Interview with Lisa Carrel: CEO & Founder of Proxfinity. Proxfinity is a Chicago based wearable event technology startup. Proxfinity uses hardware and software to deliver social hardware, for business.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l e dot c or my personal website. Patricia, Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I'm sitting down with Lisa Carrel. Lisa is the CEO and founder at Xfinity. Welcome, Lisa. [00:01:38][8.5]
[00:01:39] Hey, thanks for having me. [00:01:40][0.9]
[00:01:40] Thank you for joining us. I'm going to give everyone a quick bio on Lisa, but first, I'm going to give you a roadmap of today's podcast. First, we are going to speak with Lisa regarding her academic background and professional life. And then we're going to drop into infinity, which is her company, and unpacking all of the constituents within that. So the who, what, when, where and why of the company. Now, we're going to drop straight into the goals that Lisa has for the next three years regarding her company and every other endeavor it might have regarding scaling expansion, brand, that type of thing. And we'll wrap up the podcast with advice that Lisa has for those who are looking to get involved in like minded measures or even to work with Xfinity themselves. So a quick bio on Lisa before I start peppering her with questions. [00:02:30][49.1]
[00:02:31] Lisa is the CEO and co-founder of Proximity, a Chicago based wearable event technology startup. Her company uses hardware and software to deliver social hardware for business. She is a female founder and manufacturing focused on fundamentally changing the way humans use technology to connect. Her initial focus is on the three hundred billion dollars US meetings and events industry. Among her accomplishments, her startup was a 20 19 Momentum Awards finalist, Chicago Innovation Award winner, recognized by 80 company as a digital innovator and by Chicago Innovation as a top five startup to watch. She regularly speaks and guest lectures on her experience as a founder. Trends and tools used to effect and measure diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the importance of sales on every aspect of building as a business. She is a member of eighteen seventy one Wystan. The Chicago Connector. Chicago Founders Circle and recently accepted into catapult Chicago, where startups go to scale outside of work. Enjoy spending time with her family, husband, two young daughters and wheaten terrier cooking, running in new cities and taking acting classes. Proximity proximity events have taken her and her family on trips to places that have always been on her bucket list, like Israel, China and Thailand. I'm excited to be speaking with you, Lisa, and kind of climb through. It sounds like your personal and professional life have as much activity in them as the other, so I'll be fine. [00:04:15][104.3]
[00:04:15] I want you to launch us really quickly as we begin kind of investigating Xfinity. Can you start us off with your educational background and your professional life following that. [00:04:25][10.0]
[00:04:27] Yeah, sure. I actually it's kind of funny. I started at the University of Iowa undergrad and thought that I was going to get into biochemistry, I was going to be a researcher, I was going to use math and science every day. Those were my two biggest passions in high school, my favorite subjects. I still absolutely love math and science. When my kids come home from school with math and science homework, there's nothing I like to help them with more. But as my kind of interest developed as I grew up a little bit, as I started thinking about what a career would look like in that space, I started gravitating toward marketing and sales more. So I ended up graduating from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in business administration. A lot of my focus in school was on the marketing and management side. As I got out of college and into the real world, I found that my strengths were really in sales. I'm a people person. I love being around people. I love asking questions. I had a knack for understanding what their needs were and depending on what company I was working on, it didn't really feel like sales. And when you love what you're talking about or what you're bringing to the table, it's not a sale. You're able to help somebody instead of push something on somebody. And so I ended up in the beverage industry working for some of the biggest distributors in the world doing adult beverage sales. I was a team leader, event manager, launch new brands, managed territories all over the country, in the Midwest and at Southern Wine and spirits in Miami running the entire market. And I think I was twenty three when I was doing that. My own. That's a goal for a twenty three year old. Yeah. So and I think it's interesting. I did get promoted fairly quickly within that organization and it was now. Necessarily, a skill set is good at what I was doing, but also it was attitude, and I realized quickly that when you're upbeat about what you're doing, when you're passionate, when you're into it, managers and people around you will gravitate toward that. And so when it came time to pick from ten of us who was going to go run the Miami market when the opportunity came up, I was the newest on the team, but also the most positive. And so I was picked. And from there I I've always been in sales. I was in real estate. I took some time off, had some kids who are now 10 and eight and then started proximity. [00:07:05][157.9]
[00:07:06] So can you let's let's kind of pack proximity from the top down. So when was it launched? What year were you alone in founding it? [00:07:14][8.6]
[00:07:15] And what was the impetus, the inspiration for the launch? [00:07:18][3.0]
[00:07:19] Yeah. So in twenty fifteen my co-founders and I, so not alone, we were a number of friends sitting around a table and honestly looking at where was technology taking us as people and as, as, as friends, as humans, as people that have been around since before the tech boom, before apps were a thing. We knew what it was like to interact before apps and we knew what apps were doing to us as a species. And we said this isn't where we want technology to take us that with all of the new apps out there, all of the technologies that kept driving and competing for our attention and taking away from in-person interaction. And we said as a group of friends, what if we could use technology but use it to bring back face to face, get people to find a new way to connect and find shared interests and what really drives us as humans? And that's connection. But do it without their phones. Put your phones away and be present. And and that was where the idea was born. It was a number of us that were friends quickly filed some patents on the idea, started building what we call our proof of concept smart badge, focused on an industry, focused on a niche that we thought we could get into and focus on is our initial target, which is the meetings and events industry. And in twenty sixteen we're fully up and running. [00:08:47][87.2]
[00:08:47] So in twenty sixteen you were fully up and running. And how many co-founders did you have. [00:08:53][5.4]
[00:08:54] So there were three of us. It was my husband, it was myself and it was another friend that we initially really in on founding the business. [00:09:04][10.3]
[00:09:05] And how did you come to get to the to the prototype of your model? [00:09:09][3.2]
[00:09:09] Can you describe what it looks like? The actual you have a tangible product that's attached with this concept that you had about like mindedness, being able to connect without your phone in front of you. So can you describe the product and then also kind of start walking us through? We got into the impetus of you wanting to be able to connect with people and talking about that, how technology meets up with that. But will you describe what it looks like? And then walk us through? Because you have the unique startup experience are one of the more unique ones of developing this kind of industrial design aspect. You have wearable unit. So can you tell for everyone listening kind of what the product looks like and some of your endeavors in designing that? [00:09:57][47.6]
[00:09:59] Say it's interesting to go from having an idea, wondering. So before we started building it, we talked to as many people as we could. We talked to people that attend events. We talk to people that produce events. We talk to stakeholders that sponsor and invest in events. And we said if there was a way that you could be notified immediately within walking into a group of people that someone was near in proximity of somebody with a shared interest or affinity. And that's where the name comes from, where proximity, proximity plus affinity. Would you want that? And second, would you pay for it? And overwhelmingly, people said yes. And they said, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine. Like, you and I were kind of talking Patricia offline when we said, just knowing that there's someone near you that has something in common, provides a sense of relief, a sense of is can immediately engage you in the people around you or in the event itself, it's game changing and so awesome as before we invested in building and getting this product up and running to hear from a significant number of people that, yes, they wanted this. And also at your building, we're building a business. This isn't a hobby. And yes, they would pay for it. So we started we started contacting it. We hired a number of engineers, industrial design engineers, which I will say in the beginning was one of the most. On aspects of starting this business to go into these meetings, say what you wanted it to be like, what you how you thought it would work, and then see these industrial designers concept in 3D, render something that looked very real. These really renderings, they're amazing. You can spin them around. You can see them full circle. But all of a sudden our vision was becoming a reality. And so that was a really exciting moment. It took us about 10 months to get that initial from start to finish of that of that phase of our business super fund. And then quickly, we ended up 3D printing two hundred prototypes. We said, OK, before we go full manufacturing, set up a contract manufacturer, end up on a run with this. We should build this out. We'll see if it works. We've had people tell us that they thought they would love it. Now will they actually love it? So we 3D printed two hundred badges and did our first two events. There were a number of tweaks that we had to make on the technology, but ultimately it worked and people loved it. So we were up and running. And what we quickly realized also was this is an Internet of Things device, this is a smart badge and not just smart in that it will match people, but smart in the analytics that it delivers. And so, interestingly enough, the human engagement aspect is the emotional tie. It's what everybody can relate to. But the data and analytics that are delivered after the event and that will come with our new badge during the event are really what people are spending the money on now moving forward? [00:13:07][188.1]
[00:13:08] Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that that wasn't one of your first moments was just to kind of bring this this instant networking kind of moment that can happen at any gathering or meetup group. But the data collection is so valuable. I mean, it's kind of where everyone is really looking at it and putting their it moves the bar, I guess, for a lot of different industries as well as so people are putting their might behind it. [00:13:35][27.2]
[00:13:36] When did you did you take any funding? Did you bootstrap in the beginning? And if you have taken funding, what round are you on? [00:13:43][6.8]
[00:13:44] We bootstrapped in the beginning. The founders believed that we should spend our own resources to kick this off, get through that point where we had a we had a website, we had a company name. We had a trademark. We had some patents filed and actually issued. We also had the two hundred badges 3D printed and we had more to go on than just people saying they would want to wear this. We had actual people wearing it, we had people using it, and we ended up actually having some paid clients right away. And so we felt really good when we went out for a first round that this business had legs. And so before we took out outside capital, we had come a significant way on this. But then we did go out for a series of friends and family around. We closed at one point three million dollars around. That was a friends and family around December of last year. We've since have another round that we're close to. Closing will take up to three hundred thousand more, but it will close at the end of this year and next year will likely go for another priced round a series seed priced Aulnay. [00:14:59][74.6]
[00:15:01] Excellent. So the growth within that time period, it sounds like it's been pretty steady. You had your clientele before you went to getting your first round kind of built in. [00:15:12][11.0]
[00:15:12] How have the how is the client acquisition, new client acquisition gone since then? [00:15:16][3.6]
[00:15:17] It's interesting. The first struggle in starting a business is getting clients and getting a significant number of clients, getting the first people to say yes, getting the reputable Fortune five hundreds of clients that people know and have heard of that makes other clients coming on a lot easier after that. But then the next struggle is really how do we go to repeat clients? And so I've learned that it's not just getting one, it's not just getting to you have to get them over and over and over again and so on. Where we're at now is pretty exciting because I think we've built something we've had this idea before, it was obvious. Now it's a point where technology is where meetings and events are headed, whether with wearables, with. What people have seen on events like it is right, people are ready for this, they are used to having technology be part of their events. And and with the release of 2.0, we're at the point where now this is a solution for every single event. This isn't just an add on or something to deal with your engagement. This is an end to end solution that we've built that will really scale and enable us to be a hardware enabled platform. [00:16:30][72.9]
[00:16:31] Right. And also just to give a very like nuts and bolts description to everyone, the smart badge that at least the one that I wore. I don't know if you have another prototype year end, but I was actually at a women's venture summit in San Diego where Prox Fendi was employing their smart badges and they're worn around the neck on a lanyard and they light up when your you take a brief tutorial on I did it on an iPad prior to being assigned a badge. And then they light up. When you walk up to someone that you have collected knowledge in common with, it's really lightweight. I tied mine at one point to I think about lube because I needed my neck free for some work and it's a butt. So to give everyone who isn't in the know the feeling of it is I would say it was two to three inches by two or three inches, kind of like a square and that's right up was the same. So and plastic is felt like it was plastic made and things of that nature. It's an interesting concept. So to get kind of very crystalized about it, I took a series of questions that I was able to answer. I'm not sure if I was given the option to skip, but they were all applicable to why I was there and what I was doing. There's two different modes of why one would be at the women's venture summit. It was as an investor or as a startup personnel. And then you had different I think that there were different cross categories that you could ask and answer to. I'm curious about the information collected. Do you sign off on that information going anonymously to other sources, or does that kind of lie into the client's purview of whomever? [00:18:16][104.9]
[00:18:18] So is big issue, personally identifiable information? And we take that very seriously. So we are we have very secure system and we built this very securely so that any information we're holding, we're holding really safe. But also beyond that, we're giving participants total control of the contact information that is held on them and that is shared. And so when you sign in and set up a profile answer for multiple choice questions, you're immediately given the option to share information or run anonymous. And then at any point during the conference, you can log in and access your profile, make it more robust if you wish, or or change your settings and how much you're sharing. So, yes, it's in your hands, what you control and what you share. [00:19:06][47.9]
[00:19:06] Absolutely. I think it's interesting to to state that I haven't heard of any kind of a public gathering in the past 15 years where someone isn't saying and bring your business cards. This is an awesome opportunity to network. And that becomes kind of an interesting prospect. You get people that are incredibly energetic, can walk up and talk to a blank chair like Clint Eastwood. And then you have people who are still kind of awkward. And I think a large part of what shocked me with proximity is how many people really were saying, oh, we're a match, what are we matching over like? There was just that ability to kind of also proffer into it and also force people who are already sharing to find out what they were in common with. So even to discover that you had more in common than perhaps the information that you were sharing, because I think that networking is is always touted as a beneficial byproduct or outcome that's going to happen at every event. But it's not necessarily the case, especially in industries that don't have the most loquacious of personality profiles. [00:20:07][61.1]
[00:20:08] Yeah, well, that's one of our value propositions. And one of our statements and thesis is, is that. Networking and having a meaningful outcome, a engaging conversation, should not depend on personality and chance. This should be something that is guaranteed and it's not. [00:20:25][16.6]
[00:20:26] No, and I think it frequently is said that it is that you walk away with opportunity or conversation, that I I myself don't suffer from that. But I actually run with a community of nerds that struggle, sometimes just being able to speak about their own startups and things of that nature. And I feel like this badge just is another tool that kind of elegantly puts you into conversation with people without some of the just more horrific attributes that other solutions have kind of come up with. There's a lot of attempts to try to get people to share information or find out why or how people are matched up. But I think that this one is it's graceful in the way that it's done. And the utility, it's it's always interesting when you have some kind of an apparatus that you're trying to retrofit people with. There's a lot of things to consider that I don't think on the outside that people would consider with that kind of a design. So it's it's it's cool that you're saying that that was one of your most favorite parts, because for me, that sounds like one of the most terrifying parts in all of the things that go into that. So I like that the one hundred and eighty degree different opinion that you have on that. It's very exciting. So when you get into areas of specialty, when you guys started out with prox vanity, did you have like were you thinking like conference? We're going to we're going to hit the conference circuit or do you have areas or industry that you very specifically thought it would be applicable to or did you think anyone and everyone. [00:21:58][91.8]
[00:21:59] Yeah, we did think anyone and everyone when we first had this vision and this idea quickly realized that to build something for anyone and everyone was insane, we had to be focused. But yes, we thought about then within the meetings and event space, even within that industry, huge, huge opportunity. But also there's different segments within that market alone. We thought conferences and trade shows when we first got into this industry and we thought events where people are selling products, where there are these buyers, their suppliers, there's vendors. You know, we can really, as you said, elegantly match buying and selling, buying versus selling opportunity with need strengths and challenges are some of the strongest matches that we're able to deliver. But pretty quickly, in our sales processes, we started getting out there and making this public. Corporations started picking us up and they were picking us up for their internal or client facing smaller meetings. So anywhere between 50 and a thousand participants and we found a great niche in that market, we can deliver a ton of value this market had. When you do a smaller one day meeting, participants are pretty. Adverse to downloading an app to go to an internal corporate meeting, and so and they're not going to want it. They don't want their employees to network on an app anyway. Like there's a huge opportunity. They're spending millions of dollars to bring people together face to face. They want them to connect and they want to connect. They want to learn from one another. So not only can we affect the engagement that's taking place, but now we have the analytics on face to face that they've never had before. And so what happens at these corporate meetings is we take a lot of their demographics. What job title do people have? How long have they been at the organization, ethnicity, gender? We have all of that to weigh against the interaction data. And after the event is after we collect the badges or we've produced approximately activation, we can go up on stage and deliver that that analytic report. And the participants are sitting there and just used it and see what happened as well as the organizers can showcase. Here's what we were able to accomplish as a group, and here's what it means. [00:24:22][143.0]
[00:24:23] Yeah, it's built in marketing as well. I mean, that could great immediate feedback is exciting, right? [00:24:28][5.1]
[00:24:29] Yeah, absolutely. You know, we talk to these organizations about you're doing you're learning, you're continued learning and development leadership summits. And so for each employee in this room that has the potential to now be promoted and grow as a leader in the organization, what happens when all of that human capital is not just individually enhanced and grown, but what happens when it's networked and the network potential there and it's exponential and people get really excited? We start talking about all that stuff and they understand, like not just the value that they have, but in their connected value. [00:25:02][33.4]
[00:25:03] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, information, as we've seen is is crucial to growth and power within within everything, within an individual, within personal growth. It's not just to grow the power of a business or something like that. You guys have like a set goal plan for the next three years. Have you guys looked forward and thought about scaling or expansion or funding any of that? [00:25:29][25.9]
[00:25:31] Yes, all of the above. We have been thinking about it and thinking about it since we started this business. And I would be lying if I said it hasn't evolved and changed. But at the moment, yes, you know, our immediate immediate goal is on January, really early next year, we'll begin selling contracts on our 2.0 Smart Benge. And as we roll that out, it's an end to end solution. This is a totally digital nametag. So I'm a little bit different than what you experienced when you used it. No longer an accessory on the Slainte, on the lanyard in addition to your name tag, it is the name tag. With that comes a tremendous amount of analytics, the ability to touch one hundred percent of the users at any moment through the conference, a game changer in terms of experience and in analytics. And so really next year, it's all about getting that solution out there, not only into the hands of bigger and larger events, three to five thousand participants, but also within organizations. So that this is something that they're using at every single one of their meetings and the data design change to the interface. [00:26:42][70.6]
[00:26:42] Is there a digital screen on it now or. [00:26:45][2.8]
[00:26:46] Yeah, it's a totally digital screen. The digital screen will last for years, but the functionality will have days and days of matching, of games, of push notifications, live polling, tracking, you name it. It all comes now into this smart badge, which is digital. [00:27:08][21.4]
[00:27:08] It sounds like expansion to like multi day retreat's events, like kind of a larger scale. [00:27:13][4.9]
[00:27:14] Exactly. Nice. And so those are the immediate immediate goals. And then also working with our enterprise, contrat our clients, the big fortune. Five hundred that we're working with to have this be a tool that at every meeting they're just ordering cases, they use it, they collect them at the end, they ship them back. And this is just part of their routine. [00:27:33][18.4]
[00:27:34] Absolutely. That's exciting. It sounds like more travels on your horizon. [00:27:37][3.4]
[00:27:38] Well, the goal is to make this out of the box and so that event organizers will be so comfortable with it that it's essentially setting up their event registration page. Once it's set up and they have their attendees in the system, they get this case of badges and it's ready to go. [00:27:55][16.7]
[00:27:56] Absolutely. So I'm curious if you bumped into a woman or a female identified or a non binary individual, pretty much anyone other than a white male tomorrow. And they said, listen, I I graduated a few years ago back from University of Iowa. I got my bachelor's in business administration. I kind of felt that around. It wasn't really right for me sitting around the kitchen table with a bunch of friends of mine. And we came up with this fantastic. Idea for a device, social interaction to increase interactive skills and things of that nature on different areas and platforms. What of the three pieces of advice that you would give the individual knowing what you know now? [00:28:33][37.3]
[00:28:35] Well, to get organized faster, I mean, looking back, OK, so like one, I would say, like it is going to be hard and and not being a white man has it's obstacles. You have to have a tougher skin. You're going to hear no more than you would like. But every now you hear is also an opportunity to learn and and overcome for the next. And it gets you closer to the next day. And so don't be discouraged, you know, from one v.c or one corporate client. There are a million out there to go after and one no is not going to make your business as is one. Yes. So stay at it. Even when you get a yes or when you get to know. And also, I would say nothing's a given. And so make sure that you're organized. Don't anticipate that someone's going to remember you in three months, right. That contact down put it somewhere so that not everything is just in your head and that you're accountable for even your own leads. Because in the beginning, I think you meet with a few people. You think you're going to remember everything, you're going to follow up with all of them. But the human brain has its limits. And so. Kind of like get buttoned up faster and it will pay off. [00:29:56][80.8]
[00:29:56] Absolutely. All right. So we've got get organized fast here. It's going to be hard. Don't be discouraged. [00:30:02][5.9]
[00:30:03] And nothing is a given follow up with some contacts. I like that. That's cool. It sounds very. And they keep coming back again. I think it can't be said enough for people launching any stage of of one's life. I think that hearing and know is is heartbreaking unless one's a sociopath. It's something we don't want to hear with our business on any idea from an assistant to a boss and everyone in between. So I like that a lot. We are out of time for today, but I want to just say thank you so much. I'm going to try and circle back around and convince you to meet up with me in a year again and speak with our our myself for our audiences pleasure, because I think that proximity is in such a stage of growth that it's just going to be like this little toddler that turns into a teenager. It's going to be so interesting. Come back and see what's going on. [00:30:57][53.6]
[00:30:58] Thank you so much for taking the time today and speaking with me. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. [00:31:02][4.4]
[00:31:02] I really looking forward to talking again soon. [00:31:04][1.7]
[00:31:05] Good. I will have you. And for everyone listening, thank you so much for giving us your time today. [00:31:11][6.4]
[00:31:11] And until we speak again, remember, you always bet on yourself, Slaínte. [00:31:11][0.0]
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