The Invisible Tech Changing How We Connect

[00:00:00] Russell From: There's no reason. Every small business in Wisconsin, every nonprofit doesn't use this from our point of view. If anyone's having problems with, you know, cell phone, dead spots, just turn this on. You don't have to buy anything. Be like, if they go to our website, you can just have it. You, you know, just all it needs is internet and power.

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[00:00:17] Russell From: That's it. It's plug and play. We ask if we give it to you, just please use it. That's all we ask. 

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[00:00:22] Jacob Miller: Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Startup Wisconsin Podcast. I'm sure where you can learn about Wisconsin's growing tech scene through stories of startups, founders, investors, and the talented people making it all happen.

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[00:00:35] Jacob Miller: My guest today is Russel From Co-founder of WayFi Wireless. They help businesses and non-profits. Fix their cellular dead zones using wifi, and the carriers even pay for it so the organizations don't have to spend a dime. Russ spent years at Verizon Wireless flying around the world, setting up data centers and infrastructure, and that's where you notice a problem.

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[00:00:57] Jacob Miller: That's still true today. There are places where cell phones just don't work. You know where they are, and the traditional fix costs a hundred grand or more, and it turns out there's a technology called PassPoint. It's been around for over a decade, but hardly anyone really knew it existed, and the numbers tell the story of how far they've come.

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[00:01:17] Jacob Miller: Over 1200 locations worldwide. More than 10,000 wifi radios running and 258 carriers across multiple continents. They recently just won the award for best open roaming deployment in the world. For 2025, even beating out Cisco and other large competitors, and they did it as a bootstrapped profitable company.

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[00:01:40] Jacob Miller: After pivoting away from the original VC backed model, we talk about why he started putting up cellular radios on rooftops in Madison and Milwaukee before shifting two wifi, what it was like raising $2 million from telecom VCs outside of Wisconsin, and why he's now giving away free equipment. To small businesses through their Coverage 

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[00:01:59] Russell From: Across America program.

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[00:02:01] Russell From: Alright folks, let's get into it. 

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[00:02:03] Jacob Miller: So you spent years, you know, as a, as a executive or principal engineer within companies like Verizon or US Cellular. So what, what was the thing that kind of happened where you're like, you know what, I want to kind of get at transition out of like the corporate enterprise stuff and become like a tech founder?

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[00:02:19] Jacob Miller: Or what was that process like for you? 

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[00:02:22] Russell From: Yeah. Yeah. So what helped with that? So I, I got into you, you know, kind of stepping back even before that. So I went to UB Madison for computer engineering, and then I, I jumped right into the telecom industry at Verizon Wireless. And at that time they were transitioning from copper fiber and from 3G to 4G and towards the end over 5G.

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[00:02:41] Russell From: And basically I just wanted to know how everything worked, how does a cell phone work, how does it connect, how does that data get there? And you know, that kind of came from my computer engineering degree background. Knowing how to computer systems work on a very deep level, and I, it was just natural curiosity that kind of blossomed to something else and ended up, you know, at the very end, with Verizon flying all over the world, going to data centers and multiple countries and helping stand up equipment and infrastructure all here from the Midwest, from, you know, we'll say from, uh, you know, a little tech Wisconsin here.

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[00:03:12] Russell From: Yeah. And a lot of that was, I always had a little bit of, you know, that little bit of entrepreneurial fire, but. Going into it, like I never did it in, you know, a four Inc. Computer bootcamp coming out of, uh, UW of Madison. They have a lot more resources than they had back when I graduated. So, and I graduated during a very tough time during, uh, 2008.

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[00:03:29] Russell From: So it was a, you know, I had to kind of claw my way up through, uh, through the tech world. And what I did starting out was actually volunteering my time, uh, helping other, uh, mostly students and first time entrepreneurs. I donated a lot of my time. Started out in Milwaukee, so I was living in Milwaukee at the time.

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[00:03:46] Jacob Miller: Mm-hmm. 

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[00:03:47] Russell From: And I was just. Really spending a lot of time around Third Ward and, uh, offering my time as a mentor and helping really a lot of first time and new entrepreneurs, uh, take their idea and say, okay, let's take something raw and see is this a business? And from there, you know, did that with a couple different programs.

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[00:04:04] Russell From: Enjoyed my time there and that ended up, you know, turning into other various opportunities as well. After I did that for a bit, I kind of blossomed more into working with first time founders more directly and mentoring them one-on-one. Helping them if they needed to fundraise for their company and get off the ground.

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[00:04:22] Russell From: And that was all locally here, mostly in Milwaukee, but also in Madison as well. Uh, and my focus was really interesting because my background was hard tech, like it was telecom and, and then a bit of cybersecurity as well. So that's what kind of brought me to it. So during this whole time I was like, you know, I kind of got an itch to scratch.

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[00:04:39] Russell From: I wanna start my own thing as well. What should that be? And for a while I thought, well, maybe it's, you know, being like an ISP or doing some type of tech company. It took a while to refine that idea down and, and really, you know, I was in no rush to do it and a lot of the time I spent was finding the right co-founders.

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[00:04:54] Russell From: 'cause you know, you need all the help you can get and it's hard to find good people. So, very luck, you know, through, you know, a lot of luck of just staying persistent and open-minded and meeting people. I went to a lot of meetups. I did a lot of public speaking. I naturally started to run into other people who had, eventually I found people who had similar interests to mine.

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[00:05:14] Russell From: Some of 'em I found in person. Some of 'em are found virtually from just events and, and there's, there's, you know, so many ways to connect these days across the way too many discord channels. 

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[00:05:25] Jacob Miller: Mm-hmm. 

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[00:05:26] Russell From: And, and everything else that's out there now eventually met some really cool people and said, Hey, we've got an idea here to put something together that I think is really special.

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[00:05:34] Russell From: That solves a real problem that business nonprofits have even today. And, you know, I saw this back when I was working at Verizon. You know, there, there are areas, even today, cell phones just don't work. Like Southwestern Wisconsin, if you're a, if you're a big blue customer, you're gonna have trouble getting a signal in most, most, mm-hmm.

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[00:05:49] Russell From: Of most cities. And that's a big issue for, for tourism. And also helping nonprofits like job training centers, schools who just like I, they don't have the money to spend, you know, 80, a hundred grand or more on repeaters or what's called das systems. Basically allowing the signal to go through their building.

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[00:06:07] Russell From: So we're like, there's gotta be a better way. And found out, hey, wifi is the answer. From there, from my background working with carriers, it got to be very easy so that, you know, that's, you know, kind of the, the story and the journey of how I went from working a big corporate tech job to working with a great group of co-founders and putting together a Wisconsin based technology company that solves problems and then started getting some really exciting clients after that.

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[00:06:31] Russell From: And from there, it's just been exploding. The clients we have now are just, just completely incredible from where we started. 

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[00:06:37] Jacob Miller: Yeah, that's awesome. What I'm actually curious around, like what. What was the moment that you were, that you really realized that this could be a company, like, and actually bring it to life versus like, Hey, this is an interesting technology.

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[00:06:51] Jacob Miller: How do I apply this within this, the, the corporation I'm already existing in versus, you know, Hey, I'm gonna take this out as an entrepreneur. And like, 'cause like, it sounds like there's just a lot of infrastructure and things like that, but it sound, it sounds like. Because it, it is so hardware related.

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[00:07:07] Jacob Miller: That's why I was kind of curious like how, what were the steps that you kind of took or, or the moments and the steps, I guess, where it was like, Hey, I'm actually gonna like do this thing, I guess. 

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[00:07:17] Russell From: Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of it was putting together a team, you know, validating technology that it works, testing it out, working with different carriers there, and, you know, reading the history of this technology, this technology has been around for a decade and hardly anyone even knows it exists or pays any attention to it.

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[00:07:33] Russell From: And we're like, why? Why is that? You know, what was the history of it we found, you know. You know, back a decade ago, wifi wasn't nearly as good as it was today. Not as many carriers were participating in it that there are now, like now all the big top three carriers are using this technology. So that makes it easy.

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[00:07:49] Russell From: And also the ve the support amongst the different wifi vendors. Pretty, pretty poor decade ago we're now, it's pretty much every major OEM in the industry. That's, I would say that's enterprise grade or ISP grade supports it ably. So there is a lot of things that came together. That said, okay, this is the right time for it.

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[00:08:08] Russell From: It's just we need to do the hard work of really evangelizing this technology. And we tried a lot of different things to evangelize it. We tried, oh, we spent money on, on webinars, on outreach, on email lists, going through events, industry events that are out there. And before we finally kind of like cracked it and we're like, okay, now we figured out, you know, where are people gonna find out about this and start using this.

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[00:08:31] Russell From: And um, a big question in the beginning was, who is the ideal customer? Who needs better wifi, you know, better cellular signal over wifi using this technology. We're like, well, that's kind of everyone. I mean, who doesn't want perfect signal? And the the beauty of this is that the carriers pay for it. So you can do this at no cost to the, you know, to the actual organization that needs it, which is really amazing.

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[00:08:55] Russell From: We're like, why hasn't this been done already? And looking at the industry incumbents like Boingo. Uh, which is over at the, you know, runs the Milwaukee airport wifi. So you're like, oh, okay. So they, they, they charge a lot of fees and it's expensive and slow, and they work with very large, you know, clients.

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[00:09:12] Russell From: That's how it works there. But their cost structure is so high, you know, it doesn't really scale down market. And we're like, oh. So when we go to now what they would consider small would be, I would consider a Fortune 500 company, but they only work with the biggest of the big, everybody else is kind of.

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[00:09:26] Russell From: Out there to figure it out. And if an organization wants to do this on their own, you gotta find somebody who knows the industry and has the patience to spend two years negotiating a contract with each of the carriers. 

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[00:09:36] Jacob Miller: Mm-hmm. 

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[00:09:36] Russell From: And we're like, okay. That's why it stalled. That's why it's at, where it's at.

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[00:09:40] Russell From: What is kind of the secret to put this all together? So gotten, you know, got extremely engaged with the, with the. Industry itself. So the Wireless Broadband Alliance are called WBA for short runs all the technical standards for this technology and is kinda the bridge between the major carriers all over the world.

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[00:09:58] Russell From: So the carriers we all know and love and the actual kind of organizations and manufacturers that are producing the equipment and the companies, we actually want to use this service kind of working together. So it's kind of, that's the industry group. And understanding that, you know, that to me, made, made, you know, 'cause I came from Telecom Stream.

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[00:10:14] Russell From: I'm like, this makes complete sense to me how this all works and why we're at where we're at. You know, you know, but why isn't everyone using this? So we're like, okay, that's what's missing. We've got a product market fit, we've got the technology we have now, it's matured to the point where it's very easy to use.

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[00:10:29] Russell From: Since they've, they've pushed out what they call carrier profiles on a cell phones. So now phones, they basically, when they see an SSID. The SSID actually says, you know, stuff like, Hey, I'm carrier A, carrier B, carrier C uh, they actually see it right through the air, kind of roughly like a, a cell site does, but doing it over wifi.

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[00:10:48] Russell From: So we're like, oh, okay. So that's how it works. So now it's automatic, it's seamless. There's no pop-ups, there's no ads. It's a, you know, they kind of, the industry group kind of made sure it was a clean experience. They didn't want this to turn into another, yeah, another way to force ads on people to get connectivity.

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[00:11:03] Russell From: So that's where like, okay, that puts together after, you know, the technology made complete sense, the market paid sense, it was putting together the team. So put together, you know, someone from the ISP. Industry who knew a lot about how this works and wide background. You know, I had a background in technology and some background in sales as well, so that worked out there.

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[00:11:23] Russell From: Then the core, you know, really getting down to like our, you know, what the CTO would handle core infrastructure, the servers, and putting together dashboards as well. So saying, alright, when somebody onboards with us, they need a dashboard. They need to see metrics, they need to be able to manage this, these networks themselves and onboard themselves make that very easy.

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[00:11:42] Russell From: And we looked at what other people had tried in the past and we saw, like, they just stopped innovating like five years ago and they said, this is good enough and we're, we're not gonna innovate anymore. It's good enough. We've talked to people who work with them, they'd all have the same complaints. So like it looks like they haven't innovated the interface.

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[00:11:59] Russell From: You know, it looks like something from a decade ago or 20 years ago. You know, with a lot of 'em, there's fees and they're slow, and everything's expensive. There's fees for every access point. There's training fees, there's other fees. We're like, we don't, we're sick of fees, you know? And yeah, we just want somebody who's easy to work with.

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[00:12:14] Russell From: Also, we want somebody we can pick up the phone and talk to. Uh, we don't wanna deal with like, you know, Google level support, where you send an email and you hear something back weeks or months later. But like when you run a business, you know, that isn't really, uh, you need a higher level of service and support.

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[00:12:29] Russell From: So that, that really is what well allowed us to put together an MVP that worked really well. And, and we did a little experimentation, was like we went straight there. Like a lot of startups, you had to start out and experiment a little bit. So 

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[00:12:40] Jacob Miller: yeah, 

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[00:12:41] Russell From: started out doing something, you know, before we, we focused on really providing the service over wifi.

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[00:12:47] Russell From: We were actually putting up cellular radios all across the country, so including Madison and Milwaukee. We put up, you know, big clusters. We spent, you know, a lot of money putting up radios and selling those to the carriers. And that, that was a lot of work. That's really what got us started, is building that network with local partners, uh, throughout the country, but here in Wisconsin as well.

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[00:13:08] Russell From: So Wisconsin was kind of a hotbed of, uh, what they called CBRS cellular technology. So cell phones, people were driving to downtown Milwaukee and jumping on these cell sites and didn't even know that it was running on, you know, something, you know, me and me and the other co-founders had put up. So we had a lot of fun doing that.

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[00:13:25] Russell From: But that was complex. 'cause you have to do, you have to do FCC registration with those, obviously you have to have reliable backhaul, you gotta have a lot of site maintenance. And also those radios, while they were, you know, expensive and complex for somebody new, the industry, they, they weren't, you know, nearly as powerful as what you see on the big, big cell sites that are out there.

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[00:13:45] Russell From: Like when I worked at Verizon Wireless, we used, you know, extremely expensive Ericsson radios. Those would. Easily cost over a hundred thousand dollars. Where, you know, since then the industry's gotten a lot more competitive and the standards have opened up to where anyone can put up, you know, a 4G radio over CBRS.

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[00:14:01] Russell From: So that's the Citizens Band radio spectrum. And once you get through the registration, and of course the fees for that, to get that up and running, you have to go through certification process to make sure you're allowed to put those up. After that it was really, you know, working with Carrie say, is this what you want?

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[00:14:17] Russell From: And they, they, they kinda experimented with it and they said it was kind of nice, but. Long term we thought, man, let's just stick with, with doing cellular over wifi. Let's, you know, and that's kind of a very high level generic term for it. The actual term for technology is called PassPoint. And it allows you to work with the big carriers we all know and love and have their phones automatically jump on.

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[00:14:40] Russell From: And it turned out that that solved a lot of, a lot of issues coming up because we found that pretty much everybody complains about cellular coverage. In their business, especially traveling. Like, why don't, you know, it's been, we're, we're not talking about, you know, 5G now. And now, you know, thanks to starlink, you know, we've got satellite coverage coming in that's, you know, all over the place.

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[00:15:00] Russell From: It might be low bandwidth, but at least it's available everywhere as long as you've got a fairly clear view of the sky. And we just found like, well, that doesn't help somebody in the, in, at a restaurant. You know, that's, that's, you know, deep below ground level that can't get any signal. But we can put wifi up there quickly, affordably, reliably with the amount of quality that the carriers want.

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[00:15:20] Russell From: 'cause that's what they care about. They wanna reduce churn. That's why they're paying for all this type of integration work to be done. And they'll work with like the biggest partners. So you know, they'll work with, you know, like the federal government and the military. But telling, you know, asking them, Hey, can you work at, you know, maybe work at the local Chick-fil-A?

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[00:15:38] Russell From: They might not. They might be like, that's too much work for us. So that's where they work with partners, that's where we can, and like we know the language, we know the culture, we know the technology. This is something easy to set up. It's more of evangelizing how this works here. And it's pretty amazing now that we've grown from, you know, very, very small humble beginnings to now 1200 locations all over the world.

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[00:16:02] Russell From: Over 10,000 wifi radios up and running every day. A tremendous amount of traffic. We see our traffic frequently doubling. And you know, not only working with a lot of well-known institutions here in Wisconsin, like Dane County Airport, has been a, a very long, uh, client to help improve connectivity for travelers.

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[00:16:21] Russell From: So if somebody travels through the Dane County Airport, they're likely using this. They're jumping on the wifi without even knowing it. And it's nice 'cause it shows like the carrier name there. So like, oh, that, that's me. Okay. That's, you know, that looks safe, but you might be going to a museum, you might be going to a children's museum, you might be going to a job training center, and we power all that.

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[00:16:41] Russell From: Also, we're starting to get more and more corporate headquarters coming in and saying, I want this for our bank or our credit union. And also for all of our branch offices. We're seeing more and more of that coming in. 'cause you're like, well, I can turn this on and it's gonna cost me very little. There's just some operational costs in getting it set up, but.

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[00:16:59] Russell From: That's a heck of a lot cheaper than spending a hundred grand just for one building, you know, just to get started. Yeah. And then if we have dozens of branch offices, we're like, oh, the costs just explode. That's really kind of amazing that it just works and it's automatic. So we spent a lot of time, you know, educating and evangelizing it that's out there.

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[00:17:17] Russell From: And we're very lucky to have, you know, carriers that are pushing this and are paying us to say, yeah, help, help me get this up and running. So they're, you know, for commercial locations, you know, there can be a. Uh, a revenue stream that's attached to it. That makes sense. But you know, most of the time people are like, I just want my phone to work.

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[00:17:33] Russell From: That's all I care about. All this other stuff about standards and tech and carriers I don't really care about. That's just details. At the end of the day, I just want my cell phone to work. That was a big focus far us too, that differentiated us from a lot of other people in the industry. From the beginning we said we wanna work with everybody.

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[00:17:49] Russell From: Even the carriers who didn't wanna pay us. In the beginning we said, we'll still help you fix your network and make your customers happy, but down the road we're gonna negotiate with you. And that worked out very well. And that's how you know today we're at 258 carriers all over the world. It's not just the us it's not just North America, south America, it's a lot of countries overseas in Europe and Asia that participate in this.

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[00:18:10] Russell From: And that's actually what led to us getting a, a recent industry award just for that work of saying, we're just trying to get better connectivity. 

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[00:18:19] Jacob Miller: Yeah. W what is it about this approach that carriers are willing to pay for it? Is it because their quality of service is better? Like, you know, a customer has a clear connection more often and that keeps them as, as a customer on, on contract?

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[00:18:33] Jacob Miller: Is that why they're willing to pay for the connectivity like this? 

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[00:18:36] Russell From: Yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting because every carrier, you can, not, same technology has a different use for it. The larger carriers tend to do it to reduce churn, and when the, when the phones connect to the, these wifi SSIDs that we, we help people set up on their own hardware and they don't have to install anything, there's no license.

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[00:18:54] Russell From: That's very straightforward to set it up. Unlike Meraki or Aruba, you know, or ubiquity, if they're a, you know, a smaller, you know, or a smaller medium business for the carrier's benefit is churn. They're trying to have a high quality. Seamless experience for their customers without losing 'em to the other carriers.

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[00:19:12] Russell From: So that's, they'd say, well, even though I get, I might have to pay for this. It's better off to pay for something decent than have a slow and frustrated customer. Yeah. So that, that's how most of 'em view it. Some of 'em are a little more commercial focused for like, well, I just want this for like my highest paying.

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[00:19:28] Russell From: Uh, you know, our customers, we see that sometimes and others are strictly cost savings. We see that a lot with international carriers in, in the US to where, hey, I can pay, you know, one of the domestic carriers, you know, twice as much, or I can pay you half. And that saves me money as long as the experience is.

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[00:19:46] Russell From: Is a good one. Meaning there's it, the speed is acceptable, the latency is acceptable, the service characteristics work out and we feed those live. So while while the cell phones connect, we can't see any of the data. We have no idea who it is. It's all anonymized. But we do report like, what's the signal strength, what's, you know, quality metrics around the connection.

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[00:20:03] Russell From: And that's what they use in real time. 'cause really when these phones connect. Like the carrier knows, how's the phone doing? What's the signal strength? Where is it at? And in most cases where we see a, a lot of connections coming in, it's where the phones are like, this is a dead zone. I'm in either a, you know, a metal glass building underground, or I'm in a rural area that is very poor coverage on my carrier.

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[00:20:24] Russell From: Yeah. 

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[00:20:24] Jacob Miller: You know, 

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[00:20:25] Russell From: this is a way better experience. 

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[00:20:27] Jacob Miller: Yeah. How does wi, how does wifi work in a rural setting? Is it, you're just, they're just different types of towers that you're installing? Like how does that, how does that work? Because obviously, like if you're in a building, there's a wifi network that's preexisting that you're able to leverage, it sounds like.

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[00:20:41] Jacob Miller: But in a rural setting, how does that work? How does that d. 

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[00:20:44] Russell From: Yeah, I mean, we use, we do both indoor and outdoor wifi. It's the same thing. Same thing for rural areas. It's just the, it's just, most of the time we're just adding another SSID to their existing wifi, so it's called a, a Hotspot 2.0 or PassPoint are the two terms where it's the same technology underneath.

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[00:21:01] Russell From: So. For rural areas, there's, you know, you can do more outdoor coverage and that makes sense. Like talking to, talking to people in, in rural towns in Wisconsin for tourism is very important. Sometimes it's even for government buildings. Just people like can't use their phone indoors. Mm-hmm. And they're like, well this fixes that issue quickly and affordably.

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[00:21:21] Russell From: To get that done versus buying or buying, you know, a dedicated set of equipment that's out there, which is probably, you know, the most extreme way you could go, but it's also the most expensive way you could go. What we found a lot, especially with schools, so a lot of schools use a carrier called the FirstNet that came out during COVID.

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[00:21:38] Russell From: They, they gave out like hotspots so they could have either free or, or extremely affordable service. You also see this with emergency services, so police and fire, you, FirstNet. And that's a, a carrier that we've supported, you know, since the beginning. So now they're like, wow, all of our hotspots work, and if they don't work, you know, we can put up, we can either put up an access point or find a way to help help this if they have better connectivity.

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[00:22:02] Russell From: So that's been a part of it. And that's the beauty of, of what we do is that, you know, you can install new, new wifi aps and we've recommended a list of vendors and partners that we work with, but often your existing equipment. As long as it's recent, which is usually in the last five years, it's perfectly usable.

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[00:22:20] Russell From: There's no reason to buy anything. 

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[00:22:22] Jacob Miller: Yeah. I want to go into how these wifi networks can be a revenue stream for like a business, a school, or a nonprofit. Like how does that, how does that work? I don't understand. Like, is it, is it date selling data? Like what, what's happening there? Yeah. Like what? 

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[00:22:37] Russell From: Yeah, so it depends on who it is too.

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[00:22:39] Russell From: Like, because how much you charge has an effect on how much traffic you get. So that's why we usually say it's better for commercial entities. Say, Hey, if you charge for this traffic, you are gonna get a lower acceptance rate, meaning the phones they're attending, they're gonna, they're gonna put more scrutiny on it.

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[00:22:54] Russell From: It's not gonna be everybody. They're, they're never gonna let everybody jump on you, charge 'em for it. But we also have, uh, direct contracts with carriers as well to where, Hey, if we don't charge you, can you get us like, pretty much at a hundred percent acceptance? And they're like, yeah, we can do that. So that, that's really nice too.

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[00:23:12] Russell From: So that's better for like schools and nonprofits, government, um, to really help them out. 'cause they, they want it to work for everybody and they're, they're not interested in the revenue. Mm-hmm. We see it a lot too, with a lot of, a lot of enterprise clients as well. Like, they don't care. Like even if we gave 'em the revenue, it's like one missed text message or one missed phone call could be worth what they'd make in a month.

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[00:23:34] Russell From: So that could be tens of thousands right there. Just in just an executive not able to have connectivity or 30 40 employees who they can't, you know, reliably get ahold of outside of, you know, their laptop and their phone, you know, their phone messenger, what, you know, assuming they're on wifi here, but they want text messages to work.

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[00:23:54] Russell From: They want phone calls to work more reliably than they are currently. So that's where it comes in. So the monetization comes in for the data. So basically it's, it's performance based as long as it's a high quality connection. They, based on the amount of data, of course, they audit that and they go through a, a quality process, and then they, they do payout monthly.

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[00:24:12] Russell From: And with, with commercial partners, we do pay them, then we then share that revenue with them if it, if it makes sense. It's a very large install. So we see that a lot with franchisees. We see it a lot with like fast food, restaurants, entertainment venues. It makes a lot of sense there. Bars, restaurants that are busy.

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[00:24:30] Russell From: You have a lot of people who are sitting for a long time who are typically on their phone for extended amount of time, like at Lu Stop, you know, could make sense as well if they wanted to monetize it or nearby. But a lot of restaurants, a lot of hotels, motels too. 'cause people are usually at, you know, when they come home, when they're, you know, coming back from, you know, an event for business travel, they're hitting their phones pretty hard.

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[00:24:49] Russell From: And we see a lot from hotels and motels as well. Malls is another big one. Malls a lot of traffic from them. And it makes sense because when people have better connectivity on their phone, what we've seen in a couple studies is that the, they tend to spend more time on their phone when it's more reliable and they have faster speeds.

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[00:25:07] Russell From: And what we see is if you're a business owner, that's good. 'cause that usually means wherever, wherever they're at, they're gonna be there longer. Means, so for like restaurants, it typically means they're gonna order maybe just one more item. They just order one more drink. What is that worth to you? Even if it's only, you know, one out of every 10, how much would that increase your revenue?

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[00:25:27] Russell From: So that, that makes it for them a, a really, you know, a really easy set of calculus to make, especially when there's no, there's no upfront equipment cost, and our engineers will jump on a call or even fly in if they need to. To configure it, which is typically anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes to get this configured on existing equipment.

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[00:25:46] Russell From: Um, 'cause you don't have to install anything. You don't have to pay any fees, there's no licensing needed. So it's more of just walking them through, getting 'em on our servers, getting their user account set up, and then teaching 'em, Hey, here's your dashboard. Here's where you see the traffic and the metrics and how you're doing over time.

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[00:26:01] Russell From: Here's how you add more locations to, to light this up. You know, or if you do a refresh w equipment, here's how you onboard that equipment. And that's pretty easy. So. Yeah, this has been a big, big boost for, you know, quite a few different industries, but w what we really try to focus on is supporting the, the most carriers that are out there.

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[00:26:19] Russell From: So right now we're, we're at 258 and making it so that this works with everybody as much as possible all over the world. We focus on that first, and then monetizing is kinda second for clients who see that, see that revenue stream as being lucrative. Offsetting some of the costs of equipment. We see that now for upgrades with some clients.

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[00:26:39] Russell From: They're using this to just, Hey, now our wifi equipment kind of pays for itself. And we're like, well, that's fantastic. So when they do a refresh every three to five years, now that's not a cost center anymore. It's either neutral or it's actually a revenue driver, which is fantastic. 

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[00:26:53] Jacob Miller: Yeah, that's interesting.

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[00:26:54] Jacob Miller: Yeah. I never thought about it from like, Hey, if, if there's better connection, you know, they, if they're, if they're ab actually able to call or text that friend to show up for that dinner gathering or whatever, Hey, I'm hanging out, having a beer, come join me. Like, I never thought about the revenue generation that way.

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[00:27:10] Jacob Miller: My thought was like, here's the data, here's the, the data we can sell to this firm or that firm, or for advertising use and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, like the, the real world impact of revenue is interesting. Never really thought about it that way. Interesting. Today's episode is brought to you by headway, a digital product agency based in Wisconsin.

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[00:27:29] Jacob Miller: Do you need to design and build a world class user experience for your software, but feeling like you just can't get there on your own? That's where headway comes in. We're the folks who help ambitious startups and enterprise teams bring their product ideas to life through design, development and product strategy.

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[00:27:46] Jacob Miller: We don't just give you user interface designs and leave you to figure out the rest. We work with you. And your target customers to create beautiful user experiences, build scalable design systems, and provide Silicon Valley level talent to get it done right the first time. Whether you're launching a new software or just looking to add features, we've got your back.

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[00:28:07] Jacob Miller: We've worked with startups in industries like Logistics, healthcare, FinTech, and EdTech, helping them solve their biggest software challenges. And here's the thing, no matter how complex your product is, we can help you gain clarity and get the job done together. We're so confident that we'll be the right fit, that we offer a 50% money back guarantee.

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[00:28:30] Jacob Miller: If you don't think we're working 

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[00:28:31] Russell From: 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. 

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[00:28:41] Jacob Miller: I do wanna talk about blockchain 'cause it, blockchain is a topic I still feel like I'm learning a lot about. And how does it apply to what you're doing?

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[00:28:48] Jacob Miller: Maybe give an example of maybe how it's worked or it's working at the, at the Dane County Airport and how it applies there. Yeah. 

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[00:28:55] Russell From: Yeah. So what we've found is that there's been a tremendous amount of innovation in the sector. So the, the WBA that I mentioned earlier, we've been helping a lot of companies join them.

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[00:29:04] Russell From: Um, and kinda participate in this, in this ecosystem of, of wifi connectivity working with cellular carriers. So what, what that allowed us to do is we found that there were a couple new startups in the space who started aggressively using this technology. And since the carriers, you know, we still have to use this, this secure standard with them.

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[00:29:24] Russell From: That's really nice. 'cause now we have a shared secure link with them. What they've done is allowed blockchain to really accelerate kind of payments. And the efficiency of this even further than most people thought was even possible. So now when someone connects to one of these access points and it goes through one of these, we'll say these marketplaces that pay typically higher rates for a select amount of carriers.

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[00:29:47] Russell From: So they usually don't support anywhere near more than like 5, 7, 8 carriers. But for what they do support sometimes for commercial clients, it can, they can pay significantly more. So it makes a lot of sense and they also pay very quickly and very affordably. So typically the industry cash payments are very slow.

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[00:30:04] Russell From: There's a long audit process. The blockchain technology drastically sped that up and made that a lot easier. There are companies that sell like their own kind of expensive wifi you can buy and just put anywhere that you want. Where we've really focused on kind of the working with professional businesses one-on-one and kind of helping them hold their hand, working with their technical people and giving 'em that strong technical support to say, you control everything, you run, everything.

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[00:30:30] Russell From: Just plug us in, comes in. So blockchain has come in to really kinda accelerate really the payment space in that area, which I think is, is a huge opportunity for, for a lot of businesses who understand it and are comfortable with that technology. Well that's out there. So that, that really accelerated the growth of the industry.

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[00:30:47] Russell From: Um, and we've been a partner with several of those startups in the space and we also did consulting with several of them to help them grow that 'cause we, we built our complete technology stack from the bottom up. Every fellow technology we use, we built ourself. So a lot of them come in and don't have a background in the space that might be as, as deep and as hands-on.

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[00:31:05] Russell From: They might be a, a newer startup coming in. So we help a lot of 'em grow and I'm really happy to work with 'em. You know, that's kinda the other part is like we're, you know, we're a fast growing small company ourselves, but we have, we're now helping this ecosystem of other startups that work with us. Hmm.

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[00:31:20] Russell From: And we wanna help them grow too. Like some of 'em that work with are in other parts of the country, sometimes they're in other countries and we're helping them drastically grow very quickly and say, okay, this is how it works. You know, work with us. We'll kind of unlock it. Because even they deal with the tough part that anyone deals with.

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[00:31:36] Russell From: Like negotiating with carriers is very, very tough. Yes, patient. It takes a long time. We're like, work with us. We'll get you in agreement right away. We'll get you up and running right away. And then if you want to, and we're also very easy to work with. They want to go get a direct contract with a carrier and, and work with that for that carrier.

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[00:31:54] Russell From: That's fine. We don't do exclusivity. We try to pull lock people in. We're very easy to work with. Mm-hmm. So that's us kind of giving back to the industry our due bit. And I think that's really why we're seeing a lot of industry recognition. Because, uh, we've been giving back a lot to the standards bodies and recently, you know, we've, we got the award for the best to open roaming deployment in the world for 2025.

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[00:32:15] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Congrats man. That's awesome. 

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[00:32:17] Russell From: Yeah, and we we're up against some strict, I mean, we're up against like Cisco and the real big guys. 

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[00:32:22] Jacob Miller: Wow. 

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[00:32:22] Russell From: And we're able to beat. You know, humongous, well-known companies out there and get an industry award. And I think what really came down to is just that we're easy to work with and we focused on, like I said, not, it's not just, just about, you know, the, the revenue that comes in from it.

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[00:32:38] Russell From: It's about the experience for the customer. That should be your guiding light. Everything else comes from a good experience. If that's not. Driving what you're doing. If, if you're just doing this just for the money, that will only take you so far. You need to have the most support. You can be the easiest to work with.

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[00:32:54] Russell From: You need to have good tech support. We also have, you know, we've published over 200, you know, combinational videos and shorts on YouTube that show people how to configure this technology even if they don't work with us. We've published technical guide guides on our website on how to configure this even if you don't work with us.

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[00:33:10] Jacob Miller: Hmm. So, 

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[00:33:11] Russell From: and we're the only ones in the industry who do that. You go to anyone else? Like the wino, like good luck. They won't even pick up the phone. It 

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[00:33:18] Jacob Miller: is like gatekeeping. Yeah. 

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[00:33:19] Russell From: There's a lot of gatekeeping in the telecom industry. So we've just been coming in and just knocking down doors. And of course the industry loves that.

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[00:33:27] Russell From: You know, the industry standards bodies love that because we're helping taking a support load off of them. 'cause normally it falls on them. Yeah, a lot of companies, especially startups, asking 'em, how does this work? How do I configure this? And they get stuff from, you know, schools too and, and educational institutions, colleges.

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[00:33:44] Russell From: Like, I just wanna get this up and running and I'm just so confused. I don't understand the terminology or how this works. So we do video guides, we do written guides. And so like, here's exactly how it works. You could work with anyone in the industry, you can work with us as well, but we're gonna require it.

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[00:33:59] Russell From: We bring that down. So that's, that's really, you know, came up and Yeah. How we're getting, starting to get, you know, we got our first big industry award for open roaming, which is an international roaming standard that works with the carriers. So part of that 258 was a big part of us supporting that open roaming, which is a, another part of, of PassPoint hotspot to it auto that we support Lee.

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[00:34:20] Russell From: And you, you pretty much don't get that much revenue from that, but you work with so many more carriers and it's such a better experience. That's why we support it. 

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[00:34:29] Jacob Miller: Yeah. I love, what I love about part of your story is that, and I think this, this happens, there's a pattern of this happening that I've seen as I've talked with entrepreneurs, especially in Wisconsin and or in the Midwest, and I wish it happened more often and I don't know how to make that happen, but I love that you are a person that worked in an, in a specific industry and got a, a lot of experience and knowledge and understood.

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[00:34:51] Jacob Miller: Some of the things that were going on. So there's two things. Like one you saw a problem and and an opportunity, and you're like, oh, why is no one doing this? This is interesting. And then also. You kind of like had the tenacity to say, Hey, I'm gonna give it a shot. And then the other, the other part of it was you kind of had the knowledge and expertise to develop the right partnerships to actually execute on it because you were in the industry and like you were saying, like, Hey, it's really hard to get these partnerships to happen, these contracts to happen with telecom companies, but because you've been in it.

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[00:35:22] Jacob Miller: It was a little bit easier for you because you knew who to talk to, how to talk about it, what was valuable to them, and then how it actually could turn into a business model. So I That's super fascinating. So, so props to you for figuring that out. 'cause a lot of people that get into entrepreneurship there, there's some kind of barrier they hit 'cause maybe.

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[00:35:40] Jacob Miller: They didn't work in a certain industry, but they're like, oh, why doesn't this exist? I should do it. But they never worked in the industry or something. Or they think that what they do in their industry, they can apply to another one, and it's uphill battle the whole time because they don't have the right partnerships and the distribution to do it.

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[00:35:55] Jacob Miller: So I just, I, that's an observation. Do you have any thoughts on like how maybe, or maybe someone that is listening that works in a corporate, you know, like, like you did, what would you tell them if, if they're maybe. They're, they're in the shoes that you were in at the time where you're like, Hey, I see this thing, I see an opportunity, but no one's doing it.

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[00:36:13] Jacob Miller: Like, how do you, like, what would you tell them if you were back in those shoes again? 

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[00:36:17] Russell From: Yeah. Yeah. So from, from, you know, big corporate life, like Verizon's humongous company, over a hundred thousand employees international as well. I would say like stay, stay curious and don't get, don't get depressed or, or, you know, down that like other coworkers aren't like that.

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[00:36:33] Russell From: Most people don't have the bug. Uh, of, of wanting to, to risk, you know, everything or a lot to try something new. Most people don't have that. They, they, they want, you know, to be safe and secure and have something that's reliable and normal. So, I, you know, I'd say like your coworkers likely at, at most big companies are gonna have zero interest in your, your entrepreneur kind of ambitions.

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[00:36:56] Russell From: You've gotta have that drive within you to stay curious and stay open and put a lot of time and energy while you've got it. Into networking, meeting people, Googling, watching, you know, hours and hours, hundreds of hours of YouTube videos, Googling now, I mean, I didn't have AI back then. It would've helped me a lot if I would've had Sure, yeah.

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[00:37:16] Russell From: Had GPT and 

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[00:37:17] Jacob Miller: summarizing learnings. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. 

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[00:37:19] Russell From: It would've gotten some stuff wrong, but it would've been, it would've started me going from zero to something. It's a huge, it'd be a start, like, who's the standards body? Who are they working with? It would've gotten it right enough to send me in the right direction.

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[00:37:31] Jacob Miller: Exactly. 

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[00:37:32] Russell From: Oh yeah. That's what I usually say is like, stay curious and, and we've heard this, you know, many times people overestimate how, how much they can accomplish in a year, but drastically underestimate how much they can accomplish over five to 10. Slow, steady, continuous effort really pays off patients is a big thing.

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[00:37:50] Russell From: So I, I used to be a big fisherman growing up, especially middle school and high school. I, same, I grew up in northern Wisconsin up in the Crivets area. 

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[00:37:58] Jacob Miller: Oh, nice. I, I'm from Menominee, Michigan originally. So. Yeah, yeah, 

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[00:38:02] Russell From: yeah. It came off the High Falls flowage. So, so fishing every day was very normal 'cause there's water everywhere, but that was just very, you know, fishing, hunting, snowmobiling.

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[00:38:12] Russell From: It's just a part of life. Even going out mudding, it's a big part of the culture outside of there. Although, you know, since then, since, you know, since I went to college, I've been in Milwaukee and Madison pretty much the, the whole time, the big, you know what we used to call the big cities? 

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[00:38:25] Jacob Miller: Yeah, I know what you mean.

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[00:38:27] Russell From: You're like, now you're a city slicker. You're not driving a Ford. You know, a Ford or a Chevy, maybe a Jeep, you know? Sure, yeah. That was pretty much, pick your, you know, in high school, pick your side, Ford or Chevy. 

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[00:38:38] Jacob Miller: Yeah, exactly. 

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[00:38:39] Russell From: And then it's everything else. Yeah. 

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[00:38:41] Jacob Miller: Yeah. 

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[00:38:41] Russell From: Okay. A dodge, you know. All right. But, so this was, this was in, so that'd be my biggest piece of advice is be patient and just keep, keep at it.

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[00:38:50] Russell From: And there you will find communities that are into what you know, love the way the internet has grown over the last 30 years. You'll find people who have your interest. Eventually if you just keep plugging at it. Mm-hmm. And if you get stuck, noodle on it for a bit and move on. I mean, this was not my first idea.

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[00:39:08] Russell From: This has not been my first startup. This was not the first, you know, business I thought I had. I thought I'd be my first. I think my very first idea was like a computer repair shop basically. Hmm. Like mobile computer repair. I thought that Oh, 

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[00:39:19] Jacob Miller: interesting. A 

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[00:39:20] Russell From: cool idea. And that went nowhere, you know, for, for many different reasons.

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[00:39:25] Russell From: But I, you know, in, in middle school, I worked at a computer repair shop. So to me, this, this made sense. So I was like, oh, yeah, I used to run a little branch office for a little, i little ISP. This seemed easy. Little startup costs, you know, it's really knowledge based, things like that. But, and I said, you know, even before going on to wifi technology, we, we tried it, we did it the really hard way with cellular radios.

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[00:39:46] Russell From: I mean, I was up there on the roof with Var, like the old, it's funny, the old cell sites I worked with when I worked at Verizon Wireless. I was on those same sites on the same rooftop putting up, you know, my little radio next to their big radios and, and uh, you know, build 'em for, for using it. And I was like, this is crazy.

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[00:40:03] Russell From: You know, it all kind of comes around in ways you don't expect. So patience, you know, pays off and just continuous effort focus and the, the startup community here is very helpful. Even though they may not be experts in exactly what you're doing, the, the, the essential skills that you need to have around bookkeeping, accounting, marketing, advertising, positioning, budgeting, and really helping you.

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[00:40:26] Russell From: You know, the biggest thing when I was starting is how to communicate what we're doing. We, we did so many horrible pitches when we started. People had no idea what we were talking about. Yeah. You know, so they're like, what are you doing? You know, they'd be like, oh, we're putting radios on rooftops. Like, are you allowed to do that?

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[00:40:42] Russell From: Yeah, we register with the FCC. Like, but why would they, why would carriers do it? Well, 'cause it saves 'em money. But though they have their own towers. Yeah, they do. So yeah. Take 'em outta this journey. You're like, no, there's a specific niche where it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Um, let's try, you know, and trying this out and, you know, big companies experiment, experiment too on new things and sometimes work with, with partners to kinda.

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[00:41:03] Russell From: You know, flesh that model out and now what, what tends to happen, you know, is like you have some level of success and then you end up never really leaving the community just being active in your own way. You have so many examples of incredible businesses started in Wisconsin and now a lot of 'em give back as angel investors or you know, join different investment groups here in Wisconsin.

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[00:41:25] Russell From: How the next generation kind of rise up. There's lots of boot camps. We've been invited to participate in them. But you know, if we, we kinda speed ran through it. 'cause we're like, hey, we've already got the customer. We already know what the clients are. We already got our pitch. It's really now at this point, finding the right kind of partnerships to scale up.

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[00:41:43] Russell From: Yeah. And dealing with those, those challenges, going from MVP to scaling up, seeing how far you can scale up and how quickly you can grow. And you know, really at that point, like what do you need to, to kind of hit those types of metrics and goals to grow the business. To the point where, you know, it's something that people are like, oh.

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[00:42:00] Russell From: Yeah, that was a Wisconsin startup. That's incredible. I had no idea. 

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[00:42:04] Jacob Miller: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually wanna talk about two things is the first one is about just funding, and then the other one would be about how you scaled. So with the funding, it, because you, it sounds like you've had an, an entrepreneurial experience for a while, but with, with WayFi, like how did you go about getting funding to actually execute and like, you know.

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[00:42:22] Jacob Miller: Build those first towers, those little smaller units that you install and stuff like that. Like what, what was that experience like? 

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[00:42:28] Russell From: So when we first started in the very beginning with that, we did kind of a traditional startup. So back then we, we also had a different name. We changed it to Wi-Fi, just to kinda go with, along with our wifi shift for this.

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[00:42:39] Russell From: So it was very traditional startup, did a seed round, raised $2 million. Went through, you know, and proved the concept. And that was a more of a traditional kind of startup where you're doing some early fundraising and you're kind of racing to go, you know, racing through your series and then maybe an IPO or acquisition down the road.

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[00:42:56] Russell From: Uh, that's where it started, but. With that. You know, after we went through kind of a cellular radios, we actually reinvented the complete business and now none of that applies at all. None of those earlier investors are no longer a, a part of it now. Now we're a hundred percent private and self-funded.

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[00:43:14] Russell From: We're bootstrap, you know, Ron and profitable you could say on the inside. So our cash flows, our funding, our, we're internally hold right now we don't have any debt. 

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[00:43:22] Jacob Miller: That's amazing. 

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[00:43:23] Russell From: And we, we all the, you know, founders and employees are just paid off of what we earn from, from what the carriers pay. 

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[00:43:30] Jacob Miller: Yeah.

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[00:43:30] Jacob Miller: The, the, the first, uh, uh, funding that you did get though, two through that experimental phase, where did you get it from? Like who did you get it from? 

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[00:43:38] Russell From: Those were for, we'll say, niche telecom VCs. 

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[00:43:42] Jacob Miller: Okay, interesting. Okay. They weren't located in Wisconsin? No, 

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[00:43:46] Russell From: no. We actually met with quite a few investors in Wisconsin.

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[00:43:49] Russell From: Um, the ones who actually had the most interest were unfortunately from Minneapolis. 

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[00:43:53] Jacob Miller: Okay. 

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[00:43:53] Russell From: We did talk to many, many potential investors in Wisconsin and continue to stay friendly with them, but we actually found that it was much easier to raise from the traditional centers. New York, you know, west Coast and East coast Investors were much easier to raise from.

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[00:44:07] Jacob Miller: Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Now I wanna go into the, the scaling part. 'cause it sounds like your trajectory has been pretty incredible. Yeah. And your team size has grown quite a bit. Talk a talk about that. Like, it sounds like you've kind of been, been in this type of world for a while and understand like what it takes to do that, but, and you have a co-founder I believe in, in Tucson, right?

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[00:44:29] Jacob Miller: We've got, 

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[00:44:29] Russell From: we've got a couple of cofo. The, the core team is a set of co-founders. Yep. And then after that we have, we, we basically, and this is mostly on the sales force, then it's mostly a set of comi, commission based reps, uh, who then our former lead, mostly of the other team. And then for. One-off installations and things like that.

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[00:44:47] Russell From: We have a variety of, of external partners we contract with. Like, they're like, Hey, we wanna refresh all our equipment. Then you go ahead and we contract with them. 

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[00:44:56] Jacob Miller: Okay. Okay. So like, like full-time employees, like what does that look like right now versus contractors and stuff? 

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[00:45:02] Russell From: Yeah, it, it's, it'd be probably about, you know, as far as employees slash co-founders slash partners, we're about half a dozen.

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[00:45:09] Russell From: And then it's about the same amount who are basically. For a better word, commission sales reps. Yeah. 

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[00:45:16] Jacob Miller: Okay. Okay, gotcha. And 

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[00:45:17] Russell From: then from there, third party partners, you know, it's about two of 'em, depending on where they're at in the country and the work we need. Yeah. 

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[00:45:23] Jacob Miller: Got it. Yeah, so I would imagine, based on location, 'cause obviously you're, you're doing installations and, and integrations in multiple continents it sounds like.

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[00:45:31] Jacob Miller: So at that point you're leveraging contractors and partners in those places so you don't have to send your team there or do like, you know, remote, remote work, so to speak. Because it sounds like they have to be like boots on the ground for that kind of stuff. 

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[00:45:42] Russell From: Yeah. One, typically one of the partners will.

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[00:45:44] Russell From: So we have somebody who's an expert in that type of work. Sure. So he'll lead that. He'll be, you know, the, the project lead and he'll come on site and it's kind of the field and installation lead and do that with them and, and handle that person. And then depending on where it's in the country, like we did a big installation project in New York as part of Central Park and that for that we contracted with a local installer.

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[00:46:05] Russell From: 'cause it just made more sense. 

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[00:46:06] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. What has been like the most exciting kind of project or client to get? And, and maybe for personal reasons or maybe for business reasons, I'm kind of curious. 

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[00:46:17] Russell From: So, like, the most gratifying one actually didn't make the most money, but it was the most gratifying, I would say, actually when we first put up cellular radios in downtown Madison.

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[00:46:27] Russell From: Hmm. And my, my cell phone, you know, I had a Verizon cell phone lit up and started using it. So that was the most gratifying seeing it work end to end, it all gonna come around that that was coming in, that was, you know, kinda the most personally kind of fulfilling moment. You're like, this all works. This is incredible.

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[00:46:44] Russell From: Yeah. Like my, my iPhone just jumped on here and started, just jumped on like it was any other carrier and I was like, this is incredible. This all actually works. So that, that was personally gratifying for me. Um, and for, and you know, for some similar partners as well. Coming in more recently, what's been gratifying is seeing it kind of take root and spread on its own.

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[00:47:06] Russell From: Our approach to the industry has been different from most because we aggressively partner with the wifi manufacturers. 

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[00:47:12] Jacob Miller: Hmm. 

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[00:47:12] Russell From: And we find that we're trying to help them grow and offer, again, we're all trying to do the same thing. Yeah. Offer incredible value and connectivity to our clients. We should just work together to make it easy.

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[00:47:22] Russell From: Why is it, why are we making it hard? Or 15, 25 clicks for something that could be two clicks. So a lot of that is working with product managers and saying that's just, here's an example of how it works with this manufacturer. Why don't you know why? Why doesn't everybody else do this too? And that coming in.

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[00:47:38] Russell From: So lately it's been the incredible, you know, new places we've gotten. So now we have quite a few locations on the Las Vegas strip. So quite a few well-known casinos have now joined on, which is incredible. Didn't expect us to get that this soon, this quickly, to work with types of partners. We've also had multiple theme parks on both, uh, both the universal side and the Disney side now sign up as well as other theme parks come in.

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[00:48:03] Russell From: So theme parks on both the west and the East Coast kind of come in. So that has been pretty amazing too. Malls too. So I'm, I'm one thing I'm 'cause here, uh, most people have been to like the Schaumburg Mall, uh, or in Chicago. They're, they've been live by service for quite some time. And just, I, I remember when I, I went there so many times over the years when I worked at Verizon Wireless.

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[00:48:23] Russell From: They have a big office right there next to the Schaumburg Mall. So I'd be over there regularly for lunch. And now you go in there and you're like, now you're like, when you see your own service there and everyone walking around, it's just working. You're like, this is kind of crazy. You're like, it's, it's that whole thing back again.

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[00:48:39] Russell From: Of like, wow, it all works. End to end. And, and yeah, and we've got a long way to go too. Like we're, we're big for our niche, like at, at this point, but we wanna get so much like, we're like, there's no reason every small business in Wisconsin, every nonprofit doesn't use this. From our point of view, if you're having any, if anyone's having problems with, you know, cell phone, dead spots.

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[00:49:01] Russell From: Just turn this on. You don't have to buy anything. And we'll even, we even started a program, we started with the local Chamber of Commerce. We'll even give the equipment to them at no cost. Wow. Like to a small business, we'll say, we'll give you an ap. Like if they go to our website, you know, we call it the Coverage Across America program.

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[00:49:18] Russell From: It's not just here in, in Wisconsin, but this is where we've got, you know, the most local partners where say, we'll just give it to you. Like you can just have it, you, you know, just all it needs is internet and power. That's it. It's plug and play. If we ask, if we give it to you, just please use it. That's all we ask.

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[00:49:32] Jacob Miller: Yeah, yeah, 

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[00:49:34] Russell From: yeah. Because there is, there's a cost to this hardware. There's a cost to process it, ship it, maintain it, et cetera. There are hard costs to it, but we will provide it if that's something, and we'd actually like that to be a kit for all small businesses in Wisconsin. We've also talked to some of the, some of the, both, both sides of the political parties, so both Republicans and Democrats, and we said, Hey, for like events and for voting, we will provide the equipment if we just plug it in.

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[00:49:57] Russell From: For all your events and we're, you know, we're politically neutral. We're just trying to, again, help people communicate. 

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[00:50:03] Jacob Miller: Yeah. 

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[00:50:04] Russell From: With this. So that's, and we even flew out to Washington dc we talked to a couple of our, you know, talked to Wisconsin Senator about this and about this initiative, and they were just floored that number one, we're doing all this and no one ever told them.

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[00:50:17] Russell From: And number two, like there's this blockchain component to it too. They're like, what? You gotta be kidding me. What? 

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[00:50:22] Jacob Miller: Mm-hmm. 

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[00:50:23] Russell From: You're telling me that you're doing all this stuff with telecom and phones, jumping onto wifi, fixing coverage issues, and you're not charging people, and then because the couriers are paying you, and then on top of this, you're giving people equipment if they ask for it.

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[00:50:34] Russell From: Like Yeah. They're like, yep. They're like, so a lot of it has been just kind of getting the, getting the word out. About that. So that, that's been, you know, that's kind of been the, the points where I've been the most, the most fulfilled. But outside of that day to day, it's working with the team, working with the partners.

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[00:50:50] Russell From: You gotta, with a startup like you, you live and die by your team. Mm-hmm. And the people, especially early employees, and they're just a amazing, through thick and thin, they're with you. And whatever the problem is, like we've had, you know, like all startups, we've had setbacks, we've had, you know, things happen, partnerships change unexpectedly or sure prayers come in with some last minute request or things, you know, something break.

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[00:51:13] Russell From: You know that all that stuff happens, you know, coming into this 'cause you're moving very quickly and as long as you've got solid people and you, you really enjoy working together, you can get through just, just anything. It doesn't matter what it is, you can just get through it. That's coming up, and we're kind of a special brand of that now, being a private, basically bootstrap startup.

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[00:51:33] Jacob Miller: Yeah. That's awesome. I, I just wanna say congratulations on all the progress and, and all the impact that you're making. I love that. It's like, again, you're, you're local to me, you're local, local in Wisconsin, you know, making a difference, but you're having like this, this global impact on like, just again.

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[00:51:48] Jacob Miller: Giving people the opportunity to communicate better. Like it's just having connection is important. So what, like what's next? Like what's the, you know, you talked about hey, you kind of like, we're big for our niche, but we wanna keep going. What does that look like to you? 

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[00:52:03] Russell From: Yeah, yeah. So a lot of that has been growing internationally more so I'm seeing tremendous growth in demand in, in Mexico, south America.

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[00:52:11] Russell From: We're seeing a couple, we're talking to quite a few European carriers that we think are gonna spike up. So we're thinking that immediately the next phase is actually outside of the US, is where most of the growth is gonna happen in the long term. In the short term, we got a long way to go. In the us I mean, we've got over, I just looked at our dashboard here.

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[00:52:26] Russell From: We've got 10,610 wifi radios running live right now. I wanted to see that grow to a million, so. And we, and what we're finding is really partnerships working with really good wifi manufacturers. Like Alta Labs has been an incredible partner. We actually shared our industry award with them because we couldn't, they couldn't have won it without us, and we couldn't have won it without their help.

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[00:52:47] Russell From: So we, we show a real deep commitment to the partners that we work with that lasts through everything that we do. I think that's, that's where we're going is, is working through more. More partners. Definitely more reps will be coming in who are focusing. We just. Recently signed somebody out in Wisconsin who has 25 years of experience just working with organizations in Wisconsin and technology.

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[00:53:08] Russell From: Yeah. They're like, you're perfect. And he, he's in Milwaukee too, and I'm like, oh boy. 'cause like I've been working on Madison. For a couple years now and we're doing great in ma. I mean, I still a long way to go, but we've got airport franchises, we've got museums, we've got art venues, we've got nonprofits, like we've got, Madison is doing really well.

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[00:53:27] Russell From: Yeah, a lot of restaurants, we've got bars, we've got, you know, fitness centers, like all live here, all across the capitol. You can go around the capital square and you, you just be ping pong in different, different areas that are lit up with our service, which is kind of cool. Coming in at the, maybe one day, I, I'm waiting for the day when Washington DC is the same way.

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[00:53:44] Russell From: We actually do have some access points. When I was visiting Washington DC and, and checking it out, I actually drove around a little bit because we had like a couple small businesses that were using us. Like, you wanna check it out? You know, I was like, it's not the capital, you know, it's not right by the capital, but it's, you know, within a couple blocks.

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[00:53:59] Russell From: Sure. We're, we're getting there. That's it is growth and, and working through others. So, and we, you know, we see a lot of opportunities to give, um, you know, we, I haven't even really spent time lighting up all the incubators, different offices and all different startups just here in, in Madison and in Milwaukee.

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[00:54:17] Russell From: Donating this service to them as well and helping them with their headquarters that there's, there's, there's so much opportunity that's out there to grow. 

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[00:54:24] Jacob Miller: Yeah. I just wanna say again, thank you for your time and sharing your story. And thank you for being who you are. You just seem like a really good person and you care about people and you care about the bigger picture of things.

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[00:54:34] Jacob Miller: So just wanna say thank you and best of luck, um, your vision and moving forward. So. 

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[00:54:41] Russell From: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. We're, we're excited. I've been here a a long time. I got, I went to UUU Madison for my engineering degree, and then I went to Marquette for my MBA, so I've been been local for decades. 

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[00:54:51] Jacob Miller: Yeah.

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[00:54:52] Jacob Miller: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. 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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