Getting To Know: Our Two Founders!
Well, my friends, I, Amanda, the Marketing Lead here at TNT, thought it would be a brilliant idea to get Zack and Tim to come together and talk about how they met and how Startup TNT came to be.
I had a plan, I had written questions, and frankly, I should have known better. Zack and Tim both shook their heads and did their own thing, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone.
So without further ado, welcome to the craziness that is Zack and Tim interviewing each other! (Not to be mistaken for the craziness of when Zack interviewed himself.)
ZS: And we’re live!
Welcome Tim. Let’s start with the question I always ask: How did you hear about TNT?
TL: Basically, I started asking around “where do I hang out with the cool startup people?” This was in late May/early June of 2019. Arden told me about the Happy Hour, so I show up, expecting to see a bunch of people hanging out and talking startups. And instead, it was just you and Rob sitting at the bar, trying to use Mailchimp to send out your first newsletter. Oh and the door was locked! So I couldn’t even come in at first.
TL: My turn. How did you convince your wife to let you throw a party every week?
ZS: So Keren and I went to McGill, and we had had these Thursday Night Traditions as undergrads. I’d been talking about doing one of my own since I was a graduate student, and then in January/February of 2019, I ran into Rob at a WorkNicer event, and he told me that Polar Park was opening and it was dope. I told him about my TNT idea and he offered to host it.
I definitely wanted to do it, but then I got a little distracted because Keren and I went on a trip to China for three weeks. And when I was in China, I was reflecting on what I really wanted to do with my life. I had just accepted a new full-time position with Fitset Ninja, but while I was relaxing (aka crushing beers in China—our river cruise ship actually ran out of Heineken because of us!), I realized that what I really wanted to do with my life was to be the best angel investor in Edmonton. I wanted to eventually create a fund and invest in local startups, like the awesome team I had met at Fitset Ninja.
So I start the new job, I put out the idea on this Slack channel that EACOS had created, Nathan Beck told me he’d come, and that’s all I needed to get going!
Launched it on my birthday, May 16th, in 2019, and I said to Keren: this is what I want to do… throw a party every Thursday, for a year, and see where it goes.
TL: So you took the name and the idea from McGill. What else have we ripped off?
ZS: Lol… a lot… angel investment summits, for sure. I went to a NACO conference in Calgary where I saw a presentation from the founder of the Seattle Angel Conference, and I was like “I can do that… and even better!” So I brought the idea back here, and that’s how Summit I was born.
That and the fact that I thought 2.20.2020 was the best date ever for a Summit.
So then I pitched the Summit to at least 5–10 people—while pitching bigger ideas too—and a lot of people were telling me nah, this won’t work… this isn’t the issue that the startup community is facing, blah blah blah. Tim was literally the only person that said LET’S DO THIS.
ZS: Why the hell did you say yes, Tim?
TL: Well, I was previously a part of a local startup, tasked with raising capital for the company. And it was fucking hard. We even exited for a good multiple right afterwards—so we were a good investment! And from the Compass Report and the conversations around the Happy Hour tables, mostly everybody else found this to be one of the hardest parts of startup.
Plus, when you asked me, my game plan was to leave my corporate job, and start my own startup. And my initial thought to fund that startup was that I should just try and meet as many investors as possible and have a beer with them and get to know them. And then you pitched the Summit and selfishly, I was like this is great. We can have a bunch of qualified investors come together, make it easier to make real connections, startups will get funding, and away we go.
ZS: Interesting comment on selfishness… you wanted to be selfish to make connections to start a company and try and change the world. My personal selfish motive is to drink beers with my friends every Thursday, and to be able to invest in the best deals in Edmonton. But since I write small checks and I’m not good at picking deals, the Summit allowed me to invest the way I wanted to: by working with a team of like-minded investors who work together to identify the most promising local deals and then syndicate the deals together.
Another epiphany I had when we were putting together the Summit was that I thought I needed to be a successful entrepreneur in order to be a successful investor, with a war chest of funds from my successful startup. In actuality, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, it’s always more powerful to come together as a group, and help direct where that big pile of money goes. I can work with our group of investors and we can come together and make a difference with the funds we invest. Like we’ll likely invest $4–5 million this year alone. And if I had tried to launch my own VC, it wouldn’t have worked or I would have spent 2 years trying to raise the $5 million to invest. Where we spent the last 2 years investing, and we’ve already invested $5 million into the ecosystem.
TL: And with TNT, we get to really change the game. Our culture is the biggest differentiator—we facilitate real connections and real friendships. Other groups, other Summits (that they call an Angel Conference/Summit), they put the angels up on a pedestal (as seen in the name). It’s like a country club and the founders are desperately seeking entrance, which isn’t fun for anyone. We work to break that structure. Make everyone equal, take down the barriers, and create relationships.
Like at our first event… we had no chairs! We forced people to mingle. We said ok, everyone, let’s chill the hell out. Pitch in $5,000, and let’s have some real talks with startups, and figure out where we want the money to go. That level of casualness was definitely missing in other groups and events.
ZS: 100%. Hey, whatever happened to the startup you were going to start?
TL: Well, there was a couple I wanted to do, and through the Summit, I built relationships with a few people. Including Brendan. Who told me “Dude, why would you sink all your money into building something? Let’s go buy something that makes money.”
So we did that alongside the next Summit, and I really dug into it in the beginning of 2020, and then you know, COVID. So we started doing some financial advisory consulting alongside Brad. The consulting tied in with TNT, and we worked to get Summit II to get off the ground.
And then I was too busy with consulting to get back into private equity, and TNT started taking off and it became the startup I could sink my teeth into! That said, still looking for stuff to invest in—working with some of the investors from TNT on property development in Uganda, for example.
ZS: So where are we gonna be in one more year, Tim?
TL: Across Western Canada, for sure. Including Manitoba and ideally starting to build a foothold in BC. And building out our team and really seeing the heel of the hockey stick grow. We’ve done some good work to get TNT to be a legit organization in the last few months, and now we’ve got to see that through.
ZS: And have a VC fund up and running, to activate even more capital.
TL: Yeah, 100%. We should be talking about really hard scaling problems within a year. As with any startup, every doubling of headcount breaks things, and we’re in the process of mending since the last break (we hired 4 people in the last 4 months). The second half of the year is going to be a sprint to double and break it all again!
TL: Alright, and to cap off, Amanda wants to know what our favourite beers are. In the winter, I like porters, and in the summer, a sour on a sunny patio. Oh, and for our Saskies, a classic Pilsner can never go wrong.
ZS: Mine is a New England IPA, Harpoon IPA to be exact (the original New England IPA from ‘93!). You know, I grew up loving hoppy floral IPAs and now everywhere you go, people are brewing them. In New England, we just called it IPA, but here, they specifically call it New England IPA.
TL: And we’re done!