How to Spot and Seize Hidden Opportunities With Mark Friedler

Mark Friedler is the CEO of Gigex Inc., an IT and services company helping companies procure the best technology solutions for their needs, saving time and costs. A serial entrepreneur, he has founded four companies, including Gigex, the first cloud game download service, and GameDaily, which became the largest consumer games site before its acquisition by AOL/Time Warner. Mark’s career spans pioneering roles in blockchain, esports, fintech, and enterprise cloud services, with contributions like launching IBM’s TrustYourSupplier network and co-founding CryptoMondaysSF, a global fintech and blockchain meetup group. He is also an avid cyclist who once rode from New York to Seattle and introduced Sweden to chocolate chip cookie stores.

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Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • [2:22] How childhood ventures sparked Mark Friedler’s talent for spotting market gaps
  • [6:00] The story behind muffins on Scandinavian Airlines flights
  • [10:08] Mark’s role in the first Netscape browser licensing deal
  • [13:39] Challenges of explaining revolutionary technology to skeptical businesses
  • [15:25] How Mark survived the dot-com crash and Silicon Valley’s turbulent tech landscape
  • [18:15] The importance of building and executing a great culture
  • [22:17] The potential of blockchain for enterprise applications
  • [25:06] A life-changing moment: Son’s miraculous survival after a severe car accident
  • [31:49] How AI and automation are transforming customer service and operations

In this episode…

Technology expenses are skyrocketing, often ranking as the top or second-highest business cost. As companies grapple with these financial burdens, the quest for effective technology cost management becomes crucial. How can businesses make smarter decisions to reduce these costs while still harnessing the power of technology?

Mark Friedler, a seasoned entrepreneur, shares practical strategies for tackling these challenges head-on. He emphasizes conducting a thorough technology audit to identify waste, right-sizing cloud usage, and adopting a hybrid model combining public and private clouds for cost optimization. Mark also highlights how leveraging AI for customer service can help you transform business operations, citing examples like omnichannel communication tools that improve user experience while cutting costs.

Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Mark Friedler, CEO of Gigex Inc., about technology cost management and identifying untapped business opportunities. The conversation explores Mark’s journey from running a chocolate chip cookie business in Sweden to becoming a technology strategy consultant. He shares insights on blockchain, early internet innovations, surviving the dot-com crash, and the life-changing impact of a family crisis.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

  • “When there’s an absence in the market, you fill it by helping others.”
  • “In the blink of an eye, everything can change. Be incredibly grateful for the mundane, everyday stuff.”
  • “Retail is detail like everyone says. It’s hard to find good, consistent people and scale that.”
  • “The toughest part is really dealing with your own identity when your culture is subsumed by a larger company.”
  • “Technology costs can be the largest cost — often second largest. It’s essential to plan for the future.”

Action Steps:

  1. Conduct a technology audit: Reviewing your technology expenses regularly can identify areas where costs can be reduced or optimized. This can be particularly effective in uncovering redundant software licenses or inefficient cloud service usage, addressing the challenge of escalating technology costs for businesses.
  2. Explore hybrid cloud solutions: Consider a mix of public and private cloud services to balance cost and performance needs. This approach can help mitigate cost surges, like the 1,000% increase in cloud expenses mentioned, by optimizing where different workloads are processed.
  3. Implement AI in customer support: Integrating AI-driven chatbots and virtual agents can enhance customer service while reducing costs. These tools can provide efficient and personalized customer interactions, resolving issues swiftly and improving customer satisfaction.
  4. Embrace the role of intrapreneur: Within larger organizations, look for projects where you can innovate and add value. This mindset not only helps maintain the entrepreneurial spirit but also positions you to drive positive change and make a significant impact in a corporate setting.
  5. Stay updated on emerging technologies: Educate yourself continuously on the latest technological trends, such as blockchain and AI. Understanding these innovations can open up new business opportunities.

Sponsor: Rise25

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We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create a copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRx BarsYPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk,  and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

Episode Transcript

John Corcoran: 00:00

All right. Today we’re talking about, you know, technology costs. They’re so expensive. In fact, it’s probably the number one or number two cost for most businesses. But today we’re going to talk about how you can reduce those technology costs and make good decisions for your business around those technology costs. My guest today is Mark Friedler. He has been in and around technology and started a zillion companies in and out of the technology world. And so I’ll tell you more about him in a second. So stay tuned.

Intro: 00:29

Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran: 00:46

All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran, here I am, the host of this show. And you know, every week I get the privilege to talk to interesting and smart, savvy CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. We’ve had Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, and Gusto. So many great episodes here. Check out the archives. And of course, this episode was brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help B2B businesses get client referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And you can go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected] to learn more about what we do. All right.

My guest today is Mark Friedler. He’s the CEO of Gigex, Inc. which is an IT and technology strategy consultancy. Kind of like coaches to companies that want to manage their technology costs. And few people are as qualified to focus on that as Mark is really diverse. Background started a number of different companies in industries ranging from online gaming to fintech ad tech media.

He’s been involved with crypto, all these different industries. So it’s really going to be a fascinating dive in his background. Mark. Great to have you here today. You know, you were I love to start by getting to know what people are like as a kid, and I often prompt people beforehand by saying, you know, did you do any lemonade stand, paper route, anything like that? And you said all of the above. So you did lemonade stands. You did do paper routes. You grew up in New Jersey, and even started a bike repair service in your basement. Tell us about all these things.

Mark Friedler: 02:22

Yeah. Well, one year I realized that the last bike store in my town had gone out of business. And the year before, I did a bicycle trip from New York to Seattle, and literally every piece of my bike had broken several times over. So I got to be pretty darn good at fixing my bike. And when I saw this had gone out of business, I just took out an ad and hung up, you know, flyers around town again.

This was before the internet, and people would come over and drop off their bikes, and I’d fix them in my basement, and I even ran it. When I went to college, I sent out postcards, saying, hey, if you want your bike repaired over, you know, Thanksgiving or Christmas, bring it over. So that’s how I got started and it was a lot of fun.

John Corcoran: 03:07

And then you and a friend also started doing ski trips to Vermont from New Jersey.

Mark Friedler: 03:12

Yeah, we were in high school and we realized it was like, hey, you know, there used to be a ski club, but it didn’t exist anymore. So we, together with a local travel agency, put together a couple of ski trips to Killington Mountain in Vermont. Those of you on the East Coast might know about it. One to Hunter mountain and it was called the Outer Limit Ski Club. And my understanding is years later, that ski club still existed in Summit High School in Summit, New Jersey.

John Corcoran: 03:39

So I’m sensing a theme here. You had kind of a theme of when there’s an absence in the market, you fill it by helping others, which is going to come up later because you, after college ended up going to Sweden. I’m not sure how that came about. And there were no chocolate chip cookies in Sweden. And so And so you decided to do something about it.

Mark Friedler: 04:01

You know, I was living in a student dorm. I went over for a summer, and I had a job driving a forklift in a beer brewery. Pretty random. Just wanted to get away for the summer before I started my real job, which I actually never ended up starting. And all these people in the dorm were like, oh, in America, we miss this. We miss that. All these different products that you’re like, what do you mean? How do you not have peanut butter? What do you mean? Levi’s jeans are twice as expensive.

And someone said chocolate chip cookies. I said, that’s easy. Just go out and, you know, buy the ingredients. They said, no, you can’t even get the ingredients here. I said, what do you mean? They said, well, we have dark chocolate or milk chocolate. We don’t have semi-sweet. We use sugar beets instead of cane sugar, which means our brown sugar is really dry and molasses . Our flour kind of stinks. So I’m like, wow, this sounds like a job for Mark. And I’ve thought and I’m like, I hate chocolate chip cookies.

Said no one ever. So I’m like, how can this not work? So when I was back home in the States, I met with the president of David’s Cookies. I got in touch with Mrs. Fields. David wanted to sell me a recipe for half $1 million. Mrs. Fields didn’t do franchising. And because the cost structure, the cost of labor was so much higher in Sweden than it was at home, I figured it had to have a whole different model. So instead of building a big store like you saw in malls, I got the opportunity to open a 100 square foot kiosk in the middle of Stockholm’s busiest shopping mall. I went and did that. The US ambassador came and cut the ribbon, and that store was in business for over 30 years. It just apparently closed down two years ago. So it was exciting. It was a lot of fun. I made a lot of the Swedish people a little, a little heftier, but it was a good time. I brought it.

John Corcoran: 05:55

Piece of obesity from America to the Nordic countries.

Mark Friedler: 06:00

And a funny and a funny follow on story to that. We also introduced blueberry muffins and other muffins. That didn’t exist. And there was a customer that once came and he’s like, oh, these are so good. It turns out he worked at Scandinavian Airlines and I got a connection with Scandinavian Airlines.

And I went to their commercial kitchen and literally taught a team of Swedish chefs how to make blueberry muffins. So at that time we were making mixes or we were importing mixes from the States. So they became one of my biggest customers as I pivoted the business away from retail into wholesale. So to this day, if you fly Scandinavian Airlines from Europe to the States, you get a muffin in the morning, and that’s thanks to me.

John Corcoran: 06:46

So it sounds like you were looking for other opportunities beyond the chocolate chip cookies. Like you kind of pivoted into business selling to other businesses.

Mark Friedler: 06:56

Yeah. I mean, you know, retail is detail, like everyone says. And you know, especially in the CEO group, you and I are both members of EO. We spend a lot of time talking about managing employees, making them happy, you know, creating great culture. And, you know, when you have an hourly business such as, you know, a retail store or a restaurant, it’s hard to find good, consistent people and scale that.

And so I was looking for a way to scale it beyond just opening more stores. And I kind of got into the business of trading just of, you know, selling mixes. So we sold scanning airlines, we sold the Hard Rock cafe, you know, a bunch of other businesses. And that actually became the business after I’d sold off the stores. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 07:41

And you eventually come back to the United States after about seven years in Sweden, and you get into running business development for an early internet company. We’re talking like early 90s here. I’m curious what that conversation was like. You know, like, hey, I yeah, just ran some chocolate chip companies over in Sweden. And I’d love to do business development for you. Or. I mean, actually, I mean, I think about it, if you’re like 27 or 28 now or something like that and you’ve just run, you’ve started this company, maybe that gives you a lot of credibility for these internet companies.

Mark Friedler: 08:15

Yeah. There was one more stop before that. After I sold the business, I was looking for something to do, and I applied to a Dutch-based company that had a Swedish operation called Tele World. And they did what was called teletext advertising and information on TV. So if you’ve been over in Europe and you hit the button for teletext, you’ll see almost like a pong-like, you know, display of different information. It’s still a standard, it’s still operating.

But the company I worked for commercialized it. So they were looking for a managing director to run Sweden. And I didn’t have any technology experience, but as you said, I had experience building and running a company . It was myself and someone else in the final interview, and they hired me. And so I got the opportunity to take, you know, a fledgling company. We were number 13 out of 14 countries at the time in terms of revenue, and we weren’t profitable. And I turned that around. And, you know, three years later, we were number two. And, you know, we’re very profitable. We had initiated a deal with MTV and with Swedish commercial broadcasters. So that experience really helped me, you know, leverage technology as I move back into the states.

And that company in the States was building private networks. You know, at the time, companies wanted their own networks, you know, in the time of like, AOL and CompuServe were for consumers. And then I think there was like GT interactive or something like that, you know, for businesses. So we built those private labels like Price Waterhouse for Time Warner, you know, a bunch of large companies. So those were some of the things we did. I remember meeting a bunch of guys from the startup called Netscape, and they had just come out with a new thing called the web browser. And I did the first one.

John Corcoran: 10:08

Of them, Marc Andreessen, or was it were they bigger than that at that?

Mark Friedler: 10:11

Point? No. Marc. Marc Andreessen wasn’t with it was his biz dev guy. Okay. And we did the first commercial license deal of the Netscape browser. We licensed 25,000 copies of it, you know, for, for, for our clients. And so that was cool. And, you know, looking back, you know, the early days of the internet, like, I remember my colleague was like, oh, this is a good idea. And he was registering domains. You could do that for free. You know, it was just really the Wild West. And, you know, it was hard to get bandwidth. I remember, you know, it was exciting that we had a T1, which is basically a megabit a second. You know, no house has that slow connection anymore. But like that was a big deal. So yeah, it was an interesting time for sure.

John Corcoran: 10:54

You end up going and founding a company which was V-Cast. What was V-Cast?

Mark Friedler: 11:00

So the founder of that company came up with an idea of like, hey, what if we could deliver larger content to people’s desktop because most people at that time are on dial up, hard to get something high quality. And that was just when Adobe had come out with their Acrobat product. So a lot of magazine and book publishers were making really beautiful products, but it took forever to download because the files were so large. So we created a solution to bring in those files in the background. So you click a button and boom, you get a beautiful kind of full color file.

And so one of our first large customers was The New York Times. They had a product back in the day called Times Fax. Now it’s called Times Digest. Those of you who travel may recognize it. If you go to a fancy hotel, there’s like a 6 or 7 page, eight by 11 version of the New York Times. Yeah. yeah. So so so back then, they literally used to fax it all over the world. And they had huge costs of telecom and doing that. So we created an internet delivered version that we gave them a little piece of software to check in and would pull down the new version, open it up, and they’d print it.

And so they were like, wow, that’s amazing. It works. It saves us so much money. So ultimately, that company we sold to Verizon and V-Cast became the brand of Verizon Wireless for a while. And my partner and I were like, okay, that was cool. But we couldn’t really figure out a business model. We weren’t advertising people at the time. We, you know, the internet was very early. People didn’t understand how they’d pay for something new. And so we’re like, well, what if we took similar technology and figured out what’s hard to do?