[ZACK] I don't think that AI is ever going to replace the joy that you and I experienced going to a race. And I don't think that, you know, AI will have a product that, like, completely, you know, ever does anything like like the New York City Marathon where, like, we would completely overhaul, like, the New York City Marathon because AI is there. And I actually really like that about the industry. That said, I do think that there are, you know, just like any tool, I think that we can leverage AI to help organizers, host really great events. Hey, listeners. [KAMAL] In the next episode of Tech in 20 6.2 pod, I sit down with Zach Isaacs, cofounder of a modern event registration platform called Movement. He started Movement along with co founder Taylor Poliska over a back bike ride. It's a fascinating story. And he we also chat about how what are the frictions he sees or he has seen as he talked to a lot of even organizers over a period of time before he started Movement. What are the different frictions are in the platforms available in the market today, and what he set out to solve for the event organizers in Movement platform. We also talked about, the business model that he, has with Movement, especially the pricing structure, along with how he sees the role of AI can impact the event registration industry in a as a whole. I am sure you'll enjoy this episode. And if you do, don't forget to subscribe, like, or share this part. Thanks for listening. Welcome, Zach, to the 26.2 pod. Really excited to have you here. Thanks so much for having me. Great. For our audience, Jack is the cofounder and CEO of event registration platform called Movement based in, West Coast. I don't know. I think you are supporting primarily the US, but I think you are rethinking the event registration, especially in athletic events. So I'm really curious to, you know, more about MVMT and how we're envisioning the future. So maybe we can start with a quick, overview of what is MVMT. Sure. So thanks so much for having me. [ZACK] MVMT is a free platform for endurance athletic events, and so we make it super easy for organizers to create beautiful event pages. We handle all of their sign ups. We give them all the tools they need to host a successful event, like emailing tools and volunteer management, and then we work with our timer to handle the results. And so Movement is completely free for organizers, and we're just like a modern and easy to use event management platform. Yeah. [KAMAL] Oh, that's great. Yeah. I know you're reimagining this event registration, platform as a whole. So let maybe you can go a little bit back. I know Movement is fairly new in the industry. So if you can take us back to their founding story, how did Movement started? I know you have a background running engineering at Strava, so it would be good to see how your experience in endurance sports and, you know, being in Strava led to, you know, founding movement. Yeah. So bicycles have always been, a passion of mine, and they go it is literally, like, from the beginning of, you know, my identity. [ZACK] I've always been involved with bikes. So my parents actually met on a group ride in Washington DC. Oh, wow. And my entire career has been in the bike bicycling industry. So growing up, I worked at bike shops. You know, I also worked for a local pro cycling team called the UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team, which was my first time I'd ever experienced any web development. Mhmm. And then I, spent a summer in support at Strava when I was in college. And I wasn't studying computer science. But, from the moment I got to Strava, I realized immediately that I wanted to become a software engineer at Strava. And so after that summer and support, I started taking computer science classes and cobbled together what I needed to know to become an engineer at Strava. Uh-huh. And I was in I was in engineering at Strava for for many years. And, I was fortunate enough to get to start Strava's API team. And for those who are less technical, what that meant was that my boss and I were going to companies like Peloton and Zwift and Garmin and Wahoo, and we were literally building the systems they used to to upload photos and these foundational things at Strava. And, and so that was an incredible experience. But, you know, throughout my time as an athlete and throughout my time at Strava, I always felt like the event experience wasn't quite as good as it could be. Mhmm. So, it's hard to, for example, find and sign up for events. It's hard to find communications from the event organizer to, like, actually understand when you need to be places. It's like Yeah. When you get the start line. And then results are also often in a vacuum, and so it's hard to actually associate results with, you know, activities and and stuff like that. And so, I just felt like there was an opportunity to to serve the event ecosystem. And so I started interviewing organizers to understand the problem space, and the organizer persona just resonated with me deeply because, you know, you have to understand doing well at events and being an athlete is really sexy, but actually organizing events is not sexy. It's a lot of hard work behind the scenes. And, they're just something that, yeah, connected with me about this group of people who put in all of this work behind the scenes so that we as athletes can have a good time. And, I just really wanted to to serve them and build a product for for organizers that also does a great job for athletes, and, we've been running at that problem ever since. Oh, wow. I'm just curious. Like, you talked to a lot of organizers. Like, what would be, like, in a number of organizers or like, you probably found the pain points talking to them. Like, I was thinking of, like, what would be the scale that you try to figure out if there is a real problem or not? Yeah. I think that there are some common threads among organizers, but it's also, it varies on a case by case basis. I would say that there are a few commonalities. The biggest one is that organizers just do not like the way that their events appear on the existing platforms. So Oh, okay. A lot of the existing platforms are, you know, built a long time ago. And so the events just do not look the way that they want them to. They do not look like modern event pages. Mhmm. And then, you know, on the actual payment business side, there are things like big delays between when you actually get a registration and are paid out for that registration. Yeah. That modern payment infrastructure can solve. And so we do things like payout the event organizer every single day, so that they don't have to front the costs for their event, stuff like that. [KAMAL] Right. Oh, wow. That's super cool. So now you have talked to the organizers. You understand some of the pain points and how did lit led to starting Movement. [ZACK] Yeah. So, you know, I am an engineer and, and so I I found Taylor through my local Bison community. Taylor is my cofounder and our head of design. And, you know, last year we ended up or actually a couple years ago at this point, we ended up, like, we know we knew who each other were, but we didn't we weren't really close friends yet. Mhmm. And we ended up, you know, catching up on a a bike ride just by happenstance, and a 1 hour ride turned into a 5 hour ride. Uh-huh. And I knew from that moment that I wanted to work with Taylor. And so, that was how we got connected, you know, just from we knew who each other were from our local group ride at the Port of Oakland. And then, you know, if you got along, you know, 1 hour ride turns into a 5 hour ride. [KAMAL] And that's the magic of sport, you know? Oh, wow. So your founding story is starting a company over a bike ride. Is that kind of That is actually the case. Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. That's pretty fascinating. Great. So, you mentioned a couple of the friction points that you saw, as you talk to the organizers. Now how did you, plan I know one use case you mentioned that payout every day, which is probably big for organizers because they can see, you know, because that incur a lot of calls before they actually even happens, that you're solving that. What are the other frictions that you saw with these use cases that you talked to the organizers that you're planning to solve with Movement or you already have solved. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. [ZACK] So I think that the biggest one is just getting as many registrations and donations to the event as possible. And so, you know, if your event sells out, then, you know, more power to you. And Right. You know, you have an incredible event. But for most organizers, every single registration and donation makes a huge difference to their bottom line Right. And and their ability to, you know, assist and fund whatever donation organization they care about. Mhmm. And so, you know, we have been able through really easy sign up flows and through modern and engaging event pages to just make a world class event experience that gets people stoked on events. Mhmm. And, you know, we're really grateful to have had early early traction, and positive feedback from our event organizers because we're just able to get them more registrations and donations through really easy sign up flows and beautiful event pages. [KAMAL] Oh, great. And are you helping them also with the the reach out to to attract more registrations? Or is it some use case here? Yeah. That's great question. [ZACK] So, you know, helping them with sort of, like, off platform discovery and just helping organizers more generally is definitely something that we are planning to do longer term. And so, you know, event registrations are and just nailing the sort of balance between event registration through event setup to results is just where we start. But we wanna be as helpful as possible to organizers. And so in the future, that might mean, you know, making it easier for organizers to find a timer or to get T shirts or any of the million things they need to actually hold a successful event. Right. Because, you know, when you talk to an organizer and you ask them, like, how do you how did you figure out how to hold an event? Yeah. Most time, it's just that they had a mentor or they helped with an event before. And if we can sort of provide that same level of guidance and I don't know if mentorship's the right word, but just support. Yeah. That, you know, we think that we can make event organizers' lives or we hope we can make their lives easier Mhmm. And, you know, help them run successful businesses. Oh, wow. No. That's that's great. I do see that you solve for kind of 4 personas or 4 use cases. 1 is definitely the organizers you just, touched on. Mhmm. And the second group of persona that you support are the timers Mhmm. And athletes, obviously, and I think, some of the brands too in in the endurance sports. Like, maybe onto a little bit on then how you're supporting those personas. Yeah. Sure. So on the athlete side, we're just making it super easy to sign up. And so, you know, you can our app is mobile first, and so it's super easy to use Apple Pay. Or if you ever paid for anything with Stripe, we send you a a text message and it you know, you just can sign up within 10 seconds. Yeah. You know, like, moving forward, I do think that there's an opportunity, especially given my background and interest with APIs and integrations. I think that we are going to see a connection on the athlete side between, events and results and activities. Because it just makes no sense to me that there is no connection between results Right. And activities on a platform like Strava. Like, you know, everyone goes through this janky flow of figuring out what their results were on app links or on run sign up and then, like, manually talking about it on Strava. Yeah. And that would be automatic. And so Right. You know, I we're not building that right this second, but that is definitely the type of thing that we wanna do. You know, on the brand side, you know, we've been working with brands like TrackSmith. We've also helped HOKA with some of their local events and, been working with a bunch of brands, actually. And what they you know, what these brands are trying to do is to put themselves, you know, authentically at the center of their, you know, their users' athletic communities. And so I see. I think that that is, like, a strategy that brands are using to differentiate themselves from each other. Yeah. But you also have to remember that, like, brands have a very different business model than organizers. And so Right. What a company like Tracksmith cares about is, you know, selling clothes, and, that's how they're gonna make their money. Not gonna make, you know, all their money from just putting on events. And so what we can do for a company like Tracksmith is we actually have a very advanced, really cool API that we built. Mhmm. And so we can do things like send all of the participant information when you sign up to TrackSmith. And then TrackSmith actually puts the, uses that webhook and that information to send their own emails. So, you know, they can they send you your confirmation email. That's why it looks like a branded Trach Smith email. And then they can, you know, upsell you on clothes and do all the stuff they need to do, that they're really good at through their native CRM. So, you know, like, a brand like Tracksmith is almost like a tech company, and so it's a very different use case than just, like, a mom and pop organizer. And, the way we solve for the needs of both of those use cases is different. But, yeah. Yeah. So talking about, you know, brand support, I mean, you did a little bit on on on the business model of the clients that you support or the event organizers. [KAMAL] One thing I noticed, on your pricing strategy that you have at Movement, it is, transaction based versus, you know, you can easily call it as a platform as a SaaS product too, but you didn't go to the traditional SaaS offerings, like, in a Paypal based, you know, revenue model, but he decided to be on, transaction bid. I was maybe curious to see how did you choose that path versus a conventional SaaS platform way of revenue model. [ZACK] Yeah. I mean, I did a bunch of industry research before landing on that business model. And like you said, you know, there are companies like Eventbrite that do subscriptions. And then I I just listened to your interview, which was great with Bob, who is Yeah. Electing in the industry from RunSignUp. Yeah. And I I decided that it made more sense to go with the, the transaction based model because, it, you know, enables our product to stay free for organizers so that there's no friction for organizers to create Right. Events with us. And then, you know, I also want I don't wanna charge anything, and I do wanna support community events. And so we don't charge anything for community events, which we would have to if we were doing a subscription. And, you know, the third reason is just that we only make, you know, money, like, when people are paying the event organizer. And so we're only monetizing when we actually add value to your business, and that just feels like a fair a fair way to to do business. And so, you know, that's that's how we landed on it. Okay. That's great. [KAMAL] And and I had a great chat with Bob on the same topic, and I think his rationale has similar lines as well that, you know, he want to add value to get paid, and it's not a not a lot of ask, 6% because, you have to also pay out the other providers that you're transactioning with. Right? So and then 2 3%. So it's you're giving a very small fraction of that percentage that you're charging the athletes, as such. Yeah. [ZACK] Yeah. Yeah. We actually matched we like, you know, I don't mind telling you, we matched RunSignUp's pricing for for merchandise and registrations. And, so we you know, our our standard fee is just a dollar plus 6% just like RunSignUp. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's good. That's what I think I saw on the website that you called it out on the website as well. One thing on your the athletic side that you support, I was really, really happy to see that what you're doing in terms of the Strava. So, you know, a lot of athletes I'm a runner, so I use Strava extensively. And, you know, sometimes when you go to a new place, if you have a path already, that's great. Yeah. Because that's how I explore a new city. I fast and go out in the morning. I know the city before I even wake up. My family is up. I know where to go. So you have the proven Strava path, and I see that you are integrating that with even organizers can use it, especially, you know, you have integrated. You know, the I think you build the API when you're at Strava. So how is adding value to the organizers? Yeah. Have you seen that? Because I think it's a value add for athletes for sure. Yeah. Totally. I mean, I think that it adds value to organizers because like, through adding value to athletes. And I don't mean to be, like, convoluted there, but if athletes know what the course is and can get excited about it through having a a Strava route as your course map, then that's going to more registrations. And so, we have seen that pretty much every single event organizer that we work with has either used that Strava integration or, you know, we have other organizers who have wanted their maps on all trails or ride with GPS, and we support that too. But, just you know, it sounds so simple, but just telling people what to expect and where they're gonna need to go gets them excited about the race. And Yeah. You know, we're probably less fearful about being able to complete it. Yeah. No. I I can tell you, and I'm sure you talk to a lot of athletes too. Right? [KAMAL] Every time I sign up for a new race, I look to their risk scores and the aviation map they usually publish, and it's a PDF format. Like, there's nothing you can go double click on it and see what's actually in there. And if you can see the whole visualize the map through style map, that's great. It saw so much friction there too for athletes. Yeah. [ZACK] Thanks. Yeah. I really like that feature. Yeah. When you authenticate your when you basically connect your Strava account to BoomX, we pull in every route you've ever saved or created. And then I actually joke with my Strava friends that it's easier to find a Strava route on Movement than on Strava. Oh, really? You can enable you to search for the route by name. I mean, I'm I'm being tongue in cheek. But, yeah, you can just search for the route by name and then add it as a course map. Then there's no code or anything required. We just make it super easy. And so, yeah, I'm I'm really I I really like that feature, and I'm really glad that you like it too. And now I'm sure it will be a lot of value for a lot of runners who are going for a race. You don't know the course. And I know even organizers do a lot to publish it, you know, send a newsletter. Hey. This is a course map, elevation map. But it's still kinda static. It's not real time. Yeah. And that actually has huge repercussions, especially on trail and then, like, any course where Yes. Yes. It might have to change. Mhmm. Because if you say if you are just downloading a GPX file or, you know, creating your own version of that PDF that you upload on your Garmin or your, phone. You know, these event courses change all the time right before the event. And so if you can just have a source of truth on Strava, then our course map gets updated as soon as the event organizer updates it. And, you know, if you have it integrated with your with your Garmin, then any updates that are made to the course map are going to make their way to your Garmin as soon as you sync it. And so that you know, that's like a really minute implementation detail, but it matters a lot when you get to the part of the course where you're like, should I go left or right? You know? That is true. Especially, I saw in the news that, somewhere, a group of a 5 k people are routed in the wrong direction because somebody just played with the arrow. That goes somewhere around. It was in the news, I think, a couple of days ago. It does Oh, nice. Like a funny news, but, yeah, it happens, looks like. Totally. I didn't see that, but I can totally imagine how that would happen. Yeah. Yeah. They end up going not 5 k, maybe more than 5 k. Hopefully, they realize some point. Yeah. Yeah. [KAMAL] For the use case with the timers, I know you mentioned there are some friction about uploading timing and race results. And and just for movement, how you're solving that friction? Because I know there is sometimes there is a delay because, you know, I ran a half in Pittsburgh, you know, in May. It took me a couple of days to get the results. Like, okay. I know my Strava, how much I did, like, actual timing. I couple of days it took. Are you solving that friction as well? [ZACK] Yes. We absolutely are. So there are a couple of pain points that timers experience and and just, like, really high intensity moments. Mhmm. And the first one is when you say, okay. No more people are going to be able to sign up for this event. And just, like, making sure that all the participants are into their scoring software. And so, like, going from registration to scoring is a big deal. And the scoring software is what actually talks to, like, the timing mats and, you know, your bib, and is, like, how you get scored for the race. Right. That's, like, the first piece of friction. And Mhmm. We make it incredibly easy to get all the participant data down from our servers and into your scoring software. So that's the first thing that we do. Mhmm. Then the timer scores the event. You know, they say, you know, Kamal ran his marathon in 3 hours, and, you know, they give you your place. And the second piece of crunch time for timers is uploading results. And so, oftentimes, timers, have to upload to a completely different platform or a different page than the actual, like, where the event lives. Mhmm. And so we can really simplify things by just making it super easy to get to results from the event page. And so we provide APIs and a really easy upload system for timers to be able to go from scoring to results. And so by just decreasing friction from registration to scoring and scoring to results, We have built a super easy system for timers. And, you know, like, it it basically just leads to less experiences like the one you just described where Right. It takes multiple days for for results. And, you know, there's always gonna be things like if the timing mats, like, lose power, they might have to revert to the cameras, and we're not gonna be able to solve for that. But, you know, we can we can do a lot to decrease friction, for for things that we can control. [KAMAl] I see. I know you, I I see that, you know, within, you are so or you don't have that, you know, movement is, you know, live. You have done more than 300,000 athletes, at least I see, or maybe maybe more number now or more events that you have done. But have you seen that, open organizers reducing that timeline, especially in the timer's point of view? Yes. [ZACK] Yes. We have worked extensively with, many timers on this process and, like, gone through test scenarios with them to make sure that it integrates really well with, you know, like, either chrono track or race day scoring from run sign up. Or there's, you know, other ones in track and field. And so, yeah, we have done extensive testing and collected feedback from over a dozen dimers to make sure that this system is just, as good as it can be. But we're always working on it. So, I wouldn't say that it's perfect, but, you know, we're trying to make it better. Great. Great. I recently, I saw in the news that you, were able to fundraise for the round, so congratulations on that. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Incredibly fortunate. No. That's congratulations. That's pretty big, in a sense that you're trying to reinvent an industry which people think may be saturated or kinda no innovations can be done, but you are rethinking that. So congratulations on that. I'll be curious what is your experience on that because it's a tough market to sell in a sense that I'm reimagining, you know, even registration in today's world. You're right. But, you know, it was funny. It actually I'm just being honest. I don't mean to I don't wanna sound pretentious at all, but we are really fortunate to have a pretty easy time fundraising. And Oh, great. I think that it's just because, you know, we were able to, describe a clear set of problems that can be improved in an existing market with event registrations that's very large and kind of surprisingly large from a venture capitalist perspective. And, you know, if we're able to, you know, just do basic execution and serve event organizers and athletes well, and just make it really easy to sign up for these things and Mhmm. See results and all the things we've been talking about, then, we believe that we can have a really nice business. And, you know, like I said before, the registration piece and monetizing the same way that RunSignUp and all of our competitors do through registrations is is really, like, our short and medium term goal. Like, our longer term goal is to support organizers, and timers more broadly. And so, you we have not started executing, like, in code on that goal yet. But, you know, that is that's, like, we see many additional opportunities for expansion and to add value to organizers and timers by, you know, just be making ourselves as helpful as possible to them. So, you know, enabling an organizer to find a timer or, you know, enabling the organizer, like I said before, to get an ease to get a t shirt vendor. Stuff like that is super easy to add value. Yeah. Yeah. I know so far we are talking about things where you are a cyclist, you're an endurance athlete yourself, and Taylor is also in the similar. [KAMAL] You started as a, you know, going for a bike ride. Are there any stories during your journey in a year and a half? I think, that's what movement is there. Like, it doesn't look like it took a lot of effort. Some stories that, you know, you tried to, hey. This is an easy case that we'd have solved for, but that's not that easy. Some, what do you call it? A fail forward or fail fast kind of an approach that some examples you can share. Fail forward, fail fast. You mean, like, like, something we did at Movement that didn't work out? Or what do you mean? Yeah. [ZACK] Yeah. It's a good question. I would say that I would say that, you know, so far, we have been really blessed with this idea that our organizers have just told us exactly what they want, and we have just been able to find product market fit and just build for those organizers as quickly as we can. I see. So, you know, most of the time, the features that we build are things that our organizers are just asking us for. And so we ship it. And then within, you know, a day, our athletes and our organizers are using it. And so I think that, you know, when we were doing, like, ideation and before we launched, there were certainly things that we trialed and asked people about that did not work and that we did not conviction with that product market fit. But so far, you know, we've just been having more feedback, more business than, like, we can, then we can reasonably, like, do everything right away. And so, we're just it's like, what's the most important thing? And we just do that. And, you know, people use it right away. So we've been very fortunate so far to have found product market fit. Oh, that that's great to know. And because, actually, you have the clients who are telling you what's important to them. You're just Yeah. Time to keep up because you are saying that you have more to do than if you need can keep up, which is great suggestion to win. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. We I mean, honestly, our our organizers are everything to us. And, we we've been incredibly fortunate to work with organizers who give us, you know, constructive feedback and tell us what they want. And, you know, I think that they know that we will do whatever it takes to hold the event experience online that they want. And so that's, you know, like, last week building a new pay what you can pricing model for TrackSmith. Or if it's, you know, building a new API for a large organizer. Or if it's just, you know, integrating all trails maps, we're gonna do that stuff. Because, we care deeply about these organizers and these events, and we will do whatever it takes to help them be successful. Oh, no. That's great. You know, I read couple of the testimonials that you post, on your LinkedIn or some of the public labelable, resources, but they they all highly talked about why they choose Movement when they have other choices of other platforms in the market. So and and and primarily of that team that you have. Right? It's passionate about solving their challenges and making their event successful. That's why I think they've talk all talk about. Yeah. Thanks. I, I it's kind of funny, you know, like, as an engineer, you write the code and there's this moment before you deploy it when you're you just kinda hope that people will use it and like it. And it's it's this kind of magical I mean, it really is, I think, the most fulfilling thing for me personally is just, you know, you write something and then people like it. Like, the routes feature you were just talking about was something I was able to work on Yeah. Yeah. Where we call it routes from here or ephemeral routes. Oh, okay. That was another one of those experiences where it's just like, wow. People really use this. But, you know, we spend all this time working on it, and we thought it would be cool. But then when you're actually able to provide value to people Yeah. And helps them get stoked on, like, the outdoors and athletics, then that's just a magical thing to to spend your career doing. No. [KAMAL] That's that's awesome. How is your feedback loop? Is it like you're working on something this week? You can get the feedback from the events on the weekend. Is that kind of a feedback loop you have? [ZACK] Yeah. I mean, we provide really high levels of service for our event organizers. So, you know, with larger event organizers, we are in a Slack channel with them. So, well, let us know if they if I mean, if they're using Slack. You know? I see. All of our event organizers have my personal phone number, and so they will text me all the time. And this is what I love doing. And so we are constantly talking about stuff with them. So, yeah, the feedback loop is, you know, sometimes, organizers will send us emails or text messages, or they have a million ways to get in touch with us. Mhmm. Make it really easy. And then, we are upfront with them about exactly when we can accomplish these things. Okay. And then we just do it as fast as we can. [KAMAL] That's great. No. That that's good to know. I mean, that's kind of the communication that you have, and they you set the expectation when you're getting to them and in solving their whatever challenges they have or improvements they want to see in the platform. That's great. Now let's talk about going beyond today. I know, you mentioned a couple of the use cases you've not started working on it, but you want to work on it as as you solve it in the ecosystem. From where you sit today, Zach, what do you see where this industry is heading? Yeah. That's a great question. [ZACK] So I see 2 trends. The first is and this one is going to sound, like, not that interesting, but I think true is that registrations are more and more mobile first. So everyone is signing up on their phones. And, like, our own data shows that over 70% of our sign ups happen on iOS or Android. Oh, wow. It is crazy to me that most registration platforms do not work very well on mobile, and they do not support things like Apple Pay and Google Pay and text to pay. And so it's costing organizer sign ups by not having really awesome mobile presence. And so that's the first trend. It's just making it super easy for athletes to sign up on mobile. Mhmm. The second trend, that is something that might be less obvious is optimizing for efficiency and just a squeeze on costs. And so, I don't think you I forget. I don't think you talked about this with Bob, but there's this bill that is, been passed that's coming into effect in California on July 1 called SB SB 478. Okay. And what it what it means is that you cannot hide service fees of any kind until checkout. And so, like, when you are actually going to movement.cc or ultra sign up or run sign up for bike reg, like or and and other industries also, like, if you're just buying a stadium ticket Yeah. The entire price must be shown to you. They cannot just add service fees on at checkout. And so the reason that that really matters is because it's going to become much more obvious to everyone, organizers and athletes included. Mhmm. Like, just how high some of these platform service fees are. And so the cost in the last 5 years of putting on events has gone way up. Mhmm. And as a result, the ticket price of going to events has also gone up. Yeah. So I think organizers are going to increasingly now with this law, wants to go to a solution where the service fees are low and where, like, they are able to just get, like, every single registration and donation they can. And so, I think that platforms that have higher fees may now suffer more because those higher fees are going to be much more apparent to everyone, in a way that they weren't before this law. Do you see that the trend would be to flip the cost structure from service fee to the actual fee? Because I think you're trying to keep the same cost. Right? Like, if I'm to go for, like, if I'm to go for a tailor's ticket. I know exactly what you mean. At the checkout, I get It's painful. Almost double. Yeah. It's very painful. It's painful. Painful. Like, are you going to offload it at the upfront and then the service fee can reduce down? Or you think that's why the industry would shift to? Or you have to make sure that the service fee is very transparent to the end user. Are you suggesting, like, giving the service fee to the organizer itself, like, instead of to the athlete? Or I just wanna make sure I understand what you're asking. So if I'm an athlete, I am registering for an event. So the event cost me is a $100, and the service fee is a $106, right, or $107 at checkout. Now that $7 is not really transparent to the end user service fee. Right? So you're saying that the law would require the event organizers to make sure that what that $7 gives to the athlete or make it very transparent. Yeah. Did you see that it it it can be where that, you know, that $100 will become $105 and say $2 because you're reducing the service fee in a sense. But it happened, it looks like is that where the industry is trending or you think that, the cost cost stream is the same for the I see. End user. You're asking, like, if there might be a race to the bottom with service fees. Right. Right. Yeah. That's a great question. You know, I don't know that I know. I I think that's a really good question, and I don't think that that would necessarily be such a bad outcome. Mhmm. Yeah. I think that I do think that, you know, organizers will probably put pressure on these event registration platforms to either decrease their fee or they'll just move their business. And so these platforms will have to decide if they, you know, wanna maintain their existing business model or if they're willing to move now that their high service fees are, you know, just more out in the open. I I think it's a great question. Yeah. [KAMAL] But at Movement, how you're thinking to solve this? This, like, regulation. So we're just going to display the entire service fee, and we have nothing to hide. We Right. We, like I said, have know, industry leading low service fees of a dollar plus 6%, which Mhmm. [ZACK] Is on space fee also. Uh-huh. And so, you know, we're not embarrassed to say, listen. We need to keep our lights on, so we're going to add 6, 6% plus a dollar. Like, that's that's what allows us to host this platform and to make all this awesome technology for organizers and athletes. And we're not gonna charge, exorbitant service fees for any to anyone, but we're also not embarrassed about, what we have to do to keep our lights on. You know, we're not selling anyone's data. We're not selling ads. We're not doing weird stuff with subscriptions. We just add this small service fee and then, you know, that's how we are able to keep working on this. [KAMAL] Yeah. So, one one question. I'm not sure if you're comfortable sharing it, but this is an industry standard you adapted, dollar plus 6%. Right? As you are scaling movement to more and more, athletes and events, does it really keep up the light if if you do see the breakdown? Because I I guess if you're a mobile fast, you probably have a good, you know, upward trending infra cost that you have to support the whole platform. Oh. Does does it support keeping the lights on? I think so. It does. [ZACK] I think so. I think it's actually a really good business. Yeah. I mean, from a actual compute, like, software engineering perspective I mean, you have the people cost too, but I'm talking about overall cost of running the business. Does the dollar plus 6% fee kinda give you kind of the profit margin that you want to see? Yeah. I think so. I mean It does. Okay. I mean, you know, the the base Stripe fees, which we use Stripe for our payment processing, are publicly available. And so we you know, I think that they charge 29¢ plus 2.9%, and then they give you a break if you do more. And so, you know, we're making 70¢ plus 3%. And then we also have to pay for tax collection and remittance. I see. And a couple other things. But yeah. You know? I mean, it only works at scale, but our profit margins also go up because we're able to negotiate with a credit card provider at higher scale. And so I see. You know, our margins are, like, the worst now that they ever will be. Because as you are scaling up. Right. Right. Yeah. But we but we're still, you know, we're still able to make money, so that's a good thing. We're not actually losing money. No. That's awesome. That's great. We cannot wrap up our conversation without talking about AI. [KAMAL] So I'll be curious, like, where you stand and you are being Straub. You developed a lot of APIs, and you are thinking about the ecosystem to a lot of technology integrations. How you think that AI can, you know, be a catalyst for movement or a similar industry? Sure. Yeah. [ZACK] You know, it's funny that you're asking this because the, like, consistent feedback that I got when I went to go raise money for MVMT was that, we were in the very small minority, like, 10% of companies that did not talk about AI at all when we were raising. And I I do think that, like, from a business perspective, like, I don't think that AI is ever going to replace the joy that you and I experienced going to a race. And I don't think that, you know, AI will have a product that, like, completely, you know, ever does anything like like the New York City Marathon where, like, we would completely overhaul, like, the New York City Marathon because AI is there. And I actually really like that about the industry. That said, I do think that there are, you know, just like any tool, I think that we can leverage AI to help organizers, host really great events. And so there are some really simple use cases. Like, one of our engineers, Julia Jasko, our founding engineer, she actually led the AI efforts recently at Strava before she came to Movement. I see. And so, you know, we could and I don't know if Strava's announced those features. But, like, we can use AI to, you know, help you write engaging emails, for example. We can use AI to suggest pricing to you based on I mean, maybe we don't even need to use AI for that though. Like, you know, we could use AI to help you write an engaging description and to potentially make suggestions on when you should open registration and when you should communicate to, you know, volunteers and organizers and all the rest of it. But, you know, at the same time, I also don't I don't wanna just, like, start with a solution, which is AI for a problem that doesn't exist. And so I think that I see obvious uses for AI and content generation, to just, like, make it easier to hold, like, build beautiful event pages and send Yeah. But I I don't see AI as doing, like, a ton of the brunt work for, like, actually holding an awesome event. And so, yeah, I see I see the core of our business as not being super focused on AI Mhmm. But it's just doing really basic and high level execution on, you know, features that event organizers are gonna love and athletes are gonna love. Great. Great. No. [KAMAL] That's that's good to know, because you can see because you're solving the problems faster with the organizer. So you see where AI can actually add value versus can be a detractor, not can kinda add more value to them. So that's that's good perspective. Thanks for sharing. Well, it was great chatting with you, Zeck. I really appreciate your time, and thanks for sharing the story of, Starting Movement and the journey so far. [ZACK] Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, and congrats on the podcast. I really enjoyed the first couple episodes, so congrats to you. Thank you.