Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Valentine CEO and CTO of Peep Connect where their technology enables businesses to build on the current reward engagement model of the STAR approach, while also introducing new methods of emotionally engaging customers in offering a set of rewards, including one of a client experiences that can't get anywhere else.

Valentine, thank you so much for joining the show. I'm really excited to have you on and really dive into this whole reward based model. These founders that have built in incentives for their user base that are very positively engaging and rewarding. Mm-hmm. . And it seems like that's the direction of the future, which I'm excited about.

Before we All the good stuff withPeep Connect. What were you doing before you started the company?  

Valentine: Ooh, good question. Well, first off, Julian, it's a, it's a great to be here and thank you so much for the introduction and the opportunity. What was I doing before I was in college and prior to college, or even still while I was in college, I was helping run my parents restaurant.

While there, some of the things I did on the side was building tech, not just for my parents, but also for other businesses that were in the industry. Things like website building or something like setting up their POS system or even setting up their. Those were kind of my, that was my expertise and something that I was good at.

And so, like my mom and her friends and their friends, friends and things like that, that was kind of my foray into what I'm doing now. So I was in college doing things on the side. Graduated, got into Peep.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what was the, kind of like, did you always have this itch to do more and see things in a different perspective, enable techno or use technology to enable what people were doing?

What, what was the kind of antithesis for, for engaging? Not a lot of people say, oh, here's a problem, or maybe here's a way we can do it better. I'm gonna go do it myself. Have you always been that kind of person?

Valentine: Curiosity, to be very honest. Yeah. Like I have, I have the tendency of just sticking my nose to find things out. Yeah. Yeah. And not stopping until it's like, I find it, like I, I'm able to figure it out. And if you're a computer science major, that's actually one of the things you need in debugging,

You need patience. And I like to say patience is not a virtue of mine, but these are the skills you need, the patience you need the c. And last, but not the least, you need to have like an open mind when you actually figure it out. But that open mind speaks to maybe my idea is not the best, or what I was thinking is not the best and this is the best thing to be able to do.

Yeah. And putting it in that perspective. So I, I will not really say I'm the kind of just to go out there, find the problem and solve it. The thing is that I must have been encountered the problem as either a. Or like someone who's been using, I must have encountered it. And then I'm like, Hmm, this could be better. And then I try to see what I can do do about it.  

Julian: Yeah, I love that perspective. And, and I'm curious, you know, based on the industry you're in, kind of helping you know, restaurants or brick and mortar businesses connect with more more customers and, and create this whole loyalty kind of model and integration.

You know, I, I personally love going to a local business, even if it's not local, any type of business and having a great experience or having something that ties me in. I'm always fascinated about what they're doing, whether it's like psychologically or within their structure that get continues. For, for that re-engagement.

What have you seen that's been super successful for businesses to have a continued, continued customer base? You know, a lot of people think about new client acquisition or customer acquisition, but I think there's something to be said by those who maintain, maintain a loyal customer base. What are some mm-hmm. businesses doing? Right. And what are some where are the other businesses missing?  

Valentine: Oh, this is a very good question. and I'll break it down in very, let me answer it in this way. Yeah. First off, experience. Yeah. The thing, and why I say experience is because experience breeds loyalty. Mm, yeah. You will be able, you will be loyal to a, you might walk into a coffee shop and buy coffee, right?

Mm-hmm. , and they have the, forgive my language, the worst coffee, the shittiest coffee they have out there, but how they treat you, the experience you have there will make you the next time you are walking. , you're going to say, let's go here.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Valentine: And that's why I always tell people, people will forget you.

People will forget what you look like. People will forget how you feel, but people will never forget the way you made them feel. So it's all about status. And I think that's one thing. Businesses, most businesses don't understand the view that understand. and these are like big, medium size enterprises who are customer obsessed.

Yeah. So obsessed with what their customers are doing that they want to create. Not just a place that people can come and have good food or good drink or whatever. They want to create an atmosphere where people can come and have an experience that is so different. What they go outside, like when they go somewhere, like I want people to come in, be able to sit down and watch sports.

I want people to be able to come sit down, place an order, or people to be able to come in or even jump the line today. Yeah. It's not just about food anymore. Food agree. Everyone. You can get food almost anywhere. That's the truth. The thing is, where can you get the best experience? Yeah. And that's one thing that we hear, like that's the way I think about it here at PEOP and how I think about it going forward.

Julian: Yeah. And it's, it's so I mean, I was having a conversation with my partner recently and, and we were trying to figure out where to go and, and, you know, we were going between whether ordering something to be delivered or going to a place to actually have, you know, some kind of experience or, or just enjoy ourselves.

And I mean, you echo such a, I think such a inner. Want and need that people have, especially currently to, to have and go do something that's productive. And a lot of times it's. You know, and having an enjoyable experience where, I mean, where are companies or restaurants if they're not customer focused or they're not, or they're doing too many things, where can they improve?

Is it, you know, is it focusing on a customer or a specific type of customer, or overall creating maybe an internal ambiance that will make them successful? Or is it, is it utilizing technology to do things more efficiently or effectively?  

Valentine: I think it's a mixture of all, all, all, all of them. And why?

Because the present age, in today's present age, consume has changed. Yeah. What that mattered previously. Those don't matter. Almost don't matter anymore. And that's the truth. Like you think about it like there's a burger grill. I'm currently in Kansas City. There is a burger grill almost like every half block away.

It is true there is a burger grill almost every half block away, but why should each of them matter? The question today is even when you look at social media, people are trying to be stand out. People are trying to be known. People are trying to have an elevated status. It's the same mindset with the. Why do you matter?

Why should you matter? Why should I come to you? Why should I eat at your place? And the business should be able to answer this question. So this series of question in a way that is so eloquent now, it could be targeting a specific kind of customer, just one type of people. And then from then on you grow.

It could also be that you target everyone, but you limit yourself to maybe a few certain segments. But I would always say you target just that one sort of mindfully mindful customer, and then you build on that. Technology has also made it way easier that we should, we could do this today. The encouragement with businesses is that even if like my mom, like, it's always a back and forth with her, like it's, I feel it's easier to tell her to change the entire furniture in the restaurant than telling her to change the POS system.

And I'm not kidding you. Like changing the POS system is so hard. Like it's, it's a, it's an argument that she will cry about it for months before she says yes, but she will change her chair immediately. The reason is because they're. Digitally, digitally savings and things like that. And yeah, that's some, something that can bridge that divide to bring in that one customer, but not just that one customer, but the next one.

And the next one. And the next one.  

Julian: Yeah. How did you know, going through the experience obviously you, you had such a, I think, unique experience where you were able to test, I'm sure in, in your, your parents' business, different solutions, different ways you can engage with. How did you fall on Peep and how did you fall on this particular solution that you felt was adoptable across multiple, whether it's brick and mortar business or restaurants and that you thought, you know, this could be really the up-leveling of experience and, and an easy solution for those, whether or not they had a good customer experience or just needed it to grow and expand.

How did you fall on this in particular, and can you explain exactly what the product is?  

Valentine: Oh, okay. How do I explain this? How do I, so we, in the first iteration of. It wasn't what we were doing now, what we are doing then was really simple and it was just kind of given a two location platform whereby people can go in shop and have it shipp through their network to their friends and tell them, our target audience was where college students, like friends, tell friends, oh, I, I ate at this place.

I earned points here and I can use this point at any other location that is on this app. So, In the initial sense of the word, what we were trying to build was a digital community for these businesses, and why that was important was because most businesses, or almost all businesses, their margin, all restaurant businesses have very low margins.

Yeah. So how do you build a community that you can or have the possibility to monetize past food and march? So that was the mindset that came to you that first, like, how do we view this new kind of digital community? How do we create reputability? At this, at places like this, like create that. We weren't thinking of it in form of experience.

We were just thinking of it at the initial saying, oh, let's just create a digital community. People would like it. And this was during Covid, so mind you. So it was really important then that we started some, like that was what we were wanting to do till what we are doing now. So just like for today if I'm say talking about what we are doing today is that we believe that the future of guest experiences at most restaurants will, will run through people itself whether that be true, giving them a wide label, whether that be integrating with their POS system, and that businesses will incorporate most of these, like incorporate peep to deploy personalized.

and easily automated for them. But what we are mainly doing, or one ca one ambition we have is that we want to help businesses to gain data on their customer across multiple businesses. Yeah. And this, the only people, this, the only way this information is available today is on your credit card companies.

Yeah. Now, think of what if places like Chipotle, or let me say McDonald's, for instance, right. Can be able to track how you shop. Like you, on one side, you as a user know every single company that has access to your data. Mm-hmm. , which is the most important thing. and you can either allow them to have access to it or not allow them to have access to it.

And then these businesses, if they incentivize you to have access to it, maybe giving you free me or whatever, they can have access to the, and then something like McDonald's can see when you go, you come, you shop at McDonald's, you came out from McDonald's, walked into a BBA tea shop and bought Bubba. Now McDonald's can decide, hm.

What if we offer an experience in the sense that we have these people buy Burger and Boba at McDonald's? Yeah. Brilliant. We can offer them everything that they really actually want. Yeah. But it's not part of that, the. . Now on the user side, there is a gamification involved. I just talked about the benefit to the, to the business.

On the user side, there is kind of a gamification involved. So every time you walk into something like a Starbucks and you buy Starbucks, you earn like it's Starbucks token. And every time you go into a. Separate every other different Starbucks location, you get to level up an attribute of these tokens.

Maybe it might be the horn, maybe it might be the teeth, maybe it might be the head, maybe it might be the tail, whatever it is, or cup. Every time you level up an attribute, say you level up the horn to level 20. Right now you are a premium member at Starbucks and Starbucks every six months will send you one of the exclusive merch.

You have exclusive membership rights whenever you go to priority rights whenever you go to a Starbucks to shop, because you can now see all those long lines. You can actually now cut it. Yeah. Now you can unlock say level 15 and get 15% at the Nike store just because you shot at s. . It also creates partnership on a micro level and makes these customers have like a different experience.

Yeah. Or even now you're at level 25, you can vote on Starbucks menu. Yeah. For this coming. So what you want, you want, you want more, you want this or you want, you can vote on it. Just because like now we are not talking just about 15% of 20% of what we are now talking about is. Yeah. And that's what we are built.

That's the experience we are building here.  

Julian: It's incredible to think about the, the ways like companies like yours can really intertwine the experience so that you, you can feel such attachment to the brand. I think that's what a lot of us want, right, is if we, they have something we like, we want either more of it, or if they're, you know, Pushing out something new or have ideas.

It's kind of this whole decentralized kind of philosophy, whereas our vote counts into whatever this company's doing. And, and it's, and it's brilliant the way you've kind of gamified it in, in a lot of ways that, you know, we can experience it through one localized point because, I mean, first of all, I was a big Starbucks, you know, premium member.

I don't wanna brag, but I, I did get some free, free drinks occasionally. But, but it, it, it's difficult to go to so many different applications to then kind of collect all these different points and things like that. What, tell us a little bit about the traction. So what are you excited about, who you're working with, how many companies are on your platform, how many users are engaging with it per month?

Give us a little bit of insight into where the traction is and, and where the growth is now?  

Valentine: Mm-hmm. . So we actually just came out of private, I'll say semi-private beta. We're still in kind of a private beta at this point. So we've launched with a few, like small time places medium sized business to work our kinks, right.

And we just released out of that private bid two weeks ago. And in that two weeks we have almost up to almost 500 users on the platform. Wow. Already. And these are just. People who, it's like you said, it's just that experience, like people, this is, and the way we did it, it's just so simplified and I think that's the thing that's, we're, that's why we're, I, I love what we're building here.

Like it's so simplified that we integrate directly with the pure system of the business that customers come in, they don't need to go get a meta mask, wallet and then all these things, and then go buy and then movie. No. It's automat, it automatically, immediately happens when you place an order. Yeah. And so we have up to 500 users.

We are launching, we have a part, we have a contract with some bigger clients. Things like juice land and the rest of them to be able to launch at these. Incredible. So I, I, I'm really excited for it. We're just taking it one step at a time right now. Sure. Our goal in the short term, like I said, is just to work out the kinks before we even think of deploying to those bigger places, to those bigger clients and make sure that we are building something that people want.

Julian: Yeah. What are some of the cha biggest challenges that Peep faces today?  

Valentine: Oh, I want to say it's a mixture of fun. I think in the recent times, fundraising has been really tough. Yeah. And. It, it, it's, I think it's more so recently because I, I, I was actually, I was out for a few days recently and if I am not working or if I am not working on product, there's only two of us. It's hard to actually be building and fundraising.

It's actually hard to be building and deploying at the same time. Yeah. And I am someone who loves feedback, so I'm always looking, if I, if people are using, like, I always go look through the, the first thing I do every morning, look through the feedback from you. Okay, this makes sense, this makes sense.

This is part of our product landscape. We'll do, oh my God, you need to think about this. I am that person. And so like we would love to hire more. to help out in, in some, especially with development. But unfortunately our, we like, we're still working kings out, especially with fundraising and how that, so I'll say it's part of the biggest pro, it's part of the near term biggest problem, but in terms of getting more businesses, deploying more.

To customers and things like that. I think we've validated it enough already with the people that we've deployed with for it to make sense that this is actually something people want.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah. What was, what's particularly hard about your job?

Valentine: Everything. Oh my God. Everything . I think you can hear it from the sigh already, everything. But see, that's, that's what that excites me. It's, I don't see it as being hard. I see it as exciting because I can act. I'm doing something I love with people that I love. I'm just going down there and kicking down doors.

Yeah, and just talking to people I never almost would've met in my entire life if I didn't go this route. And it's always amazing, like the feeling when you deploy at a place initially and you go into eat there, or you're just sitting around there working on your computer and all of a sudden you see people.

Opening up your product. Like I always feel like, oh, I wonder how much people use Facebook. I dunno if that's what I feel right now. . Yeah. So, but, but that, those are some, some of the things, but what is really hard, I don't see, I think hard is an extreme word. Okay. It's not hard. It can be challenging, but every challenge is an opportunity to rise up to.

Yeah, and be better. And I don't see it as as hard. It's, there's nothing hard. There are some things hard, if I'm being honest, but it's not hard. It's just, it's a new kind of challenge that you've put yourself in and you just have to rise up to the challenge and take it on and just keep going. Control. I keep telling myself this every time.

Control only what you can control. The rest will work out.  

Julian: Yeah. Is there any, you know, as a, as a early founder in, in building this product, is there any problems that you've seen that have been particularly challenging or, or or solution wise have been, you know, taken longer to solve that? In hindsight,  

Valentine: hiring. Yeah. , . I'm  

sorry. Like, it, it, yeah. To, for me, I put hiring worse than fundraising.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finding the right people.  

Valentine: Finding the right people is much harder. Then fundraising. Yeah, that's it's main . I wish there's aand, like there's a magic donor wand I can face and be like, get me all the people I want.

And then you disappear on my screen and be like, you, you, you okay. Let's do this.  

Julian: I love that. Yeah. Yeah. If everything goes right, what is the long term vision for Peep?  

Valentine: Ooh, the biggest. I dunno if I'm allowed to say this, but I will say it regardless. . So the biggest vision where we see, in the beginning I told you experience breeds loyalty. Division I'm going for is, I'll give you another. , efficiency breeds change of habit. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. How do you onboard the next 5 billion people onto the blockchain that makes it possible that people can use this technology to not just put in rewards, but put in things like their medical documents something like their banking or even things like Like estate, like I, I own a lot of estates.

How deeds, how, where do I put the deeds? How do we make, how do we bring in transparency into this space that it fosters that? And I believe today a lot of the things that you see in the, in the space, it's, I mean, it's nice and good. baby steps. We have to start somewhere to bring on these people easily and efficiency.

Efficiently as possible, right? Yeah. And so this, what we are working on today is a way to make that vision possible. Yeah. Not just here in the States, but also around the world. So today it might be an app. Today it might be like a. But tomorrow what I see is a product, not an app. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the way I look at it.

Julian: I love that. I love that. And I, I know we're coming close to the episode, but I always like to ask this one for selfish research, but also for my audience is whether it was early on or, or even now what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Valentine: Oh man. I have a ton. So, I recently read the code Start, let me pick this up so you see 'em, because I love these books so much, right?

I have, I have these books that I've been reading and I keep these straight, close by because they are the ones that have actually changed me in so many ways. Make Time by Jake Nap. This is, this is an amazing book, Jake. He's one of. I think early at the Google Ventures, j Jake and John Ky. So make time. Is that working backwards?

This is it's like early inside stories of aws, especially Amazon. Amazon called Prior. It's amazing. And then Andrew Chen decided to bust my head with The Cold Start Problem. I mean, I couldn't ask for three needs. Like anyone that wants to build a company or that is thinking about it or that has already started, needs to read these three books.

Julian: Incredible. I love that. Now we love to share this, these reading lesson and give our audience more and more insights, and I love to talk to founders and ask this question because, There's so many different ways or so many different backgrounds. Founders come from their experiences. It's like a melting pot of information.

And, and, and there's, it only really takes one or two sparks to start a fire. And, and whether it's not your, like you said, starting a business or whether you're running one now before we jump and before we go, I always like to give my my guests a chance to give us your plug. So where can we find you?

Where can we support, where can we connect? Where can we be a part of peep in its vision?  

Valentine: Oh well, I'm a very simple man, you can find me on LinkedIn Valentine Osakwe. Just feel free to go on LinkedIn, look for me there. Happy to connect with you, or you can also find me on Twitter. I v Valera like Valenti, v a l and then o d e r a H Valera that's book on my Instagram and on my every other, it's something easier I use almost.

So you can use it and find me on Twitter, on Instagram, maybe Facebook. I don't even know if, if I search that happen anymore, but yeah. So that's, those are some places you. Kind. And then you can also feel free to email me. I don't even if I'm allowed to put out emails here. Yeah, you can, of course, whatever you want.

But feel, feel free to send me if you're looking for the next best for the next thing or you're looking to work with me. Feel free to reach out to me at V O S A K W E P Dev dev feel free to email. I would love to chat with you. I would love to connect with amazing people who are interested in either joining or even more learning what about what I'm building and how they can be able to support, or how I can also support them on their journey as a founder.

So. That's that yeah, happy to help in any way I can.  

Julian: Yeah, no, thank you so much, Valentine. Not only for sharing your early story and, and kind of the antithesis behind the product, but where you currently are and, and the future vision, the, the challenges you face as a, as a founder and and all the information that, that you've gathered that's really inspired you.

So I hope you enjoyed yourself and, and thanks again for being on the show.  

Valentine: Thank you so much, Julian. This is amazing. It's, it's a pleasure. It's an honor. I, I always stay away from podcasts, , but this was, this was really nice because I just, I just felt like I had a conversation.  

Julian: Fantastic. I'd love to hear that. Well, until next time.  

Valentine: Thank you so much. Bye.