Bevz: Jason Vego's Mission to Digitize Convenience Stores

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'd be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Jason Vego, founder and CEO of Bevz. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Vego: Thanks for having me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So a little bit more about Jason. He's a CEO and co-founder of Bevz, a SaaS platform for convenience stores. Prior to Bevz, Jason co-founded two companies, a software platform for dog groomers and a live shopping platform for clothing retailers. He also spent 8 years at Citrix, a multi-billion dollar technology company where he was the Head of Global Employee Communications and Engagement. A lot going on there, Jason. Uh before we dive in, uh where are you joining us from today?

Jason Vego: I'm in Los Angeles, California. Specifically, Studio City.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Are you originally from there?

Jason Vego: I am. So I grew up in Los Angeles, greater LA area. Uh went to to Santa Barbara for college, lived in Seattle for a couple years, but uh back in LA and planning to be here long term.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Uh we're not too far from LA and it seems to be uh a city of uh transplants. People from all over the world come and it's rare to have someone born and raised that's uh built uh an operation, a company and continuing to, to, to thrive there. So you must have an incredible network, I would just start with that.

Jason Vego: Um yeah, but uh yeah I mean it's funny, I didn't really have the network to begin with. I got my MBA from UCLA. Uh I actually just technically graduated in March of this last year. I took longer to graduate than you're supposed to. But even then, the network really started to come about in the startup ecosystem when I, I did Techstars LA. I started meeting founders, investors and I feel like I'm finally starting to build my network after decades living here. So it takes a while I guess out here.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah I hear you. Well um let's talk a little about your, your upbringing since you're born and raised there in LA. What was that experience like that kind of helped shape you into becoming an entrepreneur?

Jason Vego: Yeah so I think it's less about the LA environment that was really influential in the startup life. It was more, I'll give all the credits to my parents. They were that perfect balance of being really hard on me to, you know, get good grades, be successful, work really hard, but, but supported me sort of along the journey. As long as the work ethic was there, they were really good about outcomes not being the key, but the journey, which I, I think I'm still learning as a founder. I struggle with that one probably more than anything, but around as long as the work ethic was there and you give it absolutely everything you have whether it be school or sports or work or entrepreneurship, uh you'll look back and sort of be satisfied with that outcome. And so with that time of the resources they were, they were very supportive. So that was really what did it. I think uh they encouraged me to be okay with failure and try new things, as long as I was putting in the work ethic. And that's when I started, you know, the, the classics: lemonade stands, selling uh sort of like these magazine ads to, to my neighbors. And that sort of transitioned into my, my startup life uh from then.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's cool. Well let's give a shout out to your parents. I mean what uh, what did they do, what was their careers that you modeled after or were they entrepreneurs that you kind of got some insights from? What, tell us a little bit about that.

Jason Vego: Yeah, so my mom worked for the Department of Public Social Services for decades. So less entrepreneurial, but you know, showed that she started when she was a teenager, worked her way up managing a huge sort of portion of the company in these really tough environments, right? Like social work is not an easy career by any means. The entrepreneurship really came more from my dad. So he uh founded a company, it's called Career Options. It is rehabilitation counseling. So um he intended to never go into entrepreneurship. He was actually a counselor at Valley College uh interestingly, and he got his master's degree in counseling. And uh sort of a few laws changed in LA that, that enabled anyone who got injured on the job to get rehabilitation counseling. He capitalized and, and sort of built a company from the ground up. So I definitely watched that growing up, where he was, he was working a lot. Uh I got the better end of the, the stick where my brother he's seven years older than me, my dad was working even more. He was, my dad was starting to transition into a more I guess work-life balance while I was a kid. So he ended up still coaching my basketball teams and, and being involved in sports while still showing what like the work ethic really looks like. So um yeah, both of them sort of in the public work but still entrepreneurial.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really cool. Yeah, you, you know, you always look at people that get into certain careers and oftentimes it's their parents where the, the door that opened for them to get into acting or be a singer, be an athlete or be an entrepreneur. And so I was just curious to hear that. Um, in terms of you, uh I know you had a couple startups prior to Bevz. Um walk us through those a little bit and, and what experiences did you go through with those that you walked away with of helping you really better position yourself to be a leader of your current company, Bevz?

Jason Vego: Yeah, so I think the cool part was I had like literally opposite experiences in the two startups. So my first startup, the dog grooming software platform, that was in 2019. That was obviously pre-Bevz, pre-MBA, pre-real startup experience. So I'd found, I'd co-founded a nonprofit when I was in college, but like really building a technology startup from the ground up... I read all the articles, the books, and it seemed so doable. And I just had no idea what I was doing at all. And so I raised a tiny bit of family and friends money, I was still kept my full-time job, partnered with a friend.

I think what we found is um a few things, right? First is we had no idea what we were doing. Uh we, we made a lot of mistakes around product development and, and operations. The second was we didn't talk to both sides of the marketplace enough. So we did not talk to enough dog groomers. We were talking to people who had dogs that wanted groomings, and sort of naively assumed if there was demand we could sort of build out a platform. Um and we just made all the mistakes and, and I had no idea what I was doing. That's part of why I went and got the MBA, which was I realized operationally, finance, I, I just did not have the skills. And so we made all the mistakes, we didn't know what we were doing, and I think the biggest lesson was even timing. This [was] pre-pandemic, well before the pandemic, where I actually think if we started this in the pandemic or after, the dog groomers would have been a lot more receptive to using technology. So uh that was sort of journey number one. I think what I learned was I learned exactly what I don't know. I learned that if I start a company again I really want someone who knows the space or I know the space. I have a dog, but being a dog groomer and actually know[ing] how to groom a dog is a different sort of experience. I think the second is I really felt like a, a lack in finance and operational skills, so I got the [MBA].

The second startup was the live online shopping platform for clothing retailers that I built uh as part of a team at UCLA, as part of my MBA. That was really cool because that's like the literal opposite. They forced you to do a ton of research, a ton of conversations. They sort of said like "this is what the exact process, if you had unlimited time, like what you should be doing." So I did it the, the total wrong way, then I would argue like the total right way. Though speed is obviously a piece of that. And so we talked to a ton of customers, we pivoted the platform while we were in school. Um and then even considered sort of taking it to market after, had a really awesome team. Um and then I was starting to build Bevz around the same time while I was in school. And so I think those two opposite ends of the spectrum put me to where Bevz is. Which was: I learned a lot of the skills for operations and finance, um I learned a lot about product development and, and product management. And then I learned the balance of really getting to know your customers, doing the right industry research, but, but frankly not doing it overkill where UCLA made us do a hundred interviews and I think a hundred might be slightly excessive if you're try[ing] to move fast. So that's kind of how the journey came together. And I think those two were pretty crucial in me being able to do Bevz uh pretty successfully so far. And I still made plenty of mistakes at the beginning of Bevz and I feel like I'm on my second go at Bevz right now.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well let's talk about Bevz. What inspired you to create Bevz?

Jason Vego: Yes. I take zero credit for the, the inspiration of actually thinking of Bevz. So my co-founder Victor has owned and operated liquor and convenience stores in Southern California for now 39 years. Um he's the one, yeah it's like four decades right? Imagine the types of products even sold in these stores almost 40 years ago, insanely different, right? Like hard seltzer wasn't even a category back then or even seven or 10 years ago. So he's owned these stores, he tried to use different technology: restaurant tech, grocery tech, even the delivery apps. And it just wasn't really built for the liquor and the convenience stores. His friends, his family, his network, they're pretty much all in the space. And so I've known him since I've been six years old, he was actually my basketball coach growing up. So uh shout out to our LA... if you see me in person I'm 5'7" and pretty skinny, I'm not sure how we won the LA City Championship together but maybe that's yeah to our, our grit and our hustle I guess. But he came to me in 2019 going, "No one's building any technology for us. They're trying to force these restaurant and grocery tech platforms into us, it's not working. I want to build something for liquor and convenience stores and for my broader community." And so that's how we teamed up in 2021, but the, the credit goes to Victor. I did not think of the idea to start here. And that was one of the pieces right, from what I learned before is I didn't know how to groom dogs, I didn't know anything really about dog grooming. Victor knew this space better than anyone I knew. So we went in with what I felt was like an edge that most people didn't have.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know, we talked a little about this before. I lived in New York City and there's a ton of you know liquor stores and little mom and pop shops that you go to and you know you buy a hot dog, you buy a sandwich, you buy beers, whatever it is. But you know, many of them are not really run optimally, and some of them quite frankly are going out of business, but others are run very well. Talk to me about the segment or your niche specifically, and then what is the product actually doing for those operators?

Jason Vego: Yeah, so no, no, it's a great point. It is a mixed bag. Across liquor and convenience there's this whole spectrum right. The New York bodega that has the food, you have your sort of traditional liquor or convenience store. The laws are different in different states, like in California you can buy liquor at, at the grocery store. Uh and then you start to go into that spectrum of like liquor, convenience, grocery store, these like mini grocery stores almost. So it's a large spectrum. Who we're targeting today is we do bucket sort of the more traditional liquor or liquor convenience store and the bodega into sort of... if it is convenience first right. If it is a restaurant first with some supplemental items, that doesn't fit our bucket.

So in our category there's 150,000 of these uh, what we overarching category call convenience stores uh across the US. 1.2 million globally. Today we're targeting US. Uh of the 150,000 I think the surprising stat is 71% are independently operated or small chains. So there's this misleading idea that you walk around you see 7-Elevens and Circle Ks everywhere, but actually it is dominated by the independently operated and small chains. And so today we are targeting liquor convenience stores, independently operated and small chains across the US.

Uh to answer the second question, what, what are we really giving them, them? So our software platform is helping these convenience stores essentially buy and sell inventory more effectively. So what we're doing is we're building API and EDI integrations where we are automating and integrating the way they purchase inventory from their distributors, uh sell, sell in-store through the point-of-sale system, and then sell online through all their e-commerce and delivery apps. With the idea being, if you can facilitate the way they buy and sell, that is the core business right. They have other things in there: security, refrigeration, phone, etc. The core business of a store is buying and selling goods. If we can facilitate that, they can you know buy the right items at the right time for the right customers. And that's what we're building.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, sounds like the Holy Grail. It's like everything that you want to know about how to operate the business from the, the, the products coming and going, what not to buy, not to oversupply things that aren't being purchased, and then having the data that you can optimize your, your company and the revenue. Um how technical is it? As a, an operator do you have to be an engineer? Is it pretty easy, easy to use? What's that like?

Jason Vego: Yeah, I think the, one of the differentiators for us too, especially given that my co-founder is the customer, is the backend technology is relatively sophisticated right, we're building some pretty robust technology, data normalization, API integrations. For the user, it's the literal opposite. We knew there was no chance we are going to go into an independently operated liquor convenience store right with no technical experience and expect them to have any technical skill set. So we've made it really foolproof, easy to use, and made the technical stuff all on the backend. So yeah, short answer is no, you don't have to have any technical background. Um we do have everything in English today, [but] we do have intentions to even put it in custom languages right. We have a lot of like Arabic speaking stores right now, especially in California. Um my co-founder Victor speaks Arabic. But today it's now super easy to use. Uh today you can use it integrated with a point of sale system or as a standalone tablet. So we make it whatever your scenario is, whatever your level of technical skill set is, Bevz allows you to use the platform quite effectively.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know, one of the challenges for most startups and quite frankly most products is getting, getting it in the door. You know getting people to understand what you're selling, what's the value proposition, why they should be interested, and ultimately what's it going to do for them, what are the benefits. So for you what's the value proposition? I mean how do you get your foot in the door? Do you walk down the street, knock on doors? What's your, what's your strategy?

Jason Vego: Yeah, so I'll give you a little history because I think it's relevant to what we're doing today. So we actually started off our original product in January 2020 was a convenience store delivery marketplace. So literally think DoorDash for liquor and convenience stores. We were the delivery app right. Uh we thought we nailed it, things were going really well. Pandemic hits, we pivot the company to what we're doing today. We learned a lot in that stage. What we found out when we were pivoting, we realized that we wanted to automate what I just said right. How they buy, how they sell in store, how they sell online. Frankly, I would have loved to start with how they buy. That seems like the logical progression of buying and selling right, like they buy the items, they sell it in store, they sell it online. We flipped it because we had to find that wedge to get in the door right. That was the problem, we were struggling to figure out what was the wedge to get in the door. After the pandemic or I guess during the pandemic, these stores really wanted to better sell online. They wanted to more effectively use the delivery apps that were already out there right, because they had consumer[s] coming to them saying "I want DoorDash or Grubhub or Uber or Postmates."

And so it took us a while because we were competitors to these companies, to start... like literally they were our competition. We pivot, we were able to negotiate with these companies, bring them all into one platform. That became the wedge. The stores really wanted an easier way to use all of the e-commerce and delivery apps. That was the wedge. What the ROI ended up being, which was our sort of secondary wedge, was first it was "you want to sell online, this is the easiest way. We've now made that insanely easy for you." Then the second was we've now have the data to show if you are using one of the apps today on your own, or you're using Bevz to use one of the delivery apps, you'll see a 68% increase in sales in the next three months by using Bevz. The way we facilitate it, the integrations we have with the delivery apps, it is, it does not make sense for you to sell standalone on these apps. If you, if you're even doing it in the first place. If you're doing nothing, you're going to get quite the increase in revenue. If you're already doing it, you'll still get a 68% increase in revenue. And that's been the wedge to, to get us in the store. And now we're going in reverse. We're building point-of-sale integrations, we're building inventory ordering integrations, and that will round out the spectrum of this sort of like operating system for the store. But today the wedge is "help them make more money selling online."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, that's fascinating. With the post-pandemic era you know, taking effect now, what's the um sort of level of desire for companies to continue to use you know, DoorDash or these online serv- services that are you know delivering. You still [have] a ton of people [that] are working remotely. A lot of people are not going back into an office, nor do they want to, uh and so there is still that demand for the, the end user to be ordering online and have self-serve come to your door. And so that I know is still there, it's probably pretty prevalent. What, what are you seeing?

Jason Vego: Yeah, so it's still early days. We, we've had that sort of misconception a lot which is like "how many people are actually ordering liquor and convenience items online?" One, it, it is way more than people think. And secondly, the trend is going way upward because it was so far behind. So we see sort of like industry average wise uh typical retailer is selling about 15% of their items online. Our liquor convenience stores are still floating in the three, 3% realm. So it is 3% and growing. So what we're seeing is actually the trend just started because of the pandemic. Literally like you couldn't order liquor and convenience through the delivery apps a few years ago which is crazy to think right. I mean Drizly was one of sort of the, the market leaders, the first people to do it, but you couldn't do it in every state. There's still some states that don't allow, allow it. It is where the stores need to be.

What, what's really interesting for our market is a lot of the bigger chains you've probably seen have their own custom branded website right. It would be like 7-eleven.com. You go there with the brand name, it's obviously a lot easier to attract, and with a full marketing team and things like that it's much easier. For our stores it, we've seen that it does not make sense, at least today, for a store selling the same items right. Where if you bought Jack Daniel's at one store, it's going to be the same Jack Daniel's at the other store. Which is their best bet is to facilitate e-commerce by using the pre-existing apps where the people are, and we're seeing that trend pick up. So I anticipate these stores will catch up, it will take several years, but they're floating in the threes and we, we're seeing the trend that it should, should float in the five to 10 percent over the next kind of like three to five years. And so uh these stores will start selling more and more online for sure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. You touched a little bit on, on kind of the market and mom and pop show-, stores and how many are there. Um just kind of redefine again the market opportunity locally in the US. I don't know internationally if there's an opportunity there too, but kind of what, what, how big of an opportunity are we really talking here?

Jason Vego: Yep, so the market is quite big and it's growing fast. I mentioned 150,000 convenience stores in the US, 1.2 million globally. So in the US alone it's a $258 billion market and globally a 2.1 trillion dollar market. It's growing 40% over the next five years. So it is a actually way bigger market than even I realized when I got into this space. And so the market opportunity is quite ripe. Uh what we're targeting like I said is that 71% independently operated and small chains, but when we're looking at the long-term play is the technology we're building is applicable to mom and pops, mid-level companies, and the big ones. We're just specifically targeting the small ones today. So it's a several hundred billion dollar market opportunity if we play this right. Uh and it seems like yes, a couple of these convenience s- go, do go out of business. But really we see most of these have weathered sort of everything: pandemics, uh recessions. They seem to always figure it out. And now if you layer on technology that allows them to hire less people, grow their businesses faster and embrace e-commerce, we're, we're expecting this industry to grow even faster.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really cool. I like the upside. And if you execute, it seems like it's there for the taking. What's the vision for the company if you look at over the next 5 to 10 years? What do you really want to be building here?

Jason Vego: Yes. It's, it's two things I'm really excited to build with Bevz. The first one is we really want to take this from the... and I mentioned a piece of this earlier, but today we're really focused on what do they buy and sell. What we, what we want to build, where we see Bevz going, is becoming the entire operating system for a liquor convenience store. Which is, these stores have a lot of pieces. One, especially in the alcohol industry, tobacco industry, there's a lot of regulations. So compliance is a big one. Security is a big one. They have a lot of break-ins right, this is quite common. So security, compliance, refrigeration, phone and internet right. We found a lot of our stores are paying insane prices for phone and internet that, that it's almost robbery it seems. Robbery outside of regular robbery right. And so what we really want to be is this full system that a convenience liquor store does to hire their people, pay their people, buy and sell goods like, pay for phone and internet. So that's sort of number one. Full operating system for all liquor and convenience stores.

The second one, what I'm really probably most excited about is the data. So especially in these, in these sort of... we're talking about AI a lot everywhere right. But AI comes from the data that you have available. And since day one right, it's been a giant gap. These brands and distributors, they sell to the convenience and liquor store, they have no idea what happens after because the stores aren't tracking anything right. There's this huge black hole of data. And so what we're starting to facilitate is, if we know what they're buying and we know what they're selling right, we can facilitate their ability to buy the right inventory at the right time, never run out of items that they should be running out of, um easily sell across any e-commerce or delivery app right, and work with that data with the brand. So to me it is, when we capture enough data, we will be able to facilitate these really cool machine learning, artificial intelligence to make these stores almost do all the work for the sto-, store owner, and change the industry right. Which is right now you're a snack and drink brand, you're just going wherever, wherever you can sell your product you, you are trying to. And I think we can change the way, where the right products should be in the right stores at the right time. Uh that all comes from data and that's what we're, we're working to sort of capture right now.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, it's amazing. Um you know, it's often said that it's not the leader of the company that makes the company what it is, it's oftentimes the people you hire. What's your strategy in finding the right people for your company? What are the filters you've used that have made sure you get it right when you build your teams?

Jason Vego: Yeah, it's a great question. I don't think I've nailed this by any means. Uh I think we're learning a lot along the way. In the early days, referrals was a big one right. I, I think the early days of Bevz, I recruited a friend of mine from uh UC Santa Barbara where I went to college, where he was a great... we were, we did an internship program together. And when Bevz was pivoting I was like, "I need you to come. I, I, we need help. I need someone who's willing to take that salary cut, hustle and do a lot of different jobs." Uh and he came and now he's the Chief of Staff at Bevz, which was cool to see that sort of journey. But referrals is definitely one, whether it be from me, from others, I take those really seriously. The bigger we get, the more people are in our sort of adjacent networks. And so that's sort of number one.

I, I also feel like it's a little bit of a copout because in the early days we didn't have a lot of referrals and you can't just rely on that forever. So I think the second thing we're doing is we still post jobs on your normal places, your LinkedIn, things like that. I think the one that bring up, there's a lot of different things we sort of looked at, but I think where we found the right culture fit, sort of work ethic at Bevz, is I found our best people that we've recruited externally have come in and sort of been one, really open and transparent. I, I sometimes I fall for what I think is openness and transparency and it's not always the case. But when I can really nab like, "I am knowing this person is authentic," and then part two is we found this consistency around people going like admitting their weaknesses and, and being really honest about their weaknesses and strengths, but tying that in with a level of confidence on "I don't need the equity package now, I don't need the salary now. I want to come in and prove X, and when I do then we can talk about that." And a trust in me almost right. And a trust in Bevz to sort of get their back. I think it's almost risky, I don't even know if I would do that in that situation. But some of our best people really came in and wanted to prove themselves first. So that have been sort of two of the ways I found really interesting that have worked for us.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah. Um, as a company you know, are you local? Are you international? What's your makeup there?

Jason Vego: We are all over. So our, our, most of our leadership team is in Los Angeles. We have found that in-person meetings has been really beneficial, so that's actually tricky now that we're doing more in-person meetings, we've sort of the flow of COVID right. So a majority of our leadership team is in Los Angeles. We have a, a couple members that are not, one in Seattle, one in Arizona. Uh outside of that we're very remote. For one, is we're selling to independently operated and small chain convenience stores. We found it more effective to have salespeople in those territories selling directly to their stores. So we have people across now nine US states. So we're in New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona, uh Texas, Washington, Oregon now. Uh so that's one.

Internationally we're also doing. So we have one employee in Canada. We are starting to bolster our, our Canada presence a little, little bit. And then our software development team is in the Philippines. So uh our CTO Jim actually lived in Southeast Asia for five years after exiting his last company. And so he had a really effective way to hire awesome full-time talent uh in the Philippines. So it is not an agency, they do work directly for Bevz, but they live in the Philippines. So we are uh we are quite international, but mainly Philippines, a little bit of Canada, and then primarily throughout the US.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, COVID changed everything. And most companies we talk to and work with, which are a lot of Y Combinator, Techstars companies, well-funded organizations, you know if they don't have some international labor strategy it's almost a question for their investors to say "Why aren't you thinking about this?" Because it helps them as a company grow cost effectively, also it makes you hopefully more profitable. That path to profitability is becoming more, more of a concern for you know earlier stage companies say three years back and today it's an automatic as you're building: what's your strategy locally, internationally. So that's, sounds like you are in that path and, and doing really well. Um that's great to hear that. And I you know, it's doesn't really matter where your customer base is, if you can do the work online or you can do it remotely, you know why not at least try it? Um so that's really cool to hear.

Jason Vego: Yeah I think uh we want to be better at that. It's, it's hard right, because we like I said, we're now doing more in-person meetings uh and I don't have a deep experience hiring internationally. So for our technology team, I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was very doable because our CTO had already done that before and even started with a couple people he'd worked with in the past. He recruited his, in the referral range right, like he recruited two of his people that he worked with before and now the rest of the team is not people that we, we knew before. And now we're starting to think about for other pieces right. So sales we intend to keep local you know for the foreseeable future just because of that relationship with our customer. But uh as we're adding new people, what other roles can we start to hire internationally and layer? I think that's, that's what I think the key will be for us and a lot of other similar companies is how do we sort of combine. I don't think we're going to be all international or all US. How do we layer a really strong customer success team that has some local, some international and sort of piece those together. We have not cracked the code, but we're, we're starting to be more cognizant of how we do that effectively.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Um, well, and I don't know if there's a code to crack. If I think it's a process you have to develop and then you start to net out what's working for you. One of the challenges for a lot of companies is how do you build a culture remotely? And we hear that a lot you know, but it's also uh you get you know, out of experience you start to learn what works and what doesn't work for you as a company. And that I think really takes a little bit of work from the founders to really define your culture well and then start u- you know you have to just experiment. And eventually I think you can get to the information you need, the process works for you. Um and we're right now as we talk, we're helping you know most of our customer base is in the US, a lot of it out of Silicon Valley. And you know we're building teams right now in Canada, in South America, in um India, in the Philippines, starting to get more requests for Vietnam. So it's really becoming very, very international. And of course Eastern Europe. So um, in terms of uh um I guess let's switch gears a little bit. We're going to go into what I call Three Questions. It's just simply that, it's three questions, three simple answers. And um from the founder. So where, where do you go to think big or to brainstorm?

Jason Vego: It's [a] good question. I don't think I've figured that out yet. Uh these last two weeks of the year I'm really hoping to decompress a little and sort of do that. Um I've allowed my calendar to get out of hand and I've learned that's not beneficial for me, the people I'm meeting with or the rest of the company. So I think I, I, I don't have a great place to really sort of think big. I think what I'm starting to do is I have a dog. So still have a dog even though I'm not uh grooming dogs with technology. And the dog walk has been a really good place for me because it forces me out of the, the office or my house. I'm walking the dog. I live in a little neighborhood where there's a lot of grass patches etc. It's a, so you know weather's usually pretty nice. And so the 10 to 15 minutes out of sort of my day-to-day to sort of breathe. Being what you could call nature, LA is arguable if that's really nature especially after being in Seattle. But being outside in the open with my dog walking around, I found so far. But I, I think my short answer really is I need to be better at facilitating those time periods and structures to, to think bigger uh about the future of the company. So hopefully, hopefully next year we'll talk and I'll have a better answer.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, hey look, it's, you're in line with Steve Jobs. I mean you, you know, he would go for walks around the campus anytime he had to solve a problem and bring the person with him he was trying to do it with, or maybe a, a third party that you know would bounce ideas off of. So moving, walking seems to be pretty common for a lot of people we talk to. Um what advice have you gotten from another founder that's been priceless to you as a founder?

Jason Vego: I think I mentioned a little bit [of] this at the beginning. But appreciating the journey and really embracing the journey and instead of being so hung up on the outcome. I've talked to founders personally, I actually just watched a, a video of the founder of Grubhub talking about it, which is it seems like notoriously these founders who, even if they reach success, however one may define it, whether that be financial exit, whatever, growing a company really large. It's if it was all about the outcome, they spent years being unhappy. Uh and, and there's this sort of theme around startups especially at the early stage. There's too much to do, there's endless work, and I have like a guilt around never doing enough. And I think the advice I'm taking very seriously now going forward, we raised a, a fundraising round so we at least can breathe it seems like, is I really need to be better at appreciating the journey, learning and growing as part of it. And I'm not saying don't be focused on outcomes, but appreciate and live within the journey. Uh be happy with the process and the growth as part of it uh instead of just the outcome. So that you don't get to the outcome and realize uh you were pretty unhappy for a long time just building.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I, yeah I understand that. You know we're trained to you know focus on the outcomes, you know what's the goal, what's the end look like for you and then you kind of work backwards and create something. But yeah, it's that journey, it's that perspective that you have to keep you know in mind. If you're you know lucky to be able to build something, you're lucky to be able to have a product you're creating or people that you're working with. And you know you have the fe- freedom as the founder to decide what you want to do. Um you know it's interesting because if you look at the life cycle of any dream you have, you start with the dream and then you want to develop it and design it. And then ultimately you hit the delays which you know set you back and question you know "can I build what I want to create and am I going to get there?" You're happy about the beginning, you're excited about, you're happy about what it can be at the end, but it's that really that middle period where a lot of people give up. The great people never give up, they always look for a way and they always persevere. And I think it's hard to keep that in mind in that journey when you're going through the ups and downs of how to get through, how to break through. And um so for you, what, what do you do to stay positive when you're going through the ups and downs of the startup journey?

Jason Vego: Yeah, I, I'll, I'll share one quick story just because I thought it was interesting and then I'll answer. Which is I was watching a video of the NVIDIA founder and CEO, who obviously NVIDIA is like a huge company now right, and they asked him "what would you do differently looking back?" and he literally said "I wouldn't do it." And that shocked me because I'm like "You changed NVIDIA as a massive company right, and their chip." And it shocked me and it was like you have to almost be a little bit delusional as a founder to sort of build this and you almost trick your brain into forgetting certain moments and keep moving past them. So I thought that was funny and interesting and, and it seems like some innate part of being a founder.

To answer your question how do, how do I stay positive? I think I wasn't as good at this in the early days of Bevz. I've been a lot more diligent now. It is partly I think how I take care of myself. So I mean I'm not going to be sleeping 10 hours a night, it's not going to be possible to keep the startup going, so I have to cut some of those hours right. So where do I stay healthy and, and, and maintain physical energy is I'm pretty diligent about what I eat especially during the week. Trying to eat the healthy foods, stay healthy. I've now finally worked uh working out and exercise into my routine more. It always felt like I didn't have time for it and I realized staying positive and keeping my body healthy actually had quite an impact. Still no, I'm not working out six days a week, but I'm, I'm cycling and exercise. So I think keeping my physical body is one part that definitely affects my mental health.

Second is I absolutely go to therapy. So I go to therapy now um every other week. So keeping mental health and sort of positivity, I think having a therapist if you can afford it uh or, or get a good... it's, that's kind of the tricky part. That match, almost like a co-founder, you need a really good therapist match. And so I have a really good one now I like. Uh and so that's I think two.

And I think the third one is support systems is really what has gotten me through everything more than, more than probably all of the above. Is like you need someone, or I felt I've always needed someone to talk to that doesn't work at the company, but knows several months or years to sort of build that up. So my dad who, who is obviously part of my entrepreneurial journey right, he knows business, he does not know technology startups, but over the years he's learned a lot about Bevz through our conversations. So he's been an awesome resource that really understands business, knows what he's talking about, knows what he doesn't know, but has been a, a great person to listen and support me and, and let me vent. Because there are, now as you scale you can't do this kind of venting or negativity sort of within the company. Along with other founders has been, been a big one. So I did Techstars LA and I'm, I'm quite close with a couple of the founders that I still talk to like almost on a weekly basis. So I think those three have been big for me. Take care of my physical body, uh go to therapy for my mental health, and have a few, I don't have a lot but a few really good support system people that have, have allowed me to sort of re-embrace and then be more positive. And, and as, as I said, I still have a lot of work to do on the sort of appreciation and embracing the journey that I, I have not fully figured out yet.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing the part about the mental health. I um have a family of therapists and social workers and I understand uh the benefits, the, the true benefits you can get out of just how you look at things and how you think about them. And you know, you need different perspectives and different people can give you insights that you know at the right times that you don't, can't figure out how to get uh your, your mind in a different place sometimes. So really cool to hear that. And by the way, that's becoming much more prevalent. We're hearing this from a lot of founders and a lot of you know different sectors um which is I think just a different view and more open uh about you know what do I need to do to get better. Doesn't matter what it is, you know your mind, your body, your soul, everything. So that's really cool to hear you say that. Um what's on the roadmap for 2024 for Bevz? What are you excited about?

Jason Vego: A lot, a lot of things. So we, we actually just sort of hashed out what we're working on. We, we've set a North Star metric which is we're really focused on how much the stores are making right. We, we've realized that long term we think we will be facilitating the way they operate the business in such an effective way that they'll want to pay for the operational effici-, efficiency, the time savings. For 2024 though, we still believe that the best way to sort of find, keep and engage these stores is that they're making more money. And today how are we facilitating that? Is through the delivery apps and through online sales right. So our North Star is we really want, even though we plan to have 300% annual growth next year, we want about 450% increase in their e-commerce sales. So we are doubling down, obviously adding stores increases our GMV, but we can start to do things on how they run their store, how they manage their inventory, how they match their inventory of what's in store and what's online. So first one is we really want to see these stores selling a lot more online. And we've seen that trend start to pick up. I think it's the perfect time that we've spent the last basically four years building toward. That's one.

The second is we want to add a lot of stores right. We do believe there's a land grab opportunity which is, it's a lot of open space, there aren't a ton of competitors. Competitors are starting to pop up. And when we hook them, we're, we're usually quite successful. Today we have a 90% conversion from free trial to paid subscription and a 92% annual retention. So our big move is add as many stores as we can next year. I'm hoping to have several thousand next year by end of year.

And I think the third big is that data play. Data has been sort of behind the scenes right. Data as a standalone is no... there's no ROI for the store right? So it's a tricky part, whereas we're sort of allocating resources and time, where do we put that? If it's all toward building this data repertoire it doesn't actually have value to the store yet. So we've been sort of adding the right features and building data sort of integrations behind the scenes. I think we'll finish off 2024 going into 2025 with a real robust set of tangible data that we will now be ready to actually sort of like put action to helping the stores automate, helping the brands know what's happening in the store. And so those are kind of the three things I'm really hoping to get done in 2024. I think speaking of people it's, we're a very people-driven organization, I mentioned that before, which is we don't really spend like a lot on paid digital marketing or anything like that. Like we're hiring developers and we're hiring physical salespeople in their territories. And we have you know upwards of a thousand customers so we have now quite a few customer success. And so I, I'm a big believer in the people is what makes the entire difference. So I think those are my three goals but the only way I believe we'll reach those goals is if we find, hire and engage the right people. And so I'd say my personal goal is going to be mainly people focused for 2024 uh around navigating the team which is uh exciting for me but a little scary.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that's great. Well for those who might be listening that might want to work for you in the future, where uh what type of roles [are] you looking for and, and do you have locations defined yet or is it still kind of in process?

Jason Vego: Yeah a little bit in process, but I have an idea. So we're always looking for great sales professionals, especially for our market right. No offense to someone who's worked in, in corporate in sales. I used to work in corporate, but typically someone selling like expensive enterprise sales software is not the best fit for our, our sales team. And so we're looking for people who really want to you know, hit the small to medium businesses, these independently operated liquor and convenience stores, either phone or in person physically visiting them. So salespeople we'll definitely be hiring right now. We closed out the year, there's no more hiring through December, but we'll be hiring at least two more roles probably three in Q1 of next year for sales. Uh we haven't picked the locations yet, but a, a few that are sort of hot for us is Georgia, Texas, uh Illinois have been a few that we, we believe we'll be hiring in. Um the second is customer success too. So as we add more stores we're hiring customer success. Those are remote jobs so uh uh employees can live anywhere. Typically more junior roles, we're hoping to actually really uplevel our current people into more senior roles. So I will likely not be hiring senior customer success roles but instead more junior that can kind of grow and develop at Bevz. Uh and then software development, I will say that we're, we're still pretty adamant about building our development team in the Philippines. So this would be you'd have to live in the Philippines to currently sort of apply for those roles. But those are really the three sort of key parts of the business. The rest we filled. We, we hired our first product manager, we hired our first Director of People and Culture. And so those uh we filled as part of this round. So 2024: customer success, sales, and product I think are the, the three pillars of, of Bevz.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well if anybody wants to find you Jason or wants to find Bevz, where do they go?

Jason Vego: Yep, so you can go to bevz.com, b-e-v-z.com. You can find our careers page there, we post blogs, things like that. For me personally, I'm most active on LinkedIn. Not as much on the other social media sites, but very active on LinkedIn. So I'm quite responsive, find me on LinkedIn, Jason Vego. I don't think there are too many uh with the same exact name as me, so hopefully you'll find me pretty easily with that.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Jason thanks so much for having the courage to come on the show and tell your story. Uh the good, the bad, everything in between. As well as um you know introducing your family to us, uh you know maybe your parents will watch this at some point and they'll get a good shout out out of it. Um so anyway I appreciate you listening or coming on, and to all the listeners for listening, I really appreciate you spending your time with us. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal and look forward to catching up with everyone on the next episode. Until then enjoy the holiday and take care.

Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners from, for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.

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