AI-Powered Sales Training: Syrenn Cofounders Share Their Journey

Nati Solomon Fett: Applied to a lot of accelerators, mainly yc, which is like the staple for startups. Uh, didn't get in for really clear reasons. Uh, thank you retrospectively. But MathWorks has been great. I think what we

Jacob Miller: really needed this entire time was mentorship. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Startup Wisconsin podcast.

Today we're diving deep into the world of AI powered sales training with Nati Solomon fet and Colin Guest. The co-founders of Syrenn. Syrenn is a Madison based startup that's tackling a challenge. Most sales teams know all too well. How do you actually get better at high stakes conversations? You know those moments where you feel like the words really matter, whether it's a complex B2B sales call, a discovery session, or any situation where you feel like the stakes are high and traditional role playing just isn't cutting it.

What makes Syrenn interesting is their approach to this problem. Instead of another learning management system or basic role play tool, they built what they call a learning in the arena, not the stands approach. Giving sales reps a way to practice with AI powered scenarios that feel real and actually help 'em improve their conversational skills.

Both Nati and Colin bring technical backgrounds to this challenge. And they've been a part of the Mad Works Accelerator Program in Madison, which ties back nicely to our conversation with Beth Ott from starting Block in our last episode. In our conversation, we talk about what it's really like building a company as co-founders, their experience going door to door at gyms and car dealerships to understand how sales training actually works and what they've learned about Madison's.

Startup ecosystem. We also dig into their first customer, win their thoughts on using AI coding tools like Cursor and what they think could make Wisconsin an even better place to build a startup. So let's jump into my conversation with Nati and Colin from Syrenn.

Colin Guest: Just like to put this in an example. Uh, so, uh, Syrenn can can help sales managers, uh, basically remove themselves as a potential bottleneck in training.

Um, so. What we've been hearing from sales managers is that if they want to, uh, do role play with their reps to train them up, which is what we find them doing, that's actually a huge thing that we didn't know was happening when we first started. Um, that they'll, they'll be the ones role playing with the new sales rep.

So, um, you know, no sales manager went to Julliard, like they're not professional actors, so, uh. Being able to give them this tool to like enhance their creativity and do all that is like really, really helpful.

Jacob Miller: So CTO, I'm kind of curious like what, what is your day-to-day like, I guess, or, or even, I'm actually curious, like how did you kinda get started with from it?

There's like the AI part of it, there's obviously like the user interface part of it. I'm kind of curious, how did you guys kind of, um, uh, I guess tackle making it a real thing?

Nati Solomon Fett: Yeah. So. Really a lot of trial and error. Um, we are both, we both have backgrounds in technical consulting, so I have a formal education in computer science.

Uh, Colin is, doesn't, but he's really, uh, well-versed in, in yeah, self-taught, well-versed in a coding. And back to that trial and error, we really started with, uh, just a graphical interface and we went actually to a, uh. A conference out in San Francisco and just walked around with a very crude mockup of what we were trying to do.

Um, a bit of infrastructure in the backend. Some very basic UI interface there. Yeah. Um, yeah. Anything else you'd like to add there?

Colin Guest: Yeah, we just failed a lot. Um, we, we just had like one less stupid idea after another, and then, uh. Then we, unfortunately, we, we pivoted a few times and then we unfortunately found ourselves with another solution in search of a problem.

Like the classic route we took was, we have an idea, uh, let's build it, not we have an idea. Let's validate that idea. So we would build and then, uh, we would, uh, try the market and we, we had a, like on the third try, we basically had. Um, this, this voice AI agent in like a very general sense, and we knew we wanted to, um, to give it to a, um, B2B, um, sort of customer.

Um, it was just who could, the, the big question we were struggling with was who would be, uh, the role or person within a business who could, uh, benefit most from working on their sales conversa or, uh, their, their conversational skills. Um, and after, like we saw there was competition in sales. There are already, there are already other vendors doing this.

Um, but, and so I made the mistake of really pushing hard that we try other sorts of roles outside of sales. So we were at first role agnostic and that was our big spin, right? But it was like boiling in an o, an ocean, so that that really didn't work. Uh, then we, uh, touched on our old. Um, our old roles as technical consultants, we knew that, um, being a technical consultant, you had to have good conversational skills.

Um, but we found that the consulting industry, the they're, they're not actually incentivized to, um, be the best communicator. Like the best communicators aren't the best consultants. The best consultants are the consultants who build the most hours. Like from the company's perspective. Sure. And that's like the way that they're incentivized.

Um, and there's, there's kind of mixtures of both. But then after that we kind of just landed on sales because if you can't talk to people, you're

Jacob Miller: toast. So was there like a specific moment where you're like, oh, we're gonna lean into sales? Or was it just like, kinda like you say, like we were trying to be super agnostic.

And then, but was there like, yeah. Was there a specific moment where you're like having a conversation, you're like, we need to lean, lean into sales. Like this makes sense.

Nati Solomon Fett: I think there were a couple of moments, well, funny enough, most conversations we had prior to picking sales as our target market ended with the prospects saying, Hey, you should try this in sales and probably make more sense.

Yeah. And we, I think stupidly ignored that probably nine times and outta the 10 time we're like, okay, we should probably like look into this.

Colin Guest: Yeah. And our basic retort to that was always like, oh, other people are doing this for sales. And, and in, in my mind when I heard that, I was very dogmatic in the sense that if you wanna build a good startup, you want to have this sort of, like, there's, I'm, I'm an n of one company, and so I have this monopoly power and just in, in like where we were at.

And uh, like that, that's an ideal to strive for. But like where we were at, this is our third try. Right. And like we had built this solution out pretty nicely, like voice ai, it's like you, you need to just sacrifice that. So there's a little bit of like a ideological, like

Nati Solomon Fett: I think we quickly figure out that novelty doesn't mean you will succeed.

Colin Guest: Yeah.

Nati Solomon Fett: Just because something is new doesn't mean everyone's gonna want it. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's not a terrible thing if the market's already validated by some other vendors.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure like. When you're a founder, like you have like this vision, you're like, oh, I wanna do this. Or like, we can do this.

Like, we'll prove everybody wrong. Like, was that, was there like kind of like an internal moment of processing, like, oh, well we can't do what we wanted to do, so now we have to do this? Or is it like, was it just like, no, we're just gonna pivot and this is totally fine. Like, I don't know. I think series of verse two pivots,

Nati Solomon Fett: we probably grappled with that by the third time.

We're like, all right, we're, we're kind of pros at, at, you know, failing forwards and kind of the path we took. I don't know how you felt.

Colin Guest: Yeah, yeah. I, I felt the same way. Yeah. Like, I, I don't think that we're the types of founders to be beholden to our idea, our initial idea. And we knew that going in, um, like I think the first idea was the one we actually didn't try.

Um, it was the one that unified us. Yeah. But, um, it was one where we first validated the market and then didn't build it because we didn't validate the market. Um. So, so then we knew we wanted to work together. Mm-hmm. Um, but we were just like, all right, let's find out what we, we can build, you know,

Jacob Miller: I'm curious around, uh, about like, see your backgrounds, so, and then kind of how you guys met, and then like, and then was there like a moment where like, oh, like let's do something together and like build a business together.

Maybe talk about that a little bit. Whoever wants to kind of go first. Yeah. So

Nati Solomon Fett: we both worked for a, uh. Software vendor, company consultants, as we said. And we actually, Colin was spearheading a, an AI project within the company, and he was kind of, uh, recruiting people to join and help him out. I think I just saw a random email one of my buddies at, at that work, uh, had joined up and I'm like, okay, this sounds interesting.

I, I'm kind of a fan of ai, or at least in its very early stages, which is not a pro by any means. But, uh, you know, would, would learn. Why, uh, and yeah, that, that project ended up going really well. Uh, we built a pro, uh, internal tool that really helped the company. Uh, I don't think it got as much, uh, you know, satisfaction from the higher ups as we thought it would, but yeah, it was providing some value and it was really cool to work with Colin and see, you know, all those, you know, great traits that he has that now I see like it works really well as a co-founder.

Um. Yeah, I had in my mind that I was gonna leave the company back in February of 24 and, uh, to pursue a, a startup of my own. And actually the day that I, my last day at working at that company, uh, Colin pulled me aside and he is like, do you wanna just like grab a drink after, uh, work today? I'm like, sure.

And I. We went to a long table, actually out in Middleton, and, uh, we just chatted it up. I told him about my startup idea and he's like, all right, I'm down. That's pretty much it. Yeah. Yeah,

Colin Guest: yeah. Well said. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You don't have any other thoughts to share on that or? Well, uh, just, just like the, um, that, that we basically got to start a, a startup within a company.

Yeah. Together, uh. That was really cool. Um, and our company allowed us to, um, we, we were consultants and so we were in charge of, uh, the hours that we build within reason. Um, so if we like hit like our weekly quota, we were able to work on, uh, internal projects for a portion of that week. And so, um, we just chose to work on, we called it Esker Bot.

Yeah. Um, it was like a AI rag chat bot. Um. Retrieval, augmented generation. Um, so we basically fed it, um, it all of our like internal knowledge on consulting, which this huge body of knowledge. And then you were able to like search it. So imagine like Google search, but just for your own or uh, excuse me, chat GPT, but for just your own company?

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. It's like we get a custom GPT upload PDFs and all that kind of stuff. Very similar and say, don't reference the internet. Only reference this. You got it. Exactly. Yeah.

Colin Guest: Yeah. So it was, it was pretty early on, like, uh, in that era, like, whereas now you could do that like within a weekend.

Jacob Miller: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And that's the thing too is like with the pace of things, I'm sure that's probably a challenge for you guys with, with the, with your competitors and with the industry in general, is that within every two to three months there's some kind of announcement of like a new capability or a new thing. And so yeah.

How are you guys kind of like. Approaching that where like if there's, um, maybe a new model or something like that. Like how do you kind of, how do you guys approach it, I guess? Yeah. The pace is so fast, you know? Yeah, no, that's

Nati Solomon Fett: definitely something we've constantly gone back to and it's really been pretty advantageous for us.

Yeah. We, a lot of the rewards of the models getting better. Uh, we've, in our infrastructure, we just literally, I think, change maybe a handful of lines and we can be mm-hmm. On the latest and the greatest, so That's good. Um, on the competitor side. Yeah. That's. Something that we also do think about, it's really easy to replicate, you know, a good chunk of what we have.

And I think finding out where our moat is, that's something we're working

Jacob Miller: towards. Yeah. Nice. When you guys kinda leaned into sales, um, was there like a little bit of a learning curve? Like meet, meeting with sales teams, like here's how they currently operate and train. Um, like maybe talk through that a little bit.

Like once you kind of find like, Hey, we're gonna go after sales. What was, did you, you probably had an idea of like, here's how it's gonna work in the interface, and then as you started working with them, how, how did you kind of adapt to that?

Colin Guest: Yeah, so when we, when we said we're gonna start working on sales, we just declared to the heavens that we were gonna start working on sales.

And uh, thankfully we got some really great mentorship in, in MathWorks, and they were like, what, what does that mean? Like, you need to pick, um, who like. Who the, the real question that they asked that was a great question for us to really start that search on was, okay, you've identified sales. Who in sales would you say no to as a customer?

And we looked at each other like, I don't know. And we, we came from that meeting with a really big, um, you know, with, with a really big lack of identity and, uh. Whenever, like whenever I, I'm like in a, in a funk like that, I, I'll, I'll go like, do a workout or something. And so I was a member at, uh, crunch Fitness, um, at, in West Madison at the time.

And so I, I went there and as I was walking in, um, I just remembered hearing in the back of my mind, one of my friends who works in fitness saying, you know, Colin gyms are like 90% sales. And so I'm like, okay, well maybe these. These guys at the front desk are people to talk to. So I just started, uh, chatting one of 'em up and, uh, we, we basically, uh, had this like 30 minute long conversation where I, uh, really got a good understanding of how like gym sales works, right?

And so then he was like, you know, you should go talk to the personal trainer over there because they're a different type of like sales. Like I'm the front desk sales selling for the gym. They're doing personal fitness memberships over there. And so I did. And uh, long story short, um, after those kinds of conversations, we figured out, no, we're not for gym sales because they're much more marketing heavy.

They're B2C, right. And

Nati Solomon Fett: in Chicago, where I was looking, it's a lot of foot traffic, less, you know, sales skills. People are usually walking to the gym and they're like. I'm, I'm ready. I'm ready to, to, to buy a membership right now. So not much of a sales conversation there.

Colin Guest: Yeah, yeah. So, so like we, we just got on the phone and like within like a day we like, uh, had talked to like, probably cumulatively six or seven gyms and then, uh, by, by the, by by noon the next day.

Yep. And then, uh, I was driving by some car dealerships and I was like, Hey, I wonder if this would work for car dealerships. So then, uh, we just started walking into like car dealerships and talking to people like on the ground floor, like, Hey, how are you trained? How, like, what was training like for you?

And so, um, through that iterative method, we began to like refine who we're not for and we're not for car dealerships. Yeah. Right. Um, and then we began to, um, develop ideas of like us asking a question and then getting the response that we may or may not have, uh, seen. And or expected. And then, uh, from that just bubbled up like who our target market actually is within sales.

And, uh, how those organizations work is just through asking people and people are really like, open. Yeah. Like, like if I ask you about your life, just like you're asking us about ours, like you're, you just talk to us. Yeah.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We wanna know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so I, I find it really interesting because a lot of times in like tech startups or software, they usually just like try to do things like online or over the, over the over zoom or over Microsoft teams or whatever.

But you guys like, no, we're gonna like show up in real life and like talk to these people, like where they're working and just see, see what's going on. Were there any other ones? So you said gyms, car dealerships. Were there any other that were like, where you kinda showed up in person just just to see.

Colin Guest: So from that?

No. No. Um, but all because from that we, uh, were able to extrapolate out lessons. So like gym memberships or anything that's marketing heavy, that's not something that working on your sales conversations would be that good for, because let's say you're working retail, right? Like that's another one that we're not for is like retail sales.

It's like you get probably hundreds of at bats a week. On those sales. Right. And it's really marketing heavy. It's very price sensitive. Like your sales conversations are more just knowing what your product is. Not like, not doing like a cold call, cold outreach, doing a discovery session, asking questions back.

Mm-hmm. So like the, the higher the price of the product, that's where you start getting into. Okay. I get less at bats and my sales conversations become more and more valuable, as well as the complexity

Nati Solomon Fett: of the skill I think Colin is referring to. Yeah. It's gotta be something where, you know, the skill in selling has to be there and you need to like hone in on that skill to be able to, you know, get those

Jacob Miller: sales.

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If you don't think we're working out within the first 45 days ready to see how we can help you and your team. Just head over to headway.io and book a free consultation today. I actually am curious about, you know, what, how has it been building a company together, the co-founder relationship? Obviously you're dividing responsibilities from a technical side, and then I'm assuming your sales marketing, I mean, I'm kind of curious like how you're balancing all that Right now

Nati Solomon Fett: It's pretty, pretty meshed.

I, I don't think at the moment we have the luxury to split out and deviate purely CTO activities and CEO activities or sales activities. So we dabble in both really. Um, sounds really proficient at coding. I, I can make sales as well. Um, but yeah, we were slowly realizing that we were. Trending towards a point in which we will have to truly deviate just 'cause there's a lot of product requests, there's a lot of sales that needs to happen.

Jacob Miller: So,

Nati Solomon Fett: yeah.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Is there, is there, like, do you guys have like a line drawn where like, oh, when we hit this line, that's when we need to like, get a third person or Not really.

Nati Solomon Fett: Um, it's just kind of gut checking every week. Uh, we've kind of been talking about it in our, uh, standups pretty much every like Monday to just.

Yeah, gotta check to see if this week, do I need to, you know, delve more into coding than marketing or sales. Should I call do the opposite of that. Some weeks it's 50, 50 other weeks it's a hundred percent. One way. A hundred percent the other way.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. I think that that's great. It sounds like a really healthy co-founder relationship, to be honest.

It's working so far. Yeah, it seems like, yeah, it seems like, oh, you just adapt to each week. Hey, I, I'm gonna work more on this. Or like, Hey, actually I'm kind of stuck with this. Could you dive into this for me? I feel like it's kind of like you said, it's like a gut thing. Yeah. Yeah. Say pretty grateful.

Nati Solomon Fett: Not a lot of co-founder pairs have both people that can code, so Yeah.

Really unique situation with Yeah.

Colin Guest: Yeah. Like, uh, in, in our Mad Works cohort, I think we're the, there's, there's four, um, like tech companies. Mm-hmm. And, uh, there's two others where, uh, one of the founders is not like diving into the code with the CTO. And, um, I, I just, I, I count myself lucky as well. Yeah.

Like also being able to, um, have Nati, um, who, you know, has a very technical background, but also has really great like, uh, sales instincts and marketing instincts. Just being able to like, kind of bounce off of like, you know, an equal for sure. Yeah. Um, the ideas that we're talking about and I think it really makes the conversations just.

Way more, uh, fruitful instead of like a, Hey, I'm gonna, like, this is what the customers are telling me. Like, when are you gonna get it done? Naty? Like, let's get in the dungeon. You know, like, you're gonna go on the coding dungeon. Yeah. That's, uh, yeah. Uh, thankfully we, we've got the skills to be in that sort of area and, and also, uh, we use, uh, AI coding tools as well.

Yeah, like cursor. Um, yeah. Even though we both know how to code, it's been amazing. Amazing. It's been the best thing we've ever done. What, what do you like most? Just that it does your work.

Nati Solomon Fett: Like, it's like the, the time to market for product features or debugging is just so quick. Um, it really helps that we know how, how to code and just have that underlying logic so that we can leverage a tool like this really efficiently.

But yeah, it's like having a, yeah. Almost like having another employee that does like the ground work for you.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that's like weird about it or quirky or like, ah, I wish I didn't do that. Or like, where you he could keep having to clean it sometimes. Clean it up. Yeah.

Nati Solomon Fett: If you're not careful and you, uh, like tab too many times you might get something that you expect in there.

So you gotta be. I don't think we're there where you can just like one shot, entire features. But yeah, just having that manual review is pretty

Jacob Miller: good.

Nati Solomon Fett: Yeah.

Jacob Miller: Yeah, because I, I've heard, you know, mixed things, like if you have a technical background, you can do a lot more with it because you understand what to request or what to look for.

Like, oh, that's kind of weird, let's change that. Um, so obviously like it's powerful in general like for anybody. Um, but I was just kind of curious from your perspectives, like how it's, how it's been, so Yeah. Yeah.

Colin Guest: To, to, to put it in perspective so that, um, I had this paradigm explained to me like really clearly, um, by, I think it was, uh, I'm blanking on the name.

He's the CIO of UW Credit Union. Um, and he said that for, um, for high skill positions, ai, um, like. You, the, the benefit you get from AI is that the more skilled you are in that high skill position, the more effective you are with AI and the less skilled you are in that high skill position. Uh, with an ai, uh, the, like, you're less effective.

Whereas with a lower skill position, like let's say. Now, you know, customer service does have like a lot of, you know, knowledge to it. But, um, I, it's not one of those, like, you have like a highly, um, like, like a, like a high skill, like coding. It's the opposite. The, um, it lifts the lowest, um, skilled or at least experienced people up.

And, uh, the people who are the most experienced, they're just like, I could use it. I don't need it. But, um, that's kind of the paradigm that. It's like a, a downward sloping curve for low skilled positions and then a upward sloping sloping curve for high skilled positions. Yeah.

Jacob Miller: Um, any other tools besides cursor that you've been using, enjoying, I should say, even for other aspects of the business?

Like obviously like for code. That's very helpful. Yeah, I, I think we're

Nati Solomon Fett: just really fortunate for most things regarding the backend accounting and whatnot. Taxes. Everything's just kind of plug and play these days. Yeah. You don't really do manual filing. I, although I think you may have done a bit of manual filing for taxes.

Yeah. But there's a lot of vendors out there and they're pretty, pretty cheap. So I think we're pretty

Colin Guest: lucky. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I mean, notion, we use notion, um, we use Apollo, um, for like lead gen, um,

Nati Solomon Fett: Clerky for our legal

Colin Guest: Yeah.

Nati Solomon Fett: And whatnot.

Colin Guest: It allows you to incorporate your business. Yeah. Pretty cleanly. So

Jacob Miller: I actually wanted to ask about, 'cause you brought up, um, the accelerator a couple times, MathWorks, uh, what, what made you guys decide like, yeah, let's go through MathWorks or you know, or obviously, did you apply anywhere else?

I'm kind of curious like how MathWorks has been for you as an overall experience. So, yeah, it's been really

Nati Solomon Fett: great. Um, I guess just to step back in time, we applied to a lot of accelerators, mainly yc, which is like the staple for startups. Didn't get in for really clear reasons, uh, thinking retrospectively, but MathWorks has been great.

I think what we really needed this entire time was mentorship. I think we have a lot of the instinct, instinctive capabilities of founders, uh, as you, I think we told the story of like walk-in door to door. So we've got that type of things. We've got the technical background. It's like just being level headed in our decision making and having someone to bounce ideas off.

I think that's what. Really getting a lot of value out of Mad Works with

Colin Guest: Nice. Yeah. Awesome. How about you? How do you feel about it? I, I like it. Yeah. I like it a lot. Um, I think Netty really pretty much hit it on the head. Yeah. Cool.

Jacob Miller: What's next after, are you guys looking at anything else after Mad Works or maybe just different mentorship after that?

Or how do you, I guess kind of curious,

Colin Guest: we're, we're still applying to, um, other sorts of accelerators where, uh, so the way Mad Works works is that. You, you go through the program, um, they don't take any equity. Um, and they give you a $5,000 grant. Um, so the money's great. Um, and we're happy that no equity is taken out, um, for that, for the five grand.

Um, but, uh, we're still open to accelerators and, uh, getting, getting other sorts of investment. It's just at this point, uh, demonstrating traction and getting more sales, more sales, more sales. So

Jacob Miller: how do you guys feel about just the Madison startup community in general? I'm just curious, like, you know, what do you like about it?

Uh, we'll just start, kind of start there. Like what do you like about it?

Colin Guest: Yeah. Uh, really tight knit. Like I knew before, uh, our podcast started, um, all the names you dropped of who you're gonna be talking to, and Madison knew 'em right off the bat. Yes. Um, so, uh, it's, it's really nice that way. Um, it, it can, it can feel like if you go to an event where there's like a big, uh.

You're, you're once you, once you meet everyone though, like you're seeing the same people, um, at a lot of the same events, uh, which is nice, it's a great way to catch up. Um, but if you're looking for like, uh, networking opportunities that could lead to sales, um, you might wanna, um, also go to other conferences or events even across the state, like go to Milwaukee, um, or Green Bay.

Um.

Nati Solomon Fett: I'd also

Colin Guest: add

Nati Solomon Fett: that everyone's so friendly. I, I don't think we've ever been like ego checked by anyone. Yeah. It's usually like, oh, this doesn't fit for me, but I know a couple people I can send your way. It's like, oh, that's so great. Like, um, and just some anecdotal evidence that we've had from down in Chicago.

I think Madison's way better is, you would think Chicago is like absolutely thriving, but at least the places that we've visited and networking events we've been to, it's been a little dead. Interesting. Okay.

Jacob Miller: What, what do you feel like, uh, is missing in Madison? Like what do you wish like, oh, I wish we had more of this, more of that.

I think, I think

Colin Guest: the, the ideas are there. It's just the, uh, 'cause we're right next to UW Madison R one institution. You've got some really great programs, um, related to data science, compsci, um, life sciences, um, you know, tons of patents coming out of there. The one thing that, uh, I wish we had more of was capital.

Uh, we're very capital, um, poor, and the, the risk tolerance to, I think it could be related to just how much capital or how little capital there seems to be. Um, but the risk tolerance is very low. So high risk tolerance, more capital. If that comes to Madison, like that'd be big and I

Nati Solomon Fett: would

Colin Guest: add.

Nati Solomon Fett: Maybe some more visibility, like what you guys are doing to, to the success stories.

Yeah. So that, you know, it gets out there that this is something that is possible in Madison. And um, just another point here, it's like more mentorship by those people that have had successes. And I think MathWorks is a great starting place with those mentors.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, these are, these are things that we're, we're trying to learn more about and like, just to hear from founders, like, okay.

We're definitely trying to figure out, like for mentorship with sort of Wisconsin, we wanna try to figure out a, um, you know, formal slash informal mentorship program. Like how do we get people connected? 'cause there might be, like you were saying in Madison specifically, there might not be the right kind of mentor for somebody, but maybe they live in Milwaukee or maybe that mentor lives in Green Bay or lives in Minneapolis or wherever we can get 'em connected to like for the right mentor for that type of person and the type of industry they're trying to build in or whatever.

Um, there's a lot of opportunities there, so, yeah. Um, what about, uh, just. Do you feel like just the state of Wisconsin in general, uh, do you feel like you're supported as a startup founder, or do you feel like there's opportunities for improvement there?

Colin Guest: Yeah, I, I think, uh, I think since the second that we declared, we're a startup and told one person about it, uh, we, we went to our first event in August of last year.

Uh, I think it was Founder Fest, um, um, forward fest, excuse me, forward fest, uh, and. From the moment we said that we were a startup, it didn't matter what our idea was. And our idea at the time was completely incomprehensible to us. Um, so I can imagine how everyone we told it to felt, uh, but they, they just kept trying to, to help you out.

Like, help you out. You should go talk to this person. You should go talk to that person. Like the network is word of mouth at this point. It's not like, go to this website and figure out like you'll, you'll get like a play by play of what to do. Um, but if you just, like, if you're, if you're a, if you're someone with an idea in Wisconsin and you are like, where do I start?

Like just pony up the like $25 it would be to go to something like Forward Fest, and I know they're doing it in August, um, or a Wisconsin Technology Council event and just start talking to people about your idea. And nobody, like Nati said, nobody's gonna ego check you and be like, oh, well that's not anything that's like, that's just an idea.

It doesn't matter. Um, and if you, if you have just like the. Wherewithal and grit, you're gonna be able to turn that idea into reality. Yeah.

Jacob Miller: Did you look online at all? I'm just kind of curious like what, obviously Madison, you're aware, like either through the university or just obviously forward fest, but did you like do any like online searches for other resources or anything like that?

Oh yeah.

Nati Solomon Fett: Yeah. I think quite a bit when we started and then to Colin's point, I think we quickly realized that the more we get out there and start talking to people. The people that we want to be in contact with are usually there. Yeah. We're just finding those resources.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna ask, like, what's something that you're excited about?

Like it's either on the roadmap or just looking forward, you know, with Syrenn and, uh, things that you're working on with it. Just kind of curious what's, what, what's, uh, what are you looking forward to?

Nati Solomon Fett: Yeah, so I think business wise, we've just gotten our first, uh, B2B customer, so that's, that's great. But, you know, finding that momentum to continue on.

Um, I think we're both excited about potential reseller possibility. Um, just having, um, other vendors sell our software. So sales trainers, to be specific, I think we're pretty excited about where that, that could lead. Mm-hmm. Um, early stages though, so Interesting. It's like a distribution effect basically.

Exactly. Got it.

Jacob Miller: That's cool. That's a good move. Nice. Is there a specific industry that you find that the sales training's happening? Um, because you're talking about automotive. Then you were talking about the gym, but what, where, where's sales training happening in that perspective?

Nati Solomon Fett: Yeah, so through our learnings, I think we found that the sweet spot is, um, B2B SaaS, so other, uh, you know, tech type vendors who have complex sales processes that their sales reps need to be masters at, um, or complex products.

So yeah, that sweet spot between complexity and. Amount of work that goes into making a sale.

Colin Guest: Yeah, I'm, I'm super pumped about the reseller, uh, program. Um, and then on the product side, just, uh, we're, we're really gonna begin, uh, to make some really big things happen, uh, with Syrenn. Uh, so I can't really say, uh, what we're planning on doing, but, um, just really excited to see like this vision, uh, coming true and.

Having actual customers and uh, clients to talk to is huge because you're like, you're already validated. You're bought into using this. So your opinion matters more than every Tom, Dick, and Harry, um, that you'll, that you'll ever meet, um, until you're talking to another customer. Right. So it's just great to have that.

Jacob Miller: I mean, just reflecting on your own experience the last few years, um. You know, what's something that you wish you knew, you know, when you started like that now retrospectively thinking about it as a founder, what's something that you wish you knew sooner that would've like, been like, why did I waste all my time doing that?

I should have just did this instead?

Nati Solomon Fett: There's so many.

Colin Guest: That's a, it's kind of, it's like asking someone, like, I, I watched, I watched a YouTube video yesterday, uh, and it was a guy who went. I think he was in Central Park or Time or somewhere around New York and he asked people zero to a hundred. Uh, what's your biggest regret in life? And it's a very similar question, and a lot of people said, I have no regrets because like I've learned from all of my mistakes and it, I don't want to take that stance.

Um, so I think like I, I am happy for the path that I've taken and you never know where your, like your life would've gone if you hadn't. Yeah. Um, taking all the moves that e even the worst move in history or in your history has brought you to this place and so regretting that it's like, are you, are you happy on the path you're on now?

It's like, I might not be on this path, but, um, I think, I think for me it was, uh, in college focusing way too much on grade point average and not enough on, uh. Doing projects that I actually thought were interesting 'cause I was very interested in things like economics and, um, and computer science. But, um, I ne I didn't take courses on.

I took very few courses on those. Um, but my major was like pre-med, which is, which was the path I was on. And so doing the. Doing the pre-med track and just being this hyper competitive pre-med student, uh, who's so focused on grade point average instead of like having a realistic view of the world. And, you know, the world's not your GPA, right?

Like your GPA can be as high as possible. Doesn't mean you're gonna like, doesn't mean you're gonna like yourself with that GPA. You know what I mean? So, uh, that, that's probably, that's probably mine. Yeah. Just working on more projects. Anything yet? Yeah, I, I think

Nati Solomon Fett: I do, I think. We've personally, I've learned this along the way, but it's just asking for help.

A lot of people are really eager to help you. You just gotta be assertive enough to ask for help and, um, it's taken a while to figure that out. Um, but we're here now and, you know, really appreciative to everybody that's willing to answer my calls. Really. Yeah.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. It kind of brings to this last one. Any shout outs, uh, or thank yous to people?

Have helped you, obviously with Starting Block and Mad Works and stuff. Are there any specific people that you're just like super grateful for over the last year or two? So

Nati Solomon Fett: many. Suzy, uncle Beth, uh, uh, man, there's so many. Everyone at Starting Block.

Colin Guest: Yeah.

Nati Solomon Fett: Uh, you know, obviously family and friends.

Colin Guest: Yeah.

Really

Nati Solomon Fett: held us down.

Colin Guest: Lots of ups and downs. My, my wife's putting up with this startup for so long. Yeah, yeah. Yep. You know,

Nati Solomon Fett: folks like you guys Yeah. Really helps get the word out as well as build up the network.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. So how do people find out about Syrenn? Where do they go? Where can they learn more if they're, if they're maybe curious about being a customer or just, you know, learning about what you do so they can spread the word too.

Colin Guest: Yeah, so you can follow us on LinkedIn. Uh, it's S-Y-R-E-N-N, um, or you can go to Syrenn.co. Uh, to just look at our website. You can try out a role play for free. You can get like a free trial for two weeks. Um, and this is right now you can get that. Um, so interesting. You might be reducing that, but um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's where you can do that. Awesome. Well, cool.

Jacob Miller: Awesome. That's all I got. Congrats. Awesome, guys. Thanks for coming in guys. Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, that's all good. Yeah. How did we do? Yeah, you did great. Yeah, this was perfect. Thanks for joining us on the Startup Wisconsin Podcast. Wanna support the show.

Don't forget to subscribe and get updates. If you're feeling generous, you can share, rate and review our podcast to help others find us. Alright folks, until next time. Let's keep moving Wisconsin forward.

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