Nick Mumford & TODAQ
I recently had the opportunity to interview Nick Mumford, the current CFO of TODAQ. Nick spent his early years with the Canadian army, even finding himself stationed in Germany for 5 years where he learned to speak French and German. He has had an extensive career working in finance for multiple different companies, and he has been working with TODAQ since December of 2019. I got to ask Nick about his current endeavors, the skills he uses as a CFO, and advice he has for aspiring entrepreneurs.
To get an understanding of TODAQ, I asked Nick to elaborate on the innovations of the company and to detail their main product, Tapp. He explained that this is “computer science innovation on the most basic level.” The product allows you to take a file out of a database and move it anywhere in the world with the same integrity if it was still in a database. Because of the ability to provide validity without a database, micropayments without a central database become possible. Currently, credit cards charge around 35 cents for a transaction to take place, but TODAQ has gotten the transaction cost down to under a cent with their software. Tapp allows for significant payments of under a dollar to be made, opening up markets for individuals who are not interested in subscribing to a service but still want to partake in individual transactions. By putting products like a magazine, video, or article behind a small fee, companies are able to reduce spam, eliminate AI scraping, and verify that their customers are truly interested in their product.
Nick then touched on the benefits of introducing micropayments to a company. There is a large customer base that would open up by allowing businesses to sell their products in individual chunks rather than behind a subscription paywall. There are a large number of people around the world who will not pay for a subscription they don’t 100% need. Those same people, however, are more likely to buy isolated products that serve them a greater purpose. Nick explained how there are many B2B businesses that would benefit from offering micropayment services and would ultimately “find more customers because of it.” There are a large number of applications for the product, but they have found it can be a difficult sell to businesses that don’t have established knowledge in the area. Even with these challenges, TODAQ currently has 170 members on their pipeline that are being converted to paying customers.
After hearing about the operations of TODAQ, I asked Nick to detail the key skills he uses as a Chief Financial Officer. He explained that patience is a skill he has to use frequently in his position. Nick described how he spends a lot of his time dealing with “friction in the system.” By friction, he means the tasks that don’t necessarily add to the company’s revenue but need to be done to keep the business running. Nick explained that the common tendency for startups is to not worry about these problems and instead grow the company, but the longer you don’t deal with them the more they build up and become larger issues. It is important to balance the work you do and keep up with the small things before they become a real problem for the business.
Once Nick explained his role at TODAQ and the skills he uses, I asked if he had any advice he wanted to share with aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make an impact. He explained that running a startup is like “blowing up a balloon.” You can’t just focus on one single thing, but instead need to operate and focus on a bunch of different things simultaneously. He also described the importance of having a vision for the future. You need to know how to take the business from a startup to a bigger, revenue-generating business. With this comes the importance of being careful with how you spend every dollar. Startups don’t always have a significant amount of money to throw around, and the current venture market is not set up to allow just anyone to raise the millions of dollars they need. Lastly, Nick explained that you need to be selective with who comes onto the team, making sure they are a good fit for the environment and people in the company. Having someone who will solve problems without being told to and will help get work done is very important in a startup environment.
As an individual who has spent a large portion of his career in high finance and is familiar with the venture market, I asked Nick what he personally looks for when deciding whether or not to invest in a company and their leaders. He began by saying that he “likes to see experience.” He has a hard time investing in a company run by someone under 30, as he values the experience that being in the workforce provides. He also explained how he likes seeing diversity on management teams. He believes every team needs someone fluent in capital markets. Teams shouldn’t be fully built with software designers that have no experience in marketing, but they also shouldn’t be full of marketing people with no technical experience. Lastly, Nick looks for leaders who are true believers in their businesses and ideas. There is a large time commitment that comes with running your own company, so having passion and belief is an indicator that a leader will do whatever it takes to be successful. The chance to sit down and have a conversation with Nick was an amazing experience. I enjoyed hearing about his current endeavors and listening to his detailed advice for entrepreneurs. I am looking forward to keeping up with Nick and seeing what TODAQ is able to accomplish in the future.
Heather Willis & The Boerne ISD Career and Technical Education Department
I met with Heather Willis, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Director at Boerne ISD this week. Heather has been the CTE Director at Boerne since 2019 and has helped the growth of the program in many ways. The CTE program as a whole has 18 programs of study in 11 career clusters for the students in Boerne schools. Her goal is to unify and educate students, parents, staff, school leadership, and our greater community to strategically utilize resources and create opportunities to prepare students for in-demand, high-skill, high-wage careers. CTE focuses on work-based learning, encouraging BISD students to gain lifelong skills and earn certifications that will help prepare them for life after Boerne.
I first asked Heather what she sees in the future for the CTE programs. She hopes to see that students are completing a full pathway of study in one of these programs. Making sure they are taking a CTE course every year and the courses are coherent, ensuring the skills are building upon each other over the years, and then finishing the program with a capstone. Currently, BISD CTE students end their programs in a practicum course, interning at a place of work in their pathway. She encourages students to start interning early to gain experience and resume builders, no matter what their path is. Over the next three to five years, the CTE program is working on facilities. Some of the pathways have outgrown the current facility size and Heather wants to be able to grow those areas to fit all the students that want to be a part of those programs. An example she used was the welding pathway at Champion High School. Currently, they can only service fifteen students at a time, meaning each year they have been turning down fifteen to twenty students who want to be in that program. Another thing she hopes to see improve is communication in the community. Getting the community to understand what it is the students need to be successful when they leave. Educating students and parents on early exploration of what students are interested in to help ease the transition post-graduation.
I followed this up by asking if any CTE programs are not part of the curriculum yet that she hopes to bring into BISD. The first program she hopes to bring in the next few years is a Construction pathway. One of her reasons for this program is that construction is a large field in our area. They currently address construction through the architecture program, but she wants a facility and program that is truly over-construction. The program will help students learn the insides and outsides of framing, electrical work, and plumbing. They hope to develop a pathway for energy and a pathway for law and public service as well.
I asked Heather why she believes doing CTE courses and pathways is important for the students of Boerne ISD. She begins by talking about CCMR, or College Career Military Readiness, and how that is a big initiative of the school district and that CTE encompasses all of that. She mentions a study in Texas that shows CTE courses don’t only belong in high schools, but middle schools as well. Heather said they have begun implementing these courses in our middle schools. She believes that career readiness starts even in early childhood, and hopes to bring relevant pieces into the elementary schools, educating the youth about the world of work. They have started pushing “Project Lead the Way” down to elementary schools, through technical applications, and math and science courses. Encouraging the children to explore STEM courses, because it’s been shown that if not introduced at an early age, children begin to think they can’t do it. The hope is to change that thought process in early childhood and push children to try those areas of education that scare them.
With how wide the CTE program reaches I wondered what some challenges the program as a whole has faced. She mentions the challenge of perception, and more specifically changing the perception that all students need to go to college. She wants every student to do what’s right for them; for some it is college but for others, it’s not. Trying to change that perception in an area where we push all of our students to go to college has been a big challenge. “We battle the GPA game here too”, Heather states. Students will take AP and dual credit courses rather than a CTE course that will teach them skills and experiences they can put on their resumes. The hope is that students will take a course that interests them and see if it is truly what they want to pursue before college.
My final question for Heather was which one of the programs at BISD has been the most successful. She proudly states that there is not one sole program that is more successful than the rest. Each program is doing something special, making a difference in the kids’ lives. She mentions the Ag pathway and how FFA prepares kids for the future, the Business Marketing and Finance pathway, and the incubator program through that. All the CTE programs help students be able to succeed wherever they go, they are not tied down to a future in that pathway because with the quality of knowledge and skills, they learn, those students can apply them everywhere.
