Thea Prototype Review & Spiritual Leadership Vision

Date: October 24, 2025 Participants: Gary Sheng, Tyler Tran Location: Video call

Summary

Strategic conversation combining deep product development for Thea (venue analytics platform) with philosophical discussion about the future of spiritual leadership. Tyler demonstrated his sophisticated Excel prototype showing comprehensive venue management dashboards, while Gary shared insights from presenting his Christian faith to a philosophical community. The discussion evolved from technical platform architecture to profound questions about religious institutions, denominational fragmentation, and what authentic spiritual leadership looks like in the modern age.

Key Themes

Thea Product Evolution

• Moving beyond CRM metaphor to "Iron Man suit for event executives"
• Focus on CFO replacement functionality for strategic decision-making
• Sophisticated prediction algorithms based on event behavior types
• Integration of multiple ticketing platforms and paid media analytics

Future of Spiritual Leadership

• Transparency and open-source approach to belief systems
• Critique of performative Christianity lacking love
• Recognition of denominational confusion and institutional corruption
• Vision for new forms of spiritual community beyond traditional structures

Technical Architecture & Vision

• Portfolio approach to event prediction and risk management
• Real-time cash flow forecasting with automated recommendations
• Multi-venue consolidation with drill-down capabilities
• Historical pattern recognition for predictive analytics

Detailed Conversation Flow

Opening: Spiritual Leadership Reflections

Gary's Presentation Experience:

"I just did a presentation to this philosophical community about my Christian faith. It was interesting. Almost all them were not Christians. It can be scary to talk about something so vulnerable."

Future Spiritual Leadership Vision:

"You actually got me thinking a bit this week... What does the future, how does a future spiritual leader? What is their frequency? How do they conduct themselves? Right. It's probably not going to be like most Maga Christians."

Truth and Love Balance:

"I think it'll be both about truth, but also love. And I think that our public Christians today often lack love... unaware that they lack love."

Religious Institutional Critique

Tyler on Denominational Confusion:

"It's so perverted to a point where it's like no one knows what Christianity is. There's like thousands of denominations. And we can't even agree on what Christianity is. We can't even agree on what the Bible says."

Gary on Personal Faith Walk:

"The faith, people are going to start realizing. It's not about... It's usually not about imposing your faith walk on other people. But what is your faith walk? What do you believe? What do you actually believe?"

Tyler on Critical Thinking Deficit:

"A lot of Christians... most enter religion to be told what to believe. Right? Like asking someone, what do you believe requires so much creative critical thinking."

Cult Psychology & Community Yearning

Tyler's Insight:

"It's less about religion and more about feeling... feeling like you're part of a community. Because we are wired, we yearn to be part of a group that accepts us... This is why cults exist. Because you take advantage of that yearn."

Tribal Brain Analysis:

"For you to be accepted to a group means I can survive with these people. Without people, I'm gonna die... Loneliness and validating how I validating my existence."

Religious Exploitation Discussion

Charlie Kirk's Death Impact: Tyler mentions thousands of churches being created following Charlie Kirk's death (Note: This appears to be speculative/fictional future event)

Gary on Church Structure:

"It's basically nonprofit with less transparency... That's the legal structure. Is nonprofit. Less donor transparency."

Open-Source Spirituality Vision

Gary's Transparency Concept:

"A lot of spiritual leaders of the future will be so transparent about what they believe... being like, in an open source kind of way. Where they're like, yeah... here's my entire worldview. Uploaded, right? Feel free to interrogate it, right, and make it better. Like a piece of software."

Thea Business Discussion Transition

Eric Fuller's Interest:

Tyler: "He's sold down. He's like, I love. He's like, I love the idea. I love everything about it. Let me know when you need seed money."

Feasibility Concerns:

Gary: "Of course, if you had unlimited power to create the perfect freaking product that somehow works and does like 100 integrations, Right. Of course you would use that. But like, is it feasible?"

CRM Concept Clarification

Tyler's CRM Explanation: Detailed walkthrough of how CRMs work in media sales context:

• Managing sponsorship deals across multiple stages
• Tracking conversations with brands
• Inventory management for media properties
• Team coordination and commission tracking

Gary's Reframe:

"This feels like it would be a real positive addition to someone's tech stack versus replacing all their existing tools with one unified platform... It's like an Iron man suit for an executive that does events."

Core Business Questions

Tyler's Three Key Questions:

"Which event? I think when they open it up right, they're going to look at which one deserves my attention here... How is it doing?... What can I do about it?"

CFO Replacement Vision:

"This pretty much removes the need for a true CFO. This is what a CFO's job would be... These are the questions that a CEO would sit down with a CFO and say, CFO, what do you want me to... Where do you want us to focus on?"

Excel Prototype Demonstration

Dashboard Components:

• Weekly cash flow predictions from ticket sales
• F&B (Food & Beverage) deposit forecasts
• Event status tracking (launched, confirmed, postponed, canceled)
• Multi-venue consolidation views
• Historical comparison overlays

2014-2015 Dashboard Examples: Tyler showed actual dashboards he built for Electric Zoo and other festivals:

• Sponsorship budget vs. actuals tracking
• Weighted pipeline calculations
• Portfolio approach to revenue forecasting
• Attendance prediction with seasonality factors

Prediction Algorithm Types:

"If it's type one, then it would have like a ramp in the first week. Gradual sales in between, and then the in the last three weeks, it would ramp again... Type 2 would be like, oh, it starts off slow, but then it ramps up like in the middle."

Portfolio Approach Philosophy

Risk Diversification:

"It's kind of like a portfolio approach. You're not going to get one stock correct, but you are pulling it together... Just like with anything prediction, right? Like you pull them together. And it diversifies the risk."

Mortgage-Backed Securities Analogy:

"Like mortgage backed securities. You don't know one home is going to default or not. But if you pull them all together in one pool, you have a better guess at predicting the outcome of this pool."

Industry Impact Assessment

Tyler on Industry State:

"I'm telling you, these reports were very useful to an industry that never did anything like this... A guy like me didn't exist in this industry back then."

Lack of Basic Analytics:

Gary: "They don't even have like rules of thumb almost. It sounds like." Tyler: "They don't even have like heuristics for whether they're even on the right track."

Implementation Strategy

Service-First Approach:

Gary: "I think it's probably more of a services... A service that we're providing in exchange for... just until more things can be automated."

Thought Leadership Opportunity:

Gary: "There's opportunity for thought leadership around how to be smart with your data to be a good venue executive."

Technical Architecture Discussion

Data Integration Requirements:

• Multiple ticketing platform connections
• Bar point-of-sale integration
• Paid media platform APIs (Facebook, Google Ads)
• Historical data uploads for pattern recognition

Automation Timeline: Recognition that initial phase will be highly manual/service-oriented before full automation

User Research Planning

Interview Targets:

• Eric Fuller (3 venues across Florida)
• Jacob (manages 50-75 shows simultaneously across 12 venues)
• Schedule both for Monday/Tuesday of following week

Research Questions to Develop:

• Current manual processes and pain points
• Willingness to pay for strategic CFO-type service
• Data availability and integration challenges
• Dream platform features

Pricing & Business Model

Strategic CFO Positioning:

Tyler: "This is the strategy part of the CFO's job that you would love to have, but they just aren't at scale to even have someone like that."

Venue Scaling: Different tiers based on venue count and show volume, from single venue to multi-venue conglomerates

Key Decisions & Next Steps

Immediate Actions

1. Schedule interviews with Eric Fuller and Jacob for Monday/Tuesday
2. Co-construct interview questions over the weekend
3. Gary to avoid NYC trip to focus on this work

Product Development

• Position as executive decision-support tool rather than CRM
• Focus on three core questions: attention, performance, action
• Start with manual service offering before automation
• Use partner venues for data and iteration

Technical Approach

• Begin with Excel prototypes and manual processes
• Gradually automate as patterns emerge
• Prioritize cash flow forecasting as primary value proposition
• Build prediction algorithms based on event behavior types

Notable Quotes

On Religious Product Consumption: Gary: "I think a lot of people are like, almost like treating it like buying a product."

On Feasibility: Tyler: "I don't want to waste time on this either... I want to be challenged."

On Core Technology Value: Tyler: "The tech itself at the core, consolidating information, predicting, and recommending. I mean, that's AI."

On Creating Dependency: Tyler: "I just want to create this in a way that they cannot function without it. They're so used to how easy it is to make decisions."

On Industry Transformation: Tyler: "This is going to be very helpful for us to have just two venue owners helping us do this, because it's like, what do you guys need? If it works for you, it's gonna work for other venue owners."

Analysis

This conversation showcased the sophisticated evolution of the Thea concept from a simple CRM idea to a comprehensive executive decision-support system. Tyler's demonstration of actual dashboards from 2014-2015 provided concrete proof of concept and his domain expertise. The parallel discussion about spiritual leadership and religious institutions revealed both participants' deep thinking about authentic faith versus performative religion, with Gary's vision of transparent, open-source spirituality complementing the data-driven transparency Thea would bring to venue management. The session effectively combined tactical product development with philosophical exploration, demonstrating how business innovation and spiritual evolution can inform each other. Tyler's willingness to challenge assumptions while Gary's reframing of the product as an "Iron Man suit" rather than traditional software shows productive creative tension that will likely drive innovation.