How I Became...

Kelly Yefet (00:01.22)
Brett, welcome to the How I Became podcast. I am so excited to have you on and have the chance to tell your story and Latero's story, how it came to be. I always love to start the podcast with a little bit of your story, how you got started in entrepreneurship and how you started to build the company as well.

Brett Willms (00:21.843)
Awesome. I'm excited to be here too.

Kelly Yefet (00:26.308)
Yes, please.

Brett Willms (00:28.627)
So how I became an entrepreneur, I'm going to start really early. I used to go on family trips from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in the middle of the prairies. It was about a six hour car ride. And my mom used to play a game with me. And the game was try to imagine things that should be there in the environment that aren't there.

And so over time, I developed a practice of getting really excited about playing the game of what could I invent to make the world better. And it could be incredibly small things, like there should be another light, the stop light that tells you something different and helps you out to, of course, as I got older, really big things. And so I think from very early on,

coming up with ideas was a formative practice. And so that's where I think everything started. And to this day, I love coming up with new ideas more than anything else, thousands of ideas. So that was kind of part one. And then part two, my very first business was my mom. There's a lot of my mom in this.

My very first business was we used to create crafts at a consignment craft store.

In our neighborhood and my mom got me started making Christmas ornaments Pac -man Christmas ornaments so I buy felt my mom would buy felt for me my mom would buy felt and all the supplies for me and This is how I made my money. I would cut the felt out add the eyes glue them on Put the stuffing in and I would sell little pac -man Christmas ornaments and I would walk down to the shop with her We would put them in the store and then about a week later. We would come back and find out hey how many of these pac -mans were sold?

Brett Willms (02:20.229)
And then I would get my money and then my mom would teach me how to figure out how much money I could keep and how much money I needed to spend on more materials to make more Pac -Man. So one thing led to another. I went from Pac -Man to reindeer made out of clothespins. And that really was my first, my first foray into entrepreneurship. And then really I never stopped.

Kelly Yefet (02:46.5)
It's funny, I have a bit of a parallel story when I, not as young, but when I was coming out of university and I was still figuring out what to do with my life, my dad and a buddy of his were joking around about, we have some crap in our warehouse. If you can take that and flip it, you can keep the profits. And it started with just a couple, like pairs of socks and then, you know, some makeup and...

I just kept finding bigger and bigger deals and I grew this liquidation company. So a little bit different, but it started with this like, help us clean out our warehouse and you can keep the profits into really like getting that entrepreneurship energy going and seeing, you know, playing with all the ideas within it. But you mentioned your mom and it sounds like she had a really big impact on your thought process and how you got involved in the startup world. So beyond...

Brett Willms (03:24.019)
amazing.

Kelly Yefet (03:44.612)
You know, the game that she played, it sounded like she was kind of teaching you problem solving and innovation from a really young age. So are there kind of like a theme of your parents influencing you and your journey from a young age in other ways?

Brett Willms (04:02.931)
Yeah, I think that that's totally fair to say. My parents are entrepreneurs to this day. For me, I didn't have a job until I was 35. Everything was entrepreneurial. My folks had a little souvenir business in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that grew bigger. Eventually we had a little restaurant, gas station, and gift shop on the side of the highway. So I really didn't know anything else. Everyone around our home was an entrepreneur.

and everything was entrepreneurial. And so improving ideas, coming up with new ideas to make our way in the world. And so I think that, you know, what I say, yeah, I just didn't know anything else. And it was always trying to turn something that was available to me into something to sell or something to grow.

Kelly Yefet (04:54.628)
It's such an interesting way of growing up and really fun and again raised in a very similar fashion. Once you started your own company, did you find that you were missing elements of business knowledge or frameworks or ways of thinking that you wish you had gone more corporate first and then back? Like I know that you were at Indeed for a while. So how was that?

journey of like going getting some of the corporate experience and bringing them back and leveraging both like how did you play around with those that experience and do you think it was really valuable or do you think you could have you know started later on and had the success with the businesses that you've had success with without the corporate experience just by having that entrepreneurial upbringing.

Brett Willms (05:42.419)
Yeah, great question.

And so I'll rewind a little bit before Indeed.com. And so I've been an inventor my whole life. And the first corporate job I had was when I was 35. Before that, I had a little online market research company that's still in Canada today. And then I started one of Canada's first online advertising networks. And we sold that to a Canadian media company when I was in my late 20s. And at that time, I was all gray.

Kelly Yefet (05:46.66)
Hmm.

Brett Willms (06:13.573)
all ideas, just trying to figure things out as I went. And there was definitely pieces missing. And so the opportunity interestingly came up. A friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, Eli Singer, who you know, reached out one day and said, hey, Google's recruiting for basically the CMO of Canada, the Canada Marketing Manager role.

I think you should interview for it. And I'm like, my gosh, no, I'm a black sheep. I've never had a job before. And he's like, no, I think the recruiter is going to want to talk to you. I said, well, OK, I'll take the meeting. And one thing led to another. And I wind up in these Google interviews. And we were just about to start another ad network right when real time bidding and programmatic was coming out. And I got through the interviews, and they offered me the job. So I had to make a choice. Would I start the next ad network?

or would I join Google? And in the end, after a lot of sleepless nights, I decided to join Google because I wanted to see what real leadership, what real large business looks like. You know, my small companies that I have built only had handfuls of people before I sold them. So, yeah, so I joined Google and there's so much that I've learned at Google. The...

I'm thinking about the things I learned. It was funny, when I got there, I didn't really know what strategic meant. Everyone would say, hey, we need to make a strategic decision. I'm like, my gosh, what does that mean? And eventually, I think that's one of the biggest things that I learned at Google. For me, strategic means to have the clarity to understand what's the most important thing for you to focus on.

the insight to the insight and understanding in order to make a decision that if you have that clarity, the decision is very easy. But without that decision, it's very easy to start focusing on things that you that will essentially not wind up with the outcomes that you're looking for because you're so inundated all the time.

Brett Willms (08:32.371)
especially as your company or your job grows. There could be a thousand things for you to focus on in a thousand little mini decisions, but if you're not focusing on the right things and making the right decisions, that's really the only path for maximum growth. If you're focusing on the right things, you're making the wrong decisions. Of course, that's terrible, right? So we're focusing on the wrong things, making the right decision that doesn't get you anywhere either. And so this just idea of finding clarity.

to grow the business. I think that was one of the biggest things that I learned at Google. And then of course, you know, in corporate, you're working for a company like Google, you have so many opportunities for people to grow you. So like, if I think about the kind of leader I was when I started at Google with one person on my team, and then eventually dozens, and then eventually when I got here to the US, you know, 75 plus folks in my organizations, leadership takes a lot of training.

And Google gives you a ton of real training, of course, on the job, like learning the fire, but also courses, and they invest in you. So I think that that whole experience was incredible. You know, eventually.

I started in Canada, leading the Canadian marketing team, and then eventually came here to lead small business marketing for Americas. And that was brand, customer acquisition, and retention for all of Google's B2B products, Google Ads, YouTube for small business, Google Analytics, and Search and Maps, which we renamed to Google My Business. And for a young Canadian small town boy, that was super stretchy.

Kelly Yefet (10:14.724)
Yeah, starting with selling Pac -Man at Christmas markets to that. What is it that you think Eli saw that he made that recommendation, knowing that you are through and through entrepreneurial and then made a suggestion to go to, you know, a big corporate job, although Google's techie and all this stuff, but it's still the corporate side of things. Do you think it was qualities that he saw in you or knowing

Brett Willms (10:19.251)
Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (10:44.292)
what your long -term trajectory was and he thought you would learn a lot. Like, I'm curious to know why that suggestion for you because you were growing your own businesses and, you know, working with building your own teams and stuff like that.

Brett Willms (10:59.411)
That's an awesome question. I think, well first of all, I think it's really important to have friends that naively believe in you. So that's one, so pushing me over the edge to go for it, you know. I think Eli...

Kelly Yefet (11:08.068)
Definitely.

Brett Willms (11:13.555)
recognized what I think is my superpower is ideation and being innovative. And I think he connected that with Google. Like, hey, Willms here's the Google super innovative company. You're super innovative. You should go and talk to them. And then I think there was some practical insight there too from Eli in that, you know, at the time, not very many people understood digital marketing.

And so I had an online market research company and then this online ad network. And even though I knew virtually nothing about marketing at the time, I literally was reading a university textbook on marketing before I went to the interview to understand what a marketing program was. I was one of the only people in Canada, I think, that...

was procuring digital banners and selling digital banners, so understanding the whole digital marketing space. It was so new at the time, much like AI is right now. It was the Wild West and I just happened to be one of the people that was in the middle of the chaos.

Kelly Yefet (12:17.668)
It's so cool to know, and we'll get into Latron a bit, but it's really cool to see that you're such an early adopter and grower of the industry when digital marketing was getting off the ground and doing something quite similar on the AI front. And I wonder if you talk to your, you know, think about your mom or give her credit to, she really instilled in you from the beginning, like where are areas that have like...

big black holes that you can fill and build things around because it seems like that's been a bit of a theme in your career. And I wonder in some of the other ventures that you, that you built, I know you built them before you did a lot before even 35. Sorry. What some of those other gaps in the market that you identified and built off of, throughout your career, because it, it seems really fascinating that you've identified, you continue to identify problems and.

build businesses around that.

Brett Willms (13:14.739)
Hmm.

Yeah, that might be the silver thread through my whole career. I think that, you know, funny when we built the digital ad network in Canada, it was exactly that. It was basically playing the game that my mom and I used to play together. And that was at the time.

the digital, you know, banners in the US were a giant thing. You know, Disney was selling banners, they were advertising networks. In Canada, we only had the largest publishers selling banners and they were at $20 cost per thousand. This is one of the metrics we used at the time. Now everything's based on a click, but, or a conversion. So...

I was wondering, I got up one day and I was on these US websites and I was like, nobody's advertising the Canadian companies on these US websites. I'm like, what are they doing with all of the banners? So I started calling them up and saying, hey, can I buy your Canadian geo -targeted ad inventory from you? And eventually I started getting some people that said yes. And what I think that was really interesting about starting that company, because you always need, you need a little bit of luck and you need to be incredibly scrappy to start anything.

even later in your career. And I eventually negotiated with these US websites and the cool thing, the opportunity was, which was a bit of luck, was they didn't really...

Brett Willms (14:37.875)
want to sell their Canadian inventory. So I was able to buy it at like, you know, 10 cents on the dollar because they weren't doing anything with it. And then the only thing that they wanted me to do, because they didn't know who I was, I had to prepay for them. And so with that little knowledge, I started calling Canadian advertisers.

and saying, hey, I've got this ad network. And of course, at the time, I really didn't have much of anything other than the US website's blessings to put their logos into PowerPoint. And when I asked if I could use their brand at the time, they're like, sure, kid, do whatever you want. Come back to me when you have money to buy our ads. So sure enough, I did. I had some really big publishers on my PowerPoint at the time. And you know.

obsessive cold calling and getting rejection after rejection and hang up after hang up. The perseverance eventually led to one person saying yes. And so they sent me a check. And then I grabbed that check and then I sent half of it to the US publisher and kept the other half put in the bank. And that's where that's where performer media was born. And it was really funny, you know, at the time, maybe starting in my early 20s, the bank was wondering what I was doing because I was walking down the street.

and going into the bank and you know depositing $300 ,000 checks and Literally, they called me in and I had to have a whole meeting with them to prove to them I wasn't doing something sketchy because they just couldn't figure out you know what we were what we were all doing But yeah, that's that's the same For me, it's always the same and I think for for entrepreneurs now nowadays, I think it's even harder and

Kelly Yefet (16:07.972)
Wow.

Brett Willms (16:21.971)
Sometimes when I think about ideas, I feel like I'm one of those raptors from Jurassic Park, like in a cage, but in this sense, maybe you're on the outside of the cage and you're tapping on all of the points around an industry to find out where it might sound a little hollow or where there might be a tiny gap. And then you need to zero right in on that tiny gap because things are quite closed. There's so many people with so many amazing ideas. You have to find that little point and get in there and open it up.

Kelly Yefet (16:46.372)
Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (16:51.94)
I like that analogy a lot. Like hearing the hollow taps is really interesting. So you mentioned scrappiness, a little bit of luck, a little bit of upbringing, I'll throw in maybe a little delusion are all things that contributed to your success. When you look back, cause I wanna look forward and talk about growing Laetro in the beginning. When you look back, what do you think has contributed?

Brett Willms (17:09.235)
Mm -hmm.

Kelly Yefet (17:21.412)
to your success and getting you to where you are today because even if we just think before 35 or early 20s, like you already had built really successful companies and you've done a lot. So you, and you continue to do that, which is impressive. What, what's gotten you there?

Brett Willms (17:41.715)
Hmm. So I think it's two things. And the first is, you know, maybe the fourth power for people to think about that I think about a lot is, you know, I sometimes laugh when people say here in the valley, they'll say, Hey, you need to fail fast.

I'm like, yeah, of course, you need to risk a little bit, see if something works, then grow from there. That part's easy. Anyone can fail fast. I think that the hard part is being able to fail time after time after time and still brush yourself off and get up. And I think if you talk to any successful entrepreneur, it's really the emotional resilience of failure because that's actually...

the practice of you iterating towards your idea that's going to work. And I had never heard from any entrepreneur that they just woke up, had an idea, and it took off. People talk about pivots too, and sometimes that's a bad word. But I feel like pivoting is essential to growing your business and actually evolving your idea until you get.

that point of clarity and you see the whole molecule working because when you start with an idea there's so many unknowns and as you start to be brave enough to build your idea these unknowns start to be realized with some data and deeper understanding and you're like it doesn't actually work that way so you have to

I'll use the word adapt instead of pivot. You have to adapt multiple times, sometimes hundreds or thousands of many decisions as you zero in on the exact product that will have product market fit. I think people are scared and fail often because they're not willing to change their idea on the fly.

Kelly Yefet (19:36.58)
Why use the term adapt instead of pivot? And I always think of pivoting as believing in the problem versus falling in love with the solution. Like I've always thought of it as a, not just to pivot to pivot, but if there's a real reason to tweak your business, but curious your perspective on that. Cause I haven't heard someone say pivot is a quote unquote bad word.

Brett Willms (19:48.755)
Mm -hmm.

Brett Willms (20:02.931)
I think that pivot and maybe it's changed, but pivot here, I feel like in the Valley for a long time with VCs was a bad word. Like, hey, we invested in you doing this, but now you're doing this. And I think if it's radically different than where you started, that makes sense. But I also believe that by the time you adapt,

Kelly Yefet (20:17.196)
Yes.

Brett Willms (20:27.251)
know a few times you might also be over in that place so you needed to pivot. So I think you know if we're being honest with ourselves pivoting and adapting are the same and crucial for success like for you to get to where you want to go.

Kelly Yefet (20:31.94)
Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (20:45.252)
Yeah, that's interesting perspective as well, because I would think of the VC investing in solving the problem versus how you're solving it. But I see what you're saying in that they don't want you to totally change course because then where did their money go or what are they investing in at that point? So very interesting. Building the business. So I want to hear a bit about.

the idea for a Laetro, maybe an explanation of what it is and where you see it going with, you know, the hot topic of AI right now.

Brett Willms (21:20.819)
Okay, yeah, that's great. And just before I start, I wanna add one other thing that I would love to share with folks that are listening to this. And that is your ability to get up every single morning, even if you have a full -time job, and repeat that every day. It's about that.

that maniacal persistence and rhythm for making tiny steps towards your goal or towards that dream of starting something. If you were to ask me, what's the number one thing that I would recommend for people who want to start a business? It would be that daily rhythm with your co -founder. If you can do it by yourself, great. I think that at least for me, I always need some people around me because you need that like naive belief in yourself and that camaraderie and like,

and that energy to build. But yeah, it's a very, yeah, the constant rhythm over a long period of time that will get you to where you want to go. One day you just wake up and you're like, my gosh, I'm already on the first crest of this mountain. I can't believe it. And then suddenly you're like, I might be able to go to the next crest of this next bigger mountain. Because that rhythm creates...

belief in yourself and belief in or basically real progress towards some goal that used to feel really far out. And there's so many paths that kind of for me, I'm a total nerd. I think about the Lord of the Rings when Frodo is walking through the swamp and like this each step is really hard, but as long as you...

Kelly Yefet (22:53.572)
Hehehe

Brett Willms (23:06.995)
take one step in front of the other every day, eventually you do get to where you want to go. So the resilience plus that rhythm.

Kelly Yefet (23:13.572)
What do you do or what habits have you picked up to get that rhythm going when you're stuck in that mud?

Brett Willms (23:23.942)
And gosh, that's a great question.

Brett Willms (23:30.995)
For me, I have some funny things. I love listening to music, like uplifting music, because it's the emotional energy that you need to put that one step in front of the other. So I'll put on headphones and just find a song that really gets me going. That's one. The other, I think, is to put that meeting on every day. Like you have, even before you start, before you have money, before you have customers.

If you have that meeting in your calendar every day, first thing in the morning, that is your instantiating energy to get through. And just like that's the one thing you can miss so many things, but don't miss that meeting that starts your day every day. And that's especially true if you have a full -time job. To get something going, you have to give your idea the energy first, in my opinion, before you give your job.

the rest of the energy.

Kelly Yefet (24:31.428)
when you were...

When you were working, did you ever start a project or a company on the side? Like, did you ever do the full time with a side hustle?

Brett Willms (24:44.851)
And always that I don't think there's ever been a time in my career when I didn't have some idea that I was baking either that I believed I would start or I just loved the the practice and hanging out with friends to think about starting it. And so for me, and I'm OK, I love ideas so much. I'm OK if I come up with ideas and spend some time on them and they never come to fruition. But yes, always. Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (24:47.716)
All of it.

Kelly Yefet (25:04.004)
Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (25:11.492)
Yeah, interesting. I think that's, it's a interesting balance of like having the ideas, but then actually choosing which ones to execute on. Because every, you know, not sorry, not everyone is an ideas person. I'm not an ideas person, but I love working on the idea and bring helping, you know, founders bring things to life.

Brett Willms (25:24.979)
Mm -hmm.

Kelly Yefet (25:40.548)
But when I talk to these founders, I see that their brains are exploding with a million ideas. And it's like, you got to choose, you know, you got to work on the one that you're focused on. So do you find that hard to like not to stay really focused on, you know, your main project and the side hustle or the idea and, you know, the thing that's bringing in the income or do you, does your brain just explode and that's how you operate.

Brett Willms (26:04.051)
My brain's always exploding. I do think it's really hard for anyone to start a business while they're at work, but it always starts that way. I think very few people can go straight into starting a company because you need money. Can you ask me that question again? I feel like I lost the thread.

Kelly Yefet (26:05.636)
Okay.

Kelly Yefet (26:23.332)
I was just asking how you keep yourself motivated with having the full time job and creating ideas or building something on the side. But we can even evolve that into how you got Latros started, if it was started as a side project or a full time.

Brett Willms (26:40.499)
Yeah. Okay.

yeah, yeah, let's talk about Laetro That's fun. So, Laetro started interestingly as a little trip that I went on with my now co -founder Dave Zabowski, who's an ex -senior Disney animator who worked on Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King. And he had done some talks for off -sites with my teams at Google and we became friends. And...

I was always sharing ideas with him, like, hey, what about this, Dave? What do you think about that? Because he's supremely creative. And one day he's like, hey, you know what? Why don't you come down to the Creative Talent Network in Burbank, California? And this is where my community is. It's a trade show, essentially. It's like Comic -Con, but there's no consumers. It's just a gathering of like 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 of the world's greatest artists in the entertainment business.

And so I went down to the Creative Talent Network just for fun. So I drove down to Burbank and we're there. And just like the quality of the talent creatively is unbelievable because this is where the world's best artists are going to interview for DreamWorks and Pixar and the video game companies like Epic Games. And I'm walking around in the midst of all this talent and there's some folks who are incredible who have been invited to show their work at tables.

And I walked up to this one young woman named Vicky Zee and she had this amazing piece of a young woman looking at this kind of like moody cityscape. And that really drew me in because I felt like, hey, this is me. Like this, you know, it's you versus the world. Like every time when you're an entrepreneur, it's you versus the world. So I just love this little piece. And there's just on a little postcard. I have it here somewhere. And I'm like, Vicky, how long does it take you to make something like this? And remember at the time, you know, I'm spending, I have nine figure.

Brett Willms (28:35.251)
marketing budgets at Google. So this is the world I'm used to. And I said, yeah, how long does it take you to make something like this? And she's like, a couple hours. I'm like, a couple hours? Like, if I had an idea like this, would you, if I had an idea, would you, could you make something for me? And she said, my gosh, she was at Art Center College at the time. And she said, yeah, I'd love doing commission work when I can get customers. And I'm like, well, how much would that cost? And she's like, would a couple hundred dollars be okay?

And I'm like, my gosh. If the artwork looked like this and I was talking to an agency at Google and there were nine slides, on the 10th slide, I would be thinking about and probably pulling the trigger on like half million dollars. And so I'm like, Dave, there's something here. We need to figure out how to connect this amazing illustrative and animation talent to businesses. Because I learned at the time from Dave and from talking to people there.

Kelly Yefet (29:16.26)
Right.

Brett Willms (29:32.691)
that even the world's best artists are not any longer on one year or five year full -time employment or contracts. They're sometimes on one month contracts, two week, three week contracts, even if they're working on AAA movies. And so I'm like, gosh, like these folks, coming back to my game again with my mom, these folks need a way to monetize in between these contracts. And so that's where Laetro was born. The idea originally was to connect.

world -class illustrators and animators with businesses to help them, you know, create illustrations for websites and blog posts. There's about, I think, I'm gonna get the number wrong now, but it's literally millions of blog posts and social posts posted on the web every single day. So we're like, man, there's an unlimited amount of supply for this or demand for this. Let's get some folks to work. And so that's where Laetro started originally.

Kelly Yefet (30:30.308)
And where has it evolved to today? Because I know a piece of it is introducing AI. So I'm curious how it has expanded from that first interaction.

Brett Willms (30:44.307)
Yeah, nice. So what we did, we started recruiting artists into a small, very small community at the beginning, like three artists, five artists, 10 artists. And we started trying to find work for these artists with clients that we knew, like brands that we knew. And that started working. This is while we were building a platform to do the work. It was like a fully automated platform with tech. And...

And then what happened was we started kind of hacking something similar together inside of Slack. And we started getting these jobs. And, you know, they might be $5 ,000, $7 ,000. But the work was really incredible, of course, because the artists were incredible. And people started asking us, hey, could you make a video for us? Like, my gosh, yeah, of course, a video. How much do you have for that video? And they're like $80 ,000, $200 ,000. And so like, yeah, we'll make videos for you.

And so then illustration turned into videos, turned into why don't we recruit and bring together the world's finest creatives across all disciplines and facilitate their collaboration in on -demand teams for customers. So now the first part of Laetro, and there's your adapting and pivoting along the way, following the customer pain point, following the money.

Kelly Yefet (31:42.724)
Right.

Brett Willms (32:11.507)
Now we have a community of, so there's two sides of Laetro The first side is we now have a community of over 720 creatives across all disciplines who we believe are the best in the world. They either have eight to 15 years experience at one of the world's top agencies like Pentagram, 72 and Sunny, Droga 5, you know, name your favorite shop, or they have a similar experience on the client side.

And there's portfolio reviews, so you need to be really good at what you do to get into Laetro. And we create essentially anything you can imagine with pixels or interactive experiences for customers. It's like an agency replacement, essentially, powered by tech. That's part one. Part two, our company has a very specific mission, and that's to see creatives flourishing. And so that's part one. one.

Kelly Yefet (32:58.148)
Great.

Brett Willms (33:06.643)
That is interwoven into everything we do and every decision we make is required to support that mission across the product, the way we deal with customers, creatives, all of it. And one day, I don't know, maybe like a year ago, we saw Mid Journey come out. We're like, my gosh, what are we going to do with Mid Journey? This is going to cause some serious disruption. But what will happen to illustrators and creators and designers? And now you look at the news and...

Kelly Yefet (33:26.404)
Right.

Brett Willms (33:36.211)
what's going to happen to any of us if you believe what you're reading in your doom scrolling. So we had to face what our response would be if we were going to stay close to that mission. And of course, you know, that drives everything. So we had a few options. We could fight it, which I think is an incredibly noble cause. And a lot of people in our community are doing that. And kudos and power to them. Many of them are our friends.

Secondly, you know, you could starve it. You could say, okay, you fooled us once. You've got all of our imagery. You turned it into models, but you can't have my art moving forward. We should definitely do that. So that was number two on the ideas. Three was you should, we should embrace it. We should train everyone how to use the tools. That sounded, that didn't sound right. And because of the way that AI has come to be.

I do believe that it's unfair, strongly, I would be humanly, I believe that it's unfair to take all of those images and construct them into models and centralize that power of creativity. So the AI hasn't come together in a fair way. So embracing, we're like, that can't be the way. And so then the last one, which was, I don't know, creative or...

a little dreamy was, what if we build our own AI? And then we could make an AI system that helped creatives flourish. And so that's what we started doing. We hired an AI ML CTO. We hired AI and ML engineers. We have friends in Google DeepMind, ex -Google DeepMind, Amazon Alexa, NLP, and we started building an AI platform. And so the second side of our business,

is this new AI platform that we've just put live. We call it the Content Generation Suite for Professionals. And it's all around the idea of responsible AI. And for us, responsible AI means that a creative who's contributing to the platform, we have the consent to use their imagery. They get compensated for every image that's generated.

Brett Willms (35:58.579)
So they get compensated for their contribution. They get credit for the work. So when someone generates an image or generates copy on our generation suite, we do both photography, illustration, and copy in the styles of specific artists who get paid at the generation level. There's also credit. So is the image or is the work crediting the artist? So at the bottom of an image, you'll see AI made with Bill Maether or AI made with Travis Hansen.

And then the last one is collaboration. If you really get deep into AI right now, you'll realize AI is not actually that good yet. You maybe get to 90 % of something that's commercially viable. And our tool is all about making sure that the imagery produced is in a specific brand style, both visually and for copy. Yeah, it's not great yet. So.

Kelly Yefet (36:51.076)
Great.

Kelly Yefet (36:55.396)
You need to fix the creepy fingers.

Brett Willms (36:57.747)
You need to fix the spaghetti fingers, the creepy fingers, the earring is weird, the skin's not quite right, and there's incredible talent all around the world that can do that. So that's the other side of Laetro is the first responsible AI platform that has creatives on board instead of doing terrible things, I think, to creatives.

Kelly Yefet (37:16.9)
It's really special. And I appreciate the breakdown of like the different ways that you could proceed with AI. And it almost sounds like you may not embracing mid journey, but embracing AI and the future, but doing it in a way that doesn't trample on creativity and these artists, but working together with them to bring all their hard work to life and making it.

a better value proposition for the brands as well, which brings me to the question on the brand side of things and the value that they find in it, because I imagine it's pretty difficult for them to imagine how that would work. Because I think sometimes a brand just goes to their agency and the agency pumps out what they need and they come back. So when you were thinking about the business model, was it a tool that goes to the agency or does it?

their creative agency if they have one or does it go to work directly with brands? And I know that depends on the size of the brand and the business type if there even is an agency, but in scenarios where they do have that support.

Brett Willms (38:28.371)
Yeah, for us, it comes back to our mission to see creatives flourishing. So we're excited for anyone to use the tool. There's an infinite amount of creatives in the world who we want to see flourishing. So it can be agencies, it can be small businesses, it can be large businesses. Right now, we're focusing on large businesses. Agencies is secondary. And as we start to grow, we'll start to push further into the long tail.

Right now it's the first two. And the whole idea, it was really funny when we thought about this, the experiments that we did at first was, hey, could we create a system that could create on -brand photography, on -brand illustration, on -brand copy? Could we get the colors exactly right? Could we get the tone of voice right for the brand? And we did all of those experiments and we're like, my gosh, we could. And.

That's why we decided to build it all. But for us, it all needs to be in service of the mission of seeing the creatives flourish. And when I say that we pay creatives at every generation, it's not a small fee. We pay up to 50 % of the generation revenue that comes in through Laetro You see some other companies like Adobe and others saying like,

you know, are AI's responsible or Getty the images, but the creators are still getting paid like fractions of pennies for the contribution that they made. They should be getting paid, we think, about 50 % of the revenue coming through.

Kelly Yefet (40:04.164)
did you think about that? How did you come up with what the appropriate number is? Because yet the initial idea comes from them, but then the machine is kind of doing the residual outputs of it. So how did you work through that? Because you could say 99 % should go to them because really there would be nothing without their initial idea. So I'm curious how you came to that valuation.

Brett Willms (40:31.955)
It's been so difficult and we still don't know what the real answer is. And so there's some things that we thought about. The first is we talked to all of our creatives and asked them what the right number would be and, you know, push them on either side. And the one that we and the creatives all believe is a fair starting point is 50 because none of us know. So that was one. And, you know, and.

Kelly Yefet (40:33.732)
I imagine.

Brett Willms (40:56.083)
You know, our investors, well, we have some great investors, but I would say someone who's more business focused, they're like, my gosh, they don't need to do any work. They just put their 70 images, 30 to 70 images into the system. It crunches the model, and now anyone in the world can generate from it. The value is all on the business side. but each one of those creatives had to train for 20 to 30 years and create thousands of images, practicing with their hands and their vision and their imagination.

to gift the world that image. And so that's the other side. So what's the value of the super machine? And also, I guess on the other side of the super machine, I don't know, I'll call it that. It's weird but fun. The value to the creative is, like right now you take an incredible creative, let's say they have a $1 ,200 day rate.

They can only work with so many clients and create so many images at that day rate, and they can make a great living at various day rates. But the machine allows them to have potentially tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers around the globe who couldn't afford their artwork.

Kelly Yefet (42:15.268)
Right.

Brett Willms (42:15.316)
And so there's real value there, and then there's real value on the imagery. And if you put them together in a fair way, I think you get something magical. And I'll say, why isn't it larger than 50? Or you could make huge arguments that, hey, 15%, 20%, 25 % is amazing, especially if the absolute number to the artist becomes massive. I believe that we'll have artists making $300 ,000 a year plus just on the machine machine they're stuck.

popular. The last thing I think is we're a scrappy company. We don't have large VC investments. We've strapped this thing. We've had some investment along the way. But I would say that, or typical VC investment, there's a couple of institutional investors in Nitro, but it's not that we raised $20 million from one of these big folks. And we need to be successful.

And so if you think about, back to my Google days.

What's the customer acquisition cost of getting a new customer to come give us their credit card, get into the system and then start generating? We don't know that yet. So if we actually took too little as Laetro, the whole system would have a high probability to fall flat and die. So for now, we're playing for success and survival. And I'm sure that we're going to turn those knobs in different ways as we go. But that's the last one that we need to make sure that creatives are going to flourish and we can.

Kelly Yefet (43:32.868)
crumbles, yeah.

Brett Willms (43:47.029)
system that's too vast.

Kelly Yefet (43:48.612)
Was there conversation around different types of artists getting different percents for it? Cause we talked about the training and the background and then getting there. So years of experience or mediums like a photographer versus a painter or something like that where the input is different. Like was that, is that a possible evolution of how these percents get determined?

Brett Willms (44:09.043)
Mm -hmm.

Brett Willms (44:17.019)
So the first thing that we consider is that whatever type of artist it is, they are professional. Because the product is quite expensive. It's 20 times more than Mid -Journey or another product. So the styles and the outcomes from the generations need to be amazing.

And so that's kind of the first part is, hey, you have to be really good at what you do. And we want to reward the people that have practiced to get there. In terms of payouts, we also think that the whole thing is artist or creative first. So.

If you, there's a lower percentage and opportunity for artists, if they don't want to share their name, there's a smaller percentage. So if it's, I don't know, Lifestyle Photography by Jed Jacobson, who's one of our amazing creatives, that has a higher revenue share, then hey, this is Lifestyle Photography.

Kelly Yefet (45:22.052)
Hmm. Why wouldn't they want to share their name?

Brett Willms (45:26.163)
I think eventually everyone will. But right now, it's still creatives versus AI, and there's a battle brewing.

Kelly Yefet (45:33.956)
So it was like a hesitation of being supportive of the AI movement.

Brett Willms (45:38.419)
Yeah, there's part of that. I also think, you know, this is slightly adjacent, but for a true artist, there is something that's human and spiritual and, you know, part of their core beingness that is their style. And I know this isn't exactly what you asked about, but some artists are not, there's a certain style or three styles that they've developed over time.

They may not share that on AI yet, which is okay. They might create some slightly altered commercial styles to monetize this. The other reason which is adjacent to this, I guess, is some of these folks just have incredible fine art incomes. Like they're in galleries. They're doing the artwork for Star Wars, The Clone Wars. And so...

Yeah, nobody knows yet what's going to happen up there. Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (46:37.668)
Right. So fascinating. I want to jump into my last two questions for you. And they're always my favorite. The first one is you have been a founder or an entrepreneur for the majority of your career. And I'm sure as you have started companies or been in the startup space, you hear a lot of...

myths, I call them about being an entrepreneur or about being a founder. So I'm curious if there was something that you've been told along your journey, that speaking to new entrepreneurs or aspiring founders that you would dispel for them.

Brett Willms (47:21.491)
Mmm.

You know, the one that comes to mind first is everyone will tell you here, especially where I am in Silicon Valley is that you need a technical co -founder to get started. I'm not technical. I didn't start with a technical co -founder. We have three co -founders. We have an incredible product leader and designer illustrator on me in Matt Danzig. And we have Dave, who's a pure creative and then me who's part...

I don't know, know, a lot of weird things. I'm an inventor really at heart. But our founding team was not technical. So I think it's more about having that extreme willpower to bring your idea into the world. And you're going to stop at nothing to get it started. And the first version of your product can be completely manual.

Kelly Yefet (47:55.952)
I'm sorry.

Brett Willms (48:18.995)
Eventually, you do need technical folks to build technology products. But I don't think you need, and I think we're a good example of, you don't really need a technical co -founder to get started. I think you do, for me at least, you do need a co -founder to keep your energy and emotions up. But I think that would be the number one thing that I would want to dispel.

Kelly Yefet (48:39.396)
It's interesting. It's a big theme that has come up in a lot of the episodes is having a co -founder, being a solo entrepreneur and the puts and takes of that because...

with being co -founder, when you're having the worst day, hopefully your co -founder can kind of pull you out of that. Or when you have something to celebrate, you celebrate together. And if you have a huge challenge to work through, you can work through it together. But doing the craziness of building a business on your own just seems, you're already insane as an entrepreneur, but then to layer that on top of it is just wild. So.

Brett Willms (49:17.907)
Yeah.

Kelly Yefet (49:23.076)
yeah, I agree. I think the co -founder piece, I mean, it's like entering in a marriage. You have to really, think through who your co -founder is. And I, I, I'm curious if you agree with that, but I think it's a big component to starting the business, but, probably beneficial for the long run.

Brett Willms (49:42.835)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a long -term engagement. Choose wisely. It's very difficult, right? Do you work with your friends? Do you work with colleagues? Do you work with hybrids? Do you work with someone new who you met who has your same vision? I don't think there's necessarily a right way there. I'll maybe share one more myth that I think is important for me and that has been important for me to learn that I didn't know before and for everyone. And that's...

You hear a lot that.

People's ideas get funded. Like you put together a deck, there's two of you, you put together a deck and you go and talk to a bunch of people and they're going to give you, I don't know, $250 ,000 worth of angel money. You're going to go make your thing. Yes, maybe if you have an incredible track record. What really gets investment is you de -risking the investment for folks, especially if you want to raise a little bit more. So like, have you proven that someone will buy?

something. Did they depart with their money? Can you make the model work manually? Like what signal do you have across your idea that when you build the better version it's going to work?

And it can be anything. Like for us at the beginning, it was, can we get creatives to do work for us? Can you get a customer? How much of this can you automate? So the more you build that, even in small ways at the beginning, builds a ton more trust with people that you're talking to, because suddenly they can see your vision. And then the other part is they need to believe that you can get there.

Brett Willms (51:30.643)
And if you haven't demonstrated any of the you can get their part, you're going to have a lot lot issues. Like for me, and also your valuation goes up as you have more initial traction, right? So you can talk, you can ask for more. And so I think the most, one of the most important things is to, how much proof can you generate before you go and attempt to raise money?

Kelly Yefet (51:42.564)
Right.

Kelly Yefet (51:55.62)
Really great advice and so actionable as well. Because I think, I mean, a step before that is determining if raising is the right thing for you in your business, but then figuring out how to go about it. And I think that's a huge challenge area for so many startups and entrepreneurs in going through that process. The last question, so as you know, the podcast is called How I Became, and we've kind of talked about your journey.

building the business, your career. If you were to think about you right now, how Brett became, what would you name your episode?

Brett Willms (52:33.363)
you

Brett Willms (52:38.419)
I would name it how I became a champion for creatives.

Kelly Yefet (52:43.556)
I love that. and, and I love that it's like so connected to the mission of the business and what you're building and such an important, Topic right now with what's happening in AI and Hollywood and strikes happening and all these, you know, moving pieces. It must be very scary to be in that space. So, glad that they have a business leader on their side to help champion, you know, their future as well.

Brett, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm so excited to share your story and this episode out. And I hope you enjoyed coming on today.

Brett Willms (53:22.963)
Thank you, Kelly. It was amazing.