ENTREPRENEUR BEN LAMM SAYS SUCCESS COMES FROM HARD WORK, FOCUS ON WINNING

Dallas serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm has a history of success in his ventures, something he attributes to hard work, a focus on winning, and surrounding himself with good people.

Lamm, along with co-founder Andrew Busey launched Conversable on Tuesday with Dallas-based Wingstop Inc. (Nasdaq: WING).

Dallas-based Conversable’s platform utilizes bots to help companies deliver on-demand content, information, and ordering to customers through Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and other platforms, making social media “a new call center.”

The launch was a great success, Lamm told me Wednesday.

“Wingstop is happy, we’re happy,” Lamm said. “The feedback from clients, the press, our team … I don’t know if it could have gone better.”

The launch was hard work, he said.

“It’s been a crazy last few days,” Lamm said.

Long known as an entrepreneurial fixture in Austin, Lamm has moved to Dallas and frequently travels back and forth to Austin. He bought a house in Dallas and spent 13 months remodeling it.

BEN LAMM NOW MAKES HIS HOME IN DALLAS

It’s a big move for Lamm.

His two-story home in Austin was unique, and received media attention for its design and decor. But Lamm said he is very pleased with his Dallas digs.

“My place here is great, it’s actually way better,” Lamm said.

“I love Austin more than anything, I love Dallas more than anything,” Lamm said.

He said Southwest Airlines, the Rise on-demand air service, and the Vonlane bus service make travel back and forth between Dallas and Austin quick and simple.

“It’s so easy to go back and forth,” he said.

He said that the Dallas office of Conversable, located in the West End Historic District, serves as a headquarters and focuses on system integration and operations, while core engineering and product are in Austin.

Locating in Dallas provides Lamm, and Conversable, many advantages such as access to major corporations, a strong talent pool, and easily being able to travel around the country.

Lamm was co-founder of the well-regarded Chaotic Moon Studios, which was sold in 2015 to Accenture, a consulting and technology services company. He also was co-founder and partner at the game developer Team Chaos, which was acquired by Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA) in 2016.

“We know this is going to be huge. We’re 100 percent focused on this.”
Ben Lamm

That leaves Conversable as the sole focus for Lamm and Busey.

“We know this is going to be huge,” Lamm told me about Conversable. “We’re 100 percent focused on this.”

He said that he and partner Busey compliment each other.

“He’s the best product person I’ve ever met,” Lamm said. “He’s focused on core products and engineering, and I’m on strategy, sales, and marketing.”

Conversable’s space bypasses traditional apps that many companies use to engage with customers by putting the interaction in social media, and Lamm said that can help invigorate a client base.

Ben Lamm and Andrew Busey of Conversable.

“I think that everyone has some degree of app fatigue,” Lamm said. “Everyone has an app.”

Conversable is the only one going at the social media space from an omnichannel approach and an enterprise approach, Lamm said.

He said Conversable identifies the enterprise model for a company and then, “we hold your hand through the process and usher you into this new wave.”

He said he noticed the progression of millennials who don’t want to just text, but are wanting to be on social channels. And, those social channels are about more than communicating.

“We’ve been working on this for a while,” Lamm said. “We think this is a pretty interesting trend.”

“From my perspective it’s really about surrounding yourself with a great team.”
Ben Lamm

Lamm said there is “no silver bullet” for success as an entrepreneur.

“From my perspective, it’s really about surrounding yourself with a great team,” Lamm told me, as well as “hiring people that are smarter than you, and focusing on an area.”

He said a major key is to focus on winning.

“I do things that I am definitely passionate about at the time,” Lamm said. ““When I was running Chaotic, we were not the first mobile software company.”

But in four-and-half years, he said that Chaotic Moon built industry-defining projects and became a global player.

“We completely won in that space,” Lamm said.

Companies need to focus on getting and better serving clients, he said.

LAMM PLANS TO CONTINUE INVESTING

Good customer service is important because “if you take care of them, they will tell people about you.”

Lamm sees a great future for Conversable, and he says he’s going to focus on it rather anything thing else in the immediate future.

He’ll still be an active investor, though.

“I invest in a lot of things, when I had Chaotic Moon, I invested in other things,” Lamm said.

Lamm said he’s not the kind of person who wakes up in the middle of the night with a new idea for entrepreneurship or investment.

“I sleep pretty much like I’m dead,” said Lamm, who starts each day from a fresh approach, but always focused on winning.

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