YBIOTL Episode 8 Publish
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[00:00:00] Um, they, oh, this is, we don't have the production capability, quality investment to get video going yet, but I wish the audience could see your sweater. Can you, can you take a picture of the sweater, send it to Chaz after so he can put it up on social so people know what I'm talking about? Absolutely. We have, we can do that.
It's incredible. You have a series of incredible sweaters. You have, you should. Just a sweater line. Pips. Pips knits. Pips knits. Yeah. Pips knits. It'd be great. It's actually so good. It kind of look a bit like a really cool, um, version of a. Like a Sesame Street Charact. I mean that, that sounded like not a compliment, but I assure you it was the highest form of compliment.
Well, I'm not even joking that PE people look at me in the sweater and they say, they say, oh, you look like an emo Elmo. Yes. Yeah. We are just teeing up by Elmo impression. Yeah. We did this off. I said we have to, we have to [00:01:00] hit record so that you can do this again. Are you ready? Yeah. Emma, say Welcome to episode seven.
I'm you Bar Emma. So happy to be here with this new friend, Phil. With these, with these guest cot Phillip Girl, guess. Guess girl. No way. You set up for six episodes. Is this my coronation? You are officially, yeah. That's exciting. Cohost. Yes, I've elevated to cohost number one. This is a presentation of Indian dad media in association with
This is a Thursday media production.
Phillip Chaz, welcome to episode eight. OCHO of Your Business is On the Line. [00:02:00] I'm still here. Baby Canada's one of your top many podcasts here in Canada. Yes, Philip, you are still here. Not only are you still here, you have passed the threshold that we initially laid out for your conversion from special guest co-host to co-host Chaz.
What do you think about that? Are you proud of me? Very proud. That seems like a soundboard worthy moment. Yeah. Well, we're recording remotely today, so I don't have the mixer. Give me some mouth trumpet though. Gimme some mouth trumpet to celebrate. Um, thanks Chaz for teeing me up for people realizing we don't know what we're doing.
Oops. Oops. Chaz, we are, Chaz, when do you move past your, um, whatever Oh yeah. Title that you have because you, you, like, you have, so you like [00:03:00] what, what's your title? Producer, but like, full-time. Um, what, what do you do on the show? You like, you might be, you might be painting me, painting me into a corner here, Phil, so, but yeah.
Chaz, why don't you answer that question for us at this point. I feel like I'm interning for a company that makes zero money and also has very limited knowledge. So yeah, limited knowledge, limited resources, uh, almost no revenue. Yeah, 'cause you placed an ad Shv in in, in the last one. In Chuck's episode there was an ad.
We have a sponsor. So exciting new network. Um, I guess there will be a commercial, so I don't necessarily need to do another ad plug for them, but I'm going to because I like them very much. I legitimately use them to help build a lot of the team at ZayZoon. They're wonderful, delightful, great people. Very good at what they do.
How does it feel that in a similar way that Chuck is a semi, was a semi-professional football player, you are a [00:04:00] semi-professional podcaster now? I think it feels, uh, this is the equivalent of playing professional football in Finland, I think. Right? Yeah. This is what it probably felt like for Chuck. Chuck was a delight to have on.
Also, as you guys have followed the journey of how much editing I've had to do for this podcast, both audio quality and otherwise, his was the easiest. We had. We actually had good audio. We, we did it right and I didn't have to edit too much content out, but I understand previous episodes. I understand this episode is possibly the worst somehow.
Yeah, we had some audio challenges within the internet and their audio quality, so we've done our best. I loved Rachel. Yeah, you, well, you, you will love Rachel. 'cause this is the intro to that episode. But I, but we obviously recorded that in the past. Our audience, we can let our audience know we're recording this.
I don't know. I don't know if we can. I had a friend of mine who's a listener, Chuck's wife was like, Hey, you know how you guys keep saying you're confused about what's happened and what you said and not said. She's like, yeah, [00:05:00] I'm also really confused. And I was like, you know that, that to me is a compliment.
It means we've taken the community along. Right. For the confusion. Yeah. Yeah. We've created a sense of community. Yeah. I still can't believe we have a sponsor and an ad read. It's crazy. It's crazy. It was a lot of fun to read a commercial though. I will say that. Yeah. You started recording it with me and then you said, get the hell out of the room, buddy.
Yeah, we started it and I was like, I said to, Hey, you know, I, 'cause you had to go do something. So I just spent 20 minutes just doing it over and over and then I said, uh, hey, I think it works better without you.
But I didn't mean it like it came out. Right. I meant it because I, 'cause I had personal experience with them. It was, was better to tell from my perspective, but it definitely did sound like I said to you, Phil, you're not good at this. I will take over this. Hey, do you guys watch tv? Yeah, I love tv. I, I also really love tv.
Really [00:06:00] love TV and my kids are starting to like tv so my kids like, uh, you know, talent shows, like America's Got Talent, that kind of thing. Sure. Kids that got into those, I like watching them. Star Search recently came on Netflix. Did you guys ever watch, were you old enough? You guys weren't old enough to watch Star search as kids, you know?
So it was like the original American Idol. Right. But the funniest line I think I've maybe heard in television for a very long time was the host, uh, Anthony Anderson was describing the rating system. 'cause you vote, you can vote in real time. Right. And he goes basically, and I'm paraphrasing a tiny bit, but not much.
He says the rating system is from zero to five stars with five stars being the best. Right. Classic. And he pauses and he says, but three stars is pretty good too. Okay.
And I just sat there and went. I, us maybe the wildest way [00:07:00] I've ever heard anyone describe a zero to five star rating. Five is the best, but hey guys, three stars is pretty good too. Just almost like giving, giving me permission to give you three stars because it was, it's still good. So my kids now, and I, we just talk about now all week it's been, if somebody does something good, they're like, wow.
Three stars. Your kids seem like the cutest. Has it, has it made you change? What, how you think we should be rating? No, not at all. I actually think what I took outta that is our rating system is perfect, right? It's, it's just as get as stupid stars. Also, I gotta, I gotta tell you that the talent level on this star search shows it's not what I would expect from a worldwide talent search.
Speaking of talent, it looks, I just looked it up on my phone. It looks like it's super old. Am I right? No, this is, they, they brought it back. They've rebooted star search. Oh, they've reboot. Okay. This is not, yeah. Yeah. This is the new one. Mahons [00:08:00] mc or Ed McMahon. Ed McMahon. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some people might pronounce it Ed McMahon.
Ed McMahons is also pretty great, but speaking of talent, the kids do like a two week salsa and dance residency at their school. So this, this teacher comes in and teaches the kids, and then they do a performance. So we went and saw the performance. Um, kids who are dancing, my kids are a little bit older now, with the little kids dancing.
It's incredibly enjoyable. Like it's hilarious. It's a, it's, uh, very entertaining way to spend an hour. But I gotta tell you, little kids really bad at dancing dancers. Really bad. Like very uncoordinated. Yeah. Uh, they're not getting any of the spins, right? They're twisting each other into knots. My kids did a, you know, they're a little bit older, so they, they, their, their limbs have connected to their brains.
Little kids. It's adorable watching them dance, but they're really bad at it, but, [00:09:00] and I don't think anyone has the heart to tell them, you know? Yeah. Ed McMahon would've though. Ed McMahon would've told him straight up two stars. But, you know, three stars was pretty good too. Tech Thursday. Phil, anything we wanna talk about?
You had your first couple events of the year. How's it going? How'd the year start? Years, uh, year's been starting. Great. Uh, pretty fun. Um, I, it feels like a lot of momentum. Ottawa sold out their first two events, but they had to cancel one of them because of a snowstorm. But that's Babies. Babies, yeah. But that's, so that's really exciting.
Winnipeg has been going great. It seems like they're, they're, uh. Just, just ripping and Calgary as well. It's Vegas North baby. Vegas the north. That episode doesn't come that, that episode doesn't come out yet. Oh, okay. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah. And it's in, uh, starting to get its legs. Yeah. Really excited about all three.
And, and then, uh, this podcast is popping off and we launched Tech Thursday Live as well, which is, it was just about to say you launched a second, I would say, competing [00:10:00] podcast to, to this podcast. Is that, is that true? Well, I mean, I don't if I had to hear about it from a friend. No, I'm just kidding. You told me directly.
Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really just live recordings of our podcast that we used to release on YouTube, and then we realized that no one was watching them on YouTube. So we, we figured maybe they'll, they'll listen to it some other way. Yeah. Instead of changing the content, we've just decided to try some, change the medium.
Change the medium, and we'll see. But so far, some listeners, which is great. It sounds good. Yeah. The audio is good. It sounds great. The audio quality is really great. Whoever's doing the audio for that, maybe we should, uh, we should, we should replace me because clearly they know what they're doing. Sounds really good on two x speeds.
So if you are, if you guys are, you, you can now listen to Tech Thursdays when you're going for a run, taking a bath, it's gotta be a long run 'cause you gotta listen to 50 minutes of your businesses on the line [00:11:00] first. Yeah, yeah. On regular speed, on one x speed, and then go to two x speed for tech Thursday live.
And then, and, and then, yeah, maybe you're clipping your toenails. There's a lot of things you could do while listening to Tech Thursday. Now, speaking of medium, Chaz, you've been working hard on YouTube. What's the update? Correct. Um, we're gonna have some YouTube, well, I wouldn't call 'em videos, but we're gonna have some content on YouTube for sure.
Sure. We'll have all the episodes up there. We're gonna call them Audiograms for now. Yes. Until, yes, until I get my hair done. That's the only issue is so far. I told Chubb that his titles are way too damn long. Some of them, I'm sorry Chaz, that I don't wanna cut our guests off when they're pitching all these great ideas and say, Hey, sorry, stop at one or two ideas because Chaz thinks the title is too long.
We can have more than two pitches in an episode. I just don't think we need five titles or five names in the title, whatever. By the way, disagree by the way, follow up from another episode that isn't [00:12:00] live yet. But, um, I was connected to someone, uh, who makes organic lip balm and I have 20 pips lips coming to my house right now.
As, of course we do. Uh, but, but I, I got pip slips coming, so, so guests of the show can choose between, because you're working on a, a, a guest gift as well. Yeah, I, we are working on handcrafted bespoke guest gifts for our early guests who might be listening to this and say, where's my gift? Um, we just had the idea and so we're working on it.
It's taken some time to get the materials from overseas, but we are working on something and I sent you guys a prototype picture and it is absolutely not Canadian made. Well, I'm, I made it. Okay. Yeah, true, true. Assembled. Assembled in, assembled in Canada. That's good. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, listen, we don't have that kind of, we only got one sponsor.
We don't have a hundred sponsors. Yeah, we don't have that kinda supply [00:13:00] chain in this city, in this country. That's right. We should, uh, probably get to the episode. So today's episode is Rachel Zimmer, CEO of Simple Ventures. We're gonna go grab Rachel and we'll be right back. Hi everybody, it's Chubb here.
Are you a startup founder or a scale up exec that's trying to take your company to the next level? Are you looking for the right people to help you do it? Are you looking for people who will help you set culture, who have deep domain expertise, who can figure anything out? Who are Swiss Army knives and unicorns?
How are you finding those people? Are you juggling multiple job boards? Are you screening hundreds of resumes, doing dozens of interviews? Is it working? I bet it's not. Are you frustrat? I bet you are. Do you know how I know that? Because once upon a time I was you. Then I discovered the new network.
Jennifer, we and her team at the new Network helped Canadian tech companies build and scale high performance teams through a proven unique approach to recruitment and [00:14:00] executive search also. They're awesome. I use them to help build most of my team at ZayZoon and I would use them again, and I've recommended them to everyone that I know.
Check out new network.ca for more details. The new network. I couldn't have done it without them. Rachel, have you ever met Philip before? I haven't. Good to meet you. Yeah, I don't think we have. Very nice to meet you too. Have you heard this podcast yet? I didn't have a chance to do the homework of listening to any in advance, so you'll have to give me this live feedback if I'm totally off base.
You're like, actually I do that and do this instead. Yeah, we'll tee up a little. Um, okay, so we started this about a month ago-ish, and the idea was all business podcasts are knock button to listen to. And, and I say that some are, none of them kind of like are lighter. And if you were to ask us, uh, sort of refine this pitch a little bit, but like we think by making stuff funny, we can make entrepreneurship and tech [00:15:00] in our whole segment or accessible to people.
Um, so we've had people come on and just pitch in ideas. Originally we thought maybe they'll come on and pitch their real business ideas, but we found what's worked really well is people who have founded things or on the venture capital side or whomever, um, they talk about what they do and their actual ideas.
So we help them a little bit in that regard. But you know, when you're sitting around with your friends, you'd be like, you know, it'll be a really good idea. And, um, so some of the ideas that we've had, um, a, uh, barbecue cover that automatically covers your barbecue so you don't have to go back outside.
Phillip came up with a product line called Pips Lips, which is lip care for men with very small lips. Yep. Based on my sort of nickname. Yep. Forts, which would go under your swim shorts, but were inflatable so that you could just, you know, float a little bit. We had another venture capitalist, Dan Chapman from Agar BC pitched a giant pierogi as the new centerpiece for a party instead of, you know, a meatball sub or a pizza.
So some, obviously [00:16:00] some very game changing ideas. Yeah, some phenomenal ideas. So I know you haven't had a chance to listen yet, but you're pretty much caught up now and, uh, I guess the outcome is we are solidly, like in the 50 ish range of the top entrepreneurship podcasts in the country so far, so Oh.
With like five episodes in the world, which is, yeah. We maybe tapped into something wherein, uh. People are prepared to listen to stuff that's just, uh, is fun, but doesn't make 'em think too hard. Is that all good context for you? Great context. Rachel Zimmer from Simple Ventures. Rachel, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. Uh, Rachel, Phil, you just met. Yes. Uh, Rachel and I have met a few times. She's incredible. Capable, smart, funny, great adjectives to be. Yeah. Um, the, the way we met Rachel, can I tell 'em how we know each other? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So, um, and you're two prime. Uh, Rachel will talk about what [00:17:00] she does here in a second, but she helps one, what I think is one of the most exciting venture capital firms in the country.
We talked about doing maybe something, uh, together. Um, they decided there was someone better than me, which to be fair, they were a hundred percent correct though, right? But Rachel and her team have been so awesome. We've just kept in touch. So yeah, that's how we got to know each other. That's awesome. It is.
Yes. And, and I was excited to have an excuse to do something else, uh, like the podcast and hopefully brainstorm great ideas like today. Yeah. For something else that we went into. I, uh, what I was excited about is I get to take advantage of maybe a little bit of guilt and just trick Rachel into coming onto the pod.
That, that, that's what I feel fantastic about. Um, Rachel, would you please for the, everybody else, just maybe introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about your. If your background, your journey, and then we can get into Simple Ventures. Happy to. Um, born and raised in Toronto. Oh. Uh, I come from a big theater family, so everyone's in the arts.
I'm the only one [00:18:00] who's not an artist or working professional in that realm. And went to school initially for a dual degree in business and drama and ended up going all in on business. I was like, oh, this is so cool. The whole thing's about know your audience. Same. Same, yeah. And, uh, and went full throttle.
And so basically since school I've had three chapters to my career. A very short stint in the corporate world. Amazing training ground at places like Johnson and Johnson and American Express. Um, co-founded a company, scaled and sold it, and then for the last decade to age myself, I've been in, in venture building.
But I think that the thread of performance, know your audience. I've done improv for the last whatever, 15 years. All of that's very core to, to who I am and a big part of, you know, the self I bring to, I've got so many follow up points and questions. A great take, joint business drama. Degree we like to brand.
This podcast is the number one business comedy podcast in Canada. In Canada, so, oh yeah, I should jump in. Yeah. Didn't I ended up dropping out of the drama part, so I ended up just [00:19:00] doing business, but I, but I did start it. Yeah, but you, you did improv. Yeah. You are. This is the right wheelhouse for you. Do you?
Exactly. Sherry, do you still do improv or, or no, I do. Really? Am I together next week? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing? Long form or short form? Phil also did improv. Oh, you're an improv. I, so I'm a second city conservative grad, if that means anything. Why are you That's a legitimate improv. I wasn't very good, but I did the long form program and then, um, we do, we do long form.
Whoa. Damn. Am I just gonna watch you guys do improv games for the rest of the hour? Yeah, exactly. I wish, should we just play zip SAPs off? That's actually basically what podcast, podcast is. It is just the giant improv exercise. Um, yeah. You kind of glossed over, you said Oh yeah. Scale, scale the startup and then, and then you just very much, uh, undersold yourself.
Can you talk more about that first startup? Yeah, happy to. And then I'd love to chat more about what I'm up to [00:20:00] today. 'cause it's kind of all about what the shtick of the podcast is too. That's right. Um, but my business was in the rise of the freelance eras all around, um, driving massive cost savings in the marketing services space using the gay economy.
So when I was a brand manager at Johnson Johnson. It was kind of crazy 'cause there were YouTube pre-roll ads, if you guys remember those. Yeah, they're still on, but it would be like a 62nd ad that would be cut down to 15 seconds. And that would be typical work we would do and we would call ad agencies and say, Hey, can you edit this pre-roll?
And the cost would be tens of thousands of dollars, many months of wait. And fast forward to today, AI could do that, but back in the early 2010s it was, why are we paying an architect to do this work when you could hop into iMovie and do something really, really simply and really quick? So that was the little premise behind the company, leveraging a global network of freelancers from around the world to basically create um, hundred thousands of assets for large organization organizations like McDonald's, Labatt, and j [00:21:00] and j, and 200 plus brands that used our product daily.
So scaled up that company, helping them with their marketing and driving huge efficiencies for them. And then ended up selling to a portfolio company of the private equity firm, Onyx. So went through that like crazy scale up journey and my, my favorite part of it and what brings me to what I'm doing now is I love the zero to one.
Yeah. When it's messy and it's broken and you have to say you're sorry a lot 'cause you the thing is not working. Exactly Like that to me is the magic. 'cause when you can not, 'cause I'm a masochist, but 'cause when you can get the thing to click it is the most rewarding. Uh, so that's amazing. And outta that, you mentioned you've been a venture for the last 10 years.
Can you talk about simple ventures? 'cause I think what you guys are doing is exactly what we need to be doing in this country. Happy to. It feels like my life's work. Michael Achin, the founder of Wealth Simple, and I got together and really saw the challenge that our country is facing. And so rewind three plus years, we reflected that, [00:22:00] you know, our country's really good at two things, taking things out of the ground and financing that activity.
And that's the story we tell our kids and our grandkids. We have a really big problem, right? And both of us go on the, you know, who've been invited to speak and do various things, and we're like, instead of talking about it, we're just talking about it. Let's actually let, let's really do something about it.
And so we've raised a fund and our mission is to build the next generation of great Canadian companies. And our first fund, the aim is to create 10 businesses where we incubate the concept, we partner with entrepreneurs to help bring it to market across all the various parts of building a business. We have this awesome network of investors that are in the trenches with the founder to make sure they're successful.
And so some of our LPs include the likes of Sun Life, sobes, TD Innovation Partners, the folks from Felix Health or Shopify or Next, like it's a long list of Canada's just very best corporates and founder operators. So that's a bit about what we do. Um, fast forward to today, we've launched and funded four companies that are all doing super well.
I'm happy to [00:23:00] double click on them, but maybe one I'll highlight just to bring the model to life is the first business, um, which is in the postpartum care space. Mm-hmm. So what we observed is that in other parts of the world, like in Asia and there's massive markets all around postpartum care and helping support mom so she can be her best self for baby in Canada and the US we're not very good at that.
Yes, we have mat leave. Yes, there's like some stuff there, but really once baby comes, the world is focused on baby. And so we co-founded and started a company with this awesome CEO who is. Trying to change that narrative. And it's essentially like a marketplace for postpartum specialists. So whether you need a doula or a night nurse or a lactation consultant or a postnatal, um, RMT or a massage therapist, all that is through the ALMA platform where you can get access to these folks.
And many individuals end up having employer benefits that cover a good chunk of these services, so makes it more affordable. And we're now, we're across Ontario and scaling it up nationally now. Amazing. [00:24:00] Uh, Alma, right? A LMA Alma Care. There you go. Thank you. That's right. Yeah. We're, we like to plug the startups too.
Yeah. Thank you. Oh, that's so cool. That's awesome. And so you feel like this is approaching your magna opus, like what your whole life has, has come to. Yes. So I think some people venture that's about this podcast. Okay. Well, well, I'll tell you a bit of a, a story if I go back. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I've done a lot of travel in my life, spent a lot of time in emerging markets thinking that that's where the interesting problems are.
So, you know, before starting my business, went to India, spent four months there looking for business problems and opportunities to jump in and, and tackle. And I think when you fast forward to today, yes, there's problems abroad, but there's also a lot of opportunity and a lot of capital flowing to markets like in India.
Whereas we have talent leaving, we have massive macro issues. And so to the point of life's work, I think we need builders in the country Yeah. That are rolling up their sleeves and [00:25:00] tackling this. So, so yeah, I feel, I feel like it's actually a 180 of where, you know, maybe I was 10 years ago and, and the need that is in the country, I, I think what's really cool about what you guys are doing is we talk a lot about, hey, people just go and.
Start something, right? Like just have the wherewithal and the ability to start something. I think the things we don't talk about are, um, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs have safety nets, right? Like the, a lot of us come from have had success or had money or like, and so to de-risk and take away some of the fear you guys have created, uh, here's a bunch of the business infrastructure I don't know anything about.
But also I've helped validate this idea. And also I have a built in network of people that can help me access my first few customers. And I think, um, the studio model's really cool. And I think even some of the things you talked to me about, about how you're looking at things that work in other markets and bringing versions of those here, I think, you [00:26:00] know, we won't, we don't like to talk about anything political on this show, but, uh, given the state of the world, I think building stuff here that's for us, by us is a really cool idea too, right.
Yeah. Were you gonna say something? I was gonna jump Yeah, I was gonna say something. You know, totally unhinged. Um, go ahead. Sorry, Rachel. Well, I think, thank you, thank you for sharing that. I think the, the thing that I care and, and that really resonates for me is if you're building a business, it's so hard the odds are stacked against you, right?
Like, if you just think of sheer numbers and probability of success. And so as a former entrepreneur now in the trenches enabling other entrepreneurs, it's what can we do to crazily stack the deck in your favor? Mm-hmm. So if you're crazy enough and ambitious enough to wanna jump in and, and drive and build something, it's like, how do you just do everything you can to increase that probability of success?
Yeah, I, the other macro, like you, you mentioned, mentioned some of the macro stuff. This's a serious version of this that we done, but it's great. No, it's, oh no, this is, no, I hate it. This is great. This is great because no one [00:27:00] else. 'cause we also want people to learn stuff too. Yeah. Occasionally. Yeah. I mean, we've, we, everyone else we've had, you know, they're not doing real work.
You're the only one. No, I'm just, we're certainly not. You are. I'm not. Yeah. Um, no. But, uh, I think like one of the other incredible factions or i, in what I see that's so noble about what you're doing. Um, there are a hundred thousand less entrepreneurs in Canada today than there were 20 years ago. You should get that T-shirt.
That's one of your favorite stats. One of my favorite stats. And that's both from like SME, but also like tech. Um, and like large corporates as well. Um, and so where did those jobs go? I don't know if it's necessarily that important to go, like where did those jobs go? But I do think it's remarkably important to have a culture shift around how do we value failure?
Um, how, how do we like, encourage entrepreneurs to go and I to go out and, and start their own companies? But I think also what you said of like, how do you stack the deck in their favor and, but even if they do fail, like be like, okay, great, like let's go again. I think we're too quick in Canada to, to associate failure with like a black [00:28:00] mark.
We're in the states, you would fail and that's like cool and sexy. Yeah. Yeah. And in, in Canada we're like, never again. You just say you exited down there like gracefully. So I have story. Yeah, that's, I have a story family here, which is super kooky and with my business. My co-founder and I really wanted to celebrate failure and make that a part of our culture of what we were building.
And so every month we'd have a failure party where we'd have a cake and we'd celebrate someone or something that had failed. We'd have candles, we'd do the whole nine yards and like literally have a party around failure. And I think that your point on culture, um, is, is right. Like I think we need to celebrate it, put a positive focus on it so that more people are comfortable and, and have both the safety net and the cultural norm of a failing.
Yeah. I love the idea of a failure party. That's right. That's was like your whole life. Yeah. Well, should we celebrate right now? I could have that cake. I could have that cake every morning. Do you know what I mean? Like Exactly. [00:29:00] Here's what you Yeah. You dropped the ball on old yesterday. Old sh That's, yeah.
Um, we, I do say to my kids all the time, the only reason you don't fail is 'cause you didn't try. And uh, then kind of they're starting to tune it out. But I think if we mix the cake into the mix, I think, you know, there you go. We get back on the failure train. Yeah. No, I like it. I like it. I like it. I love that idea for the record.
That's good. You guys, we found the business idea failure cake, failure cakes as a service. Yeah. I just talked to a startup here in town that is kind of doing logistics or like Uber Eats, but for bakery specifically because moving this stuff is so unique. And then they're also doing this bakery AI software.
So we got a built in distribution partner. Wow. Basically failure cakes. Amazing failure cakes.
Feels like it's, it feels like it might be a nonprofit, feels like a non-for-profit. Um, so Rachel, uh, that's incredible. [00:30:00] Uh, what Simple is doing is great. Everybody check out what, almost up to, I think the new companies that are coming down through the portfolio are gonna be really, really cool. You've had incredible careers so far, a bunch of wonderful experiences.
Uh, this improv thing is amazing. We're gonna learn way more about that with all that context. Um, do you have an idea that you want to, you wanna pitch with us today? I mean, I like the idea, we just brainstormed better failure cases. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll come back to failure case, but, uh, yeah, if you have another idea, let's hear it.
Okay. Okay. Dragon's done. I like it. Okay. So this is, this is a more serious one, but yes, we, we haven't had too many serious ones. I'm ready. It's one that I tried doing. Q1, 2020. And when you hear the ideal, you'll quickly learn why it was the wrong time to do this. People physically beating and breathing on each other.
So picture this. So there's a couple of macro things, right? Yeah. So people are having kids [00:31:00] a lot later and as they're having kids later, um, it's harder. And so more and more folks are doing IVF and starting to think about other options like adoption. Put that there. Another piece that's happened is you have, um, around the world the adoption of birth control.
Mm-hmm. So there used to be an oversupply of kids that needed adoption and now there's way fewer children and they're in much harder to access places and. The reduction of things like China had, its one child policy years ago. So there was, you know, just way, way, way, um, more supply, if you will, of, of kids, uh, being, looking, looking to be adopted.
So that's all the macro, I'll share a personal piece to this, which is my whole mom's side of the family has been adopted. Hmm. So it's been very normalized for me to go to a family event and have people from all different backgrounds and adoption was just celebrated. Norm. Rachel, you might have one of the most interesting lives.
Seriously? Yeah. Oh, you fine. Thank you. But so on adoption, it's one of those things where the demand has gone up, the [00:32:00] supply has gone down, and the amount of friction in order to adopt has also gone up because you're going to harder, harder access markets. So the idea which I was trying to do in COVID Yeah.
Which is the wrong time to move humans. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And interact with, with public, with government groups on, on anything. Yeah. But the idea is really to find a way to match families and do this in a. Call it frictionless. Frictionless approach. And when you hear stories of people like trying to go through adoption today, it's an absolute nightmare.
It's like years of weight and the amount of paperwork and da, da da. And so if there was a way we could help families and create a global market to do this in a much more streamlined way, I would love if someone would do this. I think the world needs this. Um, it's just my timing was wrong. And so, so what?
It's a real idea. It's a real idea. But what, what is the point? It's a real idea. Sorry. I should have come up with something more fun. Like a giant No, no, I love it. Healthy cake. Yeah. I mean, we'll take it in a weird place probably. I mean, I'm, right now I'm going, how can I take this new [00:33:00] weird place isn't really offensive.
So I, children borders. I, that's the diligence that I'm doing right now. My brain. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, how can I make fun of adopted kids or people trying to adopt? What, what are they trying to do? Help, uh, create families a bunch of jerks. Um, is this like a Tinder though? Is, is that what you're kind of perceiving?
It's like, oh, family, kids. Swipe left right? Or, or how do we, that's a, that's a bold UI for such a, for such the poor children. Oh, yeah. No, no. You know what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How, how would you, yeah. 'cause I guess I, this is an area I certainly, I have very little familiarity with. And so to your point, like there's adoption from other geographies, there's adoption of kids here.
Do they still have to go through the same adoption system regardless of where the kids might reside? Or is it separate if it's in the Canadian system, do they have to go some or, we don't know. Maybe that's the [00:34:00] challenge, right? Tinder of Tinder of Sounds like it would solve all the problems. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean we, we were rebrand. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Sort of Rachel, this one, maybe it's like a, maybe it's a Bumble. Kinder. It'll be kinder Bumble. Yeah. Kinder, but kinder. Oh, kinder is great. Yeah. Kinder love kinder families. Yeah. Kind families. I think this is like the few friends we, you know, or have interacted with, who've gone through this on both sides.
It clearly sounds like an incredibly arduous, awful for us. And I guess to a certain extent it should be difficult, right? Like you don't wanna make it too easy to go. But I think feel like that's the approval process, right? Like has to be hard, right? The well, I think there's, there's good friction and bad friction.
Yeah. Good friction is Let's do interviews. Let's meet the family. Yeah, let's make sure there's a fit. That's good. Friction. Yeah. Bad friction is you can picture the bureaucracy and paperwork and oh, the number of forms that need to be completed for every [00:35:00] single agency. Like there's no reason that that still needs to be there.
Um, so I think good friction, bad friction. I think there's. My understanding is it's like 80% bad friction and 20% good friction. And I agree. Like you maybe wanna like ratchet up good friction. So like, so, okay. So it wouldn't be like Tinder because Tinder is only like 20% of the friction and, or, or like that like matching and, and interviewing and, and talking is like 20%.
And that's the good stuff that the system is probably already doing fairly well. What we're actually solving for is like the 80% of bureaucracy. It's almost like the deal, right? It's like the deal of adoption where like, because I, I assume this is operating at a global scale, right? Like you're adopting people from all over the world.
So you're trying to understand like, how do you navigate bureaucracy across the globe? Is that right? Yeah. Sit down. It sounds like a terrible business when you play it back now. Like you have to feed business to government across agencies in emerging markets where there's like heavy, like really big trial, right?
It sounds like, you know, not like. [00:36:00] Listen, a, a charity at the end of the day is a business, a nonprofit is a business, right? Like they just have different business outcomes and goals that maybe a purely capitalist endeavor as far as like a nonprofit or charitable entity that could legitimately make a difference in the world.
This feels like something that could help, right? I don't know. Do children need families? I, I mean, I've got a few children. I feel like, I feel like I'm an expert on this subject. It feels like Yeah, they do better, you know? Yeah. With families, I don't know. But, uh, I think, uh, I think we, somebody's gotta make this happen all with Rachel on this one.
Yes, yes, yes. This is, again, I'm trying to be very careful in the language. Obviously this is trying to reduce the friction of, uh, creating a new family, right? Yeah. It's like I've never, uh, I've never. Tap dance more in my life than I think I am right now. Oh, this way? Yeah. I'd say there's definitely some like international stuff that you could import from deal.
I think maybe a better [00:37:00] parallel might be something more like, um, like au pairs or something like where you are literally importing a couple Yeah, it's like the opposite. It's like the flip side of that, except more long term. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. So yeah, Rachel, what we usually do is, uh, we have a very complicated scoring system where we rate, uh, ideas based on number of salsas because our first ever pitch was an app called SALSA score.
Um, okay. This is really where this like fun, whimsical idea of, I would like to, but here's what, here's, if with everyone's permission, I would like to not rate this idea because I think it's perfect and it's, it needs to be done. And I don't want to try to make a funny rating about, I think what is such a great, serious, real idea, right?
Then I'd like to extend this into a totally different, not quite a non-sequitur. I've got a tangential idea that I had many years ago that is not the same. I wanna be clear for everybody out there. I don't want letters. This is [00:38:00] not the same idea. Okay? This the adoption idea. Incredible. When you talk though about family, you're so nervous.
I'm so sweaty. The fa the family, uh, sort of matching idea, brought back an idea I had many years ago. Um, okay, so here's when you are a parent and you have children. So you go through a period of your life before children where you make your friends through work, through school, uh, friends of friends, right?
That's where your friends come from. You have children. Suddenly, most of your friends either are friends of yours that are at the same phase or having children, or your kids make friends, and then you see these people all the time, right? And guys, here's the thing. Your kids can be great friends with another kid.
Yeah. It doesn't mean me and a parent, but suddenly I'm hanging out or talking to somebody and going, [00:39:00] oh boy. Like perfectly nice, but I'm not, I'm not enjoying it as much as I am. This, for example. So I, so what's the business idea? I love the tea. Just, I like to hang out with people. I hate I'm giving that, so it's, it's how do you get your friends to stop being friends?
So it was basically Tinder, but for families to match. So like, you know, similar, you live similar neighborhood, your kids are similar aged. The parents have maybe like some similar interests. Maybe they're funny, maybe they're like funny podcasts. Maybe they're starting a startup, you know, maybe they're doing much of those things and you would like meet the whole family as a potential like family group of friends.
I was like, I think this is a pretty good idea. Mm-hmm. Because then you could, you maybe swipe left or right and meet them one time and go, ah, this isn't for us. And so, uh, yeah. Family, friendship, it's like a bumble, but for families. Yeah. There it is. That's the pitch. [00:40:00] Bumble for families. Yeah. I mean, this, this allows me to kind of segue into my, so you're just still going dating app, I guess.
Okay. We're just, we're Wait, wait. Rachel, Rachel doesn't seem sold on. We're so we're gonna come back. I think I'm ready to pitch my dating app, I guess. Rachel, are you ready for Phil's dating app? I'm ready. We're we're just moving away. Now we're moving in here. We feel more comfortable. Which is, which is just we're Yes.
Ending. Rachel. Yes. We're, wait, is this long form or short form improv? This is because I don't know the difference. This is incredibly long form improv. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hit this off. Okay, go. This is called Will it Ever End Improv? Um, no. Uh, Kate, Rachel, this and, and Shep. This is a dating app. I'm here too.
Yeah. Yeah. This is a dating app and it's called Arranged. Okay. And it's where actually I, you know, you go on dating apps, couples who are in, who are in relationships, happily, you know, together, always ask single people. [00:41:00] Can I go on your phone? Can I play dating apps on your phone? This, this app is called Arranged where uh, couples sign on to be experienced matchers and they can like choose someone.
So if like for example, shove and Rita Yeah. You guys were my matchers. You guys would go on? Yeah. And you guys would swipe through people and then like connect with them and understand if they would be a good fit and then put us on, but you could also follow the dates so you'd be like, oh, they want a first date.
They want on a second date if you get married. If we get married, yeah. You know, that's like a, a gold star for you. Yeah. We get to automatically a gold star. Yeah. What a small, like a gamification in the app. You get one tiny gold star on 10 years into a relationship and you get a gold sticker. Yeah. Yeah.
But I think there's something in the, yeah. Yeah. Talk to me, Rachel. I like it. So where my mind, I I where my mind was going. I told, I already told you as I spent a bunch of time in India and I was hanging out with all these Indian girls when I was there, and they were, the time I [00:42:00] was dating, and they were saying to me, they're like, Rachel, it's amazing.
I don't have to date. My parents do all the work for me. They do all the vetting and then they give me a curated short list and I can just go on three dates over the course of my time and I can choose if I like them. I give them real time feedback and then they carry on. Yeah. And I remember leaving being like, huh, it's pretty awesome.
Like they have someone that's doing that. Yeah. Vetting and curation work for you and, and your, um, framing of it. It doesn't have to be your parents, you could Right. That's right. Dub the arrangers and thank God and have them actually do it. Sorry, burns is, uh, yeah, so I, I mean I grew up in East Indian family.
Yeah. Shocker. My wife is also East Indian. We do not have an arrange marriage, but yes, we definitely observed as I was growing up. Um, those things work, right? They tend to work really well. Like, uh, so when, even when the Bachelor came out on TV and everybody got excited about The Bachelor, and I'm like, listen, this is just what my people do.
Yeah, yeah. [00:43:00] Right. We're just, we're just connecting people together. And then they go in a couple days and they're like, nah, it's not for me. I've told you before, I really like this idea. Yeah. Because also when we've had some of her friends who are single, like my wife will literally go, Hey, let me, let me just review that profile before we post it up.
Right. Like it, you probably need a little, a little polish here. And then connecting the people together. I think it's a great idea. I love the idea of, uh, uh, one of your couple friends talking to that person's couple friends. Yeah. And they interact and hang out. Honestly, it feels a little bit like my family matching.
You're just matching a, a friend uhhuh a part of it because here's the thing. If Phil and I are good friends, right? Yeah. I would, I've gotta be good friends with this new person, but I've gotta be friends with that, new person's friends. Right? Right. So I don't wanna get into, yeah, I need, I need to do some vetting on the, on the broader universe as well.
No, Rachel does. We need to make a HoldCo, like one parent's company. That's right. [00:44:00] We arrange children to families. We arrange, I, I really would help. I would encourage us to keep that one as its own serious. Hello? Arms. Like, but it could be the same tech. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We license the tech for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. But Rachel, you mentioned like small Oh, like what if, what like a, a really, um, transactional, like just getting a gold star. Well, hold on though, because there's an old adage that says 3, 3, 3 marriages to get into heaven. I forget if, I forget if it's like what culture that's from. It's a real, it's a real thing.
Like I, it's a real thing. And, and so here's the deal with this app. You set up three marriages. We will guarantee that you get into heaven, you know? Right. We'll guarantee. I don't understand why more people don't do that. I don't know if that's a real saying. I just looked it up. I do agree with Rachel. The amount of effort to put it together does feel outsized with the incentive.
So an [00:45:00] eternity in heaven does feel like a bigger prize. Rachel, what do you think about this? So you are, you are a matcher. You set a couple up, they're out on their first date. How we monetize this app is like the Hunger Games, where the Hunger Games, you can actually, like your sponsor can send stuff. So you're sending bottles of champagne and we take a cut on the champagne.
I thought that's great. I thought also, and this is maybe a little weird, but you know, a lot of times couples, when we go out for a meal, you do a lot of people watching and then you'll see the couple, the other table and you're like, what do you think it's first date? Like, how long they've been together?
What, and so maybe almost like real time playby play of the date as it's happening. Could be another, like a streaming service. Like, like be like, why did Phil say that? It's just the Truman show now. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I do really like the drop in gifter. Go ahead Rachel. Sir. I think other ship, I don't know if there's other ship out west, but it's like a sauna bathhouse.
Yeah. And they've started doing singles [00:46:00] matchmaking nights. So there's definitely like a recorded sponsor. Yeah. Fun. Uh, fun thing there. I really like this arranged idea also, I think 'cause the underlying tech overlaps with my family match idea, which I do not have a name for. And the adoption match. Well, yes, the adoption matches is a separate thing.
Uh, separate thing. Really important needs to be done. Somebody get that fun. We don't, we. We don't usually stump for government funding for startups here. But for that one, yes, please. Uh, for the other two, I think arranged is ready to go tomorrow. Yeah. Do you, Hey, do you think you can second one of your founders, Rachel, to come build this?
Yeah. Be like, Hey, we talked to you about this, uh, really complex idea about something. We're gonna pivot. Yeah. Yeah. It's, well, it's like top of funnel for Alma, [00:47:00] you know, it's like we need more parents. Yeah, that's right. This is a great idea. More couples. Right. Move it upstream. Simple. Takes it on Uhhuh Simple Ventures is now funding arranged.
That's what I heard. That was the whole life cycle of Rachel Didn't agree to that, but I feel like they, it's implied. Yeah. Yeah. Her vibe was such that we have now taken it our next cohort company, which is Phil. It's a range company. We do have a senior care business, so we are starting to hit the full circle of life from birth to senior.
So we need to do something in the, in the midlife. Uh, oh. I've had a lot of, uh, serious senior care thoughts or ideas. We should catch up another time having gone through a bunch of stuff the last couple years. But, um, uh, I want to, so we rate outta 75 salsas here, Rachel. So we are going to rate Phil's arranged at the two of you.
Yeah. So you're gonna be a guest. We don't normally allow a guest to judge a rate, but because you're, this is what you do for a living, I think it feels, [00:48:00] um, uh, very topical, arbitrary scale out of 75. Like completely arbitrate. Yeah, that's, yeah. You can pick whatever you want. Want. I like to overcomplicate things.
So I always divide mine into two scores. One is the quality of the idea and the potential for distribution, quality of the idea out of 40 for me. 37. Okay. I think it's a great idea. Yes. Distribution. Um. More questions because there's a lot of competition in the right. Matchmaking industry. That's right. So how do you distribute, like how do you market to couples to set your friends up?
Actually, I think that's what you do. I think that actually might be not that. Well, I mean, re score, re score 37 outta 40 on the idea. 30 outta 35 of the go to market. 67 outta 75. That's so good. That's a very good score. Um, that's great. I I, uh, I love that you walked it through. I mean, fundamentally it's like a three-sided marketplace, more or less, um, [00:49:00] because you have couples.
Yeah. And like the majority of the realtors will probably be straight. Um, so it would be men and women as well. And so you do have to think about a go to market strategy. That would be all three. Think you got restaurant sponsorships like Rachel said. Yeah. People having their first dates. Right. Second dates.
Third dates. Coffee. Coffee for your first date anyway. Rachel, would you like to score this idea outta 75 cents? Just bear in mind, I think if you go north of 65. Uh, simple has to write a check. Okay. Noted. That is the rules. Um, the only point I'll add that I'm reflecting on is in the world of ai, like isn't AI gonna be telling us who we should pair up with?
Or is this the anti ai? It's like actually yeah, AI's big anti AI mover. Yeah. Yeah. Your friends, your friends really know you. Okay. But it's a bit of an X factor. Like which one's gonna have a better Yeah. You know, efficacy score, if you'll, I think for human connection we're gonna snap back. I think we're gonna go all the, you know, you talked about COVID earlier.
I think we all got more isolated and I think we're gonna go all the way back [00:50:00] to people, meeting people, but an algorithm. That knows you intimately. Yeah. And knows your actual quirks context. It's like stated stuff. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, like I can give all the context, I can create a normalized context engine of my life and try to get the AI to, to connect me with somebody, but, uh, you know, my friends know how dumb I am, so they, they, you know, I think they're a better arbiter basically.
Do you think there's a world where you pair like an AI algorithm with arranged, I mean, maybe. I feel like you got it. You've got the vision, you've been workshopping it. Yeah. Um, I think there's something here. I think there's a seed of an idea. I think we're supposed to come up with like silly wacky ideas and we're trying to solve adoption and actually helping people find their partners.
So I, I don't know. I think there's, I think there's something here. I I think monetization and dating apps is always hard. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, you know, the advertising model, how that all works. Um, I like Phil's idea of dropping gifts during the dinner though. I think that's like, that is, that's hilarious. That is a real win.
Especially with like drones or something, you know, or forgot just for the server at the restaurant [00:51:00] and your idea. I mean, that, that your idea is hard. Well then it becomes like a, a dual use defense tech company as well. Perfect. Knew you said defense tech. You got me to 75.
Uh, amazing. We run a real journey there. Yeah. Do you have a rapid fire, like fun pitch, Rachel? Not to put you on the spot. I have a doodle. She's 70 pounds. She runs our life and I have gotten enamored, um, with the cra You know how humans, there's like a crazy longevity burst that's come on. Yeah. Where like everyone's paying for whatever Yeah.
For their blood test, their Texas scan, their dah, dah, dah, dah. Yep. And all of a sudden there's all of these like pet, um, longevity businesses and some really creepy black mirror stuff where you can like replicate your, you clone your dog, right? Yeah. Yeah. What. You don't know about this. And so I think there's something in this space.
I think we're, I think the [00:52:00] humanization of pets and the craziness and people throwing money at it. So I don't have a specific idea there, but I think that whole general space is wacky and wild. And I literally just learned that there's like heart surgery happening on pets in Japan. There was like a stat that, and pet strollers outpaced baby strollers crazily in Japan.
Whoa. And there's now like open heart surgery, 50 to a hundred KUSD type things that are happening on pets, uh, pets overseas. So humanization of pets, something, something Humanization Corp would be, uh, just like an r and d lab that I'd fund stuff generally for having our pets live longer. Dog Jevity. Dog Jevity, right?
Pets Jevity. That's right. I, I feel like your doodle is gonna be, what's that guy's name? Who like. 50. Brian Johnson. Yeah, Brian. He's gonna be the blue kid. Benjamin Lifting weights. Lifting. Its in the backyard. Benjamin Doodle Johnson. So, uh, my kids have been lobbying me for years to get [00:53:00] a dog and I've always been pretty resistant, but we've now committed to a dog in the next year and a bit.
So I think if there's a platform out there that would make your pet live longer. Yeah. Forever. Forever. Oh, forever, okay. It's scary, but I'm still in. Yeah. Yeah. Would you do the cloning or do you just do like, alright, run it back, let's do another same one. People are doing that. Right. There's no law or rule against that, but people are actively, that is happening in the world today, right?
Yeah. People are cloning their pets so they can bring their pets back. Would you like that, Rachel? I don't know. I don't know. I don't dunno if I want any of this to be clear. I just think like a pets pet, Jevity dog Jevity, like a lab, like a Brian Junk lab is the perfect analogy for it. It's like, how do you just fund crazy stuff?
Yeah. Experiment stuff to it. Good mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, this is just, it's just Jurassic Park basically. We're just on our way. We're on our way. Well, I mean, you know, but, [00:54:00] uh, okay. I like Pet Jevity a lot. I'm long benevity. Yeah. Do you wanna rate Pet Jevity, the 70 sausage? 70 sausage? Yeah.
Because 70 to Rachel's point, everybody who has a. Would, um, the pitch is, do you wanna make your pet live longer? Who's gonna say no? Yeah. Well, I, I gotta take, I gotta take an interesting take here. Um, and this is gonna make me sound anti pett maybe, but my, my friend, he's like 35. He's designed, oh, I'm giving way too much information about him, but he's like, he he'll know what I'm talking about.
But he's designed his whole life to not have any responsibilities. Like just, and that's how he's designed. But now he's got a girlfriend, she's lovely. She's the best. And they decided to get a dog together. Yeah. And last week where I was like, Hey, let's go play squash, he is like, no, sorry. I have to stay at home to watch the dog.
It's like two weeks old. Otherwise it'll like bite at the cage. This has been the reason I've been so resistant to get a dog. Yeah. I just got my children to the point where they can self sustain. Right. Yeah. So now you're, you're bringing another. Right. A [00:55:00] toddler back into the mix. Yeah. So, so now I'm just saying, so then I was like, I, you, he was obvious, like I talked to him about it and he obviously wasn't loving the dog.
I asked him, him like, how do you make the dog outta 10? He said four out 10. Like having a dog he loves the dog at, so you're saying not everybody would be on board. I'm saying he's got, I go, I, I said, well, you know, it's a shame this, there's no like trial period on the dog. And uh, so, so now he's got this thing for 10 years and now I'm just saying dog jeopardy.
Like that might just be a little too long to have a dog if like all of a sudden the dog's around for 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. The key is we need to find a way to export Brian from family guy. Like how do we create an adult dog that can just like, run that. Be a butler. Be a butler, babysit the kids. You, that's, that's actually the real innovation that we need to, we need to crack.
Yeah. No hu no, no humanoids. Let's get dog annoyed. Let's get like dog, uh, humans. We don't need robots. Well, thank you very much [00:56:00] Richard for saying that. 'cause I said to my kids, Hey, at least at some point you're gonna shovel the driveway. Dog ain't gonna shovel the, unless dogs have come a long way. I don't think this dog is gonna shovel my driveway, but I'll keep you guys posted.
You sound like you're under a rock. Unless dogs have come a long way, it's like you haven't looked up the Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't, I'm not out there checking to see if dogs are shoveling, shoveling driveways. Yeah, they could be. They're gonna live forever. They gotta develop some new skills. They gotta get jobs.
That's how we're gonna solve the productivity crisis. That's right. Get these dogs trained up. Um, a hundred, a hundred thousand entrepreneurs and they're all golden doodles. Sign me up. Well, Rachel, uh, we just wanna say thank you very much for coming on. What Simple's doing is amazing. Uh, you're great. Thank you for being a good sport.
Thank you for pitching a real idea. So people out there care about children go build Rachel's idea and [00:57:00] that's a great way to pitch something. Hey, you, if you care about children, yeah. Do this. Yeah. Just gonna say no except for Phil's friend. Um, and, uh, please come back anytime when you're out here. We'd love to just get together and hang out.
Phil's running all kinds of events. I'm sure we would love to have you. Uh, that's right out at them. And, um, yeah, despite. The fact that someone else is gonna work on that idea we talked about. I'm still, I'm root for it and, and where can people watch your improv? Oh yeah. Where can, oh, no, no, no. Amateur.
Amateur temperature. This is next time. Last step performance. Will you tell Philip and I privately when we come out to Toronto? So we come watch. I think you guys should do improv. Like come join the troop. Like come. We get together. We get together once a month, come join. I told you my whole family's in the arts, so my youngest sister's professional and all of her friends are pros.
So I just crashed this group of legit pros. Stop that. So come join. I got super excited. That's the best pitch I've heard. That's the [00:58:00] best pitch. Yeah, we're in. We'll see you in Toronto. Done. We'll be there. We'll be there on midnight. Nice. Have a jet. We don't have a jet. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Rachel.
You've been awesome. Thanks for having me. Okay, we'll talk soon. We're back. Rachel Zimmer, Phil, maybe one of the most accomplished people in tech in Canada came on our podcast. That was pretty cool. And does improv such a big fan of that? Yeah. Yes. And she does improv and she invited us to come to improv when we're out in Toronto next.
So let's go do some improv. She was, uh, awesome. She did pitch one of our first serious ideas was great. That made you very uncomfortable. Sh she, it just made me uncomfortable because I wanted just to make sure that no one out there thought that I was making fun of the idea of making it easier for kids to get adopted.
Right. So I, you know, I just wanna say one once again [00:59:00] for the record. I'm 100% pro adoption and, and families finding. Uh, each other. Chaz, can I pitch you on this? On arra? You weren't there for the episode. What were you doing? Again, don't put me on the spot like that. What were you doing? Lemme check my calendar, but, but Chaz, do you wanna hear this idea for, uh, arranged?
Yes, please. Yeah. But Chaz, we, how we got there was, there was this really cool idea that Rachel had about making adoption easier, and then, uh, we talked about other ways that you could leverage that technology, that matching technology. I talked about how, you know, when you have kids, sometimes you become friends with people because your kids are friends with their kids.
But I'd like to vet the whole scenario first. So like a bumble for, for family, sort of, and then Phil, I guess there was a through line of putting people together through this episode. So Phil, yes. Uh, why don't you, why [01:00:00] don't you tell us about a range? Uh, yeah. Chaz, here, here's the concept though. So I, I'm a single guy.
You're, you're Chaz famously not a single guy. You have a, a loving girlfriend that you're moving in with, correct? Correct. Yes. Uh, so you guys are off the dating apps, right? Yes. But sometimes she better be. Better be, but do you like going on your single friend's hinges or whatever, like you, like swipe it for?
Uh, honestly, those things kind of scare me. I'm not gonna lie. Even when I was a single man, I just, there's something about the dating apps that really creeped me out. But I hope that doesn't ruin your pitch. No, I mean, no, that's okay. I, I kind of thought you'd be like, yeah, I love it. But that's a pitch.
Well, I, I can, I, I can help you, Phil, because Rita did used to do that for her single friends when Yeah. And one of them, she helped profile with eventually. Got married to somebody that she met through that platform. So, so, yes, so, so I [01:01:00] can confirm couples like to match up their single friends. So Chaz, I join arranged, I make my profile, but I don't actually swipe on the app.
I assign matchers, so in this case, or arrangers. So I were to assign Shove and Rita or Shaz you and your, your boo boo and mm-hmm. Uh, you guys would swipe on my behalf. And if you guys find someone that you think would be a good fit, uh, uh, you guys would actually get matched with their mattress. So you get to see who their mattress are, evaluate if their mattress are good.
People have a conversation like, oh, do they like, do they like whatever. Uh, and if all of the mattress think it's a fit. Then they say, okay, yep, a date is a go. And then the two people getting matched have to go on a date. They have to go on a date. Ooh. But I would also really like to meet the [01:02:00] couple friends who's doing the arranging on the other half.
Because I feel like if my friend and this other person got together, then by extension I would end up having to become friends with these other people. So I'd I'd like an add-on where I could meet their friends, you know, a six person dinner. I mean, I think bring back the chaperone. What's wrong with the little chaperone?
No, no, no. We don't need the people dating at the dinner. We just need the friends. I see. I see. Okay. And also, if I could take this a step further, I know we're not even in the pitch part. When you buy a house or a condo, I would also like to meet the neighbors. An app where you met the neighbors. Basically what I'm saying is all my ideas around, I'd like to meet people before I have to commit to doing stuff with them.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel that. Yeah. Chaz, what do you think of a range, but you had a really killer idea arranged, and I, I wanna make sure this gets in for Chaz, is that you thought you could watch the dates, like you could pay a premium and watch the dates and that you could pay, like, in the Hunger Games for like, gifts to be delivered Yeah.
To the table. [01:03:00] Like if you felt like it wasn't going well. So that I think took this idea from a, yeah, I don't, 40 salsa to a million salsa. I don't know if you could watch the day. It's like a live stream, but you can see if they go on a second date, a third date, I need to watch. Yeah. If they, if they, they get married and then Yeah, you could like, like a sponsor, uh, in the Hunger Gives, delivers, you know, bottle of champagne.
Oh. So you, maybe you don't watch live, but it, it's like a, when you go to the sports app, so you're not watching the game live, but it's giving you the, the updates. You know, Chaz wins a Face off, right? Like that kind of thing. They went to a second bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Chaz, what do you think?
Uh, I actually love this idea. This is, this is beautiful. I do think. Matchers meeting the other matchers might be a little extreme. I don't know if I want to get that involved with my friends dating lives and meeting, well, maybe not first date, but, but like fifth or sixth date I'd like to, you know? Yeah, potentially.
But I do love the idea of live streaming, your first date for the people that set you [01:04:00] up. I think that alone is, that's a million dollar idea for sure. Yeah. Because when couples are out, we're always like, Hey, are those people on a date? What do you think is happening over there? So this would just take that to the next level.
Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's a really good idea. I think it's such a good idea that I think it deserves its own episode. Okay. Was this an, an official pitch this episode, or is this the, the launching of it? Well, no, he pitched it to Rachel. I think he was trying to get, uh, simple Ventures to fund it.
Um, oh, I see. And no offers yet. But Rachel, if you're listening, you know how Yeah, yeah. Maybe she didn't get your email. I like the name too arranged is good. That's good, man. Yeah, it kind of like really speaks to my people. But it's kind of like bringing back the, the, it brings an edginess because it, you're talking like, obviously it, it refers to arranged marriages, but I think, yeah, people are kind of like back on the train of arranged marriages.
[01:05:00] If we, you can bring it back in a, in a fun, spunky way. Yes. And, and I totally, I definitely have a couple friends that like. They're not very, I don't wanna say socially inclined, but like social media, Lee inclined. Okay. They, like, a lot of my friends just aren't active on social media. They don't have any good photos of themselves or anything like that, but a lot of these guys are still on dating apps and so they just, they don't really know what they're doing.
And I know for a fact that some of my, like girlfriends have helped out other male friends kind of getting their profile right. And everything like that. So, I don't know. I think, yeah, there could be a, there could be the premium version where you could pay to like have the proper photography done. You know what I mean?
Like you could be like, yeah. Or I, because you might not pay for that for yourself, but your friends might be like, ah, man, Phil really needs at least one picture. Not wearing a sweater, [01:06:00] wearing a sweater or a t-shirt with himself on it. Yeah. Hey, speaking of, uh, Chaz's personal life, love this mo Mo moving into an apartment.
Yep. First time in my own apartment. I'm not a basement dweller anymore. Really. When you told me, you guys, when you told me you guys, you were moving in together and moving into an apartment, I did not say, wow. Big step or I did not say, oh man, that's a big commit. What was the first thing I asked you? I can't remember.
I asked you, uh, what kind of appliances. Oh, yes, yes. Sheb was very excited about the appliance. Oh yeah. The appliance is good. And then I felt like, and then this has come up in probably a couple episodes, but I forget. I've realized I'm, I'm actually old enough to be. If not a father, at least a really cool uncle to you guys.
Um, so then I, what would my dad have done if I was moving out to a place and been like, Hey, you come check the appliances. You know, it'd be like a, you know, it was a parkade lock properly. Right. Um, can [01:07:00] people get in? So I'm just looking out for you guys and it actually gave me an idea for another pitch, which I am, I'm, I've got loaded whatever, whatever.
It's just the three of us. I gotta pitch ready rent to dad. Oh goodness. But yeah, this is big news. We're very excited for you. Um, yeah, yeah. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you. Uh, Chaz, that's gonna be great that you Yeah, I'm excited or Yeah, you can, I'm happy to, I have a lot of suggestions of cheap food that's really big that you can always buy, you know?
Yeah. Big food. Uh, yeah. I'm hoping we're not gonna need prop food right away, but come six months from now, I'm probably gonna be on the Prop Food train. Welcome. And if any listeners are. If any listeners are ever downtown Stratford come say what up? But there probably are listeners in downtown Stratford.
Right. Aren't your friends listening to this thing? None of them. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Come say what up? Hey, can, uh, hey Pip, when you and I go out to Toronto to do improv with Rachel, do we maybe take us a little side trip down to, down to [01:08:00] Stratford and check out the apartment? I would love to check out the appliances and knock on the, how big is your, uh, pullout couch?
You got a pullout, a futon or something? Uh, we have, uh, a couch that can convert into a full sized bed, so Oh. Might be a little tight for you too, but we could make it work. I love it. I actually travel with my own cot. So I can set up anywhere. It's, I can't tell if you're kidding or not. No, of course. I'm kidding.
I did meet a girl, Saturday, old friend of mine, but we were talking about camping. She's like, I hate camping. But one time I, I brought a cot and bedside tables and a lamp. Did it make it more enjoyable for her having side tables like you, like slightly. That's like the last thing I would bring. Like, oh, I gotta bring my side tables.
Yeah. They, they, they had, the camping beds are basically cots, right? Like, they elevated off the ground. You guys have never used these, like the air? Yeah. Big air mattresses. No, they're not even air mattress. They've like folded up and they're just, they're just like planks cops. Yeah. But if you're doing [01:09:00] real camping, you're not gonna bring anything like that even, yeah.
Excuse me, sorry. Sorry. Yeah. If you're doing real camping like me, where I just, I just nestle in a nice little pile of mud, you know? You know where I like to camp? I like to camp, uh, renting a canvas. Oh yeah, that's a good one. I thought I was the bougie cottage guy on the show. Hey, we can get, actually, if we do it in the summer, Phil, we can go to Toronto, do improv, go check out the apartment, Stratford, jump in the car.
Jazz can take us up to the bougie cabin. We can, uh, pitch the, uh, the barbecue cover to everybody up in Muskoka. It's too rich for my blood though. That's too rich for my blood. I don't know if they could handle me up there in Muskoka. I think you would be very popular in Muskoka. Oh really? Yeah. Oh yeah. I think they would love, they're gonna love pip slips up there.
Oh, shit. Yeah. All right. Just bring all the stack of pip lips, a couple prototype BB covers. I think, uh, I think the [01:10:00] trip pays for itself. Yeah. We can write it off. Yeah. Did, did you just learn what that phrase is? Yeah. Is it, is it, 'cause your rent is now being written off under, uh, this podcast. Yeah. Now that I got an apartment, I'm writing everything off.
I'm like, chess, why isn't my mail going to an address in Stratford? Uh, all right, fellas. The, this was great. Everybody appreciate the support. Uh, what do I say, Chaz? Oh yeah. Follow us on Apple Podcasts. Yeah. If you're not, follow us. If you are. Yep. Tell everybody you know to follow us. Yeah. If you are threaten them not on Apple Podcasts.
Follow us on Spotify. Yeah. If you already are, tell everybody you know to follow us on Spotify. Yeah. And rate us five stars on both. Rate us five stars. I mean three, three is not that good. Uh, three. Make sure it's fucking take three. But if you can, if you're already there, you might as well [01:11:00] do five. You may as well tack a couple on.
Imagine if this kid's a, a cult following, then people are just like, give us three stars. No, the most three star rating are done ever. It turns out three stars is not that good. Um. Uh, follow us on Instagram. Your business is on the line. Yep. Follow us on LinkedIn. Your business is on the line with spaces though.
Yep. On LinkedIn. Yep. Yep. Uh, and maybe, maybe by the time this episode goes, it's, it's already up. Follow us on YouTube. Yep. Oh, we got the, we got the street logo for YouTube, right. Jazz. The, what I call it the street logo. 'cause it looks a bit like graffiti, you know what I'm saying? Oh. Uh, Phil just gave me the wrap finger, uh, because he's got an important business meeting to go to.
Uh, alright, wrap. See ya. Beautiful. [01:12:00] Beautiful.