Popl Rebrand

Join Bill Kenney as he sits down with Jason Alvarez Coen, CEO and co-founder of Popl, and Bryce Alston, VP of Marketing, to relive Popl's transformation in this insightful episode:

• Discover how Popl transitioned from viral TikTok hardware to enterprise B2B SaaS
• Learn about the catalysts that prompted the rebrand
• Understand the challenges and opportunities faced during their rebrand project
• Gain insights into their strategic rollout plan for a successful repositioning
• Hear about the importance of aligning your brand identity with your company's evolution

If you're considering a rebrand for your rapidly growing startup, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways on planning, execution, and achieving alignment. Don't miss it!

Episode Resources

• Focus Lab <> Popl Case Study
• Learn more about Popl
• Popl's Article in Variety
• "House in Tulum" by LaLuz Photo Credit

Full Transcript

[Bill Kenney]

Hey everyone. This is Bill Kenney, CEO and co-founder of Focus Lab, a global B2B brand agency. I'm back with another episode of The Debrief, where we sit down with past Focus Lab partners and we relive their project.

The goal is to pull back the curtain on the actual challenges, opportunities, and everything that happens in these projects, so you can hear it from the client's perspective, so that you might get some takeaways and understandings of what your own journey might be like if you decide to go on a rebrand.

In today's episode, I'm speaking with our client Popl, fresh off of their launch of their rebrand. I got to sit down with Jason, the CEO, and co-founder of Popl and Bryce, who's the VP of Marketing, and we relive their project together, how they went from viral TikTok hardware to enterprise B2B software.

No surprise. Along the way, brand has to come into play, right? Because that identity was not serving them anymore. It was the old them. So we had to then work with them to create an identity that would be positioned strongly as enterprise B2B SaaS.

In this discussion, we talk about that transition, what it was like to go through that process for them. We talk about the creative journey, we talk a lot about rollout. We spend time talking about their very strategic multi-step rollout as they're moving their headquarters from west coast to east coast, A cultural moment for the business, repositioning the business, and then marketing that, very intentionally on launch. So we uncover a lot. If you are a startup that has grown rapidly and you feel like your brand is not serving you anymore, these fine fellows went on that same journey and here's the work that we did with them.

Hope you enjoy.

[Bill Kenney]

All right, gentlemen. Fun fact for the people that are gonna be watching and listening to this, this is our first time meeting, although you've gone through a full project with us, start to finish and we're gonna relive that together.

So I'm excited to meet you both for the first time. Why don't you steal the mic real quick. Tell everybody who you are and what the hell you're building.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah. Alright. Well first off, Bill, thank you for having us. Really excited to have a great conversation here after finishing up such a great project. M y name is Jason Alvarez Coen. I am the CEO and co-founder here at Pop l and I'm based in New York, but I'm actually from the San Francisco Bay area. So get a nice taste of both coasts.

[Bryce Alsten]

Great to meet you, Bill. We're looking forward to meeting up in person finally. You're in Jersey. We're in New York City here.

I'm Bryce Alsten. I am the VP of Marketing here at Popl, also based in New York. I met Jason like five years ago now and was really excited about what was going on.

Didn't really intend to be part of this journey, but here we are. Jason and I just wrapped up an incredible rebrand. So we're, we're just stoked to be doing this. Everything about Popl is aligned with our lives. We're just excited to be here and thanks for having us on the show.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah, of course. Excited to chat with you both. I mean, I'm kind of distracted at the moment, is it the Empire State Building behind you? Am I, am I picking up.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

So casual.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, well, it's like, I'm pretty sure that's a big landmark, but if it's not, I'm gonna look stupid.

Alright, awesome. I'm going to jump right into the question, how did you know it was time to basically invest in, let's call it a rebrand. What were the triggers there? We work with a lot of people and everybody has maybe a different catalyst of why, so I'm very interested to hear from the both of you on, how did you know it was time?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Absolutely. That's a great question. I'll answer this and Bryce, I'm sure you have some great things to add too. So we launched it as a TikTok hardware product.

So back in 2019, we were a hardware product that was going viral on TikTok. We get millions of views every week, and that was our distribution channel. That was exciting. And we had our logo, our brand, our look, and we really didn't invest too much into it at that early stage. We just kind of said, you know, we like this logo, we like these colors let's get things going.

And fast forwarding, a lot of journey, right, to right before meeting Focus Lab, we realized that okay, like five years, a lot of evolution, a lot of growth, and a whole new customer and also like a whole new product, right?

So going from TikTok hardware to B2B SaaS but we had the exact same brand. So it's just like, okay, this brand that was serving us for this absolute opposite end of the spectrum company and now the same brand for this whole new focus we were like it's time.

It's time. I think it's like, if there is ever a time to do this, it's now. And I remember there was a day where Bryce and I looked at our website and we were just kind of like scrolling.

We're like, you know this brand doesn't really serve us anymore. It doesn't talk directly to our new customers. It doesn't come off as professional and B2B SaaS vibes.

And so we were like, what are our options?

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. Jason has always been good at thinking deeply about things. And when he comes up with ideas, oftentimes us, myself and the leadership team around him are like, yeah, that just makes sense. And you'd think that it would be a discussion, but it's just like such an obvious next move that it's like, yeah, I think you're right.

I think we just need to do this and move forward. And that's kind of what happened. And to summarize what Jason said, it's like we went viral on TikTok and our customer was a 19, 21-year-old, uh, TikTok user, and that's who was buying our product and that's who our brand spoke to. A brand that was conjured out of the moment to keep up with the growth of this viral e-commerce company.

And then fast forward through becoming a mobile app with a subscription component, then evolving into a B2B SaaS product. We're now selling to enterprise companies doing billions of dollars of revenue per year, but we're still the same brand and it was like, wow, all of a sudden this happened. Maybe we should modify the way we present ourselves, right?

So instead of showing up metaphorically in a tank top and flip flops, we're gonna show up in, you know, a suit and a button down and a tie and a Rolex. And we're gonna look the part that our new customers expect us to be. Exhibit A: Jason in the button down.

Um, and it was like, yeah, it's just time. All of a sudden, we have a new customer to serve and we want to be there for them in all ways.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

It's a great metaphor.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. I can already tell from the way you're answering the question, you're pretty evolved and mature in your thinking on what branding and like a visual identity and these kinds of components are. Sometimes we find people saying, I need a new website. That's where they go, right?

So you talked about sitting down, scrolling through the website together. Did you ever find yourself just saying, we need a new website, or did you already know? No, that starts with brand and then that informs the website.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

So it definitely stemmed from the website, right? I think you would agree that it's just like, you know, the website that you have is your portal to the world, right? When someone wants to look at Popl and look up what we are, they go to our website, right? They don't go to the app first.

They don't go to the dashboard first, they go to the website.

So it's really that portal and that portal was giving off a, uh, older version of what we were. And so that really spurred the idea to take this further. I think it was maybe like the coloring too, where we were like, we used a lot of Startup Blue, which I know on LinkedIn we were joking about, uh, which is actually such a common thing.

I've heard that from other YC founders and other founder communities. They're like, it's just so common to launch with that blue, maybe a blue gradient and then, and then white, like nice clean white.

And that's where we were. And so we also, then I think the coloring was the next piece and at that point we were like, you know, maybe we should do the logo too.

[Bill Kenney]

Okay. Yeah, basically tri, it all trickled down. Yeah. I asked because, and I wanna hear your answer too, Bryce, we, we often find that people will reach out to us. Their prompt is, I need a new website. Then we try to help them do that trickle down you just talked about, to say like, well, okay, but to change that we have to address this and this and this, and those are actually brand foundational elements.

And then we come back to the website and we build off of that. Seems like you went on that journey yourself.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah, I think so. And in the growth that we just, uh, described the experience going from, again, a viral TikTok product to a B2B enterprise solution. A lot of changes happened in our company along the way. Uh, one of them being less of a focus on these NFC enabled tap to share devices.

So instead of selling hardware, selling software. And I think there was something about the logo that said this is too playful.

We need something that just feels mature and that was a big part of it as well.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Again, you're talking to foundational elements, even though it's most easily recognized in the portal to the world. Which is the website for just about all of us these days, right? It's, it has to be, the vast majority of the world is now that, versus brick and mortar, right? There's not a store to walk into and experience.

It's all website. That's our store. We all have a store and it's a website.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

And even the brick and mortars have a website.

[Bill Kenney]

Correct. Yes. Right. Uh, okay. So you, you go on that journey, you realize, geez, we've got a challenge and an opportunity to use a better word, to level up and match what we actually have become. Then you have to go through the process of like, well, who do we work with?

What does that even mean? Where do we find these people? Everyone has different connections or different reach. Meaning on your end you might know people or not know people, so it's harder for some than others, but what were you looking for? Not necessarily like why did you pick us? I'm just curious about that journey for you all.

How did it begin? What were you looking for in the right partner in making that decision?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, I can start with this one because that journey was, that was a fun one. Seeing the variety that there was in the market as options.

Right. The way I see it, you have like the very premium, expensive ones and you have the other side of that spectrum. So for example, I'm sure you know like Pentagram.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Right.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

So that's all the way over there. Like you're probably spending a minimum $200K. Just like, here you go. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we found like other options that are, a lot of them were overseas and they were just like, for the lowest contract possible, like maybe a couple thousand.

Right. And they're just like, Yeah, we'll get it done. Like we'll get it done. We'll see how high quality it is, but we'll get it done.

And so we wanted to land somewhere right in the middle. And I remember finding your website and we actually found you guys through Braze, right? So Braze is a customer, or we're a customer of Braze. So we use that platform. And I think Bryce, you were the one who found the Braze branding page.

[Bryce Alsten]

It was actually Danny. Danny discovered it. Um, one of our lead engineers who has been very passionate about brand as well, um, discovered that you guys did Braze. Yeah.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, so he found that site that was basically a case study. We're scrolling through it like, wow. I mean. First off, their brand is great and obviously they're a leader. And so seeing that and then seeing you guys did Salesloft and then seeing, uh, Marketo and at that point we're like, all right, this for us being a B2B SaaS and that's where we're heading. This makes sense.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. It's so interesting how certain people find us or, or like I said, go on that journey. I think you captured the spectrum well, um, super happy you reached out and I'm really happy that B2B positioning is working exactly how we want it to work.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, it was, uh, the tho those other brands that were very much like where we wanted to be in a couple years was a huge, huge proponent.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. The Salesloft, the Marketo.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Could basically show us any other option. And I would still be biased because I'm just like, we wanna be where those brands are. Right? So it's just like very much a, a connection emotionally.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. So these are our people. This is our community. Why wouldn't we stay here and engage here?

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. And, and those other brands are in the space or parallel spaces, that we are, right? Sales enablement, marketing automation, demand generation.

And what that told us is, of course you did a great job with the visual. Anyone can see that, right? Whether you have knowledge of how that industry works or not.

Anyone can go to the website and say, oh yeah, it looks great. Cool website, awesome. Um, but what was important for us is to trust that you guys know the buyer in that industry and could help us craft a message and a look that appeals to that buyer. Um, so that was credibility to us.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Fantastic.

Alright, now you get into the project we don't have to relive the whole project, but obviously here we're very intentional with client experience, the onboarding of the project and kickoff meetings and prep work that we give you all so we can get a good understanding.

Uh, we set up the recurring meeting schedules and all these things, right? So we go on this journey together. What I'm most interested to hear, let's call it the good and the bad. I think that's the easiest way to frame it. First, I want to hear what was most challenging for you all. Whether that was just inherent in who you are and how this project was for you, or a part of the process that was challenging.

And then I want to hear what was the most rewarding, rewarding slash surprising. So let's start with the challenge side. What was the hard part? What do you think people struggle with in going through a project like this? Or what did you struggle with?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, it's always hard to come into a company that you don't know, brand new and basically come up with their future.

Right. We have all this knowledge. Yeah, we have all this knowledge. We've been here since day one, and these people are basically strangers, right? Yeah. We're working with them.

They come in and they're just like, all right, you know, as fast as possible, bring us up to speed and we're gonna, we're gonna design your future. Like, what a concept.

[Bill Kenney]

Who’s crazy enough to do that?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, exactly. But I, I would say from the beginning it was clear that your team were pros. Because the questions they were asking us were pointed and specific and intentional. Real like that made me feel confident in the outcome from an early stage because okay, they're asking all the right questions.

They're asking what our brand does, who we're speaking to, what our future looks like. They're also asking about the past, what was it in the past, like, you know, what are your iterations? And so those were all great questions and I think it allowed us to get to a really good spot very quickly. I will say it's not without the challenges. Like there were some cases, and Bryce, I'm sure you can go into details on these, but like, where we would like a direction first off, there were some directions where we were just like, no, but that's, that's natural. Right?

And then certain other directions where it's like we're, and this is funny, like throughout the project, the, the whole, the inside joke we had was more glass.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Make it glassier. We really like the glass look and we're like getting pushback from your team because they're just like, guys, trust us.

We're professionals. And so sometimes there is that, that um, battle between someone who has that design eye and then Bryce and I who are just like, this is just what we love.

[Bill Kenney]

We love it. Yeah.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Exactly.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. Yeah. We love it. We don't care. Just do it. Right. So there's like, there's a fine balance there because obviously you guys are professionals and that's why we came to you. Otherwise we'd, you know, find someone on Fiverr and just say, just do what we say. Right.

Yeah, I, and I think one of the biggest challenges that was probably unique to us was that this rebrand coincided with a new focus for our business. So if, if you've been following our journey for a while, it's no surprise that we made a big push towards lead capture for large companies going to multiple conferences per year specifically. And so before we got too far in that, we wanted to make sure that the way we presented that information was going to make sense to the enterprise buyer.

And so your team was stuck with a lot of, not just our old brand to guide what they thought we were, but also our old product. Right? And so a lot of what we have now built was either just being built or hadn't even been built yet.

That made it even more challenging to explain like, okay, yeah, you could go to our website and see the product we've built and what we offer, but there's actually all this coming and we need you to set it up for us to communicate it effectively. And that was one of the most challenging parts, if not the most.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

That's a great point.

[Bill Kenney]

I think if there's anything that you all experienced this, obviously, so I don't need to say it to you. But it's really important for people to understand for us and our company, it's going on that journey with our partners. Regardless of what the climb looks like. We're going on the climb together.

Is it like an epic rock climb or is it more of an average rock climb? Like you never really know what the challenges might be. But it's to embrace the challenges and to basically be there with our partners. And at the end of the day, just help them with brand. How can we help? How can we help?

How can we help? Tell us more. Tell us more. Let us ask you more questions. Do you like this? No. Throw it out like you said, some of those directions. Cut, cut, cut. Yeah. That's the early kind of stress test. Find the track, stay on the track. Add too much glass to the track, take glass off the track, and try to find that perfect balance. Uh, it's quite the journey for both parties.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Very true. No such thing as too much glass.

[Bill Kenney]

What was the most rewarding slash surprising aspect of the project?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

My favorite moment was probably the new logo, because the logo is such, such, your identity, it's just like, it's all over the place.

Right. Dashboard, app, especially our app, our app's opened by, you know, thousands a day.

And so everyone's seeing that. Everyone's seeing that logo.

It's like what you start to incorporate with, okay, open this app, share my information, receive it, et cetera. And so I think when we honed in on, there was like this one logo reveal where we had gone through a couple iterations and then we finally got pretty close to the one that is now our final. And I was just like, oh, that's nice. And that was super rewarding 'cause it's like we had a lot of different options and directions to go. The fact that we were able to land on one that we loved and basically just have that confidence of like, all right, logo checked off. Right? Because that's a big step.

[Bill Kenney]

It's a big step.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah. Imagine like, imagine everything looks great, but then it's like, ah, still kind of iffy on the logo. Very, very grateful. We didn't have that.

[Bill Kenney]

You can’t imagine as much as a brand is not a logo. Projects tend to live and die on a logo. It's just the reality.

Because people are waiting for what you've said basically, that they're waiting for that moment that like, ah, there it is. And sometimes that's really hard to arrive at, quite honestly, sometimes you don't arrive at it, but it's still successful.

They go, okay, we trust you. Or like, the majority of our project team on the client side is good with it, but maybe the founder's not. Right. So there's like some internal back and forth, but it's like, gotta ship it, gotta go to market, it's gonna work.

It's not just about the logo and then it will grow on people. Um, but it doesn't surprise me that you felt that in the project. 'cause that is such a pivotal moment.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

I'm sure you have a lot of customers, Bill, that's like, like you said, one of the key stakeholders or co-founders, they're like, oh, I really hate it. But the other one's like, I love it. And then it's just like, okay, how do we deal with this?

[Bill Kenney]

All the time. Literally all the time. And, where we have to be able to show up is in those moments, in those more challenging conversations, even if they're not challenging for us, but it's the client that's having trouble aligning.

We have to kind of like, we gotta come into that.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. For, for me, there's, there's two. Really rewarding pieces that I think I can string together here. So let's see how I do. Um, it relates to the process, the narrowing process that brings in what we like and what we believe our customers want to see. And meeting in the middle so that we don't end up too far on one side of the spectrum or the other. Your process is very much a tightening of scope type process.

So starting with the logo and a general theme, you guys gave us three options. One was like way out there edgy, alienesque, like gonna make an impression, but like, okay, I'm not too sure what the enterprise world's gonna think about this. There's one that's like in the middle, it's like, eh, okay. It's got some uniqueness, not sure how we feel. And then there was the other one. It's just like, this is safe. This is absolutely safe. This looks like, you know, most of the enterprise tools that have been used for the past 20 years.

Um,and the ability to work within that spectrum to zone in on what felt right was, was very much a pleasant experience. There's this one moment that I thought was so cool. So Jason and I both really like modern everything, modern architecture. And we found this one image of this mansion in Tulum that had glass and wood and palm trees and just like this stunning sky backdrop. And we said, I don't know how this works into a brand, but like, this is us. This is what we love. And then a week or two later, whenever the deliverable came, it's like. The essence of that was embodied in the website and the glass and, and the materials and the textures. And it's like, wow, this is really cool.

And this is the “us” part of it, um, which we're marrying with the: let's not stray so far that enterprise is gonna be like, this looks like a scary AI outta the future tool that maybe they aren't gonna be around in a few years. And that was something that's been interesting for us to learn on our journey as we start selling to these giant accounts. Part of their concern is, is this company gonna be around in five years to support the service that we're signing up for? And

asking us really like, intrusive questions about our business. And so for me to see what our brand ended up looking like on the page. And the fact that we clearly put so much effort into every little detail of our brand, to me, says we're here for the long haul. We're here to not just accomplish our goals, but serve you as our customer long into the future. Um, so marrying our identity with what we know people need from us in a very harmonious way.

[Bill Kenney]

Well said Bryce. Well standing clap sir. I won't stand. Standing clap. Something you said in there is so powerful and I think everybody misses this. If you show up in a certain way, just people take you that much more seriously, right? If you care about the pixels and the colors and the words and the way you present the product and all these things, people have to assume you have your act together.

You might not, you might not have your act together, but they have to assume you do. So it's a battle against that. Are you just a startup? You're gonna be gone in two years? No, they're not gonna ask that as much if you don't give them a reason to really need to ask that. Present yourself better. That's like step one. People do judge a book by its cover. Um, and that's where the visual identity side of the brand comes in.

That's awesome stuff. Awesome.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Okay. Let's talk about post-project now. You all had a very strong intentional plan for rollout. I want to give you credit for that. It's not to say that other clients botch it, but you all seem to have a very big focus on it.

It was really a big amount of your attention like, okay, we've got this rollout plan and we're gonna do this. And we see that generally with the larger companies, honestly, right? Smaller companies like yourselves are like, we've just gotta get back to work. The website will be better. It'll help us sell more.

Now we're back to work. You all really embraced and stayed in this like, this is a moment, let's like make a splash with it, with the articles and the NASDAQ sign and all this stuff. So walk me through both why you knew that was important and I guess some of that planning.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, a couple reasons that made our situation unique. The first one is that this rebrand was, as Bryce put it, coupled with our refocus.

We are expanding into a new market. We've been in this market for many years, and now we're expanding into this new one. And part of that rebrand was also let's change the messaging to the world. And really become a whole new company. Like we're not just changing the colors and the logo, we're actually changing who we're selling to and the information on the site. So it all kind of got packed up together. And then combine that with the fact that we moved our company to New York six months ago. So that's also a new thing for us. And so, moving to New York, rebrand and refocus, all accumulating into the same time period. And so we're like, let's go big. Let's go big with it. You know, we're probably not gonna rebrand again in our company's career, like in such a big way.

So let's not take it for granted. And I really like rally behind it. And the team did. Not only was the rebrand awesome externally, but there's also an internal factor where like when you rebrand internally, it gets morale up, it gets people excited, they realize it's the next phase coming.

And that happened in a big way with us too. Really like upleveled our team. It made people feel like it's a privilege to be here, which we feel it is. And it got everyone just locked in. So a lot of times people don't talk about that. The, uh, the benefit of the internal as well,

So that's part of the reason why we decided to go so big. Oh, but then additionally. Variety is a customer of ours. They became a customer of ours, just naturally. And so part of that onboarding process and the contract process. I was like, uh, by the way, we have a big rebrand coming. Do you guys wanna like trade services a little bit here? Where we'll knock some off of our contract for you and in return you do an article, social post, all this other stuff. And they were like, let us consider it. Sure enough they came back. Let's do, so that also is just like perfect timing. Like, okay, this is like lining up perfectly. It was just awesome, again, like great timing of everything.

[Bill Kenney]

Oh yeah. Yeah. I was curious how the Variety thing came about. Well played.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Thank you.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah, I think your question is like, how did we execute so effectively, right? Like, how did we commit to doing this? And I think that part of it was setting an aggressive timeline. We knew we wanted to get this done and we didn't want to let it linger. Because when you give yourself a soft deadline, you give yourself permission to maybe never even finish.

And I think that was a big part of our strategy. February 5th, we're going live. We booked space on the NASDAQ screen in Times Square for mid-February. We scheduled our team to fly out and be part of that event. We locked in the date with Variety. We had a WeWork collab, like we were putting dates on the calendars that were non-negotiable. That put us in a position where it's like, if we don't deliver on this date, this whole thing is basically a failure.

And that is very much how we work here. I think that was a big part of it. Um, the other is, and, to answer this question for you, I think I have to pose a question to you first.

How often when you're doing these interviews, are you talking to the CEO of the company, and not someone from branding or marketing?

[Bill Kenney]

It's a lot of CMO. I'd say there's a pretty good clip, maybe 30%. I'm actually talking to the CEO slash founder. So it might be bigger than you think.

[Bryce Alsten]

But it's still a minority.

[Bill Kenney]

It's still a minority. Yes.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah. And so where I'm going with this is it sounds like generally you don't have the CEO actively involved in a rebrand project.

[Bill Kenney]

Correct, that’s still a minority.

[Bryce Alsten]

And for us, we wanted to create a moment, and that is something that Jason has always been very good at. Jason puts a lot of thought into the moment, the unveiling, architecting and curating an experience around a moment that everyone understands this is the moment.

And we were able to take that mentality and, and apply it here with all of the things we just mentioned, all of the elements that went into this to make it very clear that like this rebrand just happened. And the whole world is gonna know about it.

You paint the world that your customers live in. Right? And so by putting these things all into place, we were able to create this moment in time that defined the launch of Popl 2.0.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Thank you, Bryce. What a guy.

[Bill Kenney]

What a guy. Look at this guy. Yes. Regardless of who I'm speaking to or who we're working with in projects, it is critical that somebody be that person that you just mentioned who's the moment maker. Who's that person that has the superpower of galvanizing a group of people regardless of title. It definitely suited you all, obviously, that Jason as a leader of the organization has that as the superpower. So therefore you can basically capitalize on it at a hundred percent.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

I'm happy for you all because, man, it's a compounding effect. Now you're getting a one plus one equals three.

And shit, y'all turned to one plus one equals seven when you have, we moved the company, we re-galvanized the team, we went out to a new customer, all this stuff. And then you've got the galvanizer himself, at the top of the stage, setting the tone and really pulling people together uh, so props to you all.

But going back to the point it did, it seemed like you all really started planning very early, and that's the great takeaway for any, especially earlier stage founders. Actually, it doesn't matter, no category, everybody should be planning their rollout.

Almost simultaneously to starting the project. To some people, that sounds ridiculous. It's true. You've gotta start planning. You're doing purchasing and buying and logistics and all this stuff. You do not wanna wait. Imagine if you tried to pull all that off when you hit that crescendo moment and you're like, okay, this is great. Now I have four weeks to plan everything. Impossible.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Yeah, if we, if one thing was delayed, it would've, like Bryce said, it would've been like all off and it would've just felt weird. We have things booked. So I was like, all right, this is, this is happening. We don't even, it's like not even a choice. Like we, we just got to get it done.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Which is great.

[Bill Kenney]

No pressure. No pressure on both sides.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Exactly. Something I always like to say, and I think is very necessary for being a leader at a startup or even a public company, is that, uh, pressure is a privilege. Pressure is a gift.

People see it as, oh, no pressure? Oh no, let me go away from that.

Or let me, let me relax more. Let me go do something that is, uh, taking me away from that pressure. But when you build something great, it's a privilege to be at a certain point where you have responsibility and pressure and deadlines.

[Bill Kenney]

Sure.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

And for us, it fuels us exactly. So that's, I think, an important piece to anyone who wants to start, start their own company or enter a high growth company is make sure that you're looking forward to the pressure.

[Bill Kenney]

So you, you might have answered the last question, but let's see. I'll still throw it out there. If you were speaking to anyone about to enter into a rebrand with any company, it doesn't have to be us. What's the one thing you would tell them?

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Well, if I wanna be super honest here, Bryce was right, and as we all said, it's a ton of work, so make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. I think if someone goes into the project and isn't truly excited about it or doesn't truly need it, it's gonna hurt both your time and their time.

[Bill Kenney]

A hundred percent.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

And so for us, we were intentional. And so I think we really thought, why? Why are we doing this? And we had really good reasons for why. And now that we've come to the end and those reasons have fulfilled themselves. We’re just super happy with the choice and the decision, and I just wanna make sure before anyone takes that step, which is an awesome step, right?

Every company should cherish rebrands, but before they take it, make sure that there's a why and it's intentional.

[Bill Kenney]

Well said.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah, and I think we touched on this already, um, in terms of just set, set commitments, burn the ships kind of mentality.

If we don't get this done by this time, it is a failure, you know, objectively. It is a failure. If we don't achieve the goal that we wrote down, we planned and we committed to by this time, then this was a failed project.

And so I think that gives you the fire under your ass. The pressure is a privilege mentality to create something special, and stay excited for it.

[Bill Kenney]

And maybe potentially forces decisiveness, which can be hard in a project like this.

Because there's a lot of what ifs. What if, what if there's a lot of what ifs And then those are welcomed and appropriate, but they can become overwhelming and paralyzing for all parties involved.

[Bryce Alsten]

Yeah, and to have a lens. We talk about the lens very often here. Um, ROI lens. Which details are worth fighting, arguing, debating about? With each other, with your team making a big deal out of asking for another revision and which ones are not going to move the needle as much? So the ability to look at everything with a lens of what, what are we gonna get out of the extra effort putting into this?

[Bill Kenney]

Again, under the pressure cooker of making the best possible decisions. It can be tough. And I think that's where both parties come together and go on the journey together. We look forward to following and celebrating all your wins. You guys are just off the back of a raise as well, right?

Didn't even mention that in the interview yet. So you got a lot of activity going on. I'm close to you all. I'm excited to come into the city to hang. Uh, we look forward to celebrating and supporting the future growth of Popl.

[Jason Alvarez-Cohen]

Amazing. Thank you for having us, Bill. Great conversation.

[Bill Kenney]

Of course. Great chatting with you both.

[Bryce Alsten]

Such a pleasure. Thank you, Bill.