EZ Bombs (prospect — active deal)

Status: Prospect. Intro call 2026-06-08; follow-up email from Rey 2026-06-11 requesting deeper call (Fri 6/12 or Mon 6/15). Source: Warm intro via Rob Church (Joshua's cousin, works with EZ Bombs).

Company

• Spice/seasoning CPG, ~$30M revenue, ~40 people (~20 remote). Grew $0→$30M in 2 years.
• Competitors are billion-dollar brands (McCormick) — no same-size competitors. Culture: first-mover advantage worth security trade-offs.
• Mid PE-investment process with a Santa Monica firm (diligence underway as of 6/8). Key leverage angle: data layer = enterprise value / diligence readiness.

People

• Rey (rey@ezbombs.com) — systems & data lead, primary technical point of contact. In-house builder, Philippines-based.
• Mike Jalonen (mike@ezbombs.com) — exec, newest team member. Built a Claude Code PM system in a weekend (email scraping + Drive access), maxed credits in 2 days. Bought a Mac Mini as local "chief of staff" AI. Proud of his builds — don't dunk on the Mac Mini.
• Joshua Roy (joshua@ezbombs.com) — ops manager, building logistics automations. Goes by "Josh".
• Fatima (fatima@ezbombs.com) — Mike's assistant.

Their stated direction (Rey's 6/11 email)

Data-first: centralize/clean/organize before AI use cases. Sheets = current system of record (want off). Vision: central data layer → query/analyze → AI reporting, automation, internal tools, agents. Start with ops/logistics/reporting; marketing later. Experimenting with local Mac Mini: ingest raw → clean/structure → queryable snapshots → LLM answers from clean data first.

ARK strategy (2026-06-11)

• Positioning: make Rey 10x faster, don't replace him (media-agency-champion pattern). DIY risk is real — bring POV to calls, sell the build.
• Mac Mini = good sandbox, wrong production home (no access control/audit/uptime). Push provisioned server + Hermes-pattern agent + managed Postgres core, Sheets demoted to input/view surfaces.
• Wedge use case: retail data collect→interpret→action pipeline (Rey named it as the current blocker). Then chief-of-staff agent done right, then exec/PE reporting pack.
• PE angle is the budget unlock: governance/security story + investor-grade reporting. Ask where AI spend sits in the deal.
• Commercial: Data Foundation Sprint ~$7.5K fixed (~2-3 wks, foundation + retail agent live + roadmap) → $3-5K/mo integrated-AI-department retainer. Don't accept the $1-1.5K anchor from the intro call.

Key files

• Intro call transcript: ~/vault/calls/internal/2026-06-08-ez-bombs-x-ark-partners-intro-call.md