Omer (00:12.320)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Nick Mercario, the co founder and CEO of Dock IO, a service that lets you control your information across the web.
Dock gives you ownership of your data and connects your online accounts using blockchain technology.
In this episode, you'll learn how Dock is leveraging blockchain technology to help people take back control of their personal information information.
You'll also learn the simple and repeatable formula that Nick has used to quickly grow Doc and several previous B2C startups to millions of users.
And you'll hear how one of Nick's previous startups taught him an invaluable lesson on the importance of user and customer retention.
So I hope you enjoy the interview.
Nick.
Welcome to the show.
Nick Macario (01:19.490)
Omar.
Thank you for having me.
Omer (01:22.100)
Now, I always like to ask my guests what drives or motivates them.
Some people like to share a quote, other people just kind of tell me in their own words.
So what is it for you?
What gets you out of bed every day to work on your business?
Nick Macario (01:34.740)
Unique and innovative ideas get me out of bed.
And that's a trend that I've tried to set forward in my career too, is that many times you see something being done that's already been done, someone does it slightly better.
But I really get excited about something completely unique that has never been done before.
Omer (01:52.380)
So tell us about Doc.
Give us a quick overview.
What is it?
Who are your target customers and what's the problem that you're trying to solve here?
Nick Macario (02:03.820)
Sure.
So Doc is a blockchain based project and we're focused on two things.
One is giving people more control over the digital identity and information that lives online.
And the second is breaking down data silos and getting companies and applications communicating with one another versus these closed data silos that exist in terms of our target customer.
Dock is meant for anyone that uses the Internet.
Any Internet user has this issue where you have information that lives in applications that you either you may be aware of, you may have forgot about, a lot of times you haven't even consented and many people aren't aware, like how misused their information is as well.
In terms of being bought and sold and exchanged either via the dark web or via data brokers or via giant social networks.
That's a huge problem that we're looking to Solve.
Omer (03:00.050)
Before we get into talking more about Doc, I want to talk a little bit about what you've done before in your background because you founded a number of startups.
So can you kind of tell us a little bit about that?
Like just give us an overview of kind of your history over the last 10 years?
Nick Macario (03:21.180)
Yes, absolutely.
So I've been an entrepreneur, like you said, for 10 years.
A little over 10 years.
Actually the last six years of my career I've specifically focused in the consumer Internet space.
So over that 10 years, four different companies sold two of them.
And walk you through the last few in the consumer space, which has been really my bread and butter.
Like I said over the last six years, starting with Branded Me, which was a digital presence, digital identity type site as well, different play where we help users build a stronger brand, help people build a stronger brand online, essentially market themselves stronger and in that attract more opportunities from a professional aspect.
So we drew that platform to a few million users, had a really great time doing it.
One time it was very popular and well known and we were approached by a company and ultimately acquired by Outsource.com, which was a freelance marketplace.
Outsource acquired us with the intention of really spicing up their brand and bringing new ideas, innovative ideas to the table.
And with that we came in with the vision of building Remote.com, which was one of my more recent projects.
Remote.com was the leader in remote work.
So it's a job marketplace and really the leading brand in terms of finding remote jobs or recruiting remote talent.
We grew that platform to again over a couple million users.
It's still used by some of the largest brands in the world today to recruit talent as well.
And within Remote, we actually had a side project at the time called, which ended up being docked, but had a side project within Remote.
We're working on a big problem and one consistent thing with all of these consumer applications was they all relied heavily on user data to operate.
So whether it was a professional network, a digital identity site or whether it was a, a job network and we needed to match job experiences to jobs and do that in an efficient way.
All of these platforms operate on data and they need data and there's a lot of inefficiencies with data.
So we started working on, working on in house project ourselves to try to solve some problems and ultimately ended up spinning it out into its own brand, which, which is Doc, which we just talked about.
So Doc, we started In August of 2007, 2017, just over a year ago and Ended up taking off, getting good traction.
We did a $20 million fundraise via an initial coin offering in February and it's since grown to be one of the faster and larger growing communities in this blockchain ecosystem.
So, been a fun ride, been an interesting ride.
And so as of today, still operating Dock and Remote.
Although my personal time is spent close to 95% specifically on DOC, that's something that I've grown extremely passionate about.
We have quite a bit of traction there.
So that's where my time is spent day to day.
Omer (06:30.050)
Great.
So I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into like how Doc works and maybe you could share a couple of examples of how somebody might use Doc and the kind of websites that they'd be able to use Dock with today.
Nick Macario (06:49.020)
Yeah, absolutely.
So, so Doc's a two sided project.
On one side it is a blockchain based protocol which is very much infrastructure level focused.
There's no user facing application, but we've created a protocol that essentially processes and transacts data and, and gets applications to communicate with one another.
On the other hand, we have a consumer facing application which is the user side of this.
The Dock app is one of many apps that will integrate in the Dock network and the Dock protocol.
But for the Dock app specifically, our focus is helping people control their data and their digital identity.
So you sign up, we provide tools to help you better monitor and control your information and where it's lived and how it's used.
And then from there you create your one true digital identity that you'd like to use around the Internet.
And with that, essentially there's other features that for example, you'll be able to log into other sites using your Doc account, which is called an OAuth.
But this will be your one identity that's used around the Internet.
The really interesting thing that we're doing is starting to connect experiences.
So I said with the protocol, we're really focused on getting applications to communicate with one another.
Open connectivity versus these closed data silos that exist with Dock and any apps that we bring in the network, any partners we bring in the network, let's say you authenticate through an application, you want to use remote, you want to log in with your Dock account.
The nice thing is not only can you import your identity into these new platforms, you can also save experiences from any of these other platforms back to the Doc network essentially and update all of your information everywhere at once.
So what you have, I talk about closed data silos a lot and these issues like let's say LinkedIn for example, where you go and you update your information or you get a new connection or you get an endorsement, whatever it may be, that update's not going to communicate anywhere other than LinkedIn.
Right.
Unfortunately.
Because it doesn't allow, it doesn't have an open network.
So if you wanted to go update that information anywhere else, like let's say it's your picture or skill, you have to go do that manually across the Internet and all the profiles you may remember, you may not.
What we're doing with Dock is creating one seamless experience across the Internet, starting to connect all of your different experiences to different applications, which for a user is awesome because you can save a lot of time and retain a lot of value.
From a technology perspective, it's very, very interesting because you start to open up new workflows that weren't previously possible and create a lot of new technologies around that.
So that's the protocol is really capable of.
Omer (09:41.520)
Got it.
So in some ways this is a little similar to being able to log into a third party site with let's say your Google account, but it's also different to that.
So can you kind of just maybe help us understand like how using Doc would be different to kind of like logging in with your Google account?
Nick Macario (10:05.920)
Yeah, or Facebook as well.
Facebook's another example as well.
The big differences are, for one is with Doc is you own and control all of your data.
So we don't.
Doc as a network, Doc as a company does not own your data.
You have full transparency and control over all of your data in this platform is one big difference between say Google or Facebook.
The other big difference, like I said, is not only can you log in to an application, but you can also communicate in both directions.
So when you say login and you can import your information, say from Facebook, like that's, that's data moving in one direction.
One way.
You're pushing data to a new application.
You can't pull any experiences back.
The very interesting thing with Dock is, like I said, is there's two way data communication.
So not only can you log in, but any activity that happens in this partner application that you log in with, you can also save back to your Dock account, your Doc network and have full control over.
Omer (11:04.880)
So it sounds like there are like two aspects to building this.
And I think you might have mentioned this in terms of being a two sided business, maybe that's what you meant, but kind of my takeaway was you've got to, you're building the consumer side of this and your, your, your goal is to get as many people to sign up and start using Doc and you've already got, you know, over a million users and then the other side of it is that you have to go out and get partners to actually adopt document Doc on their website as another way for them to log into that product or service.
So have I understood that correctly?
Nick Macario (11:47.950)
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
From the protocol perspective we are going out, getting partners, getting, bringing partners onto this ecosystem and then the application perspective.
Yeah, it's a direct to consumer.
Great.
Omer (12:01.230)
So I want to talk both about what you've done to get to, to a million users, but I also want to kind of talk about what you've done to bring on partners and maybe some of the challenges that you faced on that end.
So let's start by talking about the consumer side of this.
And so you launch the product I guess basically nine months ago and you've grown it to over a million users.
So what, what have you done?
Like what have been the key marketing strategies or channels that you focused on which has allowed you to acquire that many users?
Nick Macario (12:52.490)
Yeah, the, the backbone of all growths that I've had but between the last few platforms I mentioned, which were all consumer focused and all grew to a million plus users, has been referral growth, viral growth.
So it's been consistent, it's been my bread and butter.
But really referral growth, marketing.
So signing up for the product, inviting your friends to the product, we've done that in a few different ways.
We've allowed users to import contacts via Google, we've allowed them to import connections via LinkedIn in a few different ways.
LinkedIn limits their API in some cases, but we've made it really easy to invite people, invite your friends in some cases we've incentivized it, in some cases we haven't needed to.
But it's all been a lot of it anyways is really the core, has been referral, growth, marketing and optimizing that process from there.
With Docs specifically, we invest quite a bit on content marketing as well, on a content strategy.
What we're doing here is obviously completely new.
It's never been done before.
And the issue with digital identities and personal data and the problems around that, most people aren't aware.
It's becoming more, it's been brought to attention more recently because of Facebook, Analytica and gdpr.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with gdpr.
Oh yeah, yes, most people are by now.
And then there's data breaches as well.
So all the time, really large data breaches and people are becoming more familiar with the concept, but it's still not on everyone's mind on a day to day basis.
So we have to do a lot of education in terms of helping people understand like how just how much their information is being misused and what's actually happening with it and how we can help them prevent that from happening.
Omer (14:51.300)
So I want to talk about the referral marketing because that sounds like it's, it's something you've done with pretty much all the consumer businesses that you've built.
And I'm curious how that works with Doc.
So specifically, like when people sign up and get into or log into Doc, how are you getting them to do the referral marketing?
Because it kind of almost seems like, I mean, when you're talking about a product that's around digital identity and controlling your data, it kind of seems at odds with then kind of letting people say, hey, upload kind of your contacts into here and whatever.
So I'm kind of curious like how you're doing that in a way which people feel comfortable with.
Nick Macario (15:45.090)
Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a really fair question.
And I can explain the process and how it works essentially, but, but a fair point though, right?
In terms of being in the digital space, digital identity space, and in terms of like, you know, how comfortable people are with that.
So we make it very clear.
But essentially what happens is with Doc, you can think of Doc as your one online repository or your one source of truth of all of your information that you want to exist.
So this isn't just your name and maybe phone number or your work experiences or where you've gone to school.
This can extend far beyond that.
So signing up to Doc, you can essentially import your, your information.
And you want to import your information because the more robust of a profile you have in Doc, the more you can do with that.
And when you start to connect to other sites, I'll give you one example, right?
One of our partners is remote.com, which obviously we own and operate, but it's a very good partner that works very well with Doc.
When you onboard, when you log in or create a new account with Remote, using your Doc profile, you can skip back.
You can skip right past any onboarding or any manual efforts.
You can instantly import everything you need for that experience and start applying to jobs in seconds.
And that's everything from your profile information, your work experiences, your skills in your education.
There's also a social graph in remote.com as well as you can connect with other people as well.
So you can import all of this information in seconds and instantly be in this new experience as if you've been there for years.
People sign up to doc.
They do import their information with that.
We give them the opportunity, if they want to, to invite others to the platform.
And we do not, we do not incentivize for this.
So we don't say you invite, you get pics for free or discount, whatever it may be.
There's no incentive.
People just choose to invite.
So, you know, in that regard, you know, we found that if you provide a good experience and people are happy and you give them the opportunity to invite their friends, they will.
Omer (17:55.680)
And that's it.
It's as simple as that.
Nick Macario (17:58.480)
For us, it's been, yeah, other times we've had to, I mean, other times we have had to incentivize, but ultimately, yes, it boils down to if you provide a good experience, people want to tell their friends about it.
Omer (18:10.560)
And, and do you kind of just give them the option to do that the first time they sign up, or are you kind of sort of being a little bit more deliberate when people are coming back and kind of continuing to remind them that there's a way for them to invite friends?
I'm just curious in terms of.
Because this is obviously something that's worked for you and a lot of the times we think, you know, whatever you do, there has to be kind of a complicated way of doing it.
And when somebody comes up with, you know, fairly simple implementation, it's like, really, it's.
Nick Macario (18:50.410)
That's.
Omer (18:50.970)
I thought it would be much more complicated, but it's kind of, what do they call that, Occam's Razor?
The whole idea that, you know, the, the simplest way is often what you, you know, the right way to do something.
Nick Macario (19:06.260)
Right.
Omer (19:08.500)
So, yeah, I'm just curious about, like, just kind of what is it just that one time that you can't.
They're presented with some sort of screen?
Or are you kind of finding ways to sort of subtly kind of give them the opportunity to invite people every time they come back to the site?
Nick Macario (19:25.860)
Yeah, we, so we've, we've tested a number of things, to be honest, and we've changed the implementation a number of times as well.
We've done it in initial onboarding experiences.
We've, we've brought it in after on the back end.
Instead of saying, hey, like, rather than inviting your friends early, like, let's, let's deliver that aha moment and catch them their attention and engage them prior to that.
Deliver value prior.
It really depends on the product ultimately, you know, if you can deliver value prior, it's better.
And if you don't have to shove it down their throats for them to do it and ask them every time they come back to the platform, that's more ideal as well.
But at the end of the day, if you need to grow a platform, you need to grow a user base.
You need to grow a user base.
So doing it in a tasteful way is always optimal.
But we've tried a number of different things.
Ultimately though, the preferred method is to deliver an experience, an aha moment, deliver value, intrigue them and after, you know, after that experience, ask them if they like to share any friends.
Omer (20:34.290)
Got it.
And the second thing you mentioned was content marketing and kind of, you know, this being a new thing and sort of educating people around that.
Have you, I mean, just kind of thinking about the type of this subject and the type of content that you're creating.
Is there a specific target user you have in mind right now?
Like, is this more of, you know, kind of more of a technical person, somebody who's kind of more concerned about security than sort of the average person?
Like, so who, who is that kind of core group of people that you've decided to kind of focus your efforts around at the moment?
Nick Macario (21:23.870)
I think naturally we've attracted the early adopters in terms of people that are following blockchain and alongside people who obviously have a natural concern or awareness of privacy and online security.
That said, my goal is to bring this to a broad audience and bring it to everybody.
This is an, this isn't just a security product.
This is essentially a new way of using the Internet.
This is web 3.0, where you're in full control of your data, we're building open networks, you have the ability to port your information to and from.
And data is king.
Right?
So, yeah, I mean, really my focus has been like, how do we bring this to the mainstream?
How do we educate the, the everyday Internet user on topics of their digital identity and their personal information?
Omer (22:27.540)
Yeah, no, I would have thought that.
I mean, just some of the things that I saw mentioned on your homepage@doc IO, those I thought were really kind of great examples of, you know, content that that could be created in terms of just educating people on, hey, do you know what happens when you sign up on a website?
Like, and like, here are some examples of like, what companies have done with your data or can do with your data?
I just think, you know, the everyday person just doesn't really have any idea of that.
Right.
Even when it comes to, like Facebook, people are so, a lot of people are so kind of happy to put so much information out there.
But what do you actually, if you're able to kind of look at your data and sort of.
It's pretty shocking, I think it would be for anybody to kind of say, wow, I didn't realize that Facebook knew this much about me or.
And this is what's happening when I'm signing up on these various websites.
But yeah, I kind of get the feeling that a lot of people are still kind of sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that it's not going to be an issue for them.
Nick Macario (23:44.340)
Right?
Yeah.
Facebook, Google, Apple, you name it, they know everything about every aspect of your life.
And it's not just those companies either, it's others as well.
So many of these applications have data processing or data exchange agreements where you sign up for their, their application, their service, and now your data is shared with a thousand other companies right after.
So, you know, there are regulations coming into place that to change this and really that naturally that's what blockchain is set out to do as well, is to change the current broken system and give, you know, give control back to users.
But yeah, it's a big problem.
So we're doing what we can to educate people on it.
Omer (24:32.090)
Yeah.
And I think that the more that people start to understand about blockchain and there probably a lot of people have heard the term maybe because of bitcoin, but I think that the more and more that sort of the new, there's new applications coming out in terms of real world uses of blockchain.
Blockchain.
I think that's also going to be a good thing for you guys because it kind of helps people to understand why that's such an important aspect of kind of the solution you're offering.
Nick Macario (25:10.050)
Right, Exactly.
I mean, like I said, we're all about giving people control.
And the big thing about blockchain is a term called decentralization.
But it's that once things are written into code, they can't change.
So as a, we write rules saying this is how this network is going to be governed, that can't change at any point.
And the decentralized term meaning there's no one person or entity or group that can make that change.
Which is the problem that you see with the App Store, for example.
The App Store has full control over what apps get published and what apps don't and ultimately have a huge monopoly on, you know, the Internet.
And something like that is, would, would never exist.
It will never exist once blockchain catches mainstream.
Omer (26:01.580)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
So we talked about referral marketing and content marketing and, and how those have been sort of the two main ways that you've been acquiring users.
I want to kind of talk about maybe one, one aspect of sort of growth that that hasn't worked.
And I know that retention has been an issue for you in the past and something that you've kind of learned by doing so.
Can you kind of tell us about what, what kind of you've learned?
Because I, you know what, when we were talking earlier, you'd kind of mentioned Branded Me and kind of some lessons you learned there.
Can you kind of just tell us more about that and kind of how that's got you thinking differently about the importance of retention?
Nick Macario (26:54.890)
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the further I go, the more experience I have.
It all, it all boils down to retention is king.
So no matter how fast you can grow, no matter how many users you have, if you can't retain your users, you don't have a product, you don't have a business.
So really, I mean, boils down to us in our process, we go back to what's the pain point, what's the problem we're solving and how do we deliver an experience of value to people and how does that experience tie back to them wanting or needing to come back to, to our user product over and over again?
Just really ensuring that, like taking a step back from the growth hat and the growth perspective of how fast can I grow a network or how many users can I get to, like how much, how useful, how useful is this to the user or the customer?
And if you solve that and you provide something valuable, you don't have to worry about the growth side.
Right?
The growth side comes easy.
Omer (28:04.880)
So what was happening at Branded Me with retention?
Nick Macario (28:08.320)
Brandonme was an interesting product.
So actually I didn't go into how I, how I got started with Branded Me, but Brandon me got started from a personal need where I got into my entrepreneurial career.
I was looking to brand myself as an entrepreneur or CEO, right?
One of one aspect of branding myself and to do the reason for branding myself, if that's not obvious was, is to go out, raise funding, to go out network with other entrepreneurs, to go out, recruit team members.
These are all very important aspects of growing a business and being an entrepreneur and creating a brand around that is very Helpful.
So one aspect of creating a brand for me was my digital presence, right?
People Google each other all the time and I wanted to go out and create a personal website.
So you know, at the time, at the time I was actually operating a website builder myself, but it was more business focused than personal.
I didn't find a solution, I couldn't find a solution to build a personal website that was a good solution.
So I ended up building one from scratch myself.
But really got me thinking, like, why doesn't this exist?
Like, I'm sure there's other people that have this interest like I do.
So went out and built a personal website builder.
That's how the platform started.
And it turned out a lot of people were interested and a lot of people were really interested.
It was, we grew to 500,000 users in the first four months and had, you know, inbound interest in terms of M and A from Amazon and LinkedIn.
It was a really interesting time and ended up moving past that and continuing to grow the network.
But after getting to 2,3 million users and well before that too, the, you know, we, we quickly learned that while this is something that's very interesting to people and people want it, there's a very small percentage of people who are actually willing to pay for it.
So, so that was the issue with, with, with branded me and like this digital enhanced digital presence or our personal website was that CEOs, entrepreneurs, other groups as well, independent contractors, business owners, they, there was an interest there many times, sometimes enough to pay for this.
But the large percentage of people is just something they were interested in.
I think you see this with about me and other platforms as well, anyone doing something similar.
So we quickly learned that and to be honest, I don't think there was anything specific with Brandon Me that we could have done different to fix that other than product market fit.
Right,
Omer (30:41.690)
so let's talk about the partner side of Doc.
So I'm kind of curious like in terms of someone wanting to use Doc on their site, what's kind of involved, like how much work is involved in them being able to get started?
Nick Macario (31:05.210)
We make it very easy.
So we abstract any, any blockchain interaction from a partner.
So a partner that's going to come onto our network, they have the ability to integrate directly to the protocol.
And if you do that, there's quite a bit there.
And most development teams right now aren't equipped to handle that.
But through the Dock app we've built, we've abstracted all blockchain interaction and basically just built traditional you know, rest APIs.
So think of it as integrating with Google Facebook API and any other standard REST API.
Omer (31:42.780)
And so I guess there's like two, two kind of streams here.
There's kind of somebody can come to go to Doc I.O.
and decide that that's something they want to implement on their site and just kind of, you know, just follow what's there and get started.
And I, presumably you're doing some outbound efforts as well to bring in some of the kind of more prominent sites and companies out there.
I'm curious, like, how successful has that been so far?
And if you're getting pushback, what are sort of the common objections you're hearing at the moment?
Nick Macario (32:26.590)
Yeah, so it has been successful.
We do have someone that runs partnerships for us.
So we have, you know, quite a few, I think over 130, 140 active dialogues and partnerships and roughly 40 commitments in a short amount of time, which is good traction, I'd say.
The smaller networks.
The really interesting thing that we're doing that's different than your traditional like let's say Facebook, Facebook OAuth.
Right.
Is that we are asking these partner networks to not only integrate our solution to login or OAuth, but we're also asking them to open their networks to participate in our open ecosystem to say, hey, if your user would like to save information from your network back to their lock account, you allow them to do that.
So some of the larger existing networks, that's a big ask.
If you think about LinkedIn or any of these other large players, that's their huge competitive advantage right now is their user data, which is going to, which is going to change.
But for now that's their big competitive advantage.
So you know, we have a lot of strong traction with the small to mid tier companies that for a couple of reasons I think.
One is they're very interested in kind of what we're doing and getting involved in the next wave of like Internet 3.0.
The other is that we can provide them growth because we have a lot of users and a lot of activity on our site.
So if we post a new partner in this app marketplace, which I didn't really get into too much of the long term vision of Dock and I should have, but we're building out eventually an app marketplace which we're just starting to now, where as a user in Dock you have your identity, you have your information, you can start to connect with other apps as well.
Being featured in Dock will get you new user acquisition.
So this is very interesting for smaller to mid tier companies that are interested in acquiring new users, those conversations are easier to have.
I will say we do get quite a bit of inbound as well.
Just being that we're in this, the space that we're in.
Every company out there right now is kicking the tires on Blockchain and trying to figure out how this is applicable to their business and how it's going to make sense.
So we've got inbound from four plus, I think four to five publicly traded companies about what we're doing and how we can work together.
And we have a couple of proposals out right now.
Others are just kind of kicking the tires, but there's some that are very interested in what we're doing and actually participating.
And I think that just has to do with the nature of Blockchain and a lot of these companies understanding that the way things are done right now is not the way things will be done in the coming years from a data perspective.
Omer (35:18.540)
Right, yeah, no, I totally see that and I can see why, especially as you continue to grow your users for the smaller, so the midsize companies, just to kind of be exposed to this sort of marketplace and potentially acquire some of those millions of users is a good part of the offering.
Good luck on LinkedIn, man.
Nick Macario (35:48.710)
Thank you.
Omer (35:50.790)
Yeah, I mean, I think when they shut down their kind of API, it was like they're kind of heading in a completely different direction to.
Nick Macario (35:58.230)
Yeah, right, exactly.
And Facebook did it before them and Twitter did it before them.
But like I said, this is all going to change in the years to come.
Omer (36:05.680)
So how big is the team right now?
Like we talked about, you raised $20 million, 1.1 million users.
How big is the team?
Nick Macario (36:14.080)
Roughly 25 people.
So we have a pretty fairly lean team for the amount of capital we raise.
But, you know, we have a really, really strong team and an incredibly brilliant engineering team.
So.
So out of that 25, like I said, I'm very, very passionate about remote work.
That said, there are some benefits in being in the same room, especially in early stages of when you're working through a lot of new things, you're trying to solve problems that have never been solved before.
It's not straightforward.
So there are some benefits to being in the same room.
So out of the 25 people, we have roughly eight of us here in San Francisco, and everyone else is completely distributed.
We have team members in eight different countries.
So I think roughly almost half of our team is engineering.
And then you can imagine the rest.
But from product to design to Marketing to biz dev.
We have an incredibly strong team, and some of these people come from really prominent companies, either in the blockchain space or in the industry we're in, which is this data industry.
And I should say, actually a lot of our team members actually date back with me to my previous companies as well.
So some of these team members came on recently and we've recruited them from either top blockchain projects or data companies.
But prior to then, over half my team's been with me for two to four years.
Omer (37:48.200)
Nice.
That's good.
It's a good sign you're doing something right.
Nick Macario (37:51.480)
Thanks.
Omer (37:52.760)
Awesome.
It's a fascinating space.
You know, I'm kind of gonna keep my eyes on what you guys are up to, but, you know, I. I kind of love the idea and kind of where this is headed.
Nick Macario (38:03.080)
Yeah, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Omer (38:04.920)
So let's.
Let's wrap up the lightning round.
I'm gonna ask you seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Ready to go?
Nick Macario (38:12.920)
Sure.
Let's do it.
Omer (38:14.520)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Nick Macario (38:20.040)
There's quite a few.
I'd say be persistent because it's not easy.
And there's going to be quite a few ups and downs and you're going to have to figure out how to solve problems.
So persistence and solve problems.
If I'm giving advice to anyone else, it's more than one, but two.
Omer (38:36.840)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Nick Macario (38:40.860)
Good to great?
I love the book just in terms of understanding how some of these companies have gone from either being mediocre to okay to great and what it took to get there and understanding the road and the path and getting the right mindset to potentially do the same.
Omer (38:57.900)
The one thing I always remember from good to great is this concept of the leader and the mirror and the window.
Nick Macario (39:03.260)
Right.
Omer (39:03.660)
You remember that?
I just love that.
And I think for people who aren't familiar, it was just that, you know, they talked about these great leaders that when things go well, they're the leaders who look out of the window and kind of attribute that to basically everything else apart from them.
And when things are going bad, they look in the mirror and kind of ask like, you know, what they didn't do or could have done better.
But that was kind of a very kind of interesting analogy that's always stuck with the book.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Nick Macario (39:44.130)
Problem solver.
Going back to what I mentioned before, but I think you have to be good at solving problems.
And the better you are at solving problems, the better of an entrepreneur you're going to be.
Omer (39:59.170)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Nick Macario (40:03.230)
Exercise.
I wish I did it more, but the mornings that I do find time to go out and exercise, I have far more productive days.
Omer (40:13.790)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Nick Macario (40:18.590)
Gosh, where do I start?
I'd probably want to do something around travel just because I don't get enough time to travel.
To be honest, I'd probably do something really random.
Really, really random and touristy just to do something completely different and unplug from the tech life for the last decade.
Omer (40:40.500)
Well, keep an eye on that.
Maybe it'll be one of your side projects that emerges in the next few years.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Nick Macario (40:52.100)
Most people don't know that I pride myself on how good I am at making sandwiches.
It is a random fact.
My wife has to listen to it all the time and she agrees with me, but she finds it to be a very random fact.
So I always joke about one day we're gonna open a deli and maybe that'll be my random business idea.
Omer (41:15.380)
Love it.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Nick Macario (41:20.180)
Family.
You know, I think in terms of passions, like they've changed at different stages of my life, but I got married just over a year ago and just had our first baby, so really, my.
Yeah, so that's changed things quite a bit.
But, you know, being through the startup life for the last 10 years, it's like it preps you for anything.
So the baby's been relatively easy and it's been awesome.
Omer (41:44.400)
That's great.
Cool.
It's been a pleasure, Nick.
Thank you for joining me and kind of telling us the story of what you.
You've been up to both with Doc and, you know, your previous businesses and specifically remote.com and branded me.
If people want to find out more about Doc, you know, if you want to sign up for it or if you want to kind of think about being a partner, just go over to Doc I.O.
and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Nick Macario (42:20.410)
Yeah, just reach out directly to me, my email, which is pretty easy.
It's just nicknick IO so D I C K IO happy to connect with anybody.
Omer (42:31.620)
Great, thanks, Nick.
It's been a pleasure, and I wish you all the best.
Nick Macario (42:34.340)
Thanks, Elmer.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Omer (42:36.740)
Cheers.
