In Episode 7 of Launching Logistics, Jim Becker sits down with Mike Horvath, COO and co-founder of Revenova, to dive into an insightful discussion on resilience, leadership, and the innovative potential of logistics technology. With over a decade of experience at the forefront of CRM-integrated transportation management systems (TMS), Mike shares his journey through the highs and lows of building a successful tech company while adapting to industry demands and personal challenges alike.
In this episode, Mike reveals his approach to balancing customer needs, team culture, and tech innovation, offering a unique perspective on growth in a highly competitive field.
Guest Info
Mike is a senior executive in the cloud computing/software industry with experience managing sales, marketing, customer service and product development initiatives.
Check out Mike on LinkedIn.
Find out more about Revenova.
Interview Transcript
| Mike Horvath |
| Waiting to see which way the hurricane turns, to see if I should be worried or not. You know, I’m in Florida, so, |
| Jim Becker |
| What part of Florida you in? |
| Mike Horvath |
| I’m just, I’m in a town called Venice, Florida, but it’s south of Siesta Key. It’s between, Sarasota and Fort Myers. So. Okay, we’re expected to get clipped by this on the, you know, the outskirts of it. You know, the. So it’s. We’ll see. You know, you never know. The, hurricanes that start over there on the western side of the of the, over there by the Yucatan Peninsula. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, those have the bigger chance of turning in to the west coast of Florida versus going up into the Panhandle. So we’ll see, like Hurricane Ian did that and Hurricane Charley did that. They both kind of turned right once they got into the middle of the Gulf and hit our area pretty hard. |
| Jim Becker |
| When is it when is it supposed to hit. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Supposed to make landfall tomorrow night up in the, you know, Big Bend region, up in the Panhandle. So it’s you know, we’re already seeing the brunt kind of squall storm lines coming through. You know, every once in a while, a little storm comes through. So yeah, that’s no big deal. And the winds are still the winds haven’t picked up yet, so we’ll see. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, we got to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, right? |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s, it’s pretty interesting. I mean, we haven’t we haven’t seen a big hurricane just yet in a in a while. So, you know, I hope everything turns out better than anticipated and we’ll see what happens, right? There’s. Yeah, there’s no reason to fear. Right. And. |
| Mike Horvath |
| No, you know, I’m a midwesterner, right? And, people say, oh, you worried about the hurricanes? I said, you know, tornadoes scare me more than hurricanes because hurricanes, you got a lot of time to prepare. And tornadoes can spin out of hurricanes, but you have a lot of time to prepare. And the homes, my homes built like a bunker as a concrete home with all the storm protection, you know, storm hurricane windows and, you know, shutters and everything that I have to protect the home. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So in many ways, I’m much safer here. Even though you might have these larger hurricane events, you know, regularly on the in the summertime, you know, the home is ready for it. You know, I’m not in a storm surge area, so I don’t worry about that. You know, that’s that’s the scary stuff for the people on the coast. |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah. And it’s so interesting how the mind works, how we could just wrap up all these things. You probably caught yourself a few times. Like, what is going to happen? What is this going to be similar? Like going back to the past, maybe even, you know, being a native of, you know, Chicagoland area and going to Northern Illinois University, you probably can even remember the tornadoes that struck in, Plainfield many moons ago. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Oh, yeah. I was actually, I mean, in 1967 when I was, you know, dating myself, but, I was a young boy and, a very large tornado came through the Oakland hometown area, and my father and I, I mean, we saw it. We watched it happen, and, it was very it’s still ingrained in my brain. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We went out. Right. And my dad, my father was a law enforcement officer. We what? We went out right afterward, and my dad actually filmed it with a regular eight movie camera and, saw some amazing things, like a drinking straw stuck in a tree in the local university. Professor said that straw had to be moved around 300 miles an hour for it to do that. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Right? And, you know, the devastation, you know, the CTA busses just, you know, stacked up against the side of the Oakland High School and stuff. Just, just just amazing power of Mother Nature. So that’s from a young boy. I, you know, the tornadoes. You know, that was my, you know, early recollection of tornadoes. Every time a tornado warning come out, they take it very seriously. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Cause I’ve seen what this those things can do destructive. And, so, you know, it’s it’s gotta take precautions, you know, do the right things. Right? |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah. It’s it’s amazing. I’m sure that just that story right there popped up in your head since the moment that you started hearing about this hurricane coming in, about. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah, I think about it every time there’s, I hear, you know, I still get, Illinois weather alerts because I, you know, family up there, still in a place there. And so I’m always, you know, keeping my eye on the weather. You know, what’s going on? I actually a couple not there. Last year, a tornado came through, right near where I live on South, because I do. |
| Mike Horvath |
| I have a place, just northeast of Plainfield, and Indian Head Park. And, so, you know, the closer in. But, tornado came through there and did some damage to some homes and stuff like that. So, you know, I was keeping my eye on the weather, you know, because I have a ton of friends up there still. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So I’m always like, oh, yeah, any friends in danger keeping an eye out for. |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah. Before I was in, transportation, I was working in the banking industry and, computer information systems and putting a lot of the ATMs and signature retrieval systems after deregulation in the banking industry. And I drove through Plainfield because some of the banks that we were dealing with were in there. And it it actually look like, a nuclear bomb went off, like it just was devastating, you know? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah, it really it’s really was. |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah, it’s crazy. And it’s just so amazing how our mind looks at past experiences and really just cast those out into the future. And then we end up going through something like you’re going through right now and, and then realizing that, you know, what happened in the past doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be like that in the future. |
| Jim Becker |
| Today, you know, it’s going to be a new experience. It’s going to be something completely different, especially a tropical storm versus or a tornado up here in the Midwest. And, you know, you can have inland hurricanes, but it’s not that often. So our blessings to you and your family and everyone down there in that, in those communities that are going to be struck over the next, you know, 24 to 48 hours. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. Thanks. You know, as a state of Florida, I think it’s done a really amazing job with their building codes, you know, since the mid 90s. Know when they change them to require homes to be built in a in a manner that can survive, you know, bigger, larger storm events. So you’ll see communities here that have recently popped up that were like right in the face of like Hurricane Ian, which is a huge storm. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And they came through it, you know, in very, very good shape. And so I think, you know, as things progress, you know, the, the technology and the preventable that prevent the damage side improves as well, you know, the new steel roof technology, a lot of the things that have happened have greatly improved your chances of having, you know, little to no damage to your home, when these big storm events hit. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So as long as you’re not in that, you know, ten feet of water wall coming off the ocean, you know, if you’re inland like I am a couple miles off the shore, close enough to enjoy it, far enough away not to be threatened by it. |
| Jim Becker |
| That’s that’s right, that’s right. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It you know, you can survive these things, you know, with the right preparation. So. Yeah, but it’s but it is a learning experience. You know, all these things, you know, you accumulate what worked and what didn’t work. And you, you know, you you adjust as needed. |
| Jim Becker |
| Absolutely. It’s so important to know what worked, what didn’t work. And and when you can adjust. That’s fantastic. You know, it seems like you’ve got a lot of experience in the sales world especially, you know, going all the way back to shop talk. You know, you spent two years there as a vice president of sales. Can you give us a little idea like, really, where did you, you know, start out there and and what was that like? |
| Jim Becker |
| And as we move into this conversation. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. You bet. You know, I, I, I’ve taken quite a, wild path through my career, a lot of different experiences, you know, starting off, sales, moving on to the tech side for a while, you know, but always in, you know, software high tech industry. Shoptalk was a startup, based in Chicago. They were trying to change their business model. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It was trying to be Groupon before Groupon, before the smartphone. So shop talk, it’s a essential business model. Was, we’re going to we’re going to make, have a phone application basically. And, we’ll call you up and say, hey, Jim, are you interested in a $10 of Jiffy Lube, coupon? You know? Yeah, there’s local stores by you. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And yes, I am, you know, and it was all automated voice because there was no smartphones, was all automated voice. So shop that, you know, talking shop. Right. And you could call in, and get, different deals, different coupons than you could, you know, get called. And if you see these coupons, they would say, hey, what’s your email address? |
| Mike Horvath |
| I would collect the email address, put it into a database or voice to text, you know, the whole out of voice telephony application scenario. And it was a really good effect. It’s a real catalyst in my career because that’s where I met, like Dave Craig, my, our current CTO Romanova, and other people that work at Romanova today, where we built a great relationship. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And while that met with an untimely ending because this was a good learning and a good learning experience, because this is the company started off as a marketing company, you know, to sell these coupons and help companies market their business. And what when I came on board, I was coming off of my, my run at, Quintus in Avaya in the CRM industry and selling software and, you know, telephony solutions. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But on the tech side and the software side, but they wanted to do the board of directors wanted to do is saying, you know, this this marketing thing isn’t really taken off. They’d spent a lot of money or is it really taken off? And I think a lot of large parties because of dumb phones that there was smartphones. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It was a timing thing. I think it could have went really well. But they said, hey, the tech that we built is really interesting. It was voice, so it was the newer technology for voice apps and they wanted to take that. The market, you know, voice zcml solution and an application development solution that could run on any of the technology platforms they were doing voice app. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So the Via Conversant and Nortel and other types of IVR, you could run these voice applications or even up in the cloud with the tell me voice email platform. And so okay, this is sounded like a really cool idea. A small company got into it and we were, rocking and rolling and, but what happened was our investors were marketing investors, and they’re looking for this return. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And they had been in for a while, and they just said, you know what? We just aren’t the right match for this company from an investor perspective. And we’re out. And so one day we just walked in and they just pulled the funding on it. And we were on the verge of closing a very large contract with one of the very large IVR providers who loved our tech. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And I, you know, we tried to convince the investor, just stay a little longer. We can, you know, get this thing moving. But they said no. And so, that imploded. But, you know, key learning there is make sure your investors are matched with your, you know, your business plan, your model and your objectives as a company. And so I don’t blame them because they signed up for something completely different. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, the company is trying to make, you know, lemons, you know, turn lemons into lemonade by moving business models and, just didn’t have the right match there. So it was a great experience for, you know, many things that I did in the future was, you know, who is behind, you know, who’s funding these software companies because you got to make sure they’re aligned with your goals and the timelines that you’re going to need to get to where you want to go. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Right? |
| Jim Becker |
| Absolutely. And, you know, you as a leader, it seemed like you really had a good grasp on what the vision was, even though the investors weren’t aligned with that. You know, it did get you to a, role as a VP of sales over at EA credit. And what what did you really take away from that? What did you learn being a VP of sales over at EA credit that really started getting this your whole career? |
| Jim Becker |
| Start moving. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. You know, the credits. Another really good example of, you know, staying, you know, networking with people and, you know, lining yourself up with good people. So, Jeff Dickerson, he was the CEO of E credit. And, Jeff and I had worked together at VMware software earlier in my career. I was just a sales rep, at the time down there. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And Jeff was the VP of sales, and, you know, I had he and I had a good relationship and, done some really good things together. And when Shoptalk cratered and I was, I needed a job, you know, I went, started working my network right. And Jeff at the time was starting to work with, investment companies to try to turn around struggling software companies. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And so he was brought in to EA credit to, you know, trying to take it to the next level. And, and so he’s like, hey, I need a, I need someone I could trust someone come in and look at sales. You know, I had a very successful sales career, you know, moving up through the ranks, early in my career at this corporation and doing different things there. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And so he’s like, hey, Mike, I trust you. You know how to run sales. Come in here, evaluate who we got. You know, let’s get this sales motion. Go and let’s get this company moving. I think their technology is pretty interesting. They got some good customers. It’s just a somewhat of a go to market problem. And in a sales process and a sales execution problem. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So, you know, got in there and, you know, looked at everybody and we had some good people and needed to just do some tweaks. But, you know, really good people there. And, you know, we just did some tweaks and really got that company moving, in which you ultimately got acquired by fidelity and, you know, then they brought in a new team to, take it from there. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So that was a as I put that one in the win column, Jim, you know, we came in in fact, Jeff Parisi, who’s an our VP of sales I met there, you know, Jeff’s a rock star and, you know, one of the folks that helped us, you know, move that company to the next level and ultimately get it sold and, you know, he’s still with us today. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So, I think a key takeaway there is, and, you know, the things that I learned about from a great mentor at Quintus Corporation, who I learned a lot about being an effective salesperson as well as an effective sales manager. You know, I applied those principles there and, you know, move that company forward. Help move it. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, there’s a lot of great people. So it wasn’t just me. It’s a lot of people pointing in the right direction and help them get over the goal line. And, yeah, we did a great job. And the key I think a key lesson there is, you know, you work with people you trust, you know, that are ethical and you like and can do these types of things, you know, you can check your ego at the door. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, it’s hard on problems and easy on the people. So it’s never about your idea. It’s the idea, you know, it’s not about you. It’s about it. And, you know, we try to instill that type of culture, you know, in, in everywhere I’ve been, which is, you know, hard on the problem, easy on the people. Check your ego at the door. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Anybody in the company can have a great idea, evaluate the idea, not the source of the idea, and take it forward. So, you know, that was a that was a really good experience. At NORAD credit. |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah. It seems like you really took the lead charge. You were able to see, the distinctions in what was missing in a lot of those situations where you know, what you said there from a humanitarian standpoint, it’s not necessarily the people because both you and I do great things, but we also have our mistakes and we fail. |
| Jim Becker |
| You know, I fail on a daily basis, and I’m open to that vulnerability of those failures. What you’ve noticed is really it’s not the people, but it’s the processes. And if you work on those processes, you can really make something change. You know, with that, you really took what you’ve learned at those two places. And you co-founded a company called for Ceva, and I’d love to hear some information in regards to that, because you spent a lot more time there getting you prepared for your current role. |
| Jim Becker |
| So we’d love to hear a little bit about that and what showed up there. How did you become a co-founder and who came with you? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. So, of course it was a great, it was really the culmination of, you know, a life worth of work starting at my CRM days through the shoptalk days through, EA credit days. And, the challenge that we had at EA credit was when you have a ASP based solution that’s over here that the credit people are using, it’s not necessarily connected with the people that you’re serving, which are the salespeople. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Typically who I’m trying to do a deal. Can I do it on terms? What do I need? You know, they’re like, fill out the credit app. And, you know, we’ll get back to you in five days, you know, or three days, we’ll turn it around. Right. And so one of the ideas that I had, it was, to basically take the credit process and bake it into automation so salespeople could be served as if a credit manager was right on their hip, you know, instantaneously, you know, one click credit check in the tool that they’re using, right. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So at the time I was, you know, we were using Salesforce to manage all of our sales processes. And so I said, you know, if I had a one click credit check in Salesforce. Yeah, I think people would buy that, you know, because we had everybody that we’d ever talked to at the company and at it, which is now quarterly, you know, they change your name or they change your business model. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Wanted to take what we had and wanted to become a data company, right. Sell credit reports. So credit information and do credit analytics. And I’m a software guy. And so that was kind of a mismatch. And primarily a software guy like data too. But I said, you know, this is a really interesting idea. So Dave Craig, who is the CTO of Shoptalk, I went to Dave and said, hey, Dave, I like the build. |
| Mike Horvath |
| See if this is possible, like to maybe start a company. I went back to Jeff Dickerson and he was the CEO at he and he goes, Mike, you’re ready. You could you could start a company. And that’s a good idea. You should you should go for it. And so, you know, I had Dave, we built a little prototype to test that, see if it would work or not, and it would. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And then, we said, okay, let’s let’s start this. But, you know, how how are we going to start this? We could bootstrap it, or maybe we could find somebody who’s got a little money, and he goes, and I’m a sales and marketing and product person. I’d later and and I also look at processes and I think about how we could, you know, efficiently make this go, you know, Dave’s a great technologist and what we what we’re you’re missing was somebody that was like, you know, the business guy, who could kind of operationally again and kind. |
| Mike Horvath |
| I stare at a contract and my eyes glaze over. Some of that is loves the details, loves the financial side of the business. And, Dave said, you know, my brother, he works at Schneider Logistics. He’s running the brokerage side of the business, but he’s know, thinking about maybe making a change. You know, he’s been thinking about maybe getting into a startup as well. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. Let’s talk to him because he’s, you know, totally folk, you know, loves the financial side. Good operational guy. And so and knows knows a big. And there was a local angel investor in Chicago. So we met up and Charles loved the idea because my sales guys have this problem. Like they could use this today. And I said, okay, well, let’s do this. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Let’s go talk to our investor partner. And, he loved the idea. So we started our business, you know, so the three of us and he said, we need a good sales guy who’s, you know, can think on his feet and all that to help us and go along and knows this business. And we said, well, Jeff Parisi, let’s bring Jeff along. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So the four of us, you know, did Dave and Charles are the kind of co-founder to company. And our first hire, which was like day ten after we got something sputtering, was Jeff. And, you know, the four of us, you know, started you know, we’re running with it at for Siva and, you know, over the years, which was great. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We were one of the early what they call OEM providers at Salesforce. So an early company building business application on Salesforce. So we were in their program when they had like 1 or 2 people supporting the entire companies partners because it was so early. And, you know, we grew the business over four years and we they had done Bradstreet, Experian and Equifax reselling our credit app, you know, our product and what it was simply was you could be in Salesforce, press a button to pre-qualify a customer on credit terms. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You could do a deep dive credit analysis as if your credit manager did a pull a credit report. It would automatically, automatically evaluate the credit report. Look at it like a credit manager would look at it, come back with an answer, and you could do that. It all in under 10s. So let’s do a full on credit review of this account, and it’ll come back and tell you, you know, yes, you can sell that $200,000 opportunity on credit terms. |
| Mike Horvath |
| No problem that 30 terms or come back and tell you in that 15 terms or come back and say, nope, you need cash. So come back and tell you what you needed to do. And then it also then, would continuously check the credit risk of your customers. And now we evolved it into also collections management. So, you know, the other side of credit. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So we used to call to two C’s. It’s CRM forgot credit and collections and it was baked right into the CRM. Well then ultimately. |
| Jim Becker |
| That that that relationship that that help you actually start help you start and have that leverage and, revenue over to like merge that relationship with Salesforce over to the other side. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. So you know, when Equifax said they wanted, you know, so we had a few we had a few suitors and Equifax ultimately bought, you know, for Siva. And we transitioned into that and for a while. And we still have people that were there. They’re still there today. And we but ultimately the three of us, Dave, Charles and I, you know, worked our, you know, worked our way out of Equifax. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Great folks over there, really great relationship. But we had we had a really good relationship with Salesforce and our, our lead investor, you know, did we all did well on the exit and, Rich, who was the investor said, boy, you know, you guys are really interesting. You had a business plan. You executed on it for four years. |
| Mike Horvath |
| There’s no founder drama. You guys said you’re going to do this. You said this might be the possible outcome. One of them happen. It’s like, what are we doing next? Like, look, you know, that was fun. Let’s do something else. And that’s what Charles, you know, is, is, is is, experience at Schneider said. You know, there’s, you know, we put credit in collections on, you know, blended it on the CRM platform. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, I had, you know, my teams were all disjointed. I had one for LTL and one for truckload, you know, intermodal. We did stuff with websites and, you know, none of it was tied in with my CRM, which we were using Siebel at the time, and none of it was tied in maybe with the back office. And he’s like, you know, I think there’s an opportunity for us to build a multimodal TMS solution on the Salesforce Cloud and take that same kind of model that we used for for Sivo and with revenue of them. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So, we came up, you know, we we started revenue over with the idea of we will deploy a multimodal TMS solution natively on the Salesforce platform like we did with credit and collections. And, you know, here we are today, ten years later. |
| Jim Becker |
| That is awesome. That was 2014, right? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. Yeah. We just had our ten year anniversary last summer. Yeah. This. |
| Jim Becker |
| And that’s great. That’s awesome. And so now you’ve been really just serving, the whole transportation world for this TMS. That is has a robust CRM built in it already. Because that is what the foundation is based off of. And then you were able to take the ingenious idea of like really having that multi-mode and really flow through there. |
| Jim Becker |
| And it seems like you’ve got a great customer base now over the last ten years as well. Tell us a little bit more about your customers. What’s the mix? How many customers do you have? Is this a monthly subscription type that, Salesforce has? Because I’m familiar with Salesforce, I’ve been the Dreamforce. It’s beautiful. That was a fun time. |
| Jim Becker |
| Really big hung out with big party for a day. That was cool. Just two guys and I’m like, wait a minute. I think you’re Bono, aren’t you? He goes, I am Bono. All right. So the last hour long conversation was pretty interesting. So cool. So tell us a little bit about, revenues and how, you know, you’ve worked your way through. |
| Jim Becker |
| You know, you started out more in that, chief. Marketing officer position and then to executive vice president and now, the CEO and also the co-founder, of course. Tell us a little bit more about revenues so we can get a little, understanding where you’re at now, what you’re doing, how big are you? And, what’s what’s on on the horizon as you step into the future? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. You bet. So, you know, revenue we started off where, on the TMS side is within architecture, like you mentioned on Salesforce. And it’s really part of our secret sauce. And we’re not dependent on any Salesforce application. So Salesforce is really cool if you think about it. The way I like to explain it is it’s like a it’s like an iPhone or an Android phone. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It’s a platform that you can put applications on, you know, download them off of a store. And Salesforce, of course, itself has a, you know, market leading, industry leading CRM solutions for sales and marketing and service and, you know, commerce and all kinds of, you know, applications that they deliver. And but the platform, as also just stands independent of itself. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So it’s, you know, revenue of a we can go out and sell our teams without any Salesforce applications at all, because we run on the core platform of Salesforce. So it’s like the iPhone or an Android phone, you know, TMS runs on it. If you want to bring Salesforce a sales cloud onto it, you just download it. They share accounts and contacts immediately. |
| Mike Horvath |
| There is zero integration. It’s the same data and it all shares the same security profile. I’ll say is they share the same reporting infrastructure, etc. it’s just basically one unified data model. So the beauty of that for our customers is, you know, you can focus way more on innovation and less on integration. And as you know, if you have a CRM over here that’s on one tech stack and your teams is in another tech stack, and you’ve got, you know, maybe your accounting is on a third tech stack. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, you’re you’re trying to synchronize master data all the time, trying to get the some of the sales data into the TMS because it’s redundant keystrokes and all of that. And we basically eliminate all that. You know, you can run your entire business on the Salesforce Cloud, you know, all the way from quote to cash. You know, we have a a native accounting solution that we’ve we partner with or another vendor on the ecosystem. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But we just resell it. And so that’s our kind of secret sauce relative to just how we put our application into the market. You know, I think also what we do is also differentiating because we took a, you know, this big picture approach to transportation management. You know, we help you sell freight, you know, we help you price it. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, we help you get capacity. You know, we so it’s not just kind of operational teams, but it’s thinking about how you sell and market to your customers, how you sell and market to your carriers. And then, you know, the transaction flow in between from quote to cash. So the what that we also provide is also very robust. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, and we started off with that with brokers because that’s what Charles, you know, had the most expertise in. And at the time I knew, you know, very little I, you know, some read some books, but most importantly sat with, local brokers, you know, and just said, okay, so show me what you do, how you do it today. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, where where it’s falling down, where you love it. And, we had a few early adopter customers that, you know, said, I love this concept. This will, you know, if I can get this kind of concept in play, I think I would, you know, really, flatten my it costs, you know, make me more profitable as a result and be more nimble as a result. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And I can compete with the big guys. So, you know, I, you know, we start out with smaller brokers where they’re like, okay, I can be more nimble. I can compete with the C.H. Robinson’s and the Echo Global’s of the world. I can bring innovative things to my customers that I couldn’t do with my own. I don’t have the resources to do it. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But, you know, with this approach, I think it can happen. And, you know, from there it just took off, you know? So we started with, you know, truckload brokerage, you know, LTL brokerage, and then, you know, all the other kind of ground modes bulk, heavy haul, flatbed, specialized things. You might do anything moving by truck, basically, you know, expanding into drainage. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, now we’re looking to expand things that we do on intermodal and freight forwarding, both, you know, ocean and air freight forwarding internationally. Our core design was always multi-currency and multilingual by definition. So we have a lot of cross-border companies and a lot of people that they’ll do business in North America, primarily. But, companies that have, footprints overseas as well. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, you know, you can transact in any currency you can sell to your customer and one by your freight services from a carrier, and another does all the right conversions and comes up with a number in your corporate currency to tell you how profitable it was. So if you were, you know, buying carriers in Canadian dollars and selling to the customer in Mexican pesos, you know, no problem. |
| Mike Horvath |
| In your U.S. reporting currency, it’ll do all the right stuff and give you the right answers. So that was, you know, our vision at the very beginning was, let’s not limit ourselves. Let’s not limit ourselves to a model. Does that limit ourselves to a currency or a language? Let’s build a way to build out logistical moves and manage that, sell it, procure it, transact through the process. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And over time, we would build out more and more sophistication across each mode. And that’s what we’ve been doing for ten years, is just, you know, going deeper and deeper and deeper into the different modes and expanding our mode footprint. So, you know, the future, we’ll continue to expand modes and, you know, you know, Google geographical footprints. And then, you know, we also will be looking, you know, across the supply chain in general to see where else we might expand. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, two years ago Viking Global Investors bought revenue over and, you know, put a lot of money into our balance sheet because they really love what we are doing. This goes back to my conversation with Shoptalk, which was when we were looking at people started approaching us because we were successful, you know, 800 to, you know, 100 plus customers at the time. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, eight, I think at a top 100 global three plus in North America, three plus rather we’re using our solution. We had we have a lot of things going on. We still have, you know, a lot of things going even despite the, you know, economic headwinds. We’re bringing on customers, new customers and, you know, really exciting customers are doing really exciting things. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And and and Viking said, you know, you know, they they came in and evaluate it and, you know, it’s me and Charles and Dave in the meeting, and you’ll get a kick out of this one. It’s like you guys are running this company profitably. And, you know, why aren’t you, like, you know, running at a loss, you know, and investing heavily, you know, we’re like, well, and then, of course, they’re all they’re all Ivy League guys and really smart, you know, really, really smart. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And I’m like, you know, I went to Northern Illinois University and they taught me a business school that you needed to run the business profitably or you’ll end up going out of business. So you’re kind of made a joke about that. But, you know, we you know, when we started the company, we had, you know, a couple of goals in mind. |
| Mike Horvath |
| One was we were going to run a really good company. We wanted to have a good company culture. We were going to hire ethical, smart people. We were going to have fun doing it. We’re going to run it profitably, and we’re going to let the chips fall where they may, you know, and we weren’t going to just run and chase money. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And then, you know, just try to grow the business and thrash, you know, you’ve seen the companies out there in our industry, right? They get tens of millions of dollars. They hire 400 people. Two years later, they’re not the shiny object anymore. They they fire 200 people. And, you know, we didn’t want that kind of culture. We didn’t want that kind of dynamic. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We said, we’re going to grow. We’re going to grow at a good pace. It will grow as fast as we can digest customers and keep them happy. You know, because, you know, we’re very focused on, you know, we want our customers to the, you know, love us to be happy. We we spent a lot of time and effort and energy over the last couple of years, you know, building out our customer success teams, our support teams. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, and we actually build all that stuff out first before we expand on our sales effort. So we said we want to be in a position to take on, you know, business faster, not go get business faster in this scramble and try to how to figure it out. So, you know, we’ve been really, meticulous about that. And, so we’re in a really good position now. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, the companies grow. We are 16 people and we acquired we’re probably close to 80 now. And, and we’ve built out, you know, every section of the organization, to really go after growth in the industry. We see a lot of opportunity, you know, with our approach. And, our investors are 100% behind us, you know, really, you know, want us to grow. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And we’re looking at all kinds of really interesting things that we might do in the future, you know, with that kind of, investment behind us. And, so it’s a fun time and, you know, taken out to a whole role, you know, as, you know, like, as a founder, you do everything, you know, you change the water bottles, you clean the desk, you do everything you have to do. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, you know, initially I stayed very focused on the sales and marketing effort, you know, too obviously, you got to get customers and, you know, get your name out there, brand recognition. And I still have a hand in all of that. By being able to grow the company and bring on a lot of different people to do a lot of the things that I used to do in the day to day of the company is now allowed me to focus more on overall, operationally, on the company, you know, interdepartmental operational efficiencies, the more strategic initiatives that we, you know, that we’re looking at and evaluate them and, you know, take the time |
| Mike Horvath |
| to really evaluate, you know, that kind of, you know, strategic stuff, do the analysis and, and those types of things. So that’s been a lot of fun for me, because in many ways, I was doing a lot of that as well as all the other day to day things. And now, we brought a CRO on, a few months back. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Jeremy, step, who’s got a lot of industry experience and, you know, he’s taken on the, you know, the all the go to market stuff as far as marketing alliances, customer success and sales. And so that’s I’m still involved in it, you know, more from a strategy perspective, but you know more now really thinking strategically about where do we take the company, how do we get there. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, what are the right alliances for us? You know, even M&A when when should we go buy a couple companies to do this. You know, do we grow it organically? So having all those types of kind of meetings internally and working with Charles on that stuff, has been fun. |
| Jim Becker |
| That’s awesome. I love what you’ve done with the company. I love the growth. I’ve loved, you know, getting a financial partner to come on in. Just amazing. You know, it seems like that your leadership style, you have a certain way that you lead. I’ve got two styles that I use at different times versus a servant leader. |
| Jim Becker |
| And. And I’m always serving. How can I serve not only our customers, but also our employees? Second is a transformational leader. And it seems like that you’ve learned a lot of lessons going all the way back from all of those previous positions. And what happened with those companies along the way. What has shaped your leadership style through your journey to where we’re at right now? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah, you know, what’s shaped it is it’s I go back to the mentors I mentioned earlier, John Scott, Jeff Dickerson, I learned a lot about, you know, managing people, dealing with problems, you know, first cup company issues, customer issues, employee issues, and watching, you know, people that did it well and watching people that didn’t do it well, quite honestly. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But those two guys did it great. You know, they they knew how to get the most out of, people that were working for them. You know, they did it in, in many ways, and I, I, I also take a little bit of, influence from my father, who I think was a great leader in and of itself, World War Two veteran law enforcement officer and, great dad. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, some of the lessons that I learned from, you know, dealing with people, just that I what I learned from my father and the lessons and things that he, you know, I learned from that interaction. So, you know, all those things I think have come to you. I’ve always been a very glass half full, optimistic person. I’ve always, you know, I kind of believe in, you know, your praise in public and you discipline in private, you know, so I do I, you know, and I think, as far as management goes, you know, you just set expectations. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You don’t helicopter, you get people goals and objectives. You know, you let them, you know, go ahead and get out there, learn. You’ve watched, make sure you know, you keep them. You know use the guardrails. But you know, don’t puppeteer. And you help develop their skills and and I’ve watched that and that’s I have to be you know, I think one of the great things that I take away from these companies that I’ve been, I’ve had a hand in co-founding is it’s a whole lot of fun to say, you know, this crazy idea that we had where we came up with a, you know, a name that meant nothing and started a business. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And now we have a brand and industry people recognize and we’re employing about 80 people, and they’re all making a good living and they’re enjoying their work. And we’re in your in you’re helping them grow and you’re mentoring them and you’re your career passing them. You know, we’ve we’ve moved people around the company. One of the, one of my best stories at rubbing elbows. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We had a developer who he was. He started with the company, as a customer service person. The project manager. And we were in the same little office in Chicago. So there’s, like, 5 or 6 of us working, you know, 12ft apart and startup days. And he’s like, you know, I hear him on the phone and I’m like, you know, and he was really good at developing product to and, you know, I get off the phone one day and, Tony, I go, I think, you know, and you don’t sound happy, like, you know, like, you know what’s out there because, you know, I’m not sure this is I’m not sure this is what |
| Mike Horvath |
| I’m great at. You know, and and I and I knew he was a great developer. And I go, well, I tell you, you’re really good developer. Would you like to get on our development team? He’s like, kind of, could I do that? You know, like, of course you can. I go, you know, you’ve got the skills and if that’s going to make you happier, you know, and one of the things and we moved him over there and he’s a, he’s a rock star is one of our best. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And he’s been one of our best for years. And I and I tell everybody who comes into the company, I said, you know, you’re going to come in at a certain level and you know, you have the skills for that, and we think you’re going to be good at it, you know? But as the company grows and new positions open up and you think that’s something of interest, you know, we love to promote from within and, you know, move people around is they see opportunities to advance their own careers as well as advance, you know, the capabilities of our company. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And we’ve had very, very little turnover. You know, it’s it’s a handful over the ten years. You know, the people tend to stay here. And I think that’s a big part of it is I think our culture is really accommodating. And we’ve hired a lot of people that across the spectrum, some people have industry veterans as well as young people right out of college who, you know, are full of fire and brimstone or really smart, have skills, need to be refined, and that’s fun helping them, you know, move around, and grow in the position. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And we had we hired a few young guys and they’re in the office and they wanted to down. We had an office up in Bannockburn and they wanted to move. They wanted a downtown office. Were like, hey, you know what? When you guys kind of get in here and get, you know, get a feel for everything, you know, we’ll consider opening up a downtown location, you know, could slide closer to where they live. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, no one wants to nobody under the age of 30 wants to live in sleepy Bannockburn. Right? What a beautiful area. But it’s, you know, the young people don’t want to be downtown. So they got to a point where, like, okay, we’re going to open up a downtown office. And, and then the some of the other guys and we had been working together for a while and they’re like, they’re like, hey, we some of you guys like, come downtown too, because, like, we we learn a lot from you, you old guys. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You’re here. You know, we learned a lot from you guys. Like, you know, we’ve like to be able to turn around and say something or, you know, you’d hear them struggling on the phone and you’d like, say, hey, you know what? Let’s try this, right? Try this or try that or try this. And, that’s a lot of fun being able to impart that kind of, you know, knowledge that you’ve learned through the wars, you know, you know, taking the scars and saying, hey, you know what? |
| Mike Horvath |
| I can help you overcome that. Here’s how you should approach it. You know, try this because it’s worked for me in the past and that’s a lot of fun and adds a lot of fun. |
| Jim Becker |
| Yeah, I love what you just said there. And it’s pretty interesting, too, you know, from employees out in the suburbs because, at our corporate, it’s out in Glendale Heights, and we wanted to also have people down in the city. And, you know, when you balance that out, like really taking care of your employees and opening up that office in the city where they could go to now, nowadays, you know, 95% workforces are remote or, you know, off of a shift, if you will, a couple days here and a couple days here. |
| Jim Becker |
| You know, one thing I do want to say is, you know, my father did the same thing. My I had a father and I had a stepfather. I have a stepfather, I should say. And my father taught me really how to be a great father. Right. And how to be a great husband. That’s what my father taught me. |
| Jim Becker |
| Now, my stepfather, you really taught me that our word is something that no one can ever take away from you. And that’s something that I live by. And I kind of heard it from you, it through the same lens. Because my stepfather was an MP, both of my parents were in the Vietnam War, and my dad was on, River rat out in Vietnam. |
| Jim Becker |
| And my, my stepfather was an MP in, in the war. And, it’s just really interesting how along the way, these mentors come by and they really help us and they help us be dynamic, just like when you’re listening to the guy on the phone and you’re like, you’re not happy, are you? We could get you over here. |
| Jim Becker |
| I love how you’re able to pivot, and I can just hear it in your speaking along the journey as I listen to you, you know, it really brings up another good point of really, how do you approach decision making when balancing the needs of customers, employees in that long term vision that you’re really looking at now? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah, that’s a it’s a great it’s a great question. And it is a balance. And I think that’s a great way to put it. You know, there’s multiple philosophies, you know, the old Southwest Airlines CEO, I think Herb Killer, I think his name was, is like, hey, I focus hundred percent of my employees because if I have happy employees, I’m going to have happy customers. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Right. And, and then there’s the other philosophy. Now the customer is always right and and go that route. You know, I, I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, on that one, which is I, I believe you gotta have a great company culture. You got to take care of your employees. Happy employees will take care of their customers. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So they like working there. And they get in there and they’re they see it as a it’s almost like a family, right? You know, they see the customers as almost an extension of their own, you know, inner circle, if you will. And so they go the extra mile to take care of the customers because it’s it’s personal to them. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Right? It’s not just a job, you know, it’s an adventure, but it’s, it it is, you know, the type of culture we try to instill. So it’s really trying to do both, you know, on the customer side, you know, as we grow our customer base, you know, it gets more and more challenging, right? To get, you know, every customer has got wants and needs and and they want to do those things. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And you know, we’ve we’ve done a lot of work there trying to you know, quantify how to approach new features and keep customers happy. And, and it’s, it’s a scoring model. It’s a, it’s, it’s something that we’ve implemented and it’s, it’s, you know, trying to we make decisions on what to build next that usually falls into that. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, that scoring model helps us objectify that. And then, you know, we try to we stay in touch with our customers. And our customer success team now is doing, you know, cubes, you know, quarterly business reviews with them is they’re 20, you know, all day, every day if they have a need. We’re doing, you know, all kinds of enablement sessions. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, what we find is our teams does a lot of stuff. And, you know, people over the years, they forget about half the things that does. And so they’re like, hey, I want you to integrate to this partner. And, you know, and you’re like, you know, you can do that right? In the DMs. You know, you just turn these tabs on and, you know, off you go. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And so we’re doing a lot of work to, there and, and the decisions really fall down to it. Usually they’re not like either are like do what’s right by the employee or do it’s right by the customer. It’s usually a decision that’s it usually accomplishes both in most cases. Not always, but I think, you know, when we come down to decision making it, you know, we want to keep our employees happy. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, you know, turnover is always a bad thing. I think, you know, you got to bring new people on. And it’s just disruptive and it’s time consuming. And it draws on productivity. So you know we try to strike a balance. I would say the good news for us is that we haven’t had many like situation where a decision was, you know, either good for the customer and bad for the employee or great for the employee and bad for the customer. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It was it’s usually you’re you’re getting win win situation side of things and their decisions on you know maybe what the areas to grow first and faster than other areas. And it is we are very, very customer focused. So I would say that, you know, it’s it’s really both. But you know, we want to keep our existing customers as happy as possible and keep them growing and, and be that strategic business partner for them. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And, and the same thing with our employees would be that maybe that partner for them too, in their career paths and, you know, serve both masters. And I think we do it pretty well. And I’m happy with the way things have, gone so far at the revenue. |
| Jim Becker |
| Well, that’s awesome. And it sounds like it has gone well. And and I’ve seen your company over the years and, and even did a demo and really got to see what your software is really like. And being an an ex sales force, customer, I could see that. And you’re right, all these customers that are asking you for this or that or the other thing, one has to be very careful which road they go down and really what what’s the return on investment there as we’re moving forward. |
| Jim Becker |
| And is this really needed for all or is it just for one as you make those modifications? You know, another good question. I want to, really throw at you is when it comes to customer service or really customer experience, how do you see the role of customer experience evolving in the logistics space or transportation industry overall? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah, that’s I guess I’ll take that from two perspectives. You know, our customers are looking to really, delight their customers, right? So when they think of, you know, so we focus a lot on that because it’s our customers stay in business because they delight their customers. And so having features and functions that they can extend out to their customers and partners is a very important feature of the system. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And and that’s where we have a lot of advantages because, you know, that’s the whole idea behind CRM, right? Customer relationship management. So when you when you look at all the tools and things that Salesforce has to offer at the core level, but also in their complementary application suite, our customers have a, you know, or a copy of things that they can draw from to deploy to make their business unique. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, at the same time, because it’s not always a one size fits all type of solution, people do have unique business processes that they want to deploy, and that is one of the hallmarks of I think Salesforce is CRM in general, but you know, the platform capabilities, you know the workflow capabilities, the way you can change the entire user experience for your employees and your customers and not break anything, which has been a historical problem in software in general, is, you know, you get the screens, the software vendor tells you, and they have some configurability, but, you know, the flow is rigid or the screens are somewhat rigid. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And in our world, you know, it’s it’s a there’s a nice separation of, you know, data model against flows against the UI’s that you can, you know, why are you wise and to your heart’s content and it’s it makes it it challenges us sometimes on the support side because you look at what the customers are using, your how they’re using your application. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You’re like, I’ve, I’ve never seen anybody deploy all those things the same way you have. So but that’s, that’s the also the advantage and it’s supportable. You know, it’s how Salesforce grew to be their multibillion dollar company because they offer the same you know it’s the same architectural construct. So you know we just we just leverage that in the world of logistics. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, what we do for our customers. And we’ve grown this, you know, significantly. You know, early on it was, you know, talk to the co-founders. What do you need? You know, you get it next week. You know, you can’t do that forever. But we have a really good process for customers. You know, we have a, you know, we use Salesforce tech, you know, internally as well. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So, you know, service cloud and you create cases and they have escalation paths and they turn into what we would call customer requests for product changes or customization requests that, you know, our customers want us to do. And those have workflows and escalation paths. And, you know, all the things that get prioritized and the product, you know, go through that scoring kind of, you know, is it for one customer or ten customers, you know, is it core module? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Is it something that’s, you know, sort of specific to something else. And those things score up and they tend to bubble up. And those will be the things we tend to tackle. First. We do put out four releases a year. And we you know, they typically have dozens and dozens of features. So we move pretty rapidly and moving towards you know, daily build scenario where you can deploy new features daily if need be. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But we’re we’re keeping it sort of quarterly pace because our customers can only digest them so fast as well. You know, as you roll these things out. But we, we introduced a customer success team this year, that, you know, the people that their whole job is to keep the customer happy. And that’s including these enablement sessions that I mentioned before, Cbrs where they, you know, we bring executive to executive meetings. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We have a customer advisory board. We actually have a nice meeting coming up in January. And Saint Pete, get everybody out of the winter and come down to Florida. And you know, we’re it’ll be a strategic session with about 14 customers that, advise us on, you know, where their heads are at strategically in the industry. You know, where they see things going, what they want to do, you know, and, so we can get, those types of collaborative discussions going with the executives of, of, customers across the spectrum of customers that we have large ones, midsize ones and smaller ones. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We’re not the mom and pop solution for TMS. So, you know, we don’t have very many small, small customers. You know, we’re usually in that mid-market to large, customer base. And, but we like to bring in a cross-section of them. So it’s not just so the big customers get, you know, everything. Some of the more smaller, more, you know, mid-sized customers are doing very, very interesting things. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. As opposed to some of the larger ones that maybe you’re very good at, you know, certain modes of operation and just really crush it at those things. But some of them do. Some of the smaller ones are doing very specialized, very unique kind of logistics things which, you know, really open your eyes to. How can you, you know, deliver features and functions that can service that, you know, group as well as extend that to other people that might want to also do that type of thing in the future, with their businesses. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So one thing I have found is our customers are really, like to talk to one another, and want us to facilitate that more and more. So this cab is our first kind of big group meeting, and, well, if we’re going to follow that up with a user conference later in the year, you know, with all kinds of sessions and, and, and networking so our customers can work together, behind some initiatives that we have that will make it easy for our customers. |
| Mike Horvath |
| To work together. Yeah. We introduced, a, a shared pricing, real time rating database, last year. And it’s, it’s really getting traction. And, you know, in the world of AI that we see, which is probably the, the most interesting thing everyone is talking about today, we call this, you know, real intelligence, nothing artificial about it, because it works like the stock market, you know, as spot quotes come in to every participating member, the spark quotes immediately move into the aggregate database, and then everybody has visibility to them. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So you can track, you know, how rates are moving in real time in markets right. And yeah, so we’re really excited about that. And that’s you know our really our first foray into some of these shared service things that we can, deliver back to our customers in ways which they’re willing to participate in ways that they want to consume. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And so, you know, anonymized, you know, we’re not compromising relationships with that, but it’s just a view into the market where you can segmented by ways you know, that are non disclosure. So you know again everybody protects their carrier relationships. And I would too if I was a broker or three ple you know you don’t have a carrier. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You can’t move customer freight. So you really want to protect those relationships. You know everybody’s free to market to everybody. But you don’t want to give up the goods, you know, to, you know, your competitors, but your but everybody seems to want to know, hey, I’m I’ll compete on my merits. But kind of where’s the market at pricing is it is it moving up. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Is moving down. Is capacity tightening. Is it loosening. And those are the things that, you know, we’re doing a lot of work in to help our customers get a better picture of that so they can make good business decisions. |
| Jim Becker |
| That’s awesome. I love what you’re doing with the customer advisory board, the cab, and, you know, coming up with a, you know, convention coming up that your people can come to, you know, and being remote is great. Bring everyone together down there. It would be really beneficial. And and getting that mix of large customers, midsize customers and the smaller customers is fantastic. |
| Jim Becker |
| You know, two things that I have for you as we wrap things up here now, revenue over I love to hear the name and the genesis of it. Where’d you get that? And then also to back that up, you know, TMS technology is really advancing quickly as you talk about AI or, you know, real intelligence. What trends or innovations do you really see shaping the future of transportation management systems over the next five years? |
| Mike Horvath |
| So, okay. Well, revenue was, the brainchild of, me. It was, it wasn’t very complicated. And we didn’t hire any big marketing firms. We wanted a name that was just agnostic. It meant nothing, you know? So it didn’t pigeonhole us. We didn’t want to be something transportation management or anything. We said, you know what? |
| Mike Horvath |
| We’re going to start a company that’s focused on team solutions. Who knows where it’s going to go. So let’s keep something, you know, relatively agnostic. We were looking for a three syllable word, but nothing, you know, really came out because we were just going up and looking for available Com URLs. So revenue Ava was a really a smash together a revenue and supernova and revenue of so revenue supernova, you can do, blow up your revenues numbers by buying our product. |
| Mike Horvath |
| But it was it was really just Dave Charles and I sitting around in a room, with a couple beverages going on this. What, you know, looking at the business terms, smashing him together into some nonsensical name, seeing what came up and revenue above. We all like this. They kind of got a nice ring to it. Revenue becomes available. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Let’s buy it. Romanova! Here we go. So that’s how the name became out. As far as trends, I mean, AI is the big thing now, you know, both on the predictive AI side and the declarative AI side. We’re doing a lot of work in that area. Salesforce is doing a ton of work in that area. So having a tech partner like Salesforce on the platform side, you know, with, you know, big data combined with AI, gives us a lot of, technology, mojo. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We hired a VP of engineering that came off a Wall Street who was used to building, you know, all kinds of highly reliable, high performance, you know, sub micro, second millisecond to nanosecond response time stuff. So, you know, he’s brought a lot of engineering moxie and, and folks that he’s brought along with him to the team and we’ve got a number of initiatives right now on the AI front. |
| Mike Horvath |
| You know, where I think it goes is, you know, you can imagine a world where the AI is is trained enough and smart enough to act like you would when you were on the phone. I mean, to the point where it could even be like, you’ve seen the deepfake videos already, right? It’s not a stretch. It I mean, the technology is out there, and has the power to be, you know, so good. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It also has the power to be very destructive, you know, so it’s going to be I think it’s going to be one of the things that we have to everybody has to look out for. But you could literally have a, a automated agent that, you know, I could have a zoom call with you. And I am basically responding to you with an AI engine that is being responsive, but in a human like way, you know, not the robotic, you know, telephone press one, press two for the same thing, but literally having a conversation with you about what you want. |
| Mike Horvath |
| And it’s smart enough to understand what you’re asking, smart enough to formulate a nice declarative response. And you can imagine the power of that, because that’s a 24 by seven available person never takes a vacation, never sick is, you know, reading the data now is working off the data that you have in the system, and it’s just doing those things. |
| Mike Horvath |
| So that’s those are some of the things that, you know, I think where the industry is going to ultimately get to, I mean, the entire world gets to in terms of these types of interactions, you know, especially on the customer service side and potentially even on the sales side. You know, we’re doing work right now. We’re digesting, you know, unstructured data, turning it into, you know, information, structured data, so we can respond with a quote, you know, just do those types of things. |
| Mike Horvath |
| We’ve already worked with stuff where we pull in, you know, carrier invoices, you know, strip all the documents of the data, classify each page of the document, turn it into data that we can then use to settle out with a carrier hands free. If if it’s the you know, if they take what did 1800, they send you an invoice for 1800. |
| Mike Horvath |
| All the pad documents are there, even if it’s in one big PDF. Now we can now split it all up and and we’re doing this through a combination of things that we do and what partner technologies that we’ve partnered with. And you know, it settles the invoice. It settles what the carrier could put it back up in the drive pay network. |
| Mike Horvath |
| It could offer them a quick pay. And and literally nobody in accounting ever touched it. |
| Jim Becker |
| That’s awesome. That’s called data. Data scientists at its finest. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. So, those types of things I think are big productivity gainers for, you know, customers because they’re doing that manually. Many cases today, a lot of people don’t trust the tech. So they’re still kind of letting the tech do the heavy lift, do all the data scrape, do all the document build. Then they want to eyeball it and then let it go, which is fine. |
| Mike Horvath |
| I mean, having those options we tend to and all these automated things have ways to you for you to like babysit it. And then when you feel comfortable with it. Yeah. Let it go. Automated. Fully automated. But we’ll see where the AI stuff takes. You know, it’s the kind of it’s the buzz of this, you know, for the last week, probably a year and a half, you know, prior to that, you had, you know, blockchain. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. |
| Jim Becker |
| Oh, yeah. Well, listen, before we wrap things up, how do people get Ahold of you? Michael? |
| Mike Horvath |
| Yeah. Easiest thing is, m Horvath at Rev and Overcome. You can, ping me on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn as well. You know, those are probably the two easiest ways to get Ahold of me. |
| Jim Becker |
| Well, beautiful. Well, listen, thank you so much for really being here. It was a pleasure getting to know you a little bit better. We’ve known each other for many, many years and really, to let everybody else really get to know Rev a Nova as well as yourself and to really just see the journey that you’ve been on, it’s a miraculous journey and astonishing, if you will, really love what you’ve done and keep going. |
| Jim Becker |
| The winds behind you and this sail is lifted, so enjoy the journey, my friend. Thank you so much. |
| Mike Horvath |
| Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And, you know, maybe we can do it again sometime. |
| Jim Becker |
| All right. Thank you, my friend. Have a great evening. |