Colin Wiel On Taking A $1 Billion-Company Public, Merging A $800 Million-Company, And Now Deploying and Managing Custom AI Workforces For Businesses

In the world of entrepreneurship, few stories embody resilience, vision, and adaptation like that of Colin Wiel. A four-time founder, Colin has built and scaled multiple companies, navigated financial crises, pioneered tech-driven real estate ventures, and is now at the forefront of AI innovation.

Colin’s latest venture, Qurrent, has raised funding from friends, angels, strategic investors, and venture capitalists.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Colin Wiel’s challenging childhood experiences instilled grit and a drive to succeed.
• His work at Boeing in AI-driven braking systems foreshadowed his future ventures in automation.
• Investing in single-family rentals during the 2008 financial crisis led to the billion-dollar success of Waypoint Homes.
• Mynd’s rapid hiring before achieving product-market fit hindered agility and long-term growth.
• Qurrent is pioneering AI agent-driven workforces that autonomously execute complex tasks.
• Learning from past experiences, Colin is building Qurrent with lean funding and strong revenue focus.
• Prioritizing enjoyable work with the right people drives long-term fulfillment and business success.

 

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About Colin Wiel:

Colin Wiel is a co-founder and CEO with over 20 years of experience in creating innovative and impactful solutions using artificial intelligence. His mission is to harness the power of AI to solve real-world problems and create value for enterprises and society.

Currently, Colin leads Qurrent, a company that develops custom-built autonomous agent solutions for enterprises, leveraging its proprietary AI agent framework.

Colin set the company’s vision, strategy, and direction and oversees product development, sales, marketing, and operations. He works closely with clients and partners to deliver high-quality, scalable, and reliable AI agent solutions that address their specific needs and challenges.

Colin served as a Board Member at Blockchain Coinvestors Acquisition I and Pacaso. He is an angel investor and chairman of Mynd Property Management.

Colin holds multiple patents in artificial intelligence, has redefined Boeing’s control systems, and has launched his programming consulting firm. He is no stranger to innovation.

Before being Co-Founder/Co-CEO of Mynd, Colin was Co-Founder and CIO of Waypoint Homes, now Starwood Waypoint (NYSE: SWAY), and grew the company to be the second largest SFR real estate investment trust (REIT), managing 17,000+ homes across the country.

Colin was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and Goldman Sachs Top 100 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs in 2012. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley and a BA from Berkeley.

Connect with Colin Wiel:

• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach
• Pitchbook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. Today, we have an amazing founder. A three-time entrepreneur, he has successfully built and scaled multiple companies. Now, with his latest venture, he is riding the wave of AI, having started before the current surge of interest in the field. Today, we’ll be talking about growing fast, the challenges that come with it, and the valuable lessons he has learned along the way.

We’ll also discuss his journey, his approach to deal-making, how he leveraged AI early on, and the key aspects of building, scaling, and financing companies. Without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Colin Wiel. Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Wiel: Thank you.

Alejandro Cremades: So, you were originally born in L.A., but I know you moved around quite a bit while growing up. Your dad was a founder, so I imagine that must have been quite the journey. Tell us, how was life growing up for you?

Colin Wiel: I had a great family, though we did face some challenges. I went to elementary school in Washington, D.C., where I was part of a great community. Then, I moved to Reno, Nevada, for middle and high school, which was a huge culture shock. I was 11 when I moved, and it was a tough transition. Reno had a very different culture from D.C., and I struggled to fit in. I was often picked on, and being small for my age didn’t help. That experience, though difficult, instilled in me a sense of resilience and the drive to succeed.

Alejandro Cremades: That must have helped you deal with uncertainty and tough situations. How do you think those experiences shaped who you are today?

Colin Wiel: Going through that rough period, especially those first few years in Reno, made me realize that I had to rely on myself to be successful. It also left me with a bit of a chip on my shoulder—I wanted to prove to those people that I could succeed. That motivation pushed me to work hard and achieve my goals.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s incredible. You mentioned earlier that your father was an entrepreneur. Seeing his journey, experiencing the ups and downs firsthand, how did that shape your own
approach to entrepreneurship?

Colin Wiel: It was a great learning experience. We had both good times and challenging times. We weren’t a wealthy family, and I saw firsthand when one of my dad’s companies went bankrupt. That was tough for our family, but we got through it. Witnessing that resilience gave me the courage to become an entrepreneur myself.

Alejandro Cremades: You studied engineering at Berkeley and then went on to work at Boeing. Interestingly, you were involved with AI very early on. How did you get into Boeing, and how did your journey into AI begin?

Colin Wiel: I was a mechanical engineer interested in robotics and automatic control systems. I joined Boeing’s R&D group, which was responsible for the automatic control systems on their commercial airplanes. One of the major problems we worked on was anti-lock brakes. Sometimes, airplanes would slide off the end of icy runways, and we knew that the existing anti-lock braking system was only 92% efficient. That meant there was an additional 8% efficiency we could theoretically gain.

However, the system was highly nonlinear, making traditional algorithmic approaches ineffective. I was only six months out of college, but I had the idea to apply AI to this problem. AI could develop a nonlinear algorithm without requiring a system model. Using this approach, I was able to increase braking efficiency to 97%, reducing stopping distances by 5%.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s impressive. But despite that success, you decided to leave Boeing and become an entrepreneur. What prompted that decision?

Colin Wiel: Partly, it was that experience—I had created something valuable from scratch, which gave me confidence. I had always known I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Boeing was just a stepping stone. I figured if I was ever going to work for a big company, it should be right out of college because I knew I wouldn’t go back later. Ultimately, the bureaucratic environment wasn’t for me, so I left and did some independent consulting, including work at Netscape in the early days of the internet. Then, in 1998, I started my first company.

Alejandro Cremades: Your first venture was a success—you had a good exit. What did that experience teach you about entrepreneurship?

Colin Wiel: I was hooked. I sold the company in 2000, just as the dot-com bubble was bursting. It was a good exit—more of a single than a home run, but it was still a meaningful success for me at the time. Looking back, I wasn’t a great entrepreneur yet. There were so many things I would do differently, but it was a great way to get started and gain experience.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about your next chapters. How did you meet Doug Brien, and how did you two decide to start a business together?

Colin Wiel: Doug and I met through an investment club. It was 2008, during the financial crisis. We both had the idea of buying single-family homes as investment properties at a time when the housing market was in complete collapse. Banks couldn’t give homes away, and people thought we were crazy. But we saw an opportunity, so we partnered up.

Alejandro Cremades: That led to the founding of Waypoint Homes, which pioneered single-family rentals at scale. Tell us about that journey.

Colin Wiel: Waypoint was the first company to scale single-family rental homes. We built a tech platform to identify the best rental homes to buy. Many of these homes had been foreclosed on, were owned by banks, and were in bad shape. But instead of flipping them, we decided to renovate and hold them long-term, generating rental income. We ended up acquiring over 17,000 homes over six years, making us one of the largest players in the space.

Alejandro Cremades: That wasn’t a smooth ride. You had a nerve-wracking moment with Wells Fargo. What happened?

Colin Wiel: We had secured a $200 million loan backed by our rental properties and were deep in negotiations with Wells Fargo. We were ready to sign when, at the last minute, they backed out. At the time, we had only six to eight weeks of cash left. It was a crisis. We scrambled, raised a $30 million fund from individual investors, and found a new lender—Citibank—who ultimately saved us by doing the same deal that Wells Fargo had abandoned.

Alejandro Cremades: That must have been incredibly stressful. Who did you have to be in that moment to keep everything together?

Colin Wiel: Doug and I shared the mindset that we would do whatever it took. I was on vacation when this happened, and I canceled the rest of my trip. We cleared our schedules and focused entirely on finding a solution. It was a defining moment.

Alejandro Cremades: Eventually, Waypoint went public and reached a $1 billion valuation. What was it like ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange?

Colin Wiel: It was an amazing moment. My family was there, and I think it helped my kids finally understand what I had been working on all these years. It was the culmination of an incredible journey.

Alejandro Cremades: After that, you and Doug started Mind. Tell us about that transition and how Mind evolved.
Colin Wiel: But that was one of several experiences where we were on the brink of not making it with that company.

Alejandro Cremades: Who do you think you needed to be in that moment? Because obviously, something like that is nerve-wracking. There were a lot of people depending on you. I’m sure there were quite a few cold-sweat nights. Who did you need to be in that moment to be effective?

Colin Wiel: Yeah, it was a lot of stress. I mean, I think both Doug and I shared the perspective that we were going to go all out—whatever it took—for this company. In that moment, it meant clearing our plates, clearing our social calendars. I was on vacation at the time, and I canceled the rest of my family vacation. I told them, “Sorry, guys, but I have to be fully committed to this right now.” We did everything we could. We identified all possible solutions and acted immediately.

Alejandro Cremades: I mean, the company ended up going public and, at its peak, reached a valuation of one billion.

Colin Wiel: Yes.

Alejandro Cremades: How was that moment when you rang the bell? I’m sure that was quite an experience.

Colin Wiel: Oh, it was incredible. Ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange was a truly special moment. My kids and my wife were there on the trading floor, Doug had his family there, and our entire senior management team was on the podium with us. It was a moment that captured so much. I think my kids, who were nine and twelve at the time, finally understood what I had been working on. It was a very visceral experience for them as well.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. Obviously, an incredible outcome. So, how did you and Doug decide to start your next company, Mind? What was that moment like when the two of you decided to jump in again and turn the page to this next incredible chapter?

Colin Wiel: Yeah, it felt great because, first of all, we were super close friends by then, having been through so much together. We had just come off an IPO, ran the company as a public entity for a couple of years, and then merged it into another company. That left us free to start something new. And we had built up a lot of credibility from our previous success.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you.

Colin Wiel: So, we had a lot of people who wanted to join us right from the start. We had an easy time raising venture capital. We raised a $5.3 million round immediately—pre-product, pre-revenue—essentially the moment we launched the company.

We probably overhired too quickly. On day one, we started with 12 people, which is a lot, especially before we had found product-market fit. But we grew quickly. By the end of the first year, we had about 70 people, and by the end of the second year, we were at 150.

Looking back, one of our biggest mistakes was growing too fast with headcount before we had fully nailed product-market fit. Once you have a large team, it becomes much harder to pivot quickly.

Alejandro Cremades: Quick question before we dive into the pivot—just to clarify for our listeners, what exactly was Mind?

Colin Wiel: Yeah, so with Waypoint Homes, we bought and owned single-family rental properties. With Mind, we wanted to be a third-party service provider rather than owning any real estate ourselves. We became a property management company, servicing both small multifamily buildings (like 20-unit apartment complexes) and single-family rentals for other owners.

Alejandro Cremades: So, let’s talk about the pivot. You had all these people, you scaled quickly, but at some point, you realized you had gone too far too fast. How did you approach the pivot while minimizing risk?

Colin Wiel: There were two major aspects to our pivot. First, we started with small multifamily apartment buildings—20-unit buildings—but eventually realized we needed to focus entirely on single-family homes. Managing a 20-unit apartment building is actually very different from managing 20 single-family homes, but we didn’t fully appreciate that until we were deep into the business.

Second, there were countless micro-pivots. We were building our own technology for property management, figuring out our internal platform. That required a lot of trial and error, making mistakes, and moving quickly. But because we had too many people, every time the technology changed, we had to retrain large teams. That slowed us down and made rapid iteration difficult.

Alejandro Cremades: What was the moment when you felt like you had finally hit product-market fit?

Colin Wiel: Well, in some ways, it was a good outcome. Mind merged with Roofstock, and it’s a strong company today. Mind had raised at an $800 million valuation, and Roofstock had raised at $1.9 billion before the merger. But it didn’t have the growth or impact that Doug and I originally envisioned. If we had stayed small longer and nailed product-market fit before scaling, I think it could have been a much bigger company.

Alejandro Cremades: Well, clearly, you’ve learned from that, and you’ve applied those lessons to your next venture. After the merger with Roofstock, you took two years off. What did you learn from that period, and how did it shape what you decided to do next?

Colin Wiel: Those two years were incredibly formative for me. I realized I had created a lot of complexity in my life—various investment vehicles, board memberships, and other commitments. I needed to clear all of that out to create white space in my life.

I wanted to make sure that when the time came, I would have the capacity and energy to fully commit to something new. It took discipline because I love starting things. There were a few moments when I almost jumped into something prematurely, but I held back.

I spent a lot of time hiking, getting into a Zen state. My friends and my girlfriend barely recognized me compared to the person I was before—or the person I am now that I’m back in the thick of it again. But that break was exactly what I needed.

Alejandro Cremades: At what point did the next chapter become clear to you?

Colin Wiel: During that time, it became clear to me that I wanted to go all in on AI. I had worked with AI at Boeing and had incorporated it into Waypoint and Mind, but it was never the core focus of those companies. This time, I wanted to build something centered around AI.

Then, in November 2022, ChatGPT came out, and it was a huge “aha” moment for me. I realized that this was going to change everything. I’ve lived through multiple tech paradigm shifts—the PC, the internet, cloud computing—and I knew this was one of those moments when new startups could redefine entire industries.

I spent months studying generative AI, diving deep into the transformer architecture, embeddings, and everything else. During that time, I met my co-founder, August Rosedale. He was the best AI engineer I had ever worked with, and I knew we needed to start a company together.

Alejandro Cremades: And that became Current, your new AI company. What does Current do?

Colin Wiel: Current builds AI workforces for companies. We create, manage, and continuously improve AI agent systems that perform entire roles within businesses.

We’re seeing incredible things. Our AI agents are autonomously negotiating large financial transactions with humans—like selling cars and managing pricing across multiple dealerships simultaneously.

The future we’re working toward is one where AI entities co-work alongside humans, allowing people to focus on more meaningful work, like building relationships and driving innovation. AI will handle more and more of the mundane, repetitive tasks.

Colin Wiel: Where I think this is heading is that entire companies will be largely controlled by AI agent systems. You can imagine a day when the vast majority of decisions in a company—planning, inventory ordering, and other key functions—are entirely made by AI agents.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s unbelievable. Now, when it comes to financing, you guys have been very careful, right? Obviously, based on what you learned with Mind, you decided to take it easy. With Current, you’ve done a small raise. How did you approach the transactional aspect of Current and select the investors you wanted to bring in early on?

Colin Wiel: Yeah, we’re lucky in that I have a strong network of friends and people who believe in me.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you.

Colin Wiel: So far, we’ve raised $4 million in angel investor money, with a few small VC checks, but primarily from angel investors.

These investors bring more than just capital; they provide valuable introductions to potential customers and strategic advice.

That funding has been sufficient because we already have meaningful revenue. We’re a 20-person team, growing slowly and intentionally. After my experience with Mind—where we had 150 people by our second year—I didn’t want to make that mistake again. So, we’ve stayed small.

But now, we’re starting to grow quickly because we feel we’ve achieved product-market fit. That’s why we’ve been cautious with capital. The long-term capital needs of this business are much lower. Our financial model shows we need less than $10 million total before we can scale significantly based on cash flow. That’s a broader trend we’re seeing with AI companies in general.

Because we use AI agents as part of our own workforce, we can accomplish far more with fewer people. At Mind, Doug and I raised $200 million, but with Current, we may never need more than $20 million to become even bigger than Mind.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s unbelievable. That’s the world we’re living in now. So, Colin, one question comes to mind. Your investors and employees are all betting on a vision, right?

If you were to go to sleep tonight and wake up in a world where the vision of Current is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Colin Wiel: Every company will have AI entities co-working alongside humans. These AI agents will communicate with employees, customers, and internal systems. Humans will be elevated to focus on more meaningful tasks—building relationships, innovating—while AI takes on the mundane work.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. Now, let’s talk about the past for a moment through the lens of reflection. I’m putting you in a time machine right now, Colin, so get ready for the ride.

Imagine I take you back to the moment when you were about to give your notice at Boeing. You have the opportunity to stop your younger self right as you step out of the office building and give yourself one piece of advice before launching your first business. What would that advice be and why, given everything you know now?

Colin Wiel: Wow. There’s a lot I would say. One regret I have is not staying entirely focused on AI. It wasn’t a big industry for a long time, so it was hard to stick with, but I wish I had remained deeply immersed in AI the entire time.

Another piece of advice would be to work with people and on projects that are the most fun and make you happiest. That should be the primary driver. If you do that, wealth will follow, but more importantly, you’ll have the best time.

Alejandro Cremades: Colin, for those listening who’d love to reach out, what’s the best way for them to do so?

Colin Wiel: You can email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from anyone interested.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Colin, thank you so much for being on the DealMaker Show today. It’s been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Colin Wiel: Thank you, Alejandro. I appreciate it.

*****

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