Episode #51: Meet the Startup: Bezel - The New Platform for Watch Enthusiasts

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• Where is the transcript for this webinar?

   

  Speaker 1:
  Ever wondered how to get the most legit watches in your collection? This company has told you how.

  Speaker 2:
  We have just north of $500 million in watches available on the platform—pretty much anything you could ever want in stock, from the thousand-dollar watch up to the multimillion-dollar watch.

  Speaker 3:
  I think what we’ve seen recently—and this is especially true in collectibles and passion-based industries—is that the passion is something that you can’t really quantify, but you know it when you see it, and capitalize on that.

  Speaker 4:
  So I’m a big believer in the kind of bespoke, handcrafted, handmade future in an increasingly technical world.

  Speaker 1:
  Hello everyone. Welcome back to episode 51 of the Tech Optimist podcast. Today in this Meet the Startup episode, we meet a really cool company called Bezel.

  Now, our lead for the episode, as always, is going to be Mike Collins, founder and CEO at AV. Our guests today are Quaid Walker, co-founder and CEO of Bezel, and Chase Payan, co-founder, CFO, and COO of Bezel. Then, of course, you know me—my name is Sam. I’m the guide and editor, and I’ll be taking you through the show today.

  A little bit about the conversation that takes place today: Chase and Quaid do a really good job of explaining their background and helping contextualize how they got into what they do. They were both avid watch collectors before starting Bezel. They teamed up and thought, Hey, this process is really old and outdated—the process of buying, purchasing, and selling watches.

  So, they made it their mission as entrepreneurs to change that. Bezel is a very new, modernized marketplace with in-house watch authenticators. They make sure the best and most legit watches come out of their facilities. They also talk about some really awesome stuff, like—right here at the beginning—they have a little conversation before the actual interview starts about ChatGPT and AI and how it can help their everyday operations.

  Yeah, this is a really fun one. The flow is really nice, and the narrative is really cool. We definitely hope you enjoy it. Sit back, relax, enjoy your drive, and enjoy the rest of your workday while you listen to us chat.

  As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It’s not personalized advice and it’s not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

  Speaker 4:
  Cool, thanks. I’ll answer Chase’s question just personally, which is: I have five screens open in front of me, and on one of my screens all day long now I have ChatGPT-4. Let me tell you just a couple of practical ways that I use it.

  One: I don’t have time to read something that’s too long, and I just literally say, Summarize this thing for me.

  Speaker 3:
  Oh, awesome.

  Speaker 4:
  Two: When I’m stuck on something and need brainstorming, I say, Give me 10 ideas on this. Or, it’s even better than that—we have a carry model: How much carry can we expect to earn from 1,400 investments over the next 15 years?

  I literally dragged that in with three other spreadsheets and said, How reasonable is our model? It came back and said it’s pretty good. We put in actuals from our first 10 years versus our projections, and I said, Given what we’ve done and what this projection looks like, where is it reasonable, and where is it not? It came back and said, It’s actually quite reasonable, but your timing of how long early-stage companies take to mature is too aggressive. It was pretty good.

  Again, from an old man, it’s like—the thing about this is that it gets better way faster than a lot of other technologies. I’ve been through the internet and the smartphone. The first iPhone was bad—you had to buy two because the second one was much better than the first.

  Now, in the last five to seven years, you could go three or four years and it’s not that big of a difference. In the early days, every year Apple would release a new phone, and it was a big difference. But in AI—whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or whatever—it’s like every six months now, there’s a pretty big jump.

  So I’d just say—it doesn’t replace people, but like I tell our people—it’s like the word processor, the smartphone, or Google. It makes you better. Don’t give up on it. Keep playing with it, and I think you’ll find you can get good ROI by getting good at it.

  Speaker 3:
  Helpful. I don’t use it a ton now—but that will change right after we get off this call.

  Speaker 4:
  Get the little desktop app and just have the screen open. I was in Excel doing something, and it was taking too long. I asked, How should I do this better? and ChatGPT totally showed me the trick.

  Anyway, welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. This is our Meet the Startup show. I’m here with Chase Payan—is that right, Chase?—and I’m here with Qua Walker. These are two of the co-founders of Bezel. This is an AV portfolio company.

  I’m super excited to talk to the guys today. This is, I think, the first company in probably six months that I actually sourced—or at least originally came across—because I enjoy watches and was using the product myself. I told our team, Hey, these guys have it figured out. I love what they’re doing. We should look at the company. We convinced them that we’d be a good partner and were really excited to participate in their round of financing.

  So, Chase, Qua, welcome to the show.

  Speaker 2:
  Thanks for having us.

  Speaker 3:
  Thanks so much for having us. Excited to be here.

  Speaker 4:
  Yeah, tell us a little bit about the company and what you guys do.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, so Bezel is a marketplace for authenticated watches. We have just north of $500 million in watches available on the platform—pretty much anything you could ever want in stock, from the thousand-dollar watch up to the multimillion-dollar watch.

  We’re an app first, but have a website as well. You can browse for anything you’re looking for. If you need help in that browsing process, we pair every member with a concierge on our team. That’s a real person—they know your name, you have access to their calendar, and you can chat about watches all day with them.

  Once you find the watch you’re interested in and purchase it, it’s overnight to our office. We authenticate everything—we have in-house authentication specialists and watchmakers. We run everything through an authentication check, including diagnostics and performance checks, and we make sure it’s never been reported stolen.

  The ultimate goal is to ensure you have access to the best watches in the U.S.—anything you could want—and to make sure it’s of the highest quality you’d want to wear on your wrist.

  Chase and I started it because we were massive watch collectors ourselves in our previous lives and wanted a better solution to build our collection—from the first watch you buy all the way to the 20th watch. We’re now trying to fit into that direction.

  Speaker 4:
  This is a surprisingly large industry with a couple of big flaws. Your choices are: if you’re buying new, you’re dealing with a very old-fashioned dealer network where you have to buy less desirable pieces to get access to the ones you really want. Or you’re dealing in the used watch market, where you wonder, Is what I’m buying authentic? Am I overpaying? Is it fake? These can be expensive investments. Want to talk a little bit about that?

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah. An interesting way to frame how the secondary market works: there are two main business models in this space.

  First, you have what we call inventory resellers. This ranges from the mom-and-pop dealer on the corner up to some very large companies. They take inventory themselves. The great thing about these businesses is that you can trust them—they live and die by their brand reputation.

  The downside is that owning watches is really expensive and capital-intensive, so they can’t reach scale. Some of the biggest in the industry have 3,000 to 4,000 watches on their platform. You can trust them, but if they don’t have the watch you’re looking for, it doesn’t matter how much you trust them—you can’t check out.

  On the flip side, you have giant marketplaces where every watch you’ve ever heard of—and probably 200,000 more that you haven’t—are listed online. But there’s no trust and no authentication protection for the buyer.

  Speaker 3:
  So you can have the money you want to spend, you see the watch online, but you’ve got a lot of people telling you, Don’t buy on those big marketplaces. There’s no protection, and the counterfeit horror stories are pretty severe.

  What we’re trying to do is build a marketplace that really signifies trust at scale. How can we scale the marketplace inventory? Like Qua mentioned, we have over half a billion dollars’ worth of watches listed—more than 21,000 watches available at any given time.

  But then, how do we obviously solve for trust? That’s where we insert ourselves in the middle of the process as the authentication source of truth. We’re trying to build a trusted scale and do it in a way no one has done before in the watch space.

  Speaker 2:
  To put numbers to what you were mentioning, Mike, our average order value is just north of $10,000. For me personally, it was the largest amount of money I ever spent over the internet—aside from maybe rent or a house payment.

  It’s often a celebratory purchase, but it’s also very scary—it’s a lot of money. We’re super transparent about our rejection rates: we reject 24% of watches attempted to be sold through the platform.

  Put that in perspective: you’re risking $10,000, and almost a quarter of the time, there’s something wrong with that watch. It could be entirely fake, not keeping time, not in the expected condition, reported stolen, or something else causing a degradation of value.

  When you’re spending that kind of money and feeling nervous, our job is to be the antithesis of the rest of the industry. We want to create a high-quality purchasing experience, with excellent customer service, allowing you to trust us. That way, you can just have fun shopping for a watch and truly celebrate it when it’s on your wrist.

  Speaker 1:
  Really quick—we’re going to stop right here for a quick tech note. There’s some fascinating stuff I want to bring up as the guys talk about authenticating watches and the cool marketplace technology they’ve built.

  We’ll dive into that in a second, but first, an ad break. Don’t go anywhere.

  Speaker 5:
  Hi everyone. Just a quick break so I can tell you about Lakeshore Ventures. We build venture capital funds specifically designed for the UChicago community.

  Our portfolios consist of 20 to 30 investments diversified by sector, stage, and geography, co-investing alongside renowned lead investors. By leveraging our presence in the robust startup ecosystem surrounding the university, we secure access to some of the most promising opportunities.

  Lakeshore is part of Alumni Ventures—one of the most active and top-performing VCs in the U.S.—with more than $1 billion from 10,000 accredited investors. Alumni Ventures has the scale and expertise to deliver access to top-tier opportunities.

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  If you’d like to diversify your portfolio with a professional-grade venture fund and join the Lakeshore community, click the link or visit us at av.vc/lakeshore.

  Speaker 1:
  Thanks, David. Now, I want to talk to you about how professionals authenticate watches.

  I am not a timepiece expert or watchmaker. The only watch I’ve ever had is an Apple Watch. So, this world of mechanical, super-classic, beautiful timepieces is entirely new to me. I’m baffled by how these little things even work.

  Here’s a bit on how professionals authenticate watches, which Bezel’s entire team does:

  • Visual inspection: Experts closely examine the watch’s exterior—including the case, dial, hands, and bracelet—for signs of authenticity or counterfeiting. They scrutinize logos, engravings, and markings to confirm they align with manufacturer standards. They also assess the quality of materials and craftsmanship to ensure it meets the brand’s specifications.

  • Movement verification: They open the watch case to inspect its movement, ensuring it’s genuine and matches the specifications for that model. They test the movement’s functionality and check the serial number and model reference, which helps confirm the watch’s production period and authenticity.

  • Paperwork review: Authenticators review accompanying papers, certificates of authenticity, warranty cards, and purchase receipts.

  • Specialized equipment: High-resolution photography may be used to examine watches in detail. Some services use specialized tools and equipment to verify specific components.

  • Anti-counterfeiting features: Authenticators check for brand-specific anti-counterfeiting elements like holograms or micro engravings.

  I thought this was pretty cool and gives some insight into what Bezel’s team does.

  Alright—let’s get back into it.

  Speaker 4:
  Yeah. Taking a step back, what major trends are behind Bezel? What do you see as tailwinds for the company over the next 5–10 years?

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, and Chase and I might have different answers here that sum up to the full picture. When we started the business in August 2021—we had just left our previous jobs, raised our first capital, and jumped into the market—

  The interesting tailwinds for the industry were: we were in a massive bull market for watches. That was when ceramic Daytonas were hitting the $50,000 mark. I think that brought a lot of cultural awareness to the watch space and attracted many new buyers.

  You had buyers entering because they saw their favorite celebrity wearing a watch. Others started viewing watches as an investment class. Some thought about it rationally, others irrationally—but either way, demand grew.

  During COVID, like with many collectibles, the watch market saw a huge influx of new buyers, growing the total addressable market. These buyers expected a modern buying experience similar to other mature verticals.

  They were already using apps like StockX and GOAT for sneaker collections—modern, thoughtful platforms. The watch industry, however, felt dated, very relationship-oriented. That’s good for insiders, but if you’re not in the bubble, you feel like an outsider—it’s hard to find what you want.

  The tailwinds were: the market was shifting fast, customer demands were shifting fast, and that allowed us to build a technology product and brand aligned with what modern collectors wanted.

  Established players focus on what we call the “whales.” Economically, it makes sense to cater to six-figure customers—that’s who the brands target.

  Our bet was: What if we obsessed over building the best place to buy your first watch?

  That would do two things:

  1. It would force us to build the best product for everyone as we scaled inventory.

  2. Capturing customers on their first purchase means we’re solidifying our hold on the future generation of whales.

  Someone has to buy their first watch. That’s an amazing relationship to build with a customer—whether it’s for their wedding, a promotion, or another milestone. If we make it feel trusted, they’ll buy their first watch here, and they’ll never need to go elsewhere for their next one.

  They’ll have a relationship with their concierge—someone like Chris—who knows their birthday and what pieces to look for.

  The goal was to leverage this market opening and newfound interest to build a business around it.

  Speaker 4:
  That’s so wise, guys. Two experiences from my background:

  One, Steve Jobs did this with the Macintosh. I got my first Macintosh computer in 1986, when I was still typing papers on a typewriter.

  Fast forward 35 years—everyone who got those early Macs is now buying tens of thousands of Macs for their companies. It’s a long-term play.

  Two, at Alumni Ventures, we took a similar approach. We have low minimums to create a venture portfolio. You have to be accredited, but we get many who are just barely accredited making their first venture investment.

  We want to educate them, help them have a good experience and good portfolio because we want to be with them for the next 5, 10, 20 years.

  I think that’s the right way to build a business.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, I think about some of the tailwinds too. I think it’s a pendulum that switches a lot—verticalized marketplaces versus generalist marketplaces. For a long time, the belief was that it’s better to sell everything to everybody.

  What we’ve seen recently—especially true in collectibles and passion-based industries—is that passion is something you can’t really quantify, but you know it when you see it. Capitalizing on that, as Qua mentioned, is so important.

  You don’t want to buy the thing you love next to something you don’t. That’s an important part of how we think about Bezel. You’ve seen this trend in cars and in sneakers.

  Right now, there’s a big tailwind for verticalization of passion-based industries from a marketplace perspective.

  We also talk a lot about how you can buy any watch you want on Bezel, but you can also sell almost any watch you want on Bezel too.

  Much of what we’ve built is focused on: How do we create the best way for you to sell your watch easily so you can maximize value and get liquidity? That’s something that hasn’t really existed in this space.

  The verticalization really helps us build the best product, not only on the buy side but on the sell side as well. Collectors and people who are passionate about this space really appreciate our dedication to it.

  Speaker 4:
  And I’ll give you a third tailwind that I think supports what you guys are doing: as our world becomes increasingly robotic, AI-driven, and automated, I think there’s a fundamental human interest in craftsmanship and handmade things.

  It’s kind of the yin and yang of how our society will evolve over the next 10 years. As humans, we still want to hang out with other humans—go to a bar, a concert, or a football game and be around people.

  Yes, our lives are becoming more automated and technological, and that’s the future. But there’s something about looking at something beautiful that someone sat at a bench and poured their attention into.

  Chase and I were talking earlier about the watch I’m wearing today—it’s a Grand Seiko—and just the attention to detail in the dial, the way they polish it, all hand-done. I think humans will continue to crave that.

  So I’m a big believer in a bespoke, handcrafted, handmade future, even in an increasingly technical world.

  Speaker 2:
  Absolutely. That’s what got me into watches. So much of my job—when I was at Google prior to this—involved staring at a screen, manipulating and shipping digital products.

  There’s something really nice about having this mechanical object on your wrist that can last forever if well kept, and that you can pass on for generations. That’s fun.

  We see this reflected in our customer journey. A lot of customers will come in saying, Hey, I have an Apple Watch. It’s the best thing ever. Then they realize they want to go to a wedding, express themselves, look different, or align with a certain taste profile.

  They buy their first watch. Then they buy their second. Then they buy a watch they can swim with. Quickly, they become watchful people. Suddenly, they’re talking about movements and rotors.

  That’s a fun experience for us: we get to tell stories and nerd out with existing collectors, but we also get to educate and help create new watch enthusiasts.

  It’s an awesome privilege to watch someone go from wearing an Apple Watch every day to adding a Submariner a couple of times a week to eventually wearing a mechanical watch every day.

  Speaker 4:
  Or you do what I do—you just don’t give a damn and wear both.

  Speaker 2:
  Perfect approach.

  Speaker 4:
  Yes. I track my steps on this wrist and wear a different watch every day on my left. I just don’t care what anyone thinks.

  Speaker 2:
  Exactly—we’ve got two wrists for a reason.

  Speaker 4:
  Exactly right. So, the ask—we have a big community of people interested in watches. It’s GetBezel, I believe, as the URL. How else can our community get involved and help you? What’s your question? Qua?

  Speaker 3:
  Qua probably has a more thoughtful answer than I do. But it’s funny—we’re still small, and when people ask us that, we say: Tell everyone about Bezel—that it’s the best way to buy and sell a watch.

  Educate people on the counterfeit risk out there. One in four watches has an issue. Our main focus is protecting you every single day.

  We have so many conversations where people say, Why should I buy from Bezel? Once we explain our process versus what’s out there, they have that aha moment: Why would I buy anywhere else?

  We say, Exactly. That moment you just had? Tell everyone you know about it.

  We’re still in the early days, so more customers is our main task. Hopefully at some point, we’ll get to more advanced, interesting tasks.

  But for now, spreading the word about why we’re different, how we’re different, and remembering that if you ever need a watch—that’s why we’re here.

  Speaker 4:
  And again, my dad just passed away and I got his watch. I’ve given watches to my kids. I tend to think of a watch as a very meaningful gift that isn’t disposable—it’s a very personal object for both men and women.

  In my generation, the watch my dad wore every day wasn’t a fancy, expensive watch, but it has great meaning to my brother and me. I’ve given watches to my sons, and now that I’m a little bit in “nerd land,” the journey is fun.

  I have a nephew I’m helping buy his first watch. We’re talking about dress watches, what he wants—and again, it’s a no-brainer that this is the place to go. Honestly, this is what I would tell a friend regardless of whether we’re investors in the company or not.

  Speaker 2:
  Thank you. I appreciate that—it means a lot.

  Speaker 1:
  Another part of Bezel’s business that hasn’t been brought up today—and I want to highlight—is their selling option on their website, www.getbezel.com. You can sell your watches through Bezel, which I think is really cool.

  They have a slogan right on the front page: “Sell watches while you sleep.” Sell with ease on the top-rated, fully authenticated watch marketplace backed by some of the biggest names in luxury watches.

  The process is straightforward. They break down how you can list your watch, meet your concierge team, accept sales, and get it shipped properly and safely to the buyer. There are transparent payouts and other great features.

  Another fairly new aspect this year is Bezel Auctions. Bezel is modernizing the outdated and intimidating process of entering a traditional auction to buy a high-end watch. Now you can do it directly on Bezel.

  They’ve produced a concise video explaining what this means for Bezel, how their auctions work, and the concept behind them. I’ll share that now. We’ll then do one last ad and round out the interview. Hang tight and enjoy.

  Speaker 6:
  When we built Bezel, we set out to create the best watch-buying experience. We made thousands of watches available, thoroughly authenticated every watch with our in-house team of experts, and packaged it all into an easy-to-use app.

  We had to think differently, obsess over the client experience, and build everything from the ground up. Now we’ve decided to do it again—with auctions.

  Buying a watch at auction today is outdated, intimidating, and opaque, with high seller fees (up to 30% buyer’s premiums) and difficult-to-use platforms that haven’t changed in decades—until now.

  Introducing Bezel Auctions: easily bid on the most exciting luxury watches through the Bezel app. Get notified about auction drops, hunt down an epic price for your grail watch, and bid with complete confidence knowing everything is fully authenticated by Bezel’s in-house experts.

  Download the Bezel app, place your bid, and win your next watch.

  Speaker 7:
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  Speaker 4:
  Anything else, Quaid?

  Speaker 2:
  No. I think, to echo Chase’s point, the way we’ve chosen to scale this business—and the way we have to scale this business to do justice to what we want to create—is by intentionally obsessing over the customer experience.

  Referrals go a massively long way. Our job is not just to talk the talk but to walk the walk. What we’re selling is trust—we’re asking someone to give us the honor of selling them a $10,000 watch through an app. That’s a very hard relationship to build early on.

  Now, we’re starting to feel the tailwinds. We’ve done right by enough customers, and the industry ecosystem has embraced us. The flywheel is spinning faster—we’re at product-market fit, and it’s super exciting for Chase and me to feel like we’ve built the thing we wanted as collectors.

  That said, it’s like the Apple example you mentioned: we obsess over getting that first-time watch buyer and creating that handshake with the customer.

  The reason Apple is amazing is that they’ve never messed that up—they didn’t release products just because they had to; they released them because customers needed them.

  We think about scaling the same way: we’ll never try to sell someone something they don’t need. We’ll never grow just to grow. Our goal is to build a reputation at scale that stands for trust—and that takes time, focus, and referrals from existing customers, new customers, and people in our network.

  More than most businesses, networks are incredibly valuable for us.

  Speaker 4:
  I think you guys are taking the right approach. You’re creating a brand; you’re creating a business. Value will come from that—not overnight. It’s about grinding it out, getting 1% better every week, having the three founders battling it out, fixing mistakes as they come.

  We’re excited to be part of this journey. Our community is your target market, so we’ll catch up every six to twelve months to continue spreading the word about what a great solution this company is—and what great founders you are.

  We’re venture capitalists, all about deep tech, with plenty of portfolio companies. But you two convinced our team. What I read was: big opportunity, great approach, and amazing co-founders. We’re betting on you guys.

  Credit to you both—we’ve got your back, and we look forward to being on this journey with you. Chase, Quaid—really nice to meet you, and I look forward to catching up in six months.

  Speaker 2:
  Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, we’re just as excited as you guys are.

  Speaker 4:
  Excellent. Alright, guys. Thanks—that was awesome.

  Speaker 2:
  Thanks so much.

  Speaker 4:
  Thanks all. Mike, see you soon.

  Speaker 3:
  Sounds good. Bye.

  Speaker 1:
  Thanks again for tuning in to The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you’d give us a rating on whichever podcast app you’re using. And remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode.

  The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. Please email us at [email protected] with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc.

  As always, keep building.