The Hidden Cost of Building Blind in Product Development

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY

00:00 Introduction & Pete's Background

01:34 Mods Nation & the Accidental Car Company

01:57 How SEMA Sparked Everything

03:43 Building a Car from Scratch

06:16 The Origin of Mods Nation: Wife vs. Body Kit

13:20 First SEMA Booth & Manufacturer Breakthrough

17:35 Consumers & Manufacturers Both Buying Blind

20:08 Scaling to 300,000 Parts on the Platform

28:45 Mods TV, Film Festival & Going Physical

33:14 When the Tool Became a Community

40:02 The Wild Road Trip to SEMA

47:01 Pete's Advice & Outro

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jeff Holman (00:16)
Welcome back everybody to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host Jeff Holman and I'm so glad to have you here with us today again to hear about these awesome stories from cool startup founders and CEOs who are they're going down the same path that all of you guys are going down. They might be a little bit further ahead or maybe they're behind but they've had a few experiences that are that are in front of you on your path. So it's great to great to hear these stories and learn from them and how we can apply them in our lives.

Today we get to learn from Pete Polyakov and hear his story. Pete, welcome to the show.

Pete Polyakov (00:51)
Thank you for having me today.

Jeff Holman (00:53)
Yeah, very, very glad to have you. And as we were doing some questions before the show, I was like, I was trying to figure out what your background is. I love the background there. It's very cool.

Pete Polyakov (01:02)
Thank you so much. ⁓ Well, ⁓ you know, I was born in USSR. ⁓ And, know, one thing, USA was bad, because of many things. But one thing what they kind of did good, they gave education free to every single person who wants to study. So I got little experience in architecture, film, and philosophy. And, you know, then applied

this knowledge through my life.

Jeff Holman (01:34)
I love it. probably played into your, into your business today. You're running at least one business, maybe two, right? You're running Mods Nation ⁓ and you're running ⁓ Arvion.

Pete Polyakov (01:46)
Yes, you're right. Second one is an accidental one, but it just happens.

Jeff Holman (01:48)
Yeah,

Accident is well tell us what each are and then explain to us what you mean by accidental

Pete Polyakov (01:57)
Well, ⁓ you know, a few years ago, I went to SEMA to just understand what is going on in the professional industry. And later on, I realized the one thing you should do when you go into such places, you need to have a car at the booth. So people would walk by, look at the car and say, ⁓ my goodness, such an amazing car. And that's a great moment to start the conversation about.

Jeff Holman (02:25)
Because SEMA is the car show, right? that's where, for those who haven't been, I have not been, but I've heard of it. And you know, you're going to a car show, you're seeing everything, everything about cars, right?

Pete Polyakov (02:27)
literally

Absolutely. And every man a little bit a kid. So, you know, everyone goes to look for the cars and when I realized that, I said, well, we definitely need some car at the booth. And so because my background in architecture, I said, well, I definitely can design a car because usually architects, they design buildings and they make a lot of money or they design super yachts and they make no less amount of money.

I was never built anything like except the shed in the backyard. so, you know, nobody invited me to do super here. So I said, you know, I can make a car. That's for sure. I did that. And just to support mods. And what happened at the booth, people start to come in and they start to ask me questions who manufactured that. And that's kind of different question from who designed that who is behind that build.

Yeah, actually, they fought its manufactured car. And what when I started

Jeff Holman (03:43)
You designed and built the car. Like, I got a friend who said, hey, yeah, I got a car in my basement right now. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, I bought this kit and it's wintertime here in Utah, so there's snow. So I put it in my basement and I'm going to build it in pieces and take it out. So you built a kit car. What do you mean that you made a car?

Pete Polyakov (04:04)
So I started from a piece of paper. I said, well, any proper design and what philosophy and architecture a little bit teach you, and it's a little bit easier to understand when you in such areas, architect does not design a wall or a door handle without the design and buildings. So you need to zoom out a little bit. And when it comes to design as a discipline,

Jeff Holman (04:28)
Okay.

Pete Polyakov (04:33)
you always zoom out a little bit and look the entire composition, not just a piece. And unfortunately what is happening at SEMA, you see a lot of cool separate parts put together and it creates something, not all the time as a single expression, but more like just kind of salad in a way. I didn't want to that. exactly.

Jeff Holman (04:56)
Okay.

Pete Polyakov (05:01)
And I didn't want to do that because I said, well, I definitely need to design something that will attract people to stop by. And I competed with the amazing custom shop. you know, and I said, I need to do that something fundamental, which I did. I designed it on a piece of paper. I learned how to build cars. I learned how to weld and many other things. So I sculpted the car first, like literally from clay.

I sculpted from scratch, then created the body parts, then put it together and my team was helping me along the way. we learned a lot about that, but it was just a fun project. It never was like custom shop situation.

Jeff Holman (05:47)
This was not just a model that you would bring in and set there or was this an actual functioning car?

Pete Polyakov (05:54)
Absolutely fully functional car. Yes, it was based on Porsche 911. It was based on Porsche 911, but the entirely different design.

Jeff Holman (06:03)
Wow, that's quite the undertaking. So you're at the booth. What was the company there that you were representing at the booth? And you said, got to have a car, not just any car. I'm going make my own car, bring it in.

Pete Polyakov (06:16)
We were running with Mods Nation. That's the company that helps people to look at modifications in 3D before you actually spend money. And the concept of that car is coming out of my own frustration. I'm on the driveway. I saved some money few years ago and I'm trying to fit the body kit on my old BMW.

Jeff Holman (06:28)
Okay.

Pete Polyakov (06:46)
And it did not fit. And it didn't look anything like on the pictures I bought it from. And I think my wife walked outside, she looked at that and she said, well, congratulations, family money spent well. ⁓ and I think it kind of hurt. And at that night, I kind of like walk back and, you know, look at all of that.

And I said, well, what if I will next body kit I will buy, what if I'll model it in 3D? And we look at from all the sides, right? And it worked. Then a few friends asked me to help them with their projects and it worked for them as well. And long behold, we actually ended up with the factory. So producing these car parts and cars nonstop.

Jeff Holman (07:43)
So you're a car guy, you're out there, you're kit parts or modification parts for your own vehicles and you're putting them together and it didn't work out. Your wife gave you maybe a sarcastic comment about the success of that or the value of that for the family. so wait, so you're saying that when you, after that happened, the next time you decided to buy a modification part from a you know, a third party manufacturer, whoever makes these parts.

You said before I buy it and install it, I want to just mock it up in 3D. So, so you just, do you just ask the parts manufacturer and say, Hey, can I get your files and, do you build it yourself? What does that mean to mock it up in 3D?

Pete Polyakov (08:17)
Correct.

I looked at the pictures and because I have extensive experience in 3D ⁓ in the early 2000s, I was making video games. By the pictures I modeled, ⁓ so I had the car as a foundation and I modeled those body parts based on their pictures and applied it on the car because all these pictures they photoshopped and the angle they choose, you know...

usually the best possible angle for the picture to be taken. Sometimes we see fashion models and doesn't really matter what angle you take a picture from, they're always going to look great. You put them in the garbage bag and they're still going to look great. And that's why the models are. And the same thing with the good car body parts. If they design really well, absolutely doesn't matter from what angle you look at them, they're still going to look great.

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen all the time.

Jeff Holman (09:28)
I see. So somebody might be making parts that look good from one perspective, but from a different perspective, your wife's going to walk outside and say, well, I can see it from this perspective, but when I look over here, I don't like it as much. Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But

Client stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible. Now, let's get back to the show.

Pete Polyakov (10:13)
You know, it was even worse. ⁓ She walked to my backyard and I think it was filled. It was dozens of thousands of dollars laying in the backyard, body parts, bumpers, something that I took in, it didn't like and unfortunately, there was absolutely no point to sell it because you would lose about 70 % of the price. so she just looked at that pile and she said, ⁓ this thing going

Or I'm going. And I'm like, well, the problem is a little bit bigger than me. You know, so I said, what's the real problem there? And when I look at that, said, well, I cannot make a right decision based off these pictures. And then I realized nobody can make a right decision based off just some pictures. Like, we probably had this experience and beyond car parts, right?

⁓ And then I said, well, can 3D help? And that's what I did. And it really worked in my case and in case of my friends. And then later just built in a way bigger thing than I expected.

Jeff Holman (11:25)
What were you doing up to this point before you had this idea to start either as a hobby or even as a business? Because I think a lot of people would see that and they'd like, they'd see the frustration and they'd say, well, that didn't work, but I'm just going to buy another part. I'll fix the part. And they want to get the car done, not necessarily turn the problem into a business. Do you know I mean?

Pete Polyakov (11:51)
Yeah, well, when people constantly stutter to bombard me with these questions, you know, I realized there's something beyond that. I didn't really look at that as a business business yet. But I look at these body parts of my backyard. And I said, well, I always said, a lot of money, like a lot of money there and just laying there. And it's not helping anyone. And

when I figure out what 3D really helps me to determine if it's good or not, then it kind of started to work, but I didn't look at that as a business yet. But when I went to SEMA, it was kind of a weird story. A few years ago, I went to SEMA just to look at the cars, as you said. But then I said, you know what, let me go to SEMA and get a booth.

My idea was like, if I will ask some questions, maybe I will have some useful conversations and that will help me a little bit to understand if actually whatever I figure out will help to professional industry at all. And I got, it was pretty much one booth left and I was sitting between truck driver hats on one side and another side was, I think it was gift cars for gas stations.

Jeff Holman (13:06)
Okay.

Pete Polyakov (13:20)
Something like that. Nobody would go there ever. And what happened ⁓ is just, I couldn't imagine there was an insane crowd surrounding my little tiny table. First of all, people were trying some parts in the configurator and they're like, I would buy it. that's kind of cool. And then what really turned it into business when...

I start to see manufacturers walking by and see this behavior, what they see on this little tiny screen. Manufacturers, it's usually family business, the entire thing. ⁓ Factory owner, it's an uncle. Distributors, it's some son or logistics nephew. So it's a family class. their usual challenge is ⁓

Nine out of 10 parts they produce fail. So they pour that failure into one successful product. But we're talking about they spend between $20,000 to quarter million dollars per part to produce it and actually start to try and see if it sells. And if they can predict ⁓ their

series of products how they will perform on a singular level, it's totally, it's sorcery, it's voodoo, it's just, you know, magic.

Jeff Holman (14:55)
So was this your first year with a booth in at SEMA? Did you have your car there this year or was that a later? Okay, so you show up and you're between trucker hats and gift cards for gas stations and you're drawing a crowd that otherwise wouldn't be in that section of the show.

Pete Polyakov (14:59)
Yes. ⁓

no no, this was way before that.

100%. Yeah. And he just was empty.

Jeff Holman (15:19)
And these manufacturers, so these are like aftermarket parts manufacturers are walking by saying, so you're telling me that the business to this point is people are just saying, hey, this type of sports car or this type of off-road vehicle, like let's come up with a part, let's make it and let's see if people buy it. But they've dumped maybe a quarter of a million dollars into the design and production for that part.

Pete Polyakov (15:47)
G-Sticks. Yes.

Jeff Holman (15:49)
Just to see if it's good, just to test selling it. Has there not been a better way for them to test the market in more of like a ⁓ lean manufacturing, lean startup type of approach, or it's just always been this way that we're there? Hey, we make products and as long as one or two out of 10 work, then we're okay.

Pete Polyakov (16:10)
Well, this industry were outdated. It's almost like, you know, I think this industry lives almost in 90s. And ⁓ that's, it was more or less the same approach. In some areas, they were trying to put some pictures on Instagrams and so on, but there was never really a signal per item where you can say, well, this thing definitely going to work. Because what they looked at that screen,

I had a little tiny TV. It was some insane amount of money for rentals at SEMA. And I said, well, I'm not going to spend it. I just came here just to talk. Well, let me get like little tiny TV. And what they seen at that screen, it was the answer to their problem because they would, ⁓ you know, how much design of salary cost, right? Maybe product manager. And they can put these products online and see how they perform.

And if they see the collecting a lot, it's like Kickstarter, singular, I kickstart on pair every single product, right? And if they see it performs well, they produce it. And if it's not, they just move on. then, you know, so they don't produce things with not going to sell. And by the way, that's kind of weird thing. ⁓ loyalty to the brand, race, because they don't produce bad things. You know, it's kind of like weird thing.

Jeff Holman (17:35)
Well, you've mentioned in some of our back and forth when we were scheduling this episode, you'd mentioned that one of the issues is people, the consumers buy blind, right? Just like you did with a part that you're like, I saw one picture of it, I bought it, and then when I got it and installed it, I'm like, that's not right. It doesn't look what I, it's not what I wanted. But what I'm hearing is that not only were the consumers buying blind, but the manufacturers themselves were.

were building blind. didn't quite know what people wanted. And that's that's a huge waste of money, ⁓ or a lot of effort to get to a part that would work. okay, so you're this you're at SEMA, you're showing this off. What came of that experience that show?

Pete Polyakov (18:20)
My product was not just entertainment for kids like me, but actually it was a demand meter where people can predict their sales before they do any moves. That was the first realization. I had a little experience back then, it was coming from like 25 years ago with the t-shirt business, kind of similarization, but never at that scale. And then I realized I can solve...

the entire problem for manufacturers and for distributors. ⁓ Just give them the tool what they needed without breaking the chain because it's a family client business. You know, and that was the biggest realization what I can where nobody could but I can.

Jeff Holman (19:09)
Yeah. Had you gone, was your intention when you went to that show to sell consumers on using your tool for their own parts? Or did you go there with the intention of saying, maybe manufacturers will want to use this? Or was that a discovery that you made at the show?

Pete Polyakov (19:27)
I just went there just to ask questions. I had no idea. I had no idea how that will land because what I seen how manufacturers start to push each other with elbows to give me their business cards. It was kind of like ridiculous picture in a way. But ⁓ when I went there, went completely, no expectations, completely blank. ⁓ just thought like, is there any use for that?

I had some idea, but it just never was at that scale. I I could never imagine.

Jeff Holman (20:03)
How long ago was that when you did your first SEMA show and had that great response?

Pete Polyakov (20:08)
That was about four years ago.

Jeff Holman (20:10)
Okay, okay. And so since then, what's been the trajectory of the business?

Pete Polyakov (20:16)
Well, first thing I realized, there were like previous attempts to make something like this online and all of them copped by like a few hundred parts and they pretty much failed because the effort we need to put into the business is just so ridiculously enormous. it just doesn't work.

Jeff Holman (20:44)
What is the market like? how many manufacturers or how many different parts are there for different cars? Because I could imagine there are thousands of parts for different cars and thousands of different cars and different markets that you're in.

Pete Polyakov (21:00)
millions. Yeah, millions. ⁓ I kind of chose the angle of aftermarket tuning parts. And the reason why I did it because this was narrow enough. Because if I would try to spill into car parts, generally, I would be drowned there. It's absolutely. But even there, you know, when I chose very narrow angle, I had to solve a problem of ⁓ manual

3D models production. And unfortunately, as you know, today, producing ⁓ images, generated images or produce 3D models out of image, all that approximation. And because it's approximation, it does not really work because it's exactly the same situation as with those pictures I was buying it from. So it didn't work there and it cannot really work with AI. But

But 20 years ago, I was solving problems with online video games. How can I have 20,000 users on my server playing in exactly the same time? And that was the era when we just came out of floppy disks. And it was kind of different constraint, what you had to deal with. And I had to kind of solve

conceptual problems on a different level at that time. And 20 years later, I'm dealing with this stuff. And suddenly, ⁓ all that experience with the head 20 years ago helped me to solve the problem today where I can almost automatically produce parts on my platform and they will be absolutely accurate size wise.

Yes, we had to scan over 600 cars manually. This was a lot of work. But ⁓ the rest, it was more or less automatic. And now I think we're hitting 300,000 parts right now on the platform because of that.

Jeff Holman (23:13)
Over a quarter million parts on the platform. So, want to understand this because what I'm understanding is that ⁓ you've got to be really precise in what you're doing. Otherwise, you suffer the same problem as everything else. The phrase that I took away from something you had said earlier is close enough isn't good enough for what you need, right? You need precision. help me understand better though. Maybe I...

I might have zoned out just a little bit when you said floppy disk. I'm like, that's a blast from the past. Been a long time. But what is it from the, from your video game design 20 years ago that, that you were able to draw out of that experience and help you solve this problem today?

Pete Polyakov (24:00)
What I really learned back then, what there is absolutely no problem exists what cannot be solved. it become my skill because along the entire my life, I was solving problems where people say it's impossible. When I hear impossible,

Jeff Holman (24:09)
like

Pete Polyakov (24:22)
I'm like, okay, perfect. Let me work on that.

Jeff Holman (24:26)
So it wasn't a programming technique that you used in video gaming? This is the mindset that you achieved? Okay. ⁓

That makes sense.

Pete Polyakov (24:38)
And

that ended up in the technology. I knew what needs to be done technologically because you as an engineer and myself calling myself as the engineer as well, you know, I don't have a proper education for that, but you know, it's always an ability to zoom out. And sometimes ask yourself, you really, is the problem what you see in front of you, is it the problem that you need to solve actually?

And most of the time it is not. And I think all of us as an entrepreneur we're constantly to zoom out and look at the problem a little bit, you know, with the bigger picture.

Jeff Holman (25:20)
Yeah, do you think that do you think the engineers because there are a lot of engineers who become entrepreneurs and and it seems a little bit. What's that?

Pete Polyakov (25:30)
and musicians for some

Jeff Holman (25:32)
And musicians, yeah, you're right. ⁓ That seems a little counterintuitive sometimes. It's like, know, entrepreneurs or engineers, musicians, what is it about what they're doing? And maybe this is the key, right? The ability to look at the system as a whole back out of maybe some of the details and see the larger picture. Is that something that you feel like you've got and you've seen in other people who are also building companies?

Pete Polyakov (25:59)
Successful, think so. sometimes you're a little bit too much into leads and you're too much inside of that problem. philosophy kind of asks questions, why all is this for? You need to kind of a little bit be at the distance of the problem in order to observe it. And I think architecture kind of does the same thing. And I think in engineers like yourself,

You it's kind of you look at the entire system and saying, where's the actual problem? And sometimes it's not in that exactly moment or not in that place. But, you know, when you look at that, you say, maybe it's not even a question I need to solve. Yeah, right now. So, yeah.

Jeff Holman (26:46)
Do you feel like, like, what's the trick for entrepreneurs who maybe don't have that, that skill set already to, to balance between the detailed work or the, you know, what maybe we might call the passion work. They, they jump into a new product and they're like, we're doing it no matter what versus the, we'll just say the engineer who, who wants to step back and see the whole picture. Like how does, how does a good entrepreneur balance those two modes?

Does it really require two separate people to do it? Or is it, is it just being able to recognize when you're in one mode versus another? What's been your experience with that?

Pete Polyakov (27:26)
Well, I think it's kind of like, I hear a lot when people talk about manager time and maker time. And I think if you're kind of like, if you're creating yourself that space to be a maker, when you work on strategy, I think you can balance this too. Sometimes people, you know, bring, you know, maybe manager, you know, I heard a lot, I don't know if it's true.

Jeff Holman (27:36)
Okay.

Pete Polyakov (27:56)
But I heard a lot when people say, if you will hire CEO for yourself, your business is going to be in a way better place because you do too many things at the same time. what I found, if you create certain spaces in your schedule just to be a maker, not a manager, then you kind of can balance these two. And obviously you should because when it comes to startups,

You know, it's always fire. It's always crisis. you know, it's a lot of until you in the clouds, there's a lot of manual handling. Otherwise, you know, it just can go sideways in a way that nobody will care about your business. Like you said yourself.

Jeff Holman (28:45)
For sure, for sure. Well, so with 300,000 parts designed, ⁓ what does that do for your business? How is your business doing today? What's the size of it? What stage would you say you're at and what are your next milestones coming up?

Pete Polyakov (29:00)
We're kind of spilling more into physical world when it comes to the platform itself. We recently launched, for example, Mods TV. ⁓ It's a pretty much Netflix for cars. We just launched a ⁓ car film festival as well. we're actually, we're coming out of the entirely digital into more real world. ⁓ And I think because what we do is actually, it's about

culture generally. It's not just about parts. So there we do a lot of physical work right now. Plus, most of us coming from the film industry. So ⁓ it's kind of natural. ⁓ And I think it creates deeper roots with the community. Because one of the... I cannot say the brand, you're my guess, ⁓ but I met one of the executives on the...

very interesting sport car brand. You know, everyone knows about that one. And he told me, you know what, what you're doing right now, you kind of flip in the entire market. And I'm like, why is that? And he told me, he said, you know what, when we sell these extremely expensive sport cars, our business is not about selling cars, it's about actually community. Yeah, because that's a literally our business, we create in the community, cars just, you know,

the outcome of that. And for the manufacturers, we're just creating the tools ⁓ to ease their pain, not just as a demand, but create the entire system without breaking the chains, because that's really important. That's one thing that I learned immediately when you asked me about what I learned from SEMA, I think that's really important to say. All the manufacturers, not necessarily.

Automative or not, most of them are family businesses and you need to understand that when you do your product, you know, so if you're trying to break that chain, you actually are shooting in your own leg. So when I realized that I said, well, I need to make sure I support that chain, not disrupt it. Right. So, uh, on the factory side, we just creating more and more opportunities for them to get the right data.

⁓ and also a kind of like side effect because for me, ⁓ it's never was about money. And I said, you know, can I help every single person who wants to do something in the car business, start their own business tomorrow with no money. And I think that's also our platform can do because today if you have just a little bit skills, you can put some idea online and, ⁓ you know, see how it performs.

And if it performs really well, you can come to our platform to the manufacturer and say, well, I have this beautiful part I designed and it performs really well. How about we will manufacture that.

Jeff Holman (32:09)
license it out or have you have you seen people doing that if within your community where

Pete Polyakov (32:11)
Exactly.

Yes. really? Yes. I'm doing it myself. Yeah. I did myself with our design house, you know, because we produce custom Porsches, but not just that, but also some car parts for Porsche 911 and some, you know, classical muscle cars. And sometimes I test them out at the, you know, at the platform and see how it performs. If it performs well, time to manufacture.

Jeff Holman (32:42)
Time to make that. that sounds like it. So you've got a lot going on because you've created the platform, the tool to do this. You've created a library of all the parts. You're now creating some of your own parts. And you've got, you said, Mods TV and a, what is it, a sports car film festival, you said. So when did you realize that community really is the product or one of the products that you're selling? Because it's not just the platform anymore. Now it's...

Pete Polyakov (33:01)
Yes.

Jeff Holman (33:11)
You're really talking at a community level.

Pete Polyakov (33:14)
I think when there was a moment when I just create, what I created was just a tool. It was just a tool ⁓ just to avoid any silly mistakes and waste a lot of money.

Jeff Holman (33:28)
And so your wife didn't come out and make any comments about the car and the driveway anymore.

Pete Polyakov (33:35)
Not just that, she almost left me, you know, this pile of parts. She said, what I'm leaving at the garbage, at the junkyard, what's going on here? Right. ⁓ And, you know, I realized what people want to share with each other, their own experience, and they want a lot of validation from the community. And they want to make right decisions. ⁓ When they making something and they putting something together.

You know, they kind of like, they want a lot of validation from the community or whatever they do in the car. when I realized that, said, well, I need to give the community the ability to do so. And that's, you know, why that's built into that. You'll create the digital build and publish it and see how it works. It's kind of like demand means for the community. Everyone says, well, this great build. I like it. So you're like,

Let me spend money because everyone will like what I just designed here, right? You didn't design the 3D model, but you just put it together in a way what everyone appreciates that, you know, it's kind of almost like, you know, everyone wants to be part of the family. Then another thing where they realized ⁓ most kind of doing that. ⁓ When you buy a car and some of us go to some forums or Facebook groups and they say, Hey,

I just bought the car. Everyone welcome and so on. You drove it a couple of years, you changed your mind and you bought another brand and what you do, you do it again. You're like, hey, I'm here with a new car. Then I said, it's our audience, why it should be like that? Because at the end of the day, the only difference in our community, did you do something to your car? Maybe you just put a little tiny sticker.

on your car, it's already modification, right? So you don't need to change the high school, you know, in the middle of the year and just meet the strangers. There are no strangers. There's people you can be along the way the entire your life if you want to. So that started to put the roots, you know, where the community that's the only thing and I think kind of in a way I was building all my life because

video games ⁓ at the scale of millions of users, it is actually communities. from my experience, think six people got married on some video game I built in real life. And you know what I realized at that moment?

I grew up in a big family and it has positive and negative effects at the same time. The positive effect, you don't need friends because you have so many siblings. You will never ever have so many friends as you your siblings.

Jeff Holman (36:38)
How many siblings did you have by the way? More than 10. okay. I come from seven siblings and I thought that was big, but you got me beat.

Pete Polyakov (36:40)
More than 10.

Well, we're on the same page. ⁓ And then the downside, as you and me know, everyone grows up and they're getting their own families and their own kids. And you kind of, not like alone, but you're of like, you you're not surrounded by that noise. And you know what I realized? Subconsciously, I was trying to recreate

that family doesn't matter. This is probably I built like employee owned companies all my life. And this is why I look at the communities. To be honest with you, video games 20 years ago, we were making enormous amount of money. We had enormous amount of users. But if you ask me today, what do I remember from that time? The only thing I really remember with these six people got married with each other in real life. whatever I did back then,

change the life of those six people, hopefully for good. Yeah, so and I think here's kind of again, when, you know, for me, it's almost like a family in a way I'm trying to rebuild family. I just thought about that. I thought about our, ⁓ you know, ⁓ podcast today. And when I thought about I came to that conclusion with what exactly I'm doing, I literally rebuilt in my family, again and again, it doesn't work. But

Jeff Holman (38:14)
I love this. It's a different layer to the conversation that I didn't realize we were going to be talking about today. ⁓ You had mentioned community, but I guess I didn't understand the impact of it. Do you think this is what draws you to the aftermarket car modification to that community? it's kind of a, I won't say that I'm a part of it because I have never done many modifications to any of my vehicles.

although I do like vehicles, especially fast ones. do you, like the car community, I watch friends and they go to car shows and they're like drive their cars, you know, a hundred miles down the freeway just to be in you know, in a, well, I don't even know what you would call it, to go out on a Saturday drive together and to be a part of the community or.

Like, and when you start to think, and I've dealt with innovators and creative people, my entire professional career, helping inventors patent stuff specifically a lot. And I think, well, you've got this, like this community that loves cars, their lives kind of are centralized around the freedom that the cars give them. But then the added aspect is they're creators too, right? They're not just buying and driving, they're buying and

creating the vehicle or the environment or the, you know, maybe the trophy that they want to show their friends. Like they're creators in addition to enthusiasts. And that adds, I think, whole added level to the aspect of community.

Pete Polyakov (39:55)
You're right. It's a self expression in a way. Yeah. So think about that. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Jeff Holman (40:02)
Well, I want to bring this back because I don't know if we, want to hear what happened because we started off talking about how you, the second or third year, whenever it was that you went to SEMA or you you actually made a car and took it to SEMA with you. One that you didn't have the first time you showed up, but still had a lot of success. How was that different the year that you took your vehicle and people are saying, who's the manufacturer?

Pete Polyakov (40:30)
First we almost killed ourselves on the way from Florida to Vegas many, many times because we never drove any trailers or anything. We met deers and different animals. It was kind of terrifying experience.

Jeff Holman (40:43)
In

the car that you built.

Pete Polyakov (40:46)
no, we, you know, I bought that time I bought a vehicle to pull and the trailer, we load it all fast went together. I think my wife was, you know, we were trying to finish it right before Sima. And, you know, it's never it's never enough time to do things. And I think I didn't sleep like five days before Sima like literally didn't sleep. And then I sat down and that giant truck

and I'm driving, think my wife, some of my friends already dead laying ⁓ on the bench. And I think I dropped 30 meters and I said, you know, wife, if I'll drive any further, think I will fall asleep, of us will die. And she's like, let me take their wheel. She's a very tiny person, but you know, she just jumped in. And I think I woke up somewhere in Texas, you know, and it was like,

Jeff Holman (41:30)
Yeah, yeah

Pete Polyakov (41:44)
12 hours she drove non-stop. And I think when I woke up, I woke up, what I see, it's absolutely night. I didn't know where I am. Our gas almost zero. And I think we have a deer in front of us. And the truck, giant truck on the left. And I think we're like flying to the right side. She's flying to the right side. The truck, the giant truck, you know, like, luckily didn't kick us otherwise we would die.

A giant jumps to the left. I the giant truck, I don't know how did he stop. And we cannot even stop because if we will stop, someone will hit us behind us. So we, I think we stopped half mile away and then we had to walk back just to make sure the guy who was driving the truck was alive and totally fine. luckily Deere survived. The truck driver also was alright. Even his car didn't get hurt. But yeah, it was quite the experience.

But when we went there, I just didn't expect that much attention. I felt like, OK, well, everyone going to take a picture. And this was the expectation. Everyone going to take a picture.

Jeff Holman (42:52)
just fit in everybody else has cars. It'll just.

Pete Polyakov (42:55)
Everyone

takes pictures, maybe we'll end it up. My top goal was like, if it ended up on some podcast, there some car enthusiasts, that would be super cool. But it was kind of like, not for business purposes, just for fun purposes. And just when we went there, when people start to ask who manufactured that, we kind of got confused on what to do. Then we got that not because they see what goes like three, four days.

We got back to the hotel that night and I got sad guys, we need to create a brand right now, not tomorrow, right now. And until we're done, we should not even get up. So we sat on our computers and we had such a terrible hotel, but that hotel had a printer. So we figured out the name within probably one hour. We figured out the name, then we made the website and by the, I think it was five o'clock in the morning.

We're like, all right, we have a name, we have a website landing page, we have some pictures there. Let's print out, because we didn't have any logotype. So we went to the lobby, we printed out logotype and literally used the scissors to cut out that little logotype and stick it in the car in the morning. And next morning, we just had people coming in asking who manufactured that, what's the company making these cars? And we just start to...

You know, get pre-orders. And that's how it happened. Kind of crazy, but... Pre- Yeah.

Jeff Holman (44:28)
pre-orders

for your... So you built this as like a display car and took it there and now people want to order it. So did you actually sell cars? Did you actually end up making? my gosh. So much in this story,

Pete Polyakov (44:36)
Yeah.

I never expected that. It never was the plan. It just was very strange asset. you know, looking back, as I mentioned before, it's a little bit easier to understand for the architect. You don't design the wall, you design the entire composition. I applied the same rules to the cars. And that's the major

problem that the custom shops and people who come to SEMA, they create amazing part, like amazing bumper, amazing spoiler, whatever. And then they put it together and it's sometimes looks beautiful, but it looks random. Nothing random was about this car. ⁓ And I think people, they might not be able to express it, but they feel it. And I think that was the...

you know, the difference. And yeah, it's kind of surprise, but you know, I like cars, so it was good anyways.

Jeff Holman (45:50)
That's fantastic. man, so many questions are flooding through my mind, but they might be my questions, not necessarily questions the audience wants to hear. man, this has been fascinating, Pete. I really appreciate you sharing all this. And I can see that there's so much more that we haven't talked about, but maybe need to reconnect for another episode in the future as you continue to grow. ⁓ people who are on a journey like yours.

They've got the sleepless nights. They've got the last minute logo design or website design. They've got, you know, these, ⁓ background that's unique, an architectural background, and they're bringing it into a different industry like cars. Like, like for people who are, who feel, you know, some relationship to your story and they say, I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm a little bit like Pete. Like what would be.

a lesson that you've learned along the way that you would hope to share with them and save them maybe some of the strain about learning that lesson on their own.

Pete Polyakov (47:01)
Whatever you want to do, do today. That's for sure. Because there's a, you know, maybe it's a little bit generic, but that's absolutely true. You're never going to be prepared. You learn along the way. So there's nothing wrong to train now. ⁓ Then don't stock because sometimes you make decisions and you know, sometimes they can be wrong. And that's okay. And then you just look at them.

Just be light on that. That's totally fine. Because at the end, at the core, it's not a company. Company is just a, it's literally letters printed out on the paper. There is nothing else. It's just people around in yourself. So in the core of your company, you. And because of that, you can retract at any time, whatever you do. And it's totally normal. And because in all my experience of building all the startups, I had to change something. Sometimes entirely.

So I think that's really important to be able to just retract and do something else. I think also be open for an opportunity because sometimes just things happen and you need to act quickly. Like we've the printer printing a little tiny piece of paper on the car. We never expected that. And when we seen the opportunity, we're like, why would we waste it?

Yeah. And we acted quickly and it worked out. It could maybe not work out, but it did. So I would say, act today. That's probably the most important.

Jeff Holman (48:39)
I love that. I love that act today. Very timely advice for everybody who's building a business. Pete, this has been fantastic. It really has. I've really enjoyed it. And again, I've got so many intriguing questions that maybe I'll have to ask you offline at some point. But for coming on the show, I just want to say thank you very much. This has been a fascinating conversation, but also I think a really helpful one for our listeners to hear.

⁓ the journey that you've been on and some of the obstacles that you've dealt with and the, think, maybe unique approach to finding solutions to those problems. think that's something our audience can take away from this episode.

Pete Polyakov (49:19)
Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me today, Jeff. It was my definite pleasure.

Jeff Holman (49:26)
has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. And thanks to our audience for joining us again on another episode of the breakout CEO podcast. sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, ecommerce and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.

Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.

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