This week begins a special series on the podcast where Matt sits down with local entrepreneurs to discuss their businesses and the growing startup scene in Northwest Arkansas. We begin the series with Carter Malloy, founder and CEO of AcreTrader, which is a land transaction and investment technology company based in Fayetteville. Matt and Carter discuss the background of how AcreTrader began, the importance of finding product market fit and the challenges in managing a business with a two sided marketplace. They also touch on the importance of experimentation within your business, finding the right messaging, the journey to raising capital, and importance of building a culture in a growing startup as well as mentorship.
Learn more about AcreTrader on their company website.
Episode Transcript
Carter Malloy 0:01
It is important for our local entrepreneurial ecosystem and the growth of our region
that you are active in investing even tiny checks in local companies.
Matt Waller 0:11
Excellence, professionalism, innovation, and collegiality. These are the values the
Sam M. Walton College of Business explores in education, business, and the lives of
people we meet every day, I'm Matt Waller, Dean of the Walton College and welcome
to the be epic podcast. I have with me today, Carter Malloy, who is the founder and
CEO at AcreTrader. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. He graduated
from the University of Arkansas in 2004. He has seven years of experience at Stephens
Inc, he was managing director, equity research internet and IT services. He has a
number of other experiences. And he's also a member of the board of advisors of Signature
Bank. We're gonna focus quite a bit on AcreTrader today. But before we do that, thank
you so much Carter, for agreeing to engage in this. I really appreciate it.
Carter Malloy 1:23
Thank you, Dean Waller, excited for the conversation.
Matt Waller 1:25
So Carter, you majored in physics, and then you went into finance. That's a little
unusual. I mean, it happens sometimes. But at what point in school, did you realize
you were interested in finance?
Carter Malloy 1:39
Throughout the whole thing, actually, so I studied science, because I find it fascinating.
I liked the problem solving nature of physics, I think I was a class or two short
of a minor in business. So my intention actually was out of school to start a business
and be an entrepreneur, and which I've probably tried and failed at a few times before
strapping on a necktie. But yeah, always did want to be in business just really enjoyed
science, too.
Matt Waller 2:04
So science is very interesting. For sure. physics is very challenging. Because not
only is it science, it's so integrated with mathematics, and really today, computer
programming. So I'm sure you learned a lot. I mean, computer programming and quantitative
techniques are helpful in finance, for sure. Did you find that to be the case, when
you went to Stephens?
Carter Malloy 2:31
I think as it is, with just about every job, 90 something percent of what you do with
that job you learn on the job. And so what physics taught me was was really just thinking
creatively about problems, right? It's often which formula do I apply to this problem?
And then then how to actually engage that particular solution set to try to find an
answer. I'd say that core learning of physics like it was a plugging and chugging
formulas at Stephens I learned in the Physics Building, no, but I think a lot of those
learnings from from college were highly applicable in the world of finance. I was
unfortunately, too early probably to have a lot of software engineering in in undergrad,
I missed a lot of tha, learned a little bit of it on the job for fun more than anything,
but I'm a huge fan now of the integration of computer sciences, alongside you know,
whether it's mechanical, or electrical engineering, or physics. I think just learning
those core skill sets, like Python are, are really valuable throughout just about
anything you do at this point in the world. So yeah, I think that's not a ton, like
from acoustics. I was big on music and performing and recording music in school. And
not a whole ton of that you can apply on the job in finance, but again, that the engineering
mindset and problem solving mindset was really what my greatest learning was in school.
Matt Waller 3:45
Before you went to school or while you were in school, you got interest in potentially
starting a business, right? Do you know what spurred you on in that direction?
Carter Malloy 3:53
Both my parents were entrepreneurs. And so I was around that a little bit as a kid,
and both the good and the bad of that. And so that was a meaningful part of it. And
then I always had a job. So in high school and college, I always always worked. I
worked in kitchens a lot, you know, in restaurants and bars. I had a lot of years
inside the walls at Grubbs here in Fayetteville. And so initially wanted to start
a restaurant actually and then sat down. And as you should always do before starting
a business really think about the economics and realize that that was actually not
a great idea. The odds of success were very low and a success is defined by low profit
margins and long hours.
Matt Waller 4:31
And you're also interested in music. What kind of instrument do you play?
Carter Malloy 4:35
In college and post college I played with a band and toured around quite a bit and
playing lead guitar and a little bit of synthesizers. I now really focus on the drums
and play drums or piano most days.
Matt Waller 4:45
What kind of music were you playing?
Carter Malloy 4:47
Strangely, electronic music so some pretty out there stuff. I think it's become a
lot more popular now. But there's tons of fun.
Matt Waller 4:54
That's great. So I'm going to skip over to AcreTrader which you started in 2018. First
of all, why don't you describe what AcreTrader does?
Carter Malloy 5:07
AcreTrader is a farmland investing and transaction platform. So we help consumers
and farmers and investors, people within that ecosystem. We help people buy and sell
land smarter with advanced technology, data and expertise.
Matt Waller 5:20
What led you to see that as an opportunity for a business?
Carter Malloy 5:25
Well part of it is I was lucky to be around that as a kid, my dad, I mentioned entrepreneur,
and part of that venture was was always farming. So we always had a farm to go to
as a kid. And so had a had a love for the sense of place and being outdoors and being
in the country. Then through my investing career, as you mentioned earlier, I spent
seven years at Stephens and then I spent five years at a long short equity fund on
the West Coast. And in the background, I've been buying and selling farmland. And
at some moment, you know, after having a really good financial outcome with investing
or trading in farmland, I stepped back and realize I spending 12, 15 hours a day some
days trying to grind out alpha on public markets. And over here in the background,
there was this multi trillion dollar asset class that was wildly inefficient with
intense information asymmetry. And so started focusing on it more, again, as a hobby,
I guess, or investing hobby, if you will, and fell in love with it and knew a lot
of people that wanted to get involved and looked around and was surprised to see there
was no way to get involved. And so probably for the 20th time in my career, I spent
about 2017 sat down and built a slide deck for our business. And this was the first
time was like, hey, wait a minute, this actually has legs and and can scale and what
I share with people, they don't laugh at me.
Matt Waller 6:35
Amazing. So your experience in trying to invest in and trade farmland really helped
you see, okay, this is a huge asset class. It's got information asymmetries, which
means that some people have a lot of information, some people don't have hardly any
information, it's difficult to access. So if you can create a tool to allow larger
numbers of people to trade, and to share information, then you could gain efficiency
in that market. So that makes total sense. There's a big leap from recognizing the
inefficiencies and the asymmetries to actually having a tool, you know, to help solve
that problem.
Carter Malloy 7:25
Yes, a very big leap. I think the biggest one obviously, is leaving a paying job for
one that does not pay. I was lucky enough to be a little further along in my career,
and wanted to move back to Arkansas and the Fayetteville place I've loved since coming
here in 99. And this was a real opportunity to go try something and go swing it an
opportunity. I had a friend I worked with at Stephens of like, in my very first year,
there's 06 or 07 named Will Slavof, another graduate of the business school here.
And I was thinking about taking a big risk at the time. And his response to me was
always make those big decisions in your life as your 80 year old self. And that really
stuck with me, I've actually looked at the data sense. And there's numbers and numbers
of surveys of folks in nursing homes. And the what do you regret most in life question,
the overwhelmingly most popular responses, I did not take enough risk. And so when
you talk about that big leap, it really was one. But when I sat down and thought,
am I going to regret this? Right? And so let's just plan on for the mental exercise
was plan on failure and just assume that this doesn't work. If I go spend six months
of my life or a year of my life swinging at this and some save money, and doesn't
work, will I regret it? And the answer to that case was easily no, we got to try.
So through good luck along the way, a lot of hard work, we've been able to build a
great company.
Matt Waller 8:49
When you create a company like this, where you're trading, in this specific case,
trading farmland, there's so many different realms that affect us regulatory, legal,
practical, informational, you know, making sure people are aware, these are monumental
challenges. And so I'm sure over the past four years, you've had some moments where
it's felt like a heavy lift that has been a heavy lift, what were some of the most
challenging aspects of getting the point where you thought you had product market
fit?
Carter Malloy 9:24
It's a long list of mistakes and failures along the way. I think those are important
to, to have and to celebrate them and learn from them as quickly as you can. In terms
of product market fit. I'll perhaps give you an example of that. So our business is
a two sided marketplace, right? There are investors and there are buyers on one side,
and there are farmers and land sellers on the other. For us early on in the business,
we really focused intensely on land owners. So let's go try to find landowners that
are interested in selling their land and working with us and we can give them a great
transaction experience. Strangely, the supply side of our marketplace was in romain.
The challenging side of the business. So I kept banging my head against the wall and
trying new marketing programs and with our small team of going to try and find more
landowners that wanted to sell. And one of the folks on our team said, Hey, let's
go work with the farmer. Instead, we've got to partner with him anyway. Let's see
if the farmer can go out and find land for us. And I actually like push back against
that often farmers rent land, right to grow their business. And so they may not own
this land, I'm not sure if it's a good idea. And this partner of mine in the business,
Ben Maddox, and Garrott McClintock, both our COO and head of farmland operations today,
really pushed me hard and challenged. Let's just try. So we went out and try it. And
lo and behold, that lit the switchboard up. And so one was, in terms of finding product
market fit, it's often in surprising places. And then two was just trying new things,
right, we had a business plan, we were sticking to it. And then we tried this small
change and who were speaking to, and it really turn the company on.
Matt Waller 10:55
That seems to be so often the case which shows why it's so important to experiment.
But what was it about that little change that really gave the leverage?
Carter Malloy 11:06
In our case, really, it was about with a landowner, they're going to sell one time,
if they are going to sell at all. Usually they're not. And so you're out hand to mouth,
feeding yourself one thing at a time, and this is specific to our business, but it
applies to many other companies out there. With the farmer, in our case, suddenly,
we have a partner. So that was going to be working on this land anyway. And this partner
was now out looking for land for us and speaking to a whole bunch of landowners. So
we got this important network node out there in the marketplace for us. And ultimately,
we found people that are building businesses on top of ours, that is just a far more
scalable way to build a company than it is to go do one thing at a time over and over,
especially when it's really hard.
Matt Waller 11:51
So tell me a little bit about the technology side of this, how you built the technology,
what does the technology do that kind of thing.
Carter Malloy 12:00
The initial technology was really about this notion of fractionalizing or securitizing.
So taking an asset and breaking it up into small units or shares. So the most classic
example of this is an IPO. When a company goes public, they take their shares that
have been private thus far, and make them available to the general public through
an IPO. And in that process, that initial public offering, they securitize right.
They actually create these small securities to allow more investors in. And then trade
for, as you mentioned earlier, lots of really hard things, lots of regulatory difficulties
and legal legal work along the way. So in our business, the to me, the idea really
before quitting a job and a partnership, I'd probably never find, again in my career,
I wanted to make sure to test it. So I was able to find a group of engineers to work
with. And so I'll start there. It's a sort of fascinating approach of just trying
to be programmatic about things. So in that case, I knew I wanted to build an investment
platform. And so I went out and found roughly 100 consumer websites for investing,
and then picked my favorite 20 of those and found their lead engineers and reached
out to every one of those, I think, like a couple have responded to me. And, and one
of those turned out to be incredible. And so we began working together. And so I've
worked on this with him at night. And ultimately, we built what's called an MVP, a
minimum viable product. So we built a really, really bare bones website, and investing
technology that will at least allow you to start the investment process. The whole
thing didn't work. But the idea was just to get it out there and see was the public
actually interested. So we spent months building that and then put it on the internet
towards the end of 2018 ran a bunch of surveys alongside it, bought some Google ads
and Facebook ads, which Lord knows, we didn't know what we were doing. But just to
go try to throw some traffic at this tool and see if there was interest and lo and
behold, there was interest and so that was really that first signal on the demand
side. Ah ha. There is real product market fit here. And that was the moment for me
that was the moment of comfort to jump across the chasm there and leave and go start
something new.
Matt Waller 13:22
So when you started developing this technology to securitize farmland. At some point,
you know you have to wonder, right? When you think about owners trying to communicate
this concept, hey, we we could securitize your property. How were you explaining that
to them initially?
Carter Malloy 14:27
It was hard, and we explained it the wrong way 100 different ways. Right. And so for us, as I think for many businesses, some of the initial hurdles to be successful are really building trust, building trust with your customers. And in our case, with landowners and farmers, this is a huge part of their livelihoods and, frankly, a large chunk of money for investors the same thing, this is their money, that's important to people come to find out. And so it was really about creating educational materials, writing those education materials and then just getting on the phone. Right, like one of the worst mistakes I ever made was this notion of, hey, the MVP is built people like it. Great. Let's go do this, and then come to find out. Like you can't just build it and expect them to come. It takes a lot of really, really hard work and grinding and just picking up the phone and calling every person you've ever met, to try to make it work and ultimately to find the answer to that question. So I can talk about our specific case if you'd like. But ultimately, it's really the process of discovery of discovering the right messaging that resonates with the customer.
Matt Waller 15:29
So once you started finding that for it to be scalable, you can't always be calling
people for it's become a real market, there's got to be enough awareness, kind of
like in the stock market, where people already know you can buy and sell stock, that's
known. And owners of private companies know that going public is an option. But landowners
don't generally know that they can securitize their land, I think so scaling it, then
there's a still a marketing challenge there is they're not.
Carter Malloy 16:03
It's a monstrous marketing challenge and continued today in our business. And I think
the, ultimately, there is no silver bullet to solve any types of marketing problems.
But the biggest one is, in frankly, throughout business, the most important thing
is empathy is understanding what the customer wants, what your co workers want, and
the employees of the company want and the partners want the investors in the business
want. And so making sure that always sitting on the other side of the table. And so
for us, in marketing, I think what that really meant is building a story brand. So
if I go out and say, hey, we built all these features, and it securitizers your land,
and it does ABC and D, they don't care about that. What does this do for them, that's
what they care about. And so explaining to people, this is how this is going to help
you. Suddenly, it really begins to resonate, if you're helping people to make money
to grow their business, to better their livelihoods. And you can explain it in that
direction, then it's far, far easier to begin that conversation and to have them actually
engage and come learn.
Matt Waller 17:01
So when you're investing in stocks and bonds in the market, you don't have to be a
certified investor. But if you're going to do seed funding, or private equity or something
like that, you have to be a certified investor. So for someone who's switching to
the other side, someone who's wanting to invest through this, do they have to be a
certified investor? Yes, so
Carter Malloy 17:29
Yes, so for our platform, they are ultimately private securities. And so you do need
to be an accredited investor. And so there are several ways to do that. Several of
them unfortunately involve money, but a few don't, so you can be accredited if you
make two or $300,000 a year. You can be accredited if you have a million dollar net
worth a few other sort of financial litmus tests, or you can be accredited if you've
taken some securities exams. It would be really wonderful if everyone were that were
actually investing would take some exams and go or at least go study up on this. And
I don't mean, read a 10 minute blog on Robinhood, about how you can get rich buying
Bitcoin, but actually understanding the fundamentals of investing. So while it is
somewhat of a negative for us, and that we can't let everyone invest that wants to
invest, it is really positive, and that the investors coming to our platform, are
generally educated on investing. And then we provide lots of subject matter expertise
and educational materials. Because at the end of the day, no matter what part of the
world we're talking about, the best investor is an educated one.
Matt Waller 18:27
So you're talking about explaining this marketing this in a way that is meaningful
to them, that appeals to their psychographics not just what it does. So we're not
just talking about securitizing property, what were some of the key things you found
that they were interested in?
Carter Malloy 18:46
In our case, the primary thing that people are interested in is growing their business.
So in the case of a farmer, most farmers they own equipment, they get economies of
scale in that and depreciate that across more acres than economies of scale in buying
seed, you're going to get a better discount, the more volume you buy. So as a result,
many if not most farmers are in growth mode, they would like to grow their operation.
The problem is in their case, if you want to go by the neighboring track, it may cost
you a couple million dollars. Newsflash, not everybody has a couple million dollars
laying around. And so our messaging towards those farmers is, hey, look, you can go
to the bank and have a mortgage hanging over you if you can get that if you have the
cash to put up. Or you can work with us as a quick financing mechanism to go lock
up more land and grow your operation. And so that idea of we help you grow your business
really resonates well. And it's a fact of life, I think in our company. And it should
be in any company that it's got to be a win for your customers, or the outcome has
to be positive. If you want to build a big sustainable business. You have to produce
positive outcomes for the people you work with.
Matt Waller 19:49
Back to the buy side. That takes a totally different approach to marketing. I would
think I would think that a lot of people want to diversify their portfolios. And I
would think that knowing that this is a big opportunity that your technology or business
is going to enable something that is really valuable, and has good returns at times
allows for the average person to invest in farmland that normally wouldn't be able
to, because they wouldn't have the time to put into it, to study it and figure out
how to do it. Which is important. Even when there's good opportunities. If you don't
know what you're doing, you can lose a lot of money. And so do you have different
kinds of funds that are transferred, that are invested in? Or how does that work?
Carter Malloy 20:43
Through our website, you have the opportunity to invest in individual pieces of farmland.
So once or twice a week, we'll put up a new farm early on in our business that tended
to be row crops. So things you plant every year corn, soybeans, cotton, rice, things
we're used to here in the Delta, in particular, and in the Midwest. And so that was
initial focus, then we expanded out to permanent crops on the west coast. So things
that grow on trees, or vines, apples, citrus, nuts, grapes, things like that, after
that expanded to Australia. So we've begun doing some international offerings, and
are now doing timberland as well. And so the idea for you the investor is that you
can come on and build a portfolio of individual pieces of land, to our website.
Matt Waller 21:25
and what percentage of the investors are, I mean, obviously, they have to be an accredited
investor. But what percentage are just individuals versus say institutional and those
kinds of things?
Carter Malloy 21:38
By numbers the extreme majority is individuals and then by dollars, institutions are
growing as a percentage, although still certainly a minority of what we do, it is
all US based people, but almost all individual US citizens.
Matt Waller 21:52
And you've expanded globally, what are some of the challenges with expanding globally?
Carter Malloy 21:57
You know, with Australia, the reason we went there is one, we believe in the farming
there, the farming ecosystem and water rights. And it's just a fascinating place to
do business in what we do. But importantly, Western laws, great court systems and
fantastic title law, similar to here in the US. And so it looks and acts very similar
mechanically, to what we do here, obviously has its own sets of rules and regulations.
And so we will likely stay concentrated there before we continue to expand internationally,
just as every time it creates more and more work for the team. And we want to make
sure that we as a business are well prepared to continue to under promise and over
deliver and what we do.
Matt Waller 22:35
So Carter, once a company has product market fit, which is excruciating, it just takes
lots of work, lots of critical thinking, lots of pivoting and morphing and, and then
you've got to come up with a business model that works even when you have product
market fit. And that's not always easy. It can be just as hard in some cases is harder.
But once you have that you want to scale. And to scale, you need to hire people, you
need to buy technology, you need to implement processes, etc, etc. And to do that
you need money. And you need money at different stages, especially in technology types
of businesses, you need some seed money, at some point, you may need venture capital
money, different types of venture capital money. Would you mind talking to your journey
with raising capital?
Carter Malloy 23:28
I'm happy to, it is a long one that we are always on. Right. I think the big takeaway
for me and I may think a little more conservatively than perhaps a lot of similar
hypergrowth businesses and on the west coast. But I am a pretty big believer in getting
money when you can and wherever you can. And raising capital for business making sure
that it is well insulated, is things will always take twice as long and or twice as
much money as you expected them to. Obviously, you know, we talked about product market
fit, it is incredibly vital that in that process, that discovery process, the product
also has good unit economics, right so that on a per widget basis or a per transaction
basis, in our case, that does have an attractive, gross margin to it that you're able
to actually make money. So that if you're not growing very fast, you can focus on
margin, which is really important. But as a leader of any company, the most important
thing you can do before anything else is make sure you don't run out of money. Because
that's it, it's over. Everything else is important there they can be much softer.
If your customers are unhappy, you can still stay in business. If you run out of money,
you no longer have a business. And so ones that focus again on your economics and
making sure that the business can sustain itself without outside capital. And then
once you've established that, it is an option for many business leaders or entrepreneurs
to go raise growth capital, to invest ahead on growth to drive the business faster
and to take advantage of especially when you working in large markets, the opportunity
to go be a large player in those markets. So I'm happy to discuss the process of that
and the challenges of that as well. But I want to make sure to call out the the importance
of having money inside of your business is many years ago in my first entrepreneurial
ventures, I ran out of money a couple times, and that's not fun.
Matt Waller 25:18
If you're not able to make money on the margin, you will scale yourself into poverty
pretty quickly.
Carter Malloy 25:26
Well said.
Matt Waller 25:26
and it does happen quite a bit. Surprisingly, during the.com, boom, it happened a
lot. You know, things were scaling before they should scale quite a bit. You know,
one thing that's been really interesting in Northwest Arkansas, I'm sure you've seen
this, but I saw a study, I can't remember who provided it. It was only looking at
accredited investors. And it was saying what percentage of accredited investors invest
in seed funds or provide seed funding. And, you know, the coasts it was a lot higher
percentage. Here in the middle of the country, it was low. I don't remember the numbers,
but quite a dramatic difference. Meaning, essentially, people that could be investing
in seed rounds didn't compare to the coasts, especially the West Coast. How about
for you, before you went for venture capital. How did you go about getting seed funding?
Carter Malloy 26:31
Beg and borrow with every person I know, I think that's the way to do it. I would
also take a quick moment to say that that study referring to was shared with me recently
from the atento capital guys, out of Northwest Arkansas and Tulsa, and it does suggest
that we have a hole in our ecosystem of folks that can invest in startups are not
doing it at the rate that they do in other geographies. And so if you are one of those
people listening here, it is important for our local entrepreneurial ecosystem and
the growth of our region, that you are active in investing, even tiny checks in local
companies. Importantly, one because it's nice for the area but two to make money,
don't invest in bad companies, right. But if there's some ideas out there you believe
in, sometimes it's worth taking a flyer because you can make real returns, and again,
also help grow the region. For our business, I'll say Dean Waller I was lucky to work
inside of technology and investing in my previous career. And so I was able to go
into a lot of senior leaders and executives of tech businesses, and friends in finance.
And so we as a business raised, the large majority of the capital we raised was outside
of Fayetteville or outside of Northwest Arkansas. So a lot of it was on the West Coast,
out of Little Rock, out of the UK, even, you know, and some some here locally, for
sure. But I'm very excited to see the ramp up locally in activity among angel investors,
you could call them or seed investors. So to answer your question, again, in our case,
as it should be, the way to raise money is the way to build a business, which is pick
up the phone and call the person you know, and you don't always have to ask for money,
you can always ask for advice, and or ask for introductions. And so if people don't
want to invest I would always ask well, what are the things you don't like about the
business? Because it's helpful to hear and then do you know anybody else I should
be speaking to, take the opportunity to get advice and to get introductions.
Matt Waller 28:18
And at what point did you will raise venture capital?
Carter Malloy 28:22
So we raised angel round call it in 2019, by is $1.9 million, you know, friends and
angels, folks locally, introductions, again, through networks, etc. Then in 2020,
we did our seed round, which was an actual formal priced equity round, right? So you're
actually going out and doing the whole song and dance and raising raising real money.
And that was three and a half million dollars if I recall, one venture capital investor,
and then a few follow on investors from the previous round.
Matt Waller 28:54
So Carter, Peter Drucker was famous for saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
And, you know, the real underlying thought there was that you can have great strategies.
But if you don't have a culture that will allow for those strategies to be implemented
and people buying into it, then it doesn't really matter. And you know, culture can
get a lot done without communication. Because people understand, yeah, these are things
that we do. But I'm wondering, since you now have over 100 employees in a relatively
short period of time, how have you done that in a way that's been able to maintain
the culture that you're striving for?
Carter Malloy 29:39
For a business like ours, and frankly, for any business, they're just talking about
venture capital investors. They were looking for three things. They're looking for
market rates, are you in a large enough market to build a real business. They're looking
for product. Do you have a product the customer wants, and can be something big? They
are looking for people, and I would argue very, very loudly that third is the most
important by far and it's something that we really pride ourselves on as a company,
is just how intense we are about hiring and have been since day one. And really seeking
to work with only the absolute best and brightest. And so the most important thing
I could say there is, we have never made compromises intentionally. And the temptation
is insane, right? Where, oh, we just need to get this salesperson hired. Gosh, we
need him so bad. We need him yesterday to start. And we met, you know, this is the
15th person we've interviewed with, and they're good enough to get the job done. Let's
just go ahead and hire him, we need him. And that is the worst decision, I believe
one of the worst, if not the worst decision you can make as a business. One rotten
apple destroys the batch, right. And so it is absolutely incredible to only hire people
that completely knock your socks off. Often, people show their best side in an interview.
And so their best side isn't making you just oh my god excited, probably don't choose
to live next to them. For the foreseeable future. You spend most your waking hours
with these people. So we, as a business, first and foremost, with culture, have just
focused on hiring incredible people. And today, our hiring process, interview process
is obscene. It's more than rigorous. that offends a lot of candidates, because we
ask them to do big projects for us, we ask them to do technical interviews, then come
in the office and interview with a dozen more people then go through finals. And that
turns some people off great. We have people that really want the job, they're really
excited to come work here and are willing to go through a rigorous process. And for
them, and for us both it weeds out a lot of candidates. So we're speaking a little
bit to the importance of when we're talking about culture. First is making sure that
your culture is built to truly and only truly exceptional people, we tend to mean
reverse human nature, if there's 20 of us in a room, and one of those people is leaving
at 3pm every day, we as a roomful of people probably start leaving closer to three.
And so it is important that everyone is pushing one another and driving one another.
So again, foundational culture is just absolutely amazing people, but then still,
we have to provide as a business, anyone has to provide the beacon and the boundaries.
So we're not here to micromanage people and give them task lists. Or else we'd never
get anything done. And we would probably drive a lot of people crazy. So instead saying,
here's where we're headed, making sure we have a very, very clear beacon that we're
we're looking to achieve together. And then here are the the rules we operate within.
And making that list of rules as short as possible. For us. One of those is the idea
of transparency. We sit down once a month, every director point, every manager sits
down and does start, stop, continue. So the employee tells the manager, hey, I want
you to stop doing this thing. I want you to start doing this thing, and then continue
this incredibly uncomfortable conversations. But it allows us to air our laundry,
get the difficult stuff out of the way and build trust faster. So there's a long way
to answer it cause it's something I'm very, very passionate about is building incredible
culture.
Matt Waller 32:52
Building a business like this. Not only do you need mentors, externally as a entrepreneur,
we all do, actually, no matter what you're in, I believe, but certainly people within
your company also need mentors. Mentorship is so important. You know, I I've never
seen a study on this. But I would suspect that people that continually have mentors
and are mentoring, probably outperform those that don't. How have you been able to
manage that, in your business?
Carter Malloy 33:27
For us, most importantly, just like the people that work here is we want to find really
great mentors. I think everyone will be surprised at just how senior of a person is
willing to mentor if you ask them. It's really exciting to be asked to be a mentor,
as anyone listening here can imagine, and many have done. And so we're not afraid
to ask, we will ask the absolute most senior people that we meet, whether that's for
our CFO to find somebody incredibly senior in finance, other fast growing large companies
or me personally or anyone else here. So one is never be afraid to ask, you don't
get what you don't ask for. And then two is we really try to focus mentorship on improvement.
So the worst conversation you can do with the mentors is hey, here's my idea. And
here's what I'm working on. mentor says, great, you're doing a cool job. This is awesome.
No one has gained anything from that conversation. So we make sure to guide those
conversations with I hate to say negative but critically posed questions, right. So
what can I be doing better? What have I presented today that we could do better on
as a business? In this case we'll get done with a podcast today. And my question to
you, Dean, Waller should be how can I do better on the next podcast? What about my
answers, other than being long winded, what about my answers could have been better.
And so constantly focusing and working with folks that are more experienced. Focusing
on how we can improve is really what mentorships all about.
Matt Waller 34:50
That's terrific. Carter, you know, I think we are so proud of what you've accomplished
to me. It's just it's so exciting to see someone from the University of Arkansas from
this area create a business like you have had monumental challenges that you've overcome
and are continuing to overcome. And I can see that your commitment to continuous improvement
is a key part of that. But thank you so much for what you're doing for the community,
for your company, for society and really, for investors opening up this opportunity.
That's terrific. Thank you for joining us today.
Carter Malloy 35:34
Thank you, Dean. You're doing great.
Matt Waller 35:36
On behalf of the Sam M. Walton College of Business. I want to thank everyone for spending
time with us for another engaging conversation. You can subscribe by going to your
favorite podcast service and searching be epic. B E P I C
