July 21, 2026 – AI Sales Leads Yoni Tserruya and 4 IPOs Benjamin Chen

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award-winning school for startups radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I got two kittens the other day as a gift. I don’t know if that’s a nice gift or a mean gift to give you to give someone kittens, but I got two kittens, and they are both trying to eat the microphone right now. They are in the super curious phase, and I moved over here to the desk, and they had to follow me. They are fun to be around. Everyone needs to have a kitten or a puppy in their life at some point. I got a fantastic show for you today. Two amazing stories. Two amazing entrepreneurs. First up today, we have Yoni Saruya. He is building an AI product. Actually, built already 240 employees. An AI product for sales. It is amazing. He has done an amazing job building it, and the story is really impressive. Bootstrap and then raised money late, which is always the way to do it. And this product is affordable for all of us entrepreneurs. That comes out at the end of the interview, I think. But you need to know it that you should be on this. It’s a great product. Then we have Benjamin Chin with us. Four IPOs that he was part of. How could you get more impressive than that, we spend a lot of times talking about sports and martial arts and how that can be so beneficial to the development of a child, but then also is an incredible part of being an adult and how important it can be to maintain your exercise and energy. Anyway, we have a great conversation. Ben has actually been with some companies here in Atlanta, and we talk about some of the Atlanta superstars, and so it’s a wide ranging but very good interview. I think you will enjoy learning about Ben and Yoni. So we put together a great show for you today, and as always, we do it for free. All right, except for those of you who subscribe. Well, we don’t. We are going to be setting up a Patreon Patreon soon, and so hope you get ready mentally for that. We would love to have you in our more exclusive club that we’ll be setting up here in the next month. So look forward to that. Anyway, thanks for being with us. As always, we have a big show today, and I’m excited for you to meet both the entrepreneurs. We’re gonna go and get started here in just a second. Oh, I won an award for the book. The book finalist. So you got to buy the book. It is now a finalist certified one of the best independent published books of the year. Real environmentalists. So go check that out, please. It’s a great story about how we capitalists will save the environment. Tied

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Jim Beach 3:44
are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. I am very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur that’s helping all of us other entrepreneurs with our marketing. Please welcome Yoni Saruya to the show. He is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Lucia for the last 10 years, they have been helping salespeople and maybe a lot of other people too with the data that they need to go to market. So they provide access to sales, marketing, and revenue teams to be more successful with your sales. Lucia, welcome to the. I’m sorry, Yody, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Welcoming company.

Yoni Tserruya 4:27
Yeah, thank you, Gene. I’m great. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for the introduction.

Jim Beach 4:32
Being with us, you are part of the Israeli software Ecca. Israel is what number two in the world for software development.

Yoni Tserruya 4:45
Yeah, two maybe three depends on how you measure. But yeah, I think we have a pretty pretty mature industry here of tech companies over the last few decades, and. Yeah, we’re very proud of it, and and think I think what’s really special here is a lot of innovation, a lot of you know out of the boat thinking. I think for the Israeli economy.

Jim Beach 5:15
How do you run business on a day to day basis when your country is at war?

Yoni Tserruya 5:22
Well. it was a tough three years. I have to say, a lot of interruptions. A lot of people that you know need flexibility with various you know reasons. Whether it’s reserve duty, whether it’s you know alarms and stuff like that. So I think we gave a lot of flexibility for employees, and a lot of them, you know, and a lot in a big period of the last three years, we we worked fully remote with a lot of flexibility about the hours and expectations. But I think on the others, on the other hand, and in parallel, I think Israelis are very, very resilient, and everyone understands the reality is tough. But we, everyone, also understand that the company is strong, and we will pass that, and they will need to work even if it’s hard. So, I think everyone were able to find, you know, what they can provide, what they can contribute during these unusual, you know, times, and the company were able to continue and build. And I think that that was the most important thing for us to continue and have, like, you know, this this rhythm that continued to operate.

Jim Beach 6:42
All right, tell us about Lucia and the products and the problem you solve.

Yoni Tserruya 6:48
So Lucia is a go-to-market intelligence platform, and we help sales and marketing teams identify their best customers. We’re providing them very wide and comprehensive data on all the companies in the world, all the trends and the people who work in those companies, and basically our technology allows you to search for the best companies that you better or you want to reach out right now that are ready to buy your software, or even let the AI do the work for you, match the the potential lead for you, so that you can mainly focus on selling. So we’re basically providing intelligence that’s integrated to any platform out there, wherever you work, and and that way, sales teams can just you know focus on what they do best, which is engaging with customers.

Jim Beach 7:43
All right. So, how does it know who’s likely to buy software coming soon? Well,

Yoni Tserruya 7:48
I think you know it’s depending on your business, but every business has its you know ideal customer profile, ideal type of companies, and in specific events that if they happen, the probability of buying your your product is higher. So it can be like companies that has specific roles in the company, company that has big sales organization, a lot of expenses in AWS. You know, just just open new offices. What whatever your product is, but there is there is some kind of definition or or characteristic that if you are if you can define it, then you can find the companies that match that. And every every every given moment, there are different type of companies who just met this criteria. So our our job is to provide you the most relevant ones at any given moment.

Jim Beach 8:47
Okay, so I can translate that into my language that growth leaves fingerprints or breadcrumbs, and you go out there and find the breadcrumbs that say, “Hey, we’re growing really quickly, and therefore you are a good prospect for whatever I’m selling.

Yoni Tserruya 9:09
Yeah, yeah, I think yeah, we’re looking for signals that, yeah, breadcrumbs, whatever you call it, that increase the probability that those companies are ready to buy. Okay, I think I think the point is that at any given moment, maybe you have a big thumb addressable market you can sell to, but at every given moment, probably just 5% of the total addressable market are ready to buy, because companies has you know their own life cycle, their own problems, and they are not ready to buy at any every time of the year, so the sales organizations that are able to identify those 5% and focus mainly on those 5% in any given moment can can really outperform, and I think that’s the new type of sales.

Jim Beach 9:56
All right, so this would then feed. My outbound calls, correct? So you’re producing leads for my salespeople to make outbound calls, right?

Yoni Tserruya 10:10
Yeah. So I think outbound is, of course, a huge use case that we can support, but it can also support inbound. So let’s say that you have big, you know, invoke flows that comes customers comes to your website and fill up your forms, and you still need to prioritize. You still need to know who to reach out first, and you also might need additional decision makers within the company. Maybe not the right decision maker sign up to your to your website. So I think you can you can you need data for both outbound and inbound. This data is what helps you prioritize and navigate within the organization.

Jim Beach 10:51
All right, makes a lot of sense. I get it. I love it. Just brilliant. How did you get the idea for this? So prior to this, you were working software. Yeah, I mean, you had your own app company, and you worked for AT and T.

Yoni Tserruya 11:09
Yeah,

Jim Beach 11:09
you don’t seem that you’re going to be an entrepreneur until all of a sudden you are. So, talk to me about October 2012 when you start becoming an entrepreneur with your first app company.

Yoni Tserruya 11:23
Well, I mean, it started. It started, you know, bottom up. Everything in my life happened bottom up. I I started as a mobile app developer. I had an idea which you know I got excited about. Started to develop it, got feedback, and then I approve it. And then you know these iterations and this feeder loop always pushed me further, and and then at some point you know I realized that there were people that needs to connect to other professionals over the web, and I had a very good access to how can I provide accurate business contact details for anyone in the world, and so then Lucia launched. At the beginning, it was just mainly focused on accurate contact details. But you know, we’re we’re a decade after Lucia founded, and today, you know, getting contact details accurate contact details is super hard. But the main problem is like, where do I need to invest my time and focus? So I think every time, you know, we we got further the vision also got further and and and and modified, and we just updated that our version and and and and you know try to capture another another step up to a point that now I mean I’m telling you now that the pitch and the vision because of and thanks to AI, but of course this is not what we and where we started. This is where we are right now because we are adopting to the world, but it’s just you know it’s a bottom up build measure learn iterate all the time. That if you are if you are persistent enough, and if you are not given up, then you are making progress within few years.

Jim Beach 13:11
How many employees do you have now, or sales? What data point can you share with us that will show how big you’ve become?

Yoni Tserruya 13:19
So, like, we’re 240 employees. Wow! Yeah, it’s a lot, depending how. Yeah, but it’s pretty good. Yeah, it’s pretty big, medium company, however you call it. I think the beautiful thing today is that you can just do so much more with this amount of people. That. That the key is how can you how can you really work efficiently with AI with this amount of people because the real risk is the small companies that run much faster with higher with fast technologies and and our work is to do the back do the opposite way around. How do we become leaner and faster so we can compete with the small commerce?

Jim Beach 14:07
And have you had to raise money through the cycle? Yeah, talk about that.

Yoni Tserruya 14:14
Yeah. So we started as a bootstrap company, and we founded a company without investors for few years, and and then we realized that the opportunity is big, and we we want to make it bigger. So we raised money in 2020 and 2021 and since then we’re a funded company, and yeah, so we’re 200 240

Jim Beach 14:47
240 million.

Yoni Tserruya 14:49
Yeah,

Jim Beach 14:49
same number as employees.

Yoni Tserruya 14:52
Yeah, never thought about it that way, but yeah.

Jim Beach 14:56
Wow, that’s a lot of money. Did you? Was it Silicon Valley money or Israeli? Where did who were your investors?

Yoni Tserruya 15:05
You know, U.S. and Israeli both. It’s both of them.

Yoni Tserruya 15:12
Okay, was funds.

Jim Beach 15:15
How difficult was it for you to raise the money? How long did it take? Did you have introductions? How did the process go?

Yoni Tserruya 15:22
Yeah, it took a while. I think I think we had pretty good traction back there, and pretty good, you know, industry and story. So we were successfully raised the funds. I think you know. Think the hard part is to continue and operate and execute and have you know like like meet the expectations in the same rate and and and just you know continue and build and iterate and adapt to the world because the world is changing so fast in the last three years that you really need to you need to to build fast to keep up.

Jim Beach 16:07
Yes. What kind of ROI do you talk about? Do you claim when you’re doing a sales call or trying to sell? What are the claims you make?

Yoni Tserruya 16:17
It can be you know 100, 200 300% It’s like the the service is not that expensive. I think the ROI depends on your sales motion, like how much you pay to your salespeople, what is your average deal size, what is your conversion for outbound calls. So and for so it really depends. But I don’t think it’s the service is not expensive. It’s mainly about your process. If the process is efficient,

Jim Beach 16:48
okay. Well, that’s going to be true with a lot of instances. What do you mean when you say not expensive?

Yoni Tserruya 16:54
You mean it starts with $50 a month, and just depending on the total, the the amount of data that you need, so of course it can go to higher numbers, but that means you need a lot of data. We’re basically consumption-based company that, depending on how much data you need, we are discharging for that.

Jim Beach 17:13
Okay, how specific can we get? You know, could I get companies that are-is it only B 2b or can I get consumers too? It’s only B 2b isn’t

Yoni Tserruya 17:26
it? No, it’s only B 2b Yeah, it’s only B 2b

Jim Beach 17:29
I haven’t thought that through yet. Yeah. So, all right, that makes a huge difference.

Yoni Tserruya 17:38
Yeah. Yeah, but if you think about you know the sales trends that happen today in the world, like 10 years ago it was all about let’s do outbound, let’s send emails and calls and let’s sell. I think today customers are becoming you know exploded with a lot of outreaches, and and and I think you you guess you are also get a lot of reach outs to your inbox and and phone calls, so it’s less efficient. And I think the industry is shifting from spray and pray approach. Let’s try to reach out to everyone. Let’s do automation because that’s becoming, you know, the channel is not effective anymore, and it’s become more about how do I know precisely and becoming more laser focused of where I need to spend my efforts. Like I don’t want volume; I want high quality leads that I need to spend my time there, and I think it’s becoming an industry of quality matters a lot, and for that you really need human beings. Because if you only need to spray and pray and you know and bombard people, then I think AI going to do that for you. I’m not sure about the conversion, but AI going to do it soon. If you are going to have human beings with human skills, that’s never going to be replaceable with AI. But then you need to really know where you’re sending them or what type of leads you you want them to focus on. You don’t want them to focus on just every every lead. And this this thing this shift is is started to happen even before AI, but I think now AI is making it even more extreme because AI going to do the small SMB volume deals, interactions, service, and where you need human beings will be really to build trust, to really do the complex stuff that in enterprises and big deals that AI cannot do, and and and you need data to know where to put AI, where to put automation, and where to put human beings. I think I think this evolution is just happening right now, and it’s happening pretty fast, by the way.

Jim Beach 20:00
Learning that price point really changed my perception of the product. I’m sitting here, my mind is racing now. Could it do things like, you know, find companies in Tel Aviv that are growing 40% and hiring a lot of people? Yeah, would that be a target that?

Yoni Tserruya 20:21
is an easy query. Yeah, we can do that.

Jim Beach 20:25
What about companies that are investing in HR training and investing in coaching and things like that? That also an easy

Yoni Tserruya 20:34
one? No, but I mean that’s something that you know our agent can take, go to do the research over the web and come with results. So I mean, there is a database that we are, you know, we have that have information. If you need things that are really specific, this is where our our agent goes. You know, take one two minutes go to do a research work and then come back with an answer. This kind of work is an agentic question.

Jim Beach 21:03
Okay, but for only $50 a month, my goodness, that’s oh, it’s the beginning.

Yoni Tserruya 21:09
It’s the beginning. It’s if you need a lot of data, then it’s become more expensive. But yeah, I think you know today in the world, things needs to be self serve. How much you pay for ChatGPT and what do you get from it? You know, it’s. I mean, it’s things can be more expensive when you scale, but their entry point should be is is like easy to get started.

Jim Beach 21:33
Well, for our listeners, the small business people, that’s just a great price point because it can provide so much just places to to call, you know, targets. That’s the hardest part for us. So, yeah, I love it. What is your job as the CEO? Do you spend most of your time raising money and doing outreach, or do you do HR a little bit, or do you do a little bit of programming. What is the different buckets of your life, and how do yeah? So

Yoni Tserruya 22:06
yeah. So first of all, no, we’re not raising fund, and and because we’re a PLG company, the main work that I spend time is how do I make sure that the company offering marketing and sales funnels, everything operates more smoothly, and I mainly my contribution is mainly internally here within the headquarters. Work with the people, and to improve the service and improve the user experience. So it’s mainly about how do we improve every part, and and and also because every again, everything is changing so fast in the world right now. Is like you need to try a lot of stuff. You need to try to. We need to improve our product to be an AI product. We need to improve our service to to be empowered empowered by AI. Everything is about how do you do things more efficiently with a better experience for customer. And and it I’m always like shifting my attention between departments. I’m I’m trying to be where the bottleneck right now exists, and just to open this bottleneck and and and let the company run faster in this area. So it’s always it’s changing all the time, and the bottlenecks is just you know just moving. It’s like a factory. You only you always have some bottleneck somewhere in the factory. You need to you need to find it, and you need to find ways to unleash it. So that’s the thing where I am.

Jim Beach 23:34
Very well said. It is always the bottleneck. What kind of bottlenecks come up in your business? Is what would

Yoni Tserruya 23:41
always was the bottleneck? There were a period where the bottleneck was the product because you know everything changed from human manual work to automation to AI. So we had to figure out our offering and improve our offering. That was one area. Then you have an offer, a bottleneck of okay. Now I need to sell a different value or more advanced value for the modern world. How do I train my salespeople? How do I change my messaging? How do I bring the right personas now that we’re not manual works, and we need to sell it to? We’re selling the products now more to builders and sales ops people, so it’s like you’re always in in in transition. And in the last three years, the transition is is extreme. It’s really fast, and it’s all over the place. There’s bottleneck of how do you do things more efficiently in the company, and where you can leverage AI to reduce costs and even do things better with less headcount. It’s always changing. Always.

Jim Beach 24:48
What industries are you absolutely the best at? Certain industries you just kill it. What what industries would that be?

Yoni Tserruya 24:56
It’s a first of all, it’s geographies. It’s like. U.S. Europe, Australia, India. We are very good there. We’re good in industries of software, IT, financials, everything that is every every industry basically that has LinkedIn profile or people that you know reach out in the business world. We are there. We are basically focused. Our database is mainly focused on companies. I’d say above 1050, employees. We’re not in the the real very small businesses. We’re like in a bit more structured companies, and but we’re doing it, you know, in the Western world in general, and but there are other places as well. All

Jim Beach 25:45
right, that makes sense. Well, Yoni, it’s very, very impressive. I love this. It’s just one of the industries that I know very little about, but at this price point, I’m going to investigate it for my team. It just makes a lot of sense. How do we find out more? Get in touch. Find out all about Lusha.

Yoni Tserruya 26:06
Well, it’s pretty easy. I mean, it’s a self-service business, so you just you know there is the website, there is tons of content out there. I’m available as well. If you know you want anyone likes, I’ll be happy to connect. But everything is, you know, out there on the web. We put everything out.

Jim Beach 26:25
Fantastic! Thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. And stay safe. Thanks for your time.

Yoni Tserruya 26:33
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Beach 26:36
We will be right back.

Intro 2 26:49
Well, that’s a that’s a that’s a wonderful question. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s that’s a that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

Jim Beach 27:10
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. I have a really fascinating guest to introduce you to. Please welcome Benjamin Chen to the show. He is the founder and CEO of From the Matt Academy. It is, as you would guess, a martial arts studio. He is also the co-author of a new book called Lessons from the Matt: The 12 Martial Arts Principles That Will Help You Succeed in Business and Life. You would think that’s enough, but he has also, through his time, worked with consumer electronics and software and cloud computing, and he has raised more than 500 million in investment capital, helping venture-backed startups bringing hundreds of products to market. He was the senior vice president and general manager of RAB Lighting, one of the largest electrical product companies in the United States, and has had amazing success with them. He has also worked with companies like Sony, Disney, Toyota, Yahoo, Best Buy, Verizon, Mercedes-Benz. Wow, what a career, Benjamin! Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Benjamin Chen 28:17
I’m doing really well, Chum.

Jim Beach 28:19
How does martial arts fit into your life overall. Does martial arts make you a better investor?

Benjamin Chen 28:28
I think so. You know, I think the one of the most important things that you get from martial arts training is being able to operate and make decisions under pressure. And in today’s life, you know, with kind of the the new AI world, it seems like the pressure is just increasing more and more. We have these demands of, I got to do something, I got to do something right away, right away. And I think what happens in a live combat situation, you kind of learn to deal with things in a in a very real manner, and what I mean by that is, oftentimes something comes to us, and we think it’s it’s you know we have this perception that it’s this overwhelming thing, but the reality is is in the right context, it’s really not, and so it’s important. I think when we make decisions, that we make them from a point of clarity, and without we’re able to see things for what they truly are, and not react, but be proactive in our decision making. And I think martial arts provides that.

Jim Beach 29:41
Do other sports, or is there something particular about the speed of martial arts?

Benjamin Chen 29:47
I think there definitely in other kinds of environments where, as I think, martial arts is unique in the sense that it’s very much an individual, one-on-one scenario, right? But there are other things. Like judo wrestling, yeah. I mean, you you have a number of situations where you’re you’re faced with having to make decisions by yourself, and I think that’s one of the unique aspects of a discipline that martial arts brings.

Jim Beach 30:17
Do you like the martial arts movies, or they all drive you crazy.

Benjamin Chen 30:23
You know, I love the martial arts movies. You know, as corny as many of them have been in the past, you know, they’re they’re kind of representative of of some hopes and dreams and you know aspirations, oftentimes that I see in myself, and that, and I enjoy them truly as you know, also as entertainment as well. All

Jim Beach 30:48
right, my father was a particular kind of doctor, and they made a show about him or about his field, which was Quincy, MD, with Jack Plugman, and boy, did he hate that show. He just said that’s not true, and he just storm out so he could never enjoy it at all. So, tell us about the book and what are some of the lessons from the mat that we can learn and some of the stories there.

Benjamin Chen 31:18
Sure. Well, you know, the book came about as I was looking at trying to put together a set of wisdom that I might leave for my daughter, you know, who’s now 20-one, and I wanted to give her something as a reference. And many times I’ve been asked by other parents of kids that are graduating school, and they’d say, “Hey, Ben, would you mind talking to Joe? He’s got an idea for a business he wants to start. You know, and I get involved early on this way, and so it kind of came from this, right? Being asked a lot, and I’m really thinking about what’s important, and so of these 12 principles in the book, right? Lessons from the mat. The the first and most important principle is I call it the stillness muscle, and you know just like you have to hold a camera lens steady as you’re taking a photo or an image, so you kind of have to have a clear mind when you’re looking at something that’s in front of you, and so you know one day after training with with my instructor, Master Kang at the time, an old Korean gentleman, you know, he he turned to me after the lesson and he said, “Hey Ben, do you meditate? And I kind of half jokingly, you know, said, “Well, not really, you know. I mean, I I know what it is, of course, you know, and I know it’s supposed to be good for me, and and but but I told him you know I’m busy you know I’m running companies and doing this stuff and and I’ve got a really busy life so I haven’t really able to do that and then you know he turned and looked at me and and and he’s an old you know fella that’s fought in wars been a monk in a temple. I mean, he’s done all these different things, and he looked at me with those eyes, and he just said, “Do you have two minutes a day? And what was I supposed to say? You know, like,

Jim Beach 33:35
“No, I’m too busy yet. I can’t do minutes.

Benjamin Chen 33:39
And so I said, “Yeah, yeah, of course I’ve got two minutes, and he said, “Just start with that. And you know what, Jim? Those two minutes changed my life. The two minutes of just finding a quiet space for myself, breathing, and thinking, and clearing my mind, you know, it’s a gift. It’s a gift that I give myself every morning, and those two minutes have become 510, 1530, And I’ve kept that practice the whole time now, and it’s changed my life. It’s simple. It’s not. This is just a just a wellness thing. It’s just something we can give ourselves for free every day, right? It’s a gift we can give ourselves, and and once we do that, you know, you’re able to then find yourself in this calm, and then what happens? I noticed as my day rushes by, when something comes to me and is urgent, or supposedly urgent, I’m able to come to that place of. Much more quicker, much more easily than ever before. I can take a breath and get myself into that same place because I’ve been practicing that. So that’s one of the most important principles: is the ability to clear your mind and operate from a place of calm, regardless of the situation.

Jim Beach 35:34
That’s a hard one to do, Benjamin. When the adrenaline is flowing and the anger is flowing, and you can’t believe what that employee just did is going to cost you $5 million I can’t be still then quiet. How do you make that happen?

Benjamin Chen 35:49
You’re absolutely right.

Jim Beach 35:51
$5 million Benjamin, down your drain.

Benjamin Chen 35:55
You know the the reality of the issue, right, doesn’t change. The what changes is your ability to deal with the issue. I mean, if you if you think about how pilots are so calm under pressure, right when they’re when they have an emergency, right, the plane’s on fire, it’s crashing. You know, you listen to the cockpit voice recorders, and they’re calm. And why is that? Because there is no other optimal way, right? Lessons from the Mad is about this concept of serocial zenya, which is about optimizing the use of energy to achieve a result. It comes from judo, and life is about that. Does it help you if you just you know jump up and down and and yell at the top of the you know mountaintop? Nothing’s to be achieved, right? If you have a situation that’s truly urgent, the most important thing is is to find a center to operate from, so it is the most efficient way, right? And what you need to do, what’s difficult to do, is you need to take your ego and put it on the shelf, and that’s also something that martial arts provides you because the truth is basically spoken on the mats, right? You know when you’re in a confrontation and you’re sparring or rolling with with another individual, the truth it becomes prevalent. You can’t hide whether or not you’re better or not better than the opponent. It’s real, and you learn that. And so when you get when you train yourself into this to do this over and over and over again, it becomes easier for you to take your ego, put it on the shelf for a moment. You still need ego to drive forward, but you can put it on the shelf for a moment and then see the thing for what it is, right? You know this joke’s not going to work. I got to let go of it. I got to try something else. You know, you you have to flow with what’s what’s happening in front of you. And I think this is the most important aspect. You know, oftentimes I’m called in, and a business owner will have all of these problems. You know, be saying, “Well, you know, this supplier screwed me. The financing people delayed their monies. All these different things happened, and I’ll ask them. I said, “Okay, let’s just get down to brass tacks. What do you need to survive? Okay, let’s just draw a little circle around that. Just oxygen for you and your family. Now we can talk about all your other concerns, your suppliers, your customers, your employees. But you just gotta-you have this reality. You gotta get to the reality point as quickly as possible. Secure that, and now let’s talk about what the next steps are. And you might not be great. You might not love them, but that’s your reality. And once you once you get comfortable with with understanding that that’s the truth, then you just move forward from that.

Jim Beach 39:17
What is I P P O N Ipon?

Benjamin Chen 39:22
This is the the winning move. Like in in the concept of judo, you basically grab another person, and when you throw them to the ground, right, and their back lands on the ground, that’s an epong. That’s a that’s a devastating winning move, right? So it it is checkmate essentially on the board.

Jim Beach 39:52
And what do you learn from that? How is that one of the important things we need to learn from? What’s the the takeaway lesson there?

Benjamin Chen 40:00
Well, so you know, there’s to get to that epon moment, right? Usually, it takes a series of preparing your company, preparing yourself for that moment, right? And and you’ve done all your homework, you’ve done all your research, you’re engaged. There comes a moment that you have to pull the trigger. The epon moment is only available for a period of time, and so this gets into the moment of when it’s time to jump, when it’s time to go, you need to go. A hesitation at that point, right, makes no sense, and it will only cost you. So there is a place where you have to do all the homework. You have to prepare, but then there’s also another place where you have to go, and that’s what that moment. That’s what training in that moment is about.

Jim Beach 41:00
Let’s switch a little bit to some of your business career. You’ve done so many different things. You’ve started a lot of businesses. Seems like you move fairly quickly. You don’t have many businesses you’ve stayed at very long, other than Mochila. You started off in CBS TV studios helping as an administrative tech guy MIS, and then you started your own business. It seems I’m having trouble figuring out exactly your pathway here. Talk to me about your growth as a technologist and an entrepreneur.

Benjamin Chen 41:45
Sure. So, you know, over the over the last you know over 30 years of being an entrepreneur, you know, most only I’ve I’ve raised over 500 million in venture financing. I’ve been part of four companies have gone public in the United States. As a trajectory, you know, I I started my life in my career early as a computer geek, essentially. And one of the things I did was in the early days of when the internet was just coming to be, I was working at CBS, a broadcaster, and managing most of their technology on the West Coast. And you know, it was an interesting time. I got to be in California, the first customer for you know Verizon Pack Bell, which was Verizon now at the time, for the internet. And I had started a business making websites for movie production companies, and that business was growing at 50% a month. So I ended up starting a company called Iron Light Digital in the San Francisco Bay Area. We raised venture money for that, and that became one of the first major internet companies. We sold Toyota’s first car online. We did a number of those kinds of things, and ultimately, yeah. Well, there was another company called IXL that came calling, and Bert Alice, who had rolled up a bunch of television stations, wanted to do something. So I became the chief technology officer for a company called IXL, which merged with, you know, at that time, we were about 60 folks. We grew that to 3000 people in a little bit over three years, and we had about 20% of the Fortune 500 as our customers. So we built the first version of WebMD. We built, you know, Delta’s, you know, reservation system, GE’s, you know, operational systems, a lot of those kinds of things. In addition to all the flashy kind of entertainment sites that you might think about, Bert Olis was you know

Jim Beach 43:54
icon in Atlanta, driving around in his little bug Volkswagen Beetle, and then when the company had problems. He sure did disappear quickly.

Benjamin Chen 44:04
Yes. Well, you know, he he is. You know, I I didn’t play in that in that kind of world. You know, I mean, he was definitely flying high throughout that. And I know he did a lot in the role for the TV stations. He did a lot in IXL, and he ultimately, you know, left IXL and did some other things, which I didn’t really follow. But you know, he’s a wheeler dealer kind of individual for sure, you know. And I think, you know, all of that translated to, you know, most recently, I was working for a lighting company in the in the U.S. a company that’s been around for 70 years. They control about 10% of the market for lighting in the U.S. And I managed the notion of creating five different business units for them during the over six years that I worked for them. But essentially, they were all startups. You know, and whether they were corporate, you know, and funded, or whether they were venture funded, they were all the same, right? Go do Mission Impossible. Go create some extreme value from a small group of people and assets, and you know, demonstrate an extra normal return from that. That’s essentially the life of a serial entrepreneur that’s in the startup world. If you look at what you’re supposed to be tasked with, you’re supposed to get extra normal recurrence, right? Revenue and margin per employee that you hire in your company in that industry against an already established public company that is a well-oiled machine. That’s your job. So you know the it’s quite difficult, and so you have to figure out how to get more from from less.

Jim Beach 45:56
Tell me about this company that you were at for right at a decade that I don’t know any. I’ve never heard of this company, Mochila M-O-C-H-I-L-A.

Benjamin Chen 46:08
Sure, Mochila was a company that focused on basically taking branded content. So we would take content from publishers, newspapers, magazines, and we would take that content, and then we would connect that with, let’s say, you had an article about investing from Forbes, and and Mercedes wanted to be part of that article, right? So we would create an interactive ad unit that could be placed on a website. This is pretty normal. Like today, you just you just assume that you see these things. We actually created the first interactive ad unit that had content that basically became a standard in the industry, and then eventually we had a partnership with Yahoo, which is a company that’s not as as high flying these days, but we were part of their back end engine for delivering those kinds of custom content, and so we had relationships with essentially every publisher, magazine, newspaper in the world, including all the major wire services, and access to all their content, and we had developed this high-speed aircraft engine, if you will, that could basically on-demand pull content related to an asset that you were interested in advertising with, and have a set of rules around that. So an advertiser could say, you know what I don’t want to be about this type of negative content. I only want this kind of content. And likewise, the supplier of the content could say I don’t want any ads from these companies. And then you had where the content where that content delivery package went to, and that would be your end publishing point. And they also have the ability to set rules and parameters, and our high-speed engine could basically do all of that in real time.

Jim Beach 48:07
Benjamin, it seems like you’ve been at the right place at the right time for your entire career in moving on from really cool thing to really cool thing. Would you agree with that? And how’d you get so quote unquote lucky? I’m. implying it had nothing to do with luck. So I hope you saw that with the quote unquote. But explain how you got so lucky.

Benjamin Chen 48:32
I, you know, I have been very lucky. I will definitely say I’ve been lucky for other bites. I

Jim Beach 48:38
just think you’ve worked really hard to get yourself in the right spot, but you’ve always been yeah spot yeah.

Benjamin Chen 48:43
I I think it’s more about the passion for the thing, you know. Like you kind of you kind of you kind of are really like deep into something, right? And so you kind of like well, you know, the internet first comes around, and all of a sudden this there’s this little thing like a web browser, and you know, and it’s doing stuff, and you kind of get a, you got a an itch in the back of your head, and you’re like, yeah, you know what, this could become real something, you know, and you start seeing early early notions of animation of motion happening, not just still images, you know, on the internet, and you start realizing, okay, okay, there’s going to be real stuff that can happen here. This thing could talk to a database in the backend. You could actually process a transaction. You could. It’s not just an online brochure. It’s. It’s so much more. It could be, and you start, and and it’s more of following the flow. You know. You know. I think. You know. It seems lucky, but it’s more of just it. You know the universe, the flow of the thing that you’re really involved with. It tells you. It shows you. You know we’re moving this way, and and if you just just if you just let go and you just kind of. With it, right? If you just go with it, and AI is a good example of that today. It reminded me so much of the early days of the internet, because in the beginning there was like, “Oh, should we have a website or not? That was kind of like every corporate company in America was saying, “What should we? I don’t know if we should have a website. It’s the same thing with AI. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t know if we should be doing it, or how much we should be doing. It’s very clear to me that it’s here. It’s a tool. You either you decide to use it or don’t use it. But those that do, they’re going to have an advantage. And and it’s the same thing. It’s there’s always this kind of thing that happens.

Jim Beach 50:41
Does every company need to have AI? You know, I have five people. We sell chitlins. You know, pig intestines fried in a greasy bag. They’re awesome. We’re the best chitlin supplier in the world. Do I need AI for that?

Benjamin Chen 50:58
Well, you know, I would tell you. I think it used to be the same question of whether or not you know I needed a website for my small business, and I would answer that there’s definitely going to be uses for that technology with your business. It’s very easy to think that you know everything about your business, that about that industry. The wonderful thing about AI now is you can you can have a partner. You have this kind of like you know online smart robotic agent that you can you can train. You can learn everything about your business, the locality, the the local rules and the all the you know all of the supply chain around it. It’s it can learn and it can be alive and it can stay with your business. And so as new things come, right? It’s not to say that you can discover them on your own, but it’s going to discover it immediately. It’s going to know about that change. It’s going to know that you know what there’s a preference. There’s a use for this food that you’re making for this other opportunity. It’ll tell you that. It’s things that you won’t that you know, and that’s the issue: is that the the change, the pace, the movement is increasing rapidly. Those that use it and those that don’t. So I do believe that everyone has the ability to find value in using the tool, just like the internet provided value. And you should not, you know, you should try to embrace it as much as you can, as quickly as you can. That would be my my recommendation.

Jim Beach 52:46
All right. How do we find out more, Benjamin? Get a copy of the book. Follow you online. All that, please.

Benjamin Chen 52:53
So, lessons from the map. You can get the book in in print as well as in audio. Amazon is the best place to do it. Amazon for audio and print. Audible is also carrying the book. It’s been a bestseller in Amazon multiple times. I also have a website called Fromthe Mat Academy, and you know I try to provide folks additional information. So the book has a QR code, allows you to to watch additional videos that we produce for each chapter, and we’re trying to create kind of more of a community of place where you can go to really you know learn more about these principles.

Jim Beach 53:34
Fantastic, Benjamin. Thank you so very much, and we greatly appreciate you being with us. Thanks a lot.

Benjamin Chen 53:41
Likewise, patient. We

Jim Beach 53:44
are out of time, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care, and go make a million dollars by now.