Triangle Tweener Talks

00:00:03 - Jason Widen
Having space and being able to activate space in a meaningful way means something, right? And you can be a people architect because every day you're meeting, you know, bunches of people and then you start to connect the dots and it's really hard to measure. But I know it happened. I mean, I was there in the thick of it and still I'd just be stopped at a supermarket or be like, hey, you introduced me to this person back in the day and I don't think I'd exist if you hadn't done that. That feels pretty good. Welcome to Triangle tweenertalks, 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. Now here is your host, Serial Founder and General Partner of the Triangle Tweener Fund, Scott Wingood.

00:00:56 - Scot Wingo
Welcome to this episode of Triangle Tweener Talks featuring Jason Wyden. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors. Our new sponsor Lithios Apps Lithios Apps is a Triangle based software design and development studio that builds custom, mobile and web applications. Focused on quality and user experience, Lithios helps founders and teams bring products to life that drive growth, engage customers and stand out in a competitive market. They've worked side by side with clients whose products have gone on to earn millions and follow on funding. Bank of America BofA's Transformative Technology Group helps game changing tech businesses and founders realize their boldest ambitions across a wide range of technology sectors. With hands on support, world class resources and an extensive network, bank of America provides the stability and scalability that tech companies need to rapidly grow today and into the future. Aligned Technology Group Navigating Cloud Cost As a startup ATG helps you maximize your AWS activate credits up to $100,000 for startups and $300,000 for AI driven startup businesses. As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, they streamline your cloud journey, optimize security, scalability and cost efficiency. Startups move fast. We help you build smarter. Visit Aligned Technology Group to learn more. Extensus HR As a peo, which is a professional employer organization, Extensus HR empowers tech founders and growing businesses to scale smarter. They take on all the HR administrative work off your plate allowing they manage the payroll, recruiting, employee benefits and retirement plans, compliance risk and more so the founder can focus on innovation. For over 25 years, extensus HR has leveraged people first approach approach, customer centric mindset and deep industry expertise to ensure employers have the tools they need to stay competitive in today's market. Whitley Recruiting Partners Whitley Recruiting Partners specializes in recruiting top tech talent for growth stage startups in the Triangle. They target industry specific entrepreneurial employees who drive immediate results through a fast, accurate and scalable recruiting process. They do offer a special offer for Tweener Times subscribers and tweenertalks listeners. A free survey of available local talent for one of your openings. Robinson Bradshaw A full service business law firm with a passion for supporting the Triangle's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Learn more about Robinson Bradshaw startups and venture capital practice@robinsonbradshaw.com Eisner Amper formerly HPG Eisner Amper is one of the world's largest business consulting firms with a dedicated technology practice offering outsourcing, accounting, tax and advisory services. Their experienced professionals serve more than 2,000 technology companies from early stage startups to public enterprises. Discover how Eisner Amper's stage specific solutions and industry expertise can help you achieve your milestones whether startup, international expansion, MA or IPO. Visit eisneramper.com tech well listeners and viewers, on today's podcast we have one of the Triangle's hardest working, most humble and and yet most successful founders. Jason Wyden. Raleigh founded where I'm actually recording this is one of is a huge asset to our startup ecosystem. They started in downtown Raleigh in the warehouse district and now have four or five locations across the Triangle. Jason founded that with Jess Lipson, Brooks Bell and Christopher Gergen. Additionally, Jason has found a new co working concept called Blue Co Warehousing and on top of that he runs a service business as well. I think he calls it dirty, dangerous and disgusting. Something like that. On this episode we're going to learn Jason's backstory, what led him to the Triangle, how he started Raleigh founded with the other founders and the insights that led him to found his latest venture, Bluco. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. And now without further delay, here's Jason Wyden. Jason Wyden, welcome to Triangle Tweener Talks.

00:05:09 - Jason Widen
Thanks Scott.

00:05:10 - Scot Wingo
It's been too long. If there was a quadrant diagram of founders that have had high impact, low pact, and then are in the spotlight and out of the spotlight, you're in this interesting quadrant of very high impact but very low spotlight. So I'm excited to get you on here.

00:05:27 - Jason Widen
Happy to be here.

00:05:28 - Scot Wingo
We're going to crack open your brain and see what's going on in there and get you to get you to try to get you to be a little Bit more, you know, egotistical and like, lean into cheerleading for Jason Wine.

00:05:40 - Jason Widen
Okay.

00:05:41 - Scot Wingo
Cracking up.

00:05:41 - Jason Widen
My brain's a little scary.

00:05:42 - Scot Wingo
But I'm going to humble you.

00:05:43 - Jason Widen
Let's go.

00:05:44 - Scot Wingo
I'm going to try to de. Humble you a little bit.

00:05:45 - Jason Widen
It's going to be tough. Well, I don't know. I'm pretty humble.

00:05:48 - Scot Wingo
Every time I've tried, I get that. That aw shucks kind of thing. Let's start with where are you from?

00:05:55 - Jason Widen
I am from Salt Lake City, Utah.

00:05:57 - Scot Wingo
Ah, okay, interesting. See, I've already learned something. I didn't know that. And then, you know, you obviously have been in the triangle for quite a while. I saw on your LinkedIn you did a tour through Denver.

00:06:11 - Jason Widen
It was. I went. I went to the University of Denver.

00:06:13 - Scot Wingo
Okay.

00:06:14 - Jason Widen
So I graduated from.

00:06:14 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So escaped Salt Lake City. Most people go to byu. So you. You decided to go on a different path.

00:06:20 - Jason Widen
I did not take. I'm, I'm not lds and I did not take that path. But I do respect the school.

00:06:26 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, yeah. I think it's an excellent school either way. What. How did you end up at Denver? Was there a certain program or you just wanted to ski or what? What was the gist of that?

00:06:37 - Jason Widen
Growing up, I worked at Snowbird Ski Resort. I actually cleaned hotel rooms on the weekends for a free ski pass.

00:06:44 - Scot Wingo
Nice.

00:06:44 - Jason Widen
And I did that from the age of 13 all the way through college. I ended up being a supervisor and a manager. I also, at the same time, I have an uncle that lives in Hawaii that was really into the hotel scene. So at a very young age, the idea of being a general manager of a hotel, I was very passionate about. I spent the summer with my uncle in Hawaii and he has some well to do friends that were executives. And so I had a passion for the hospitality industry. So I spent my formative years working in that space. And so when I tell people I literally cleaned rooms as my first real job, making $3.10 an hour, I did. I was also a ski bum, so I enjoyed the skiing part too. But yeah, so that's. That passion was created from those early experiences. And then Denver University at the time was one of the best hotel schools in the country.

00:07:37 - Scot Wingo
Oh, interesting.

00:07:38 - Jason Widen
So I went there for that reason. Had an uncle that attended there and it was a great choice. Cool.

00:07:44 - Scot Wingo
And then that one is not uc. So it's like right in downtown Denver.

00:07:49 - Jason Widen
Yeah, downtown Denver. It's a. Know a private liberal arts school.

00:07:52 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Do they call it a hrt, hotel, restaurants and tourism, or is it just.

00:07:56 - Jason Widen
Like well, it was actually a business school with a specialty in hospitality management.

00:08:02 - Scot Wingo
Gotcha. Okay. And then what? Give us some age range. When did you go to school?

00:08:07 - Jason Widen
Let's see, 18. Graduated in four years.

00:08:10 - Scot Wingo
Yep.

00:08:11 - Jason Widen
Then headed off to LA for a bit and then off to Europe.

00:08:14 - Scot Wingo
Oh, okay. Was this like your I'm gonna backpack Europe kind of thing or you're still doing hospitality?

00:08:20 - Jason Widen
I went there at a very young idle time.

00:08:22 - Scot Wingo
So you've been working since you're 13? I guess.

00:08:24 - Jason Widen
Yeah. No, I mean I've always been, you know, hard worker. You know, I think it, it's just in my nature. So, you know, went to school in la. I was in a fast track program to be a general manager of a hotel with Wyndham Hotels. I did that for a few years. I was director of sales, I was housekeeping, but manager. A manager of a front desk department. And then I really wanted to travel abroad and I got really lucky and I landed a job at the Royal Horse Guards Hotel. Kurt Kewan was a general manager. He was an old Austrian guy that didn't like the kind of British hierarchical way of doing things. And so here I'm in this young, brash, early 20s something. Interviewed with him on a vacation in London and he hired me in a job that I was completely unqualified for. Just to mix things up. So I was managing an early age. I was managing 50 year olds in a five star hotel in London. Right off in Bankman Station and the Royal horse guards.

00:09:23 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:09:24 - Jason Widen
1212 was the restaurant was there. It's kind of famous along with few hotels there. Anyways, fancy hotel there. Did that for a few years and it really kind of set me up for knowing that I could probably do anything if I was able to accomplish that at that age.

00:09:38 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Imagine you ran into the stiff British upper lip.

00:09:41 - Jason Widen
Oh my God.

00:09:41 - Scot Wingo
The Brits are famous for well said is better than well done. So there's lots of, lots of talking, not a lot of doing for some, some, some folks.

00:09:49 - Jason Widen
Yeah. And I mean I, you know, fortunately I look young and beautiful at my age now. I looked really young then. So you know, I. Learning how to manage people that are much older and have a lot more experience than you was a. Was a good, good experience for me.

00:10:04 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I'm sure they were like, what's this teenage American coming over here telling me how to run my hotel all about?

00:10:09 - Jason Widen
With a lot of big ideas.

00:10:11 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Which part of London was that in?

00:10:14 - Jason Widen
So that was like right downtown London. I mean I could see the Big Ben. Okay. And that's the parliamentary, like literally the Horse guards, where they have the horse guard parade. It was right there, but it's across the river from the London Eye.

00:10:25 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:10:26 - Jason Widen
You'll see this castle looking hotel there. That was it. Yeah.

00:10:28 - Scot Wingo
Neat.

00:10:28 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:10:29 - Scot Wingo
Cool. Let's go back to. So common theme we're already picking up is this work ethic. Where. Where does that come from? Did your parents teach you that or where.

00:10:38 - Jason Widen
Or, you know, it's interesting. I don't. I mean, I was always driven in that way. I mean, I very distinctly remember at a young age I got a paperweight that said, take risk. Create your own destiny. And I remember sitting in my room with one of my dad's cigars and Coca Cola and like a whiskey glass, pretending that I owned a company. Now, obviously I've grown a lot since then. You know, I don't sit around with. I don't smoke cigars and I don't sit around drinking whiskey with my, my feet on the desk. But I don't know, my parents would tell me that. I mean, I always had the lemonade stand. You know, I had a lawn mowing business that I had as a, as a youth that I sold for $30,000 when I went to college.

00:11:20 - Scot Wingo
Wow.

00:11:21 - Jason Widen
And I just, I always liked the idea of creating something, you know, it wasn't necessarily about the money. Although, I mean, be lying if I said you're not motivated by that. It was always about creating and doing. And my parents really supported that without me overdoing it. Yeah.

00:11:37 - Scot Wingo
Were they entrepreneurial or they worked in Big Coast?

00:11:39 - Jason Widen
My grandfather, my mother's father was. And he was always someone I looked up to. My dad was very entrepreneurial. My dad was in the military and he always kind of bumped up against the grain. But he was on a career track. I think he probably, if he ends up listening to this dad, I think this is true. But I think he always wanted to be an entrepreneur and own his own business, but he was in a career path that he climbed the ladder very successfully.

00:12:08 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:12:08 - Jason Widen
So he didn't leave that. So. But I was always supported by them. And the day, the dreaming, you know, the typical entrepreneur, constantly dreaming and those types of things. I think my dad did along with me.

00:12:18 - Scot Wingo
Didn't squash that and say, you'll be a lawyer or a doctor, and that's the only choices.

00:12:22 - Jason Widen
There we go. He never, never did anything like that. Very supportive. But most definitely, I think there, there are other influences in my life that also factored into that. But I don't know, it's in your DNA, though. I mean, I definitely. There's that. There's something inside of me that. That's just exciting about creating and building something.

00:12:41 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Whenever I see you at Raleigh Founded, you have that. That kind of. Not nervous, but that. That owner energy. So you're always like, you know, sweeping or taking out some garbage or moving something out of a way that, like, you know.

00:12:53 - Jason Widen
But you also can't shake the hospitality out of me. And the housekeeping.

00:12:57 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Must be hard when you go to a hotel and you're like, oh, this is like, this is messed up. This. I could do this. This could be better. Yeah.

00:13:04 - Jason Widen
Well, for years I owned a restaurant, and my wife stopped going to the restaurant with me because, you know, she'd just say, hey, you got a team here. They're making stuff happen. And, you know, it's hard not to see in your periphery when someone hasn't received their food in the time they should. And by the end of the night, I was always either on the line doing dishes or food running. And that did not go over well with her.

00:13:27 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, it's not the night she signed up for. Yep. Cool. Since your dad was in the military, did you have that military experience where you moved around a lot or was he relatively stationary?

00:13:37 - Jason Widen
I did. I think the benefit I had from that is I grew up in a very worldly household, and my dad wasn't atypical. I mean, he lived off base. Japan is. My dad was a Vietnam vet, so I was born in Japan. I spent some time there and then with the military. My dad, we didn't, um. He was a commander of an Air force base in Utah, so. And it was through the guard towards the end of his career, so I didn't have to move around as much. But my early years, Arizona and New York State, and we spent some time overseas for sure.

00:14:09 - Scot Wingo
Cool. Area 51.

00:14:11 - Jason Widen
No, I have not been there. No. No aliens.

00:14:14 - Scot Wingo
Dang. I thought, we're gonna get a fun alien sidebar in here.

00:14:19 - Jason Widen
Well, maybe in college. There could be a story there somewhere.

00:14:22 - Scot Wingo
All right, so when we were last. Let's get back to your journey. So you're in London running this hotel, and then what happens?

00:14:28 - Jason Widen
The entrepreneurial bug hit me. I recognized that there was a problem, and that is seasonal workers having professional opportunities at. In hotels. So I befriended the director of human resources. There was a woman by the name of Ann Lagarde, and we'd talk all the time, and she'd tell me how hard it was to staff for the summer months at the same time my parents moved up to Park City, Utah when I left school. And when I go home, the same thing would hold true in winter resorts in Utah. So I had this idea that I could facilitate short term visas between US Citizens that wanted to go to the UK and UK citizens that wanted to come and work in ski resorts. Do it in, in more of a professional way. So instead of being a bartender, you could be in more of a professional track in the hospitality business. So that was my first kind of.

00:15:29 - Scot Wingo
Like an exchange program, correct?

00:15:31 - Jason Widen
Yeah, that was my first real business. Right. I figured out how to do those exchanges. So I partnered with Ann and a guy named Michael who was the executive chef of the Savoy Hotel. I think you probably recognize that hotel. It's one of the more famous, excuse me, banqueting facilities, restaurants in London. So I partnered with those two. I was very young. They were both a little bit older and seasoned and we started that process and that was my first experience. And not partnering with the right people. Neither one of them left their jobs. I did. To start this new venture. Yeah.

00:16:12 - Scot Wingo
So you were all in. And they were like, sure, yeah, so.

00:16:16 - Jason Widen
We'Re all going to leave our jobs and build this thing. And I did. They didn't, but it was a good learning experience. And we had a bit of a run and then 911 happened and turns out to exchange visas when you're not a lawyer during a time like that was really tough. And I was onto my next journey.

00:16:35 - Scot Wingo
Was that called Leadership Exchange?

00:16:37 - Jason Widen
No, that was. I called Career Plus Travel.

00:16:42 - Scot Wingo
That's not even on your LinkedIn. We're going deep.

00:16:44 - Jason Widen
We're going. I'm, I'm older than you think.

00:16:47 - Scot Wingo
What, what years was career plus travel?

00:16:50 - Jason Widen
So that was 1999, 2000, and I think part of 2001.

00:16:58 - Scot Wingo
The 9 11. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so that, so that was like not a successful first thing. So you had some founders that weren't as committed and then you hit the brick wall of 9 11.

00:17:08 - Jason Widen
Yeah. And listen, we had some success, but it just wasn't sustainable. I think had I been a little bit older and more experienced, I think I probably could have partnered with an attorney and I could have made it happen. Yeah. In retrospect, you look back, but you know, it's okay. I mean, we did some, you know, it had a good run and it was a fun. I ended up moving to the Czech Republic during that period of time. So I lived a bohemian lifestyle with who is now my wife in the, in Prague. And that was like in the late 90s. I mean, you know this. Scott. But that was kind of the tech boom. And we used to hang out this place called the Globe in Prague. Back then, all these expatriates that were coming there to kind of introduce tech, there really wasn't a tech space there. So I had all these, these people that would meet up at the Globe and so we would mastermind our next ventures there. So I had a. It was a really. It's one of the motivations and why I started HQ Raleigh and now Raleigh founded back in the day because I had this place I went to every day with all of these really interesting people that were all trying to build something.

00:18:12 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:18:13 - Jason Widen
And that had tremendous impact on me. When you have your contemporaries there with you and you're, you know, you're kind of in the trenches together, thinking through your next move. It was also during that period time that, you know that tech boom and bust, when people lost a lot of money.

00:18:28 - Scot Wingo
Yes.

00:18:29 - Jason Widen
So it was kind of my. I. I was a fly on the wall with people that raised an incredible amount of money with these tech companies and a lot of extremely smart people. And I just. It was like a master's degree for me in entrepreneurship.

00:18:43 - Scot Wingo
Very cool. So you were still doing career plus travel during then, but just kind of watching the dot com, both the up and the down of that, that whole.

00:18:50 - Jason Widen
Correct.

00:18:51 - Scot Wingo
But from Prague. Interesting.

00:18:52 - Jason Widen
From Prague and, you know, beer drinking and all those good things.

00:18:55 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. What's that clock? Is it the glockenspiel there? I can't remember the name of it. There's a famous clock. And then like a lot of the stuff is kind of in that plaza.

00:19:03 - Jason Widen
Yeah. It's in the Jewish quarter and on the spot. I am totally drawing a blank.

00:19:09 - Scot Wingo
Too much beer during that.

00:19:10 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:19:10 - Scot Wingo
A little bit hazy.

00:19:11 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:19:13 - Scot Wingo
Okay. So then that didn't end up working. Then what did you do?

00:19:16 - Jason Widen
So I moved back to the States, actually. I followed my wife, who got her Ph.D. at Indiana University. I followed her back to Bloomington, Indiana.

00:19:25 - Scot Wingo
The exact opposite vibe of Prague.

00:19:28 - Jason Widen
Yes. Great place, but. Yes, abs. Opposite vibe. And, you know, we. We basically came back. I had a little bit of money I saved up, and I promised myself I was never going to work for anybody again. The entrepreneurship was my path. And then reality set in. We're living off my wife's $16,000 a year graduate student stipend.

00:19:50 - Scot Wingo
A lot of ramen.

00:19:51 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So I started driving limousines, you know, for a local airport transit company there. And that was, you know, it was really interesting time period because I used that Time to really kind of think through my next move. And I had a little bit of money saved up and I bought a rental property and then I bought another one in Bloomington. In Bloomington. So college rental properties. We lived in one, we had tenants come in, we bought another one. And still driving limos.

00:20:18 - Scot Wingo
You can meet a lot of good people in limos.

00:20:20 - Jason Widen
Oh my. Actually, no, it's interesting. I met a few investors there, you know, I mean, smart guy, have a background, you know, I could use the entrepreneurial pitch, you know, I'm trying to find out my next thing, you know. Anyways, I ended up buying, I think it was up to six homes in this college town and had no idea what I was doing, doing all the plumbing and all this stuff on my own. And then, you know, and then I decided, hey, I probably need to become an expert in this, something I want to do. So I went and I worked for a local realtor there. You know, the shopping cart picture on the. The shopping cart type of realtor.

00:20:57 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:20:57 - Jason Widen
And because we're a college town, a lot of, A lot of parents would come into town and be interested in real estate investment. And she wanted nothing to do with it. So long story short, I saw an opportunity, she didn't want to have anything to do with it, and so she just kept passing off all these investment people to me.

00:21:11 - Scot Wingo
Nice.

00:21:12 - Jason Widen
So what, what I learned from that is that he had all these people with money coming from the coasts and they really wanted to buy rental property, but they didn't want to have to manage it. So what I did is I'd go, I. I create these investment syndicates where I'd go and buy a property, I take their money, I'd fix it up, I go and get the bankrupt loan. I'd be 51% owner, they'd be 49. And I built that up over time where, you know, basically it was rinse and repeat for me though.

00:21:39 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And they did these basically what we today call SPVs, but you didn't call them that.

00:21:43 - Jason Widen
And I, you know, I did that over a significant period of time successfully.

00:21:47 - Scot Wingo
Were you the property manager and all this as well?

00:21:49 - Jason Widen
Yeah, I had a property management company and we managed hundreds of properties. And then I owned, I think at its height, I owned 60 some odd units.

00:21:59 - Scot Wingo
Wow.

00:22:00 - Jason Widen
Small apartment buildings and a few commercial things.

00:22:04 - Scot Wingo
You're probably personally guaranteeing all this. How did you sneak through that?

00:22:07 - Jason Widen
Well, I also benefited from your, your.

00:22:10 - Scot Wingo
Wealth at that point.

00:22:10 - Jason Widen
Yeah. I mean, fortunately, I didn't contribute to the 2008 collapse, but I Definitely took advantage of the loose credit. I mean I, I still to this day do not know how my wife and I borrowed against these homes. Now granted it was like 9% interest, but I mean I own six homes and my wife and I brought in less than $40,000 a year.

00:22:33 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, and you leveraged it into six.

00:22:34 - Jason Widen
Now I had great credit score and there was a little bit of cash I had, but no one should have been loaning me money during that period of time. But I made good on it and those 9% interest loans quickly turned into, you know, 6 and sub 5 and you know, became, you know, as you build up reputations with banks and you got a good reputation after a couple of years and ended up being a good business.

00:22:58 - Scot Wingo
Cool. So what, so this is probably going to go from 2001 to, and a PhD is usually like three or four years. So this is get you to like 0405 kind of on the timeline. Yeah.

00:23:09 - Jason Widen
So she left for a bit. She, she was a professor in Virginia and we did the, the long distance thing. We did it successfully that time. I had a very thriving business and like any good entrepreneur, I decided to buy a restaurant and construction company and a little bit of money. And I'm young.

00:23:26 - Scot Wingo
Restaurants are the end for every entrepreneur I know that's bought a restaurant is not in it.

00:23:30 - Jason Widen
Well, yeah, you know, and also too, I'm young and the shiny thing, you know, problem is very real. As a young entrepreneur, there is absolutely no doubt and I'm guilty of it. But yeah, I, I, I bought a restaurant. That same restaurant I was talking about earlier. My wife couldn't stand going to, that was it anyways. But I had a home there. I mean, I'd been a successful business person and my wife and I felt like our relationship was strong enough where she could move somewhere else. And that held true. But you know, as we approached, you know, when the financial collapse happened. Right. That kind of changed my outlook on, you know, what I wanted to do moving forward. And my wife and I decided we wanted to move to a new place and, and I wanted to start a new career after I, you know, I, I sold a good chunk of my business back in 11. So that's what brought us to, to North Carolina.

00:24:23 - Scot Wingo
Tell me more about the restaurant. What was the concept?

00:24:26 - Jason Widen
So the restaurant's called Tuta Bene is a wine and tapas bar, not a topless bar.

00:24:31 - Scot Wingo
Top U.S. toppas. Yes. Yeah.

00:24:34 - Jason Widen
I have, I have spoken many a times and said tapas, especially with college kids and everybody's turning Red and giggling. And I'm realizing that they. That I owned a tapas bar. Anyways, so tapas restaurant. It was in an old car dealership. Really cool warehouse. What's interesting though, that was also part of the formative years of where founded came from, because in a college town, we became this landing spot in this hub for locals. Because a lot of places in. In a college town are beer places, burgers and those kinds of things. And we were a place that a lot of the working professionals would go. There was an art gallery there and my mom was part of it. She curated art and I had my real estate office in the back. It was a super cool concept, but we really created this community of thought leaders and creatives and those types of things. And we ended up having to.

00:25:24 - Scot Wingo
Is that intentional or just kind of like happened?

00:25:26 - Jason Widen
You know, I think, you know, if I look back, I think that's just me. I mean, no, I don't. I didn't mean that in an arrogant way, but I think I've. I've always been one that wants to like, create hubs and gathering spaces and be communal. And I. I think that, you know, that just. I maybe just came from some of. Some of my and my family's personality traits. And then once it starts to work, then you be. There's just a smart business move, you know, to have people want to come to a place and be a part of a community and spend money while they're doing it.

00:25:58 - Scot Wingo
You know, if you get a bunch of local leaders in, then maybe they'll do an event or do some catering or something. It's a good way to get a little B2B business going in the restaurant.

00:26:04 - Jason Widen
Absolutely.

00:26:05 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:26:05 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:26:05 - Scot Wingo
Did you buy the business or you kind of conceived it from.

00:26:08 - Jason Widen
Oh, we conceived it from scratch, you know, I mean, restaurant businesses is not. I mean, I made more money off of a real estate deal in a month than we ever did on the restaurant.

00:26:17 - Scot Wingo
But.

00:26:17 - Jason Widen
But it was my brand. I mean, I would also tell you as an entrepreneur, you know, I think, you know, for those listening, it's common sense, but it's so true. Like your personal brand is so important. And that was my brand. I mean, people knew me for Tutobene, but I raised a hell of a lot of money on the real estate side because people come to my restaurant and my mom lived in town, so my mom was just. She's this wonderful personality. And you meet my mom, you love my mom, and I'm asking you for a hundred thousand dollars, you know, probably gonna get the hundred grand, little mom clothes. Yeah. So anyways, I mean, I. Some of that, I mean, facetiously, but it is true. But building that personal brand, being a place of community really fueled a lot of the real estate investment stuff that I did.

00:27:05 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So in a way, the restaurant standalone didn't work, but it was like if it was part of your conglomerate, it was kind of one of the parts of the flywheel that made the whole thing work.

00:27:12 - Jason Widen
Yeah, absolutely.

00:27:14 - Scot Wingo
Why are restaurants so hard? Like, why does every entrepreneur crash against those stores?

00:27:19 - Jason Widen
Yeah. I mean, margins are low and it's a grind. Yeah. And seven days a week. Yeah.

00:27:25 - Scot Wingo
Did you guys do a breakfast or just lunch? Dinner.

00:27:27 - Jason Widen
We did lunch and dinner. I think in a college town too. It's, it's very cyclical. Right. I mean, nine months out of the year you make money and then the summers you, you lose money and you know, staffing, I mean, everyone, whenever you. I mean, I. It'd be really, it'd be a lot more fun to own a restaurant now because you can have like a limited. People are okay with the chalkboard, limited menu, then you run out. But you know, frankly, back in those days, like, you know, if people came and they had their favorite meatballs and they were out, they're not coming back. Right. Where now you can just kind of make it part of that. Also too, with technology now, I think you can better gauge who's going to come and when they come. And maybe back then it wasn't as the data wasn't as strong. Nevertheless, we didn't necessarily lose a lot of money, just didn't make a lot of money. But, you know, 2008 was a, you know, was a punch in the gut to a lot of people, and that was a casualty.

00:28:21 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:28:22 - Jason Widen
Right.

00:28:22 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So let's talk about that. So it's 2008. You own a restaurant and you know, somewhere north of certainly 30 or 40 properties.

00:28:30 - Jason Widen
Yeah, yeah.

00:28:31 - Scot Wingo
What happened? Did the loans start getting called or.

00:28:34 - Jason Widen
Yeah, no, I mean, I remember this very distinctly. You know, October of 2008, I mean, the world stopped. Right. You know, and you know, when you, when you start to have some momentum, you start to take some risks that maybe otherwise you wouldn't. And what I would do is I, you know, when I was growing more quickly, I'd take a bunch of hard money. So for those of you don't know, hard money or short term loan at a very higher interest rate that you're not planning on keeping. Yep, I remember. And then, so what I'd do Is I'd use hard money so I could go more quickly. I'd close on these houses, I fix them up, I get them rented, and then I go back to a traditional bank and I borrow against them. And at. At a, you know, 100 LTV mostly because I create a lot more value in the house. Great business model. Until it wasn't.

00:29:17 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:29:17 - Jason Widen
And, you know, when two things happened. I had five homes in October of 2008 that I had contracts on to sell me to sell on the buy side.

00:29:30 - Scot Wingo
You were. You were looking.

00:29:30 - Jason Widen
I was also flips it. I was flipping some homes during that period of time. I did some of the parents and those kinds of things. I picked them up, get them set up, and then I turn on, flip them to generate more cash then. And the banks pulled all of them, pulled every single loan. Um, and yeah, it was hard. I mean, I felt like, you know, a deer in headlights. Um, this whole idea of, like, one foot forward, keep moving forward is so true. Um, and the other thing too, that I learned during that period of time is just be open with people when you're going through a tough time. I think I tried to kind of hide it there for a minute.

00:30:05 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:30:06 - Jason Widen
And I think I talked to my dad, and my dad, you know, said, you know, sometimes best is to go everybody and put all the cards on the table and have them help you. And I was like all of my investors and people and I got through that entire experience. It was scary. I mean, I had a restaurant and I had a construction company. There was other things I had. I mean, I employed a bunch of people.

00:30:24 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:30:25 - Jason Widen
I got all. I got through it all with my integrity. You know, we were able to pay our employees. You know, I took a pretty good haircut. But everybody restructured the debt for me. You know, the banks ended up coming back online after a period of time.

00:30:38 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So you lost the restaurant and some of the properties were selling.

00:30:42 - Jason Widen
Yeah, I lost the restaurant. No, I mean, the property side ended up making, you know, good money after that. I mean, there was a little bit of a casualty to that, I think. The restaurant, though. I mean, we were hemorrhaging money. Right. And I'm, you know, and sometimes it's best just to call it a day. Actually, a funny story. The. The, you know, The. The building that we were in was actually owned by the Dalai Lama's nephew. And he. And he wasn't the. He was a little bit of a shady character. And so, you know, during that period of time, I think he was going through some Financial issues. And so our concept was built on our building and it was a culmination of people not going out to eat and cash flow being really difficult and then this guy not taking care of the building and those kinds of things. So sometimes though, I think, you know, sometimes you just gotta, you gotta make a smart move to do something you don't want to do.

00:31:35 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:31:36 - Jason Widen
And I needed to focus on the real estate. I didn't make money on the restaurant as part of my brand. I didn't make money doing it. I made my money doing something else. And the restaurant could become very distracting. Is it 20 something with not a lot of responsibilities is okay for me to work 80 hours a week, but when you're going through something like the, the financial collapse, I mean, you gotta like focus all your efforts on what you're doing. And, and, and I did. And you know, I ended up, you know, I ended up selling the, you know, my, a lot of my real estate assets years later, which afforded my wife and I an opportunity to kind of recreate ourselves. The other thing it did for me, when I think when you're faced with difficulties, I think you kind of look in the mirror and ask, what do I want to do for the rest of my life?

00:32:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:32:19 - Jason Widen
And while I was really good at, you know, it's good at raising money and I was good at doing what I was doing, it wasn't totally fulfilling. And my wife at the time had built a social entrepreneurial study abroad organization. My wife is an academic, but she did that on the side. And she would have study abroad programs with young people on international relations and leadership and civic engagement and business. So she invited me to do one of her business classes, business and entrepreneurship classes abroad. And I ended up doing that and I really, I loved it. It was fun to be around, you know, young people with energy, you know, the world in front of them. And I just, I really enjoyed giving back in the way that I did. That was another influence on, you know, one of the reasons why we came out to meet Christopher Gergen, who at the time had started a social entrepreneurial endeavor in Durham. And we came out to meet with Christopher and his crew over our three day weekend. The funny story is there's this British woman at the American Tobacco complex. There's like a big fishbowl apartment there that I think the Goodman's own or something right now. But this woman was walking her dog out in front of that and my wife was staring up at their place and she said, are you guys interested in renting it. And I said no. My wife said yes. I look at her, I'm like, what are you. What are you doing?

00:33:41 - Scot Wingo
And you're just visiting or you had moved here by then?

00:33:43 - Jason Widen
No, we just visited like a three day weekend.

00:33:45 - Scot Wingo
So still living in Bloomington.

00:33:47 - Jason Widen
Was still living in Bloomington, three day weekend. And anyway, so you know this, we go up and look at it, we end up subleasing. She was a professor at Duke that was. Was going home. I don't know if she was adjunct or something. Anyways, we ended up leasing her place on a temporary basis and we never left. I mean, I mean, obviously I had a business and so I, you know, I went back and I sold off one of my business partners, bought my property management business and some of my assets. And it kind of bought us a little bit of time to kind of relocate ourselves. But at that point, I wanted to be a social entrepreneur. Yeah. So the idea was, is to, you know, triple bottom line. You know, I wanted to now, you know, I wanted to make money and I wanted to, but I also wanted to give back and be a part of a community. And so I really threw myself into that. I didn't know where that was going to lead. And turns out when you stumble into people like Christopher and Brooks and Jess and some people that are movers and shakers, that's a good place to be, you know. So, you know, my people ask me if you believe in luck, and I used to not. But to me, the definition of luck is you put yourself in a position to be successful, which I quite literally, when I met Christopher, we were at an event and he's hard to get in front of. And so every time I would be an event, I positioned myself where he had to walk by me. I think it was like the fourth or fifth time he walked by me. He's like, feel like I've seen you before. And so we struck up a friendship and then from there, you know, Christopher's like a master connector. And it was through that relationship I got to meet Brooks and then later on Jesse Lipson and. And.

00:35:27 - Scot Wingo
Cool.

00:35:27 - Jason Widen
That's really where.

00:35:29 - Scot Wingo
Tell me more about Christopher Gergen 3day. We can actually don't know much about that. So this is vintage 2011 time frame.

00:35:34 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:35:35 - Scot Wingo
Okay.

00:35:36 - Jason Widen
Well, maybe a little bit earlier. I mean, it could have been like the 2010, 2011 time frame. Yeah. So he, he had started something like a, a social entrepreneurial hub in Durham that didn't end up working out. It was too niche. It's called Bull City Forward. And like I was frequenting this establishment and so I went to Christopher and said in a very nice way it's being mismanaged and like a accelerator, an.

00:36:08 - Scot Wingo
Incubator kind of thing.

00:36:09 - Jason Widen
Co working, Co working. I mean this is very early so I mean co working sort of existed, you know in bigger cities, but not.

00:36:16 - Scot Wingo
Really was heavily an American tobacco doing.

00:36:18 - Jason Widen
His thing during this time shortly after. We're kind of all born out of the same time period. My dates are probably a little mushy. AU was not. AU was not around yet. So Bull City Forward basically was a place for change makers, social entrepreneurs. People like were more impact focused to build their companies. It was a kind of a buzzword back then too like triple dot bottom line entrepreneurs and all that stuff and you know a lot of the kind of underserved community of entrepreneurs and those kinds of things. So it was you know, great idea but so niche like you know it's like sometimes with non for profits, like great, but how are you going to sustain yourself? And the, the fundamentals of the business I didn't feel like were strong. The, the intellectual aspect of it was definitely there. So Christopher, I just, we kind of struck up a, a friendship just through me kind of giving him a little bit of advice on like the physical operation of that. And then we really kind of struck it off. I mean he's you know his. The thought leadership and the intellectual capital that Christopher brings to bear. He's kind of exciting guy to be around. I mean he does a lot of, you know, leadership. He's a very big thinker and I'm like just very pragmatic experience that I had in the real estate world and I we struck up a friendship and the first thing we started actually was the think house.

00:37:42 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:37:43 - Jason Widen
Back in the, back in the day.

00:37:45 - Scot Wingo
Then Jess was involved with us too.

00:37:46 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So I pitched, I pitch books so well I would to go back a little bit in time. At the time it was Hub Raleigh which became HQ and is now Raleigh founded. That happened first. So Brooks and Jess, you had some success with you know Brook or excuse me Jess selling chair file and then obviously Brooks with Brooks Bell. I mean they were two of the more prominent tech entrepreneurs in the local community. They had been talking about giving back. They went to the Innovate Raleigh conference where all these thought theaters got to together to talk about the future of entrepreneurship and innovation and the triangle. Christopher attended that. So long story short like coming out of that Brooks and Christopher had a conversation around, you know, could we like coming out of that conference There was talk about creating like a hub for high impact, high growth entrepreneurs. You know, Christopher's kind of a masterful kind of connector of ideas. And so he came back to me and he said, hey, he's these, these folks, Brooks and Jess, really want to invest in something that could kind of bring high impact, high on, high impact, high growth entrepreneurs together. Would you be interested in just looking at this with me? So came to town, we looked at this idea of starting far away. At this point I'm in Durham. At this point I'm in Durham. Yeah. Struck up the. So I, you know, I spent, you know, what was it, probably a year, you know, not necessarily working, just networking, those kinds of things. And kind of came over and, you know, selfishly meeting Brooks and Jess and Christopher, I said, you know, I'd be willing, I got a little bit of bandwidth, I'd be willing to take this on. I mean, for me, I'm meeting all these thought leaders and we brought this focus group together with Tom Miller and thought leaders from Terry Lomax and thought leaders Marianne Baldwin and folks from NC State and kind of local government and then some local entrepreneurs. And we had a kind of a roundtable discussion around this idea of having a hub. And then ultimately we threw up a shingle not too long after that. And Brooks Bell had some extra space on Hillsboro street. So we threw up a shingle. And it was crazy.

00:39:58 - Scot Wingo
The Junior League building right there on. Yeah, yeah.

00:40:01 - Jason Widen
I mean, just crazy. Like you associate yourself around the right people at the right time. And I had, I used to say this all the time, so I may be a little off, but I think I had like 467 inquiries about this concept. We threw up a landing page. Anybody be interested? And I had a crazy amount of people reach out. So I went back to Brooks and Jefferson Christopher. I said, I think like people are interested in this, right? I mean, it's just validating this idea that people really wanted a gathering space. You have these disparate communities of entrepreneurs and I know you're out there and they got all these like big players. But. And so in our small way, we popped a tent up and the idea was, let's just invite people in the tent and create a bump factor and connect people to resources and opportunities. Along the way, though, Christopher and I started Think House, which was essentially like, you know, the idea I had was like, we bring, we, we put a bunch of young entrepreneurs in a house like I was way back in the day. And you put, you put some support and a little Bit of programming around it and you know, you, you can be a young entrepreneur that, that doesn't need to go out necessarily go out and work for someone else. And it was a fun experiment. Didn't necessarily, it wasn't necessarily sustainable, but it was fun. We did it for I think four or five years.

00:41:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, let's, let's pull on these threads. This is interesting. So, so the first name was Hub, right? Like just Hub or something. Correct. And then why did you guys, did someone like say I have a trademark for that or you didn't like the name?

00:41:29 - Jason Widen
Well, no, it was, I saw you.

00:41:30 - Scot Wingo
Guys changing your name.

00:41:31 - Jason Widen
Yeah, it was an inside story of.

00:41:32 - Scot Wingo
Like why were you constantly changing?

00:41:34 - Jason Widen
We just like to change names. No, actually it was a group out of Europe somewhere. Anyway, there was a group that was licensing this concept and when we dug into the details of this organization, it just didn't feel like we were going to buy into a name that didn't have a lot of value. So we ended up pulling out of that arrangement and starting hq. Okay, so you actually, so actually Hub did exist and we were in kind of a pending status for a period of time. And then when the rubber actually going.

00:42:11 - Scot Wingo
To license these people's ip, we're gonna.

00:42:13 - Jason Widen
We'Re gonna license the. But it wasn't necessarily a franchise. It wasn't, I don't know what the technical term is, some sort of licensing agreement where they give you some, you know, you get a little bit of intellectual content and you can use their name and you pay a fee. But you know, when you, when you dug into it as a group of Europeans, they don't really think at the time really understood the US market. Yeah. And there was a lot of big ideas, but not a lot of like operational help. And at the end of the day like you got to, you know, you got to be able to pay for the, the lights first.

00:42:42 - Scot Wingo
Yes. Better said than done.

00:42:43 - Jason Widen
Correct. Yeah. So, you know, so it was a good, you know, it was, it was a interesting, you know, going through that and then obviously HQ and caught fire and yeah, that's what we lean into. But the reason why we changed the name later is, you know, I, I, I won't mention their name, but there's a very deep pocketed group that had something used HQ in the past that basically had the trademark. They had a lot more money than us and our attorney told us, you're going to spend a lot of money protecting this.

00:43:15 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:43:15 - Jason Widen
So we said, oh, let's just change our name. It's a Good time. And we like founders.

00:43:18 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. I thought that was like maybe what had happened somewhere in there, but that's interesting. I didn't realize Hub was actually a license of something back in the day.

00:43:24 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:43:25 - Scot Wingo
And then how did you end up. So I always thought the OG building was the one in the warehouse district, but it's actually. You were. You were kind of a little piece of Brooks Bell's building, correct?

00:43:34 - Jason Widen
Yeah, for. I don't know, I think it was probably for a year. And then we stumbled into the one in the warehouse and that became our, you know, that became our hub. I mean, that was a really cool time.

00:43:44 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:43:45 - Jason Widen
A very special time period. It's fun. Everybody's growing up together. Jay Dawkins, I just saw yesterday at the between her event. And I mean, he. I think he was the broker on that deal. And we used to daydream about the businesses we were starting together. And I remember the early days when he was talking about Citizen and all that stuff. It's just. It's interesting now. I go back all those years later and that that web of connections that was created all that time ago, you know, still is so important today. Right? It's. It's really amazing. Like the stuff that you're doing with Tweener now. I mean, it's just, you know, I. I'm just happy. In the early days, we were a part of it, but just to see the evolution of the entrepreneurial community and the connectedness is really cool. Really cool.

00:44:29 - Scot Wingo
Well, it's interesting. So I was like, busy building Channel Advisor and I would meet people. And then between Channel Advisor and Spiffy, I did the Tweener list. And part of it is I was, you know, so I got this list of. I decided where I'd draw the line. And I got this list of 50 companies. And I didn't publish this, but I actually got the addresses and I put them on a map because I was trying to figure out, like, what caused this kind of cambion moment in our. Our entrepreneurship ecosystem. And when I mapped them out, the cluster was like, right over you guys and you. And it was like, holy cow, it's the co working. Like, you wouldn't intuitively think coworking, because at that point, you know, you've got like, Regis is like this kind of like, you know, these are my words. My kind of like soulless cube land. You're kind of like, how is that going to start an econ? You know? And then that made me very curious and I started spending more time at Both of them, you could kind of see it' this community factor that, that you don't get from, you know, the other options that are out there.

00:45:25 - Jason Widen
We both really leaned into it. I mean, I mean, I think if, yeah, as anybody from a business model perspective, we could run these spaces with half the staff. But I think, you know, like Brooks and Jess in particular really wanted to give back and support, you know, the high impact or growth ecosystem at the time. And I au. I mean, I remember the Goodmans are very involved, especially Michael back in those days, you know, and Adam Klein. And there was also some healthy competition too, which I think helped a little bit.

00:45:53 - Scot Wingo
From the outside, it seems like you're more collaborative like.

00:45:55 - Jason Widen
Oh, absolutely.

00:45:56 - Scot Wingo
Like the past that Raleigh founded works there. I don't know if they're past.

00:45:59 - Jason Widen
Yeah, we have like, just like little.

00:46:01 - Scot Wingo
Stuff like reciprocity matters a lot, right?

00:46:02 - Jason Widen
Yeah, yeah. Back in those days though. And it was, it was never unfriendly. But you know, I just remember the. Some of the media would say, hey, you know, but ultimately, like Adam and I have talked about this before. It was a really, it was a really fun time because it was, there was a spike. I mean, Ced, you know, kind of was trying to reinvent themselves and there's just. There was a lot of people that wanted to be a part of this so called entrepreneurial ecosystem and we're just one piece of that. I mean, there were so many different groups were having events and doing things and. But it, but it was fun to be a part of it and to have sometimes. I've always, I've always told people, I feel like I'm like a people architect or maybe not right at this moment, but back in the day, you know, it's like having space and being able to activate space in a meaningful way means something. Right. And you can be a people architect because every day you're meeting, you know, bunches of people and then you start to connect the dots and it's really hard to measure. But I know how it happened. I mean, I was there in the thick of it and still I'd just be stopped at a supermarket or some people would be like, hey, you introduced me to this person back in the day and I don't think I'd exist if you hadn't done that. Yeah, that feels pretty good.

00:47:16 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Yeah, those connections matter. The. Let's talk about the house. And it's kind of interesting. The. So think house.

00:47:23 - Jason Widen
Yep.

00:47:23 - Scot Wingo
So did you guys buy a house or you rented one and it was in Downtown Raleigh. Right.

00:47:26 - Jason Widen
Or we bought a house. It's over in Boylan Heights. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:29 - Scot Wingo
And then David Shaner. Oh, yeah, he went.

00:47:33 - Jason Widen
Zach Milburn, Jay Dawkins.

00:47:35 - Scot Wingo
Yep. Interesting. So you did cohort type of a thing, kind of like an accelerator.

00:47:41 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So I bought an old boarding house. I say, I, we. We bought an old boarding house. And you know, the idea is that if you, you know what the real world is.

00:47:51 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:47:51 - Jason Widen
Okay, so the real world was the real world without San Francisco, without the drama, you know, Hope. Well, maybe there probably was drama I didn't. Wasn't aware of. So. But the idea is like to put a cohort of people together. It wasn't overly programmed. I mean, I think if there was a few moments there, we tried to overly program it and it didn't work. The idea is to create a convening spot for these young up and coming entrepreneurs and then invite people like Jess Lipson and Brooks, David Gardner. Invite people over for dinner. Right. And then outside of that, connect them to other resources and people to help them scale and grow. I mean, that was the goal. Some of the cohorts, it worked really well for. There were some of the groups that didn't.

00:48:33 - Scot Wingo
So when it didn't work, what was that? They like, follow.

00:48:37 - Jason Widen
Listen, at the end of the day, starting a business is tough. I mean, the success rate, you know, is still going to be low. Right. You sprinkle into that, you know, younger people that maybe don't have the experience and, you know, sometimes I wouldn't say think they know it all, but listen, when I was young, I thought I probably knew more than I did.

00:48:57 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:48:59 - Jason Widen
You know, and then you've got me and Christopher and others that started it are busy doing other things. Yeah, right. There's a part of that. And then when people are living together, some people can get along, some people won't. And then you become a landlord. I was a landlord for a long time and you know, you know, you. It's just that wasn't scalable. I mean, I think that some of the cohorts would tell you it was an awesome experience. And then a couple others, maybe with some of that other stuff coming to play, wasn't as good of an experience. But that's what you do in business, though. You test it. I mean, we were thinking about, you know, scaling something like this. You know, you test it, you know it doesn't work. You know, you move on. I mean, I look back, you know, fondly, but, you know, it just wasn't scalable.

00:49:41 - Scot Wingo
And you actually learn more from the things that don't work, I think, than you.

00:49:44 - Jason Widen
Absolutely.

00:49:44 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:49:45 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

00:49:46 - Scot Wingo
You learned you didn't want to do that anymore.

00:49:47 - Jason Widen
Yeah, I mean, listen, it was a valuable, it was a big give back, you know, for a period of time. It just. From a time perspective, we could continue to do it and probably would have been fine, but. But you know, you gotta, at the end of the day, you gotta be able to pay the bills and. Not sure it was sustainable that way.

00:50:04 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So then also on around that same time, you were listed as a founder of Revgen. Talk about that.

00:50:10 - Jason Widen
Yeah. With the shiny thing still back then too. No, you know, I think, I don't.

00:50:17 - Scot Wingo
Think that was a youth thing. I think you've always got shiny things.

00:50:20 - Jason Widen
Yeah, yeah, I think there's some truth to that. No, that was. So when you're starting an early CO working space, there's not necessarily a lot of revenue that comes out of that, especially when you're small. You know, I think Jess Lipson, I'm speaking for him right now, so I'm not sure 100% this is how he viewed this. But at least that's what I think. You know, I think we are, we're doing good with the co working space, but I think he probably recognized that there's probably a little bit more earning potential I needed. And he had an opportunity that he saw through Citrix where they were outsourcing their sales. Right. And there was an opportunity. He said, hey, I need to do this. I've worked with you, I think you can make this happen. And so it was like immediate, big customer. Right. That I could.

00:51:08 - Scot Wingo
So instead of outsourcing to some unknown.

00:51:10 - Jason Widen
Entity, there's a third party lead generation.

00:51:12 - Scot Wingo
It's like inbound it.

00:51:13 - Jason Widen
Correct.

00:51:14 - Scot Wingo
Own it. And then, then I would imagine, if I remember this right, this also created a pipeline for him to hire him. So it was like.

00:51:20 - Jason Widen
Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:21 - Scot Wingo
Well, once you. So you're building up all this intellectual property out there, these other people, and I'm sure they would let you hire them, but they're going to like be very expensive to. Whereas if you owned it, you could get like your own pipeline, Correct?

00:51:31 - Jason Widen
Yeah, well, you know, you have a little bit more influence. I mean, he, he didn't manage it directly, but obviously Citrix was. Manage our relationship and you know, end up working out. I mean, third party lead generation, you know, there's a lot of turnover, you know, so having someone else do that for you is probably a good thing. But you know what I learned from it though is if you put, you put these young professionals or career transitioning professionals through a gauntlet of sales activity. Some people don't make it, other people do. And you end up vetting these people that then other people find value in. I actually just met with John Rosar. So I'm still a fractional owner of Revgen, but John ended up acquiring the company from me years later. So what started out as way for me to make a little bit extra money became a real business. So we became Citrix and then we brought on a bunch of other clients. I'm like, holy shit, excuse my language. Like this is actual full time job. And I tried to split the two. And then at the time founded was rhq. At the time was growing. And that's really where my heart was.

00:52:35 - Scot Wingo
It has a real estate component too because they are in this really nice building. And I've always thought that kind of has your fingerprints on it. Like did you, did you help get them in there or.

00:52:45 - Jason Widen
I wouldn't say I advised him. He was in, he was in. Founded there for, for a bit too.

00:52:52 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:52:52 - Jason Widen
But nevertheless, you know, Revgen started doing really well. I think there was a, there was a couple of time periods where I was having to cover very large payrolls, you know, because the cash flow and I'm like, I'm a part time manager of a company that now has 50 employees. This is not a good thing for me to take my off the ball. And something bad happened. So I brought in John Rosar. I know you know John, he's amazing. I mean, he's a go getter and he's a sales dude. So anyways, he took over, he turned, I mean, he ended up growing the company and then he acquired it, bought me out mostly I'm still a fractional owner a few years back, but he's built the company now. I mean, I think like 100 employees. And I mean they're, they're doing really well. So that's why I did it though. It's kind of an opportunistic thing at the time. And it ended up being, you know, good investment.

00:53:42 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So this brings us to Blueco. So let's talk about how you got the idea for Blueco. What is it? And let's talk through that.

00:53:51 - Jason Widen
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, as I'd mentioned before, you know, I've been in kind of the space place creation business for a long time. You know, similar to 2008 in the financial collapse and we go through a pandemic, right. And anybody in the real estate world, you know, took a couple of punches to the gut. It's helpful that we had a really strong ownership group and founders so you know, we successfully made it through that period of time. But you know, I mean there's some recovery that needed to happen. And you know, for me professionally, I'd been doing founded for significant period of time. I think at that time it was eight or nine years. And so what's next for me? Right. So I ended up buying a. And I'm going to answer the blue code questions around about way of doing this. I ended up looking for what I call dirty, dangerous and difficult businesses. Right. I'm not the only one to say that there's other people out there too. So basically service based businesses that have good earning potential that, you know, baby boomers are selling type of thing. So I went on an exploration. Is this something I wanted to do? And the idea is I was going to build a portfolio of these service based companies and I was going to hire, you know, young people, you know, to come in and run these things and then give them some equity on.

00:55:04 - Scot Wingo
Visas from the uk. No, just kidding.

00:55:06 - Jason Widen
Yeah, yeah. You know, and there's a social entrepreneurial mindedness to it. You know, like I really, I was interested in kind of helping people that maybe weren't as well connected, underserved communities to have these opportunities. Right. Generational wealth creation and all that. There's always a part of me that wants to give back to the community in that way. So. So that was the idea. So I bought a biohazard remediation company and I took that over and very quickly I'd forgotten that when you buy a company that's existing, even if it's been around for a while, there's still problems to have. So I disappeared for six months, quite literally. I took a hiatus from founded and had to dismiss many people there. And I was in a hazmat suit and doing all these things to my wife chagrin frankly at the time. She's like, why are you doing this? You didn't need to do this.

00:55:55 - Scot Wingo
And it's just post Covid. So there's all this amped confusion.

00:55:58 - Jason Widen
Well, it's actually during, during COVID that.

00:56:01 - Scot Wingo
I'm running around in a biohazard suit.

00:56:02 - Jason Widen
Correct. So you know, I'm literally wearing the suit, you know, learning the business. So anyways, what happened is it ended up being a successful business. I make a good return but I went way off track in what I was doing before. So then the world started to come Back in the shared space and there was an opportunity I found. So I remember very distinctly. I'm at a parking lot at a public storage unit with Rick, the guy that I bought this company from and he's got eight employees out there. They're about to be in hazmat suits and hot houses for the rest of the day and he doesn't have an office like Rick, what are you doing? Like this is hot out here and these guys. And he said I can't find any flex space I can afford. Only thing I can find is 3,3000 square feet. Yeah, like interesting. So then we're meeting his house and his this weird dog and it's just not, not conducive to like meeting. And so the neighbors like why are.

00:56:55 - Scot Wingo
Eight guys in hazmat suits wandering around your house?

00:56:58 - Jason Widen
Yeah, it's just, it's just a strange work environment. Right. So I started looking around every time I'm going to the storage unit and I'm like plumber, electrician, moving company. Like why don't these people have something like Raleigh founded? Now don't get me wrong, I already knew with Raleigh founded and Loading Doc that we had a market within our building for E commerce companies. There was no doubt and we had, we had looked at actually in the early days we actually helped out loading dock a little bit you know before they got started. And so I was already real.

00:57:27 - Scot Wingo
Well Freeman's.

00:57:29 - Jason Widen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not.

00:57:30 - Scot Wingo
He was there last night.

00:57:31 - Jason Widen
I don't know he was, I didn't see him. Yeah, we have good relationship. I'm not taking credit for anything they've done. I had nothing to do with it other than the fact in the early days we trained their team in a very collaborative way to start their new thing. So I knew a little bit about that. And then we had many Raleigh founded members that had E commerce. I already knew like pairing storage with some sort of coworking worked but I want to do it for blue collar folks. Right. Like service based companies. So I ended up hiring the E Clinic, the NC State program to do customer discovery. And I said I'm just, I'm interested, you know, are these plumbers, electricians moving companies that need space? Would they be interested? So we interviewed 200 and some odd people and overwhelmingly it came back that there's a market for it. Yeah. So then the entrepreneurial light flips on. Maybe this bio thing, you know, maybe I shouldn't veer so far off of what I'm really good at. I kind of stick with What I was doing this, you know, bio. You know, I hired a couple to run it. I think they can manage on their own and I can step out. And you know, I went to Brooks and Jess and Christopher and I said, hey, I think, I mean there's a problem to be solved. You know, I think I could take advantage of it. And they kind of all give me their blessing, you know, I mean, these guys are off doing other things and you know, I think they saw it as, you know, I'd been, you know, probably the most active part of founded anyways, and I, I think they kind of found it as a way of me to kind of go off on my own and, you know, scaling something that I could do on my own. So with some very important help, you know, I tested out the, you know, the first concept over off pylon and here we are today.

00:59:09 - Scot Wingo
So you bought a building and you, you kind of you vision.

00:59:13 - Jason Widen
Yeah, so we, I skipped ahead there a little bit. So obviously customer discovery, need for the concept. And then, you know, when the rubber hits to hit throat, especially when it comes to something like that, it's like, okay, now I got to do a, you know, I gotta find a warehouse and test it. Which a little scary.

00:59:29 - Scot Wingo
Kind of retrofit it for your vision.

00:59:31 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So. So we did, you know, put. But it happened so quickly because, you know, once you, you find a place, you know, the Lois go back and forth and it's like, are you gonna lease this place? Yeah, you know, it's like, oh yeah.

00:59:44 - Scot Wingo
It's kind of like pretty into it correctly.

00:59:46 - Jason Widen
The lease is, you know, so I don't buy it, I don't own it.

00:59:49 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

00:59:49 - Jason Widen
At least this lease is $80,000 a month. Right. So anyway, so a lot went into that. Then it's like, okay, let's do this. Let's test this thing out. And. And we did. But this all came from a need though. I mean, I. What, what is so beautiful about this though is all these worlds connect. Like the E Clinic and NC State's been a big part of my life and the community forever. These guys came in and did the customer discovery and their findings have ended up. I've been able to prove those things out. It's really cool.

01:00:21 - Scot Wingo
A bunch of students are pretty smart.

01:00:24 - Jason Widen
Absolutely.

01:00:25 - Scot Wingo
So explain it to folks. So I know what flex space is. So you take a warehouse and what's the ratio of office space to kind of warehouse space? And then how do you fractionalize warehouse space? Is it like a lane? Is it like a cage?

01:00:38 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So in our, the. The first. So we have. Currently we have more or less 60,000 square feet. Actually no, because I have the Charlotte one. So 160,000.

01:00:49 - Scot Wingo
One building and then another.

01:00:50 - Jason Widen
Correct. I have two buildings in Raleigh, so we started out with one. It's about 30,000 square feet. The building is subdivided into dedicated spaces that separated with chain link fencing. So we have everything from a five by five unit all the way up to a couple thousand square feet. So what we learned from our research is, is that there's a, there's a gap in the market. There's not a lot of flex space under 3,000 square feet.

01:01:16 - Scot Wingo
Yep.

01:01:16 - Jason Widen
A lot of, A lot of waiting lists and those types of things. So it told me that, I mean there's a market for it. Right. There's a lot of small operators that only need 100 or 200 or 300 square feet of space. So we have dedicated spaces and along with the dedicated spaces you have shared equipment. So we have pallet jacks and a forklift. They have access to a dumpster and recycling and a hose Internet. So it's, it's turnkey, plug and play. Super flexible terms. One month, two months, three months, six months. So literally co working meets warehousing. But it's definitely more utilitary. Yeah, I mean, I mean people are, it's very functioning. We also have fleet vehicle parking, so people pay to park their, their fleet vehicles.

01:01:57 - Scot Wingo
That's huge. Yeah, the parking is a huge problem.

01:01:59 - Jason Widen
Well, I remember in the early days you were one of those people we surveyed back. You know, I was thinking through the idea and one of the things that struck with when you talked about your vehicles being maintained. So it's interesting, we have the, you know those mobile repair units that actually come into our lot at night and repair the moving trucks.

01:02:16 - Scot Wingo
Yep.

01:02:16 - Jason Widen
Right in the dump trucks and other people that have stuff there. So really, I mean you're creating this hub and then, and then you've got these shared amenities that people can use together. But for instance, if I'm a plumber and I have three trucks, I don't necessarily. And I every now and again I need a classroom or a meeting room. We have that. Right. I need the loading dock, but I don't need it every day. Yeah, but we have that. I need to drive my truck into the warehouse. We have that. So, you know, where they typically have to go out and get their own space or be at a, you know, small storage unit. You know, we're, you know, we're creating really good quality Business environment for them when they're not having to burn through as much cash.

01:02:59 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So what's your vision? Are you going to have one of these? Like, are they going to be 300 blue coats? Like, how, how big is this going to get?

01:03:05 - Jason Widen
Yeah, So I think, listen, we've passed the pilot phase. I mean, you've heard me say this many times. I've been pushing the broom for the last 18 months. Right. Um, I just started to exit the push in the broom phase. I think it's really important for every founder to understand the nuts and bolts of the business that they're operating and learn what works and what doesn't work. Uh, I've definitely had some challenges along the way. Um, so I've done that. I'm exiting the pushing the broom phase. Um, now I want to prove this out at scale. So opportunistically, one of my investors has a place outside of Charlotte. We just soft opened that several weeks ago, and we got. We've started to get traction there. We officially open here at the end of 1st of June. So then I'm going to prove that out at scale. We have a couple other fleet vehicle parking lots that we're working on, and one of my investors is building a new warehouse in Fuqua, Varina. So the idea is, let's call it three or four. I'm going to test out at scale, and then the idea is to. To expand that throughout the Southeast. But I have to get it, like, how is this going to work at scale with me being away from Charlotte and I have a little of experience managing things from afar? What does that really mean from the. The overhead, corporate perspective? Can I really do this with me, or am I going to need a whole team and what's that going to cost?

01:04:23 - Scot Wingo
Economics work for that.

01:04:24 - Jason Widen
Yeah. So, but I definitely, you know, listen, I want to stay as close as I can to my backyard for as long as I can. We have a really, really good, strong market. So, you know, Durham, you know, even on the 85, you know, corridor, as you. As you go down, you know, towards Charlotte, there's some opportunities there. But, you know, I want to be very calculated. I want to make sure that I prove out the unique economics on these units. But along with a way of saying, Scott, I mean, the idea is to have, you know, a bunch of these. Right. I think there may be a real estate component to this that I'm still trying to work out. You know, we've. My roots are creating value for a hard asset, and I definitely know I can do that. So, you know, will there be an opportunity to own real estate, you know, as part of this? And I can do this in a way that it's transparent and honors both the operating company and the property and company. I'm still working through that, you know, but I think, you know, I'm still not out of the woods. Still a lot of hard work to do, but I think we're headed in the right direction.

01:05:23 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I think these physical world models, you know, people in my software world, we call it, you know, the world where you move atoms, we're just moving electrons and you guys are like moving atoms around. I love service businesses because the moats are so much deeper. Right. So let's fast forward. Let's say you get to the point where you have 10 buildings and then 20 and 30 and then someone decides this is a good idea. You're so far ahead that, you know, no amount of AI agents or throwing money at the problem can accelerate that kind of, you know, maybe if like Walmart came in or Amazon that has unlimited budget, but you know, another startup is going to take. You're always going to be X number of buildings ahead of them. And the learnings come linearly too. And it's very hard for them to kind of like look at your, like in software it's easy, relatively easy for someone to kind of copy what you've done. It's very, very hard to copy these types of physical models because so much of the learnings are like locked into the intangibles.

01:06:20 - Jason Widen
Absolutely. In location.

01:06:22 - Scot Wingo
I mean, you know, the three L's of real.

01:06:23 - Jason Widen
Yeah. I mean who's, I mean who's going to build a warehouse right near where I am here in Raleigh? They're not. Yeah, right. So, you know, but that also is a big challenge. You know, how do I bird dog the deals in the right locations? But you know, so far that's worked out. But yeah, you know, I feel like we got a good model. I think in terms of barriers to entry, I think, you know, they may not be. There is some barrier there which I think will help us in our efforts to grow and scale.

01:06:50 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, I know you think you are always chasing a shiny thing, but let's look at the record. So you've built three businesses that look like they're here for the long haul. So you've got Raleigh founded, which is still percolating. Revgen, I know you're not super involved, but you were founder of that. And then now Blueco, which I think has got a very Bright future. Thank you. I don't know many founders that kind of not only have started three successful businesses but that they're still alive. That's quite a feat.

01:07:14 - Jason Widen
Yeah, men buy one, don't forget about one.

01:07:16 - Scot Wingo
Yes, yes. The. Would you call it dirty, dangerous and difficult? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

01:07:23 - Jason Widen
I do, I do think that there's some lessons learned there. I mean, I will say, I mean I definitely talk to you and I know I, I talked to Jess and you know, the people that you got to respect and admire. I mean there is something to be said for focus. Right. And I think, you know, being a serial entrepreneur and you know, I would categorize myself as probably more of a lifestyle entrepreneur, you know, small business owner with blueco, I had different mindset coming into it. I truly did step down from my posts and these other things. Founded in particular is very all consuming with the community events and volunteering and startup weeks and all this thing. I mean I really have tried hard to stay super focused because I am trying to scale something. So I'm finally learning, you know, as I'm a little bit more mature in my older age that there is a benefit to, you know, to focus and, and I, I think it feels good. I mean it feels good when you can raise money for something and you can focus on something and you know, that's not to say that ideas don't run through my brain all the time but I think, you know, there is that value in, in focus and concentration and making sure you're keeping your eye on the.

01:08:35 - Scot Wingo
Yeah.

01:08:35 - Jason Widen
The road for what you're doing right now.

01:08:37 - Scot Wingo
Ideas are easy, execution is hard and if you've got a. What you think is going to be, you know, I think there's a multi billion, you know, 100 billion dollar opportunity here. If I look at my world of fulfillment for E commerce and if you look at the macro co working there's no one is doing what you're doing that I'm aware of and you know, so I think that's worthy of your focus.

01:08:54 - Jason Widen
Yeah. Oh, thank you, thank you.

01:08:56 - Scot Wingo
It'd be hard to find a bulb shinier than that. So.

01:08:57 - Jason Widen
Yeah.

01:08:58 - Scot Wingo
Well, thanks for being on the podcast. Appreciate it.

01:09:00 - Jason Widen
Thanks for having me, Scott.

01:09:01 - Scot Wingo
Absolutely.

01:09:07 - Jason Widen
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 Tweenertalks.