Julian:Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast.Today we have Tim Williamson, CEO and founder of NieuxCo, a venture studioheadquartered in New Orleans. Tim, I'm so excited to have you on the show andnot only get to, going through your background, your experience, kind of howyou got into the venture space and, and also just, what you're doing within Webthree projects.

What's kind of somecool things that you're working on, not only project based, but also in termsof initiatives. But. Before we get into all that good stuff, what were youdoing before you started the company?  

Tim:Well, hey Julian. Good to see you and good morning. Good afternoon. Well, I'vebeen on a nice I guess 30 year journey.

Actually rightbefore this I had started organization called the IDA Village back in 2000which is about building an entrepreneurial ecosystem within New Orleans. Andover the last 16 17 years. Formalized, the, the ecosystem helped launch all keycomponents of incubators, accelerators, et cetera, et cetera.

In between, thatwas something called Hurricane Katrina which happened in New Orleans. And NewOrleans became a stark city. So been part of building the entrepreneurialecosystem, helping launch, start and grow many companies and then a lot. Andthen recently there have been some remarkable exits coming out of New Orleans,and the company I just started now has been some of those founders that arepart of the ecosystem.

Julian:It's incredible to think about, how other cities, when you think about,Marques, cities like Silicon Valley think people are talking about SiliconBeach and New York obviously has it, but there's, there's a really growing,popularity in terms of other cities and, and their founder community and it, whatwould you attest kind of that that growth to, is it, evolution in technology?

Is it, access tofundraising and capital? What in particular do you think was a, a maincatalyst, a main driver for the community in, in New Orleans to at least kindof pick up and start to, embrace that, that sort of culture.  

Tim:Well, I, I'll tell you exactly, and, and, and it starts with a, a, a deep senseof place.

Yeah. New Orleansis a, is a different city. This is not New York. This is not Boston, SanFrancisco, Miami or, or LA for that matter. This is a, a 300 year old city. Soto answer your question, the startup energy started over 20 years ago by abunch of new, myself included. We were born here and had to leave because thecity was declining.

Mm-hmm. We cameback in the late nineties when this thing called the internet was emerging andwe all were starting internet companies and no one knew what the internet was.And we collectively looked around and realized the problem wasn't no one knewthe internet. The problem was the city was going was declining.

Yeah. And so webelieved that entrepreneurship was a platform for transforming the city. So Ithink cities like New Orleans or Detroit or Cleveland, other second tiercities, What's driving the, the entrepreneurial energy is people love the city.Yeah. And want the city to sustain itself. So it was driven by more sense ofplace than a sense of profit at the beginning, I think.

Julian:Yeah. And what in particular, you, you talked about some recent exits. What,what's been exciting about the recent growth of the, sort community, the re,the recent good news and, and kind of, successful outcomes of the communitythat you've seen just recently for our audience to kind of get some contextthere.

Tim:Yeah, I, I think from a high level, I mean, I think it's easy to say the exits.In the last six months there have been about two and a half billion, over twoand a half billion dollars worth of exits. Wow. That were from companies bornof the ecosystem. And, and that may not be a big number for New York or for SanFrancisco, but for say like New Orleans.

That's remarkablebecause these companies were started. Over the last 10 years within New Orleansthey're all homegrown. A, a company lucid sold for 1.1 billion level set, over500 million turbo squid and others. So what's exciting, Julian, is that thesewere companies and founders who chose New Orleans yeah, after Katrina and theybuilt their companies here, grew it here, and were, had successful exits aboutperhaps 600 million of that money.

Has dropped into300 local families. Mm-hmm. And so now you have the beginning of a startup,capital driven by the startup. But the second thing I think is more importantis you have the ecosystem around that. So you have incubators, accelerators,Tulane University has launched a major initiative as a billion a biotechdistrict opening up.

You have angelnetworks venture capital. So you have the formation of an ecosystem. That hasnow the system's in place driving another generation of entrepreneurs. Andlastly, you now have the first generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Yeah. Whohave their own capital and who have proven that you can launch within NewOrleans.

And that's whatwe're doing here is now reinvesting that capital back into what's next? Let'sgo figure out what's the next newey, next industry to go attack. Yeah. It'sjust exciting. Yeah.  

Julian:And what, what is the, the, community composed of in terms of demographic? Ithink people are always, thinking, young, scrappy entrepreneurs, but it seemsas though it, it's from what I've understood about a lot of founders, it's, it,it's, it could be a myriad of different backgrounds, a myriad of different,past experiences, maybe even professionally or not, what is that communitycomposed of and what's particularly exciting about?

The opportunitythat's ahead of them and the access to that opportunity, that's just beendifferent from time before in terms in terms of entrepreneurship. Yeah.  

Tim:Well, I, I can speak from a New Orleans standpoint, maybe on a broader thingthat there's different recent studies are, are, are research that New Orleansis one of the most diverse founder communities and diverse in male, female,diverse in ethnicity.

So this is all typesof folks who are starting their companies in New Orleans. I don't know theexact number, but I bet the average age is a little bit higher. Sure. Becausethese are probably more professionals who are now seeing a problem and buildinga company based off that problem, versus young kids coming out and, and tryingnew ideas.

So there's a, amore of a maturity of, of industry knowledge. So, yeah. Patrick Homer had a, a,a background within the sampling business of, of lucid. Scott Wolf was a lawyerwho saw a problem in the lean business. So these are more professionals orpeople who have experience in pro in their twenties, in their thirties andforties saying, I see a problem to solve it.

Yeah. And, and, andlastly, there's a, in New Orleans, I think. A, a, a, a connective tissueamongst their group, as I mentioned, the sense of place. So there's arelationship where everyone really wants to help each other out. They want toconnect to each other, and there's a common vision of how do we grow New Orleansand grow the ecosystem.

So it's a differentvibe. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but there's a, it is, it's, it's alittle bit like Mardi Gras that no one owns Mardi Gras, but everyone comestogether to make it remarkable. And New Orleans has a Mardi Gras connectivityaround the ecosystem that. Has allowed it to start scale and, and start to nowdo remarkable things.

Julian:Yeah, yeah. Thinking about, shifting gears and thinking about your pastexperience being, being that you built companies web, web one, web two, and nowweb three, what are you seeing in terms of the, the similarities and thedifferent cycles of technology and what's been particularly different aboutthis new wave that's, you haven't seen necessarily in the past?

Tim:Well, I mean, that's a great question. I, I, I started a, a company back in 93.Trying to convince people to use video. That video was a great way to sell.Yeah. This is when Cable opened up and people thought we were crazy because No,you had to send the VHS to people. And that was a hard idea that video wasgonna work.

And then I startedfirst digital media studios with Cox and Active Media in. Pittsburgh, newOrleans, Austin, San Antonio, and others. Trying to convince people that theinternet was a way that you're going to look at your news, sports of weather.And people thought we were crazy and here we are in web through.

So answer yourquestion, it's all the same. I mean, new. There's always these new ideas that,that seem, that are hard to explain and there's a lot of people resisting thoseideas. Mm-hmm. And then once it becomes mainstream, it starts to scale. Ipersonally enjoy that. Uncomfortable time, trying to explain video and tryingto explain the internet.

Now, explaining webthree being on the front end of, of adoption's hard. Yeah. And, and you have tosort of grind it out. What's been similar are to answer your questions in allof those phases, there are people, the early players, somewhere early and somewere just taken advantage of a, a, a market that wasn't complete yet, orwasn't, wasn't wasn't sort of mainstream.

So there's a lotof. I'm not gonna use the word scams. Just a lot of fast money. Yeah. That thatcomes and goes. And what happens after that goes, you start to see real playersposition themselves for the future. And I see the same thing happening here inweb three that the last year have been people, it was fast and fun and looseand people doing all these crazy things, but you're now seeing real peoplebuild real things for real communities.

That start to scaleup and come mainstream. And that's what we see an opportunity here.  

Julian:Yeah. Well, what's, what do you think is the, like the signal that people aregonna be seeing from, the more kind of on, on the average level? And, and for,for reference to my question, it's like web one.

Obviously peopleweren't online and then there's a huge transition to being online. Web two, wehad, kind of, it was difficulty communicating. Then we had all these consumerapplications that made, communication, easy transactions, all these things kindof more easy. So we saw a huge impact there.

Web three, I feellike on average people don't see the impact yet. But when will they see it andwhat will they see in particular? Is it in their banking? Is it gonna be in,the way they interact online? What in particular do you, do you predict for,for, individuals to kind of see that change and transition be impacted?

Pure speculation,by the way.  

Tim:No, no. Yeah. We're all, we're all guessing, as you say. I think there's acouple things from my lens. I think the minute it becomes useful to me, and I,I, I'm looking at the, the, these digital wallets. Yeah. Let's say there's 81million or a hundred million digital wallets, at some point there'll be abillion digital wallets.

Everyone's gonnahave a digital wallet. Yeah. And when I, when I needed to buy my, my Starbucks,n f t. To get a cup of coffee or when I needed to buy Amazon, or when I neededto get into the things game. So one bit of, of, of adoption is when I need touse it to do something I want to do. Yeah. But then the second thing that we thinkis that in our, and the thing we're looking at is we believe that thistechnology is a great way to strengthen commu real life communities.

It allows diversityto come together. It allows people to, to make decisions together. Thistransparency and decision making. So when real life communities start to usethis technology to connect to each other you start to see it becomes, I'm, I'mnot gonna go back to my, to date myself. When email came out, why did I needemail?

I didn't need ittill my friend had it right. And now I could communicate with him. So theminute people start ha start connecting with each other around web threetechnology, it starts to become mainstream. Yeah. What we are, Interested in isthat we see that the next phase of web three is going local, where thestrongest communities and clearly the most sustainable communities are thoseYeah.

Where you live,where you live, work, play. And we're, we're looking to see how localcommunities adopt the web three technologies to build relationships with eachother, to do things they're already doing. Yeah. So I think that's where we seeit starting to happening. And we're seeing some indications.

What, what we gotbehind us is a project we launched. About four months ago, a Mardi Gras Nft, whereit was, we used AI driven content to create 5,000 pieces. Our communitydeveloped that, that got you in to a place to get a bar and bathroom for MardiGras. Yeah, so it is not a big idea. We, we happened to be on the parade route,but to, to access a place for Mardi Gras, but the N F T was an interesting wayto test it around people using it.

So I just thinkwhen real people use it for real things, it's become mainstream.  

Julian:Yeah. First of all, the bathroom and bar or getting to the bathroom. That,that's a brilliant idea. I, I just think about, and at least when I was in NewYork, how, how difficult it was to find a place and if I just had an N F t it,it would've been a different experience, but, That's so fascinating.

And, and just to givethe audience obviously more context, describe New NieuxCo. Obviously yourventure studio working on different projects. What's particularly excitedabout, the projects you have worked on to, to this point, and what are youparticularly excited about in terms of the projects you're currently working onand how those evolve?

Tim:Yeah, so, so NieuxCo was started about a year ago over a year ago aroundJanuary 22. As I mentioned by the, on some of the entrepreneurs that haverecently exited out of this community. And when we were talking about what'snext, we decided that the best thing we could do is, is go explore what's next,is where the role of entrepreneurs is, is to be chasing the latest, thetechnology that is down the road to figure if it works.

So we startedNieuxCo as Adventure Studio to launch projects to really explore what's next inNew Orleans specifically, And we launched a project called The New Society,which was envisioning what if you could reimagine New Orleans, there would be anew society, what would we do different? What would we do is different?

And we launched itwith 504 founding members. If you're asking why 5 0 4, that's the area code. Sothere's another logic of but we launched it. And if you look at the chart onMay 5 0 4 of last year, which is May 5th, May 4th was the top of Ethereum. Sowe, we topped out the market. So the market was straight down, but.

We, we launchedwith 504 people from New Orleans, who quite frankly, most, most of 'em, hadnever actually didn't know what the internet web three was, didn't have aCoinbase or a meta mass, had never done nft. And we onboarded these 504, weclosed out that, that project, that min in August. And from August until now,we've done a couple things.

We, we have acampus, we have a, a beautiful building on St. Charles Avenue, which is themain, the main area of St. Charles Avenue on the parade route. Which acts as anoffice, acts as a bar, acts as a meeting spot, acts as we have a podcast room.There's a, a kitchen restaurant. This is a campus for creativity.

Yeah. We launched acommunity treasury that has been used to invest in several projects, which Ican talk about in a second. The decision making. We've had educational eventsto try to educate everybody about what is Web three weather meta mask, how's itall work? We've had social events to connect each other.

And we've tried abunch of different projects. We launched something with a local brewery calledNew Brew, which was an NFT that allowed you to drink beer at a local brewery.And we launched the Secret Garden with local artists. And we, as I mentioned,the Mardi gra ft. So this is just an i a a community of folks who love NewOrleans, it's global people around the world, and we're gonna just look atprojects around food, art, music, and experiences and just use this technologyand challenge our creators to try new things.

Yeah. Excited wherewe are and what we built and we're about to open up the membership to. The nextround of 5 0 4 builders, now we're gonna scale it and start to build some newthings.  

Julian:Yeah. And what are some of the cool things obviously you mentioned some, someprojects there, but some cool things in terms of the, the shared experiencesthat you've seen and how those different projects have kind of carried on any,I guess, tracking or any particular I guess, I guess insight to, how thatshared experience was different from, say the normal.

Going to a breweryto, to get a bite or get a get a beer. How has that kind of shared experiencekind of evolved and what have you seen as a result of it?  

Tim:Well, I'll give one example, and this, if this is answering your question, letme know that, the, the, the Mardi Gras NFT was designed for us to figure outwhat is AI and you, and using Dolly and other technology to create art.

And so show me yourMardi Gras. So one of our founders. Is a guy named Steve Gleason and Steve Gleasonis, is very infamous in New Orleans. He's a, a former saint player who blockedthe punt after Katrina was the greatest, is the greatest play in the history ofthe, of New, of the Saints.

Unfortunately, he'sdeveloped als and has become one of the leading advocates in the world aroundals. Yeah, he started a foundation called Team team Gleason. So he went to hishouse and with his eyes, he, he typed in man two, two, love and created a an NF T with, with his eyes and creating a design like this.

And inconversations we talked about, what if. What if the, the ALS community coulduse AI technology to unleash their creativity? Yeah. He's now launching aproject that's, that's gonna be creating a marketplace for folks with als. So,What we've seen is by bringing, I'm not gonna use real world people.

I mean, I wouldn'tsay Steve Gleason is in the Web three community. Sure. He's part of thecommunity exploring web three. He's now taking this technology and, andbringing it to his real world community. So that's what we're seeing our folkswithin the banking industry, folks within the legal industry, folks runningreal companies saying, how do I use this technology, bring it into my realcompany.

And that seems tobe what, which is the, the dynamics of Yeah. Of connecting this technology, thereal world opportunities.  

Julian:Yeah. Well, what do you, what would you describe the way, like Web two and webthree are different in, in terms of the user experience And one thing thatcomes to mind for me in particular is, it seems as though web two kind of toolsare more about attention grabbing and, kind of more of, of, eyeballs and, andtime and, and kind of.

It seems as thoughkind of Web three philosophy is a little bit more about a reward basedecosystem that continues to kind of reward you and, and, progress you throughthis kind of user journey, shared experiences and all this. That's one thingthat comes to mind, but how else you know, the mechanics difference and, andfor, for those who, don't understand the underlying differences.

That makes thesethings possible. What's exciting about, the technology in particular and, andhow, it, it's built differently and, and maybe has a different philosophybehind, it than, than maybe what two products were.  

Tim:Well, I, I, I mean, not, not only give you a perspective, I I, I do rememberwhen email came out and that was clunky and you couldn't, sure.

To get on theinternet was really hard and why would I do it? And. It was just, it was, itwas more of a, an effort. And when you got on, no one was there, so it didn'treally, it was different. And then, secondarily as social media came out, itwas strange around, it was clunky as well, like, who am I connecting with?

And you startseeing mass adoption. Yeah. And, but I think that was all about, web One wasjust getting on and trying to read and figure it out. Web two was trying to,how do you connect? What's interesting about Web three? Is, is bringing adifferent level of trust and the OPP opportunity that, we're building a commonbrand.

We have this toolthat we can now make decisions together and that tool is now on the blockchain.So there's transparency to those decisions. Yeah. And now, and that tool allowsus to do, have different access utility. So what I, what we're excited by thisis all so new that. It's, it, it could potentially transform the way humanbeings connect to each other.

Yeah. The way theymake decisions together. And then as more people get on, you start to see moreengagement amongst each other. I think we're, I mean, we're at the, we're atthe getting, getting email and trying to find other people's stage. Yeah. Whichis exciting. But as I'm seeing in the last year we had an event here about amonth ago where two one was a local chef.

Nina Compton, who'sa James Beard Award chef, and Big Frida, who's one of the famous singers.They're launching NFT projects. And in this room when we invited everybody in,everyone had a wallet. Everyone had Ethereum in that wallet. And so we raisedthat, who here understands what NFT is?

Everyone knew whatit was. It became down to the idea, right? So it wasn't about what's an nft orit wasn't about what's How do I do this? It's becoming more about do you have agood idea or not? Yeah. So that's what we're starting to see is, as becomesmore mainstream, it's less about the technology and it's about the execution ofthat.

Yeah. And that'swhere we see an opportunity of just getting more people to try more things and,and hopefully people like it.  

Julian:Yeah. And thinking about whether external or internal, what are some of thebiggest risks that you think NieuxCo faces today?  

Tim:Oh gosh. I mean, we can go down the list, but I think the easiest part of whatwe do is creating an nft, that's the easiest part.

I mean, arttechnology, and it's becoming so mainstream, the hard part is execution.Mm-hmm. So, as, as we, this is a business, I mean, it's not an NFT project.This is a business and the NFTs connect our communities, so, I'm not going backto the Mardi Gras thing. So okay, let's create a 5,000 piece collection withusing ai.

Let's launch that.So we did that whole big thing, but the day after we launched it, we had to puton a 10 day effort. We had to host Mardi Gras. Yeah. So hosting Mar, it's like,imagine if you've never been to New Orleans, but we're literally on St. CharlesAvenue, which means that the parades go right in front.

And so for 10straight days Yeah. We had to host a, a parade. It was more the execution of,bars and bathrooms and people and execution. So the biggest risk is, isexecution. Yeah. I think. And just delivering on our promises. Secondarily, Ithink is managing expectations of, of how does it all work?

Cause you havedifferent levels of expectation. Some really understand it, some don't. Yeah.And so when we do different treasury votes, you've got the people who knowwhere the wallet is now to do the vote and some people like Tim, what are youtalking about? Sure. So we have to create the level playing field of this.

And thirdly, it'sjust when does the adoption curve grow? When does, you know this weekend one ofour major retailers, mink announced that they're now accepting Bitcoin. So it'sthe first local retailer. Yeah. That's accepting Bitcoin to buy their jewelry.So then I talked to another person who's in jewelry business.

Tim, how do I dothat? So how long does adoption take? Yeah. We know it's gonna happen. Thequestion, is it one, is it one month, one year, or 10 years? That cycle is, isis based how we're predicting our business.

Julian:Yeah. Thinking about long-term, if everything goes over, what's the long-termvision for NieuxCo?

Tim:Well, I, and long-term is a strange word I know. In 2025, new Orleans ishosting the Super Bowl. Yeah. And so that's a moment where the world comes toNew Orleans. And we imagine by that time web three will be a little bit moremainstream. There'll be more brands involved and this will be a differentconversation.

It's not about Webthree. It is just a tool based thing that there's now 19 million people whovisit New Orleans every year who spend 10 billion on food, art, music, andexperiences. That's our economy, that's our tourism economy. I don't knowexactly, but I would guess less than zero. 0% of that is digital web three.

Yeah. Digital food,art, music. By 2025, you're gonna have people coming in town who aresophisticated digital buyers. Yeah. You'll have over a billion digital wallets.So the, the mid to short term is we're basically gonna model the New Orleanseconomy where new create food, art, music, experiences. People around the worldbuy it.

Yeah. They're justfinancing a different distribution channel. And that distribution challengejust is growing and getting bigger. So we see participating in that businessand that business is gonna start to grow and scale up. So that's the shortterm, sort of two to three years is positioning ourselves for 2025.

Yeah. We gotta makesure our artists know how to do cool art and our musicians and our foodcreators, and Mardi Gra Jazz Fest, French Quarter fests, all these differentthings. But in secondarily long term, we see cities around the world doing whatwe're doing is building not web three communities, that they're gonna buildcommunities, exploring new tech.

And so I thinkyou'll see new, new society like models popping up in second tier cities, andthis is not New York or Boston, San Francisco or la. This is Cleveland,Detroit, Amsterdam. Worldwide, you'll see communities starting to say, how dowe build place based? Communities to explore this technology Yeah.

For our owncommunity. So we see, sort of a, the next generation of, of this is a networkof local communities that will be connected to each other.  

Julian:Love that. I, I love this next section. I call it my founder faq. So I'm gonnahit you with some rapid fire questions and we'll see where we go. I always liketo open it up with what's particularly hard about your job day to day.

Tim:We have right now, 504 founding members. We have 504 different opinions. Yeah.Managing diverse opinions is always fun. Yeah. And probably secondarily,tempering new ideas. I think the hardest part is, yeah. Okay. Let's just focuson new I, let's don't keep going after new ideas.

Let's focus andexecute. Focus and execute. But managing community is always fun andchallenging and rewarding. Yeah. That's not easy.  

Julian:Yeah. What's particularly different about, this kind of journey for you inregards to what you've built in the past, businesses kind of offering whetherthere's a service or a product, this is, this is very much more, it seems like,evolved from, from a high level, but also, it, it seems to have a lot of groundlevel impact if everything goes well.

But what, what inparticular do you define as different for you in this kind of next I guess, Iguess project or venture studio in, in regards to other things you'vedone?  

Tim:I, I would actually say the easy answer is nothing. I mean, I've done thisbefore. I mean, I mean this is, this is not new for me in terms of starting anew concept and trying to explain it.

Yeah. And and communityaround it. What is new here is the diversity of the network. Yeah. That webuilt an entrepreneurial ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors and peoplewithin the community. We've now. What's been inserted are artists and creators.Yeah. And you start to build a creator, the musicians and artists to enter.

And that's anopportunity to, to have a, a, a, a broader community of creativity. So that's,that's different. I think secondarily, the technology is certainly not there. Imean, the onboarding is hard and it's so clunky. That's not different than itwas with the internet. When we started the internet studio in New Orleans, Itwas 14 four modem, so no one could really download your content.

So just goingthrough that pain again of, of, of waiting for people to get on board. Butthirdly, I'm, I'm 58, not 38, so, it's, it's, yeah. You've seen some thingsbefore. Yeah. But how do you explain, yeah. How do you, how do you explain thatto others that it's just a cycle and a wave and how it goes?

Julian:Yeah, yeah. If I'm an artist, if I'm someone who wants to get involved with NFTprojects and start to think about how to create an experience, where do Istart, what do I do? If I'm interested in, in building projects around NFTsand, and experiences around it, where do I

Tim:start?

Well first, I mean, we literally do have acampus, a physical place on St.

Charles Avenue. Sowe do have events here where people can come and meet happy hours oreducational events, social events. So, the first thing is just connect into thenetwork. So within the network there, there're other artists who've doneprojects. There's entrepreneurs know how to scale projects as people know howto fund projects.

There's tech folkswho know how to build them. So it's just being part of the network. Andsecondarily, I think it's. I think artists, are really good at the, thecreative element of this surrounding themselves to people know how to scalebusinesses. So I think there's a, there's a mixing of the artists and the entrepreneur.

Yeah. So, whatwe're trying to do is, is to bring the artists into the entrepreneurialnetworks. Cause I think building businesses is easy for some folks and creatingis easy for others. Yeah. Marrying. So I think it's just plugging them in. Andthen thirdly is, is lastly is I think there's an opportunity to connect themwith real life businesses like the.

The new brew idea.We had an artist studio NFT connected to selling beer. That's a real businessusing art to sell business, tying them into real revenue streams, right? So ifthat makes sense. We're exploring how do we mix the artist with the businesscommunity? And we think that could be magic there.

Julian:Yeah. Thinking about, in terms of The different projects you're working on, what,what in particular hasn't, been touched at? Maybe it's industry, maybe it's aproduct or type of service or experience. What hasn't been touched with Webthree that you're maybe looking forward to somebody else doing it, or, or it'skind of in progress and being done?

Anything thathasn't been kind of touched by Web three that, that you're particularly excitedabout?  

Tim: Imean, I mean, my excitement is I mean, the initial thing is I don't think wescratched the surface with our artist. Creating things. Yeah. Our restaurants,our food and music and as I mentioned, experiences, new Orleans has morefestivals than most cities in the world, but how NFTs can create a better userexperience.

But I get excitedby the Steve Gleason project. I mean, where, a norian can look at thistechnology and figure out solutions to helping unleash the creativity in theALS community. Yeah. That's a global impact. So I think we haven't even touchedon. People who really are experts in their own fields, starting to figure outhow this applies to them.

Yeah. Is excitingto me. And that's just basically introducing, and the reason why we're doing itin New Orleans is we're never ahead of the curve. We're five years behind LAand New York and San Francisco, so we just wanna be in the game. Yeah. How dowe educate our, our group now?

So when it doessort of scale up, new Orleans is in it. So it's just educating everyone in NewOrleans about. Just understand this technology and get ready. We want, we wannabe participate.  

Julian:Yeah.  

Tim: Imean, what's, what's easy about New Orleans? A vision for us is that, of thatmodel is probably of the 19 million bucks, local creators make maybe 0.001% ofmoney.

They don't reallymake local grids don't make a lot of money. Yeah. That's a problem. If thistechnology could figure out a way to just make. Little bit more money forartists and musicians and creators. Yeah. They will actually start more things.Yeah. If they try more things, then you'll start to see a new wave ofinnovation that people will buy new things.

And then we thinkwe're about to potentially start a whole new golden age creativity coming outin New Orleans. Yeah. Because we've got the creativity and now you've got newtechnology and there's new capital. So we're excited just to see a new wave ofcreativity coming out in New Orleans. Yeah. That is gonna, showcase to theworld by 2025.

Julian:Yeah. Thinking about, for, for advice for other founders, what's something thatyou've seen startups, maybe it's a mistake or maybe it's a common misconceptionor mis expectation. What's something that startups maybe don't consider untilthey're more mature that they should consider more on when you're building in,in kind of that initial stage, in that initial process?

Tim:Well, I, I many of these now I've worked with thousands of, of founders andhelped launch hundreds of companies here, but I think my first advice is, knowwhat you're good at and know what you're bad at. Yeah. And make sure yousurround yourself with people who are good at what you're bad at. I, I, I thinkpeople gotta be really honest about who they are and honest about what they'rereally good at, and focus on that and surrounding yourself with people who aregood at what you're about at.

So you're. Yourthree to five folks in your kitchen cabinet are critical. Yeah, I see founderstrying to be good at everything or trying to do things they're not good at.Secondarily that the key to a founder, a successful founder is trust. Do whatyou say. Don't just sell, don't hype up.

Just cuz you closedthe deal doesn't mean you won or you raised some money. Delivering on yourpromise is what will determine if you're successful. So, Don't get caught up inyour raising money or don't get caught up in your sales, you better deliver onyour promises. Those founders that deliver on their promises consistently startto get more folks who bet on 'em and grow it.

Yeah. And thirdly,it, it takes time and so get ready for the pit. When you start something and itgets really, really hard. Yeah. That's when the, the founders really build realcompanies, but too many people give up when it gets hard. Yeah. You, you gotta,you gotta wait for the hard, hopefully.

If it's not hard,it's gonna get hard, but wait, you gotta wait till it really gets hard. Andonce you get through that, you're stronger and ready to scale.  

Julian:Yeah. I think you mentioned something about, fundraising and, and not measuring,your, your success on that. As a, as a founder, I feel like a lot of foundersare shifting that focus, one intentionally, but also because there's just lessavailable dollars.

So we're all haveto kind of think differently and, and more, scrappy and things like that. Butyou know, if I'm a company thinking about fundraising, what are my signalsbeing that, not all companies should fundraise at every point in time. It's notnecessarily a. There should be a reason for that kind of that injection of capital.

What are some kindof, reasons that you think founders should consider and signals that theyshould consider when the time is right for them?  

Tim:Yeah. Well, I, I, I think the way I, I think about it, that's what I thinkthere's different level phases of fundraising or times. I mean, there's the,I've got an idea of fundraising.

Yeah. I mean,there's the friends and family. I've got an idea and you're very clear. I'mjust trying, I'm trying to figure it out. So at some point there's a, there's a,a raising money to test out and prototype. It's hard to make promises at thatpoint. You're just promising, you're trying, and that's a different level.

Yeah. And thesecond thing is the building phase. Once you start to have something that's amore of a serious fundraise where now I've got this thing and I wanna raise,scale it up. And then thirdly, there's a scaling phase where I've proven it outand I wanna scale it. So I think founders need to sort of make sure they'reboxing out those three phases, that there's certain people who like to.

Fund the startupphase. There's friends and family. Hey, let's see if it works. It doesn't work.Who cares? The building phase, you start to feel real investors who are saying,you better show me a return. You better do what you say. And then scaling, it'sall business as you know it. You're now, you're here to make them money.

So I thinkunderstanding where, where you are in those and making sure you're not raisingmoney, you're selecting people to be on your journey. So who do you wanna bepart of that? Phase. Yeah. And yeah, so you, founders should be selecting theirinvestors, if that makes sense. Yeah. To be part of their phase.

Julian:Yeah. I always like to ask this question cause I love how founders extract,know knowledge out of anything that they ingest. Whether it's early in yourcareer now, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Tim:Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, I can say one of each, but there's one book Iread And this is probably dating myself, a book called The Celine Prophecy.

Have you ever heardthat book? Mm-hmm. No. It was a, it was a famous book I think probably in theearly nineties. But it was, it was, it was a journey of a guy on the way to getthe Celine prophecy. It was a story. But the, the, the, the moral of it was, isthat every person he met, the, there was a clue about meeting that person.

So, he was drawn todifferent people and the goal was to figure out why did I meet you and what wasthe purpose of this and what we supposed to do for each other? Yeah. And the,the moral of that was, is that every relationship is a positive relationshipand there's a learning lesson from each.

And so as you'remeeting people through your journey, through your world, there's a reason whyyou meet people and everybody has a message for you, and you have a message forthem. Sometimes it's a one minute meeting, sometimes it's a week meeting,sometimes it's a 10 year meeting or a 20 year. But everyone in your life isthere for a purpose and.

And they're part ofyour personal journey. So I think that's always been interesting about buildingcommunity and connecting to others. Yeah. On a person, somebody who. Yeah, Imet after Katrina was a guy named Jim Coulter, who's one of the leading venturecapitalists in, in the world mm-hmm.

With tbg. And, backto that journey we met and he became a partner in helping, me and othersrebuild New Orleans. Yeah. And thinking through, that mentorship and insightsabout, from a, a much different level of thinking about how do we reallyrestart New Orleans and, and build this ecosystem in an incredible way, but,Yeah, it's just people have, you gotta talk less and listen more.

So you really meetpeople with wisdom, listen to their words, and yeah. And every one minutemeeting would be extremely valuable to me.

Julian:So, yeah. I love that. I, I know we're at the end of the episode and I wannagive you a chance to give us your plugs and we're to find you and things likethat. But last little bit is I don't wanna make sure we didn't leave anythingon the table.

Is there anything Ididn't, is there any question I didn't ask you that I should have? Is thereanything we didn't talk about that you wanted to chat about? Anything? Anythingthat we we left on the table here today.

Tim:No. Well, well, Julian, I, I thank you for your time. I think what I think theopportunity is is that all this new technology, whether it's web three or AI orMetaverse or whatever it may be, ultimately the next opportunity is for localcommunities around the world that aren't in those major hubs.

Need to startthinking about it now. How does this techno, what is it and how do we get ourcom our, our community positioned for that? Yeah. So the thing of it is urging othercommunities around the world is, start thinking about it now. And we may have aMardi Gras, but everyone has their own Mardi Gras thing are their own personalthings.

So I think how dowe use these technologies to strengthen real world communities? We're justdoing it here in New Orleans. But we think that, our peer cities around theworld that, are these deep sense of places, that's who we wanna connect with.Yeah. And learn how you do this and the, the rhythms and rituals about how youwork, they're all gonna be different.

So I think we'reexcited by that. And the only plug, and I don't really have a plug, that, thepeople that we would love to join are the, the new Society collective arepeople love New Orleans. Yeah. So it is the people around the world who. You'refrom here, you moved away, or you went to school here, or you went to JazzFest, or you got drunk on Berm Street.

I don't care. Thecriteria is you gotta love New Orleans or have some passion for it. Yeah. Andwant to be on that journey to figure it out. So this isn't a get rich quick,buy this, sell this. This is a journey over the next 10, 20 years, how weposition New Orleans for the future.

So if anybody,loves New Orleans or is connected to New Orleans, Yeah, feel free to connect.And we love to plug in to what? To what's next here.

Julian: Ilove that, Tim, and thank you so much for being on the show and sharing yourbackground, your experience. Last little bit is where can we find you? Give usyour LinkedIns, your Twitters, where can we find the new NieuxCo and thecommunity and be a part of it.

Give us your,websites, LinkedIn, everything that, that we can do to not only be fans, butalso be supporters of, of what you've got going on.  

Tim:Well, thank you. Well, the website is new nieuxco.xyz. That's the new society.NieuxCo, n ie ux.co is the company. We, on twi on Twitter, at New Society andat New Society on Instagram.

And our discord,obviously is new society. I am th Williamson at th Williamson Twitter. And TimWilliamson on LinkedIn and all those other places, but Twitter is probably thebetter place at th Williamson.

Julian:So amazing. Tim, well thank you so much for taking the time. I'm so excited toshare this with the audience.

Think about theprojects you're working on and kind of how you're pushing a, a local adoptionto a really new technology and how that's gonna impact the community, but howother communities can do the same. So, I hope you enjoyed yourself, but thankyou again for being on Behind, Company Lines today.

Tim:Well, thank you. And, and come down to New Orleans. We, we'll show you what wasgoing on.  

Julian:Absolutely.  

Tim:Thank you, Julian.  

Julian:Thank you.

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