Building a Business in the Generative AI Era

0:00Season three of the Built Right Podcast is right around the corner, but we've got one big change coming your way. The Built Right Podcast is now the Talking AI Podcast, and we've got a lot to talk about in AI. In the Talking AI Podcast, we'll be having in-depth conversations with both AI experts and early adopters of AI. That way you can understand how the technology works and how early adopters are beginning to implement and, more importantly, get value from AI. Our guests range from AI research scientists to founders of AI products to industry leaders putting AI to work in their business. While you're waiting for Season 3, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode.

0:41And make sure to leave us a comment about the AI topics that you want to hear about. So get ready to talk some AI in the new Talking AI Podcast, coming your way August 6th.

0:53Welcome to Built Right, a podcast by Hatchworks where we help you learn how to build the right digital product the right way. In this season, we're going all in on generative AI with guests ranging from international AI speakers, founders of Gen AI products, experts in specific domains of Gen AI, and leaders across industries. We're here to help you figure out how to take advantage of this new emerging technology so you can win in the market. So whether you're an AI techie or just AI curious, we got you covered. Let's get into it. Today, we're joined by Matt Pierce, founder and CEO of Immediate, who delivers responsible on-demand pay through early wage access.

1:32Really interesting product and solution we'll get into here in a bit. But Matt has two decades of experience in high-growth businesses, including early-stage startups, all the way through IPO. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thanks so much for having me. Excited about the conversation. Yeah. And today we're going to be getting into Matt's story of finding product market fit by focusing on a very specific niche. And this is a lesson anyone really can apply to your business, no matter the size or scale. It's one of those like lifelong first principle kind of lessons you really got to lean into. And his story is one of the better ones I've heard of how they focused and then use that to scale.

2:11And plus, as always, we're going to get into how AI is impacting Matt's business, how they're taking advantage of it and where he sees the future going. But before we jump in, give us a bit of a background on you, Matt, your experience and kind of what's led you to where you are today. And then we'll get into the fun part of the story of how you got started with immediate. It is it is funny when you hear almost 20 years ago, wait, has it been almost 20 years? like, goodness gracious, time flies, you know, it really does. So I tell people a lot. I've, I've been in sales all my life and, and started as an intern in grad school, working for a healthcare technology company.

2:55I was able to kind of take that and enroll it into a full-time job out of school and ended up being at this company for right at a decade and was fortunate enough to was Employee 55. I was fortunate enough to get in. I got a nice seat on a rocket ship. We built it up and took it public. I worked my way up in the partnerships world. When I first came in, I was building a reseller program. I took it from four to 25 partners. Then they let me hire somebody to manage it. Then I moved on to build a national lead gen program, which I built up from essentially nothing. I added 44 partners in the first year.

3:32We did 5 million in revenue in the first year there. And then they let me hire somebody to manage that. And so I kind of kept just working my way out of jobs, right? I'd build something up and then I'd go, all right, I need somebody to manage what, you know, like essentially I need somebody to farm what I've, what I've gone out and gotten ready for us. And so I ended up, I guess they kind of at a certain point said, well, he's done, he's done every job in the, in this, in this division, let's just make him the head of it. And so I got a promotion to run in the business development team. And it was about the time that we were going public.

4:05And so we had a nice IPO in early 2012. And then Vista Equity Partners came along and acquired the business for about$650 million a year and a half later. And I got to hang around for about a year after that and really learned a lot about private equity-backed companies. And it was interesting. I'll share a little bit about this because it really helped frame and shape a lot of who I am and the way that we've been building this business here is when I started there, very little process, right? Super heavy on the culture. We I mean, still some of my best friends are from there. I actually met my wife at this company.

4:41I mean, it was just like a really good culture of people who were waking up every day, rowing in the same direction. and you build and build and build. I think we were 850 employees when we sold and learned a ton along the way. But what happens when private equity comes in and especially for us, they took us back private and then merged us with two of our competitors. And so you blink and wake up and it's, oh, hey, we're 1800 employees and we're in five different cities and trying to build relationships with a finance team and a legal team. and a field sales team and take all that and then bundle it into a private equity playbook where there's very detailed structure.

5:27And so that culture shifted very quickly to process, right? And so I always kind of took that as a really solid lesson for blending culture and process, right? You don't want to be overly processed because then you kind of lose your culture. You want to be overly focused on culture because then you kind of lose the process. And I think as a company and organization grows, that's really the thing that you have to go through that's going to help you get to that next level is how do I keep culture intact? How do we make sure that things are still fun and exciting? But as we grow in scale and you go from, you know, like here at a media, go from me being the only salesperson to now we have eight.

6:11How do we make sure that they're all falling in line and working the right process? And so that's something that I learned early on that I think has carried me through my career. Quick break in the pod. If you're listening to this podcast, chances are you've been thinking about how to actually use AI inside your business. And that's exactly why we built the AI Opportunity Finder. It's a free tool that helps you uncover high impact, tailored AI use cases based on your business, your goals, your pain points, and your industry. No fluff, no generic use cases, just real ideas that fit your business and the ranked by ROI potential.

6:46It takes about three minutes to run and it's like having your own personal AI strategist for free. If you want to try it for free, check out the link in the show notes or go to hatchworks.com backslash AI dash opportunity dash finder. yeah and you hit on an interesting point i've been through some of this too with the first thing for listeners like step back and if you're if you're early in your career uh i think it's marissa meyer it's like it doesn't matter what seats you get on the rocket ship just go get a seat like that's a great way to accelerate your career um great to have experience in both small and big companies but like what matt just went through like you basically probably accelerated 20 years worth of a career, probably in a five-year period.

7:28100%. Absolutely. But the one piece you had on process and culture, that was really interesting there. We've had similar things with Hatchworks. When you're a startup and you're small and everybody knows everybody, it's easy. You don't need all the process, but you start to hit these plateaus. As you were talking through that, I'm like, man, we've gone through these same things of getting to... I've heard of it in people numbers or revenue numbers. It's like you hit the million in revenue, kind of hits a plateau, hit about 10 million, 100 million. And there's these different pain points as you go and grow.

8:02But it's kind of interesting to hear that story as you go there. And the process piece, that'll be interesting. We'll get your take on that later as we start to get into AI and where does that fit in with automating some of these pieces? And And, you know, maybe it accelerates things even further. 100%. It really does. And I don't want to skip ahead, but there's definitely some things that AI is bringing to the table that is helping organizations as they scale and kind of go and do those processes. But just to round that out, after I left there, I spent a few years, I spent two years at a company up in Boston and a year out a company out in L.A.

8:44And really, I think that there's, I guess, like this, the mindset that comes from an entrepreneur is I knew in college that this is what I wanted to do. I obviously had no clue what kind of company I was going to start. I felt like I was a natural born leader. And I felt like I, in some cases, I thought I might be unemployable. I've got opinions. And you know what I mean? And so there's this piece. It's a great track for entrepreneurship. leadership. Exactly. I just remember sitting in a class in college and being like, I just don't know if I want to work for somebody. And we all work for somebody.

9:20But it's also, I knew that that's where I wanted to get. And so I was like, what are the steps and process that I could take? And so when I had that opportunity to join that company right out of college, or when I was still in grad school and then joined right out of college, I'm like, this is a time for me to go in and lean in and learn. And so I was very deliberate about the selection that I made. I could have gone to work. Matter of fact, I had a job offer right out of grad school to move to LA and get into the entertainment industry from an agent perspective, like be an agent in training, which I think now about, goodness gracious, how different would my life be.

10:01I went out there and did a two-week interview process and got the job offer. And it was going to be an agent in training for celebrity voiceover work. We're talking like 03, 04, when that was just getting going. Now you hear celebrities on all the advertisements. Back then, that was kind of unheard of. And so it was just a different path. But I remember when I was going through the checklist, the pros and cons on that decision of, is this going to help me get closer to starting a company and being my own boss? Or is this going to take me way out of my comfort zone and put me into a place where, what if I really love this and I'm here the rest of my life?

10:38I'm like a West Coaster the rest of my life. And I just didn't know if that's what I wanted. And obviously, for me, at least, I made the right decision. And so I kind of was seeking that when I left. I went and worked for this company in Boston, learned a good bit there, got to really rebuild a growth organization, which is an important piece of the puzzle. And then I got picked up by a pre-series A company out on the West Coast. And in my mind, it was, all right, I'm going to go do this again. This is a pre-series A. I was employed like 25, good equity slug. And let me go build this thing. And this is going to be a big West Coast pop.

11:14And I just got burned out. I was traveling out there every three weeks. I was traveling all the country. It's kind of like a team of one. And I just got burned out. And about a year into it, we parted ways. And I kind of sat down and go, all right, now's the time. And I started doing growth, like growth consulting, just to see if I could find a place that I wanted to go really sink my teeth into starting a business, which led to starting immediate. So I know that's kind of like a little abbreviated, a little extended, but it just kind of shows that my mindset from the early 2000s when I was in college was, I'm going to start a business, period.

11:58And even when we had that exit, I didn't go out and buy a flashy new car and do all the things that sometimes people do when they make money. And it wasn't like it wasn't retire money, but it was, you know, it was pay off your house money. And and it was, you know, with some leftover. And as opposed to me doing that, what I did was I put that money, set it aside, said, this is the money I'm going to use to start a company one day. And and so it was it was a lot of build up to where we are today to foundationalize and make sure that I was in the best place to succeed. Yeah, it's funny how serendipity plays into things in your career.

12:38I love hearing people's career journeys, but it's also putting yourself out there for the at-bats. I look back when I first started, I got my first job, somebody put out on Facebook. And this was back in the day when Facebook was still the new thing with just in college. And they said, hey, our company needs some interns. And I was like, I don't have a job yet. So that led me down this like meandering path to where I am. But it's just, you know, it's so random how things kind of work out. But in the end, it makes perfect sense. So love hearing those journeys. I prescribe to the mindset that life doesn't happen to you.

13:16It happens for you. And I think if you take that into everything you're doing, and look, sometimes it's hard to believe that. And sometimes it's hard to get on board. And there may be people that are listening like, crap, I'm in a tough spot. I don't feel like this has happened for me. I can look back on some of some of the darkest days, some of the toughest times, some of the times when I wasn't really sure if this was ever going to work out. And even here, there have been times where I've laid awake at night staring at the ceiling fan, just going like, what have I done? Is this going to work?

13:54And I think everybody goes through that in some phase of their life. But I think when you can kind of take that as like, all right, hey, I'm here, right? What am I going to do about it and how am I going to use what I've learned and where I am to spring forward. And if I can, if I can leverage this, then I'm going to be in a really good spot coming out of it. And, and Hey, if I'm not, I'm going to take that same mindset. Your mindset can really, can really play with you, you know? And, um, and I just think that there's, there's so much power in being able to, to shift your thinking. And I know that that's, uh, I can, I can, I can sit here and say this because I've been practicing it and doing it for a long time.

14:35And, you know, my wife and I have this discussion sometimes where she'll be worried about something, upset about something. I go, just don't think about it. And she'll go, just don't think about it. Like, that's just not an option. You know what I mean? And I do think that there's probably some like man versus woman in that where the compartmentalization, like guys by and large do a really good job of that. And women have a tougher time to compartmentalize things. Um, but I'm, I'm thinking less about compartmentalizing and more about like, what is me worrying about this going to do to make it better versus me like going into action.

15:11Right. Like, so as opposed to thinking about all the things that are going bad, I think a lot about like, you got to think about solutions, like think about the solution to the problem, not just fester on the problem. And, and I think that that's one of the things that just like through my career has helped me and guided me to where I am and still use pretty frequently. Yeah, it's what's in the span of your control to a certain extent. And then it's that unlock you mentioned there. When you're going through the pain, just realize that that's going to be something that's making you stronger, you're going to look back on.

15:44I look back when we went through COVID, it just seemed crazy specifically for our company at Hatchworks, but we learned so much through that experience as a company that now when we hit a speed bump or a roadblock, it's like, okay, we've done this before. We've been through this. And it's like building muscle to a certain extent. But I want to ask you, get to kind of a philosophical question here. What's your definition of product market fit? And then let's get into kind of the early days of immediate and how you found that. Yeah, to define it is hard, to me at least, because I think every company, every platform, every product are going to have a little bit of different way of looking at it.

16:40For us as an organization, I felt like we got to product market fit when we started selling to people that we didn't know. And, you know, the first the first few customers was like, oh, you know, well, hey, my brother runs my brother runs a company and he's got 25 employees. Like, let's go get them like, oh, hey, family stage. Right. Right. Exactly. I mean, I was the one of our first customers was the coffee shop that I was working out of because I was working there every day. My wife tells me I'm too loud and I can't work from home. And so so I would go I would go to one coffee shop in the morning.

17:13I'd come home and have lunch with her and then I go to another coffee shop in the afternoon. And so at this one, they got in there and they were like, you're here like every day. What are you doing? And I was just like, hey, sales pitch time, you know? And so I still knew them, right? There was that. So I felt like when we kind of got over that hump, and I would say probably more so not even just the one time because lightning can strike. When we got to a place where we could sell people that we didn't know in a repeatable way, right? And that was when it started to click. And it took us post first customer, I'd say it probably took us seven or eight months to get to a place where we were really selling people we didn't know.

17:59And that's so that for us, at least that's where I felt product market fit kind of started coming into play where we felt really like, all right, we've built something that works and that people will buy and that people will use. So now we're good. Let's see how we can pour gas in the fire and repeat what we've been doing. Yeah, I like that definition. I've never heard of it told in that way, but it's almost like a test, a litmus test of, okay, are there people outside of my immediate circle interested in and buying this? That's a great test. I like that. I've never heard of it referred to in that way.

18:31Yeah, and the flip side of it, if you can't sell your friends and families, you're probably going to have a tough time selling strangers, you know what I mean? And so that felt like a pretty good place for us. Cool. So take us down like any kind of early, like what was that journey like in the early days to start getting to scale? Any kind of anecdotes or interesting stories along the way? Yeah, my early sales stories are some of my favorite. Just because you've got to be scrappy, right? You don't have referenceability. We used to laugh, our CTO and I, because people would ask for references early on.

19:15and they'd say, can we talk to a senior living company that's on ADP that's over 1 ,000 employees? And I would go, let me see if I can pull together a reference for you. And I'd go back and I'd look at my spreadsheet and I'd go, we have seven customers and the largest is 140 employees and none of them are on ADP. And so I would go, I would, I would send an email and I would say, still working on the ref, the ADP specific reference, but I found you one that senior living and I'd like for you to talk to so-and-so. Right. And then I would just keep my fingers crossed that that would go well enough that they would come back and say, you know, I don't need the ADP specific reference, you know?

19:55And so, so you do have to do things that are a little, a little scrappy early on. And for us, we really made a decision that we were going to focus in health care initially and then also try to focus on kind of quick service and fast food restaurants. Largely because the solution that we offer, it's a voluntary financial wellness benefit. You mentioned at the beginning, but it essentially allows employees the ability to get there to access their pay in between paydays. So something unexpected happens. I don't have to turn to run a credit card debt, write a bad check, title, payday loan, etc. Right.

20:33I can go and say, hey, I've already earned money. I can access a portion of that. And we do it for free to an immediate card or a three dollar transaction fee to to their own bank issue debit card or bank account. And so all this to say, we looked and said, we believe that. Primary users of this will be making less than call it thirty dollars an hour. So where are companies with a high volume of people making less than$30 an hour? And that's typically like healthcare as in senior living and in like home health, home care and physician practices. And then obviously fast food. We see it all the time, right?

21:13You'll drive down the road and you'll see a billboard that says, you know, now hiring starting at 16 bucks an hour, 18 bucks an hour. And so we're like, all right, let's go do that. And so I actually had these little cards made. I might have one in my desk here. I do with this under a pile of stuff and I don't want to shuffle around, but I had these little cards made that, that said I had a QR code on the back that went straight to our website. And on the front, it said, you worked today. Why wait to get paid? And there you go. I got the marketing copy going. I like it. Right. Yep. And this was when I was, I was the only marketing guy and I'm going like, I think this goes well, you know?

21:55And so I came up with this tagline that was like our first tagline. It was your pay, your way. And there was a QR code on the back. And so I would hand those out. I would go through the drive-thru and I would say, hey, do you mind me asking you a really personal question? And people hear that and they think like, what is a really personal question? And I go, you know, sometimes people be like, I don't think so. But by and large, people go, yeah, you know, they're handing me my food. And I go, how often do you get paid? and they say, oh, oh, you know, and then, then they're like a little, the defensive nature goes away.

22:28Cause like, that's not that personal, personal. They didn't ask me how much I get paid. They just said, how, how often. And so most of the time I get paid every other Friday or every Friday or whatever. And I go, do you have the ability to get paid in between paydays? And, and most of the time they would say, no, we don't. And I go, wouldn't it be cool if you could access your own money there? Yeah. And I go, I got a solution for that. And I give them like, Like, you know, it helped me to tighten up this like 20 second elevator pitch. Right. Like, hey, we got a platform that allows you that connects to your time tracking system and lets you get paid in between paydays for a nominal transaction fee.

23:00Would you give that to your boss? And we use that. We kept doing that. We were doing that over and over and over and over again. And then I would start, you know, I'd find out if it was a franchise operator or if it was there's one group. So we're headquartered in Birmingham. There's one group that's headquartered here and got like 25 locations and all corporate owned. And so I found, you know, I found the CEO's contact info. And so then I'd send them an email. Every time I do that, I'd send an email and I go, I go, hey, went to the location over on over in Wildwood. And they said they'd love this.

23:32This is the this is the 12th time I've had somebody say this. Like we should get together. Like, let me share something with you. And and so finally, he gave me a call. We go in the call and he goes, I've been hearing about this from all the managers at the stores, that there's some guy who's dropping cards off in the drive-thru. And so I was like, well, tell you what? Right? You got to stick with it. And I said, tell you what, give me an opportunity to share this whole presentation with you. And if it doesn't work out, I won't drop off any more cards at your location. She goes, all right, cool.

24:01Let's do it. And so they end up becoming a customer. They've got about 1 ,000 employees. They have 44 % enrollment. Our average enrollment is anywhere from 15 % to 25%. They're at 44 % enrollment. And the reason for that is because there's so many people that are kind of in that target market. Like, right, they're in that pay band where we see a lot of success. And so that was that one of the core values of our company is, which at the time we didn't have them. You know, I kind of came up with them as we went and then formalized. And one of our core values is tenacity, right? Like, we're going to keep doing it.

24:32We're going to keep chipping away. We're going to work hard. And because I believe that in the long in the long run, just being tenacious is is what's going to get you over the hump. And and so we did that with groups like like that fast food chain. We've done some we've done some other pretty creative things. But I really it's funny because when you're in those days, you can't savor it as much as you'd like because you're kind of sitting there going like, you know, it's a little bit of like kill or be killed. You've got to get some deals done because you've got a finite amount of money. I think at that point, we had raised maybe a million, million and a half dollars or something.