Anthony Delgado CTO of Fownders

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today we are talking to Anthony Delgado, the CTO of Fownders. And we discuss learning to code as a result of entrepreneurial ambitions, how Fownders grew from an accelerator to an online community with over 3,000 active companies, and how Anthony went above and beyond to provide hurricane relief to the people of Puerto Rico. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:00:31) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:00:43) So tell me more about yourself. What was your ambition for starting the podcast so I could have some context?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) Yeah, so I was working with a private capital company and I started seeing a bunch of companies come through and CTOs and, you know, small founder-cofounder relationships. So before that I had done projects, but they would last six or nine months. So I had, you know, experience every year or two. And when you review them all the time, you just get insane amounts of experience and exposure, and patterns start to show themselves.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:18) So I kept having these same conversations over and over and over, and then I decided I was like, I'll do a blog or I'll put them in a book or something. And then I did that, started sharing them with all my CTO friends, and we started having conversations around them that were super interesting around these topics of the book, right? And we decided to record them and share them with each other, and then someone said, "Hey dude, you gotta do a podcast." I said alright. So I hired someone that knew how to do podcasts, and we told everyone that had preregistered for the book, which we had several thousand people preregister for the book. We said, "Hey everyone, we're gonna do this podcast and talk CTOs," and they're all CTOs and lead developer types, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:58) So instantly, boom, we were booked up three shows a day, four months out. It was crazy. So then I lost my voice because you can't do three shows a day. And we backed it down to two, and then we're slowly backing it down to one because now we have our world tour coming up.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:02:16) What? You guys are doing a CTO world tour?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:20) Oh, absolutely, Anthony.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:02:22) Wow, that sounds like fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:24) You wanna see the—you wanna know the highlights? You want the inside scoop?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:02:29) Yeah, totally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:31) You're techy. You like tech stuff, right?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:02:33) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:34) I mean, you're the CTO of Fownders. So I mean, it's kind of that's interview question number one, right? You're like, "Uh, technology? Like, no. Robots suck." Yeah. Alright, so what we're doing is world tour, 16 cities. It's called the Modern CTO Geek Night Out World Tour.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:51) And the show's gonna open, right? And there's a drone show. Did you see the Olympics or the Super Bowl where all the drones went crazy in the sky?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:03:00) No way. You guys are doing one of those?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:02) Oh yeah. So that's just the opener, my friend. That's just the appetizer. Yeah, so we got the drone show. Now the drones have lights on them, right? And it's dark. And they're—we have a DJ and there's lighting on the stage and everything, a whole lighting effects kit and all this stuff and a giant media screen. And the DJ, the media screen, and the drones are all going in sync to their little opener thing, and it's just this—oh, it's like the opening event for the Olympics or whatever, but it's just for our live show, right?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:03:31) Wow, that's—oh, and you're gonna live stream it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:33) Oh, we're live streaming it to the entire world. All the computer science universities in the entire world, everyone's getting live streams. Yeah.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:03:41) Oh, that sounds so dope.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:42) Yeah. So then we have what we call the mother drone, right? We have a mother drone that's going to be flying around, and it's got a 4K camera on it, and it's going to be taking shots to the media screen, right? So the producer's gonna be showing the crowd, and the drone's gonna be flying around, right? So that's just the beginning. Then we're gonna have our—it's like the host—I'll come out. I'm the host, right? Come out. "Hey everyone." I tell them what to expect. The first thing we're gonna have, right, is we're gonna have this amazingly high-profile guest, right? Now we have 16 different tour stops, so we're gonna have different high-profile guests at all the tours, right, at all the different stops. So I'm talking—we haven't signed the contract yet, okay? But so we can't say the exact people yet. We're still getting it together. So we're getting one of those for each stop, and I'm gonna interview them. I'm gonna Modern CTO interview them, bring some value to people, right? The next part of it, Elon Musk style flamethrowers. Have you seen those?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:04:43) What?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:44) Yeah. So we're gonna have an Elon Musk—we want to shoot it off inside, but if they don't—what we're gonna do is we're gonna fly the drone outside, and we're gonna select an audience member to get to go outside and actually fire off the flamethrower.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:04:58) Wow. That's so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:58) It's gonna be broadcast—it's gonna be broadcasting into the media screen. So that's—it's insane. Then we're gonna bring up local CTOs that are from that community. So when we're in New York City, we're gonna get some really cool, you know, Forbes 30 Under 30 or some other, maybe CTO of Slack. We're gonna get some really notable CTOs that live in that community, and we're gonna bring them on stage.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:20) And it's gonna be me, that CTO, as well as whoever the special appearance is, and we're gonna have a conversation. Then, have you seen the Boston Dynamics robots?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:05:30) I think so, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:32) Where they're running, the video goes viral. It's like this dog. You can't kick it over. You try to kick it over. It can open a door and crap. Have you seen all that?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:05:37) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:39) Okay. And then there's these other ones like a biped. It's like these two legs that can run, and it's this thing called Cassie. So we're getting a—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:05:45) I've seen those. The ones that are in Black Mirror, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:49) Yes, that's what I'm talking about. So we're gonna get one of those to come on the stage, and then me, the CTO of the company locally, and then the special guest, we're gonna have a conversation about that, and we're gonna do a live Q&A from the audience so they can ask any of us questions. We're gonna kind of hang out. That's like the show and tell part, right? And then in each city—right, because it gets better. So in each city, the university—we're gonna hold them at the university. So whatever the big, large engineering university is because they have the big auditoriums, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:22) So wherever we're at, before we go, we're gonna announce a hardware hack and a software hack. Okay? And the hardware hacking team and the software hacking teams, they're gonna kind of compete with each other. We're gonna pick a winner at the event.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:38) And that winner of the hardware hack and that winner of the software hack, each of those teams, right—there are gonna be teams, two or three, probably two or three teams competing—and we're gonna pick a winner. And each team's going to win $10,000.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:06:49) What? Yeah, in each city?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) In each city. Yeah, we're giving away over a million dollars.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:06:55) You're giving away over a million dollars in hackathon style?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:58) Team—city world tour—Modern CTO world tour.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:07:02) What? Who's the sponsor of this?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:06) And then—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:07:07) Planet Earth?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:08) Yeah, right. And then I'll tell you in a second. But and then the outro. Okay? A drone show high-energy finale. It's gonna be crazy, man. It's a 90-minute high energy, just the most—you're gonna be sitting there, and yeah, there will be drool. The drool will be on the ground. It's gonna be insane.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:28) Wow. Are you excited? Are you gonna come?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:07:31) I'm super excited. Yeah, I'll be there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:33) Oh yeah. Also, it doesn't cost anything.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:07:36) What? Yeah, you probably have some crazy sponsors.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:40) Yeah, we're putting out the bid right now. Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, all the big software companies, it's going out to bid right now.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:07:48) I love it. That sounds so amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:50) Yeah, so it's gonna be the Modern CTO Tour presented by IBM or presented by Intel. So whoever picks up the bid, whoever wins the bid is going to be the one that's—have you ever heard of anything like this before?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:04) No, I have not. The coolest thing that I've been to in tech is Twilio's SIGNAL conference that I go to every year, but it's nothing like that. It's a one city thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:17) Yeah. So this is the coolest thing that you have ever heard of in technology?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:22) Yes, I can say that confidently.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:25) Dude, that's—you wanna—where—what city are you in?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:27) And I'm a—so I'm in New York. We're in Newark, New Jersey, right outside of New York. And I'm a conference and hackathon junkie. So I've been to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:38) Really?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:38) Yeah. Yeah, I've been to quite a few hackathons. I won a couple, and conferences, and I love that type of stuff. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:47) Will you help us with this?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:49) Absolutely, brother. Anything you guys need, you just let me know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:52) So what's going on with Fownders, man? How did that get started?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:08:55) So yeah. So Fownders—Fownders, we are a social learning platform for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Nice. And what that means is we're kind of like a social network for entrepreneurs. So think of us like a mix between a LinkedIn and a Netflix for entrepreneurs.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:09:17) So we actually started out as a social impact accelerator. So we're headquartered here in the city of Newark, New Jersey. And Newark, New Jersey has traditionally been one of the roughest neighborhoods, not only in New Jersey, but in the whole country. It had one of the highest carjacking rates in the nineties and early 2000s, really high crime rates, really high poverty rates. And the founder of Fownders started the company as a nonprofit initially.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:09:50) And we started out as a nonprofit. We ran a very small incubator where we took people from the city who had ideas, and we gave them small seed investments to see their ideas out to fruition. And they ran that program for about a year, and that's when I came on board. And at the time, everything was all analog. And to join their accelerator program, it was a WordPress website with a contact form that you filled out, and it went into somebody's personal Gmail box, completely unorganized or anything.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:10:26) And at the time, they were receiving hundreds and thousands of applications from people all across the world. So they started out just trying to kind of help Newark and create a tech ecosystem here in Newark, and it ended up blossoming into this whole movement and this whole community. And founders have moved here from all across the United States. So we have founders from Texas, from Utah, from California, Florida, you name it, Ohio, who have picked up their bags and actually moved to Newark, New Jersey to start their companies. And a lot of them live here full-time now, which is kind of amazing.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:11:08) So yeah. So at the time, like I said, everything was all analog. I came in for their second cohort. Their first cohort had just finished, and they were gearing up for their second cohort. And they were looking for a CTO.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:11:20) And I was already working in the city of Newark. I was working for a digital agency called WebSignia. I was already in the ecosystem with all the kind of tech people here in Newark, and I met some of the founders at a meetup after work, and it was an event that I wasn't even gonna go to. It was crazy. It was 7:00 on a weekday.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:11:43) I was kind of tired coming home from work. A buddy of mine was supposed to come with me, and he actually bailed. And, you know, it was a 50-50 shot that I even went, and I was like, you know what? It's on my way home from work. Let me go check these guys out.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:11:54) So it was a pitch competition where the graduates of their first cohort were graduating. And some of the people from their first cohort didn't have any technical guidance at all. So I kind of volunteered myself to be a technical mentor, started working with some of the people in their first cohort. And then when it came time for the second cohort to roll out, it kind of made sense that I come on board.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:20) What's your day-to-day like? Are you mentoring these founders?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:12:23) Yeah. So I kind of joke, and I say that I'm the CTO for 900 companies and not just one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:30) Welcome to my life, man. I get it.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:12:32) Yeah, it's definitely a lot of fun. Sometimes the first stages of a company are the funnest when a company is young and idealistic and, you know, shooting for the stars. So yeah. So the company has evolved, though.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:12:48) So when I came on board, we ran a 12-week in-person accelerator where we worked with, you know, five to ten companies one-on-one. And we did that for about a year after I came on board. But then we realized that there was this huge potential for all of these people from all around the world that wanted to join Fownders and be a part of this community, but weren't necessarily gonna be able to pick up and move to Newark, New Jersey. So that's when we launched our online platform. So currently, our online platform has about 3,000 companies in our network who are all members of this community where they consume video content. They're able to connect with each other, DM each other, similar to a closed social network for entrepreneurs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:33) And is it all technical or no?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:13:35) No. No. So that is definitely part of our DNA, is just the entrepreneurial spirit. So, you know, some of our companies like UE and Mint are tech—really super techy companies. So we have people who have apps in the App Store and things of that nature.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:13:54) But some of—honestly, some of my favorite companies that are part of Fownders are completely non-technical, like Jiminy's. So Jiminy's is a protein cookie that is actually—the protein comes from crickets and super traditional business where you're just selling these protein cookies. But what does he need? He does need an online store and an e-commerce presence and a social media presence. So, of course, we help him with things of that nature.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:14:22) But yeah, we don't limit ourselves to just tech startups. It's really anyone with a dollar and a dream.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:28) Did Gary Vee invest in that one?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:14:30) Did Gary Vee invest? I'm not sure. It's possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:34) He's been talking about cricket protein a lot.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:14:37) Oh yeah. Then we should definitely make sure that those guys are connected if they're not already. Gary is actually—we've done some video content with him. So he's actually on the platform. So if you log in, he's in there. So we should definitely connect those guys.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:52) Yeah. Connect the cricket protein people. They need a little association, right?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:14:56) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:57) So what moves are you guys making as Fownders? Where are you at in your growth of your company? What are you doing to expand? What's getting you pumped right now about your growth there?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:15:08) Definitely. So our team is definitely growing. Our team is about hovering close to 25 people right now, and that varies from sales and biz dev to marketing to video content to developers. We run in a scrum environment. So we have a daily Skype call via Google Hangouts.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:15:32) Right? And we go through our three questions for the day, which is, what did you work on yesterday? What are you working on today? And is there anything standing in your way? We use Trello for task management.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:15:46) We use GitHub. Our application is built on the MERN stack, so MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. And currently, we're in the process of really refactoring a lot of stuff for the new year. We built our MVP with kind of a different model in mind. When we launched it, we had the idea that it would be kind of like Founders TV, and there was much more of an emphasis on consuming content that was entrepreneurial and inspirational, but not necessarily educational and designed in the format of lesson plans and things of that nature.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:16:27) So as you can imagine, a platform like Netflix operates a lot differently from a back end perspective than a platform like maybe Udemy or something. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:38) Right.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:16:39) So originally, our courses, they were called channels. So we had these channels and, to be honest with you, our back end schema still represents them as channels. But now, you know, they're represented from a marketing standpoint to the outside world as courses. And so now we need all these different types of logic. Like, you know, what order are these videos being consumed in?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:17:02) Right? When they were just series and they were just kind of random videos that there wasn't a progressive order, those things didn't matter. Right? So now we're trying to figure out, like, okay, how do you unlock maybe a merit badge, or how do you unlock a certificate and things of that nature? We also recently added social features. So being able to direct message another member, being able to connect with a member and have a news feed that's curated and customized. Right? So these are all things that, again, when we first launched our MVP, we didn't have in mind.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:17:37) We launched it with the idea of it being kind of Founders TV with these different channels that were kind of one directional. And since then, we've kind of evolved to these courses that are shot very intentionally, and it might be five to six videos in a series that are designed to be watched sequentially.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:57) So do you track how your different content is consumed?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:18:00) Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, data is a huge part of our strategy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) Any interesting patterns that really stood out to you? You're like, whoa. That's crazy.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:18:10) Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of hypotheses that we thought were proven wrong and vice versa. Right? So there's certain content that we thought was gonna be super popular, and it wasn't, and vice versa. We've found people rewatching, like, video 23 out of a 40-part video series.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:18:32) Right? And being able to notice those trends can now dictate what courses and what video content we produce in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:41) So what questions are you getting the most often in your life from these all these different, you know, several hundred startups? Like, what are they asking you the most? What do you get the most?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:18:51) People really want to know where to start and how to start. And there are so many founders out there that want to start technology companies, but don't necessarily know how to code yet. And myself personally, that's how I learned how to code. I started coding about 10 years ago, and it was the result of entrepreneurial ambitions. I had a company that I started that was kind of like a marketplace, more like eBay or Amazon, and I knew just enough code to be dangerous.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:19:25) Right? So I knew how to set up MySQL and set up an Apache server and install a few scripts and kind of get the thing going. But then I obviously, I wanted to make customizations. And to accomplish that, I was outsourcing stuff to India. And it was very frustrating not being able to speak the same language, not being able to be on the same time zone as someone.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:19:50) And at the end of the day, I knew a little bit of code, so I actually started competing with the developers. So I would give them a feature, and then I would try to code it myself. And if I could code it quicker than them, I would cancel the request and give them a harder request. And I finally got to the point where I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna code this stuff on my own.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:20:10) So that's how I learned how to code. And today, there's this whole VC, you know, write me a million-dollar check for an idea I scribbled on a napkin mentality. And a lot of it, I think, is misguided. I think a lot of people misunderstand the venture space. Yeah. Sure. There are certain ideas that get funding without having a prototype or an MVP or a business model, but those are far and few in between.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:20:31) Most companies, accelerators, even incubators, they are not going to invest in a company unless they have an MVP or a prototype. And when you look at a team of founders and you don't have one founder who's technical, your operating costs go up significantly. Because now if one of your founders doesn't know how to code, you have to have someone on salary full time in order to deliver your product.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:21:08) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:08) And they're never as motivated as you are.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:21:11) Oh, yeah. Of course not. They're not gonna work those 25-hour days like a founder will. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:18) And you know what I'm noticing, though? Because I fully agree with you. I watch Crunchbase all the time, and my mind is like, how did that company get funded? Right? And so I started looking into them and kind of monitoring them week by week just to embed myself in the understanding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:35) What I found is that a lot of these companies that don't make sense getting funded with nothing and just this idea are companies where they know somebody. Right? And it's like a friend helping a friend or a favor exchange, or the investors are just completely not in the space and they have no idea, and that individual they gave money to is their only connection to tech. Right? So it's never a intelligent company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:05) With a bunch of smart tech investors, they're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's give a bunch of money to that. There's no idea. Everyone's looking for cash flow and solid technology.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:22:12) Absolutely. Yeah. A career angel investor is gonna be looking for cash flow revenue model. I mean, I go to a lot of these events in Manhattan, and, you know, they'll rip your idea apart. They're looking for a sustainable business.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:22:26) And like I said, the Cricket company is a great example. He has quite a few investors, and it's easy to invest in him because he has a very clear business model as opposed to, you know, a lot of these companies who kind of have an idea. But if there's not a business model in place, a career investor is not gonna invest in something that doesn't have a business model.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:48) It's very clear to me. You take the crickets. You put them in the cookie.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:22:58) There you go. Yeah. Basically.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:00) Cricket cookies. Everyone's like, dude, I get it.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:23:02) I get it. Yeah. There's a price. There's a revenue structure. There's a cost per cookie sold.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:09) Yeah. There is something to take from that, though, and it's simplicity works. Right? Like, if someone comes to me and they're like, we're gonna make money this way, and we're gonna make money this way. And we're— I'm like, dude.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:23:20) No. The best is advertisement when people say that. I used to run a six-figure blog. And do you know me? I made barely over 100k. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:31) Right.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:23:31) And do you know how many views I had to have? Like, I had millions and millions of views to basically pay my own salary and a few interns. Right? Like, it's crazy. Advertising is expensive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:45) Anthony. But if there's 300,000 of these people and if I just get 2%—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:23:53) Yeah. That's— No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:54) No. No. Hear me out.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:23:57) There's 3 billion people in the world. We just need 1% penetration.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:02) And we're good. And we're good. You know, the world is so noisy. The hardest thing is to communicate at scale. Everyone, every person who makes money is then spending a portion of that money to put noise into the world to get more money. So you're not just competing— Like, people think, oh, I'm just competing against my— I'm competing against the other person who sells crickets. Right? Their crickets are orange. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:30) No. It's like, dude, you're competing against every business on the planet. Food, Apple. Everyone. Everyone is fighting for that. See, because one person can only pay attention to one thing at one time.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:24:42) Well, think of the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a great example of that attention grab. Right? It doesn't matter if the person's in your industry. If they want to be on that Super Bowl spot, they're competing for that price, and it's driving that price up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:55) It's amazing how the Super Bowl stuff works. Like, everyone sees it. They're like, oh, cool. And then that's just it. It's like, what did Budweiser do this year? Oh, that's cool. All right. Like, I don't drink beer. I don't drink Budweiser. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:12) I'm into that— There's this root beer. I don't drink much beer, but there is this root beer beer that tastes like root beer. It's pretty great. Have you had that before?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:19) I've had the root beer that is beer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:23) Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:23) That one? Yeah. That's really good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:25) Yeah. I tried four or five of them, but there's this one where you can't taste the difference. It's like just— It's like I think it's called Not Your Father's Root Beer or something.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:34) It's great.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:35) That's the one I've had too. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:37) Yeah. February 6. I'm February 4, man.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:41) No way. We're like cousins or brothers or something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:43) We just had birthdays. Yeah. We're cousin brothers. Yeah. Who are those guys?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:48) They're the cricket protein cousin brothers.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:50) The Aquarian crickets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:52) Branded. Let's go trademark that real quick.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:25:54) So admittedly, the reason that I keep talking about these cricket cookies is because for my birthday, I was with the founder of that company, and we actually went to Puerto Rico to do humanitarian work. So we gave out over 200 cricket cookies and over 300 solar paneled lights to the people of Puerto Rico. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) Things that they need. Right?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:26:19) Yeah. No. Definitely. So that island is really still in some pretty rough times. About 50% of the island still doesn't have power.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:26:28) So the capital and the touristy areas and the cities have power. But out in the country and in the mountains, these people have been without power for five or six months, and they've kind of almost been forgotten about. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:42) That's crazy.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:26:42) Yeah. No. It's really crazy. So a couple of weeks ago, me and a couple of friends of mine, we took it upon ourselves to kind of plan a pilgrimage out there. So I was the first one to book my ticket. I booked my ticket about a week before February 1. And then every day until my flight left and even a few days after I was already in Puerto Rico, I convinced a new person to come with me.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:27:07) So we ended up going out there with maybe about 10 people and different people, different companies, different types of entrepreneurs, all volunteering whatever their skill set was, whether it just be monetary, you know. Jiminy's brought his cookies, and he gave those out. And yeah. And we just went city to city, village to village, doing some humanitarian work, and it was really awesome. It was really humbling, and it was a great experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:37) You're gonna laugh at me. I just after, like, the tenth time you said it, I just picked up on the cookies are Jiminy cookies.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:27:44) Yeah. Like Jiminy Cricket.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:45) Like the cricket.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:27:46) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:48) Oh my god. I feel so silly. Like, that's hilarious, man. But you know what? If it was text in front of me, though, I would have gotten it. You know? We'll just pretend that. Jake will edit that. Oh, so then you brought the— Did you just order a bunch of the— You didn't order them off Alibaba. Did you just go to the store or Amazon, the little solar lights? How'd you get those?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:28:14) So the solar lights were from another person that I know from Founders. His name is Hugo Sanchez, and he has a video conferencing app called Mody, which does video chat in real time. But unlike Skype and FaceTime, it lets you not only record the call, but charge for the call per minute. So it's great for consultants, anyone that wants to bill for their time.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:28:38) You can kind of put your hourly rate in there, and then you can be available to your clients. So you can tell your clients, hey, here's my Mody account. Whenever you need advice, you can always FaceTime me, but it's gonna be at our agreed upon hourly rate. And it's super seamless.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:55) Yeah. No. It's a great app. It's super seamless. It kind of feels like Snapchat. It's very fluid user interface. So I attended his app release party in Brooklyn. It was an amazing event. DJ Enuff spun, JW Cortez, who's an investor in the app— He was the emcee. He's an actor. He's on the Batman series Gotham that's on Channel 11.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:29:15) Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was a really great event, awesome people, and that's where I met David. And David has a tourism company in the island of Puerto Rico. He's lived in Puerto Rico for the last eight years. And when the hurricane happened, his for-profit business turned into a nonprofit, and he started doing this humanitarian work. So I met him at this app release party. He had flown into New York just to attend it.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:29:47) And we get to talking, and I'm like, yeah, we could, you know, we could teach the kids how to code and that could help. And we could do solar panel lights, and that could help more. Brainstorming all of these ideas. We had met in a diner in Manhattan over a— It was probably the worst tuna sandwich that I've ever had in my life, but I'm so happy that I had it. And we're brainstorming all these ideas of how we can help the island, and he looks me in my face, and he's like, bro, you just have to come.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:30:16) He's like, listen. We can talk all the ideas that you want. You just have to come and see it firsthand, and it'll make more sense to you. They do. So that's the interesting thing. The country's language is Spanish, but I would say about maybe 70%, 80% of the population is fluent in English. They teach it in schools. It does appear to be kind of a class thing. So most upper and middle class people, people in the cities, they definitely speak English fluently. People that don't have as well of an education, they may not speak it as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:53) Wait. Is Puerto Rico its own country or part of the United States?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:30:58) So yes. So that's another misconception. So, yeah, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. It's a commonwealth, and it actually has a very interesting political past. So it's a commonwealth, which means that it gets taxed like a state, but it doesn't have the same representation as a state.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:31:14) So we get taxed by the federal government, but we're not able to participate in the presidential election. So they're not able to vote for the president, but they have to pay taxes to the president, which is kind of interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:29) Woah. That's crazy, man.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:31:31) But every single Puerto Rican citizen is a citizen of the United States. So if you're born in Puerto Rico, you can just move to Florida and automatically have voting rights and every other right of an American citizen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:43) So you didn't need a passport to go. You could—that's how everyone could go so fast.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:31:46) Yeah. You don't need a passport to go, and it's actually becoming a cryptocurrency haven. They have this new tax law. It's called section 22. And what that does is that—if you start a new business in Puerto Rico, it grandfathers you into a 4% tax for the first twenty years that your business is in operation.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:32:10) So all of these newly found cryptocurrency millionaires, they're moving to Puerto Rico to start these businesses because they can pull their money out. They're pulling their money out in American currency. They're in a beautiful tropical island. Right? And they're pulling their money out in American currency, and they're grandfathered into this 4% tax for the first twenty years that their business operates.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:32:34) So it's very interesting, the opportunities that are there in the island.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:40) Woah. That's super unique.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:32:42) Yeah. Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:44) We won't talk about it too much because we don't want every—like, if it becomes too buzzy, then the loophole gets closed. I was like, I was excited, but I'm like, hold on a second. I don't want to go rant on it because we just won't talk about it. We're like, shh. Well, no. Tell your friends.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:32:57) It's not really a loophole. It's an incentive. The government is actually promoting this. So the governor of the island is actually attending a big cryptocurrency conference that they're having there to fully endorse this activity. They want to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:13) Oh, really?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:33:14) Bring money into the economy. Yeah. So, traditionally, the economy in the island is based on tourism. So it's kind of like this servitude economy where it's based on serving the foreigners that come. So me and a few friends of mine, we started this foundation. It's called Vision for PR, and our vision for PR is threefold. One is to use solar energy to help renew the island. The second is technology and innovation, and then education. Right? So how can we create a digital economy right here in Puerto Rico?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:33:46) Puerto Rico is three hours from New York. You don't need a passport to get there. They're on the same time zone as New York. It's the same currency as New York. So there's really no reason why this can't be, you know, a tropical version of like a Silicon Valley where you can have a whole tech ecosystem and have this 4% tax incentive, which I think is pretty dope.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:07) So you're real big in the philanthropy space. Right?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:34:10) Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's part of the reason why I joined Fownders was because, you know, we're trying to do something very similar here in the city of Newark. But, yeah, I really feel that technology and entrepreneurship and innovation can transform people's lives and create upward mobility for individuals that, you know, ten years ago, twenty years ago before the Internet wouldn't be able to have that. You know, I grew up lower middle class. My family immigrated here, like other people's families. And, you know, if it wasn't for technology, you know, who knows where I would be? I was able to learn this skill and basically open up to the global economy and be able to compete with people on a global scale. Whereas, you know, thirty years ago, if you lived in New Jersey, you were stuck in New Jersey. You couldn't do business with anyone that wasn't in, you know, walking distance. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:08) Oh, yeah. And we're kind of experiencing the connectedness. Like, you and I got to grow up through the disconnect and connectedness of the entire world.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:35:16) Yeah. No. Definitely. So I kind of witnessed it both ends. Right? Like, the positive and the negative. So, like, I have like three, four cell phones. I have an Apple Watch. I'm super connected. Right? This techie guy. But, you know, you get a text message or you get a phone call, and there's this switch. Boom.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:37) I'm sorry. That—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:35:39) You're supposed to reply instantly. Right? And if you reply to someone even a few hours later, people will ask you, oh, what happened? Or they'll take it personally. And it's like, I remember when people didn't have cell phones, and like, you would write a letter or you would, you know, or you would call their house phone, and if they didn't pick up, there was no caller ID. You had to call back. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:00) Yeah. In school, we had pen pals. We would get letters and like, it would—another one would come in a month. You know? Yeah. We'd have these converse—yeah. Yeah. Or like, you would have a phone and you would call someone, and you'd leave a message. And it was like, has it been two or three days? Should I call them again? You know?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:36:19) Exactly. And now we have like text messaging with read receipts. So god forbid, you looked at the message and you didn't reply instantly. It's like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:27) I turned it off.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:36:27) Yeah. It's terrible. No, I—it's even—I turn it on, and I let people know I read it. I don't—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:33) Oh, you're trying to change the world. I'm trying to change the world.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:36:36) You're all excited.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:40) No, it's—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:36:40) Need to—yeah. Time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:42) It's interesting, though, because like, as you get busier, right, and as more people are talking to you, it is not rude. You build up a queue and you process the queue. You know? Like, it'll be—I try—my goal is zero inbox every day.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:36:54) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:54) But there will be days where—this is what happens because you know this. You get this problem. But I'll get to talk to somebody else about it finally. Okay. And so what's happening is you get to zero inbox every day, but inevitably, there's, you know, once or twice a week, there's a thing or two where like, you have to leave it unread because you need more information to get back to it. Right? And then sometimes it can be three or four days before that information comes back to you and you get to reply back.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:37:21) Yeah. No. Absolutely. Well, and that's a big American culture thing. So I noticed, you know, even when you go to Puerto Rico or you go to Europe or you go to other countries, they don't have this rat race mentality. There is a more relaxed culture as far as replying to emails, replying to phone calls. People take a two hour lunch. People have, you know, a month, two month vacations. So it does feel like a very kind of American thing that we're so tied into being constantly connected and constantly productive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:00) And there's a difference too. There's the people who have stimulation for stimulation's sake, and then there are the people who are running so fast they don't even realize they're running because they're just going after their dreams, and they're just enjoying it. And to them, it's just life. Like, they love the speed, and they intentionally move fast because they're so ecstatic with what they're doing in their lives, and then time just flies by.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:38:22) Yeah. No. Definitely. I mean, I've usually, in most situations, been in the first category where I'm doing it out of passion. But there is something with the entrepreneurial and the passionate mentality that you almost don't have an off switch. Right? You don't know when to turn it off. So even when you're working on something that you're not passionate about, you can't help but bring that same passion to it. So it's definitely a balancing act. And, I mean, you definitely want to be able to stop and smell the roses sometimes. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:55) Yeah. So I'm gonna—because you're into the nonprofit thing, right, so am I. I'm a—I'm a president of a foundation. I'm gonna send you some of our children's books. I'm gonna mail them out to you.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:39:05) Oh, that would be amazing. That would be so amazing. I would love to distribute them and check them out. That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:11) Yeah. We made some. One's called Back to the Moon. It's this little brother and sister who go to the moon in a rocket. Right? And the other is called The Princess Physicist. It's this princess who's stuck in a tower, and she finds a book on physics and then uses physics to get herself out instead of a dude coming and saving her.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:39:26) Oh my god. Those are so amazing. I did—I was checking them out right before the show. They're like, to encourage STEM in young children. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:36) Yeah, man. So we give them away to like, homeless pregnant women and the kids that are in foster care bouncing around without family or parents. You know? And so we just print up—my mom died like about a year and a half ago, and she left me and my brother and my sister $25,000. And we said, well, what do we do with the money? We don't just want to go spend it on crap. And then we decided to do something cool with it. So I wrote the books. I hired an illustrator, got them printed by the same company that prints Disney's children's books, and then formed a 501(c)(3), went through all that with the IRS, and then ordered the books, got the books through customs, and then they showed up in a pallet at my house, and we just started taking crates of them and going and giving them away to charity, man.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:40:20) I love that. It's so amazing. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:21) So we'll send you a couple of books so you can just have them. Just be like, dude, look. This is my bro, Joel. Like, look at these books, man. You know? That'll be fun.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:40:31) Yeah. No. That's so great. That's so great. It's so important. I mean, it's like you're doing it in a way that doesn't feel like work. Right? But sparking that light for a love of technology is so important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:48) Yeah. It's like—it was the same amount of work as creating an entire business. Right? Developing a product, ordering the product, like, dealing with all the logistics of it. Right? All of that. I don't know because it was like Tuesday. And I was spending our money to do it. Like, I was spending the money our mom left me and my brother and my sister because I was taking the lead on it. You know? And it was really, really a lot of fun. So, yeah, I'll send you a couple of those books. And then when we're out there, right, we're gonna get you to come. You're just gonna—because I know you now. You can just come hang out with us like, behind the scenes and stuff.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:41:20) Absolutely. Yeah. That'd be so dope.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:22) You—you know what? You want to shoot the flamethrower, dude?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:41:26) I'm so down. You've—

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:28) You down for the flamethrower?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:41:29) You have no idea.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:29) Alright. Alright. Dude, I'm excited. Jake, we gotta make a note—show notes that we gotta get Anthony the flamethrower.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:41:36) That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, let me know. I'll—not only the New York one. I might show up for the Cali one too, depending.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:43) Awesome. Yeah. And then we're gonna—we're doing this whole—we're putting together all the really cool hype videos and all the cool media and everything right now and all the, you know, web page explaining it and all the tour stops and all—you know, it's a lot when you do 16 city tour. Right? So we're putting all of that together, and then we're generating like, a lot of hype in the next two weeks. So—

(Anthony Delgado at 00:42:04) That's awesome. Yeah. I would love to get that out, get the word out. I think that's another thing that's super important. So, like, myself personally, I started coding like I said, like 10 years ago, and there was barely a New York tech scene back then. Like, there wasn't a Google headquarters in New York. There wasn't a Twitter headquarters or any of the kind of fun Silicon Alley stuff that's here now. And, you know, going to conferences, going to meetups, going to hackathons, those are experiences that really transformed me and helped change my life. So if I can introduce that to as many young developers as I can, I'd love to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:43) That's what it's all about, man. So if people want to know more about Anthony, what's going on with Anthony, and look you up, how do they find you?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:42:51) So I'm on social media. You can follow me on Instagram at anthonydelgado.me. You can follow me on YouTube, exact same thing, anthonydelgado.me, or you can go to my website, which is anthonydelgado.me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:07) So it's anthonydelgado.me.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:43:09) Dot me. You got it. And if you want to shoot me an email, it's [email protected].

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:14) Way too confusing. Alright. Dude, I'm pumped. I'm gonna order some of those cricket proteins. We're gonna get a video of us eating them or something. I'm gonna see if I can—I'm gonna get my—not my wife. I actually like her.

(Anthony Delgado at 00:43:26) No. They're delicious. You have to try the birthday cake flavored cookies. They're amazing, and they're a complete protein. So they're healthy, and they taste just like a birthday cake.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:37) What's their tagline? Like, put a spring in your step?

(Anthony Delgado at 00:43:39) That's a good one. You might want a copy of that. You can shop out to me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:42) It's all yours. Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:55) I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.