The following interview is a conversation we had with Jon DeWald, CEO and Co-Founder of HELIXIntel, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $17.6 Million Raised to Build the Future of Building Management.
Jon DeWald
Hey, Brett, really nice to meet you.
Brett
Super excited to chat. So, to kick things off, can we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
Jon DeWald
Yeah, for sure. So, born and raised in beautiful sunny Buffalo, New York. Lifelong entrepreneur. Honestly, when I was in high school, started a lawn mowing business, and outside of a four year stint in the Marine Corps, where I did a couple of tours overseas in the early two thousand s, I really have been in entrepreneurship ever since. Started my first company when I was a freshman in college.
Brett
Wow. Well, first off, thank you for your service. And second, I’d like to ask, what did you take away from the military? I’m sure there were a lot of valuable life lessons that you learned, but if you had to pick maybe one or two, what would they be?
Jon DeWald
There’s so many life lessons. I think the thing that was the most rememberable to me is to be flexible. And I’ll give you a quick story. I signed up in legal administration. I’m an Eagle scout. I always wanted to be a lawyer growing up, and so that was my plan. And 911 happened, and they switched a lot of the Marines to combat infantry battalions. And so it went from thinking I was going to be a lawyer to actually in Iraq in the infantry battalion, and I just had to be really flexible. And being 18 at the time. Right. So right out of high school, it was an incredible life lesson, and that has really stuck with me throughout my entire life. Yeah, I can imagine.
Brett
So you’re 18, and all of a sudden you find yourself in Iraq.
Jon DeWald
Pretty much. That was something.
Brett
Wow, that’s wild, for sure. Now, let’s switch gears, and we’d like to ask just a couple of questions to really better understand what makes you tick. So, first one is, what Founder or CEO do you admire the most, and what do you admire about them.
Jon DeWald
The founders that I actually admire the most are family founders. I come from a very entrepreneurial family, and my brother founded a fuel cell company with a few other fellas, and they raised a tremendous amount of capital, as well as my aunts and uncles, who are all entrepreneurial and have from construction companies to packaging manufacturing companies. It really runs in my family and something that I’ve always looked up to. And obviously I have deep respect for all the famous tech titans who’ve been so incredible in San Francisco and around, but the ones who have really impacted me the most in my life are those who have touched it.
Brett
And is it a surprise for you or. It sounds like it’s not a surprise that you ended up becoming an entrepreneur because it’s in the family.
Jon DeWald
It is. My parents were both educators, and so very deep push towards pushing the boundaries, critical thinking, experiencing life. And between that, and as I said, the rest of the aunts and uncles and family kind of just was bred into it. So I guess not too surprised.
Brett
That’s awesome. And another question we like to ask, it’s about books, and the way we like to frame this is, I stole this from someone else, but they call it a quake book. So they defined a quake book as a book that rocks you to your core. It really just changes how you think about the world and really how you approach life. Do you have any quake books that come to mind?
Jon DeWald
I’m a big fan of biographies, and so I don’t do, fortunately, I think know, obviously, upbringing and business has come very natural to me. And so for me, really, the psychology of famous individuals, a book I love, like Washington, I think it’s called a life, or famous characters throughout history. I just love digging in and hearing their experiences and sometimes the stories that they tell. And for me, that’s really been impactful to how I gauge my life and how I run the companies that I’ve been a part of.
Brett
Have you heard of the podcast the founders?
Jon DeWald
I have, yes.
Brett
Okay.
Jon DeWald
Yeah, I just got turned onto that.
Brett
Like a month ago. And same thing, I love reading biographies, but some of them are so damn long, they take like 20, 30 hours to read. So finding that podcast where you can get like a nice 45 minutes summary, that was life changing, I would say.
Jon DeWald
Yeah, I believe it.
Brett
Ben, you have like one biography that you’re just obsessed with.
Jon DeWald
It’s like a go to book.
Brett
You’d recommend it to anyone else, definitely.
Jon DeWald
Washington, Georgia. Washington’s book, it’s by Ron Chernobyl, and he’s actually probably one of my favorite authors, just done a fantastic job. And I always think back to the immense opportunity he had to go down a different path, and he chose the one he did right. And the ability to stick to the strategy and the plan and execute, and it’s impacted me.
Brett
How long are we talking here, though? Is this like one of those gnarly biographies? That’s going to be 30 hours probably.
Jon DeWald
I think it’s a good thousand pages, right? But it’s a page tribute.
Brett
They say. I’m going to read it, John. I’ll be very mad if it’s no good. Let’s switch gears now. Let’s dive into the company. So I’d introduced you as an asset management platform. I think some people listening may think that it’s asset management as it relates to finance and investments, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. So what are we talking about here, John?
Jon DeWald
Yeah, for sure. So we’re in the fun world. Know, asset, equipment, property, ecosystem, right? So everything from HVAC equipment to buildings to infrastructure, vehicles, all sorts of assets, that’s the world that we live and swim in. And honestly, that’s where I’ve come up in. This happens to be my fifth startup, and every one of them has been in the property and equipment ecosystem.
Brett
And what is it about this ecosystem that excites you think?
Jon DeWald
Because it’s one of those untouched to technology relative to the opportunity, right. And there’s a lot of folks working in the ecosystem, in the property space, in the equipment space. But when you look at it, compared to the money that goes into fintech or into AI now or other platforms, it’s been relatively resistant to technology. And I think there’s a moment in time happening right now where it’s needed. Because when you think about this asset class, I believe the number is something around $214,000,000,000,000 worth of property assets globally. And it’s such a humongous market, and it’s been very stagnant and there’s been some great successes. But what I found is that you put the right amount of effort in and you have the experience, you’re able to do some very unique things in the space.
Brett
Are you seeing a shift now where investors are more interested in unsexy businesses, or like you said, you’re not fintech or not cybersecurity software, but businesses like this. Are you seeing a shift there where investors are more open to backing these types of opportunities?
Jon DeWald
Honestly, our company is headquartered out of Buffalo, New York, and our first kind of tech unicorn was a company called ACV Auctions, and they’re in the business of trading vehicles between car. So, you know, that was something that really impacted me because it truly is quite an unsexy industry. And for us, we’re in this property and equipment space. Massive opportunity. But I think one of the things too is you have to come with a lot of experience, because it’s hard to move folks who are used to doing things a certain way, especially in this space, technicians and maintenance folks and property managers and CFos and all these individuals, and you got to really be able to speak to each of them.
Jon DeWald
And then what we’re seeing, and I’m seeing honestly on the investment side, probably goes to the fact that we had a pretty competitive series a, and I know obviously it’s an interesting market right now, especially just across the board. And were in the fortunate position of having opportunity to choose what we thought was best. And we had some great investors that were looking at, and then we had term sheets and it was a really hard decision, but really excited about the way it came out for us.
Brett
I’m guessing you’re in a pretty unique position too, right? Because your customers aren’t startups. A lot of the companies that I work with and a lot of the founders that I speak to, they’re building software and they’re selling that software to software companies. So when software companies have been crushed from a valuation perspective and everything else that’s going on, the startups have been affected as well. But for you, it’s a totally different market, right?
Jon DeWald
Completely different. And so our actual customer is the insurance industry. That’s an interesting twist on our conversation, right? And we provide solutions for insurers who then in turn provide our solutions to the customers that they insure. Properties, buildings. And so we’re in this unique position where we are dealing with a couple of industries here who are old and antiquated, but really looking for change and then allows us, that has also been very helpful to us in our go to market because we’re able to scale very efficiently. There’s a great post if any of your followers follow Andreessen Horowitz, but they put out a recent article not too long ago talking about b to c, and that’s the businesses partnering with other businesses who then drive to customers. And that really helps with the cost of acquisition. We’re very efficient at that.
Jon DeWald
I was just the other day chatting with a fund manager and he had a hard time believing our burn compared to where we would be against other, I guess, traditional startups. And a lot of it has to do with just how we’ve been able to really distribute and expand in a very efficient manner.
Brett
And can you help us visualize what the platform does for an insurance company?
Jon DeWald
Oh, yeah. It’s the best thing ever. We help them manage the risks and losses.
Brett
Great.
Jon DeWald
So if you think about it, insurance companies are actually the ultimate risk holder of a property. And if you think about maybe like a. Simply think about your home for a second, or your apartment, your condo, whatever it might be, you as the owner, the renter, are directly responsible in managing property and assets. And whether you have everything running right, efficiently tracking everything, taking advantage of anything that’s out there. You’re the one who’s traditionally been on the hook, but the insurance company is the one who backstops you. They’re the one who provides support so that if an incident happens, that they can essentially help provide financial support, obviously, or other resources. And that’s really what we’ve done with them. Right. So we’ve built essentially a form of what we call a property management software.
Jon DeWald
And I say a form of, because we’re not in the business of helping tenants pay for rent or anything like that, it’s truly that property, the building, the assets, the infrastructure. And we gather a tremendous amount of data from the insurance companies, which we’ve really unlocked, and then from the properties, giving them tools like a work order management system or asset management, maintenance management, vendor management. Right.
Jon DeWald
The list goes on, and it gives an insurance company the ability to truly see what’s going on in a property and then help drive action and drive action, this isn’t something that really took me a while to wrap my head around, because when I thought of insurance companies early on, and I should preface by saying, I sure do not come from the insurance industry space, this is two and a half years in, so slowly working towards our phd here. But when you think about an insurer, and the way I have always thought about them, is just paying them every month, which is wonderful, right, from a business perspective, get that reoccurring revenue. But man, I got a problem. It’s going to be increased rates. It’s a whole thing.
Jon DeWald
And what’s happening in the insurance industry right now is there is a substantial increase in risk happening, meaning that claims are increasing and they’re outpacing premiums, which means that premiums are going to go up. And we’re not talking basis points, we’re not talking single digit percentage points, we’re talking real substantial increases in what you and I are going to be paying. And it has to do with they’re not going to lay their business, they got to stay around, they got to make money. And if they’re going to provide capacity, provide risk, they got to be able to backstop these failures and it’s increasing at an exponential rate. And so insurers are really driving towards helping properties understand what they have and then potentially paying for some or all of a problem before it becomes a claim.
Jon DeWald
This crazy statement I just said there, but if you think about it, that means that there’s a massive amount of budget that we’re working with, and that’s premiums. And the goal is to reduce claims, in effect, help their, what’s called the loss ratio by being proactive. And so there’s a major shift in the industry and we happen to be at the tip of the spear. Our seed round was led by a company called Munich Reventures based out of San Francisco, and they’re the largest reinsurance company in the world. So their footprint is absolutely. You know, we have been very fortunate to be in this position where we had a lot of team members and a lot of resources in different parts of the industry, properties, assets, software development. And they really believed in what were building and our mission and helped us really grow.
Jon DeWald
And it’s shown by, I think so far this year, we’ve added over 100,000 buildings onto our platform. So we’re really in a hyper growth mode right now.
Brett
Wow. How many did you add last year?
Jon DeWald
Probably somewhere around, I would say 15,000. So we are growing. And part of it has to do with how we embedded ourselves in the insurance process and really turned on some of the vehicle and the distribution and the number of properties that everything’s insured. Right. And we’re in this unique space where we don’t compete with anyone. We’re really a new business model and a new ecosystem that collaborates. And so because of that, we’ve been able to really define value for all the stakeholders.
Brett
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Brett
Now back today’s episode. What do you attribute to that success? Any Founder listening in would say, yes, I want that. I want to grow that fast. I want to have a customer base like that. What do you think you’ve gotten right?
Jon DeWald
Oh, man, we get everything right. Like honestly being flexible, right? Because we started out with a different strategy and myself and several team members come from. I ran the federal dealership at one point for a company called Ingersoll, ran one of the largest air compressor manufacturers in the world. And so I had that business that I owned and built and eventually exited. And what we realized was manufacturers are wonderful at selling equipment, but have a very difficult time in staying connected. And so our strategy was to build a platform that enables that. And when were introduced to Munich Reventures and they got a hold of our precede pitch deck, that’s like how early this was.
Jon DeWald
There was a gentleman, Jay over there, who just an awesome investor and understood what were doing and explained to us the problems that were happening in the insurance industry. And then we spent a couple of months just kind of talking back and forth about what could be done and then building the business case and going through all the things that an investor needs to do on diligence. And what I love about, I’m a big fan of corporate venture capital.
Brett
Most.
Jon DeWald
Of my time in the past 20 years, and that’s working with those space because you have folks who are very sophisticated in capital allocation, but also bring value creation for the startup. And that’s a hard thing to accomplish as a startup because corporations are traditionally risk adverse, right? So you have to overcome a lot of hurdles for them to bring you into their ecosystem, right. You think about reinsurers, they manage risk. Risk of a startup is high, right. And so to overcome that hurdle, there’s a lot of work that went into that and for any CVC. So I’d say just be flexible, listen to what’s going on around you, and move as quickly as possible when the opportunity presents itself.
Brett
And from a go to market perspective, what would you say was like the single greatest challenge that you’ve faced so.
Jon DeWald
Far, that you’ve overcome understanding the insurance industry 100%? It is a different language, and you probably say that about every industry, right? We work with. So our series A was led by National Grid Partners, which is the venture capital national grid. And they’re a massive utility in the US and the United Kingdom. And so, you know, the way I think about it, know, they speak utility, right? Insurer speak insure property. Speak property. And having the ability to understand and communicate value to each one of them is instrumental.
Brett
Another company called Risk IQ that worked with national Grid partners.
Jon DeWald
Not familiar. I’ll have to check them out. They do have a really awesome portfolio of companies that they’ve been investing in.
Brett
Super interesting. Now let’s talk a little bit about you or a bit more about you. So one thing we like to always ask about too are superpowers. So is there a specific skill that you think you’re just the best in.
Jon DeWald
The world at, or one of the best in the world at? Well, I’m a salesman at heart, so I guess best salesman. But probably there’s two things that I really refined over my time as an entrepreneur. And the first one would be the ability to align incentives. That’s pretty much the foundation of how I think, right. It’s why do I want it and why do they want it and what’s in it for everybody, and then how do you align them? And if I can’t do that, then I don’t waste my time or anyone else’s time. And that can be a process. You can be communicative, speaking to folks, but that is something that I focus on and I really drive home within the company as well. And then I would think the other thing that I’ve worked really hard at is just managing people.
Jon DeWald
Right as you grow. I found once you get past that first few people in an organization, you have a lot of unique individuals who bring incredible value, especially, let’s call it pre series c, right? So still pretty early on in any company, in any startup, and even though you can get to 100 plus people, that’s not a massive corporation. And so you’re dealing with a lot of personalities, a lot of people, and you got to move everyone and work with them to drive the outcomes that you’re looking for because you don’t have all the infrastructure set up yet. We’re still building everything. It’s one of my favorite things, honestly. I love my favorite moments in any startup is the early days. Building, creating, and then building the infrastructure.
Brett
Is it ever hard to maintain motivation for you after you get past that kind of build and creation phase in the early days?
Jon DeWald
Not really. Fortunately, if you happen to ever chat with any of the folks that I work with, I’m highly energized and highly motivated, but I believe very deeply in what we’re doing and honestly, in everything I’ve done right. I’ve been in the unique position of being self employed since I was 23 and worked really hard to be in that position. And I guess why I should say self employed is I’ve always worked for my shareholders, but it’s been a very fortunate position for me to be in.
Brett
Andy, if you reflect on the journey so far, what would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to yourself if you were just starting the company again from scratch?
Jon DeWald
That is a wonderful question. The advice I would give myself would be take time in getting to know the different team members that you’re working with and understanding their core assets. And so let me give you an example. I’ve come from a business. We did structured finance, so energy assets, right? So truly bringing capital to projects. I ran a dealership for Ingersoll Rand at a few other companies. This is my first traditional software business, and I’ve had to learn quite a bit about product development, product management, software development, and we’ve made a lot of right decisions. Right. And part of that has to do with the incredible talent that I was able to bring in around me when I formed this company, one from my Co-Founder, Mike.
Jon DeWald
Fortunately, he also happens to be my brother in law, so was working on him for a number of years. He’s the computer science guy in the room. But when you kind of then build out, it put us in this always learning position. And still to this day. We were fortunate to recently hire a very seasoned executive from Google, who I think he was at Dell and HP before that, and really has been tremendously successful in software sales and really being able to listen and understand what they do and learn from it. So hopefully a long winded answer, but I think that would probably be the best thing to say is listen and learn.
Brett
I like long winded answers. Always the good ones, I find question here for you. Let’s zoom out. So maybe three to five years from today, what’s that vision? What are you building?
Jon DeWald
We’re building operating software that brings multiple ecosystems together under one platform. And so starting with the property and asset management ecosystem, it’s provided the properties they’re able to work in there and execute. But we’ve been fortunate in bringing in the insurers, we’re now bringing in the utilities, and we’re working very closely with manufacturers, distributors and contractors. So when I take that step back, and I talked earlier about this moment in time happening, every one of these industries has been just very resistant to change, very resistant to coming off pen and paper sometimes, right.
Jon DeWald
Excel spreadsheets are ruled today, and we’ve happened to align incentives and value creation in a way where you’ve got, I would say, some of the largest outside of the finance world, some of the largest industries around, manufacturing, energy, insurance, properties, and we got them all working with us on our platform. We got a lot of work to do, right. Our roadmap is extensive and we have to continually remind ourselves to stay incredibly focused. But execution, bringing the right team around, we’re in the position where we’re able to move quickly and gain that market share that we’re working towards. Amazing.
Brett
I love the vision. All right, John, we are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap. If any founders are listening in or any investors that are listening in want to get in touch, where should they go?
Jon DeWald
You can find me on LinkedIn, although I would recommend also shooting me an email at John dewald@helixintel.com. So please reach out if you’re interested. We’re growing fast and we love partnering. It’s a big ecosystem out there, and we’re finding that we can move faster with partners. So looking forward to it.
Brett
Amazing. Sean, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Really appreciate it and really enjoyed the conversation.
Jon DeWald
Awesome. Thanks, brother.
Brett
All right, keep in touch.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform form of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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