Nick Nanakos is the Founder and CEO of TruckBux, a full-stack online ordering platform for food truck owners and their customers. While studying Finance and Real Estate at Drexel University, Nick worked part-time & in internships at several large firms such as J.P. Morgan, Investors Capital, Balfour Beatty, and Ameriprise Financial. He founded the Drexel University Real Estate Club and made a ton of connections, amassing knowledge in the sector. However, Nick found himself immensely unhappy on this corporate path—and truthfully, unhappy was an understatement. He then began building TruckBux and this energized him beyond imagination.
Nick noticed an absurd amount of food trucks appearing at his university, neighboring campuses, and major cities that he traveled to. While the growth fascinated him, he also recognized some major problems that were holding back the industry’s full potential due to a lack of innovation. Nick worked relentlessly towards his vision, launched TruckBux, and eventually dropped out of school at 22-years-old to be all in.
Nick comes from a background of highly-talented restaurant entrepreneurs and has worked in every angle of food—from waiting, to cooking, to managing, to bringing technology into his family’s restaurants. Ironically enough, his grandfather immigrated from Greece to the US with $8 and worked with a street food cart in Manhattan. This gave him a chance to observe other apps go-to-market and product functionality, dissecting all of them with the knowledge that he would create something far more powerful for food trucks. Once his restaurant intuition aligned with his observations of the fast-growing food truck space, his focus shifted to food tech. In all pursuits, Nick’s mentality is high-conviction, non-consensus, and irrationally optimistic.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Nick’s background in the food industry and why he started TruckBux
- The challenges food truck entrepreneurs face and how TruckBux works for vendors
- Why Nick decided to proceed with his business idea despite the presence of big players in the market
- Why most big names in the food delivery industry overlook food trucks
- How the TruckBux founding team came together and how they’ve grown since the start
- Attracting top talent for TruckBux, building a company culture, and inspiring your team
- Why Nick decided to move to Austin, Texas
- Nick’s thoughts on working remotely and how his company and team were impacted by the coronavirus pandemic
- SeedInvest and why Nick chose their funding model
- What Nick has learned from starting and growing his business
- Where to learn more about Nick Nanakos and TruckBux
In this episode…
When Nick Nanakos decided to start his business in the food industry, he knew that there were already big players dominating the field. But from his research and intuition, he knew that there were gaps he could fill with a little innovation. Coupled with his desire to be his own boss, he developed an app that has since revolutionized the food truck business.
TruckBux, Nick’s app, was started through bootstrapping and has been going strong despite all the challenges it has faced. TruckBux helps food truck entrepreneurs grow their businesses, and unlike the bigger food delivery apps, TruckBux takes a smaller percentage from orders, helping these businesses grow and reach a wider market.
In this week’s episode of Elevate Hire, Greg Toroosian is joined by Nick Nanakos, the Founder and CEO of TruckBux, to talk about Nick’s journey in entrepreneurship and his process building an app for food truck businesses. Nick explains why he chose to enter a competitive market dominated by big industry players, how his company is being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, why he chose to bootstrap his business, and common challenges faced by food truck business owners.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Elevate Hire
- TruckBux
- Nick Nanakos on LinkedIn
- Nick Nanakos’ email: nick@truckbux.com
- Uber Eats
- Postmates
- Capital Factory
- Greg Toroosian’s interview with Marcelo Lebre from Remote
- SeedInvest
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Elevate Hire, a talent acquisition firm which provides leadership and senior level recruiting services for early-stage companies. Elevate Hire also offers advisory and consultancy services for select clients.
Elevate Hire was founded by Greg Toroosian after more than a decade in the Talent Acquisition space, working with startups, globally recognized brands and recruiting agencies, because I found that too many early-stage companies were struggling to recruit and retain top talent during crucial times of growth.
Because recruitment and talent retainment are keys to having a successful company in today’s fast-paced economy, Elevate Hire is committed to helping you recruit the right top tier talent, at the right time, can differentiate the most successful companies from the rest of their field.
If your company needs assistance with talent search, hiring process improvements, choosing and implementing recruiting tools, team training, or if you’re in need of an advisor, get in touch with us today to find out how we can make this work so that you can start building the company of your dreams.
Click this link to learn more about us and the services that we can provide for you and your company.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Elevate Hire podcast where CEOs founders and executives of early stage companies talk through their experiences and building teams.
Greg Toroosian 0:16
Greg Toroosian here, Founder of Elevate Hire and host of the Elevate Hire podcast where I talk with CEOs, founders and executives about the challenges and successes they’ve had while recruiting for their teams. In this episode, we’ll be discussing bootstrapping while hiring a competitive market, new forms of funding and how partnering with larger players can affect your hiring. This episode is brought to you by Elevate Hire, a talent acquisition firm who recruit leadership and senior level team members for early stage and rapidly growing companies. We believe that recruiting and retaining talent is key to having a successful company in today’s fast moving and currently uncertain economy. Being able to recruit the right top tier talent at the right time can differentiate the most successful companies from the rest of their field. If your company needs assistance, recruiting key teams Members improves your hiring processes building your internal team. Or if you need an advisor then we can help. For more details visit elevatehire.com.
On this episode, we have Nick Nanakos, founder and CEO of TruckBux, a full stack online ordering platform for food truck owners and their customers. Nick is a first time founder who has identified and carved out his niche. But it’s also up against and actually partnered with very big players. I’m looking forward to seeing how things are going and to learning from him. Welcome to the show, Nick.
Nick Nanakos 1:29
Hey, Greg, thank you so much for having me.
Greg Toroosian 1:31
You’re welcome. I’m glad we could get this in the books. So I always start the show by passing it over to the guests. So they can give us an intro on that in their own words, and then tell us a bit more about how they got to the current place in their career and in their business. So if you want to take it away,
Nick Nanakos 1:45
yeah, absolutely. So my name is Nick Nanakos. So I’m the founder and CEO of TruckBux. As Greg mentioned, TruckBux is a full stack online ordering platform for food truck owners and their customers a little bit about my background. So I’m Originally from New York come from a huge food entrepreneurial background. My grandfather immigrated over from Greece, he started with a food cart in the streets of Manhattan. Eventually the rest of his family came over, they saved a bunch of money and went into the restaurant space. So we’ve all been food entrepreneurs forever, my mother, my father, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and that’s still what we do today. So from a young age, I’ve been totally immersed in that from every angle from being in the kitchen to the managerial aspect to being a waiter to also in the future, bringing in technology into my parents restaurants to ensure that they had an online presence and eventually, eventually I would go on to study financing real estate at Drexel University in Philadelphia, or get some large firms I was at J.P. Morgan and Balfour Beatty and Investors Capital and met a lot of people, but ultimately I was super unhappy, just hated corporate to be totally honest with you. And at the same time I was studying I saw food trucks everywhere. throughout the campus, I saw like, over 45 on my campus, and then same on the other camp on the neighboring campuses. Wow. And yeah, it’s a huge culture in the city of Philadelphia. And then as I continued to travel to every pretty much major city in the country, I saw the same trend. And I knew that there was something there. And I think that was the restaurant intuition kicking in. But at the same time, I saw such a massive reliance from customers on these trucks. So I did some more research to find out that the trucks were essentially non-existent in 2008. And that’s when the movement started. And they started because restaurant entrepreneurs didn’t have access to capital to start brick and mortars. They couldn’t pay the rent. They didn’t couldn’t pay the labor. So they started into food trucks, which is a fraction of the startup cost. So food trucks were born under hard times, and that’s why we’re seeing a resurgence of them now and they’re growing even more, because we’re also under hard times right now. However, despite the monster’s growth, I saw some major problems in the Industry primarily being the lack of innovation and technology to unleash their full growth potential. And that’s what brought me to create TruckBux.
Yeah, and I can go into TruckBux if you’d like. Or if you Yeah, you want to go from there.
Greg Toroosian 4:18
That’d be great if you could give us some insight into TruckBux just for the people that don’t know and just a little bit more about how you guys plug in what you offer the platform etc.
Nick Nanakos 4:27
Yeah, absolutely. So, observing customer behavior in the food truck owner behavior, I was a customer for trucks myself while I was studying. And I noticed a double sided problem on both, you know, on behalf of both the food truck and the customer and starting with the first one, people were standing in line for 20 to 30 minutes or more, so they had extremely long lines and wait times. The second fact is that an overwhelming amount of these trucks you know, are cash only. And obviously that alienates a large customer base as cash continues to be More obsolete. And the third fact is the fact that they are mobile. And because they move around, it creates a major inconsistency among them in their customer base. And it’s also one of their greatest strengths, the fact that they can move but when they lose, you know, their presence and their consistency, that also results in a loss of sale. So obviously, it’s the trucks losing money, the trucks not getting sales the way they should be. And then the customers are obviously frustrated and limited in which you know, in the ways that they can carry out their ordering process. So essentially, we started building TruckBux at the same time. And so we started building an app right for the consumers. And the way TruckBux work essentially is that customers download the app and they can find nearby food trucks based on their location, see the trucks menu photos, ratings, get opened and map directions and then they can also order ahead for pickup and delivery. They can pay with Venmo Apple Pay or card and they get a quick alert when it’s ready. Due to a recent partnership with Postmates, which is now breeds, we can deliver in all 50 states and we’ll cover this a bit more. But moving to the food truck, they have their own app, which is called the TruckBux vendor app. And that lets them receive incoming orders for pickup and delivery and set the prep time to notify the customer driver when it’s ready, full control of their menus such as price and uploading images and descriptions and inventory control, setting their live hours of operation, their live location and then all their sales and data analytics for any custom date range as well. So they typically use it from their smartphone device so we don’t have any hardware costs associated with that either. And that’s the favorite way that trucks use the app but that’s TruckBux in a nutshell.
Greg Toroosian 6:43
That’s so cool. Yeah, and you know, when you explain it and put it out there, it’s like it becomes glaringly obvious the need for it. I mean, anyone that’s used or likes food trucks and seen that I mean, in LA I hope it is going to carry on going on but there’s First Fridays. I don’t know if you headed out on? Yeah,
Nick Nanakos 7:01
yeah. 100 Plus,
Greg Toroosian 7:04
Yeah, something like this would have been great for me to just map out where I want to be ordered ahead and go through. But that’s really cool. So thank you. Thanks for sharing that. So this may be a question that a lot of people want to ask because I know potential founders talk themselves out of starting a business or even a side project, if they doubt it will work or if there are other people doing it already. So how did you decide that this is what you were going to start when companies like Postmates grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. We’re already big players already with a robust platform and large user base like they could have had their own side project or they could have just pivoted slightly that didn’t worry you.
Nick Nanakos 7:43
So no, I never really worried me. I think because I had internal exposure to the way these companies operated. I was able to find holes in their models and in their product as well. So for example, while I was studying in school, there were several weekends, you know, for all All my years throughout college before I dropped out, I think that’s worth noting that I had a year left basically had the idea in 2017, launched to 2018. And then started growing it started getting a ton of organic traction, kind of went viral all over campus with no spend associated, and I signed up every truck myself. So the growth was just, you know, compounding day over week over week and to the point where I was running out of class to take phone calls with investors and sign up trucks. And I told my parents I’m like, look like, this is my passion. This is what makes me happy, and I’m not going to work corporate or for anybody else ever again. So I need to be all in on this. And you know, they push back we, you know, had a lot of disagreement on this initially until they were like, you know what, this, this is what makes you happy you have our blessing goal and but during the time I was studying, I had you know, I had the chance to work in the restaurant and see my parents restaurants. They have a Greek restaurant in upstate New York and basically, I saw a Grubhub tablet there DoorDash Uber Eats, Postmates, all these different tablets And I was able to look at the product and just study it and say, Okay, this is exactly how this function works. This I think could be much better. And then I looked at, you know, one of my parents restaurants, which was a tiny one in the college town. And the kitchen was literally about the size of a food trucks kitchen, it was that small. And then there was a seating area for about 35 people, or 40 people around that range. And then, you know, they had the phone also for, you know, pickup or delivery orders or whatever. So I’m like, if this kitchen is the size of a truck, and they have to manage the people sitting down in the restaurant and phone orders, I’m like, then, without a doubt, food trucks can handle technology and the truck, right, they don’t have technology that’s powering growth. So I knew that I could build something that would be quicker and more efficient. from a technology perspective, that was very, very synergistic to food trucks specifically. And that’s how it’s kind of got my inspiration from a fear standpoint. I didn’t worry about it because I realized that they were all hyper focused on restaurants. Yeah. So if DoorDash is doing the same thing as Grubhub, and Grubhub, is doing the same thing as Uber Eats, and Uber Eats is doing the same thing as Postmates, then, you know, there’s obviously room for market penetration. And then on the food truck side, nobody’s doing it. So we’re going to obviously spearhead that and then be the dominant force in the food truck industry. Now, yeah, there’s the competitive side of things where you’re like, Well, okay, they both created marketplaces, for example, a TruckBux and Uber Eats both created marketplaces. But there’s some key differences between us and then and that’s evolved over time. One being the fact that you know, these other platforms have thousands of restaurants inundating the whole platform so there’s these food trucks don’t get attention if they ever tried to join those they’re neglected and they don’t receive sales. So that’s number one. Because the food truck experience and the restaurant experience is very different. Number two is they take predatory commissions on every order they take between 30 to 40%. Have a single order from the restaurant. And not only is it predatory, it’s crushing the restaurants. But on top of it, you’re even seeing legislatively cities putting caps on the amount of commission we can take. I have
Unknown Speaker 11:11
no idea it was that high,
Nick Nanakos 11:13
very high, very high. My mother at a restaurant is paying an arm in arm and a leg for every order. And it’s unfair. The reason they had these costs is because they built delivery themselves. And it’s a very expensive and intensive model, but that drives up the cost for them. So, you know, in our case, I guess we can kind of transition into the delivery partnership, so we don’t build delivery ourselves. Um, we partnered with Postmates, which again, is now Uber Eats because Uber just acquired Postmates and they supply all the drivers all the logistics and everything on our behalf. So you know, the way it works like for example, Greg, let’s say you download the TruckBux app, you see your favorite food truck and you order a burrito to your house for delivery. Postmates are Uber dispatches that driver they go to the truck, they pick it up truck doesn’t know it’s Uber Postmates they have, it doesn’t make a difference, neither does the customer and then that meals delivered to your door. You know, so it’s, it’s basically happening in the background. And in our case, we only take 15% on pickup orders and 20% on delivery orders. So obviously far more costs and hyper focus on the trucks themselves. That’s great. So anything I would say I would like to add real quick is one one company that I really looked at. I said, look at slice pizza, slice pizza raised nearly 100 million dollars. And this is a company that is online ordering and pickup and delivery specific for pizzerias. That founder has probably been asked a million times by investors Hey, why ‘s stopping Grubhub and Uber Eats from partnering with pizzerias. Nothing, nothing at all. And actually, they do partner with pizzerias. But if you find that niche and you build a product that’s that’s, you know better. You can navigate the space better and build better relationships and you’re going to dominate it. And that’s evidence that that can be done. So TruckBux is very similar in that aspect.
Greg Toroosian 13:10
Guys, great, great insight. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So all potential founders, people sitting on ideas, don’t talk yourself out of it. There’s enough space for everyone and just do it better find a niche and do better, basically. That’s great. So it’s almost like they just didn’t look at it. They overlooked food trucks, or didn’t think it was lucrative enough or whatever. And
Nick Nanakos 13:36
the thing is that the best founders have a secret, right? They discover a secret and also like, as humans, we’re so mimetic in that we gravitate towards things that we’re familiar with or comfortable with. So in a lot of cases, they don’t feel validation if it hasn’t already been done before. Yeah, immediately to me it was a gem that was hidden in plain sight. And, you know, I was around it all the time. And I just knew that I was the one to be able to build the product around it. So, you know, that’s what I would say I do feel in a sense that they’ve overlooked it. And obviously that’s advantageous to us. But it’s a matter of speed and execution. So we want to be able to move as quickly as possible.
Greg Toroosian 14:18
Perfect. Cool. So let’s go into your team. So you’re one of three co-founders. Is that right? Yes. Cool. And so you It sounds like you came up with a lot of the product idea and what this was going to do. And did you recruit other ones or with a friend of yours from college? How did you guys
Nick Nanakos 14:40
pretty much I met the whole team while I was studying. You know, one thing that I’ll say is for TruckBux, it couldn’t have been started in a better place than where we were. We had all the food trucks 45 plus in our backyard, literally where we were living. And then you had all these developers and hungry students look like For opportunity, and just very smart and talented people, you know, some of the best startups have come out of even that region, the same school Drexel University, where I went go puff came and go off has raised a billion dollars with a bee from SoftBank. Right? So, I know those guys personally, like, we were in a great starting area. Um, but what I would say is this, if you have an abundance of resources around you, and you have to be able to tap into that, right. So when I first launched, um, it was just me and one other co founder. We outsourced the product. We didn’t even have a tech team. And then shortly after launching it, what was good about outsourcing was we were able to get the product built quick and fast and get it out there and it was working and started picking up traction, but very shortly after launching, I was like, Okay, I need the team in house, a CTO, somebody that’s going to take this from a creative, visionary standpoint on the tech and build a team around him. So you know, I brought on my CTO and then from there he brought on several engineers. And now you know, we have a team of over 10 people, um, me and my co founders being full time and the rest of everybody else being part time, but we’re raising money to obviously put everybody full time.
Greg Toroosian 16:12
So none of the co founders are actually technical.
Unknown Speaker 16:15
No, my CTO is nice. Okay, so he’s now there’s a
Nick Nanakos 16:19
Yeah, yes, myself as CEO Summit as CTO. He obviously is the mind behind all tech and manages all of our full stack engineers that are in house and then Fidel, who’s our creative director, in charge of all design and aesthetic and brand.
Greg Toroosian 16:32
Great. So I guess that’s another great nugget there to share. Like, don’t let your limiting tech knowledge or not having an idea about how to build the product stop you from starting. So you’re out sourced?
Nick Nanakos 16:44
Yeah, exactly. I was like, Look, I for me, everything’s about moving quickly. So I didn’t want to wait to be able to find the perfect match or anything like that for a CTO or tech team. And also I was like, I just generally can’t pay somebody and no, I want it to be special. wrapping around it. So I was like, let me build it. I’ve never done anything in tech. But I know I can get this done. And we worked with the team offshore and got it done in under a year of full development and launch. And then what was nice about it, we were just able to focus on customers because the product was working and doing what it needed to do, and getting traction and orders and new trucks signed up. But it wasn’t innovative enough. So that’s when we made the move to start hiring aggressively. And the team is always going to change like my team. I mean, until you get to a really, really solid point. But in year one, my team is completely different now than it was in year two. So you go through that when you’re in a college market and you’re just starting off but now we’re at a point where we’ve had an amazing retention and it’s like the same team that’s been here for a year and adding new members and you get better at retention. You get better at building culture and you get better at identifying talent. And what keeps retention high is momentum because if you’re getting people that are part time or even in colleges that are working for free, you Want to see momentum? That’s what keeps them inspired. That’s what keeps them committed. So again, just you know, momentum is everything. Great.
Greg Toroosian 18:09
So how have you guys gone around building this team? Was it all people that you were at college with? Were there referrals? Did you have a user recruiter? Were you advertising roles? How have you attracted talent?
Nick Nanakos 18:24
Well, I would say, I mean, for my CTO, I met him outside of the food truck. And it was right after we launched, and there was a sign on the truck. And I was, so I’m in line and I’m like, Hey, you should download that app. So he was like, What is it and I pulled out the app, and I started showing him and he’s like, this is awesome. Oh, my God, like, we needed this on campus for years. So I started talking to him, basically kind of pitching him in a sense. And then he was like, Look, I’m computer engineering and I’m looking for an opportunity. So I’m on board. So I brought him in, started, you know, talking chatting more and he became the CTO quickly after that and brought in amazing designers and alpers underneath him. So sometimes one person can bring five or six people. And that’s what he did. Because look, at the end of the day, if you’re not, if you’re a non technical founder, you have to be literate in what they’re talking about and understand the concepts and things like that. But at the same time, I’m not a technical founder. So I was like, I need somebody that’s gonna be able to run that oversee that, well, I can focus on company oversight and sales and fundraising. And then same with design. So you know, our designer, he brought in people as well. And a lot of the time it’s just like a domino effect where they start bringing in people themselves as well. Culture is just again, I think our whole entire culture is about making everybody feel entrepreneurial in their own art, to where people have autonomy to make their own decisions. And people you know, again, it’s an open door policy to where everybody’s super mobile in the company to where they can reach out to anybody. And also, you know, inspired by that momentum. That’s, that’s everything. Like for example, we just got to write up in NASDAQ and Business Insider. And investorplace and all these things it’s like things like that, that get people so fired up and inspired. You know, like I have team members sometimes that call me in the middle of the night at like midnight, it seems like we are absolutely killing it like you know, just just so energized. And sorry, I’m waking you up. Personally, you’re not waking me up. And second of all, if you’re calling me at this time to tell me that that’s amazing that energy is so infectious.
Greg Toroosian 20:26
That’s great. And everyone must feel so bought in at that early stage to see progress, right like that coverage press like that as well and feel ownership and sense of like, I’ve helped do this. I’ve helped bring it to this point as well. I’m like, proud to be part of the project and proud to be part of the company. That’s huge. Yeah, that’s huge. Well, that’s great. Knowing your own limitations as a founder and hiring people that are specialists and not wanting to keep all of that control is key, an ideal and knowing when to delegate tasks and allow and empower them to To build their own departments and stuff is some great advice as well to share for sure. Thank you. So tell me a bit more. You just recently moved to Austin.
Nick Nanakos 21:08
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Yep. I moved here about a month and a half ago. Austin is not only the fastest growing city in the country, but it’s the fastest growing food truck city in the country. There’s several, you know, over 1000 trucks here, and it’s just everywhere you go here, there are trucks literally every street I go everywhere I turn every main area food trucks. So it’s, it’s amazing. It’s definitely the market for us, along with several other amazing markets in the country like la San Francisco, New York, Boston and Nashville, you know, the list goes on. Yeah. Um, but we’re also part of the top accelerator here. It’s called the capital factor. We have free office space here and a bunch of perks that come with that investor network that we’ve already you know, closed some checks from and things like that. So yeah, we have the team getting ready to relocate and that’s why we’re here.
Greg Toroosian 21:55
Very cool. Very cool. And we spoke before we started recording just about your perspective or sharing a real perspective right now, because for anyone listening to this far in the future, it’s weird to say, but we’re in quarantine. We’re deep in COVID the pandemic and all the conversations about remote working, everyone has to be remote right now, but what that’s gonna look like for the new way of working. So how are you kind of thinking about that? What do you think, for your team?
Nick Nanakos 22:27
Yeah, I mean, I think my team now has been, you know, initially when COVID first head, we really looked at things internally and said, Okay, well, we got a bunch of trucks on our university market. So we’re going to anticipate that if the students are kicked off campus and the trucks are non operational, then perhaps revenue is going to take a temporary hit. And it did temporarily, right, because we understand that this is not a truck specific problem. It’s a global pandemic problem. But fortunately, obviously, if trucks are operational again and things are back so revenues climbing up and surpassing, actually the previous levels But what we did during that time was say we’re going to cut any expenses that are not vital to our survival. And we’re going to offer our trucks 90 days of free Commission on every single order. So we went from having like 15 food trucks on the platform to like over 85 food trucks on the platform in 11 cities in a matter of just some weeks, right. So the growth was exponential, because these trucks needed online ordering like never before, right? They didn’t have the technology, they needed to reach customers for pickup and delivery because all these events and gatherings have been canceled. But starting off, we’re like, you know, it was weird because we were meeting every single day in the office, like in Philadelphia every single day team meetings, this and that, and just grinding out tasks. So month one, it was kind of like, I think everybody was a little like, Okay, well, what’s going to happen here? How are we going to adjust but very quickly, we got into the groove of putting in a strict structure in place to where everybody could collaborate well, and you know, it’s just about organization as a founder so you have to be able to delegate that and build something out. That’s going to work for everybody. And now I think everybody’s comfortable with it. I think We also think, not only truck loads, but every company probably out there misses the human connection element. There’s something about being a room and sharing that energy that is just tangible, that I don’t think will ever be replaced by remote connection. I really don’t think so I think obviously, companies are going to shift and many of them will be fully remote. But there’s nothing like the human connection and being in a room together. So even you know, I got my team flying out next week and things like that just so we can get together and stuff like that. That’s essential.
Greg Toroosian 24:34
I think it’s important, especially at the early stages, while like said you’re building that culture, you’re building that camaraderie you need things you decisions making quick being made quickly. changes are happening quickly, you know, updates happening quickly. It’s hard to do all of that in a remote fashion. When your teams get to be sizable and tasked with stuff that is completely separate to everyone else. Maybe they can have their own way of working but Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, I’ve never been fully remote or the idea of working from home or anything, and I’ve had to, like adjust to it, am converted to it for sure. But again, I love that human in person interaction meeting people sitting in the same room and, and culture is huge. And I still can’t get my head around. Well, I wonder what it’s like I one of my guests, actually founder of a company called remote is that although obviously by their name, remote and always have been, and that’s where they power, but the way that they do that culture is very different anything that I’ve ever experienced, or how I would think of working, right, I buy works for them, and it’s ideal for them. Right. Yeah, if you’ve had that in person in that office experience and then pivoting to something different. Not easy. Yeah, right.
Nick Nanakos 25:49
Right. I mean, yeah, I think it’s helpful as a tech company, because so much of the process is building code. And obviously, it’s so the engineers, you know, and in a lot of cases Hey, they actually prefer it because they Like 4am they’re like nocturnal. So they’re on different schedules with folding, folding, you know, they’re usually in front of the computer anyway. So, um, they, they like that. And I think in a lot of ways, it’s actually accelerated performance. I think for more of the marketing and sales people, you know, think about sales, right? Like a person selling is obviously something that’s highly effective, especially in the restaurant industry, like, you know, going door to door to food trucks and signing up those owners. I mean, obviously, we do it remotely, too. And it’s the predominant way now, but, you know, there’s something about that element that people are definitely longing for. And I think it’ll, it’ll, you know, re enter, you know, sooner or later.
Greg Toroosian 26:43
Yeah, in that market in that industry, do you need to pound the pavement right. It’s all about in person interactions, seeing what you’re signing up as well. That’s important. So you mentioned investment. You guys have closed some checks as well. First place I actually saw you was on seed, invest Can you share a little bit for the listeners about what SeedInvest is and why you actually chose that funding model? Yeah, as an option as well.
Nick Nanakos 27:08
Yeah. So I mean, prior to this, we raised a quarter million, um, you know, it’s kind of like a pre seed round. And that was from inception to today. But recently, we got approved to fundraise on SeedInvest. And, you know, we’re raising a $1 million seed round right now. And essentially, SeedInvest is a crowdfunding platform that accepts less than 1% of companies, but they have over 350,000 investors on the platform blended between accredited and non accredited investors. So we went through due diligence with them to get approved and live on the platform which took about three months three and a half months Wow, very intensive, the most intensive due diligence process I’ve ever done in my life. And you know, filing with the SEC independent CPA review is all these things which are great in a way, you got a report with the SEC and like to make your financials public. So it’s kind of like, rapidly preparing for an IPO?
Unknown Speaker 28:08
Yeah. So you got your practice run.
Nick Nanakos 28:12
Exactly. That’s all looking at it. But basically, you have a 45 day campaign, and then people can invest, you got to hit your target of funds that you’re seeking. And if by the end of the campaign, you hit the target, you keep the you know, you keep the amount invested. But if you fall short, all the money gets returned in full to investors. why we chose cdms, you know, I didn’t actually directly reach out to see them as they contacted us. And I thought the opportunity was awesome, because it was around the time that this code was just starting to really hit and there was so much uncertainty. And you know, you can understand that VCs are going to double down on their existing portfolios to provide a lifeline, and a lot of them are going to cut back entirely probably, right. So BC is down. I mean, in certain sectors, it’s increased and there are obviously a lot of high conviction VCs that see As an opportunity to invest, and my hat’s off to them, because they should be investing. So it’s a great time, I think, for investments to be made. But what I realized is, you know, people are going to be investing like more than ever because they’re going to be home and sitting in front of the screen. And SeedInvest had their best performance this year over an eight over an eight year period to where they’ve had like hundreds of thousands of new investors signups and crazy growth numbers, the best on every metric in their company’s history. And that’s, that’s literally because VC is on the downward trend. And people are sitting at home looking to invest now and they have more time to check their emails to look at things and
Unknown Speaker 29:37
you know, their own research. Yeah,
Nick Nanakos 29:39
right. So yeah, so it was a good way to raise money for us. And you know, where we’re going to hit our target. We got about two weeks left, and you know, we’re on a great pace to hit that and then obviously secure the funds needed to
Greg Toroosian 29:53
go screw. Yeah, I know a couple of companies that have gone that way. And it seems they said the same thing. very rigorous. They don’t allow everyone through. So you’ve got that peace of mind as an investor as well. But it’s also interesting to see the variety of companies there. And I’m glad you guys are using that as a platform to get ahead because you don’t really give away much of the company either. Right? It just
Nick Nanakos 30:16
depends. It depends on the valuation and the term set forward around things like that You mean to investors or you mean to see the best, both, but what’s gonna take some CEOs takes it very reasonably caught on the funds that come through, if you bring any investors through from your own personal network. And you provide those investors prior to going live on the campaign on a list to them like they won’t take any fees on the money you bring in yourself, which is very fair. So CMS doesn’t take much totally reasonable for the work they do on your behalf. And then in terms of the investors, that’s kind of up to the terms of the round, whether we invest or whether it was not unseating best, it’s going to be dependent on valuation and instrument you’re using a discount rate and a little amount invested. So
Greg Toroosian 31:01
yeah, cool. Well, thank you for sharing that as well as another great nugget there for early time, early investors, and early stage startup founders, all of these different platforms, things out there to help you. Excuse me. So, before we wrap things up, I kind of wanted to open it up so you can share anything that you’ve learned in your first couple of years from starting a company from scratch. Having this brainchild, this idea, and then seeing it come to life, what are the things that you’ve learned along the way things you probably wish that you knew earlier on? And then what it’s been like for you to see this journey and grow this team and see the early success that you guys have already had?
Nick Nanakos 31:44
Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean, reflecting on this as a whole on the high level, you know, I think from a young age, I always had it inside me to have leadership ability like everywhere I went and my friend group had so many sports teams, I always had to be the leader. And it was just instinctive to me. Um, you know, even from high school from like, the football team being the captain taking them to the championship just in every piece of my life. So when I started going down the corporate path, you know, it just was meaningless to me, I have a lot of friends in finance and corporate and, and family too. So not to, you know, bash anybody, I’m just talking about me personally. I just felt that I needed a deeper purpose in my life. And I wanted something that aligned with who I am as a person, something that really truly imbibed me and I know that that was something in the food sector, but I didn’t want to directly enter food from owning a restaurant or owning a food truck. I wanted to create something so powerful that could help people throughout the entire country or throughout the entire world on such a mass scale. And that’s obviously the size you know, that’s the vision standpoint. But what I’ve learned is a lot about myself but a lot about other people in doing this, you know, obviously I dropped out of school. I think school was amazing from a resource standpoint, people I got to meet and, you know, opportunities that were presented, but I, I wasn’t, you know, the biggest fan of just the education system in general, because I didn’t feel that I was learning enough for things that were applicable to my life. And I and I felt that I was gaining more experience from going on my own and I and that’s just totally true. You know, like, and a lot of people that love education and pro education and I have nothing but great things to say about Drexel University, but from what I learned of being an entrepreneur in the matter of a year, was more than I learned in three years of being in school and it continues to go down that way. Because ultimately you’re in the jungle and when you’re in the jungle, if they’re preachers who are trying to attack you or kill you or as you know, you’re trying to find water, you’re trying to find ways to survive and thrive. You better be creative, and the only way for you to be creative is to really push yourself and pull yourself accountable and take risks. And obviously have no fear. Right? I mean, that’s, that’s one of the things to say is like, getting into the entrepreneurial journey, like you have to conquer a lot of fear. And fear is something that is actually good because without fear, there would be no such thing as bravery or courage. But I would just say, overall, the greatest thing that you can do, as a person or as a founder, as an entrepreneur is not be afraid of risk, risk is what brings return, you know, and also, being a good person goes such a long way as well. And I think I’ll ended on that note, because, you know, just ethics yield fruits, like, you know, it’s treating people good, whether it’s your customers, whether it’s your colleagues, whether you see it’s just true, you know, like, and that and that’s authentic, and people can feel that energy that when you walk into a room or when they look you and make eye contact, they know that you’re a genuine person they know that you care. Um, and that’s going to go a long way in any element of business. So, yeah, I would n’t be happier with this path. And that’s not to say that it’s easy and it can be very difficult sometimes, but it’s amazing and I wouldn’t have it any other way. When anybody contemplating starting, do it, jump in.
Greg Toroosian 35:21
Yep, do it. Well, that’s a great point to end on. Thank you very much for that. We’ve been talking to Nick Nanakos, who’s the founder and CEO of TruckBux. Nick, where can people learn more about you and TruckBux?
Nick Nanakos 35:33
Yeah, so you can go and check out TruckBux, just that truckbux.com and it’s just truckbux, one word. Same as all our socials. It’s just @truckbux. And obviously, check out the App Store, download the app and see if there’s food trucks nearby. And if there aren’t yet, there will be but you know, if you want to contact me directly, it’s just nick@truckbux.com. I don’t have a problem making that public because I’m more than happy to help anybody that is seeking advice or any kind of, you know, collaboration in any way that might be advantageous.
Greg Toroosian 36:08
Thank you so much. And I’ll be downloading and looking right after this myself. Awesome.
Unknown Speaker 36:13
Awesome. Thank you so much, Greg. This was awesome.
Outro 36:18
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