From NextAI to becoming a founder George Korkejian, Co-Founder & COO @ Rozvelt

Nectar: George such. Jeff, a pleasure to have you on the show. We've known each other for a while and as you're, as you were talking about before, it's like good excuse to catch up with a friend and also learn about a cool new startup that you're building, you recently left next AI to start this new startup.

Maybe walk us through a little bit of that thought process, right? Like you, you're a super connector in the Montreal ecosystem. What led you to like, Hey, maybe I want to do my own thing. 

George: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been a long time coming, I've been in the ecosystem as an entrepreneur for almost 10 years now.

A bit over 10 years actually. And what really has been the, I would say the key element in my career has been working with founders. Solving problems really that working with the co-founders to try to better understand how do you bring something to market that hasn't done, that hasn't been done before.

And I really fell in love with that problem iteration scaling process. And so having done it with other founders for the past decade, I really just wanted to do it for myself. And I was at a certain point in my career where having been at next day I, for the past five years and doing it at scale with about a hundred startups a year I was jealous from others.

And I really just wanted to give it a shout for myself. I knew for a while now. I wanted to do it. And yeah, so here we are. It's been a year now that we've we've launched Roosevelt. We'll dive a bit later as to what it is, but that's the thought process as to why I decided to jump in.

Nectar: Yeah. Obviously huge respect for the work that you did and next AI and all the work with entrepreneurs. I can imagine being so close to, that type of energy it gave you that bug. I imagined that hey, maybe, yeah. I wanna do something on my own one day. Was it like, curious to maybe just pick a little bit on that side.

Was it like something from like earlier in your career you've been thinking, like you said it's been a lot 10 years that you've been in, in this space. Was it almost like day one or did it, was it like a slow burn of eventually, hey, maybe I have a startup, I have my own company that I wanna do one day.

George: So it was actually from day one. It's funny, I, I. One of the first my first job was in vc. I was very privileged to start my career in venture capital at a fund called amchem. And what we did was we used to take university projects and spin them out into startups. So we used to invest C Capital find a CEO.

The founder would become the CTO with a technical project. And pharma usually. And then we would build a business plan and try to get the company to series A. Just that process of getting a product back in the day was a product in pharmaceutical industry, so about five to seven years pre-commercialization and having all that process identified.

Seven years pre-commercialization just fascinated me. And so I did that and then I got the privilege of going to to a fund called BC Ventures, and I started working with a lot of more founders. And despite the investment part once the investments were made, I would always call my founders and say.

Hey, how can I help you? What do you need this month? Can I help you on X, on Y, on Z? And they would always get shocked when I called them because they would get scared at first, right? When an investors calls you, they're always on the edge, right? And they would be like, Hey, George, how can I help you?

What's the reason for the call? And I was like no, nothing. I just wanna see you need something like how can I be of service? Like you need an info to this company, data company, you need help on your sales pitch. And we were usually the smallest check. And they're round. But what they would always tell me is, George, you're the smallest check and you're the VC that calls me the most to try to help me.

That is so impressive. And that for me was the moment I realized that more than the investing part, I fell in love with the helping part. And so that kind of became. The trigger for me as to the rest of my career to say I wanna really work with founders and eventually that's what triggered me to become a founder.

Nectar: Interesting. Yeah. And do you find so far, you said it's one year into the journey, the lessons, from your time being, I don't wanna say this in a derivative way on the sidelines, do you find the lessons of being exposed to so many founders through your time at XDI and then any vc, have you felt, do you find those lessons have been like, useful so far?

George: They have. It's very it's a really good blessing to have been able to experience this as an entrepreneur before being the founder. There's so many things that we were able to avoid, right? Because having seen so many founders like you get to see trends of things to do, things to avoid.

And we were privileged enough to be able to. Get those guidelines and implement them into Roosevelt from day one. So we like, long story short, and I'm sure we'll get into this later. We were able to essentially. Taker hardware. We're in the hard tech space and we were able to go from zero to a pre-sale launch and literally 12 months and four days, right?

Where usually it takes about two to three years, if not more. And so that for us was not that we were special, we didn't do anything different. We just, we believe we did a lot less mistakes and we iterated a along a lot faster. 

Nectar: Yeah. Maybe not to get too tactical, but are there principles, things that you said you, like things that in the mistakes you avoided that, how would you be able to communicate the things, and maybe at a more abstract level versus Hey, don't do x, a more micro thing.

George: I think the biggest, the biggest takeaway for us, based on my experience especially from next AI, was don't, and this is something actually I learned from someone you know very well. It was don't be afraid to just go out there and talk to your customers. And usually in hardware we have the tendency to do the opposite.

We have the tendency to just. Lay back, do a lot of r and d iterations, prototype. And a lot of times I actually saw this yesterday I was looking at a Kickstarter of a product that I was like, should I buy this? Should I not? And they had this product slide saying, this is our 36th prototype.

It's the first time I see it and I was like, why would you do 36 iterations of a product before launching? And I think that's usually the tendency that we have in hardware for us. We did quite the opposite. Every single time we had an iteration, we showed it to the public. We're like, what do you think?

What should we improve? So always having the customer or the consumer at heart in, in, in the heart of our discussions, in the heart of our iterations was key in our decision making. And that allowed us to really have faster iterations. And faster decision making processes to eventually go to our MVP.

Nectar: Yeah. So it's not, you mentioned this, speed of execution, right? Compressing two, three years into one. It's not just a function of hours, right? So it's I, yes, there's part of, there's definitely grind part of it. So I'm not trying to minimize that, but it's also this notion of just working smarter.

George: Yeah. It's, grind obviously all founders work very hard. We've, we haven't stopped, but as you say it's working smarter. So for us, it's, it was really a question of identifying what are the critical factors that we need to go to market and what are, what's the fastest we can go with the minimal requirements together our for sale.

So our timelines were very ambitious. And we had this very ambitious objective of saying, what in 12 months we want to have her for sale and hardware. And we just stuck to it and we said, no matter what, we're gonna stick to it and we're gonna make it happen. And we did. And it doesn't mean that we're gonna deliver it but it's a pre-sale and people understand that it's essentially a Kickstarter type campaign and they are participating in the iterative process.

Of fine tuning the product with us. But how do we do that? It's making sure that we build a community, we build an inclusive process where people want to collaborate with your product. And that happens by. Incorporating them in all the aspects of decision making from day one and not just when you launch.

Nectar: Yeah, no, not very cool man. And like you mentioned where you're today with the presale and we wanna talk about the product, but maybe give us a sense as to like the inception or the genesis of it. So you mentioned you had a willingness to start a company and so walk us through to hey, how you've stumbled on like this very complicated, niche area that seems very hard to like grasp.

George: Yeah. So about a year and a half ago I really knew I a bit earlier. So a bit about, about two years ago, I would say. I really knew it was time for me to start my own business. But I didn't have the idea, right? And so I was really struggling personally to try to balance my, my, my life at next AI helping helping founders scale and not knowing what I was gonna do next in my career.

And it was funny, I was at Startup Fest 2024, and we usually do at next ai we do these pitch evaluations where we try to find the best company to, to get in our cohort. And so we usually listen to about a hundred startups pitch. And it's about, I think day two. And I get a call from a really good friend of mine who says, I have a pitch idea.

And this is a really good friend of mine that I went to university with. Every single time I have a pitch, I have a startup idea. He has a startup idea. He calls me, right? And usually they're all bad ideas. We challenge each other and it just doesn't go anywhere. And he goes, I have a startup idea.

And I go, this is like the worst time possible. I just listened to a hundred startup ideas. Not today, right? And he goes no. You gotta listen to this one. It's really good. Give it a shot. And I go, okay. Tell me the idea. I go next to the food cart and he gives me this idea of, filtering your breath.

For wildlife animals for both wildlife observation and hunters, because this is the biggest problem they have and so on. And I was like. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I said I'll call you back. I was really saturated and I need to think about it. It was like a lot of information, and it wasn't necessarily my niche, right?

It wasn't what I was used to hearing as a pitch. So I thought about it and I couldn't sleep for a couple nights. I did all my iterative process. Like I researched. Was it really a problem? Are people do they know about it? Are they willing to spend money on this? Is there something that exists?

If so, what is it? And. Turns out it's a huge problem. Everyone's aware about it. There's literally blogs on Reddits of people trying to find solutions and nothing exists. And the solutions that do exist, they're just not efficient. Like they don't actually work. And so I called them back and that's essentially how Roosevelt started.

We went we really locked ourselves at his house for a couple days and we. Built out or essentially our manifesto of what Roosevelt is, what our values are, how we're gonna work together the good, the bad, the ugly, and what decisions we're gonna make in all these situations. And that's, that was about 13 months ago now.

Nectar: Oh, wow. Wow. Maybe before diving into the product, I'd be curious on that front, on the partnership side, because I think that, the two very simplistic things of what, success or failure of a business is a. Does your product create value and can you extract, like economics from that value?

And B, is the team, the alignment of the team, the founders usually, and can they stay can the. Can you get along during times of extreme stress? That's really it, right? On that second part, I find it gets still unserved. Everyone talks about the product, et cetera, but like the partnership is, I find is even more critical, right?

If the founder split, that usually means the end of the company, right? How did you. How did you tackle that in that, war room session at your co-founder's house of Hey, what happens in EBC scenario? And maybe not to get into the specifics, right? I don't, like you don't need to, share, in information from your shareholder agreement, but curious to, to hear you about how you thought about that whole that whole moment.

George: Yeah. And unfortunately that's something that you learn by seeing it through other companies. That was one of the first discussions that we had, right? We were. Really good friends, as I mentioned, but you, it's better to figure these things out when things are good than when things are bad.

And so when we first sat down, it was great. Now we're happy. It's potentially the start of a very long marriage. Let's talk about, let's talk about divorce. And so it, it was a tough conversation to have, but being a founder, building a company. It's all about having tough conversations, right?

So if you're not ready for that, then you shouldn't build a company. It's really important because you're essentially doing something that hasn't been done before and you're in the public eye. So every single day, every single step you take is tough. It's new it's risky.

And so for us, it was important to be aligned today when things are good and we know how to respectfully talk to each other, then the day that we're not aligned and things might, might not be as good. So what we did is we literally sat down and we said, okay. What do you see the company grow in five years?

What's your vision? Do you wanna sell the company? At what price right. Do you wanna give this to your kids one day? And so it was literally going to every single point and making sure we're aligned. And if we're not aligned, talking about a compromise because it was out of the question for us to get into this marriage of building a company and risking their actual family life.

If we were not aligned, because that means eventually one of us were to compromise our real lives based on something that we did not want to discuss based on a discussion, based on a, based on essentially a difficult conversation. We didn't have the guts to have. 

Nectar: Yeah. Yeah. And that's really good feedback.

I agree wholeheartedly. And and it's one of these lessons you just learned by seeing, as you mentioned, right? Like having seen in my career as well, it's like you have to have, like you said, difficult conversations upfront, which is not easy. We say, Hey, we're starting this new thing, it's gonna be exciting.

And then it's okay, let's talk about the worst possible scenario, right? I hate you, you hate me, and we need to split. It's yeah, you said, but Yeah, but you have to have, you have to do it. And usually if you take the shortcut of not having a conversation, it's gonna come back and bite you in the ass.

And I've seen that happen, unfortunately. And it's not a, honestly, I've seen it happen with experienced people. Like it's a, it seems like sometimes a a mistake that can be easily avoidable. And it's not just a question of, oh, it's a junior person or first time founder. And I've seen it happen with people that have a lot of gray hair and it's guys.

This is like something you should have done 10 years ago. And it's not just, 

George: It's not just the bad situations. Sometimes it's the good situations too, right? Yeah. 'cause people change. So you need to be able to be aligned based on even if things go incredibly well, 

What do we do?

If, let's say you your pre-launch goes magnificent, right? And you end up selling for 5 million. What if your co-founder decides to give himself a 500 k bonus? That needs to be, you need to be aligned as to are we re-injecting that in the company and are we bootstrapping?

If all of these little things are not discussed upfront, then it just leads to, I would say useless confrontation and stress. And those are usually small friction items that build up over time and create jealousy, ego difficulties between co-founders. And that what, that's what implodes.

And people don't see that and they say, oh wow, that product was amazing. I wonder why didn't, why it didn't work out. This is why it didn't work out. 

Nectar: Yeah. Yeah. It's actually more like. Yeah. I dunno if there's a stat here, but it's like it ends up being, the majority of cases I've seen startups fail. Is that right?

Versus like the product not extracting enough value. We're like, now 17 minutes into the recording, we haven't really do dove into Roosevelt. Like you kinda give us a glimpse. But yeah maybe George, give us the pitch, like the product, what does it do and a little bit of your vision of what you're trying to build.

George: Yeah, 

Nectar: absolutely. 

George: Essentially what we do at Roosevelt is we're providing a new tool for hunters and wildlife observers to better manage their sense of smell.

The sense of smell for animals is the biggest tool that they have to be able to detect whether there is, there's humans or other animals around them. So there, there's. A lot of products on the market to manage different kind of smells that humans have, whether it's deodorants, shampoos things for their boost.

They have hermetically sealed bags, ozone generators all of these products, actually, what we found is only cover 20% of your body sense because 80% of the sense of smell that your body image every single day comes from your breath. But there's nothing to actually solve that in the market. So we were actually shocked, and that was the pitch that my co-founder Nick gave me about a year ago at Fest.

He said I have all these products and I'm only managing 20%. 80% is not being managed. And I was like, what? How is that possible? And we both have scientific backgrounds and we started doing some troubleshooting and we realized that this is actually a problem. And so we really decided to build something, a real solution to, to solve this problem.

And so what Roosevelt is essentially a high performance wearable. So mask in a certain way that filters only your exhale. Does not filter your inhale. And that's really an innovative, not only, that's really an innovation, not only in the field of hunting and wildlife observation, it's an innovation in any industry because it's the first time any company has been able to not only develop, but also.

File patents on a technology that only filters Excel. We're the first company to actually file a patent on this technology. We really don't filter your inhale. We have independent valves that allow fresh air intake to come in. Without noise, without any restriction. So you really don't feel like you're wearing anything at all.

And then when you exhale, we filter everything that you, that your body takes out. So it's a new, it's a really, it's a new flow that we've been able to build and we've integrated it along with new functionalities that are adapted to the hunting. 

Nectar: Why is it important for the inhaled? Is it just 'cause you don't, you want the hunters that say you're, sitting somewhere for a few hours trying to, scope out, the animal you're tracking and you don't want to have any sense of discomfort.

Is that it? 

George: It's a few things. Number one, when you're in the wild, when you're in the woods, you want to be one with nature, right? So you wanna actually breathe in fresh air, you wanna smell the woods, and by, by not filtering your inhale, we allow that to happen. Number two is you don't actually we're all.

We're all still, I would say, shocked from the COVID era where we've been wearing masks and it's restrictive and you feel like you're suffocating. We don't want that to happen, right? So we what we want it to have is a product that does filter your exhale but does not offer any restriction of air.

So you don't, we don't want you to be suffocating. And so when you're inhaling, you don't really have a lot of force at inhale, and that's where all of the pressure builds up. And when you feel restriction. But when you're exhaling, you have a lot of force, right? 'cause you're, 'cause you have all your inter intercostal muscles that are allowing you to forcefully remove remove, remove the air out of your lungs.

And there you really don't have restriction. So by removing the filtration at inhale. We removed the concept of air restriction and you feel like you're not wearing anything. So based on those two features, I would say we really have been able to provide a new reality where you're wearing a mask but you don't feel like you're wearing a mask.

Nectar: Yeah. So fascinating product. And then on the validation side where it's very different I'm thinking of your experience at XDI, it's hey, we're building this AI platform, whatever, and it's hey, like how users interact with it now. It's like, how do you test this?

That, the bear, the deer actually don't, smell like how do you actually validate, the your product, your hardware product. Yeah. Works the way it's intended to. 

George: Yeah. So that's the fun part actually. So there's two ways.

There's the scientific way and then there's the real life field testing. So the scientific way is the technology we're using of filters is actually proven right? So we're not necessarily inventing the filters themselves. We've tested a lot of filters and we've built a composition, a combination of filters that are optimal.

Both for airflow restriction and filtration. For a specific use case. Now what we want to do is then take that combination and test it in a laboratory setting, in a neutral setting to say it actually filters X percent on this composite, X percent on this composite, X percent on this composite.

And that will be available on our website so everyone can see. But it's important to say that the filters that we use, the technology of filtering what we call, com organic, volatile organic compounds, which is the molecule that are responsible for breath orders, has been used for years and years in different industries.

It's used in different factories to remove orders. It's used in your air filters, right? It's used in air purifiers and it's the same technology that we're using, but now it's used for another industry. The second way to actually validate this and to provide mostly, I would say, credibility to the brand for consumer base is to do field testing.

So right now we're actually building our better testing campaign. We're printing 75 units that we're giving to real field testers. And this is a risky move, but we're actually doing it because we believe in our product, we're giving it to 75 of the biggest, most influential hunters and wildlife observers in Canada.

They take it, they go to hunt, they go to wildlife, observe, and then they give their feedback live. And so it either flops or either works. Yeah. Sink or swim. Yeah. Sink or swim. But you gotta do what you gotta do. But we, I mean we really believe in what we're doing.

And they are really excited in what we're providing them. They've already tested it a couple times and they are shocked as to what we've provided them. And now they're gonna, they're gonna really give it a full test trial in the next couple months, so September, October, and November, and then.

Based on that, we'll be able to essentially say, not only has it been tested in a laboratory, it's also been tested by 75 of the most influential hunters and observers, and it's all approved. 

Nectar: Maybe on this side you mentioned the sink or swim aspect of it. What were the conversations turned like?

Is this maybe too risky to do it at this stage? Considering, maybe these people leave bad reviews. We can tank, what we're trying to do. Before we've optimized the product or you're like, Hey, we're confident enough with where the product is today that hey, we're we should do this and, move fast and break things kinda mentality.

George: Yeah. Our mentality when we first started the business, and this was one of the things that we wrote in our inner manifesto that first weekend was. There literally we wrote it three times. We believe in order to build a company, we need to dare we always say this every, everybody says this.

I've never heard a startup pitch where someone doesn't say, nine, nine out of 10 startups will fail. If we're doomed to fail, might as well take risks and make sure we do it faster. Than later. So that's always been our mentality where we want to dare, we want to be risky, we want to be bold.

And by being bold, we believe that if we are the one out of 10, then let's do it faster. Let's be ambitious and let's not be afraid of failure. Let's embrace it. And let's just let's take failure every single step of the way, every single like milestone. Let's just take it with us, right?

And so WWW would we have been able to actually launch a company without field testers? No. So I think we would've just been, we would've just been pushing that to a later date. So by just embracing it and using it as a marketing spin we just, made it a better now we're viral.

Yeah. I like that. I like that insight. Yeah, exactly. 

Nectar: I love that insight. Yeah. They're there, and, yeah very forward thinking. So I really like that insight, man. You mentioned your your pre-launch and like your, you're viral now. Give us a sense, we spoke about it before recording, but Yeah, like what happened exactly in the past week?

George: So we, we actually launched the company pre-sales early August. And so ever since yeah everyone's been talking about our company. It's been really, it's been really interesting to see. Yeah so we launched our pre-sales roosevelt.com early August, and it's been really exciting.

It's we have such a really big fan base and support base from a lot of strong ambassadors and film testers as well. And we've been blessed, like we, we have a strong team. We're a team of seven now. And we've been able to gather some of Canada's biggest hunters.

We're gonna be on wild TV now, which is Canada's biggest I would say TV broadcast for hunting and wildlife. And there's a lot of other media articles coming out to to show support for what we do. And coming from an intrapreneurial background where we haven't done this before.

And now seeing that people talk about us, it's just such a blessing. I don't know how to explain it. It's every single day I wake up and I and I see photos of our product on, on, on articles and on media and people just sharing and commenting, and I'm like, wow, I would've never imagined this in, in, in so many years.

So it's a privilege to be able to do this. 

Nectar: Yeah, you almost have to pinch yourself. It feels that, after a year, this is where you're at. So very cool George. And curious as to what's the next step, right? So like you're, man, how does the manufacturing, how does the supply chain look like?

You're not building an AI product, right? It's not the buzzy AI product, but. You're also building in a market that's huge. Like I'm like, I've never hunted in my life, but I have a few buddies that do it. And I know the the kind of like how it becomes a part of your lifestyle and my buddies that do it, it's it's a ra it's like part, it's almost like religion to a certain extent.

So it's it's it's huge market that, that is obviously, in, in need of innovation. How do you think about, how do you tackle it? You go to market and then the business model. 

George: Yeah it's, it is a religion. You go to Western Canada during London season, and literally there's some towns that are closed.

There's posters that say close for hunting. So it's really fun to see and that's why it's been fun to to launch this in such a community where people are close knit. And I think that's part of the reason why we've been shared so much because one person sees it and they share it to 500 of their friends and.

That's what happens every single time. So to come back to your question as to how we're launching this and manufacturing it it's two tier short term. We're doing this strictly e-commerce. So on our website and then we'll go retail. Retail is really the game. And one thing I would say, people want to be able to touch and feel the product before they buy it.

And that was a compromise that we needed to do. We can't really do that right now, especially since we're in pre-sale. And you don't want to go to retail too quickly. That could really kill your business. We're essentially getting the pre-sales now. Then we'll see how many orders we get, and that'll be the first batch of orders that will essentially manufacture to be able to ship for the summer 2026.

Nectar: Yeah. And where are you manufacturing? 

George: Yeah, so that's a good question. We're currently identifying that. So we're for the beta testing the 75 that we've developed, it's all being done in Canada. So we're really proud of that. We actually have a man, our main manufacturers in Granby and Quebec.

And then we're trying to find, or a commercial manufacturer right now. 

Nectar: Yeah. Interesting. I'd have to ask the question about the whole, taco tariffs, right? What's going on with that? Yeah. Do you feel, like you're still at a very small scale so far, but I imagine like it ends up being a conversation point.

It's like how do we tackle this challenge? 

George: Yeah it's interesting right? It's it's just back and forth. So we made the decision to. Remove that noise from our organization because it, it changes so often. I think there's two critical I. Factors, factors that, that might play into that might have an impact in our organization in Roosevelt for, into the tariff.

Number one is manufacturing. So if we were to manufacture some somewhere else, or do we manufacture in the States that has a very big decision making point. But we're not there yet. We're gonna be there in, in a couple months. So we'll see what happens if there's main changes that will happen in terms of the tariffs.

Number two is actually selling to the states. That unfortunately it's gonna be the US customers paying more with the 35% counter tariffs that were now proposed. Every single time a US customer purchases a Roosevelt product, then they're gonna get a 35% bill. So there's not much we can do on that.

We, we would love to say no, we're gonna cover that for you, but we just can't. It's too high of a margin. Yeah. So we made that decision to say US customers you will have to pay the tariffs at checkout or, when you get the bill in 2026. But it's. I dunno. It's weird times we're living in.

Nectar: Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah. It's such a, it's such a strange thing to have to deal with, but yeah, I can imagine. And it's very different than for software, right? Software like flows through the borders. No one notices, but yeah. An actual, product made with atoms. It's a little bit of a different game for sure.

Yeah. Maybe talk a little bit about your experience back in next ai and you were so close to founders, you co you coached and were seeing so many ambitious people walk through those doors. Anything that surprised you the most right now that you're on, the other side of the table building things that, lessons that you weren't aware of, like despite the fact that you were so immersed.

Things that you learned that maybe weren't that obvious for you when you were back in the, in the next AI days? 

George: Yeah. So I got asked this question a couple weeks ago too, and the hardest thing is when you're in that mindset of coaching founders, it's natural, right? You're always in, you see so much and you're able to find guidelines of here's what's worked in the past here.

What's, here's, what to avoid, here's what to do. Here's some introductions I could do for you. I thought it was gonna be easy for me to follow my own advice. It's harder than it looks. And so being put on that driver's seat where. I have that experience, right? I have that wisdom.

I've given it to others, but now I'm the one taking those decisions, pivot, do it fast. It's not that easy when you're the one that needs to pivot. I'm like, okay, now I get it. Now I get it. Why? Two weeks later when I go to see them and they still haven't pivoted, now I understand why they haven't pivoted, right?

I think. That has been the hardest challenge for me is. Taking my own advice, knowing what's best yet not listening to myself in a certain way. I wish I had a, I had I had a coach. We are privileged to have a lot coaches. In, in retrospect we don't probably go see them enough.

But it's just been very interesting to, to have that. Self-reflection and say, ah, George, listen to yourself. I wish I had a mirror and I would just look at myself and be like, come on, George, you know better. 

Nectar: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's very good insight. I find that the closest analogy you can think of is like, when you're watching like a sporting event in the, in a live arena, you, let's go see a hockey game.

You're in the stand, you're like, you're screaming oh, make the pass or whatever. You could see what's happening on the field. Yeah. But then if you're the player, and if you've played sports, it's like. In the moment, having, the puck on your stick or the, the ball on your foot, it's like, it's not very evident that you have to make that pass or whatever.

So it's people could scream all they want, the ball's not gonna move by itself, so it's really the player in the field that's doing the job, so maybe there's a, a or clean day to the man in the arena. Kinda classic, kinda, classic saying here it's the person sweating on the field is doing all the work and it's not evident.

You know how to move the chess board. So I really like that insight. Maybe a final question or two for you, George. What's the ambition, right? You mentioned that we can retreat with your co-founders. What's the ambition with Roosevelt? Like, how big do you want to take it? What's the idea of how you can scale this company?

George: Yeah that's a really good question. When we first started building Roosevelt I pitched it to some of my, in my network and the reaction that we got was, oh, it's a very niche product. It's a very niche product. Then. It's not right. It is. It is, but it's not. And that's really that's really aligned with this question of what's the vision that we have for Roosevelt.

We want, we wanna build a brand. We want to be the voice for the outdoor space, specifically for hunters and wildlife observers, where every single time. They want to they want to have a premium product associated for order management. They go to see us, right? And the specific product, the vector that we've developed, that we've commercialized now is the first step in that direction.

We want to be able to build brand credibility, brand trust. So the day that we develop other products people naturally go to buy the Roosevelt brand and not any other brand. That's just in the hunting space, right? Second part is the patents that we've filed in terms of the filtration where we only filter on exhale, but we don't filter on inhale are applic are applicable to many other industries, and we have a medium to long term vision of really going outside the scope of hunting and developing.

Other products. So similar masks, but lower tier products that also help individuals that have similar needs. And there's a lot of needs like this. So you can think of any other applications where individuals need to protect the environment in which they're working, but the environment in which they're working cannot contaminate them.

They all need to wear masks, and they all currently wear masks that are restrictive and filter both ways. So think of the manufacturing space where people are on the manufacturing lines and they're building products. Think of the food safety, where they're, they're at good food. They're packaging your foods.

You can think of the clean rooms where people are in the, are in that space and they need to actually work without contaminating the room, but the room is not examinable. These are all industries. Where our mask provides not only more sa not more safety, but not only provides more comfort but provides more value.

And so this is our long-term vision of going two tier Roosevelt, being a premium brand for hunting and wildlife observation space everywhere in Canada, US and worldwide. And then having that technology whether built ourselves or licensed out to mean manufacturers to other industries. 

Nectar: Yeah.

Yeah. It's a great vision, George. Yeah, I never thought of that. There's so many different applications of what you're trying to build and yeah, like you mentioned, yeah, no, I don't think it's niche at all. Like most people don't realize how big that segment is. Yeah. Thanks so much for your time.

And maybe a final question for you, George, if people wanna follow the journey and you guys are very active promoting your company, documenting this, the, the story so far, what's the best way. 

George: You can always go to our website, roosevelt.com to see more about our product and if you're interested in purchasing.

Otherwise, feel free to follow us on our socials. We're very active, as you say. So that's LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. 

Nectar: Awesome. Awesome. 

George: George. 

Nectar: Thanks again. 

George: Thank you.