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Russ: This is BusinessMakers WebXtra, a continuation of the radio interview with Scott Jones, serial entrepreneur and founder of Cha Cha. Now Scott, you just rattled off a bunch of cool companies and cool technologies. Is there like a single place, a website, that one could go and read about all of these?
Scott: Sure. You can go to scottajones.com. It talks about Power File, which is a Sequoia-founded company, huge amount of archival disc storage. We actually store it on optical disc. Some data. Government, medical, legal, businesses, you know don't need access to all of their data. In fact some statistics show that it's single digit fraction of the data that you access, typically, and the rest of the stuff, you just want it sitting out there in a safe place –
Russ: Right.
Scott: – where you can get to it.
Russ: Right.
Scott: The interesting thing about that technology is that some of the main competitors in that space – if they gave it away, we'd still be less expensive because, because the data sitting out there on an optical disc that's not spinning –
Russ: Right.
Scott: – so it doesn't need all the electrical –
Russ: Right.
Scott: – doesn't need the power. Doesn't need the air conditioning. It doesn't need the floor built out to support a buncha weight. It's a really interesting technology.
Russ: Now, let's make sure. scottajones.com – that's Scott with two T's –
Scott: Yes.
Russ: – ajones.com.
Scott: Yes.
Russ: Right, cool. Well you are such an innovator and entrepreneur, did this start happening to you at a very young age or what were you like as a young teenager?
Scott: Well, I wasn't technology savvy back then but I think I was very entrepreneurial even as I was growing up and through elementary school I was doing lemonade stands on the corner. In fact I'm partnering with Michael Holthouse here to do a lemonade day starting this year in Indianapolis and I built haunted houses and charged admission. I helped pick the fruit that would fall in the driveway and stain it – I would bring buckets back to my parents or my neighbors and sell –
Russ: And sell 'em.
Scott: Yeah. (Laughter) Sell them. So lots of different. Putt-putt courses, all sorts of things in the neighborhood.
Russ: Wait – were you a real good student or were you –
Scott: No.
Russ: – in the band? Not at all? Not at all.
(Laughter)
Scott: I, in fact, I used to get in trouble a lot. So my grades were good but my conduct – I think I got, at best, a C. And I was – it was often doing entrepreneurial things at school like rolling a penny down the aisle and you know, watching everybody try to tackle it.
Russ: Were you like a musician? Were you in the band or any sports or anything like that or –?
Scott: I wasn't very athletic until –
Russ: Student Council?
Scott: – well because I'm 6'6" now and –
Russ: Right.
Scott: – and back then – in junior high I was 6'3" so I was –
Russ: Wow.
Scott: – I was recruited to the team but, trust me, I was not a good player.
Russ: All right well before I let you go, let's imagine that we have an aspiring entrepreneur in the audience, what kind of advice would you give a very young person that's thinking, "My goodness, I wanna go out there and make it happen myself"?
Scott: My mantra at the business now and in previous business is fail fast. So everybody's gonna make mistakes. Everybody's gonna fail on things but just notice it quickly and usually a failure is not a complete failure. So as I was talking about with the Cha Cha story – you know, we were online and we did a buncha good things like build out our guide network and merge human intelligence with technology – but it turned out we were pointed in the wrong direction for the market, we didn't have a market, really, to monetize this thing. But when we discovered that the data, the capability was much more useful on a cell phone, we could basically repurpose it very quickly and so we noticed what was failing and tuned it up, kept the things that worked and threw out the stuff that didn't work at the time, but interestingly, even a year later, we discovered well actually putting it back online again is a good idea – now that we had built up our database of this really cool content.
Russ: Okay. Scott, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us and I'm sure we're gonna have some Cha Cha customers out there now for you.
Scott: Great. Text 242242.
Russ: Great. That's Scott Jones, serial entrepreneur and Founder of Cha Cha. And you've been listening to a BusinessMakers WebXtra.
Scott: Thank you so much, Russ.
Russ: You bet. And this is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.