May 18, 2022
In this episode, Conor Joslin '23 interviews Thomas Cotter '17 and Brendan Quinn '06. Thomas and Brendan met while Thomas was a student at Holy Cross. Their professional journeys converge thanks to the app INDX, a startup co-founded by Thomas and funded by Brendan. Through INDX, they hope to channel their energy and create a product that fosters learning, discovery and growth for all. True entrepreneurs at heart, they show us what's possible when you take a problem and focus your efforts on finding a solution.
Interview originally recorded in March 2022.
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Thomas:
You can't just build something because you care about it, right? At the end of the day, there has to be a problem and you have to be able to solve that problem for people. And so I think you get lucky when you find a problem that you experience personally, that you also care a lot about in trying to solve it.
Maura:
Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney from the class of 2007, director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show.
Maura:
In this episode, we hear from two alumni, Thomas Cotter from the class of 2017 and Brendan Quinn from the class of 2006. Thomas and Brendan met while Thomas was a student at Holy Cross and their relationship has grown from there. Mentor, fellow Crusader, friend and business partner are all titles that can be used to describe their relationship with one another. Their professional journeys converge thanks to the app INDX, a startup co-founded by Thomas and funded by Brendan. Conor Jocelyn from the class of 2023 joins Thomas and Brendan to learn about their journeys through Holy Cross and the circumstances that led them to collaborate on this startup. Champions of a Holy Cross education, Thomas and Brendan are passionate about promoting lifelong learning. Through INDX, they hope to channel their energy and create a product that fosters learning, discovery and growth for all. True entrepreneurs at heart, they show us what's possible when you take a problem and focus your efforts on finding a solution.
Conor:
So hey Thomas, hey Brendan, how are you guys doing today?
Brendan:
Hey, Conor. Good to be with you.
Thomas:
Doing well. Thanks for doing this, Conor.
Conor:
Yeah, thank you for joining us. So Brendan, how about we start off with you? So could you please tell me a little bit about your background, maybe where you are from, your family life, and then also maybe tell us about when you were searching for schools, what convinced you to choose Holy Cross?
Brendan:
Yeah. So I am class of 2006, to date myself just right off the bat. Was born in the Bay Area. My folks were in the service, both in the Navy. So I lived in California until I was about four, moved to New England, Southeastern Connecticut more specifically, and grew up there predominantly. Started Holy Cross in 2002. And then after Holy Cross, went on to spend 15 years in financial services at one organization called Silicon Valley Bank. And we'll get into kind of what I'm up to now later on, I'm sure. In terms of what attracted me to Holy Cross, I really think it was like there was an intimacy about it. When I came to visit, I was definitely looking at a number of schools in varying shapes and sizes. And I just had that there was like a intangible feeling about Holy Cross and the community that it embodied that was just very attractive to me.
Brendan:
And so it was a pretty easy decision. I actually did early decision, was able to convince some people that I might be a good fit. So it worked out and then it's been, I would put it in the top five most important decisions in my life in terms of where I am today. So there's not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for Holy Cross and my time there and all the relationship that have extended from that one of which being Thomas.
Conor:
Yeah. I had a very similar experience going to Holy Cross. I applied ED as well, and I was very attracted just to all aspects of it. I mean, it's a great place. Now Thomas, could you also share a little bit about your background, where you're from and then why you decided to attend Holy Cross?
Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Conor and Brendan, and I know each other pretty well at this point and I didn't know you were from the Bay Area, Brendan. So I just learned something right there. So that's awesome. I'm from Acton, Massachusetts. So not too far away from Holy Cross, about a 45 minute drive. A little different experience in terms of how I ended up there though. I originally went to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where I played football, got some concussions and knew I might want to transfer. And I only looked at a few schools after my freshman or kind of in mid flight of my freshman year to look at transferring. And ironically with Holy Cross, was the first school I ever toured. My mom dragged me, I think as a sophomore or a junior to just go see what a college campus looked like.
Thomas:
And I always liked it, but when I was originally looking at a school I was out of high school, I just knew I wasn't going to be playing on any of Holy Cross's sports teams. So kind of brought it out of my mind, but I did an interview and looked at the campus and at that point had been in college for a little while. So I feel like I was able to make a pretty informed decision. And the liberal arts education, I was really interested in Spanish and economics and Holy Cross had great programs. And then the smaller school community and liberal arts education really attracted me, which is what brought me there.
Thomas:
And I'm super appreciative because transferring can be a bit of a challenge to overcome, because you're coming in fresh. A lot of people have their friends and everyone about Holy Cross was super useful and I'll throw a little jab because my grandfather went to BC, but BC actually let me in for transferring, but wasn't going to offer housing. So I'm always even extra appreciative of Holy Cross for their kindness to transfer students.
Conor:
Oh, awesome. Happy to hear that. So Thomas, I guess we'll ask you this question. During your time on the hill, what were some of the offices, clubs or extracurricular activities that you were involved in and were there any specific experience, classes or professors at Holy Cross that really set you up for success in the professional world?
Thomas:
Absolutely. No, it's a really good question. As far as extracurriculars, I experimented with a lot of things. I was the co-chair of the Sales Club. I was in the Finance Club, which is actually how Brendan and I ended up meeting, which is a funny story that we can probably pop into with one of those awkward networking calls that everyone tells you to do that thankfully has turned into a friendship, I guess almost lifelong friendship at this point, which is a funny story that I guess those calls actually work, which is nice to see.
Thomas:
I think one professor that stands out for me is a professor in the economics department, Professor Boyle. I had her for three or four economics classes and she was very rigorous, but she did a really good job of I think leaning on both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of economics, which is what I really liked about it. I also had a lot of really good professors in the Spanish department through that lens. But to your last question on I think how it set up for professional success, my worldview right now retrospectively is that the faster you can learn something new and apply it, the better off you're going to be. In our world things change so quickly that nothing is very static and it's very much a cliche with liberal arts education that you're learning how to learn, but I think there's a lot of truth and foundation to it.
Thomas:
And so I think my overall experience kind of being able to take in a lot of information, practice thinking for yourself and then applying it, has been the most impactful thing early on in my career because going back, I'm a 2017 grad. The world has changed a lot since then. If I were to be just looking at very specific skills, I think they would've already evolved. Like some of the software skills that I learned at Holy Cross I don't use anymore. Because even though softwares can be out of date, not just one small example. And I think that Holy Cross provided that foundation to continue to learn and adapt, which is really important.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you very much. Brendan, I'm assuming you guys probably have pretty similar experiences at Holy Cross with all the different classes and professors, but anything different that stands out to you as something that really impacted your success in the professional world?
Brendan:
Yeah, I would definitely echo a lot of what Thomas just said there, particularly around the, just like the foundation that a liberal arts education affords. I was also an economics major. I mean, there are so many professors that influenced me, motivated me, touched me in different ways. But the one that actually stands, there's two, one is Professor Mosher who at the time was an adjunct professor and he was my indoctrination into economics at all. I was a pre-med biology major coming into Holy Cross, having grown up in a family, a medical family. And after my freshman year, I was starting to realize that that was not the path that I was going on. And so I was in a lot of ways back to square one in terms of my major and direction I wanted to take.
Brendan:
My forthcoming professional career and Professor Mosher was, he just had a very lightness about him. He was very, he was a great teacher, a great instructor, very great relationship builder. And so like that, and then kind of marrying that with just my, I have a very macro way that I think and operate, which aligned very nicely with the macroeconomics curriculum that I was being exposed to at that time. And so it just, things clicked. And then further on down the road, Professor Rask was one, took multiple classes with her. I just remember her being again, another just incredible teacher, very careful about the way that she did not try in one size fits all curriculum. She was very customized in her way that she was able to explain different concepts to different people that are coming from things from a different point of view.
Brendan:
So tying it back to the liberal arts, which I do think is above any specific vertical of subject matter that you're studying, knowing how to think, learning how to make better decisions with better information while also acknowledging for a lot of reasons that Thomas outlined that you're never going to have perfect information continues to serve me every day. And so also like Thomas, I would say that there's very few things in my, like the actual tactical part of my study at Holy Cross that I feel like I'm drawing upon every day. But the foundation of the liberal arts education in like helping you learn how to think and make better decisions, that's going to be a lifetime of value for me personally. So for that I'm grateful.
Conor:
Yeah. I think that's the beauty of the liberal arts and going to a school like Holy Cross. A few weeks back, I was talking to an alumni and he said something that really stood out to me. He said that like the difference between a Holy Cross student and students that go to large, massive school undergrad business programs, we are completely separated from them because we learn so many different skills. We learn how to problem solve. We learn how to analyze. We learn how to critically analyze. We learn how to read, write. We learn how to present in front of a big crowd. Now that just separates us from so many different students when applying for jobs and internships in the business world.
Conor:
And I think that's something that really stood out to me as something very impactful for people's careers as a Holy Cross student. So that leads me to my next question. Brandon, our motto at the Ciocca Business Center is major in anything and succeed in business. So can you speak a little bit about, well, I guess both of you, can you guys both speak a little bit about your economics and your accounting majors and the impact that it has had on your professional career? So Brandon, we can start with you and then we'll head over to Thomas.
Brendan:
Yeah, I would say in terms of my economics understanding in the context of my career, I think what it did was in a little bit more of a specialized way still gave me this foundational understanding of how to think, how to analyze, how to communicate, how to make decisions with imperfect information. Economics is like there's an academic side to economics, but there's also just a practical side of it as well. And so you can't model everything. And so yes, models can help you create a map of reality or the world, but it's not the territory, right? It's a model and it's a framework and it's one that can be utilized to give you kind of broad strokes, directional understanding of things. But specific to the taking that into the real world, you also have to acknowledge that every model is broken, to the upside, to the downside. It's a guide. It's not the answer.
Brendan:
And so I feel like that with the backdrop of liberal arts education, like I walked out of Holy Cross into my job in financial services at Silicon Valley Bank with that appreciation, probably more so than a lot of my peers that came from more focus financial undergraduate degrees. And in the short term, I definitely had a feeling of, it's not like imposter syndrome, but I felt like I was playing catch up on some of the more technical aspects of my job, but that goes away. Right? Every job, you're going to get technically trained up based on the particular roles and responsibilities of that. And then ultimately where the competition happens, if you will, is at the more foundational levels of how do you think, how do you communicate? How you read, write, make decisions, that's the stuff where liberal arts education and more specifically Holy Cross's version of that, I think sets new graduates up for longer term success relative to their peers.
Conor:
Yeah. I absolutely agree. That's great points. Thank you. Yeah. Thomas, can you talk about your economics major and the impact it had on your career?
Thomas:
Yeah. I think I'll just build on what Brendan said or even what... It's funny, you said in chatting with that alum, Conor, a leg up to maybe more traditional skills, but I think Brendan added a nuance to it that's really important, that tying back to the first thing that I said in terms of optimizing for the rate of learning, like how quickly you can apply something, knowing that the benefits aren't going to be linear. So you're not going to take one step and get one step of benefit. It can be sometimes take one step, get four steps of benefit. That sometimes you actually do feel in starting your career that you're behind on some tactical technical skill sets, right? Putting for Brandon's case like a discounted cash flow together. For me, understanding like I don't know, gross margins. I didn't directly learn that in any of my coursework, but you can fill up on a lot of that technical and tactical skills and then start to apply it with systems thinking, communication, leadership skills that I think allow people to benefit.
Thomas:
And if you think about your college education as a lifelong investment, or hopefully jump starting a lifelong full of learning new things, right? The more important thing to learn is how to learn than the concrete sand you filled in a box in a temporary place in time when you were in school. And so as I think about the economics major, like I said, I spent a lot of time in the Spanish department. For example, I studied abroad and Buenos Aires. A lot of those experiences, I think set up to echo what Brendan was saying, the ability to learn new things with like a very common set of skills that can allow you to be successful in different environments.
Thomas:
And I think that that would be something I'd pass on to all Holy Cross students that even that first job out of school should be viewed through the lens of just the first step. Right. And even if there is a bit of a learning curve on understanding something super specific to whatever industry or function that you're in, that leaning into those other skills that are lifelong can kind of help you make that something that's more exponential.
Conor:
Yeah. Thank you. I absolutely agree. Obviously, all of these skills that we learn from the liberal arts education helps to succeed in the business world. But personally, I also think that a big part of it is also the Holy Cross alumni network and everything that they do for us. So how has the Holy Cross alumni network supported you, Brendan?
Brendan:
Oh, man. I don't even know where to begin because there are so many examples of it. Look, when I was coming out of school, I was doing a lot of meetings. I was doing a lot of coffees and phone calls and whatnot with quite literally just like cold inbound alums and crusaders want to help crusaders. Right? So it's like there's an element of just being part of this community. And if you're an alum, you remember those people that helped you. And so it's almost like a pay it back, pay it forward kind of thing. Another one I'll just say, and I'm not going to, I don't want to flatter Thomas too much, but I will say the alumni network establishing the relationship that we have now and that one being a lifelong friendship first and foremost, and also is flourishing into a number of other dynamics to our relationship that spanned the personal professional continuum.
Brendan:
And so, I mean, it is the alumni network in a lot of ways that brought us together. And I would say, yeah, Thomas is going to shake his head at me. But I actually look up to Thomas in so many ways in his entrepreneurial spirit, his courage, his commitment, his ability to go from the macro to the micro. And so this, the Holy Cross alumni network, you are engaging with it right now, like the potential and the vibrancy of it. And the encouragement I would give as Thomas was alluding to it before is like you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So leverage it, take advantage of it.
Brendan:
As alum, we want to help. And so don't be afraid to reach out, but it is on the individual student to take that first step be proactive, because there's a lot of Holy Cross grads every year. We don't know who needs what and what, where, so it's like people need to come and like have an ask or have a, they want to have a conversation or whatever it is, but just demystifying the fear of taking that first step. Because it's pretty good once you... The water's pretty warm in the alumni network.
Conor:
Absolutely. I think every person I've talked to in the networking field has been amazing, an amazing experience, and they're so willing to help, which is awesome. Thomas, do you have similar experiences with the Holy Cross alumni network? How have they impacted your-
Thomas:
Yeah. Well, I mean, first off, thanks Brendan for the overly flattering words. But I mean, I think I can probably answer it just through a story. Right. And it kind ties into how Brendan and I even know each other. But I was terrified my senior year of not having a good job. So I was economics major thinking about finance. I think a lot of Holy Cross students think about that path because it's something their friends are looking at. There's a lot of really good relationships there. And I had no idea what else was out there in the world. And so I had lots and lots and lots and lots of networking calls, reaching out to people, asking about it, those kind of things and a lot of people were super helpful. And a lot of times I didn't help myself in terms of like really thinking about what I wanted, what I like to do and what gave me energy.
Thomas:
And so with Brendan, it's funny how it happened was he was doing a Holy Cross Finance Bootcamp. I think one of 40 people we followed up, but what I remember about our first networking conversation is it didn't feel forced, right? There was overlap and commonality and things. I think we ended up talking for 20, 30 minutes past the time that we allotted. A lot of it not about working at Silicon Valley Bank at the time, which is what I was thinking in a very short term way. Long story short, I didn't end up going to work for Silicon Valley Bank. I interviewed a few times, went to different places. I ended up going to grad school and then in technology consulting, but Brendan and I maintained our relationship. Right. Out of the maybe hundreds of calls we've had, I've kept in touch with maybe three to five people.
Thomas:
And then Brendan the most out of all of that. And it's super non-linear in terms of the benefit of that. Like Brendan said, friendship, a lot of professional advice. Brendan is an investor in what I am now working on now. And so if you look super short term around the alumni network even, if you're just like, "I want a job from this conversation," I did not get a job from the first time that Brendan and I chatted. But four years later, Brendan was the first, one of the first people to encourage me to work on INDX, which is the company I'm trying to build right now and continues to be one of our biggest supporters.
Thomas:
So I think that's one other thing I'd tie back is it's not a temporary access point. I think when you think about an alumni network, I think it's a great opportunity to build relationships that can be lifelong. And Brendan graduated in 2006, I graduated in 2017. We're both now working in the world. There's no difference, right? We have similar interests, a lot of overlap and a lot of support for one another. And I think I wouldn't have had that opportunity without that entry point through Holy Cross and then you can kind of take the rest from there.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Yeah. So Thomas, I guess we'll kind of leeway into this question about current students looking for jobs and internships. Obviously it can be very stressful managing with school and extracurriculars and stuff. So could you tell me a little bit about your experience and maybe provide some advice for students looking for their first internship or their first job?
Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you what I think now, and then I can also frame it with what I actually did, which like a lot of advice is kind of how it goes, right? You learn it by suffering. I'll start with my own experience. I had absolutely zero idea what I wanted to do and was very... I think like a lot of Holy Cross students wanted something that would be good, that would look good, that I thought I wanted. And so chased and tried a lot of things where there wasn't a ton of fit. Through that process ended up finding technology consulting, helping out companies build tech products, which I can kind of talk about a little bit later on, which is where I ultimately landed, but it was a very roundabout way. So the advice I'd give would be explore as much as possible.
Thomas:
And then when you have opportunities and have a little bit of fit, like exploit. Explore exploit is kind of the mental model I think for thinking about it. But there is an insane range of things that you can do, especially when people talk about business broadly, like that's a, obviously I think it's like the entire economy, except for a couple of preset tracks like becoming a doctor or a lawyer, where there's kind of a credentialing hoop there. So I would say try as many things as you can, try to build things, try to do things, try to do it on your own and figure out what you like, which sometimes can fall on deaf ears when you just want to know you're going to make money, know you're going to have a job when you're out of school.
Thomas:
But I think the more you can look at it as something a bit more of longer term in terms of finding fit, the better off you'll be in terms of testing that out. And I'll hand it over to Brendan on that point, because I know that his first job became many jobs within the same company and to what he's doing now. But I mean, that was definitely my experience of it.
Brendan:
Yeah. I would again, echo a lot of what Thomas just said. I had gone through while at school as I mentioned, I'd gone through a pre-career shift if you will, like being pretty tracked on being a doctor and then morphing into something more business. I always had an eye towards financial services. So coming out of school, same thing. I was looking for something that was going to look good on my resume, make some money. And with the idea that I probably actually wasn't going to be there for very long in the... I like Thomas's model around explore exploit. I would definitely... That resonates with me probably more so today than it did back then. But even back then, I kind of just thought like, okay, this is going to be a stop on the train and I'll figure it out.
Brendan:
What happened was I wound up staying at Silicon Valley Bank for 15 years, but it was not the same Silicon Valley Bank for 15 years. And it was like my job function through those 15 years, took three discreet kind of shapes and sizes, four really. So even within, while it's the same company, it was very different jobs and workflows. And I think in the end, just you got to follow the learning, follow your growth edge. If you don't feel like you're developing, particularly earlier on in your career, if you don't feel like you're developing and gaining skills and building relationships and just growing as a human, it's probably not a great fit. And that's probably... The trust your gut.
Brendan:
And that's probably the time to start, whether it's like doing some deeper work on yourself to understand where you want to be in five, 10 years and then work backwards. Or just, if you have an idea of where you want to be, then getting tactical around what the next move is. But I think it starts with, if you feel like you're everyday challenged and learning and growing and doing it with people that you enjoy being around, then that's probably a pretty good thing. And if the opposite is true, then it's probably time to start considering something else.
Thomas:
The only one quick thing I'll layer on that is I think a lot of times, and Brendan kind of gave me this idea. When you think about internships in college, it's a very formal thing. But if you think you might want to be like a product manager or help build products, try to build something. Like if you think you might want to be in finance, get one of those dummy stock trading apps and trade dummy stocks that you can talk about. If you think you might want to be in sales, go sell something, right?
Thomas:
I think one way to combine the best of the liberal arts education and giving yourself the best starting point out of school is as you have those inspirations, layering in action on top of it so that there's a learning. I think if you make what you're going to do after school something that's very hypothetical, it can be easy to kind of not encounter blind spots that you have about what that actually entails. So I think that'd be the only thing that I'd add on that. Again, I didn't do that. So I mean, this is retrospective learning, but-
Conor:
Well, thank you. I really appreciate that advice. And I know any student my age or around my age, listening to this will also very, really appreciate the advice as well. So Thomas, when looking back at your four years on the hill, what is your favorite memory about Holy Cross? I know there's probably a lot, but-
Thomas:
Yeah. I mean, I think the, I mean probably a cliche answer, but definitely the friendships and shared experiences. I'm still very close with a lot of the people that I went to Holy Cross with to, I live in Denver now. One of my very close friends lives here as well. He's still one of my very best friends from school. Relationships built with people like Brendan. I got married last summer and I think three of my groomsmen were from Holy Cross. And I think it's just those relationships and those shared experiences without being too cliche or stealing Brendan's answer.
Brendan:
Yep. I'm going to go cliche and you in fact did steal my answer. So I'm just like, yeah, it's in the end, Holy Cross's community and there's the big community that is Holy Cross at large and then we all have our micro communities that we curate while we're there. And like Thomas, most of my closest friends in life today being 16 years removed from Holy Cross are my friends from Holy Cross. And so there's countless, countless times of just like just being together, getting into a little bit of trouble, having some fun, learning a lot that you just cement these relationships for life.
Brendan:
And so it is cliche, but it's also true that the people that you're making, I mean, when you're in college, you're really becoming an adult. You're becoming a fully independent human and you're forming relationships on your own accord, full stop. And so just leaning into that and enjoying the time there, but also recognizing that it's not over after the four years. In a lot of ways, it's just beginning. And I think as an example, the relationship that Thomas and I now have is an example of how that can continue.
Conor:
I agree. I've made so many valuable relationships so far at Holy Cross and I haven't even graduated yet. So I'm excited to see who else I can meet and generate relationships with. So we're going to ask one more question about Holy Cross and then we'll get into INDX and the app. So how has the Holy Cross mission influenced your work? Thomas, you want to take the first one?
Thomas:
For sure. I mean, I can start with that. I know we'll talk a little bit more about what I'm working on now, but I think, thinking about men or women for others, the thing I'd layer on top of that I think as it relates to how I think about what I work on is solving problems that matter, I guess, would be how I'd put it. There's an infinite amount of problems that you can chase and tackle in the world and tackling ones that you personally care about that will be beneficial for society being someone with a vocation for others. I think business is one of the best avenues to do that. If you can set up a sustainable way of solving a problem at scale, I think that's one of the best ways to have out size impact on issues that you care about.
Thomas:
And so I think we'll get more into what we're trying to build with INDX, but a lot of it's around lifelong learning or continuous learning after you leave school. It's something I'm very passionate about. It's something I think is very important. And I think that helping people continue to learn and adapt and almost own their self-learning or self-education is something that is I hope a net benefit for folks. And also something that thinking about the purpose or having a vocation that kind of comes from Holy Cross is how I think about where to spend my time and what kinds of problems that are worth solving.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. Brendan, how has the Holy Cross mission influenced your work?
Brendan:
Yeah, not surprisingly, a lot of the same kind of values that Thomas just shared. I would say as far as like where I'm at now, I guess the best way to characterize myself is I'm an entrepreneurial investor. But I'm also building a business myself called Can Deliver Advisors. But the ethos of everything that I do spanning my entrepreneurial activities, my investment activities is really about empowering individuals, democratizing access and opportunity to as many people as possible. In addition to just selfishly wanting this product to exist, a big reason why I am so honored to be as involved in the INDX story as I am is because of exactly what Thomas said in that, by building a product, a company, an experience for individuals that enables in this case, lifelong learning, what a gift. What a gift to the world and what an important thing to be doing in this day and age where there's a lot of just noise that's out there.
Brendan:
And being able to parse that signal from that noise, using a tool like INDX, it really, it powers down into those just foundational values that certainly Thomas and I both share around everything that we're doing is actually in service of others. So you peel back the business, the capitalist, the narrative around that, it's actually like what a tool to business aligning incentives in ways to create products, experiences for people to advance humanity. We're getting= pretty meta here, but it's a pretty inspiring thing to feel like that's what you're doing on a day in day out basis and that's what Thomas I get to do.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. It was so amazing to hear about both your Holy Cross experiences, but now I'd like to hear more about your company INDX and more specifically why you started it and the goals you have. Personally, I've downloaded INDX just to take a look at it and I love the app. It's awesome. And it's been very educational and eye opening, and it has allowed me to learn various new material in a multitude of different formats. And I really like the diversity of different topics that the app offers as it makes room for a variety of different lessons to be learned. So before we get into the more personal questions about INDX, can you provide the audience with a brief description of the app?
Thomas:
Yeah, for sure. In super simple terms, I like to describe it as kind of like Pinterest, but for learning. So we make it easy for you to save the podcasts, articles, videos, Twitter threads that you come across so that you can save and share it with colleagues and friends. So as you come across something seems interesting to you, you click a button, you get reminded to go back to that content. So you actually read it, watch it, listen to it, and then be able to connect with the community of people who are trying to learn about similar things and the tactical. On the higher level, more on the mission side of what we're trying to do is content creation is exploding. So there are tons of articles, videos, podcasts published every day, just the amount of content is insane.
Thomas:
And so one of the theses we have is that it's going to need some curation and community for people to be able to connect and learn around that content. So what you see with the app today is very much the beginning in terms of trying to get off the ground, but what we're trying to make it easy for people to do is find really, really high quality curated content around what you're interested in. So for example, Brendan has a Bitcoin collection on INDX. If you're interested in Bitcoin, rather than just going on YouTube or trying to learn about it on your own, you can basically fight through a lot of the noise to find some signal from someone like Brendan, who has done a lot of the work to know what content is worth spending your time on. So we're not exactly sure what that looks like right now. Part of it is being very iterative and chasing it, but that's the higher level problem that we're trying to solve.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you very much for that description. I know we've kind of briefly went over your career paths to it, but Thomas, could you briefly explain your career path that has led up to your decision to create the app INDX?
Thomas:
Yeah, for sure. After Holy Cross, I went to a graduate program at Notre Dame. It was a technology entrepreneurship masters, so it was a really cool I think and beneficial additional experience on top of my Holy Cross education to learn a lot, push the technical skill sets for me, which is around data and analytics, and also learn a lot more of entrepreneurial skill sets specifically around technology. And after that, I went to work for a company called Avanade which is owned by Accenture, and then Ernst & Young in their technology consulting practices, basically helping really big companies build out products and services that allow them to better serve their customers. So if you think about like the Starbucks app, that's not an exact example, but helping a company build a loyalty and rewards app and building that out.
Thomas:
And then as I was doing this, I felt like I was building a lot of the skill sets to be able to go into entrepreneurship, which is what I always wanted to do. And as I came across the pain point for INDX in my own life more and more, being a young professional outside of school, I was very used to learning. And I felt like I had to continue to do that and doing it purely on my own was very difficult. What content should I spend time on? If I did consume a great podcast, there was a lot of friction in maybe like calling Brendan up and asking him to listen to it so that we could both have a chat about it. And that's kind of what inspired the leap into trying to build what we're building now to make that a lot easier for people to benefit from all the incredible business, productivity, health content, name the other topics, that way you can kind of self-learn or self-educate as a part of a community.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. And Brendan, I know that you talked about your first job was Silicon Valley and how you climbed up through the ranks through there and had possessed multiple different jobs while you were there. But can you explain a little bit after where you went after Silicon valley and then what led you to your involvement in INDX and how you decided to become a essential partner?
Brendan:
Yeah, so I would say so Silicon Valley Bank is a organization as the name infers is a heavily focused on the innovation economy. So does a lot of work in the technology space, which is where I spent my entire 15 years SVB doing. And so for the last 10 years I was there, actually it was an entrepreneurial experience in and of itself under the umbrella of a big company and actually starting, we'll just call it a venture capital practice within the bank. It was technically debt investing versus equity, but that doesn't matter for purpose of this conversation, but it was really an investment business into growth stage companies. And did that for 10 years at SVB. So I really got schooled and trained and learned a lot about venture capital investing in early to mid stage businesses that are in growth.
Brendan:
And so that is, as I think about my investing being my craft that I practice, it is like I'm not going to be your guy that tells you the best public market stock to pick. I'm much more of a asymmetric thinker in terms of invest early in opportunities that yes, have a high probability of failure, but also have significant upside potential to them. And so as it pertains to INDX specifically, in addition to just how it kind of aligns with a lot of the values and the ethos that I just operate within at like kind of the foundational level, from an application perspective, and then obviously overlay the relationship that I have with Thomas, it was a very logical investment. In addition to the fact that like, this is a product that I want and I use this thing every day, not because I'm investor, but because it actually adds efficiency to my life and value to my life in the curation process, the consumption process, and then the community aspects of it as well.
Brendan:
And so it was fun. Thomas was so kind to bring me into his entrepreneurial ideation. We had a lot of meetings, whether it was over lunch or in an office or on a phone where we just riffed. We literally just like, because this wasn't his first idea. Thomas is an entrepreneur through and through. He's constantly, I'm sure he is thinking about stuff right now. Maybe not. But I remember we had a lot of conversations about a health app at one point, Thomas. The point is like being in on the, like Thomas inviting me in on the ground floor, seeing his entrepreneurial wheels turn and go from idea to now something that is in full blown execution mode has been a really, really been a really fun, been fun to be a part of that journey. So yeah, I'll just leave it at that for now.
Conor:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you very much. Seems like Thomas is quite the entrepreneur.
Thomas:
Not yet. We're working on it though.
Conor:
So Thomas, I've read a little bit about you and Susie's road trip and the day that you guys came up with the idea for INDX and it is a very interesting story. So could you please share that story with the audience?
Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. And no, thank you for mentioning Susie. But so Susie Lira-Gonzalez is my co-founder. We actually met at Notre Dame. She went to Gonzaga, so not quite Holy Cross, but they're in the Jesuit family. Heartbroken by their lack of a title in March Madness yet again, but she's being resilient. But I'll share a few things, like first off, we haven't been successful yet in the definition of an exit or making our company public. But it is a long road that you try to take as quickly as you can when you're trying to test and validate if an idea is worth working on and then building it. And there's a lot of people who support and that's what makes it really fun. And so in addition to Brendan and Susie, as my co-founder, we worked together in technology consulting. As I was kicking around ideas, it sounded a lot different than the product is today, but we were in a car ride from Redmond, Washington.
Thomas:
We were at Microsoft for the day, back to Seattle, which is where I lived at the time, just talking about different problems that we faced and kind of both had a lot of overlap in terms of our conviction that helping people learn from distributed content would be a big problem. And we didn't know exactly what that was. And so it's been the two of us and we're now a team of five over the past year. But those early, early days, or even now, you need partners. You need people who are going to support you in terms of figuring it out. And super thankful for Susie with that as well, especially because we have very complimentary skill sets, which she's an engineer by trade and very operationally focused where I can come at things from more of a higher level. So I guess the takeaway from that is finding partners and team members and whatever you're working on that compliment the way you think and how you like to solve problems.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. What a great story. But I love how INDX is for lifelong learners like we are here at Holy Cross. So have you guys always wanted to create an app or something that promotes lifelong learning or did that day driving home to Seattle just searching from some inspiration for you guys?
Thomas:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's a few things. I think that there's your values, right? Like Brendan was kind of talking about earlier. And then you can't just build something because you care about it. At the end of the day, there has to be a problem and you have to be able to solve that problem for people. And so I think you get lucky when you find a problem that you experience personally, that you also care a lot about in trying to solve it. So definitely didn't always have this in mind. Like Brendan was saying, there's a lot of other problems and ideas that we looked at related to health, related to other aspects of education and learning. And this is kind of the one where we just saw the most early demand or in talking to people and testing the idea, building prototypes, that kind of thing got the most traction. And that's kind of what we just continue to chase is additional traction, additional ways to level up and see if the business is viable.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. Seems like a great, great idea. And I know that there are probably so many different steps and factors that went into and are going into making the app of INDX. So can you briefly summarize and explain the process that it took and is taking to create the app?
Thomas:
Yeah, for sure. And I think the layer I'd add on top of it is I think that Holy Cross students, hopefully making this useful and interesting for people, like as you're thinking about career paths, I think working for startups, being in entrepreneurial environments that Holy Cross students are very preset to benefit there. A lot of it involves critical thinking, communication, having clarity of thought, going to gather evidence on things, right? And I think that that education can really help you chase that. But I think the process is like in simple terms and there's no one way to do it, but the way that we've done it is when we had the initial almost hypothesis of a problem for a particular person, we went and talked to them, tried to better understand and not solution or come up with what exactly an app or a software or an email service or whatever it is, looks like, but really define the problem and the pain that someone goes through and their experiences, and really observed that.
Thomas:
And then we built something that was really crappy, but people still used it, which kind of told us that even this really crappy thing might be worth making better because people were still able to... For example, the first app we built quickly, you had to put in your password every time, which I'm sure you can imagine, Conor, like you wouldn't want to do ideally, but people were still using. That was a pretty good signal that we could keep doing it. And then we ended up raising a little bit of money and built a team around the idea to chase. And we're still building out the app right now. It's not done. It's a constant work in progress. But I think the main thing is staying super close to who you think that customer is, seeing how they're interacting with it and continuing to be as intellectually honest as you can, if you're actually solving the problem and able to build a business on top of it, which is kind of the stage that we're at now.
Thomas:
We have the app built. We have some investment that gives us time to figure it out. And the next steps for us are, what channels can we go through? Do we really know who that beginning customer are? How are we going to monetize the product in a way that is sustainable and has incentives aligned with the user are kind of the challenges that we're tackling now. And each time you gather evidence, make a decision, see if you're right or wrong. And then if you're right, you can keep going. If you're wrong, you got to go back and see which I guess road in the woods you're going to have to take next.
Conor:
Right. So I guess a follow up for that. So how do you guys promote and advertise the app?
Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. We haven't spent a ton of time on advertising until recently. A lot of it has been, so having like 1,000 people in a beta or like people coming in, super communicated with them as they're using early versions of the app. And it's just gotten to the point now where we're able to start to push for more people, just because we have more conviction where we're at and kind of pushing to handle it. There's a, like you want to figure out that value hypothesis first before you can grow. Because if you're building something no one cares about, when you try to grow, they're going to try it and then they're going to leave. And then you should just go back to the drawing board and making sure that you're creating that value.
Thomas:
But predominantly through newsletters and podcasts, which probably makes sense given what the app allows you to do. But the most traction that we've got is either organic or paid advertising in different newsletters. People who are already self-selecting into owning their own education and they're learning, subscribing to a writer or listening to a business or a technology or a health podcast, those kind of areas is where we've had the most success. And that came from trial or error. We've played with Instagram ads and stuff like that and they didn't play very well for us relative to kind of those more specific forms of advertising.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you for that. Would you say that your liberal arts degree majors in economics, has it had like an impact in your creation of INDX? And if so, how did it help you in the creation of the app and moving forward?
Thomas:
Yeah, I think it definitely helped. I think the main thing it helped with is just the experience of it. When you're in school, you have a professor who's spending time curating content that you're going to spend time on. If you're in a history class or an economics class, like read these materials, spend time on this. And then after you kind of consume that, you have an opportunity to connect within a community that's just built in your classmates. And I know you're not there yet, Conor, but you hit the professional world and you really have to make time for that learning. Like a lot of times it can feel like there's just an immediate task at hand that you want to tackle. But continued learning is also important, right? We also live at a time where the ability to create content has basically no cost.
Thomas:
If you look at the podcast we're creating now, it's one of millions and millions that will be published, I don't know, in the next couple months. How do people find the content that's worth spending their time on? And once you do spend your time on that content, how do you have a feedback loop around it? How do you connect with somebody who also read it? How do you maybe revisit that three months ago? And I mean, that's how people learn for the most part in the professional world. There's a lot of friction in taking a course or going to night school if you're building a family or have a full-time job. And so as we think about trying to solve that problem, it's kind of taking this spirit of that education, where you can consume great content and connect with great members of a community and make it way, way, way, way lower friction and have software that helps people do that on their own. And it could become a different variation as we continue to learn more but that's how we're thinking about it now.
Conor:
Sweet. Thank you very much. Obviously you guys have made a lot of progress on app, including a blog and a podcast. So what next steps or ideas are you thinking about? There are so many different topics for people to submit podcast blogs and articles under. So have you guys thought about adding any other topics as well?
Thomas:
I think the main thing, the stage that we're at right now, and I'd love Brendan's take on it as well is we're still hunting for people call product market fit, right? Like iterating on the product where it's truly pulling people in and doing a great job and solving that challenge for them. So less of thinking about like tactically, what we're going to add. The main mode we're in right now is just hunting for the iteration that can hopefully actually crack the nut. So as you think about growing or people using it, or giving feedback on it, at the end of the day, you're trying to find continued traction or where to go next based on if you're actually solving the problem. But Brendan, I'd love your take on that as well.
Brendan:
Yeah. I think as far as what I'd add there is identifying your initial addressable market in any early stage business is critical. You cannot be everything to everybody at all times, particularly in the earliest of stages of a company's life. And so it relates to what Thomas is saying, but like finding the, when I say beachhead, there's a certain addressable market from a demographic perspective that you want to target, and that could be age, that could be educational background, that could be interest, that could... There's a whole bunch of different facets to that, but it's really figuring out as fast as possible through as much iteration as possible, what that best beachhead, that best early addressable market to focus on and then exploit it.
Brendan:
Again, back to the explore exploit thing. You don't want to explore forever and try and do everything because then you'll accomplish nothing. Once you kind of tap into that early sign of product market fit, like engaged addressable market, then you just go. You go run it that hard. And to me, from the purview that I set with INDX, it feels like we're entering into that phase where we're really going to start getting tactical around the exploitation of the addressable market that we are in the mid to late innings of really nailing.
Conor:
Sweet. Thank you for that input. So the final question we're going to ask and then wrap it up is what does your five year plan look like? And so are you guys interested in selling it off, merging, expanding or et cetera?
Thomas:
Yeah, I think it's a good question. I'm not sure there's a five year plan related to it specifically. I think it really depends on trajectory, right? I guess, answering it generically, like it could not work and essentially go to zero. There's acquisition, there's continuing to have the built business grow and eventually have companies go public. I think in general, what I'd close with is I think that it can be challenging, but it's a lot of fun and worth pursuing a problem that you care about. I think that Holy Cross in general, the community, other students, as they look at career opportunities should look at something similar. And so for me personally, whether it's with INDX or whatever may come next, it's the kind of ecosystem that I want to be involved in, like early stage technology startups. It's very dynamic. There's a lot of opportunities to solve problems that you care about and technology's changing every day, which is going to give you new tool sets to solve those problems.
Conor:
Awesome. Thank you. Brendan, do you have any input on that?
Brendan:
Yeah, I mean, I don't have much. Yeah. I tend to just be as much of a sounding board and a... Just for Thomas and Susie. And so ultimately I think INDX could become a bunch of different things. And ultimately the market's going to be the referee and all you can do is continue to just be maniacally focused on executing, on solving the problem that INDX is setting out to solve and what's going to be, is going to be not to be. Not to finish on a super cliche, but there you go.
Conor:
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your time. I really appreciate hearing about your Holy Cross experience and how you use your liberal arts education to pursue the business world. And then I also, it was awesome to hear about INDX. Such a great app. I know on my part, I'm going to talk to my friends about it, show them the app, have them download it, check it out. Because I know definitely a good amount of my friends will be into that and then bring it home to my hometown, talk to my parents, my siblings, and hopefully they can bring that in their own paths to their schools and their colleges. So hopefully we can all have a part.
Thomas:
Feedback is much appreciated. So as you play with it, let us know.
Conor:
I will. I will. Thank you, Thomas and thank you, Brendan.
Brendan:
Thanks, Conor.
Thomas:
Thanks, Conor.
Maura:
That's our show. I hope you enjoyed hearing about just one of the many ways that Holy Cross alumni have been inspired by the mission to be people for and with others.
A special thanks to today's guest and everyone at Holy Cross who has contributed to making this podcast a reality. If you or someone you know would like to be featured on this podcast, then please send us an email at alumnicareers@holycross.edu. If you like what you hear, then please leave us a review.
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I'm your host, Maura Sweeney, and this is Mission-Driven. In the words of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, "Now go forth and set the world on fire."
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