Episode 113: These Founders Are Betting Cleveland Beats Silicon Valley

On this episode of Marketing Moves, Ashtyn Morris sits down with Rob Reznick, Founder of Beacon, and Anees Pretorius, Co-Founder & CEO of Bean AI, for a conversation about startups, trust, AI, and why Cleveland may be one of the most overlooked places to build a technology company right now. From referral infrastructure to AI-powered accounting workflows, both founders are betting on a future where human connection matters more than ever, even as technology continues moving faster than ever before.

For both Rob and Anees, Cleveland was not a fallback plan. It was a deliberate decision.

Anees’ journey to Cleveland started halfway around the world. Originally from South Africa, he began his career as a chartered accountant before relocating to San Francisco through Deloitte. What was supposed to be a six-month assignment quickly evolved into something much bigger after meeting his future wife during a trip to California. That relationship eventually brought him to Cleveland, a city he admits he could not have pointed out on a map at the time.

But once he arrived, something clicked. Beyond the weather adjustments and Midwest winters, he found a city filled with people who were welcoming, ambitious, and eager to build. Over time, he also noticed something else: businesses across the Midwest knew AI was changing everything, but many felt overwhelmed and left behind by the rapid pace of innovation happening on the coasts.

That realization became one of the catalysts for moving Bean AI’s headquarters from San Francisco to Cleveland.

Rob’s story followed a different path but arrived at a similar conclusion. After years working in finance, startups, and cybersecurity, he became increasingly obsessed with one core idea: trust. Specifically, how much of life and business still revolves around human referrals and relationships.

While many startups continue chasing the same coastal ecosystems, both founders believe the next generation of meaningful companies can — and should — be built in places like Cleveland.

Beacon started with a relatively simple observation: people make referrals every single day, but almost nobody gets compensated for the value they create.

Initially launched as a referral marketplace focused on hiring and job connections, Beacon quickly evolved into something much larger. Today, the platform is building infrastructure around referral-driven growth for businesses, helping companies activate trusted networks to generate warm introductions, leads, and new opportunities.

At its core, Beacon is betting on the idea that AI will not eliminate the importance of human relationships. In fact, Rob believes the opposite is happening.

As AI-generated content, outreach, and automation continue flooding the market, trust becomes even more valuable. The people businesses trust, recommend, and connect with become increasingly important signals in a world where information itself is becoming harder to verify.

That philosophy shapes everything about Beacon, including the product experience itself. Rather than creating another cold networking platform, Beacon is intentionally designed to feel human, interactive, and even fun. Rob compares parts of the platform to a dating app experience, helping users surface meaningful relationships and rediscover valuable connections already buried inside their networks.

The long-term vision is ambitious. Rob believes Beacon can eventually become the infrastructure layer powering referrals across every category imaginable, from business leads and hiring to teachers, veterans, and community connections.

While Beacon is focused on relationships, Bean AI is focused on workflows.

Anees founded Bean AI after years spent working inside accounting and finance organizations where he saw incredibly talented people being slowed down by outdated systems and repetitive processes. Despite accounting being one of the most important operational functions inside a business, many finance teams still rely heavily on static spreadsheets, fragmented systems, and manual work.

Bean AI is designed to change that.

The platform uses AI to automate repetitive accounting workflows while helping finance teams move away from manual preparation work and toward higher-value analysis and strategic decision-making. Rather than functioning as just another project management tool, Bean AI acts as a dynamic workflow engine that not only organizes work, but can also execute parts of the work itself.

What makes Bean especially interesting is how intentionally the company approaches product design. Anees explains that most enterprise accounting software feels clunky, outdated, and difficult to use. Bean’s philosophy is different. The team wants enterprise software to feel as intuitive and polished as consumer apps people use every day.

That focus on user experience has become a major differentiator as the company grows.

Instead of prioritizing aggressive top-of-funnel growth early on, Bean AI focused first on proving value and building retention. According to Anees, once accounting teams begin using the platform and seeing the operational improvements firsthand, adoption and retention become significantly easier.

Even though both companies operate in highly technical spaces, the marketing conversation throughout the episode repeatedly comes back to one surprisingly simple idea: people still buy based on trust.

For Beacon, marketing is less about polished corporate messaging and more about creating something that feels authentic, human, and memorable. Rob explains that in a world flooded with AI-generated content and automated outreach, the brands that stand out are the ones that feel genuine. That philosophy shapes everything from Beacon’s product experience to the company’s social content strategy. Instead of overproduced campaigns, Beacon leans into humor, personality, and relatable storytelling to capture attention in a crowded market.

At the same time, Rob is realistic about the challenges of building a two-sided marketplace. Beacon is intentionally staying lean in the early stages, focusing on organic growth, community engagement, and proving value before aggressively scaling paid acquisition efforts. The goal right now is simple: build something people genuinely want to share.

Bean AI faces a different challenge entirely. Selling AI software to accounting and finance teams means marketing to one of the most risk-averse audiences in business. Anees explains that accounting technology has historically leaned into outdated stereotypes about accountants themselves — rigid, overly serious, and transactional. Bean is intentionally trying to break that mold.

The company’s marketing philosophy centers around making accounting technology feel approachable, intuitive, and even enjoyable. That mindset extends beyond branding and directly into product design itself. Bean wants enterprise software to feel as seamless and user-friendly as consumer apps, something rarely prioritized in accounting software.

What is especially interesting is that neither founder views marketing as separate from product development. Both believe strong retention, customer experience, and product value are foundational to successful marketing. Before pouring money into large-scale campaigns, both companies focused heavily on validating product-market fit, refining the user experience, and making sure customers actually wanted to stay.

It is a refreshing perspective in a startup landscape where many companies prioritize growth at all costs. For both Beacon and Bean AI, marketing is not just about getting attention. It is about building trust strong enough to keep people coming back.

Throughout the episode, Rob and Anees push back against the idea that meaningful technology companies can only be built on the coasts.

Both believe Cleveland is sitting at an inflection point.

They point to a growing network of founders, operators, and investors who are starting to build momentum inside the city. At the same time, they also acknowledge that Cleveland still has work to do when it comes to funding, startup support, and encouraging bigger thinking around entrepreneurship.

One theme that comes up repeatedly is ambition.

The founders argue that Cleveland does not need more companies building safe, incremental products. It needs founders building category-defining businesses and investors willing to support those bets early. They believe the city already has the talent, intelligence, and work ethic necessary to compete nationally — it simply needs more people willing to think bigger and move faster.

For both founders, building in Cleveland is not about settling for less. It is about recognizing an opportunity before everyone else does.

This episode of Marketing Moves is ultimately about more than AI, startups, or even Cleveland. It is about conviction.

Rob Reznick and Anees Pretorius are building very different companies, but both are centered around the same core belief: the future belongs to businesses that create real value for real people.

For Beacon, that means strengthening human trust and relationships in a world increasingly dominated by automation. For Bean AI, it means using technology to elevate people out of repetitive work and into more meaningful, strategic roles.

At a time when so much of the startup conversation revolves around hype, scale, and speed, both founders offer a refreshing reminder that the strongest companies are still built on relationships, trust, and a willingness to take bold bets before the rest of the market catches up.