Ever feel like your performance reviews are stuck in the 1940s? Well, you're not alone, but it's probably time to join the party and jump into the 21st Century. That's why we invited Confirm.com on Firing Squad. This company, led by CEO Josh Merrill, the former CPO at Carta, thinks they have the answer to give employee review software a big refresh. Blame the Millennials. And yeah, they have some well-funded competitors that might have something to say about their success. Don't worry, we'll get into that. Can they pull it off? Gotta listen to find out.
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Firing Squad Intro (0s):
Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level.
Joel (24s):
Oh yeah. What's up everybody. You know who it is. It's your favorite guilty pleasure. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost? Joel Cheeseman joined as always the "Pippin to my Jordan" Chad Sowash and today's victim.
Chad (39s):
Stop. Stop. Saying that you're Jordan of anything other than eating fried foods. It's just total bullshit.
Joel (45s):
I'm just reading the script Chad. I'm just reading the script. I was gonna do your Shaq to Kobe. Would that be better?
Chad (55s):
You've done that one before.
Joel (56s):
Bird to Parish? I don't know. I don't know.
Chad (58s):
Oh yeah, No, I'm definitely. Oh, Parish. I love me some Parish. Oh yeah.
Joel (1m 1s):
Magic to Kareem.
Chad (1m 2s):
Oh, Kareem skyhook, baby. Oh yes. I love some skyhook.
Joel (1m 6s):
Yeah. Some Cousy to Chamberlain. Yeah. Or Russell. Sorry, not Chamberlain. Jesus Russell was the sorry. Boston fans. We just lost a whole city on that one. Anyway. Can we get to the show please?
Chad (1m 18s):
Okay. Thank you.
Joel (1m 19s):
Jesus. All right. Our guest today is Josh Merrill. Josh's CEO at Confirm. Is it Confirm or Confirm.com? Josh? Which you prefer?
Josh (1m 29s):
It is Confirm and thank you guys so much for having me here. I hope I can be the well, the Steph Curry of HR platforms today.
Joel (1m 37s):
Look what he did there. Chad, look what he did there.
Chad (1m 40s):
He's trying to bring it forward.
Joel (1m 42s):
He knows the audience. He knows the audience. All right, Josh, before we get into the rules of the game and grill your company to death, tell the listeners a little bit about Josh Merrill. What makes you tick?
Josh (1m 52s):
Yeah. So I've been in startups for about a dozen years. I love working on problems that, I love unsexy problems. Frankly. I love problems that, you know, we sort of put up with in our day to day lives and we don't really think very much about until someone points it and goes, wow, that's really broken. And I feel like that's the type of problem that we get to solve with Confirm.
Joel (2m 13s):
And we love unsexy problems. Chad, we love unsexy problems.
Chad (2m 17s):
Josh just called HR unsexy. Good job, Josh. Good job.
Joel (2m 21s):
Yeah, like let's just point out the obvious Josh
Josh (2m 27s):
HR is plenty sexy, but we do performance reviews.
Chad (2m 30s):
Oh boy. Gotcha.
Joel (2m 31s):
All right, Chad, tell him what he is won today.
Chad (2m 34s):
Well, Josh, welcome to firing squad at the sound of the bell.
sfx (2m 38s):
ding, ding, ding
Chad (2m 41s):
There it is. You're gonna have two minutes to pitch Confirm at the end of two minutes, eh, we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q and A. Yeah. You want to be concise or guess what's gonna happen kids? He's gonna get the crickets. After Q and A you're gonna receive one of three, either big applause. Strap yourself into this rocket ship because it's gonna take off. Golf clap. You're gonna need some nitrous to get this bad boy moving or last but not least the firing squad. Get that jalopy off the street cuz it ain't going nowhere. That's firing squad. Big boy.
Joel (3m 18s):
You a confirmed loser. If you get the guns.
Josh (3m 22s):
Ouch.
Joel (3m 22s):
All right, Josh, are you ready to do this?
Josh (3m 24s):
I am ready.
Joel (3m 25s):
Two minutes starting in three, two.
sfx (3m 29s):
ding, ding ding.
Josh (3m 30s):
All right. Well thank you so much guys. So the problem that Confirm is solving is that performance reviews are fundamentally broken. So performance reviews were invented by the US military a hundred years ago, the Nazi military actually created 360s during World War II. We're still using the performance reviews they invented, but the way we work today is completely different. So today, you know, I can hop on Slack or Microsoft Teams. I can direct message anyone in the company. I can form a cross-functional team to solve a problem. The way we work today is in networks. So why are we evaluating that work top down like we're in the military.
Josh (4m 14s):
And that's why we created Confirm. So Confirm is the first performance platform that uses the science of organizational network analysis to uncover data that managers can't. So the way it works is, you know, using Confirm, anyone in the company can review anybody else and that review may be positive or negative, but the point is that it mirrors the way we actually get things done. And one of our customers actually said, he said, 'it's like an x-ray of my company's talent'. And so with Confirm, you can identify your top and bottom performers, your culture carriers, your flight risks. You can reward them for performance, real performance instead of politics.
Josh (4m 56s):
And you can make confident people decisions based on data instead of bias. And you can learn more about us at confirm.com.
Joel (5m 6s):
All right. Thank you, Josh. That was tight. You're in a little bit under, so good for you. My first question, as always, let's get to the name. It's fantastic. Big ups for the name, especially for the confirm.com. You must have paid a pretty penny to get Confirm.com. Talk about the name and what it took to get it.
Josh (5m 26s):
Yeah, so we did pay a pretty penny for it. I'll give you kinda a little bit of my history. About 10 years ago, I joined a company called eShares and we were at esharesinc.com and we figured, you know, when we got bigger, we'll buy eshares.com. You know, the owner wanted like, I don't know, million dollars or something. And by the time we actually got big enough that we could afford it, he suddenly realized, oh, I, I can actually charge 10 times the amount. And so we actually have to change our name. And that company is now called Carta. Starting Confirm, you know, I was like, I'm not doing this again.
Josh (6m 9s):
And so, you know, we shelled out as soon as we had the money, you know, we shelled out, I think it was 375 for, for that domain name. But, you know, we're very happy that we're easy to find. I can say our name in a, you know, crowded bar and people can still hear me and it's working out great.
Joel (6m 29s):
Thanks for the transparency, Josh. Most, most people wouldn't give the dollar figure. So big ups to you on that one. Real quickly, are the, are the employee reviews anonymous or are they labeled who says, what about you?
Josh (6m 42s):
Yeah, it's a great question. So the reviews are not anonymous because you know, this data needs to be actionable. And a lot of this stuff, you know, if you just get a bunch of anonymous feedback, you can't really do anything with it, but it also needs to be psychologically safe. So those reviews are going to a person's manager, not that individual themselves. We do pull out some of the compliments, some of the nice things that people are are saying about me. I may be able to see those, but everything else is visible to my manager and above.
Joel (7m 15s):
Got it, got it. We'll probably come back to that later. So curious you don't, our firing squads are typically divided into people who have deep experience in our space and those that don't. You are in the don't category. You mentioned Carta, which is a well-known company. Does your lack of experience in our space help you? Is it a hindrance, the inspiration to start a company like this? Talk about that.
Josh (7m 37s):
Yeah. You know, actually kind of a similar experience, when I joined Carta. So I spent many years there. I was a Chief Product Officer over at Carta, and I joined not having any experience with equity, but having been a previous founder and experiencing the pain of trying to manage a cap table and work with lawyers and investors and trying to get option grants to employees, it's a huge pain in the ass. And I think similarly with Confirm, you know, my background, isn't HR, but I have plenty of experiences as a people manager, you know, experience kind of writing those reviews, being reviewed, participating really on both sides of a broken system.
Josh (8m 21s):
And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, you wanna know just enough to be able to figure things out, but you don't wanna know too much because it makes it harder for you to see how broken the system really is.
Chad (8m 38s):
So let's dig into that a little bit deeper, not just about your experience, but about your team's experience. So do you have anybody on the leadership team who actually has HR recruiting talent management background?
Josh (8m 51s):
Yeah. It's a good question. So we are certainly surrounded by, I would say a lot of advisors who have, you know, decades in HR. The leadership team itself, I would say our background, our experiences are largely in people management and we've come from organizations that are known for their best practices with performance reviews. And we can still look at that and go, this is really broken and you know, through Confirm we have the opportunity to fix it. So I think it's a little bit of mix of that kind of, I would call it like a healthy naivete, but we surround ourselves with people who are familiar with, you know, the way things work in HR.
Chad (9m 44s):
Okay. Okay. So give me an idea. Do you have any military background experience?
Josh (9m 49s):
No, I don't.
Chad (9m 51s):
So, so hating on the military and yet you've never actually had a review in the military. I spent 20, I spent 20 years in the military, which is why I'm asking.
Joel (10m 2s):
And there was more hate for the Nazis. Right. Just so we're clear.
Chad (10m 6s):
Yeah. We'll get to that in a minute.
Joel (10m 8s):
Sorry.
Josh (10m 8s):
More hate for the Nazis. Yeah.
Chad (10m 10s):
Yes, yes, yes. So first we call HR not sexy. Now we're saying the military has bad practices. So tell me about the actual military practices, because I'm very intimate, unfortunately with those practices. Tell me why, what you're doing, fixes what they've broken.
Josh (10m 29s):
Yeah. So, and to be clear, you know, I don't want to hate on the military, obviously. You know, my point in bringing up the history of performance reviews is, you know, back in World War I, the system that the military used, it was really innovative. It was really novel, but when you fast forward, you know, the way we work today has changed completely. And it's just, it doesn't fit anymore. It's like trying to put, you know, horse shoes on a car. And so what you really look at, you know, when, in terms of what the military introduced was having a consistent scale for a commanding officer to rate and evaluate a subordinate officer.
Josh (11m 11s):
And that was really the innovation. And because our sort of corporate org charts looked similar to a military hierarchy. We took that system and we kind of, we kind of brought it into the workplace and that really has been the standard for how we decide, you know, how engineers in Silicon Valley are gonna get evaluated and paid. So there's nothing inherently wrong with that system. It just doesn't fit the way that we work today.
Chad (11m 37s):
Okay. So how did you guys fix it?
Josh (11m 40s):
Yeah, so I think the big insight for us was understanding that the way we work today, isn't in the hierarchy of of a hundred years ago, right. We work in networks. So, you know, we can congregate on Slack, on Zoom. You know, we work super cross functionally. And in that setting, you know, any individual manager that has to evaluate an employee, they actually have less context and less visibility than ever to be able to make fair and accurate evaluations. And in fact, it's only gotten worse since the pandemic. We actually started the company right at the beginning of the pandemic, but we quickly realized that man, you know, with everybody working from home and, you know, hybrid remote work, like a manager just doesn't have the visibility that they used to.
Josh (12m 32s):
When I was in college, they used to teach about, you know, manage by walking around, well, that's all gone. And so we need a new way for a manager. You know, you can't be in every Slack channel and on every email thread. We need a new way for those managers to see what's actually happening.
Chad (12m 48s):
So does that mean there's constant feedback? Are you getting constant feedback from peers? Are the managers actually adding feedback in as it comes? Because one of the biggest issues is we talk about like NCOERs. So for, in the military is that you sit down every quarter and you have to remember what the fuck went on in, and the same thing happens in these civilian world as we, oh God, I gotta remember what happened. Oh, they hit their goals. That's not the big issue. The big issue is managers and peers don't have a feedback loop to be able to do it instantaneously, when it's actually happening. Is that something that you guys provide? How does it really make it more fluid rather than the construct of brick and mortar that we used to use?
Josh (13m 33s):
Yeah, exactly. Well, so you need two things. So one is that you need a concept of continuous feedback and that's been really popular in the industry. It is really popular right now. And I think it's a reaction in part to how much people hate performance reviews. So a lot of people are saying, well, don't do performance reviews. Do continuous feedback instead. And continuous feedback is great, but it doesn't mean that you don't need to measure people anymore. You still need performance measurement, as well as that continuous feedback. And we do both. So using Confirm, you know, I can give feedback, I can give recognition any time I want to anybody in the company.
Josh (14m 13s):
I can request feedback. I can request feedback for my direct reports, for example. And then we gather that, and then when it comes time to do those quarterly or half year performance reports, we bring all of that in. And what we're really trying to do is remove recency bias. Right? So exactly, exactly what you said. Like I'm not gonna remember everything that happened. I barely remember everything I did over the last three months, let alone all of my direct reports did. And so we wanna remove that recency bias as much as possible. And so we bring all that continuous feedback in as well.
Joel (14m 47s):
Sounds like some millennial mumbo jumbo to me Chad. I don't know. I don't know this constant contact. All right, Josh, you've raised about five and a quarter million in a seed round. What have you done with the money? What do you plan on doing with what's left? Are you gonna raise more money? Talk about the funding.
Josh (15m 5s):
Yeah, absolutely. So we raised five and a quarter million from Resolute Ventures, Animal Ventures. We love our investors. They're super supportive. You know, we really started this company, like I said, at the beginning of the pandemic, we actually thought we were gonna build a recruiting product. And a month after we started, you know, the economy was losing a million jobs a week and we had to pivot. And so we spent a long time being really thoughtful about, you know, what is the problem that we really wanna solve here. And the more we dug into performance reviews, you know, the more interesting it became, it's this, you know, kind of process that runs in the background that really controls a lot of our career futures it's super broken and nobody really thinks about it.
Josh (15m 55s):
And so that became our entry point. And so, you know, what we've used the money for is, you know, we've built up a team. We built a killer platform for doing performance reviews, continuous feedback, you know, career pathing. And now we're actually just at this inflection point where we're starting to, you know, take that message out more broadly to the market and really starting to ramp up sales and marketing.
Joel (16m 25s):
Any plans to raise additional funds.
Josh (16m 27s):
Yes, there are.
Joel (16m 28s):
And, is it a challenging environment right now to raise said funds?
Josh (16m 35s):
You know, I would say it's challenging for a lot of companies for sure. I would also say that there is a little bit of a flight to quality, and most of the investors that we talk to, you know, when they see a really big, you know, a big meaty problem, like performance reviews, and they see a company that can really fix it, that actually creates a lot of openings for us to tell our story.
Joel (17m 0s):
What does your typical customer look like? And are you a global company, or is that still a lot of space to grow into?
Josh (17m 6s):
Yeah, so our, our typical customer, you know, we've really been focused on tech, although that we're not exclusive to tech, but we tend to find that, you know, if you think about our work being done in networks, we tend to work really well with customers that operate in that kind of way. And so, you know, our typical customer is, you know, may have anywhere between a hundred to, you know, a thousand employees, I would say on average, we have customers that are both larger and smaller, but that tends to be our sweet spot. And we are already global. I mean, a lot of our customers are fully remote, so they have, you know, employees all over the world in every time zone and we accommodate that.
Joel (17m 49s):
One of the things that need my knee jerk reaction to first sort of digging into your company was, oh, they don't have any competition. Talk about your differentiation. Certainly 15 to five comes to mind who, by the way, just raised $52 million. So you might need a bigger boat comes to mind as I think through that, but, there's Culture Amp, Mesh, Lattice, a lot of well known companies, a lot of well-funded companies, what's the sales call like? What's the differentiator for you guys?
Josh (18m 18s):
Yeah. The core differentiator is, you know, all of those platforms, I don't wanna, you know, I'm not taking any pot shots at 15Five or Cattice or Culture Amp. I think they're all great.
Chad (18m 26s):
Do it.
Joel (18m 26s):
Oh Please do. You've heard our show before.
Josh (18m 28s):
Well, so I would say this, like, I think what, from a performance review standpoint, I think a lot of platforms have taken a fundamentally broken process and they've brought it online and made it sort of, you know, faster and a little bit easier through a nice UI. But at the end of the day, we're still measuring people in the same old broken way. And, you know, frankly, I don't see a lot of companies that are actually attacking the underlying problem of how people are measured, the way that Confirm is. And so when, when customers get excited about us, it's really about being able to understand in super high fidelity, you know, who are my top performers, who should I be concerned about?
Josh (19m 14s):
Who's actually driving influence in this organization and then being able to take action on that data really quickly.
Joel (19m 20s):
Would it be fair to say that a customer wouldn't use, you and a competitor or someone that I just listed as a competitor, they would choose one or the other, they wouldn't use both services. Is that correct?
Josh (19m 31s):
I think most of the time that's true. You know, we do absolutely have customers that, you know, they love Lattice for feedback, or they love CultureAmp for engagement surveys, and they want to marry that with this network data that only we provide, but oftentimes our customers end up, you know, if that's, if that's sort of the place that they start by integrating these platforms, most of the time they just end up on Confirm.
Chad (19m 55s):
Ok, so who's your target market? Who are you actually selling to?
Josh (19m 59s):
Yeah, so our target tends to be, you know, CHROs, you know, directors in the people function. You know, we find that, like I said, our sweet spot is, you know, kind of that mid-market, and we've been focused on, you know, companies that, that really work in that network sort of way. But we also find that is really surprising is we get a lot of interest from CEOs. And the reason is, you know, CEOs don't log into performance management systems. Like it usually that's usually something that sort of happens below the CEO level. But what we find is that when we're running a performance cycle, we see this in our analytics, our CEO customers, they will log in a dozen times a day to look at the data as it's coming in to Confirm.
Josh (20m 50s):
And the reason they get excited is that they can see who those, you know, how the company's kind of kind of performing at a high level with respect to talent, but they can also drill all the way down to the water cooler level and see, you know, who's concerned about, you know, is Bob concerned about Mary, you know, is Jane an outstanding contributor? And they really get a lot of intelligence and insight from that.
Chad (21m 18s):
Okay. So what is really the biggest issue for HR and TA that you're trying to solve today?
Josh (21m 26s):
So I would say that the biggest issue, you know, if you really look at, if you talk to most CHROs or heads of people and you ask them like, Hey, can you gimme a list of who my top performers are? You would be surprised at how difficult it is to produce that list of people with a high degree of confidence. And I would say that at a baseline, the first problem that we solve for people is we can tell you who those people are, who you can't afford to lose, and we can actually quantify their impact and tell you why they're making that impact or how. So that's kind of the high level place to start.
Josh (22m 8s):
And then there's, once you actually understand who's driving impact in the organization, there's a lot that you can do after that.
Chad (22m 14s):
Okay. So when we talk about HR and TA, really one of the biggest issues that they have is not being seen as a cost center. I mean, how will your product demonstrate that HR and talent acquisition and great talent management is actually the revenue generation machine?
Josh (22m 33s):
Yeah. So to me, that really starts with having data, you know, most CEOs that we talk to think of performance reviews is this kind of like, it's kinda like this perfunctory, you know, compliance exercise that we go through that, you know, I'm really not gonna learn very much from it. And, you know, I, I kind of trust the ratings, but not, not completely. And for HR to be able to deliver, you know, with confidence and with data that, you know, evidence of like, here are the people we can't afford to lose. Here are the people that the organization is concerned about. That's the basis for actually moving from, you know, sort of being seen as a cost center to being seen as a function in the company that's really strategic, which it is and should be treated.
Chad (23m 20s):
So this sounds pretty expensive. Don't you think, Joel?
Joel (23m 22s):
Like a lot of money, Chad.
Chad (23m 23s):
Like a lot of money.
Joel (23m 24s):
Back up the Brinks truck.
Chad (23m 25s):
That's what I'm thinking. So, so what is this gonna cost a company? How do you price this out? Give us a little insight into that, Josh.
Josh (23m 33s):
Yeah. Well, I mean, if it sounds expensive, I think that's great. Cuz if I, if I put my salesman hat on, I can, I can give you good news, which is, you know, we're really competitively priced. We price per employee per month. And you know, if you compare us against Latice or Culture Amp, you know, we usually come out frankly, quite a bit ahead. But what I think is really compelling is, you know, most organizations look at this and go, this is a really different way to understand performance. And for those companies that, you know, think this might be for them, but they're not sure we actually can do a pilot program, a three month pilot where, you know, if they wanna run a performance cycle in Confirm before actually committing to anything with us, we can help them do that.
Josh (24m 21s):
And you know, a hundred percent of the time, you know, our customers look at the data and the insights that we can deliver and they commit to the platform
Joel (24m 31s):
Is an economic downturn good or bad for your company? For example, with saying that you help with flight risks and retention, do you assume that some companies that want to keep who they have use your tool, or do you feel like you're gonna be an unnecessary solution that they can sort of put aside until the economy gets better?
Josh (24m 53s):
Yeah, it's a really good question. You know, over the last, like I would say month or so. I mean, that's really, when we've seen our pipeline explode. Almost seems like the worse, the news gets, the better our pipeline becomes. I think that, you know, we're certainly seeing budgets get squeezed, you know, there's no doubt about that, but the need to take a finer, you know, kind of take a magnifying glass to performance, you know, that need is bigger than ever. It's surprising to me. Some of it is on the downside where, you know, I may be, you know, carrying under-performers, but most of it is really, you know, I just wanna make sure that my top talent doesn't leave.
Josh (25m 39s):
Yeah. Because in the midst of, you know, this kind of constricting economic climate, the war for top talent is like hotter than ever.
Joel (25m 50s):
Yeah.
Josh (25m 50s):
And, you know, the primary interest of our customers is I don't wanna lose those people, but first I have to know who they are.
Joel (25m 56s):
All right. And lastly, gimme a glimpse of your whiteboard. What are some things you guys are building that if we talked a year from now that you guys would be launching? For example, up-skilling seems like a natural progression for something you guys might add in the future.
Josh (26m 10s):
Yeah. So, you know, one of the ways that we think about this is, you know, being able to create kind of a standard baseline for how we measure performance and how we understand that performance. And so one of the things we get excited about is being able to say, Hey, you know, you just hired a group of sales people. Here's how they're ramping up. And here's how they're ramping up relative to other sales people in your industry who are working at a similar level. And to be able to do that across any function at any level is something we get really excited about. You know, you just can't do that in the way that performance reviews are done today.
Josh (26m 50s):
You know, I may get a four at one company from one manager. I may get a two from a different manager, right? There's no standardization, but what we're actually doing is bringing standardized measurement to performance reviews. And that will allow us to actually create those sort of cross company baselines. And we're pretty excited about that.
Joel (27m 13s):
All right, Josh, the Q and A is now over. Are you ready? My friend to face the firing squad?
Josh (27m 26s):
I hope so.
Joel (27m 28s):
Chad, get em.
Chad (27m 29s):
Here we go. Josh. I love all of this except the message. You said CEOs want the data. What you didn't say once was one incredible word. Bottom line. Okay. Performance equals what bottom line? Retention equals what? Bottom line. Happy employees equal what? Bottom line. Do you know what CEOs care about the most? The bottom line. They say employees, but they're looking at the bottom line and HR cannot connect the damn dots to the bottom line. The message. What does HR need most? They need a way to demonstrate that they are the heart of every organization.
Chad (28m 11s):
No company runs without talent and yet HR and TA are still pretty much seen as cost centers. Hell they see themselves as cost centers. You talk to 'em and they hang their head. They shouldn't. So I believe Confirms data and insights can be the springboard to finally getting HR and TA to the adult table at the C-suite. Once you change your message, that is an incredible, I think, a vital piece. But I think one that you guys can actually focus on and change pretty quickly. But until you do that, my friend, I'm gonna have to give you a golf clap.
Josh (28m 48s):
All right. Well, good feedback. I appreciate it.
Joel (28m 51s):
Golf clap. It is all right. It's my turn, Josh. It's my turn. All right. So I really wanna like this company in the business, starting with the name, God damnit, I'm sick of these startups with shitty names, and this is a damn good name. There are a few things that I see that are challenging me right now. Number one is either the lack of anonymity or not being anonymous. In other words, if I have to review a coworker, am I biased? Because my face is on the review. Is it more skewed to positive? Because I know that my name is on it, or is my review based something that would benefit me from maybe somebody that manager likes better than others.
Joel (29m 31s):
So I'm concerned about that. And I'm also concerned about the data because the data to me seems really subjective because it's based on people's opinion or reviews of other people. So where data typically is something really solid and factual. This data seems really subjective. I'm not saying it's not valuable data. I think keeping your finger on the pulse of your workforce and what they're saying and what they think about people at their company. And I do think there's incredible value in the retention tool and having someone say, Hey, you know what? I was overhearing Jim at lunch, he's looking for new jobs. It might be a good time to like, you know, save him or something. The other thing that I think is a major hurdle for you is the competition.
Joel (30m 14s):
I know that you said you're different from 15Five and some of the others pricing is an issue, but you're also really focused on tech. And I know 15Five has been really ingraining themselves into the tech world for over a decade. I think, I mean, they're a really established company in this space. So I think you're gonna have a hard time on the competitive landscape, especially with the dollars that those guys are raising. Now that said, I think you can carve out a niche. I think you do have valuable data. And I do agree that Chad, in terms of the messaging can probably be a little bit more refined and that may be in part because you're not from the space. Maybe it's gonna be a little bit of a learning curve in terms of the language and what's gonna be successful.
Joel (30m 56s):
And what isn't, I do think you're a very high potential to be acquired. I think as people are going shopping in the next six months, 12 months, 18 months, the service you provide is gonna be appealing. And someone with a brain is gonna figure out that I need to write a check to these Confirmed cats and get this solution onto my platform. So for me, you've got some things to work out. You've got some struggles and challenges ahead. I think you need to raise a nice Series A me as well, Josh.
sfx (31m 28s):
Golf clap.
Chad (31m 28s):
Ah, We agree.
Joel (31m 29s):
We're saying there's a chance, Josh.
Chad (31m 30s):
We're saying there's a chance.
Joel (31m 31s):
But you've got your work cut out for you. And I'm sure we're not telling you anything that you don't already know.
Josh (31m 38s):
I'll take the chance.
Chad (31m 39s):
You better. You sure the hell better.
Joel (31m 41s):
You better take the chance and come back in a year or two and tell us how wrong we got it.
Chad (31m 46s):
Or how right we got it cuz you pivoted. And it was awesome.
Joel (31m 50s):
Yeah. Oh, there you go. And then we'll take 10% of the company.
Josh (31m 54s):
That sounds like a Series A to me. Until
Joel (31m 58s):
Until then tell the listeners again where they can find out more. Share that beautiful url, once again.
Chad (32m 4s):
Beautiful bean footage.
Josh (32m 5s):
Absolutely. So you can learn more about Confirm at confirm.com.
Joel (32m 9s):
Fantastic. We appreciate your time. Josh. Good luck to you. Another one in the can Chad.
Chad and Cheese (32m 14s):
We out, we out.
OUTRO (32m 15s):
This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.