Ever to Conquer

A Successful Startup Co-Founder Turned VC Takes On PubSec with Cam Doody, General Partner at Brickyard

Episode Summary

In this episode, Jamie sits down with Cam Doody, Co-Founder and General Partner at Brickyard, to explore what it really takes to build in broken markets, navigate entrenched power structures, and reimagine the role of venture capital. From moving college kids into dorms to raising millions in VC funding, Cam shares the raw, unfiltered journey behind scaling Bellhops and why the team ultimately ditched the five-star review system in favor of something better. He also opens up about the evolution of Brickyard, a bold new venture model built for operators instead of spreadsheets. If you're rethinking how to fund, scale, and serve, this one’s for you.

Episode Notes

Startups don’t fail because the ideas are bad. They fail because the systems weren’t built to let them win. Cam Doody is flipping the script.

In this episode, Jamie sits down with Cam Doody, Co-Founder and General Partner at Brickyard, to explore what it really takes to build in broken markets, navigate entrenched power structures, and reimagine the role of venture capital.

From moving college kids into dorms to raising millions in VC funding, Cam shares the raw, unfiltered journey behind scaling Bellhops and why the team ultimately ditched the five-star review system in favor of something better. He also opens up about the evolution of Brickyard, a bold new venture model built for operators instead of spreadsheets.

They dive into:

This episode is a front-row seat to the future of venture, crypto, and civic innovation, all told through the lens of someone who's been on the front lines and is still building what's next. If you're rethinking how we fund, scale, and serve, this one’s for you.

About Cam

Cam Doody is Co-founder and General Partner at Brickyard, a seed-stage venture capital firm. Prior to investing, Cam co-founded & built Bellhop, a Top 5 U.S. moving & relocation company that has moved nearly 500k U.S. households. In his personal life, Cam is husband to Hannon, dad to Margot and Liles, and avid about aviation and the outdoors.

Guest Quote

“Delusional optimism is the only superpower of a founder. You would never do this if you knew what it took. And of course, when you're looking back, you're just talking about all the good times and stuff, but in the middle of it, it is brutal.”

Time Stamps 

00:00 Episode Start

02:10 Cam's Journey

06:02 Founding Bellhops

12:08 Hypergrowth and its challenges

18:34 How to balance customer feedback with company vision

30:54 The emotional rollercoaster of a startup exit

35:45 Founding Brickyard

43:52 Importance of on-site founder support

48:42 Benefits and challenges of investing in public sector innovation

55:40 Can venture capital evolve for the public sector?

01:09:36 Understanding the real cost of inflation

01:12:07 Inflation as theft: Why Bitcoin might be the cure

01:25:42 Crypto and Regulation: Are we at a turning point?

01:31:39 The Bellhops review system overhaul

01:39:30 The Roundup

Sponsor

Ever To Conquer is brought to you by RedLeif, a digital agency focused on accelerating the modernization and security of public sector data. Visit RedLeif.io to learn more.

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Episode Transcription

[00:00:00] Jamie Grant: Without a way to align incentives and fund innovation in the public sector, there's gonna be this growing chasm where it's gonna be harder and harder and harder for innovators to access the public sector. 

[00:00:13] Cam Doody: You don't need talent density if you're not scaling your company. What you need to get to product market fit is radical focus, and you need to be around other founders that are in your exact stage who can push you and challenge you.

[00:00:40] Jamie Grant: All right, y'all Welcome back to another episode of Ever to Conquer. Uh, I am incredibly excited about today's episode. Um, I know most of you know me as a, a very scripted and disciplined filtered individual, but today I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of break that mold and, uh, I have somebody with us today that is not.

Uh, only a really good friend, but also has a, a really cool story and some insights to share. So Cam Doody is a general partner at Brickyard, um, a a a new take on the VC world that I'm obsessed with. Cam, thank you for taking time outta what you do. Uh, I can't thank you enough for this. I'm incredibly excited to see where this goes in, like all the dangerous ways that are, I think good. 

[00:01:22] Cam Doody: I mean, when you, when you called me and you said, Hey, we should rip a podcast, uh, you know, we, we catch up, uh, pretty often, but normally when, when we talk, we end up talking for like an hour, uh, or more. And it's always so interesting and, and so hopefully we can get into to some of the, the, the dirt and, you know, the real gritty stuff that you and I really wanna talk about anyway.

[00:01:48] Jamie Grant: I think like the joke has always been, what if people could hear our conversations? And here we go. 

[00:01:53] Cam Doody: Yeah, let's go. I'm, I'm, I'm really excited. 

[00:01:56] Jamie Grant: So, so tell the folks who Camp Duty is from a, from a professional perspective, right? Um, you know, we, we've known each other a long time. Um, I think you've got a really cool story both in like, kind of how it started and then also where it went.

[00:02:10] Cam Doody: Yeah. I mean, so Jamie and I for you guys, we, we went to school at Auburn together, war Eagle. Oh, damn. And we, you know, when I graduated I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I, I knew whatever it was, uh, you know, I, I tend to hyperfocus on things and get like super deep into whatever I'm doing. And, uh, I graduated right in the middle of the financial crisis and the, the economy was just like flat.

I mean, it was just, you could hear a pin drop. I mean, it was such a weird time. And, uh, and so I had, you know. Uh, big ambitions through college about what I wanted to do. I was actually worked for a defense contractor through college. I thought that I was going to Afghanistan for like two or three years on a project, uh, that ended up falling through, you know, with a, a trade secret lawsuit.

And like, and 2, 2, 2 weeks before I graduated school. And, and so I graduated and I, I was like, I have no idea what to do. And nobody was hiring. My brother-in-law was like, I can get you a job at a bank. And I was like, I'll take it. I just, I've gotta do something. And so I ended up going and working for, uh, in banking.

Um, you know, and you know, when I tell, when I, when I say that to folks in venture or whatever, you know, like, oh, okay, which banks you in? Was it Goldman? It is like, no, no, no. I worked in a bank park, you know, in a, in a mall parking lot in a bank branch. I was repinning people's debit cards. Um, and that, that time, you know, not to throw shade on retail banking, but it was just a, uh, I, I knew I wanted to do more.

And it was, it was really scary to me to see a career of like, okay, this is, this is a 40 year grind in a 50 or 60,000 person, you know, multinational retail bank. Uh, and it was weird to see what, you know, where I would be in 10 years if I just climbed this corporate ladder. In fact, it was, it was terrifying to me.

And so I, I put a year in there, I had a great time. There's amazing people that I worked with. Um, but, uh, I, I stayed just long enough until, you know, I, I could have like a full year on my resume. Then I went on medical equipment. I had a lot more autonomy and I. You know, I, I got to play into the sales side a, a good bit, um, and for a, a startup medical equipment company where I got to launch a new market.

And, uh, that was really interesting and, and invigorating for me to, to be able to have a lot of agency in my job. Um, but pretty quickly, uh, I knew that if I, you know, my goal has always been time independence. So, you know, if, if I were to be able to wake up every day and live life on my terms, uh, and I have some pretty wonky terms, um, I have to, I have to take this thing really seriously and I have to, you know, I, I have to start something of my own.

And, uh, and so one of my best friends and I started thinking about starting a company, which we started meeting, um, you know, every week or two, uh, trying to come up with an idea. And, and after about a year of this, it was like, okay, we just have to pick something. And go. And the best idea that we had at the time was, you know, it's a real pain to move in college and nobody really hires moving companies, but you've got like tens of thousands of broke athletic college students that are capable.

You know, could you connect them with, you know, with an iPhone, um, and match them with, with jobs for other students that were moving and facilitate payments and stuff. And this was like before Uber. Uh, we didn't even really know what Uber was, but we knew we could. Like I was gonna 

[00:05:57] Jamie Grant: say, give the, give the timeline for this.

'cause you were early in the tech enabled services game. 

[00:06:02] Cam Doody: Yeah, this was 2011 when we started the company. And so this was like, you know, very, very early on. But we knew that we could, we could build, we could build on the platform and we could coordinate a large workforce, uh, with um, you know, because these college kids just had, you know, smart fuzz in their pockets.

And, uh, and so we started moving college students into dorms. And we were like, we're gonna be huge. We're gonna go to every college, we're gonna go, you know, we're gonna move every kid into college dorms. You know, there's 2,504 year universities in the states. We're gonna be at everyone. You know, we get through the first year we were hoping to move like 20 kids in.

We ended up having to move 400 and something kids in, in three days. You know, we were knocking on fraternity house doors, you know, begging kids, you know, we had to hire 90 kids to actually do this 'cause they were all smooshed into the same, you know, two or three day period. And we get through it and we made a bunch of money and we were like, oh yeah, this is gonna be like shooting, you know, fish in a barrel.

We're gonna do this everywhere. And uh, and then so the next year, this was 2012, we ended up going to eight uh, schools in the southeast. And it was just so clear you can't build a business on two or three days. I mean, it was a, it was just a, a madhouse. And, um, but luckily around that time, you know, the, the parents or the kids started asking us like, Hey, like, we loved your bellhops.

Um, can you load or unload our U-Haul? You know, and we were like, no, we only move students, you know, whatever. We turned down our first, you know, a hundred requests for that until finally we were like, okay, let's just try it. And so we, we started moving non-students and then that became, you know, 95 plus percent of the business in like a year or two.

Um, and that flattened out the curve a little bit more. Um, and, uh, we decided to raise venture capital in in late 2012. And, um, and, and then we started scaling the company. Um, and then, so this company's called bellhops. And, and so we were a labor only moving platform with some really great tech on how we, you know, matched customers with, with bellhops.

Um, but our customers were like, we don't want to have to pick up the U-Haul. Can you pick up the U-Haul? And we were like, no, we can't do that. Whatever, you know, 50, 50 more requests later. We're like, all right, let's try it. And then, you know, within about five months we became, uh, like a top 10 customer of U-Haul.

And, uh, and, and so what we were doing was we were booking a truck, uh, and, uh, you know, we'd book a move and then we'd, we'd go and book a a a U-Haul on a corporate account. And then the, the captain, the move would go pick up the truck and bring the truck back. Uh, and, and we're building a moving company without any of the licensing, you know, any, but we were operating a full service moving company, you know, at this time we're in like 47 cities.

And, uh, and so we started getting cease and desist from every municipality, you know, and we're just tossing 'em in the trash, you know, whatever. And then we got served and it was like, okay, we've gotta figure out, you know, um, and the company just kept growing and we were operating a full serve moving company, uh, in a bunch of different cities.

And, and everything was growing really nicely. And then U-Haul decided that they were gonna shut down our corporate account because they had a, a labor only product that we were like cannibalizing. And, uh, and so they basically changed their policy and, and they killed our corporate account. And we had like 2,500 trucks.

That were booked for like the month of July in, in 2015. That it, you know, we had 2,500 moves that, that had been booked that, that we were having to execute over the next month. And we don't have any trucks. And so randomly I had met the best friend of Roger Penske. Hannon and I were in The Bahamas on like the first vacation that I'd taken forever.

And met this guy and, and ended up calling this guy. I was like, I need to talk to Roger Penske, like right now. 'cause if we've gotta book 2,500 trucks, like now, and two days later, Penske's executive team flew in. We got all the stuff. So anyway, this pushed us down this path. We, we just kept, you know, uh.

Yeah, being hesitant about moving up market, market, going up market, dealing with new problems, doing it again. Um, and now, you know, bellhops is, is the third or fourth biggest, uh, local and, and regional and long distance, uh, centralized AK non franchise moving company in the us. So we're, we're moving, you know, we've moved about a half a million US households, uh, now, and we're doing everything from, you know, Miami to, to la you know, stuff.

And, and we're still doing labor only stuff. But right before COVID, uh, we sold part of the company in a private equity and, uh, I stepped outta the company at that time. You know, I was fried. I was, it was just, it such a hard. 

[00:11:06] Jamie Grant: Let, let me hang on. I wanna stop you for a second. Yeah. So you, you hit on so much gold there.

Um, if, if you were to s, if you were to try and describe hypergrowth to somebody that's never been through it. Yeah, because you and I were going through it about the same time, um, in totally different businesses. How do you try and explain hypergrowth to somebody and how could you even begin to write a playbook to prepare for it?

Like if you look backwards and you go, I'm Cam Doty, uh, you've never met a stranger, you've never met something you're scared of. Like you are quintessential like co-founder gold to just like tag take. But now you look back and you go, could I have prepared for it? How would I prepare for it? How do you explain it to somebody?

'cause when somebody goes, Hey, this is the first time I, you know, Hannah and I took a vacation in a while. Like everybody wants the hockey stick results. But, but what is that, how do you describe the, the absolute utter 24 7 chaos of going through hypergrowth? 

[00:12:08] Cam Doody: That's actually a good way. So let me put it this way.

If, if founders had a crystal ball. And you could actually see yourself ringing the Nasdaq, uh, in 10 years or 12 years, whatever. And you're like, I know that we're gonna win. Like if you had that certainty, but then you had to go and watch everything that you had to do to get there. Yeah. 99.999 Yeah.

Percent of us, including me, would be like, screw this going back to the bank. 

[00:12:46] Jamie Grant: A hundred percent. 

[00:12:47] Cam Doody: It's it's brutal. It's absolute. So, yeah, I, I say like, delusional optimism is the only superpower of a founder. It's like, you, you would never do this if you knew what it took. 

[00:13:03] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:13:03] Cam Doody: Um, and, and of course when you're looking back, you're, you're just talking about all the good times and stuff, but like in the middle of it, it is brutal.

I mean, it is hardcore. Bad, you know? 

[00:13:19] Jamie Grant: And, and what are exact, like, so I I, we, we joke, um, Amy, our, our CO at Carey, like there were times where she was hit and submit an a a DP like saying a prayer, you know, like you're having to hire so fast that you're like, I think we can make payroll. Or I have 2,500 trucks that I need in 30 days.

And like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I don't think enough people realize what the hyper-growth phase, uh, one of my favorites, and I forget who it's attributed to, but most organizations die of suicide not by homicide. Like, it's not external. Yeah. They, they just quit or they walk away. That hypergrowth phase to me is something super fascinating.

'cause I don't think you can plan for it. I don't think you can prepare for it. I don't think you can opt into it. 

[00:14:04] Cam Doody: There's so many things that, that, that we could dial in here. Like, one thing is, you know, when you're in a hypergrowth company, um, the worst part about all of it is, you know. People grow at natural rates and these companies that are experiencing hypergrowth are growing at unnatural rates.

Yeah. And so you, you have it's Groundhog Day over and over and over again of the best person in your company overnight becomes an anchor on the business at, at no personal fault to them. Like the company just outgrew them. And these are people that were your MVPs. Yeah. Like people that have, have put, been putting heroic effort into your company and you're having to let them go.

And it happens over and over and over and over again. And, and, and so I like to think, you know, I like to look at it. The only people that really get a pass are the founders because you, you, you are not, you know, to a degree like your board. I was about say, obviously get rid of you. I was about to say, I, 

[00:15:13] Jamie Grant: I, 

[00:15:13] Cam Doody: yeah.

Keep going. Yeah. But, but your bo, your founders have a pass to a degree, right? Yeah. But in the, in the day-to-day operations, managing the business and like hanging onto that, you know, that that ambulance that you got a hold of, right? Like you're just getting drug down the road. And in the middle of that process, you, you know, the, the founders.

That's where a lot of this imposter syndrome comes from, because you start to build a company with people that are way more experienced and capable than you are. And somehow, like, you know, you are just trying to, to, um, you, you're just trying to keep your head above water. Yeah. Um, but anyway, it, you know, the, the hypergrowth thing is, it, it's, it's like people say, how do you know you have product market fit?

Um, like what is product market fit? And it's like, it's like. You know it when you see it. And that's the only, that's the only way that, you know, it's just you think that you have pro, you know, I, we have a lot of founders, and so they're like, I think we're on product market fit. I'm like, mm-hmm. Yep. It's cute.

It's cute. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, but when it comes, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, it's, it's a, it's an overwhelming and challenging, uh, thing. 

[00:16:44] Jamie Grant: It's, it's, it's almost addictive, at least in my experience. Like you, because know, like even, even when you look at what the original thesis of bellhops was, uh, kind of like Uber, kind of like Airbnb, like any of the things that were kind of those first market entrance into let's disrupt the dinosaurs, um, you know, going back to, I mean, Netflix, Kodak, like all of these blockbusters, like the, the dinosaur and the, the predator.

Like moving was kind of fine before y'all. I mean, it wasn't, but Right. Like taxis were kind of fine before y'all. And that delusional optimism to go like, wait a minute, we don't have to settle for something that sucks. Even if something that sucks is kind of working. How, how did you, I'm, the other thing I wanted to touch on that you, you went through is like, I think you both as a, a man and a friend, but also from what I've observed about you in the professional sense, you do listen to your customers.

And I thought when you were talking about the requests that were coming in of like, Hey, no, we only move students to, no, we can also. Move families to, no, we can do more. How would you advise and how do you advise your companies on the balance of, 'cause I think you and I agree on sales led product market fit, right?

Like get out of the castle, go get in front of customers and prospects. Yeah. Pitch and pitch and pitch and listen. But also like the tension of not reacting to the last request you had. Did you have a system or a process where you said, okay, now we've heard from enough credible prospects or customers? Or was it kind of a feel to go, okay, we've had a hundred or we've had 50.

What, what, how do you, how do you coach companies on that? 

[00:18:34] Cam Doody: Well, luckily, you know, in startups you have so many fires that are always burning 

[00:18:40] Jamie Grant: mm-hmm. 

[00:18:41] Cam Doody: That you, you're, you're very busy. Like you're, you're very busy in, in, you know, in in defense mode. Right. Just you, you, you crack some, some, uh, some new growth lever.

Your, your company starts growing that creates new problems for your company. And, and so, you know, you, you, you start putting out fires here and there, and so, and operationally you're like drowning a bit because your company is growing and then somebody shows up and, and says, Hey, but if you did this, like I would definitely buy this more, or I would sp spend more money or whatever.

You know, the, the silver lining in this is you're kind of preoccupied and so you have to hear something like enough before you're like, okay, uh, let's, let's take the next step up on the asso tote, you know? Yep. Um, and so, but I think this does happen to every company. You know, Airbnb is a perfect example.

Brian Chesky tells a story, you know, Airbnb, you know why Airbnb is called Airbnb? 

[00:19:49] Jamie Grant: I've heard this one. I know how they started and I think I have it right, but tell us, 

[00:19:55] Cam Doody: it was, it was aired and breakfast. Yes. So when they started the company, it was like, Hey, you rent an, you know, rent an aired in somebody's living room?

Yes. Okay. And so we started doing that and he's, and I'm just, you know, telling the story in his voice. So we started doing that. We started renting, you know, they started renting the, their mattresses and the living room. And then we, he was like, we started having customers come to us and be like, Hey, there's like a fully open bedroom in my apartment and I kind of feel weird making somebody sleep in the airbed and living.

Can we like make 'em, you know, can we just rent the room? And Brian was like, you know, for the first like 20 customers, we were like, well, yeah, I guess you could do that, but you have to put the aired on top of the bed. Okay. And so you get in these like little tunnel vision, you know. Sure. Periods of vision where you're like, yeah, but yeah, we could do that.

But then like that makes like, we named the company Air Bed and Breakfast and they're like, well, okay, I'm not even gonna be in my apartment this whole weekend. Somebody just wants to rent the whole thing for the whole weekend. Can I do that? And they were like, well, how are you gonna cook 'em breakfast in the morning?

Right? Yeah. And, and so everybody goes through this. There's only so much you can, you, you know, you can, you can, uh, catalyze on in any one time. And you have, you, you, you ha you have these, these anchors that are constantly, you know, that you're constantly having to like, cut anchor lines, you know? Um, and the tunnel vision's good, but you also need to be able to cut.

You know, one of the best, uh, sayings in, in venture is have strong convictions, but hold onto them loosely. 

[00:21:41] Jamie Grant: Yes. 

[00:21:42] Cam Doody: And. Uh, you know, that's probably the, the most defining characteristic of really great founders because you have to be able to keep cutting those anchor lines, you know? Um, I love 

[00:21:55] Jamie Grant: that one. One of the things that I, uh, you know, there's just certain, there's certain just masterpieces, I think, in our industry or in just business leadership.

Um, one of my all time favorites that kind of launched him was Simon Sinek to the, the Golden Circles. Yeah. Uh, to your point, to like truly understand the why, and I think in my experience when I've lost track of the why and I start thinking about the how or the what, I now care about the air mattress on top of the bed or cooking the breakfast, rather than understanding like truly timelessly why our company exists, which then, you know, the other thing you touched on that I think is, is really interesting that is.

Pervasive and I got to live this on the legislative side. And it was a fascinating journey to be a borderline libertarian that hates government, um, to, to be in a state that was super majority Republican, to be running legislation to try and abolish the regulatory capture that was, you know, preventing ride sharing or preventing the short term vacation rentals in this, you know, the, the oligarchy or the big interest that's sitting there.

Like my, my favorite on the, the vacation rental stuff was the hotel lobby showed up and they're like, dude, you can't let Airbnb or V or VRBO just operate. You don't know if there's a sexual predator like in the next unit. And I'm like, I tell you what, I'll make you a deal. I've already drafted the amendment.

You have to announce every time there's a sexual predator at the pool at your hotel. So if you wanna make them like, let's just level set this field. Um, and you know, they pretty quickly walked away from it, but it's like they're, they're willing to use kind of the hired gun to walk in and say like, it's not fair for a free market and private property rights to flourish because it'll attack our business.

And so instead of being intellectually honest, they're like, well, they could have a sex predator in there. It's like, do you do a check in of everybody that checks in at your hotel, a cross reference whether or not there's a sexual predator there. I like the regulatory capture piece. Um, and I, I don't know if you've seen Bill Gurley at the All-In Summit a couple years ago, but it is a beautiful, uh, a beautiful job of summarizing what I lived in the legislative front where it's like, how am I having a hard time getting conservative Republicans to disrupt markets and go like, let's just let private property or vehicles actually engage in commerce with people.

[00:24:17] Cam Doody: I, it was crazy. I pitched Bill, I pitched Bill Gurley 

[00:24:20] Jamie Grant: one time, by the 

[00:24:20] Cam Doody: way. 

[00:24:21] Jamie Grant: I wanna meet Bill Gurley because here's the thing, his that, um, that he, uh, the number of my, I actually have it, I will prove this to you in the world at some point. I ha I was going out to, uh, the valley that we would do like a group of, um, it was kind of an association led thing where it was like, um, legislative leaders from across the country, like 10, 20 of us that were really focused on tech friendly, policy free enterprise.

And it, I was flying from San Francisco back to DC and I remember thinking that the, the geographical distance, and I have it in a little mo and the geographical distance between DC and San Francisco is smaller than the metaphorical divide between the innovation community and regulatory capture. Sure.

[00:25:04] Cam Doody: Oh 

[00:25:04] Jamie Grant: yeah. And he titled that speech, um, he titled that speech, the number of miles. It's like 28 17 or something. I forget what it is. But the other thing that was crazy is he used Epic, uh, the EMR company and the regulatory capture that happened there. Who Epic was trying to kill us while we were a nobody trying to build the patient side of healthcare.

So, big plug for people who don't know regulatory capture, tell us, I said this was going anywhere. You pitch billed Gurley when you were at bellhops? 

[00:25:33] Cam Doody: Yep. 

[00:25:34] Jamie Grant: Mm-hmm. And what happened? 

[00:25:36] Cam Doody: Oh my gosh. It was, you know, I've, I've pitched probably a thousand VCs at this point, you know, over the, over the last decade.

But there's a few that just totally, you'll never forget. I remember, you know, how I felt going into that meeting. I mean, for, he had already your listeners, he had real, real 

[00:25:54] Jamie Grant: quick to to to level set. He's already early Uber at this point. Like he is, 

[00:25:59] Cam Doody: yeah. This was 2000 and, uh, 18. Okay. Um, so 

[00:26:04] Jamie Grant: for our audience, and, and real quick Cam, we have a, a total array like.

Give us Bill G tell people why you were nervous. I, I, 'cause you and I both would. Why Bill Gurley? Who is he in general and then specific to bellhops, like 

[00:26:26] Cam Doody: Yeah. Bill Gurley is like the emperor in Star Wars.

So Bill, bill Gurley runs a venture firm called Benchmark. Yeah. And they're one of the, you know, top performing, uh, venture investors of all time. And, um, you know, they don't have one of these like, massive funds. Like, it's not like you go into Andreessen Horowitz and there's like a hundred partners and you're in like a big business park.

And, you know, this is, uh, benchmark Capital is, is, I think it's five partners total. And I didn't know they were 

[00:27:02] Jamie Grant: that small. That's cool. 

[00:27:04] Cam Doody: Yeah. And they don't have any analysts. There's no, there's no layers in the business. It's just the partners and, and, and it's in like an unnamed, you know, building. Uh, uh, and I think I had just watched that succession.

I, I think I'm remembering this right, like May, if maybe succession wasn't around in, in 2018, I think it was. Um, but you remember when Kendall was like, he was like getting hyped up to go into like some meeting or something? He was trying to look cool and he was like blaring, like raging against the machine.

Yes. His headphones. Yes. I mean, I was like in an Uber on the way to this pitch. I was like, I am going to murder this pitch. I mean, I was so dialed in. I mean, I was, I walked in, we get into this room, whatever, and Bill, girl, if you don't know, he is like seven feet tall. I was about say he, he's, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if he's, I mean, he is tall.

He's like six. He's like 6, 10, 6. It's something. Yeah. So he comes in, he is got this super deep voice. He's, you know, he is from Austin, Texas, and, uh, he sits down and like, normally, you know, you go through your like pleasantries or whatever, and then you like get into the pitch or whatever. And so he sits down, he is like, got this, sits duh.

Like this. And he was like, okay, uh, what are we doing here? And I was like, uh, well, um, yeah, well we're, uh, bellhops, uh, we're raising our series C. Um, you know, would you like me to get into the deck here? And he is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Uh, and so we're like you, I'm like clicking through the first slide, get to like the SEO slide.

And I was like, you know, rattling off, you know, metrics, whatever. And he is like, why don't we just, uh, go to Google? Let's see, let's see how you actually pull up. Uh, and I was like, oh. Um, yeah. Okay. Uh, it was everything that he could do to throw you off. Um, he w he was doing the most nonchalant way, and we get like three quarters of the way through the deck and, and he just kind of stands up and he is just like, okay, cool.

Well, it's good to meet you guys. Um, I'll, uh, yeah, uh, Jenny, you can. Okay. And he just walks out of the room like I was, I wasn't even fully through the deck.

And, and did they follow up? Uh, no. No. It, it was, it was, uh, yeah, no, it was one of our investors had made, you know, bill invest in these like really high impact, like super sexy, super, uh, current companies, like a moving company. I'm sure he was walking into this meeting. He took it, you know, one of our investors like pulled like a hail Mary, like favor to get in front of him.

And, and I think he knew the whole time he was just kind of doing it for a favor. But, um. It was an experience. It was, it was a time. That's awesome. 

[00:29:58] Jamie Grant: So, so let's transition to Brickyard. Uh, so, so kind of setting the stage, you, uh, have, have a exit of, of some sort, right? Where you, you get the liquidity event, you step out to first question the build, just like the question of hypergrowth.

And I have unfortunately, or fortunately not experienced it. I, I actually kind of like, for what we're building now that I, I have not had the successful exit. I've had like the catastrophic ending, uh, which was an amazing experience. Um, painful, but, but amazing. What is that like to go through? Like you've gone through hypergrowth, you've been in chaos mode, you've gone through all of that.

You're now kind of like talking about a liquidity event and then the liquidity event happens and then you look at your bank account. I.

[00:30:54] Cam Doody: This is hard to describe. Um, I'll tell a quick story. So back in 2000 and and 12 when we had moved to Chattanooga at Lamppost group, the three founders of Lamppost were three entrepreneurs, started a company called Access American Transport. They sold the company in 2013, uh, when we were housed out of Lamppost.

Um, and they had become like our very close friends and they, you know, we were at the very beginning of our journey and they were at the end and they had this moment where they got bought, they had raised no venture capital and they got bought for about a half a billion dollars. And so there was no, you know, it was just, it was a huge outcome for these three best friends, right?

And they brought us into the room and they wanted us to like actually see it happen. Um, and so we're like kind of sitting back and they were just sitting there kitten refresh on their screen. And all of a sudden, like dink like one of one of these guys just kind of slumps back his chair and he kind of puts his head down like that.

And it was a, it was a look of loss.

[00:32:07] Jamie Grant: Keep going. Was a loss. Keep going. I, this is what I thought your answer was gonna be. Keep going. 

[00:32:13] Cam Doody: And I, you know, I'm all ex, I'm obviously super excitable, so I'm like, Barry, oh guys, what? This is me. Like, holy crap. You know, I was like this, surely this is the best day of your entire life. Like you just did what I am about to dedicate a decade of my life to hopefully do, uh, with absolutely no guarantee.

And it probably almost certainly won't happen, right? And it's like he looks up and he is like, it's not the best day of our life. Um, and it was kind of somber and they sort of just filtered out of the room and that was it. Um, and, and so, uh, in 2019 when, when we stepped outta bellhops, it was a very similar feeling.

Like it was just a, you, you, you spend all this time building something. It's very similar to raising a child. And, um, it's not natural to just move on. You know, it's, it's like, it's just, it's just a weird, it's just weird. Um, and I didn't understand that in 2012 and it, I couldn't even wrap my head around that, um, until in, you know, until we, we experience something, you know, similar.

Um, and so, uh, yeah, that's probably how I would describe it. 

[00:33:44] Jamie Grant: Alright, so then you, 'cause I do, I, I, I mean, I. Kind of, you know, when we had what happened to our company, it was like the loss without the bank account, right? Like, I mean, I literally lost all common stock in something we built for eight years. And fortunately the papers didn't really realize it, but they're dunking on me every day.

Uh, I went broke, like in public. I had my house, I had my $29,000 legislative salary, uh, for a part-time job. And I had just lost, you know, eight figures of worth on paper. And it's like, you can't get back into the company. We've got 325 employees that are looking for a job. I don't think people realize the attachment that develops.

And I would never equate it to kids. Uh, not a dad hopefully will be, but like, I, I don't wanna, I can't even imagine right, that, that attachment, but. Uh, there is a, a, a second tier level of attachment and a family-like bond that you realize, and I think team sports really helped with this. Like, you know, there's that moment when you're a senior that you're like, this locker room will never be together again.

Yeah. And, and there, but when it's, man, when you've co-founded something and built something with people that you have gone, like the, the hyper growth phase of like who's in the foxhole, who's in the trenches, that that builds a level of bond that I don't think people that haven't gone through something similar can, can relate to, which I thought was gonna be your answer.

So you go through that period. How does Brickyard start? What is Bricky Yards? Um, introduce Bricky Yards from a why Chattanooga perspective. Like, I think there's something cool there. Um, like, like why did you pick Chattanooga? And then what is Bricky Yards? And then we'll pull some threads on that. And then I wanna get to kind of like where you see the landscape, because I think.

Yeah, let's start there. 

[00:35:45] Cam Doody: Well, so the, the group that wrote our first check in a bellhops called Lamppost Group, and it wasn't an accelerator, it wasn't an incubator. There was no demo day. It was not all it was was a venture firm, but if they wrote a check into you, you came and built in their building. And we did that alongside 10 other companies over like a four or five year period.

And it was magic. It was like, uh, seven of those 10 companies are really big, super successful companies. And we all started, you know, in the same second floor of the Loveman's building downtown Chattanooga. And, you know, there was something very special about the competition and the, the extended exposure to o these other founders as they went through their trough of sorrow and, and ultimately, you know, hit product market fit like the bonds that you created.

Outside of like, you know, a lot of the accelerators today, like Y Combinator, which is amazing. Um, you know, that's a 10 week bootcamp, functionally. Yeah, right. But when you spend a year or two years or three years alongside, you know, others that are, uh, operating under the same pressures that you are and you're experiencing their highs and their lows and, um, it, it's just a very different thing.

And so we knew this this whole time. You know, when, when we came up for air and we were all free agents again, whenever that would be, we were gonna do lamppost again. Um, and so that's what Brickyard was. So when we, when we, Matt and I stepped outta Bellhops, right before COVID, we took about a year off. And then, you know, believe me, like sitting on a beach and, you know, waking up at, you know, 8:00 AM on a Tuesday and kind of mulling around the house until a 10:00 AM yoga class.

It's not all it's cracked up to be. All right. It's. It's very, uh, it's a, it is a terrible feeling. And so we of were, 

[00:37:40] Jamie Grant: first of all, for anybody that knows Cam duty thinking that you could do that for two weeks, let alone a year. Yeah, 

[00:37:47] Cam Doody: yeah. It was, it was, uh, not start crazy maddening. And of course, like I got into like a million things, like over that, you know, but it was, I was just squirreling around.

I, it was super fun and I got into a bunch of really, you know, exciting, you know, side quests. But like, I wanted that depth. Yeah. Like I wanted to be back in the trenches. And so we all came back together as a group and we bought a building on the south side of Chattanooga, which is this amazing old Persian rug warehouse.

Um, we turned it into exactly what we wanted. Uh, ourselves and we basically took the playbook of lamppost, which we really understood from the operator side. 

[00:38:31] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:38:31] Cam Doody: And, uh, and we ran it back, but we didn't know, you know, this was 20 21, 22, during like this bubble in mania and venture capital. Um, we didn't know if we could attract top tier, top 0.1% founders to functionally the middle of nowhere in Chattanooga, like totally away from these, these established tech hubs.

But we knew that actually building in this environment is accretive to early stage teams because you don't need talent density if you're not scaling your company, right. What you need to get to product market fit is radical focus and you need to be around other founders that are in your exact stage who can push you and challenge you, uh, and you can have tactical discussions about how you're solving problems and things.

Um, and so, uh, we're a traditional venture capital firm. We write, you know, three to $600,000 checks into pre-seed and seed stage technology companies all over the world, you know, uh, and if you take a check from us, you're basically buying into our style of building, which is put the blinders on, um, and completely lock in until you get to a million and run rate at a, at a minimum.

Um, and, uh, and so we, we naturally attract a very specific type of founder, which are like kind of your like junky yard dogs. Like they're not in venture capital because they're putting it on their resume, that they raise money from Andres and Horowitz, and they're not going after Forbes 30, under 30, and they're not doing the parties and the events and all the other BS that comes with venture.

You know, these are just. Serious startup operators that have a company that they're sort of neurotic about solving and they wanna put themselves in an environment where they can just lock in. Yeah. And that's hard to fake. And we're like, in this world today where there's way more materials out there on how do you build a deck and what metrics do you talk about?

And like how, what words are you saying? And you know, when you're talking to investors and it's like, it's like Rolexes in the eighties, it's like the fakes are getting really good, you know? Yeah. And when you're a pre-seed or seed stage investor, um, you're just looking for the fakes as like a first order of business.

And, and so we said, all right, maybe the best thing that we could do is build this highly inconvenient, totally unorthodox thing where we actually attract a very specific type of founder that. Doesn't fall into, you know, that category of, you know, the folks that are in it for the wrong reasons. And it's been a major edge for us.

Uh, and so yeah, we, we've backed 44 companies now over the last three years. Um, teams come here for about two years at a time, and, you know, they're in Brickyard 90, a hundred hours a week. Um, and it's a blast and it's a ton of work and it's, you know, it's just, it's um, it's, it's an execution house. Um, and we think that that's really what was missing in venture.

And so we, we've really carved off a pretty unique edge in the space, um, where we're able to, to continue to invest in a very specific type of founder over and over and over again. 

[00:41:54] Jamie Grant: So, so you keep throwing out just like gold. I think we could do another episode on depth. In general, I'm convinced that there is a crisis societally.

I mean, in friendships, marriages, businesses, like the lack of depth in our generation and in this country, I think has all of these different symptoms. Um, and I think at some point we all understand that there is the choice between breadth and depth. Like at some point time is linear and we have to be a broad based business person, whatever it may be, or a deep person.

Um, and as you kept going, cam, one of the things that I think, and I don't know if y'all have ever talked about this as a team, but having been on the operator side of venture, not on the, the, the general partner, limited partner side, one of the things that scares me about raising venture again if I ever did it, is does my board, do the investors actually understand our business?

[00:43:00] Cam Doody: Yeah. 

[00:43:01] Jamie Grant: And y'all made a bet that I loved the painting or the lithograph, whatever it is. When you did the unveil of Burn the Ships, I was like, it's middle of COVID. You have everybody trying to celebrate remote work. You are literally going with your personal money where everybody is not going right. Like you, you are taking this position that says like, you know, we have to kowtow to remote work and we have to give these entitled folks what they want if we want, and and y'all said, no, no, you come here to burn the ships.

You come here to be here will be in the trenches with you. I wonder how much there's an alignment in how much like risk mitigation or risk management you as a general partner are doing by also being at Brickyard with them to actually understand their business in a way that I think would be difficult in traditional venture.

[00:43:52] Cam Doody: Yeah, I mean, I think, well there, I think there's like two things at play here. Number one, these companies change week to week in the early days for like, yes. 

[00:44:02] Jamie Grant: Yes. And 

[00:44:02] Cam Doody: so even if you underwrite a company, you know, it's almost certainly like a hundred percent different than what you underwrote even like a quarter later, right?

Yeah. If, if it's a good team, like, you know, sometimes you, you make investments in teams that like kind of really dialed into exactly what they, you know, yeah. What their go to market motion was or whatever. But that's pretty rare. Like normally your best founders are like reaching these false summits and they're not wasting any time at the top and they're sprinting back down and they're scaling another one and two months after investment, you know, they're doing something totally different than the, you know, that, that doesn't even make sense for your, in invest from for, for your LP memo that you wrote about why you invested, you know, so that's one thing, and it's really difficult to stay on top of that.

When, you know, let's say you've made 30 or 50 investments in a bunch of really early stage companies, and all you're getting are like monthly or quarterly updates. 

[00:45:00] Jamie Grant: You're doing a QBR to learn where they are, right? Like 

[00:45:03] Cam Doody: yeah, and it's, and so being around these teams, like we don't have standing meetings, um, although we're constantly getting pulled into, you know, rooms like, we've got this problem, how do we solve this problem?

And, and it's not like we have all the answers. We just are founders. And so it's a bunch of founders in one place, and we're all kind of trying to solve each other's problems, you know, uh, from, from, from, from day to day or whatever. Um, 

[00:45:31] Jamie Grant: my question to you real quick, I to, because you had a second one, my, uh, my, not my question.

My prediction is that when you get pulled into those war rooms, you're giving more questions to solve problems than answers. 

[00:45:45] Cam Doody: Well. The, the, the, the, the truest thing that I can say about real founders is they will never, ever listen to what you tell 'em to do. It's almost certain, like it's gotta be their idea.

The Socratic method is timeless for a reason. It is, you're absolutely right. And if you come in, you know, super prescriptive, which is hard to, you know, as any founder is, you're, you're very opinionated. You, you know, have very, you know, clear lens of one way that you see the world, et cetera. It's hard to not be prescriptive.

Um, every time I've been prescriptive with a founder, like 100% hit rate, they've done the total opposite thing of what I've suggested. And so, yeah, you, you really do, you have to ask the right questions and you have to get them to start asking the right questions. 

[00:46:37] Jamie Grant: So if I want to touch on here for a second, because, um, us as a company being a hundred percent.

Committed right now to, to like radically disrupting the go to market for public sector innovation. Yeah. Um, which is, is in desperate need, but part of our conversation that led to thinking like, hey, I know we're in like different places, so to speak in the industry. You made what I think is your first investment in a technology company that is a hundred percent focused on the public sector.

Uh, I don't know if there's more than one, but I know of one that I've had a chance to kind of get to know a little bit. I'm curious if there's more. I'd love to, when you made the decision to back prole, um, how did you look at, let, let's step back for one second. What I try and tell people when we look at investment in the public sector is that traditional venture has problems in that the public sector business unit is gonna be about three times as expensive on a cost per lead basis.

The sales cycle's gonna be twice as long. The customer acquisition cost is effectively criminal, but the lifetime value of a customer is elite, right? So if I compared commercial business to public sector business, CAC in the commercial space is way better. Like faster growth, faster logo acquisition, lifetime value, not as good, right?

Yeah. Um, public sector is kinda the inverse. I wanna do two things. One, I wanna know why you took the bet on Prol as a guy who has some adjacent experience in the public sector, but not necessarily in like winning public sector business. Why did you ultimately make a bet on them? And then let's dive into where you see kind of public sector policy and incentives and kind of this new frontier we're in going.

Do you plan on doing more? Do you think there's an, i I wanna jam out for a second after that, so I'll quit rattling questions. Why did you make that bet and do you see yourself making more bets on public sector technology companies? 

[00:48:42] Cam Doody: Yeah. Yeah, we have, um. Yeah, prol is, um, you know, we're very drawn to founders that are, um, sort of just extraordinary people.

And like, that may come off like, you know, of course everybody's gonna say, you know, but when I say extraordinary, I mean like different, like just different people. You know, real founders are just different. You meet 'em and you're like, what was that? That, I don't know if it was good or bad, but it was something, you know, and, you know, the, the prole team fit this mold of, okay, they're, they're viewing something from a completely different angle than most people.

And, uh, you know, Nick, the CEO is just a, you know, very smart HighQ, very, uh, just driven person. Um. And we really loved what they were doing in the beginning, but this was one of those stories like the, you know, what prole is today is not what we backed 

[00:49:44] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:49:45] Cam Doody: In the beginning, you know, in the beginning. It's not 

[00:49:47] Jamie Grant: even what you introduced them to me as 

[00:49:50] Cam Doody: I know, and that's how the, this, that's how these things go.

And, and so yeah, when we backed, uh, prole, you know, 95% of our decisioning is like, are these dogs? Are, these are these dogs that are about to go to war for a decade, and they have the chops to do it. They have the drive to do it. They have a direction that is interesting to us, but like, we don't have the ego of trying to, you know, speculate on like how the market is going to receive, you know, completely new technologies like ai.

Yeah, 

[00:50:25] Jamie Grant: yeah. 

[00:50:26] Cam Doody: What I do know is that every extraordinary company that will be built will be built by a neurotic person that's obsessed with what they're doing, that's working in insane amount of hours. That is totally committed to, you know, building a really large company like that's, that is investible at this stage.

[00:50:45] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:50:45] Cam Doody: And so that's why we invested. But, you know, um, functionally the idea of, of how do you use AI to index all of this information on, on, you know, on the web and parse it into these like manageable chunks to then create value to, uh, uh, for, for the market. And, uh, you know, they started about, uh, how do we go scrape the, the web use AI to scrape the web for every public RFP and put it into a marketplace and then we'll match.

You know, um, contractors with these RFPs and we can handle a lot of the RFP process and like the RFP writing and um, you know, we, we can match them with the right products or, or, or projects and, and we can take a, we can make, but it was still murky. It was like, yeah, like there's something there, but we don't know exactly and they've pivoted a couple times.

Um, and uh, and that's what you have to do, especially now, like more so, you know, 10 years ago technology if, if technology was like, you know, doing 70 down the interstate 10 years ago, well it's, you're like up in the flight levels doing like 600 knots today. It's just moving so much quicker and so you can't linger when something is not right.

And, uh, and so anyway, they've, they've been really great about not lingering and, and pivoting and, and, you know, we, we feel really confident this team's gonna be able to land on something really exciting because they have the, the foundation of, you know, these are real founders that are technologists or technical team.

They're, you know, they've got the chops and they've got the will to really understand, you know, how do we find the problem, uh, that needs to be solved? Like, how do we really dial into that one thing? 

[00:52:36] Jamie Grant: No, it was fun. I, I've, I think I've spent two or three sessions with 'em, just, you know, friend to friend, uh, be a soundboard, whatever, and it's really clear.

First engagement, they are dogs, right? Like, these guys, uh, have done their homework. Um, and so that's fun, right? Like, I don't necessarily have a lot of time to, to do like, you know, the, the soundboard stuff, what we're trying to build, but it's also super encouraging and motivating for us what we're trying to build to go like, Hey, there are other folks out there adjacent.

That if we can help spotlight landmines for them or, or they can help get us to think about something differently. To your point, kind of that acc creative component of, of what Bricky Yards is, is building. So do you see, um, do you see a model for Venture on the horizon that, I think there's two things at play here.

One where software was going 70 and now 600 knots. I think the other thing that's true, when you co-founded bellhops and I co-founded Carey, the dependency and the value in the expense of engineering talent was like inverted to today. The, yes, the Cam or the Jamie that might be highly strategic, that might know how to map out a, a go to market and say like, I can go win, but I need you to build me.

The thing that that wins with we're, we're kind of going into this place where, and I'll say specifically for the public sector. I've been very vocal that I think we're in like the second inning of the third spring training game when it comes to software in the public sector. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, if you're building for the public sector right now, it's kind of two choices.

Like learn COBOL and make that your retirement strategy to go work on mainframes or like understand how to leverage the tools that are out there. That's gonna kind of get us maybe a little bit back to a different version of tech enabled services. Um, and I mean, away from kind of the big system integrator boondoggles that make the technology itself subservient to the Army that can win the RFP and not fully SaaS.

'cause I'm not sure the, the public sector, the government entity has the, the team, the training, the talent, the longevity to go into like that CapEx model of like building a team to manage SaaS. Mm-hmm. Do you think there's a play for venture? So if, if, if you agree with those things, uh, and tell me if you don't, but if, if you agree with those things.

Do you think there's a play for venture, a model? Have you seen anything that sets the stage for an investment that doesn't just view a liquidity event as the only win for the GP and the lp such that the business that's come into the public sector to today that has this ability to generate a really long tail LTV might kind of fit in that cash cow bucket that might not be in the acquisition bucket.

Do you, do you see venture playing there in a way that I don't think it does today? 

[00:55:40] Cam Doody: You know, I kind of doubt it. It it, if I think about, I. If you just think about the structuring of, of venture capital, where you have the LPs that are investing in gps, and the gps are, their job is go find the companies and make the investments and manage to fund, et cetera.

[00:55:58] Jamie Grant: Yep. 

[00:55:59] Cam Doody: Um, you know, LPs are looking to like tie up capital for a period of time and then get liquid again. 

[00:56:06] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:56:07] Cam Doody: Um, you know, if, if, if they're looking for cash flow or if they're looking for dividends, they're looking in other buckets. 

[00:56:15] Jamie Grant: Okay. 

[00:56:15] Cam Doody: Um, but I, I think that, that what we're about to see in, in, in technology, just in, in the market period, is the prices of all things are gonna gonna be falling to the floor in terms of price or cost of production.

And so bellhops perfect example, we've probably spent 30 or 40 million bucks in our tech stack over the last 10 years. We could probably build it today for like one or 2 million bucks. Right. Um, with like, you know, a, a fifth of the engineers and faster and faster and, and, and probably, you know, a, a 10, 10 times, you know, less Yeah.

Time. So, yeah. Um, the, the, as, as that happens, you, you are gonna have companies that don't need to burn as much capital as they used to need to do in order to produce hyper growth. 

[00:57:18] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[00:57:18] Cam Doody: Um, and they're also going to be profitable way quicker. And so you have the ability for smaller teams to get really large with great margins way quicker.

And so I do think that venture is gonna be in for a, a pretty wild reshuffling over the next decade for a number of reasons. And we've kind of talked about, I. I dunno if you wanna get into, you know, the Bitcoin thing, but yes. That's where we're 

[00:57:44] Jamie Grant: going next. That's one coming out of erp. Like, that's the other thing that I think is really insane and awesome about the audacious bet y'all were making at Brickyard at the time.

Because if you put all those factors together, there's COVID remote work, you're in the middle of ERP where valuations went insane. Mm-hmm. Where anybody with cash could be a, a, a GP in some regards or an lp. Yeah. Right. Like you didn't have to be good. Um, and I think there's, I, I subscribe to the theory that there's gonna be a washout of a lot of folks who have the title of venture capital that were able to do it well.

There's certainly in the middle of COVID with erp, silly money, zero interest like the next decade. You better be really good. 

[00:58:30] Cam Doody: There's certainly that. I mean, absolutely. Yeah. I'll kind of break this down. I think like your, your growth stage investors. That are raising these like billion dollar multi-stage funds, you know, companies aren't gonna need to raise a four or 500, $600 million series, C, DE, whatever, right?

Yeah. They're not gonna need to raise that much money anymore. And so, um, and so capital is going to be, you know, crammed into, there's gonna be the same amount of capital searching for yield is out there, um, but it's gonna be much more discerning into like who's actually getting the capital right? As opposed to like the spray and pray thing.

But this is part of a larger theme of we've broken our money and, um, you know, we may be in an environment today, like if we, if we enter back into a decade, like the seventies of persistent high inflation, um, which I think is, is, is very possible, if not probable. Um, there may be venture funds that return two times or three times capital.

You know, in 12 years. But the LPs are actually getting less buying power than they gave the GPS 10 or 12 years prior. So nominally there's a return and you know, the venture firms will be like, wow, we're a three x fund, whatever. Well, the, the LP actually didn't get as much buy, so we all, so we're living in a world that's nominal.

People look at their salaries and they say, well, I got a five, you know, I made a hundred thousand dollars last year and this year I making 110. You know, and that feels good, right? Well if with 12% inflation, like you have less money than you had last year when you made a hundred grand. You know? And, and, and so the numbers that we are being told, uh, with, with regard to, to inflation, like the CPI is one, it's a rate.

It's not co it's, it's not. Comprehensive inflation. It's a rate, it's just Yep. How fast is accelerating. Right. But, but two, it doesn't include, it's, it's not honest, you know, it, you know, the CPI consumer price index doesn't include, uh, energy. It doesn't include housing and it doesn't include food. Okay. Well, what are your top three line items for any American family in terms of budgets?

Those three things. So like, what are we even measuring? 

[01:00:56] Jamie Grant: Okay. Before you even get to auto insurance, right? Like it, it, when you take Florida, for example, like obviously a lot of great growth happening in COVID, but when you look at property insurance and auto insurance and you incorporate that into inflation, it's like.

What is my actual ability to own and accrue assets? If you really think about it, like for a middle class American family today, how do they start acquiring and start accruing assets? And, and I think if we expressed to your point, the impact of inflation, it's expressly that it's harder to own a house.

It's harder to own a car and the cost of energy just in my family unit before we get to the national security concerns on energy and winning the AI battle. Mm-hmm. That I think is, you know, forefront. So not to hijack it from you, I love where you're going on the CPI 

[01:01:47] Cam Doody: Well it all just comes down to this like, okay, the, let's go back to two, the year 2000.

Alright. The last 25 years of the s and p, the s and p five hundred's grown at like 7.2%. Okay. What do you think the, the, the M two, the, the, the, the, the growth of our money supply? What has it grown at? 

[01:02:09] Jamie Grant: I, you're gonna tell me 

[01:02:11] Cam Doody: it's literally 7.2%. Okay? And so these are the 500 best companies in the world, okay?

And they are just keeping up with inflation. And this is why, okay? Technology is naturally deflationary, all right? Prices fall to the marginal cost of production. Over time. Companies compete. I figure out how to make a cup for 10 cents less than you. I charge 10 cents less. I take your customers consumer benefits, and now they're paying 10 cents less for less for the coffee cup.

That's like how a free market works with technology. We're getting better at all things every year, right? Yeah. Life should be getting easier every year. Our money should be affording more every year. But what's happening is because we are in this debt ridden system, we've got 36 and a half trillion dollars in debt, okay?

And so. The Fed is acting out of, its, uh, out of, out of self preservation. They basically have one job, don't default. Okay, you got 36 trillion in debt, right? And everybody's like, well, I'm not worried about inflation because we're about to have a productivity miracle with technology. And it's like, that's the worst thing that can happen because here is, here's why.

Okay? We're 4% more productive every year in this, you know, in the, in the US economy, about 4% more productive. Okay? So we get 4% better at doing all things. Okay, well, a 3% inflation rate, you know, the feds target a fee, 3% inflation, they're stealing the 4% in, in price drops that we should be experiencing, plus 3% more.

Okay? So it's really at 3% inflation rate. When you're growing at 4%. Is, is the Fed's stealing 7% from you every year? Okay, well. What's about to happen in this next decade is we're about to go from 4% to 6% to 8% to 15%. Okay? More productive as the cost of things drops faster than in any time in, in history. And to offset that deflationary gain.

Because keep in mind, like every time we are more productive, you're ramming more. I make less, well, you're ramming more energy into the, into the same number of units. Okay? So that 36 trillion in debt is now harder to pay off 'cause each dollar is worth more. Okay? So the Fed has to print to offset these gains.

And so as this accelerates, this is gonna accelerate. And so the debasement of our money is going to literally just go in lockstep and they're just maintaining like when life should be getting way easier every single year. We're just maintaining. And so that's this concept of, of what Bitcoin is, which is, is a.

[01:05:03] Jamie Grant: Yeah. Real quick, let me, I want to, I wanna, I wanna hit pause for one second 'cause I don't wanna lose this piece. Yep. I want to, I want to go to Bitcoin and AI 'cause you have some really cool stuff on it, but I wanna go backwards for a second. When I asked you the question about venture and how it plays in the public sector, you gave the answer that I expected.

Right. Venture doesn't really set up for, uh, investments in companies that are gonna do business in the public sector specifically. Right. Like a, a, a, a company that only plays in the public sector for all the reasons you said. Right? Um, the pace of growth over here in the commercial, like if you're a founder and you can grow in the commercial market a hundred times faster and it's way more straightforward and you don't have to deal with regulatory capture.

And you don't have to deal with RFPs and you don't have to deal with all the moats that keep you out, like in the scenario of the, the cheaper coffee cup. Like you can go in the commercial market and sell that really easily. If you want to go to the public sector and sell a coffee cup for a dollar less, it's actually harder.

Like it is easier to sell a coffee cup for 10 cents less in the commercial world than it is to sell a coffee cup for a dollar less in the public sector world. And I think my concern is that without a way to align incentives and fund innovation in the public sector, just like the delta between the Fed and the productivity rates, right, um, there's gonna be this growing chasm where it's gonna be harder and harder and harder for innovators to access the public sector and the public sector.

You know, whether it's an agency head, a governor, a mayor, a CIO, they're gonna be left. To be completely beholden to kind of the, the, the big players that, like Kodak and Blockbuster are still alive in this world because Netflix can, in the iPhone can't happen in that ecosystem. So I'd love for you to chew on that for later.

Like, that's not a now thing, but that's, yeah, that's kind of why I was asking the question of, not from a Bricky yards perspective, but from a public sector innovation perspective, where right now, so much of that money is dominated by the, you know, the, the massive company that's kind of part of that oligarchy.

And it makes it really hard for somebody who is doing the productivity gains to enter that space. And that's one of my concerns. That's why I love what Doge is doing to follow the data. Follow the dollar. 

[01:07:43] Cam Doody: Look, that's what I was gonna say, like, look like the, the, the, the, the public market. Or, or the, or the pro, the, the government should be just as discerning, if not more discerning as the consumer in the public market.

Yes. Right. Like they should be chasing, but one of 'em 

[01:08:00] Jamie Grant: operates on a p and l. Like what I tell people all the time, like when, when somebody goes like, how come this big it project gets canceled in two quarters in the commercial world, but it goes five years in the public sector. Sure. There's a p and l over here that's governing.

And I think you would, you would say, and I would agree as a taxpayer, the government should be running a p and l. There should be a scorecard. There should be something that's like, why do I have 500 change orders? Sure. 

[01:08:24] Cam Doody: Well, I, I think that that's why we're going department by department, by department in, in by line item.

Right? Like, I love it. Right? Like we must, people do not understand that. It, it's not like the government just has like a cornucopia that just, you know, like produces value. No, we produce the value. 

[01:08:50] Jamie Grant: That's right. 

[01:08:50] Cam Doody: And then we pay taxes, and then the government prints money at their discretion and there's no checks and balances as to where that money money goes.

And so the capital allocation in the free market is like, we're the best capital allocators there are because we have kids that we have to, you know, put food on the table every night. Like, if I make a bet on something and it returns less to me than I put in, then like I just, I just hurt my kids. Right?

Like the government has none of that. And that's why we're seeing, um, you know, the, the problem is we, we have to start the, you know, the. The government has to start running like a family that is trying to take care of its children and it's not doing that. Dude, I love that you 

[01:09:37] Jamie Grant: said that. I, I heard, um, Howard Lutnick recently was talking, I didn't know this, I don't know if you know this, that GDP actually incorporates government spending.

So when the government tells us what GDP is, it's, it actually factors in how much money government spent 

[01:09:59] Cam Doody: that, that, that, that's absolutely asinine. Crazy. Isn't that insane? I'm finding out new stuff like this, I feel like, like every week and it's, it's, it's unfathomable what, how bad the rot has become.

Like we are being lied to, and it's not like everyone in the government's evil. It's just this little lie has turned into this big and then this big and this big and this big. And. Everybody that's new that's coming into this thing, it's like, well, this is just how it's done. And so it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And now, you know, we're, we're in a really, uh, pivotal moment. 

[01:10:37] Jamie Grant: Do you wanna make a public wager here? And I know you won't make this wager. Um, I, I would be willing to bet. And when Lutnick was talking about this, he actually kind of teased it, that if you look at government spending prior to an election, they dump spending so that they can say, GDP is growing, and then look at the next two quarters.

And it's like, well, we've run all the money out. And so to your point that what made me think about that Cam is when you, I love when you talk about, like, thinking about our kids is like, the conversation in DC has always been, well, if you want to touch entitlement reforms, you're gonna take Medicare away from old people.

You're gonna take healthcare away from kids, rather than actually looking at the amount of rot and saying like, Hey, we're actually lying to people. And what if we looked at what is spent before, like. I, I think it's crazy to think that we can't clean up line by line in agencies and actually preserve the intended benefit better Yeah.

Than we can when, when GDP doesn't like, like, doesn't even require production. It's just bending. We're, we're 

[01:11:40] Cam Doody: talking and I don't know how much time we, like, I, I don't wanna like go too much down this, this path. I don't care. We keep going. Well, but we're, we're talking about the symptoms. Yes. Like everybody is talking about the symptoms.

The symptoms. What's the 

[01:11:57] Jamie Grant: disease? What's the disease in your mind? Because I think this takes you to where you were gonna go on Bitcoin in a way that I think is really interesting and I don't wanna lead you that way, but, but let, let's dive on The disease. It's, 

[01:12:08] Cam Doody: it's creating money out of thin air, which is nothing other than theft.

It's a lie theft. It's, it's theft. Yeah. Like the creation of money 

[01:12:20] Jamie Grant: is theft. And so why, why break that down in a way my mom would understand, like if, if the Fed prints money, uh, 'cause I don't think you're saying it's metaphorical theft or arbitrary theft. I think you're saying it is literal theft of the value that John and Beverly Grant have.

[01:12:36] Cam Doody: Well, okay, so like taxes, okay. You have to vote for politicians to come in and then like they have to vote on be, you know, in Congress on behalf of their constituents. Like, yes, we want these tax hikes or whatever. Like in order to, to tax more, you know, the elected officials in our government have to propose legislation to raise taxes.

Okay. And this is like this agreed upon thing. Okay. And then obviously there's, there's a lot of like trickery that happens there. And there's a lot of ways that you can get, but for the most part, you know, indirectly we elect. People that we think are gonna raise taxes or lower taxes. Right. Um, it, I mean, is that the, uh, uh, 

[01:13:21] Jamie Grant: no, I think I, I think you're there.

But I also think the other thing that doesn't get talked about enough, and, and this was fascinating me, you know, to kind of be in the locker room of the, of the legislature for a decade, um, we also elect them to spend more 

[01:13:35] Cam Doody: y Yes. But let me just go back. Basically what I'm saying is, is like taxes are like, they're, they, they are taking from us, but they're at least doing us the honor of telling us that they're taking from us.

Agree. I like where you're going. Yep. Okay. And, and so what all inflation is, is like, let's say I have, let, let's say I have three cups here. Okay. Let, let's use 2020 COVID. All right. There's three cups on the table and they're all full of water. All right. Well, COVID happened and we decided that we're gonna print 40% of every dollar that's ever been in circulation.

Okay, so we put two more cups on the table. Alright. Were those cups full? No. There was nothing in the cup until it touched the table and then all of a sudden, the second it touched the table, now I have five cups that are like 80% full. Okay. 

[01:14:30] Jamie Grant: And so, 'cause there's no more water, to your point, like for this example, there's no more water, there's just more cups.

[01:14:36] Cam Doody: There's no value that's created when you add a zero on a ledger. Okay? There's no value to the economy. There's no more goods or services that have been provided there. You're just diluting the money. It's like, Hey, have a sweet tea. This takes tastes great, and then you pour some water in it. It's like it doesn't taste as good, right?

That's buying power. Okay? Yeah. And so. So when, when unelected people can decide to print, you know, dilute all of us by 40%, my dad that's been saving for decades and decades, you know, for retirement. Okay, well now his money is going, you know, functionally it's going to go 40% less far. Okay. And it's gonna take a while for that to spread through the, you know, to through the market.

And for that to be realized, the, the creation of money is just purely theft. So if you just think about, um, all, you know, you, you have power production plants, like think of like a nuclear power plant, right? And it's kicking off megawatts. Alright, well those are our companies that are creating better goods and services every year.

They're like creating new stuff. Okay. And it's great. All right. Well. In order for a civilization to, to, uh, function, you have to have a fungible money that you can trade for goods and services in the economy. Okay? And so these are like batteries over here, alright? And so all of a sudden you've got all these new, these power plants kicking off money and they're stuffing them into these batteries, alright?

And the batteries are what we use to do our life. Every ev you know, every day. Well, if the government just keeps throwing more batteries on this side, the production plants aren't producing more electricity. You know, there's just more batteries. You know, that, that electricity is just being spread out across more batteries.

And so the, the concept of what Bitcoin is, is, is a totally fixed supply of money that's infinitely divisible, which is not dilutive. You can just divide it infinitely. So, so functionally what needs to happen is everything in the world is downstream of the, of money. Right. And if, if the money's corrupted at the top, it corrupts everything else all the way down the stack.

And so what's happening is, is we have too much debt. In order to main remain solvent, we have to continue printing debt. It's not just a problem in the us it's a problem in every government on earth. You know, these central banks are printing money. You know, the we're the U USD is the best fiat money on Earth.

It's the Titanic. Okay? But we all know it's sinking. We can buy less and less every year. We know it's sinking, but we're not gonna jump ship into the icy waters to go to the Russian ruble. You know, they're further in the water than we are, and we're not gonna jump ship, and we're not swimming over the Chinese yuan.

You know, we're just gonna sit here on the Titanic and we're gonna listen to the dude play the, the violin, and we're just gonna be like, I hope somebody comes, but like, life's not that bad. Like, we're on the Titanic. Like we got food and stuff. Well. What happened was is we had a boat that just pulled right up next to the Titanic 10 years ago or, or 15, uh, yeah, 15 years ago when the Bitcoin white papers was ridden.

And it's a verifiably, indestructible boat. Okay. And you have a few people that are jumping ship and now we're having institutions and BlackRock and governments and, you know, we're having your first player swim out. They're leaving the dollar, they're swimming out to this completely isolated system, monetary system.

Um, and they're climbing into the presidential suites over there. Okay. Well, the Titanic is taking on too much water. We're never gonna patch the hole. The 36 trillion in debt that we have is only gonna get worse. We're refinancing 9 trillion of our money this year into higher rates. You know, we are, there's, there's no way to earn our way out of this because.

On top of the 36 trillion, we have another a hundred trillion of unfunded liabilities in, in, in, um, you know, social security, Medicare, et cetera. Like, there's no way out of this. And so what, this is actually a good thing because what needs to happen is there needs to be a separation of money in state.

Obviously the state needs to be able to take tax and they need to be able to function on behalf of their constituents, but the, the, their ability to print money is nothing but theft from us. So they tax us and then they're like, stab us. And the ribs kind of behind our back when, you know, when they printed 40% every dollar in circulation after COVID, well, they gave us about a, 1,000,000,000,005 back, but then they took five and a half trillion of it, and then they did whatever they wanted with it.

Right? Right. And so that was theft. They stole that from us. Anybody that held. Money saved, money had to pay for that, and we're going to pay for that with inflation. And so do 

[01:19:42] Jamie Grant: you, do you, real quick, do you think that the, the, I don't know, I don't know what the right question is here, but like at the same time the market was ripping and so it's almost like there's this charade to cover up the theft that says again to that nominal when you were talking about the, just the, the growth and productivity.

If we said like the growth of the asset, uh, in the way of commodities that are publicly traded, it's almost like the American public doesn't necessarily realize that sometimes the market ripping is actually just another nominal kind of mask over their actual buying power. 

[01:20:21] Cam Doody: Well, well of course, because, because there was a flight to, to preserve purchasing power.

And so if you knew that inflation was coming, if you knew the money was being debased, well you're gonna hold assets. Right? Right. It's, it's the people that can't hold assets that are getting the most screwed here. And so preach and, and, and so, um, yeah, like when you know your money is being devalued, you, you're, you're, you're trying, you, you're, you're, you have to go find yield to offset the, the, the debasement of the money that you're holding.

You're not gonna, you know, our parents, for example, like when we were in high school, I guarantee you our parents had savings accounts. They had cash in a savings account. Do you have a savings account? No. Hardly do I have a savings account? No. Do our parents have savings? No. You're fully allocated into the market and you may have like, maybe like a little emergency fund.

Yep. Um, we've killed saving. And so the Yes. The time process. Any incentive to save by the way? Sure. Like. Uh, which is crazy. Sorry. Well, there, there is no incentive to saving because you, you know, you're just gonna lose seven to 10% of your money every year if you do that. Yeah. And so, you know that, that's the problem.

Everything is downstream of a broken money. And what Bitcoin just represents is a fixed monetary policy That's fair. That every, that everybody ascribes to, but nobody can change. Okay. And, and so there's no more of, of this, you know, if you can't control the issuance of money, you, you cannot, um, bec become this, this ab use, this abstract power projection of, um, of, of, you know, we're the government so we can do this thing, and then like, we're gonna steal this, this, you, you're, you're buying power from you because it's.

You know, if we don't do it, then we're going to go through, you know, an economic collapse or something. Um, so I think 

[01:22:31] Jamie Grant: what's interesting, and I don't know if you, I don't know if you agree with this, I'm, I'm curious, um, you talked about the bellhops examples, right? Like you're getting the cease and desist and then you get served, um, you know, the, the fights against and airports, you know, the regulatory capture.

One of, one of the things I used to do kind of a keynote around during those days, uh, was the difference between capitalism and capitalism. One with an A and one with an O, right? Like actual capitalism and a free market that allows the taxi cab owner to be disrupted or allows the hotel to be disrupted or allows U-Haul to be disrupted in, in kind of a caveat, enter, uh, Milton Friedman, Frederick Baat School of Thought that, that I'll die on the hill defending like that capitalism.

Um, is really just free enterprise that that incentivizes cam to take on and the bellhops team to take on something that's kind of like, fine. I think in the crypto space, what's really interesting is we're kind of seeing the capitalism with an O, which is a playbook that should regulatory capture, whatever you wanna call it, where companies are actually going to Capitol Hill, whether in DC or around the country, to advocate for protectionist policies that arbitrarily raise rates and prevent against competition.

Which I think when you look at CPI or GDP, those things, regulatory capture has a, I think, an incalculable impact on those numbers that we all, it's almost like a ghost you can't find, and it feels like we're at this inflection point in the crypto space broadly, when you have a. You know, a president that shows up at, at, at crypto conferences when you have David Sachs, uh, joining the administration.

When you have Byron Donalds coming out talking about how we should, you know, the, the notion of a sovereign wealth fund or the ability to accrue these assets, it does feel like we're starting to have elected officials in a prominent position where the, you know, the first four or five years of that rideshare, I couldn't even get the rideshare legislation agenda in a Republican, supposedly free enterprise legislature, meaning I couldn't even get my bill to have a hearing from a Republican chairman because the entrenched in interest were so great.

It feels like we're starting to see some inertia in the crypto space where the banks who have, I think, and, and you know this way better than I do, my sense from the cheap seats is that the banks have been very anti crypto for a while, for obvious reasons. It feels like they're, you know, now stable coins and some of the things that are happening, it, it feels like the tide is turning a little bit.

And if I were to sum up at least my experience with, uh, rideshare, uh, short term vacation rentals, those tech enabled services taking on entrenched industries, there was a tipping point where the market finally won, expressed by the consumer. The consumer said, I want Bellhops. Right. Not U-Haul. The consumer said, I want Uber, not a taxi, an Airbnb, or a vrbo.

Sure. Do you feel like we're at that, where, where do you have us on the spectrum with crypto in that regard? 

[01:25:42] Cam Doody: Yeah. I mean, I, I think that this started with the institutions coming with the, uh, regulatory clarity around, uh, allowing for these big money managers to launch their ETFs. Yeah. And so that was a, a, a a, a major domino that fell.

Uh, which effectively open what's an et 

[01:26:03] Jamie Grant: TF for folks that, for folks that don't know, what's an ETF 

[01:26:05] Cam Doody: case? It's just, it's an exchange traded fund. It's basically if you, in, there's a bunch of Bitcoin ETFs now, um, you know, BlackRock has one, fidelity has one, et cetera. And, uh, you, you can buy it like a stock and it tracks the price appreciation of Bitcoin.

So like, you give them a hundred grand, they buy a hundred grand with of Bitcoin, they hold the Bitcoin, you know, you go up, you know, you, you ride the, the price, you know, fluctuation with the, with that Bitcoin that they bought on your behalf. And then when you wanna cash out, they, you're not getting Bitcoin back, you're getting, you know, fiat back.

But you get to appre, you get to, to, uh, participate in the, the, in the price appreciation. And so it's just an easy way, you don't have to custody it. It's just an easy way for people to get into Bitcoin. But you have these large, you know, funds that are actually buying Bitcoin with their client's money, uh, which is a pretty good deal for them.

Um, yeah, but they basically 

[01:27:02] Jamie Grant: oppose it until they can monetize it, right? Like it's that same playbook every time, time for the big institution, right? Like propose it, oppose it, oppose it, and then figure out how they can monetize it. And once they realize that the growth of the monetization is better than the loss created by competition, all of a sudden they're on team innovation.

[01:27:19] Cam Doody: Sure. And like I, you know, you talk to your banks, like I, I bank with a few like boutique smaller banks, you know, uh, that, um, you know, a year ago I asked them, you know, for, for like an unsecured line of credit for, for something, and I tried to use, you know, Bitcoin and they were like, there's no, we can't, you know, we can't, we can't even look at Bitcoin as being an asset.

We actually have to look at it like an, a liability. Okay, well, two months ago, SAB 1 21 was passed where banks don't, you know, if, if. Yeah, BA banks can now custody Bitcoin. Okay. And so that the, the whole tide is turning. Whereas before, if you wanted to hold a hundred million in Bitcoin, you had to hold a hundred million in, in cash equivalents as like collateral.

Okay. Yeah. So like, just to even hold a hundred million in Bitcoin, you had to also tie up a hundred million versus, you know, US Treasury. So, all right, well that's gone. Now. These banks can actually custody Bitcoin directly. This is a massive deal. And what, what that enables is, is now I, you know, had a conversation with the same bank and they, they came back and, and they were like, Hey, we can, we can totally recognize, you know, Bitcoin, you know, is a personal asset now.

And it's like, okay, well it just, the, the, the Regulat one regulation needed to change. And now all these banks are like, we want to be, you know, we, we, we want to be the first bank in. The state to custody Bitcoin, you know, so it's, it's all, and, and by the way, the 

[01:28:49] Jamie Grant: Banker's Association metaphorically was showing up in the capitol lobbying legislators saying, Bitcoin's the devil un until a regulation changes.

Right. And, and it's not a knock on those associations. Like I, I always told people in, in, in the capital, the rule of association was the most powerful rule in the capital because the associations are actually not vested in good policy. They're vested in the most advantageous policy. Yep. And, and so those associations are showing up, lobbying you, and it's like, dude, nothing changed about Bitcoin from two months and a day ago.

Nothing about the technology, nothing about the value to the stakeholder, nothing about the impact to the industry. The only thing that changed was the impact to your institution's ability to leverage that. And it's why I think regulatory capture is just this plague. Um. So I, I wanna ask you one more question, uh, that is gonna take us back to the top on something.

'cause I wanna, I want to, um, I, I, there was something I wanted to ask you that I didn't ask you, and it'll tie the, the bow I think, really nicely to the public sector. Uh, but in, but in general, you made a, I don't know you, but you've, you've talked about it. Your team bellhops made a team, uh, a decision. And I think if I was to sum up our conversation today, um, one, one of the things I would tell the, the, the digital service in our all hands, I, I would use it as our closeout slide.

Would the constituent, the taxpayer do business with us if they had a choice, right? Like government has guns and badges, which are really compelling ways to force you to do business with 'em. Um, and customer constituent experience is becoming a bit of a trend in the public sector where people are like, Hey, you know, like.

Actual design matters, clicks, workflows. Like Cam, when he deals with a commercial entity, gets an experience for a digital transaction that's radically different. And there's this, there's this, I think, plague and I think it goes to kind of what you know is happening. We will just lump it all into Doge where it's like, Hey, we should be looking at how to create growth.

We should also be looking at how to curtail spending and give us some little narrow channel out of this disastrous financial crisis that, that, that the country finds itself in. But I wanna go to just that culture of seeing Cam and his family when making monetary decisions. I wanna take it to the programmatic side.

I wanna lay on the plane here. We're gonna get to our roundup of, of some fun stuff. Tell us about how bellhops decided to get rid of the Five Star customer review system. What was behind it? Like how did that impact the culture, both of the bellhops team, but how did it also give a lot more transparency and value to the bellhops customer?

Yeah. I've never asked you about this. I'm fascinated by it from the little bit I've seen on the outside. 

[01:31:45] Cam Doody: Yeah. This is, this was like a 18 month long obsession of mine, um, in which is a normal length 

[01:31:54] Jamie Grant: of obsession for someone, by the way. Yeah, exactly. That's par. 

[01:31:58] Cam Doody: This is one of those, this is one of those like things that I really hyperfocused on.

So the problem in bellhops is we have algorithms that are assigning moving crews to jobs based on like, size of the job, where the job is, all that stuff. Okay. And we're also collecting a lot of performance data from each of our movers. Um, you know, they're on time rate, their damage rate, their, you know, their reviews that they're getting from their fellow bellhops, their reviews, they're that they're getting from their customers, et cetera.

Um, and. Actually making sense of like who a, a great bellhop is is pretty difficult when you're only collecting a five star review. And I like, I have this like, deeply seeded belief that the five star review system is, is it's just a marketing thing. It is developed because people wanna say, oh, we're a five star company, or we're 4.7 stars at 4.8.

It's, it's about cust driving, uh, like customer demand. But if you're actually trying to give data to an algorithm that is trying to understand who is actually a top 10% bellhop or a top 25% bellhop, or a 50 percenter, or a bottom 10% bellhop, you know, the difference between a great bellhop and a bellhop that we would need to fire and get off the platform was like a 4.7 at the, you know, was like a great bellhop and a like a 4.61 was like a really bad bellhop.

And so. You can't give that to an algorithm and, and, and say, Hey, like, there's, there, there, there's, there's, there's not enough information in there for you to actually parse out who is really great, who is your world class, you know, bellhop versus like, who does somebody that needs to get off the platform.

And so, uh, we, we did a, uh, like a massive deep dive and we discovered, like, we started asking the question with our bellhops, like, would, do you like working with Jamie? Yes or no? Right? Or like, would you work with Jamie again? Yes or no? Or like, we tried to word it a bunch of different ways. Well, 90, like 8% of our bellhops said yes.

We're like, I know that's not true. Like, why is that happening? So we interviewed, you know, like a couple hundred bellhops, and it was guilt and fear. Guilt. I don't wanna be the reason Jamie doesn't make rent next month. And fear, I don't want Ja to Jamie to find out that I gave him a bad review and then show up on a move with him, and then, you know, something happened or whatever.

All right? And so we shifted to this idea of, of high fives. And, and so, uh, and this was for internal reviews, okay? So every bellhop after every job would review each other, okay? And you basically, in increments of one, like you'd have to take your phone and go, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And it was capped at, at 25 or 30, you know, high fives.

But if you wanted to give a, a 25, high five rating to, you know, Jamie, you had to sit there. There was friction. 

[01:35:03] Jamie Grant: There's friction in that friction. 

[01:35:04] Cam Doody: It was harder to give a better review. Okay. Yeah. And so we rolled this out and like literally overnight, uh, it pulled out the, the distribution in a perfect bell curve.

And, you know, our top or our bottom, you know, 5% bellhops would get like 2.3 claps or high fives, and our tops would, would get like 14 and a half high fives. And so that was actually data that we could feed into our algorithms to know, like, this is a 12.5 bellhop. Like we need to give him bigger jobs, better jobs, you know, higher paying jobs, et cetera.

This is a six. Okay. We need to feed, load him up with like more tutorials on, you know, he's, he is on time rates good and is this and this, but like, you know, he's kind of right in the middle of, of other bellhops liking him and, uh, anyway, and so it, it solved the guilt and fear piece because, um. You know, the, the, it, it, it was getting what we needed through the, the, the, the presence of positives as opposed to the like absence of, of negatives.

Right. 

[01:36:17] Jamie Grant: Dude, I I love that for a lot of reasons. I thought you were, I, it's funny because when you said that the five star rating was really a marketing play, and I, I completely agree with the reason you gave, but I actually thought you were gonna go somewhere else. 'cause I, I think it's two things. One, I do think, especially in the SEO world and, you know, just all the reasons why marketing were a 4.8, 4.95 star, whatever.

It's, um, the second thing, I think it's actually sometimes a marketing play to give the false or surface level impression that I care about my customer, right? Sure. Like every time I deal with Delta and, and call the desk and get the press one or press five, like. To your point, like it's just easier to press five.

It, it's kind of fives or ones, right? Like somebody has to be, I don't know if I've ever given a three, you know, it's like I either had to give Oh, it's 

[01:37:11] Cam Doody: totally binary. That's the thing. Yes. I mean, I should have gotten to this, but like the five star review is totally binary. It's like it ev like any experience I've, I I've ever had is a five, unless it was God awful.

Yeah, right. It's like you're never giving a spectrum. You're never like, yeah, it was a three, right? It's a five. Unless it was absolutely horrible and then it was a one, so it's, it might as well be zero or one, right? Yes. And you can't actually do anything with that data. And so, um, you know, being able to, and do, 

[01:37:45] Jamie Grant: sorry, cam, the, the, the do anything that I think you touched on is also huge, right?

So like, when you think about, I was blown away. I had about 300 employees, uh, until we outsourced a data center. But I was blown away at how good the talent was. Uh, you know, like there's this notion that like government workers are lazy and dumb and can't do anything else. And, um, I found that to be largely untrue.

Uh, there's certainly stereotypes are, are real for a reason and there's the bad examples and you kind of find 'em and root 'em out. But, um, those mission driven people that are there to try and like the, the, it was interesting to me, like whether it was COVID or Hurricane Ian response, like all of the kind of rapid response stuff we did, how excited the team got at, like the metrics and being able to see it go.

Um, they really do want do a good job. And I think when you're an executive and you don't have data that helps you do the personnel development at like a employee specific level, right? Like, it's not just am I putting a good product out for my constituent or my customer, it's also like how am I getting data that helps me?

Identify somebody that might be on the edge of not making it in this job or having a ton of potential that just needs some growth, discipleship, mentorship to go like, Hey, you, you really have the ability to go to the next level, but here's what's holding you back. And, and I think that's something really interesting that you touched on, that it wasn't just the data for like the quality assurance.

Sure. That's a, I'm sure that was a major motivation, but it was also just the workforce and personnel development side that I think you're blind to at the scale y'all are playing on unless you do that kind of thing. 

[01:39:29] Cam Doody: Yeah. 

[01:39:30] Jamie Grant: Alright, let's, uh, let's, let's run through, we call it the roundup. I told you these are all impromptu, uh, the, the, if there was one guest that was made for this, uh, it's cam duty.

So, uh, let's kick off with the one piece of advice, like the one that shaped your career more than anything else. And who gets the credit?

[01:39:58] Cam Doody: I mean, I, I think it's, I mentioned it earlier in this, uh, in, in the podcast, but like having strong convictions and holding onto them loosely is I have a lot of strong convictions. Like all day, every day. 

[01:40:14] Jamie Grant: We've now had the understatement of the episode. 

[01:40:17] Cam Doody: And, and, but like you, you have to know when to let go of these things.

Like when, when new information is presented that that debunks some conviction that you had. You have to, you have to reevaluate. And I think that's something that most people have a really hard time doing. Yeah. Um, and, but it's important to have strong convictions. It's not like just go through life lukewarm.

Like that's not it. It's like you have to vigorously approach life with the information that you have. Yeah. And until you get a piece of information that debunks it, and then the second that happens, you need to burn the thing to the ground and find a, a, a, you know, redefine whatever that that conviction is.

And then continue. We love to forward 

[01:41:10] Jamie Grant: to, we, we love to say, or my team, sick of me, sick. Monday and Friday can both be true and mutually exclusive because Wednesday happened. That doesn't mean we're any, right. Like all of a sudden something happened on Wednesday that makes everything about our hypothesis and assumptions and beliefs, and even the data from Monday fundamentally irrelevant.

And now it's like, okay, I love, I love that you called out. Don't weaken the conviction, don't get soft. Maintain the strength, but have the curiosity and the intellectual honesty to go, okay, it, it's changed because we were wrong. It's changed because we have new information. It's changed for any number of reasons.

Let's maintain. I I love that, that both of those are important to you. Um, if you have, and, and, uh, I mean, not to like overshare, but Cam and I go back to a level, uh, we met when Cam was actually in high school visiting Auburn sleeping on my couch. 'cause his brother, uh, was one of my best friends in, in college.

Cam and I, it would be fair to say, probably in our career have battled the ability to focus until we get hyper-focused. Uh, cam if you have one kind of productivity hack or framework that um, guys like us have to battle, like all these distractions and figure out what to dive into. If you have one productivity hack or one safeguard framework to help you lock in when you're locked in on the five star, what, what is that thing?

[01:42:46] Cam Doody: Um, Adderall. Just kidding, kidding. Some things never change. 

[01:42:53] Jamie Grant: Some things never 

[01:42:55] Cam Doody: change. I'm joking. Um, kind of, yeah, kind of. Uh, that's a whole different story. I was, I was horribly overmedicated all through my childhood. I, I had 

[01:43:07] Jamie Grant: dude open invitation. I want to do a repeat with you on that, 'cause we share that.

[01:43:15] Cam Doody: Okay. Yes. Uh, yeah, I'd love to. Um, I don't know. I don't know if, I think it just depends for, I think it's just different for everybody. You know, you just have to, uh, you have to decide what you want out of each day and it's, it's way easier to, you know. Rolling each day and just find time where you're just scrolling on your phone and you know, you're not retain, you're not living with vigor.

You're not, you're not like in, you're not very intentional because there's, yeah. There's so much that you can spend your time doing that isn't actually productive. Um, I think if, if, if you're able to have an idea, even if it's just a, you know, a one minute thought you have on your way into work, like, what am I actually doing today?

[01:44:07] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[01:44:07] Cam Doody: Um, and, and you can kind of, uh, think back to that, you know, throughout the day and the next day it changes to something totally different. I, I, I think that's been very helpful for me. 

[01:44:19] Jamie Grant: I've dug on, um, and, and, uh, hat tip to a buddy of mine, Jordan Rainer, uh, the concept of open loops and I guess neurologically, our brains, uh, continue spinning if we don't take that thought and put it somewhere reliable.

Um, I struggle to, to do it well, but like, how to capture those open loops, put 'em in a system. And try and go. I think I know the answer to this one, cam. Um, I'm not gonna lead you too much if you want to completely unplug. Like, you, you are just like, want to get to the place where your, your brain, the world, it shuts off and you're just in that moment.

What is that thing you're doing? 

[01:44:58] Cam Doody: Um, I fly airplanes. I love, it's a cathartic thing for me. Um, that is, I, you know, I, I can't be on my phone. Uh, you know, you're just locked in, uh, and fishing like those two are, or, or even like, you know, uh, I just love being in the outdoors, whether it's hunting or fishing, if spearfishing or I like being on a mission where I am not even tempted to pick up, you know, any kind of distraction so people know in those moments.

Go ahead. No, keep going. Keep going. In those moments, you're just fully present. Um, and it's in those moments when you're, you're that I'm fully present that. Um, I'm, I don't have any, you know, worries or thoughts of that. You know, it, I, I just like to lock in. I guess that's part of, yeah, 

[01:45:52] Jamie Grant: no, I, I, I don't even know if you know this, but I've said for, I don't know, 20 years now, like you'll find me one day on a ranch in Montana.

Um, and that is, uh, that is Chris and Cam Doty's influence on my life. Like, I, I, I knew that fly fishing would be one of those. Uh, I love, um, I love the content you put out. I love when I get to be on the snake or Madison sending you pictures, uh, visiting out there. But, um, literally you and Chris are like, like, that's the, Chris is the reason I started Fly Vision and, and my love for Montana, uh, and being out west is, uh, is, is a, a duty impact in my life.

Speaking of that one book and one band that you're convinced the world needs to know about. 

[01:46:38] Cam Doody: Uh, a band. I, I actually heard this band like three days ago and I'd never heard of him before. And I was like, how has this guy been hidden under a rock? Uh, Sean, this is why this question exists. Sean McConnell don't know him.

Uh, yeah, I mean, he's great. There's, there's a song called Shaky Bridges, uh, that's, I'm on, I'm on, I'm onto him hot right now. Um, and then a book, I think on this topic, I, I've said this a lot, but there's a book called Hard Thing About Hard Things, uh, by Ben Horowitz, and it's just an absolutely amazing book for anybody that wants to take on starting a company and have like a very realistic view.

About what it entails and it's, it's scary. You read it and you get scared. And I think if you can make it through hard thing about hard things and still want to do what you're about to do, you absolutely should do it. And if, but if that book can scare you off, you probably never should. And in both cases you'll be better off.

[01:47:49] Jamie Grant: Yeah, 

[01:47:49] Cam Doody: I love 

[01:47:50] Jamie Grant: that. Um, most people gonna pick 'em on this one. You get both 'cause you're cam duty. I wanna know the wildest thing you've ever done to impress someone and did it work? 

[01:48:03] Cam Doody: Oh my gosh. Most, well, I dropped a, I dropped a, uh, I dropped a volleyball out of an airplane for the, uh, beta, uh, volleyball tournament.

[01:48:17] Jamie Grant: I was about to say like, most people would struggle with this one 'cause they're like, I can't come up with one. You're struggling. 'cause there's like a, an infinity list.

Also, it would be criminal not to give a shout out to the dirty governors while we have a duty brother here. Uh oh. Yeah. Speaking of our college days, but, uh, oh, yeah. Yeah. One band that, uh, people should dive into. Um, all right. Do you have a controversial take? Like your hottest take that you're convinced shouldn't be controversial?

[01:48:49] Cam Doody: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's Bitcoin. I don't, we did not go get to go deep enough on the subject. Yeah. But I think it's the most important technology in the history of mankind, and it's equally as important as ai. Uh, and, and when I say, I just said it's the most important, and, and equally implo important, Bitcoin and AI are the same thing.

They're part, they're, they're two sides of the same coin and people don't understand that yet. And, um, it's, it's infinite productivity of AI and the absolute scarcity of money. And those two things are human flourishing and yeah, study Bitcoin. Yeah. 

[01:49:31] Jamie Grant: Yes, I love it. And we're gonna do that. All right. Land in the plane here.

We got two left. This one I'm excited to ask you 'cause I don't have to give context to this. If Brickyard played your walkup song every time you showed up at the office and you get to pick your walkup song, 

[01:49:49] Cam Doody: uh, Nelly batter up.

[01:49:55] Jamie Grant: Love it. Love it. All right. And our, our, our last question, uh. We let every guest leave a question for the next guest without knowing who they are. Um, we had two guests together on the last one. Um, and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna merge these 'cause they, they kind of run together. Um, if there's something in your business experience you regret, what is it?

And if there's something you will regret not doing, if you don't do, what is it?

[01:50:29] Cam Doody: I don't think there's anything that I regret. Um, I think that's unproductive to even think about. Like regrets, I think. Yeah. Um, I think we all make the best decisions that we can make with the information that we have at the time. And if you're fearlessly making, you know, if it, it, it, you know, your regrets would be not making the hard decisions that you knew you needed to make.

That's the regret. 

[01:51:01] Jamie Grant: Yeah. 

[01:51:01] Cam Doody: You know, making a bad decision. I won't be regretful to make, you know, for, for any bad decisions that I've made. 'cause I tried to make the right decisions, but if, if there was a right decision that I didn't make because it was gonna be hard, that's, that would be a regret. And then, what was the other one?

[01:51:20] Jamie Grant: Uh, if you don't do it, what are you gonna regret? Like what is something that you're looking at going like, man, I gotta, is there something that if you don't do in the future, you're gonna regret not doing in the future? Um, it's kind of funny that somebody left these for you. 'cause the, I could, you're not a regret guy.

And I think this one's actually tough 'cause you kind of do it all. Like you, you see it, do it, see it, do it. 

[01:51:44] Cam Doody: Yeah. Uh, I don't know. I don't even know how to answer that. 

[01:51:48] Jamie Grant: Alright, then let's take you to, let's take you to your question. You wanna leave for the next guest? 

[01:51:53] Cam Doody: Alright, this is my favorite question.

Uh, for, at like dinner parties and you kind of asked it in like three questions ago, but, uh, it's really great. It's really special when you have a group of people around a table. Um, and it's, it's always just such a thought provoking question for me. What is one thing that you know for sure that you don't think that I know?

[01:52:19] Jamie Grant: Like you've gotta know it's a certainty and you're pretty sure that I don't know it. Yes. Can you give us a, like, are there a memorable answer is, is are there memorable answers to that? Because I can see that being one you at the dinner party and two, getting some pretty wild responses. If, 

[01:52:37] Cam Doody: if it functionally it, it makes everybody respond with like their highest conviction thing that they don't feel like they can talk about normally.

Interesting. 

[01:52:49] Jamie Grant: Yeah. So, so when you come back, yes, Bitcoin two. I love the intersection of the way you go about things. I teach it from a jury selection perspective, like coming outta, like, you can't ask the jury, you know, are, are you liberal or conservative? Do you can't ask 'em, do you like cops or not like co but you can ask them questions to kind of get, I, I love those kind of questions that are like, tell me about yourself without me having to ask you tell me about yourself.

[01:53:12] Cam Doody: Yeah. 

[01:53:12] Jamie Grant: Yes. I love that. Alright, cam, dude, this has been, uh, everything I hoped it to be. Uh, I told everybody at the top that, that we would go all over the place. That, let's do it again whenever you want. Um, 'cause I think there's, I mean, you gave us absolute gold on a couple fronts. Um, we're gonna put, uh, we'll follow up with you if folks wanna catch up.

Um, just late brick.com um, is a really special place and a really special team. I. Cam, dude, I know you have companies that you're helping in the trenches at Brickyard right now. So for you to take this time and come spend it with us, I can't thank you enough, brother. Hey, 

[01:53:50] Cam Doody: I'll, I'll do it anytime. Uh, I'll try to be less scattered next time.

[01:53:55] Jamie Grant: Let's not make promises that neither of us can keep. 

[01:54:00] Cam Doody: Thanks, Jamie. All right, brother, 

[01:54:01] Jamie Grant: we'll talk to you soon. 

[01:54:02] Cam Doody: See ya.