An introduction to Scott & learning his industry background

Jason: Hi everyone thanks for joining. We are here with Scott. I want to introduce you to what we are going to be doing here on a weekly or biweekly basis. Today we’re going to learn more about Scott, his background, how he joined the company, what his role is, and some other things. But going forward, we’re going to talk to other team members, talk about the company, recent news, industry stuff, and we want it to be interactive. If there are any questions, or things in this video, please drop a comment below and we’ll make sure to get it in. But Scott, first things first, how are you?

Scott: I'm excellent, Jason, thanks for having me on.  

Jason: Good good, well here usually we like to kick it off, I know it's going to sound, maybe a long time ago, but usually where you went to school, first couple of early jobs and then we will kind of go through the timeline.  

Scott: Yeah sure, I would be happy to. This is actually my third chapter of my career, I guess I could call it. My first chapter was in the telecommunications industry. I worked at telecom for a little over a decade actually and did my MBA while I was doing that there. Then I re-careered into the brokerage industry. I had a passion to do that after working on an MNA project, whilst I was in the telecommunications industry. I was working on an MNA deal and I learned the power of investment banking and how the investment banking piece really drove a lot of the business decisions, particularly related to MNAs. So then I re-careered into the investment business and worked in the brokerage industry for 10 years, for two different brokers. I served on the board of directors on one of them so I got to know the investment business very very well, and became an investor in small and big gap space and myself, I’m an active investor to this day. When I was in the investment business, I looked at how technology may have an impact on investment business and actually, it was interesting because the investment business, a lot of the brokers or brokerage practices still have not really adopted many of the current technology pieces, so many of the rules you have to follow, you have to call the brokerages to process a trade , and you can’t text your broker, that sort of thing. So I saw an opportunity of how technology can be disruptive and change the way that the brokerage industry operates and I wanted to be a part of that. I found that at AnalytixInsight which was a microcap at the time when I joined 5 years ago. We've covered a lot of ground in the company since then. We are really working on developing tools to help brokers as well as investors. 

Jason: Before we get into this part of the story, I’d take a page back. Investor banking here quick. I know a ton of people are going to be watching this and listening, very interested in investing. I always like to ask, doesn’t have to be doing anything now, but 10 years in investment banking and on the board at one of those firms, did you see  cool things or any cool companies that came through, any cool tech?

Scott: Oh yeah, there’s a lot of great, you see a lot when you are in investment banking cause you’re raising capital for the growth industries of the day and everything goes through a different cycle, so sometimes it's oil and gas, sometimes it's mining, real estate, tech and so on and forth. You get to see a lot of different management teams, a lot of different projects, a lot of opportunities and some of them are obviously more compelling than others and so you learn quickly, you screen through a lot of slide decks before you finally zero in on the ones you truly like. But yes, some really compelling and interesting opportunities that I’ve been able to be helpful in early stage companies have been able to make a difference in and it's also very rewarding, just in terms of contribution actually, in the growth of some of these companies. 

Jason: Yeah, well looking at some smaller cap investing, I am not going to do it here, but going forward we might have to do a piece on you on what you look for, cause obviously everyone asks those questions. We will make sure to get them over, so here’s a little teaser for something to come if anyone has any questions for Scott. Investment banking is still pretty active in the small cap space, so let's talk about how you got involved with Analytix. You see what's been happening in the investment banking broker role. You say technology is going to hit this space pretty hard. So you started as an investor at Analytix, so how does someone go from investor to now a Vice President of Corporate Development. So walk me through that transition. 

Scott: Yeah so, I joined as VP of Corporate Development and supporting Prakash Hariharan, who is the CEO. What we have done is continue to build the company. We each bring different skill sets to the table in terms of how we’re developing the products and solutions that the company is working on, and you need the various aspects of the investment business and experience there to acquire those. Little things like when I first joined the mining sector, there was starting to be some staged interest in the resource sector space which is very prominent here in Canada, there are a lot of, with well over 1000 publicly traded companies in that space. I used to spend a lot of time with those companies at PDAC when I was particularly raising capital for those companies. The first thing I always looked for was how much working capital a company has because having an asset in another country is interesting but not so interesting if there is not enough cash to fly the geologies to the site right. It became difficult to try to figure that out because some of those financial points aren’t readily or easily available so we developed the tools we built where I can literally find those answers on my phone while I am listening to a company's presentation pitch. Those are the types of technologies that we’ve developed that make investing a lot more fun and makes looking at Sadar filings and Edgar filings a lot more fun. 

Jason: Yeah, well it’s funny and we’ll do a deep dive into the company and we’ll do kind of a what's out there comparison - we’ll do a lot of those videos. But interesting that, of course you’re in your day to day and saying “god, this must be better, you know, there must be a better way”. And then seeing, hey here’s a great fitting and building the solution. A Lot of great companies start like that, but we’ll talk about that going forward. So walk me through, I guess what your day to day, week to week looks like as VP of Corporate Development. 

Scott: Yeah so we continue to obviously spend a good part of our timeline on making sure the strategy is correct and the developments that we’re doing in the company and the pieces that we stitch in to help create the jigsaw puzzle of a successful company are the right pieces. Bringing in the right team and the right relationships and partnerships are very important. So in the last 5 years we have developed a number of key relationship points with some very large players and related industry participants, that have been meaningful in the contribution of what we do within the company and so we continue to make sure we are tailoring the products that we build for that need and as an active investor myself, I am very familiar with what investors are looking for and that landscape has also changed. If you think about in the last year and a half, largely due to COVID and largely due to some of the online brokerage platforms that are now available, you’ve got a market industry with a lot more participants now that are active in stocks, it’s hard to go to a cocktail party and not hear someone talking about their favourite stock. I also interface with investors regarding our story and try to position our story and get our story well told and to be well understood. There are a number of components within our story that aren't so easy to recognise on the first round, so it does take some explaining to walk investors through that and I spend a fair bit of time helping to do that. 

Jason: Awesome, we’ll do demos and other things coming up and we’ll go through it and you’ll get your chance to explain it hopefully a little easier. Before we close things off, I need to ask, because I feel like we are going to get so many questions. 10 years of investment banking, give me your one or two favourite investments you made. It doesn’t have to be the most successful but maybe the most interesting maybe companies or something. Hit me with something.

Scott: Well, I am passionate in the tech space and the microcap space here in Canada and the reason for that and, obviously AnalytixInsight is who I work with and what happens in the Canadian microcap sector, because we have been conditioned by the resource sector which people want the discovery, but not the mine. So the speculative investor then wants to invest while there is speculation on the table but as soon as it becomes real, they sell it off and that’s just the shape of investment and every stock chart in the mining sector goes through that. In the tech sector, it should be treated the opposite but it is treated  the same by most Canadian investors because they look at early stage tech companies and when those companies become real, with real platforms, they end up selling them off, the same characteristics as it would in the resource sector. So where I like to play and I’ve had some very good recent success in this, is investing in the tech stores that have become real and the technology sector in Canada and the reason we have very few technology companies that have become large and very successful, is because they are normally purchased and bought out by american tech companies before they hit their full stride. So what I look for in companies is to find companies that actually have gotten to revenues, that have real platforms and real development and you can usually find those companies after a few years into their life cycle present really compelling evaluations compared to any of the peers in the US space and that's what I focus in on, in terms of my investment strategy. 

Jason: Yeah, well we’ll dive into it, obviously on another call, but thanks so much. Scott, it's been a pleasure. We have a lot of teasers for things to come so you are going to have to be back here of course. Thanks so much, anything else about you that you wanted to get into the video? 

Scott: No, I think we have covered it and I am passionate about AnalytixInsight and looking forward to continuing to work with you Jason. 

Jason: Awesome, well Scott, thanks for joining, looking forward to chatting again soon. 

Scott: Okay, Take care.