Soundtrack to a Financial Advisor's Life – Patrick Sullivan & Jake Rosenfeld on their social impact startup Bonsai.
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Patrick Sullivan & Jake Rosenfeld on their social impact startup Bonsai. We discuss startup life, living in NYC during COVID-19 and Bonsai’s twist on career building.
Trevor Chambers:
Hey everybody. My name’s Trevor Chambers. I’m the host of Meet The Masters with Olde Raleigh Financial group. Today is May 7, 2020, and what we do here at Meet the Masters, we interview subject matter experts like today’s guests, Patrick Sullivan. Say hi, Patrick.
Patrick Sullivan:
Hey everybody.
Trevor Chambers:
And Jake Rosenfeld.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Yep. Good to be here.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah man. These guys have lots of experience in founding, and funding, and exiting businesses, and hiring people, and they’re the nuts and bolts of how to get a company rolling, and I can’t wait to hear their stories. They have teamed up to create a new venture called Bonsai which we’re going to talk about, which I think is pretty right on time in terms of the concept. Let me just start off with Jake. Jake, are you a Michigan kid? I saw Michigan on the roster for college. What’s going on? Where you from? What’s your story?
Jake Rosenfeld:
Yeah, yeah. I definitely identify as a Michigan man, but I’m born and raised in New York.
Trevor Chambers:
Okay, all right.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Yeah, I was born in Long Island about 20, 30 minutes outside of Manhattan. Went to Michigan for college, and moved to Manhattan right after college. But loved my time in Michigan, big Michigan sports fan. While at Michigan, I fell in love with the concept of being an entrepreneur and always did some hustle side projects, as a kid growing up, but really it blossomed while I was in college. So I started my first real venture which was a marketplace for tutors and students to connect in Ann Arbor, specifically within Michigan. And honestly, that was created to solve a pain point that I was feeling myself. It wasn’t that I was some genius hacking away programming a website at night, I needed an economics tutor to do well in the class in order to get into the undergraduate business program and I was totally screwing up.
So I pinged my professor. I said, “Hey, where can I find a tutor?” He said, “Hey, go to Morris Hall, go to the basement dungeon and all these tutors from around campus put these little post-it notes with their names and contact info.” A light bulb moment went off. I was like, “There needs to be a better way.” So I created a website, a marketplace to fill that need, really, for myself. I think that translates to the rest of what I’ve done in this space. That kicked me off and been interested in building companies, particularly companies that touch technology, ever since.
Trevor Chambers:
That’s awesome. Then you somehow stumbled into the orbit of one, Patrick Sullivan, who’s a Bronx kid I think. Right? Is that true Patrick?
Patrick Sullivan:
I’m from the Boogie Down.
Trevor Chambers:
Well aware of the Boogie Down. When the Boogie Down was on one side of the street, I was typically on the other. I’m strictly an upstate kid that hung out with cows and stuff.
Patrick Sullivan:
First of all, thank you, Trevor. I really appreciate it, and I’m actually walking around lovely North Raleigh right now, while we do this, enjoying the weather. Hope it’s not too noisy.
Trevor Chambers:
No, no it’s okay.
Patrick Sullivan:
… get a walk in while I do this. I come from serial entrepreneur background. I’ve been very involved in the New York tech ecosystem and Raleigh tech ecosystem for a few years, had companies. Funded, built and sold companies to large tech companies, such as Google and Facebook and then healthcare space as well. So I’m really a hardened, scrappy early stage person who likes to think about problems at scale and help try to solve those.
Really excited to share stories, and anecdotes around experiences and now living full time in Raleigh and can reverse commute to our offices in New York city, with my partner, Jake on the call. My background is, born and raised in Bronx, New York and I’m a street hustler at heart. And so I applied a lot of that critical street thinking into the businesses that I’ve been part of and it keeps me going and keeps me motivated and keeps me focused on the art of the hustle.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah, I love. You’re hustling right now you’re huffing and puffing down there. I like it.
Patrick Sullivan:
Okay, if you ain’t trying you’re dying.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Damn right. Well, Trevor, real quick before we move on, I think that Patrick referenced a really important thing that connects the two of us. Right? And I think a big part of building business can fall into two buckets. One is, you have an idea for a revenue generating engine, and you start a company, right? It could be, I want to create the best hamburger in New York city and I’m going to sell those hamburgers. I think Patrick and I both come at starting businesses purely from, what is the problem perspective?
Not necessarily jumping in, knowing what the solution is quite yet or what the monetization strategy is, what the product is quite yet, but what is this overarching pain point that either I myself I’m feeling, or a whole bunch of consumers out there are feeling and putting the right people in place and the right heads together to essentially ideate on what the best solution is. Growing up two separate lives for sure, and inevitably connecting, I think we both share that thread.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah. And then you also share something called Bonsai. Let’s talk about what the hell is going on with that, there’s been a bunch of press circulating, I have noticed, mostly because I’m connected to Patrick on his Facebook, which is no deep research, but there’s some stuff going on. Tell us what’s going on. I heard you raise some money, and tell us what this thing is, because I just think this is really cool. Either one of you guys.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Yeah. I could jump in. We connected and started thinking about a problem about a year ago. And the problem was that, there is a tremendous imbalance in terms of opportunity that pre-professionals, call them college students, call them high school students, whatever it might be, have in order to access the right social capital to launch a lucrative and fulfilling and sustainable professional life.
Whether that’s measured in salary, whether it’s measured in just job placement rate, et cetera. We identify there being a massive problem around the access individuals were getting early on in life. And a lot of it was connected to the name brand on their university diploma. And for us, after about a year of ideating and going back and forth in order to quote unquote, level the playing field. We are building today, and what we launched about two weeks ago. So that’s connected to all of the press you’re seeing Trevor, is a marketplace that connects advice seekers. In our case, advice seekers are our college students and young professionals with advice givers, and advice givers are professionals and executives across various industries.
So what we do is, we learn about the profiles, the interests of advice seekers, and we pair them with relevant folks in the workforce, and facilitate one-to-one video chats. These video chats center around specific career topics. And the idea is that, almost analogous to how Uber and Airbnb are marketplaces, we are the marketplace for career advice, bridging the gap between supply and demand. People that crave knowledge about a certain topic, and people that are able to offer their insight into that specific knowledge.
Trevor Chambers:
Awesome. So Patrick, why this, why now?
Patrick Sullivan:
It’s so hard to follow-up Jake’s polished response.
Jake Rosenfeld:
I know
Patrick Sullivan:
I have trouble speaking but I’ll try-
Jake Rosenfeld:
You don’t pull out with glossy right now…
Patrick Sullivan:
His teeth are shining, believe me. I want to hang out with him everyday-
Jake Rosenfeld:
No wonder you like this…
Patrick Sullivan:
He’s got the Kodak smile and delivery.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Great hair too.
Patrick Sullivan:
I think piggybacking on what Jake was mentioning, right time, right place. It’s been a life’s work, for me, having had the journey from the Bronx to here and throughout my early beginnings. My dad was a superintendent, he also worked in the transit authority. The networks to where I am today were probably not even in existence. And I think the idea of what Chase bank was to me, was always just a bank on the corner. Not really understanding it’s a big corporate global organization called JPMorgan Chase, and it has the power of networks through people that at that time, and my parents, we didn’t understand, or would we even have the opportunity. I think that’s still translate to a lot of folks in inner cities that don’t understand the networks and the power.
So, part of the journey has led me to starting companies, but building a really strong network that can help us build relationships, build knowledge, more important, put us in a position to create opportunities. And I think a lot of people don’t get that in particular on network platforms, such as LinkedIn. We’re trying to reverse engineer, how could we bring the networks to the people that need it most and democratize that accessibility.
Trevor Chambers:
Just to be clear, what exactly is this business model tool? I just want it clear, so that folks are clear. How are we making money on this?
Patrick Sullivan:
I’ll let the Michigan man response.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Pat, I really wasn’t happy…
Patrick Sullivan:
Cash in a bag. We take cash, we take quarters.
Jake Rosenfeld:
That’s it, period. Essentially, like any marketplace it’s a pay-to-play model. So we have, advice seekers that pay advice givers for the one-to-one sessions and Bonsai as the middleman if you will, take the take rate in the middle, off of the advice givers fee. It’s important to point out just in that regard, that’s our fundamental business model, where we’re experimenting with a number of ways to give free sessions to advise speakers on our platform. And we have a few different ways in which we’re trying to do that, and hopefully we’ll find the exact code to work at scale over the next few months.
Trevor Chambers:
There’s so many ways to build wealth. Education plays a huge part in that, hard work, doggedness, certainly Patrick, and Jake, you know all about that. Plays a huge in building your wealth, right? Even inheritance plays a huge role in actually destroying wealth because we’ve all met those guys. But a big part of building wealth is that soft skills to building connections. And like anything of great value, transformative connections are in the stronghold of relative few, I would say. So, I look at Bonsai, in much like a currency exchange. Connections are currency, and if you’re locked up to that exchange is harder to build on yourself, right?
You guys know what I do, I help people invest for longterm plan, and we manage the culmination growing rate, everybody’s hard work education and connections. So Pat, I just commend you guys on that. I don’t know if you want to add anything further on Bonsai, why Bonsai?
Patrick Sullivan:
Why Bonsai, why not Bonsai? But one thing I wanted to add to that point is, I wish I had thought of it as the way I’ve processed this thinking of a good friend of mine, had summarized throughout our professional careers. The later stage in your career, you built all these network inputs. I got to know you Trevor, friends of ours, friends of Jake’s that are highly credentialized professionals that I can [rolodex 00:13:14] at any given time. And I think we’ve aggregated all this sort of currency, as you mentioned, that’s so valuable. And sometimes we hoard it, and we only share within the wealth of people that we feel fit within the categories of our networks and it creates unfair advantage for the people that need it most.
So where we feel we’re at that export stage, how do we export that knowledge and currency to the networks that need it? And we’re looking at how do we democratize that, and there’s got to be a way that we can pull and push and more important push the networks to people in a seamless, streamlined way that reimagines how people typically would acquire access information, whether it’s coaching, mentoring, advising. We got to reimagine that in a digital way and simplify that. And that’s the why Bonsai, had come to fruition. It’s like sculpting, we need to sculpt these individuals. We need to help them understand their needs and help them manage directionally where and how they get there with this really large currency of networks that we’ve acquired over time.
Trevor Chambers:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but corporate America wants this, right? I mean, you Pat, you got some friends in some interesting places and they need a better solutions yet.
Patrick Sullivan:
I would say yes and no. And yes, corporate America always looking for talent, but we’re trying to bypass the filters, the systems that have been created that corporate America utilizes and have depended on, and this systems could be the other job boards, job listings. We’re not a job board. We’re not a job listing site. And they’ve created these barriers to entry on the recruitment side, on accessibility. We know these big organizations recruited at Michigan, recruited NYU Stern, they recruit and what happens to everybody else, the SUNY New Paltz kid, that’s me, I graduated… I’m with you man.
Patrick Sullivan:
Yeah, man.
We got to figure out ways. We know where we infiltrated our product is based on former employees, people that want to provide this knowledge gap back to those in need and who need them more. And those in need could be the person from the Bronx to the privilege student. The privileged person that just doesn’t have access to networks. Their parents or family might be in finance and they need access into digital media. We hope to help and provide that accessibility at scale. And everyone needs access to networks. There’s ways that we think we’re doing with Bonsai that help transform not how corporate America thinks, but how people think in general. And human capital and human knowledge is beneficial to their careers and their outcomes.
Trevor Chambers:
Awesome. Well said. Jake, you got anything to add to that man?
Jake Rosenfeld:
That’s super well said I think. We have some amazing friends at some large companies across the country. A lot of these companies unfortunately, they’ve been built to optimize for efficiency, particularly when they hire. And sometimes that results in auto-generated projections, if a resume doesn’t have a specific GPA, or if a resume starts not from a specific group of 10 schools, literally. So we have seen those things play out and shake out, and we said, ” Man, sometimes it’s not necessarily about what you know, it’s just who you know, and that’s it.”
And as someone who didn’t go to one of those 10 universities that company XYZ recruits from, has come into the company through a person who currently works at that company or used to work at that company, that could be tremendously valuable for that applicant, if you will. So it’s almost taking a little bit of a different take on the recruitment industry, if you will. And to Patrick’s point, we’re not a job board, we’re not a recruiting company, but that’s how we’re envisioning the flow of human capital working through our platform.
Trevor Chambers:
Cool. Can we switch gears a little bit? Well, actually before I do, is there anything else that you guys want to say about Bonsai, particularly?
Jake Rosenfeld:
Check us out on joinbonsai.co.
Patrick Sullivan:
Yeah.
Jake Rosenfeld:
And answer a bunch of questions.
Trevor Chambers:
Nice. Perfect. All right. Cool. Let me switch gears just a little bit. We are experiencing obviously a pretty interesting economic shock with this pandemic. I put this to Jake first, I guess and then Pat, what role do entrepreneurs play in economic recovery do you think?
Jake Rosenfeld:
I think they can play a huge role. I don’t know, this might sound cheesy, we’re entrepreneurs at large, whether you’re starting a small tech company or running a big tech company or again, creating a new burger joint, you have the power to shape the future, as far as recovery goes. You have the ability to contribute to economic recovery by creating advancement and stimulated the economy in new ways through innovation.
So I think it’s an interesting role that [inaudible 00:18:45] play. Actually, a few weeks ago I think, when this lockdown first started, Mark Cuban said, somethings be effective, rather than entrepreneurs looking at this pandemic and everything going on with the economic climate as, “Oh, this is a terrible situation. How am I going to get myself out of this?” Look at it as an opportunity to say, why not try XYZ? Why not try this vision I’ve been tinkering with for quite a bit of time and see how we could contribute to the next version of reality.
I think that entrepreneurs have the ability to create the new reality, after coming out of these crazy times. Every economic recovery and downfall is different than the one before it, but I think this one in particular, we’re going to see some amazing innovation with products, specifically technology products that people can use, as social distancing probably becomes the new norm to some respect. And I think there are going to be some tremendously valuable companies that come out of this, as the winners from doubling down on that.
Inevitably what that leads to is jobs created, and platforms for other people to build businesses on. So, we’ll see. The jury is still out obviously, but I think you can contribute in a very meaningful way, depending on what you build and you have to have the right mindset to do so.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah. Pat, I had a nice interview with Jesse Lipson, who I know you know here locally, in our entrepreneurial ecosystem. Jesse has recently founded Levitate, it’s doing great. I don’t know if you have any comment. He said, “Sometimes in times, when the slate gets cleaned a little bit, it’s actually easier to be an entrepreneur.” Do you have any thoughts on that?
Patrick Sullivan:
Yeah. I was piggybacking on Jake whose mentioned about innovation. The country is built on, in the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and like any given entrepreneur, we’re always searching for problems. That’s the basis of why you build and why you execute on a business.
It’s a funny antidote. I’d walk around New York city like, “Wow, what if there was ads on the back of jeans?” What if we add ads on sidewalks? [inaudible 00:21:26] clean up sidewalks. Crazy ideas. I’m like, how hard would that be? You are always ideating. The good, I think it comes out of it is problem solving around major, minor problems [inaudible 00:21:40] industries. And we’re seeing the rise of the entrepreneur.
I’m heavily involved in large entrepreneurial communities, part of a 8,000 strong zoogler organization that I’m seeing already the spirit of innovation in how these great minds come together to solve problems. Also very actively involved in nonprofit sector, and in particular, one thing that comes to mind is I got together with the tech industry and the music industry with my old friends and we built a platform to mirror live aid in a digital way called song AIDS. We’re about to launch that in may.
We pulled together tech companies, folks in Facebook, in Instagram, artists, and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Santana, his wife Cindy. Amazing folks that come together for hunger fighting, WhyHunger. We did something, putting a business together, as we were falling from the sky. It’s amazing to see how people can collaborate and come together with these competitors, people that work at Google, work at Facebook, we’re all working together with a common theme. How do we put food on the table for those who are hungry through song aid and song aids, the initiative.
So, we’re seeing the spirit of that. We’re seeing that spirit transcend to all industries around folks in tech and in other areas of media. And it’s exciting, because it’s good. There’s no, I don’t know if I want to do this. I have to do this and how do I help mentality. It’s a different DNA, change in a way for some entrepreneurs and I’m proud to see that happening.
I think that we’re going to see some amazing products being built and services and different ways of thinking. It’s typically going to be driven from the bottom of the economy of the startup ecosystem that these things happen. Obviously, you have great companies and great companies doing amazing work. We did a project, with Google to their Waze products for WhyHunger, they did something in a weekend that normally you would take a normal business pitch cycle months to do if not a year. And over the weekend, Google through engineers are putting 30,000 local food pantries data into the Waze app, so people that are hungry and in need of food, can you drive around and see where to get the food. ….. an amazing that, and now we’re putting the additional 30,000 food pantries.
These are the small pantries that nobody gets to see. These are not the feed America, the big behemoths, but these are like the small mom and pop pantries. And so, it’s powerful when you put together entrepreneurs, good causes, big problems, big tech, and people that are willing to get together and solve it. So, good has come out of that. That’s a really great example that I’m proud of, and seen that happen. Kudos to Emma Weisberg, at Waze who’s at Google, sits on the board with me at WhyHunger, helped put that together and execute with our team at Google.
Trevor Chambers:
That’s so cool. Thanks for sharing. [inaudible 00:24:46] at the end, I do want to plug, I know you’re pretty philanthropically involved, you and your lovely wife, [chassis 00:24:54], so I want to hear about that. Hey, I was reading a little bit about each of you. I think you both can answer this. What role does humility play in being an entrepreneur? Patrick, you said something like, first rule of fight club if you will, just be quiet. Surround yourself with small people and be quiet and listen a lot more or less and not put yourself first. That’s a huge importance, isn’t it? You collect the data.
Patrick Sullivan:
Obviously, there’s different levels of cycles when you’re starting out and you’re trying to figure things out. I’ve been founder one. First person to start a company and you’re doing data modeling, you’re doing business development, you’re doing marketing PR logos. And then eventually you realize those logos are not good. The business model is not that great. And you need to bring smarter people around you that have capabilities that probably exceed if not go on beyond your capabilities. With that said, it’s also important that you’re part of that process. Sometimes people pass responsibilities to the wrong people or too early. My job is this good, I’m a little bit better than most people, but then hire superstar talent around you that helps you get to the next level. Sorry. That was a car driving by.
Okay, don’t get hit on.
Patrick Sullivan:
Actually I’m on the highway now. I’m almost where I got to go. I’m just literally walking on the highway. It’s very exciting, I’ve been very fortunate and blessed when Jake and I met each other, we liked each other. It took us about few months to figure out we wanted to get married each other and become partners.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Right.
Patrick Sullivan:
It’s probably the best decision I ever made in my career, but I was capable realizing what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. And we just basically compliment each other, I believe on how we work together. And I think it’s very important that entrepreneurs find out what they’re good at. One very good, clear lesson around the start of a company is, you create infrastructure of the inside person and the outside person. You don’t want all outside people doing inside work and vice versa. And I think it’s critical that you have one person who becomes the foundation as you become the brick layer and build the floors.
It obviously hybrids and blends at times. But I think it’s important you have that one person who is responsible for operations and then one person’s responsible for sales.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Yup. I concur more on what you just said on that and all. It’s so funny, man. I did little logos for an early idea I had and you kind of do that grunt work, right? Because you learn so much, and then somebody comes in and is so much better than you at it. And it’s like, “Oh my God, what the hell was I thinking.” But you learn.
Patrick Sullivan:
That’s the key, and doing it all. I always use, the lesson was learned how to pour the coffee first, and the key lesson there is letting people know and understand that you do the same thing they do, we’re all equal. I always think of it as there’s a no boss rule. Everyone has the role and responsibility. Don’t put a set tone of a top down thinking, bottom up thinking, with people that are smarter than you. I’m about to jump in a car right now, probably keep listening.
Jake Rosenfeld:
How nice, your body man is picking you up. He’s got this.
Patrick Sullivan:
I love it. I love it. I will echo all of it. I’m super cheesy. And when I hear good points, I always try to relate them to really powerful things I’ve heard from people I idolize. I’m a big NBA fan, big basketball fan. And one of the last interviews Kobe Bryant did, before he tragically passed two months ago, someone asked him particularly about, what’s rule number one of leadership, and his response was, serve don’t lead. I think that’s the perfect answer to your question. It’s all about, how can I serve the folks that are around us, around me or around Patrick, whatever it might be, around you, how could we serve them and make their lives better while we’re all tracking towards the same goal and the same mission.
He viewed it as, I’m a leader, I’m a boss. It’s hard to get to where you want to be with a real cohesive unit, but if you adopt the mentality of serving and not leading, I think that relates perfectly well to the concept of learn how to pour the coffee first. And that’s true humility.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah, so bummed about Kobe, he did so much, and had so much potential that guy. Unbelievable. Ah, it’s amazing.
Shout out to Kobe, terrible. Jake, real quick. What are you most concerned about out there? Just looking at the world, what are you concerned about? And then conversely, what are you most optimistic and then Patrick, you’re up next?
Jake Rosenfeld:
I think it’d be wrong and not true if I didn’t say, concerned just for the health and wellbeing of folks. Right? Particularly starting with my loved ones and family and all that stuff. But luckily, we’re all doing okay, and this whole [crosstalk 00:30:45] living in right now is [crosstalk 00:30:47].
Trevor Chambers:
Where are you, man? Where are you right now?
Jake Rosenfeld:
I’m in New York city, [crosstalk 00:30:52].
Trevor Chambers:
Where in New York?
Jake Rosenfeld:
Right on the border of Tribeca and Chinatown.
Trevor Chambers:
Oh, nice. Love that area.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Few blocks South of Canal Street. It’s crazy here. It’s crazy, man. The first few weeks of lock down, it was a weird dark environment. It continues to be so, I think some folks have loosened up a bit and got used to the current reality. Obviously, just concerned for the health and wellbeing of the people I love and the people around.
I think from a business standpoint, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a serious concern, but I’m interested to see the contraction of valuations across private companies. I think particularly, really young companies. Call it the pre-money valuations of companies in the startup space. The past few years it’s been a good time to be an entrepreneur. I’ve seen entrepreneurs in the past few years, raise a few million dollars, on a PowerPoint deck, valuing the company sometimes 10, 12, 15 million bucks. And that’s largely because of the valuation of a startups, simply just a function of supply and demand, right?
Trevor Chambers:
Right.
Jake Rosenfeld:
It’s not necessarily about modeling out future cashflow. With supply and demand being really the framework for it, I’m interested to see how this… As some capital could dry up because of the economy being a little more shaky than it was a few months ago, there’s going to be less competition for some of these quote unquote startup deals. So then the financing, and I think valuation probably will contract a bit. So it’d be interesting to see how that shapes out.
Again, I don’t know if I’m quote unquote concerned about it. I think also it could be a net positive for everyone involved, raising at ultra high price before you’re necessarily supposed to, is not a good thing for either the investor nor the founding team. So we’ll see how that plays out. I’m optimistic about what we’re doing here at Bonsai honestly, and I think, it connects to one of your earlier questions on the roles we can play in economic recovery. What we’re doing at Bonsai, not only can play a good role there and just in terms of legitimate, tangible income for folks, but if we’re able to facilitate these relationships in the new virtual world, through our platform, that’s going to be a really powerful thing for a lot of people.
And I think there are benefits to having a mentor. There are benefits to having a mentee and if we’re able to bring humans together, even though they can’t necessarily physically be together, I’m just optimistic about that being part of the future DNA of what we have going on.
Trevor Chambers:
Nice. So Pat, thank you. What do we see as the biggest challenge here, probably speaking, and then what are you most optimistic about?
Patrick Sullivan:
I can sit here and talk about all the amazing things going on, but in reality my heart is heavily leveraged into feeding the hungry and helping those in need educationally, in particular, in New York city and across the country. We live in a privilege world. Our eyeballs see only certain things that are in front of us. And I think that as we look deeper and look into the cities and the pantry lines or the food lines, they’re miles and miles long. There’s kids who don’t have access to computers and laptops and the tele teaching and everything’s gone online and we’re trying to get hotspots into communities in New York city and the Bronx that weren’t set up.
So, what is happening to our education system, in particular for the folks who need it and don’t have the opportunity to elevate or enhance the online experience and getting food and the necessary funds to keep these pantries open. My fight, that’s what I’m focused on very heavily. That’s out of the health challenges around COVID-19. I think these are the major implications concerns, and I can not stop, Jake works with me very heavily on that side as well. And we’re active employers and trying to do as much as we can. I think the economy and macro approach to business, people we’ll, innovate, we’ll overcome.
The airline industry, the retail, the bars, restaurants, those are places that we don’t know how that’s going to shake out, especially in New York city and harder hit communities. I’m optimistic that we’ll overcome, but still the heart is not there to say, I see the optimism yet, through the trees and through the forest. I know a lot of people restaurateurs, who own businesses, how could they have predicted the staff layoffs, the concerns around how they’re going to pay their own rent and the compound trickle to that effect. If one party doesn’t pay rent, mortgage companies and et cetera.
I hope corporate America comes together and hopefully does a better job at helping small businesses, these stimulus bills, loan programs, but I’m optimistic we’ll figure it out, but I would’ve had a better answer to say, “Hey, let’s put a pin on this direction, but TBD on that one.”
Trevor Chambers:
Yes. You know what we’re going to do, we’re going to talk again at six months, review the tape and sewer out, all that… speed round I’ll let you gentlemen go.
Patrick Sullivan:
I actually just got a beer and I’m sitting here.
Trevor Chambers:
Oh, love that. What kind of beer?
Patrick Sullivan:
It’s actually Naked Pig. It’s from Alabama. It’s a pale ale.
Trevor Chambers:
It’s a winner. All right. Shout out to Naked Pig. Jake, what are you streaming, reading or podcasting these days. And not all three, only one dude.
Jake Rosenfeld:
I’m reading the biography of David Geffen right now. I founded Dreamworks and a bunch of other entertainment related businesses, music space, et cetera. Love biographies. He’s got a crazy story. Talk about self-starter hustler. Win at all costs, but when he reached his pinnacle and obviously achieved all the success in the world, he’s focused the rest of his life on giving back, in very meaningful ways. So man, he’s definitely an idle, amazing book.
Trevor Chambers:
Cool. Patrick, in between raising two lovely boys and eating your wife’s incredible food, what are you streaming, podcasting or reading?
Patrick Sullivan:
My kids.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah, imagine.
Patrick Sullivan:
That’s my reality, I will say. We can talk about business streaming, reading, but it’s really spending time, quality with my kids that help enhance my thinking and my awareness to what we’re doing with Bonsai, and who we are as good global citizens. I think the pure simplicity of being around your kids and listening, and reading with them, and taking your time, and nurturing them through this and transcends all of us, if we’re all doing it, we’re all in it together. Every parent has different things, but I think that’s been the most impactful thing for me.
Obviously, constantly reading about the industry and then financials and that, we could talk about that all day, but for me, it’s a streaming, reading and listening to my kids.
Jake Rosenfeld:
And Patrick is a big Narcos fan. I got to add that-
Patrick Sullivan:
That is true.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Trevor, what about you any?
Trevor Chambers:
There’s some great podcasts, I’m a wealth graduate, so. Excellent to a lot of that stuff. There’s masters in businesses is great. I love that ad lots, is another one, that’s on Bloomberg network. Patrick, Colin Jayden is a beautiful man and I just love your family. You guys are awesome. We had the pleasure of coming up somewhere around the holidays and eating and other frivolity with all your friends, that was a special time just to hang a little bit there.
All right. I know that you guys are both into music. This is next, last question, I guess. For a hard day of startup land, what’s your go to song and or album? Either one of you guys.
Patrick Sullivan:
My all time go to is Rush. And it’s the first release album, 74 of the band Rush, the Canadian band, a lot of go to songs there. But one thing that gets me motivated is the song called the Working Man’
Trevor Chambers:
Yes.
Patrick Sullivan:
It has that blue collar feel, I’m a blue collar person minded, from the streets of New York city. At the end of the day you listen to the working man, sounds like you know that song, Trevor.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah…
Patrick Sullivan:
That’s my all time go to, that album in particular. Finding My Way. That’s me Rush, Rush.
Trevor Chambers:
Eric had a role in jazz course, 120, with two, 12 inch speakers in it. That was his go to. And I have one, an old one, it’s a late seventies version. You know what I mean?
Patrick Sullivan:
Nice.
Trevor Chambers:
guitar players so-
Patrick Sullivan:
I’m a retired.
Trevor Chambers:
Oh my God. I did see a nice picture of you up on something with a nice looking mullet, Patrick. So I want to preach one shoot out to that [crosstalk 00:41:40] from back in 1985 or whatever that was.
Patrick Sullivan:
It’s funny people find those [inaudible 00:41:48].
Trevor Chambers:
Oh yeah, totally. You can’t escape it. All right. Well guys, any last words of inspiration from startup land go, Jake.
Jake Rosenfeld:
Man, just keep on keeping on it. You got to persevere no matter what, right? And that can go, that transcends far beyond startups into life and just have that mentality when it’s go time, just grind through it.
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah, man, Pat.
Patrick Sullivan:
Innovate fast, sell faster. And when it comes to the people that you’re working with and when you’re building out teams and they’re situated in their 13 state, the goal of leadership is to train people, to leave and excite them to stay. And if you get that right, you’ll always have an amazing team.
Trevor Chambers:
I couldn’t end it better than that. That’s well done. I actually am going to quote you on that. Okay. I’ll steal it…
Patrick Sullivan:
Of course.
Trevor Chambers:
Okay. I don’t care. I’m not proud. Anyway, hey guys, seriously, I want to do this down the road. I’ll call you, pester you and you’ll come back and we’ll talk some more. I wish you nothing but luck. Much love to every body out there suffering. Hey Pat, give me a quick shout out to your charities of choice. Are you guys…. a couple of things going on.
Patrick Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, whyhunger.org, I sit on the board. It’s a global hunger organization and then heretohere.org is an education initiative that’s trying to help create pathways to inner city kids in New York city get better jobs, better opportunities than democratize the accessibility for them all.
Trevor Chambers:
Yup. All right, cool. This will be transcribed. So those addresses will all be in there folks. All right, guys, I’ll let you get back to it. Pat, enjoy that beer. Jake, stay healthy up there, brother. All right?
Jake Rosenfeld:
My man. Thank you so much, Trevor. Appreciate [crosstalk 00:43:58].
Trevor Chambers:
Yeah, and then I’ll talk to you guys soon. All right. Hope I see you sooner.
Patrick Sullivan:
Thanks Trevor, stay safe.
Bye bye.