Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here from Philly Tech Entrepreneurs. I’m here with Christian. Christian is a young entrepreneur that I was fortunate enough to meet at our last Meetup that we had in August. Christian was raised in an immigrant household in Philly, and he has created his own connections, learned how to code in just a couple of years, and is starting his own Venture called Side John. So we’re going to get into all about his background, this concept that he’s working on, a bit about AI as well. Christian, how you doing today?
Christian: Living the dream. How are you?
Dave: I’m good, man. You know, we had this long conversation before about how to properly pronounce your last name Iosf, and then, you know, I did the intro and I just totally forgot to even say it.
Christian: Yeah, that’s the Romanian side. People think it’s an L. Uh, please, it’s an I, I promise.
Dave: I gotta cool, man. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing. It’s definitely unique. You’ve already kind of mentioned the Romanian side and kind of what, you know, growing up in Philly and, uh, so what brought you here?
Christian: Both of my parents are immigrants. My mom is Ecuadorian and my dad, obviously Romanian. And, uh, they met in New York. We moved to Philly, and I pretty much grew up here. Uh, I have a lot of first-generation friends. All of their parents are immigrants too. And, um, I went to a Central High School here in Philly. So, um, there’s a lot of first-generation students going there and a lot of smart people going there too. And I was really fortunate to meet all those people there. Growing up with my family was pretty hard. We grew up relatively poor, um, but my mom and my dad had good instincts on them. They put me through school, and, uh, I came out the other side learning how to code, doing the things that I need to do to try and go up in the world, you know?
Dave: Yeah, I hear you, man. That’s awesome. I appreciate you kind of sharing a bit about your background and, uh, what it was like. Um, I have a sort of unfounded, you know, no quantitative data or anything, but always this feeling that immigrants kind of often make good entrepreneurs. Um, they, you know, often are very hardworking, great values. And in a lot of other countries like people, I don’t know, I think small businesses have like a bit of a large presence than they do in the US like people are kind of running stores and shops and things like that. And in the US, like larger conglomerates have kind of taken over a lot of the ecosystem for business. So, uh, it’s less likely maybe for someone who’s growing up in the US to like get some of that small business exposure. Obviously, you know much more about the Immigrant Community than I do. And what are your thoughts on that?
Christian: Yeah, I mean, no, I completely agree. And, uh, actually, that really plays into why I’m working on Side John. Um, I feel like there’s not enough people that are working on the projects that they care about and building the businesses that they want to build. Um, and I think there’s too many resources here for us not to take advantage of them. And especially now with all the AI tools that are coming out, it’s way easier to provide value to potential customers with all of these tools that are making our lives easier.
Dave: Absolutely. Yeah. The time to start moving on to that sounds good.
Christian: Yeah. Uh, normally I do the Segways here, but I’m happy with you taking control. So let’s talk about Side John. Um, I’ve, you know, you mentioned this project to me when we were speaking at the Meetup, but I don’t want to be the one to describe it. Tell us a little bit about what you’re working on, um, kind of where you’re at in the journey and where you see it going.
Dave: Yeah. So, uh, Side John came out of the need of connecting early stage entrepreneurs together. Uh, like I said, people want to work on the projects that they think up and they don’t have a team. And so, uh, I recently launched Side John. It’s been about three months now, and it’s, uh, about, I got over like 2,000 visits in the past couple of months and like an 11% conversion rate for signups. Yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been going pretty well. I’m getting some projects onto the platform. And, um, it’s made to help people build their founding teams. So if you are an early stage entrepreneur and you have a project, you’ll post it online and recruit specific roles that you’re looking for. And, uh, it’s, it’s going pretty well.
Christian: That’s cool. Um, yeah, it’s one of the harder things is kind of like building that founding team. Um, you have people with various skill sets. Some people, you know, they have the idea, but maybe they’re not a developer, an engineer. They can’t take it to life. On the other hand, you have worked with lots of developers who are excellent coders but just don’t really have a, a problem that they want to solve or an industry. Um, so it’s great that you’re kind of out there trying to build, you know, a bridge between the two of those. And of course, our community at Phil Tech Entrepreneurs has lots of people that, you know, could benefit from that. So happy to kind of get it out there. Obviously, want to, um, mention also that John is spelled in the sort of the Philly way here. So it’s j WN. Right?
Dave: Yeah, yeah, it’s a s dja a wn. Uh, because all new businesses start with a side John.
Christian: That’s very fair to say, um, you know, getting some traffic, you’re getting some conversions, which is awesome. Um, the early days are always the hardest, you know, getting eyeballs on it, you know, what are some of the things that you’ve done just to try to kind of introduce it into the world?
Dave: Yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve been posting on Reddit. Um, I have been essentially scouting the posts where people are like, I can’t find a team. I don’t know what to do. Um, and so a lot of those people actually are interested in looking at Side John. And actually I’m pretty involved in the, um, the communities here in Philly. So I, uh, I volunteer at Philly Startup Leaders and I help them with the website. Um, I am also an ambassador at Venture Cafe and I help them with the connecting role. And so if I meet somebody who needs this other person, let’s say, I don’t know, a businessman looking for a developer, then I can connect the two of them. And honestly, that’s really just the manual process of what I’m currently doing with Side John. So, um, being involved in those communities, I meet a lot of people and I get to hear about the problems that early stage entrepreneurs are having. And they are also interested in Side John as well. I’m having this cold start problem where I need more projects on there and, you know, getting it in front of people, it’s been a very manual process so far. And honestly, uh, I’m working on some, um, I’m designing some collaboration events with these communities as well. So, uh, definitely be on the lookout for those. I think Side John is going to grow quite a bit for sure, man.
Christian: Yeah. We are very hopeful about that. Uh, you know, your point about kind of getting it involved in the communities. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been involved in a lot of communities. I tend to, I work with a remote team and a lot of years I was honestly traveling. So I just was never really, uh, in one place long enough to kind of get involved in the community. You know, PTE is kind of the first one. Um, great to have you with us. Um, someone with your experience kind of working in PSL and Venture Cafe and to be able to kind of bring some of those insights and cross-promotion with what we’re doing. Um, I know that Side John has an AI component and you’re a big proponent of kind of working with AI tools. Kind of, you know, tell us a little bit about how AI is working within Side John and just generally what you see in that space.
Dave: Yeah. So right now, all you can do is post a project and apply to projects and have a profile to display all of your experience. Um, I actually want to build features that my users actually need. And so I have this idea. I’m not completely sure if it’ll actually work, but I want to leverage generative AI to automate the startup accelerator program. So a lot of startup accelerator programs are very similar. And, uh, you know, it’s maybe a 60-day, a 90-day program. You have speakers, you have information being essentially injected into your brain. And, uh, I think that process can be completely automated with generative AI. And so you’ll have this digital assistant that will be directing the program and you’ll go through this process of this accelerator program completely automated as many people it makes it more accessible for a lot of entrepreneurs. Um, and, uh, this is, that’s going to be phase two of what I’m doing right now.
Christian: Yeah, I love it because it’s obviously it’s nice to be able to, you know, potentially provide the foundation where entrepreneurs are connecting with each other, maybe building founding teams. But then if you actually become maybe like the ecosystem in which they work, they get educated, they get accelerated, you can extend like the lifetime of their relationship with Side John. And obviously, fits in the business model and things like that. So super cool. Um, definitely. And if you haven’t already done this already, you know, one of the things that I’m always interested in is basically getting, you know, recommendations from AI about who we should be talking with and what projects are relevant to us, right? Like, I see you’re smiling because you’re probably already like thinking about it already done it. But if I look at like PTE for an example, you know, every day, like people sign up, they post an introduction. And I just think about, man, I mean, how many people maybe signed up like a month ago that are not seeing that, but then like that would be really relevant to them because maybe they have a similar background or shared interest or they went to the same college or whatever it is and kind of like, you know, bridging some of those connections. And I could see how that would work with Side John as well where you could say, hey, Dave is a really good fit. You need to see a mo and he has the experience you’re looking for or this is a project that someone had in a space you’re interested in. Is that also some stuff that you’re looking to kind of put in Side John?
Dave: No, I completely agree. I think it’s, it that sounds very, very ideal. I think, and I think it’s very possible too, even with where AI currently is. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be any better to be able to achieve what you’re talking about. Um, I think we just need to implement it in a different way. And, um, yeah, that’s exactly the direction that I’m going in. I really just want to make it easier for people to build the things they want to build. So whatever it is that they need, that’s something that I’ll be building. And if, you know, if the current state of Side John isn’t actually solving that problem for a lot of people, then I’ll pivot. And it’s perfectly fine because this is really what I’m passionate about.
Christian: That’s cool. Yeah. Love the mission. Um, and love to you know, be able to promote it more within the community, which is why it’s great that we have you kind of on this on this show today. Um, for people that want to learn more about you, Side John, you know, how’s the best way to kind of get in touch?
Dave: Yeah, uh, so it’s sa sja a w. Um, you can also email me at my last name. My first name, it’s Ios. Christian. And, um, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m around. Uh, I’ll talk to you. I’ll listen to your problems, you know, I would love to hear from the community.
Christian: Perfect. You’re also in our Slack Channel as well. So if anybody wants to DM you there, um, another way to kind of get in touch. Um, thanks so much for being on the show, Christian, sharing a little about Side John. Hope to catch you at a future meet-up.
Dave: Sounds good. Thanks.