Brandon Dawson

And about the time I shoved it together and we were going to be a global leader was in 2001 when the tech

industry busted in.

My private equity group, I was in a fund and they said, hey, we're liquidating the fund and we're going to turn all our equity to cash.

And of course, getting flushed into that system wasn't something I was very excited about.

But I learned the most important thing is I was a victim of private equity for a year or two until I realized I created my own conditions.

And I also was a victim of the time.

2001, there was a lot happening.

And then September 11th happened and everything changed.

The point here is the biggest lesson is I want to be in control of my destiny.

I didn't want to use anybody else's capital.

I never wanted to be in a position where somebody could flex on me, tell me what to do, and certainly sell my company without me wanting it to be sold.

So I decided I was going to reinvent how businesses were built for

for small businesses and the marketplace was showing me a huge opportunity because 97% of businesses fail out of 34 million and most of them stay at 3 million or less.

So I just saw a massive opportunity to reinvent how small business can be scaled up.

Obviously, VC, private equity, they all have their place.

If you have something that you can time to introduce into the marketplace to reinvent a space that you need massive horsepower, you need great relationships, and you need sophistication of people that understand how things are supposed to work along with their network of people, venture capital and private equity is a perfect place for that.

If you're a novice entrepreneur with an idea, most of you aren't gonna access private equity or venture capital.

So you gotta have something that a venture capitalist or a private equity group really says, this looks amazing.

So you could spend all your time pitching to never get a deal.

So you can waste an enormous amount of time with your concept to your business and never find funding for it.