Transforming Travel Through AI-Powered Personalized Maps with Marko Ruble

00:00:04

             

Welcome to Winds of Change. I am your host, Emy DiGrappa. Winds of change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities Council. Wyoming Humanities Council is committed to sharing the stories of the people, places and history of Wyoming. In this special series, we are talking to Wyoming entrepreneurs and innovators.         

00:00:23

             

And today my special guest is Marko Ruble. Marko is the CEO and co-founder of YerGuides IO, a travel and adventure marketplace that transforms user generated travel maps into AI driven smart maps. Whoa. That is super cool. And I can’t wait to hear all about this.         

00:00:47

             

But first I want to tell you a little bit more about Marko. He’s a traveler, an artist, an entrepreneur and a father. He is co founder of what wh a T Fest, a decentralized music and arts festival providing access to the arts in rural Wyoming. Another super cool thing Marko does. So welcome Marko.         

00:01:10

             

Thank you, Emmy for having me. This is super cool. Yeah, I’m so excited. You do so many things that I just love. And so let’s just start from the beginning.         

00:01:20

             

Where did you grow up? Cody, Wyoming, actually. About. Well, I started born at West Park Hospital in 1980 and shout out actually I was just there this morning. My mom’s having surgery, so I took my daughter, who was also born in Cody, shout out to my daughter Kate.         

00:01:37

             

I took her actually up to the maternity ward after we dropped my mom off at the surgery center. And it’s the same hospital that I was born into. And so she got to see where, you know, she was born. Of course it looks a lot different than when I was a kid, but yeah, I was born, born there. And then I spent the first few years of my life off of 19th street in Cody in Little Alley.         

00:01:59

             

It was Newton Avenue, I believe, when I was a kid named after a guy named Glenn Newton. It was kind of a guy about town. If anybody’s older in park county and Cody, they would know who he is. Few years there and then my parents moved us out to the country north of Cody, about a little less than a mile from the Shoshone River. So my childhood was not just spent in the frontier state of Wyoming, but also in ag country in the frontier state of Wyoming.         

00:02:32

             

And as I like to say, it’s kind of the land of high altitudes and low multitudes. So my childhood was very much detached from what I do today in the tech space and the sort of like global travel industry. But I think like pretty, you know, pretty interesting, like principles instilled in me, having grown up in ag country near the Shoshone River. And where do you currently Live Cody, Wyoming. Oh, you still live in Cody.         

00:03:02

             

Okay. Wow, you’re bringing it home. That’s really cool. So how did travel and adventure become part of your life story and just in your blood? Yeah, my dad was a pilot, a wildland firefighting pilot.         

00:03:23

             

They dropped the fire retardant on forest fires and set fire lines and support efforts on the ground in that regard. So back in those days, 80s and 90s is when I was a kid, so I’m dating myself, they would fly all over, mainly the western United States, but also they would get out east, you know, probably as far as like North Carolina, that sort of thing, to depending on the seasons, and would just. It was like this wild west of aerial firefighting. They were kind of solidifying the industry and bringing it into what it is today. So there was, you know, just a lot of kind of making it up as you go.         

00:04:08

             

And as a result, we would kind of follow him around. He would leave, you know, like super early spring, late winter to go on contract, and then he would be out fighting fire until October, November sometimes. And so we would go out and find him all around the west. And mainly. And we would, we would travel different.         

00:04:33

             

Like, we would go to destinations, you know, like Disney World or, you know, whatever that would be. But mainly we would be in these kind of like outside communities around a destination where the tanker bases were at. And so what that kind of instilled in me is like, you know, with regards to travel, you know, there’s like, there’s kind of a perception that like, a lot of travel is destination based. And it is, but for a huge fragment of society, it’s like, it’s kind of like it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. And there’s a lot of secrets around destinations.         

00:05:13

             

And like the oftentimes, you know, the barrier to entry can be a lot lower for folks, like even if they’re not even traveling that far, but don’t have a lot of money to travel, that sort of thing. The majority of the adventure out there in the travel space is around destinations. It is that journey to and from. And so that type of travel, like following my dad around doing that, you know, we’d like be in the old, like Plymouth minivan with like the aluminum cast engine that would start smoking at about 90,000 miles. And this blue.         

00:05:48

             

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Uncle Buck the movie, but for those viewers or listeners who have like Uncle Buck’s car that smokes really bad, like it was kind of like that, you know, and so we’d like, you know, just like, pile in the minivan and. Because, you know, you’d start going over a hill in the middle of the day. Like, you could maybe go 30 miles an hour, you know, but otherwise you’d overheat. And so, like, we would travel at night often in the old minivan. And like, I.         

00:06:19

             

Like one time we were in Bel Air, California, like, Southern California, you know, and, like, we roll up to this stoplight and, like, I’m sitting all the way in the back of this van, and not only is it like a Plymouth minivan, right. But it’s got, like, the fake wood panels down the side and like this awful maroon color. Yeah. Tinted windows in the back. It’s like a sauna, right?         

00:06:41

             

The windows don’t open up. Like, forget about AC because the car is like an explode, you know. So I’m sitting all the way in the back where the windows vent right above the exhaust. We pull up to this intersection, and I look and it’s like this beautiful couple from Bel Air, you know, it’s like the movie producer and his, like, hot wife half his age, like, roll up in the convertible right next to us, you know, And I know it’s happening, and just like on the movie Uncle Buck, where it’s like, you know, he can, like, time when he’s going to backfire in this hu. Thing of smoke’s going to come out.         

00:07:11

             

So too, is the case of the minivan, you know, and, like, I’m just watching these folks, like, oh, my gosh, I know what’s going to happen to them. We are going to smoke them out. So it was like, we couldn’t, in a way, because of our tech, our technology, and we didn’t have a ton of money. Like, we couldn’t go to the nice destinations anyway, you know. So it was just that, like, adventurous travel.         

00:07:32

             

Like, make it up as you go. Just like, we’ll make it somehow, you know. That was like, my basis for travel and adventure in general. And if you grew up in Wyoming, particularly where I did land at high altitudes, low multitudes, at the base of the Absorca Range, which is really part of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which turns out is one of the last great intact ecosystems in temperate latitudes over land that also have bears and wolves and all kinds of crazy things, like, you’re gonna have adventure and you’re gonna, like, be exposed to the unknown in a way. So I think that, like, sort of, for me, sort of facilitated the bug, I think.         

00:08:23

             

So anyway. Kind of fast forward through, you know, life, you know, I went to school in Cody. Cody Public schools, Park district or. Yeah, school district number six. Great experience.         

00:08:36

             

Left for a year, go to college out in Washington. Came back and got into live production. That’s where WhatFest came about. WhatFest is like, you introduced a music and arts festival providing access to the arts in rural Wyoming. And our sort of branding mechanism with what is.         

00:08:55

             

What fest is what you make of it. And so it’s like a purely, like, volunteer effort. We use fiscal sponsors. It’s more of an idea. It was kind of my art project, but it’s not kind of morphed into this whole different thing.         

00:09:07

             

Right. Like, it’s what you make of it. Right. That’ll actually be 20 years going next summer. And then is it still going on?         

00:09:16

             

Yeah, yeah, 20 years next summer in a venue north of Saratoga, Wyoming. You’ll have to go to whatfest.com to figure all that out. But really cool venue right alongside the Platte River and the river bottoms, trees and nice grass. It’s a super cool thing, but they only. They limit it to 500 people, so you probably should, like, get your tickets early when they announce it.         

00:09:37

             

But anyway, so I don’t really have much to do with that now. It’s more like emeritus status. And, you know, people ask me questions and I usually give the wrong answers anymore. But, yeah, sure. So with all of that, like, I figured out, like, I don’t work with artists very well.         

00:09:54

             

Like, I like live artists. Like, I tend to stress everybody out because I’m too just like, frenetic or something. So, like, in the process, like, we spun off a sound reinforcement company called Benderable Sound LLC, which is operational based out of Laramie. Our kind of. Kind of.         

00:10:11

             

Our home base is at the Griffin Theater at the Laramie Plains Civic Center. Super cool theater, one of the highest in North America. You should totally visit it. It’s awesome. And.         

00:10:22

             

But I was, like, paradoxically a silent partner in a sound company, right? Like, because I couldn’t interface with artists and distress everybody out. So then I, like, kind of when I was in college at that time, I met a kid in one of my international studies classes, and it was one of those, like, huge lecture halls in the classroom building at uw. And, like, I saw this kind of. This Asian dude, like, sitting by himself, and I’m like, thinking to myself, and this is probably.         

00:10:50

             

I’m gonna, like, get canceled when I say this. But I don’t care. Like, I’m thinking, like, to myself, like, well, you know, like China’s like taking over the world. I should probably like know some Chinese kids or something, not knowing that what would become my friend and co founder of an import export brokerage was actually Burmese. So like, you know, we met, but through my ignorance of the whole thing and that like mushroomed into this whole new insane kind of like, like period in my life where we started an import export brokerage.         

00:11:20

             

We had an office in the United States and then a sister office in Myanmar and it’s otherwise known as Burma in Southeast Asia. And that was right after the fall of the dictatorship. So my friend Tunlin Ong is his name, his grandfather was very high up in the democratically elected government led by a historical figure there, a woman named Aung San SUU Kyi. And so we had an opportunity to offer like our value proposition I guess was access. And when we got all over places that really like Westerners had trouble getting to, but no destinations, more again like that.         

00:12:07

             

Off the beaten path and figuring out secrets around destinations. In this instance it was trade, but same kind of thing. And at one point it was over there and in a city called Lashio up by the northern border, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with Myanmar right now, but they’re in a civil war. Things fell apart. I shouldn’t comment too much on it, I don’t make anybody mad, but the city of Lashio was recently under siege, which is a super bummer deal.         

00:12:41

             

You know, a lot of people complain about things in America and you know, politics and all of that. And it’s like, I just, I say like, we have it so good in the United States and we have it so good in Wyoming. After being in places like that. Not to discredit anyone in Myanmar or Lashio or anything, because one of the most beautiful places and like myriad of cultures ever experienced. But nevertheless, while we were there, got detained at an airport in Lashio and got detained because we had violated a very obscure guest housing law, even though we kind of had permission to stay at my friend’s compound, family compound, compound.         

00:13:21

             

Nevertheless somebody didn’t like it. So got detained, got interrogated. So like, like my wife was with, with me at the time, Lindsay. She was marched off to one room, I was marched off to another room. The room I ended up being in kind of like smelled like rotten urine and jungle and terribleness.         

00:13:41

             

Was like a drain in the middle of the floor. Cheap plastic benches, two way mirror, dude with a machine gun, like a really old M16. It didn’t have a Bolt Jammer on it. The guy with a notebook like, you know, like screaming at me in broken English like, you reporter, you reporter, you bastard, whatever he was saying, you know. And so I’m like sitting there and I’m like, I’m thinking like I kind of had like two thoughts.         

00:14:03

             

Like one was like, you know, like if big, if I get out of here, this better be a good story. And I think it is. So far it is. But number two was while I was there I’m like thinking like, you know, I need a map. Like and I need a map that I could navigate place, but I needed a map that like is infused with content that I could navigate culture.         

00:14:34

             

And I needed that map like connected to sort of people who are doing or traveled kind of like I do that like off the beaten path kind of, you know, not necessarily destination based. So that like in the hopes of while I was there being detained, like I probably could have avoided getting detained by violating a very obscure guest housing law, you know. So that kind of like started this whole year guides thing that was like a semi aha moment. Came back to Wyoming, like did a bunch of research, formed up with your guides, then was accepted into an outstanding group in Jackson Hole, Wyoming called Silicon Cloire. Went through like a startup success fundamentals course with them, graduated through there, then was selected for a mentoring program called Teams which is just really high level.         

00:15:32

             

You’ve got a group of mentors that we’re kind of like aligned with who just, it’s, you know, I lead my sessions, they’re usually about quarterly and just try to get, you know, it’s Jackson so there’s like world class people all over the place. It’s really cool. So to take the idea of your guides and start honing it and homogenizing it and figuring out how does this goofball from the middle of Wyoming build a scalable company? Like how do you do that? Right?         

00:16:07

             

And Wyoming, you know, like to say we have a population slightly bigger than Fresno, California in a landmass like around the size of Germany or something. So when I was starting out like my entrepreneurial journey, building a scalable company, not, not necessarily just a small business, but like really like, hey, we’re going to go to startup land and we’re going to like get weird with it and like we’re going to go where this carries us and we’re going to attract people who are passionate like about whatever they do, you know, like Silicon Clar kind of glued that together for me from there, you know, like went out and have found some co founders. One’s in Kansas City, Missouri. The other one is in Cody, Wyoming. So shout out to Thiago Leitch and Cody, originally from Brazil, immigrated to the US via Houston, found his home in Cody.         

00:16:57

             

And then other co founder, Rich Chungong, he was born in Cameroon and then immigrated to the us, found a home in Kansas City, played college football, then went to Europe, played professional football over there. Like the American style, not the European style football. But all of us are like really into travel and tech and we’re utilizing AI for AI driven maps. We also, I have to mention, are in the blockchain space, which is very interesting on all fronts, but particularly being in Wyoming with a very favorable atmosphere in the public sector, you know, from guidance and appropriation through the legislature, trying to figure out this new technology known as blockchain. So that was probably like 22,000 words and it’s 222 right now.         

00:17:54

             

And I’m going to quit talking for a second because I’m so I get rambling and I start get all excited, you know, and I don’t let anybody else in the room. So please, Emmy. No, that was a very complete answer. And I have a lot more questions for you. But I love the story about the Plymouth van.         

00:18:16

             

Was it a van? Right, yeah, the old plus. Yeah. Because I had. I grew up with a Plymouth station wagon.         

00:18:25

             

So we traveled. My dad was in education, so every summer we would travel cross country. Seven kids, big Hispanic family, seven kids went everywhere. And I remember we went all the way and traveled all across Mexico for a month, going into El Paso, Texas. And even my grandmother was with us because she was born in Chihuahua.         

00:18:55

             

So the muffler on the station wagon broke off. And so we’re just like driving around and hearing this scraping muffler everywhere we’re going. Finally, dad decides to like, you know, get it all wired up there. But then it kept falling off and oh my gosh, that story was like hit home for me. That was a home run.         

00:19:18

             

Because I get it, I get it, I get it. And plus, and this is probably counterculture to where we live right now, but no seatbelts, okay? That’s the best way to grow up. I’m sorry, but I’m sorry. Even the shocks go out, you know, and you’re back, one of those land.         

00:19:38

             

Yachts, just all the kids spread out with their blankets and their pillows, reading books. I mean, just hilarious because now, oh my gosh, just to get a seatbelt on my grandkids is like, I need a Training manual. Okay. Just to get it in the car. It’s like help.         

00:19:59

             

So I don’t know. Such. Such a different time. Right. And so I love that story.         

00:20:04

             

I couldn’t agree with you more. When you travel and you don’t do the destination thing, like what do they call those resorts? All inclusive. Yeah, it’s like an all inclusive and I’ve never done one of those, but I have no desire to anyway because I love the adventure. So I love what you’re doing when you travel.         

00:20:27

             

It’s all about the adventure to me. It’s not going to the perfect destination and laying by the pool or whatever. It’s about knowing the people and the culture and the adventure of where you are. And so, so I think you have this brilliant idea. I think this is the coolest thing.         

00:20:50

             

So it’s your guides. So what does YER stand for? YER is a colloquialism of your in the English language which confers agency ownership, individuality. Your is our brand. So your like and this is where, so it’s like as a founder, like especially CEO, you got to do all these things and you’ve got to talk different dialects of English to different people, marketers, coders, finance, you know, all the different aspects that are, you’re balancing in the whole thing.         

00:21:25

             

So I’ll put on like my marketing hat. So your as a colloquialism of your. Your is a word that is spoken every day by just about every single English speaker out there. There is an element of traction and stickiness with your. Now anybody listening is probably going to think I’m a cynical, like a cynical bastard, right?         

00:21:52

             

Like you’re, you’re taking advantage of natural processes and you know, human physiology to like advance your service or your product or whatever. But that’s kind of advertising in a nutshell, right? So our product, your brand I year is at the crux of which all of this expands out, right? Because like we see just like, like if you take a profile of people like us now that, you know, we’ve kind of connected and have this similarity in like the way we think about travel, which you know, is definitely not unique to us. It’s a whole bunch of people that do this sort of thing and it works for us.         

00:22:33

             

But you take this idea of like self determination and individuality and ownership and we, you know, we make a colloquialism of year out of it, like and build from there. So like one of the things I learned with Silicon Claw and our startup fundamentals is like the first day or Two, you’re in this like high pressure, you know, world class, like environment, right? You’ve got a bunch of different startups around you. You’re in Jackson Hole and it’s like go time, right? Like one of the things that they tell you is like you have to really like bury down on what do you stand for?         

00:23:09

             

What are you about with your company and your and yourself. As a founder, for me it was this self determination. In fact I have a whole mantra behind this was developed. But self determination and individual ownership is at the core of your guides as a company and you’re as a brand. Now because we’re in tech, we operate in the real world by empowering individuals to create maps for other individuals.         

00:23:38

             

Community engagement. Maybe they’re an influencer, maybe there’s somebody that wants to share something, maybe there’s a tourism booster. The use case doesn’t, we’re agnostic to that. But nevertheless you want to share something and you want to share something of value. What we do differently is we incentivize you to be able to decide who gets that value that you’re willing to share, because you have a choice in that.         

00:24:09

             

And not only that, but we’re a marketplace so you can value those insights how you see fit.         

00:24:19

             

And this is the blockchain component is we’re establishing what’s called data, provenance and maps because what we do are digital maps. It’s all data. So not only is our users able to own those insights, value those insights, but then it establishes almost like a digital copyright that they are the ones that put that forward. And because it’s maps, we’re dealing with geospatial data and consideration, which is super rich, right? But you own the metadata, you own the product, you own who you can distribute it to.         

00:24:55

             

However you want to do that, that gives the individual ownership. That’s the year with what we’re doing right now because we’re also digital and because we’re a bunch of kind of techie nerds. Like I’m not a coder, but I’m like a total nerd in this stuff. We play around with digital worlds as well. So we’re, we have a strategic partnership with a metaverse and the metaverse is called Omniverse City.         

00:25:30

             

And Omniverse City allows individuals or businesses or organizations or whatever to create a digital twin in their digital world. So it’s like, it’s an, you know, they’re like two different things, but they all kind of go together. So year for us is not in the real world. It attaches with people. But in the meta world where a lot of this stuff in tech goes, the kind of alternative reality, augmentative reality, all of that kind of stuff.         

00:26:01

             

We also have this little character named Yur who is the patron saint of travel and adventure. And Yuri, he’s. He’s. Or she. It’s, you know, whatever you make of it is kind of a little character and he’s kind of a little mischievous.         

00:26:16

             

So it turns out like humans have. Have you ever heard of the term wanderlust? Yeah. So there is a gene mutation in the human genome that is like, sort of associated with wanderlust and it’s a mutation on the DSDR4 gene. So like you’re like the little character in the metaverse who’s running around just kind of being mischievous and like having fun with life and.         

00:26:42

             

And whatnot. He has this genetic mutation or she has this genetic mutation. And so here is not just in the real world, it’s like in Metaverse. So. But the takeaway with your is it confers agency ownership and provenance.         

00:27:00

             

And I can go into why that’s important, but we probably don’t need to. No, I love it. That reminds me. Your little, Your character reminds me of my daughter who, big time traveler and has lived in a few interesting places. She and her best friend used to have this little character, it was a gnome, and they would take it with them.         

00:27:23

             

They like traveled Peru and Argentina and just. But they took their little gnome with them. Just reminds me of what you’re saying. Yeah, because that’s the thing, like, the more outbound you go from like what you’re used to, your home or your home environment or whatever. And like, the more outbound you go, like the sort of like fuel behind that I think is like.         

00:27:51

             

Like for me at least, it summed up as like this. This notion of like, let’s get weird with it. Let’s just see what happens. And those little like, you know, like, you’re talking about like the gnome and like the little, the meme ability of a gnome, you know, like putting it on top of a ruin at Machu Picchu or something and then just like laugh like it doesn’t matter if anybody else gets it but you and your friend or you and your friend group or other travelers in your. In your sort of tribe or whatever.         

00:28:17

             

Like, it’s like, oh yeah, that little turkey was. Or she. Whatever. Like, you know what I mean? Like.         

00:28:24

             

Yeah, and that’s the thing about travel is like, you know, it’s like a really good form of diplomacy, which in our world right now, like, I don’t think there’s a huge argument against needing good diplomacy and relations and connection, but it’s also like good mischief, you know, it’s like a good way to stir things up, whether it’s like in your mind or whether it’s in society or whatever. Like, you get, you get context and you get development and background that you can, you can share. Just like a gnome. Like, you know, you made people laugh. Now that gnome that your daughter and her friend traveled around Peru or wherever the gnome went, right?         

00:29:08

             

Okay, now that gnome is on our zoom call and our zoom call is going to be recorded by you with a podcast and that’s going to be archived out there and I assume, like, you know, be able to share that. So, like just that one little thing. Now look at the audience. It’s created and just because he got weird with it and it’s a good thing. And we laughed and we smiled.         

00:29:26

             

Gnomes are hilarious, you know, so. Yeah, I know. And so now she has little salt and pepper gnome shakers at home and she has a little gnome. It’s fun and it does connect you to people and, and you want to, you want to enjoy and laugh at life and just have a smile on your face. So I think that’s really cool.         

00:29:48

             

Your little, your guide, your little year person or your non person or whatever, you’re it. You’re it. Whatever you want to make it, it’s yours. It’s yours. But how?         

00:30:02

             

Okay, so it’s maps, but it’s also a marketplace. So pretend like you’re coming to Cody, Wyoming, and like, you want to meet up with me and I’m going to show you, like, say we know each other, you come to Cody. I’m going to take you to my favorite little spot at the city park, and then we’re going to walk down over and hang out by the Whitney Vanderbilt statue over by the hospital. And then just for the heck of it, we’re going to take a walk around this neighborhood and end up at ice cream shop downtown. This is something like, I am being your guide to do this.         

00:30:47

             

It’s like it’s not going to the museum. Nothing against the museum. Five museums under one roof is amazing. Buffalo Bill, center of the West. Not trying to take away anything.         

00:30:56

             

I’m trying to index the experience of you just coming over to Cody and like, hey, let’s just go hang out, right? But say I can’t make it, right. Say like, you know, timing isn’t going to Work, but say, like, I care enough to be like, hey, Emmy, like, I still want to do this. I want you to do this. This is awesome.         

00:31:13

             

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to walk around and I’m going to take a little video of each one of these spots so you know where they’re at. I’m going to take that video that’s going to log in metadata on where that’s at. We’re going to put that point on a map, a waypoint. I can give directions, I can give all this stuff, but I can in essence, digitize that experience between us for you and then put that, you know, in the marketplace.         

00:31:43

             

That’s a mechanism by which to transfer it. Whether it’s, I just give you that for free, it’s on my page, whatever, or say, I don’t know you and you are interested in those things. Plus seeing like the poker church in Wyoming or in Cody, which you’ve never heard of before, but it has this crazy history between Buffalo Bill and Nate Salisbury and the town founding fathers in a giant poker game. And I’m having, like, a moral, like, crisis of, like, you know what? We just made a bunch of money playing poker.         

00:32:14

             

We’re good Christian. We, we should do something good with this. Let’s build a church. But it’s like, kind of not on the map, right? Well, okay, like, I’m going to see the cowboy.         

00:32:24

             

You know, they’re the poker church. Like, shoot, that’s worth 10 bucks. I’ll buy the map of all these things that you gave me, and we’ll end up at the poker church with some sort of experience and say that poker church has an incentive that day where if they, you know, like they’re doing a fundraiser or they have free admission or something like that, we can have small businesses organizations build incentives in. So it’s not just a community engagement tool for you to come to coti see these sites, but now it’s an engagement tool to not just see the sites, but interact with small businesses or nonprofits or, you know, a lesson that’s being taught in a venue at the rec center that, like, is actually a really good concert venue that kind of nobody knows about. So it’s that sort of thing.         

00:33:13

             

Put it on a map. All right, well, it’s either free or it’s worth something to you. So now you have the option to either give it away or you can sell it, you can rent it, whatever you want to do with it, but it’s up to you. And Then you own the metadata around that, and that’s established on chain, on a blockchain. So that now, as we move through AI, large language models and generative AI, I think, like, everyone would agree there’s probably some, like, trademark issues with that.         

00:33:41

             

Right. There’s a lot like, you know, it’s just sweeping through the Internet writ large and coming back with, oh, hey, here’s what I’ve generated for you. Here’s what I predict you would want me to say, that sort of thing. Well, now you’ve established provenance, so now we can have a mechanism to go back and be like, well, yeah, actually, like, here is a trademark of information that’s not just like, hey, I typed a review, you know, on some site, but I actually created something of value and I should be able to, like, be valued for creating that value, whether it’s like, in the form of like a payment or like recognition or royalties, you know, that sort of thing. Like, we’re so, you know, there’s.         

00:34:23

             

There’s larger things at play here. But, like, really, it’s just like I got. I can make a suite map of something and here’s how to get it. You can either get it for free or you can buy it from me or rent it. And that’s in essence, like what we have.         

00:34:38

             

So you’re. Or I can create my own map using your tool, the YourGuides IO, and then I can own that map or I can sell it. Yeah, keep track all your journeys if you want, make an atlas of your life. Whatever you want to do right away, you own it. And then if you want, put it on a marketplace and if you don’t, keep it for yourself.         

00:35:00

             

Wow, that’s way cool. Where are you in this process? Are you. Are you completely done building and now you’re marketing it or what? Where are you?         

00:35:09

             

One of the things in startup land in Wyoming with a low population, meaning a lack of institution, like easily accessible institutional knowledge and access to capital, is that you don’t just bootstrap. It’s less bootstrapping, it’s more sandal strapping. There’s no resources. You’re out here making this up as you go. And not only that, but particularly in tech and blockchain tech and AI and all this stuff, things happen so fast and require so many resources that you have to, like, pull some real, like, Sun Tzu, you know, art of the warrior kind of thing and find a way in.         

00:35:54

             

So you build very elegantly, very lightly and test as you go and build this concept out to where finally this year we’re at a critical mass and we’re working with this group in Kansas City called the KC Futures dao. They’re still being stood up. A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. Hit me up if you want to learn more all about that yourguides to IO Put in your email, you can get a hold of me. But with them we’re going to be building discovery tools for the World cup in 2026 for Kansas City and hopefully a few other places.         

00:36:29

             

And then further, we just started working with a foundation that is helping us leverage some grant opportunities to like build out the like the rest of the muscle in what we’re doing. But we’ve had to like kind of like go on our own, like reinvent, not reinvent like oh hell no, invent like cut our own trail on building a tech product and leveraging strategic partnerships. So for instance, we’re in Kansas City, we have a strategic partnership with somebody in Charleston, South Carolina, a few entities actually in Kansas City, we’re working with a private island in Vanuatu in Micronesia. We’re doing all of this crazy off grid stuff. So we’re leveraging these partnerships and we’re building as we go and we test as we go, which is nothing different.         

00:37:23

             

But we’re doing all that we can to not follow the classic point A to point B, go to VC right away model. Now I am not disparaging any VCs in the world by any stretch. I’m just trying to demonstrate that there to other founders that there is a way to do it on a scarcity budget that’s like a step below bootstrapping against sandal strapping. And what that is is leveraging your networks and leveraging the partnerships you can create and build out from there. So to answer your question, we are right about there.         

00:38:03

             

That’s what we need to build and that’s happening. This is already being built right now. So we’re like right about there and what we’ve built extends out about a mile and a half that way, that way. So we built so much in so much, so little time, it blows my mind. And then if you consider the fact that there’s been a black swan event, like a pandemic, there’s weird geopolitical things going on with regards to Ukraine and Israel and the problems that blockchain as a technology had through FTX and cryptocurrencies and the weird stuff that happened in there and then all of a sudden the mass adoption of AI in a four year Span fell all on our plate and we’re navigating this remotely.         

00:38:53

             

Like we’ve got people we’re working with all over the world from day one on this, which is like right on and perfect, perfect scenario for a global travel app. Like perfect. We’re already global, we’re already doing this. And not only that, but the insights that we’re getting right now and the criticisms and the things that like checking our assumptions and all the stuff that has to happen to make a product that or a service that people love and can’t live without is in real time happening. Like it blows my mind.         

00:39:27

             

I grew up next to the Shoshone River. Like I was like my, my childhood was like Huck Finn or something. You know, like I go down to the river, is like a 12 year old with a 22 rifle, 22 long rifle and I’d camp for a day or two with a bed roll. You know, like this wasn’t like the globe, like private islands, AI. None of this was in my head, none of this.         

00:39:53

             

I had a scarcity mindset. And like that’s not what our universe is about. Our universe is about abundance. Right? And so for me as a founder, the biggest hurdle I’ve had is just internally, just like in my own head, coming from a scarcity mindset to realizing the universe is predicated on abundance now we can, you know, when it comes to business, when it comes to strategy, when it comes to like you know, getting people to want things and blah, blah, blah, blah, we can create all the scarcity in the world we want.         

00:40:25

             

There’s again, there’s an abundance of scarcity, ironically enough. But as like if you’re in Wyoming, like I’m so shout out to you founders now or future founders or whatever. Like I’m like the anti founder founder, right. But I can tell you that like moving, whether you’ve moved into Wyoming, whether you have lived here a long time or you’re born here or whatever, the, the trick that has to be realized right away beyond like the, the basic like, oh, there’s a problem here and I can solve it and I can solve it better than anybody else and here’s why somebody’s going to want it. The trick really like at the fundamental, the first principle level for a founder is switch from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.         

00:41:15

             

You’ll find all the scarcity in the universe that you want. But if the premise of the argument is false, the whole argument is false and the argument is this, that our universe, our existence, our Planet, our communities, our love, our communications, all of this is all abundance. Like, that’s what we need to tap into. And when we move, like we talk about, like in Wyoming, you know, need for economic diversification, Right? That is a conversation of abundance.         

00:41:45

             

That is not a conversation of scarcity. The scarcity is the problem. The abundance is the solution. So I hope that kind of ties back to, you know, what you were wanting to achieve with a conversation like this. Talking with entrepreneurs, founders, whomever in Wyoming and trying to, like, envision, like, what is.         

00:42:04

             

How do we define prosperity moving forward in the land of high altitudes, low multitudes? How do we balance open spaces and population? How do we address the fact that, like, Wyoming is the least populated state in the nation? Has been basically since the beginning. Because we’re kind of this weird compromise, right?         

00:42:25

             

And yet our geography is not going to change. Our geography, like, speaks so much to that population thing. Right. But there is a way that we can move forward and balance all of these. And it starts with just like, loving yourself, thinking abundance and looking at Wyoming in a different way.         

00:42:48

             

Like, what do you want to do with Wyoming? Because that’s the beauty of Wyoming in a frontier state. It’s malleable. It’s not set. You have access to, like, crazy people.         

00:42:57

             

Like, you can talk to a legislator, whether it’s at the state level or federal. Like, that’s not impossible. That’s not. Like you have to hire people to do that. Like, you can do that in wyoming.         

00:43:10

             

I mean, 523,000 or whatever people. We have two senators in Washington, D.C. like every other state in the union. You know what I mean? Like, it’s, it’s just an abundance thing.         

00:43:22

             

So anyway, I’ll. There I go again. Yammering. I’m so sorry. Yammering.         

00:43:28

             

I love yammering. No, I love it. I love that you appreciate that. We live in this great state. We have this small population.         

00:43:38

             

And even though, I mean, I think that’s what I love most about Wyoming is that abundance is all around us. We are the state that has so much abundance. Yeah. Abundance of wind for those. No, I’m just kidding.         

00:43:55

             

Abundance of wind, yes. But guess what? We got all the other stuff, too. We have the largest migration of mammals in the lower 48. We have the best night skies.         

00:44:09

             

You know, we don’t have light pollution in a lot of places. You can still go out someplace and see nobody, nowhere. And there, there’s. There’s a lot of abundance in Wyoming. I always think about that.         

00:44:23

             

I always think about, wow, it is this is an incredible place. And the more I learn about, you know, doing this series with innovators and entrepreneurs, I’m like, we are flipping smart too. It’s like.         

00:44:43

             

Smart ass. But so I, I love that you’ve, you know, tapped into that which I think as an entrepreneur, I think all entrepreneurs are doing that is that they tap into getting rid of their limiting beliefs. They have to be resilient. They have to look at the abundance they have. They have to be like, have an outlook of positivity and not negativity.         

00:45:14

             

It’s so easy to be negative that that’s what I’m learning about entrepreneurship. It’s so fun and it’s so interesting and there’s so many different personalities that make an entrepreneur and every, everything is completely different for each entrepreneur in terms of like what they’re creating and what they’re good at and what they love. But the thing that is consistent that I’m finding is that resilience and destroying like you, you’ve said it and I’ve heard other people say it. Your biggest enemy is yourself is your, is that is your brain like your limiting beliefs will, you know the things that will, you know, come and try and attack you that you’re always going to be, you know, because you’re always reinventing yourself every day. Yeah, I think it’s super cool.         

00:46:04

             

I think it’s so cool. Yeah, sometimes like a lot of times it’s sheer terror and career you get into for like living a long time probably. You know, you gotta really like it’s like being an athlete or anything else. Like you really, you know, there’s like that saying out there like the body can take a lot but it’s the mind that you know, you have to fortify. So you gotta be good to your body but you get really gotta be good to your mind.         

00:46:33

             

But then I think like in order to access abundance like you really have to when it comes to problem solving and learning how to problem solve. And I think that like schools in Wyoming are doing a really good job with this. With the ride initiative through the governor’s office is focusing on like the, a new way of learning how to learn and doing it through problem solution frameworks which requires any time like you, you tackle a problem. So that’s what entrepreneurs do is they find problems and come up with solutions for them. Hopefully usually not always, but usually.         

00:47:11

             

But in order to do that and unlock that abundance in the problem solution mindset is to boil things down to a critical minimum. Like I think they call it like, first principle thinking. Like, boil it down. Question the assumptions of, like, why things are like, you’re building a widget. You know, if you’re building a hand, do you need five fingers or could you get away with two?         

00:47:36

             

Like, is there. Is there a better way to do this in a simpler, more elegant form? And that’s what entrepreneurs, I think, excel at, probably because they have an innate personality trait that, like, gravitates towards that. Like, because it’s so easy to get lost in the sauce of the complexity of a problem and likewise the complexity of a solution around that. But you think about the entrepreneurs that make it, the products or the services that make it.         

00:48:07

             

They’re so simple. And that’s across the board. It doesn’t have to be entrepreneurship. That’s science. E equals MC squared changes the world, right?         

00:48:17

             

Like, that’s how, you know, it’s like the paradox of abundance, maybe. Like, take equals MC squared, right? Like, that simple, very simple equation unlocks crazy abundance. Horrific, but also great future generations be the arbiter of MC squared. Right?         

00:48:36

             

But, like, that’s what entrepreneurs, I think, excel at. And if you live in an environment like Wyoming that is naturally, like, there’s some higher barriers to entry again, like access to institutional knowledge, access to available capital, which is changing. Like, there’s. There’s some stuff out there that’s really changing. Like.         

00:48:53

             

Like, I was in G Beta. Yeah. Like, I was their cohort last year. And I got your name. Yeah, I’m sorry, I got your name from them.         

00:49:04

             

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, shout out to Bailey and Stephanie. They’re doing amazing stuff. They are. Including, you know, putting a fund together, I think.         

00:49:13

             

I hope they’re able to get that for early stage. But, you know, in our remaining few minutes here, because I got a hard stop about three. That’s what entrepreneurs do. Well is like, boil it down to your bare minimum, question your assumptions, question what needs to be there and what is frivolous and then build up from there, you know, and like, Wyoming as a sort of culture and. And the realistic sort of reality of it all is like, a lot of that is built in kind of has to happen because we’re a frontier state.         

00:49:47

             

So I would argue that, like, you know, we are, like, in Wyoming, even though we’re a small state per capita, we are like, immensely valuable emerging market for entrepreneur. Well, for investors, for consumers, looking at a concentration of seriously adept entrepreneurs. Absolutely seriously adept. Because necessity is the mother of invention. Right?         

00:50:15

             

Shout out to Wyoming and to you and thank you so much for your time. Marko, it’s been great talking to you. Yeah, you too. I had a quick question. The station wagon that you had, did it have the back seat, like, all the way in the back that faced the rear?         

00:50:31

             

Like, you have two seats up front and then, like two bench seats. And then a lot of those old station wagons, they had a fold up seat or fold down seat. It was all the way in the trunk and it, like, faced the rear of the car. Yes, but it was never up because we had so many kids, all the seats would be down. And because we were always like, well, yeah, if we were just going, you know, to my aunt’s house or doing something like that, yeah, we’d all pile in and sit in the seats.         

00:50:58

             

But we never put. Because then where’s the luggage go? And then finally dad had to put a luggage wreck. Anyway, it’s like, you know, remember Chevy Chase when he put the aunt on top of the. Yeah, that.         

00:51:10

             

That was my family. Oh, yeah.         

00:51:16

             

Yeah. Oh, me too, man. Yeah, it’s like blood, sweat, tears, smells, stains, food, whatever. All there. So, anyway, you take care.         

00:51:27

             

Have a good afternoon. Yeah, you as well. I mean, thank you so much.         

00:51:36

             

Thank you for listening. I’m executive producer Emmy de Grappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities Council, our co hosts, and all the people who generously share their stories and their time. For more information, go to thinkwhy.org subscribe and never miss a show.