I also think that if we fast forward through my childhood and those atrocious middle school years, one of the first exposures to Ys and artisans was really my mom. Before the divorce, my mom was an artisan. Hey, I'm Ronna.

In this episode, Derek will be talking through his childhood and career path in which he found his passion for serving creators. Hope you enjoy this first episode of Starting Bunches.

Hey, what's up everybody? This is Derek, your host here at Start Something Founder and c e o of Bunches. First of all, this podcast is meant to encourage all of you listening to take your own leap into starting. Every other week, we're telling the stories of those among us who are pursuing their passions, full-time, writing, music, fashion, tech, and more. I only have an hour with each of them, though. That's not enough to uncover the ins and outs, ups and downs of the story of starting something. Last week we told the story of Trinity and Trinity Moto Tech next week can wait for you to hear about Caroline and her act, Caroline Kidd, as a musician. In between interview episodes, I'm going to tell our story, the story of bunches. I'm gonna try to. Raw, authentic, and genuine as possible. The ups and downs of building a product, raising money, starting a company, looking to have each episode about 15 minutes long. We'll take our time working through this story. I'm also sure that there's gonna be questions along the way as you listen to this story, may not wanna make sure that they get answered. So guess what? We've started a bunch. For Start Something listeners, it's a group chat that we call a bunch. I'll be there answering questions, listening to your feedback, and taking suggestions. You can join us by clicking in the show notes of this episode or visiting us online@startsomething.fm where you can find all of the episodes for this podcast. I also think it would be a disservice if I didn't share my hack. For those of you who listened to the first episode and may be familiar with a bunch of culture, that we ask five questions of guests that appear on the podcast, and they are, if you were a global city, what city would you be? If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be? If you were a beverage, what beverage would you be if you were a genre of music? What genre of music would you be? And last but not least, if you were an animal, what animal would you be? You dear, start something listener. You should know that I am a Nashville, Tennessee Pomegranate, bourbon, neat hip hop dragon kind of person, man, maybe. I don't know if that will show through the story of bunches. Maybe if you know me outside of the podcast or even outside of bunches, maybe that. You don't find that to be accurate? I don't know, but it is part of who I am and part of who I am also really defines a lot of bunches for better or for worse. As the CEO founder, I think a lot of my story is really a part of. The bunch of story, for better or worse, and I was born in New York. I grew up primarily in the rural south, but really throughout the country. We lived so many states. My dad worked for DuPont. We would move from state to state as his job dictated. And for a lot of people, I think that would've been maybe off-putting or a rough childhood or anything like that. And for me it was quite the opposite. Being able to see a lot of the country and experience a lot of what this fantastic nation has to offer. Just experienced the differing peoples from state to state was a pretty cool thing for, for me growing up. I mean, it certainly has impacted my life in ways that I'm still discovering now, even as a 30 something year old living here in Nashville, Tennessee. But I also think that if we fast forward through my childhood and those atrocious middle school years, one of the first exposures to s. Sins was really my mom. Before the divorce, my mom was an artisan. She would shape mold, fire, paint, these little ceramics. She would have molds and a kiln, and she would fire the ceramics, the kiln, and then when they came out of the kiln, she would paint them. Everything from those little cute praying precious moments, figures to. Teddy Bears and Dragons, and then we would do the craft show tour and we would go to the Dogwood Festival, the collared festival, the watermelon festival, the Cresent Theum Festival, primarily throughout Eastern North Carolina, but really a lot of different places. I mean that extra $300, $500, $600 a month, it meant so much to her. It was validation as a craftsperson, it was an identity, doing what she loved professionally. I mean, it led to friendship and a little bit more financial freedom for our family. Just seeing that growing up has really impacted me in, in, in significant ways, really laid the foundation for bunches. Where here at this company we're really looking to help others find that financial freedom, doing what they love, whether it's painting precious moments, figures, creating music, starting a fashion brand, or being passionate about things like cars or the nba. That's really the DNA of the, this company and I, it started at an, at a pretty early age in my. Fast forward a little bit. I studied political science and philosophy in school. Knew for certain I was gonna be in the political arena, primarily in the international politics arena. Foreign policy was really a passion of mine and to an extent still is, but a series of changes in my life led. To being a software engineer. I was self-taught as a software engineer and really viewed code as a creative outlet. Started with games and then moved to the worldwide web in the nineties and eventually became a career. I applied to a small business in Eastern North Carolina on Craigslist of all places. This was what year? 2007, 2000. And then worked at a place called Gander Mountain, which is R EI Best Pro Shop, et cetera. And then really the career, my career and life changed when I ended up LinkedIn. At LinkedIn, I had the pleasure of leading a team responsible for what was called talent solutions or Team money, or the recruiter software product. I left LinkedIn after about 18 months. In my leadership role there for a company called apar, which is in the wealth management space, I ha had the distinct privilege to serve as VP of product development there, which meant that I ended up leading product management, large portion of the engineering org, design, qa, et cetera, and then left apar after a couple of years for the startup world, I joined a, a small company called Exec, which you'll hear about in the next episode of the Story of Bunches. And then after the exec. That's where kind of the bunch of story officially began. Even throughout all of that, I always believe that divs and artists and entrepreneurs, they drive society, right? Culture flows downhill is another way I like to put it. They, it flows downhill from urban to rural areas. That is cities start to define culture before it makes its way primarily into rural areas. And then from the creative class to the general populace. And I've. Looked at that. Always wanted to be a creator. Always wanted to help creators because it, it's a way to influence society. It's a way to impact the world in which we live. And who turned onto a lot of this thinking from Richard Florida, who wrote the creative class, Kevin Kelly's, thousand True Fans, like those are both pretty seminal works that. Shifted my entire worldview into thinking about creators and creatives and artists and entrepreneurs, and how they Im impact the world in which we live. Even started to work on this pretty early through college, I started an artist in residence program at my local church and really sponsored musicians. We even ran a music venue in Eastern North Carolina as bands would tour the East coast. They didn't have a lot of places to go between Washington, DC and Atlanta in Greenville, North Carolina, which is. School being just off of Interstate 95. It was a pretty convenient kinda layover spot. We would house artists, musicians, we would take them out to pizza at two in the morning after a show, et cetera. But it was just this beautiful place and time in my life. We were hosting artists and musicians on their way further south after a tour of North and being able to hear their stories and help them along the way. Free housing is pretty great when you're on tour that. Pretty much before the tech career, the end of my interactions with a lot of creatives and artists until really starting bunches in 2019. Really, the idea phase of bunches, it was before it was a registered company, before we had employees or even a product, just a dollar and a dream. Shout out to j Cole, but at the time it was. Just an idea in the back of our heads, like, Hey, something is here, and we'll talk about that as, as well in later episodes. But talk to a bunch of creators. A shout out to Chris Lavish, Mike Staub from Bad Mary, Eric Kovski, Lewis Chen. We would hear their problems just over and over, regardless if you were Lewis in the dental space, or Eric in the fitness space, or the mike in the music space, or Chris. Chris in the style and fashion space. Just over and over. We heard the same problems again and again. 50,000 people will fill a stadium. But if you have 50,000 followers, like brands just shrug their shoulders at it, a thousand person audiences don't matter, or a thousand true fans do. And it's those true fans that oftentimes, Would provide the financial backbone to a lot of people provides. Not only are those thousands true fans, your true fans, but oftentimes they're the first people to listen to a song after you drop it. On Spotify, they're the first people to buy Merck. Once you put the Shopify store up, they're the first people, to buy tickets to your event. The first people to download a PDF course, they're the first people to subscribe to your new channel or your second channel, or whatever it may be. No one knows who they are, and a lot of those early creators that we talked to, you just highlighted that problem over and over again. It was one of these things where that Kevin Kelly worked the thousand true fans just. Really came to light to mind over and over again where it is so much work being a creator. In fact, the work around creation is often more work than the active creation itself with, and that theme, regardless of what vertical you're creating in, was just pretty wild to me. That you could spend hours of your time on crafting a song or a piece of art or getting the look right for a styled pose for your Instagram stream or working on a video, for your YouTube channel, et cetera. But then the work after the work was just. That much more burdensome. It was pretty wild to me when I was diving into this space, and that's the problem that Tome and I and the team here at bunches, that's the problem that we are out to, to serve. And so that's the intro to, to the story of bunches. The story of my quest to serve creators is the story of bunches, but it's also important to know that I am not bunches and bunches is not me. We're not one and the same. I believe that no matter how talented you. No matter your backstory, no matter how hard you try, no matter you know, your education or the trips with your creative mother that you would take as a child, you can't successfully start something alone. And the story of bunches begins with me meeting a young NYU dropout who loved Drake way too much. I mean, that's for the next episode here on Start Something. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you next week.