Chris: 00:00

What's up founders, VCs? Welcome back to the show. I'm super excited for this conversation. I love when I can talk to people that I talked to like a year plus ago and get like a recap and update on what they're doing. Today's special guest is Logan Weaver from Surmount AI.

Chris: 00:18

Logan, welcome back to the show.

Logan: 00:20

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Chris: 00:22

Man, so what has been going on? Now I want to go step by step. So my first question is what's been your biggest accomplishment in the last, let's say twelve months?

Logan: 00:32

We went from no revenue about fifteen months ago to we're about to cross 4,000,000. Things are looking very good for the company. We're we basically so we started as a robo advisor, became the fastest robo to hit 100,000,000 in assets under management. And then about six months ago, we got a lot of interest from, like, registered investment advisers and started to go that route, and there's a much better business model on that front. So we're still taking the the B2C approach, but we added in a B2B offering and that's been working very well.

Chris: 01:07

Man, that is dope. That's incredible growth, man. So I imagine that's been a really tumultuous time or was it an easy thing to kind of execute? Process look like?

Logan: 01:21

A little bit of both, right? Like nothing's ever easy, but I think because we had built up a lot

Chris: 01:27

of

Logan: 01:27

the tools on the robo advisor side that we're now kind of just repurposing for other advisors, The process certainly wasn't daunting to get the product ready. It was really just a matter of how do we make the switch and kind of start to build that level of trust, in the adviser space just as because it's a little bit more close knit. But we have some great advisors, great, you know, RAs that we're working with that have made a lot of connections and have been guiding us along the way. So nothing's ever easy. But in terms of scale, I mean, we scaled a lot more efficiently on the b two b front, and it's been exciting.

Logan: 02:05

Like, it's it's always chaotic behind behind the scenes. Yeah. You know, there's a lot to be excited about for sure.

Chris: 02:13

That's dope, man. That is dope. And with you scaling on a b two b side, what kind of made you make that switch? Because I know when we first talked, you were really focused, like hyper focused on, you know, the b two c, just getting those kind of customers working with them. To hear you're doing b two b makes sense because that's like usually what scales in a startup world a lot easier.

Chris: 02:34

So what made you want to pursue that?

Logan: 02:37

Really just market pool. Initially, we're getting RAs reaching out asking if they could kind of leverage some of the tech that we built for the Robo Advisor. And initially, we were saying no because we thought it might be a distraction. And once we started kind of getting some numbers thrown at us, I mean, it's we'll make maybe the average client value on the B2C side is like $720, like 730, like that around that range. On the B2B side, it's in the tens of thousands.

Logan: 03:08

So it just yeah. So without completely building a whole new product set, we were just able to kind of double dip with the tech that we had. And it's still the same mission of providing more personalized investment management to the end client and a lot more value to them. It's just there's a much more scalable route to do that through businesses that already have client bases.

Chris: 03:31

Yeah, I imagine it's a lot easier and especially because you're working through companies versus like regular Joe Smo. And I don't think that's necessarily bad that the consumer has a way to just go and work with you. That's obviously good. That's like the foundation. But having the companies has to be just 10 times better and a lot easier in terms of customer acquisition, I imagine.

Logan: 03:54

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a lot less of a slog. We started opening up a sales process, which is working pretty well. And then just the ongoing relationships, we don't have to manage, you know, tens of thousands of of individual I mean, I guess we still do. But, on the b to b side, it's pretty much just one or two points of contact for each, customer, essentially.

Chris: 04:15

Man, that's a really unique workflow you got there. And so one of the things I thought about just, you know, looking at how much the company has changed over the past year or so is what's your distribution like? Because if you move to from b to c to b to b, that has to be a totally different distribution approach.

Logan: 04:34

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the b to b is definitely scaling more through sales and word-of-mouth. B2C, I mean, we're still growing at an average of over 20% month over month, largely because of, like, my Twitter account, our Reddit accounts, and then we own a couple of pretty large Reddit communities, in, the automated investing and investment management spaces. So we've always taken the approach of, you know, output over outspend.

Logan: 05:01

We're not the comp we're not the type of company that just spends a lot on meta ads, or anything of that nature. We started getting a little bit more aggressive with, like paid marketing and paid growth spend. But for the most part, it's just, you know, all output, all, you know, reaching out directly or through some sort of contact that is a mutual connection.

Chris: 05:24

That was why I was asking because I was literally gonna ask about the advertising dollars. Because for some reason, a lot of founders think that like if they're not spending, I don't know, $10.15, $20,000 a month on Facebook, Google, you know, the typical ad spend that they can't get results, you know. But I do think that having a distribution channel is very important if you don't have that ad cash to just spend every month.

Logan: 05:49

Exactly. Yeah. We've we've historically been an intentionally lean funded team. Like, never we didn't wanna take a bunch of VC dollars and then not be able to pivot when we needed to early on before we knew we had something strong. So in that approach, we had to be very frugal.

Logan: 06:09

And ultimately, think that led to the distribution that we have now, which is great. Like, it's almost all organic, which is a nice feeling. I don't I don't know how I think that's infinitely scalable, but at least early on, I think it's really good to figure out some sort of organic channel because I mean, just hear time and time again, people, you know, get a funding round and it basically all goes to meta ads and they don't have too much to show for it.

Chris: 06:33

Yeah. And I think a lot of companies lean on that because it's like the easy way. And what you're doing is a lot harder. You know, having a Twitter account and actually being out there, being active, talking to people, I think is a lot more challenging than figuring out ads to creative and stuff. That's challenging, but I think creating your own distribution channels versus using the ones that exist is a lot more challenging of a path.

Logan: 06:57

To an extent, there's definitely a lot more lift in it, but I think the outcome is more rewarding. Our churn numbers are good. Our conversion numbers are good. And I think that's largely because we already have some sort of rapport or, like, people know who we are when they come to the product in many cases. Whereas I feel like oftentimes, you know, we spent less than a $100,000 on ads in the history of the company.

Logan: 07:24

We've actually seen much higher churn, much lower conversion off of those ad spend. Just because unless you really have it dialed in, which transparently we don't, it could be jarring for some people to like, maybe they don't know exactly, like, might sound interesting, but they might not fully understand what they're getting into and then they sign up and, you know, maybe just churn immediately. So I think for us, we always think about how can we get people into some sort of marketing funnel in a free way for them. Like, oftentimes that's through educational or some sort of interesting market related content, and that feeds into different newsletters, different sign up flows for different products. And then ultimately, you know, just try to work from mid funnel down from there, which has been pretty effective.

Logan: 08:13

It took us a while to figure out, but I feel like we have it pretty dialed in at this point. There's always room for growth but at this point it's definitely working.

Chris: 08:22

That's good. So what does your content approach look like if you're not running ads? I imagine that you have to put more into the content side of things.

Logan: 08:30

Yeah. A lot of written content on Twitter X I guess and Reddit. And then we read a lot of blogs both internally and then on external platforms that are all kind of semi, like we don't ever want to be car salesmeny where it's like, oh, you know, we're talking about so and so, you know, sign up for Sermout. Like, think that's kind of a bad approach and that's always off putting for me. So it's, it's more so offering free value and then having a pretty, like, I don't know how to articulate it over the non car sales many way of getting somebody in the loop.

Logan: 09:06

It could be a newsletter of if you're interested in this topic, you know, sign up for this free newsletter. I think oftentimes getting people into that marketing channel for free has been our approach so far. And so, I mean, I guess we we do still spend on growth. It's more so like the video content that we make, the written content that we make, and then have, you know, kind of distributed for us. But I think it's a much like, we control basically the entire distribution pipeline as opposed to hoping that, you know, a meta ad or a TikTok ad gets in front of the right client and then at the right time, etcetera.

Logan: 09:44

So I think for us, it's just a matter a matter of getting as many touch points as we possibly can in a way that's actually valuable to them.

Chris: 09:53

Yeah, I think the touch points is huge and it's good that you're leaning into the content because what I'm learning from talking to so many founders is there's really only two paths. If you spend a ton on ads or you put that time, energy, money into your own content. Those are like the two paths to growth essentially.

Logan: 10:11

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think the latter is very strong because that in itself is an asset for the company. Like people start to the founder of Better, I was talking to him one time, like, b e t r, he did the exact same thing. Like, they have, when they got their seed round or something, they built a content studio, and then they just are constantly, like, they're a machine just creating content.

Logan: 10:35

So I think to your point, that's a modern way that some companies, if they can figure it out, it can be a huge asset to them. And I think we're a lot of the way there. I I've seen a lot of companies that are doing a much better job at it, but I think for us, it's worked so far. It's something that we're definitely going to continue leaning into. And I mean, it's producing results.

Logan: 10:55

So until it doesn't, we're going to keep doing it.

Chris: 10:59

Right. I like it. I like it. So what about your team? How has your team changed in the last year or so?

Chris: 11:06

Because if you went from only B2C, now you're in B2B, if you scale, you know, where you got over a 100,000,000 in assets you're managing, you have to have grown this team. You have to.

Logan: 11:18

Slightly. So we have pretty much the same team construction as we did probably about a year ago. We've moved a lot more onshore. So a lot of the same positions that were being filled with like nearshoring or, you know, offshoring, they're pretty much all US, Canada, and then a couple like the nearshoring South American countries. That's been great just because, you know, everybody's sleep schedule is a little bit better for one.

Chris: 11:48

Yeah.

Logan: 11:49

And then, you know, we haven't gone from when I talked to you a year ago, we were probably a team of six. We're eight full time right now. And then we're basically building out a second team of four that's gonna manage the b to b the b to c side because most of our effort is going into these registered investment advisers. Like, the RA space is primed for disruption right now. And I think just the tech that we've built over the past couple of years seems to be providing a lot of value into it.

Chris: 12:19

So you were able to get to this next level without adding 20 team members. I think that might be another misconception of the startup world because Yeah. When I interview some, you know, people with this in in the space, even some VCs, they really harp on team a lot, you know, in terms of having a bigger team. And I think sometimes the the kind of lie you tell yourself is, well, if you add more people, that immediately means we add more value. And I don't know if that's always the case.

Logan: 12:46

Yeah. No. VCs are always gonna tell you to have a bigger team because they want you to spend your money faster in many cases. So that's actually the main question that I ask VCs, is like, what is your expectation on how quickly we spend X amount of money that we're talking about raising? And I think for us, we've always been a very frugal team.

Logan: 13:04

And I am a huge fan of small teams. You can get a lot done with a small team of a, a plus players. And if you guys are focused on the same mission and just have a good process of actually executing, then, I mean, you can get, I feel like, a lot more to just every team member that you add in is going to add to bureaucracy. It's going to potentially change the culture a little bit. I think I watched a podcast the other day with Dylan Feld, where he was talking about that when they were starting to see a lot of signs of product market fit, he regretted not hiring more aggressively.

Logan: 13:45

I think we're experiencing some of that right now. Like, we need to double down on, like, customer support. But aside from that, I think we're we're getting a lot done with a team of sub 10. I think and even, you know, say we raise $10,000,000 next month. I don't think we would go from, you know, the team size it is now to adding twenty, thirty more people.

Logan: 14:09

Like, I just don't see the value in doing that. I think that's more of like a long term like, hire when you need to hire, essentially, not when you have Yeah.

Chris: 14:18

I think that's that's a good point. I like your perspective on that. So we gotta talk a little bit about the funding, the raising that you've been doing. How has that changed recently?

Logan: 14:29

Yeah. I I keep making the joke that for the first time, we feel like the pretty girl in VC where they actually wanna talk to us. We we've never really gotten we've gotten great angel interest, but we've never really played the VC game. For the first time, I mean, we have funds every day, every other day reaching out to us, which is great. We've been getting a lot of introductions from funds to other funds, from RIAs to funds.

Logan: 14:59

So I think right now there seems to be a common perspective that what we're building, if we're able to execute on it, has the potential to be a very large outcome, which is what they wanna see. I think the timing is right. I think our execution has been good so far. I think, you know, we've we've proven that we have repeatability, a pretty strong product, and the ability to to kind of go the the distance. But then you're kind of in a position where you're like, we needed your money two years ago.

Logan: 15:27

We don't need your money now. So we're scaling largely off of revenue and the funding from existing investors. We have a great list of existing investors, as well as a couple of advisors that either just sold their company or just had some sort of, you know, outside exit that came in as investors. I don't know. I think for us, the best position to fundraise is when you don't need to fundraise and we find ourselves in that position a good bit.

Logan: 15:58

I do see the value in running our first, like, official VC process because that would unlock a lot for us. Like, we've always been very lean, which going back to that point, it would give us the firepower to really, like, double down on branding, double down on sales, like some of the areas that I think could, you know, take us from where we are now to 10 x, you know, from where we are now. I don't know. I think it's interesting. Right?

Logan: 16:26

Like, the problem that I'm facing right now is, like, who's the right fit and why? You know, capital is a commodity and, you know, really aligning with the VCs that are going to be a good partner and and be additive to the mission. You know, some VCs, whether they mean to or not, can be kind of counterproductive. I don't think that's a very common case, but it's just it's you're basically getting married you take venture dollars. I think it's just really important to have that relationship ahead of time, know what you're getting into.

Logan: 17:02

And that's kind of the stage that I that we find ourselves in right now of, you know, talking to a handful of different companies that might be funding us and figuring out what actual value would you add outside of capital? Because capital is just nice, but again, it's just a commodity. Like, can you help us become a larger company, make more connections, avoid landmines? I say all the time, if we can avoid as many landmines as possible, we have something big. So I think that's really the questions that I'm asking myself now, not can we get your money because I think when you're executing money is gonna be available.

Chris: 17:44

Yeah. And it seems like you're in a position already where the money part isn't the problem. And I interview VCs all the time on the show and it's so interesting. Even angel investors, how focused they are on that alignment of like the long term goals. That's such a big deal.

Chris: 18:01

I don't know if a lot of founders are aware of that because I think it's challenging for founders to get to the position where you are, where you're not just focused on the money. Yeah. When you're just focused on the money, you can't see anything else. You're just that's all you focus on. Yeah.

Chris: 18:14

But when you get past that, it's like, okay, well, I need to care about these other things and where can you fit in that space? So I'm pretty sure it's interesting journey right now.

Logan: 18:23

Yeah. No, it's we find ourselves in a pretty good place. I'm excited to see I do think we'll probably run some sort of process over the next, like, three months. I don't know. We'll see.

Logan: 18:36

I think if revenue keeps scaling the way it does, we're kind of at a fork in the roads where, you know, do we build something that can generate 20,000,000, 25,000,000 annualized and like have a, what do they call those companies, like a lifestyle business or whatever it is? I'm not interested in that. Like I'm interested in building a genuine industry disruptor and kind of modernizing investment management, providing a lot more value to basically every end client that I possibly can get in front of. And I think the outcome in doing so is going to be massive. I wonder, like question we keep asking ourselves internally is like, how much do we actually need VC dollars?

Logan: 19:16

We have a lot of great angels. We have some liquidity on the team ourselves that we could, you know, and have kind of self fund with. But at the same time, that only gets you so far. Like, if you want to build a $10,000,000,000 outcome, you're going to need to raise a lot of money in many cases. And there's not many male chimps of the world that can, you know,

Chris: 19:37

produce But that to

Logan: 19:40

I mean, it does seem like the timing is great. I don't know. We'll see we'll see. We're at a fork in the roads right now where it's how much do we actually want to lean into VC? I think it I think it all comes down to the the partner in the firm.

Logan: 19:54

Right? Like, if they can be additive, and really be partners with us, then absolutely, I think it's a value add. If it's more so just, like, you know, taking their money for the sake of taking money, I think we're better off just continuing to half bootstrap, half raise from, you know, the angels that we have. Because whenever we've asked for for capital from the existing angels, like, they're there. We have some very successful, very smart people that have that have backed us.

Logan: 20:21

And the angels, I love. I feel like people don't talk enough about angels. Like, they are hands on when they need to be. They give great advice. You don't really have to worry about the whole, like, losing board control.

Logan: 20:35

Like there's a lot more political aspects that come in from raising venture dollars. But at the same time, that's part of a company kind of just growing up so to speak.

Chris: 20:44

And I was gonna ask you that. Do you think that because of the specific space you're in in the financial sector that there's more pressure to work with VCs over the angels? Like, you think that that's kind of like part of it?

Logan: 20:56

I think that probably any company, once they start to show really strong signs of product market fit, there's going to be pressure to raise from venture capital. There's a lot of options, though. Like, I've only really done the angel investor route. I know people that have raised from family offices. That seems to be a route.

Logan: 21:15

I pretty much am familiar with two routes, angels and VCs, and I guess three bootstrapping. I don't know. I think there's there's a lot of conversation around us right now from advisers about venture debt. You don't need to to dilute. I don't know.

Logan: 21:30

I I I do think that VC is a convenient way to raise a lot of capital. And if you know what you're gonna like, that's that's the other thing. It's like a lot of companies raise capital, they're like, okay. What do we do with this? I think we have the game plan for exactly what we know we wanna raise for, how much certain experiments or expansions are going to take in terms of time and money.

Logan: 21:53

So I think it's really just a matter of having those answers and then choosing the path, essentially, because each one is going have its pros and cons.

Chris: 22:01

Sorry, lost you. Here we go.

Logan: 22:02

That's one thing I need to invest in is maybe a better Internet. My Starlink is always doing that.

Chris: 22:08

Yeah, man. This is it was really good to see how much you've been able to grow and what you've put into the company and just how much things have evolved, man. I'm super happy for you. It looks like this could be an industry disruptor for sure. I do agree with the routes you've taken.

Chris: 22:23

I love that. You're working with the angels. I think they're super underrated. I have one on my show, Dana Robinson, and she also works with founders on their pitch and stuff like that. And they're usually just such giving people.

Chris: 22:38

You're not really asked to give them much, but they want to pour out and help a lot more. And so I love being around the Angels, man. They're just super insightful, you know. They're really, really, really valuable for a lot of founders too.

Logan: 22:51

Yeah. No. Absolutely. Our our first angel was Andy Ballester, the founder of GoFundMe, and then raised from some Morgan Stanley guys. We've pretty much either gone the angel route in terms of people that have built very successful software businesses, know, Brian Gillis, Andy Ballister, or people that have just had a very successful career in finance.

Logan: 23:13

So I think that's helpful in a lot of ways. When we raised our pre seed round, we didn't need money. We've always had like transparently, bought a bunch of crypto when we were in college. So like, that's what

Chris: 23:24

it's kinda

Logan: 23:24

like the rainy day fund. So we more so raised the pre seed round. Was thinking of like, how do we build a strategic advisory board to help us really unlock the potential here? And we've done that. I mean, everybody's been very effective in terms of guiding us in in the different areas.

Logan: 23:44

Like, for example, Grace Melas, Alexa Moncola, like, they are very good with kind of the financial side of things, acquiring companies, like, you know, the legal compliance side of things. Each person has their own kind of strong set of skills. So if you can kind of assemble a great team of angels, I mean, have that's an asset in itself.

Chris: 24:10

I think there might be a new strategy. That's a good one

Logan: 24:13

right there.

Chris: 24:14

Instead of going chasing VC, just assembling different angels who could be valuable in different spaces of your company and kind of fill those gaps, that could be the answer for a lot of founders. And I do think that will be a lot easier versus trying to, you know, apply to Y Combinator every chance you get or chasing VCs on LinkedIn. Like, I think that will be more impactful because me myself, when I'm just talking to angel investors just to learn literally just for conversation, they're usually the ones that are like, yeah, sure. Let's talk about whatever. It's usually super easy.

Chris: 24:47

Whereas VCs are more like, you have to like break into their castle or something like that. It's just Exactly. It's a

Logan: 24:52

really weird dynamic. It's it's it's kind of like a clue. You would it's counterintuitive because their whole objective is to meet founders that are building interesting things. But even if you're building an interesting thing, if you don't have a connection to that VC, like chances are they're not gonna reply. Yes.

Logan: 25:07

Angels are another way to oftentimes, they know VCs. You know, their friends are VCs. They invest with the VCs. So that's another way to kind of, you know, backtrack interrelationships into the VC space. Like, that's been pretty much how we've met all of our VCs, either through angels or other VCs.

Chris: 25:27

Wow. Wow. Man, this is a really good conversation. This is it's great to see how much you've you've grown the company and the progress you've been making, man. This is you gotta do this in another year.

Chris: 25:37

Like, we gotta just keep

Logan: 25:38

it once a year. Annual tradition.

Chris: 25:41

Right. Let the people know where they can find you and check out Surmount AI.

Logan: 25:45

Yeah. Yeah. It's just surmount.ai, and then we also have surmountwealth.com if you're accredited. And then you can find me most popular social media is going to be ex Twitter, which is just Logweepr. And I I write a lot about like, it's actually we spend a lot of time, like, trying to find unique stories and different things to talk about, in regards to the market.

Logan: 26:13

So like different investors who have built huge portfolios or had some sort of success, different historical information about the markets. We try to be very informative, it's been great. Went from my Twitter went from basically just like my hometown friends to, you know, a pretty decent following in probably about a year and a half. So I think, you know, the more that we can give good content out there and feel free to shoot me a DM and ask for something or give some feedback. But, yeah, check out Surmount, check out my Twitter and let me know what you think about both.

Chris: 26:46

Right. Logan, thanks for being on the show.

Logan: 26:48

Yeah. Thank you for having me, Chris. This is great.