#44: Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation)

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:00:00]:
The project that I was working on at the time was a $65,000,000 major rehabilitation project as far as replacing the entire highway pretty much. I was like, if this project alone costs $65,000,000 and there's projects everywhere in Ohio and across the United States and all these people are about to get cell phones and there's no good application for them to use, then there's a big opportunity for someone to create an app that people like and will actually benefit them. And, you know, if you can do that, then you might have not just a business but also a very big business.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:31]:
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 I had the pleasure of speaking with Jake Bilowski, who is the CTO and founder of On Station. Jake spent 10 years as a construction project engineer with the Ohio Department of Transportation after studying and becoming a civil engineer himself. Through his time working on transportation projects in the field, he experienced firsthand the challenges that would later inspire On Station. He taught himself how to code and spent 5 years developing the product and validating it in the market to the point where earlier in 2021, he was able to secure 1,400,000 in funding from jump start and precede investment from Clyde.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:27]:
Today, On Station is now being used in over 160 transportation projects and has thousands of users, including major contractors, consultants, and multiple state departments of transportation. I very much enjoyed going through Jake's entrepreneurial journey here and learning more about the transportation and construction industries. So please enjoy my conversation with Jake Baylowski. So I I love tying these these conversations back to, like, the real world and and in practice. And and I was actually driving back from Cleveland from Columbus this past weekend, and I was thinking about our conversation because for the first time, I was just very acutely aware of the tooling and software in play or lack of it rather for those who are, you know, like, physically on the highway, on the road, like, making the the work happen. And so I was looking forward to this conversation to to really, like, understand what it is that you're you're bringing to market and and the problem that that you're trying to solve. So I was I was just thinking about it, but I love to start with just kind of a high level overview of of On Station and and what the problem is that you're that you're actually solving.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:02:39]:
Sure. Well, thanks for having me, Jeff. On Station is the roadway location solution. It is a tool that right now most road workers out there don't have a go to productivity application. And I created it based on my experience on the road, and I focused on the question of where are you at and what are you doing? This is the question that comes up multiple times a day, every day. And what you need to answer that question is look up your location because everything's referenced with location on the highway, whether it be a station on construction projects or a mile marker for everyone else. And then you reference your project design information or whatever the work item may be, and you need to communicate about communicate about that, take notes. And that's essentially the basic fundamental thing, how you start a lot of work items throughout the day, how you communicate on the job.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:03:31]:
And people are still using old technology for this or no technology at all, and that's where On Station is a great benefit, provides value in that its leading feature. We have 2 main unique features, but the first one is location. It automatically provides a station, which I'll just clarify now because it's On Station is the name of the application, but there's a unique unit of measurement in transportation projects. It's 1 foot instead of a mile marker, but it runs down the center line and everything on the project, where does this guardrail start, where does it end, where does this light pole go, everything has a station number and On Station provides that automatically using the devices GPS and a map. And most people out there just have no reference to it all because it just only exists digitally unless surveyors go out and put stakes in the ground and you can use a measuring wheel to reference off of those stakes. But quite frequently, sometimes they don't even go up in projects. And then also once they're up, they get knocked down a lot with grading and other construction operations and then the stationing is lost. So we really provide a great value in just knowing your location out there on the road with otherwise not really any references to get based off of.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:04:41]:
And then our other big innovation and is newer is our flag and chat, which is a way to drop a flag on the map. And unlike other mapping applications that you can write down some details about what that flag or pin represents, we built a dedicated chat right into that call out so that you can start listing notes, pictures, videos. You can add people that are on the job or in the office, off-site, and start working through chat as people normally are. They can just take pictures and share what's going on. They can collaborate, get questions answered, and it's all about ease of use as far as dropping that flag, starting the conversation, getting the relevant notes. And between those two primary features, you can answer the question, where are you at, what are you doing, and really just a couple seconds or a minute if you want to start a conversation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:35]:
Yeah. So approaching this from just like a very beginner's mindset, who is asking that question, you know, where you are and what are you doing? Who, you know, what of what value is the location data and the facilitation of this communication in the larger, you know, perspective of these construction projects?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:05:54]:
On a construction project, it's it's a basic need whether it's a construction project or not, but I was a construction project engineer working for ODOT for many years. And it would start just like, my inspector out on the project, out there with the contractor. They're out building it. And they say, hey. We have, this quick issue going on or I have this question that wants to be answered and I would, ask the question, where are you at and what are you working on? And with that, he would give me a location and he could start texting me some notes or a picture and at the same time I'd be looking in the plans. I'd pull up the blueprints at my desk even if I'm working out of my truck on the other side of the job, same thing. And that's we just try to get that initial orientation. Where are you at? What are you working on? Look up the relevant details of that work and just have an informed conversation so that they can have a question answered or they can get a detail, so they can move on with the work and then everyone's on the same page.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:52]:
Yeah. So I I wanna dive a little bit deeper into your time and experience with, with the Department of Transportation as as really kind of the the source of inspiration for for what you're now building with with On Station. Just, you know, that from afar that it's a highly niche problem, and I'm not sure that most people would even be aware that it's a problem that exists, but obviously is something that you've experienced personally in it. So I'd love to just kinda hear, you know, how it is that that you came to to this kind of work and and kind of the recognition of of the opportunity that you're now working to to solve.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:07:28]:
Yeah. Interestingly, this is, the name of our company is named Projekt and On Station is our flagship product. But, going into college, I didn't know what a civil engineer was and, you know, kind of backed into that major and I'm really glad it worked out that way. But my first job out of college was working for the transportation or the Ohio Department of Transportation. They they have 2 career paths for civil engineers. 1 is a planning and design engineer, which is primarily in the office managing the design phase of the project. And then construction project engineers is the career path I chose. And there you get assigned to any one or a number of active construction projects that everyone sees when you're driving down the road in the orange barrels and get you frustrated and those guys are working out there, but they're all over the place.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:08:17]:
And for 10 years, I was, had different roles on the project at a at a earlier in my career. I really worked as like an inspector, an assistant to the project engineer, and I spent a lot of time just out on the road. I was equipped with my plan set and a spec book, and I worked out of my truck, but I'd follow the crews around, take daily diaries and notes of what they were working on, if they got anything installed, making sure that it met specs and took measurements for pay items and I did that for a long time. So the first half of my career was just learning how to do the job, what is entailed of being a project engineer, and then spending a lot of time just watching the work, taking notes, and making sure that I was doing my job correctly. So a lot of field time was involved early on and then you eventually kind of graduate and take on more responsibility of being a project engineer and you could be working on 1 big project or a handful of smaller project. Each of them are unique and challenging in different ways. And as a project engineer, you're really ultimately responsible. You're the owner representative.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:09:28]:
You're the guy on the spot that is managing from the owner side all the construction that's going on and really it comes down to a lot of documentation of the work that's being done, managing a lot of the work performed, that it meets specs, that we have to pay them for their work along the way And there's just a lot of documentation that goes with that and they have a lot of questions about what's going on in the field like this design detail is left out of the plans. What do you want us to do? And there's a lot of conversations around extra work. This needs to be done. Is it covered in the plans or is it not? And you have fun conversations about what to do on the project, how to do it, and a lot it all goes through the DOT engineer because we have to approve essentially the path forward and especially if there's funding involved. But my favorite thing about working as a DOT project engineer was just the the interaction. There's a lot of interaction. There's a lot of things going on. Little issues or big issues coming up on the job almost every day, especially if you're balancing multiple projects.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:10:36]:
There's prime contractors. They're the main entity that you're working with like a project superintendent or another project engineer. They all have their crews and they have subcontractors that have crews out there. Usually, depending on the size of the project, you have 1 or, you know, 4 or 5 inspectors that are directly reporting to you, while they're inspecting and keeping tabs of what's going on in the project, then there's a lot of consultants and you're still in touch with the office as far as designing and planning goes if there's any questions about that. So just all the people that are involved in all the different, they call them stakeholders, but people who have a role on the project and everyone works together to get this done and make sure that it gets done right, not just what's left in place, you know, that's the biggest part so we have good roads to drive on, but making sure all the documentation is there because there's a high responsibility of accountability for the government and spending your tax dollars, the gas tax to improve and maintain our roads and bridges.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:39]:
It seems like a highly complex, you know, space that you're working in, all those interactions, all the stakeholders. What is the the tooling that is in place, you know, currently when you were doing that work as a civil engineer to, you know, that they were using to empower yourself and those you were working with to to do it right and and get it done. Yeah.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:12:02]:
Yeah. Primarily, when I was working still, I had, in the first half of my career, I didn't even have a smartphone, but we did have a computer and a laptop back in the office. We have an app that would be like you do a lot of administrative things with that app as far as keeping track of worker hours and these pay quantities. And that's really common out in the industry right now. These administrative applications that benefit the company, benefit the business processes that need to be noted and documented and saved. But what people didn't have is a real operational tool, a tool that helps them be more productive. Again, the question of where are you at and what are you doing. So what I had to work with is most of these people work out of their truck.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:12:50]:
Even I was fortunate to have an office to go back and forth, but I still spent a lot of time in the field. But you have your your your plan set. That's still mostly a big book of paper, essentially. Your spec book is another book and you they have them in digital forms, but you would reference that on your laptop. As far as the locating piece go, just kind of speak to how it relates to on station. Some individuals have a GPS rover. That's really the the best thing you can have for high precision surveying and location. But these things cost 10, $20,000 and only a couple people need them on the project, those who are specifically laying it out and they're very expensive and you have to program them for each job.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:13:30]:
On station really focuses on the 90% of the people who are not getting the high end technology. Most of our users don't even have laptops out there. So we don't wanna just serve the the engineers and the managers on the project, but also the construction workers, the inspectors. And anyone who has to answer that question, they might not get the the benefit of getting a rover to carry around because they don't deem it important enough for them to justify the cost. Most of them just aren't using anything to locate. The primary way to locate on the job right now for most people is to reference a location, a station, and the plans like a landmark, a light pole, or a stake in the ground and to physically use a measuring wheel to measure a distance off of that, do a quick calculation, and you can determine a station for that. So compare that to On Station that you open up the app and within 20 seconds, you have your station information and it's just as it's within 5 feet, which is not high end, like, surveying equipment, but the catch here is that that's good for 95 to 99% of the things you need to do is just to have a very close within a couple feet reference of where this thing is because that way you can note it and you can also communicate about it and be on the same page about it. So I think that's where people get hung up sometimes is that for most of the time, you don't need precise location.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:14:59]:
For those that do, they have it. It comes at a very high cost, but most people aren't going to get that kind of technology. And On Station can serve everyone for a very low cost and provide a lot of value in just that location alone. The communication piece, and this is something that kind of came up in the last few years of my job and as people, more smartphones are out in the job, is they're texting to get work done. Texting, chatting is becoming a primary form of communication everywhere and it definitely is on a construction project. And I was communicating a lot, not just with my inspector, but sometimes my managers about project work. And On Station makes it very easy. It's one of the only construction apps that have a chat platform built in, and it's all about getting those text and pictures in the same app as reference to the project that you can reference anytime because what I found at the end of the project when it comes time to compare notes and get all that information, you know, you talked about, you know, you wrote down somewhere.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:15:58]:
But when it's spread out across everyone's text messages on their own devices like their native messaging apps, you don't get that back. And On Station solves that problem of centralizing all that, communication and chat and the the data, the notes, and the pictures that are in it just very well as far as making it easy to do, keeping it organized throughout the project. These look like little conversations on your map when you open up the phone and then you can have multiple projects and all those conversations are saved per user per project and it's a very efficient way to manage all that data being collected and also reference it at any time and then come back to it at the end of the project or afterwards to see what was said.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:41]:
So when you were thinking about when you did start On Station or Projitec rather or On Station was the kind of the first focus. Were were you working to solve your own problem or had you just recognized a market opportunity and and kind of had this entrepreneurial inclination to to try and and bring something to market? How are you kind of thinking about at the onset, you know, why are you starting this thing and where the vision for for the company ultimately lied?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:17:11]:
Sure. Well, there's a few things that kinda happened, around the same time. And this is halfway through my career. I was about 27, so 6, 7 years ago. I first decided to learn how to, develop applications. I had just at that point in time, I had a little more free time, and I was looking on taking a new hobby that could, you know, produce maybe some secondary income and be something more that I just wanted to take on. And with that, I started to develop I I just made a realization. There was an app that I like to use that reference location, and and it's really kinda funny.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:17:50]:
Just, you know, a personal interest of mine, and it's kinda proprietary at the same time. So I can't I'm not gonna say exactly, but I took something that was almost plainly obvious as far as how to reference a location. And I just kinda had the idea of if you can do this in this app, then you can definitely do it along the center line of a transportation project. And with the same technology, we could have an instant station finder. And that was even before I kinda really knew how to code. But since I was starting to learn how to code and I had, that idea, I tried to prove it by making that that feature, making that application. And I did it in really short amount of time as far as really beginning to learn how to code. And I had this prototype of a station finder tool, which is still the leading feature in our application built in about 8 months.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:18:40]:
And I also, at the same time, realized the market opportunity because sitting out on the project, spending a lot of time out there, you have time to think about other things when you're waiting for a concrete truck or

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:55]:
a

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:18:55]:
crew to arrive or something like that. And it almost to me felt like, you know, hurricane conditions, you know, that lead up to that. You know, if it's the the temperature and the way the wind blows and just the time of year, as far as these factors that contribute to something big happening, on the project, I realized that a lot of those a lot of people that smartphones were just being becoming available out in the project. Most people didn't have them, but you knew within the next few years, everyone's gonna have smartphones because it just offered that much value, and they would eventually realize that. So at that time, most people didn't have smartphones. I probably didn't even have a smartphone as an engineer. That changed in the next 3 to 5 years, and I saw that come in very plainly and that I started looking for other other apps to do my job and there really wasn't much available. And the people, the software vendors that you would expect to have an app, their apps just didn't hit the mark.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:19:54]:
They were very amateur, I guess. You know, I don't think they really focused or knew how to develop on mobile at that time. They were focusing, I think, taking their desktop apps to a web app where I started working on mobile right away and we eventually caught up to each other and everything. But I was like, if everyone's gonna get smartphones here and there's no apps good apps available for these people that are they're gonna wanna use. And then the project that I was working on at the time was a $65,000,000 major rehabilitation project as far as replacing the entire highway pretty much. I was like, if this project alone costs $65,000,000 and there's projects everywhere in Ohio and across the United States and all these people are about to get cell phones and there's no good application for them to use, then there's a big opportunity for someone to create an app that people like and will actually benefit them. And, you know, if you can do that, then you might have not just a business but also a very big business. And combined with I already had a feeling of I wanted to take on a bigger challenge.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:20:54]:
I wanted something with some freedom and to exercise some of the ideas and, you know, what I was willing to put into something extra. It all kind of made sense for me to just develop this out. You know, it was a side job. I was able to it was a hobby that turned into a passion, you know, in a business but I was able to work my full time job which I did enjoy and it was a good job but when I had that feeling of this could be something big and I could actually work towards it, if I learn how to code, I can build something. No one could really stop me, if I can code and release an app in the App Store. Really, all it took was I'll tell you a funny story is how it got started is my girlfriend got me a book that was how to program iPhone apps for dummies. And she got that for me for my birthday. I must have been talking about, starting to want to code a little bit.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:21:49]:
And then I had the book and I had the interest, but I didn't have a Mac computer. So I went on Craigslist, and I found a post for a guy who had an Imac out in Elyria. And I visited him to check that out. It was like $700 which, you know, was a good amount of money for me to be in like a just getting out of college and everything and school loans, and I really haven't bought an expensive computer like that at that time. Well, I go over the the guy's house and it's just kind of a you know, you have your reservations about a a shady Craigslist deal to begin with, and I certainly did.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:23]:
Well, I

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:22:23]:
went in the house and I was like, it looked like there was a yard sale in an inside the house. Like, they were reselling a lot of stuff on Amazon. I was like, he brought me in there, and I I had a lot of, doubts. And he sat me down, and he showed me this computer. And it was a nice Imac and something I would wanna use. And next to the bookshelf next to it had a lot of coding books. So he was a developer. He used this Imac and this Imac was the nicest thing in the house by far.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:22:48]:
I was like, if this guy is a developer, he definitely takes pride in this computer and it looks like he does. And he told me some valuable information at the time. Once he showed me the computer, he, once I decided, yes, I do want this, he was moving his files like pretty much cleaning the computer. And he clicked on a file out of his own curiosity and sure enough, like, there's a little thumbnail that was x rated. You know, I'll leave it at that. Like, it flashed on the screen as we're both sitting in front of the desktop, and I just kinda looked over at the bookshelf and pretend like I didn't see anything even though I was just dying on the inside. And he, he told me that I was like, how do you learn how to code? And he he recommended you can get this book, but he recommends some online resources, which the whole, like, e learning platforms were becoming, very prevalent at that time. And he said you don't need to go back to college.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:23:42]:
You take these courses, and I'll tell you which website to get started on. And, I went to lynda.com, and they eventually, I believe, got absorbed into LinkedIn learning or LinkedIn training and it was just a great hookup. The guy gave me a good computer that lasted me 5 years longer than, you know, before I moved on to the next one. He gave me that nugget of information like you can do this if you you stick with it and you don't need if you stick with it, you can learn online and become, like, a developer. So yeah. After that, that all happened within that 1st year, and I started a business. As soon as I had the prototype, I sampled well, I shared it with people on the project because I developed the app. I was able to put it on their iPhones.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:24:23]:
I'm a iOS developer. And the guys on my project, they put it out there. Sure enough, it showed them their stationing, and that's really like, that's a game changing thing for them. For most people, like, it it'll never affect them. But for the people who have to locate themselves and answer that question every day on that road, it's a difficult thing. And they're like, wow. This this actually is really sweet. I was like, yeah.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:24:42]:
I think it's really sweet too. And I ended up starting a business about a a year after I started coding, and Projekt was founded at the end of 2013. So it's been a long time, you know, to get to this point. And, you know, I had to fly under the radar for a long time to develop this out and just figure everything out as far as what I wanna do. So it was a it wasn't just like we went into business and everything was rolling at that point. It was probably a 4 or 5 year delay before we could really get things rolling, but doesn't mean I was doing great work and really learning and preparing for what we're going through now is really what it ended up to be.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:22]:
Yeah. And this is a journey that you had in the earlier days undergone on your own for the most part. How were you kind of managing, you know, building this on your own from scratch and and making that jump from having the full time job to, okay, I'm gonna pursue this full time as a as a business rather than a hobby and a passion.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:25:45]:
Yeah. It was there was a lot of challenges to that, but there is also a lot of, you know, I looked forward to what, you know, I believed it could be. And it wasn't total it wasn't total faith though because I created this prototype and I was able with the help of my cousin who was actually kind of an early an early partner and a friend to give me some help in the sales and marketing side of things. But I I sold a project and we said, hey. There's a few projects where I say, hey. We have this tool. You can imagine, it will help you and we'll build it for you for free. You just tell us what what you think about it.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:26:20]:
And I was able to do that and we delivered it to some major transportation projects in North Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, just just random but they were all good very big projects like in their state with, reputable contractors and everything. And it was it was essentially risk free from them, and they gave a 100% positive feedback, which we used to pitch to Glide, you know, at that time too. But our first paid project was actually, like, a $20,000 build. And that's when I kind of validated that you could sell this and it has a lot of value. Now that was, like, the most I've sold a project for, at the very beginning, but it to me, it helped me show that it was definitely something worth pursuing. Because again, like on average, there's about 50,000 projects across the United States, you know, even more if you include city and county governments. But, yeah, if it if it's it's useful on all the projects and having the opportunity to make money on it and then the larger opportunity of, like, the industry change and empowering these workers altogether that was a lot of incentive to me to get serious about it and give it a lot of time and attention which is, you know, what I did. There's no way around learning how to code and develop this app out and starting to run a business and get into marketing sales without really any prior experience.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:27:45]:
All my experience had been engineering and construction project management up until then. And then you even get into pitching and telling your people about this opportunity and hoping that they can provide you some, some funding even if a little bit in the the minor leagues or the early rounds of the pitch competitions and and that's what we did. The logistics of it, I think if you're I did this for 3 or 4 years as far as really grinding to develop out the app as much as I could, sell a few projects, maintain these customers, and anything in support of what, you know, what that entailed like creating marketing videos to demonstrate the application and get a website up and running to have some online presence and validity. When you tell these people about your app, they're gonna try to validate that especially large contractors and and, departments of the transportations, which who was using my app at the time. So the logistics of that is I I did work my full time job. And fortunately, with that being that I worked for the government I wasn't have to work the the super long weeks that a lot of the other people on the project did because they were actually cutting back on overtime in that period. But I would have a full day of work. I would have to do whatever I needed to do at the house.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:29:02]:
And I would usually reserve 2 or 3 hours a day in the evening, 3 to 4 days throughout the week of building the application or building a project, which is part of serving our customers so they can reference their project within the application. And that'd be a couple hours, multiple days throughout the week, and sometimes I would go 3 to 6 hours on, like, a Saturday or Sunday to supplement that because I always felt that pressure of needing to do something. And and it wasn't too much. I certainly didn't kill myself, trying to do this. I've maintained a pretty good balance, but, you know, it definitely was a lot of work any way you look at it. But, yeah, it was it was kind of a tough schedule. It was a very tough schedule to maintain, and it it wouldn't make any sense if you didn't really believe in the the goal of what was going on here that one, it could be, you know, it is something I'm passionate about and it could be something I could do full time someday, but also it really could be a massive opportunity if everything played out. And I had to pay attention.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:30:05]:
I would have probably would not ever do this again as far as spending that much time trying to build something without, you know, for for a long time or just in the hopes. At that time, you don't have much to work with. If you don't have much money or a team to support you, you have no other choice than to kind of do things on your own and bootstrap it until you do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:26]:
Yeah. But, you know, as of recent, I know you've been able to to secure some funding for the business and I I'd love to kind of dive deeper into your outlook for the future, how you plan to to use the the resources, building out the team, bring it to market. But before we do that, I did wanna ask just at the onset, understanding that On Station is is really kind of the flagship product and Projektek more of the the parent organization. But through the lens of, you know, the ambitions that you have and the vision you have for the company, is there a broader lens that Projekt takes approaching the civil engineering space where On Station is is very niche in its application or or how are you kind of thinking about On Station as as a product versus Project Tech as a as a company?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:31:12]:
Yeah. There's not too much distinction that needs to be made other than that. There is a potential really, we're only focused on on stationery is our only product right now and Projekt is just the company name. So that if we were to decide to have another spin off application or another application altogether, we can still manage multiple applications with different names under the same business. But for all intents and purposes, it's all about On Station at this at this time because if On Station goes, we go and there's no other plan B or another product that we're invested in. It's just Onstation and Projektektekt was the LLC that I started and Onstation is the app.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:58]:
Got it. So, yeah, tell me about, you know, the kind of growth prospects for the business, where you guys are today and, you know, with this recent capital raise, how you're thinking about, you know, really growing the business here?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:32:11]:
So the funding is going to be a huge benefit to us. Mainly in already we've doubled the size of our team to 10, mostly developers, but we also have sales, marketing and civil engineering technology. And we determined that that's that's what we need to get to the next level of success for for On Station and the business, we are able to move into a bigger office to support our team. Prior, we definitely had a start up office where we had about 4 people in a room on each wall. And if we all backed out of our, you know, seats at the same time, we'd we'd hit shares for sure. So it was great. It's great to be in a a newer space, essentially building the team and the environment so that we can start beginning to do our best work, which includes executing our strategy on the development and road map side, but also the outreach of reaching more people, our customers, you know, strategically, but definitely put a lot more resources into that. And then also upgrading our our presence of being online, being that we are an application and a technology company.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:33:18]:
Most people are interacting and learning about On Station through some type of online content and digital media. So, producing good material for them to put out there so they get a good impression and understand On Station if they're not already using the application.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:33]:
Yeah. And you I think you've kind of hinted at it in the earlier days just kind of rolling it out to the the folks you were working with, the impact that it kind of has on the day to day. But but what is the reception been in in practice to to the use of of the application and and what it kind of affords people who are, you know, out there actually doing the job?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:33:54]:
Yeah. The are like I said, the users that are using On Station and are the users we're targeting are is a lot of the common workers, the inspectors, the foremans, the construction workers and consultants out there, most of them don't have any productivity application. And a lot of them just have a an application that's like filling out a form or something they need to write down to do their job. And, actually, I have a lot of experience with them, and it was it was cumbersome to work with those applications. But when they need to reference their location, again, what they need to do multiple times a day that this app they we've had customers tell us, like, this is a this is a game changer for us. We really love this app, and we, you know, we Google when we realize, like, how much time it's gonna save us on our job and how much it's going to help us on a daily basis. And we do have a a small audience, you know, compared to our competitors and what we're going after right now, but there there are a lot of them really love and they really like On Station. And they're like, this is the app that we're gonna use to do this, locate ourselves, and start taking notes.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:35:00]:
And it's like there's no going back, which is really important to get that level of commitment and engagement for your users. So we've we've shown that we're able to do that as far as get that initial problem solution, the users to get a reaction that On Station is a great tool for them and make that decision in a short amount of time. And then the plan is that with the connectedness to a project where, like I said, it's a very interactive environment out there on the job and you meet a lot of people on the job in different organizations and all those people go to different jobs and do the same thing that if we can if we have an app that creates a positive reaction and they're like this is the solution and start telling everyone else about it, we have a what was called a product growth strategy where there's a fire rally aspect of spreading through the app. It's not stopping us from contacting and marketing, you know, the best that we can, but we do rely on organic and network growth as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:56]:
So what, looking forward, are the opportunities that you are most excited about for On Station?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:36:06]:
Well, at this, there's so many opportunities ahead of us. Our goal of ours right now is that we have a lot of trials and we have in place where companies, a small percentage of their users are using the application on a small percentage of their projects. And On Station is built that it could be as valuable on any project, large or small, and it is only makes sense that if they like it, they should use it on every project and all their users because it benefits everyone the same, and it and it doesn't matter what project it is. So that's really one of our main focus areas right now is that inside sales, inside growth, and to become more ingrained that not just individuals are choosing to use On Station, but also organizations. You know, they're choosing to use On Station than any other app that's out there. There's we don't really have not competitors that are 1 to 1, but a a lot of one offs. It's, you know, it's an attractive market and there are competitors out there. But proving that companies, not just individuals, will decide to use On Station as a whole is a big focus for us.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:37:16]:
On the the technology front, we have some really big features coming out that are gonna allow us to reach more the audience. For example, right now, stationing is not on every construction project. It's only ones that are engineered with, come up with set of plans, and actually a majority of them are don't have stationing. And we've collected all the LRS and mile marker information across United States to create a database of mile markers so that they can instantly locate themselves even if they're not on a construction project. So that will expand our potential audience greatly once that's going. And then we have a really innovative

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:53]:
What is, what is LRS? Just for my own Yeah.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:37:55]:
So That's a good question. It's a linear reference system. So that is generally how you reference a location along a line or a line that's not straight like a road to say there's a measure to this line and then you are some place up the line and offset to it and that's like your pinpoint location. So LRS is the general term actually mile markers and stationing is variations of that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:20]:
Got it. Got it.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:38:21]:
Thank you. Yeah. We also have a new safety tool coming up which safety is primary focus on every project especially in construction which because it's not always dangerous but it's you know if you're out there working on the road next to traffic and safety is on everyone's mind. We all want to be safe out there and we want to provide a feature that promotes safety and we have a good idea that being that all of our users where most of them are on-site actively working on the road that we can report that location to traffic apps such as Waze, Apple, even state, proprietary traffic apps that you can alert the traveling public of the presence of these workers and these work zones. That does exist a little bit, but not for the worker individually. And I I think that will be a really great feature to put out there to add safety as far as one of the core features and values of On Station as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:13]:
Yeah. I can imagine that would be pretty powerful.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:39:15]:
Yeah. And then as far as big opportunities go, we are in trial with a couple of state DOTs, and they're one of kind of our ultimate clients as far as having the most projects on a reoccurring basis. I believe in just the way things are progressing and conversations we have that some of these big opportunities either with contractors, but especially DOTs that we've been working with for years now, they like using On Station. COVID kinda put a spin on things as far as putting some of our opportunities on hold or push back, and now is gonna be the good time in the next, I think, 6 months. We're gonna get some scalable trials with some of our DOT clients. And, really, we're just we're preparing for all of those things, but those are definitely the highlights and the outlook for On Station.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:02]:
Yeah. No. It's a it's an exciting outlook. Very cool to very cool to see. I'm curious as you've kind of taken this from inception and nonexistence, just an idea to something very tangible and and real and and out there in the field. Just some reflections that you have on the process of building this company, you know, what have been the lessons you've taken with you, the things that you've had to kind of learn along the way, the challenges and what you're enjoying about this process?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:40:32]:
Sure. It really has been an adventure. And in the early years, it's and it's also been interesting going for so long at it now that I've been able to see the progress and the change over time. I'll, mention a story. I was watching, an old YouTube channel of what I was doing, what the type of videos I was putting out there for, like, my early pitch competitions and demo videos that I had to do for my first customers. This was 7 years ago, old YouTube channel. And it kind of brought me to tears a little bit because that's not on the one hand, I knew what I was thinking at the time and to say and to see 5, 6 years later that now I'm doing this full time and the opportunities are still great and ahead of us and have a great partner and a team and funding behind us. Like, that's only what I could have hoped for early on.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:41:25]:
And, that's, you know, it was a really cool thing to go back and just kinda be grateful of getting to this getting to this point. Of course, we haven't hit the big home run yet. That's what we're working towards now, but it's definitely something to take take a step back and celebrate and be grateful for. And then the same videos, I was like, that stuff was not that good. You know, I put my heart in, my sweat into it, but it's such a change now having a team of talented individuals and professionals so that all these different aspects of building the application and the business, we have talented people behind in putting out a much better quality product and having all the services, you know, behind the business that we're gonna need. So I think the whole transformation stands out to me and I I probably appreciate that most because just I've seen it from being an idea kind of pulled out of thin air and just a a desire and working towards that to now we're a very legitimate business as far as we've gone through the Cleveland Entrepreneurship Partner partnership network around here being funded at in the early stage of of Glide. And that really helped us out as far as a local organization kind of backing us up with a little bit of funding and believing in us. They introduced me to one of my main mentors, Jumpstart, and one of my main mentors there where I gained mentorship for 3 or 4 years before I was able to meet my partner.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:42:59]:
And that early mentorship was very helpful to me when there wasn't a whole lot of things to celebrate and I couldn't talk to many people to relate on what I was working on. Just seeing them every now and then and hearing their words of encouragement and belief and telling me the next milestone or the next thing that I should be working for really helped me stay in it and stay on track. And then at the very end of working being a part of Jumpstart as a as a founder and having a mentor is that my mentor introduced me to my partner today. And my partner was also involved in the organization, but he was on the mentor side and looking for opportunities with founders or and startups and through my good fortune and for On Station. And it's an exciting opportunity for him that we became partners and started working on this as a partnership, which is a was a big difference and something I'm very grateful and excited about because things have changed drastically as far as the progress that we've made. The excitement of the things that we've been doing over the same amount of time, it's it's we've been able to go to another tech accelerator, the, Techstars hard tech accelerator in Indianapolis just last fall, which was an incredible experience for, any startup, but we got we got to do that and we grew a lot as a as a startup from there. Met a lot of great people that are mentors as well. They're just out there.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:44:29]:
I think a lot of people have been down this path before. They appreciate the innovation. They appreciate what it takes to build something up, you know, that business stage from 0 to 1. And whether you've been successful or not, I think their appreciation and respect is still there, and a lot of people are willing to help those people out even if it's just a phone call. So, yeah, the the transformation, the adventure of being able to do exciting things, my personal work, I felt was very exciting and giving my best ideas to the application and just trying to promote it. It's a struggle. I'm definitely way more comfortable in the the building and the designing and developing and working with the team than I am the promoting and marketing side, but it's like whatever it takes. Now with the team, we can just delegate that and everyone can kind of play more into their strengths, but also work together and share ideas at the same time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:23]:
Yeah. I think that's the that's the beauty of building the the team behind you. Cool. So one of the, the things that ask everyone who comes on the show is not necessarily for their favorite things in Cleveland, but for something that other people may not necessarily know about, hidden gem. And so, I want to ask you for your hidden gems in Cleveland.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:45:44]:
Yeah, I have some hidden gems. A couple years ago, I decided to take on another hobby and just try something different, way different from even development and business, but I started taking, salsa classes. And the after doing that, I went to a couple of studios here around Cleveland. I learned that the the Latin and salsa community is dancing community is a really cool thing and is a good opportunity for anyone that wants to get out, try something new. I went to Veeva. So Veeva is a studio on the east side. I started taking classes there. They do all kinds of dance classes, but I just stuck with the the Latin dancing and then also LaSalsa on the west side.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:46:23]:
I live in Lakewood and they're in Lakewood now. Both great places to learn and then you find that almost every night during the week there's a small kind of intimate setting but very fun, very diverse, very friendly community of people out there that you can learn how to dance and be a part of a group and check out these cool spots, you know, if you have the free time and want to do something fun. Another That's

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:45]:
awesome.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:46:46]:
Hidden gym is El Tango which is a restaurant on Madison in Lakewood. I went there a few years ago, met the owner, and he just has really great fruit and he's a really interesting character. So if you want to find out the kind of characters I hang out with my free time and have some great food while you're out there, then I I recommend Altango in Lakewood. And then also, I like going to concerts and get away, but the the medium size venues out here like Jacob's Pavilion, Agora, House of Blues are not hidden at all, but, another places that I like to hang out at, and that's I think that's it for my hidden gyms.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:24]:
Yeah. Those are great. The I love the the salsa bit. Yeah. I'll try that. Well, Jake, thank you very much. Very, very cool and inspiring to hear your story and and all the the progress that that you've made so far. And I hope the the journey from 1 to x is is as fruitful as the journey from 0 to 1 so far.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:47:45]:
I appreciate it. I, I I hope we can do, like, episode 2 or the follow-up like we can make it. I can tell you that we did it and it was awesome and how it all worked out. But yeah, we can only hope for that at this point. But thank you for the time and let me share my story here and good luck to yourself as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:04]:
Yeah. Really, I really appreciate it. If folks have anything that they like to follow-up with you about Projekt or otherwise, what is the best place for them to reach you, Jake?

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:48:15]:
Yeah. They follow On Station if they wanna keep updated with our business progress. We're on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook. Search On Station. Personally, if you wanna reach out, connect on LinkedIn. Be more than glad to do that. And my email is jbaylowski@gmail.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:31]:
Awesome. Thank you again, Jake.

Jake Bailosky (PROJiTECH — OnStation) [00:48:33]:
Alright. Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:36]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayofthelandor@sternfa, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:13]:
The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the UP Company, LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.