In this PrimeTalk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA, Ari Horowitz, the co-founder, and CEO of YardLine Capital unveils his experience in serial entrepreneurship & fueling Amazon seller growth through his company Yardline. A capital provider for e-commerce sellers, Ari shares his personal journey into e-commerce.
In the world of e-commerce, the goal is often to get your business to the level where you can sell it and make a good profit. The thing most e-commerce sellers struggle with though is exactly how to do that. It’s an interesting topic. And today Yoni Mazor of PrimeTalk discusses the steps you can take to get your business to that next level.
In today’s episode, Primetalk sits down with Ari Horowitz, the co-founder, and CEO of YardLine Capital, a company that helps all kinds of e-commerce businesses secure the capital they need to grow their business. However, Yardline doesn’t provide only capital, you also get knowledgeable and useful advice and help from their experienced team to streamline your operations to the point where you can sell off your business!
Ari Horowitz goes through his more than 30 years of experience in the world of business and commerce and details how he came up with this capital solution for e-commerce sellers. If you are in the e-commerce space, whether it’s Etsy or Instagram or Amazon, and you are looking for a flux of capital to get your business to the level you envisage, then this episode is for you!
Visit Yardline.com for more information.
Learn about GETIDA's Amazon FBA reimbursement solutions.
Yoni Mazor 0:06
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of PrimeTalk. Today I have a really special guest. Today I'm having Ari Horowitz. Ari is the co-founder and CEO of YardLine Capital, which is a growth capital provider for e-commerce sellers. So Ari, welcome to the show!
Ari Horowitz 0:21
Hey Yoni! Great to be here, man, we're really excited to be able to talk about the space and have a conversation with you guys. We love what you guys do as well.
Yoni Mazor 0:31
Thank you so much. Great to have you here. We met a few times physically before the world ended with COVID. So it was a pleasure. We were in New York City, that temporary, yeah, temporary hold. God willing the vaccines are running all around. So that's good news. We met in New York City, we met in a little bit of an Amazon tour in New Jersey. So far, it's been good times. So hope for more of those, but in any case, all that aside, today's episode is gonna be all about you, the story of Ari Horwitz, so you're gonna share with us, you know, who are you? Where are you from? Where were you born? Where did you grow up? How did you enter the, you know, the professional world? So I guess without further ado, let's jump right into it.
Ari Horowitz 1:07
Outstanding, outstanding. Well, let's see, if we go all the way back. I think that the way I would position myself is I've always been an entrepreneur, I'm at a very early age I was buying baseball cards and arbitraging them to the kids at school because I had a source to get them: my bike. So I've always
Yoni Mazor 1:25
Hold on, so where’d you grow up? What was your team in baseball, we're gonna dive into all that nitty-gritty.
Ari Horowitz 1:30
I mean, I'm a Yankee fan, man. I mean, I'm a diehard Yankees, you know? Yankees, Giants. You know, Knicks, Rangers, that's always the
Yoni Mazor 1:39
I have a feeling you’re not born in Boston or anything.
Ari Horowitz 1:41
No, I was born in New York City. So I'm a New York City native, we spent...I grew up in a suburb of New York City, out in Connecticut, Westport, Connecticut. And went to school out there, attended the University of Pennsylvania, for college, and then, you know, basically spent the last...my whole life pretty much in New York City post my professional life in New York City. So it's, I was an entrepreneur in high school, I was an entrepreneur in college, I had my own driveway tarring business. So I sort of put in that manual labor and realized I’d probably be better off if I tried to do something that was a little, little less strenuous. And
Yoni Mazor 2:20
So hold on. When you, let's go back to the baseball cards for a second, before I'm going to jump into the tar. So I'm really going deep here. How old were you? What was the time? What is the context of the times? Give us a little bit of taste of that.
Ari Horowitz 2:33
Now, I was just, you know, I think it's an instinctual thing, right? People wanted baseball cards, and I would ride my bike downtown and buy them and sell them to the kids at school for a lot more...
Yoni Mazor 2:43
That is what? In the 90s or 2000s.
Ari Horowitz 2:45
I mean, it's probably back in the 70s. Believe it or not.
Yoni Mazor 2:48
Back in the 70s? Good for you. Looking good. So hold on, back in the 70s, who was like the teams back then and the best teams? The Yankees?
Ari Horowitz 2:55
The Yankees man, Ron Guidry, Greg Nettles. Those are my guys, right? Like we, I still call my buddies up from those days and leave messages with their assistants that Greg Nettles is calling, they kind of know who it is. But number nine he was my guy that was my idol third base.
Yoni Mazor 3:11
So where'd did you buy the cards? Where did you I guess procure your inventory?
Ari Horowitz 3:14
I went down to, you know, the local stores downtown and bought the cards and then came back to the elementary school and sold them to the kids. Everyone else was flipping them. I was selling them.
Yoni Mazor 3:26
Yes, so you had built-in clientele when you go to school.
Ari Horowitz 3:30
That's right. I think I kind of got in trouble for it. Actually, at some point. The teachers were not happy that I was probably overcharging people for these cards. But look, I think it's I think it's a bug you get and it just caught on. I went on to...I had an SAT tutoring business when I was a little older. That was pretty good at the time. And then the driveway tarring, that we tar driveways and sealed them up so you wouldn't have to repair them. So...
Yoni Mazor 3:51
Which area? The area you used to live in or the suburbs of New York?
Ari Horowitz 3:55
Suburbs up in Connecticut. Westport, Connecticut was where I grew up.
Yoni Mazor 3:58
Yeah. So you actually from Connecticut not, you know, technically speaking you’re in Connecticut.
Ari Horowitz 4:01
Yeah I was born in New York. I spent my childhood in Connecticut. But I've been back in New York long enough that I'm going to call myself a New Yorker. So that's my story, I’m going to stick to that one. Sounds a lot cooler than Connecticut.
Yoni Mazor 4:13
Yeah, no, it's great. It's a tri-state area. I'm also kind of here so I feel like I live in New York even though technically I'm still in New Jersey. That's kind of a thing, the vibe here in this area. Alright, so let's go hone down on the year. So you go to college and...What year are you into college and you said,
Ari Horowitz 4:29
Ah so you want to put some dates around this stuff. I went to college in 1986, I graduated in 1990. I actually did a quick stint in Chicago working for Quaker Oats. That was really I'd say probably my only real job.
Yoni Mazor 4:45
So Quaker Oats. This is before the PepsiCo days. I think they owned the Quaker Oats brand but also Gatorade was?
Ari Horowitz 4:50
I was there and actually it's really fun to watch “The Last Dance” because I was there in 1991 when the Bulls won the first time, that was a lot of fun. Like that was a really cool, cool experience to...
Yoni Mazor 5:00
So you used to live in Chicago for that role, for that job?
Yoni Mazor 5:03
Oh, yeah. When I moved to Chicago, I did that for a couple years. But you know, it was short-lived. I mean, I had a, you know, the bug was still there, being inside the corporation. I didn't, I wasn't really made for that. My first day there I wanted to see the guy that ran the company. So I tried to get a meeting with the President. And, and I got, you know, I called his office and I set one up, I kept calling his office to set one up, and then eventually my boss's boss, his boss probably called down the line and called me into their office, like, why are you trying to set up a meeting with Phil, I said, Oh, he runs the company. I want to see what he's all about and find out where this thing's going.
Yoni Mazor 5:40
So what was your position there? What were you supposed to do for them or what was..?
Ari Horowitz 5:42
I was a marketing associate.
Yoni Mazor 5:45
Got it. And so were they a public company back then? Or no?
Ari Horowitz 5:50
Yup, they were public company. They just bought Gatorade. So it was a cool time to be in Quaker Oats. Totally. Coincidentally, I mean, I had no idea what I wanted to do. But it seemed like they wanted to pay me a lot of money out of college to do it. And they came on recruiting and figured I paid for this education, I may as well go.
Yoni Mazor 6:06
So that was your first job out of college. You graduated ‘90, ‘90-’91-ish and you landed in Chicago, Quaker Oats.
Ari Horowitz 6:12
I did. I did. I had a fun entrepreneur experience there too, which is I started riding my bike to work because the first time I ever had a suit, or ever put a suit on. So I was riding my bike, I put on my school backpack. And as you can imagine, when you got to the office, it didn't look great. And I tried to find something better, but I realized there wasn't anything. And I think I spent all the money that I made at Quaker Oats developing a backpack garment bag. And I actually started, I lit up a factory locally there and I started manufacturing them and selling them to my buddies at Quaker who were also trying to bike to work. And we ended up actually starting a company after that called Energy Back Rider, which probably should have stuck with it might be a little more appropriate for the times now. But yeah, we sold 1000s of them. It was great.
Yoni Mazor
6:58
So you did all this, you know, side to side while working for Quaker Oats?
Ari Horowitz 7:04
I did yeah, I pumped all the money I was making at Quaker Oats I pumped back into making backpack garment bags. So
Yoni Mazor 7:09
Pack, backpack garment bags. Alright. So take us through the years. You started there in 1990-91, and stayed there until which year?
Ari Horowitz 7:16
Yeah, so that was...I ended up 92. That didn't last very long. And in 92, I came back to New York, and a buddy of mine from college, who had... who I was very close to those years at Penn, he had been selling hard drives out of his dorm room, down at Penn. And he decided that that didn't work out, very commoditized business, tough, tough to win on. But he eventually got into the software game. And he called me up and said, Hey, I heard you coming back or you knew I was coming back. You want to help me get this software company going? And? And I said yeah, sure that sounds great. Let's go do it. I had nothing else to do. And I said, so what do you want me to do? He said, Well, you go, you do the accounting, you go raise money. I said, Alright, well, how do I do that?
Yoni Mazor 7:57
So you Ari are gonna do the accounting and raise money? And he’s gonna make software?
Ari Horowitz 8:00
Yeah, that was my… that’s what...I was supposed to do the business development, raise money. He was writing the code. He was the techie guy.
Yoni Mazor 8:08
Sounds like Steve Jobs and Wozniak, yeah.
Ari Horowitz 8:11
Right. I like that. I'll take that one.
Yoni Mazor 8:14
You got it. Yeah, maybe you know, you have some...you're sitting on a fortune that we didn't know about calling until I don't know, Cisco, or something. And let's see what ...
Ari Horowitz 8:22
I can pretty much I can pretty much guarantee that's not the case. But it's a nice thought. Maybe on this one. So yeah, it was pretty cool. We, you know, we were you know, early 90s. Right about when, you know, tech was cool to be the kid that, you know, believe it or not program the VCR the night before for their parents, right. So we were able to sort of...we were the smart guys in the room, even though we're 21 years old. And
Yoni Mazor 8:44
So you're saying this is 1992 93 already?
Ari Horowitz 8:47
Back in 1992. Yeah. And what’s kind of amazing is that the YardLine story actually starts then. I was sitting in an office that we had borrowed in the back of a building called, the famous building in New York City called the Gray Bar Building. It's on top of Grand Central Terminal. And we...it was, I think three of us at that point. And we had landed a big deal with one of the...with an OEM called Digital Equipment Corporation. They're not around anymore. They got bought by Compaq. And we need to write the code now on the deal that we oversold them on and landed.
Yoni Mazor 9:17
Give us a little bit of context with the OEM story. I'm not sure I'm familiar with that. I hear...
Ari Horowitz 9:21
Yeah. So it's just like a white label deal. It's the original equipment manufacturer, you would we would write code for these guys. And they would put their own name on it. And then they would sell it to their customer base. So basically just you know, writing software and selling off to these guys.
Yoni Mazor 9:36
I believe that's kind of what Microsoft did with the operating system with IBM. IBM makes the hardware, you slap in the software and you get to go live.
Ari Horowitz 9:43
No, that's...it's a Windows...that's a brand new product that Microsoft had. We would actually be under the covers, right? So it was their product. We were the...they were the manufacturer. We were the underlying technology to it that they would bundle into their platform. We didn't get our brand on it, but we were able to, you know, to get licensing fees for them using it within our platform.
Yoni Mazor 10:04
Yeah, I know, this was a lucrative business? What was the..?
Ari Horowitz 10:07
It seemed pretty good. I mean, we ultimately sold the company to EMC, which is a big software company up in Boston. So that was a good outcome. They paid us
Yoni Mazor 10:14
And what year? What year did you guys sell?
Ari Horowitz 10:16
We sold in 1998, actually, after I had left the company,
Yoni Mazor 10:20
So five, six years into the mix. They made an exit?
Ari Horowitz 10:23
Yeah, yeah. So um, and that happened to be one of my first exits. But the cool story there is that I'm sitting in the back of this random building. We didn’t have our name on the door, no one probably even knew we were there. We barely knew where we were. And, we were dying for software engineers. And this is before, I remember Silicon Alley, remember the phrase “Silicon Alley” in New York City with so sort of a take-off of Silicon Valley, but later in the 90s, When, when, you know, New York City became somewhat of a tech hub, I guess. But some dude came knocking on my door. And he was, you know, had the long hair, the Birkenstocks, the shorts in the middle of February, you know, right out of Central Casting looking like a guy that would write code. And he says to me, and I said, Hey, you guys looking to hire any coders? And I said, Actually, we are, first of all, how did you find us? Who are you? And what are you doing here? And he said, Well, I just moved here from Oklahoma. I just graduated from MIT. And I'm thinking I'm pretty good at writing code. I'm looking for a job here, my apartment’s across the street. And I don't know my way around New York City. I just got here. So I picked up the phone book. And you guys are the first software company in the phonebook that starts with C. And my name is Carlos Cashman.
Yoni Mazor 11:41
So because his first initials of his first name, last name, were “C”’s, he went to the phonebook for...Yeah, the phonebook, the Yellow Pages for the letter C
Ari Horowitz 11:52
We were actually in the white pages.
Yoni Mazor 11:53
White pages, got it. What were you guys called? What was the name of the software company?
Ari Horowitz 11:57
It was called Conley Corporation, C O N L E Y.
Yoni Mazor 12:01
Conley Corporation. So Carlos comes in. Carlos from MIT. That’s brilliant, that’s unbelievable.
Ari Horowitz 12:06
Yeah, I was...I thought I was getting punked. I didn't, I didn't really think that some dude from MIT saw we're dying for software engineers, but we had to hire him on the spot. So it's kind of funny story side note, but we didn't have any office space for him, so we put them in a broom closet. And he was sitting there writing code on these servers that were so hot that he used to be sweating right onto the keyboards. You have to dump it out everyone somehow but we laugh about those times. But that company got sold to EMC, I actually went on to go do another business called Icon CMT, which is an internet service provider early on in that. That company eventually got public and got sold to Quest.
Yoni Mazor 12:40
Hold on, we’re scrambling things around. I want to keep track. So hold on. So 1998 you sold to EMC. But yeah, which year did you leave in?
Ari Horowitz 12:49
So I left in ‘94. I was there about two years, I left in ‘94, one of our customers was basically a sun var. And we ended up turning that into an internet service provider
Yoni Mazor 13:01
What’s that? What’s a sun var? I'm not sure.
Ari Horowitz 13:03
We would resell Sun Microsystems servers, basically.
Yoni Mazor 13:07
I got it. Okay.
Ari Horowitz 13:09
It was what powered the internet the early days. So we were right there at the beginning of that. And we were building local area networks. And we heard about this thing called the internet. And we said, well, just sounds like a big wide area network. I bet we can participate there. And so we started providing internet connectivity to our clients. And then that grew and eventually that company got public and got sold to quest and became the backbone for Quest Communications.
Yoni Mazor 13:33
Wow. Okay. So what was your role with that company? What was the company name?
Ari Horowitz 13:35
That was called Icon CMT.
Yoni Mazor 13:40
Alright, so Icon, what was your role with them?
Ari Horowitz 13:41
Same thing as Conley, I was doing business development and basically the CFO, I was raising money and trying to do deals.
Yoni Mazor 13:49
Did you bring Carlos with you? Or he stayed on the track with..?
Ari Horowitz 13:52
Carlos stayed at Conley. But then, I think it was right about the time Conley got sold. We teamed up again, and brought him into a new company, we spun out of Icon, called Grey Peak Technologies.
Yoni Mazor 14:05
Great what, sorry? Great what? Peak? PEAK?
Ari Horowitz 14:10
Grey Peak. P E A K. And we were building networks for big telecom companies. So we had built a network for ourselves, which we sold the Quest, and now we had the expertise to build these. So we set up a consulting business to do that.
Yoni Mazor 14:24
And which year was that when you guys..?
Ari Horowitz 14:25
That was 1997 we founded that company.
Yoni Mazor 14:28
Got it and what was a trajectory there?
Ari Horowitz 14:31
So we went from zero, sold that for 100 million about 18 months later.
Yoni Mazor 14:36
So this is almost a dot, you know, the dot com bubble, right?
Ari Horowitz 14:40
We were deep in the bubble at this point. Yeah. So
Yoni Mazor 14:42
So, 1999 around 2000, the year 2000?
Ari Horowitz 14:45
Yeah, we sold that in 1998. So we started in ‘97, sold at ‘98. And then we spun a product out of that which was a platform, which actually could have been Upwork or it could have been, I don't know if you know Upwork or that company?
Yoni Mazor 15:00
Yeah. Fiverr. Upwork. Where you get, you know, freelancers.
Ari Horowitz 15:02
So we started a company in 1998, called freeagent.com, it was actually...the parent company was opus360. But the business was freeagent.com and it was all about leaving the corporate life and going off and doing your freelance gig workers, and the whole idea of, you know, going off and building your E-portfolio, which could have been LinkedIn. And you know, you think about all these things that could have been right. It's all about execution, man. Like, the ideas are simple. It's the execution that makes it happen. And timing.
Yoni Mazor 15:34
Execution along with yeah, timing and the network effect. Right. Yeah. So what happened with that? What was the station for that?
Ari Horowitz 15:40
So we met, we started in 1998. We got public in 2000.
Yoni Mazor 15:44
So you're the founder there again?
Ari Horowitz 15:46
I was the founder there again, also, the founder and CEO. Carlos was my co-founder.
Yoni Mazor 15:50
So you and Carlos founded this. In the year 2000 it went public. On NASDAQ?
Ari Horowitz 15:55
NASDAQ. Yep.
Yoni Mazor 15:57
And take us then, what happened next?
Ari Horowitz 16:00
The bubble bursts. Yeah. And it was that it was just, you know, holding on for dear life. But we eventually got the company sold to a company that now is part of IBM. And, you know, it was, you know, it wasn't the outcome that we'd hoped for. But it was an incredible learning experience. And yeah,
Yoni Mazor 16:17
Yeah if you guys survived, and you're able to pass the torch and not crumble that's, on its own that's a major thing, because I think like 70-80% of the industry just vanished. Right? All the companies, the start-up companies and the tech companies in the year 2000, 2001 was a big big drop down in business and raising funding everything just kind of collapsed. So why do you guys sell it?
Ari Horowitz 16:39
Yeah, so I felt like Rocky, remember Rocky 1? At the end, where all you want to do is finish, just want to go the distance. That was my thing. I knew this thing was not gonna, you know,
Yoni Mazor 16:49
Wasn’t it like a crazy pendulum. Because, you know, everything was hot, it was on fire. And all of a sudden, there's like a curtain belt, where everything starts to drop like a fireball.
Ari Horowitz 16:55
It wasn't a pendulum, it was a cliff. It was like, the world, the music just stopped. So you know, it's, it was something that, you know, if you hadn't been there before, and seeing something like that happen, you had no idea.
Yoni Mazor 17:10
Would you say the lessons are learned? It's engraved?
Ari Horowitz 17:13
You know, I would like to think so. Right? I would, you know when I think back over the last 15 years up to you know, or even 20 years since that happened. Now, I didn't think this would happen again, in my lifetime. But, or at least my professional career, but I think we're getting close. You know, the stuff back there, that was internet, you put a.com after your name and your stock went up. You know, I think if you look at e-commerce now and FinTech and the SPAC world, you know, all those sort of things happening and where the stock market has run to, you know, I think that we're getting into bubble territory.
Yoni Mazor 17:48
I wanna give a little bit of context with the SPACs, so special purpose acquisition companies, where basically you open a company, you raise a lot of money, and then you sit on the money, you got a year, maybe two, to kind of find a company you can take over and merge with. And that's kind of a very hot model right now in the stock market. So you think that might go, you know, it's too hot, overheat, and might be a little bit of a drawback over there. But before we get to now, I still want to, you know, hover around 2000, 2001. When was it you guys eventually sold to the IBM company?
Ari Horowitz 18:18
2001.
Yoni Mazor 18:20
Ari Horowitz 18:23
Right...actually, we were in the process of the acquisitions talks during 9/11. Yeah, when 9/11 happened. So we sold right after that, then the world just stopped right when that happened, and we were fortunate enough to get out and get the...
Yoni Mazor 18:35
So you're living in New York City back then?
Ari Horowitz 18:38
Living in New York City, yeah, actually I was unfortunately, I was there when, watching the towers fall from my apartment.
Yoni Mazor 18:45
So you're living in Midtown?
Ari Horowitz 18:47
Downtown, down in the west...
Yoni Mazor 18:49
Wow that’s really close.
Ari Horowitz 18:50
I was right there. Yeah.
Yoni Mazor 18:53
Wow. All right. Okay, so take us to the next station, yeah, it's, uh,...
Ari Horowitz 18:57
Yeah, so I took a little bit of a breath. And I sort of had tried to have a little bit of fun. And, you know, enjoy New York City a little bit after a pretty crazy run for the last really 20 years, I traveled around a bunch I got, I got really excited about what I thought was gonna be the next big thing, which is local content, being able to figure out not just where to go eat, sleep, drink and play anywhere in the world, which is sort of now fitting my lifestyle back then. But being at the front of that, on the discovery side of that, the thought being that you get on the front side of the discovery there, you could ultimately monetize any of the transactions that happened behind it. And once again, we were just way too early with that concept. But I bought a media company called Blackbook Media, which I ran for a while. The cool thing there was it was an art entertainment fashion platform with some local content around where to eat, sleep and drink. And the terrific lesson there for me was just understanding branding, and getting to know why that's so important. And I have a quick story there, which is I came in being a tech entrepreneur. And I wanted to take this media property that the time was just a magazine, put it online. And eventually I thought there would be a location-aware device that you carry around in your pocket. And that would play into my local content strategy. And when I came in to look at the magazine business, I saw that they were printing on very, very expensive paper. And my first..it was the biggest cost center in the company. And I told the guys, we got to take the paper quality down a little bit because it's too expensive. And they told me that if we did that, we were going to lose a bunch of our advertisers, Gucci being one of them, which is a core advertiser. And they also follow the herd right? If Gucci is in there, then Chanel wants to be and it's all environmental, environment-based. And I couldn't believe that, like I couldn't tell the difference between 50 pound and 40 pound paper. And so of course, I didn’t listen, and I changed the paper and Gucci sent us a note saying they're pulling their ads. So we got them back, fortunately, but it was a phenomenal lesson for me at the time of really understanding how important environment is, how important branding is, and how you can, you know, create a passion around something that it's way bigger than what it is. And these are all lessons that I've taken into the YardLine opportunity. You know what, ultimately, at the end of the day when we're selling money, which is what we're doing to be able to build a whole philosophy around that, you know, Matt, Matt Cluney joined us from OnDeck and American Express, who’s been terrific leading that charge. You know, we're just super excited about the ability to you know, this is we have a passion here you're on my right I've been an entrepreneur my whole career. And you know, this whole as we started talking about here, you know, another bubble, let's say, but the e-commerce opportunity in these marketplaces is just such a phenomenal area for entrepreneurs right, for very little capital and not having to build a full team and not having to get a lease, you can start a company, you can leverage companies like yours to help build your business and you don't ever have to hire people, you can do it all yourself. And now with companies like YardLine, what's so exciting for me about doing this as a founder and CEO, is that I can enable people to live that entrepreneurial dream right? So if you look at our Instagram the YardLine Capital that we put together, it's actually bringing back that 20 year ago passion that we had for freeagent.com. Back then it was go off and do things on your own as a freelancer. Now it's go off and do things on your own as an e-commerce seller right? And I think that the wealth creation opportunity here is going to actually be bigger, when we look back on this, than even the internet. A longer tail you know, maybe not as big for some people, but much longer tail. And you have companies like YardLine now that are fueling the growth and then you have companies like Thrash, CO, and all the other companies that are out there that are creating liquidity for these companies. So as an entrepreneur, I mean, what a phenomenal, what a phenomenal place to be.
Yoni Mazor 22:53
Yeah, we're super super lucky for multiple reasons. Yeah, the right place at the right time. Now with COVID, it's all have been exasperated. And we're on the lucky side of the corner where e-commerce is the big winner, as opposed to other industries, maybe travel hospitality, which are taking major hits. So we're very privileged to be in the right place at the right time. Actually, you know, taking 20 years back, you were in the hot space, which crumbled, and it was kind of the wrong side of the map. And other industries kind of get benefited but 20 years later, now, you know, the e-commerce, tech industries are booming where other industries which are more traditional, are taking the hit. So I see a kind of cyclical, what goes around comes around. But I want to keep a keep on the you know, on the storyline, I do find interesting how you're able to connect the “now and then”. Basically, it's like I almost hear you telling me that you kind of want to lend money to yourself 20 years ago with all that passion. So you know, more entrepreneurs can get the opportunity to grow their businesses and you know, experience, you know, taste the success and wealth that comes along with it. Okay, so, you had the magazine and take us, what was the trajectory there? And what was the next station for you after that?
Ari Horowitz 24:01
Sure. So the media company Blackbook Media, the magazine being one of the channels, digital and ultimately, we were one of the first companies to build an app in the app store and we created a location-aware...
Yoni Mazor 24:10
No kidding you did for the app store with Apple. What year was that?
Ari Horowitz 24:14
That was probably in 2000..when did they launch that? 2006 was it? 2007?
Yoni Mazor 24:21
Yeah, around that.
Ari Horowitz 24:23
So I didn't... I should have known better.
Yoni Mazor 24:27
I think you did ok. But I'm also, so hold on, so you founded the company in what? 2001 2002?
Ari Horowitz 24:32
I actually
Yoni Mazor 24:33
Or you bought it. Did you buy it right?
Ari Horowitz 24:34
Yeah, bought the company in 2004 and was involved with it until we ultimately sold it in 2012. So and through the way I bought some other media companies I also was I bought Vibe Media so that the hip hop platform
Yoni Mazor 24:49
Did you own that?
Ari Horowitz 24:50
I ran it. So I bought it with a private equity firm. And so I ran Vibe, I ran Blackbook..We started to go...
Yoni Mazor 24:57
What year did you run...years did you run Vibe?
Ari Horowitz 24:58
I actually did it twice. We bought it and sold it and bought it again. So we...Yeah.
Yoni Mazor 25:05
What was the logic there? Let's talk about that.
Ari Horowitz 25:07
You know, it was a very dynamic space, right? It was being an entrepreneur. We knew the business, we knew the platform and
Yoni Mazor 25:13
What was the first year you bought it? Or the first time, sorry?
Ari Horowitz 25:15
We bought it with a private equity firm. I think it was.. So hard to remember...I think it was 2008 maybe, and then we bought it again. Or I actually merged with it in 2012.
Yoni Mazor 25:25
Got it. Wow, so two closures there double dip, so to speak. But they're both successful runs for you guys?
Ari Horowitz 25:29
Yeah. They were okay. It was a tough place to be. It was...a lot of uphill battle there. The media space was getting tougher and tougher. And the online piece was great. The traditional media piece was tough.
Yoni Mazor 25:40
Everybody's suffering from circulation, the decrease in the past decade or so. So got it. So I'm a little conflicted, because you're doing like five things the same time, which is amazing. Wow.
Ari Horowitz 25:53
Look, I think, yeah, in 2012, we got...we exited the media businesses. And then I got, through the Blackbook platform, I was very involved in local content, you know, the whole local hospitality world. And I sort of wanted to get back to my tech roots. And so I got started investing in and looking at businesses in hospitality technology. So getting involved in restaurant reservation platforms like Rezi, which I was part of, which we ultimately sold to American Express, getting involved in some mobile payment platforms and point of sale systems, and really getting into the nuts and bolts of the whole hospitality tech space, which also was relevant because, you know, this is the what I tell entrepreneurs also, you just got to get out there and do stuff, because you never know where it's gonna lead you. I was doing the mobile payments for restaurants. I also became part of the whole credit card processing space because that was a big part of it. And through that, I met the co-founder of YardLine, uh, Tomo Matsuo. Tomo and I hooked up there because he was building the capital markets business for ...
Yoni Mazor 26:55
Oh so what's his name again? How do you spell that?
Ari Horowitz 26:56
Tomo Matsuo
Yoni Mazor 26:58
Tomo Moto? How do you spell that? Let's start with the first name.
Ari Horowitz 27:01
Tomo T O M O
Yoni Mazor 27:03
Alright, T O M O. That's important. Last name is?
Ari Horowitz 27:06
Matsuo M A T S U O
Yoni Mazor 27:09
Got it. What's his origins? Is that Japanese? Japanese. Okay. That’s what I figured. That's very cool.
Ari Horowitz 27:16
So Tomo and I, we met each other back when he was doing, building the Cowboys business over there. And I was doing mobile payments, we did some deals together actually. And he kind of gave me a little education on lending. He was doing the...building up the portfolio over there at this company Paysafe. And so, you know, this sort of jump-starts now getting back to you know, where we got involved with Thrasio. So I was doing basically investing in and helping out companies in the hospitality tech space. And Carlos and I, after the run we had in the 90s, we'd always stay in touch and we'd have lunch or dinner every you know, six months a year. So
Yoni Mazor 27:50
Carlos still in New York City, or you already moved to..?
Ari Horowitz 27:53
Carlos was up in Boston, I was still in New York City.
Yoni Mazor 27:55
Got it. Okay, you guys kept in touch.
Ari Horowitz 27:57
Yeah. So stayed in touch. You know, after starting three companies together and...or essentially started three companies to be involved and...
Yoni Mazor 28:04
So gimme the names of the three companies. I know Icon was one of them.
Ari Horowitz 28:06
So Conley Corporation was the first one that he and I were involved in, an Icon he didn't make it into. Okay. So then there was Grey Peak Technologies, which I think he was the co-founder of with me, or maybe came on very early. And then Opus 360 was the one that he and I co-founded together and took public in 2000. That was the company that freeagent.com and where he and I shared that passion for free, you know, building this, this platform for independence.
Yoni Mazor 28:34
Amazing. Okay, so you guys kept in touch and we're already touching 2012-2013?
Ari Horowitz 28:39
Yeah, well, that was...that...let's even fast forward that. So I just spent 2012 through to must have been, you know, 2018 working on different projects there in the hospitality tech space. And Carlos, smarter than me got into the e-commerce business and into the e-commerce advertising space. But we had lunch. And he told me about this idea that he had in the company and started Thrasio. And I was super intrigued by it. I originally think I tried to talk him out of it. I told him that buying $500,000 top-line businesses at the time was a lot of brain damage, and probably something that would ultimately not end well.
Yoni Mazor 29:20
When he pitched you back then, you guys are talking about 2017-18? When he pitched you about this?
Ari Horowitz 29:24
Yeah, I don't think he really pitched me on it. I think we're just sort of chatting about what he was
Yoni Mazor 29:28
So he’s chatting with you. What was his description? Well, how was he describing that vision back then?
Ari Horowitz 29:33
Just as it is, you know, he thought that there would be a really interesting opportunity to consolidate the space, that there's a lot of expertise and synergy can get from being bigger and smarter, and that they had a lot of expertise around that being really understand the e-commerce space.
Yoni Mazor 29:47
And what was his background until then with e-commerce, you mentioned advertising but give us a little taste of...
Ari Horowitz 29:52
You know, so he did an ad tech business. And then he was involved with a bunch of, I think in a consulting business around the whole e-commerce space. So his ad tech business was working with an e-commerce company. So he was very smart on that whole space. And then he teamed up with Josh Silverstein, who's also very, very smart about that space and the super finance guy. And the two of them got together with this idea. And, you know, good for them, right? Like they, they saw, they, they've always
Yoni Mazor 30:19
What was Josh’s experience? Like a bit more touch about that, just..
Ari Horowitz 30:21
Josh was on the financial side, you know, he really understood the numbers behind it. And he had the vision for how, you know, to use leverage to be able to acquire these companies and to really help put the whole package together.
Yoni Mazor 30:31
Got it. So you teamed up with Carlos, but also Josh, and
Ari Horowitz 30:36
I wouldn’t say I teamed up with him, you know, they brought me the opportunity. I was...
Yoni Mazor 30:39
Yeah yeah yeah, I’m saying, yeah, you teamed up for lunch or whatever.
Ari Horowitz 30:42
Yeah, well, so we had lunch. Yeah, I'll give credit where credit's due, you know, we had lunch about it. And I said, I tried to talk him out of it. You know, I told him, it sounds painful. But when he explained to me the ability to tap into the amazon seller central account, and have data certainty and uniformity. That was really the game changer, for me, at least in my mind that got me really excited about the opportunity to do what Thrasio has done at scale. And, and, you know, I said, Can I come work there?
Yoni Mazor 31:12
Hold on. So let me just understand your context back in time. So, you're already involved in the, you know, the hospitality tech space? And that kind of shifted your trajectory, or you're kind of looking for something new, what was your status back then?
Ari Horowitz 31:25
The connection there was, you know, I was keeping my eyes open, I was actually curious. I was picking his brain a little bit because one of the things in the hospitality tech space that I was trying to solve for was ratings and reviews. So I had launched a company called String, which was a peer-to-peer recommendation platform, still is. And the reasoning there for that platform was that I felt like the ratings and reviews you get on platforms like Open Table, etc. They don't mean anything. You don't really care what everybody thinks, you care what people you really care about think, or you trust. And so it's reviews from people you trust. And so what I was actually picking Carlos' brain about at the time was ratings and reviews on Amazon. And if they were moving towards a place where it would be more personalized, where you actually knew the context of the person that was making the ratings and reviews happen. So that conversation moved towards what Thrasio was doing. And, and so I got super intrigued by that. My initial thing was, now try this out a little bit, I'll learn something about Amazon, right? I figure I’d put enough money into that company, I was buying the stock and I figured, well, maybe I'll go learn something here. But and I'll admit those, you know, God bless, those guys were phenomenal visionaries on this one. I didn't see it at the level. 2018 Yeah. But I was really intrigued. I did see the real value in pulling data right, the data element to it the ability to pull data out of Seller Central when Carlos told me about that, that's when the light bulb went off. And I saw I saw the opportunity right? It was just, that's the game-changer. And at least in my mind.
Yoni Mazor 33:05
Alright, so you went back some and said I'm changing my trajectory. I'm you know, delving into the e-commerce space.
Ari Horowitz 33:09
I don’t even think it took me that long Yoni. I think right at lunch, I said I'd love to get involved, can I help? And so Carlos was excited to hear me say that, I hope, I think. Hooked me up with Josh, who I think also was excited to leverage my expertise in, you know, acquisitions, m&a, roll-ups, which I've done, and operations. And so I joined up with those guys really, right, right there immediately, and, and help build the m&a team over there, where we looked at hundreds, probably a 1000 companies while I was there and bought, you know, just about 60 of them, I think at the time before I left. So it was a great run, we did, you know. Partnered up with a guy, Michael Dimauro, who was also running sort of side by side in the m&a side. And we were out there to buy businesses, right. And, you know, building a great brand and then flipping the businesses over to the operations team. And it was just they did a phenomenal job in marketing and supply chain management, and core operations. You know, Stephanie Munir, Brandon, though just great operators, and taught me a lot about the whole Amazon ecosystem and what it meant to be successful there. And then what we would learn, we take back into the m&a side, and we'd get smarter and smarter about how to acquire these businesses, what to look for, what to avoid, and really how to value them. And so
Yoni Mazor 34:30
And so when you sat with Carlos and then introduced him to Josh with...this, the company didn't even launch yet? This is pre-launch or this already. They had a few companies they bought?
Ari Horowitz 34:41
No, I think they were probably about six months into it. I was...I came in in April, and they were about six months, they bought like three or four companies at the time.
Yoni Mazor 34:47
Got it. Okay, so we're gonna go on, and you're stepping into saying this is hyperdynamic. You know, you build up your skill, like very, very quickly and you know, you learn from every transaction, and you pretty much become like ...industrialized the whole thing, right?
Ari Horowitz 35:01
Yeah, that was the idea was to try to do it at scale and to build tools and IP around how you can do this at scale and do it fast. And, but also, you know, we also I, at least I think I helped them to try to build a brand, which I believe we did you know, the when we would go out and buy, you know, people, when you're selling your business is not just about the price, it's about who's going to grow your business fast as post-acquisition. So you do the best on the earn up, who's going to have a surety of close, meaning you're using your own capital on the balance sheet, you're not going to waste 45 days, 60 days on the diligence, and not close. So there were a lot of things that we focused on, have all been through this before. And you know, all these things that led to the success of Thrasio. It was a lot of executional elements that led to that. And you see the results of it now. Yeah, the company.
Yoni Mazor 35:49
What about the name? What can you tell us about the name, if at all? What does that mean? The name?
Ari Horowitz 35:52
I think that's a Carlos thing...I showed up, the name was there. Yeah. To me, a name’s a name and yeah, it was a little tough to pronounce it first. But I think, what's amazing is with the success that the company has had, it sort of points to the fact that you know, it's all about what you do.
Yoni Mazor 36:07
It's anonymous, it's anonymous for I guess, for e-commerce exits, enrolling up companies or acquiring companies. It's anonymous. Yeah, you take a name, you make something out of it. That's really what the secret is. It's what you do. And then you know, make the name now the name makes what you do. So yeah, it's a great example for that. Okay, so, you know, you’re there for I guess, two years, maybe two years. Plus, you know, about, you know, 50-60 companies are rebuilt with m&a, with the mergers and acquisitions. And what was the next station for you? What, what were the dynamics afterward?
Ari Horowitz 36:42
Yeah, well, we're buying all these companies, right. And the one, there's probably two, there are two common dynamics of each of these businesses. As most people who are probably listening to this who are in the e-commerce space, or thinking about becoming an e-commerce space know, the cash flow dynamics of being an e-commerce seller are tough. I mean, it's a great business to be in for all the reasons we talked about earlier. But as a, from a cash flow standpoint, it's very, very challenging. And it's really tough also to get financing because the traditional lenders don't really understand the business. The banks don't really get it, right. You go to someone and say, Hey, I'm doing $3 million in revenue, and then you show me your bank statements, but it only shows $2 million in revenue. Well, because Amazon takes them you know, you've already lost.
Yoni Mazor 37:23
Yeah, they take all the fees, and then advertise?
Ari Horowitz 37:27
Where's your lease? And how many employees do you have? And, you know, so wait, what do you own? Do you own the factory, right? It's just, it's just not what they're used to.
Yoni Mazor 37:37
Yeah, they’re connected to the physical space. And well, you know, e-commerce and selling on Amazon is embedded in the digital space where it's a different breed, a different animal, it's hard for conventional banks to even swallow this frog. So
Ari Horowitz 37:48
You got it. Not just traditional banks, but any financing, you know, an organization to understand you really need to be...you really need to understand the operating. So when we're sitting there, we're looking at all these companies and recognizing they all had a cash need. And many of also being sole proprietors or solopreneurs. You know, there's only so much you can know, right? That's why companies like you guys are great because it's just one less thing they have to worry about, you guys do it, you have a phenomenal model of sharing and the prop. You know, the profit again. Yeah, again. Yeah. Um, so it all makes sense. And we strongly encouraged, you know, because we wanted to partner with you guys, you know, that you should use all these tools around you, as a sole, you know, because there's always been, but we would find that a lot of them just didn't know what was out there. They weren't using the right tools, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. So really expertise and capital are the two things that are driving it. And the really interesting dynamic that may be obvious to a lot of people, but it's worth stating, is that the uniqueness of these e-commerce spaces, unlike a lot of businesses, or most businesses, there's no lack of demand, right? The customers are there, you don't have to worry about them coming, they're on the platform, right? They're there, they just got to grab more of them. Right. And so you know, they're there, you probably could be selling twice as much as you're selling today. But you just don't have the capital to do it. And you don't have the capital to buy the inventory. You don't have the capital to spend more money on ad dollars. But as long as you're generating a positive gross margin on every sale, you realize you learned in economics 101, should be selling right up to the margin, right? It's all incremental gross profit, especially if you don't have to add more people. You don't have to add more leases. You don't have to do any fixed costs, incremental fixed costs, you just keep maximizing the variable costs. So that's the thesis there. It was then that I started to realize this that I called Tomo, who I think is one of the smartest guys in the lending space. And I said what do you think of this idea? And he jumped all over I think within 12 minutes, we decided we're going to start a company to do this. And just got super excited about it. That was right about the time when COVID hit and the traditional, you know, some of the more traditional lenders like Cabbage and OnDeck which had exposure to brick and mortar companies just, you know, shut down At least temporarily
Yoni Mazor 40:01
Cabbage got sold, right? To American Express or something?
Ari Horowitz 40:03
Yeah, they sold a port, the portion of it, they didn't take over the portfolio, but they took over the technology, and OnDeck got sold as well. But it was tough for them to do, they had brick and mortar exposure. And if you had brick and mortar exposure, not just e-commerce exposure, that was a tough place to be at the time. So we saw a real opportunity to get after it. And that was, that was the genesis of YardLine Capital. The exciting thing again is that, you know, it's like, you don't really get an opportunity a lot in life, I don't think, to do what you tried to do 20 years ago, and you kind of were too early and you missed it. And here we are. Now again, with this idea that we can fuel the entrepreneur, we can create opportunity for people, you know, doesn't matter where you live, doesn't matter, you know, race, anything color, it's all about your grit and your ability to work hard. And that is super exciting to get behind. That's the mission that we have at your line is to be part of that. And to drive that whole dynamic. And to be able to provide capital to people to do that. And then ultimately set them up to get sold, right, you know, they...then they come to us, they take the capital, and then they go sell their business. And once they've grown it more and you know, go do it again. Right. Like that's, that's the amazing opportunity here that we're really excited about being right in the middle of.
Yoni Mazor 41:16
Got it. So if I'm an Amazon seller, I hear you in this episode, I'm like, Okay, I want to reach out for help. So what's it like for somebody to reach out to your outline? I’m a seller, take me to the experience of reaching out. What will be the processes? What will be the dynamics? How am I going to get the money? How soon? How much of it?
Ari Horowitz 41:34
Yeah, so we try to make that as simple as possible. Right. So you go to yardline.com, that's the easiest way to do it, or you can email me directly: Ari at yard line dot com. So ari@yardline.com, I'll say that again. You know, that's the easy way to do it right. And then we'll get you online, and there's a very short application process you go through. Really just telling us about the basic dynamics of your business, we can pre-qualify you for the amount of capital that we'd be able to provide based on the fundamentals of your company. And then it's a pretty quick process, it's a should be a one-day turnaround, where if you provide us with the information and provide access to either your Amazon account, or really any e-commerce platform will tap into so whether it's Shopify or eBay, or Etsy, or Walmart, we're very bullish on Instagram shopping and the opportunities there. Wherever we can get data, we'll make a data-driven decision on providing capital, we'll do a one-day turnaround, you know, ultimately, we're driving towards instantaneous, when we build out the tech to do that, and you take capital from us, there are no personal guarantees on the money, it's all based on, you know, our projection of your future growth.
Yoni Mazor 42:53
On the marketplace level?
Ari Horowitz 42:55
Correct. And so and then what we do is we enter into a partnership. So you'll take the capital from us, we charge a fee for that capital, that's how we make money and pay back our lenders and our investors. And then what we'll do is we'll share in the distributions going forward, so we're fully aligned. As part of that, we also take you through something called the Y50BA. And that is a 50 point checklist, where we look at your business, and we say, Hey, you know, you're not looking at your...you getting overcharged on your inventory should call you guys, right? Well, what sort of point out all that what we think is the low hanging fruit to improve your operations, it's a sort of derivative of at Thrasio, which we called the “conveyor belt” which was a 503 point checklist that we would take companies through or they take companies through, they take companies through that the post-acquisition, you know, to identify where they should be focusing resources. So we've slimmed that down, we have a 50 point checklist. 95% of the time, we identified places that make a real impact, and our interests are aligned. So because we're taking a fee, and getting our capital back by taking a percentage of distributions, if you grow faster, we all win. If you have an account suspension, or you have problems or growth slows down, we don't get paid. We're not just taking money back based on you know, a fixed amount every month or every day. It's all based on growth. And so we're really putting our money where our mouth is, and we believe that we're experts, operating experts, stemming from our Thrasio history here, and we can help companies grow. So you get capital, you get growth expertise, you get a partner there for you. And you know, in my mind, you know, this is a land grab, right? If you got real estate on page one of Amazon, you got to get it while it's hot, right? This is, we are in the second inning of this and you should be expanding and going on to Shopify, you should be getting yourself an Instagram shopping platform going, you should be considering international expansion, if you have, if you have momentum on Amazon, take it while it's hot, right? This is the time to grab it. And so we'd like to partner with companies that have that desire.
Yoni Mazor 45:12
Beautiful. Alright, got it. So if I can, you know, sum it up a bit, and you know, the essence of it, it's not just about giving money, it's about giving money, but full support analysis trajectory, you know, you take a little bit of that Thrasio magic, and the ability to break down and strip down the fundamentals of the business, see where, you know, things might be going sideways. So you, basically you harvest it, and align it back into the right place. So there's a growth trajectory. And that I find that unusual, that I find that unique because you do come from that experience and from that world, we were able to really look, you mentioned the conveyor belt, where you can really hone into a lot of the expertise of the largest e-commerce player in the world right now, probably, and you hone that down into the micro-entrepreneur, so you're given the capital, but also their, their consulting, and alignment needs, which I find unique and special. So I think that provides a lot of opportunity for the entrepreneurs out there to be able to, you know, really touch that growth and really maximize the momentum that's out there with e-commerce because, you know, I always say this, and I'll keep on saying this one day in e-commerce is like 10 years of conventional business. So, you know, that's what you guys are saying, next day, you'll get the capital like, when do you see that in conventional lending, you want to buy a house in 45 days, or whatever, it takes forever? Right? You want to get a car loan, it takes forever, but you know, with this, to grow your business, which is one of the most sophisticated business missions that can be out there as an e-commerce store, or platform, or marketplace store? You guys are just fertilizing all of that. And I find that unique. Okay, so um, but you also mentioned they, if they want to reach out to you, they can just, you know, email you at ari@yardline.com or yardlinecapital.com.
Ari Horowitz 46:52
Just Yardline - yardline.com.
Yoni Mazor 46:53
And, okay, so I usually reserve the ending to, I guess, two components. One is if they want to reach out to you, where can they find you, which you kind of gave us, but if there are more handles, you want to give him a handoff, we can do that. But the last thing will be like this. What is your, I guess your message of hope and inspiration for entrepreneurs listening out there, based on the fact that for the past, you know, 30 years, you’re being an entrepreneur in the following dimension, I want to do a quick recap on your story to see if I got it. Right, right. So in the early 90s, you know, you get off college, you're in Chicago, you’re working for Quaker Oats for a year or two, then head back to New York City, you enter to the tech world. You also kind of meet Carlos and the company, you guys, you know, started over there, eventually got sold there in 1998. But you already left around 1996 to start another company with
Ari Horowitz 47:45
In 1994 I got to...one of our customers was a sun bar icon CMT
Yoni Mazor 47:50
Got it and so that was Icon, right? And you led that until which year?
Ari Horowitz 47:55
I left that in 1997, we started Grey Peak Technologies.
Yoni Mazor 47:59
And that was public around 2000-2001?
Ari Horowitz 48:02
That got sold to a public company in 1998.
Yoni Mazor 48:06
And then, and then the next one was Opus 360 which got... became public?
Ari Horowitz 48:11
That was the company that housed freeagent.com. That was the core product there. And that got public in 2000.
Yoni Mazor 48:19
In 2000. Then eventually sold to this IBM company, that eventually became IBM, then you kind of took some time off, then you went into I guess the content world, the magazines, right? For five years, the local content up to about 2012 and then 2012 up to about 2018 you're dabbling with the hospitality technology. Right? And then 2018 Thrasio and the e-commerce world were full-blown. So essentially, what from all this experience that you packaged overall 30 years, what is your message of hope and inspiration for entrepreneurs listening out there right now?
Ari Horowitz 48:53
Well, look, I've done you know, I've done this thing cross-platform, a lot of different, you know, sort of careers, if you will, or different iterations of my entrepreneurial endeavors. And I think that the key message is go out there and do it. Like there's a lot of people that think about...they wait, they wait for the perfect idea, they wait for, you know, everything to line up, that's just not the way it works. You know, come up with something, go find a product in China, go find it, you know, someplace else that you want to deliver, and get out there and do it. Get your Amazon store set up. It's the biggest platform, check out, depending on if you got some followers on Instagram, but start, you know, figuring it out and play with it and mess around with it. And then you know, when you have the opportunity to, grow it right? When you find the right thing that's working, grow it Don't hesitate. Step on the gas hard, leverage, leverage Equity Partners, leverage companies like YardLine that can provide growth capital, get, you know, do what you can take it while it's hot. And when you have the opportunity for liquidity, take advantage of that. Right? Make sure you get some liquidity, put some money in the bank, and then go do it again. Right? This is not going to be your only idea. Don't fall in love with your product or your company. Remember, this is what you do for a living. This is...you’re a business person, your job as an entrepreneur. And you should think of it that way. And just keep your head on straight, don't get emotional, and recognize when the right time to sell is and the right way to leverage capital for your growth.
Yoni Mazor 50:17
I love that. I love the energy. I love, you know, the whole vibe that you've given us, I can summarize the inspiration or words of inspiration. Just do it. Okay, if it's working, don't look back, people. Double down on it. But nevertheless, don't be too attached emotionally. If, you know, if there's a time to sell, sell, if you need to do it again and again, or redo it again, go for it. This is a package Ari is giving us for the hope and inspiration for entrepreneurs listening out there. Alright, Ari. It's been wonderful, you know, blast from the past. You know, with all these moments I have, I wish I had more time because you have, it's like you have, like five or six people all in one bundle, into one with experience and wisdom. But I really do appreciate, you know, sharing the story with us. Anybody that you know, heard the story. Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. That's it and until next time.
51:05
Fantastic Yoni. Thanks so much for having us. We really appreciate it.
