Welcome to the Cloud Native in 15 Minutes podcast. If you haven't listened before, the goal of the podcast is simple, to explain some complex but increasingly important and even strategic technologies and about the time it takes for a coffee break or a walk, short walk, a commute, whatever you do in 50 to 20 minutes. So I'm Derek Harris from Pivotal, and my guest today is Zach Klima from a Detroit-based startup called WaitTime. And what WaitTime does is it uses imaging and AI to monitor how many people are in line at, it's focused on sports right now, so how many people are in line at any given concession stand or how many people are coming in and out of the gates or any number of things. And the goal is to make a better experience for both, for the fans who can get a sense of like, hey, I should go to this concession stand or this bathroom line. I'm not going to have to wait as long. And also to give the venue some sense of traffic and traffic flows and that sort of thing. So it's really interesting, but specifically, instead of talking about the technology, we talk a lot more about, you know, building, how Zach went about building this company. And I think it's relevant for, not just if you're an entrepreneur, it's definitely relevant, especially an entrepreneur based in the Midwest or based somewhere outside of, you know, the ample access to venture capital and angel investors, right? So, but also if you're a large company, you know, and especially a large company based on the coast where you have, you know, a lot more access to technology and a lot more access to capital is, what are the, what are the ways you might go about looking to get into a new space? How many go about building out that team? How many go about finding that initial foothold to get into something new and then expanding it? I think it's from a business perspective, you know, from startups, even large enterprises, I think it's really insightful. In fact, and one of the ways you'll hear wait time, got it, got it, got it start from Dan Gilbert, the, of Quicken Loans, who's doing some stuff, you know, maybe, maybe it's an idea for, if you're an executive for how to start fostering talent, nurturing, interesting technology in your area with, with some sort of an incubator, but anyhow, stick around, really interesting. Listen to Zach Klima from wait time now.
2:05Okay, Zach, let's start off with talking about wait time, specifically what is wait time for anyone that's unfamiliar? Yeah, absolutely. So wait time is an artificial intelligence software company, focused in sports right now, where we've developed the only patented AI building system technology that's able to track and record the movement analysis of people in real time. So that's all concession lines, restroom lines, retail lines. We're also doing ingress and egress, so gate entrances. And also, um, we just successfully did something with the live monitoring of grandstands. So basically, you know, the, the seating capacities. So in a nutshell, it's all about the redistribution of people within an arena or stadium at this point in time. Very cool. And how'd you come up with the idea? Like what was the conception of this? Yeah. So I'm a habitually, I'm very impatient. And so, um, I was actually in line at a Detroit Red Wings game, which is, uh, I'm from Detroit. So the wings are my team. And so I, um, I was in line, it was a playoff game and it was overtime game seven. And so I, I went in line and to get a beer or I believe it was to get a beer. Datsuk, Pavel Datsuk, one of my favorite players of all time, hit a game winning shot. Everyone came running out. There's obviously a sudden death and I'm sitting there in line, like twiddling my thumbs. And I'm like, you know, you know, son of a gun. If I wish I would have known what the wait time was before I got up, I would have gone to a separate line and gotten served faster. So that's where the, like the light bulb went off. And I was like, you know what? I think that this is a very common problem with everyone. And that goes to sporting arenas and stadiums. And then also be who likes to wait in line. Like, no, I can, I'll give someone
4:09a ridiculous sum of money that I don't have. If, if they told me and convinced me that they like way in line. So with those two things, it was kind of a, the stars aligned. I'm okay. This could be a good idea. And so that's where the initial light bulb went off. All right. It's interesting. Yeah. I think everyone's been there. I was just at a WNBA game a while ago and I, and what it got me was I saw people eating better food. I said, well, one, I didn't even know that thing existed. And two, I only did light for an awful long time with this nasty pretzel. Yeah. I got to know what's going on here. All right. And when was, and when was this, when, when did you actually launch the company? So that was in 2000, the, the inception happened in 2014 and we started to get working, um, 2015. So I had to like, obviously find the right people to actually build the technology and believe in the vision. So it took me about a year to find those after I came up with the idea. All right. And 2014. So that was, you know, I'm not sure exactly what the, what technology you're using, but that was pretty early days for even some of the computer vision stuff that seems commonplace. Absolutely. Right now. Like, yeah, it was, you know, in processing power, um, back in those days, um, was not even strong enough to do, as you just said, to do imaging and, and artificial intelligence in the way that we're doing it. So it wasn't even possible even before, like, so you talk about perfect timing, right? So it wasn't even possible back then. Um, but obviously, um, you know, you find the right people. So for example, my, my head of technology technology is the global leader in imaging. So he owns about half the world market with the technology he invented about 20 years ago. So his, his, uh, his foresight and his knowledge of how to make things happen before the really even possible is, uh, it was quite nice. And so, yeah, we, it was a
6:11perfect timing in the market. All right. How, how'd you go about finding talent? I mean, finding your head of tech maybe, but also finding other people that work a lot. So I know what happens a lot of times is, you know, anyone who says who has AI in the resume, they, they go off to Google or Facebook or their companies get acquired by Google or Facebook. And it seems like everyone else is struggling to, to find talent. Right. So, yeah. So, um, that's a good question. So, um, I had the opportunity to pitch to, um, the guy who's rebuilding Detroit. His name is Dan Gilbert. And so Dan put me in his business accelerator in Detroit called wisdom where they accept five out of like a thousand people to be, to fund their ideas and to kind of like help bring them to market. And so I did that. I went through this program and I quit my job. I'm an architect by schooling. I quit my job, which confused my mom, obviously. And I quit my job and I jumped right in and they take a, I think they gave me like $25,000 and, you know, for a percentage of your company, you know, like a chunk of your company. And so I was like, great, great deal. Let's get started. And so, you know, I, I met with all these different entrepreneurs and this network and I, I listened intently, didn't spend a dime. I listened intently. And so, um, when I did that, I learned that like, Hey, this is, you know, I think I'm on the right path here. So I met a guy through that network named Doyle Mosher. So Doyle Mosher is a very well-known entrepreneur in Metro Detroit. And what his main business is he builds very, very custom high-end homes for very well-known entrepreneurs and business leaders, um, so on and so forth. So for example, like the Ford family, the Kennedy family, things like that. And so what he was building a house, uh, quite a large house,
8:13uh, to say the least for a guy by the name of John Mars. So, you know, Doyle started to mentor me and to kind of like get my pitch deck, right. And, you know, just kind of like the, you know, the standard stuff. And so, but he was increasingly becoming more interested. And so one day he was building this house for like five years. And one day he said, Hey Zach, I want to introduce you to John. Um, I know he made a gazillion dollars in software. I don't know what the software was. I just want to like run this idea by him that your idea. So I didn't even, I couldn't afford an iPad. I had a, I literally a binder of Photoshop renderings of my idea. And I'm like, Hey, this is how it's going to work. We're going to have a sensor above. It's going to track motion below so on and so forth. So I was explaining to him, I met John, I was explaining my idea to him and he was kind of finishing my sentences before they're coming out of my mouth. And I was like, Hmm, I'm gauging interest here. This is good. He's like, Hey Zach, how much money are you trying to raise? This is at the end of my pitch, quote unquote pitch. And so I'm like, Oh, by my financial projections, you know, whatever BS they, they teach you at that point in time, which at that, you know, don't mean anything. And I was like, Oh, I don't know about $3 million. He's like, okay, forget all that. I'm going to bring on my team that helped me take over the world, literally. Um, and we're going to, you know, basically I'm going to do this for equity. I'm going to, you know, um, a mind as beautiful as John's. It's, it's not about money for him. It's, it's about creating something and you have always has to be creating something. His currency is creation. And so when that happened, um, things got very real and I was like, okay, well, I, yeah, that sounds great. You know, there's not much of a sales pitch on his end because I'm like,
10:13clearly this guy can execute. So I was flirting with a lot of very high, um, not, not, not just network, but like very connected sports individuals that I've been talking to. So for one, um, a guy named Andrew Craig, who he's really kind of the main advisor of the international Olympic committee. So he actually has his fifth winning bid, which is Paris, but he negotiates with the cities on how to win the rights to host the Olympics. And so he, and so, uh, you know, all these people were kind of for it with me, like, Hey Zach, like great idea. If you can pull this off, like I'm in. And so when John Mars came on, uh, it became very real. And so at that point in time, that was in 2000 mid 2014. And at that point in time, that's when we officially quote unquote started the company. I would say when we actually got started. All right, cool. And where are you at now? How, how, how big is the company? Where do you have wait time installed? Yeah. So we have about 40 investors now, um, ranging from some of the people I just talked about to, uh, Michael Jordan's son, his oldest son, Jeff is an investor. So we, we have some very, um, you know, recognizable figures within the company. And so with that being said, we internally fund the company. So we didn't take any outside money, um, because of the story I told you where we were able to internally fund it through our, our CTO is the one that actually can build the technology. And so, and he's part of the company. So 40 investors were in 12 venues across the world. So Australia, UK here in the United States, and then soon to be Canada. So three different continents right now. Um, and the reason why we wanted to kind of grow at a steady pace with the right people is because we wanted to make the product as perfect as possible and as scalable as possible before we
12:18actually scaled. So with that being said, we wanted to really make sure that everything was bulletproof and battle tested before we started to really press copy and paste, which we did strategically. And so now we're at a point in time in the company now where we hit, we do have larger resellers of our solution, like an IBM to people, uh, other people who are helping position our company across the world like Cisco, um, you know, within their product set. And so now all of our, you know, me knocking on doors now has, and it's, it's got a great paradigm shift. A lot of that has changed into a lot of these leads are now inbound because it's clearly the value proposition is standard across each venue. Every venue is the same when it comes to this problem. So that's the kind of the point in time where we're at right now. All right. And what, what is the user experience? Like what, what does the actual product look like? I'm, I'm, I'm, my understanding is there's an, there's, if I'm a user, I'm, if I'm going to the event, I have an app on my phone and then there's software and cameras or sensors set up throughout the stadium that are, that are basically feeding that app. Is that fair? Correct. So we mount cameras above every line in the, in the stadium and it basically takes anonymous screenshots. So we don't see anyone's face, but we take anonymous screenshots from above. So they're top of their heads, their shoulders and 10 times per second. So those screenshots are going to our servers that are on site and our servers are custom made that go on site that process these images at that frame rate of 10 times per second. So that's how we process the images and get the data from like real time line cows and serve time and wait time. But then we serve this up to digital signage concourse, digital signage. So that's where if you walk out of your seat, the first thing that you see is a very large board that
14:23shows you concessions and restrooms in each direction and what the wait times are in that green, yellow, red spectrum bar analysis. And then also on the team's mobile app. So we integrate with the team's mobile app. So they're able to see exactly what the wait times are at their fingertips as well. And that plays into a lot of these teams, mobile strategies. A lot of these teams are, are really trying to push people to mobile. So that's a great way to do it is to provide them with information that they need, not even just that they want. That makes sense. Cool. And so how have you, how have you gone about growing? Like, like you mentioned, you know, you have, you have a lot more investors now you have, you've got some critical mass going. What was it, what has it been like growing the team? Like how big is, is the team you have right now? And how have you, you know, plotted out growing, you know, an engineering team, right? Or growing, you know, your business. So the power of John being the foremost leader in imaging is the way that he builds the technology. So he is, he, it was able to make the technology and automate it as much as possible. So we actually don't need to build our dev team out really at all, you know, outside of our core, our core group. So we have about 15 full-time people and we don't really need to grow as, you know, really much more than that. It doesn't matter if we have 50 venues or 500 venues, you know, we might grow a little bit more, but we don't necessarily need a lot of personnel just by the way that John has built the system very intelligently. So yeah, we don't really need to grow the team out that much. So for us, it's more about strategic partnerships. So who can help sell and position wait time effectively? That's really where we, you know,
16:23focus most of our energy. Okay, cool. And then finally, Zach, like what is, I mean, do you have a, do you have an end goal in mind? I mean, is the end goal like, you know, wait time in every stadium or, you know, is there an evolution of the product? Yeah. Yeah. At some point I'm just curious what we're thinking about. Yeah. So obviously every stadium, that's the goal. I mean, our, our, you know, the, the more, the feasible way to get there is to become a building standard. So we, we're now working with architects and designers, you know, when it comes to speccing our system into these arenas and stadiums. So we're starting to have those conversations now. So if you go to a stadium that doesn't have wait time, you're confused, like, Hey, why doesn't this place have wait time? So that's our, that's our goal when it comes to that, but not even just stadiums, you know, we have, our AI is so complex and so captivating that there's so much other industry crossover applicability. So whether it be from retail to, you know, to convention centers, to you name it, uh, airports, there's a lot of applicability for our software. So, you know, we might just have the industry that we're in now, which is kind of all pretty much sports. Um, you know, we see it where there'll be these pillars of the company. So you'll have a sports division, you'll have a retail division, um, so on and so forth. So that's kind of the way that we see it going and, you know, acquisition is, you know, is, is probably going to happen down the line, but not anywhere in the near future, just because we're, we're just scratching the surface on what we're doing with our technology. And we do have everything protected. We have issued patents, which is very rare with software, as I'm sure, you know, so that puts us in a good position to win, um, across a lot of different fronts.
18:25All right. Yeah. And that's really interesting, actually. The, I mean, I got smart, the idea of branching out because yes, sports is like a limited marketplace. Right. So, so, so you go, you go elsewhere. Right. And then the idea of the idea of working with architects and doing stuff at the inset versus trying to retrofit, I think too, like puts that plants, that idea or plants, that seed at the early stages. Right. So just part of the design. And then it seems more normal, maybe. That's right. That's right. You know, and, and, um, you know, for us, you kind of hit on it. It's sports is small, but it's, it's great publicity. So the reason why we started in sports strategically was to get our name out there. Sports is not the end all be all for wait time. It's just where you have a captive audience for a nice amount of time. And so with that being said, it allows us to have basically marketing happen because we get a lot of press with our solution to get our name out there, to get the attention of other people that can apply our technology differently in other industries. So that's kind of where, why we started in sports, which is, um, you know, kind of played out nicely. All right. Makes sense. Well, with that, we are out of time. Thanks a lot, Zach. Appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you very much. All right. There you are. I hope you learned something for more, for more information about wait time. You can visit its website at, and wait for it. Cause this is not exact. It's the wait times.com. So T H E W A I T T I M E S.com company's wait time website, the wait times.com. Okay. And for more information about pivotal and our broad suite of products and services for building and managing and running cloud native applications, as well as helping you just build better software, check out pivotal.io. And if you like this podcast and want to keep up with all things, digital transformation and, and cloud native without, without a lot of sales or product talk,
20:27visit the home of this podcast that is intersect pivotal.io slash intersect. And you can also find us online at intersect it on Twitter. Thank you.