Notes

Dr. Jeff Daiter von InVintory: 5 Dinge, von denen ich wünschte, dass sie mir jemand gesagt hätte, bevor ich anfing, mein Unternehmen zu leiten
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Self-doubt is the seed of all that fails to grow. I would encourage any founder to work through any unrealized feeling of self-doubt.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jeff Daiter.
Dr. Jeff Daiter is an avid wine enthusiast with a strong passion for improving the experience of growing a wine collection. Having struggled to quickly find his bottled treasures hiding in his cellar and fridge, he has dedicated the last couple of years to developing a robust wine platform, InVintory, that among many other notable features, quickly locates a selected bottle of wine using patented 3D modeling technology.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Over the last thirty years, medicine has been my primary profession. However, this career afforded me the ability to truly seek out and enjoy my passions, one of which was wine collecting. The biggest challenge I encountered was keeping track of my bottles and knowing where to find them. One night, I was rooting around in my wine fridge, trying to find a particularly special bottle. I pulled out shelf after shelf with no luck, until, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a bottle rolling off the edge. Before I could react, it crashed to the floor and splattered wine all over the place. Of course, it was the very bottle I’d been looking for. I turned to my son, Josh (an app developer, and co-founder and Chief Product Officer at InVintory), and asked him to help build a better way to track my bottles. That’s how InVintory was born.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
As circumstances would have it, we started InVintory in the months just prior to Covid. While I don’t pretend to think that we suffered more than others, it did greatly affect our business. We’d initially patented Augmented Reality technology (called VinARTM) to find bottles in cellars. It was built on the premise that we would contract individuals to go into collectors’ homes to set up the feature. With the pandemic, this model died on the spot. Consequently, we had to pivot and do so quickly. Luckily, Josh thought to create a modified version of VinAR called VinLocateTM — a simpler 3D representation of one’s cellar or fridge that customers themselves could easily create on a mobile app or web app. We raced to get this done and launched it earlier this year. It is a powerful, standalone feature, but our goal is still to deliver VinAR and we are working hard to make it easier for collectors to enable this tech on their own.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
The “drive to continue” comes from those around me. I often look to others to draw inspiration. Josh provided me with a lot of confidence and desire to succeed. Yule Schmidt, our Chief Operating Officer, is a long-time wine aficionado and initially sought us out after she found the product offered on the web. This inspired me to continue. Notable celebrities who have used the product have also reached out and the list goes on. The influx of these inquiries and the positive feedback we continue to receive from our customers gives me the confidence to march forward.
So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
All is going well. We recently launched our paid subscription, Prestige, which includes VinLocate as well as advanced analytics, like collection market value. The response to the subscription has been good so far, and at the same time, we continue to see growth in our free tier (Aspire). The next challenge for us is to really hit that inflection point in our growth to take us to the next level. We just formally launched in the United States, kicking off a robust marketing effort to bring more attention to InVintory and locking in our long-term success.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
There is a company called Liv-Ex, based in London, England that is the source for much of the pricing data that we utilize. A few months after gaining mastery over their platform, I was doing a Zoom demo to a group of ten sommeliers who were planning to work with us using Liv-Ex to verify wine data. I shared my screen and typed Live-Ex into Google. However, I mistakenly typed Live-Sex and well…I will leave it to your imagination as to what popped up on my screen!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Two things: our product and our philosophy on wine and wine collecting.
Our product blends our intuitive design and our powerful technology. We have focused on developing a seamless User Experience (UX). Many other competitor apps out there have outdated interfaces that are difficult to use and create a negative UX, but our goal is to take the work out of wine collecting, so design is at the forefront of what we do. Our technology is equally important. As I mentioned, VinLocate is just scratching the surface, but even having seen and used it countless times over, it still blows me away. I often do demos for potential users because I love to talk to our customers directly, and it’s so much fun for me to see the amazed reactions when I show them how easy it is to find any bottle.
The other notable aspect of our company is our ethos on wine and wine collecting. We are very conscious about presenting wine as authentically as possible — not as something pretentious, nor as something that needs to be “dumbed down.” It’s simply something that reflects a place, a culture, and a year and should be enjoyed with others. Building on that, wine collecting is not just about amassing bottles; it’s about amassing experiences, so you don’t need a ton of disposable income to get started. Even just building your Wishlist in InVintory or recording memories is a great way to build that “collection” and it’s a personal point of pride for me that we see many young people on the app who are engaging with it in exactly this way.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Burn out is something I am very familiar with, having survived over 30 years as a physician. There are many “motherhood” remedies out there such as take time for yourself, meditate, eat and sleep well, exercise, etc. However, truth be told, I personally think that the secret to not burning out is to realize that the ability to engage in a start-up business, no matter the grind, is a privilege. Many have it worse than I do, and self-pity is the greatest factor to ensure failure.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
For me, the list of notable people is endless, as are the stories of inspiration. However, despite this, I must give credit to the energy and inspiration I draw from our team. We have almost twenty very skilled and talented engineers, designers and wine experts. We meet every morning, by Zoom, and I am always impressed by their genuine interest and commitment. I find this to be the source of much of my personal inspiration to succeed. I do not want to let them down.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
As a physician, I found it important to employ a population that is often overlooked. To that end, I partnered with a government-funded employment agency that seeks to introduce neuro-diverse individuals into the workplace and hired four individuals who have a diagnosis of Autism to work on our growing database of one million wines. This has truly been a “win-win” initiative and I am grateful for the talent that they bring to our company.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my company” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
I have started and sold a number of companies over my years. I feel like I have “learned my lessons” and “taken my beatings.” This is not to say that I won’t still fumble the ball at times, but experience is definitely the best teacher.
I’ll just share three important lessons.
First, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In my early days as a physician, I was approached by someone offering to display original art pieces on my office wall. If a piece sold, I would receive commission. Surprisingly, the first ten or so pieces sold, not to my waiting room patients, but to people who had seen the piece through other media channels. Nevertheless, I received the commission and a trusted relationship blossomed. Eventually, the value of the pieces increased to the point I was asked to acquire insurance. Unsuspecting, I purchased a sizable insurance bond through the agent selling the art. Of course, not only did the piece fail to sell, but my contact disappeared. Trying to recoup my loss, I had the pieces appraised only to discover that they were worthless. Eventually, the perpetrator was apprehended and an article was published about how the now infamous “artful dodger” had scammed many physicians. Too good to be true indeed!
Second, know your audience. I had the honor of speaking at a scientific conference to share some research findings. Over the course of the five-year project, I had had many contentious arguments with one of the many funding groups. I shared this unfortunate experience with the audience, only to discover the president of that company was sitting in the first row, having flown in from overseas just to hear the presentation. I was thoroughly embarrassed and could hear my mother’s whisper reminding me that If I didn’t have anything good to say about someone, then I shouldn’t say anything at all.
Third, more generally, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to never stifle creativity. I always seek to encourage any and all ideas. The human mind is remarkable, and we should never forget this. So many of our successes at InVintory have come from brainstorming together as a team. I’m always impressed by the ideas people come up with when they let their minds stretch.
Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?
Self-doubt is the seed of all that fails to grow. I would encourage any founder to work through any unrealized feeling of self-doubt. Everything we ever want is just on the other side of fear and we need to pursue our passion with vigor. Too many individuals have fantastic ideas but just fail to execute. For a founder, this is a critical error and one that certainly will lead to failure.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Ah, what a wonderful question. This will catch you by surprise, but if I could do anything, I would end the stigma of “addiction.” I have spent my career treating those who suffer from substance abuse. Medical problems that seem to come from above the shoulders, tend to leave people feeling accountable. Shame, self-loathing and the loss of will to live is the fallout. By contrast, nobody feels as embarrassed about a disease the falls below the shoulders (pancreatitis, strains, sprains, etc.). We share those stories openly. I believe if we could end the personal and societal stigma around mental health and addictions, the world would be a far better place to live.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Anyone can visit our website, www.invintorywines.com. We are also on Instagram and Facebook, and I welcome anyone to connect with me personally via LinkedIn.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Here's my website: https://www.replicauhren.one