#27: Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet)

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:00:00]:
As much fiber as you can put into the ground, it will eventually end up being exhausted. So that's why for us, when we're building these networks, we're building the fattest pipes we can. So that's instead of a 48 to 96 that we might have built a while ago, that's now 288, 432. In the data center space, you're seeing people build cables that have that are thousands of fibers to meet the needs that they specifically have. So we will have invested $1,000,000,000 into our 10 state region to build networks. So if you if you do that times all the other states and all the other places, you're talking about tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of fiber construction that still needs to take place just to make the things that Apple and Verizon and T Mobile are telling you you're gonna do with 5 g actually happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:45]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today we are talking about the technology that enables the streaming of this podcast today, the Internet itself and specifically the world of fiber. Brett Lindsay is the CEO of Everstream, and he is also the founder and chairman of Snip Internet. Snip, which Brett had founded back in 2016, is a Cleveland based Internet service provider and recently has closed on a $7,750,000 funding round to support its expansion across the Midwest market. And in parallel, as the chief operations officer of 1 community before having joined Everstream, Brett oversaw the a $100,000,000 expansion of the network that ultimately became Everstream, which, as CEO, he has since taken from a 25 100 route mile fiber network to more than 15,000 route miles of fiber.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:54]:
In 2016 to 2017, Brett more than tripled the size of the organization with less than 12 months with 2 Michigan based acquisitions. And in 2018, Brett facilitated the sale of Everstream to AMP Capital, which is a global investment manager, which he used to expand Everstream's network into 5 new markets, including Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Saint Louis, and closed additional strategic acquisitions across Indianapolis and Saint Louis. With this, Brett brings more than 25 years of experience in the telecom industry, having also served as president of Atlantic Telecom and COO of Vox Mobile. Today, Brett also serves on the technology board of advisors for Greater Cleveland Partnership. Brett is a true wealth of knowledge, and this was one of the most informative conversations yet. So please listen, learn, and enjoy. I was actually on a run earlier today, and I I ran by the Detroit Superior Bridge on, West 25th. And I I came across the the Snip Internet logo there, and so it got me excited for for today's conversation,

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:03:04]:
with Sniff

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:04]:
and Everstream, just having this, like, very large presence here in Cleveland. So I've been really looking forward to to having you on to, share your story. So thank you for for coming on, Brett.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:03:12]:
My pleasure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:13]:
So I I'd love to start with your interest in the Internet and connectivity and and how it was that you first went about breaking into telecom?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:03:26]:
Frankly, I didn't know what I was gonna do when I was in college, and I had a mentor who kind of came into my life. My aunt remarried and I met this guy and he was running a long distance company. So this is in the late eighties when people actually paid for long distance. So he was running a long distance company in California and I thought, man, this guy's got a great life. What did you do? And he said, well, you need to start selling telephone equipment so that you kind of understand how things piece together. And then from there, if you can move to an operating company, so you understand kind of mechanics of all the pieces that actually run the network. And then, hopefully, you know, move from sales into operations. And if you do that right, then maybe you'll get a chance to be an executive at an organization.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:04:07]:
And so I did exactly what he said. I finished school in 92. I started working for a company called WillTel that now doesn't exist, selling telephone systems. You know, I was literally 22 years old, got a got a commission and a small salary to just go cell phone systems in. Figured out that if I spent a lot of time with the technicians, the people that actually installed the gear, then then I would know what the hell I was talking about when I went to sell the next one. And, it proceeded to really, you know, get into that business and do well In the, like, 96 time frame, the Telecom Act happened, which basically allowed for competition in the local phone market. So you could come compete against AT and T or Verizon or whomever was the the Arbuck there. And that allowed for me to make that jump to the operating company.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:04:50]:
So I worked at a company called Brooks Fiber, which later became part of of WorldCom, and and then went to moved to Ohio in 1996 or 1997, actually, to work for a company called NextLINK, that later became XO Communications and now is owned by Verizon. And so that kind of gave me an opportunity to work from sales into operations into, like, a city manager job. And then I started running construction across the Midwest and then moved into executive positions after that. So I've been at Nextyear on March 30 years that I've been in the space.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:22]:
Got it. Got it. What are kind of the formative experiences throughout that that got you into the mind space of, you know, wanting to start and and build your own companies?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:05:33]:
Sure. So, you know, I think from 92 until let's see. Sun was born in 2002. So up until May of 2002, I worked for what I would call big companies, you know, 5000, 10000, or more people within the organizations. And in 2002, a day before I believe my son was born, my division within Quest got shut down. Lost my job with a whole bunch of other people, and immediately started having conversations with a small private equity firm out of Boston that I had met through my last position. And they were looking for someone to run sales and marketing for a fiber based company that was headquartered in Philadelphia, but had a presence in Cleveland. So I moved my family from Columbus to Cleveland.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:06:16]:
And so that was my first real foray into being at a private equity backed business that was really kind of on the cusp of, you know, building out network and starting to win customers. And it's it's actually kinda funny. So I joined in 2002. Mhmm. In 2003, I actually donated fiber from my network. The company was called City Signal to what then was the original one Cleveland, which later became one community. So they were trying to kick off and connect all of the institutions around Cleveland, and so we donated them a pair of fibers, to kinda help get them started, and then I never heard from them. Again, I went on and did other things, but it comes full circle back to 2010.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:06:54]:
We could talk a little bit about how Everstream started, but it it's a it's a very small world in the telecom space. And so for me, it was, okay. I don't wanna work at a big company anymore. I appreciate what I learned, and they were great, but I really wanted to be able to control my own destiny. And starting my own business was more around wanting to be able to take the things that I learned through the process that I thought were great around culture and how you treat people and how you grow your business and get rid of the crap that I didn't like, like the bullshit of politics and all the other things that happen in a big business that really aren't necessary. People just assume that they have to be that way. And so I think for me, it was an opportunity to go, okay. I feel like I've learned a lot of useful information over this period of time.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:07:34]:
Can I actually implement it, and can I make a company grow the way that I have a vision for it? And I think I've been fortunate to be able to do that, you know, since 2010 when I joined one community, which later became Everstream, and then the creation of Snip back in in 2015. And it gave me that flexibility and freedom to try to do the things that I thought were gonna be the most impactful on both, customers and the people that worked with me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:58]:
Yeah. That's awesome. So I definitely wanna get into the the founding story of of Everstream. I I'm really interested in it because to me, coming from the the startup world as I know it and and the founding of companies, you know, I typically have, you know, from the stories I've heard and being involved in the space myself involves this kind of iterative process of working towards an MVP. And from afar, when I when I how I understand Everstream and and look at it, the idea of starting a fiber network and infrastructure company seems like such a different approach really in terms of, you know, getting getting to MVP, because in a lot of ways, the how I've thought about product market fit and surmounting that, it, it just feels a little bit different than how you would approach building a company like Everstream. So I would love to hear the the founding story of that and and how it is that you actually go about starting a fiber network service provider company.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:08:54]:
Yeah. So it is not a traditional start up, obviously, because what you have to have is, you know, tens or 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars to be able to do it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:02]:
Right.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:09:03]:
So, you know, I joined what was called 1 Community in 2010. And so they had received about a $100,000,000 of federal grant money from under Obama for the broadband stimulus act that came out as well as the FCC to build a rural health care pilot program to connect hospitals in rural Ohio. So when I got there, you know, we had, I don't know, 20 or 22 people. We had a handful of technical folks that kind of understood what was going on, but a whole bunch of other people who didn't really understand what we were gonna be doing. And so we started quickly ramping. So from 2010 to 2013, it was really just built. Just get get the network built, try to sell customers along the way. But trying to sell customers on buying Internet or connectivity from you when you don't have any fiber in the ground, as you can imagine, is a little bit difficult, kind of, more than the chicken and the egg.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:09:47]:
Like, they don't really care if you don't have fiber on the ground. Why are we talking?

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:50]:
Right.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:09:51]:
But we did, and we only had 2 salespeople, and we grew the business. In 2013, we started running into the issue where people were saying, gosh, if I'm an enterprise company, why would I buy from you a nonprofit? And it really came to a head. I think it was late 2013, early 2014, had a meeting with Sherwin Williams. And they were like, look, love the story, love the fact that you got fiber all over Northeast Ohio. But if I go to my superiors and tell them I'm gonna buy fiber from a nonprofit, they're gonna be like, what the hell are you talking about? They they could change their mind on whether they wanna be in the business. They, know, how are they gonna continue to raise capital? Not sure that it makes sense. And so that was really my opportunity to create EverStream. So we created EverStream as a for profit subsidiary of 1 community.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:10:33]:
And so we started winning enterprise business and fiber to the tower and wholesale and all the things that anyone else in our space would do. But what we did was I mean, as I said, you need tens or 100 of 1,000,000. You know, we were still a nonprofit. We were had relationships with all the local banks in town, but we really needed a private equity partner to come in and and capitalize the business that the way it was needed so that it could grow. And so during that process, finally got the board and one community to agree to effectively let me take all the fiber assets, put them into Everstream, create a for profit entity for which I then could go raise capital, and then would create a a dividend stream, if you will, kind of for one community so they could continue with their philanthropic work for a period of time and not kind of, like, all of a sudden lose all their revenue. And then when we sold Everstream, they would benefit from that. I'm not sure that they actually really thought it was gonna happen, but it did. So this group, MC Partners, which is the same group that I mentioned that I started working for back in 2002, actually came in and invested $50,000,000 in my idea to take the business private.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:11:35]:
And so, you know, that was now the 3rd time that I had worked with this group. I worked with them in 2002. I worked with them again in 2,000 5, and then we've kinda gone our separate ways. So they were coming back in, so they were a known entity. And and and, you know, I think the the benefit of having worked at several places before, it was I had some credibility and it was easier for them to understand, you know, the story and and willing to commit to give us capital. And so they came in with a plan of giving us $50,000,000 to us. So it was MC Partners, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley. Mhmm.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:12:03]:
And the idea was to take a business that was pretty nascent. I mean, we're only doing about a1000000 and a half or 2000000 a year of EBITDA, about 12 and a half, 13,000,000 of revenue, and take it over a 5 year period to 14 and a half million of EBITDA and say 45 to 50,000,000 of revenue. And so, we started down that path. I think it was the second day after we closed our funding. We got a book on a business in Michigan that was for sale. They were getting ready to go into bankruptcy, and I had had some experience in the past where I bought a company, took it through bankruptcy, and brought it out the other side. And so we started bidding on this business, ended up being what's referred to as a stalking horse in the bankruptcy process, and then ended up effectively buying a statewide network across the entire, state of Michigan for $36,000,000, which is unheard of. I mean, no nobody banks our fiber business.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:12:50]:
You have to be doing something really wrong to be to not be successful. And the other reason that you're not gonna be successful goes back to not having enough capital. So they they were capital trained, and they never met a product they didn't like. They were in every business known to man. It was related to telecommunications. So, anyway, they got in trouble. We bought that. We then also bought another business in Michigan called Links Network Group.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:13:11]:
So from a from, you know, the beginning of 15 to January of 2017, we acquired both businesses, expanded from Northeast Ohio across all the way into the state of Michigan Mhmm. And Sub Fiber through Wisconsin and down into Chicago. So what we ended up doing between 2015 and 2017 was take the business from a1000000 and a half to 18 and a half million of EBITDA and about 50,000,000 of revenue. So we had achieved our 5 year goals in 3, and the market was getting hotter. And and so my question to our our private equity partner was, hey, I think we should sell the business now. I need a lot more capital than you're gonna be able to have to give me to continue to grow the business long term. And so, I said, what is what is the right return for you? What what is the number that will make you go, yeah, I'll sell the business for that. And so they said it's 300,000,000.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:14:01]:
Well, 300,000,000 at that point. I mean, that was gonna mean evaluation that we were gonna get would be, like, you know, close to 18, 18 and a half times EBITDA for that sale, which obviously is a healthy multiple. But we were successful in doing that. So we sold to AMP in 2018 for 333,000,000. And for us, that was a that was a great return. But I think what it did for me was it solidified the belief that if we ran the business, what I believe to be was the right way. And what I say by that is leading the business for the people. Look.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:14:31]:
People can say all the time that the, you know, that you've gotta put the customer first. You have to put your people first. If you don't put your people first, there's no way that the customer is gonna have a good experience. So we started building, which I think you've probably heard me talk about, our mantras. You know, what drives the business? You know, do what you say we'll do. Right? In in our building, that feels like the golden rule. Like, everyone knows that's our motto. It's on our t shirts.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:14:54]:
I mean, it's tattooed on my arm. I'm not kidding. So for me, it is, like, it is my personal mantra that I have been kind of maybe inflicted on people, but that's what we do. You know, the second one, happy people, happy customers. If our people aren't happy, there's not a chance in hell that the customers are going to want to do business with us. And then the last one is the no asshole policy. Nobody wants to come to work and work with an asshole who is making your life hard, who makes people feel, you know, harassed or not safe or whatever. I mean, nobody wants that.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:15:24]:
And so the idea has just been if we live by these kind of basic mantras that we will do better than everyone else. And I think it's it's continued to, to prove itself out through this period of time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:35]:
Yeah. That's an extraordinary story there. You mentioned on a lot of things there with threads I'd love to pull on. I wanna start with, in the earlier years, you mentioned, you know, the the strategy was really just building out this network. And it sounded like over time, it transitioned maybe more towards an acquisition of other infrastructure and assets that had already been built out. I'd love to get your perspective on on just this build versus buy, you know, strategy approach in this business and and how it is that you thought about that with regards to, you know, the geographic expansion and when it made sense to build and when it made sense to buy and and just, you know, the the the the rationale behind those decisions.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:16:14]:
Sure. So, you know, I think and it's the the thing that everybody says, right, buy low, sell high. How do how do we find some assets that we can pick up that are at a fair price? And the challenge was they're not always going to be that way. I mean, fortunately, we found a company that was in bankruptcy. We were getting what what do we look for? You know, who are their customers? Where does their fiber network go? And is it a dense network? Meaning that they've built it themselves, they put fat cables in the ground or up on telephone poles. Or is it a what we call a thin network where you have bought fiber from other providers and kind of pieced it all together, but you don't really have enough fiber for the long term. You have it for the short term. But if you're gonna be in business for the next 10 years, there's not enough fiber there.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:16:56]:
And so what we were looking for were companies that had fiber rich assets that were going to be meaningful that would create long term value. And so we we have done, gosh. We're getting ready to close our I believe it's our 6th or 7th acquisition next week. And so for us, every acquisition is a little bit different. And so, you know, when we did the Michigan ones, it was really just about, gosh, can we can we get a little bit more geography, a little bit more kind of land grab where we can be more relevant to customers? And so, you know, there's some nice synergies between Ohio and Michigan. I can how can we leverage that? Mhmm. So from there, when we sold to AMP, you know, we started looking at acquisitions that were frankly too expensive. So, you know, we looked at an acquisition in Southern Illinois that was kinda rural, nice network, but no big markets, not a lot of upside, and it was expensive.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:17:42]:
And it ended up going to a cable company called Cable 1 for north of $300,000,000 for a business that I would not if it was my money, I would not have spent $300,000,000 to buy. And then we looked at another business called Bluebird, and it was more of a kind of thin fiber count. Again, not in a bunch of great markets. And I just thought, again, it's my money. I'm not doing it. So in February of 2019, we had a board meeting with A&P. We completely went in with a new strategy, and I said, look. These deals don't make sense.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:18:07]:
They're too expensive. We will find deals that do make sense, but these aren't the ones. And instead, give me $300,000,000 so that I can go build fiber in new markets to increase my geography and give me more scale so that I can go win bigger contracts. And it was it was an easy story to sell because that same day, we had gotten our first order from T Mobile where they were buying 1100 towers, basically, us building fiber to their cell towers. And they were across a number of these markets that we wanted to build into. They agreed to fund a $300,000,000 capital campaign to go into Columbus, Ohio, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Saint Louis. And so we just full full speed ahead going and and building fiber in those markets. And all the while, sales organization is focusing on trying to find who's that next big customer that we can expand with.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:18:55]:
So it was a little bit of build it and they will come, but we have had a good success in building both an enterprise sales engine, wholesale, and wireless. So AMP kinda believed in the story of what we were doing. But from there, once we identified these were the markets that we were gonna build in, I started looking for small kind of tuck in, bolt in type acquisitions in each market that we could do that would help speed up our process. So, you know, we bought a company called Arch in Saint Louis, which was a downtown conduit system that really just gave us, you know, a couple steps forward than where we were when we started to build in Saint Louis. And then we looked at a data center company in Indianapolis that didn't make sense for us to buy, but a data center company did, and then they didn't want their fiber assets and customers, and so we bought that. And while I didn't get a bunch of fiber assets, I got a bunch of good customer relationships that I knew I could then layer on top of the fiber that we were building. And each one of these acquisitions has kind of gotten progressively more expensive. Mhmm.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:19:47]:
And then we did Rocket Fiber in Detroit, which was you know, we knew that we needed a presence in Detroit that was meaningful. And that's a business that had been, funded by Dan Gilbert, and there was a team of people there. And obviously, there's a lot of synergies between Cleveland and Detroit. Anyway, so that was up until last year had been our most expensive, acquisition. So we closed that and, actually during COVID, which is a monstrous pain in the ass.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:10]:
I can imagine.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:20:11]:
And then we are closing on Unity next week, which will take us into Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. So from 2018 to now, we have gone from 2 states to 10. And so a lot of that has been done through acquisition, but also because we've built just a shit ton of fiber everywhere. So last year, we built over 2,000 miles of fiber. This year, we're gonna build about the same. And so there's just an incredible amount of capital that goes in to to making that happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:37]:
Yeah. So I wanna ask a a really basic question here, assuming you have that capital, that financial sponsor. I have this idea in my head of what it is to actually build fiber, but I am sure I am terribly wrong about, like, what what that actually is. So how do you actually build fiber? What is that process for for building out this infrastructure?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:20:57]:
Yeah. So there's really 2 ways. You're either gonna do it aerial or underground. So aerial means literally every telephone pole that you see up you know, running up and down the street with all kinds of cables on it. We are on tens of thousands of poles where we actually you know, you're hanging what's called strands, so you're putting up this piece of metal strand up to support the weight of the cable, and you're literally hooking it to the pole with a bucket truck and a reel and unwinding fiber along those poles. And so that's how you build a stretch. And then all of a sudden, there'd be no poles, and you'll need to go underground. And so you'll either literally get out there with a boring machine in the public right away, get your permits, and bore underground a conduit and then pull fiber through that conduit.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:21:39]:
And other times, you'll lease available conduits from partners or parties like an AT and T or the gas company or whoever it is that may have available conduits. But you are I mean, we own and operate 25,000 miles and and, like, route miles, driving miles, fiber across the 10 states now. So it's you know, you can imagine everything from building it is one thing, then you've gotta operate it. You've gotta hope that you don't have a windstorm or an ice storm or somebody drives, you know, a delivery truck into a pole and knocks down and catches on fire. I mean, all the stuff that you would imagine that could happen does happen, you know, on a daily basis.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:15]:
Got it. When you look at the fiber industry overall, like, how much fiber do we have laid out relative to, you know, traditional connectivity infrastructure? You know, how much room is there to build and, you know, why is is gigabit fiber Internet vital versus this traditional Internet infrastructure?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:22:37]:
So the first question, there is not enough fiber in the ground to support everything that we're going to need even for the next decade. Well, let's think about kind of the evolution of why why it's fiber. So you have AT and T who had a a copper infrastructure for years years years. You had the cable companies that had a coax infrastructure that they were using for traditional video services. Mhmm. And so these guys had kind of separate businesses. You know, they're the phone company, and this guy is the cable guy. What everybody started to converge on is the the fact that you have limitations just from a physics perspective on how much data you can push across those medians, copper and and coax and the distance limitations around it as well.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:23:17]:
And so fiber started coming into into Vogue, you know, a long time ago, but people talk about it a lot now. But so what ends up happening is AT and T starts to build fiber. You know, Spectrum, the old time Warner, they start to build fiber, and then you had new parties coming in. So, like, in 1996, when the Telecom Act happened, everybody thought they were gonna be the next big AT and T phone company. And so everybody had to build fiber networks and connect all these locations together. And then that kind of washed out. Everybody realized, wait a minute. We don't need that many telephone companies.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:23:46]:
What we really need is the opportunity to build fiber and provide high speed connectivity between buildings. And so that's really where fiber comes into play. The challenge is that fiber still is a finite resource. If you put a you know, in the old days, you might only build a 48 strand or a 96 strand, so individual pieces of glass within a so you have a a big cable with what's called a buffer tube inside that has 12 individual strands of fiber. And so you splice a buffer tube together and you add a few customers along the way. But depending on how you manage that network, you can eat up that fiber actually fairly quickly. Now technology has moved along the way that you can make those fiber networks extend and and you can put more across them. But at the end of the day, all of the things that so the macroeconomic trends in our industry are are are these organic Internet usage.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:24:35]:
So how much Internet you're using at home where the businesses are using is growing at almost triple digits every year. It's just continuing to go up. Wireless is the same way. And and I know one of the questions is about 5 g, but the push to make 5 g a reality requires fiber. You have to have tens of thousands, 100 of thousands of small cells across the entire US to make 5 g a reality. Every one of those 5 g nodes is required has to have fiber to to be able to work. Then you've got people moving things to the cloud, whether that's AWS, Azure, Google. All of that requires additional connectivity, direct connections that are are right across fiber for the for the speed that people want.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:25:14]:
And then you've got just traditional data centers, regional data centers, and then folks that are going into what are, you know, hyperscale big data centers like a Facebook owns for content for Instagram and all that kind of stuff. But every one of those things requires fiber. So it it's almost like as much fiber as you can put into the ground, it will eventually end up being exhausted. So that's why for us, when we're building these networks, we're building the fattest pipes we can. So that's a instead of a 48 to 96 that we might have built a while ago, that's now 288, 432. In the data center space, you're seeing people build cables that have that are thousands of fibers to meet the needs that they specifically have. So the the it's the the good and the bad. We have spent if you include what was spent to acquire us back in 18, we will have invested $1,000,000,000 into our 10 state region to build networks.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:26:02]:
So if you if you do that times all the other states and all the other places, you're talking about tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of fiber construction that still needs to take place just to make the things that Apple and Verizon and T Mobile are telling you you're gonna do with 5 g actually happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:19]:
Got it. When you think about, you know, the building of all of this fiber, I'd love if you could just paint a picture maybe of of the competition in the space. Because when I think about the Internet, you know, I think about Comcast, I think about Spectrum, I think about AT and T. You know, why is it that here in Cleveland, the innovation, you know, is coming from Everstream and not from one of these, you know, all the monopolistic companies that has infinite capital and and can invest tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars to build this stuff out without a financial sponsor?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:26:48]:
Yeah. So I think, so there's 2 things. The biggest competitors are AT and T and whoever the MSO whoever the cable guy is because they've got the market share. AT and T has been here for more than a 100 years, and the cable guys, so on average, have been here for 25 to 30 years typically. So as far as the competitive landscape, as far as I'm concerned, they're all that matter. There are other providers out there, Alumina, Windstream, Azeo, whomever, but they don't have the market share that I'm going after. I'm going after local customers in a metro market, and that business today is owned by AT and T and and Spectrum. The reason that they don't do it, and while, you you know, you make a comment, they have an infinite amount of capital, that's just not true because they are so distracted with lots of other things they're doing.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:27:31]:
AT and T is, you know, the phone company. They're also the wireless company. They're now owning content. They run HBO. They have DIRECTV. And every single one of those businesses is vying for the capital that they have. And on top of that, each one of those businesses has its own risks and demand. So the traditional fiber business, they're thinking, okay.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:27:52]:
We've got it. We've we've held it for a long time. These guys are gonna come in and take some of our market share. I don't know that I can really do much about it. On the wireless side, to remain competitive, they've had to spend tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars just to buy Spectrum so that they can roll out 5 g. And then you think about, you know, the fact that they bought the old Time Warner content side, spent 1,000,000,000 of dollars, bought DIRECTV, spent 1,000,000,000 of dollars. So you look at them, and they're so distracted, and they have more competitors than they've ever had before. Because they bought Time Warner.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:28:21]:
They're in the content business with HBO. But now they're not just competing on the fiber side or the wireless side. Now they're competing against Netflix and Amazon and Hulu. I mean, so you think about all the people that are coming at them from all angles. I don't envy that company or being in that position because they have so many people trying to take their market share from all sides, and they only have so much money because they're public companies and the market will hammer them if they take on too much debt, if they, you know, go do another acquisition. And so the idea of going and spending money to upgrade fiber networks across their entire footprint, 1, it's too expensive for them to do. And second, they just can't they can't commit to doing that when they have other areas of their business that probably need capital more. And it's the same sort of perspective.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:29:04]:
Spectrum is now, you know, launching Spectrum Mobile. And so they're taking resources that they probably would have put into fiber, and now they're putting it into, you know, growing a mobile brand. And it's and so it's to me, the best part about being in our business is having big lumbering competitors who can't move quickly, and we only focus on what we're good at. Building fiber, delivering Ethernet, Internet products to business customers. We don't do residential. We don't do anything else. And that allows for us to be very, very hyper focused and use our capital in the most efficient way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:37]:
Got it. No. That that makes a lot of sense. I I wanna you know, building on this idea of just local competition, introduce Snipp, and and and talk about, you know, the founding story of Snip relative to to Everstream and just to try and understand, you know, why start Snip Internet as a separate company? What what's really the goal behind that?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:29:59]:
Well, so if I go back to 2018 when we were planning on selling Everstream, kind of leading up through that, the fear was that we would get bought by a strategic and not a financial partner. So there's a company called Crown Castle that in kind of 27 and 18 was buying everything. Like, any any telecom company that came up, they were being bought. And so my thought from kinda 2015 to 2017 was we're gonna get bought by a strategic, and I'm gonna be out of work, and so I'm gonna create Snip. So I had something to do next. And my thought was the same way that we had been successful at EverStream competing against AT and T and Spectrum could and should be the same in the residential markets. It's complex. They're adding all kinds of fees.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:30:38]:
It makes it difficult to know what I'm gonna pay this year versus next year. And then if I move, there's cancellation fees and all. It just it seemed like a very complicated business to deliver a very simple proposition, which was only all people want is Internet. They really didn't care about getting video services anymore. Everything was moving to over the top. And so the thought was, could we leverage, frankly, the Everstream network where we had already invested a bunch of money, create a separate company that was focused on the residential side, leverage the Everstream network by being a customer, a wholesale customer, and invest our money into building up and down the risers of apartment buildings so that we could provide high speed connectivity and be super simple. Meaning, the way that we interact with customers, the way that we do our billing, that we only offer 2 products, fast and faster, and try to keep it as simple as possible. And so that's what we did.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:31:28]:
But look, I mean, you know, if if and and this was not started with 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars. This is me and friends and family putting money together and starting Snip, you know, on my own and wanting to be able to to grow that. And so we did that, you know, and we kind of, frankly, kind of limped along from, you know, 2015 through actually March of last year before I mean, I continue to raise capital from kind of our initial group of investors. But last March closed on, you know, 7,750,000 led by Pepper Tree, which is a local Cleveland based private equity firm, and some other investors that I was familiar with to take Snip from just Cleveland to add Columbus and add Milwaukee. So take go into similar markets where the competitive dynamics were good. But, you know, kind of an interesting thing happened along the way. Every time Everstream was looking at buying something, there was an opportunity for some of the services to not stay within Everstream. So when we bought Rocket Fiber up in Detroit, on the Everstream side, I won all the business customers, but they had a bunch of residential customers as well.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:32:30]:
And that dilutes my story on the Everstream side and my valuation. And so we parsed up the company and took all of the residential customers and dumped them into Snip. And then Snip continues to buy more and more services for from Everstream. So you've kinda got this, you know, nice symbiotic relationship between the two entities. But, again, very focused. And, Snip, I don't do business. I only do residential. You know, I'm only going into, you know, buildings that are 5 stories or above, that have 35 apartments or more.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:32:57]:
We're very, very specific on how we grow the business and keep our products very, very simple. So it it's a bit of a you know, they're very different beasts, and, clearly, they're different ownership groups. So the idea of putting them together, didn't really make sense, and and and I think they're they're better off being, separate. So now Snipp is in you know, we've got our largest base of customers actually now is in Detroit because of the acquisition. We're in probably 80 buildings there versus, I don't know, 40, 45 in Cleveland. But, you know, we've opened up the Milwaukee market. We have an office in every single one of these cities, you know, in downtown. We're turning up buildings and growing that business kinda more from a bootstrap to, you know, successful capital raise to what I think will be, you know, an exit in the not too long term, and then another capital raise to be able to continue to expand Snipp across probably 10 to 12 cities.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:46]:
Got it. So I wanna get your thoughts and perspective on Snip's, you know, brand and personality, which, again, just from consumer on the outside, it's really colorful and lively and vibrant in a way that I don't think anyone would expect typically from an Internet provider.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:34:05]:
Yeah. I mean so look. I mean, it's why ever every telecommunications company that's a big telecommunications company on the business side, their logo is blue. And so that's why Everstream is purple so that it doesn't look like everyone else. On the residential side, it was more of, they do so much consumer marketing on the residential side. There is no way that I could compete with all of the ads and stuff that they're doing, and so we have to be a little bit more aggressive and stand out. So the Snipp logo came from my grandfather. My papa was, in the service business, working for Ford for most of my life and had Snap on tools.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:34:42]:
And if you're familiar with Snap on tools, it's that red and black oval logo with the same kind of script that's in the Snip logo. And I just remember seeing it and always it just always caught my eye.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:52]:
Yeah.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:34:52]:
And then having, you know, an ounce of marketing time spent. Remember at some point that somebody said yellow and black are the most recognizable and easiest to see colors together. I was like, okay. So the logo's gonna be yellow and black, and it's gonna look like Snap on because I like it. And so I drew up the Snip logo, and that was the name, and it was also Snip as in cut the cord. So I you know, a little bit of a play on what was getting ready to happen in that space. And then just thought, if we're gonna be out there, then we have to have taglines that, you know, maybe are a little a little edgy, sometimes too edgy for people. You know? I mean, when the when the, you know, the first, I guess, the first 3, let's see, we it was, you know, fast as fuck, happy pipe.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:35:33]:
I know, fat pipe, happy life, and, and we suck less, because no one likes the cable company.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:41]:
And no one likes the cable company.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:35:43]:
And so the thought was, gosh. And the the We Suck Less actually came from, an much earlier in my career, a CEO that I worked for. We were we were starting a new phone company, and we were we were basically trying to help people understand that we were trying to build a phone company from scratch against competitor that had been at it for a 100 years. And and the thing that he said was, look, every day we're gonna suck a little less, You know, because we'll get a little bit better, we'll get a little bit smarter, we'll have more time behind us, and every day we'll get a little bit better. And so that that that transformed into we suck less in my mind, and it's been something that I've always used. So from a snip perspective, it was okay. I need to be aggressive. I need to get out there and have something that's kind of a little bit in your face and and edgy, but I also need the experience for customers to feel different.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:36:28]:
It needs to be really simple. It needs to be something that, you know, they just you know, they go on the line or on their phone and they hit an app and I wanna sign up for service, put your credit card information, we charge you every month. Hopefully, you never have to talk to us, frankly, because it should just work. And so going through that process was great for me. Again, because every time you've been in the business, you learn something new and you try to take the things that have worked well. I think what we have done pretty well at Snip is, again, have very clean, easy marketing with with simple products and has a personality which allows for us to, you know, to compete against big guys.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:00]:
Yeah. I mean, it's it's so one of the most painful consumer experiences is just calling up your traditional ISP and trying to get some issue fixed. And so you talked about, you know, mantras are magic with Everstream and the accountability idea of doing what you say you're gonna do. And just that ultimately happy customers come from happy employees and the team that you've built. I'm curious how much of the culture at Snip, you know, borrows an ethos from the the culture at Everstream or or what you've done differently or or things that that apply at Everstream that that may not make sense at Snippen, just how you've navigated, you know, building the culture at these two companies that that are unique and have their own brands and personalities, but are are are different.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:37:48]:
Yeah. I mean, look. It's a little bit different, obviously. You know? Yeah. I've got a full time job with Everstream. I have a team of people at Snip. So I'm not at Snip as often. So I've got a team of people that a number of them have worked for me before.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:38:00]:
And so, you know, Greg Knight, who runs technology for us at Snip, we've worked together 3 different times and I've known him for more than 10 years. And so having somebody that you know and trust to be able to jump over and kind of head up that part of the business is is a great thing. My CFO, is a woman that worked with me in the past as well. And then Robin, who's the the GM for, for Snip is someone that I knew from afar. I met through my wife. We hit it off. I was looking for somebody. She was looking for something new.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:38:30]:
And so just, you know, you you find a team. And what I what I hope and believe anyway is that they know how I am. They know what I want. They understand what I expect from the standpoint of what the culture is gonna feel like. And I'm really counting on them to help kind of continue to drive that culture over there. And, you know, what the interesting thing about culture is it's very easy to talk about, and it's very hard to actually make work on a daily basis. And it takes a lot of time and energy, and and you have to be very focused on it. What is really hard though is when you're doing acquisitions because most people, when they get acquired, aren't happy about it.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:39:07]:
Let's be clear. You know, they're fearful. They're thinking somebody's gonna lose their job. You know, they already have somebody doing what I'm doing. The name's gonna change. The feeling's gonna change. Our culture's gonna change from the way it used to be. And so we know from the Everstreet side, because we do a survey every year to be on the, best place to work thing.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:39:25]:
Right? You know, we're on it, and that's great, and that helps with recruiting. The best thing that comes out of that process is we get survey results that show how people feel about the business. And we know from doing acquisitions over the last 5 years that it takes 6 to 12 months for a person that has been acquired to start to trust you. I don't care if you do everything right, you you keep every promise you've ever made, it still takes 6 to 12 months for them to understand that you are gonna do what you say you were gonna do. You are going to help them, you know, build their career and grow and do all the things and give them the opportunities that we talked about. But it it never fails. In every acquisition that we've done, it takes 6 to 12 months. Once people reach that 12 month mark, and they see how transparent we are and how we're real about our culture, and that we care about it.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:40:09]:
We promote 20% of our team members every year. Those things make them go, okay. These guys aren't full of shit. They're actually gonna do what they said, and so they start to buy in. And so we can watch from, you know, year 1, year 2, year 3, year 4, year 5, and plus how much more committed they get to the outcomes of the business and maintaining the culture because now they feel like they're part of it. And so that's, you know, that's the hard part. And, you know, at Snipp, we did an acquisition in Detroit. We added 15 or so people.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:40:37]:
Into the company now is approaching 25. And so, you know, that's one's one culture. 1 you know, and and then as you move to, like, 50 and a100, you know, the challenge of Everstream is we've, you know, we've gone from, what, 22 when I joined, you guys about 45 when we switched the name to Everstream. We had a 120 when we did the deal with AMP, and now we've got over 350. Trying to maintain that same culture across 350 people, across 10 states so that, you know, every office that you walk into of ours, the furniture is exactly the same. The paint is exactly the same. All of the sayings are on the wall. We do the same events in every single office.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:41:13]:
But, I mean, that takes a lot of time and energy and resources so that it feels the same when you walk into Saint Louis or Chicago or Milwaukee or Indy as it does when you come to Cleveland. And people don't end up feeling like, oh, Cleveland's the cool kids and everybody else, you know, is just kind of lagging behind. That that's not the case. But again, it takes a ton of work to do that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:32]:
Right. I I get the sense that asking the question how much fiber is enough, the answer is there. It's not in the foreseeable future that any amount is enough. But when you think about Everstream and Snipp, early on, you mentioned the impact that you wanna have. What what is that impact?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:41:47]:
So they're they're very different. So on the Everstream side, serving business customers, you do reach a, an opportunity where I mean, you have built 100 of miles or 1,000 of miles in a specific geography. So, you know, in Cleveland, we have built most of the fiber that we're going to build kind of what I'll call on our core backbone. Like, how do we connect between Toledo to Youngstown and every city in between? That's there. So our costs start to go down every single time we add a customer. And, you know, instead of having and initially, maybe it's a 24 to 36 month payback, our average paybacks in Cleveland are probably more than 12 months now. And so when we're adding fiber in, it's more like building, you know, this last little blip off of the network into that customer's location. It's a it's a short bill.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:42:32]:
It's not that expensive, and we will continue to do those as we grow our market share here. It's a little bit different. And like in Indianapolis, for example, where we've built 300 miles, but we're expecting to build 700 miles. So we've still got, you know, significant capital that has to go into that market and and build. So we're gonna do it for a couple of reasons. 1, because it's necessary if we're gonna service the customers well and grow the business in each of those markets. You have to invest like that. But it's also from a defensive perspective.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:42:58]:
If if I invested $1,000,000,000 across 10 states, it makes it really hard for somebody else to come along and invest a $1,000,000,000 on top of me because I'm already taking Martin Fair. I've already got the network bill. I've got a lot of advantages over them to be able to continue to grow the business. And so the cap the capital demands on the business will go down over time because that that footprint will be kind of so ubiquitous. The way that we, talk about it internally is AT and T is gonna be in 1st place, Spectrum is gonna be in 2nd place, and we're gonna be in 3rd. And the only reason we're gonna be in 3rd is because we haven't been at it that long. And so what I think about is how much market share can we take over the next decade to service customers well and grow our business. And and and I've I know if you look at all of the customers that are within one mile of our fiber assets, that is a $7,000,000,000 annual spend.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:43:50]:
I got a lot of room to grow on the Everstream side before I'm getting bouncing up against something like that. So that that's how we do it there. On the snip side, it's a bit different. So, you know, if you read a lot about what's happening right now, that, you know, there's this big fiber to the home craze and, you know, they're talking about $7,000,000,000 on this latest FCC fund that's gonna help bring Internet's people in underserved areas. And, you know, And and there will be tens and tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars that are coming into fiber to the home. That's different from SNIP. You know, I'm trying to mean, the the fiber to the home business is a tough business. You're building fiber up and down every single street.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:44:24]:
You're in people's yards. You're, you know, attaching to their houses. You're doing all that stuff. On the snip side, my my belief has been that by having a, again, a simple model where I'm going into apartment buildings, I'm going vertical, I can service a lot of customers in a small area. We can deliver more of a carrier grade service than a traditional Internet offering. And I think that plays really well across urban environments with a, you know, large, call it 24 to 40 year old population, a lot of millennials that are working from home. And if we have that sweet spot, then I can do very well in non tier one markets. I don't wanna be in Chicago or New York City or LA or Atlanta where you've got competition everywhere.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:45:04]:
But in tier two cities, which are, in my opinions, were the best cities in the US, Cleveland, Columbus, you know, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, you know, on and on, Indy, St. Louis, Those markets are ripe for somebody to come in and just outshine the traditional incumbents in those markets. And so that's what we're really after.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:22]:
Got it. Building on that tier 2 city idea, you know, one of the challenges specifically here in Cleveland, also in Detroit, is this issue of the the digital divide and kind of the the lack of Internet connectivity in a lot of places. I believe Cleveland was up there as the the least connected in in the country, and, you know, it's coming off the back of the UN classifying Internet as a, I feel like you're in a unique position to to provide some insight onto to this issue and and how you see it evolving and things we can do about it going forward.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:46:06]:
Yeah. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth to answer this question, just clear from the beginning. So, you know, back in 2010 when I joined 1 community, on top of the broadband stimulus money, we also received a grant, which was run by a different group to go help address the digital divide. So so, again, this is 11 years ago. We were talking about this without the same quite level of urgency that we have today, but it's been going on for a long, long time. And the idea was we need to be able to educate people to understand that if I'm a student, I have to have Internet access or I don't get to participate. And again, this is 11 years ago, even more prevalent now because of COVID. If I'm elderly, I have to be able to understand how to to use my electronic medical record because if I can't, I'm I'm almost lost with talking to doctors anymore.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:46:52]:
And then last, if I'm looking for a job and I don't have Internet, none of the jobs are in the newspaper anymore. They're only online or at least at that time it was 75 percent. I'm sure it's even higher now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:02]:
So if

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:47:03]:
you don't if you don't have Internet, you are a you are a have not. You are not going to be able to achieve at the same level that somebody else has. So we started talking back then about Internet being the 4th utility, that everyone had to have access to it. And I have been a proponent for a long time. The fact that the only way you are going to get people to have Internet in their home, especially in the poorest of poorest neighborhoods is if it is somehow subsidized. And so what you're talking about now is, you know, if you're going to give people Internet the same way they get subsidies for their gas bill or their electric bill or whatever or section 8 housing. Great. But Internet has to be a part of that.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:47:39]:
And so, I think there's a bit of a misconception. There is Internet in a lot of places. People don't buy it because they don't have the money to buy it. Because that that service is 45 or $50, and spending that on Internet versus spending it on food, then that's not gonna happen. And so, you know, there's been things that have come out even recently where AT and T and Comcast and Spectrum have lowered prices down to $20 or different things. And Biden's come out and said, hey. We're gonna we're gonna, you know, give those that need a $50 of the well, $50. I mean, you you get a lot of people to build fiber into buildings if you tell them you're gonna give them $50 a month to provide that service.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:48:14]:
So I think we'll see what happens there. But it's also not just fiber. I mean, there there are so many different solutions to provide Internet, you know, where you can do wireless in buildings, you could do wireless in campus environments. There's all kinds of neighborhoods around Cleveland that need that done. I think the challenge that we're and we're finally, I guess, people maybe are finally listening or they're finally understanding that it is one of those things that will keep people from being able to pull themselves out of poverty if they don't have access to the Internet. And I think in some people's mind, it just that sounds too dramatic, but I think it's 100% true. If you can't do well in school and you can't understand what the doctor's telling you and you can't find a job, that's a problem. So, you know, I know there's a lot of people that are trying to solve the issue.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:48:58]:
And and I think one of the challenges is because it hasn't really been pushed at a federal level in a meaningful way, even in the city of Cleveland, there's probably 10 different groups right now that are trying to solve the digital divide. And there's meetings and meetings and meetings. And some people are doing a little bit and some people are talking a lot about it. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, there has to be a federal initiative, a federal program that helps cover the cost of Internet for people who can't afford it. You just have to have it. And then there has to be, you know, some additional encouragement to invest in those specific buildings. And there's a ton of money. I mean, I think it was just released yesterday or the day before.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:49:30]:
You know, the FCC just came out with the new $7,000,000,000 plan through USAC, which is how you administer money through the E Rate process where schools, libraries can now not just buy connectivity, but can buy, you know, laptops, iPads, access points for their school and libraries, doing anything they can to try to create pockets of connectivity in in every city. $7,000,000,000 goes a long way. I mean, if it's spent effectively. And you know, that's one of the challenges. We did our broadband grant back in 2010, and I think we stewarded the money very well, but there are plenty of places where they took money and the outcomes were crap. You know, they took money that was there to build, but there was no money to operate the business afterwards. And if you didn't hit your goals and drive your revenue and margins up, then you were gonna die. And so a number of those projects died along the way.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:50:19]:
But before we wrap up here,

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:20]:
I just wanna get your perspective on on 2 kind of, other ideas, one of which we talked about before, which is, 5 g and and just why does it matter and and how does fiber play into that? And the other being just your perspective on Starlink and lower low orbit broadband Internet initiatives that are are kind of gaining some at least public interest at the moment. So just your perspective on those, and then we can wrap up with our our closing questions.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:50:49]:
Sure. So 5 g does not work without fiber. So 5 g, there's 2 parts. You have to upgrade the macro tower, which are the big cell towers that you see along the freeway, and then you have to have small cells, which are literally like every street corner, little telephone pole size devices that have antennas in them that every single carrier is going to have to have, and all of them require fiber. So the amount of fiber needed for small cells is super significant. You know, the largest tower operator in the US, Crown Castle, went and and spent tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars buying fiber companies like Everstream to prepare them for the rollout of small cells required to make 5 g a reality. You won't get the speeds and be able to do all the things, the promises of 5 g, if you don't have small cell deployments and everyone requires fiber. So, fiber plays a massive role in 5 gs.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:51:41]:
On the Starlink side, I'm a huge Elon Musk fan. And when you when you just think about the, you know, you do PayPal, you do Tesla, you figure out solar stuff in a way that nobody else does. Oh, and by the way, you're gonna build a rocket company and a satellite company and do it better than everybody else in in faster time frames. So I my, public disclosure disclosure, I'm an investor in SpaceX and star and SpaceX is a customer of Everstreams. So I believe that they will do well over time. It is not going to work as flawlessly as people want it to in urban areas, and that's not really what it's designed for. It's designed for rural areas to to bring broadband to places where you can't get it. But I can tell you, it works.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:52:24]:
I think they will absolutely be successful. I would not bet any amount of money against Musk. I mean, for me specifically, I think he's probably one of the smartest people of my generation, and and and I would put him, you know, know, frankly, above a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs in the ability to think differently and do so many things extraordinarily well that I think Starlink is gonna be a huge success. It's gonna take some time, but I think they have their place in the industry. And look, there are so many people across the globe that still do not have Internet the way that they need to. I I just think you've got, you know, the the size of that opportunity for them is massive.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:01]:
Yeah. It's very it's very exciting to to follow along with what they're what they're doing there.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:53:05]:
Agreed.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:06]:
So I I wanna tie it back here to Cleveland. You know, one of the things that we ask everyone coming on to our our dozens of listeners is, not necessarily for your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something hidden that other people may not know about. So with that, I will ask you your your favorite hidden gems.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:53:25]:
You know, it's funny. To me, the the biggest hidden gem is the biggest thing in Cleveland, but people don't seem to take advantage of it, which is the lake. I I am on the lake all the time. We live in Brattanal. We are out on the lake. If it's above 70 to 75 degrees, we're gonna be on the lake. And, you know, I used to live over off Lake Avenue in the at kinda Edgewater neighborhood area, and I would take my daughter to the beach every weekend. And so to me, you know, the Flats resurgence is unbelievable.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:53:56]:
I mean, I was here when the Flats was a tomb, and and you were probably gonna get shot or knifed or something if you were going down there. And now it's amazing. And so, you know, I I just don't think people take advantage of it. And the second thing is, and it's shocking to me, the number of people I know that don't take advantage of the Cleveland Metroparks. When I look at the fact that you have thousands and thousands of acres of land that are being managed as far as I'm concerned, the best managed nonprofit in Northeast Ohio. You know, they they manage the zoo. They manage all these parks. They've done amazing things at Edgewater.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:54:28]:
And so when I think about the thing, you know, one, we need to leverage the water better. And if you're not on the water, I don't understand. I mean, I've got a ton who lives in Medina who has friends from Akron who had never been on Lake Erie. That that is mind boggling to me. As a kid who grew up in California, you would drive hours to get to the beach and go to the water. Right. So to me, it's just interesting that it's not as as big of an attraction, I guess, as I would assume it would be for, you know, millions of people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:54]:
Yeah. Tow totally on the same page there. It's, it's pretty extraordinary. Very excited for for it this summer. Absolutely. If people have anything that they would like to follow-up with you about, where is the the best place for them to to reach you, Brett?

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:55:08]:
Shoot me an email. Just blinzy, blindsey@everstream.net.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:13]:
Awesome. And my my final question is something that you mentioned, related to to mantras or magic, but you didn't bring up, which is, love you, bye.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:55:23]:
Oh, sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:24]:
So Figured it's a good place to wrap up. Yeah.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:55:26]:
No. No. It's great. So I start I don't know why it possessed me, but, you know, I'd be sitting in my office with my door open, and people, would be walking by as they were leaving. And I just started shouting love you, bye to people. And some people love it, and some people hate it, and they get super uncomfortable with it, because I think they think I'm gonna, like, chase them down and hug them or something. But so started saying it, and then everybody else kind of started saying it. And so we then took so we have lots of say the you know, our 3 mantras are literally up on the wall and 2 foot tall letters, 20 feet long in every office.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:55:58]:
But I thought, you know, our team needs to understand that when they're leaving, that idea of love you buy is real. Like, I mean, you know, we we have a a a team of people who we we count on, and I want them to understand that that's how we feel. So every door that you can leave an office from says, love you, buy on it. So that people think about it when they're when they're leaving. And, you know, and I'm sure people have tuned it out by now, but every once in a while, you you know, I'm walking out and I'm normally busy around the phone or whatever, and I'll look down and see it. And it'll make me laugh just thinking about the fact that we have it printed on the, you know, on a door and and in every office across our our footprint. So, I guess just one more thing to try to, you know, make sure people understand how much we care about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:40]:
Yeah. No. It's it's awesome. And, with that, love you and bye. Okay.

Brett Lindsey (Everstream & Snip Internet) [00:56:45]:
Thanks, man. Take care. Take care.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:48]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland, at thetagan, or at sternhefe, j e f e. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make a good guess for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave a review on iTunes.