Erin Geiger: 0:10

Hey everybody, welcome to the latest episode of Clover. This week we have Melissa Wood joining us, also in the Austin area. Welcome, Melissa, to the show.

Unknown: 0:20

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Erin Geiger: 0:22

So, super stoked to have you. I was introduced to you at an event, I believe it was on International Women's Day back in March. I attended a panel. We both are involved in Founders, which is a local organization that really does kind of celebrate and support female founders, entrepreneurs, all the things Cherie Werner runs it. She also was a guest on this podcast in an earlier episode, so super fun. So, yeah, so I heard Melissa speak about some really incredible things that she's working on, and was so inspired. I was like, I've got to talk to her on Clover, so, so excited that you accepted the invite. So I always start out with, like, let's just jump in. So always curious about everybody's story, so you didn't just wake up and be where you are today. So if you wouldn't mind kind of walking us through that kind of A to Z journey, like, how did you get to where you are today?

Unknown: 1:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it started. I'm from a very small town in North Carolina called Coats, and as 2000 people, so it's very small, but it's also the home of some pretty fascinating things, like a prop tech company that started in the in the 80s actually and grew to a Fortune 500 company in the in the mid 90s and being a very small town my family had an opportunity to be a part of this this company this startup and went through the whole kind of evolution of it to it being acquired, and I was right out of high school, so it was the summer before going to college. I took like an administrative assistant job there, and I was working at the front desk on a computer, and this computer happened to have Adobe Photoshop on it. I mean, this is this is night - we're talking about 9519 95 and I was playing, I'm a creative, and so I was playing around with the software and started coming up with all these different designs, and the VP of sales walked by, walked by, and saw me working on, I says, did you create that? I'm like, yeah, he's like, I have an idea for sales team, do you mind assisting me with it, I'm sure, so I created some designs for him, and that just kind of boosted my career, really my journey. They immediately moved me to, well, I actually went to school, came back, and was continued to work with him, and they moved me to be a computer artist and animator for the company, and without going through the whole journey, when it got acquired for the first time, I was moved to a lighting company that used fiber optics and different technology, and they sent me to New York City to learn d animation and d modeling and animation, and so that came back and became an animator for them, where I would work with the industrial design team to take concepts and create visual renderings of concepts that then they would take to customers like Pepsi to sell the idea. So that's how I got started. I was think 19 at the time. Went back, decided, you know, wanted to finish, get my earn my degree. I'm the youngest in my family, but the first to earn a degree, and so it was a big deal. So I went back and actually got a degree in an art with a concentration in photography, is a big passion, is also a big passion of mine, and during that time I got a scholarship to, or not scholarship, sorry, internship with an e-learning company as a designer, and I, because I had taught myself so many of the tools, and also had that experience from the previous company, I was, I went straight into a senior design role, and that became my, you know, job after I graduated from college, and then the, the, it was a small boutique firm that the, the lady who ran it decided to retire, and literally handed the company over to me and my brother, who was the senior account manager, salesperson, and we were forced to start a company. I don't, I don't, I can't say that, that, like, I, that was a true startup, because I feel like it's now that I've been through, like, the journey of, like, starting from scratch, like it. Very different, right? Like, we already had major clients, like Citigroup and Sodexo, and that's why we had to build a company. So, we did that for a while. Then life happened, and we decided to really.. so that company was handed to us, and we paid it for it, and handed over to our industrial designer that we were working with, who was super passionate about, you know, growing it, and so, and she, in return, end up I hired me to consult with her over the years, and so it kind of over the years, I, I did some consulting work with her, but while starting my own family, well, I did some traveling. I went out to California for a year to really push myself as a designer, and met a mentor friend of mine who's been like my one of my biggest champions as an entrepreneur there, and he, you know, this is around the time Myspace started, and I remember thinking I'd moved to Nashville, and then San Francisco, for again, for like a year, and when I moved to San Francisco, and I discovered Myspace, I remember telling this friend, this friend, by the way, bought one more domain in, in his early 20s, and built them up into companies, and so he was doing really well. He, I was introduced to him through my roommates, and we started. He's, he's, he's a techie, but very creative. I'm creative, but also have the techie side as well, so we, we would jam together and nerd out on different ideas, and it was, it was great. I helped him with a few things. Well, I told him about Myspace, and I said, this, this app is, or this platform is amazing. It helps me feel connected to my people back in North Carolina, in Nashville. And so we were exploring it together, and he came to me one day, says, Well, you know, I own the domain me.com Why don't we work together? You know, he had this idea of creating this other kind of social platform, and I remember thinking to myself, yeah, Myspace is kind of already doing that, and I actually had decided, like, the e-learning business was actually still kind of happening at this at this point, and so I was, I think that actually it, that's when we formalized the actual company, the e-learning company became more of a multimedia design company as well, because I did a lot of living in Nashville websites and photography and and CD design for artists, and so we created a kind of a consulting business, and so I was in the middle of that, so I was like, well, I'm gonna move back to the East Coast, and you know, within and work on this business with, with my, with my brother, and and said no to me.com that then sold to Apple for lots and lots of money, but it was okay, because one, you know, I met my husband, I've, you know, I'm married with three wonderful children, like, so that was the right path for me, and, and the, the, the founder of me.com is, like I said, has has continued to be a mentor of mine, and one of my biggest champions behind anything that I do, and so that's that's my journey, you know, kind of in the up until we'll see around the I got married, I started having kids, I'm an entrepreneur at heart, like working at a startup at that young of an age and going through that excitement of an acquisition, I mean it's hard not to get excited and passionate about that, and, and so I knew that this is something that I want to continue to pursue eventually, this this entrepreneurial journey, and I had some opportunities, some that, that you know, I helped other people with, some I tried that didn't pan out, and but and then at one point I had one big opportunity that that that I had had planned on pursuing, and the day before, yeah, the day before I got the call to like kind of start that that position I got a call that I had cancer and I had to turn that opportunity down, because that opportunity was a three month period of me kind of all in to kind of see how we would work together, and that was also that three month period was what the doctors were saying I would need for, you know, surgery, radiation, all the things, and so I obviously was not able to jump in then, and then I, you know, was having kids around the same time, so the next five years or so was really, you know, me, you know, getting healthy, being a mom, and then we decided to move to Austin to be closer to my husband's family, is a big, a lot of family. Here in Texas, and it was kind of an opportunity to reset. My health was was better, and so, yeah, we moved here. I spent the first year focusing on my health and the family and getting us settled in, and you know, thought I'm not going to work well. I was working a little bit, because I cannot work, because I love working, but I was doing a little consulting work, and I thought, well, hey, let's buy a house that we can renovate and make it our own, like, you know, I've got time, and little did I know how unhealthy that could be for you, stress, and I'm like sitting here trying to focus on my health, but it was fine, like, I, it was a, it was an eye-opening journey that I'd never experienced, because, you know, I never did a renovation. I've had other friends who have been through family, but never went through it myself, and, and as I'm going through this, this renovation, I kept thinking to myself, you know, I'm really surprised there's not technology out there that really helps hold the parties accountable and to really help kind of with more clarity and more visibility into the process, and but what do I know? I'm a homeowner, I'm not professional, so there's probably something out there, and then five years later, I was actually, when I was kind of, I had picked up my consulting career and was asked to help a startup in California who uses space frame technology to build backyard homes, and through my five years with them, I started really understanding the pains from the professional side, and I was right, like, there, there isn't technology out there that really solves this problem of making sure that everyone is aligned on the process, on the, you know, the renovation process before jumping in, and so that's when I decided, like, this is health wise and life wise, this was it, was a good time for me to start, you know, to create a solution, and so that was three years, three ish years ago, I started that journey, and spent the last three years, you know, doing the whole startup thing, trying to create a solution to solve this problem,

Erin Geiger: 12:22

yeah,

Unknown: 12:25

boring.

Erin Geiger: 12:27

I'll, yeah, that's incredible. And first of all, so grateful that you got through cancer, so that's something that we need to highlight. So that's,

Unknown: 12:38

yeah, part of my story. It's part of the the the grit, the rising, all the things that you have to have and do to be a startup founder, and it's, you know, you know, hate that I had to go through it, and my family had to go through it with me, but at the same time it shaped, it helped shape me to be who I am today.

Erin Geiger: 12:59

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can only imagine like having your kids, and you know, and yeah, that's that's just a lot, so yeah, so just glad that you're here through that. I'm curious, when were you in San Francisco? Do you remember the year?

Unknown: 13:17

I believe it was 2004 okay, four

Erin Geiger: 13:27

around then, okay. Well, we were in San Francisco at the same time, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, whenever I moved to San Francisco in 98 and was there through 2012 and so short stint in LA, but mostly in the Bay Area, so whenever I hear people that were there around that time, I'm like, oh, we need to talk, because that was like a whole era of like the.com boom and bust and all the things, so it's yeah, it's it was an interesting time to be in that area, that's for sure, so so many questions for you. How you know you mentioned that you had many opportunities come your way, some you jumped on and some you didn't. So, can you talk a little bit about that decision making process? You can use me.com as an example, or others, just because there's so many people that are listening that like are maybe approached with opportunities or want to start someone on their own or they're not sure like when or how to take the leap or how to make that decision, so yeah, talk a little bit about kind of how you made that decision of like taking on opportunities or no,

Unknown: 14:37

yeah, well, me.com what came at a time that I mean, I had already somewhat had made a decision of what I wanted for my life, like as far as where I wanted to be, and it was to be on closer to my family on the East Coast, San Francisco was, I had said to myself, I was going to live here for a year to learn to like push my. As a designer, and that time was coming up, and I did exactly that, and so I really, you know, it was less about, you know, I didn't believe in what he was doing, because I believe anything he does, because he's a genius. It was more about kind of what I knew in my heart I needed in my life, and that was to be closer to my family and kind of pursue this, this other journey, and it was, it was great, though, because I, you know, I still, this, this friendship, you know, this mentorship friendship remain, and that was still able to be very much part of the early days and give feedback, in return he's done the same for me with ideas that I've had, and so we've, we've done a lot of back and forth over the years, of like, you know, what do you think about this and what do you think about that, we've never really come back together, except for form, as he was, he helped in the earlier days, but yeah, so that, that was on the me.com side, that was because of just where I was in my life, like it was, you know, I had already had some other commitments. The other startups or ideas that I had were more birthed out of something that I had been through or experienced, and, and had an idea, and wanted to see where, where it would go. I mean, right, this is that's where most, the best, best where the how the best products are birthed right out of real experiences. One was when I did go through cancer, I, you know, I love sharing my story. I literally have a tattoo that is a way for me to be able to share my story to people, like I will literally wear it on my sleeve, and I would had a blog at the time, and would talk about my journey, and would really, you know, yeah, help other people who are going through things, and so I had this idea of, oh my gosh, I don't even remember the name of it now, idea of creating an application to help people share their stories with other people who are going through similar things, and it ended up becoming, you know, I had someone that I brought in as a partner who ended up moving, and it was one of those things where I just, I didn't want to do this alone, I don't, I don't want to start any business alone, right, like, hey, it's, it's, it's hard enough, like, and I'm a team player, like, I like to have to work with other people, and he decided to move to California, actually, and so we decided to not pursue it, and I think at the time I was still dealing with some health stuff, and it just wasn't a good time, and during that time I also, you know, one of you know when you go through something like cancer, you, you realize just how short life is, and so I started learning to check out, started to want to check off things on my bucket list, and one was go to Africa, or bring my.. I had actually been to Africa on a humanitarian trip a couple years before, and then really wanted to take my family, and so I took my family over. We were helping with an organization called MOCA Club that would get college students to commit to a cost of a coffee to help a organization of their interests, it could be to towards, you know, helping or money going towards orphanages or money going through education. We help women, we've rescued women off the street to help give them a job, things like that. And so, what I would do is go over and bring teams over, so that they would see where their money is going, and can be an advocate back in the US, and through that journey, I met a lady, Fabin, who worked at a hospital, it's called the Fishella Hospital in Ethiopia, and we just hit it off. She had thyroid, thyroid cancer, is what I had gone through. She had thyroid issues. She had, you know, three children, like we just.. we had a lot in common. And I remember saying to her one day, you know, I really.. I love coming. I love being able to come and share my story with the women in Ethiopia, because I feel like, you know, I really can relate to them, and she's like, well, she said, where I don't think you can relate is that they don't have the community and the in the healthcare that you have to really help them through these journeys, and that that hit me hard, that landed really, really hard, and that just realizing how fortunate my community, how I was to have the community that I had to get me through what I did, like I had a six month old baby and couldn't take care of them, and so we had a friend that moved in and lived with us to help me take care of this baby, like things like that, that, and then of course the. You know the healthcare that I had to help me get through it. These ladies don't have that, and so I started. I said, "Well, I've got to do something about that. And so I started a company, or a project called Mothers in Crisis, that we then later called the Fabin Project, because Fabin partnered with us on it, where we would help sick and single mothers in Ethiopia be able to keep their children as they get care, instead of having to put them into orphanages, and so that was a.. it was a wasn't necessarily a startup, it was just more of a project, and we helped a handful of women, so that's that's another, and then there's without going into all the details of that, it ended up there ended up being a situation where we realized the problem that we were trying to solve in this, this scenario was something that, especially some American who has no clue what it's like to go through what these women are going through, could, could solve, and even the lady on the grounds there really struggled with the basically what it was, is that you know, a lot of these times these women were abused, were single because of abusive relationships, and so part of our deal was that you, you get support from us as long as you stay single, because a lot of times the men will hear they're getting, you're getting money from Americans, and will you know find their way back in, right, to take advantage, and that happens, and they always chose, they would always choose the men, which, that's for a whole other podcast, right, of like, we think about that, right, and so that's where we wouldn't say the project failed, because we really helped, we really truly helped, but it wasn't something that we could continue doing once we started seeing kind of the out what that outcome was. So I'll stop there. Yeah,

Erin Geiger: 22:12

no, I just, yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up, because I definitely wanted to talk about that, you know, and your experience in Ethiopia, and I just love your heart. You mean you just see something, and you're like, and I can't help but notice that when you started talking about that, you kind of lit up, you know, it's it's very dear to your heart, I can tell, and so it's like you have these, you know, you have your kiddos, you're, you know, you're you've gone through this this health situation, and then you go to, you know, then you're helping people in Ethiopia, and you're also, you know, creating companies, and it's just, but, but everything with such intention and such heart, you know, which is, which is pretty incredible. How did you take your experience, you know, in Ethiopia and apply it, you know, because I'm sure it impacted you so much in so many ways, so how did it kind of impact the rest of your life, be it personal with your family and also professionally as you went on to work on other initiatives.

Unknown: 23:16

Yeah, so with, you know, one of the things I love, love, love about the Ethiopian culture, or the people, at least, that we built relationships with, and I've been a lot, like we lived there for three months, my at a one year old and a three year old, and then I went back and forth several times to lead teens, so I really built a lot of relationships there, and is their their loyalty to things, their their loyalty to one another, to their family is incredible, 100% family first, and also the how laid back and how like how just they're not on a time frame like it, which for Americans could be really annoying, like you say show up, you know, for this at this time, and it doesn't start for two hours, so but that kind of slow pace, and just it, and I love that, that aspect of it, and one of the things that they do in Ethiopia, they do what they call coffee ceremonies, because that's coffee is where, or Ethiopia is where coffee originated, and you would sit for when you get invited to do, when someone invites you over for coffee ceremony, you sit together for two hours to watch them make coffee, and you're not on your phone, you're not doing anything, sitting together and talking, and, and it was just.. it's just so beautiful. So, there's things like that, where I, you know, just in my personal life, where I.. I come in and try to apply certain things in my life, and it's.. you know, I'm not. Not great at it. I don't do it all the time, but I try to make sure that I am present, and, and just being with the people that, that I care about, and not, you know, then try to have kind of like this balance of, you know, getting things done, working, but also just being present, and being so that that's a, that's a big kind of life experience that I pulled from Ethiopia, but then on the loyalty side too, is you know, especially in the startup world, like loyalty is so important, and it's also really hard to find, and it's something that I, you know, hope that anyone that works with me could say about me, that I'm extremely loyal, and if you're in my team, I'm going to take care of you, because I think that's a, that's, you know, the power of good leadership is taking care of your people and your team, and so, yeah,

Erin Geiger: 26:02

yeah. How do you think I love that, even you said, you know, your kiddos were with you as well through this, and so how has this impacting that, like, kind of seeing you in the way that you navigate your life and everything? Like, what do you think that's instilling, or what do you hope that's instilling in your kiddos as they, I mean, they're young, but you know, kind of as they kind of march forward in the lives of their own with what you're doing.

Unknown: 26:27

Yeah, I love that you asked me this, because I just had something happen last week that just made me such a proud mom. I have three amazing children. You may have met Gaia, my daughter, my oldest, she's 19. She goes to found hers events with me. She, she's her first year in college right now, and they, you know, they see me grinding every day. They've seen, you know, they've seen the passion, the struggles, the tears. They've seen it all, and they've also been my biggest supporters and champions to like keep going and I think just watching that I think has I would say that they in their own way are our leaders but I think you know being able to watch that has also kind of instilled some leadership in them, and I see that more. I've seen that more with my daughter, because she goes to these events, and you know, seeing her work the room like with confidence, more confidence than I had at that age, like by far. And it's just unbelievable to kind of see her kind of work the room and kind of be kind of like rising to kind of like naturally as that leader, but then my middle son, who is 17, he is really involved in the art, they were both involved in the ROTC program at school, which is a leadership program, and my middle son is trying to get into the, he's a junior, so he wants, when he graduates, wants to go to the Air Force Academy, and so we met with a three-star general family friend this past weekend, and he asked my son, you know, of, you know, where do you think your interests are, and your kind of, your strengths are, and I was thinking, like, he's gonna say kind of engineering or something, or like I was thinking, like, or math, or something, that, and he says I would say leadership, and my heart just exploded, like, really, and they started talking about, like, you know, you know, being a leader, and you know what he loves about it, and, and I, you know, I can't help to feel like he seats has seen that in me as well, and I don't know, it just made me, made me a very, very proud, proud mom, and excited to see that, because we, you know, we want, we want to raise good leaders, right, like that's what role needs, right, I right? So it makes me very proud to see that I've, you know, got my.. I'm raising these leaders that I feel very confident are going to do amazing things.

Erin Geiger: 29:11

Yeah, I mean, you're leading by example, you know what better way for them to see that exemplified? You know, my oldest is also in his first year of college, so yeah, we'll talk about that too. Yeah, I have a 19 year old who's super stressed right now as he's wrapping up, or his finals are next week, he goes to OU, so they haven't started, but I think the Texas schools are already through their finals, if I'm not mistaken,

Unknown: 29:44

taking a year doing a year at ACC. Okay, there's,

Erin Geiger: 29:48

yeah, very cool. He's looking into taking classes over the summer in ACC as well. Math is a killer, maybe, and it's, yeah, so and then my, my. Younger kiddo is a eighth grade, so he'll be going into high school in the fall, so yeah, so we have similar,

Unknown: 30:08

he'll be in the eighth grade now, yeah,

Erin Geiger: 30:12

yeah, yeah, I know, so crazy. Okay, so I love that you have the creative side, and then you also have your the technical side, right? and so, and as you've kind of started these startups, if you've, you've kind of, you've created these systems that kind of, I'd like to visualize it as like these systems kind of create a cradle the creativity, right? and so I'm just curious, like, how do you kind of make the two work together when you're, when you're founding these startups, right? So it's like, it's like, if a system is broken, like, how, what do you believe can actually rebuild that trust, because some of the things that you're, you're in, are like in home renovations, and we've done updates in our house, and you know it's tough, and it's like, you know, it's people don't show up when they say they will, or you know, like all the things, and you're it's it's this trust factor, and I'm like, to me it's so simple, I'm like, just do what you say you're gonna do, you know, come at the time when you say you're gonna come like whatever it is, so, so, how do you do that, like with your creative mind and your tech mind and the systems that you're creating, and you're in, you know, one of the industries that you're in is about that kind of like rebuilding trust, like how do you facilitate that?

Unknown: 31:36

Yeah, well, in renovations, especially, like trust breakdown breaks down because of the misaligned expectations, the lack of transparency, and really that fragmented communication. So, you've got on one hand you've got the professionals who are resistant to technology, and then you have the homeowners who are already skeptical or burnout from past experiences. So, what really rebuilds that trust is the visibility that people need to see what's happening, right? They don't need to just be told, like when information is hidden or inconsistent, that's when the anxiety sets in. And so, and consistency matters as well. So trust isn't built in one big moment, it's it's it's built through patterns like saying the same thing, showing the same progress, setting expectations, and then meeting them over, over time, and so a technology, especially AI, could really help when it is supporting that human behavior instead of trying to replace it, and so if if the system reflects that someone is being heard and understood, it creates this feeling of partnership, and that's when that trust starts, starts building. So, I see it a lot in startups, and honestly, it's something that we're very conscious of at Formus. A great story can create emotional buy-in, excitement, and belief, but if the system underneath can't deliver on what it promises, then everything breaks down in translation, and so the vision sounds right, but the experience doesn't match, and then that gap erodes the trust starts eroding fast, and so the companies in my mind, the companies that work are the ones that were the story and the system evolved together, and so when systems and systems, yeah, so systems are what make a story repeatable, dependable in, in trustworthy,

Erin Geiger: 33:31

yeah, yeah. I love that take on it, you know, it's like you just make it that visibility is key, and then one of the things that you talked about when I saw you speak at that International Women's Day event was curate, I you call it your accidental startup, and it was just so inspiring that you just once again saw a need, and you're like, I bet you there's nothing out there you know that can really tackle it the way it needs to be, and so you went out and built it. So, can you tell us how Curate kind of came about, and what it's, what it serves, and more importantly, yeah, like you just deciding, okay, let me test this out and build this thing.

Unknown: 34:14

Yeah, it's actually a fun story. So, three years ago was when I started Formis, and really started, you know, jumping into the going to all the networking events, and I went to South by Southwest unofficially, because, you know, there's a ton to do outside of a badge holder, and was completely overwhelmed, because I'm getting invitations from, you know, just through the previous networking of different events I could go to, and then all these spreadsheets are being spread around, and there's all these events, and I really didn't have time to search through websites and spreadsheets to figure out what I'm going to go to, and so I just kind of, I went to where my friends were, or where I knew someone, and just. Kind of flew by the seat of my pants, and even, and really remember, and I'm pretty introverted too, and so it, you know, already going to all these back to back events is exhausting, but just this idea of, you know, constantly like just from one event event to the next, not knowing what you're, you're getting yourself into, or where you know, so it just does. It was very overwhelming and stressful to the point, and at the end I remember thinking, like, I'm sure I missed out on some really great at this that I should have been at, and felt like, you know, there could have been way better use of my time and energy. And I remember running into the President of South by a few months later, I was at a networking event, and someone had introduced me. I'm like,"Oh, I experienced South by this year for the first time unofficially, and he said,"Well, what'd you think? I'm like, "It was completely overwhelming, this idea of.. I was like, 'You, if y'all.. if only I had an app that did this, this, and this and and he's nodding his head as I'm going off about it and he hands me his business card, I says this for me to build the app because I already have a startup, but somebody needs to build this, so that's it, and then you know I've told this source I was actually a badge holder the next year, so I experienced the official and unofficial have started going to tech events like LA Tech Week, Austin Tech Week, and same problems, and I'm telling everyone, someone please build this app. And then when Cherie asked me to speak on the panel of the events for this year, South by because I was also a badge holder again, I told her this idea, and I had just shipped the Formas platform, our beta. It was hands off, like it was one of those, you know, stressful times in a startup, where, like, you put your baby out there and you just have to sit and wait and see what the market does with it. And so I had some time. I was also home sick with the flu with my son, and got off, and when I was talking to her, I said, about, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna build this for myself, I've got some time right now, this will be a good distraction for me not to think about what people are thinking of the platform, and so I got off the phone, and like, in a couple hours, I built something for myself, and thought, wow, this actually works, then decided to share it on LinkedIn, and then it went viral, like people loved it and needed it, and so I ended up reaching back out to Hughes, who's now the former president. I said, "Funny story, remember three years ago when you know you handed me your business card, blah blah, and he wrote back immediately, and was said, Are you interested in building a business out of this? And I'm like, I don't know, already have a company, and I said, only if I have someone that's really experienced in the event space, and so he's like, I might know someone, and so we had coffee, and he's been great supporting me through this journey, and really it really is more of a side project experience experiment right now, because I do have formists that you know I'm focused on, but hey, when a market shows up like that, you don't ignore that, right, I'm in over 3400 users in three weeks, incredible, and that's just through word of mouth, and so, yeah, so that when I say it was an accidental startup, it was an accident, it was a really came from a place of an idea that that's been broke for three years, and was desperate, because when I went to LA Tech Week, I spent two full days curating my schedule, and was still, it was still chaotic. I didn't have two days, but I did, and it was still chaotic, and I thought, well, I could build this app to do, you know, spend a couple hours doing that versus spending, you know, you know, days trying to curate the schedule, and then feel like I'm missing out, and I would say it really, it helped tremendously, and we've done a lot of surveys post South by with people you just curate, and it did, it was very minimum at this point, because I literally built it in like two days, but it did the job, and so I'm excited to continue building it out, just testing it. We've decided to make it just for Austin Community right now, just as you know, build something, because I really do believe that they, that if Curate really, you know, grows into something bigger. It's going to be because of the community. It's, it's, it's where it is today, because of the community, right. And so we're, we're hyper focused on kind of allowing the community to work with us on building this out. And so we're, we are just today, I launched the, the. The Austin TV Festival is using, we're using it for their event, and then I'm going to be bringing on the one-off event, so that any, if you're focusing on tech and startups for now, even the TV film fest is a little bit, it's more of a pilot, and it's more focused on the arts, we are going to kind of bring it back to focus on the tech and startup community first, and then let it grow from there. So, if you're a startup, or you know, in the tech space, and just want to know, like, what's going on on a weekly basis, you can also curate those schedules, not just the big conferences. So,

Erin Geiger: 40:39

okay, yeah, that was going to be my next question. Can somebody download the app and apply it to any conference that they're going to attend? But currently it sounds like it's more Austin-based at this point,

Unknown: 40:51

Austin-based, like Intertech and Tech Expo is on there. So, yeah, we'll, we'll pull in anything that's going on in Austin for now, because it's got a like I built this entire thing myself, I can't, I am actually looking for an operator to potentially kind of run these pilots, and but baby steps, so but it's because people are people using it, so

Erin Geiger: 41:23

yeah, I mean, obviously, right, you know, the market has spoken. How did you go about building it? I mean, you said, like, oh, I built it in a few hours, like, what, how did you do that?

Unknown: 41:33

Yeah, I vibe coded it, so I'm a big fan of of programs like Lovable, which is the one that I've used, so I think it's, it's a great platform, especially for someone who is a designer. Some of the AI I've used is not, have not been great on kind of UI, UX design, visuals, and I feel like Lovable has done a pretty good job, but I also know how to prompt really well, so that I know that that helps. I know it's level might may not be as easy for just someone who has doesn't have that background, but for me it works great. And then once I get the prototype built and out there and testing it, then I'll, you know, obviously now it's off of lovable. I've got, you know, using the I'm still, you know, using I'm now using Claude to help kind of with updates and stuff, but it's not through lovable, because level costs a lot of money to keep up. I use, like, called VS Code to keep it updated, but yeah, so it's just five, and I, I highly recommend that for anybody who has an idea, because I do mentor a lot of female founders. I had one who said, like, have this idea and find a CTO. I'm like, no, you don't give you, if you're going to start a tech company or an app, there you need to learn to build it yourself by code, because there's tools out there that makes it super easy. Build the prototype yourself, build it as you would use it, test it out, and then let's validate that in the pro, in the market, prove that you're not the only one that would use it, right. And then, and then you've got, you know, then you're in a position to then go, you know, raise money, you know, find a CTO, but there's, you know, the I think to get started is the.. it's.. it's overkill to have pull a CTO in to build a prototype, so

Erin Geiger: 43:33

right, exactly. No, and it's exciting that kind of world we live in now, you know, the tools that we have in our hands, where people can, if they don't have extensive experience in something, but have the interest and the passion to move it forward, at least get it started. It's exciting that we have those opportunities. So cool. Okay, we will. I'll add the info around Curate to our show notes, and everything. I've had so much fun talking to you. I was wondering if people want to connect with you online. What's the best way to do so?

Unknown: 44:05

Yeah, they could email me at Melissa at either formis.ai on the home renovation side or Curate, or sorry, M wood@formis.ai and Formis is F O R M U S on the curate side, it's Melissa M E L I S S A at Curate C U R the number eight events.com and then I'm also on LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Erin Geiger: 44:37

Okay, perfect. And because we love music over here. I always ask this one final fun question. If you could only listen to one music artist for the rest of your life, who would it be?

Unknown: 44:48

Oh my gosh, I would say Fleetwood Mac for us.

Erin Geiger: 44:56

Nice. Yeah, can't go wrong there, that's for sure. Um. Well, thank you, Melissa, for your time. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You shared so much that will help our listeners. So, thank you. Appreciate it.

Unknown: 45:07

Appreciate you having me. Bye.