🎙️ From Startup to IPO: Building a FinTech Giant in Charlotte w/ Michael Praeger, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, AvidXchange
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In this episode of Outsider Inc., host Ian Hathaway interviews Michael Prager, co-founder and CEO of AvidXchange. Michael shares his entrepreneurial journey from founding early ventures to building AvidXchange into a leader in FinTech, processing $200 billion in annual payments. He discusses the importance of starting small, focusing on solving specific problems, and the evolution of AvidXchange's business model. Additionally, Michael highlights the advantages of building a tech company in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his commitment to bridging the digital divide through the AvidXchange Foundation. The conversation emphasizes practical advice for entrepreneurs, the importance of evolving leadership to match company growth, and the substantial impact AvidXchange has had on the Charlotte tech ecosystem.
Show Notes:
(02:53) Michael's Early Ventures and Entrepreneurial Lessons
(05:36) The Birth of AvidXchange
(06:32) Scaling AvidXchange: From Startup to Public Company
(12:20) Challenges and Lessons in Building a Tech Company
(20:18) The Evolution of the Avid Pay Network
(24:27) Raising Capital and Partnering with Bain
(26:58) The IPO Journey and Reflections
(28:48) Building a Tech Company in Charlotte
(34:05) Leadership and Personal Growth
(38:22) The Impact of AvidXchange on Charlotte
(40:20) Beyond the Bio: Personal Insights and Advice
✅ Host: Ian Hathway - Co-Founder & Managing Partner, FOVC
✅ Guest: Michael Praeger - Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, AvidXchange
Produced by Spellbinder Media. Executive Produced by Bridge Five Ventures. Copyright ©️2025, Bridge Five Ventures, LLC, All rights reserved.
Listen & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or at outsiderinc.substack.com.
AI-Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] Michael Praeger: One of the things that I kind of learned previously to starting avid exchange related to kind of getting a business off the ground is around the, the concept of starting kind of small and being really good at solving one problem. For one set of constituents. And I think one of the things that in my coaching with other entrepreneurs that a lot of companies struggle with is day one, they try to boil the ocean and they try to do too much for too many people rather than being really good at one very specific thing.
[00:00:38] Ian Hathaway: Welcome to another edition of Outsider Inc. I'm your host, Ian Hathaway. Today's guest is Michael Prager, a visionary FinTech entrepreneur and a master at turning bold ideas into transformative businesses. As the co-founder and CEO of Avid Exchange, Mike spent more than two decades revolutionizing accounts payable and payment processes for middle market companies.
As CEO, Mike led the company [00:01:00] from its humble beginnings in 2000 through its IPO in 2021, where the company produced nearly 5 billion in exit value for the founders and employees and investors. Mike continues to lead AVID Exchange today, growing the company to over 1600 employees, nearly 9,000 customers, and more than $200 billion in annual payments processed.
Michael's success is rooted in his decision to build avid exchange in Charlotte, North Carolina, far from the traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Boston. By embracing Charlotte's unique strengths, Mike helped redefine what it means to build a thriving world-class business as an outsider today, avid Exchange stands as a cornerstone of the city's tech ecosystem and a testament to the opportunities that exist beyond the usual startup hotspots.
I. Before Avid Exchange, Mike hone his entrepreneurial skills at two additional startups. Planet resume.com and info link partners and his leadership extends beyond business through initiatives like the Avid Exchange Foundation, which focuses on bridging the digital divide in underserved communities.
I'm excited to dive into Mike's entrepreneurial journey, explore his [00:02:00] perspective on the advantages and challenges of building a major tech company outside of Silicon Valley, and learn how he's shaping the future of Charlotte's innovation economy. Michael Prager,
[00:02:09] Michael Praeger: welcome to the show. Thanks, Ian. Uh, I'm excited to be here.
It's always great to be at a podcast that's dedicated to, you know, entrepreneurs building great companies. It's a passion of mine, being an entrepreneur and I spend a lot of time coaching and just being involved with other entrepreneurs and kind of their journey. Certainly the entrepreneur journey is unique and I'm glad to be part of supporting the ecosystem.
[00:02:30] Ian Hathaway: Thanks again for being here, Mike. I'm super excited to have this conversation. It's not every day that I get the chance to talk to an entrepreneur who took a company from founding through scaling through IPO and is still the CEO today of this public company, especially a tech company that was built outside of Silicon Valley.
So I definitely wanna spend a good amount of time today digging in on Avid Exchange. But before we do that, avid Exchange was not your first company. In fact, you founded a few companies [00:03:00] before, so let's start there. How did those early ventures shape your entrepreneurial approach, and what were the lessons learned?
How did they prepare you for what would be ultimately this challenge of building avid exchange in the future?
[00:03:15] Michael Praeger: I. Yeah, so I'd probably have to, uh, kinda give you one experience that actually was kind of the first one that started my kind of entrepreneurship interest and journey. And that is, I grew up in Wisconsin and went to Georgetown, the school, and after my freshman year I said, you know, holy cow, I've been exposed to, you know, the big city of Washington, dc I don't wanna go back to Wisconsin in the summers anymore.
My parents said, okay.
And this is before kind of internships, were really a, you know, a thing for undergrads. And so I started a painting company and one thing led to another and ended up with the contracts for George Washington and Georgetown to paint all the dorm rooms over the summer and ended up having 200 plus students working for me over my remaining three years at at [00:04:00] Georgetown.
And that kind of was the catalyst for, you know,
of. Figure out something to do to support myself. And that led to, I actually went to Summit Partners after Georgetown and got some great experience in, in kind of the intersection of financial technology and software at Summit. And then ended up, uh, leaving and running a company in my, you know, mid twenties called iLink Partners that was in the business of automating the tax billing and.
And that was really at the time I said, you know, love Boston. In the summers, not so much in the winters. I can, you know, move any place. When I think of my next journey, I knew I was gonna be doing something entrepreneurial and, and looked at like five cities in the southeast and came to Charlotte. It was Labor Day weekend 96, and I was in Charlotte for like three hours and I said, this is it.
It was just a feeling I had. About the energy of the city, the [00:05:00] can-do attitude, the kind of the public, you know, private partnerships that the local government has with, you know, the business community. And not to mention, I live on a lake, easy access to the mounds, easy access to the beach. And so moved to Charlotte and start another company that was in human resources side with uh, two partners of mine from Boston.
And we automated the hiring process for technology skillset workers and for companies that were specifically hiring technology skillset workers, and then had an opportunity. Sell that business to career shop in November of 99. And then that sort was kind of the catalyst to, uh, start Avid exchange. But how Avid Exchange got started is I was going to dinner with a good friend of mine that runs a commercial real estate company in Charlotte, and he said, Mike, you know you have time in your hands now and I have this problem in accounts payable, and his name was Daniel.
And I said, Daniel, I don't know anything about accounts payable. But he's like, well, you know about technology. You're a smart guy, you know, go meet with my CFO. And maybe you can recommend some software applications that might be able to help [00:06:00] us. So I was kind of interested in what my characteristics are.
I'm curious about lots of things. And he was right. I had some time in my hands, and so I met with the CFO and I'm like, holy cow, what a bad process. I'm very labor intensive, paper intensive. And I said, it's probably just Ja Daniel's business, the way he runs his business. Probably everybody else has this figured out.
And so a couple weeks later, I'm at a dinner with another friend of mine that was running a title insurance company telling him the Daniel Levine story. And he's like, my account's payroll problem is just as bad. Can you help me? And that was the catalyst really to start. Avid Exchange this year marks our 25th year, and it's hard to believe I've been doing this for 25 years, but it's really probably a collection of five different companies along that 25 year segment at.
Levels of scale. Scale. The first five years was all massive startup, figuring it out, and then it became, okay, how do we leverage partners to more of the scalability becoming a public company and now we're on our next milestone of being a billion dollar business. [00:07:00]
[00:07:00] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. It's an amazing journey. You mentioned it's basically avid exchange.
Today is five businesses. For listeners who don't know what Avid Exchange is like, what is it?
[00:07:09] Michael Praeger: Yeah, so great. So, um, I describe Avid Exchange as a software company that automates the accounts payable and payment process for middle market companies. And simply speaking, we eliminate the paper invoice and the paper check for our customers.
And so what that means is that we have a suite of software tools. That we have, you know, roughly, we're approaching about 10,000 customers in the US that use our tools to manage their accounts payable and their payment process in electronic format. Again, eliminating the kind of the paper and the manual process related to it.
And then we have, you know, over 1.2 million supplier customers that are on our payment network that are submitting invoices and receiving payments, managing their payment business rules, and accessing our cashflow management tools on our network. That's the business today, and we're really excited about, you know, kind of what the future holds for us.
What's [00:08:00] interesting in the middle market segment as we define it, just in the US market alone, companies between 5 million and 1 billion of revenue. And, uh, we expect that over 60% of that market still is managing a paper base or a manual process related to accounts payable and payments. So long runway ahead in terms of our middle market focus, uh, even though we've been at it for a while.
[00:08:21] Ian Hathaway: You mentioned that it was sort of, I don't know, maybe a random conversation with a friend who was facing sort of these messy paper-based challenges, manual challenges involved with accounts payable processes in in real estate. That was confirmed by a second conversation. Eventually you decide this is a big enough opportunity to form a business around.
What was the process like crossing that chasm from. Here's two people who have this problem to, I'm gonna drop whatever it is I'm doing today to to start this business. How you even knew who to reach out to and how to kind of validate this early idea and get those early resources that you needed to [00:09:00] get going.
[00:09:00] Michael Praeger: Yeah. So one of the things that I kind of learned previously to starting AVID exchange related to kind of getting a business off the ground is around the concept of starting kind of. Being really good at solving one problem for one set of constituents. And I think one of the things that in my coaching with other entrepreneurs that a lot of companies struggle with is day one, they try to boil the ocean and they try to do too much for too many people rather than being really good at one very specific thing.
Full disclosure, when we started Avid Exchange, I said, let's solve this problem, this accounts payable problem for this real estate, and then see if that. Other real estate companies had a similar problem. And it turns out that our first customer, which was Levine Properties, was running an accounting system called MRI Software, which is one of the leading accounting systems for real estate, and they're based in Cleveland, Ohio.
And what we integrated [00:10:00] to MRI and our market was our first kind of market was only real estate companies that used the MRI accounting system that was in a four hour drive of Charlotte. And then all of a sudden we became really good at solving the accounts payable problem for our customer real estate companies that used MRI software.
And then we started getting requests by real estate companies that say, Hey, I want you to solve my problem too, but I'm on Yardi, I'm on AppFolio, I'm on RealPage, and I'm on other accounting systems. And that started our journey then of like integrating to other systems, but it was because we had this following that we really good at solving the accounts payable problem.
That's the kind of my lesson learned on new innovations that we do today is I always caution our product team is like, you guys like, it's great. I love the vision, but we can't start there. We have to start very small and tangible of doing a couple things really well in any new product offering that we're doing.
[00:10:56] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, the early stage companies that I work with, I mean we're investing [00:11:00] in pre-seed and seed stage founders oftentimes first time, second time. It's the number one mistake, which is, like you said, boiling the ocean. Did you intuit that for Avid exchange? Was it because you had learned that from mistakes in the past, or was it from that having that seat as a VC before all of this where you saw that mistake repeated?
[00:11:18] Michael Praeger: The reason why I brought up the painting story is there's so many lessons I learned while I was in college. I started thinking, okay, I'm gonna market my student painting to. And then I said that was, you know, too cumbersome, too much erritory. So I said, okay, we're only gonna focus on northwest dc. And then it was like, okay, we're only gonna focus on like the one neighborhood behind the Georgetown campus.
And whenever I focused my lens of the market, we became more successful. And we grew faster. And so I'm like, this is really interesting 'cause like the, the smaller my market focus, the better we're doing. So that concept always kind of really stuck with me about you don't have to boil the ocean, do something really well for very [00:12:00] specific, you know, customer set and good things will happen and you'll be able to expand from there.
[00:12:06] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, and especially early on, I've heard other interviews you've given where you've talked about some of those key early relationships you had, like customers who believed in you, like Levine Properties, investor mentors, Huma Call, ed Crutchfield, and others. In addition to kind of having a few key insights and access to customers and and capital and mentorship, what about kind of getting the early team off the ground there in Charlotte?
Like what were the kind of folks you were looking for? Where did you find them?
[00:12:34] Michael Praeger: My experience in kind of the, all the business I've been involved with my career, the early team has always started with where I've had existing relationships because the reality is it's so hard off the ground and you need people that you've.
No you trust have similar work. Ethics have similar visions because it's super hard. You're not gonna get paid at the beginning. You, you face [00:13:00] failure more often than you face assess. And so to kind of get through that startup cycle, I pull people that I've worked with in the past that I knew I trusted.
And one of the big lessons I've learned, which is hard, is that you need different skill sets of people at every different stage of growth. At the beginning stages, you need people that are kind of like jacks of all trade to some degree because people are doing three, four functions versus being a specialist in one function.
Right? And so in the businesses that I've started, I've always pulled on people that I had relationships with or I've worked with in some degree in the past.
[00:13:37] Ian Hathaway: One of the things that's really interesting to me about the journey of AVID exchange, we talked about some of the high level performance metrics today.
You know, IPO. Processing hundreds of billions annually in payments. Thousands of customers, thousands of employees, more than a million different suppliers on the platform. And I think [00:14:00] too often in the tech world today, the public lore around founders, companies like Facebook and Instagram and Uber, that it's this overnight successes, right?
And you definitely did not have an overnight success. You mentioned it's been 24 years in the making already. I know there were some turning points along the way. One of them was sort of this realization, this evolution towards the Avid pay network beginning maybe in 2010 with customer discovery, 2012, finally rolling that out.
I definitely want to talk about that, but. What were those first 10 years like? If you could sum it
[00:14:37] Michael Praeger: up. Yeah. I mean, I don't really know of any truly successful tech software related companies that to get to a real exit didn't take 10 plus years to build. I was a, you know, fortunate a number of years ago to be invited to Wake Forest.
Kind of the MBA class at Wake [00:15:00] and one of the students kinda raised their hand and asked him what his experience in kind of early stage investing and he kind of thought about it and he said, well, lemme tell you something. I've never had an early stage investment that didn't take 20 years plus to be successful.
And I think that, obviously that might be a little bit of an extreme, but it, it really highlights that it does take time, especially in today's world of more SaaS-based software. It's where you don't get that big revenue hit when you sign a, you know, a big license deal like you did in the past. It's kind of one transaction at a time.
To build a real business. It takes time and I think that's okay as long as you have that mentality set. It's not a sprint, it's a long-term marathon. And as an entrepreneur, one of the things I think is you have to manage your energy accordingly, and you have to be able to not get too down with the downs and not get, you know, too excited with the ups.
And because that kind of relates to. But I think being mentally prepared that this is a long-term commitment and journey. Get [00:16:00] energy from those parts of the businesses that really excite you. And one of the things that I've learned as a leader is it's really important to spend your personal time in parts of the business that give you energy and that you're passionate about.
And for those other parts of the business, hire people that are better than you. And one of the things that I think for lots of entrepreneurs, it's somewhat of a scary proposition to say, what does it mean for me as a leader if I have to hire people that are better than I'm? And what I've learned is that's the leverage.
By adding people that are better than you and the different disciplines of the business, it actually makes you a far better leader. And allows you to spend your time on the things that you're one probably the best at, and B, that give you the energy. That's been kind of my secret to why I'm still here 25 years later and in building a successful business is to constantly evolve the kind of talent pool.
And one of the things that kind of learned, and it's been hard because we have people that are in the battlefield with you building [00:17:00] an early stage business, but what you realize is that that same skillset may not be the right skillset for the, you know, next level of growth. Or the next level of scale that you need in the business.
It doesn't mean that those people have to leave the business, but their roles have to change. And so I spend lots of time, and I still do today with leaders on breakfast, lunches, dinners, and on the personal side of leadership related to what is the best role for them. And one of the things that I see every day is when you have a leader that's not being successful in a.
They know it before you know it. And actually helping them navigate that and, and putting them in roles that there are gonna be successful in as the business grows is super critical. And in some cases, that does mean leaving the business.
[00:17:46] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. So I, I, I want to go a bit deeper on that because I, I feel like this is something that, that.
Happens, especially as companies start to gain traction, right? They're expanding sales, maybe they're bringing on new investors, and [00:18:00] it's this role, especially technical founders who are used to building product and now they're evolving to, to hiring people and letting go. This is a constant friction. I think one of the ways that people can balance that is, like you said, reserving some time to do the fun things like.
The job still has to be fun. So you've gotta carve out that time. But do you have any practical tips or early memories of that, that first time that maybe you let go and you know, and hired someone that maybe that there's a little bit of a discomfort, right? Because founders are used to being some of the smartest people.
They're used to being the most, you know, sort of driven and energetic, and now you're, now you're having to let go of that to a degree. And that's really an internal transformation. So any tips or like early memories
[00:18:44] Michael Praeger: of doing that? Yeah, well probably my earliest memories are ones where I didn't get it right early on in our business.
We were like in our year and a half old, and there was a great leader that I knew in Charlotte that just exited a much bigger business, a hundred million dollar software [00:19:00] business. And I was very proud of myself that I got him to agree to be kind of our chief operating officer, you know, at our year and a half, you know, startup.
And what I quickly realized. He was a great talent, but he wasn't a great talent for a startup. He was a great talent for maybe, you know, a $25 million business and up because he was somebody that needed a team and resources to execute what he wanted to do. And in a some person startup, you have to do work yourself, right?
You have to execute. And that's what kind of was my journey of really being thoughtful about what I need and look at it from a kind of a three year window, what I need the skill sets to be for the next three years to execute this function. And part of it is a big part is I. Who can operate in a size company that I am right now, especially here in Charlotte.
We have lots of talent from the big banks and the Duke Energies of the world. [00:20:00] And what I learned early on is that that talent might be great for avid exchange at some point in time, but not as an early stage company. I.
[00:20:07] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, I think about it a lot as sort of starters, middlers and enders. Very few people can do all of those things well, and it's just having that awareness and the availability of those resources.
So going back to, let's say, maybe the middle, it feels to me like there was a big sort of state change in the company with the evolution towards the Avid pay network, maybe to level set again, could. Could you maybe explain a little bit to people who are less familiar? What is the difference between a software that manages workflows around, uh, accounts payable to actually being a payments network?
Talk to me a little bit about the evolution towards that. What was the realization and I. Maybe how you decided this was the path forward that you needed to take.
[00:20:50] Michael Praeger: Yeah, so one of the other kind of key lessons I've learned is that listen to your customers. Usually as an entrepreneur you have an idea and it's your idea that you try to [00:21:00] quickly realize is.
That actually customers had the best insight to what they need to run their business. And so in our case, in the Avid Pay Network, we were a software only business automating the workflow process of their payables and when it became a fully approved invoice. We then integrated to the core accounting system.
We and our process ended and that's what we were for, you know, 10, 12 years. So we started in 2000 in, well, probably 2009 timeframe. I started hearing from customers. I said, Mike, now we have all our invoices electron. We manage 'em all electronically, but we're paying all our electronic invoices with a paper check.
Can you help us? And at first I, I'm like, why are they asking us? We're like an AP software company. Like we don't do payments. Why don't they ask their bank? Why don't they ask their accounting system? And so after hearing this for about a year and a half, in 2010, I brought about 30 of these customers that are asking this question to Charlotte to try to understand.
What the business problem was that they really thought that we could solve, that nobody else could solve. [00:22:00] And we had a CFO stand up from, uh, one of our large customers in Seattle at the time, and he said, Mike, my problem is I have 300 office buildings scattered across the country, and because of the mortgages, our bank accounts are 26 different banks, and we have 312 operating accounts that we're making payments out of, you know, across these three.
And because of how we built the portfolio through acquisition, I'm running seven different accounting systems. So I have seven different accounting systems. I'm paying, you know, payables outta 312 operating accounts across 26 banks, and I wanna run one bill payment process every Tuesday and Thursday. And now a sudden all the lights went off.
I said, I got it. Now I understand why one accounting system or one bank can't solve your problem. And so that became the mission of what we were trying to do. His name of the time was Dick Cargo. And our whole mission was to solve Dick Cargo's payment problem. And, and the launch of the AVID paid network was to solve that very specific problem and then [00:23:00] realized is.
If not the same dynamics related to solving their bill payment process. And what we realized, uh, then is our sales evolution really started to accelerate because the combination of our software to manage the workflow process combined with the payment network was really powerful. And that was kind of the magic suite that customers were looking for.
And we grew for over 30% for 12 years.
[00:23:29] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. I love that intentionality of naming the core customer problem after an actual customer, right? Because it just keeps you laser focused on who you're building this for and why.
[00:23:41] Michael Praeger: It also brings personality to like the problem that we're solving, right?
[00:23:45] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. It makes it human.
Absolutely. So, okay, so growth starts accelerating. You're this fast moving FinTech company now, and I know you had raised a minimal amount of capital, something like $10 million mostly or [00:24:00] exclusively from local sources. And then in 2015 you've got a lot more seats at the table. A 200 million venture capital round led by Bain, along with many others around the table.
Could you share a little bit about that decision and kind of maybe your evolution as a CEO of like. This is a very different company at this stage from the, the company that you were building in the early days. So what was that process like for you and the decision to welcome Bain and others around the table?
[00:24:27] Michael Praeger: Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of a, maybe a, a precursor to kind of our capital history. So I'd come off a couple successful exits, and when we started to have exchange was April, 2000, and the world hadn't yet cratered and at the time we're like, oh. No problem. We should raise a $10 million a round, you know, pretty easily, you know, to kind of capitalize the business.
And, and we ended up closing the a round at a million and a half and I did a majority of the round. And so the moral here is one of the best things that happened to us. We never raised a lot of money [00:25:00] early. And so what would happen is after we raised that million and a half round, we kind of really grunt it through.
'cause obviously.com, the two thousand.com cycle happened and it became really tricky to raise money. And so we like, Hey, listen, let's like build the business one customer at a time, make real money from real customers and just kind of continue to prove out the business model. And so we kind of just raised a little bit of money along the way.
And we are 10 plus years into the business, we'd raised less than $10 million. And I think that really kind of preserved a lot of the dilution along the way. But what I encourage entrepreneurs to do is be careful how much money you raise, you know, early to make sure that you, you raised the right amount, because it's gonna take multiple rounds.
I think probably the average successful software company that exits had four plus rounds of funding. And so be thoughtful of the number of capital you have to the next stage of your funding cycle. So with the time in 2000, you know, 15 when we, uh, did the Bain Capital round, I was led by Matt Harris at [00:26:00] BA Capital was.
We roughly built a $40 million software business, you know, on less than $10 million of capital. And what I really was looking for is, okay, now I really see how this can become, you know, a much bigger company. And I'm not sure if I have kind of the wherewithal myself to kind of. Build a business that was a hundred, couple hundred million of revenue at the time.
That was our thought process. And so let me partner with some really smart venture investors who have experience in, in taking companies that were at our stage and having build them to much bigger businesses, having successful exits. And that was my thought process at the time. And so we did that deal.
Uh, we were about a $40 million business in thousand 15. Our IP. Uh, 21, roughly a $400 million business, and today approaching a half a billion and moving towards kind of our line of sight to being a billion dollar revenue business.
[00:26:58] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. So speaking of that, [00:27:00] IPO in 2021, what was it like to go through that process?
Not many get to do that, but hopefully a few people who are listening will. What would you say to those folks? What, what do you know now that you wish you knew then? I
[00:27:14] Michael Praeger: mean, it used to be what I would say for lots of entrepreneurs, it's like not only analogy, the Super Bowl type exit, if you can get to an ipo, and I would say that the world has changed and because it used to be that you needed to be public to get access to the level of capital that you needed.
In today's world of the private markets, I don't know if you have to be a public company to get the capital that you need to grow and be successful. And so I think getting to those milestones is a great objective, but I'd say think carefully about the process of whether I. Being a public company structure is the right structure for you to achieve your objectives or not.
And it used to be for a lot of the venture investors, the only way to get liquidity was to be a public company. And again, [00:28:00] in today's world with capital, that's not really the case. I mean, I was, I had one venture partner of ours, kind of tell me last year that in the last 12 months, the lines of cross, there's more capital now available in the.
Private PE world than there actually is in the public world. And so that's a very different dynamic in today's world. I would say also now being a public company seat, four plus years, you need a very built out team because you end up working on a lot of things that have nothing to do with building the business.
You spend a lot of time with investors and analysts. And things like that that are kind of part of the role and part of being a public company. And so as long as you understand kind of how your role's gonna change and have a very built out team that can run the business and support you, being a public company I think is absolutely mission critical.
[00:28:48] Ian Hathaway: So I want to shift gears to Charlotte. You did something unusual. For a tech entrepreneur, which you already were at the time. You left a mature ecosystem [00:29:00] in Boston and moved to Charlotte. It sounds like it was mostly a personal or entirely a personal preference. Maybe talk to me a little bit about.
You're thinking around that, what was Charlotte like back in those days? Did you have a thought of, could I continue on my entrepreneurial journey as a tech entrepreneur in a place like Charlotte? And how did you maybe sort of overcome being a newcomer to the city?
[00:29:25] Michael Praeger: Yeah, so when I was in Boston, I said, Hey listen, I know I'm gonna start another company after my exit of.
What are the characteristics that I need in a supporting ecosystem? And at the top of the list was really good cost of living, quality educational system, university systems, providing engineering, software related talent, access to a great airport. And then I would say kind of, and this is more of a personal one, but quality of life, weather, things of that nature.
Kind of doing that analysis. That's what brought me to Charlotte. I was [00:30:00] actually a little confused. I was like, I don't understand why other, why there's not more entrepreneur companies in Charlotte, because I found that, you know, had great access to talent and there's a really good can-do attitude related to the business community in Charlotte, combined with.
The public sector, they're very supportive of each other, and I just found it was a terrific platform and environment to build a business in. And I can't tell you how many early stage venture investors came to Charlotte and visited me in the early years and said, Mike, like what you're doing? But if you're ever gonna build a big business here, you're never gonna build a big software business in Charlotte.
You're gonna have go back to Boston, to San Francisco, or. And I also kind of thought that was interesting that they'd have those comments because I'm like, I think we're doing just fine here. And one of the, I guess the reasons was at the time around the access to capital, it used to be that the geographic proximity of capital takes San Francisco.
How many people just drove down Sand Hill Road and [00:31:00] building the, building, the raised capital, right. But in today's world. If you have a, a really good idea and business model, capital will find and people will come and everybody's only a plane flight away from seeing anybody. And so I kind of took the approach where, yes, I did raise some early stage venture capital in Charlotte angel investors like Hugh McCall and from Bank of America at Crutchfield, from First Union at the time, and other C leaders who in support of what we.
And kind of supporting me in building a new business. And Charlotte checked all the boxes. And so I was always a little bit surprised that there wasn't more people like me in Charlotte trying to build a business. But I will tell you today, there are,
[00:31:44] Ian Hathaway: one of the things that surprised me is that this narrative that you have to be in Silicon Valley to build a great tech company, it is often repeated today.
I think it dissipated some in the, there's been a proliferation of early stage capital over the last decade, I think. Covid turbocharged [00:32:00] that a little bit. And now with the kind of the rise of ai, I feel like those voices are getting louder again. But you're living proof that that's not true, right? So I think you set a great example for founders everywhere who it's like to borrow the advice from our mutual friend, Brad Feld says, figure out where you wanna live and then build the best life you can around that.
And, and I fully agree. So you did mention that. You couldn't figure out why there weren't more people like you building companies like the company you were building, and now there are. So maybe just quickly, how has the ecosystem in Charlotte evolved over the years and and what role do you think Avid Exchange has played in that evolution?
[00:32:42] Michael Praeger: Well, first of all, I, I, I'm glad you brought up Brad, because full disclosure, Brad is the one that close, Brad, we started the Boston chapter of EO at the time, and organization was a kind of a predecessor. You know why, yo, and one of the things [00:33:00] that Brad did is he just said exactly right. Figure out the environment that you wanna be and where you wanna be, and then build your ecosystem there.
And so I saw Brad do that when he moved to Boulder, and there was a couple years later that I said, I'm gonna do the same thing and move to Charlotte. So today the Charlotte ecosystem is pretty robust around what I'd say. FinTech data science, the local university system, UNC Charlotte has really leaned into both engineering as well as a focus on data.
And I think it's part of the focus of, yes, it is a banking city and there's lots of financial technology that's here. So how do they create a pipeline of talent to support the focus of Charlotte, which I think is good because again, going back to having a more narrow focus of developing talent, I think is helpful and.
Terrific catalyst in terms of the amount of entrepreneurs building FinTech related businesses, uh, here in Charlotte has been the most robust it's ever been in since moving here in nine seven. I'm a massive supporter of that Charlotte [00:34:00] entrepreneur ecosystem and excited to see how it's evolved over the last 10 years.
For sure.
[00:34:05] Ian Hathaway: Let's talk a a little bit about you as a leader. I've heard you say like a one of avid exchanges. Cultural values is being growth-minded. And I've heard you say that if your company's growing 30% every year, then you as a leader and as a person need to grow 30%, at least 30% every year. So like what does that look like in practice?
How do you push yourself to stay ahead and, and to keep growing and evolving as a leader?
[00:34:32] Michael Praeger: Yeah, I think you, um, at the beginning I kind of, I was doing it outta like just survival necessity, right? And then I started working with a coach and it got me kind of on the path of like, if you're gonna try to change anything, you have to be intentional about how you do it.
And, and then that kind of created for me and how I think of mindsets and kind of having that growth mindset. And part of that growth mindset is. A curiosity factor about how, I'm curious about [00:35:00] how I would need to evolve to be a better leader at each stage of our growth, and I'm actually get energy out of that process, right?
What do I need to develop? How do I need to develop to be a better leader for my business? And one of the things I try to do every year is to lean into something that's like, not the business itself, but try to learn a new skill or a new capability or get better at something that creates energy for me.
So a couple years ago I wanted to learn how to e foil. I live on ail, so I invested in a e foil. I. And then now, and then it turned out that summer ended up like teaching all my buddies how to eil. Right. So I became like this IL instructor, right? And last year was about getting my book done around
Wanna change? And really try to [00:36:00] evolve it and kind of increase the frequency, make it more impactful for our customers, sharing their stories about how they have transformed kind of manual based processes. But that's one of the things I try to do each year is to kind of challenge myself to lean into what am I gonna work on and develop on.
That's kind of tangible in a way also that gives.
To put time into something if you're not energized by it.
[00:36:26] Ian Hathaway: I'm glad you actually, you brought up the, the podcast. I did not know about the e foiling or the book, but, but the, the podcast I did know about and, and I'm glad I was gonna ask you about that next. You mentioned coaching and curiosity, right? Do learning something new is fundamentally about being curious, but so is hosting a podcast and so.
On that, the power of change. What have been some surprising or interesting insights that you've learned by being a podcast host so far?
[00:36:54] Michael Praeger: One of the things that I've learned is a lot of similarities to [00:37:00] CFOs, finance leaders that are in a business that transform their process. There's so many characteristics of being entrepreneurial, right?
They're almost like entrepreneurs within their business around taking risk. Taking a process that worked fine for, for long periods of time and saying, no, we're gonna really throw that process out, create a new process, move from paper to, and, and you people that are in a finance role, that's a, a scary proposition at times.
And so one of the things I've learned is. There's a lot of characteristics between an entrepreneur and somebody that's transformational minded and wants to just radically change a business process and kind of what they need to do to be successful doing that. And then also I've kind of learned that going back to kind of passion and energy that these people actually.
Get a tremendous amount of energy into, in, uh, transforming business process and, and versus kind of maintaining the status quo. You can get somebody to execute a function and it's gonna [00:38:00] probably run fine for, and that same process is gonna stay the same way for a long period of time. Versus somebody that's has the mindset to say, how do we just start over?
And if we had to do this. Today, how do we do this process differently? How would we do it without paper? How do we do it without manual process? And, and that takes a special to a different type of leader, and there's a lot of characteristics with being an entrepreneur.
[00:38:22] Ian Hathaway: So, jumping from today, like let's say looking into the future 20 or 50 years from now, what do you hope people will be able to say about.
Avid exchanges impact on Charlotte or the legacy that you will be able to leave as a founder and as a, as a leader of, of the city.
[00:38:42] Michael Praeger: So I think, you know, one of the things that, uh, you know, I take a, a lot of pride in is the impact that Charlotte's had on the community. And yes. You know, we do employ, you know, about 1700 plus are c.
And, and growing. But [00:39:00] also one of the things we started close to over 15 years ago was the Avid Exchange Foundation and how we invest in supporting the community of where our teammates live and work. One of our main focuses is around, we call it our kind of tech initiative, religious, eliminating the technology divide.
Of making sure that all high school students, some middle school students have access to technology, and so we're very focused on how everybody, regardless of their economic background, has access of laptop, high-speed internet when they're in their high school years, because if they have the same access to technology.
That equals the playing field for their opportunities. That's one of the big things that we've been able to do here in the Charlotte community, in addition to just being what we consider a great employer and being a thought leader on how the city has to continue to evolve to be dynamic. Can be diversified and attract the talent that we want to continue to have in the city.
Probably some people might argue the city's actually grown a bit too fast in [00:40:00] recent years, but you know, growth creates not only solves problems, but it creates more problems. But that creates more opportunities for people to solve problems. But I think, you know, down the road is saying Avid exchange had a positive impact, not only what we do in terms of help our customers, but it had a significant positive impact on the community overall.
[00:40:17] Ian Hathaway: So look, Mike, we're. About Outta time. But on Outsider Inc. We like to finish with a segment that we call Beyond the Bio. So these are just kind of quick hit questions that let us get away from your resume a bit so listeners can get to know you as a person. Does that sound cool?
[00:40:33] Michael Praeger: Sounds cool.
[00:40:34] Ian Hathaway: Okay. So what's a quick piece of advice that a mentor gave you that's kind of stuck with you along your journey?
[00:40:41] Michael Praeger: Hire people better than you.
[00:40:43] Ian Hathaway: Who's an unsung hero in your life that has had an impact, like very big impact on you?
[00:40:48] Michael Praeger: Tom Desel, my high school basketball coach. We won the state championship my senior year in high school, state of Wisconsin, and I think the time the Wisconsin Journal sports editor said, [00:41:00] this is the least talented state championship team the state may maybe has ever seen.
[00:41:06] Ian Hathaway: So that's your headline. The. Least talented championship team in Wisconsin State history. I don't know how we didn't get to this sooner, but, uh, I'm glad we eventually got to it. So, speaking of, you know, your hometown, you mentioned before you're from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. How, how do you feel like I. Growing up in a small town in the Midwest helped shape you as a leader, shape your perspective as an entrepreneur?
[00:41:31] Michael Praeger: Yeah, I think, you know, it really kind of shaped me from the standpoint of work ethic. Both my parents were teachers, both my grandparents worked in the foundry at the Kohler company for 50 plus years. And I think there was a kind of a work ethic just got still early on, and I still have this mindset today.
The Tom Desel basketball coach scenario, he taught us early on that like you don't control the talent that you were born with. Uh, but what you do control [00:42:00] is how hard you work and your work ethic. And one of the things that I think I've always taken with me, whatever situation I'm in, is I may not be the smartest person here, but I'll AtWork anybody.
And I think that's been kind of the key to my success.
[00:42:14] Ian Hathaway: That's a good Midwest value. And speaking of hard work, who is someone in the local Charlotte startup community or in your broader network who doesn't get enough credit and deserves a shout out from you?
[00:42:27] Michael Praeger: That's a good question. So I'd go in my longtime business coach Patrick.
The end. He's a remarkable entrepreneur himself, but he gets, uh, a lot of energy about being in the background and helping people like myself be successful. Uh, although he's an incredibly talented, uh, coach and human being. And then obviously we share a common passion with guys like Brad, who is just salted to earth A special people.
[00:42:49] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. Okay. So. Are there one or two songs that you like to listen to that kind of fuel your workday or have inspired you as an entrepreneur? We're we're [00:43:00] creating a Spotify playlist. So one or two songs you'd like to add to that.
[00:43:04] Michael Praeger: So, hey, I got, I got two for you. One that brings me back to my senior year graduating when I kinda learned I was leaving Wisconsin and going to Georgetown.
And the song at the time that came out was Summer 69 by Brian Adams. And so that one's that dear to me. 'cause that was kind of the, the theme song for me, leaving Wisconsin, gonna Georgetown and then one that whenever something kind of, uh, bad happens, you have a bad day. Lose a customer, whatever it is, you're downs back high of songs.
[00:43:37] Ian Hathaway: Oh yeah. Amazing. Okay, so last question. If you could give one piece of advice to a founder who's about to start their first company, particularly someone who's trying to break the mold in some way, what would it be?
[00:43:55] Michael Praeger: I would say don't try to boil the ocean. Start by solving a, a [00:44:00] very specific problem in a really good way for a single customer.
[00:44:04] Ian Hathaway: Well, Mike, that was an amazing conversation. Thanks so much for joining me and I can't wait for the listeners to get a chance to hear this.
[00:44:13] Michael Praeger: Yeah, no, um, excited. It's a great way to kick off the year. You've given me actually a lot of energy and motivation about my own podcast, and so I can't wait to get started on kind of where I'm gonna take it this year.
And certainly look to, you know, stay connected and love what you're doing and supporting entrepreneurs. So thank you. That's a
[00:44:31] Ian Hathaway: wrap for today's episode of Outsider Inc. A huge thank you to Michael Prager for joining us today to share his fascinating story. There is so much to take away from this conversation.
Mike made the consequential decision to find an ideal place to live and then to build his next steps as an entrepreneur Around that. Things worked out pretty well for Mike and his story as a reminder that entrepreneurs don't have to flock to Silicon Valley to find success. What's more his approach to hyper-focused customer segmentation early on and [00:45:00] an obsession for solving customer problems are critical lessons for entrepreneurs building today.
If you want more from Outsider, inc, don't forget to subscribe to the platform@outsiderinc.substack.com. It's packed with highlights from today's episode and bonus insights you won't wanna miss. You can follow Outsider Inc on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn at Outsider Inc. Pod. You can also follow me on X at Ian Hathaway.
Outsider Ink is produced by Spellbinder Media. We'll be back soon with another fascinating outsider conversation. Until then, thank you so much for listening, and remember, great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. See you next time.