Taylor Monks | Co-Founder & CEO of BasicBlock.io. Commando Entrepreneurship, Embracing the Suck, Web3, and Why Blockchain-Enabled Apps will Change the World.

Greg Spillane: 0:04

So Taylor, man, great, great to speak with you, brother. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

Taylor Monks: 0:08

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited that Charley could make the connection.

Greg Spillane: 0:11

Yeah, no, absolutely. So why don't you take us like I'd love, I'd love for you to help the audience better understand basic blocking, which has to do enough there.

Taylor Monks: 0:19

Yeah, so my name is Taylor Monks. I'm 27. I'm the CEO. And I'm one of the co founders at BasicBlock. There's two originals of us, myself and Brett Iman, really, we work as kind of a payment solution for all these trucking companies out throughout the across the United States. So 93% of trucking companies out there are actually small mom and pop shops. So 93% are trucking companies that are less than a truck, some those guys typically, you know, can't get credit can't get advances on fuel and, and then you pair that with a lot of the brokers and shippers out there, like Amazon and Walmart, that extend out their payment terms, to 45 days, you know, some to 120 days, they often just can't survive that, that that break in time for them to get paid. So what we do is we underwrite them based on their sales. So really how it works is they they use an application that we've developed, they kind of upload all their documents, we do a lot of cool tech in the background, we get them paid instantly, for a really, really fair price, we invoice for them, we collect for them. And then we underwrite them based on kind of their portfolio of like, hey, you need a new truck, we see you're hauling, you know, 30$40,000 a month with these, you know, triple A rated brokers, you know, we can extend you credit on these accounts receivable and essentially help you grow your business, buy another truck, you know, get more fuel, and then we kind of have all these partners in the background. Because we aggregate a lot of these small players, it's often really difficult for our partners to work with them and one offs. So we then go kind of be their, you know, back end and negotiate deals for them on repairs and maintenance on tires on fuel. And then really, we just kind of sit in the middle of that and payment process everything. So we don't charge anything for software, we just make money holistically on the payments. That's how it kind of works for us today.

Greg Spillane: 2:06

So where did the Genesis this idea come from?

Taylor Monks: 2:09

Yeah, so the truth is I in 2017, I dropped out of college, I was a junior there going, I was going to be a senior. And I left college, I'd made some money in cryptocurrency Bitcoin at the time, I you know, about 70 grand in my pocket, which felt like a million dollars at that moment, you know, being like a 21 year old. And I dropped out of college, I moved to London, which is where my dad lives, my real dad lives over in London. And the thesis was, hey, let's just build something. You know, the reality was, I didn't do much, but you know, party too much, probably in London and came back to Nebraska, which is where my, my stepdad, my mom was, and really where I grew up, here in, in, in the Midwest, came back and my mom picked me up from the airport. My mom is pretty intense person, you know, like any, you know, probably mom, but my mom is very in your face, we we kind of had that style of family. And you know, she was like You just dropped out of college and you just kind of turned down these job offers and you broke up with your long term girlfriend who's going to be a doctor and all this kind of stuff. And she kind of was like, What are you going to do with your life. And just so happened at that time that she picked me up from the airport, there was a lot of there's a lot of trucking companies that have, you know, offices and docks near the Omaha airport. And I just looked out the window. And at the time, I saw some trucking and saw docks. And it was honestly just a thing to get my mom off my back. So I said, Hey, I'm gonna work with trucks. You know, and, you know, find out a couple years later, you know, that now obsessed about it. But at the time, you know, my mom was very quick to point out that I knew nothing about trucks. And she was definitely right. So really, the Genesis came from, you know, I was always interested in building products. I had been in college and had helped build some products and pitch some ideas. I'd worked at some startups. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And when I finally took the jump and dropped out of college, it was honestly my mom yelling at me and me seeing some trucks on the side. We'll do that.

Greg Spillane: 4:08

And you start this or you say you got a co founder? Was your co founder on board of this? Or was it your idea that you brought somebody on?

Taylor Monks: 4:17

Yes, at the time. So Brett is he's kind of a dad of the group. So I'm the one that's probably doing stupid things, probably, you know, risking it all and, and Brett's really good operationally. So Brett was founder and CEO at another company in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the time of that. And that company was great. And it was growing, but it wasn't growing as fast as I thought we could grow together. So I ended up saying, Hey, man, you're not a CEO, you're a CEO, and you should come run all these internal ops for this company. And, you know, God willing, you know, he took the jump and decided to come with me at the time. You know, it was very bar napkin style. We met at a bar, and I kind of told him my idea and he kind of was like, Okay, this is interesting. You know, I'll advise you. And you know, we had been friends for years at that point. And I knew when Brett finally put his name to, like, I'll advise you here. In all reality, you know, Brett's very similar to me, he's either all in or all out. And when he said that moment, I knew he was in. And, and he likes to say that he wasn't in at that point in time, but he definitely was. And then, kind of the next year, we spent really just kind of me figuring it out. So it you know, Brett had made some money in his career. So he was kind of floating me and basically keeping me alive for a lot of the first year in the 2018. And then end of 2018, beginning of 2019, is really when we kind of hit our stride, probably, and started to figure out what we were doing.

Greg Spillane: 5:44

What when, I mean, this has fascinated me, because, you know, a lot of times you talk to people that are solving these, these problems, a big problem, but it's still a discrete problem in a very particular niche space. That's technology quite hasn't been able to get into it's, you know, it's Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, what it's like selling into that space and the sophistication of your, your clients. But how did you know this problem existed? Like, did you was it a lot of like, lean startup type stuff? Or? Yeah, so

Taylor Monks: 6:16

that's a good question. You know, I've read a lot of books in my other startups I've worked in, like, operationally, I cut my teeth pretty heavily in a startup and Lincoln, where I learned how to validate problems and like, not get bias from it. It keep in mind, I also knew nothing. I knew nothing about trucking. So anything that anybody told me there was no, I didn't have biased and even have, like, I didn't, yeah, so very quickly, you know, I'm a very, I'm assaulted by do it type of person, I'm assaulted by like, get dirty. So we started off doing a lot of research and looking into trucking and, you know, you know, you see the general problems that a lot of these companies have built now some that are investors like Project 44, who, you know, who saying, you know, hey, we, we want to be able to track and trace these truckers or, you know, provide visibility, and then, you know, there's a lot of these other companies that, you know, are providing, you know, loads for them, like the Uber freight and, you know, I felt very strongly about payments, I had a decent background and payments, and I knew a lot about that, and I was very into payments and currencies, and I was an international business major, and I was really good. And in school, I was really great at finance. And I just kind of thought, let's just go down this route. And even on my original white paper, if you kind of read it and look back at it, you know, my thesis isn't, isn't actually it was actually not much different than it is today. Now, the product is changed a lot, but the thesis on kind of, like, what my belief was in the market is very similar. So I don't know, you know, I don't know why I had this idea. But, you know, the way that I really validated it and figured it out was very lean startup method. And, and what we did, which was the biggest thing is I actually gotten trucks with, I got in trucks with drivers. So I hitchhiked, you know, 1000s of miles with drivers that I didn't know, across, you know, across Interstate 80, essentially, from Fremont, Nebraska, all the way to Chicago, you know, you name it, Cincinnati, Texas, all the all those places. And I learned by really doing so I didn't know these people, but I just kind of said, Hey, I'm a kid, you let me ride with you, I have some questions. And I'll get out eventually, whenever you drop me off, and I'll figure out a ride home. And I would do that for weeks at a time and then kind of figure out like, Okay, this is how it works. And this is where those problems are. And then very quickly, I found out that like, Okay, this bleeding at the neck problem like this squirt blood is spewing everywhere, which is typically where like you want to focus on, you know, your your, your, your product that was like this cashflow, which is what we really doubled down on. And it worked like, overwhelmingly.

Greg Spillane: 8:41

That's amazing. By the way, I I've never quite heard that before. But it makes so much sense. What better way to do customer research or potential customer research, then, you know, lock yourself in a cab of a truck for you know, 14 hours since

Taylor Monks: 8:58

Yeah, so a lot of people call me crazy for doing that. But I still do stuff like that today, right? So like, if we want to know something about a product, we go out live and do it. So now you know, half 14 lives in Nebraska and I live in Chicago, because a lot of our partners are here in Chicago and like, and I don't want to be in a situation where I like to have to think I want to go do so A perfect example is we're having conversations with fuel companies to give our truckers you know, fuel discounts. And you know, yesterday I was on a call with them and you know, saying how does this work for a trucker? How would this work? And you know, they're explaining it to me and talk to me and then I just go, Hey, where's the nearest location to me in Chicago that your truck stop is that and they pull one up? And I said great, I'm just gonna go there tonight. And then I go to the truck stop and I sit there and I asked truckers, how does this work? What do you like, what do you not like? You know, and I ask cashiers okay, how does it work in the backend and I learned that's the I learned the best by doing. And then oftentimes, I think the problems in supply chain logistics people like to make them really complex. But they're not, they're often not. There's a lot of easy, slick ways to solve solutions and the way that I like to solve them as well. On the ground boots on the ground, like commando style first guy in, let me figure it out, and then you know, bring in the troops later, you know, to kind of, you know, establish like what the actual process will be.

Greg Spillane: 10:14

I love it and makes all the sense in the world. There's a level of like fearlessness there that I don't think a lot of people maybe have, or I don't even know if fearlessness is the right word. But like, where did that come from? Was that something that was taught to you? Was it a conscious decision? Is it just like who you are just innate, like, hey, that's how I learned.

Taylor Monks: 10:34

Yeah, I don't know. I think like, I just, it's, it's happened so many times. And that, that I know that it works the best. You know, I relate a lot to like, in the early stages of a company, you kind of have these like layers of company. In the beginning, you want these Commandos, like you want these people that you drop in behind enemy lines, and are kind of like Swiss Army Knife guys that, you know, are really like solid and have really good training and, and, you know, might not be like the best sniper, but there, they can definitely hit the shot, right like that, when when they need to, and they're grinders, and they're gonna be the ones that kind of crawl through the mud, and move an inch an hour to get like where they need to go. And, and that's like early stage, but I'm really good at, like, I'm good at jumping in behind enemy lines, and like being really scrappy, and not having all the tools that I need, but solving the problems I need to. And then later you start to bring in soldiers, those soldiers kind of like are the next layer of the company, which is really like, those people are here to, you know, establish some process, establish some order, and really like kind of gather what's going on and create the rules and the process. And then you bring in the policeman and the policeman then just maintain like that order. And that's what happens. And, and as you kind of go down that there's these different level of employees and different, like mindsets. And early on, we did a really good job of figuring out who's the commando and who was the policeman because we didn't want policemen, you know, we wanted commandos dropping in and figuring out these problems. We didn't want people just like maintaining the order and like not willing to get there, you know, get dirty. And maybe that's like a not the greatest comparison. But you know, that's like how we think about that basic block and kind of those tears.

Greg Spillane: 12:06

Yeah, no, that makes sense. So you guys, you guys are doing great. You guys just closed a pretty substantial round. Where are you guys in you guys lifestyle? Life cycle, you guys still having a product development? Are you starting to look at scale?

Taylor Monks: 12:20

Yeah, so we're like both, I would say, I lead our product team. So my, the majority of where I spend most of my time is recruiting, fundraising, and then product I like really enjoy product. So I would say probably we're in this boat area where we're trying to scale up our entire team. And then also we're trying to, you know, continue to develop. So the the majority of our resources, go and do engineering, where we're building a lot of cool technology, you know, in routing expense, tracking all these different tools for truckers that they've never really had access to, we just partnered with Visa to launch, you know, a credit card, that's going to be one of the first credit cards, or it is one of the first credit cards in in North America for a trucker to manage their entire business on. So we've done a lot of cool stuff in terms of product development. And that will always happen, you know, for as long as I'm running, you know, the show, and I'm the CEO, like I really enjoy thinking about kind of the product and where the next evolution in the markets going like I really thrive in that in that sense. And then the scale part of it is like getting the actual people to do the work they're bringing in the soldiers essentially now to like scale up some of the platform is, is is challenging for sure. Just because as you grow the company culture changes a lot. But it's definitely something that we're in right now. So like you said, we just raised a significant amount, it was 78 million, I think is the final, you know, total of what it will be. You know, today we've raised about I think it's around 85 ish, somewhere around there at 8283. I'm not really sure now. So this is a significant round of financing that is going you know, to everything that you can imagine sales, marketing, ops, engineering, you know, leadership, just kind of everything in general. So when

Greg Spillane: 14:01

what, you know, when you're raising that first five, six, $7 million, you know, I'm not sure where that money came from. Sure. Some family office, maybe a little bit of institutional, some friends and family. You know, going to what I'm assuming is a very large institutional round. How has that changed for you as being a CEO? I'm sure there's more people that have joined your board. There's more people coming in and you're getting more attention more direction, is it? What's that experience been? Like?

Taylor Monks: 14:28

Yeah, it's it's really cool. So, you know, Charley, who was on this podcast, you know, earlier, he was really one of our first kind of like, I would say, family friends money. Week, so we raised an initial round, which Charlie participated in, and we raised that I was lucky enough via Charlie, he introduced me to Jason Calacanis, who, by all means necessary is really one of the greatest of all time when it comes to early stage investing. At the time we had really no money at all, you know, we bought a one way ticket to San Francisco, and we just kind of hoped and At the time, I had gotten to this kind of like little mini type of like, you know, entrepreneurial school where they're paying for me to live there, I got a scholarship to go there, you know, that paid for me to stay in San Francisco for five weeks. And to me, it was like, Okay, this the weeks that we have to raise the money. I met Jason Calacanis. And pretty much, you know, after we met him, he wrote us 100k Check in our life pretty much changed, you know, that was a massive signal investor, he is like, early stage, he is who everybody knows and follows in San Francisco. So when we got that check from him, it was, you know, it was very validating to the rest of you know, really the supply chain kind of world like, wow, okay, people are making bets here now. And Jason was one of the first to do that. So we raised money from him, and he's an angel, but I mean, he's as close to institutional as you probably could get from an angel standpoint. Sure, that very quickly, we raised you know, institutional. So we raised institutional, it was the first couple million we raised institutional. And then we raised this round, which is obviously much larger institutional. As far as how it's changed. You know, I'm very, I think investors understand that I'm, I'm a pretty transparent founder. So I tell you, the good and the bad all the time. I don't really care. And I don't really, you know, I don't really sugarcoat it. What I do best in and what are investors know, that I do best in this kind of let me be, so coach me, like from the outside, but inside the walls, let me just do what I want to do. You know, sometimes it doesn't make sense. And there isn't rationale behind it. Because it that there's just sometimes I'm just in my brain, it doesn't make sense, or I can't explain it. But generally, me doing me, which is a lot of small experiments, works out in us figuring out things really fast, and then kind of allows us to move but when I get too many cooks in the kitchen, that are kind of telling me how to do it, or what to do. Generally, it gives me like, you know, a net, you know, paralysis by analysis. Like, I'm trying to get too many opinions to make my own decision. You know, and sometimes, you know, democracy is like, you know, the killer of speed sometimes. So, yeah, sometimes it just has to be, you know, me doing it. So our investor, nothing's really changed for me, if anything, we just have more money, which is cool. And I get to hire, you know, cooler people that are smarter and much smarter than me. But in terms of like, freedom and, and, like how all things shake out and work? No, I think even even more, so I've been kind of more empowered to make the decisions that I want to make and make them faster, which is like a really cool feeling for me, especially as a 27 year old.

Greg Spillane: 17:28

Yeah. So where as you guys look at scaling. You know, I know you I know. You come from Omaha. Now you're in Chicago. Sounds like the team's kind of split. What are you guys looking? I mean, you know, we're in this post COVID world, it seems like everybody's much more comfortable in this kind of like remotes. Everybody works from their home office type of thing. Are you guys going to have a headquarter somewhere? Are you guys looking at multiple headquarters? Are you going to be comfortable with this sort of like global team?

Taylor Monks: 17:53

Yes. So it doesn't really bother me. I'm totally old school in terms of like, like, what I like I like the office, though, I'm only the least productive in the office in terms of me, and then making everybody else not productive either. So me, in fact, I have a home office, that's a block away from our actual office in Lincoln as well. So that I often stay at, you know, a decent amount. So the way that I think about remote is very hub and spoke model. So I think about like, almost like, I think about these hubs, like Chicago's a really good hub for us, right? Like, it's a internet and, you know, it's International Airport, you can get to anyone really quickly, there's always flights, you know, big city, easy to recruit to, and I think of kind of Lincoln and Omaha, and you know, you know, let's just say Milwaukee, and Ann Arbor and all these kind of littler, like big towns that are around them as almost the spokes. So I foresee us having like, a lot of headquarters in these hubs, where those hubs are Chicago be one of them. And then, you know, I see like, little small offices with individuals out there perfect example that is out and Lincoln right, so nor global HQ, for now is in Lincoln, and it will stay there for you know, as long as we can keep it there. But the way that I think about remote work is it's more like, hey, we want the place for them to come if they want to come, but wherever they're at, they can be at. And if they want to travel here, it's a very short flight for them to get there or short drive for them to get there to be in the office to interact with the individuals that they want to see or work with on a day to day. Yeah, you

Greg Spillane: 19:23

know, several years ago, it felt a little bit like, you know, if you wanted to be a, you know, tech startup, you want to be able to raise money. You know, everybody, you know, the Silicon Valley was kind of the place to be and, you know, it's still without a doubt. I mean, one of the major hubs, but have you have you seen a shift in the last couple years with that?

Taylor Monks: 19:43

Um, people like to say there's one, you know, Button no, you know, I think that I think Silicon Valley is where a lot of stuff happens and there's a lot of talent there and network effects right like a tons of that. And because of that, I think, you know, it allows you to recruit and build faster and get more engineers and, and almost have a little more validation. You know, the cost of living those is, is so much dramatically higher that it's, there's a reason they have to raise so much more funds to survive out there. But I mean, I think venture capital in general, you know, I think like, he, I mean, it doesn't bother us, because I get on a plane, like, I'm 27, you know, I'm, you know, I have a dog, that's really it, and I'm able to just get on a plane and go, so I don't really care. But I think for like a lot of founders that probably have, you know, families and kids and wives and significant others that they can't do that often. So it's harder for them to go raise those rounds and like, take the jump of like, yeah, you know, when I show up, it's like, I don't care where I'm at. And investors don't really care either. Because they just know, if they want to see me, I'll get on a plane in seconds and be there. So the shift, I would say, you know, is there a shift to more venture capital being out in the world? Yeah, there's more money than there ever spin, that's for sure. But is it going to the Midwest? You know, I would say no, I'd say the majority of it is out in Silicon Valley, New York, Miami. And, you know, that's just the way it is. You know, I think that that's just how it is right now for, for, for, you know, the market. And I don't know that that will ever change to be honest.

Greg Spillane: 21:24

Yeah. So, take let's take a step back. Because I, you know, you grew up in, did you grew up in the Lincoln area?

Taylor Monks: 21:33

Yeah. So I've moved around a ton. I was born in London, and where my dad lives currently, and then I moved to Nebraska. Then we moved a few places in Nebraska, went to Arizona for a few years, and then came back to Lincoln really in, like seventh grade was when I came back. I don't remember much of Arizona, but Lincoln was, you know, I like Nebraska and kind of the that kind of when I moved here was really when like, I would say I grew up probably,

Greg Spillane: 22:00

yeah, and you were an athlete, right? I mean, you you Yeah, so

Taylor Monks: 22:03

I was, you know, the I was the classic. You know, my stepdad was a varsity football coach out muskie High School and in, you know, Arizona and Gilbert. And then I would be at every practice and every weightlifting thing and every film session hanging out with all the players, and then, you know, moved to North Platte and Nebraska and I was there. You know, my seventh grade year, my dad was still he was the freshman coach then and then was the offensive coordinator on the varsity team. So I'd still go ride my bike to the varsity practice every day. Then I got into football. And then that's kind of we're, you know, I remember getting into football when I was in Arizona. And the first thing we're real first memory of Nebraska, as I remember, my mom sat me and my brother down. And at the time, you know, we were decent football players, but weren't that great. You know, we weren't very good in terms of like, you know, just being good football players, you know, we hadn't really grown up or figured out who we were, what position we were going to play, you know, and I remember my mom saying to us, you know, Nebraska is gonna be a lot different. These kids know how to play football, they eat breathe, and sleep football, Nebraska and theirs instead of Arizona. And I remember thinking, you know, we were gonna come to Nebraska and you know, suck. And very quickly, we realized, like, oh, yeah, we can compete too. And, and even now, you know, I think about that moment a lot. Because, you know, I remember when we went out to Silicon Valley, you know, being from Nebraska and saying, you know, out in Silicon Valley, you know, these guys are gonna be a lot better startups. And then we showed up and we're like, Wait, we can compete here too. So it's kind of been like a theme really, in my life where, you know, we got from Nebraska, we played football, like high school at North Platte transferred out to a smaller school. My dad became a superintendent there, so it wasn't my coach anymore. And then play collegiate football at Nebraska Wesleyan, which is really fun. I enjoyed that sort of made some my best friends.

Greg Spillane: 23:49

Yeah, absolutely. What position did you play? I played wide receiver. Okay. And when you when you're when you made your decision to drop out and jump into the business world, was that one of those things that was tough to leave at the time?

Taylor Monks: 24:01

Yeah, it was actually that was probably the hardest thing. I love my football coach. You know, I went I was in I went when I was in high school. I was actually I was pretty good. I played wide receiver and then I was specialist and, you know, then played defensive back and I came to college. And I think like just where I was at, like, I I kind of I think I got worse when I got to college, which is kind of crazy. But I think I didn't get as I didn't like my coaching. I felt afraid to like mess up and instead of like, just go make plays, which is kind of what I was used to. So like, I kind of realized like, you know, hey, like I'm just more now a role player like i i You know, I'm not the star that I was in high school like my job here is to support other other wide receivers and and I'm really good at playbook and I'm really good at reading coverages and that I can support in that way. So I became much more of a role player when I got to college and I like that that was fun. For me, and I enjoyed practice, and then I got to my junior go into my senior year. And, you know, I remember my coach, you know, saying, you know, you're the last person that I thought would, you know, kind of, you know, lead the team and you know, when I told him I'm not just leaving the team, I'm actually, you know, leaving college in general. You know, he was pretty surprised at that for sure. And that was definitely easy. Easily one of the hardest things I had to do. It was harder than probably telling my parents to be honest.

Greg Spillane: 25:25

So you talked about crypto, right and I know I know we started the story off you made you made some money. I think you said $70,000 What did you make this in college? Or was this right after you? Yeah, this

Taylor Monks: 25:35

was in college. So when I was in college, I was really into cryptocurrency early on, I was always into just weird technology you know? So I was really into into that and I was putting tons of money in fact I last year, last two years I've taken my entire salary in Bitcoin. So you know, I'm like really progressive and stuff like that where i i was depositing tons and tons of money that I could possibly get my hands on into cryptocurrency and it was just going up and up and up and up and up. And I took it out you know, almost at the right time really what happened was I was in Nebraska Thanksgiving 2017 And a lot of the like, I was I knew a lot about cryptocurrency, but I didn't openly talk about it to really anyone because it was like hard to fat it was hard to like grasp, you know, and people ask are fairly conservative. And I was at my at Thanksgiving, you know, 2017 and one of my cousins was talking to like one of my aunts about Bitcoin and I was like, oh shit, that was like if these people know about it in Nebraska then that's like the sign of a bubble and I need out so like literally that that day or the next day I sold every single dime of cryptocurrency and then in a couple weeks it crashed like No, no one could ever believe, which was, so I got really lucky. But I felt very convinced that Oh, wow. If these people are talking about it, I need to get out because this seems like they don't know enough to be in it.

Greg Spillane: 26:57

So I you know, I kind of following and I'm sure you are because you seem like you're you're you're just naturally curious and follow a lot of things but you know, this kind of this web 3.0 Yeah, it's cool. A little bit of a buzz term type thing, right? Metaverse, you got guys like Gary Vee and all these guys that are like super onboard of it. We were seeing the rise of the NF T's. I know it's early, but what are your thoughts on that space in general?

Taylor Monks: 27:24

Yeah, so I really like it. Like I'm a big I have a few entities. And I really like them you know, I do I think that they like are worth what they worth no way like no, it got but I just like it like i i really like the community. And I think that that's what's cool about cryptocurrency is the community is really strong. And there's a really great community. So for me, I'm really interested in it I obviously Boston manatees. In fact, I I tried to be in the Constitution dow I don't know if you heard about that, where there was a decentralized autonomous organization that was trying to buy one of the constitutions. They raised $45 million in like seven days, and it was a bunch of like 20 year olds that were trying to figure it out. I put money into that too. I was like, Screw it, like I'll try and by the constitution. So I think that it's really interesting, you know, I think that we are super early. My big like, ploy to everyone and I I'm obviously at the kind of bleeding edge a lot of tech so a lot of my friends get to, you know, come in with me like when I see this constitution where Tao that it's so silly, but it's like, let's just do it. Like, let's, you know, let's put a couple 100 bucks or a couple grand in there. I'll often bring my friends with me. So like, I think that my advice generally is it doesn't make sense. And that's okay. Like it's part of it is fun. And part of it is like figuring it out and doing it and as you do it, you learn and that's the best part about web three and like cryptocurrency is the more people that learn and get exposed to it. That's a really big win in general because it is coming and it's going to be a thing I think that the earlier that you can expose yourself to it like the better and I think that my job in my friend group is not necessarily to make money on those but it is to bring people into the community that haven't ever been in there before. So I'm not like as deep as I am now but I often obviously see a ton of it on Twitter and I follow a ton of people and some really good friends or founders that some really amazing like huge cryptocurrency companies that I believe in it and I get I get pretty excited about it but I don't like ever go into it thinking I'm gonna make money on it just kind of go into think like, this is cool. I want to own part of the Constitution. Yeah, and it's like, what are we gonna do people ask you What were you gonna do with it if you want and it's like, I don't really know like I don't Yeah, we were gonna do with the Constitution like but that was like not the point. The point was like, just can we do this as a group and, and web three. And like blockchain and cryptocurrency allow groups to collaborate like that before, like when they've never been able to do that before.

Greg Spillane: 29:57

Yeah, it's one of those things where like, if you look at it Now there's so many kind of fundamental issues that, you know, that exist. I mean, just, you know, even looking like just the gas cost and using a theory, um, and yeah, it's not. Yeah. And it's, it's slow. It's not, you know, there's things that are in place. But, you know, I think the foundation of where this is gonna go like I do, I'm kind of a believer in web web three. It's sort of the decentralization and almost democratization of, of, you know, assets and digital assets. And, you know, I do think we're moving into more digital worlds. I don't know, the metaverse things was was a little strange kind of Ready Player One kind of like, yeah, it's

Taylor Monks: 30:38

very real. And I think that, you know, you know, we've, we've always been interested in, and I'm very interested in, that we've even toyed around with the idea of what if we could take all these invoices that like these truckers are, and we could tokenize them. So anyone in the world, you included, if you'd like to have a portfolio of trucking invoices you could have and some dude in China could buy truckers invoice, you know, in Iowa with a yen and that trucker get funded immediately with dollars, right, that's like a really powerful, you know, proposition for people that are looking for capital and cheap capital. That, you know, we've obviously toyed around with, like, what if we could do that? And could we ever do that? I think that, you know, everybody always asked me, you know, because obviously, on Twitter and all these other places, I always am tripping about blockchain. And, you know, I'm taking my salary in Bitcoin and doing all these crazy things that, you know, they always ask me, Are you guys ever going to do anything with that are, you know, investors can kind of get scared of that. And I always tell them the same thing I want to. But you know, today, like, we're really focused on just building and, you know, hopefully, in 10 years down the road, when, you know, we want to do something like that we can set ourselves up to, like, try to but, you know, today like, it's just not not feasible. And just because of all the fees, and the slow and all the stuff you're kind of talking about.

Greg Spillane: 31:54

Right? Yeah, no, I think there's a big opportunity. And I think you're seeing it more and more with people building solutions that that perform the utility of the promise of what we're seeing today, but doing it in a way that that scale? Well, I was actually gonna ask you that question. I think you just answered it in. Are you guys looking at it at at basic block? And is there any way to apply it to current business? So let's get let's get back to to your business, right, your freight, transportation logistics, absolutely huge, gonna only get bigger. You know, I'm not an expert in the space. So you know, excuse my ignorance, if any, you know, anything I say here. But, you know, from the outside, everybody talks about about the opportunity there. And you've seen so many technology startups, and maybe I see him a little bit more closely. Because I'm connected with Charlie and I see everything that Charlie's doing the companies he's investing in and, and working in, tough to break into, very fragmented, especially when you start to get into the trucking business, you start to get into the the freight brokerage side of the business. Maybe it's stereotypical, maybe it's true. I'm not sure. You know, maybe not the most tech savvy or, you know, group of early adopters that exist. How have you looked at this? And how you overcome this? Because obviously, you are you guys are crushing it? You're doing well.

Taylor Monks: 33:16

Yeah. So it's, uh, you know, I think it's just like a foundational, like, cultural type of thing that we're good at, you know, we're really good at acquiring truckers. And I think partially because we're really good at communicating. So like, just the way that we built our company, like you won't ever get a call tree. Almost everything is direct cell phones. In fact, my direct cell phone is on the website still. That like it is our and it says 24/7. You know, you can call me half the time people call and I haven't literally now i don't i There's no way I can ever solve a problem. Because I don't know the problems. Like I don't know how to solve them sometimes. But I think that the way that we solve it is, you know, we do spend a lot of time on on UX UI. So the user experience and how that feels and how it looks and how it's designed. We do a lot of testing. And we're lucky enough that you know, we do live in the Midwest that we can leave our office with engineers and go five minutes down the road and find one of the largest truck stops along Interstate IED, where there will be tons of truckers there that we can do real live market testing of like, How does this feel? And how are they interacting with it? So again, like you know, the way that we overcome that is we get out in person, and we test live on sites. So we don't often there's very, there's a lot of times at basic Bach that a meeting will be happening. And that meeting will be asking each other questions about how to solve something, and somebody will likely say, why don't we just go try it, and everybody will load up in somebody's truck and drive down the road for 10 minutes and just grab as many truckers as they can and get a pool and then come back to the office. So we tried his real life testing and then you know, I think that we're just honest and open with our customers. So like we do a really good job of communicating when there's troubles and problems. challenges. And we default all of the time to, you know, like, we want to pay you as fast as humanly possible, like, so that mindset of just like pay fast is, is always in the back of everybody's mind. So it's like solve problems fast pay these truckers fast, like, do whatever it takes to get them paid, you know, instantly. Yeah. Which is a big like, I think again, like, it's not necessarily, you know, how do we solve these problems, but there it's kind of like mental like, it's like, I think we've mentally just like, and culturally just like ingrained the importance of some small things into our heads at the very beginning, that have like translated today, that makes us really good at what we're doing, you know, for our customers, and that's why they like it.

Greg Spillane: 35:43

There's, there's been some stuff in the media just talking about the trucking industry in general, more and more difficult for for truckers to, you know, make a living companies, you know, don't want to pay necessarily, what's involved cost of living inflation continues to go up, fuel pricing continues to go up. Yeah, yeah. How do you is that something that you're seeing, I mean, you're you're close to

Taylor Monks: 36:07

talk, yes, we are, like, closest as you can be to some of these owner operators. So, um, you know, the way we solve that, we do a lot of work on like financial, like literacy for a lot of these truckers. So like, we help them save a lot of money in all aspects of insurance of fuel of truck trailer leasing, you know, their credit card bills of everything, we're trying to save them money. And then we're also trying to teach them what to do with the savings. So like, create layaway account. So we're creating layaway accounts, we're creating maintenance funds, we're creating all these different, like little funds for them in the background, that they can see and touch whenever they want. But at the end of the day, like, you know, we do a lot of a lot of education on, hey, this money should stay here, because historically we've seen, you know, when your truck gets over 800,000 miles, like you're at a higher risk of something large happening where it could be a 510 grand expense, and we don't You don't want and we don't want that truck to not be on the road. So we need to, we need to keep this maintenance fund topped, you know, at this around this area, right. And, and, and we do a lot of that, and it works really well, you know, and we have a lot of really great data too. That's, that's like one of the beauty, like, the best part about our business, and probably most valuable is the data that we get is like, show direct and from the source, that we're able to do a lot of cool things to leverage that and underwrite on it, that essentially help us you know, predict, with some certainty that you know, you know, things can happen, or breakdowns can happen, or fuel prices can skyrocket. And in fact, like we, as a collective group can look at all our truckers, and sometimes say, like, look like, you know, perfect example. This is, is one of my buddies works in, in, in oil out in North Dakota for our company. And he was saying, man, we're having a lot of trouble finding truckers and I go, Yeah, I could have told you that two weeks ago. And he goes, Well, how do you know that? And I go, Well, if you look at we have a heat map of where we know, these truckers are hauling. It's like, they're all going down towards the hurricane when Hurricane Ida was going on. Right. And they're, they're picking up everything from the hurricane, they're moving it in the south. So like, we can, you know, at that moment, and, you know, we start to realize like, oh, wow, like the data that we have, that we can start to say as like, as these economic things happen. As hurricanes happen, as you know, flooding happens as all these different crazy things that happen, these truckers are going to move to ship goods there because people are, you know, panic buying or all these different things. And when they do that, that means they're they're gonna buy fuel there, which means fuel prices are likely, you know, going to increase and all these different things, right. So we can predictive, we can predict and say with some certainty, okay, hey, the next natural disaster that you know, happens in Florida, we need to be pouncing as soon as we possibly can on fuel companies to get fuel discounts locked in for the next month or two. Because when our truckers go down there, you know, the prices are going to rise, and we don't want them to, you know, be susceptible to those those price increases. So that's just like a really good example of like, what we're doing and how we're doing and how we're leveraging stuff that we have out there. To kind of to kind of help them on the back end.

Greg Spillane: 39:15

Yeah, no, that's amazing, man. I love that. You know, no wonder you guys have have been successful and not just your business, but obviously raising some capital. So you look you strike me as a guy that doesn't get rattled easily. I you know, looking on LinkedIn, I think I think it shows that you guys have like 13 employees, which is like 10 Yeah, like 10 employees. You guys just closed $78 million in capital A year burns got to be like next to nothing. It is yes. I if I was sitting in your seat, I think the most stressful thing would be how to deploy all this capital, right? I mean, the investors in and invest for you to hold on to it. They want you to spend it. How do you how do you kind of take that on? I mean,

Taylor Monks: 40:01

So, you know, when we went out and tried to raise this round, a big thing for me was I want to be able to get the people I want to get, like, if I want, you know, you know, if I want the best, I want to be able to get them and I don't want to, I don't want salary to be a question anymore. Like, I just want the best talent. And often now I'm running into that talent and thinking like, like, I would love to have you, I just don't know that I can afford that salary, you know, and then, and that's not a great feeling for me, because I know the impact that they could have on the business. So deploying the capital, you know, you have to deploy it all, you know, we'll find ways Trust me, there's always ways that I creatively, I'm like, I could do this or do that. And

Greg Spillane: 40:39

that was his acquisition, kind of on the table.

Taylor Monks: 40:42

No, I don't think so. Not for us. So I think that the, the majority of it will go into engineering, and there's a lot of, like, I've talked about a lot of that data that we have, there's a ton of data science that needs to go into that. And, and, you know, I'd be lying, if I said, you know, we're not having to manually pull some of that now and predict, right, because we kind of are, you know, and a lot of that needs to get to the point where, like, we can do it with such accuracy that it and do it automated that, that that takes time. And that takes, you know, resources and expensive resources. So for us, I think, you know, the deployment capital, you know, it is obviously going to be tough, but trust me, you know, we're going to go from 10 to, you know, God knows how many people in the next year. And on top of that, you know, we have to continue to fund all the invoices that we have. And that grows, you know, significantly daily as we onboard more and more and more truckers that happens all the time. So yeah, I think, you know, I've just learned at this point, you know, I'm still young, obviously, but I've gone through a lot in starting the business and like, I've learned a lot of things that probably a lot of founders never learned and probably never want to learn that I've generally yeah, like I I get, I don't get excited, or I don't get like stressed anymore. I just am like, I try and stay even keeled as I possibly can. Because the end of the day, like I just don't want to expend energy that like is is not really like, it's not worth it, if that makes sense. It's just more important for me, as an individual to like, be very calm and collected and, and thoughtful. So a terrible thing. You know, I did I in ways that I do that now, you know, obviously I'm you know, I'm still young, so I still go out and party and you know, I'm doing all the stupid things I probably shouldn't be doing. You know, I ended up getting a dog like last year and, and that's been like a huge thing for me. And Charlie was like, super against it when I when I first got it because he's like, no need to be super focused. But now, you know, I think he would even look back and say, you know, this dog is like, you know, given me some type of responsibility. So I can't go out and party all the time. And it also forces me to have like a lone time. So it forces me to like go on a walk with her which on those walks, I generally it's where I get the I get the opportunity to decompress, and often think about all the things that are going on. Where it just allows me to help make clearer, more focused, like driven data driven decisions a lot of times what's really valuable for us as a company? Yeah,

Greg Spillane: 43:05

I mean, well, one of the things I'm going to take away from this conversation, and I think a lot of people out there listening would take away from this conversation is, you know, if you want to go out there and you want to solve a problem, one of the best ways, or really most important way, things you need to do is really, truly understand the problem. So you know, don't don't try to solve it sitting at your computer screen behind a keyboard, you need to go out there and you need to talk to your customers, you understand their problem and what you're looking to do. And I love the fact I mean, this the story of you jumping into trucks, you know, with guys and taking these trips from, you know, Nebraska, to Illinois. I mean, it's just like, it's amazing to me, what other you know, and you talk a lot about this, you're a young kid, but you you've you've done a lot, and you've learned a lot of lessons, and what are some of the other lessons that you've learned or some advice you'd give to young entrepreneurs?

Taylor Monks: 43:54

Oh, pay your lawyers, for sure. You never want to pay them, and they always suck, but just pay him anyway. Because they'll save you so many times. Yeah, you know, I think that's a, that's a big thing. And then I think another thing that I constantly say is, you know, don't be concerned about you know, the problems like that you're going to create, and the unknowns, just be concerned about the problem that's in front of you today. Like it's always okay to like put some thought into the things that are going to happen. But the majority of the time they don't happen or they happen unexpectedly or they happen in a way that you didn't predict and and the more time that you waste thinking about how to solve problems you don't have the less time that you're actually building and and what we've learned that basic block and we do this today even still is you know, we we don't we don't really worry about like it's a very like, again, culture driven thing where we know that we're going to run into problems down the road, but we just don't care. We openly say like yeah, we'll we will solve that. That's a problem for another day. Because you know about all that you really have to do in startups is just continue to move like an inch forward every single day. And that's faster and farther than anyone else is moving, I can promise you that. And if you do that, you know, and you do that consistently over time, that compounds out and you start to see returns, that a lot of large organizations and some medium sized organizations and some small that just don't want to be agile organizations will never see. So for me, my advice is always just do, don't worry about it, you know, just do and then when you raise venture capital, the stakes are even larger. So you get to do with the expectation that you probably are going to burn money in doing it. So you learn a lot faster. And you learn a lot bigger things a lot faster, which is always really cool, too. Yeah, no, I

Greg Spillane: 45:51

love that man. I had a mentor who used to always say, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? Yeah. And, and, you know, it's, it's like something I tell like, my, my, my kids like my daughter. And it's, you know, like, she'll look at her room. And she, you know, hey, clean your room. And she's eight years old right now. And I can just tell she's, like, overwhelmed, like, how do I do this, because it's just such a mess, because that's what eight year olds do. And you're like, you know what, go pick up that sock, you know, like, you got to start with one little thing, like, pick up that sock, put it in the hamper. And it's like, now go pick that up and put it into your chore, right? Like, it's, it's like, if you try to look at this giant task in front of you, right? Hey, I want to build this, you know, multi billion dollar unicorn that's going to transform the way the shit you know, the trucking industry works and connect all these dots to create date, like, can almost be overwhelming. But like, if you take those little baby steps every single day, you can continue to move forward, do the next thing do the next thing. You know, you make the right decisions. It's amazing what you can accomplish.

Taylor Monks: 46:54

Oh, yeah, it's like, again, it's like I go back to that commando thing, right? Like, they might move an inch an hour, but they're still moving in the right direction, slowly but surely, and the enemy does not know they're there. Like they don't know they're there, and they're still moving. And that is like a I think is a is a very true statement. I think all you have to use this move. And oftentimes, you know, and I credit, Charlie a lot to like helping us get there and do that is, is because Charlie's very good at understanding like what is the first step? Because sometimes you don't know what it is. And he's really good. And that's why he's on our board. And that's why he's invested in a company. And that's why, you know, we'll continue to have him invest. And we've been really grateful for that. So I think, you know, if there's anything else that comes out of that is, you know, find people that are willing to do that for you. And Charlie, if you're if you're in supply chain logistics, you know, Charlie's a good person to know to do that. But if not, you know, you got to find that person that you know, can help you just, you know, I guess really just convince you, or tell you what the first step is, right?

Greg Spillane: 47:59

Yeah, yeah, sure. So anybody out there listening, Charlie Mahoney, we did an episode with him a couple weeks back, but you can you can also look him up, he's, he's a stud. I've known him for a long time. So we'll look Taylor amazing to have a chance to speak with you, you're you're super, super impressive guy, you're having a chance to talk to you. Not surprised by your success at all, you have a very unique sort of disposition and way about yourself that I love. It's like a mix between like pragmatism, and like, I'm just going to continue to move forward no matter what, I'm not going to let anything around me bother me because I have a focus and a vision of what I want to accomplish. And, you know, kind of combine those things together with obviously some intellect and you get a beast of a founder. So

Taylor Monks: 48:53

yeah, yeah, you know, we've been, we've been really lucky. You know, I think like, again, I think a lot of those traits and things that are just were ingrained in me in at a young age, and I was lucky enough to, you know, to do that, and, you know, even before we were talking before the podcast, you know, like that, embrace the suck type of thing. You know, I could promise you that, you know, people that are listening, if you start a startup, it's, you know, everybody else's, it all sucks, and you don't know what you're doing, and nobody ever knows, and you feel like you're wrong, but the truth of it is, it's everybody, everybody is doing the same thing. You know, I equated a lot to like, you know, when we would run sprints at the end of practice, you know, you're on your knees, or you're bent over and look over and your best friend's over there, too. And he's also die. And then when the whistle blows to do another one, everybody lines up and you're like, Well, I guess we're gonna do another one. And that's kind of like what we all are like, right? Each individual person, it's kind of very, like similar to a company and we're all sucking for air and we're all trying to figure it out. But the whistle blows and you go again, you go again, and you go again, if you continue to do that, you know, I think that there's a lot of cool things that can happen and, you know, we're lucky enough to, to have done that and continue do that, right, we still treat ourselves like we're sucking air even though, you know, we have all this money, it's still it's, it's it's still like a mindset that I think is, is very valuable to have as, as a founder and as a startup for sure.

Greg Spillane: 50:12

Yeah, we, I was talking about this some of the other day about this and the podcast and some of the similarities between athletics and entrepreneurial ventures, and it's exactly how you touched upon it earlier, right? Like, you can't let your highs get too high, or your lows get too low. You know, you go out there in a, in a sporting event, and, you know, whatever sport it is, and you know, you have a great performance and a big win. You know, that doesn't mean that you could take the next week off and celebrate, like, if you know, the next week, someone else is gonna eat your lunch, right? So it's constantly like keeping yourself even keeled. Realizing that, you know, it's a journey, and you know, you got to keep working hard and busting your ass to, to be ready for the the next challenge that you're going to face.

Taylor Monks: 50:56

Yeah, 100%. You know, I think that, like a lot of a lot of what I've learned and how I interact, and just those types of things, I feel like I've gotten from sports, you know, even with my stepdad be my coach, you know, being the offensive coordinator. You know, there's a lot of, and I think of that relationship very similar to like our board or our investors, you know, like, he can't, he's not inside the game, he's not inside the huddle, like he can't look any No, sometimes you know, when you're winning, or when you're losing or getting your ass kicked, you can kind of look in the eyes of the other players in the huddle, and you can feel it. But a coach doesn't feel that from the sidelines, they can't feel that like in the huddle, but I think like my job is often it's very similar to what it was always as the player that ran the plays, and as wide receiver, you know, I would go to my dad, and you know, we'd spent years together obviously, me being a ball boy, obviously, you know, our own our only family thing, we could talk about it, you know, dinner on Fridays, or really ever it was practice or, you know, or the game. And, you know, I think that we built a lot of history, which is kind of what I built with Charlie are these other board members or investors that, you know, see it that we have a relationship that, you know, on the sidelines, they think they feel it, but sometimes they don't know, you know, sometimes on fourth and one or fourth and three, like you feel like you know what the play should be run or sometimes, you know, the player that needs to have the ball in his hand, like in and I think that that relationship that I had very similar with my dad is very, again, very similar to the one that I have with my board where sometimes I know where we're hot, sometimes I know when we're not. And when the board is, you know, wanting these things. It's like, Hey, I know you're upset about these things. But there are there are other things that we need to like double down on, because that's not going to help us being pissed about, you know, you know, a guy missing a block or us losing money. Like, we need to focus on like, hey, what's the next play? What's, how are we going to get out of this? Right? Like, who's gonna make the next play? And I think that a lot of that mindset is kind of, again, I've grown up with and it has translated really, really, really well to us and building a business.

Greg Spillane: 52:53

Yeah, man. Absolutely. Well, hey, brother, anybody out there want to learn a little bit more about you or get in touch with you? What's the best way to reach out? Yes, so

Taylor Monks: 53:01

you can reach out on our website, which is just basic block.io it spelled just how you think it is spelled instead of.com. It's dot io. So basic block.io. If you fill out a form, it'll come into our Hello at basic block and somebody will get it to me. Otherwise, you can just email me directly in my email is just Taylor at basic block.io. And if I don't see it, then ping me again. And I'll definitely read it and get back to whoever.

Greg Spillane: 53:28

Oh, cool, man. Well, look, I had a great time talking to you. I'm going to continue to track your progress. I am expecting big things from you and your company, man.

Taylor Monks: 53:39

Yeah, thanks. I really appreciate for having me on. And I'm happy to be here and share our journey.