Graham Dugoni Transcript
Clint Betts
Graham, thanks for coming on the show. Honored to have you. You're the founder and CEO of Yondr. Give us a sense of what Yondr is.
Graham Dugoni
Well, sure. Well, thanks for having me. Look, Yondr creates phone-free spaces. That's what we do, phone free spaces. Phone free schools. If you've heard that term out there, that's Yondr. We invented it and we do it.
Clint Betts
So tell us what a phone-free space is.
Graham Dugoni
It depends on the space you're talking about, a little bit. But the idea is, in a modern context, in this digital world that we live in, how do you create spaces that are free from the constant tug and pull of modern technology? So if you're a person going to a comedy show or a live music event, what that looks like is you step up to that show, say it's at Madison Square Garden, everyone coming in places their phone inside a Yondr pouch, Yondr staff is facilitating. Once you have that pouch, it locks. So you hold onto it with your phone and your wearable tech inside. But once you step inside the performance space at the venue, you will see that it's an entirely phone-free venue. So no one's texting, nobody's taking pictures, everyone's just enjoying what they're doing.
And then, on the flip side, if you're in school, we help schools become phone-free. We've been doing that for over a decade. And so people, if you're a day in the life of a student, what that means is you step into school. Again, your phone, your wearable tech, goes inside the pouch, locks, and then your entire school day; six to eight hours is going to be a phone-free experience, which, especially for digital natives, is a radically new experience.
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure. I've been to a number of events where you've had to put your phone in the pouch and stuff. What led to you realizing that, one, this was a need, and how did you come to found the company?
Graham Dugoni
Well, I started the company 11 years ago in San Francisco, so that was during the middle of the tech boom. And I guess at that point, everyone was looking at this vision of the future where everything would become more connected everywhere all the time. I think there's a general feeling that was going to lead us to this tech utopia place, and my perspective was a little different. I thought that with radically new technology like smartphones, for example, there are going to be a lot of good things and a lot of unexpected consequences, and that's what I was focused on. My interest and my background for many years before that was sociology and philosophy of technology. So, reading people like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Marshall McLuhan. So, I am really applying those concepts from people who studied the question for a very long time to a modern landscape.
And my idea was that we're going to need these phone free spaces to preserve things that are inherently fundamentally important to people of all ages and that tend to be eroded, let's say in the presence of technology or digital media in particular.
Clint Betts
At what point did you realize, "Hey, we're onto something here? This is going to work."
Graham Dugoni
In 2014, remember there was no such thing as a phone-free space or a phone-free school. So when I was going around at that point, talking to people door to door, I was doing this out of the back of my camper in 2014. I had a bunch of maybe 500 hand-sewn pouches that I had made myself at a hardware store in San Francisco, and I got a lot of rejection. I think the first validating point I had probably was when I went to talk and try to pitch to a couple of venture capitalists, and they basically laughed me out of the room. And at that point, I said, "Well, if you don't get it, then I'm definitely right. This is definitely going somewhere." So it was probably negative reinforcement that first told me, "Hey, I'm onto something."
Later on, getting a few people to actually let me try in a venue was my first real hands-on experience when I started to talk to folks at the ground level inside shows and schools. Even in 2014, I knew that people were wrestling with the question, even if they couldn't articulate it, yet people were wrestling with this question of the role of technology in daily life and how we start to create some structure around that question. But all that on-the-ground experience and going door to door for years is what helped me realize how to grow it.
Clint Betts
And you played professional soccer, right?
Graham Dugoni
I did for a bit after college, yeah.
Clint Betts
What was that experience like?
Graham Dugoni
I mean, it was a cool experience. I was young, traveling around, and got to live in Norway for a while. It was great. I grew up being a soccer player, so that was kind of my life. It afforded me a lot of benefits. I got to travel, I got to be part of great teams, and it taught me a lot of things, such as discipline and competitive drive, but mostly, especially in my early and mid-twenties, I think it gave me a lot of time. When I was in Norway playing, I would go to practice, but I didn't speak the language. So I'd go practice once a day, and I would have the rest of the day by myself. So I'd go hiking, and I would meander around. And I think it's a thing a lot of young people, maybe a lot of people, don't get now. It's just the time to take things in and think about what you're doing and where you want to go.
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. What principles have you taken from being an athlete, having to perform at that level, starting your company, and being an entrepreneur?
Graham Dugoni
I think of most of the lessons; I don't really consciously think about it anymore. They are kind of just becoming ingrained in your personality. I think competitive drive and discipline is one that you just have to learn if you're going to be an athlete because you have to do a lot of things you don't necessarily want to do every day. I think there are other things I learned over time about just learning itself, how you master the fundamentals of something and relegate it to your subconscious that I've kept on applying as I've gone and trying to tackle new problems, the art of self-teaching.
But probably the biggest one is just if you grow up and you work and you participate in sports and you're on teams a lot, you know how to get through things and not complain and know how to get through difficult moments and then come back and reflect after. Whereas sometimes when I encounter people who haven't had some of those experiences, it's a little less natural, I would say that kind of flow.
Clint Betts
How are you thinking about AI? I mean, how do you implement AI inside of your own company? You've got a really interesting company here and you're trying to get everybody to just avoid these things entirely and just be present, which is the right thing to do?
Graham Dugoni
Well, not entirely. Look, I mean, I'm not... We're all living in the world, so when it rains, we all get wet. It's not like you put the genie back in the bottle, per se. So, for me, it's not exactly negating all technology. I'm aware that the world is moving forward, and I view phone-free spaces as a constructive move into the future, not as turning the clock backward. I think when people think about the role of technology, AI included, they tend to think about maybe the symptoms or how we can move the needle to use it better. And that's not wrong, but to me, technology fundamentally affects people at a more physiological level. And physical boundaries are very important if you want to grasp how to create habits and navigate the world.
So, as a company, we're scaling, and we've gotten quite a bit bigger, but I've turned off artificial intelligence inside of everyone's emails. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, the idea of a computer, someone at our company, talking to someone externally, two computers talking to each other is just silly. And then I care too much about our team and their growth and their development of critical thinking faculties to have them outsource all of that to a computer, which I think will be one of the fundamental outgrowths of artificial intelligence, is just a slackening of the brain at some level and a lack of developing critical faculties for dealing with the world, but also a worldview that's coherent and hangs together.
And people need that, especially young people. You have to think of things for yourself, walk around in them, and if you can just go fetch data, I'm not so convinced that easily translates into knowledge or understanding.
Clint Betts
And have you noticed that with the schools, when you put this in schools, what changes have people told you or at school administrators said have happened once their school has become a phone-free environment?
Graham Dugoni
Well, it's a radical transformation. I mean, it depends on what period of time. If you go back, again, we've been developing what's become in schools, the Yondr program, and that's how we work with districts and now states. We help with the pre-planning and the policy and the communication with parents and everything, the implementation support, and the rollout. But the effects are pretty immediate and dramatic. I mean, after two to three weeks, most schools see a reduction in disciplinary issues and fights by over 50%. They see improved academic [inaudible 00:08:01].
Clint Betts
Wow.
Graham Dugoni
Oh, yeah. You hear kids are starting to play sports again at lunch. I've heard from librarians that more books have been checked out sometimes in the first three weeks of school than the entire previous school year. So again, you have to get in the mind of a digital native who's a teenager going to school, and you've grown up with a computer in your pocket. That is a lot of effects. But what we found very encouraging is if you can help create the framework of a device-free experience during the school day, all these things that are really important for young people to develop come back super fast. However, the elements of fights and things like that that are coordinated through social media are a huge problem.
And I have a lot of empathy for young people dealing with that because it's like living in a hall of mirrors. Anything you do, you're afraid of being recorded and posted, what does that do?
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure. Can you imagine being a student with cell phones everywhere? I couldn't even imagine what that would be like.
Graham Dugoni
Oh, all the ridiculous stuff we did as kids, having to worry about someone peeping over your shoulder, that's no fun for anyone.
Clint Betts
Yeah, it's crazy. It adds an element of childhood that is unnecessary, and it probably shouldn't exist. So I think what you're doing there is an incredible piece of this. What does a typical day look like for you as CEO of the company?
Graham Dugoni
It depends. I'm not a super process-oriented person, so I like to keep things fairly flexible. I also like to travel. I like to be out talking to customers and seeing what we do on the ground. So, on any given week, I might be on the road, or I could be in the office. I prefer, in a way, being on the road. I've got a family, so I do it a little less than I did 10, five years ago, where I would be basically at all the Yondr shows I could go to and in every school. But I think every day, maybe the common theme for me is that I don't have a smartphone, and I haven't for 10 years. I've got self-imposed limitations, which helps. So, I don't get carried away as much in reading the news and getting swept up into things at the beginning of my day. And then you just go into whatever the day is going to bring you.
Clint Betts
What type of phone do you have? Do you have one of those dumb phones, or is that what they're called? I think they're called dumb phones.
Graham Dugoni
Yeah, I've got just an old-fashioned flip phone. I've had several models over the 10 years that's been pretty consistent.
Clint Betts
And do you feel like from a health, mental health, all that type of perspective, you just have far more clarity and it doesn't matter, the latest thing that we all should be outraged about, you don't even know about it, so you don't even know whether to be or not be outraged?
Graham Dugoni
Well, I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I think all the news trickles down to me through friends, and everybody just kind of by osmosis. So, I get it through a funny filter where people have already digested it. And look, I'll still read the news and do that stuff. My work just exists around a laptop. Or if people want to talk to me about something on a phone call, what I found is it has a funny way of slowing things down, but ultimately speeding them up because I can only process... So, my assumption is you can only process so many things in a day. So, if you want to be efficient with your time and push things forward, you've got to be able to digest and make smart decisions.
I think one aspect of digital media now is people are so bombarded and so overstimulated that it's very difficult to actually take a ball and move forward. When it comes to the news and stuff, I'll still get it. It's just delayed. And generally, if it's not essential, I don't hear about it till a bit later. But I think, in general, it's helpful for me because, look, with anything going on in the political world, economic world, and cultural happenings, I'm interested in the things I can affect and affect them in the best way I possibly can. And trusting that that will have a knock-on benefit over the other things that are tangentially related.
But all that comes from you focusing and choosing your path a little bit. Otherwise, people can become, I think, a bit of a river without banks. And if you start your day inhaling a lot of social media, the news, it has that effect, an atomizing effect, I think. It solicits your attention and endless directions, and that ultimately, to me, can be a bit counterproductive, even if it's well-intentioned.
Clint Betts
What do you read, and what reading recommendations do you have for us?
Graham Dugoni
I read a lot of different stuff. I read a lot of philosophy still. I read a lot of mythology. I read a lot of fiction. So, right now, I am reading Bernal Diaz's account of the Conquest of New Spain. I just recently read H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, which is just a smattering of stuff. To me, the stuff I generally read at the end of the night is to take me away mentally somewhere else and leave the day behind. I don't read business books and stuff like that because that's just a continuation of work.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I don't read a lot of business books either. I've never really found the appeal, to be honest with you, which is kind of weird. It's like the person who runs CEO.com. Yeah, I'm not a big business book guy. How are you feeling about this year economically from a business perspective? And what is it like to sell into schools? Is that like a longer process time or a longer close rate? How does that all work?
Graham Dugoni
Look, we're feeling very good about the year. We're growing very quickly as a company. We have a large international presence as well. And I think for so many years, our team, our company, has been out talking to people, especially in the education world, about the benefits of a phone-free school. But until maybe just pre-COVID and post-COVID, I think, we're out evangelizing. We're saying, "Hey if you thought about a phone-free school, all these different things it can do for you." And people were in different phases of understanding, I think, from educators to parents to students themselves. Post-COVID, that radically changed where I think people came out of COVID, and a lot of parents, in particular, had seen what online learning was and what it would mean to be behind a screen that much.
And they're starting to ask questions, saying, "Whoa, I didn't realize this was happening." Or "What are the developmental effects this is going to have?" So, as a company, our role became pretty different. We weren't any longer; we weren't out evangelizing a phone-free school. People were going, "How does this work?" And so our job became, "Hey, well, we've been doing it for 10 years. We can help walk you through how to make this effective because it's a little more involved than it might sound at first blush." But now, there are tons of legislative movements around the country that are behind the issue, which is super exciting.
Most importantly to me, what our growth represents is that we're giving more kids a framework for how to relate to the online world through their experience. Remember, if you're a digital native and you grew up with a smartphone in your pocket, you don't necessarily have that understanding of the difference between the two. And that's my fundamental goal, not to tell kids what to do or young people or people in general. It's just to open a window to say, "Hey, there is another path here." And to show them the difference.
So my feeling has been that, for a young person who goes to school for four years where Yondr is being used and has a phone free education, their childhood and upbringing is going to be pretty different from a peer who did not.
Clint Betts
Yeah, there's absolutely no question about that. Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Graham Dugoni
Oh, I've had a lot of people place bets on me that have been super helpful in my life. I had a few early investors who took a chance on an idea that seemed absolutely ludicrous at the time, totally cross-purpose with the dominant cultural zeitgeist back then. And then I would say maybe the most important thing for Yondr's history was probably when we started working with Dave Chappelle around 2015. He had just come back on the scene. And when I think about that, it was just me with maybe, at that point, 500 pouches total that I had scrounged up. When I met his team, I thought they knew where I was.
They knew where the company was at that point, but they liked something about it. They're willing to take a chance. I flew out there with a friend and started doing those early shows, and that started the whole process in motion of us getting some notoriety and me learning how to do it, being launched into the entertainment world that led to all these other things. So it takes people like that. You have to come across people like that. And I've seen the same thing in the school world.
I've always tried to leave the door open for serendipity a little bit. When you meet people, when good things come in, and at funny inflection points, you meet people who do that for you, and you just have to be kind of ready to pick up the ball when it drops.
Clint Betts
Yeah, the first time I heard about these things was at a Chappelle show. I was like-
Graham Dugoni
Oh yeah.
Clint Betts
He definitely popularized these.
Graham Dugoni
Yeah, he was great. And he was the first artist I spoke with who understood the mission of the company. For me, business is important. I'm not super interested in business, and I never have been. So learning about business and being an executive is interesting in so far as it's part of the vehicle for the cultural change I'm interested in facilitating, but it's not the be-all and end-all for me. So when I talk to an artist like him and laid out my philosophical view of the role of technology in society, the positive things it can do, the issue we're facing at that moment and what could be done about it, and the artist's role, a very important role in all that, he was the first one I think, who grasped it and was like, "Yeah, I get that. I'm behind that."
And understood that, whether it's related to privacy or all these other things, if people want freedom, if you want freedom to express yourself, to be off the grid for a little bit, we have to create those spaces. Tech companies aren't going to come and give you that space. It is not how capitalism works. So you have to go carve those out and defend them and defend what they represent. And I think artists are sensitive people; they intuitively understand that. And I think people at a deeper level when they go to shows, and you're swept up into the mood of being at a show and no one's distracted, no one's filming anyone. That's what we go to live events for. And that's important because that cuts across all these cultural, economic, and political divides, and it reminds people like, "Hey, we're all people, and we're here enjoying this moment."
And that has an extremely beneficial effect on society, I believe. Better than anybody can write in any op-ed because it hits on the level of... It hits you more in the chest than just in the brain.
Clint Betts
Oh, I totally agree. Graham, thank you so much for what you do, seriously, in the world, and for coming on the show. You're making a difference in what you've done and what you've built, it's life changing, man. You're helping a lot of people. Thanks so much.
Graham Dugoni
Hey, Clint, I appreciate it.
Clint Betts
Thanks, Graham.
Edited for readability.