You're probably texting right now, aren't you? And if you're not texting now, you will be soon.
That's why text recruiting remains such a hot solution. And that's why industry veteran Ty Abernathy launched Grayscale. But there's a lot of competition out there - hello Canvas, TextRecruit, Emissary, Rectxt, and the rest - so escaping the Firing Squad with his pride intact is no guarantee.
Did Ty survive, and what about that name, the one that sounds more like an investment firm or a bad '80s Tarzan movie?
Gotta listen to find out.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
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 (23s):
Firing squad. Boy, I am itchy with the trigger finger today. Happy to be here, Chad, what's going on? As usual, everybody this is your favorite podcast, the Chad and Cheese podcast. And this is maybe your favorite show on the podcast firing squad.
Chad (39s):
It's mine.
Joel (40s):
And today we welcome Grayscale and co-founder and CEO, Ty Abernathy. Ty. Welcome to Firing Squad.
Ty (50s):
Thank you guys. It's good to be here.
Chad (52s):
Wasn't grayscale what you caught during Game of Thrones? Wasn't that the bad, the bad disease, grayscale.
Joel (1m 1s):
I thought it was a bad eighties movie about Tarzan? Grayscale Legend of Tarzan. Wasn't that? Greystoke yeah,
Ty (1m 10s):
Let me just call out that. First of all, I'm the worst at naming companies, but yeah, we were about like three months in and I watched Game of Thrones, but like I started having people, like, are you a Game of Thrones fan? Or like, you know, why, why did you name your company Grayscale? And I'm like, okay, let's not after the flesh eating skin disorder on Game of Thrones, but you know, it'd be cool if I just like embrace that. I think.
Chad (1m 34s):
Yeah, why the hell not?
Joel (1m 36s):
Let's get into a little bit about you. And then Chad, we'll go over the rules and we'll get into this company you call Grayscale. Sound good?
Ty (1m 44s):
Sounds good.
Joel (1m 45s):
All right. What do our listeners need to know about Ty Abernathy?
Ty (1m 55s):
Well, I enjoy long walks on the beach. I, my long, long hair is flailing in the wind right now. I'm winking at you. Now, this is off to a bad start a little bit on the, yeah, my background's in recruiting. I started a company called Take the Interview. It's now rebranded Convey IQ in the video interviewing space and number of years ago and stumbled into the world of high volume hiring on that journey. And that sent me down the path of what is now Grayscale. I'm excited to talk to you all about that.
Joel (2m 29s):
Chad, tell him what he's won today.
Chad (2m 32s):
Well Ty, you will have two minutes to pitch Grayscale at the end of two minutes, you're going to hear that bell then Joel, and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If your questions start to ramble, or you get just fucking boring, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets. That's going to be your signal to move along and tighten up your game. So at the end of Q and A, you will receive one of three grades and that could be big applause. Big applause means you might be the Ted Lasso of our industry, which means promotion to the premier league of recruitment tech is eminent.
Chad (3m 14s):
Golf clap. I can hear Roy Kent starting to growl, which means it doesn't look good for you. And last but not least the firing squad. That's right you're relegated. Pack up your gear and get the hell off the pitch. Are you ready to face the firing squad?
Joel (3m 31s):
He mixed that up just for you Ty so no pressure, but are you ready?
Ty (3m 38s):
I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do this.
Joel (3m 41s):
And you're two minutes starts.
Ty (3m 43s):
All right. Well, Grayscale is our focus is on high volume hiring for enterprise organizations. So what we do, we work with brands like Amazon and Wayfair, large organizations dealing in really high volume, whether it be for, for warehouse hiring or call center facility hiring. We're designed to help streamline the process, increase efficiency throughout the process. Our product has an a candidate engagement tool. It's SMS first. So it's designed essentially to help the recruiter, who may in the case of Amazon may be working with a thousand candidates at a time, you know, to be able to create a one-to-one experience. So despite there being a one to a thousand ratio, Grayscale is designed to help facilitate a one-to-one feel for the candidate.
Ty (4m 32s):
And we do that through leveraging SMS and other channels like audio and email, very deep automation capabilities to help the recruiter be far more efficient in their day to day. And to really help eliminate a lot of those challenges that arise in the hiring funnel. From, you know, candidates ghosting you for interviews, from candidates falling through the cracks throughout the process, all the little inefficiencies that come as it relates to high volume hiring, when you're trying to drive candidates through your process very quickly, right? And in the case of large retailers, we work with that might be two or three days, right? You have to get all of your candidates through the door or through your process and hire, right.
Ty (5m 15s):
Cause it's all, it's the first offer that typically is the one that went. And so we Grayscale is designed to help you drive the process forward much faster, create a far better candidate experience and to help your recruiting team be far more efficient with your highest volume hiring needs.
Joel (5m 34s):
Thank you, Ty, and real quickly, where can they find out more about your company?
Ty (5m 39s):
It's a Grayscaleapp.com spelled G R A Y S C A L E A P P.com.
Joel (5m 44s):
All right. I teed you up for my first question, which is the name we, we joked about it obviously, but what was going through your head when you picked Grayscale and you couldn't even like secure a domain that made sense you had to throw app and then.com at the end of it. I mean, were there other names like, just help me, help me understand, is it hard for salespeople to say, Hey, I'm with Grayscale? I mean, Text Recruit makes sense, right? Like they're a competitor that makes sense, so help me understand the name, man, sell me on it.
Ty (6m 16s):
Yeah. We just figured if we could confuse our target audience as much as possible, it would somehow serve as well. And so no, I'm terrible at naming companies. Grayscale is a design term and I have some design background. I just, it's a very foundational sort of a design term as far as when you're, when you're designing new interfaces. And so it just kind of felt like we were doing something fundamental and foundational in recruiting. And so, boom, there you go. It stuck.
Joel (6m 46s):
It's better than ResumeSieve though. I'll give you that.
Chad (6m 52s):
Well, you know, it kind of, in both of them, feel like you have to get a shot because you might've caught something, but Ty, this isn't the first rodeo in the recruitment space. So what major lesson did you learn from starting up Zuzu Hire?
Ty (7m 9s):
Well, yeah, Zuzu Hire, that was my first foray. I was doing agency recruiting at the time and started that like on a part-time basis. So that's where I cut my teeth and just, you know, getting a business off the ground and sort of like 80/20, 20ing it, and like being scrappy and not raising any capital, like taking $10K out of your savings account and just like hiring a developer and see what happens. Right. So that was sort of, I learned a ton. It was like a little crash course and MBA, over the course of a year where I just learned a lot about like, just the fundamentals of getting, you know, getting an idea off the ground, really.
Chad (7m 49s):
So single out the major lesson for us.
Ty (7m 54s):
Just the, that momentum can, an idea in your head is something that is far better, far better, far better served taking action. So I learned like always have a bias toward action. And by taking those steps, things start to shape and move and evolve. And so I'll leave that there.
Chad (8m 16s):
So that being said, what did you learn from Convey IQ and how did it lead you here? Because Convey IQ interviewing this is SMS. I mean, what's the same, what's different? How did you make it here from there?
Ty (8m 33s):
Yeah, I, yeah. So can be IQs of video interviewing platform. We, I, I learned a lot through that journey. We, from basic things like don't raise a lot of money early in the life of your business. It has some interesting forces on the business while you're trying to figure out exactly what you have and what you're building. And so I also learned a lot about the world of high volume hiring. We kind of stumbled into that with Convey IQ with companies using the, you know, video screening tool to assess candidates for high volume call center, hiring, things like that. And so that was really kind of the impetus of where Grayscale was born, but yeah, a lot of learnings along the way, there was a, those were some key ones though.
Joel (9m 11s):
So a quick view into the past, and we're going to bring that into the future. Text message marketing or texting has forever been high levels of engagement, open rates, just insane. I mean, I remember 10 years ago talking about, you know, 95% plus open rate, I remember, 90 plus percent engaged before 15 minutes or reply, like, what are the metrics right now with texting? Because with messaging and video and so many other things, and even, you know, risks of spam, like, can we expect the same engagement through text marketing that we did 5, 10 years ago?
Ty (9m 50s):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think even even more so now than before, because you have the SMS is just so pervasive, we text with our grandparents, right. I mean, it's just a very, it's the way we communicate, the way we engage, we get texts notifications about our doctor's appointment coming up right? None of that happened five years ago. Right. So, yeah, I mean, open rates are still, you know, north of 99%. Response rates are like just shy of 50% of 49% is for us globally across our customer base response rate. And then six minute response time. So not only are virtually everyone is seeing your messages and half of them responding. They're getting back to you in six minutes or less.
Joel (10m 28s):
Gotcha. And how does a company or a recruiter typically engage with the product? I know you have some native apps. I know you have some Chrome extensions, like do most engage on the desktop. Is it mobile? Is it across the board? Talk about that?
Ty (10m 40s):
Well, one of the things we, we made the decision on early on is like, we don't want to pull you out of your workflow. That you're doing day to day. And so recruiters live in their ATS. They just happen. ATSs are not designed with high volume recruiting in mind. So Grayscale the primary way, a lot of our customers are use us is just a browser plugin that they can use inside of whether it be Taleo or Success Factors or Workday or Greenhouse, you name it. And we just sort of get like super charged them with the ability to text with their candidates, to automate a lot of touch points throughout the process, and to be able to create robust drip campaigns, all these things that you need when you're dealing in volume, to help create a high touch experience that can scale pretty seamlessly with a big brand.
Joel (11m 27s):
Yeah. So this is a pretty crowded industry, crowded space, certainly listeners will know Text Recruit, Canvas. Now, part of Jobvite, Emissary, some of these are sponsors of the show or relationships we have. Rectxt, et cetera. I assume the question of how are you guys different comes up every day. How do you guys answer that question?
Ty (11m 47s):
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean a lot of what we've talked about so far is around SMS and SMS is, is certainly a very key component to what we do. Obviously we just talked about the value of why SMS is working in recruiting, but, you know, really the problem, like the job we're being hired to do, for these organizations is to really help streamline their high volume hiring. And so that's all we think about is volume recruiting for enterprise organizations. And I think that looking at it through like the jobs to be done framework like that sort of puts us in a position in a lot of little ways. We're very different from, you know, an Emissary or Text Recruit and not just through SMS, but through voice, through email, we'll be adding video capabilities, but through, you know, creating an omni-channel approach to engagement that really sort of supercharges what the recruiters able to do in a given day while creating a really great experience for candidates.
Ty (12m 44s):
But, but volume hiring is all we think about.
Chad (12m 46s):
When are you going to be able to say you are omni-channel because that's not an easy feet putting in WhatsApp and all the other messaging platforms.
Ty (12m 56s):
Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Yeah, that's very, very true. We're currently omni-channel today. We'll just, we're continuing to layer in additional channels into our offering. And so the, you know, for example, you know, today you can leverage Grayscale for SMS and for WhatsApp and for voice, we'll be adding email capabilities and others down the line to continue to expand the offering, because we see thinking about it, like, again, if our job is to help streamline high volume hiring, there's different use cases where different channels make the most sense. And so we want to make sure it's the right channel at the right time. And then with the right escalation point. So that may start with email and then you get a nudge via text and you get an automated call to confirm if an action hasn't been taken.
Ty (13m 42s):
So this kind of escalation sort of cascade, if you will, that can really help. A lot of high volume hirings is herding of cats. Right? And so like, how do you effectively herd those cats to the appropriate outcome is effectively as possible. And we think really an omni-channel approach is the key there.
Chad (13m 57s):
Are you thinking about adding scheduling in there as well since that's just a normal, the normal next step for most recruiters?
Ty (14m 5s):
Yeah, it's a great question. Well we certainly thought about it. I mean, for us, we integrate really deeply with some of the major scheduling tools out there, just make it really seamless to leverage those tools. And you can actually plug in a lot of different other offerings, whether it be assessments or scheduling tools into the Grayscale platform, just to seamlessly trigger those throughout the process. So we play really friendly with those. So it hasn't really been a need thus far, but certainly something we might explore in the future.
Chad (14m 34s):
Gotcha. Talking about integrations, let's talk about the big integrations, the ones, the ones that matter most the ones with the core talent platforms, the applicant tracking systems. Talk to us about those. Are those mainly just being able to write off a Chrome extension, are they truly working inside the platform?
Ty (14m 55s):
Yeah we do offer like really deep API driven integrations with all the major ATSs in the market. I named some earlier, but we go, we go really deep sinking the data. You can, everything that lives in Taleo, for example, lives in Grayscale from a candidate standpoint, we can update the ATS back as well. So, you know, we integrate deep, but usually the interface is going to be, we have a standalone desktop version, but most of our recruiters just opt to use Grayscale via the browser extension inside their ATS. So they have all the capabilities there and their ATS. They're not really having to navigate externally to sort of get what they need. And it just sort of bakes right into their existing workflow.
Joel (15m 34s):
What do you consider the biggest threat to the business? Something that comes to my mind is the whole chat bot, conversational AI phenomenon. I assume that that keeps you up some nights. Obviously the government is policing and entities are policing spam via text and opt out and all that stuff. So what are the threats to the business that sort of keep you up at night?
Ty (15m 56s):
Yeah, that's a great question. That was so to the conversational AI component, I actually like that, that I don't see that as a threat at all. In fact, we, you know, you, you look at like companies like Paradox, you know, Olivia for example, like we, you know, I think that's a great tool for the right type of buyer. Like for us, we're kind of philosophically opposed to like outsourcing your candidate engagement to a chat bot. We try to create every, like we to create human to human experiences, just we use automation to scale that. Right. And so we're kind of anti chat bot around here. And so, and a certain type of buyer that really resonates with and others were like, great. Olivia is a great offering. You go in that direction.
Ty (16m 36s):
Right. And so I don't see that as a threat, looking at threats. I mean, you know, the most obvious one is like, we're in a white hot labor market right now. Like, you know, at some point things are going to cool, right? At some point, you know, you've been, y'all been in the industry long enough to see the penguin pendulum swing back and forth a candidate driven market, and then, you know, employer driven market. And, you know, it's just, it's riding that wave. And I think that there, whenever this, you know, this music ends, you know, whether it's next month, next year know next five years at some point it will end. And just thinking about like on the other side of that what's that gonna look like? That's probably the biggest thing I think about.
Joel (17m 19s):
Okay. So you mentioned automation, drip campaigns triggers like your solution has a lot of automation, which is obviously hot, but it also sounds like a lot of maintenance talk about that hurdle with companies. I mean, teaching them drip campaigns and triggers, and is all that baked in, or is a lot of maintenance for the customer. Yeah.
Ty (17m 38s):
Yeah. I mean, a lot of it's, you know, we, intentionally keep it like stupid simple, so that a single recruiter it's designed for like a recruiter to use day to day to manage their workflow. So I think, you know, a lot, like you look at like the CRM market, it's like big lift. It's usually like run by the sourcing team or, you know, a recruitment marketing team. This is, we just designed everything with the recruiter in mind. So, it has to be stupid simple for them just to be able to leverage in their day-to-day. And so for us, that's just like basic stuff. Like, we're not talking about training algorithms here. We're talking about setting up basic if then rules that give you the ability to kind of see what they apply to.
Ty (18m 19s):
And then, and we've got playbooks that make it easy to sort of roll out these automation rules, but usually for an enterprise organization, we can have them stood up and integrated in roughly two weeks. So the lift comparatively, like I think that's one thing we do really well, is just make it stupid simple to roll out to, you know, and, you know, we had a healthcare company recently start with eight seats on the platform, and then 90 days later we're up to 500 seats, you know? And so just make it really simple to use and help them see value from day one.
Joel (18m 50s):
I love that you define two weeks is stupid, simple. You have a product on your feature set called text for jobs. What is that?
Ty (18m 59s):
It's basically just an SMS apply process that just makes it easy to really design, to sort of eliminate drop-off and the apply process and to drive more candidates in the door top of funnel. So we've got, you know, big brands that will use that to advertise openings, whether it be at their facility, you know, their store locations, you know, text, you know, I care to 8, 9, 7, 4, 3, they'll learn more about our opportunities and apply, you know, as you can stick those on all of your Linux LensCrafter locations around the country, or, you know, a lot of different use cases for how you can promote those, but really the, at the essence, it's about driving more candidates in the door for your jobs and really helping eliminate drop-off in the apply process.
Joel (19m 39s):
Gotcha.
Chad (19m 40s):
Okay. So I want to dig in a little bit on the anti chat bot/conversational AI comment, because that is obviously the best way to scale. You can't have a human touch, every conversation all the time, whether they're it's the easy, keep it simple, stupid conversations and whatnot. Now it sounds like you do have automation kind of baked in, is that correct?
Ty (20m 2s):
Yeah. We have some, we have some basic automation, baked in. Yeah. But you know, we don't, we're not going to be talking to you about the technology we're using. We're going to, you know, it's for us, it's like, that should all just sort of like fall into the background. Right. And, I think, the point I was trying to make before is just when every aspect of your candidate experience is driven, is you're interfacing with a conversational AI. We think you're missing a really good opportunity to build relationship when that's, and you can only do that with human to human, right? You can't build a relationship with a conversational AI.
Chad (20m 34s):
Now you understand, right now it's harder. It's harder to find recruiters than it is tech people. Right. So I understand, totally believe that, but it's not how the market is at, the landscape is today. So it's really hard to be able to have that conversation and have it fall on real business day-to-day ears. Now, obviously you, you know, you've, you've engaged some companies and gone from eight to 500 seats. I guess the big question for me is scale? how do those individuals actually scale more conversations? And they don't have to do the stupid shit, like ask the stupid questions that happen every single day, about 125 million times.
Ty (21m 18s):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, great point. Yeah. Solet's drill in on the Amazon example for a second then. So we start working with Amazon. Single recruiter can handle 150ish candidates at a time, right? Pretty good. You know, candidate volume, they're moving through the process. They set up Grayscale, set up some automation rules and map out their candidate journey and a consistent candidate journey for their highest volume hiring areas. Took them, you know, a better part of, you know, half an hour to set up those rules. And now a single recruiter can handle north of a thousand candidates at a time. And so that the efficiency they're able to see through that makes it to where they can scale that up.
Ty (21m 58s):
And that the candidate journey is consistent. The human touch only comes in as an escalation point and when there's questions or clarification points, but everything's coming from the recruiter, everything's designed to kind of further the process, whether it be notifications, whether it be next steps, whether, you know, whether it be assessments, but, you know, we are seeing a lot of efficiency while still being able to keep the recruiter in the driver's seat. Okay.
Chad (22m 21s):
So you just received funding, how much and where are you going to spend it? Oh,
Ty (22m 29s):
Raised, yes. We just raised capital a little over 3 million in investments. For us it's just about, thank you. I appreciate it. We're continuing to build out the team on, on all fronts, that is to really help support our business as we are growing and growing much quicker than anticipated. So we're excited about building out that team and continuing to expand on the product offering. So yeah, it's going to go toward mostly head counts, which will hopefully result in a product that adds deeper value to our customers down the line.
Joel (23m 3s):
What does, you mentioned Amazon and some other big companies. Do you guys target staffing agencies at all? And if not, why?
Ty (23m 11s):
We do not. We do have a handful of staffing agencies we work with, but we don't target them. That's not our core audience for us. It's about TA teams. That's, you know, pretty much all we think about. The reason the problems are similar, but kind of there's nuance differences in the world of agency recruiting versus the world of TA. And so we find for one, we just find the problems in TA more interesting, a little bit hairier, and particularly when it comes to volume and yeah, so we just chosen to kind of focus our business there. I think, you know, a, I have seen firsthand what a lack of focus can do to a business.
Ty (23m 51s):
So we are, that's all we're focused on right now. And so that means we can't really like we're okay. Saying no to agencies who, the big ones that want to work with us, because our focus is on corporate TA.
Joel (24m 1s):
I think all of that was Latin for their cheap bastards and a pain in the ass, which brings me to my next, yeah, that's, that's what we do on the show. So that brings me to my next question of pricing. You guys don't publish pricing. Is it a custom pricing? Is it sort of based on size of the company? Like what can I expect as a customer or someone that gets a demo to pay for Grayscale?
Ty (24m 30s):
Yeah, it varies based on a few factors, but just quite simply, we charge on a per seat basis. It's basically kind of unlimited communication per seat. So we don't have any sort of like overages or caps on usage or SMS fees or anything like that. It's just a per user seats. Pricing can range, a lot of our customers might just get started with a seat and that's going to be the highest per seat price you're going to pay. And then, you know, as you roll out to hundreds, it gets really, really cheap per seat, pretty fast. But yeah, that range can be anywhere from, you know, $250 a seat down to, you know, below $10 a seat, you know, depending on those variables, but that's how we approach pricing.
Joel (25m 15s):
Right. Good for you for saying numbers. That's good.
Ty (25m 18s):
I'm going to, I'm not going to just, yeah. I'm going to give you guys some stuff.
Joel (25m 25s):
Yeah, that's a nice range. 10 to 250 and what's the exit strategy.
Ty (25m 30s):
I, what is the exit strategy for us? I dunno, this is probably gonna feel a little bit of BS to you guys, but like, we're just, we're focused on building a great business that's delivering value for our customers, right? Like, I'm less concerned with exit strategy that will usually take care of itself. You're focused on the first, if you get the first order problem, right? Like usually the rest will take care of itself. I mean, but I mean, you guys have been in the industry long enough. I mean, who are the, you know, who the likely acquirers, right? It's like, you know, the ATSs in the market. It's possibly CRM. It's, you know, it's a large agencies. It's, you know, that stuff works itself out. I'm not too concerned about that.
Joel (26m 6s):
And with that Ty, you were done with Q and A, and it is time to face the firing squad. Are you ready?
Ty (26m 15s):
I guess let's do it,
Joel (26m 17s):
Chad. Get him.
Ty (26m 18s):
Get me. Come on, lay it on me.
Chad (26m 20s):
All right, Ty, dude, I love the experience, the expertise, Zuzu to Take the Interview to Grayscale, you suck at naming things, but if that's the worst thing you do, we'll talk more about that later. Noi big deal. Okay. So focus, you didn't take the bait, when I threw it out there on scheduling, cause I was trying to suck you in to that and you didn't take it. You didn't take the bait on staffing, right? You turn down business that isn't in your focus area. Scale. I love the steps that you're taking to help organizations scale. And it's not just scale, it's all also about recruiter, experience and candidate experience. We don't talk enough about both sides.
Chad (27m 2s):
Everybody wants to talk about candidate experience, but what you're providing is de-stressing that recruiter, the hardest people to find right now for most companies are recruiters, not developers, right? So you're actually providing tech to be able to de-stress them and help them engage where they need to engage. I think you need to go further. And in that regard with regard to investing in conversational AI and those things, to be able to grow larger, if that's where you want to go. Integrations, this is where I think your name doesn't matter because overall, if you're integrated into all of these different systems and they start to pick you up from a partnership standpoint and perspectively push you, the integrations piece is where the acquisitions come from.
Chad (27m 43s):
That's what we've seen. That's the roadmap. It's not, if you have a great name, fuck the name, go canvas.io. That's all I got to say. Overall. I think high volume positions are amazing. That's a great focus we see right now, that's exactly what the market needs. Several players in the market, but that just validates the market. And since the market is so large on the high volume side, there's plenty of room. So I was looking for things to pick you apart, found a couple of pieces, but I think you deserve a big applause.
Joel (28m 22s):
Back up the Brinks truck, baby.
Chad (28m 24s):
Ted Lasso recruitment tagline.
Joel (28m 26s):
So it's my turn, no secret that I've loved SMS mobile for a very long time.
Chad (28m 33s):
Play the sexy sax.
Joel (28m 34s):
And yeah, you want some sexy sax for when I was a younger man. And the one thing about it is I keep waiting for it to sort of fizzle out, right? I keep waiting for a web based messaging or video or something to displace it, or at least put some chinks in the armor. And 20 years into text messaging, it's still going strong. I mean, people who remember American idol and voting via text and on flip phones, like, and it's still incredibly effective and it's incredibly impactful in recruiting or anything, that's sort of salesy. And you know, I think this is a way that a lot of people could ride.
Joel (29m 19s):
I think it's probably difficult enough with, you know, cranking up the Twilio machine and the texting and the regulations around it and the different countries that it's sort of a barrier to entry for a lot of people. So I liked that component of it. I love your experience, you know, in the industry and what you did with Take the Interview. We, we joked ironically in the green room of how much video has sort of struck gold with the pandemic. I think texting is similar, similar to that. When people don't meet face to face, they need other ways to communicate. I also love the opportunities internationally, and we didn't talk much about that on this podcast, but we talk a lot about on the show now of growth areas in India, Africa, South America, obviously Europe as well.
Joel (30m 4s):
I know that there are challenges in all those different markets, that are a pain in the ass, but all of those folks have mobile phones and that's how they communicate. So I think, although we've come a long way texting and this form of communication has not fizzled much at all. And I think globally, there's a huge opportunity to take this thing much bigger than it is. I am a little bit surprised that there hasn't been a huge success story in text recruiting. Maybe it's sort of meant to be a limited business for, for a variety of reasons, but I'm definitely after, you know, being a fan of SMS and mobile for so long, gonna poopoo Grayscale, regardless of the shitty name it as well gets a big applause for me.
Joel (30m 56s):
So Ty congratulations, man.
Ty (30m 57s):
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. My takeaway is like my shitty company name is even shittier than I originally was thinking, but yeah, well
Chad (31m 11s):
And you knew it was a flesh eating disease from Game of Thrones beforehand, and it's worse than that. Okay.
Joel (31m 17s):
And I love that you had to say A instead of E when you spelled Grayscale spell it,
Ty (31m 23s):
That's when, you know, like when you're like having to be like it's with an a that you like, you, you have, you, you're great at naming companies like skin eating disorder and a weird name that can be spelled multiple ways. Like good job Ty.
Joel (31m 36s):
That's all right, man. Well, congratulations. We'll let you go in and spend some of that new seed funding that you got, but for our listeners, where can they find out more about Grayscale?
Ty (31m 49s):
At ready guys? Grayscaleapp.com, G R A Y S C A L E A P P.com.
Joel (31m 56s):
All right, Chad, you know the line.
Joel and Chad (31m 58s):
We out, we out. Peace.
OUTRO (32m 5s):
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