Ep. 274 - Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora on Startup Tech, Trends & Ecosystems

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora. Todd and I talk about the new technologies and trends from no-code tools to embedded audio and video platforms, that affect how we see, hear, and interact with each other. We also explore how companies are tapping into startups and startup ecosystems to enable founders to build and impact the world more effectively. Let's get started. 

Inside Outside Innovation as the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week. We'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Todd Embley. He is a Senior Startup Advocate for Agora and a formerly with China Accelerator. So welcome to the show, Todd, 

Todd Embley: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you because we've met a while back early in my startup days when I was running NMotion. You were in China. And we met at some global accelerator network conference. I think it was in San Diego, perhaps. So, you spent a lot of time in Asia, as I did. And recently moved back to the states, working for a interesting company called Agora. We had a chance to run into each other again in Lincoln. 

Todd Embley: Yeah. Thanks very much. I actually did come back from China and moved to the U.S. but now I'm back in Canada. I am Canadian and I'm living in Western Canada. 

Brian Ardinger: I wanted to start the conversation with the most recent company that you're with is a company called Agora. It's an interesting company for a couple different reasons. And it's a real-time engagement platform that a lot of popular companies are using to build on top of like Run the World, which is something that we've used for our IO Conferences and that. 

And some of our IO Live events. I think you guys provide like the SDKs and the building blocks to enable these types of startups to build off of. So, I I'd love to get your take, not on just Agora, but you've got an interesting role there as a Startup Advocate. So, what is a Startup Advocate? 

Todd Embley: It's a great role, for those of us who aren't necessarily adept at selling. And we fall under marketing. And the role is really, if I were to compartmentalize everything that we're about and our ethos and thesis. Is go out into startup land and be as helpful as possible. Try to integrate. You know, we sponsor. I run workshops. I meet with lots and lots of entrepreneurs all the time, and we're just out there trying to be as helpful as possible. 

And the great thing that the company and the founders and senior leadership have all gotten behind is just be out and be as helpful as possible. And wear the t-shirt while you're doing it. That's almost the be all and end of it. And for those that are really interested in what Agora is and what Agora does, then we can get into that. But essentially, we're not trying to put it in front of everybody and not trying to blast everybody with, with Agora specifically. 

The team is comprised of people who have been entrepreneurs, been in startups, been in VC, run accelerators. And who have just a lot of empathy for startups and that's kind of where it begins and ends. 

Brian Ardinger: We see a couple of different companies use this approach of startup advocate type of program to help build their business. Walk me through like, what are the benefits and the reasons why a corporation would want to put together some type of program around this.

Todd Embley: You know, I think AWS and what they've been doing for as long as they've been doing it are kind of the benchmark. And they were, I would say the pioneers, at least the most famous pioneers of running programs like this. Our senior leadership had an opportunity in China to talk to the heads of AWS Activate in China.

And they divulged some interesting statistics, which I think were the precipice of Agora wanting to build their own startup team as well. And that was that after 15 years of them having a program, they will now attribute up to 65% of AWS revenues today to the activities, you know, over the last 15 years, of their startup program.

And what we're trying to do is invest in our future huge customers. Knowing that the world's next billionaire companies, trillion-dollar companies. The unicorns of the future are still just startups today. And if we want to align ourselves correctly with what it takes to build a startup and how hard it is, let's maybe try to get out of their way at the early stages while they're trying to cross the early chasms of, you know, and the difficulties of what it takes. 

So, from a revenue perspective or from a cost perspective, let's give our stuff for free. You know, until you, their revenue. You can't get blood from a stone. So, while they're still searching for product market fit and revenue, let's let them use our software for free until such time as they are then finding product market fit and then able to start generating revenue. And only at that time, should we then start to talk to them about actually paying for the service? 

Brian Ardinger: That makes sense. And obviously it seems to be working. I think I read on your website, you've got over 50 billion minutes of engagement on the platform. Probably going up as we speak. I don't know if you can speak to any specific use cases or specifically what you do when it comes to helping these companies get up and off the ground. 

Todd Embley: Sure. As you alluded to, there are some famous companies that have been using us, especially in the real-time audio space. There are a few NDAs in place. So, you could mention who those companies are. And by all means it's pretty widely known. I necessarily can't speak directly to who some of those more famous ones are. 

But the nuts and bolts of the program essentially boils down to free minutes. So, my Director, Tony Blank. He and another friend of ours, Paul Ford, used to do this at SendGrid. And that's where they were a big supporter of the Global Accelerator Network where you and I met in the beginning and then the Twilio acquisition of SendGrid. So, he was there. And they were doing a great job as well. 

And leading on some of the data from their experience there, or Tony's experience there, and then understanding our business and the data that we had over the years that Agora has been thriving. We positioned the amount of minutes at 1 million, we figured 1 million minutes of Agora should be enough for most companies to achieve product market fit and revenue.

If you haven't achieved product market fit and revenue, after using a million minutes of Agora, you may have some underlying other issues that are getting in the way of that. But we really feel that upwards of 80%, even 90% of companies who do achieve and use up the million free minute...