Build a Team In Trust

Build a Team In Trust

John Standish

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

6/24/2020

Or listen using the plugin below:

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

the team and Trust build a team and Trust so the things that you need to look for and bring in I mean you know I mentioned it just a couple of minutes ago integrity is everything person's integrity ethics you got to do the ethical thing everyone this is Devon Miller and welcome to another episode of the inventive journey I'm your host Evan Miller a patent and trademark attorney it found in Miller IP law as well as a serial entrepreneur that loves to talk with others and hear their invented journey today we have a great guest on he is his name is John Standish and he started his career in law enforcement has a had a fun career going from law enforcement to fraud there to the fraud unit and going to ensure working with insurance companies and now he said that his own startup so welcome on the on the podcast job well thank you I'm happy to be here thanks for the invitation all right well pleasure why don't you I did a quick introduction but why do you start us at the beginning of your journey a little bit 32 years I think you said when we talked before in law enforcement or quite a while and then you now kind of almost in your second career so maybe walk us through or tell a little tell us a little bit about your journey sure well I'm I am in my second career technology with a start-up software company called infinite Linux were based in Silicon Valley basically we're an artificial software company that uses machine learning to extract structured and unstructured data and insurance claim files and deliver insights for better decisions that's what we do so but my first career how my journey started goes way back in 1978-79 when I got into law enforcement in the Bay Area and I joined the California Highway Patrol in January of 1980 went through the Academy graduated and went back to the San Francisco Bay Area no I get it I know it's early on but I get a jump it just asked you so what you know I always find it interesting everybody when they take different career paths so what what you originally direct you to law enforcement was you know he wanted to serve people you had other family there was a mod it's like it was kind of an interesting thing you know I was kind of I was being pushed in two different directions early on in my life and in high school one direction was is to become a professional golfer because I haven't I had to town I played in high school and I enjoyed it but I got burned out on I mean you you know you hit a thousand golf balls a week you know and eventually you're gonna burn out so god bless the men and women that do that now that's incredible but the other thing you know was you know should I become a doctor you know being kind of pushed that way and then one one night I took over my local police department had a ride-along burger where you know if you lived in a city you could sign up and ride with an officer for a couple of hours to see what it's like is a great community building tool that the police department uses and that changed my life that's right then and there I said no this is what I want to do I like the the aspect of public service law enforcement and that's the direction I went so there was my first pivot in life so I did that so when I got on the Highway Patrol just like everybody else you know you are assigned to a regional office and you're on patrol duties you know any any Police Department patrol is the bread and butter but did their specialization programs one of which was Investigations which I always jump it one more question just cuz I always completely unrelated but I sure I've got the other one the status so Highway Patrol you always wonder if you go five or ten over if you're likely to get pulled over that's how everybody that always Drive so what was your employee people over if they're going five over well you know I mean okay I'll tell you there's a I completely aside but I always just have that question so I figured I might as well take advantage of it well Devin thank you for this so so here's the thing if you know you you're a highway patrol officer and you encounter a pack of cars and everyone's doing 75 80 miles an hour and they're just all traveling together I mean yeah you could cook out one car or maybe a better thing to do is get in front of everyone and slow everyone down and then move on but if you are weaving in and out of traffic accelerating slowing down following too closely making unsafe lane changes URH marking pretty much I mean fact of life I was curious I did me the irelia but it was you Benjen Highway Patrol I've always had that question I know others have always had it so I figured I'd get your perspective so didn't mean to go too far side but go ahead and continue on your journey so so about the fifth year into the Highway Patrol I had transferred out of the San Francisco Bay Area and gone to Sacramento and I became fascinated with what what's called accident reconstruction reconstructing an event an automobile collision you know science and math is involved and so I had a background in that and I liked numbers and in the physics and I there was always this natural curiosity into me like why did this happen okay and if that happened why'd what caused that to happen you know I mean that was just my it's my natural curiosity so I really got interested in that and got accepted into a program on the Highway Patrol it's called mate em AI T it stands for a multidisciplinary accident investigation team and that is comprised of four individuals there are two officers that have specially training in what's known as occupant occupant kinematics in vehicle dynamics in other words studying what happens to the human in an automobile collision when they're inside a compartment of an automobile what caused them to be injured what caused the fatality injured things you know I'm really starting to drill down and reconstructing the event and that's that was one of my first takeaways that I care that I've carried on in life right now is doing investigations or a project on a multidisciplinary approach and what I mean by that on the Highway Patrol the main team you had your two officers and you had Caltrans California Department transportation engineer who handled you know the roadway design and then you had a motor carrier specialist you know a mechanic with some expertise and so those four people would function as one team to reconstruct the event looking at all different types of issues and I really enjoyed that so I did that and then they asked me to if I wanted to go into what was known as the stage Donald lil collision unit which was attached to the auto theft unit and look at referrals from the insurance industry where the if the insurance company suspected that the claim involved was staged on mobile collision because there's there's an inverse if you can prove how an automobile collision occurred factually with evidence the inverse is you can prove that the collision could not occur as being reported so that was my first introduction of the world of insurance and when I started they told me what I was going to be doing I didn't have a clue anything about the insurance industry you talk about fast on-the-job training and having to pick stuff up and thank God there was some experienced officers and some wonderful people from the investigation teams in the insurance industry they were great to work from and learn from about the nuances of insurance claims and I really really took a liking into this I really enjoyed the work so I did that for nine years there out of Sacramento and then recruited I was recruited by the California Department of Insurance the enforcement branch now and there's a unit in there it's called the fraud division it's a law enforcement agency within a state regulatory agency it's highly specialized and their sole mission is to investigate reported instances of fraudulent insurance claims it's reported by the insurance industry and consumers went in as a detective and I retired as the chief of the fraud division and on August 1st of 2010 and you know so it it was really interesting is like when I went in as a detective the only thing I was focused on you know was obviously you know the Criminal Investigations but as you start to ascend into the chairs of supervision and management and executive ranks there's a whole different world that you have to negotiate in manage and I really enjoyed doing that so again some experience in creating legislation the regular regulations that are put upon the insurance industry that monitor them and guide them whether transacting insurance and you know in over the years I got really interested in technology now you know I was always the type of guy that you know I had if a new toy came out I had to have it had to have that new toy and try it out and use it had some good toys and some horrible toys you know not the prettiest the jokeboys goes you know what the prettiest color of prettiest color for cars right exactly hey so technology I'm in exactly the same way so yeah so you know being it you know I get to monitor and lead a number of different types of Technology projects and when I retired you know for the first 90 days I didn't do anything I played golf I read about five newspapers I watched the morning news shows I went to the beach I mean you know and you know in it it kind of got boring in a way so you know it's like okay I've got to do something so I started a consulting company where I would provide services to the insurance industry X provide expert testimony and analysis if the insurance company got sued for bad faith and or they got sued because their special investigation did a their special investigation unit did a an investigation on a on what they thought was a fraudulent claim did they do it right did they abide by the regulations did they buy by the law did they document it correctly report it correctly that all type of and so I started doing a couple of these projects a year not enough to really keep you busy full-time but I mean it was nice to keep it's good to keep the mind engaged but I'll jump in just again kind of an aside but these there's two fun of questions not to ask so what's in the fraud you need consulting everything else without getting into details but you couldn't couldn't disclose what's the craziest case or what's the craziest circumstance you worked on oh my god Evan we're gonna need four other podcasts a 30-second overview just the funnier that one that you would never have thought over the craziest when you worked on well some I want to say I don't know about crazy but I think one of the ones that was most interesting that was really eye-opening was is I arrested this gentleman who lived in Carmel California and he was a professor at the Defense Language Institute DLI where they said you know where all the military troops go to learn a language before they're assigned overseas so he taught he was an Arabic language instructor and he had a condominium on the Pebble Beach property along with a home in Carmel Valley well excuse me not on the salary of a language professor of the DLI so the first morning so what this guy was doing was staging automobile collisions quite frequently to fund his lifestyle yeah and so it was kind of it was interesting working that investigation because he was tied to other things that we found about when I executed some search warrants is for the premises and woke a lot of people up I think that's one of my most memorable things look is it's like there's the old adage you never know what's on the other side of the door until you walk through it and that one was really kind of interesting but I've got a lot of others too but what I just I thought it'd be interesting just here so I'm sure there are plenty of fascinating stories but although you you meet some incredibly mentally challenged individuals that try and get away with stuff and then you meet some very sophisticated gated in very smart people that get away with it for a while until they're caught those are the I always always like working the complex organized crime stuff but anyway don't be back to your story Gemma sighs you know I was always interested in technology you know new software programs new computer systems always had to have the fastest and nicest kookier I mean typical stuff so when I retired I had met some people from SAS the SAS Institute and some amazing brilliant people it really enjoyed interacting with him and I was asked if I would be interested in becoming an alliance partner and a consultant and work with SAS which I did and I worked in the state and local government practice for criminal justice along with a financial crimes practice which is interacted with the insurance people as well did that for three years had a great time learned a lot and then I get this email out of nowhere through LinkedIn from Shri Rama Swami who was going to start a company called in fanatics and she asked if I would be interested in joining the startup I was I was very flattered I never saw this coming so we talked in a couple months later you know I bid my goodbyes and to the SAS team and I started with Sri and Infini lytx and you know over the last four years we have created an amazing product artificial intelligence product it's called Charlie does three different things we are a bootstrapped startup we have not taken any funding from anybody yet doors still open but yet but you know trying to find the right VC who has a who has a broad vision and can see down the road instead of the quarterly spreadsheet reports you know can be a challenge I mean it's just the nature of the game we understand that but we're we're having a lot of fun done some amazing projects for people and then some customers and that's that's my journey so if you would have asked me in you know December of 1978 how I would like being part of an artificial intelligence software company I would have looked at you and said you're nuts I don't know what you're talking about but here we are with that it's a good interesting point so you to take I mean and I can see some overlaps and how do you but you know working from police officer you know Highway Patrol and then fraud unit and some of the things you went there that one oh even that kind of certainly makes a common thread and I do it now you're over to AI and artificial intelligence and computer software and how is that transition or you know from almost to see at least seemingly disparate or different types of careers how was that transition or how did that how did that work for you you know it was interesting it was an interesting process and it's still an ongoing process because what we have done and in Fennell Enix is following what I had learned in my first career sri and lama and balan of the other co-founders it didn't take too long to realize that a great approach is to take a multidisciplinary approach so we created some artificial intelligence software for the insurance industry so you know if you just have you know a data scientist and on and an architect set out on this on this journey to do that with no knowledge of the insurance industry it's not going to work so having a domain expert alright you know as part of the core team really helps and so like when we started this journey I mean you know a sri will tell you that I was locked in a room in Santa Clara which would total about two weeks and the engineers and the data scientists didn't bring them starting at insurance 101 two investigations 101 to try and spot fraud and other patterns other patterns of behavior patterns and other types of analysis that an insurance company would do to keep you know keep profitable and running so they it's kind of like the analogy is like you're gonna build a piece of AI software for an industry one of the first things that you should do is pick an expert from that industry and mimic his or her mind mmm that is that is a huge advantage because it's like you know it's it's it's just like the analogy between law enforcement and investigating claims if you take a senior patrol officer who is work to beat or City for 20 years they will tell you to the day and the hour of the day where the troublemakers are going to be and then go find them right it's just experience they know their city they know their environment the same thing with the claims examiner a senior accomplished claims examiner no shortcuts how do you get to the bottom of things quickly how to document it quickly and settle the plan quickly whereas the new person in that's been hired to just claims isn't a huge learning curve especially they have no experience in that so one other that one of the things that we strive to do with our with our solution or our Charlie platform is to help the new claims examiner learn from the senior accomplish because we mimic the mind the with that with our AI of those people and so they can learn faster know and oftentimes you think you know you and I'm always work a lot with the software and the engineers side side and you know oftentimes I think there's a you know sometimes it's almost a flaw in the logic okay I can figure this out or we can come up to speed or this is really a software problem but if you're not getting that if you're not getting the full background and experience as someone that's done that it's going to be hard to try and replicate it if you don't know what type of things might answer yeah I remember three years ago we were invited to participate and speak in this insurance accelerator program it is a Silicon Valley insurance accelerator is it's it's tied to Stanford University and the very first meeting we went to the very first two day conference I mean there must have been over a couple of hundred people from startups it would the room was packed and they had industry leaders you know making presentations technology leaders you know people from I mean the big companies and everyone's eBrush and taking notes and handle on every word they said when I remember sitting next to Sri and as I was looking around in the room and it's like okay besides insurance people speaking on stage you know that worked for the insurance company right now I think I was the only one in the audience with any experience working within the industry and I said I don't know if this is gonna work because you had people creating software with no knowledge on how the business or the insurance industry functions and in what's really kind of interesting now when we go back and participate in these programs most of the people aren't there some companies didn't make it so I guess that's one of the takeaways for a startup you know in you know is like bring in find someone from your domain that you're gonna service and you've got to bring them in to be successful I think no I that's similar I'm working with another startup that gave me lawn or launching their product and not too long and they're in the diabetes you know it's technology and as for wearables but they're in the diabetes monitoring for wearables and one of the things I think they did to their credit and very good ideas they brought in a doctor this is diabeetus it works with the patients on a day by day and I mean you know the insights you get from that side we can do the best technology but the insights you get from the doctor and how the patient's what they need to know and how they work and they're much like what you're saying is is it's a big difference between that what you can do exactly I mean that is a great example I mean having the doctor there as part of the team going yeah that you can do this or no you can't do that I mean yeah absolutely and that's the other thing too with I wanted to mention the the regulation guidelines and practices set on to the insurance industry and the beginning of this we saw a lot of companies come up with some of these some of these ideas and the software that they were building you know and it's just like I wanted to hand them a copy of the regulations for the claims practice Act and the suspected reporting suspected frauds and you all need to read before you think about creating your software because what you designed it's never gonna work let's go it's not gonna get just mmm okay well I'm gonna ship you I always have my classy questions but the question before my last questions one more and that is so how is it so you know as far as I understand correct me from you know police and that is always you know government will run through the government you have you know what would be never know ins ever secure but it's certainly a different animal when you're government employee as opposed to a start-up how is that transition is there anything different or anything of note or and anything unexpected when what you know for a while of your career you're working for heads and office police officer and for the government industry versus now doing it as a start-up you know it's a great question and there are some similarities and what I mean by that it's like okay there's there's just misnomer I think that you know if you work for government you got a job for life well that's not true I mean if you are a screw-up and you don't do your job you will get fired it's plain and simple so I mean it's kind of like this this rumor that's running around so people are held accountable now in law enforcement if you screw up and make mistakes I mean yeah you're probably not gonna be around too long but you know your life and other people's lives are gonna be in jeopardy so you can't do that yeah you got to stay sharp and that's how they go through the process to define the right people and weed them out through the training and the people there on the streets are competent and can do this but in a start-up it's kind of like there's this there's this flavor of and we have fallen into this trap we have been suckered in where these people will come along and they'll say because of my skills you need to hire me and they're I think they're nothing but quick buck artists and they don't stick around too long after you pay him when I'm godly sound of money and they didn't do anything so it's it's like you know being committed when you start working on a start-up and into a project you need some people that are committed and have integrity and ethics and they can be resilient because I will tell you going into a startup mode especially on technology is not easy if it was easy a lot of people would do it right a lot of money would I met a lot of love I mean yeah yeah a lot of people and there isn't it's it's hard yeah but if you stick with it and you have the right team in the right idea and then the right mentorship and then hopefully the funding will come you can scale and so yeah it's there's some similarities but you know if you're doing the right thing and moving forward and you have those core principles I think you okay all right that's great that's great insight okay well we're reaching towards and the podcast and now I will hit on my last quite two questions I always hit on at the end of the podcast and the first one is so what was the worst business decision you ever made yeah but thank you for that negative question okay this is like the typical lawyer you don't ask the question unless you know the answer so firstly I our biggest our worst decision we made was having a big vision which we did but we didn't start small and what I mean by that oh so in the business of insurance they're called Minds different lines of insurance automobile workers comp disability and health long-term care Property and Casualty personal lines liability you know you have all your special issue the specialization programs as well so when we designed Charlie we designed it for all lines of business so that's how we built it and coded it I mean we processed over 33 million claims to date and we have over 2,000 unique insights developed from the artificial intelligence our mistake was is not focusing on one line of business in other words starting small be successful and then scale it so looking back I mean you need the broad vision absolutely you need to have a broad vision but picking you know one line and starting small and then scaling from there and that's so that's probably a little bit safe but the technology is there technologists and near the engineer and me always all we could do these five cool things and we can do all these it because yeah it'll be the best product ever and yeah then you lose focus on doing one thing really well first and then expanding from there with the other thing that we learned is that you know when we started approaching potential customers no one has the same problem I mean each one of these lines of businesses have their own intricacies their own little quirks and you know so if you try you know when you talk to a venture capital team I mean and they're used to an app that someone buys for one function sometimes they have a hard time understanding the the complexity of the business of insurance and now you talk about all different lines and all the things that are you know that go in it's like okay now this is two long sales cycle no I don't really I don't know anything about this I'm not comfortable in so yeah we've learned from so and I'll give you the car they always ask that question because you know too often you hear the highlight reels of a bit you know I read and I always love to read books and you know or at least on different companies in the history and I listen to some podcasts and shows but that's always kind of you know if I have free time when I listen to for eyes on the side if you were looking for a good podcast I'd love to listen to is a podcast called business wars where they kind of go through like an apple versus a IBM or Windows and you or again you know Ford versus Ferrari and you get all these different you know kind of businesses that go up and head-to-head we always get the highlight reels to large degree of hate you know everything worked out great and everything built up and you'd ever get to hear hey this is not an easy thing it's not just yeah I started a company and grew and was a wild success and there was no hiccups along the way which no matter the business is never the case and so I always asked what the the worst what worst business decision you made and I think that was a great I would be highly skeptical if someone uttered that in public so okay well now we'll go to the second question what I always ask you so if you're to get talk speaking to someone that was getting into startups or just started or wanting to get into startups but kind of into that phase of life what would be the the top piece or the one piece of advice you'd give them build a team and Trust build a team and Trust so the things that you need to look for and bring in I mean you know I mentioned it just a couple of minutes ago integrity is everything person's integrity ethics you got to do the ethical thing if you could if you take shortcuts or you cross over that line that's going to be perceived as something and legal down the road it's going to come back and bite you don't don't do it so ethics is it and then you you you need to have people that are resilience there is gone there will be tough times I mean cash flow is always an issue yeah it seems until you're I mean into like it seems like you know advanced Series A or Series B funding and then maybe it's not an issue but I mean cash flow I mean you you you will always worry about cash flow and there will be tough times so you need the people that are going to stick this out with you because there will be payoffs no quitters you don't want any quitters and then you have to be able to pivot so like when we started we had this vision you know there were could be two different divisions with infinite Linux one on healthcare one on general claims I didn't even last a few months you need to pivot you need to pivot on where the market needs or is though the marketplace is telling you what the draw is and what they need so you have to be able to pivot or else you won't survive no that's very good insight and I think all all good advice so perfect well thank you for coming on it's been a absolute pleasure I always get to the end of these and there's about twenty more things I think would be fun and interesting to touch on that we never have the time but it was it was fun to hear your journey and your story and it's a certainly one that is an interesting one and I think a great one to learn from him to hear so if people are interested in whether it's getting to know a little bit more about your product and what you guys do or looking to invest or become become part of the team or just reach out to you guys and find out more what's the best way to reach out to you guys infinite lytx comm just click the button info and send us an email we also have an 800 number there on our website it's a n fi n i ly T ICS infinite lytx comm and it goes straight to my smartphone every time someone sent something in so you're not gonna get lost in we will respond perfect well certainly for those that are interested or want to reach out certainly direct him your way and thank you again for coming on for those of you that are also wanting if you needing any help with patents or trademarks or looking to or any advice for your startup for small business I'm also happy to help so feel free to reach out to us at Miller IP law and anybody on the podcast they were they're always happy to talk here connect up with you as well as well if anybody is looking for help we're here to help yes so thank you again John for coming on it's been an absolute pleasure and hopefully to hear see how your journey continues on and hope wish you the very successful journey Thank You Devin I've really enjoyed it so please stay in touch will do all right thank you [Music] [Music] English (auto-generated) All Sales Recently uploaded