of his executive MBA classes over the years.
01:05:36 - Scot Wingo
Cool.
01:05:37 - Jan Davis
I joined Excel Ventures. So the women that are lending money to women.
01:05:42 - Scot Wingo
So you know Robby Hardy.
01:05:44 - Jan Davis
Yeah, that's how I met Robby was through that cool lady, obviously.
01:05:48 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, she's been, you know, she's kind of from your generation of startups. Yeah, yeah.
01:05:54 - Jan Davis
She's a boomerang. She was. She moved back after we had moved here. Oh, another interesting connection. Elaine Boley, who was running RTB Capital at the same time, was running that I was running tap, had lived in Chicago, and she had moved down here shortly before we did. And in fact, somebody introduced us and we had coffee together before we actually moved.
01:06:17 - Scot Wingo
That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you both end up in the same network that way.
01:06:21 - Jan Davis
Yeah. Let's see. I taught entrepreneurship to undergrads and the Shuford program for three years, which was.
01:06:27 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, that's a really neat program. I didn't know about it, but they post Covid. They like, they pre covered. They would go visit offices and it's piffy. We were the only one that was still open. Still are in many ways. So I got to know them really well because they would always come and talk about. It's interesting for me because I've been talking to these college kids about entrepreneurship for 30 years, and 25 years ago, people would be like, why did you do this? How'd you get these ideas? Why would you not. I would always get the question, why didn't you just go work for a big company? And then now the kids are like. They visit from the Shuffert program, and they're like, when you're negotiating a safe and convertible note, how do you think about the nuances of this? I'm just like, whoa. Gosh. Yeah. Like, they go like what I would call, like, level eight questions immediately. Like, it's really wild. And it's not just that program, but, like, you know, it's really wild to have seen that happen so fast.
01:07:17 - Jan Davis
Oh, yeah. The whole. The whole focus on entrepreneurial education.
01:07:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:07:21 - Jan Davis
Is just.
01:07:23 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:07:24 - Jan Davis
People.
01:07:24 - Scot Wingo
People know. They come out of undergrad with, like, you know, stuff I didn't know until I was, like, 45, probably. Yeah. So it's crazy. Yeah.
01:07:30 - Jan Davis
Same.
01:07:30 - Scot Wingo
Which is good. So they can just, like, get to building faster and not have to go through all that mess.
01:07:34 - Jan Davis
Yep. And let's see. I judged. I've judged. I can't tell you how many pitches I've judged a ton over at unc. And it's, you know, you get these loops like the carpe guys.
01:07:44 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:07:46 - Jan Davis
One was unc, one was Duke undergrad in the Robertson program. And I. Casper and David.
01:07:53 - Scot Wingo
David. Yeah.
01:07:53 - Jan Davis
And I saw them pitch as undergrads over at 1789 on Franklin street in. In Chapel Hill.
01:08:01 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And they. They recently sold their company to a private equity firm. So congrats to them after a, you know, really. Really, you know, sweat equity. Huh. Which is funny because they're an anniversary.
01:08:10 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
01:08:10 - Scot Wingo
But, yeah, they really. You know, those guys grind. Are grinded. And, you know, I'm excited that they got a great exit.
01:08:17 - Jan Davis
Me too. And. And Tap two was an investor in that one, so that's good. That was good. Yeah, that was good. And we were also an investor in Filter Easy.
01:08:25 - Scot Wingo
I was gonna say, I thought Filter.
01:08:26 - Jan Davis
Easy had a nice. Had a nice exit.
01:08:28 - Scot Wingo
Some wolf pack guys.
01:08:29 - Jan Davis
Yep, yep, yep. And we invested in I Scribes, which was great. Irr. Because really quick exit. But the cash on cash was. Yeah, but.
01:08:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, so you're, you know, you're basically a angel investor. Mentor.
01:08:46 - Jan Davis
Board member.
01:08:47 - Scot Wingo
Board member.
01:08:48 - Jan Davis
And I started teaching again last fall, but I'm teaching second year MBAs. I'm co teaching with Mitch Muma. You talk about an OG. He said venture capitalist. He's been doing that for 25 years. So he holds down the venture capital point of view, I hold down the angel point of view. And it's for second year MBAs who are interning with venture funds and angel groups. And funds.
01:09:11 - Scot Wingo
Interesting.
01:09:12 - Jan Davis
So it's a seminar style class. We match them up with the funds in this area and a few out of market funds and then they were with them one class a week for the fall semester and they work 8 to 10 hours a week with their partner fund for both semesters.
01:09:32 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I may come audit that now that I'm a venture capitalist.
01:09:36 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
01:09:37 - Scot Wingo
A small, a tiny teeny one. So. You know, another thing you're really well known for is you always have a soft spot for female founders.
01:09:47 - Jan Davis
Yes.
01:09:48 - Scot Wingo
And it's really interesting, you know, we've gone through this whole story and except for the time when you were at that consulting group where you were one of five women, you know, there's. You were a woman female CEO, you've been on director. You haven't. Through this whole story. You haven't said, you know, the men stopped me from doing. I know you faced a lot of that stuff, but you're, you know, you've just like powered through all that and you do it with positivity. That's what I love about you. You're always like, you're a very positive person.
01:10:15 - Jan Davis
Yes. Yes. I can't, can't really take credit for that. I was genetic. My mother was like this. Just. It's an adventure. You're going to figure out how to do it.
01:10:26 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:10:27 - Jan Davis
I mean I've always been the first or only this current sort of iteration where with the RTP angel fund, we're about a third women, which is, it's amazing. Really cool.
01:10:40 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:10:40 - Jan Davis
I mean we worked at it. Yeah, we worked at it. But with tap one there were three women and tap two there were 11, but only about three of us who were pretty active.
01:10:49 - Scot Wingo
Zell is all ladies excel.
01:10:51 - Jan Davis
Is all ladies.
01:10:52 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:10:53 - Jan Davis
I mean I have stories.
01:10:54 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:10:54 - Jan Davis
As, as I think most women.
01:10:57 - Scot Wingo
But you haven't let that dull your spirit. Stop you in any way that I can measure from an outsider.
01:11:05 - Jan Davis
You know, it's. What's the point?
01:11:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:11:09 - Jan Davis
You know, you, I'm a small woman, I mean with the southern accent and I may as well just make the best of the assets I have. One of the things I've said about the Consulting. The consulting gigs. I would get more information out of the people that I was interviewing than my male Yankee colleagues.
01:11:32 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:11:32 - Jan Davis
Because I'm just not threatening. And I really.
01:11:38 - Scot Wingo
Richard Holcomb is funny. He, like, has a pretty standard accent, but he can turn on his country accent, and that's how he negotiates. Because people think you're stupid. He calls it like, the hillbilly negotiating style or something. It's kind of like using your Southernism as a. As a. As a. You know, to trap the other person. It's like a clever thing. That is really good.
01:11:56 - Jan Davis
Yeah.
01:11:56 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. I'm sure you've seen a fair amount of that.
01:11:58 - Jan Davis
Yeah, yeah.
01:12:00 - Scot Wingo
People underestimate you. And that's. That's a. That's a. That's sometimes good, especially in a negotiation or something.
01:12:07 - Jan Davis
Surprise them. On the upside. Yeah. You know, I have had some wonderful male mentors, some that, you know, and I. Like I said earlier, I've had chances to watch them do things and learn, but I think the best thing that they have done for me is position me in with investors. As far as Bill was concerned, or Jay, who hired me at TransUnion, he really talked me up in the organization so that when he retired, the CEO was comfortable offering me his job. I mean, things like that.
01:12:46 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Yeah. They didn't stifle you or discount your business or anything?
01:12:51 - Jan Davis
No, they. They were very supportive. And I, you know, but they're just. And I. I have a thick skin.
01:12:59 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Give people the pitch for RTP Angel Fund. Like, what's. You guys recently started that. And it was kind of the remnants. This is my external view. So some of the TAP folks, and then there was this RTP Capital Group, and that was more of a syndicate.
01:13:13 - Jan Davis
It didn't network.
01:13:15 - Scot Wingo
You guys kind of merged some of the pieces of that to start this new one. Tell us what the. And you recently closed on. On, you know, closed the fund. Give us kind of the pitch on that.
01:13:23 - Jan Davis
Merle Mason and I were two of the people on the executive committee with Triangle Angel Partners Fund 2 and we did a online survey of our members about interest in doing a fund three and really did not get enough interest to warrant the effort. Meanwhile, R2B Capital, which started at the same time that TAP did, but was a network where there was an annual membership fee, no committed capital, and each person made his or her own decision about what to invest in. With tap, it's a group decision, so it's based on a vote. They wanted to have a fund. They were tired of just the syndicate Model. And so Elaine Bowley and Mark Friedman, who were two of the people running that. The four of us started sitting down during COVID and I know it was Covid because it was freezing and we were sitting outside at LA Farm talking about we should put this together. And so we then we got a little bit more serious. We found that John Cambier, who had been a partner with Idea Fund for 20 years, wasn't going to go ahead and raise another fund with them and that he would be interested in being our fractional fund manager. We got Ashish Sagrolakar, who is a healthcare exec who's also on the tap, the TAP executive committee, TAP two executive committee and Mary Musakia from who is very involved and on the board of First Life Venture center. So the seven of us, John plus three each from TAP and RTPC started raising that fund in January of 23 and we closed on 3 million in June of 23 and started writing checks. So our process is people apply and we hope that interesting entrepreneurs will apply. And I talk to several people probably every week about whether or not they're ready to apply.
01:15:22 - Scot Wingo
I send a lot of people Yellow's way.
01:15:23 - Jan Davis
Please, please do. And I'm always looking at who Tweener Fund is funding and. Oh, I'm also a Tweener Fund member.
01:15:30 - Scot Wingo
Yes, you are an LP and we appreciate that.
01:15:33 - Jan Davis
So we screen. We have screening committee that will meet twice a month if necessary.
01:15:41 - Scot Wingo
So people go to RTP Angels.
01:15:42 - Jan Davis
There's a RTP Angel Fund. Com.
01:15:45 - Scot Wingo
Yep. And then they fill that out. Yep. Then you guys, you get all these applications, you screen them.
01:15:49 - Jan Davis
Yep. And we've been running between 15 and 30amonth. About half of them are not relevant because they're from the west coast or from so out of the country.
01:16:00 - Scot Wingo
You want Triangle local or North Carolina local?
01:16:03 - Jan Davis
North Carolina local and you know, even into Virginia.
01:16:06 - Scot Wingo
Okay. So Mid Atlantic. Ish. Yeah.
01:16:08 - Jan Davis
Okay.
01:16:10 - Scot Wingo
And then some revenue. No revenue. Life Science. Where are you on all that?
01:16:15 - Jan Davis
Yeah, we thought we would be doing more pre revenue, but because it's been hard for companies to raise money, we're finding that there's our opportunities to invest in companies that either have revenue or at least have users and a quick path to revenue. It's better than we thought. We were able to invest with a little bit more proof of product market fit than we thought. So screening committee then every month we have a dinner meeting. So the second Thursday of the month people will come and two entrepreneurs will pitch the people who are there. Then vote. Secret ballot. We'd started out voting, you know, raising hands, but we found that loud voices dominated. Too much.
01:17:01 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:17:02 - Jan Davis
So we now do secret ballot.
01:17:03 - Scot Wingo
Interesting.
01:17:04 - Jan Davis
And that's a vote to go to due diligence. And then we have to put together a due diligence team. So we have to have people who will volunteer to work on the diligence team. And so if we don't, then it tends to fall to the bottom of the list. And we. We've had one where we just couldn't get it in a way.
01:17:27 - Scot Wingo
That's a signal. Right. It's kind of like a signal that if no one's gonna be that energized about this thing that they'll volunteer time. Then maybe there's. Maybe that's not what the group wants. Those interesting dynamics.
01:17:36 - Jan Davis
We've written six checks and it's been the only thing. The things we won't do are like Main street businesses, consulting businesses, things like that. And drug development takes too long and takes too much money.
01:17:49 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, no, yeah. We draw the line to that. Anything with FDA and the thing is like not a fit for this type of.
01:17:55 - Jan Davis
Well, we, we will do med devices that require some FDA approval and healthcare it. So that's kind of on the healthcare side. We did. We've done one consumer software.
01:18:09 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Cool. So you've done six. What's like the average check size?
01:18:14 - Jan Davis
175.
01:18:15 - Scot Wingo
Okay. And then do you guys lead or.
01:18:16 - Jan Davis
It's usually we will lead, but it's always part of a syndicate because people are. People are going to need more than 175. And in fact, sometimes we'll say we're committing 175, but you got to round up 450 or you got to round up 500. And we will often co lead with somebody like Charlotte Angel Fund or somebody else that's doing that. We just had one getaway where they ended up with four competing term sheets and a million dollar lead.
01:18:48 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:18:49 - Jan Davis
We were very disappointed. We were. We were excited about it too.
01:18:53 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:18:53 - Jan Davis
And we hoped that they would crowded out.
01:18:55 - Scot Wingo
You couldn't just glom onto the.
01:18:56 - Jan Davis
We asked them, could you? You know you're going to save us 175, you're going to say. And it started out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they ghosted us and then.
01:19:04 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:19:05 - Jan Davis
So that was. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it does happen. But we're pretty excited about it. Yeah, you're pretty excited about it. We saw a couple of companies yesterday at the big launch challenge. We're out going to pitch competitions looking for companies that are Interesting.
01:19:23 - Scot Wingo
Nice.
01:19:25 - Jan Davis
So we'll see.
01:19:26 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And then are you guys open for LPs or like investors or is that.
01:19:30 - Jan Davis
It's a fun. It's a closed fun. Elaine and Mark, Elaine Bowley and Mark Friedman have kept the RTP Capital structure alive. And we are, we are accepting members into RTP Capital and they will be invited to our meetings and they can see our due diligence. They can't vote. And if there is room in a deal after the fund has made its decision, then they can come on. Or if we turn it down and they like it. Okay, they can.
01:20:03 - Scot Wingo
So people can come to your meetings and kind of, there's a membership fee and they can kind of like get to feel the vibe and see the companies. And even though it's closed, is it on a. I remember tap was like every two years. Is that right? Is this like a two year cycle? You guys are putting a three year cycle, 20, 26, it'll open up again?
01:20:20 - Jan Davis
Maybe, yeah, something like that.
01:20:21 - Scot Wingo
It depends on the pace.
01:20:23 - Jan Davis
I mean, at the pace we're going, our goal is to try to do 15 deals in three years. And we're definitely on that pace.
01:20:29 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.
01:20:29 - Jan Davis
So we will probably start talking. We will definitely start talking to people in two more years.
01:20:36 - Scot Wingo
Awesome. Well, cool. Well, I know we're, we're up at time, so anything else you want to let people know about your background or what you're up to? Now?
01:20:43 - Jan Davis
I would encourage entrepreneurs to reach out and apply to the fund if they want to chat with me. I'm, I talk to as many as I can and I am so excited about where this community is, where this ecosystem is, and I just see, you know, blue skies ahead.
01:21:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Well, thanks for all your, you've done, you've mentored lots of folks and you also put your dollars in, which we appreciate. So thanks for all you've done for the community.
01:21:16 - Jan Davis
Thank you for all you've done for the community.
01:21:18 - Scot Wingo
Absolutely. Yeah. And thanks for coming on the pod. I appreciate you coming on.
01:21:23 - Jan Davis
It's been my pleasure.
01:21:24 - Scot Wingo
Thanks, Jen.
01:21:29 - Jan Davis
For more Tweener content, check out the Triangle Tweener time substack@tweener.substack.com for more tweener content, check out tweenertimes.com thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon on Triangle Tweener Talks.
