YouSaid · the spoken record

Songe LaRon

lines on the record: 28
first: 2020-07-23
most recent: 2020-07-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, the features that we rolled out actually really helping them reopen successfully. So hopefully we'll look back and we'll say, you know what, we made the right decision. And Lord knows what crises await us in the future. But we're going to have the same approach that that will enable Squire to be successful if we can make our customers successful, we'll be successful.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that I'm glad that we've remained one focused on this space barbershops and putting our customers first. That's one of our core values. Customers are our lifeblood. And I think that when this happened, nobody expected it. Nobody expected pretty much all of our customers to be shut down and not operating. We had to make some decisions about what to do. And we optimized for doing what would provide the most value to them. So, you know, we immediately switched focus to how can we help these people during this time when they're not making money? How can we help them keep the doors open so that when the shutdown is over, they can reopen their doors? And I think that so far, it looks like those decisions were the right decisions just because of the way our customers in the market and the industry has reacted. And also we're seeing.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But on the other hand, you know that one of the most beneficial things you can do is create a successful company and be an example of what's possible and hopefully make it easier for black founders in the future to follow your footsteps. So that's really what I'm focused on.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, I mean, one of the things that kind of unfortunately you have to learn to do as an entrepreneur is To our employees and what they're going through. We communicated to them that as a company, we stand on the side of Black Lives Matter, of Black Lives Mattering. It shouldn't even be a controversial statement. And that we really want to give our employees space to process. And we told everyone they could take time off if they needed to, if they wanted to just be with their emotions or if they wanted to go protest or if they wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. We also made a statement as a company saying our position and we made some public donations to some nonprofits. So, you know, as a company, those are things that we felt is the right thing to do. And on an individual basis, as a black man, yeah, it is very difficult. On one side, you want to help, you want to do what you can to kind of support the move.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give it one check. It'll take us a couple months and then go out and try to get it out. We never really stopped fundraising. It was a constant thing that we were doing to keep the business afloat. And quite a few times, I mean, we came close to one month of runway. Wow.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was inequity. Yeah, yeah. I was at Shoxy structure as a warrant that converted to equity when we raised a price ground. But prior to that, yeah, raising money is not easy, particularly at first as a first-time entrepreneur, as somebody who doesn't have a track record in tech and didn't have the network at that point. It was challenging. We were fortunate both my co-finder and I to have a pretty decent network of professionals in New York City from like law, finance, and other kind of like high paying industries. And we actually were able to, and many of them are African American, we were able to get some of our early friends, no family, just friends around friends and slash angel that helped us get to the next level. But for us, fundraising, until we raise the Series A and Series B, it was always a real kind of like just a grind.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been difficult. So that company is called 43 North. And it actually wasn't a grant. It was an investment, $650,000. We won the competition. So that's an equity investment.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Months to 12 months with little to no income and just know what you're getting yourself into. But I do believe that entrepreneurship, particularly in tech, provides an opportunity for wealth creation that is in a short period of time that is really unparalleled in most other industries. I mean, I believe in it. I believe in entrepreneurship. Clearly, that's what I've committed my life to. So I would never tell somebody to not pursue it, but it is risky, particularly now, particularly now.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a tough question. That's a good question. I do think that the tides are changing, especially recently with increased attention to the plight of black founders and black people in general. So I think that now is probably a better time than ever to be an entrepreneur, a black entrepreneur. That being said, it's still going to be challenging to be an entrepreneur period, let alone a black entrepreneur. The odds are kind of against you, to be frank. So I would encourage them that if entrepreneurship is their dream and if that's kind of what they see themselves doing, then they have to pursue it. I always encourage people to take risk but measure risks. So if you're at a big company and you're making a decent salary, save as much personal runway as you can before making the leave. Understand that you may go six.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a great question. It's been a challenge to keep those relationships remotely. I mean, we have had a little bit of an advantage because we were already somewhat distributed. So, you know, we had an office in Buffalo, New York City, our engineering team was all spread out. Our sales team was all spread out. So we were already used to collaborating on Zoom and communicating on Slack. But this took it to a whole new level because there's no physical presence anymore. So we'll do like a virtual happy hour and not even talk about business. Things like that help. It's never a replacement for the physical one-to-one interaction, but it does help.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe in bringing people in and giving them room to make mistakes, to excel, to learn from those mistakes. If you have to micromanage the people that you hire, you probably hire the wrong person. And yeah, so those are just two things off the top that I think are worthwhile.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the principles is, I believe, in bringing the best people into your team and really looking for people that can complement your skill set and are better than you at what they do. And if you're an employee at a big company, a big corporation, you want to be the smartest guy or girl in the room. You want to excel over other employees so that you can kind of move up the ranks. And, you know, that's how you'll be successful. As a founder, you do not want to be the smartest person in the room. Right. You want people in the room who are way better than you at what they do so that collectively you can make the company excel and that will in turn make you successful as a founder. So kind of like a successful founder is only as successful as the people that they bring in. And also I don't believe in micromanaging.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, when we started seeing stage reopening, it was a positive sign because our revenue started rebounding relatively quickly. In fact, May and June exceeded pre-COVID numbers just because of all the new business that we bring on. So that kind of showed, okay, things are trending toward best case. And then now we're seeing states closing again, which we didn't really expect, like California has reclosed. So it just goes to show you can never really know, but it's always safe to us kind of assume the worst case scenario be prepared for the worst case, which we were prepared to go to zero revenue for over 12 months. I thought that that was in the realm of possibility.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Need during this time. And as a result, what we've seen in the last two months actually more inbound and more customers signing up than we ever have in the life of the company.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's made me understand that you can never predict the future. There's always going to be an unknown unknown. We always thought that a recession was coming at some point. The grave retrain can't go on forever. I always thought that our business would fare relatively well in a downturn because people will continue to get haircuts. And we've seen this in the past that these type of services tend to remain consistent in downturns. I mean, this is a total black swana van. I just never would have predicted a pandemic at the scale. But if anything, this has made me believe that our business is even more resilient than I thought before, just seeing how we've been able to kind of adapt to the reality and make changes on the fly, push features that we know our customers.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really look forward to that normalcy and to being able to get a haircut and feel great about themselves and feel the way things were before COVID. So we're actually seeing for the shops that are reopening higher than usual bookings. And we'll see how that trend continues in the months to come. So far, that's what we're seeing.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so bookings definitely took a dip when the shutdowns started March, April, our revenue essentially went to zero. And we also decided to waive all of our subscription charges to current and new customers until October because we knew that their revenue was also going to go to zero and we didn't want them to have that overhead. So as a result, we expected the squire essentially wouldn't be making any money, but we were okay with that because this is just such a difficult time. What we have seen though is that shops as our customers are reopening, they are getting booked out. They're getting booked out relatively fast and then the bookings are continuing to stay consistent. That just kind of speaks to how much of a need there was, like a pent-up demand from their clients to get haircuts. And I think that there's something about just the barbershop experience and the community element of it that people, you know, men in particular.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the sale to them is that this is going to make their lives easier. This is going to save them time. And this is actually going to enable them to be better business owners and make more money. And we can show them that that's what the software actually does. Early on, we did get more pushback from cash-only shops. So our focus was more on shops that are already taking cards. But that's really the trend just in the world generally. Consumers are used to paying for services with cards. So the shops that are cash only, there will be some segment that just doesn't want to pay taxes, quite frankly. But, you know, we're seeing more and more, particularly, you know, the newer shops that are opening. They understand that if they want to meet the consumers and provide a really great experience to their clients, that they have to kind of accept cars. And it enables them to charge more. We know that assess people will pay more on cars.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Forever and ever for most barbershops. Yeah. And that's what we're solving because that sounded really an ideal experience for you as a customer and it's not a good experience for the barbers either in terms of efficiently running their business. But getting a haircut is such a great experience and it's such an important part of your life that you're willing to go through that poor customer experience to get the service. But we think that we can make it better than that.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Yeah, so I actually prior to founding Squire, I was at a corporate law firm and Dave was actually in business school. And both of us wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, didn't want to go to corporate route. So we would just brainstorm ideas on the weekend. And we eventually stumbled on the idea of barbershops. And the idea came out of our own experience. I haven't gone to barbershops for decades. Like most people, I started going with my dad as a kid around six or seven. And the experience of going to the barbershop hadn't changed. Very antiquated, low-tech industry, cash-based, need to call to make an appointment, long wait times. So all of those pain points that we had experienced formed the basis of why we came up with the idea of this is something that we wanted to work on.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there's two central models for Barbershop business models. One is what you mentioned, which we call kind of the booth rental model where each barber is essentially an independent contractor. They run their own business. They manage their own schedule. They go and come as they please, and then they pay rent to the owner, usually on a weekly basis. And then the other model is what we call a commission model, where those barbers are treated a little bit more like employees.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The main ways from handling a payment processing, so that's really core to our business, there's a subscription component. So the shops that use our platform will pay $100 to $250 a month. And then there's a customer booking fee. So if you book and pay on Squire, you'll pay about a dollar extra. And that revenue goes to Squire.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Squire is a business management and point of sale software focusing on barbershops. So we do essentially everything that a barbershop needs to run their business from handling the booking interface to the back end inventory. It's really customized specifically for the barber shop industry. And then on the consumer side as a client, you can actually find a barbershop, book, pay, and tip all in the app or on the website.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To really do work. Masks really do work. Yeah. If there's one thing I wish everyone could kind of agree on, I think that mass work.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Worth anything, there's risks. You know, you walk outside any day and there's going to be some risk involved and it's just a matter of the balance of how much you want that service. So it makes sense if you don't feel comfortable getting a haircut.”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the disinfecting. I mean, they already have to disinfect tools between every cut. They should be doing that. But now they're also disinfecting the seating area. Many of them are using disposable barber capes, or they're using just one per customer so that they'll have a supply ready so that they're not reusing the capes. Lot of them are not doing certain services like they want to do beard work or they won't do shaves anything that would require the client to remove their mask you know I think that there hasn't been a lot of evidence of barbershops being one of the high transmission services”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Barbers wear masks, customers wear masks. There's no waiting in the barbershop anymore. Customers will have to wait outside or in their car until their appointment time is ready. And there's also social distancing between shares. They spread out the shares so that they're servicing less fewer customers as a result. I would say that barbers are probably one of the few types of professionals that are very well equipped in this new environment because they actually go to school for this. In order to get a barber license, you have to study disinfecting and taking different precautions. So unlike maybe waiters or other types of people who are providing services, I think barbers are one of the few that actually already had to get licensed and go through education to be prepared for this environment. So I'm a big proponent of”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, they are open. I think Connecticut is probably phase three or whatever phases where barbershops and other service-based businesses are open. So yeah, they're open for business”
2020-07-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT