Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. Brian Glick, founder, CEO at Chain.io. And on this episode, we're going to speak with Manjot Singh. Manjot is the CEO and co-founder of Summit Edge, which is a technology company that does a combination of supply chain related products as well as consulting.
Speaker: for things like Salesforce and CargoWise and all sorts of other technologies that supply chain companies need to bring together. On the episode, we're going to really get into some of the differences between working in big companies and small companies and working across venture capital and bootstrap businesses. And then at the end, we're going to get predictions on what all of this AI and Vibe coding means for the future of consulting and software and ERPs. So wide-ranging conversation and i hope you enjoy it.
Speaker: Manjot, welcome to the show. So glad to have you here. Yeah, man. very excited ah to talk to you and your team. We've worked together on various things and very excited to continue working together and then seeing where things go and excited about this conversation.
Speaker: Awesome. So let's start with the fun one. How did you get into this business and why why would you decide to stay? Yeah. So if we want to just pull back a little bit, how I got into the supply chain world in general was completely happenstance, right? I started my it at that time, it was just a college job at FedEx when I was 18.
Speaker: And never in my wildest dreams did i ever think this would turn into my career. I just wanted some beer money. And FedEx was hiring for part time roles and it worked out because i'm an early riser.
Speaker: So I would wake up at 1, 2 a.m., go do my shift, four or four and half hours, come back, take a nap, go to school. And so that's how I kind of worked my way through school. But immediately after, as I slowly started to understand more and more about the space, I realized i actually do thoroughly enjoy the world of supply chain. It's incredibly complex, but it's very simple at its very core, right? Like you're basically moving goods forward.
Speaker: to a customer within that promise that they're expecting. Then as a part of that process, kind of went through FedEx, senior leadership roles there. Then it went to Amazon, was there for about eight years.
Speaker: And then eventually I said, I'm doing all this cool building and product design and things for other people. Why don't I do it for myself? And so thus Summit Edge was born.
Speaker: So to your point, that's what got me into it is I've always had a bug of entrepreneurship and wanting to have something of my own and building something from the ground up. Even when I was in large organizations like Amazon, I never stayed past the initial build.
Speaker: Like we would take programs like Prime Free same day. I took it from zero to $3 billion dollars in top line revenue and then left to go start another startup within Amazon called Amazon Extra Large. So when I started, had two delivery stations and one fulfillment center, and now there's 134 delivery stations and i think over now 15 or 16 worldwide fulfillment centers. So as soon as I like kind of hit critical mass, I kind of go off and want to build something else.
Speaker: And so that's what Summit Edge was, right? It was my next project, my next build. And what makes me stay is the excitement of building, right? Like right now, I would say we're very much past our fundamental, like foundational stage at Summit Edge. We are now in our growth stages.
Speaker: So, you know, hope maybe in the next two to three years, I find myself doing something else after we get out of this like initial growth phase. But as of right now, it's it's still very exciting. It's really cool. Lots of changes coming around in our neck of the woods. We've got so much new tech, so much new technology. So yeah, it's exciting. So I'm staying.
Speaker: So you started in one of the biggest companies in the world, and then you went to the biggest company in the world, at least for a moment. um yeah And then you said, okay, I'm going to take that security blanket away. Right? What did that feel like? making that decision. Because I'll tell you as an outsider, when you hear somebody from Amazon say, I built this thing to 3 billion in top line revenues. Yeah, but you attach something to a rocket ship that's already moving in a direction. oh yeah There's all that momentum. You know, you say, okay, I'm going to turn on a new feature.
Speaker: I can test it with a million users today, yeah right? And then get product feedback. And then you go and say, okay, now I'm going to start something from scratch. yeah What was the, take me through that mental process.
Speaker: Yeah. So, you know, I always told myself like, and I'm not saying Amazon is doing bad, but I would, if you talk to leaders that joined right around when I did, which was like around 2015, right around 2021, 2022, of course there was layoffs and stuff. My team was affected. Like I was told that I needed to downsize my team and So it was just like the writing was on the wall in that sense, right? And at Amazon, there's this saying called your day one mentality, right? So that day one mentality really is like that builder's mentality where every day is day one. You're continuously improving. You're constantly looking.
Speaker: I feel like right around that twenty twenty one twenty twenty two mark, a lot of senior leaders that had that mentality, David Bozeman, who's now at C.H. Robinson as their CEO, Dave Clark, who now runs Augur, like a lot of the core senior leadership team that was that inspirational day one mentality team, including Jeff Bezos, like that's when he stepped down into the chairman role and Jeff Wilkie took over.
Speaker: it was a different culture downsizing was happening and i'm not saying that you should always innovate and just like innovation doesn't happen by throwing people at it but a lot of projects that were i would say the next like exciting thing at amazon were being pushed off to the side to put the business in maintenance mode basically and so i told myself that was when i would find myself somewhere else right I did look for a few roles outside of Amazon, like Google.
Speaker: There was a couple of roles at Meta and a few others. i was looking at like the the top, the Fortune fives. And simultaneously, I was doing consulting off to the side for different businesses for a variety of different things. A lot of them in like the middle mile, final mile space.
Speaker: And as a byproduct of that, we were starting, so both me and my co-founder, we're starting to see some success with that. And so we said, why don't we just take a bet on ourselves? Like we have a good security blanket from all of the stocks that we've cashed out. Why don't we just take a bet on ourselves and let's go build something of our own. And yeah, so Summit Edge initially started off as a pure consultancy. And then we've ballooned to where we are today with partnerships with ERP systems and our own proprietary products and services. And consulting is still a big part of the business, but that's what the journey was like. And really it was about the culture shift at Amazon.
Speaker: So consulting and product, right, um are very different animals. What's it like doing both at the same time? Yeah, I mean, well, I feel like if I boil it back down to what it is, so like if I were to take ah a space, like a final mile space, there's core fundamentals ah that it takes for a package to go from a sortation center to a dispatch window to a driver to a customer, right? So there's some core fundamentals. And that's, that's I think, consultancy, ah consulting is definitely a ah very different skill.
Speaker: right it's a um You really have to understand that specific customer's needs, that specific problem, that specific geography. um When in product, you're kind of more looking at the experience.
Speaker: How do the tools tie in What type of tech stacks do you put into it? um But I feel like the best product leaders are really good consultants because they can go into a situation and look at... what does my customer actually want, right? And what is my customer's actual needs? And they can work from that customer backwards to help develop that product. And it's the same journey that you take somebody when you're consulting, right, is you basically sit with them,
Speaker: I usually do a week in their shoes, right? Like talk me through your processes. Let's work through everything. Let's leave no stone unturned. Let's walk a mile in your shoes type of thing. And then we start to pull back and start to give our recommendations.
Speaker: And I think tie in between the two is the customer experience, right? So on the consulting side, you're just basically making recommendations and providing them potential stop gaps for like very high risk things and giving them an idea of what to do next. Product side, you're actually doing the execution of it, right? So you're working with all your engineers and your product leaders, UX, all the other things to put that, all those suggestions into action and put it into a tangible thing that people can work with, right? So yeah, it was an interesting leap, but I didn't feel like out of place doing consulting. Yeah.
Speaker: As a part of the having time, i went back and did my EMBA, which is then also continue to help really solidify some of those like innate principles that i just you just kind of learn being in organizations like Amazon. But it actually puts some like literature and fundamentals and some... Give me an example.
Speaker: like What's something that you feel like... Because I hear very mixed things about these EMBAs from different people. I think everybody brings their own preconceived notion and then leaves with the same notion they came in with. But um what's kind of like give me an example of something that you feel like matches that pattern.
Speaker: Yeah. For example, like market analysis, market research. One framework for that is Porter's Five Forces. right So there's an actual science to how to dissect a market.
Speaker: right You can agree or disagree that that's the best model, but these are the types of things that... like For me, fundamentally, I did not know. ah i Like when I do market research or were used to do market research, it used to be very thinking about it just innately, trying to figure it out on my own rather than having a set framework that I'm following and dissecting it. And so in Porter's Five Forces, and forgive me, i this has been a while since I've read the whole thing. Yeah. But you basically, there's five segments, five forces that define a industry, right? And you then dissect your specific, rather than trying to focus on the entirety of the industry, if we're talking about like manufacturing, you wouldn't say manufacturing, you would say manufacturing in China, in this specific region. Right. So then you really start to dive a little bit deeper and then you can then tease out using this framework. You can tease out more and you give each one a grade.
Speaker: And if it's I believe it's if it's five, your average comes out to five. It's a great grades of one through five. Then you don't go into that market. That is a highly competitive, highly high risk, very high barrier to entry type of market. You don't go there.
Speaker: But if you have some sort of like under a three, you may want to make a decision. So actually, coincidentally, when we started Summit Edge, how we're directionally moving into which areas, we are actually using something similar to Portis 5 Forces to make that strategic business decision on where do we make the investment next.
Speaker: So that's an example. But You're very right, right? I think for me, it was EMBAs serve a variety of functions for me. Like a lot of people, the academia is a part of it, but at least and different than an MBA, an EMBA, you're working with people that are 14 plus. I think our average tenure was 14 years in their industry space this and years of managerial experience.
Speaker: these are These are seasoned professionals. Most people that are that went to work like in my cohort and the cohort before and after, you know at least director level people, if not senior manager in like the Fortune 5, right? so And then or above, right? We had a couple of like VPs and CFOs and things like that. it's just It's also a great networking tool, which is why I went. like I can't tell you the amount of people that are now in the Rolodex just from the alumni. ah and that's That's been very helpful.
Speaker: Changing topics slightly, but I'm curious, again, with this transition from big company to to being a founder and and a business owner, right what's been different about managing a team inside a company versus managing a team where you're the ultimate authority, where you have the ultimate responsibility?
Speaker: It's incredibly nerve-racking. It's like things that you don't, you you had said it, right? At Amazon, even though but you're responsible for a product, right? Or you're responsible for a team, there's still like a trillion dollar company backing you, right? So at the end of the day, you're not worried about running out of cash or you're not worried about P&L. You're not worried. You are, right? For your own business unit, but it's not the same. Now,
Speaker: we're talking about billions now we're talking about hundreds of thousands and billions right so it's every single decision like we my vp of biz dev just came to me and was like i need another two thousand dollars a month for this tool i was like hmm do we really let's think about this for second so that's the difference right because at the end of the day, now you are not just responsible for just your business unit, you're responsible for the help of the company, you're responsible for all these people that work with you. And yeah, it is a different level, even though the size and scale is very different, it is a very different level of pressure.
Speaker: But I also think that's why it's not fickle, right? You can probably attest to this. It's you have to have a backbone. You have to have fortitude and resilience and grit and all of the things in order to actually make this type of thing happen.
Speaker: And Brian, I don't know if you guys are bootstrapped or not. I never asked you actually, but we are, right? So literally like every dollar that we spent in the early days was our own. And so...
Speaker: That slowed growth, but I very conscientiously living here in the Bay Area stayed away from venture money. I have friends in the venture capital space. I know a lot of the firms on Sand Hill Road, and I very specifically stayed away because of the founder control that it relinquishes. But yeah, man, it's been a lot.
Speaker: Explain that a little bit for people. So I founded companies both ways. I've kind of lived on both sides. um At Chain, we actually we started in one model, we moved into venture.
Speaker: um you know And so yeah I've got sort of a broad view of this. But for people who aren't from the Bayer, when you say founder controlling, you say, okay we're bringing venture in. you know like When I was a little bit more naive about it, it was, oh, somebody gives you a pile of money.
Speaker: yeah right the senate end of this a period right Yeah, right. And then it was, if you can get a lot of money and it de-risks you, that sounds great, right? Why would you choose not to do that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the the broad strokes of it are like, so there's like three types of vehicles, right? There's traditional funding, banking, and things like that if you can secure against some sort of asset.
Speaker: That one, but you know, yeah there's no control. Private equity is probably... ah is and definitely another vehicle if you have some level of size and scale, you're an existing business. But yeah, for startups, you know typically like pre-seed, seed, angels, that's where you're going before your Series A. right And that those folks, I'm not saying that they're predatory. I think that's a little harsh, but they are hedging against risk. right So they're they're going to ask for a lot of equity up front, which also...
Speaker: Because when they're investing with in in your business at that early of a stage, they're basically just taking a bet. you know And I think the success rate last stats were even for like some of the biggest um like angel firms and things like that, they it's like one in, I think, every 50 even makes it to A, right? So it's like they know they know that they're going to whatever pile of money they give you, it's a huge risk. It's a bet.
Speaker: So they're going to, you know, bring in experts. They're going to, I mean, if you think about it, with the silver lining side, you do get funds, you do get access to people that you wouldn't have usually gotten access to.
Speaker: um But your direction is very set, right? Like, like you, you are very laser focused on a mission, right? And when I say relinquishing, ah which is also not a bad thing as a young founder, right? um But when I say relinquishing founder control, or taking control away from the founder,
Speaker: Like tomorrow, if I decide that, you know what, I actually don't, wouldn't do this, but like, I don't want to partner with, you know, Salesforce anymore. I can say that and move along. I don't have anybody to respond to on what my revenue targets what my customer acquisition costs are, what my P&L should look like. And typically when you're accepting outside money, that's what the expectations are.
Speaker: I've seen founders on on on the other side of this and I do not envy their lives at all. they they You spend... 50% of your time building 50% of your time, or like working with your board and stakeholders and writing decks and trying to figure out how to raise the next round. It's this like constant battle of justifying what you're doing and making sure and you're setting realistic targets and and communicating that out to these these investors whilst also trying to run a business, right? So...
Speaker: the But it does allow you to scale. It does allow you to to move up. You do relinquish a lot of equity in early stages. So your pre-seed seed angel A, series A is typically, I mean, typically when you start to get into Bs and Cs, like a founder is down to like under 10%, right? So I own 100% of my business. So even if it's not the next unicorn, I'm going to make a good living. It's all good. Yeah. And I think there's just a couple interesting things out of that that I can just share from experience from my side, which is like, one is understanding that math, that if you own 10% of $100 million, a business, you sell business for $100 million, you own 10%, you get $10 million. Right. You own a business that you sell for $10 million and you own 100%.
Speaker: that's the same you get $10 million, dollars same business, right, to you from an outcome standpoint. right And i think a lot of people outside of it don't quite understand... the reality of that math. And that basically what you're saying is, I don't think that without that outside money, I can get there because the dynamics of this business, and really this is where it all started with TechVC, is the dynamics of the business is I need to lose money for a while to build the momentum for this business. And so when you fund a business through consulting,
Speaker: Part of the model there is i can build my product while I'm funding the business with the consulting revenue. but um but Now, I've had friends who have said that to me who are at your 20 and still haven't built the product because they get the consulting is very time consuming or it becomes very easy to just keep doing that.
Speaker: um but you know So the VC model is I want to spend all of my time building the product. I don't want to worry about the rest of these things. So if you give me a pile of money now, I can acquire market share. I can build product at a rate that is much, much faster because I think that my product has a long payback period. So I need to spend $500 to an acquire a customer and I'm going to get $500. I'm going to get $10,000 from them, but it's going to take five years to get it I need money now to build this engine. yeah Um,
Speaker: But the thing you really do kind of make an agreement, it's usually not written in the documents, but it's the assumption is you are not aiming for a $10 million dollars company.
Speaker: No. Right. You've made an agreement with these investors that they're giving you the money to build a billion dollar business. Absolutely. Right. Like that's the deal. Yeah. and so I think where people sometimes are in for a surprise is they go,
Speaker: oh, well, we grew last year. And like yeah that's not the metric. The metric is did you triple in size? right And did you triple in size again? And did you triple in size again?
Speaker: That's a different mentality. And there's I would argue it's neither better nor worse than owning your own business and saying, if I can grow 30% a year for the next 10 years, I'm a happy camper.
Speaker: yeah like Both are good outcomes. Where people get into trouble is when they... misalign in either direction. Either think they're going to bootstrap their way to a billion dollar company in three years, or the other way around, right? I'm going to take this money and then use it to build a company that grows at a 20% rate.
Speaker: Right, right. so Yeah. Yeah, that hockey stick model, right, that hyperscale. um I mean, they used to be called unicorns, now we have deca-corns and whatever else these ah open AIs and anthropics of the world are now. Trillion dollar businesses before they go public. I mean, gosh, what's going on? I don't know. But in any case, yeah, you're absolutely right. like the people, especially your your seed and pre-seed and seed investors, angel investors, and definitely your Series A folks, right? When you start getting to more institutional investing, they they're looking for that 25x, 30x return on their money, right? Because they they took that bet on you. And so because of that, the expectation is to triple, quadruple every single year.
Speaker: And so... ah Otherwise, your next round is going to be a little bit hard. Right. So, yeah. And the math has to hold. And the math is very simple.
Speaker: And if you just boil it down, say I'm a VC and I'm going to write a thousand dollar check just to keep the numbers simple. Write a thousand dollar check to a bunch of companies and one at that to 50 companies and 49 of them are going to fail.
Speaker: Yeah. I only break even if that one company does 50 times. the value, which means I really need them to do 100 times the value. Minimum, yeah. Right? So when they give you the money, you say they bring in all these people, they bring in these experts and all of this stuff.
Speaker: The reason they're doing that is because it's not give you the money and hope you're the 100x. It's you try to guide all 50 companies into being the 100x, knowing even with all of that work, it's likely that it's going to fail. it's going to fail.
Speaker: Yeah, and and like the other other thing is, I mean, that's why companies get acquired all the time merged or there's like, ah you know, people just, you know, sell it for scraps. ah You know, the end of it is because, you know, um in year three or four, I mean, year five is right around the point where, like, if you haven't made it with venture money, you're kind of kind of out of luck at that point, right? Like, because...
Speaker: your're If you haven't shown a path to revenue and you haven't then you're like by a year two, and then you have like actual paying customers by that towards like mid to end of year two, you're starting to raise a lot of eyebrows. and that's i mean You brought up a really good point. You have to be realistic on both sides of the table. And I think...
Speaker: Too many times people come into this. I mean, don't get me wrong. Bootstrapping is just as hard. There's a lot of complexity to that process as as well. um And a lot of times you do find yourself looking around and saying, damn, if I just had another, you know,
Speaker: $500K or a million dollars laying around, it would be great. I could i can destroy the world at this point. But this thing does teach you a lot of patience. You can't just cut a check all the time. You have to be very strategic and prioritize.
Speaker: But on the VC side, it's not that you can spend unlimited cash. You still have you know whatever your funding rounds are, but there's other vehicles right um that you can use at that time to to leverage against.
Speaker: especially if you are are anticipating a higher rate of return, you you can go back to your investors, you can work on your next round. ah There's a lot of vehicles, but there is a higher sense of urgency to to deliver, get to market quick, work to get your first few customers, um show the ARR growth, that top line revenue growth. like and you got it you got There's a lot more pressure to it. So you've just got to be realistic on both sides. So so bringing this back to supply chain people, um one of the things that I know I've had this conversation with people on this podcast before, but I think it's important to bring back is when a customer comes to you, knowing your business model is very important to how they evaluate. And I think a lot of times where anyone who's buying software and services from tech company
Speaker: owes it to themselves to understand these things so that you understand that if you are buying the latest, greatest whizback thing from the company that didn't exist two years ago, and it's already in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and it has raised $150 $300 million, dollars and has all of this press out there that you are buying into a company that has made a decision to act a certain way and to yeah be a certain thing, and that might be great.
Speaker: And if you buy, somebody comes in with the same pitch and they're coming at it from a bootstrap long-term growth, they're going to treat you in a different way.
Speaker: And the risk profiles are different and not even greater or worse. like They're just different risk profiles, different relationships you're going to have with the vendor. So when you're out now in the world and you're Talking to your customers, how do you like articulate who you are to them and what that relationship is going to be? And you've sold to me before, so I know the answer. So you have to tell the truth.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, like I think the answer is is very simple, right? ah when like I don't want to call Summit Edge like a mom and pop shop. We are obviously scaling, but... I would say right now every single one of our customers is like I know them personally.
Speaker: Like every single person, I've either been on calls with them, um they can send me emails, they can pick the phone, they can call me. And I also feel like some of the things that we sell, like right now we are we're starting get into the product space where people are just buying stuff online and then just you know starting a subscription from some of our products. but ah Those are those are the think a much lesser revenue amount than than some of these higher touch services. So like an implementation for Salesforce, right? i'm going to There's a lot of back and forth, a lot of conversation we're going to have. a Implementation for a CargoWise customer. We're going to have a lot of conversation, a lot of back and forth, because this is going to be your fundamental ERP that you're using for your business, right? So it's a very different world in the bootstrap model versus some of these venture-backed companies. Like hyper personalization and and and ah customized support is expensive, right?
Speaker: You can't really scale with that. um And so don but companies like yours and like mine are slowly kind of, i mean, you definitely, you guys are much further along in your journey than we are. ah But And now you start you have a few of these products that are like self-service and things like that. But some of your like you know older customers, higher touch customers, i mean you're still very much embedded in their their business. right so i mean we i'd like We have customers from when we started.
Speaker: right and And I think that's the relationship ah piece that that gets lost when you scale ah to a certain extent. And also most of these companies, right they're building...
Speaker: products and services that are repeatable, very similar, ah and and you just have to do a couple clicks online and you can purchase it. So like it you know there's a very much lesser need for like a founder or like the leadership team to have a personal touch with these customers. So...
Speaker: I want to double back to wrap us up. This might be a deep rabbit hole. And I'm glad we don't have a hard cut time. No, no, we're good. But you said something earlier that's been sticking around in my head. So the the business development guy comes to you and says, Hey, I want to spend $2,000 on this thing.
Speaker: yeah Right. And you go, ah And a year ago, that was a yes or no question. And now it's there's three there's a third option there, which is, can we just vibe code this? and yeah Can we do that? and ah so do put that in your head.
Speaker: And now you're a company that sells this combination of products and consulting and vibe coding fits now in this weird space in the middle of all of that, because you can build things for people faster. They can build for themselves faster. Maybe they don't need a thing at all. Maybe you can build the last 5% of the thing that they can buy. And that's the vibe code. Like,
Speaker: Where does this new ability to build things faster fit into your world? Yeah, no, and really, really solid question. And that is the next kind of leap for Summit Edge. What what we really, like I said, we started off, but we've worked in all these like Fortune 5 companies. um And we really just, and me, my co-founder and a few other members of our team worked at companies like FedEx, Amazon, USPS, Walmart, Amazon.
Speaker: Target was another one. Yeah. So anyways, long story short, we've worked at, we we understand the supply chain world. So we actually get, get to what we have in our ecosystem is functional industry knowledge. Right. And so what we've never had,
Speaker: prior to this new phenomenon of Vibe coding is the ability to go build it ourselves. right so ah and At least enough to get it to like an MVP, and so that we can say, okay, what else would you want in this? right like Here's what we think, but what would you want? The barrier to entry of that is is pretty much gone now at this point. right um so um It has dynamically changed. Like a few of our customers have literally come back to us and said, you know what, ah like one of our one of our ah one of my friends ah owns a ah pretty decent sized trucking company. And he's like, man, I've been paying Trimble, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Speaker: like we know you guys are in the supply chain tech space. Like, can you just help me build something? If I just kind of would be a a design ah partner with you, ah would you be able to build it? And we're like heck yeah, dude, let's do it.
Speaker: And so we've been on that project for like six months and then we're basically going to do a full overhaul of their, current process and basically install a full yeah ERP for them and that does all of the processes of what a trucking company would need, right? Like from yard management to maintenance to transportation management and all the other things in between. ah And so we're building that out for them and would have never been possible. We couldn't even think about that like three years ago.
Speaker: And now it's a possibility. And not only is it a possibility, it's actually being executed. So it's very much going to change the game and people Too many times, what i my kind of vision into the future is people are going to start to realize that your typical ERP, let's take a cargo-wise, right?
Speaker: If I'm paying for all these features and functionality, what am i actually using? And people are going to start to realize, actually, you know what? My business can actually be much more sustainable if I just, I'm paying for 100%, 30%. don't just the 30%?
Speaker: why don't i just build the thirty percent And then that will help me kind of right size my business. So if they are starting to understand this space a little bit better, i mean, there's some things that you won't be able to get over the line. Like CargoWise is a great example, like connections to CBP and, and carrier connections and things like that. But,
Speaker: The world is getting more and more democratized when it comes to these types of things. like There's ah companies that are building APIs that you can ping that have already all this data linked to it. So when in times past, you had to be a billion dollar business.
Speaker: Now, like I can start doing that. so it's a I think this is going to be in the next five years, we're going to be looking at a very different model of how people think about the fundamental ERPs that they they run in their business.
Speaker: I think that is the foundational question right now. And I'm hearing so many different subtle answers, but what the answer I'm hearing from no one is business as usual.
Speaker: No, definitely not. So is all of this tech and all of this new capability a reason to double down on my ERP? Is it a reason to get rid of my ERP? Is it a reason to do some third path that no one's seen yet? Is it ah a combination of all of the, like, everyone's got a vision right now. And it's going to be like the only thing I can say after 30 years of doing this and going through a couple of these cycles, we're all wrong, but we're all wrong in unique and special ways. So it's going to be very interesting to to keep an eye on all of our companies.
Speaker: um And I think one of the really strong opportunities that bootstrapped businesses have right now is to be able to experiment with individual companies yeah and individual customers to find the answer in a way that large kind of large software companies and venture-backed small companies can't do because you don't have to justify the learning on a 90-day payback cycle.
Speaker: You can justify the learning based on the fact that you're learning. yeah And so that's a really big advantage. Yeah, yeah. That ability to be nimble and being able to pivot, I think, is the strategic advantage into the future.
Speaker: ah Like youre you said, you can't we're all wrong, but we're all wrong in our own unique way. But the person that can pivot and get on the right track quickest, that's the people that are going to win.
Speaker: Yes. So let's wrap up on that again. Just a fantastic conversation. So glad that we got to do it. And we will have links to Summit Edge in the show notes and all of that stuff and your LinkedIn. um And again, just really appreciate having you on.
Speaker: Yeah, man. It was so much fun. Thank you again for the opportunity and looking forward to working with you more in the future.
Speaker: So I'll tell you, when we went into that episode, I had some notes written and we didn't hit any of the topics that I expected, but what an awesome conversation. It's always great to see someone's passion about their own business and how that relates to their experience coming up through the industry.
Speaker: So huge thanks again to Manjot. um We'll have links to what Summit Edge is working on. I really recommend taking a look at their website. Just the way they've decided to talk about things in our industry on their website gives a real clear picture of their vision for the future.
Speaker: As far as Chain's vision for the future, i have an ask of everybody. Head over to Chain.io. And while you're there, if you could scroll down and we have a couple of videos that are a minute long, one for freight forwarders and one for shippers about our Chex product. And my ask is we're trying to get as much feedback as we can about how people understand the way that we're bringing AI. So if you could spend one minute watching ah the video that we have there, And then drop me a DM on LinkedIn with your thoughts and whether you understand what we're doing or or how you feel about what we express in that one minute video. I'll be much appreciated ah as we're learning along with everybody else how ah people in the industry are ah understanding the different software companies' visions of AI.
Speaker: So again, go to Chain.io, scroll about halfway down the page, watch the video, and drop me a DM with some feedback. Other than that, I hope everyone is having a great end of summer and looking forward to peak season and the holidays. And I'm, again, Brian Glick, founder CEO of Chain.io, and I will talk with you next time.
