Laura St Clair (00:13)
Welcome everyone to our launch podcast for Iconique.

And we are Iconic Technologies, LLC.

My name is Laura St. Clair and I am a rider, I'm a small breeder of Hanoverians, here in the U S. My career was in commercial real estate marketing, which I still, I still love that. I love transactions and I love the negotiation side of that, but my passion is working with horses, so that's who I am. Alex?

Alex Klug (00:54)
Yeah.

So I'm Alex Klug.

And I would say I am not as involved today, at least in the horse world, but I do have a passion for solving problems and working on developing products. I did mechanical engineering undergrad because I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I knew I loved solving really complicated and complex problems. Have had a career that spanned finance, marketing, I'm now actually leading product development for HP's AI and data science solutions organization. 

And, you know, talking with you learned a lot about some of the problems and opportunities that were in this space. And, you know, just immediately thought this would be a really cool opportunity to disrupt and innovate There is a lot of customer pain points and excited to try to solve some of them.

Laura St Clair (01:53)
Yeah. And I think the terminology is so funny. Customer pain points. Yeah.

Alex Klug (01:57)
Yeah.

Laura St Clair (01:58)
The sport horse industry is fragmented one because of the way the different registries are all organized. Everyone is a bit of a silo. I'm a Hanoverian person and other people breed Oldenburgs or Dutch, Selle Francais, whatever it is. And everybody sort of stays in that group, and yet, the breeding crosses over all the time more and more. And I think that's a really, really good thing, but when you're trying to understand the horses, know where they are, you're trying to find one to acquire, you're looking to breed one, or you want to just know more about some horses that might be related to yours, it's really cumbersome. It's a real challenge. And I think that that's kind of the way we started really talking. 

You know, I'm always looking at the market and saying, you know, you know, what would I buy? I mean, I've, you know, I have a young stallion. What mares would I acquire in a, in a perfect world? And, you know, finding those horses, you go down this Facebook and text message rabbit hole. I'll get messages in the middle of the night from Poland about a mare that needs to be sold right now.

And then on Facebook, it's, how many carrots and I'll PM you, and I PM’d you, and I didn't get your PM, and I'll send you another. You know, it's this really strange communication because, Facebook specifically prohibits the sale of animals. So we end up using code. And to a certain extent being subject to the algorithms of Facebook in terms of marketing our horses for sale or finding one to acquire. 

So to me, and I think you agree, that's crazy. That's really crazy. So.

Alex Klug (04:08)
Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's, that's kind of where it started where, know, you, messaged me you said, Alex, I have this great idea. Like there's this major problem in the market, in the sport horse world, that I think there's an opportunity to really fix and solve.

I was like, yeah, okay, I'll listen to you. And I think it was walking the Starbucks. You're like, hey, people are selling these hundred thousand dollar plus horses on Facebook using, these carrot emojis.

And people responding in the messages, and half of them are just like, looks great, but no real indication of interest is like, is this a legit kind of lead, or is it not? And, you know, to me that was just, that was just crazy. Like why are people going to Facebook? Where is there not a better platform for users to kind of share and talk about the horses that they have or horses that they want to sell or, have breeding services with. 

And, I think that's where I was like, okay, well, there might be something here. And then we took the next step of actually mapping out what, what the journey was for users. How could we make that process easier for the users easier as an overall experience to get to the outcomes that users want?

Laura St Clair (05:31)
Exactly. You know, a lot of the market, is not on social media. I realized that with the mare that we sold in Florida, the buyer had no interest in social media. She is a busy businesswoman. And if I had only made her available through Facebook, that never would have happened. And there are a lot of people that are that way. 

And it's funny because when you you start looking at horses, you really sort of tie yourself to Facebook. You're always looking like who's got something, who's going to post it, what's going to show up and I don't want to miss it.

As a breeder, I'm in a lot of the breeder forums and like, if you inquire and you're not ready to put money down, and buy that horse, then you're considered, a tire kicker and a time waster. 

And I know in my own life, the best decisions that I ever make are the thoughtful ones, the slower ones, the ones where I've thought about it and you kind of come back, that's the one that you come back to. And that's how I've bought the horses that I have. I didn't do it quickly, but I did it thoughtfully. And I think that the way that horses are marketed right now is not conducive to that.

And so, you we sort of started thinking about other models. And of course, since I'd been in commercial real estate, and real estate is a great one because, Zillow, I mean, I remember when Zillow first came out and it was just like, of course, right? I mean, you know, let's see every house. Like, let's see every house. You know, what did that one sell for, our neighbors or down the street?

You know, when we travel, I'll open Zillow and I'll fantasize for a minute about, about living there and what could I buy? And it's, it's fun and it's educational and it's every place. And I think that that's really at the core of what we're doing at ICONEQ because it's not, it's not a sales platform. It's a platform for all sport horses. 

If you have a horse that is in or is qualified for one of the registries that is recognized by the WBFSH, and there are 85 different registries, then you're in. Doesn't matter if that is a day old foal or a three year old that you do want to sell, 
or a 15 year old that you wouldn't sell for any amount in the world. They all belong on ICONEQ and can be featured there, because you know, those are horses that other people with related horses want to see, and we want to know about. 

And we've set it up also so that it's not just a popularity contest. I I think sometimes on Facebook, you'll see these things and you want to like, you want to “heart” everything that they've done, and you know, yay, incredible, stunning. mean, you know, it's just how many words can we come up with? When it really should be about so much more than that when we're choosing a horse that we hopefully will have for a long time. 

It's a big decision. Horses are expensive. And buying the right one is important for you, and it's important for that horse. And that shouldn't be a popularity contest. It should also be, very open conversation - it shouldn't just be “social media” kind of conversation.

I think that we've gotten away from picking up the phone and calling each other and saying, know, tell me about this one, you know? 

So we've designed something where finding, browsing, following horses that might not even be for sale, but you see a foal that you love, you love the breeding or you've seen the stallion, you admire the stallion, you look at all the foals that are in the database, by that stallion, and pick out your favorites, and follow them. And then if the status on those foals changes, you'll be notified. And that's how great partnerships I think are made.

Alex Klug (10:11)
Yeah, I think, I think the Zillow analogy is, is really, really accurate and appropriate because I think when we did look around at what was available on a lot of these platforms today, it was just so focused on the actual transaction, right? Where it's only people listing their horses for sale, or for these services. And there was really no place for you as an individual to showcase you know, your horses that you just have and you want to celebrate for their accomplishments or the work that you're doing as part of developing them. And so I think that was really impactful for us pretty early. Again, looking at the whole experience, not just the initial, the first step of finding or buying your horse, but then just owning your horse.

Because it is a journey. These are not animals that you keep for a couple of years, these are animals that you keep for like a lifetime. I think it was interesting too, because we looked at the business model of some of these companies that existed out there. As a product guy, you want to be aligned with your users. You want to create value as you're generating value, but for a lot of these solutions, they were

Laura St Clair (11:19)
Right.

Alex Klug (11:22)
kind of creating value at the expense of the user, right? You paid to advertise your horse.

We're not charging anyone for putting their horses on ICONEQ because we want ideally every sport horse to be on there.

Laura St Clair (11:35)
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's the beauty of it.

So.

How are we going to monetize the site?

Alex Klug (11:44)
I think we have a lot of ideas, right? And that's been the incredible part of this journey. Because I think going into it, I would say we didn't really know. I think the way we approached it was basically like, knew that the existing solutions out there were at least not meeting the need, right? But we just felt there was a gap in the market and that if we created this platform, I think very strongly that we felt like, we could get people using it. I mean, that was the goal. If we could get people and their horses onto the platform, opportunities to monetize in a way that's aligned with the value that you're creating for those users, will appear. I think again, like too much of the industry is focused on that initial transaction, I mean, there's opportunities there, but there's so many different services again for, for owning your horse. 

Like connecting users with trainers. There's a lot of incredible stuff happening with horse feed and genetics, and the research being done there, and how impactful that can be to performance. There's opportunities with, you know, helping users understand when they should deworm their horse, you know, how they should buy insurance, when they should buy insurance for their horses. You know, just all sorts of services, that we can provide. So I think I'm not, it's, kind of crazy as you you're like, hey, how are you going to monetize this when you're going to make money? 

But I think there's just so many opportunities to, to work with, and create new services or work with existing companies, the partner, that again, that, that are aligned with value because what we want to do, you know, for any of these things is we want to make sure that the, users that are in our platform are really happy. If we're trying to monetize something at the end of the day, it's because they're getting something that they wanted out of it. 

And I think one of our guiding principles is just kind of our users will tell us. As people come on, we've already had early access users into our platform, and they're already starting to tell us, can you build these things?

Laura St Clair (13:38)
Yeah.

Alex Klug (13:49)
Whether it's computer vision to do analysis on different gaits of the horses, or the strength of a genetic match between a mare and a stallion, I think there's just so many different opportunities and, know, given our background, think we want to kind of help make it easy for just the everyday user to, to…

Laura St Clair (13:58)
Yeah.

Alex Klug (14:10)
kind of figure it out and take advantage of that great technology.

Laura St Clair (14:13)
Yeah, absolutely. Make better decisions.

Alex Klug (14:15)
Make better decisions.

At first we were worried people wouldn't want to put all their horses on, but some of our users are very large breeders and they just wanted all their horses on it. They're like, they love the look of the site. They loved seeing their horses on there. And they're like, I want...

Laura St Clair (14:27)
It went crazy. Yeah.

Alex Klug (14:35)
every horse I have on this platform. And I think that was pretty validating for us. But I think it just goes to show you exactly what we're talking about where people need to build these relationships. It's not something that happens over a weekend. not just spontaneously buying some appliance or something. You have to kind of understand and have…

Laura St Clair (14:42)
Yes.

Alex Klug (15:03)
time and space to fall in love with this horse. And so by having all the horses on the platform, you can follow that horse. You can see its progression as someone who's posting, horses. I can decide if I want people to be able to contact me about a horse, And in that way, you could have basically a roster of people who you know, like, hey, they're interested in this foal that been growing. Once it's the right time for the foal to find, it's owner, you're not starting from scratch. You have people who have following potentially this horse from the day they've been born.

Laura St Clair (15:39)
That's exactly right.

Alex Klug (15:44)
I think that it's just a different philosophy than what's been out there so far.

Laura St Clair (15:50)
Definitely, yeah, I think it's really what's needed. And I want to say, I mean, how grateful I am to the beta-users who have helped us really create the site. And I know that several that we've had who have pretty large farms were surprised when they put all their horses in and it's easy to do it. So they did it pretty quickly. And that's when we started getting comments like, wow, I think I can run my business with this in a different way. And, I think the site visually is, is really quite different. I mean, our goal was to…

Alex Klug (16:21)
Yeah.

Laura St Clair (16:29)
really make the horses themselves...

Alex Klug (16:33)
Well, it to the name, right? We wanted everyone have an opportunity to showcase what makes their horse ICONEQ, right? We fell in love with that concept. And you're right. So much of the design was about showcasing and highlighting what is unique and incredible about every single horse on the platform,

Laura St Clair (16:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think our soft launch is eminent.

Alex Klug (16:58)
Yeah. think we're at a point we want people to start, start playing with it. Cause I think, going back to you, like, there are so many different things that we've heard already that, that people want more of. And, again, as a product guy, like that, I want to, I want to hear from our users.

Laura St Clair (17:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Klug (17:15)
I want people to use my product to say like, this is great, but you would be really even better if you added this kind of feature or service. So, yeah, I think we've reached a point now that users can start using and exploring our solution. So anyone will be able to look through the horses, filter, kind of see the listings, only users who have created an account…

Laura St Clair (17:23)
Yeah.

Alex Klug (17:42)
logged in, verified their email address, will be able to create their own horse profiles and contact other users about their horses. Yeah, excited to hear everyone's feedback on what we've built so far and where they think we should go in the future.

Laura St Clair (17:53)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. ICONEQ.com. I -C -O -N -E -Q .com.

Alex Klug (18:11)
Hope everyone enjoys going on this journey with us.

Laura St Clair (18:15)
Let's go launch this thing. All right. Talk later. Bye.

Alex Klug (18:17)
Sounds good.