Jeff Graley - Co-Founder and President of Mile 2: Working “On” the Business, Managing Cash Flow, and Building a Startup Ecosystem

Jeff Graley  00:00

Ideas are a dime a dozen, right? That was one of the interesting things early on in Mile Two journey is people be like, hey, I want you to sign an NDA. I don't want you to steal my idea. I'm like, the world's about execution. Nobody understands your problem better than you, your solution better than you, nor has the passion for it that you have.

Callan Harrington  00:19

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives, and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Jeff Graley. Jeff is the co founder and president of Mile Two. Mile Two builds custom software for a range of diverse clients, including startups, Fortune 500 companies, and the US government. Jeff is a veteran and serial entrepreneur. His thriteen years with the Air Force reinforced his strength as a problem solver and communicator, allowing him to turn existing projects around or lead new projects to success. At Mile Two, he continues to push the envelope on new technologies and domains such as human-machine teaming, big data, and artificial intelligence. And, you know, we hit on most of the big founder challenges throughout the show, we talked about managing cash flow in the early days, how much cash to have in reserves, building an advisory board and the benefits of doing that. And probably the biggest challenge that comes up on the show, of how to remove yourself from working in the business to working on the business as the founder, Jeff gave a great breakdown on how he got over this hurdle. And I just thought it was excellent advice for anyone that's in this situation. One of the topics, though, that I found to be really interesting is how Jeff is partnering with others, to build the startup ecosystem in Dayton, Ohio. Being in a smaller market myself in Columbus, Ohio, I thought it was great advice for others that are looking to build one in their home market. So with that, let's jump into the show. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Graley  02:25

Hey, thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:26

Yeah, absolutely. So for our listeners, tell us a little bit about Mile Two.

Jeff Graley  02:30

Yeah, so Mile Two, fundamentally, is a systems engineering company. But we tend to work mostly in software. And the thing that makes us different is we work at the intersection of people technology and work. Most folks, most companies focus on technology. Or if you're a human factors consulting company, you focus on the human factors. We tend to focus at the intersection of those three things. And when you think of that as a systems engineering problem, these systems of systems start to overlap. And you know, those boundaries, that's where interesting things happen. So we tend to look at the picture from a bigger perspective than most companies, looking at those boundaries, looking at those interactions, and then trying to come up with good human machine teaming solutions.

Callan Harrington  03:11

So okay, break this down for me a little bit here. For me, I'm probably the ultimate layman when it comes to this, although I've been in tech companies. Is it making technology that's just easier for humans to use? Or to advance, essentially, what they're doing using AI or whatever that may be?

Jeff Graley  03:28

I would say yes, and... to that. Right? So yeah, so sometimes it's, you know, an Excel file is a very universal tool, it's got a lot of flexibility to it, you can do so much with it. Even rudimentary visualization, actually fairly complex ones. But is that the right tool for the job that you're doing at any given time? So we have the ability to look at that and go, okay, we know how the human brain works, whether it's perception or cognition, and we say, okay, if you want to support things like synthesis, or information analysis, these things need to be supported, because people are inherently biased, or people are inherently prematurely narrow to a solution, because it's the easiest thing to do. Because we can only keep five, six things bouncing around our head at any given time. So how can I support analysis, which means you need to be broad, you need to be a thorough, so how do you represent that information? How do you build tools to support that, given the kinds of decisions you need to make, and the data and the capabilities that you have to make them with?

Callan Harrington  04:25

What an example be, I've got large amounts of data, and I've got 1000 different ways I can cut this data up, that building tools to help better be able to draw insights from that? Would that be an example?

Jeff Graley  04:39

Yes, yeah, that's an example. Another example would be the world's move towards complexity, right? The world's not complicated anymore. It used to be complicated. You could take everything apart, you could put it back together. There's a manual. Now the world's about complexity. So the things that happen in a airplane, a person can't understand all of those systems. Even the pilot, they have to understand heuristics and some of the themes of it. But there's no way for them to exquisitely understand each of the systems in detail. So how do you represent the most important information about those systems to a pilot so they can make good choices? Whether it's flying, landing, or taking off the plane. That makes total sense. Why did you found Mile Two? Part of it was I hit a new point in my career where I needed to make some decisions within the Air Force. I started out active duty Air Force as a clinician, so I saw patients I was- I did patient care. I was an audiologist working at a hospital, I got sent to the Air Force Research Lab, where they made me more of a program manager, sort of an engineer on the job training. At some point, as you're going up that track, you got to choose a pathway. And I didn't really love the pathway that I was on, you kind of had to step back a couple of levels to move back up the track. And I wasn't really interested in doing that. And then serendipity happened as well. The Air Force, the AFRL, decided that entrepreneurship should be explored as a mechanism for technology transfer, and commercialization of technology within the lab. So I volunteered to be a pathfinder and do a pilot around that, say, what does it look like to leave AFRL and take a technology with you or take a patent with you and start a company around that? So that was the intent.

Callan Harrington  06:20

Okay, gotcha. So, if I can break that down a little bit. So the Air Force Research Laboratory, essentially, as I understand it, is there's research that's going on, there's new technologies that are being built. There's all sorts of innovation that's happening within the Air Force in this research lab. And if I'm hearing you it's how can we spin that out and have an entrepreneur take that over and build a business around this? Is that correct?

Jeff Graley  06:46

Yep, absolutely.

Callan Harrington  06:47

Gotcha. I think this is really interesting. We had Nick Riplinger, on the show. And he was talking about this and went in depth about it. And I think it's something that I know it's, you know, in the Dayton area, a lot of people realize, but I don't know how many entrepreneurs realize there's, you know, I think a lot of people are worried about the idea. A lot of times, those ideas could actually already be out there. It's can you go out here and build a business around this? Do you find that to be the case?

Jeff Graley  07:12

 Yeah, you know, honestly, ideas are a dime a dozen. Right? That was one of the interesting things early on in Mile Two journey is people be like, hey, I want you to sign an NDA. I don't want you to steal my idea. I'm like, the world's about execution. Nobody understands your problem better than you, your solution better than you, nor has the passion for it that you have. So yeah, it happens, big companies will steal your stuff. But at this kind of like local working level, it just always made me smile, because it's more about the execution. It's more about the passion. It's more about the curiosity, than it is the technology itself more often than not,

Callan Harrington  07:45

I think there's so much truth to that. I mean, I think a lot of us have been in the startup world, and walked into a company, and you have to sign an NDA before you can even meet with somebody. Even for a job interview, you have to sign an NDA. I mean, I understand the signing an NDA, if it's an executive role and things like that, but I'm in a later stage company, but for just the regular position, anybody comes in, signing an NDA, I always thought it was interesting. I can't say I don't get it. But I think there's oftentimes it's taken to a whole new extreme. So tell us a little bit. So you mentioned that you started out in the Air Force. So you wanted to be in audiology? Is that correct?  Correct. Yeah.  What kind of drove that?

Jeff Graley  08:22

My whole career is about not having a very good plan and staying curious. I got into my sophomore year of college and really didn't know what I wanted to be. I was speaking with a lot of people about career paths. And one of my family members was a speech pathologist, and she was like, you should check that out. So I did, and in undergrad speech pathology and audiology are a single bachelor's degree. Really didn't like speech pathology at all, but I kind of liked the scientific basis behind audiology. So ended up following that path. Your working degree is a master's degree, so I had to get a master's degree right after undergrad. And then I went into the Air Force to be a clinician.

Callan Harrington  08:58

Was your plan to go into the Air Force while you're in college? Or was that the opportunity kind of presented itself when you were in your masters?

Jeff Graley  09:06

Yeah, it was more that presented itself. And there were some constraints, right. So again, to practice, you need to do a one year fellowship. And I was getting married to an audiologist, we needed to find a town big enough that could support two internships or fellowships. So when I looked and said, hey, I can guarantee mine through the Air Force, then you just have to find one on the on the local economy. This doesn't sound like a terrible idea.

Callan Harrington  09:29

When was it that you realized it's not what you want to do?

Jeff Graley  09:31

Probably a couple of years into it. It was twofold. One, within the Air Force, there's only about thirty five, forty audiologists. So your career path was pretty narrow. And I don't think at that point, I think still at this point, there's never been a general officer that was an audiologist. You kind of cap out at lieutenant colonel or colonel, and I'm just a striver. So, you know, if I'm going to do something, I want to be able to get to the pinnacle. And this doesn't even give me a path to the pinnacle. Whether I deserve it or can achieve is a different thing, but I want the opportunity. The second was I found that audiology was very much about expectation management, right? So when people lose their hearing, and you get hearing aids, you don't actually fix it. It's not like glasses, your hearing doesn't go back to 2020. It's, you're missing actual hair cells detection capability. And you can make it louder, but you can't really make it clearer or much clearer. So I always felt like I was disappointing people, and again, wired to achieve, wired to strive. And I spent most of my days what I felt like disappointing people, even if I did the best job, the technology did the best job, they still were like, this isn't as good as I thought it would be, or I still can't have a conversation with my wife, friend, family member. And as that was just not for me. I don't like disappointing people.

Callan Harrington  10:43

That's really interesting. One, I didn't realize that. Makes me deeply regret having subwoofers in high school. One, I didn't look cool. Two, it did permanent damage to my ears. So that makes total sense. That has to be delivering bad news all the time, because the best you can do is where they're at now. It's just not getting worse. Is that correct?

Jeff Graley  11:02

Right. Yeah, I mean, it was- it was better, but it was not, it was never meeting their expectations. Or extremely rare to.

Callan Harrington  11:09

Gotcha. So how did you how did you approach this, you know, spent a lot of time in this, of course, right? You undergrad, masters, couple years in, realize that there's this ceiling that's going to be kind of put on you if you go this route. Whether or not, again, like you mentioned, whether or not you hit it or not, inconsequential. It's just, it's there. And that's as far as you can go. Where did you start to explore and what was kind of going on your head at that time?

Jeff Graley  11:34

So I think it's twofold. One, I'm wired in a way that you can always re-plan, right? No plan is ever seen through all the way without any kind of disruption. It's just the way the world works. So I just always consider re-planning a part of the deal anyway, but the Air Force kind of pushes that on you too, right. Every three years you move. And did they send me to a hospital? No. They sent me to a research lab. Well, what am I going to do at a research lab? Right. But I stayed curious. They gave me some interesting projects to work on. I really enjoyed them and did pretty well at it, apparently, because they kept giving me more responsibility and cooler projects to work on.

Callan Harrington  12:11

Did you have a choice? Or was it you're going to the research lab? See you in Dayton.

Jeff Graley  12:15

It was the latter. You don't get a choice.

Callan Harrington  12:19

I mean, this may be a dumb question, but I mean, it sounds like that worked out considerably for the better, in hindsight. How did you feel at the time?

Jeff Graley  12:27

I was excited because I'd be close to home. I grew up in southern West Virginia, my wife's from northern West Virginia. So there was a lot of family reasons that it made a lot of sense. And again, I'm wired for curiosity. So I was like, alright, sounds interesting. We'll figure it out.

Callan Harrington  12:42

What was it like once you got in it?

Jeff Graley  12:43

I really liked it. I had a lot of autonomy. I could see the measurable impacts that I was having. I had all kinds of trade spaces that I had to navigate. It lined up really well with what I was good at and enjoyed. I mean, fundamentally what I learned, and it took me, I was in my early thirties before it finally clicked. I really like building and growing teams. Well, they don't offer a degree in building and growing teams. That's something that you either find your way through business, some of these other things, but I found that's what I really valued when I worked on projects that were maintenance mode or peaked, I was ready to go do something else. So that's what I found my real passion was about or was around. And I was able able to do that in AFRL, because there's always new projects coming.

Callan Harrington  13:27

It sounds like you didn't want to just go up the ladder. It was, you really wanted to build. You were more intrigued by this building than you were I need to rise up the ranks as high as possible. Is that fair? Or is that- or is it both?

Jeff Graley  13:38

It's both. I think that achievement angle and moving up the ranks was still something that was super important to me, because that's, you know, it's a nice signal from the world that you're you're doing a good job that you're valued, that you keep getting pushed up that. And I see that as greater responsibility, right? So the more responsibility the more impact that you have, generally happens, the larger the organization that you're running, right? That's one of the things we talk about here at Mile Two, like why do we want to grow? Well, it's like one, because I want to, that's what I enjoy, you know, and I like working at Mile Two. So I want to stay here and let it continue to grow. It's also about impact. Think of how many more employees you have, the more you can impact positively. We think we're doing good things here. The more revenue we have, the more we donate back to the community. The more families of our colleagues and co workers that we have under that umbrella, the umbrella just gets bigger of the impact that you can have. So for me, that's part of the wanting to move up the organization.

Callan Harrington  14:35

What do you want from a size perspective for Mile Two?

Jeff Graley  14:39

I don't think about it that way. Again, it's about that journey. It's about continuing to grow, continuing to get better, because what I find for me is that keeps me challenged, right. I've had to evolve multiple times over the last seven years to be the leader that organization needs. And that keeps me on my toes. I don't want to let people down. I don't like disappointing people. So I continue working really hard on my skills as well, to make sure that I can be the leader that the organization needs, that I'm putting in the work that the organization needs to be successful and stay successful.

Callan Harrington  15:11

So I'd love to dive into that, specifically the- so the first stage gate, right, is just getting this thing off the ground. What were some of the surprises that you just couldn't have anticipated until you got in there? People won't pay you. (laughs) (laughs)

Jeff Graley  15:26

Should have been obvious, should have asked that question pretty early on, but yeah, a lot of people won't pay you. They won't pay you when they say they're gonna pay you, like on time, these things. So, you know, just navigating those things with payroll, and paying bills, and stuff like that, early on was- I don't know, I guess I was just- I've lived a charmed life. I didn't anticipate that at all.

Callan Harrington  15:48

When you say people don't pay you, is this meaning- I think it might be both- I just want to ask to clarify, but we've got engagement with our customer, we've invoiced them, they either didn't pay at all or, you know, payment terms were net fifteen, and they paid in ninety days. Or is this that you got into this, thought it was going to be that we could sell this kind of over and over again, and then were like, oh, okay, people won't pay for what this is, we've got to pivot on that.

Jeff Graley  16:16

Oh, no, that one's more of the former. It was net fifteen, you get paid net sixty. And you're like, well, that blows up my cash flow. Or not at all. And, funny story, there was one guy that didn't pay us for like three years. And then I randomly opened the mail one day, and there was a check from him with a note said, "I promised you I would pay you eventually."

Callan Harrington  16:34

Three years?!

Jeff Graley  16:35

We thought that money was long gone. But he ended up paying. So kudos to him.

Callan Harrington  16:41

Okay, so how did you manage that? What was your process, because one of the things that I also had a really hard lesson of, I had to manage off of the cash flow forecast, not the P&L. At the companies I was with prior, if they had venture capital, or were a little bit further along, you're not as much managing out of pure cash flow. But in those early days of a bootstrap startup, that was a big, big thing that I realized I had to do right away. How did you manage that when you're getting paid sixty days later, ninety days, three years, later?

Jeff Graley  17:09

So it's good partners, right, both internally and externally. So Jorge, one of the cofounders of Mile Two, he was generous multiple times through that process and put money in the bank to cover payroll, just in case the money didn't show up. And sometimes it didn't. But, you know, we always made sure he got paid back first when he did that. So that was appreciated. Like if- without that, we would have had to not pay people a couple times, at least not on time, which goes against my internal morals. Like if you commit to something, you deliver on it. I don't want to disappoint people. So we were able to do that a couple times. The other- through banks. So Wright-Patt Credit Union had a program where essentially, we could get a corporate credit card with like a $50,000 line of credit. And when your year one, two, three, it's really hard to get a line of credit at all, period. Especially in the software business, there's no assets to take. So they were generous and let us use that. And you could use it like a line of credit, as well. So that was super helpful in navigating some of those hiccups in the cash flow.

Callan Harrington  18:07

Gotcha. So you- if I'm hearing you correctly, the line of credit, I mean, of course, you had a founder would put some of the money in to cover the gap. But the line of credit then became that piece where if you're 30,000, short, because you're due, let's just say 100,000, the next month, that line of credit will pick up that 30,000. When you get that 100,000, you'll repay off that 30,000. Or if it's a super low interest rate, you maybe roll some of that.

Jeff Graley  18:33

Yeah, and even if you're thinking about growth, you got to hire people, we sell hours, right? At the end of the day. So it'll be two months before I get paid for that person's work. Right? Because they got to work a month, I got a bill, and it'll take a month to get paid for that bill. So got a sixty day lag in there. But they want a paycheck in two weeks, right? Rightfully so. So how do you cover that? That lag in there? So it allowed us to grow as well, because you could hire when you needed to, not when you had enough in the bank account to make sure it worked.

Callan Harrington  19:01

Do you still use a version of that?

Jeff Graley  19:03

We still have a line of credit. It is not exercised nearly as heavily as it was early on. I think zero setting on it at the moment. But early on, it was never zero. I'm pretty sure.

Callan Harrington  19:14

I'm actually curious on this. Do you keep a certain amount of cash in reserves?

Jeff Graley  19:19

Yeah. I mean, once you're able to, you absolutely should, right? I mean, one of the concepts, I don't know how purely we followed it, because the first three or four years, it was almost impossible. But we talked about if there was two of us, let's treat the company like a third partner. So keep that money in there. If you're going to do distribution, make sure there's at least that much still in there or more, you know, we use that philosophy to at least guide some of our decisions, even though it was impossible at times to actually have enough money to do that.

Callan Harrington  19:47

That's an interesting concept. So if I'm hearing you correctly, it's let's just say 33% goes to Jeff, 33% goes to Jorge, 33% goes to Mile Two. And is that used to reinvest back in the business? Or is that used for cash reserves? What does that typically look like?

Jeff Graley  20:06

I would say, yes, it depends. I think we've always been pretty thoughtful about investing in the company and making sure that we're always looking ahead and looking forward. And we hired a recruiter really early on, maybe employee number fifteen or twenty. Right. Because it was an investment in the company, he understood our culture, he understood what we were trying to do, he was a part of our team versus using a third party. That was a good example. HR is another one that we brought in pretty early. We have a leadership development director, at the size we are now. There's only 120 of us or so. Most companies our size don't invest in those kinds of capabilities, but it's consistent with our values of growth. Right? Both for individuals, teams, and the company.

Callan Harrington  20:49

Okay, I'd love to go back to this again, on kind of the growth goals in general with Mile Two. For you, is it to grow? So you're familiar with the concept of small giants? Have you ever heard of this?  So small giants are essentially they're trying to- they're larger companies, but their purpose is to be a great company, not to be as big as possible and exit, or go public, or raise capital to get as big as possible. And then of course, the other school of thought is kind of grow as big as possible and have the largest kind of exit that you can. Do you guys have a kind of a goal and a mission on that, or- I only asked this because you said specifically, which I thought was interesting was, you're growing for the purpose of being able to have a bigger impact. So I'll pause there. I know I asked about three questions in one there.

Jeff Graley  21:01

No.  It's probably closer to the small giants model. But I mean, fundamentally, Mile Two, when we started internally, it flows a little better. But we said we want to do cool shit with cool people. That includes customers, our co workers, and the problems that we go get after, right? So that's more the mentality, as long as there is cool shit to do, and more cool people to work with, that's what drives it every day.

Callan Harrington  21:59

Gotcha. Gotcha. I love that. And, okay, so the first stage gate was learning how to really kind of manage that cash flow and get the company in a position where you've got a little bit more predictability. What was the second thing that you as a founder, right, because you've, you know, given the size that you are, you've had to go through a couple of stages of what a typical company would would go through; what was that next thing for you were you kind of had to reinvent yourself?

Jeff Graley  22:26

That's more around like starting to get rid of titles and get rid of functions in jobs. I've always, again, just kind of naturally been wired to work on the company. I'm not a software developer. I don't really have any appreciable technical skills other than on the job training type stuff that I picked up. So my natural inclination was always not to dive into the work, but to look at the company and say, where should we go? But when you do that, it's really hard to give up those roles too, right? So trying to find the right timing and the right person to start to hand those things off to, right. So finding my counterpart, I'm not an implementer. Like, that's not my favorite part. I'm not really super into like, let's build a spreadsheet, let's do details. I'm good enough and smart enough to know that I need those things, and I was doing them. But as soon as I was able to divest of those responsibilities, and find a partner and other people in other roles to be more implementers, that worked really, really well for me, and for the company.

Callan Harrington  23:25

So if I'm hearing you, then it's you're more excited on working on, you know, here's what's kind of coming next, here's what I'm working on, as we're building this and hiring people that are better at executing on those given tasks, then you would be executing on those tasks to free you up to do more of the work where you are best at. Is that is that correct?

Jeff Graley  23:44

Yeah, I've seen a lot of founders that, especially the ones that are- tend to be very technical or very technically intertwined with their company, start to be the break, start to be the thing that's actually constraining the throughput and capacity. Decisions can't get made, because they're busy with this, or they're not thinking about other opportunities, or looking for other opportunities, because they're too focused on what's downward looking or the project they're working on. And I didn't want to be that. I don't think I'm very well suited for it. But I don't want to be it, even if I were. So finding those partners and those teammates allows you to kind of increase your capacity, which therefore increases the capacity of your company as well.

Callan Harrington  24:20

When did you start making that transition? What size was the company?

Jeff Graley  24:24

I think around fifty people really felt like the knee point of, yeah, you're not going to be able to do all this anymore. So somewhere between twenty five, thirty five and fifty, I started to push some of my roles out to other people and hire folks to fulfill those skill sets.

Callan Harrington  24:41

What was the hardest part about doing that?

Jeff Graley  24:44

Observability. Right?

Callan Harrington  24:46

What do you mean by that specifically?

Jeff Graley  24:48

Well, so trust is important, but you still need to be able to observe, see into the system. Once you get too far away from the work, or whether it's the work of accounting or finance or human relations, human resources, you lose observability. So how do you build that into it, whether it's your relationship, whether it's the way you report things, whether it's the mechanisms that you use as an operating system? That was the hardest part for me was I want- you know, you got to trust but verify. So how do you make sure that you have mechanisms to be able to do that?

Callan Harrington  25:19

Do you have an example of some of those on what you started to do to see some- Actually, before we get to the examples, what were some of the mistakes that you made in making that transition?

Jeff Graley  25:28

I mean, honestly, one of the things is challenging for me is, I don't have a formal business background. So having the right lexicon or the frameworks that everybody else is using, because they got taught that in school, is not something I have. So some of it is communication, right? How do I articulate what my instincts are telling me or what my experience is telling me in a way that's relatable to the person I need to actually do that job? That's been a huge challenge for me, because I mean, so far, my instincts have been pretty strong. But how do I articulate what I'm concerned about? Or where I think this opportunity is, and put it into terms that someone else can go run and make it happen?

Callan Harrington  26:06

How do you do that? Do you have a framework that you did kind of adopt or that you created as a result of this?

Jeff Graley  26:12

No, I'm still winging that part, I thin. Some of it's learning, some of it's constantly, you know, reading and building, building up knowledge around these things. Some of its coaching and counseling, too, right? So we invested in an advisory board really early on. Like, we were probably three years into this and brought in an advisory board, which is really great, right? Super experienced people that do a couple things for you. One, help give you frameworks like that and validate that what you're saying is not just you're pulling it out of thin air, it's real. Because I think that's one of the things, the whole imposter syndrome, is you think maybe you're the one that's not thinking about this right. Or maybe you're overconfident in something. And having an advisory board allowed me to validate, again, my instincts, my thoughts, my concepts, the direction I wanted to go with stuff. And then more often than not, they were giving you permission, like by validating it versus saying, no, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, you shouldn't do that. It's almost like they give you the freedom to go really passionately pursue the idea that you had.

Callan Harrington  27:13

It is super interesting. Because- it's funny, because I did a bunch of startups. I've been a part of early stage startups my entire career. But when I went to start my own company, I made every mistake that like, I've read every book, I've been part of these, and I still made all those mistakes. And the biggest challenge that I had early on was like within, especially within the first year was, who the hell do I talk to about this? There's nobody, it's just me, especially at that time, it was really just me. And then, you know, and I had heard about some of this like, well, yeah, it can be lonely when you're starting a company. I didn't realize that till the first kind of real fire like, I can't, I'm burning out my family on this. I can't take it there. So it becomes such a challenge. So is that how you were able to kind of get past that, was building this advisory board?

Jeff Graley  27:59

Yeah, I mean, that was one piece of it. I was pretty fortunate, I guess. One, I got to learn a lot of mistakes on the Air Force's dime when I was in the Air Force, right. So I'd run programs, and, you know, big and small. So I've learned a lot of mistakes and have been able to do that, you know, not at my own risk. The other thing is one of my good friends left around the same time and started his company. And then, other piece of that is Greg Meredith was running Startup Grind in Dayton and putting meetings together. So I started to build a network of who was doing stuff through that. I'll be forever grateful for him doing that, because it allowed me to get more comfortable, and comfortable enough to make the jump. And to build that connection of what the ecosystem in Dayton looks like. And through that, you start to get to know the other people that are running companies. Right. So Tangram Flex started around the same time we did. Galois has a presence here. And you just meet a lot of just really cool people.

Callan Harrington  28:52

I'd love to dive into this piece deeper, in particular. So you're pretty- from everything that I've seen, you're pretty active within the Dayton, Ohio community. And one of the things I'd love to kind of dive into is, you guys are- just looking at kind of the hiring trends on LinkedIn and such, you guys have consistently grown and you're consistently bringing in technical talent within the Dayton area. And for our listeners that are not familiar with Dayton, you know, Dayton, Columbus, these cities are pretty small markets as a whole. How did you consistently drive? Do you put a big emphasis on building from within and having really strong training programs? Or is it that there's way more talent out there than I think people realize, and you're able to kind of harness that in?

Jeff Graley  29:38

Yeah, I would say it's more of the latter in that case. It's the talent available here is tremendous. I think it's just overlooked, right? Going all the way back to the time, you know, when the Air Force started standing up in Dayton. Right. So the Air Force Research Lab has a couple billion dollar budget to be the R&D arm for the Air Force. Right? It's not all spent in Dayton. But there's a lot of density here, right LCMC, the lifecycle management centers, also here. Air Force Materiel Command, which does all the acquisitions for the Air Force, right here in Dayton. You got UD, you got Cedarville, you got Wright State. You have all these universities here too. And just draw that circle a little larger, you got Ohio State, Cincinnati, Miami. And if you think about that, that's some top notch engineering schools. And even the folks that didn't go to those schools, the Air Force sent them here, or the Air Force hired them into the research lab. I mean, you literally have people with degrees from the greatest schools in the in the nation all working here in Dayton, like inventing the future. Right, inventing sensors, inventing GPS, noise cancelling headphones, like all that stuff came out of the lab. So the density of talent here is exceptional.

Callan Harrington  30:50

What recommendation would you have for other people that are in markets of similar size, that maybe aren't doing that thing too. Because I will say I was down in Dayton this past Friday, and I was blown away by The Hub. And for our listeners that aren't around here, so it's their Entrepreneurial Hub in Dayton, in partnership with the University of Dayton. And like, how nice it was, all the amenities that it had, and it was gigantic. I just, I had no idea. So Dayton's really built kind of this ecosystem. What could people that want to do this in other markets similar to Dayton and don't have that? What recommendations would you have for them?

Jeff Graley  31:28

For me, it started with Brad Feld's book. So right when he exited one of his companies that him and his partner, Jason, I think, who was the lawyer involved. I think they both moved to Boulder, Colorado, and essentially started an ecosystem there. That was university entrepreneur led, but also the government was involved. So that was a good model for me. That's actually what I've had in the back of my head as Dayton's navigated this, and I've participated in it. But the state of Ohio also has done a great job with JobsOhio, the Entrepreneurial Signature Fund, I think it's called, which funds part of what the Entrepreneur Center does here and sent funds down in Cincinnati and and a couple others around. But you got to put it all together, right? So having leaders in the Dayton market that are willing to put it all together. And I think the next evolution is, and this is what I'm starting to get really passionate about. I don't think you can truly reach your maximum potential as a town like this, without it being entrepreneur lead. So again, companies like Tangram Flex, JGR, Mile Two, we're all starting to mature, you know, seven, eight, ten years old. Starting to turn over leadership too. You're moving to different companies, some are joining other startups, Rick Peters just joined Tenet3, right? Left Tangram, went to Tenet3. Now that you're starting to get that mixing of experiences and mixing of talent, I think that's what's going to be the next leap. And then some of these companies are going to exit. And again, if you don't follow the Dayton market, there's been a lot of consolidation on the defense side, Perduco, Hellebore, CAMO, PreTalen, and II, have all sold and consolidated in some way over the last three or four years. Well, that makes for some wealthy people, for the entrepreneurs who started that. How do you pull them back into that ecosystem, to be the leaders and the mentors and the investors for that next round of companies? Like Dayton had a lot of like what I would call grandfatherly type companies, companies have been around for decades, right? So now you got some of these young upstarts from the last five or ten years. Ideally, they're starting to exit, turn over the people turn over that capital, and inject that into that next evolution of entrepreneurs.

Callan Harrington  33:34

Yeah, keep that flywheel going. We're starting to see that right now in Columbus, Ohio. With the number of exits that happened in 2021, number of those people are spinning out starting their own thing, and even getting investments from those, not even just the people that were there, but the companies themselves, investing in former employees' companies. So that's really cool to see. Because essentially, that's what you're saying, the ecosystem needs to be built by a number of companies first, just starting and succeeding, succeeding really just the length that they kind of been in business and continuing to grow. And then as those companies start to exit, they start to reinvest back in that community. Is that essentially it?

Jeff Graley  34:13

 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Dayton historically has been very manufacturing heavy. And I don't think that's quite the same, right, as it is with tech companies, led by software engineers, and software heavy, and software oriented technologies. So I think it's a lot easier to kind of start those companies and grow them at scale pretty quickly, versus some of the manufacturing companies that we've been historically known for, like some of them have been bought, and those folks exited, but like, a lot of folks don't want to make that leap from the business they know to a whole nother ecosystem, like software, and rightfully so. I wouldn't want to throw my money at things that I don't understand, necessarily. So I think having that understanding of the markets that we're in, the technologies we're using, will lead to those greater outcomes.

Callan Harrington  34:54

Yeah. And it makes total sense. And you said you're starting to see some of that now?

Jeff Graley  34:58

Yeah, the markets are starting to do that, and now the conversations are starting to be had, people are starting to get the itch after a year or two, like, alright, I want to do something, I want to have an impact, like, I'm not gonna sit on the sidelines, what do I do? You know, and they have the resources to make something go too, whereas you're not bootstrapping everything.

Callan Harrington  35:14

I've got a question at that for the entrepreneur that's just getting started, that wants to find their way into those people. How do they do it?

Jeff Graley  35:22

In Dayton, you don't.  Right now, it's kind of tough. I don't think it's organized very well. I think that's one of the things that needs some effort. The Entrepreneur Center would be, The Hub would be the first place I would start, because they definitely have those connections. And, you know, have a passion for making that go. But I think it's still relatively difficult in Dayton, to figure that out.

Callan Harrington  35:42

For all these people that have all this capital, that are kind of sitting on the sidelines, what can they be doing right now to get involved?

Jeff Graley  35:48

Yeah, it's showing up at the Startup Week, Startup Weekend, those kinds of things, whether it's being a judge, whether it's being just someone bumping into a mentor, or whatever role you want to be in, that's the kind of stuff that I encourage people to get involved in.

Callan Harrington  36:01

Gotcha. So here's a random question, do you think that it's going to take people like yourself and other successful founders to pull those people in?

Jeff Graley  36:04

Yeah, I do. I think there's got to be someone. That's why I think it's got to be entrepreneur lead, like someone who has the scars, who's been through it, who has the credibility, and the track record that you've actually been successful to do it, that will bring those people to the table in a more meaningful way.

Callan Harrington  36:25

Which kind of gets back, to bring it full circle, to the bigger that you can grow Mile Two, the bigger impact that you can have on everything else.

Jeff Graley  36:33

Exactly. We've been sponsoring Startup Week and Startup Weekend and things like that. You know, the first few years, we would go and be judges or organizers and things like that, that didn't cost us anything. But now we started putting our money back into that, so that we can have an impact, you know, and make the scale even bigger. I think we sponsored some of the tickets this year, so more people could go because it was more affordable, and they tripled the amount of participants versus last year. So it is having a meaningful impact and having Mile Two resources to be able to do that is important to not just me, but a lot of people in the company.

Callan Harrington  37:06

Do you also find that that impacts Mile Two from recruiting perspective, from visibility, just all of that just in general?

Jeff Graley  37:12

I think it does. I think there's a level of authenticity there. Right? When you say you want to do cool shit with cool people, and you're putting your money there, and your people are going and participating. Like we had three or four people that actually put a team together to work on Startup Weekend. Like a lot of companies, they'd yell at you about that, right? I think we actually had two teams. Hey, what are you doing? You should be doing that. That's my intellectual property. It's like, no, you guys got cool ideas. Like, go work, work through them, go participate, get reps, because you're just going to be better, not just for you, but for Mile Two. And should you leave Mile Two, we support that, right. We've had several people leave and go start their own company. We took the perspective of you're alumni, unless you just burn it down on the way out the door, your Mile Two alumni. And we've started to have people come back, their second stint of employment at Mile Two. And some went to startups that didn't work out, some went to other companies, and that didn't work out. Or it may have worked out just fine, but they chose to come back here. That to me is super cool. That's a signal that we're doing something right. You know, year seven, we already have multiple people that have worked here, went and did other things, and then came back to Mile Two with new and novel experiences.

Callan Harrington  38:17

If you could have a conversation with your younger self, age, totally up to you, what would that conversation be? And what advice would you give them?

Jeff Graley  38:27

Yeah, I think actual risk and perceived risk are two different things. And actual risk is much lower, if you are smart about navigating these things, then the perceived risks that everybody thinks is there.

Callan Harrington  38:39

I love that. I love that. Jeff, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jeff Graley  38:42

Thanks for having me, man. It was good.

Callan Harrington  38:44

Yeah, absolutely. I hope you enjoy Jeff and I's conversation. Getting out of the day-to-day is a big challenge for founders, and I love Jeff's breakdown. If you want to learn more about Jeff, you could find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked the episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.