#209 Bobby Nims: Transforming Dreams into Opportunities with 'Lonch' the next generation crowdfunding platform

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Bobby Nims, who is joining me live. Of course you will be seeing the recording, but, Bobby, the way I like to do it is I keep it to the guests to introduce themselves, because no one can introduce anyone better than themselves. So the floor is yours. 

0:00:19 - Bobby
All right, Mehmet, I really appreciate that. 

So, for my audience, my name is Bobby Nims. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Lonch, a crowdfunding platform that provides the opportunity for people with ideas to move their ideas forward. So, essentially, if you think about any kind of idea whether it's culinary or a park, in recreation or technology or sports or leisure people can come through our platform with their ideas and connect to people with the right skills to move their idea forward, to move their idea forward and possibly eventually bring their idea to market and make an income and make money and make money in perpetuity. So Lonch is basically the platform that brings people together. It's a home for big and small ideas and it's a crowdfunding platform that provides everyone the opportunity, without capital, with access, to possibly achieve their dreams, to possibly work on things that they're passionate about and we're genuinely excited about kind of eliminating the walls and barriers for people who don't necessarily have the time or even know where to start with their idea to bring their idea forward and validate it within the community and possibly make it happen. 

0:01:43 - Mehmet
That's great, fantastic. Just out of curiosity, bobby, are you open for anyone around the globe or just is it like currently in the US? 

0:01:52 - Bobby
Yeah, so, yeah. So right now, our app is actually launching later this month and it's United States based only. We have a number of just expansion plans internationally In the upcoming years. We're starting here, based in the United States, and if you think about it, it's not just technology, it's all verticals. So, from our perspective, people with skills maybe it's in marketing or patents or business law they don't necessarily, they didn't necessarily can't go to a fiver or upwork, but they can come to Lonch. And conversely, people with ideas or non-technology ideas, again, they can come to Lonch as well. So we're really excited and we're going to start here in the United States and hopefully expand internationally in the next few years. 

0:02:39 - Mehmet
That's great. So I believe you have a journey yourself, bobby, with the startups and entrepreneurship. So if you can just tell me what actually you know was the motivation to start the Lonch, yeah, so predominantly it was through my partner or founder co-founder, christopher Gulliver. 

0:02:59 - Bobby
He's had this idea for 20 plus years and I've had a number of different sort of startups more kind of nonprofit, more in the philanthropy sort of space that have been sometimes challenging but also successful at the same time. And for me I think the motivation sort of is dried behind that. Everyone should have the opportunity. So from my perspective, you shouldn't necessarily need to have a business degree, know how to write a business plan, be able to pitch, have money in your pocket to spend and invest when you don't have the money necessarily. 

And I think about not only maybe Gen Z and college university students that across from between, continue to work on their idea and heading to a nine to five, but I also think about the single mom or single dad with four kids working two jobs, or the retiree who, just you know, maybe served in the military and worked in a distribution or factory for 40 plus years, but it's always had this idea that they really wanted to explore but never have had the time. So for me it's always about kind of uplifting others and also, I think, enabling others to find their happiness, to live a more autonomous life to do the things that they want to do, and so, for me, the motivation behind Lonch is really helping others and I think, from our perspective, when the Lonch platform, you know, stand, stood up and our app is out there, it's going to change a lot of people's lives, because I think a lot of people have ideas and dreams around what they want to do, and Lonch can be a home for them. 

0:04:38 - Mehmet
That's great to hear and actually, you know you made you made me excited, because I know a lot of people who you know they have dreams about starting something, but they don't have the means to get it up and running. So that's really great, bobby. Now, but from your experience, of course, like there should be like a bare minimum, let's say, for an idea to be, you know, valid, to be a successful startup. So what you can like. Give some hints for people who might be joining later on on your platform. What are the bare minimum, let's say, that they need to keep in mind when, when they want to bring their ideas into a full fledged start. 

0:05:20 - Bobby
Yeah. So I mean, I think Lonch helps you start there. A lot of people don't even know where the starting line is for their idea and so if you were to download our app and you're on your phone, you start with your own product page. So, whether you're coming in to possibly bring your skills and attributes to products or you have your idea, you basically create a product page on our marketplace and that product page is really simple and basically, once you create that product page around what the product is, what do you know? What possible problem or solution are you providing or solving? A description around that product and what you need. 

We make it really simple at launch actually, where we don't look at your help or necessarily people as jobs. We look at the opportunities as skills and we actually call them hats. So you may have an idea, let's say, for a biodegradable picnic basket, which is actually somebody somebody shared with me two days ago and they want to have a picnic basket that basically you go hiking with it and then you can leave the picnic basket. It just biodegrades into the earth, it's eco friendly and it's good for the earth and they just don't want to carry it back down. They go on these really long hikes and they want to do something nice or nice kind of family dinner or sort of some kind of picnic and they want to leave the basket. And so the person doesn't know plasticity for the basket, they don't necessarily know patents around what the basket could be, they don't have any skills or possibly knowledge around distribution of the basket. You know marketing the basket right, so they would create that page for that biodegradable basket and they would talk about the why and sort of the passion behind it and then they would start to list off these hats. Basically he listens Does anyone have any experience with picnic baskets? Or, as anyone in experience in you know how do you patent an idea for a picnic basket or things like that? 

So at Lonch we make it really really simple for people to come on with ideas. 

It could be a new type of soccer ball. It could be possibly a new app. We came across a student yesterday who was talking about an app to make vending machines more technological. That would manage the inventory, manage the space of vending machines, because vending machines are a kick. You put in your money and you take out the bag of chips and what they're saying is well, I have an app now to manage the inventory, to order seamlessly the distribution of those products to you, have those products delivered to the vending machine. 

So we come across ideas from people, from parents, from nine to fives, all the time and we say you're starting points here, there's a home for you here with your idea. So, to answer your question, it's really any idea and Lonch provides that path forward for that idea. I'd move that idea forward and we, as part of our process, help the idea eventually become a product. That product becomes an LLC sort of just in time and then it goes to market and so we really kind of help guide, really guide that person through that process to help them be successful. 

0:08:17 - Mehmet
So you provide the know how basically to them right. 

0:08:22 - Bobby
Exactly so. If you're familiar with, like a legal zoom, or you're familiar with, like you know, some of those types of platforms, imagine coming to one platform and it has all the tools and resources to provide you exactly what you need to bring your idea where it needs to go. 

0:08:38 - Mehmet
That's perfect, amazing Now, but in general, like you know when, whether it's a product or a service or maybe an innovation, right, so you need. You need to have also a way to push it to the market and from your experience, like, what are the best ways to take a product to the market? 

0:09:00 - Bobby
Yeah. So it's just A, your willingness to share your product and idea. So I think a lot of times people are more conservative or they tend to be probably more risk adverse in terms of sharing their idea and product. And we say, like you just embrace, you embrace collaboration, you embrace market validation, and that's Lonch. So it's the willingness to share your idea and actually have your idea validated by the community, have your idea validated and worked on with others, right? 

So from that perspective, especially for entrepreneurs and founders, you know there is a passion around what you're trying to bring and I would say, like that is a time to not be afraid, right? I think, just from the perspective of like you want to be able to share it, right? So from that perspective, I think sometimes founders, entrepreneurs, are sometimes skittish of, well, it's not perfect, or you know, I don't know how this is going to be handled. Or you know, what do I think of when I receive criticism? Right? Or nobody buys my product, right, and we look at that at Lonch. It's just like embracing who you are, but also opportunities, right? So from that perspective, every single point, milestone within your own sort of path as an entrepreneur product is basically where you are where you're supposed to be Right. 

So, from that journey perspective, like you are where you are supposed to be right and failure is part of that but also validating in the marketplaces as well. And so Lonch, if you think about you know, in the next 12 to 36 months of having 50, 100, 250,000 users, there's going to be an entire community marketplace to validate your product, and we think that when people are able to understand your product, they can provide the feedback you need be the customer voice that you need to help shape and evolve your product as well. So I'll kind of pause, but I think to your answer your question, it's adaptability and agility with your product and, obviously, until you evolve your product and continue to evolve your product, that's that's just going to be ongoing, just as much as it is with change, right, as an entrepreneur, founder, right. So, yeah, those are the things I think about. I think, if you're thinking about bringing your idea or product to market, and not be afraid and just embrace embrace the customer voice, because that voice should influence what you're building. 

0:11:18 - Mehmet
Absolutely, and that's a good point that you can validate very fast, you know, instead of being, as they say, being stuck in a rabbit hole and trying to say, okay, is it something that people will buy or is it something that it's worth to build? So it's, you know, it's a nice idea. Now it's a ground funding platform for your launch, right? So people usually and I ask this question a lot and you know because you've you've been in in this for a long time, bobby because people, when they think about startups, they think about two ways of doing things. So either they think about, you know, to bootstrap the business, you know, try to put their own money, or they think, oh, I should go to investors and I should go to engine investors and VCs. Now, crowdfunding has been here, I mean, for a while, but what do you think, you know, the role of crowdfunding would play in the new startups that are coming up? Because you know people are fed up with, you know, these VCs and you know and all this stuff. So what is your view on this? 

0:12:32 - Bobby
So, man, I got to introduce a new term for you. It's called crowd funding. So F O U N D I N G oh, crowd funding platform. So, from our perspective, we totally agree with what you're saying. Right? So for our perspective is, why should somebody have to pitch in front of a VC investor in Silicon Valley? Why do I need to drive for this hedge fund group to raise this capital? Right? It just seems like the process is completely broken. 

And here at Lonch, we absolutely agree. We say to you that bringing people in at the right time increases the likelihood of success. Bringing people in who are just as passionate about what you're doing increases the likelihood of success. Getting paid based upon the value that you deliver in perpetuity when the product is successful is. I think a lot of people would welcome that. And obviously, here at Lonch, we're on a Web 3025 sort of stack technology with blockchain and through our royalty token structure. That's exactly essentially what's happening, so we're really excited about that piece, to answer your questions, absolutely. 

So I think that the kind of the movement towards the investment groups, I think is kind of shifting and repositioning the newer, younger generation, gen Z, wants autonomy. They want to work on what they want, where they want, when they want, and actually they wanna do it on their phone, right, where they want, right. So from our perspective the nine to five, over the next five to 10 years, we'll slowly start to pivot towards a crowd sort of founding base experience. It will transition from an obviously an office setting to a setting of hiking, the setting being on a beach, the setting being with a family. It's gonna shift from you receive that bi-weekly check in your checking account to now you're getting paid substantially in perpetuity, year over year, for a product that you contributed to years ago, right, based upon the value that you brought. So our perspective is very similar to it, like, we think, the days of the investment group, hedge fund group. 

Yeah, they obviously continue moving forward, but we also think there's a significant population of people who will never have that opportunity and, additionally to that, a lot of investment groups aren't gonna invest in a product that has a lifetime value of a few million dollars. It's not worth it. But for somebody, or for a group of four people or for a family, if a product was going to make a few million dollars over the course of 20 years, that's still a significant amount of money. So we think from a market perspective, like a total dressable market, like for products, particularly under $5 million, they have no chance of getting any type of surface with an investment group when, at Lonch, we would love to have you right, we think there's an opportunity for any idea, whether it's worth a dollar or a hundred million dollars, right. So I'll kind of pause, but hopefully that gives you a little more sense about Lonch kind of our philosophy. And then, as we think about removing those barriers, what a crowd founding type of platform would provide versus more of a crowd funding type of conversation experience. 

0:15:51 - Mehmet
That's amazing and you know, let me be very honest, it's a music to my ears because you know like. 

I was told that it was not, like, directly related to what you do with Lonch, but we were talking about AI and you know, I told my many guests on the podcast, not because AI only, but what I'm saying more and more is that people want exactly what you mentioned the autonomy. And I believe the future of war is not what we see now. Actually, it started to shift because and I want to ask you like, is it only Gen Z, who you know like are, after being solopreneurs and you know nomads and you know, have this autonomy? Is it something really only for Gen Z? 

0:16:38 - Bobby
It's for everybody, in fact, I think when you think about it I mean so here at Lonch, we probably we get upwards of I don't know 10, 20 people a day or so. Our app is around the corner, just reaching out, and you know, the interesting is, when you apply for a job, there's a job description and so if you've been coding or you've been in marketing or you've been legal for 20 years, right, there's kind of a you're sort of boxed in, right, you can only do coding. For your next job, you can only do marketing. You can only do business law. What if you have passion for graphic design? What if you're really really good at illustrations? What if you're really really good at writing children's books? Right? 

So from our perspective, like again, we think that there is just enormous runway for the nine to five, outside of their jobs, not only to possibly work on products or bring their ideas that they're super passionate about. That gives them a sense of like, of life, fulfillment and just the ability to do things that make them happy but also make an income, right? So, if I have, for example, so for you, for example, let's say that you are, you know, you're really good at I don't know compliance law and we have, there's another, products that are really good compliance law, your podcast laws. All of a sudden, you know sometimes on the weekends you're contributing these products from a compliance perspective that if it's successful, generate more wealth for you, more wealth for your family, right, and that leads to you know life experience, life fulfillment, life happiness, right, as well as you're helping a product that you're also passionate about be successful, right. So we think that there is enormous runway for the nine to fives and I think there's a lot of people out there. We know there's a lot of people out there there's just don't even know where to start. 

And we talk to, we go to like these hackathon events. The hackathons are these types of kind of fundraising competitions. They only award the top three winners and those three winners get capital, they get resources, they get accolade, they get support, they get press. But what about the other 400 or 500 people who tried, right? And our message to them is yes, you can. Our message is there's a home for you and our message is keep moving your idea forward, come to launch, right. So I'll just kind of pause, but absolutely, with our agency. We think nine to five, we think retirees, we think at different types of events like hackathons, like there's a home for you, there's a community for you and even if your idea isn't something that's ready right now for the market, you can still bring your idea on. And when it is ready or the right people come along who see the vision and see what the product needs, right then maybe that's the time as well. So I'll stop there, but we think even you have it. 

I probably have ideas stemming from your childhood that you can be on our platform and absolutely try to move forward. 

0:19:40 - Mehmet
Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. How, from community perspective because you talked about community like, is it kind of similar to a social media platform I'm just curious to understand where people can collaborate. And because I know like building community is not easy for me, Like it's something that needs dedication and needs time, but I can see the passion. But you have done it before. So how big are you planning to make this community? 

0:20:12 - Bobby
Yeah. So if we think about our first 500 users versus the subsequent 5000, versus the 50,000, right, like, what does that look like and feel like? And obviously we expect eventually it's just exponential and becomes a household name. So let me start with just kind of the user experience, customer experience, like it's very familiar, very similar to like what you'd see like on a LinkedIn kind of kind of Facebook with like a five or upwork. So you're going to sense like the actual interface or wireframe, end to end user kind of friendliness is all there and within the tool, from program project management to financial management, to collaboration, messaging, artifacts, strategy decisions it's all there within the app. So within the app itself, through iteration after iteration, we'll have dozens of capabilities actually drive moving an idea forward that you'd feel like with a startup, that's, with a group of people in the same room. So we're really excited about what the experience is going to be on our, on our app for people From like a like I guess, kind of like you know, the community we do definitely do take steps in terms of validating people who join. So it's not only kind of just you know, sort of confirming who they are through email, but we will eventually have kind of like kind of voice or face recognition as well. It'll be really unique to this kind of crowdfunding type of space where we're validating people for who they are. From our financial kind of reporting perspective, we as part of Lonch, kind of getting connected all the reporting of financial reporting here in the States as well and obviously driving kind of transparency, legitimacy and trust right. The sense of trust like we trust Lonch, we feel safe, the environment feels like it's conducive to collaboration and people. So there's obviously there that you build over time right and I think as you start to build successful products and then you start to hear people's stories of changing their lives overnight through our platform, that's where I think that grows, the community grows. So I'll kind of pause there. 

But in terms of the validation, we expect to have college students to elderly people, people in technology, non technology to people are have had an idea of tried working on successfully to people have held on to an idea for themselves for a really long time and they want to move something forward. We're going to expect to see a lot of people who work in their day job that are just eroded and tired. I'm like I want to work on something that I enjoy working on. I'm going to go to launch with the possibility of being paid in perpetuity. I have all these skills I used to have in college. I haven't touched in 20 years. I want to dust those off and go to launch. 

So again we see like a huge marketplace. You know sweets and pages of product ideas. You know tens of thousands of people collaborating and connecting on our platform, a sense of community supporting, connecting, engaging and that's why we feel like, honestly, from our perspective, like Lonch is essentially going to be the next biggest market disruption as we think about startups and the entrepreneur community, because it's going to enable and kind of kind of remove some of those barriers, whether it's capital or even where to start. So kind of pause, but community will exponentially grow. Lonch will take steps to help validate and drive trust and then from there really everything kind of happens on the platform. 

0:23:47 - Mehmet
That's fantastic, bobby. You know, as we are close to the end, like, what's the advice you want to give? Because you mentioned fresh graduate students, and I like to ask this question from someone who got the experience and is passionate about, you know, entrepreneurship what you tell whether they are Gen Z or whoever, whoever had an idea or whoever you know is dreaming to have a startup what you tell them? 

0:24:18 - Bobby
Don't give up and whatever your idea is and whatever you're working on, there's a path forward for you. It might feel and look different and where you land with your idea, it might evolve, obviously to something that's that's different, but our message is, my message is don't give up and there's no such thing as a linear path in life and there's certainly no such thing as a linear path as an entrepreneur, and your path is going to be unequivocally different than every other entrepreneur and you should embrace that and welcome that and know that you're not alone. And there are a lot of reasons why startups don't succeed and I think there's basically that line that says you're gonna continue your idea for when it's really hard, when you don't feel the light, when you don't see you know the light of day and you don't know where to go, or you're gonna try to find yourself and and be sort of agile and just continue to energize and put your effort into trying to move, make, make material progress every day. So I'll kind of pause. It's easier said than done. 

Launches app is still not there. We're literally like around the corner of being the Apple Store, but this has been years and years of sweat equity and just really hard work. So, and again, Lonch may or may not be successful, right and so at the end of the day. But you know, follow your dreams, don't give up. And either way, regardless the outcome of your idea, your life is gonna be more fulfilling because you, you went down this path and try. 

0:26:07 - Mehmet
I love this. I love this, bobby. Where can they find about lunch? What's the website? Yes, no one, it's okay yeah. 

0:26:15 - Bobby
So Lonch LONC H so you can go to WWW. Lonch LONCHio you can actually go find us on LinkedIn. We have a pretty substantial TikTok following now with the spink jacket, and then we have a kind of refresh podcast series as well the Lonch podcast and you can you can literally literally download or find us an available platform and I would say, if you listen to this podcast, in a couple weeks you know, september on, download our app and check it out yeah, great. 

0:26:47 - Mehmet
So I think this will go in the first week of September anyway. So, yeah, so, just for you know, I'm very transparent, you know. So my audience, they know that, you know I have some backlogs. So, yeah, guys, so this has been recorded and mid of August, let's say, and I will make sure that I will put the links, I'm very excited to see the journey, bobby, as well, and I love the way you mentioned about keep trying. Actually, I was on another group, you know, today where we, everyone had a challenge to build something. Some of us failed, some of us, you know, they did small things, but the message because they wanted to, you know, like actually delete the group, and then I said, guys, don't, don't, don't do it, because you need to keep trying as you said, keep, keep trying. 

0:27:36 - Bobby
This is the key one. 

0:27:38 - Mehmet
It's a. You know, like I am always energized when I have guests like yourself, bobby, who you know mentioned these things, because we need to keep the entrepreneurial spirit. I'm also believer that, yeah, like I'm not saying all the jobs will disappear all of a sudden, but yeah, hundred percent like people will have more choices to achieve their dreams, and this is one of the main goal why I have this podcast. Yeah, I know it's called it's called CTO, but, guys, yeah, we, I believe tech enables us, as entrepreneurs, to have a better destiny. Thank you very much, bobby, for the time and for the listeners. Guys, as usual, if you have any questions, any feedback about this episode or the show integral, please reach out to me. You can find all my media handles in the frame here, you can also send me a link in the message, if you want, where I'm more active. 

Also, if you are interested to be a guest same like what we want today don't hesitate, reach out to me and I will be more than happy to arrange for that. Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again in the next episode. Thank you, bye, bye. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet