Roman Gonzalez is building Gardenio with the mission of empowering a generation of lifelong gardeners.
And in the age of quarantine and social distancing, growing food, getting away from screens, and getting dirty in the garden is even more important.
Roman is co-founder and CEO of Gardenio, a direct-to-consumer garden club—they send you all you need to grow herbs, along with an app and community to help you grow.
This is a unique hybrid approach of building a tech-enabled community and support system to help gardeners succeed in growing the herbs and veggies that they order online.
In this episode, Roman details his grassroots efforts to validate his business model, as well as:
The passion for the Gardenio brand, and its mission, is palpable as Roman shares his story.
Gen Furukawa: [00:01:25] all right. Thanks for joining the cart overflow podcast. My name is Gen and today I have Roman Gonzalez, founder of Gardenio and Roman, I thought you could maybe just start off with what Gardenio is?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:01:39] Yeah, absolutely. so I always like to start by saying that Gardenio is a mission is how do you empower a generation of lifelong gardeners and not just kind of push plants off a shelf like it's kind of has been, but how do you get people getting the benefits of growing over time and being successful?
And so the way we do that is with a new kind of direct to consumer garden club membership, right? So it's a membership model.
Every season, we send you everything you need to grow your own organic food at home. Right now it's mostly herbs going to branch into veggies and we have a mobile app to help you as you grow.
And, and you know, it's not just a, an add on, right. It actually gives you local as information in the future at all. help you identify and address issues in the garden and, and connect you to other people for support. And right now we actually offer one to one support. so the idea is helping people start to grow their own food and be successful and continue to reap the benefits of that over, you know their entire life.
Gen Furukawa: [00:02:33] Hopefully. Yeah. I think what's really unique about what you're doing is like the online to offline and yeah, kind of almost just a counterintuitive point of getting people to use an app, to help them grow better food and basically get off the screen. And I think now people are going stir crazy in the COVID lockdown.
There's no better time than now for what you're doing.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:03:02] Yeah, I appreciate you saying that I very much feel the same way and other people have resonated with it that it's I come from a tech background. I was, I was a tech marketer for about six years, been an, a user experience designer and a researcher for the past seven years.
And, you know, yeah, very, very techie. And it might been my co-founder is also a tech founder, but we both come from this perspective. we both come from this perspective of, you know, there's kind of almost too much tech in spaces like this, right. People are kind of trying to over-engineer the solution, you see these giant robots that cost thousands of dollars that it's like, we automate the gardening for you, or like even less expensive stuff.
And it's like, but it is very plastic heavy. And it's like, we do it all for you. And it's like, well, why. The reason people grow their own food is because it's deeply emotional. Right? A lot of people like to think it's functional. It's like, Oh, I just get, like, my food will be cheaper and it will be more delicious.
And my functional end will be in that. It's like, no, no, this is very much people's mental health, emotional health. the activity of doing it in and of itself. So there's like we have this really cool opportunity to use to not be the tech between you and and a plant. Like when that sensor and all the data, et cetera, but rather how do we use technology to support you and be the tech behind you?
helping facilitate that relationship with the plant. So for me, yeah, I love the way you put it. I think he really understands what we're doing.
Gen Furukawa: [00:04:18] Yeah. So can we go back to, to 2018? So if I'm correct, you've you started in March of 2018, right? You bootstrapped, you had this idea from born from your own frustrations.
I can't grow things nor can I, I have, I've tried. And now that we're actually both in Austin and we try to go hard or stuff, I'm still failing, but you tried to do it. I'd love to learn how you actually started. Building an eCommerce brand company, product bootstrapped. Because I think like that is hard. I think that's one of the big potential challenges of eCommerce is that it is very capital intensive.
So can you walk me through how you actually got off the ground and got your initial traction?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:05:01] Yeah, that's a great question. so we got into an accelerator actually in fall of 2017, but what was before we incorporated in 2018 and started selling boxes. And that was an accelerator called Divinc. it's for women and people of color founders, and it's an amazing program.
Some amazing people run it. And, they were kind of the first ones that took a big bet on us. And at the time we were just a tech play. We weren't even e-commerce at the time we were like, Hey, let's build this app that brings us all this information together. And then have, you know, down the line. We'll monetize that audience with this box.
Well in that process that people were in, we had capital factory mentors, accelerator in town and incubator in town. And so we I've had people say like flip that model on, you know, just show, you can make some money, then make the app later. So we ended up taking that approach, built out like a really lean prototype so that when we did our first pilot in March of 2018, It really was just like, all right, we'll just like grab a box.
And, you know, they put the stuff in the box and now going, we were, you know, hand delivering this thing. We, you know, we had small order quantities. And so I was just figuring out like, okay, they live here in Austin. They had to live here in Austin, was put together a Google map and we're just dropping it off.
And, you know, we were trying to get, try and get feedback from people, make sure the relationship was strong. You really have to overinvest, especially in those early customers. And so that was how we started. And then eventually we were kinda like, Hey, well, we can't keep hand-delivering this. We need to ship this.
So, so you, my background was not operations. And, and, and I think a lot of econ folks, you know, certain kinds of econ businesses, or many of them are a little more operations intensive than I think people really think when they get into it and there is like the dropshipping, path, which is, you know, much less so, but for us, we really wanted to have control over like, okay, we want to know the plans where they're coming from.
We want to know the soil and where it's coming from, our support into our market. And it's important to us ethically. Right. And so we just started to, you know, even the first plants that we bought, we just went to a retail garden center. It's bottom of full price. And in, in, you know, put them in the, put them in the boxes.
And, over time when we said we've got to ship this, we had to start developing a kind of box structure to ship the plants. Cause, especially with plants, right there, they're kind of perishable. They, you know, they can go bad if you, if you don't give them enough sun and whatnot. And so it's really like, how are we going to do this?
And so we went through all these box models. We bought so many boxes, so many sizes of boxes, we're testing everything. And, I remember, Up until really this, this spring, when we kind of launched our membership offering, we were taking these boxes, figuring out the structure and format. We were cutting them ourselves.
And so we had, you know, like up to 50 of these, like, you know, it was, it was depending on what we were shipping. It was like a small box, but I had two boxes inside, but you had to cut a diamond on the top of the bottom one. And the other one, you had to cut completely in half and to have a little you, and it was, Yeah.
So it was one of those things. It's like, it can't be, it can't actually be this hard, but it's like in the beginning when you're doing that proof of concept, like it is. And, so it was, it was a lot of really just exploring, experimenting, trying, and getting feedback. We held events where we had a bunch of people over.
We gave them drinks, we gave them food and we raised money for nonprofits and just got feedback.
Gen Furukawa: [00:08:13] So in, in the very beginning it was local. You were, you were doing events and, and it sounds like maybe word of mouth or even a friend's network to start in Austin with the driving.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:08:26] Yeah. W w when, the way we got those actual customers was really around, organic network.
just basically telling everybody in the world we possibly could. At the time, the team is quite small. It's still quite small. It was different, smaller it was just kind of just me. So when you're, when you're a solo founder, initially it wasn't time, trying to get the word out and you don't have a ton of money behind you to like, run these, you know, 30 K you know, Facebook ad campaigns or anything.
you end up just, just really like, it's you all your hustle right in. And so it was just like, I would go to events. You had set up tables and we didn't have a sign or anything. We throw it on a sheet of paper, Gardenio buy your own plans. Then you have like a little boxes and it got more sophisticated over time, you know, especially in the, but it was like field marketing.
it was word of mouth it's, kind of organic social, And over time would, as we got a little more sophisticated, we would start to, do more things like reaching out to communities online, right? So more like social outreach now, we're at a place where we do more email marketing and, and have email drip campaigns architected.
we are, we do a lot more press outreach than we did before. And we've seen some success with that over the last few months. But in those initial days, it really is just scream as loud as he can to as many people who would hear you. And, just to, just to get people, buying it, get some feedback.
Gen Furukawa: [00:09:45] Cause your, your main goal at that point, and was validated that people were willing to pay to receive plants or seeds in the mail, right?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:09:54] Yeah, absolutely. And so we do all live plans, so we didn't do any seeds. And that was one of the things that we actually got the best feedback on because they, you know, people would open up the box and I'd be like, Oh my God, this smells amazing. We, we didn't, I don't even think they knew they were doing it, but open up the box, we did some, you know, saw people open it up.
They would lean in because they wanted to smell. And it's this really lovely learning like that. It's just, so to that end, it's not enough just to like, get the customers or prove that they'll pay. It's like, for us, eventually we went to a retention model. And so it's like, are they going to enjoy it? What are the questions?
What's clear, what's unclear. What do they like, what do they want to see? And so really trying to learn from those early customers was super important for us and still is right.
Gen Furukawa: [00:10:37] Just so I'm clear. Your model is basically the first order is like 70 the dollars. And then you get a pot and the dirt or the plant and then thereafter on a quarterly basis is $40.
Is that right?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:10:51] So the first season is $75. We do a bunch of discounts on that, but that sends you three plant kits. So in every plant kit, it comes with a right size container. And in this case, it's small format, kind of six inch container made out of rice holes, no plastic involved at all. we send you a live organic plant, right for your season, right?
You don't have to do all the research to figure out what I want and is, will get us going to send you what's right. We send you the right kind of soil to go with that specifically, this specific kind of plant in the amount that you need it. And, and mulch, a lot of people don't like, once you get into the gardening space, you love mulch.
You don't know it yet, but you will. And, so we give you all those supplies. That's all you need. And we give you the care guy. So you get three of those, your first season, every season after for 45, we will send you a new plan. and are you doing a new plant kit? And so as part of this, you get something called infinite lives.
So if your plant dies for any reason, other than that season, we will send you a new one. And yeah, this is big for me philosophically, but. because everybody's like, well, what did I go to the plant? Or what about, and that keeps so many people from getting to experience the joy of growing. And in for me, I was like, well, I mean, they should part of being a gardener.
Is that just that you're growing something, right? Like plants dying is part of the course of things. So how do we reframe plant death help make sure again, that the people are like continuing to grow and it's all that plus the app access, yeah, that's kinda what you get and you can be a member for a year, five years, 10 years in, you know, or one season, whatever works for you.
Right. So the season is three months. Yeah. Okay.
Gen Furukawa: [00:12:28] And then the app is the education and then the support and the guidance that, here's what you do. Here's how you take care of it. And then kind of like some trouble quote, unquote, troubleshooting to get through. The challenges of beginning gardening.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:12:43] Yeah. A hundred percent right now we actually do one-to-one support.
So you said, or you can take a picture or photo video, anything like that. You send it to us and say, Hey, what's going on here? We get back, say, Hey, we think it might be this or this. Here's how you do it. And so it's, it's, it's pretty one-to-one right now we're building tools that automate a lot of that troubleshooting process.
And that, that helped people just diagnose without having to contact us. And eventually whenever we launched the community, the way that we want to launch it, it's, it's going to be like, you're able to ask your community of other gardeners. Right? We don't pretend that we are, we know everything the best, right.
cause we really want to leverage these existing communities across the country who will, are already helping people. Right. Just because they want to spread them out and watch them how to grow food. And, and so that's a huge part of our longterm strategy of like, how do you amplify the good work people are already doing?
so even within the application and so that people can really be successful again, continue to want to grow.
Gen Furukawa: [00:13:42] One of the things I think that you do really well, and I think it speaks of the authenticity and that you are the only, you are the persona that you're serving as a millennial, getting into gardening is the storytelling and the mission.
And I think that resonates in the social, whether it's the, the YouTube videos that you do and the Instagram. And I think that there's some level of humor and candidness candor in there. Yeah. So what's your approach to copywriting and storytelling as you reflect the brand online?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:14:16] Yeah, I love that question one.
Thank you for watching those videos. I'm slightly mortified, but once you know, I know you emphasize it because it's at a couple points in the homepage, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. yeah, I actually think that's a really big, I'm a big believer in people don't just buy what you do. They buy, why you do it and, and, and whatnot.
And there's, you know, at our loftiest point, we say that like, Gardanio is not. Yeah, it's not even just this mission. It's sort of, it's, it's a perspective on what it means to be alive in 2020. And that sounds very big. and I was a philosophy major. I'm entitled to that way of thinking about things, but it is just like, you know, in a world where we're so tech saturated and everything is there to make us feel bad. And there are systems of oppression and injustice meant to keep people down. It's it feels like we can't have any control over our lives are like the awful things that were going on and listen to all those things are part of what it means to be alive.
But yeah, part of what it means to be alive is that you get to have this relationship with the nature and with other people and with yourself. And I think that those are the things that have made people happy for yeah. Thousands of years, as long as we've had, you know, millennia, right? Like, as long as you've been conscious and those things have been there the whole time, it's not getting deeper into a screen.
Right. It's and so in some ways we're, we're reminder of that, that we had what we needed all along. It was always here. and yeah, and so because of that, like, we really were people, let me, I try and tell that story because I really believe it. It's like, and I'm glad that you feel it's authentic because it is, and you know, I don't do anything in life because I'm like, Oh, it's gonna make me a million dollars. I can get cool cars or something like that. and so I think those are important messages and I think that that's what we find resonating with people.
And it's like, even if like, yes, we have this product that we think solves problem, but like, I am so interested in brands that are less interested in like pushing a unit and more interested in like, how can we shift culture, right? How can we bring? And that, and that's why I think that business opportunity is big too.
It's like, how do you reincorporate the ability to grow things and the connection to plants, into the fabric of society and the way that it was, you know, many years ago, when everybody was growing some percentage of their own food, And so that's, it feels big enough to be interesting. So you asked about the approach to it.
I think that one it's, you know, I don't know, looking inwardly and like, why, why do, why do I do anything right. I think, Oh, that comes from, self-introspection thinking about what I value in how I want to run this company. Right. And so when I start from there, I'm just kind of like, okay, well, like how do I start to codify that message?
In, in ways that people can understand or that are, that are repeatable, that are not moving, just talking for 45 minutes, about how much I like basil. which has really been the problem. It's like, okay, how do we hone it, hone in on it. And, in just trying to repeat those things, we're constantly exploring different aspects of what we believe, right? Whether it's our belief in building a diverse company from the ground up, that's been huge in terms of getting people to help. and at the early stage in the company, right? People like the idea of working for a founder of color and a female founder. And, so we've been able to get fantastic talent that way.
on another end, What's been working really well for us right now is talking about talking more about what we believe, which is that the, the future of, of the, the growing space is not more tech. It's more people flow forward. Right. And I just think there's a cultural appetite for messages like that. I think about it almost like a politician, right?
Like what do people want to hear? And can we reasonably deliver on. And, I did learn a lot about messaging from working on the Obama campaign. It's 2012. you'd get these messaging points and, from high on up and whatnot. And it was just all about like, how do we keep it simple and keep it real and earnest and to be fair.
Cause again, I want to answer your question about process. I think we're still figuring out how to codify that, like it's, it's been a little qualitative in that, for instance, Chelsea, She's a software developer was an art school grad. And, but she gets it incredibly right. She's got the, she's got the lighthearted tone.
she, she's very good at puns. and she, she also knows how to be earnest. And so some of it's just kind of like, I can tell that you understand what I'm trying to do, right. That it's, we have codified it in other ways, which is that like, it's purposeful, but playful. And like, we were serious about the things we're serious about, like, about injustices and, and about, getting inclusion. But we also know that like, Hey, we're like, we're dealing with plants. Like this is, we're not here to like feed the entire world. That's I don't, that's not part of necessarily part of our mission, even if feeding people as a, as a consequence of it.
it is it's spreading this joy. And again, in anxious times when everybody is sort of like made to feel bad. Yeah. Message of like, Hey, things are awful, but basil tastes amazing. Well, that kind of encompasses our entire aesthetic in like one sentence. I it's, it's just trying to be weird and express that in as many ways as possible.
And you're willing to take the risks that like, Hey, I may look dumb in this video and, or this may not come off the way I want, but let's just keep putting it out there. And, and if at the end of the day, Like, that's what people take away from it. And they, nobody buys another Gardenio box, but like people are moved by that message or they find connection with it.
Then I still consider that. It's good.
I
Gen Furukawa: [00:19:52] think that's a powerful thing to keep in mind and I think it's come to the forefront now. Everybody's in coronavirus. I'm in a bedroom now recording this and it's like, Oh, okay. People are willing to, to accept shortcomings or not a super high polished high production quality video, if it is authentic.
And so yeah, you look silly, but you're putting yourself out there. And I think it's those incremental steps towards where your, your big vision is of combining the online and offline. And I think that moves people.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:20:22] I'll say one other thing on that, which is that like, it's so easy, especially in direct to consumer to create like a Ooh, weird garden brand, but we say crap, you know what I mean?
Like it's just like, we're edgy, we're for millennials. And, and granted I am a millennial. yeah, I make it by a few . I think I promise. But it's like, how do you, you see everybody like zigging this way? So like, how do you use zag? And so anytime that. I do have like an awful idea or somebody like Roman, that's ridiculous.
I'm just like, all right, let's just go for it. And like, we're early, we can afford to do those things. And so I, I feel like if there's any advice in what I'm saying, it's, as long as you're not like a racist bigoted person, then, I think that you can sort of say like, what feels real and honest to me and what is my weird.
In in like, how do I leverage that weird. So I don't just sound like every other droning company out there that's like, Ooh, you know, it's good for the environment. And we donate this for that. And you know, but it's really just, I don't know, like a shelf, you know what I mean? yeah. Right.
Not to disparage any shelf companies.
Oh no.
I own all of the direct to consumer shelves to be fair.
Yeah, longterm organic, organic growth, and really for direct consumer companies who have again for the past 10 years, just been saying like paid social, which is all gonna be Facebook ads, Instagram ads, et cetera.
Like that's no longer tenable. The first wave of D to C brands was able to do that because they had a lot of organic reach via their social media platforms. when, when you would see brands in your Facebook feed and, But now we've, we've talked to, you know, CEO plated. We've talked to plenty of customer acquisition folks from major to these two brands.
And it's just, it's more complicated. And the onus on brands like Gus is how do you, how do you not put all your eggs in one paid marketing basket and really diversify, and, and do something unique that lowers your customer acquisition costs over time.
Gen Furukawa: [00:22:24] I think those constraints and in this case, Monetary constraints really do drive creativity.
And so yeah, some of the videos that you're putting out there, you might even do it on your iPhone, edited on GarageBand or whatever, and put it out there, but it works. And again, we're going back to authenticity and how it works. Yeah. So just to clarify, and I could, I didn't look at the Facebook ads library, are you running paid ads or are you really just going on referral and video at this point?
Roman Gonzalez: [00:22:53] Right. And so we made a D. We made a very, we made a decision to not focus on paid ads. One, cause we don't have a ton of money. Gotta be rolling us. we're, pre-funding, we're raising a pre seed round now. but aside from that it's cause we really wanted the growth that we have to be, largely organic word of mouth.
And referral-based. And we wanted to really focus with our first, sort of cohorts of, of members on retaining them and on, really kind of doing things that don't scale in terms of surveys and, and support. And, and then when we're able to raise enough money to properly run some meaningful learning campaigns, then, Then we'll, we'll what absolutely put a lot of eggs in that basket in the beginning.
Like I said, I think that's a risk you take in the beginning, but I think it's, it's worth it for how quickly you learn. So, yeah.
Yeah, we would just to be quickly, we have run tests in the past. but it really is one of those things. I'd be curious on your opinion on this at some point, but, I think that under a certain amount, there's only so much you can learn or that you're learning is very slow.
So for instance, we ran a campaign that like never got out of learning mode. So I mean, the rates that we saw were higher than we would have wanted on a bigger campaign. They indicated good things for when we got out of learning mode. But we just didn't spend enough to really, to really, to yeah. To really learn.
Gen Furukawa: [00:24:14] Right. That's one of those things where if you're in your first cohort of your subscription model, you don't really maybe have enough data to know what a lifetime value is. And after how many months somebody will churn out. So I think having that as your lifetime value metric, without that you're shooting in the dark a little bit,
Yeah, challenging.
but I would like to ask a little bit about the community and how you've approached retention, because I think I've spoken with other people and it is a very unique and prudent decision to build a community. I think that's your defensible moat in addition to the product and the marketing, of course, but having a community of people who are Gardanio and rely on the app and the community in order to.
Expand their knowledge and have that network. I think that's, that's really smart. But what have you learned thus far in terms of communication outreach to keep people engaged from quarter to quarter? Because that might be a long time in order to say like, yeah, I'm getting value. I want to pay again.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:25:18] Yeah.
and so the people who have, so our first season had 57% retention. and in the meal kit space for comparison, it's usually about 10 to 15%. And we had a 50% retention, like a blueprint. Yeah. And those are publicly available. so we were really pleased to be, you know, we were targeting for 52% and even I was kind of like, well, I don't know we're gonna hit that.
And, and, and so, but we got 57. We were like, Oh man, this was really great. We're doing something well, I think part of what we, part of the reason that was easy again, because we really focused on the customer service and support and, and we, weren't just sort of like, alright, you know, to hell with these customers, let's go get new ones.
We were really trying to be there for them. I think ones that didn't, It's because we're such a limited bandwidth team that, you know, we didn't get to get to some support things on time. Right. and so we were a little slow. Some of them, they were operational issues like, the, you know, the, the, the bag of soil opened up because we didn't close it properly.
And so they're sort of upset about that. And then one of their plants dies and they don't renew infinite. They don't use it for their lives. And so there's sort of like, Oh, well, you know, the plane died, you know, I'm no good at this. And so, I think as we scale and we're able to bring more people on, we're going to be able to execute our strategy of doing more proactive outreach, helping folks that way and, continuing to speak to them in a way that meets them where they are, it's calling, and then that's, in, in compassionate and helpful. And I think that that will transition over time to then be, Oh, I'm a part of this community and this community is really cool.
So you're playing, of other gardeners, I'm getting, I'm getting joy out of coming in and seeing what they're doing. See what they're is. Well, and also what's going poorly for them because it's like, we don't want to, I just feel like. Part of what we're doing is a little bit like a social media platform.
And so, I think similarly to like Instagram, that you are, they've been these reports on Tik Tok, but they would like actually sensor out people who were like not conventionally attractive or something. So it's always focused on this like idealism and just like this perfect life. And, and one of the approaches that we're taking to the community aspect of what we're doing is showing like, Hey, it doesn't always work out for everybody and we're all learning.
Gen Furukawa: [00:27:25] I want to be respectful of your time, Roman and. I guess if you could share your, your one takeaway as you're in this transition, you're growing, you're getting product market fit. You're working into this retention model and basically getting traction as you're going into your next fundraising and growing the company.
What are you focusing on? Whether it's building awareness or focusing on converting more leads into customers, the retention part, can you kind of explain how you're approaching this next step of growth? Absolutely. so we're still
Roman Gonzalez: [00:28:00] very much focusing on retaining the members that we have, if we're able to continue to show strong retention numbers, then that, speaks very well for our fundraising, which gives us that longterm, yeah.
Longterm ability. but I think, also continuing just to focus on making sure that we're learning. So in every department, like I treat the entire company and I tell everybody like that everybody's working on two week experiments. you know, every sprint. And so whether you're a developer, trying to figure out some problems, around a feature of your building, whether you're a marketer running small, like a partnership campaign, the idea is that as long as we're continuing to learn, and obviously we want it to be successful, but it won't always be that then we're, then we're a company who learns quickly.
We can adjust quickly. And we can just be smarter than the rest of the folks who are just now getting into the space and figuring it all out. so certainly on retention, but also on continuing to learn, so that, you know, we can, we can execute our, our very best at, at what we're trying to do. yeah.
And I think, Aside from aside from that. And when you look at it, the next stage of growth, it's certainly looking at how do we, how do we get the resources and also start to identify the talent, that can, that can come on board. Like how do we meet the folks that, have either done something like this before, or have the hunger and energy.
And so like, so like identifying talent for me as a CEO is one of those incredibly fun things. And so I'm getting to meet new people all the time, to be like, yeah. Do you, do you get the vibe? Do you get the voice? And do you, do you have a strong idea of what's coming next? So that's certainly, you know, in the next six to nine months, some broad focus right now.
Awesome. Roman, it's been awesome. Really learned a lot, and I appreciate your transparency and insight and thoughtfulness. What's the best way that people can get in touch with you and learn more about Gardenio. Yeah, definitely. So everybody can go to growgardenio.com if you're in Texas, you could buy a box.
It's very easy to do, and get your first, first seasons membership. Otherwise, we do make a bunch of, funky, weird little videos on Instagram at growgardenio. and as for me, I'm easy to reach. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. so just search Roman Gonzalez or growgardenio, you'll find me.
And, and once you follow me, you will. Probably wish you, you heard less. Cause I'm very, I'm very vocal and, and try and be very helpful in the community, especially for founders of color. So if any of those are out there, I'm always have to be a resource.
Gen Furukawa: [00:30:19] Yeah. I'm happy to follow you. And it's, it's really
Roman Gonzalez: [00:30:23] great, Roman Gonzalez thank you
Gen Furukawa: [00:30:25] so much.
Roman Gonzalez: [00:30:26] Thank you, man. I really appreciate the time.