We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tremain Davis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tremain below.

Tremain, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Ideas are a dime a dozen. There is nothing special about coming up with an idea. Everybody has them. The power is in the execution. Having the ability to make something tangible out of literal thin air is a very rare and valuable skillset. I am a 5x founder over the past 25 years, so I understand the grind necessary to go from idea to execution.

There are certain things that are required to move an idea forward. Some things are quantitative, hard-core business principles. Other things are more qualitative; like the mindset necessary to persevere when things feel insurmountable. The last thing is the opportunity in the market or the timing of things. Most successful people will tell you that you cannot time the market, and that is 100% true. But there is a certain understanding you can uniquely bring to the table that allows you to see things that others don’t see.

Now here is the tricky part…
None of the things I named above work in isolation. To really win, all of these things have to come together. It’s the collision of these elements that create the environment for massive success. There is no shortcut.

That said, the basic startup framework is as follows. If you have an idea that you want to pursue, start with your value proposition. This basically means intimately understanding who your target customer is and what problem you’re solving for them. Spend as much time as you can learning about this person and their needs. Do this before you spend any money on building your solution. Only after you really understand your target customer, do you now go out and craft you product or service. This is powerful because now, you are spending you time, money, and resources to only build products and services that customers want.

If you have the mindset to stay consistent during this process, and there is an opportunity in the market, you now are on the path to go from idea to execution. It took me two decades and a lot of headaches to be able to concisely layout this framework. I’ve have many failures along the way. But after 25 years I can honestly say, I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my first tech company 25 years ago. Since then I’ve started multiple businesses, invested in businesses, consulted with over 1000 companies, taught entrepreneurship at multiple US universities and built a national ecosystem of founders.

Today, I run two tech companies. The first is an ed-tech company where we build A.I. enabled educational programming that helps students build personal pathways to either college or higher levels of employment. Our focus is on creating economic mobility for under-resourced communities. My second company is in the deep tech space. With this company, we use fiber optics to build corrosion detection ecosystems for mission critical infrastructure. Our initial clients here will be government agencies like DoD and Navy. I am the Chief Strategy Officer of both

The last thing I do, and probably my most meaningful; I run a nonprofit social impact consulting firm. My nonprofit consults on projects around the country, with a focus on sustainable community engagement and economic development. This work is a culmination of the years I’ve spent building businesses. I’ve learned over the years the power innovation and entrepreneurship can have on advancing any community on the planet. This led me to develop my own frameworks about business, innovation, entrepreneurship and community that I now teach around the country.

The thing I’m most proud about is the impact I am now having on the next generation of thinkers, dreamers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. I appreciate more than anything that my story can now help others to be successful.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the main things I’ve had to do throughout my journey is change my relationship with failure. My first tech company was a great but we weren’t able to get it all the way off the ground because we were limited by the technology of the times. We were working on “streaming video” six years before YouTube came out. We raised and lost other peoples investment money, and after three years we closed our doors. I felt like a complete failure. I was only 19 years old when we started, and I didn’t have anyone around me to tell me to keep going. I had to pick myself up and realize that the value in the situation was the knowledge I gained from going through the process of bringing an idea to market.

Have you ever had to pivot?

This is a very current and real example of the need to constantly being able to pivot. My ed-tech company was dealing with existential crisis at the beginning of this year (2024). We raised about $1 million in a seed round last year but we realized we were not going fast enough to get to our next round of funding at the beginning of 2025. This year we’ve had to literally revamp the entire company to accelerate our growth. We may some very risky decisions six months ago that are paying off today. We are now very close to being on track for our series A fundraising round next year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thinkpgc.org
• Instagram: @iamtremain
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/tremain-davis-348504a4

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