Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. And it's guest time on the show. And I'm very pleased to have back with us this morning Blair Garrou, managing director of DFJ Mercury. Blair, welcome back to the BusinessMakers Show.

Blair: Thanks, Russ. It's great to be back.

Russ: You bet. Well, it's been a while since we've done one of your very cool Dealmaker series.

Blair: Absolutely. And today, we've got a great entrepreneur we'll be profiling.

Russ: But before we get started why don't you share a little background on DFJ Mercury and then talk a little bit about the DealMaker Series.

Blair: My firm, DJF Mercury, is an early stage venture capital fund. My partners and I make investments in startup technology companies. The Dealmaker Show was a way for us to showcase some of the recent companies that we've seen through our review process. We also hope that other entrepreneurs can benefit from the successes and challenges of some of our show's profiled entrepreneurs. Now this morning, we'll be profiling a company named FUZZYLUKE, and its founder and CEO, Michael Gile. I've heard a lotta buzz about this company, and I'm really interested in learning more.

Russ: Okay. Well, I'm really excited about it. Are you ready to get started?

Blair: I am. Let's do it.

Russ: Okay. I'm gonna get outta the way and become a listener to the Dealmaker series.

Blair: This morning, we're profiling a company called FUZZYLUKE and its founder and CEO, Michael Gile. Michael, welcome to the DealMakers.

Michael: Thank you, Blair. It's great to be here.

Blair: Michael, as you know, VCs love to have entrepreneurs give them the brief elevator pitch as a way of introducing their idea. So why don't you tell us more about your company, FUZZYLUKE?

Michael: FUZZYLUKE is a company that asks, "What does your car have to say?" And what we try to do is connect your car's computer systems directly to the Internet using your mobile phone. And in this case, the iPhone. And what we do is use off-the-shelf hardware that you can plug directly into your car's computers in a diagnostic port that exists in every car manufactured since 1996, and we use that to connect your car directly to FUZZYLUKE's Web platform.

Blair: This sounds really, really interesting. Now tell me, what was the geneses for this idea? What drove you to start FUZZYLUKE?

Michael: It really was my misunderstanding of what cars were. Back in 2004 when I was living in Florida. I was driving an Oldsmobile. And as many listeners know, the Oldsmobiles were being phased out by General Motors at that time. And I was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to repair my car or to find information about it. And so I undertook to understand better what a car was. And I found out that cars are actually a lot more computer nowadays than they ever were before. And when I found that out and I decided there was an opportunity here, I had background in embedded systems and I need to understand exactly what was going on in that car.

Blair: Now why don't you walk me and listeners through how a consumer buys your product, how you install it, and what's next when they get that information on their iPhone app.

Michael: Sure. Well a consumer can purchase a piece of hardware directly from Amazon or from any number of other retailers.

Blair: And that's the actual chord that goes from the car to the iPhone.

Michael: Absolutely. There's two different types. Some of 'em are wireless. One is a direct cable from your car to your iPhone.

Blair: Okay.

Michael: And once you purchase that, you plug it into your onboard diagnostics port, which is almost always right underneath your steering wheel. And then you open up your iPhone application. You go to the iTunes app store, and you can install the FUZZYLUKE application which is called FUZZYCar, or one from our partner company, which also uses FUZZYLUKE software called Go!Link.

Blair: Okay.

Michael: And once you do that, you're ready. You turn on our application and you start scanning your car. And what we do is we maintain every piece of information that your car supports. And that literally is hundreds of sensors, anything as mundane as speed and RPMs, to things as advanced as air bags, anti-lock brake systems, tire pressure sensors, even your Check Engine light.

Blair: Now a consumer can buy this directly. But are there any other ways that they would see your product?

Michael: Yes, there is. We actually support a reseller model which is a white-labeled version of FUZZYLUKE.

Blair: Okay.

Michael: And that is our hosted and branded Web platform, and branded mobile applications. So you can have iPhone, Android, Blackberry. And for the Jiffy Lubes, Midas, auto dealerships out there, we provide a way for them to talk directly to their customers so as they're driving around and if their Check Engine light goes off, now your car dealer or Jiffy Lube or Midas, they know that you're Check Engine light went off, and they can call you or they can text you and they can say, "Don't panic. Everything's okay. Here's what's wrong, and here's an appointment to get you in next Thursday when it's convenient for you."

Blair: Well, that's a pretty compelling value proposition. So you're basically telling me when my wife's Check Engine light goes off and she gets her little notification on the iPhone, her mechanic's gonna call her before I have to call her back and get the whole thing worked out.

Michael: Exactly. We're giving the mechanic the exact same information that they get when you drive into their garage anyways. It's the same diagnostic computer.

Blair: Very, very interesting. And we'll be back with more with Michael Gile in the Dealmaker series after this. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com.

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Blair: You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. I am Blair Garrou, managing director of venture capital firm, DFJ Mercury, here with Michael Gile, CEO of FUZZYLUKE, in another Dealermakers interview. So, Michael, I was thinking about all the compelling opportunities to pull data from your car, and the first one that comes to mind is speed. I mean, you basically can track the speed over time of anyone driving that vehicle.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely.

Blair: I would think insurance companies, parents, teachers, there's a lot of people that would love that data for kids that are driving out there.

Michael: Oh, yeah. And more than just speed, the location, where they're going fast, the fact that your phone can tell you if you're taking a corner just way too fast so now you've got tire wear that's ridiculously bad, all of these things together, hundreds and hundreds of different orientations of this data to solve problems just like that.

Blair: And you talked about your example of your Oldsmobile in Florida growing up, and I thought about the GM car that we own where we have OnStar. It seems to me that you could do a lot of what OnStar does with your iPhone using Bluetooth.

Michael: Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And Bluetooth is part of the strategy going forward. And we had an old prototype that worked on a dumb phone, essentially, so Bluetooth, wireless, plug directly into your car. It's more about making it right for the particular person than it is providing a solution that's just gonna be one stop for everybody.

Blair: Yeah. I was thinking I'm imagining starting it with my iPhone. There's an app for that. This is what we're talking with FUZZYLUKE.

Michael: Yes, exactly.

Blair: Very, very cool. So let's go back to when you started the company up to now. Any pitfalls? What did you run into that was a big problem that you overcame?

Michael: Well, I think the hardest part is when you're starting out, as the entrepreneur, you have all the passion in the world. You think your idea's the best. You tell your friends and your family and they tell you, "Oh, this is the greatest idea ever. You need to run with this." And so you start running with it and then you start asking people, "Okay. Well, I'm ready. Give me some funding." I've got an idea and I've got a couple slides and maybe a little tiny demo. And then you meet and then you meet up with the real world because there's a big difference between your friends and family telling you it's great and asking somebody for $1 million. There's a much bigger gap that you need to leap there. And for the entrepreneurs out there, you need to understand that it's not just your technology, and your first pitch that you come up with is probably wrong. So just understand that you need to find someone who likes your technology as much as you do. You're solving a problem for someone, and that person will pay you real money. That really should be your first goal that you achieve. Don't go out looking for money right away.

Blair: And any other general advice for entrepreneurs in launching a business?

Michael: A lot of 'em more on the personal side. And I think this is something that hit me personally just this past year, 2009, is you get to a point where in my case, I'm not wealthy. You have to realize are you really gonna go at this. And in my case, it was looking at myself in the mirror, literally, looking at myself in the eye and saying, "Is this something that I really am going to go after?" And once you have that gut check, you say to yourself, "Yes, this is it. I don't care. I'll live on the street. I'm gonna do this, because if I don't, I'm going to regret it." And so if you have an idea, you need to look yourself right in the mirror. Go to sleep tonight. Get up in the morning and look yourself in the mirror and say, "Is this the right thing? Is this the idea? Am I the person, and is this the time?" And if it is, just put everything else aside and go for it.

Blair: Now you've got existing customers. You've got your iPhone app in the iPhone app store. Those are things, those milestones, they've gotta keep you going through these tough times.

Michael: They do. They do. And it's all about the little steps. It's not one thing that just suddenly happens one day and you're Bill Gates. It's little things. And you're not gonna be able to build up to be Bill Gates unless you have hundreds of those little events to get you there. And it's about momentum. Every time someone sees you, you need to be talking about the new thing that you've just accomplished. Not what you want to do, not what you're thinking about, but what you accomplished. That's what's important.

Blair: Now back to the business side, any other plans for moving off of the iPhone? Are you gonna develop an Android app? Are you gonna develop other types of apps for mobile phones?

Michael: Actually, I think we're most excited about the iPad right now. That seems to be the big one, and with a much larger screen, it already works with our existing software.

Blair: Right.

Michael: But now we have so much more screen real estate. We're interested in Android just because of the fact that we have background processing. For everybody else out there, if you can just run your Android phone like you would anything else, you just leave it in your pocket and it just works, that's what we're really excited about is making FUZZYLUKE just part of your daily existence.

Blair: So, Michael, tell us, what's the current status of the company?

Michael: Well, right now, we've been in bootstrap mode since Day 1. And what we did with that is perfected the technology, went out and found our first customers. And now that we've got customer revenue coming in, now we're into fundraising mode. So we've been privately funded, leading up to now, so we've revenue positive. And now it's time to go out and hit our homerun.

Blair: Now for our listeners, if they want to go and either learn more about your product or actually buy your product, where do they go directly?

Michael: Right now, you can go to fuzzyluke.com and we have a link on there to buy the wireless device that we support. And this week and next week you'll be seeing on Amazon.com the Go!Link device, G-O-L-I-N-K, from a called GoPoint Technology. And that is a car charger and an iPhone diagnostic cable.

Blair: Okay, super. And then they can go to the app store on their iPhone and learn about a couple of your products there.

Michael: Yes, indeed. On the iTunes app store, you can search for FUZZYLUKE, or you can search for Go!Link.

Blair: Well, Michael, I'd like to thank you for joining us and telling our listeners more about FUZZYLUKE.

Michael: Thank you, Blair. It was great to be here.

Blair: And when we come back, I will do my Dealmaker review of FUZZYLUKE with Russ. You're listening to the Dealmaker series on the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com.

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Blair: You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. I am Blair Garrou, managing director of venture capital firm, DFJ Mercury. We are wrapping up our latest Dealmaker series, and it's time for the Dealmaker review. Before I give you my opinion of the deal, Russ, tell me what you think about it.

Russ: Well, it was impressive. I'm impressed with all the mobile iPhone applications these days. But at first I kept thinking, "Well, do I really wanna know that much information about my car?" Already, I get prompts from the dashboard and some of 'em I know, some of 'em I don't know. But I'll tell you, when they connected it to the mechanic and him having access to the information and being able to communicate with me, it had a lot more value and a lot more meaning. That's my opinion.

Blair: I think you're spot on. When we discussed this deal internally, we talked about device convergence, right?

Russ: Right.

Blair: Everything is moved to the cell phone, music, maps, other applications. The iPhone store then opened up this whole new world. But the car - Michael said it himself. It is a massive computer. Imagine the terabytes of data that they can process and analyze. And who wants access to that data? Yes, it's the mechanics. Yes, it's the car retailers where you buy your car from in the first place. But imagine the ability to create an auction where people could bid for your services on the fly. I personally think the data will be more useful not while you're driving, but after the fact. Imagine going to your car and it alerts you that your fuel is low, or it alerts you when another driver is jumping into the car. Those types of things and the fact that the data travels with the person at all times is really, really compelling to us.

Russ: Well, I agree. I'll have to be honest, as father of a teenage son right now, I got kind of intrigued with the ability to track his driving performance. Completely different application, but obviously the power is there. Man, that could be really interesting.

Blair: Well, and imagine going to your insurance firm and not only having power locks or remote sensor, but you have FUZZYLUKE installed. Is that worth knocking $100.00 off your insurance?

Russ: It oughta be.

Blair: I think it pays for itself.

Russ: Real cool. So you would kinda give FUZZYLUKE a thumbs up I'm hearing.

Blair: Absolutely. And I think these guys are really making a mark in the iPhone app scene.

Russ: Okay. Real cool. Blair, I really appreciate you doing another Dealmaker series with us.

Blair: Thanks, Russ. Always a pleasure to be here.

Russ: You bet. You've been listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com.