Cool Companies You Should Know - Engage3

Join Bob Goodwin of Career Club and Edris Bemanian, CEO of Engage3. Engage3 was founded to revolutionize retail pricing through data science and predictive modeling to help retailers understand and manage their Price Image and to ultimately enable Personalized Pricing. The capital markets have recognized their differentiated value proposition as evidenced by $59MM in total funding, including a $35MM round in December of 2021. Hear Edris discuss their company culture, leadership principles, and the kind of talent they are actively recruiting for.

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Transcript

Bob Goodwin  (00:14):

Hey everybody. Welcome. My name is Bob Goodwin, founder of career club. And thank you for joining us for another episode of cool companies. You should know career club. If you're not familiar with us we focus on companies that are in high growth mode. Oftentimes there are other companies that you may not be familiar with. They're not household names yet, and yet they've received usually tremendous amounts of funding and they're on a high growth trajectory. It's our pleasure to introduce you to companies just like those. So at that today, I'd like to introduce our guest from Engage3 Edris Bemanian. Welcome, Edris .

Edris Bemanian (00:50):

Hey Bob.

Bob Goodwin  (00:51):

Hey, welcome. How are you doing today?

Edris Bemanian (00:53):

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. It's an honor. Oh,

Bob Goodwin  (00:55):

AB absolutely. So where do we find you today? Where are you?

Edris Bemanian (00:59):

I'm in Davis, California. So this is background. So don't be fooled by the background, but this is where we're headquartered. It's about 15 miles from Sacramento, California, and about 70 miles from San Francisco, California.

Bob Goodwin  (01:11):

Awesome. So just as a little bit of an ice breaker you know, just a little bit about you, where you're from, where you went to school a little bit, maybe about your career, things like that.

Edris Bemanian (01:20):

Yeah. Yeah. Happy to. So I've been with Engage3 for almost nine years now, which is wow, which is very interesting to reflect on because I remember back in the day thinking, Hey, there's no way I'm gonna stay with one company for more than two or three years at a time. And here I am, you know, three times over having exceeded that. And, and the reason is cuz I, I love what I do. I love this company. I love the team. Prior to Engage3 I just happened to be at the intersection of retail technology and, and retail without intentionally realizing that that was my path. So worked with Sedexo, which is a large food service company, worked with them. And now, you know, which is a you know, media company that many might have heard of on the supply chain side and then have worked with companies like Mecado which provide e-commerce solution to e-commerce retailers and, and so on.

Edris Bemanian (02:05):

And I've always just been fascinated with startups. So any chance I got I've, I've been engaged with different types of startups. The reason behind us being at Davis California, because aren't that many startups in Davis, California, although it's growing and you should, you should track Davis, California is that I actually went to undergrad at UC Davis. And so I studied and environmental policy here. And our founder one of our two founders who are Kenton, we may they did their undergrad degree in Davis as well. And so at one point we had an office in Davis, California, as well as San Francisco and we ran them in parallel and we just saw that we were getting a good result out of being headquartered in Davis, both because able to recruit aggressively out of the university, but also because we were, you know, getting white glove treatment for being out here. And so as you can imagine we, we, we found people who were looking for startups, but wanted to be more in this type of geographic area. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and we're, we're, we're in it for the long run. So that's, you know, that's resonated with us. That's worked out for us so

Bob Goodwin  (03:04):

Far, what what's what's Edris doing when he is not at work

Edris Bemanian (03:07):

When I'm not at work? Every chance I get I like to play tennis or soccer can be kind of hard. If you don't sign up for an actual league to hold yourself accountable, cuz you always shift back to the things you could do for a startup, but that's been helpful. And then I like to travel. So mostly soccer, tennis, travel skiing,

Bob Goodwin  (03:27):

Probably I'm gonna hang out with you. Now, you know, a couple things though that you said that that sort of strike me one is, you know, just from the, the conception or preconceived notion or whatever of a startup, you know, you've been there for nine years and the company was right. You know, so startups aren't just, you know, just started last week. They're not all just in the basement, you know, and we're filling jelly jars to go sell, you know, it it's like it's a long haul game, you know, which is cool. Two is you know, the, the, that you guys kind of met, you know, around UC Davis, right. And there's a little bit of serendipity, you know, sometimes it happens or you're talking about like your, your career path kind of found you a little bit in retail and you know, I think that's cool. And then you, you sort, you sort of find your lane over time. So that's cool now the brother's names again are what

Edris Bemanian (04:20):

Ken and Tim, we may,

Bob Goodwin  (04:21):

We may. Yes. And so when they started the company, what was the, the problem they solve in the marketplace and how did they seek to kind of uniquely solve for that?

Edris Bemanian (04:32):

They have a fascinating background, actually. It's a great story. So they grew up in what is arguably the was the first competitive price collection company in the world. And so their, their parents started a company in Mississauga and Canada and it was all around the idea of, Hey, let's collect this data, this market data and provide it to retailers and to brands and help them figure out, you know, how they should go about their pricing strategies cause they need the data. So much of it prior to that was art. So at the ages of four and or five and seven, they were driving around Canada doing data collection. And so as you can imagine, if that's what you're doing day in, day out as a, as a child, it's what you think about. And so when Ken, one of our founders was getting his, doing his PhD work in theoretical physics at UC Santa Barbara, he realized, Hmm, a lot of my friends are going off into wall street and applying models there to, to make people a lot of money <laugh>.

Edris Bemanian (05:24):

But what if you actually can take those concepts and apply them to retail pricing? And so he, he actually shifted and focused on that. His brother, Tim sold the business he had started, which was a pool business. And they, they started CME and TRICS was the first retail price optimization company. And it was credited within inventing the retail revenue management category as a whole. And so they're able to consistently push 100 basis points of sales to the bottom line and within retail, that's a huge impact. Yeah. And that company ultimately got acquired by SAP in 2006. And that's all exciting. Ken stayed on as the chief data scientist there for a few years, but then they realized that there was still a lot of opportunity left on the table. And they saw that with mobile technology coming up and mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, information becoming accessible to consumers fingertips that there was, there were some new trends that were coming about.

Edris Bemanian (06:12):

And so they realized, Hmm, what if we actually go back and we figure out how to further segment pricing to account for the truly individual's preferences. So as an example, you know, you can set prices at the store and shelf level, but what about Bob? What are Bob's preferences? What about ed? What are Ed's preferences? And so the idea around Engage3 form, which was how do we actually improve outcomes for retailers manufacturers and can S mm-hmm <affirmative> and do that by revolutionizing the way products are, are bought and sold. And so they started engaged three to go after that mission and to tie it back to, you know, your comment about, you know, startups, aren't always, you know, one year, two year types of, of stints you know, they, they put, they built out this company or it bounded this company and we've been upon that.

Edris Bemanian (06:58):

And it's been it's it's, it's been, we've had number a number of evolutions here. We started out with, as a shopping application where we were able to save consumers 40% of up to 40% of their shopping trips just by helping them identify where they should shift their trips to and be more efficient. And as we got more progress there, we saw that, Hey, there's a lot of power here. There's a lot of there's a lot we can do by understanding every individual's preferences and whether they care about gluten free, whether they care about non GMO, whether they care about environmental attributes and, and other types of things and being able to meet those consumers where they want to be met, because that's where retailers and brands wanna go to. So there's a clear target here. That's a win, win, win between the three.

Edris Bemanian (07:40):

And we are focused on figuring out the pricing component of that. How do we identify the prices and the combination of offers that will allow everyone in that group to win. Because retailers want to engender loyalty with their customers, brands wanna engender loyalty with customers as well, right? As they compete more with private label and, and other alternative options and consumers are looking to be treated fairly and find the products they want easily. And so that's how this company came about and we've had a number of evolutions, but since 2015, we've been very focused on our strategy. It was just to work with retailers and manufacturers and help them understand what the market is saying regarding prices and products. And then working with them to then understand how they're being perceived in the market. And now we're helping them figure out what do they actually do with that information, right? What are the prices that they should set to achieve those outcomes? Does that make sense?

Bob Goodwin  (08:30):

Yeah. No, totally. Now having spent a little bit of time on the website. Yeah. You guys talk about price image. Yeah. Can, can you kind of help people understand what price image is?

Edris Bemanian (08:42):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's fascinating. So a lot of the solutions that are out in the marketplace today were built on science and statistical models that were built in the early two thousands. And they haven't really evolved a lot since then. Okay. And so what we've done is we've invested significantly in models that actually identify and understand consumer behavior and psychological models that help us understand how are these prices actually being perceived and which of the products and the prices that are driving the most impact on perception. So, as an example, one of our customers might be priced 3% above the market, but they might be perceived to be priced 15% above the market. Well, that's, that's, that's unfortunate for them, right? Because they put a lot of effort into being within 3% of the market. So how do we identify the pro products and prices that are driving that perception, help them get control of those so that they can more closely be aligned to where they actually are in the market and perhaps even prove their positioning in the market. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So sometimes you might have a set of items that are within a shopper's basket that drive a disproportionate amount of perception. And those are hard to identify if you're just looking at the old statistical models that previously did that work for you. And so we've focused heavily on building out a team and building out products and models that allow us to get to that.

Bob Goodwin  (09:55):

So is this marrying like POS data with survey data or because it's really interesting, you know, so much, you know, kind of jewelry point traditional pricing work is just, you know, running pretty aggressive models against POS data or retailer data or whatever, but then we've got the, the consumer perception image part. And I, again, I'm curious how those get married.

Edris Bemanian (10:16):

Yeah. It's, it's what you described, but we're also bringing in billions of prices a week that we collect around online and in store channels. So we know what all of the store specific product specific prices are and we collect and, and own that data. And then we also bring to a data from proprietary data from our partnerships with companies like Nielsen provide, you know, a exclusive proprietary access to some of the data sets we work with. So we, we bring those together. We work with the POS data. We have very robust models and we understand the retailers, different pricing strategies and the brand strategies. And together we can bring all those together to identify what is the price image within a market. And what's driving that price image within a market. And then we can also step back. I can look how about across your total portfolio of stores and, and categories and departments

Bob Goodwin  (11:01):

Now. Super cool. So obviously the investor community, you know, is seen, you know, like a lot of runway for you guys, because if I, if I got my numbers, right, you guys have raised 59 million in total and recently closed a 35 million series D round is right.

Edris Bemanian (11:19):

We did just close that round. Yeah. Yeah. And what the investors are seeing is, as an example, today, we're working with it used to be five, but now it's as of the last week, it's six of the LAR 10 largest retailers in the world. And, and that's because there there's a huge problem statement here. A lot of companies either have, have the systems, but don't have data. So you have garbage in and then garbage out situations, which Bob you're very familiar with, right. Is in, in what you've had to deal with in the past. And then in other cases they might have data but they don't really have sound systems that help them identify really what's driving that image of perception. And they're relying on these old, these old models. Most of the time we'll find that they, they need both.

Edris Bemanian (12:00):

And so we'll come in and we'll deploy that system and we've been able to grow our customer base pretty aggressively as a result of the innovation behind the products and the fact that we have an end to end solution and the investor to recognize that. And they've also recognized that, Hey, these guys are really scratching the surface, right? They're, they're, they're at the beginning of their journey. Because there's so much more to do as we go down to, as I mentioned, the more granular individualized levels of who needs, what offer for product at what time. Yeah. That's where we seen that we can drive 300 plus basis points of profit improvement and make it a win-win for everyone involved. But even today with what we're doing, we're driving, you know, north of a hundred basis points, profit improvement while driving improved loyalty for our customers, with customers who are working with our solutions. So the investors see that and they track those unit metrics.

Bob Goodwin  (12:47):

So, so in kind of this, you know, inflation environment that we find ourselves in and like, everybody's like way more sensitized to pricing than maybe they were just a few months ago. Yeah. How's that kind of playing into, you know, your all's go to market and, and kind of the reception from your clients.

Edris Bemanian (13:07):

Yeah. Yeah. What, what a lot of people don't think about all the time is that the pressure is for, of inflation and the supply chain are impacting the retailers and brands significantly too. Right? It's not that they're evil corporations that, that wanna just maximize profits. Right. They, they know they have to drive loyalty and they know that they have to be competitive. But they have to they have to make money while they're doing that to stay in business. And so a lot of consumers might not perceive that and understand that. And so the, the point here is that if you're blind to what your competitors are doing in the market as a first step and how, when they're taking price increases up or, or where they're taking cost and absorbing it, it's challenging to figure out how to respond in your own model.

Edris Bemanian (13:48):

So step one is we provide all this market data that we're collecting and, and our customers can tap into that understanding what are my competitors doing? More importantly, though, it's important to understand, well, again, if I know what drives my price image, what are the items, categories, departments that drive my image and how do they vary across these markets? We know that shoppers in Austin or Texas are different from Houston, Texas. We know within Houston, Texas, there are, you know, many times, three different price zones or strategies even within Houston alone. And so when we look at those different things, it's important for our customers to understand in this case, retailers and brands, to understand what are the items that my customers really care about, that I, that I need to ensure that they're treated fairly on. And where are they willing to pay more? And what are my differentiators relative to market and to my named competitors. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so, because of the fact that there's inflation happening, there's supply chain issue use more transactions are shifting to online and eCommerce. We bring those together to understand and, and equip our customers with what their price response should be and how they should think about their total portfolio. And so that's driven a lot of demand for the solutions

Bob Goodwin  (14:47):

As well. So, so you, you, you brought up a couple things I wanted to ask you about one is this is an an Omni channel tool. It's not just brick and mortar, just online that's

Edris Bemanian (14:57):

That's right. Yeah.

Bob Goodwin  (14:58):

And, and, and you guys are doing price collection in store, so it's not just price scraping on the web.

Edris Bemanian (15:04):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Bob Goodwin  (15:05):

That's huge by itself. And then FMC and non FMC, or, you know, kind of the, the counter sectors.

Edris Bemanian (15:15):

Yeah, that's right. So it's, it's, it's everything now. So previously we're focused on FMCG, but we've been expanding its non FM pretty aggressively. So whether you're thinking furniture, sporting goods, you know electronics, even apparel we're, we're getting into those spaces. And some of those categories are even more challenging than FMC.

Bob Goodwin  (15:36):

I, I was gonna say I tried, I, I started leading the apparel business for one of my former employers. That is a hot mess. There are a gazillion skews that is really a tough, tough sector.

Edris Bemanian (15:48):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you have to, you have to approach those problems with science <laugh> and technology versus approaching them overly manually. And so we've been investing pretty aggressively and that's part of our, our series, the investment is intended to go towards enhancing the science that we have even further and making sure it applies more broadly outside of our core areas.

Bob Goodwin  (16:09):

So, so, so channels categories, what about geographic footprint?

Edris Bemanian (16:14):

Oh yeah. So historic, you know, we, we're launching into 30 countries this year. Which is <laugh> 30. Yeah, yeah. We're launching into 30 countries this year. And so we hired a general manager of international his name's Steven and, and he's got tremendous experience. And so he is leading the charge there. But we've got a number of countries already signed up and now we're just implementing there. And then we've got others that were, that are part of our phase four for the year, but we're excited about that. And, and we we've been hiring pretty aggressively as a result. So we've, we've been expanding our customer success team. We've been expanding our solutions engineering teams our technology teams to go and, and, and anticipation of that growth. And you know, I think if if, if, if things play out the way that they look that they're playing out, we might see a higher number than 30 even.

Bob Goodwin  (17:06):

So that's really exciting. If we could pivot a little bit, you know, one of the things that I love about doing this series and, and what I think our list really enjoy is getting to hear you and see you. And it kind of humanizes the company and you're not just, you know, 39 million or 35 million raise. It's like, you know, these are real people and I'm gonna go work with real people, real company. And, and so could you talk maybe beginning as a CEO about one, the leadership style that you have that your El L T has and then how that is informing the culture that you guys are building?

Edris Bemanian (17:47):

One thing that our founders did a phenomenal job of, in my opinion, when they started this company was building an environment that was focused on growth and where it identified and rewarded people who wanted to make an impact. And I've benefited from that here. And many others have as well. So one of our core values is having a growth focused mindset. I think that's what we really look for. So one of the reasons that I've stayed for nine years, right, even though I told you, I was, I thought I'd have a cap of two to three years per company was because we've had this environment where if you wanna put in more, you, you have the ability to, and it's not just that you have the ability, but you're encouraged to, and you're celebrated for doing that. And so we've seen that happen time.

Edris Bemanian (18:27):

And again, at engaged three, where people who at all kinds of stages of their career right early, or, you know, people who say this is my last, this is my last gig. <Laugh> right. I just wanna do something fun for my last gig. We've had, we've had that, that whole spectrum. And everyone within that spectrum has, has demonstrated an ability to, to come in and, and take on more responsibility or, or drive more of an impact. And there's kind of a cliche saying out there, which is, you know, you're the CEO of your job. But I actually endorse that heavily here. So, you know, just because I'm the CEO of engaged three as a total company doesn't mean we don't have many CEOs within the company. We have people who really own their functional areas and we have conversations with them about what they can own beyond the, so for those who are looking for a growth focused mindset and one where they can drive a lot of impact, Engage3 is a really good environment because we're growing so quickly and growing so much, we really need that help. And that's, you know, independent of any other demographics you might think of. Right. It really just comes down to, to ability and, and, and mindset.

Bob Goodwin  (19:30):

Yep. It sounds like a meritocracy.

Edris Bemanian (19:33):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that word. I love meritocracy. Yeah, absolutely.

Bob Goodwin  (19:36):

You you're welcome. You can use that one, but what are some of the other values, you know, because I mean, there's, you know, just a dictionary full of, of values that people would espouse, but if you really kind of speak from the heart, what, what are the values that you guys are building at gay H three?

Edris Bemanian (19:52):

Yeah. We crowdsource our values back in 2015 and, and they've held strong and we've evaluated as a company, whether we would evolve or change them. And we made some minor changes over the way, but we've been able to stay true to them. So one of them is ownership. We, it used to call it accountability. We evolved it to ownership as we had a all kind of company review of, of our core values. And, and what we mean by that is, again, coming back to the CEO comment, right, you are the CEO of your space. You are the CEO of the outcome and the results. And so we really try to drive and encourage that, but, you know, it kind of has happened organically, thankfully mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then the other value that we have is this is an interesting one it's it's rigorous honesty.

Edris Bemanian (20:35):

And the reason that we thought that that was important, you know, again, we crowdsource these, so it was, they were voted on by the team and, and, you know, embraced by the team years ago is because you can, you know, you can have a growth focused mindset and, and just be really optimistic and excited about growth. But if you don't take a step back and address the realities of what your constraints, your challenges are, then you're gonna end up with a lopsided system. And so we, we see those two as balancing each other out where we're incredibly eager, excited, and aggressive about our growth <affirmative>, but we also are rigorously honest about what challenges are ahead of us and, and what we need to do differently. So those are the three core values. So I want just to go over them again, growth focused mindset, rigorous honesty, and then ownership.

Bob Goodwin  (21:19):

Yeah. You know, the, the rigorous honesty reminds me the classic good to great where Jim cost just keeps talking about, you know, thank the brutal facts. You know, it's not, it is what it is. And if this isn't working, we need to call it what it is and, and move on, you know, and, and figure a new solution out. So that's great. How much has the company grown from a a headcount perspective over pick some time period? Three, five years.

Edris Bemanian (21:46):

Yeah. Yeah. I couple years ago we were close to 60. Now we're, you know, 130 and growing, so,

Bob Goodwin  (21:56):

And then what would you expect to be by the end of the year or end of next year?

Edris Bemanian (22:00):

I think by the end of this year, we'll actually be north of 200. That's awesome. So, yeah, we're growing very aggressively. And so that's again across the board, so it's not specific to any one function, but we've grown our go to market team pretty aggressively because previously we had just a very small group of folks working on, on sales and, and customer success. We hired a VP of customer success from Nielsen who's, you know, phenomenal and she's building out her team. We've got a really strong data science across a couple of different functions, those that work on our price image, models, those that work more on analytics, data management. Yes. And so between our data science and data analytics and data engineering teams, we're expecting a lot of growth. And then our solutions engineers who ensure that our customers get the value that they're looking for out of our solutions. We're growing that team pretty aggressively as well. We've, we're headquartered in Davis. We've had a, we have an office in, in Scottsdale, Arizona as well. But really we've been looking globally. So we're agnostic of geography and are more so looking for people who can bring an impact to the table. And who surface that somehow through the interview process.

Bob Goodwin  (23:09):

It's, it's that a that you kind of anticipated one of my questions frame slightly differently in light of that, is that a, a pandemic realization or were you guys kind of already in that mode?

Edris Bemanian (23:23):

We we've always been a global company. We've always been pretty distributed but the pandemic did accelerate how we embraced it. So we've now for example, we, we didn't have many people in Atlanta, Georgia, but now we have quite a few people in Atlanta, Georgia, and that's because we tapped into a really strong talent pool there. We would not have done that. Otherwise, at least at the rate with which we've done it. So the pandemic helped us accelerate where we were going is how I would say that. And then we've also been able to find and, and have had for a number of years, fantastic folks in Eastern Europe in India also in a few other countries as well Canada and, and we've been able to tap into those and embrace those talent markets too. I think I don't

Bob Goodwin  (24:08):

Wanna go off on, I don't wanna go on a weird tangent, but with respect to Eastern Europe, has the things that have been going on in Ukraine impacted you guys.

Edris Bemanian (24:17):

Yeah. We have a strong team of developers who are actually in Belarus. And so, you know, we're, we're always worried about them and wanna make that they're, they're doing well. And then obviously just empathy for everyone in, in Ukraine dealing with that solution or that crisis, but we haven't had any team members specifically in Ukraine.

Bob Goodwin  (24:37):

Yeah. So what is, how does somebody get promoted and engaged? I mean, you and I, I think I kind of probably have a decent idea of where you're gonna go with this based on what you've already said, but you know, people are, and you're kind of probably the poster child for this, you know, looking for growth opportunities and, you know, to continue to be rewarded, you know, as, as they contribute, you don't have to name anybody, but, you know, just maybe thinking, you know, of a couple like representative folks, what do they do that got them promoted and continues to you, have your eye on them?

Edris Bemanian (25:14):

Yeah.

Edris Bemanian (25:16):

It's particularly been folks who've brought forward new ideas and have actually taken steps towards implementing them or, or qualifying those ideas. I think that is probably the best indicator of demonstrating that someone wants to go above and beyond their role and take on more. So we've got a bunch of examples where we have leaders in different departments. Who've done exactly that, whether it was in the business development product recruiting or, or any other functional area, data science and, and those folks, you know, both met the expectations that we had of them and that their, that their managers had of them, but then said, Hey, here's something I've been playing with. And I've been able to see some initial results with that. I'd love to expand upon or they say, Hey, here's some ideas I have. This is how I go about it.

Edris Bemanian (26:05):

And here's what support I need. And, and we would wanna typically lean in and support them because they're usually aligned with our overall organizational objectives. And we've been able to see through the course of that, that, Hey, this new process that you introduced, that we didn't think about big impact, right. We wanna scale that these, you know, this approach that you took to ensuring that our customers get what they need. Fantastic. We haven't thought about that before. We wanna make sure that, you know, we see you as a runner in our organization. That's what we call it. And, and because you're a runner, we wanna unencumber you from other things, so you can go focus on that impact. And so I think it's really wearing the CEO hat and, and thinking about, you know, how do I maximize X within my, my departmental metrics?

Bob Goodwin  (26:46):

Yeah. It's funny, as you were kind of giving your answer, I was thinking about, well, this ties back to that CEO mentality and ownership.

Edris Bemanian (26:54):

Yeah.

Bob Goodwin  (26:55):

An owner, a CEO is going to not wait for somebody to say, Hey, go solve that or whatever they're gonna like, Hey, I see a problem or an opportunity. Here's an idea to go solve that. Or maybe it's something I've been doing. Yeah. And basically kinda running to it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And, and then I'll send you guys like, Hey, what are you doing? That looks cool. We should be more of that. So that, that's great. It's interesting too, you know back to just sort of the notion of startups that should be, what's very appealing to somebody about working at a younger company instead of, you know, you're an E five and you fit in this box and that's all you do, and we've got it all scripted out for you. And I guess for some people, you know, that's comfortable, but for other people that would drive them insane with boredom or feeling restricted or not grown. And so I, I can see where that culture, that you've fostered. And I really like this notion of CEO of whatever it is that you're doing. And like, if you can bring that mindset and not just, Hey, I'm an employee and, you know, waiting for my paycheck every other week, you know, those people will be runners. That's a great term. Where did runners come from? I love that <laugh>,

Edris Bemanian (28:03):

It's this book called, move your bus that I read, and I was just fascinated by it. What's interesting about it is the guy who wrote it was a principal at a private school, and it wasn't like a, he wasn't a, you know, 10 X, you know, startup entrepreneur guy. Who's seen the movie a bunch of times. He was more so looking at how his best performers in terms of the education field were, were performing and how he incentivized the them and measured them. And it was actually really impactful to me.

Bob Goodwin  (28:28):

And what's the name of it again?

Edris Bemanian (28:30):

Move your bus.

Bob Goodwin  (28:31):

Okay.

Edris Bemanian (28:32):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've we bought take where we bought copies of that book for everyone on our leadership team. And, and I, I bought that for quite a few people on holidays too. So yeah, it's, it's a good one. And the idea is, you know, you, every organiz needs all of the segments, right? They need your runners, joggers, walkers and they'll play their different roles. So, but the idea is just those who want to be, you know, runners how do you make sure that they're unblocked and unencumbered how that they're supported and, and getting the resources they need, because if they're driving an outsized impact, let's give them, you know, outsized resources as a result. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so going back to your point about meritocracy, that, that guides a lot of, you know, how our leadership team has, has thought about things what's nice is that we've developed an operative leadership team as well. And, and, you know, it's the, the folks that make the, the, the track, the, the train run on time, that's the phrase <laugh>. Yeah. And, and so they've actually been bringing in their new ideas and evolving and building upon things that they've learned at other companies, or they've seen work at Engage3, or, or just other ideas that they've gotten from their advisors. And so there's a lot of disruption going on in even our organizational development processes at three. And that, and that's a thing.

Bob Goodwin  (29:42):

Hmm. So bringing this home a little bit, so, you know, it sounds like there's a lot of product opportunities. There's a lot of channel opportunities, a lot of geographical opportunities thinking about your human resource needs, moving forward as we get to 200 or 200 plus

Edris Bemanian (30:00):

Yeah.

Bob Goodwin  (30:01):

Functionally or, and, or kind of attributes, character qualities like that, what are you guys looking for? And, and for our listeners, how will they know, Hey, they might be looking for me.

Edris Bemanian (30:15):

Yeah, yeah. It's so much of it is around tenacity. Hmm. And there are a lot of ways that you can demonstrate tenacity from the beginning of the job search process to, to the end. A lot of people do the whole spray and pray kind of approach with, with, with, you know, looking for jobs and you, you kind of have to do it to some extent. Right. but if you find an opportunity that you particularly like and are particularly interested in, there's this assumption that people don't read the emails that you might send.

Bob Goodwin  (30:52):

Mm.

Edris Bemanian (30:52):

But that's, that's actually a, an unfortunate assumption because if you directly email the hiring manager or HR with a compelling reason for why that you think you would be a great addition to the team, then if it truly was well written and speaks to the role, you're gonna get a response or you're gonna get your odds of getting response are much higher. And so as, as I think about Engage3 in our open roles, right, as I said earlier, data scientists, data analysts, product analysts, product managers, I mean, we we're hiring across the board <affirmative> and we get a lot of applicants as all companies do. But we read the emails we get <laugh>. And, and so if you look at the role and you look at the company and, you know, either whether it's because you bring, you know, certain technical expertise that, you know, because, oh, you know, I've got a lot of experience in Python programming, I've got a lot of SQL experience or, you know, Hey, I've got a lot of visualization engineering or customer success management, right. There are certain things that candidates can bring to the table and have the differentiation around mm-hmm <affirmative>. And if you really surface that and help tie it back to the company's either mission or stated goals in the job description, or, you know, what you've seen recently in the press about Engage3, it's gonna resonate.

Bob Goodwin  (32:07):

No. Well, that is massively music to my years, because that's the, what we're teaching people at career club is, you know, essentially for me bringing sales sensibilities, cuz that's what sales people do. They, they know their value proposition, they know their pitch. They figure out who their territory is like, who should be the target audience for this. And they proactively reach out. And one of the other things we teach people is the way you go about your job. Search says a lot about how you go about your job. So you're talking about, you know, taking, you know, that sense of ownership and I'm not waiting for something to happen. I'm going to make something happen. I'm going to reach out to people. They can do something about it. And, you know, we have found that's a very differentiating behavior because people kind of hide behind the online pull and just, you know, kind of Mely submit a thousand applications and wonder why nobody's giving back to them.

Edris Bemanian (33:09):

Yeah. I could not agree more with, with your statement <laugh> and, and, and, and then to your point, right, Bob, there's a huge difference between creating a curated email that you then again, blast to maybe dozens of instead versus tailoring it to the individual companies. Right? If you find a company in a role that you're particularly interested in, yes. Treat it like a sales cycle, right. You are, you it's, it, you can't just passively apply and hope that you get picked out because you're one of many, and even the best recruiters with the best in 10 or the best applicant tracking systems with the right logic and even AI associated with it might miss you. And so don't, don't leave it to chance. Right.

Bob Goodwin  (33:49):

Well, and that's exactly it is not leaving it to chance. So is there anything, cuz I've been directing the conversation a little bit. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that, you know, you really like to share about in gauge three or, and, and if not, is there a point that you would like to just reemphasize as we wrap this up?

Edris Bemanian (34:07):

Yeah, no, I appreciate you asking that. I, I, I realize I left one of your earlier questions unanswered, so maybe I'll just come around to that, which is the why, why did I join Engage3? And, and hopefully that's maybe a good way to close it out, was looking for an environment where I knew I could make an impact, but I knew I could learn a lot as well. And I knew that as I looked around at the founding founding team with their prior successes and the other folks that they had on the advisors, the board, I, I recognize, Hey, this is a place where one, I could learn a lot, but two, I see that they are hungry for help in a lot of different areas. <Affirmative> but the other side of it that resonated with me was, was the actual purpose that I described.

Edris Bemanian (34:47):

Right? So improving outcomes for retailers, manufacturers and consumers, what does that actually mean? Well, I, I mentioned that I'd studied economics and environmental policy and it, what really resonated with me was the idea that, Hey, if people care a lot about certain things, right? Whether it's health outcome, environmental outcomes or, or financial outcomes, yes. Being able to meet them where they want to be met and leveraging, you know, analytics and data to do that is, is very exciting. And so for me, I joined because I, I thought, Hey, for those who care about sustainability, right. And, and want to incorporate that into their purchasing cycles, how do we help make the air shopping trips easier, right? And more effective towards that end? How do we let tap into big data to help us get there? And so that's still the ultimate, you know, reason that I joined the company was to, to drive that impact. But along the way, I've been learning a lot. I've been growing a lot. I, I get challenged and stretched every day and every week as we scale. And so it keeps it fun and exciting, but it's also helpful to just know that there's an ultimate goal that you're working towards as a company, right. That there's a, there's a vision to bring human values into the pricing equation. So hopefully that answer's

Bob Goodwin  (35:55):

No, I think that's fantastic. And again, the best candidates today want to work at a company that has a purpose, has a reason to be besides making rich people richer and right. You know, as I think about again, this inflationary environment that we're in and how much is gasoline in California right now, $7 or something insane. Yeah. And I mean, people are feeling a lot pressure. Their paycheck has not gone up commensurately with inflation. Yeah. And so they have to be more choiceful and, you know, because the dollar only goes as far as the dollar goes. And so when you're doing something that helps people align their spend with their values and helps them, you know, kind of live their best life, if you will, you know, with, with what I'm that matters. I mean that, that's, that's a human good that you're accomplishing. So I applaud you guys for that. It's not just data and science and stuff, real people's lives are getting better.

Edris Bemanian (36:58):

I appreciate that. Yeah. And, and if you can even start by aligning supply and demand more efficiently so that you incorporate what people actually care about and incorporate what they're truly willing to pay with, what, what they pay at the, at the stand, then that makes a huge difference too. So there's a way to make an impact now, right. Particularly with everything you're describing with inflation, and there's a way to build towards a better future on how these transactions even come about. So it's that's, it's exciting. It's exciting. And it's challenging. So the other thing I might mention is startups are not for those who are faint of heart <laugh> and you have to really be addicted to environments where there are things are evolving and dynamic. Yes. And where you, you have to be hungry for that ownership because ultimately if, if you don't go and embrace that ownership, that ownership comes to you. Right. <laugh> so absolutely the, the cognizant of, of the type of company that you're looking to apply for and, and making sure that it matches what you're looking for from a lifestyle perspective. But if it does, it can be one of the best decisions you've ever made and it can absolutely accelerate your career.

Bob Goodwin  (37:58):

No, super cool. And, and that the, or the point we were making earlier around, you know, if you wanna be an E five, you know, and that's all, you know, and you're comfortable in that. That's cool. Good for you. But if you want something more, not, not even more but different, you know, it is more energizing and satisfying, then I totally agree with you, but there is that other side of the coin. It's like, you know, it's not, not built yet. Like we're still building a lot of this stuff and you know, if that turns you on and you like doing that awesome. And if it's like, well, how come we don't have one of those yet, because that's what we're gonna go do after lunch. We're gonna go make that go. Anyway, this has been great Edris . Like thank you so much. I think that you've just hit on so many of the notes of why we want to do this series and help people see that, you know, the CEO at some company, that's raised a bunch of money. It's like, you know, he's a nice guy and fact, they have real values and, you know, can community what that value is, you know, and the value proposition of the company. So, you know, no surprise to me that you guys have raised a bunch of money. I'm sure there's a series E around the corner or an IPO or something. Cool. But wish you the best of luck in again, thank you so much for investing a few minutes today. It's a great story and we're just really proud to be able to it.

Edris Bemanian (39:15):

Thank you, Bob. It's a great program. And if anyone's interested in learning more about Engage3, feel free to add Yesenia resend on, on LinkedIn or email her she's our lead recruiter.

Bob Goodwin  (39:25):

So we will add that to the the show notes at the end, so that people have that. So. Perfect. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks much.

Edris Bemanian (39:32):

Thank you, Bob. Cheers.