Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Will Larry, Software Developer at thoughtbot, joins Giant Robots as host! 🎉 Will talks about how he got into tech, how everything is going so far at thoughtbot, interviewing at thoughtbot previously, but not getting the job, and why he decided to interview again (and snagged the job!) Follow Will on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is our brand new third co-host, Will Larry. Will is a React and React Native developer at thoughtbot. And we're so excited to have him join us as a co-host of the show. CHAD: Will, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations and welcome. Woo-hoo. [applause] WILL: Thank you for having me. I'm excited. CHAD: Will, I was so excited when I put out the call for people to join as co-hosts, and Victoria raised her hand, and then you did as well. You were on parental leave when all that started to happen. And so congratulations again on your new family member, and I'm glad we could finally have you join us. WILL: Yeah, I was excited about it. When I thought about joining, there are two things that came about: the excitement of joining and just the fear of it. CHAD: [laughs] WILL: And I was like, I need to do this. I need to do this because it will make me better. So I'm excited to be here. VICTORIA: That's a lot of change to navigate in one year, Will. [laughs] How's that got going for you, and how's everything so far in your first time here at thoughtbot? WILL: Yes, change, change, change, that's what has been this year. I changed and started working at thoughtbot, our third kid. This year, we moved to Florida, just a lot of change. But I've learned along the way that change is life, and so we just embraced it. And I'm hoping that we're kind of settling out a little bit, but it's been good. It's been great for our kids. I think they're ready for some consistency and just the same thing over and over for a little bit. But it's been good. And we made it through. We're on the other side. CHAD: Was there a grand plan to all the change? Like, did you have everything planned out in advance? Or did it all sort of just happen one thing after the other? WILL: Yes. If you know anything about me, I'm a very big planner. My wife, my spouse she is the one that pushes me to be more spontaneous, but this was too big to be spontaneous, so it was definitely planned. It actually got changed. We were supposed to move in September, but with the birth of my son, we decided to move it up and move sooner. VICTORIA: Right. I'm going to ask you the same question but about your career. So you made a big change from operations into mobile development, and was that part of a grand plan, or did you happen upon it? How did you make that change? WILL: That change was kind of out of desperation. I was in operations working for a nonprofit; I loved it. My spouse was working at the same company, and I was a promotion ahead of her. It was an amazing opportunity. But the teams are so small that we couldn't be on the same team. So they had multiple locations throughout the country. And you don't have to step off the team, but if she's going to take this promotion, you have to step off the team. There potentially is a way that, down the road, you can come back. And Katie is my spouse. She has been so supportive of everything that I've ever done. And I just felt this was a time, a great time for me to show that I support her in everything she did. But it was probably one of the toughest times in my life. I didn't have a job. I thought that I can easily jump back into it and find a job. I ended up working at a clothing store, which is not my strong suit. I really struggled working there. I think I worked there a month, and I was like, I can't do this. And then, I went to work at a different company, a travel insurance company, and so I would process the data. I was miserable, and that's an understatement. I was so miserable. One day my spouse came in, and she said, "Hey, we got to change this. You're not doing well. Let's dream a little bit." And normally, that's not my personality. Normally I'm like Xs and Os. I know what's coming. And I was so out of it. I was like, let's do this. And she asked me a couple of questions. And one of the questions was, "If you could do anything, what would you do?" I thought about it. And I came from a small town in Louisiana. And I never had the opportunity to work with computers. It was just the resources weren't there. And so that was one of the things I said, "Hey, I want to work with computers in any way that I can." She was like, "Go figure it out, whatever it takes." And then I told her I was like, "It's going to cost some money for me to do this," because I went to bootcamp. And she was like, "Go do it. Let's invest in you. Let's make this happen." I ended up going through the bootcamp and came out on the other side. Interesting story; it's interesting how things come back around. My first interview was at thoughtbot. I bombed it. [laughter] I wasn't on thoughtbot's team at that point. But the way that it was handled, I got a glimpse of the culture. I remember walking out that day and saying I'll be back. I will be back to be a part of this company because I bombed it. But they still spent time with me explaining things, teaching me the things that I bombed. And so I was like, wow, that's what I want to do in this field. So yeah, that's how I got into development. Here I am. CHAD: Was there anything that surprised you about development, about the tech world? WILL: Yes, yes. I think the biggest thing was the growth in development. So in any of my other jobs, I was able to take in expectations and make a plan and, like, okay, check off. I can knock that out and be successful. And I tried that in development, and every one of my bosses would say, "Slow down. It takes time. It takes time." And I just didn't realize how long it would take for me to grow in my coding skills. That was the biggest surprise for me because I just couldn't come through, and okay, I got it, let's go. Because I'm very big on I know my expectations, okay, I can meet those expectations, and then I'll go over and beyond. But I couldn't do that in this field. And I think that was the biggest surprise for me that I couldn't just show up at work and do my task and still be a great developer. VICTORIA: Right. And I love that you're sharing that story. Because with the people I've worked with at Women Who Code, it's a very common struggle when you're starting out in your first time as a developer and getting comfortable with being not great for the first six months or a year, or however long it takes. And I think that it's important to share that and make sure that other people feel the same way. And you might feel that way for a long time and maybe forever [laughs] if you keep switching up your roles in tech. WILL: Yeah, definitely. And it was a very humbling experience also because, in most of my other jobs, I was the leader. I was the person that had direct reports and leading people. But in this job, I started at the very bottom. I remember there were days when I couldn't even get through my tasks and had to really lean on others to help me through it. You know, my senior developer, I was like, "Hey, it's that time. I got some questions for you." And so, I had to learn how does Will learn and what's the best way for me to excel in this field? The things that I've done before, I couldn't do it going forward. CHAD: Bootcamps are pretty popular. And they are an avenue that certainly didn't exist when I was learning. You said when you were having the conversation with your wife that it sounds like that was just right there as the path forward. But did you consider an alternative path? WILL: Yeah. So at that time, I felt like there were probably three paths: there was the bootcamp, there was the college degree, and there was the self-learning path. So the college degree, I thought about it because, at that time, I felt like a lot of companies were still like, hey, you have to have a degree to be hired and be a part of it. So whenever I thought about going back, I didn't know if it was going to cut me off from other jobs, so that was one of the reasons why I really decided, or I really thought about going the degree route. And I decided against it because I did a lot of research, and there were companies at that time that were like, you don't need a college degree because I already had a college degree in sports medicine. And so most of them were like, you just have to have a degree. And I was like, okay, I don't think I'm going to be stuck in this position because I didn't have a computer science degree. The other way was self-taught. I didn't think that I could put in the time and the work. One thing I learned very, very early on is there were a lot of things that I just didn't know about the field. I didn't know HTML. I didn't know CSS. I didn't know how to get a server started. I didn't know anything. If I knew anything about computers, it was more about the hardware side of it and nothing about the software side. So I knew very quickly that the self-learning aspect wouldn't work for me, and so that's kind of why I decided to go the bootcamp route. I asked a lot of mentors, "Hey, what's the best way?" And they're like, "Bootcamp." And they're like, "Go to the one that teaches you the most." And so, at that time, the bootcamp I went to was two years long, but I was able to probably eight months in get a job in tech. And then, I completed it while going to work at that tech company. VICTORIA: Oh, that's great. CHAD: I mean, this might be a little bit of a hot take, but I'm going to say it anyway, which is I think that if you don't know how to code at all, or very little university programs, computer science programs aren't really set up to teach you that in a great way. It's more likely that someone with that level of experience will really struggle going into a computer science program not really having coded before. Bootcamps are much more conducive to learning from scratch along with other people. It's not even necessarily about the programs, but going into a CS degree, so many people already do know how to program. And so it's really hard for them to make a well-balanced program that works for everybody. WILL: I totally agree with that. VICTORIA: I could see it. It's both ways. The way I've always heard it explained is a computer science degree will teach you a lot about the underlying principles that you might wish you knew later after you have finished your bootcamp. But a bootcamp will prepare you for on-the-job performance like day one, more likely to just give you the full breadth. I mean, I've taken computer science 101 at University of Maryland, and I learned HTML, CSS, how to get a basic website up, some simple things that can get you up to speed. I think you could start from scratch and go that route. But it's hard to keep it up to speed with current technology trends in a college atmosphere. And so I think you'll see a lot of partnerships with universities now. And obviously, bootcamps were created to address that gap. You got a job while you were still in bootcamp, and I'm curious how that went for you, that job search. That's a huge hurdle to just getting from the bootcamp to the first job; if you have any advice for people who are in a similar situation right now. WILL: Yes, it was very challenging at the time. I think I applied to over 400 positions. My biggest thing that I would say is stay the course, hang in there. Keep going. There are a lot of down days that I was like, am I supposed to be in this field? Am I supposed to be here? The other thing that I learned very quickly was resources. Who did I know in the tech field? Who could I reach out to help me with it? Because that was another thing that I learned. I thought whenever I first took my junior dev job that I would come in and be able to really implement tickets and items. And I quickly realized that they hired me because of my character and who I was going to be long-term and that I can offer very little at that moment of, hey, coming in, and doing a ticket, and really shipping a feature I cannot do that as a junior dev. But hopefully, in six months or two, three months, however long their time period was that I could ship a portion of a feature. VICTORIA: Right. And that's always been...for me, someone hiring for technical roles and the entry-level point, sometimes I would prefer someone who has professional experience. Especially working in consulting, you have the ability to communicate your ideas well and work with clients, but you're still learning the technology side of it. That's a lot less than hiring a new college graduate who hasn't ever worked before [laughs] but may have a computer science degree. It's a totally different value that you're bringing to the role, I think. CHAD: And that persistence really pays off. Just to make sure that timeline is clear, I think you interviewed with us for the first time five years ago or so, so I really appreciate you sticking with it and eventually coming back to us. That makes me super, super happy. WILL: Yeah, and one thing that I learned along the way is there are different companies out there, and depending on your purpose and your goal, there are great fits depending on what your goal is. And my goal in my career was to learn and to be with a great company that had a great culture. And I felt like thoughtbot was a good fit for me with that because I want to enjoy the people that I work with. I want to get to know them. I want to help them be a mentor, be a mentee, and thoughtbot was a good fit with that. That was one of the reasons why I put it on my list of hey, whenever that opportunity comes back, apply, apply, apply back to them. CHAD: You originally interviewed with us as a Rails developer for a Rails development position. But along the way, you joined us as a React and React Native developer. So tell us a little bit about that journey along the way. WILL: Yeah, so I did as a Rails developer, and I quickly realized that at that point in my career, Rails was harder for me to comprehend. There was nothing visual that I could really understand. And going back to what Victoria said with universities being able to keep up, at the end of my bootcamp, that was when React was on the rise. And so they actually released a module for React, and so I was able to really pick up that module. And at that point, I thought React and front end was going to be a lot easier for me to comprehend and easier to get a job in the field, and so that's kind of why I went that front-end developer way. And then it's interesting now because I'm coming back around learning more Rails and, hopefully, be able to contribute to client work with the Rails side. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it's time to design, build, and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Liftoff brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we'll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today's new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow today. Get in touch at thoughtbot.com/liftoff. CHAD: thoughbot's not the first agency that you worked at. Before you joined, you were working at another agency. Was there something in particular that gravitated towards this kind of work as opposed to working at maybe a technology startup working on a specific product? WILL: Yeah. The two first jobs that I had in tech was typical software as a service products. I enjoyed it, but I felt like we were building on the same thing over and over again. And it was okay, but I know for me that I'm a big-time learner. And so I felt for me, I'm a big-time learner, and so I felt going the agency route would give me the opportunity to be exposed to different aspects of tech. So at the last agency, I did some Rails work. It was very, very minimal, but I was able to do that. I was able to learn a lot about React Native and React and probably worked on a handful of jobs. Even at thoughtbot, I've worked on jobs and contracts that range from a month to six months. And I know potentially, I can work on a contract for two years, but it still gives me enough change to where I feel like the tech field will not leave me behind. So I can work on a job or a contract for a year and then reset and say, "Oh, React released XYZ." And I can implement that into this new product or contract I'm working on. So that part right there is what really excited me about working for an agency and being a part of the company. CHAD: Yeah, that's a big part of that variety, even both on the tech side but also just being able to work with different people and not be bound always to the same thing is one of the reasons why I've been able to do this so long I believe. WILL: That's a good point because I love meeting new people. I love getting to know them. And it gives me that opportunity to work for a client, get to know them, and stay in contact with them but even go to a new client. If I was working at a product, I'm with the same company inside the four walls of that company. And so I love that aspect of getting to meet new people and getting to help companies deliver their dreams to the world. I really enjoy that. CHAD: And that's what you're going to get to do as part of the host of the show too. WILL: Yes. I'm excited about that too. VICTORIA: I was going to say the same. You're going to meet so many cool people. [laughs] I've already met a lot of really interesting people in the last two months. So let's ask you a fun question. You're meeting new people; maybe you're introducing a new podcast guest. What's your favorite icebreaker question to ask? WILL: I think my favorite question to ask podcast guests is why they do what they do. And the reason why is because it's very interesting seeing what propels people to go and do the things that they do. I guess I'm a student of people and humans. I love understanding the greatest people like Tom Brady, Michael Jordan. I know that may be up for debate. VICTORIA: [laughs] WILL: But just what makes them click. Also, for our guests, there are so many different aspects and products that people are coming up with, and so it's amazing to hear why they're doing what they do. And a lot of them, I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that? That's a great idea. [laughter] And so I think that's my favorite question by far is why do you do what you do? VICTORIA: I like that, yeah. As soon as I come on, I'm like, "So you're the founder of this. And why did you do that? [laughs] Tell me." But it's always an interesting story, just the right person, and the right place, the right problem to solve, and the right group of people around them to figure it out. WILL: Yeah, and definitely the sacrifice that they're making. Being a CEO or founder of a company is not a nine-to-five job. You're sacrificing a lot of time, a lot of effort, resources. So yes, why do you do what you do? Because you're sacrificing so much. So why did you do that to get to this point? I love it. VICTORIA: We could ask Chad that. [laughs] Why did you start thoughtbot, Chad? [laughs] CHAD: I ask myself that every day. [laughter] VICTORIA: I know. CHAD: No, I'm kidding. Oh, we have a whole episode on that we recorded for our anniversary with the original co-founders that I had, and we did the history of thoughtbot. So I like to point that out every once in a while, Episode 262 from February 12th, 2018. Time flies when you're having fun. I didn't think it was that long ago. WILL: [laughs] CHAD: We're currently on Episode 442. VICTORIA: I will say it is a productive podcast. There are a lot of great episodes that come out. I'm excited to have Will on to help share the experience of [laughs] creating them. CHAD: Yeah. And speaking a little bit of meta, this is the first time we've ever had three co-hosts. We have an appetite, the three of us, for trying some new things with this new sort of season that we're embarking on. But we also love the show as it is, and so we're going to keep things sort of going like they are with some rotations and doing some joint episodes and that kind of thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if, after a couple of months, we start to layer something new on. I'm not quite sure what that will be yet, whether it will be just maybe episodes with just the three of us, and not a guest, talking about some thoughtbot stuff or some things we want to talk about. Or maybe it could be something else. What do you all think? WILL: I love that idea. I love being able to have different options and opening that out. I think it's a great idea. Like you said, I don't know what that looks like, but I'm excited that we have the opportunity to bring different aspects, different podcasts to our guests. VICTORIA: Yeah, I'm already thinking of people I can voluntell at thoughtbot [laughter] and talking about topics that I'm interested in. [laughs] There's a lot we could do with that. And yeah, I think it'd be good to mix it up. How has working at thoughtbot supported your work-life balance with your family? WILL: It's been amazing. At the time of this recording, I have three kids; their ages are three, two, and a couple of months. And so, from the very beginning of parental leave, being able to take that time and be with my son and take care of all his needs was amazing. And not having to worry about work, yeah, it was top-notch because I was able to really just focus on him and my other two kids. Because when you have a baby and other siblings, it gets tough, so I felt like most of my parental leave was just keeping my baby alive. [laughter] The older siblings were amazing and actually surprised me. I thought that they would be jealous, and why is this new human in our house taking your attention? But it was actually the exact opposite. They wanted to hold the baby. VICTORIA: Aww. WILL: They wanted to be with him. And so it was like, okay, I'll let you hold them, but I got to be here with you, and I got to help you. And my two older kids are very independent. And so that was tough, but it's amazing to see how much they love their younger brother. VICTORIA: Aww. WILL: Yeah. So that has been amazing. But to continue on the work-life balance, it has been really amazing working at thoughtbot because we are a remote culture, and especially the clients that I've worked with the flexibility of the schedule. So yes, we have meetings that I have to make it to and be a part of the team. But for the most part, as long as I get my work done, I am in a good position. So, to be honest, with the newborn, sometimes I'm up at midnight. And I'm able to work while I'm up with my son because that's the time that he wants to get up and eat and hang out, so I'm like, okay, let's hang out. So that flexibility has been amazing for me. I love the remote aspect of it because I am a big family person. So I love being able to be home with my kids as they're growing up, eating lunch with them, going on a walk with them. So yes, it has been amazing. To be honest, I don't know if I can ask for anything more than what thoughtbot provides to me as a parent. So I'm really thankful for that. CHAD: That brings back a lot of memories for me because when our son was born, I also was up with him, and it would be one of those scenarios where you finally get him to sleep in the bounce chair or the chair, and you're like, okay, what do I do now? Because he's going to be up again at any moment. I was like, okay, I'll do some coding now, and it's like midnight, one in the morning, or whatever. And I got a little bit of a reputation for these pull requests coming in at night but this general sense of understanding about why that's happening. And like, okay, now I'm not in in the morning because this was the schedule that I was on and a real flexibility and understanding of that. But it really brings back memories for me. I'm glad I'm well past that point now. [laughter] WILL: And I am thankful that thoughtbot is thinking about those things. Like you said, you're past that point, but you still are thinking about those things. And that means a lot to me that it's not in your forethought, but it's still very important to have that culture. And you're remembering how it was when you were a parent. That means a lot to me. VICTORIA: Yeah. And I think that if you look at the state of the October's reports and see when developers are actually submitting pull requests, the windows are much longer. So post-pandemic with that giant shift to remote work, you will see them in earlier hours of the day or later hours in the night, but there are longer breaks in between. And I think for knowledge work especially; it's hard to just work an eight-hour block and be able to constantly be outputting during that time. [laughs] So it makes sense from a work-life balance but also a productivity overall balance as well. CHAD: That's really interesting. I hadn't seen that report, but it resonates with me as true or resonates with me. And we've always talked about the concept of sustainable pace, and when we were in offices, that often meant Monday through Friday, eight to five, nine to five. This is the schedule we're all keeping. And if someone was deviating from that, it was like, oh, you may not be working sustainably. Now, in a remote environment, it is much more about flexibility and recognizing that as long as people are working in a sustainable pace, variety in hours and flexibility is totally okay. And like you said, Will, it's about the work that you're getting done. Like, if there's a problem with what I'm delivering or what I'm able to do, let's have that conversation. Conversation shouldn't be about when I'm working or the hours that I'm working, the amount I'm working. WILL: And as a human, your first thought is, is this person working the hours they're supposed to? And I think that's the first thought for a lot of people. But the one thing that I do like about thoughtbot is that trust that we have with our developers. Okay, there may not be their eight-hour block during the day, but are they getting their work done? If they're getting the work done, why should I even say anything to them? Because they're being successful. That's what we asked them to do, get the work done. Are their clients happy? If their client is happy, I'm happy. And so I think that's one thing. The trust that thoughtbot has given to me as a developer means a lot to me, too, because I can work at midnight and still be productive and get my work done. CHAD: I think it's telling. It's very rare for us to have a conversation with someone about maybe not working enough. It's almost always the opposite which is checking in with people and making sure that they're working sustainably. VICTORIA: And I'm curious, Chad, about the policy of the four days of consulting and having Fridays for investment time; how that decision was made at thoughtbot. It's been a policy for a long time. CHAD: Well, it comes from our value of continuous improvement. When we were 16 people, all designers, and developers, working client work five days a week, there was no time, strictly speaking, within a sustainable pace to reflect on the way that we were working, to make improvements, to learn new things, to create the open source that we were doing and the blogging that we were doing. And so, if we were honest with ourselves, a lot of that stuff was happening outside of normal working time in addition to the five days of client work we were doing. And so I think it was Joe Ferris who said, like, if we believe in continuous improvement, we've got to carve out time and sustainable pace. We've got to carve out time within the week in order to be able to do those things. The truth of the matter is a lot of our most popular open-source projects were actually created at a time when we didn't have investment time. And so, like I said, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we were really stretching ourselves thin at that point. So working on client work four days a week made us not only more sustainable but ultimately because it's continuous improvement...and so when you have a feedback cycle where short iterations, you can reflect on the way that you're working or that you have time set aside for making improvements, it makes you better the rest of the time as well. And so now it's part of our secret sauce is the reason why we're able to be as productive as we are in that time that we have is because of that time set aside for improvement. The reason why we're able to make the open source and the blog posts that we do which make us have a bigger reputation and make our client work faster because we're able to use open source is because of that schedule. And so it's a self-fulfilling virtuous cycle of improvement. So that's where it comes from and why we've been so successful with it. WILL: And that's actually a huge reason why I wanted to work at thoughtbot because one of my first jobs in tech, I would come in and knock out tickets, and I really thought that that was enough to be successful in the field. But then I quickly learned that yes, I was learning the tickets that I was working on, but there was so much more that I did not know, did not understand. And at that point, that's when I had my first son, and we were working five days a week. So the biggest question for me was, with a newborn son and working five days a week, when do I fit in that investment time? When do I learn the outside aspect that we're not doing in the everyday grind of our tickets? And I quickly learned that I had to do it on the weekends. I had to do it outside of the hours that I was working. And it was hard. It was not a sustainable pace. With thoughtbot, one of my criterias was being able to learn, being able to be mentored, and thoughtbot checked that off. But not only did they check that off, but they gave me the opportunity, the space to be mentored and to learn. So I love Friday's investment time. It's been huge in my career. CHAD: I'm giving away all the secrets here, but it's okay because it's the execution that matters. But the reason why at your previous places you weren't necessarily able to do that is because that's not their product. Their product was the SaaS product that you were working on. And so when a company like that thinks about where they're investing, the investments that they're going to make are in their product. It's one of the reasons why we call investment time investment time because I wanted to communicate that we are investing in our product, but our product is the way that we work. It is our people and our process, and the tools that we use. And so when we think about making investments as a company, that's what the product that we're in the market with is. And so we can afford to invest in improving that product in the same way that a company whose product is software can afford to invest in that software and has trouble investing in making the people, and the process, and the tools, and the culture better. VICTORIA: That makes sense to me. And what I've found so far in having that four-day workweek and the way it comes out from a pricing perspective for clients is that you're paying maybe a premium for hours. But your team is able to get more work done in less amount of time because it's so focused. And then overall, you're getting a higher quality work product in a short amount of time. And I think it just makes a lot of sense to me. And I've been working in many consulting companies, and they all have this problem. They all want to put out a lot of knowledge articles and blog posts and be known for their expertise but don't commit to making that time to it or spending the money on investing in people to build those products. So it's something I was really excited about for thoughtbot too. [laughs] CHAD: This is great fodder for future episodes with just the three of us. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah. WILL: Love it. CHAD: Will, thanks again for joining the show. If we don't get to play D&D again together for a while, this will be a secondary substitute for that. WILL: Yes, I do plan on coming back. That was huge also, so don't count me out. [laughter] CHAD: I won't count you out. You can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode, along with a complete transcript, at giantrobots.fm. VICTORIA: If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. CHAD: You can find me on Twitter @cyptel. VICTORIA: And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. CHAD: And, Will, if folks want to follow along with you, where are all the places that they can do that? WILL: Yeah. You can follow me on Twitter @will23larry. And I would love to interact and chat with you. CHAD: Is the 23 for Michael Jordan? WILL: Always. [laughter] CHAD: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. VICTORIA: Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Now that you have funding, it’s time to design, build and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Lift Off brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we’ll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today’s new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow, today. Get in touch at: thoughtbot.com/liftoffSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Leonard S. Johnson is the Founder and CEO of AIEDC, a 5G Cloud Mobile App Maker and Service Provider with Machine Learning to help small and midsize businesses create their own iOS and Android mobile apps with no-code or low-code so they can engage and service their customer base, as well as provide front and back office digitization services for small businesses. Victoria talks to Leonard about using artificial intelligence for good, bringing the power of AI to local economics, and truly democratizing AI. The Artificial Intelligence Economic Development Corporation (AIEDC) Follow AIEDC on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Leonard on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Leonard S. Johnson or LS, Founder and CEO AIEDC, a 5G Cloud Mobile App Maker and Service Provider with Machine Learning to help small and midsize businesses create their own iOS and Android mobile apps with no-code or low-code so they can engage and service their customer base, as well as provide front and back office digitization services for small businesses. Leonard, thanks for being with us today. LEONARD: Thank you for having me, Victoria. VICTORIA: I should say LS, thank you for being with us today. LEONARD: It's okay. It's fine. VICTORIA: Great. So tell us a little more about AIEDC. LEONARD: Well, AIEDC stands for Artificial Intelligence Economic Development Corporation. And the original premise that I founded it for...I founded it after completing my postgraduate work at Stanford, and that was 2016. And it was to use AI for economic development, and therefore use AI for good versus just hearing about artificial intelligence and some of the different movies that either take over the world, and Skynet, and watch data privacy, and these other things which are true, and it's very evident, they exist, and they're out there. But at the end of the day, I've always looked at life as a growth strategy and the improvement of what we could do and focusing on what we could do practically. You do it tactically, then you do it strategically over time, and you're able to implement things. That's why I think we keep building collectively as humanity, no matter what part of the world you're in. VICTORIA: Right. So you went to Stanford, and you're from South Central LA. And what about that background led you to pursue AI for good in particular? LEONARD: So growing up in the inner city of Los Angeles, you know, that South Central area, Compton area, it taught me a lot. And then after that, after I completed high school...and not in South Central because I moved around a lot. I grew up with a single mother, never knew my real father, and then my home life with my single mother wasn't good because of just circumstances all the time. And so I just started understanding that even as a young kid, you put your brain...you utilize something because you had two choices. It's very simple or binary, you know, A or B. A, you do something with yourself, or B, you go out and be social in a certain neighborhood. And I'm African American, so high probability that you'll end up dead, or in a gang, or in crime because that's what it was at that time. It's just that's just a situation. Or you're able to challenge those energies and put them toward a use that's productive and positive for yourself, and that's what I did, which is utilizing a way to learn. I could always pick up things when I was very young. And a lot of teachers, my younger teachers, were like, "You're very, very bright," or "You're very smart." And there weren't many programs because I'm older than 42. So there weren't as many programs as there are today. So I really like all of the programs. So I want to clarify the context. Today there's a lot more engagement and identification of kids that might be sharper, smarter, whatever their personal issues are, good or bad. And it's a way to sort of separate them. So you're not just teaching the whole group as a whole and putting them all in one basket, but back then, there was not. And so I just used to go home a lot, do a lot of reading, do a lot of studying, and just knick-knack with things in tech. And then I just started understanding that even as a young kid in the inner city, you see economics very early, but they don't understand that's really what they're studying. They see economics. They can see inflation because making two ends meet is very difficult. They may see gang violence and drugs or whatever it might end up being. And a lot of that, in my opinion, is always an underlining economic foundation. And so people would say, "Oh, why is this industry like this?" And so forth. "Why does this keep happening?" It's because they can't function. And sometimes, it's just them and their family, but they can't function because it's an economic system. So I started focusing on that and then went into the Marine Corps. And then, after the Marine Corps, I went to Europe. I lived in Europe for a while to do my undergrad studies in the Netherlands in Holland. VICTORIA: So having that experience of taking a challenge or taking these forces around you and turning into a force for good, that's led you to bring the power of AI to local economics. And is that the direction that you went eventually? LEONARD: So economics was always something that I understood and had a fascination prior to even starting my company. I started in 2017. And we're crowdfunding now, and I can get into that later. But I self-funded it since 2017 to...I think I only started crowdfunding when COVID hit, which was 2020, and just to get awareness and people out there because I couldn't go to a lot of events. So I'm like, okay, how can I get exposure? But yeah, it was a matter of looking at it from that standpoint of economics always factored into me, even when I was in the military when I was in the Marine Corps. I would see that...we would go to different countries, and you could just see the difference of how they lived and survived. And another side note, my son's mother is from Ethiopia, Africa. And I have a good relationship with my son and his mother, even though we've been apart for over 15 years, divorced for over 15 years or so or longer. But trying to keep that, you can just see this dichotomy. You go out to these different countries, and even in the military, it's just so extreme from the U.S. and any part of the U.S, but that then always focused on economics. And then technology, I just always kept up with, like, back in the '80s when the mobile brick phone came out, I had to figure out how to get one. [laughs] And then I took it apart and then put it back together just to see how it works, so yeah. But it was a huge one, by the way. I mean, it was like someone got another and broke it, and they thought it was broken. And they're like, "This doesn't work. You could take this piece of junk." I'm like, "Okay." [laughs] VICTORIA: Like, oh, great. I sure will, yeah. Now, I love technology. And I think a lot of people perceive artificial intelligence as being this super futuristic, potentially harmful, maybe economic negative impact. So what, from your perspective, can AI do for local economics or for people who may not have access to that advanced technology? LEONARD: Well, that's the key, and that's what we're looking to do with AIEDC. When you look at the small and midsize businesses, it's not what people think, or their perception is. A lot of those in the U.S. it's the backbone of the United States, our economy, literally. And in other parts of the world, it's the same where it could be a one or two mom-and-pop shops. That's where that name comes from; it's literally two people. And they're trying to start something to build their own life over time because they're using their labor to maybe build wealth or somehow a little bit not. And when I mean wealth, it's always relative. It's enough to sustain themselves or just put food on the table and be able to control their own destiny to the best of their ability. And so what we're looking to do is make a mobile app maker that's 5G that lives in the cloud, that's 5G compliant, that will allow small and midsize businesses to create their own iOS or Android mobile app with no-code or low-code, basically like creating an email. That's how simple we want it to be. When you create your own email, whether you use Microsoft, Google, or whatever you do, and you make it that simple. And there's a simple version, and there could be complexity added to it if they want. That would be the back office digitization or customization, but that then gets them on board with digitization. It's intriguing that McKinsey just came out with a report stating that in 2023, in order to be economically viable, and this was very recent, that all companies would need to have a digitization strategy. And so when you look at small businesses, and you look at things like COVID-19, or the COVID current ongoing issue and that disruption, this is global. And you look at even the Ukrainian War or the Russian-Ukrainian War, however you term it, invasion, war, special operation, these are disruptions. And then, on top of that, we look at climate change which has been accelerating in the last two years more so than it was prior to this that we've experienced. So this is something that everyone can see is self-evident. I'm not even focused on the cause of the problem. My brain and the way I think, and my team, we like to focus on solutions. My chairman is a former program director of NASA who managed 1,200 engineers that built the International Space Station; what was it? 20-30 years ago, however, that is. And he helped lead and build that from Johnson Center. And so you're focused on solutions because if you're building the International Space Station, you can only focus on solutions and anticipate the problems but not dwell on them. And so that kind of mindset is what I am, and it's looking to help small businesses do that to get them on board with digitization and then in customization. And then beyond that, use our system, which is called M.I.N.D. So we own these...we own patents, three patents, trademarks, and service marks related to artificial intelligence that are in the field of economics. And we will utilize DEVS...we plan to do that which is a suite of system specifications to predict regional economic issues like the weather in a proactive way, not reactive. A lot of economic situations are reactive. It's reactive to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates or lowering rates, Wall Street, you know, moving money or not moving money. It is what it is. I mean, I don't judge it. I think it's like financial engineering, and that's fine. It's profitability. But then, at the end of the day, if you're building something, it's like when we're going to go to space. When rockets launch, they have to do what they're intended to do. Like, I know that Blue Origin just blew up recently. Or if they don't, they have a default, and at least I heard that the Blue Origin satellite, if it were carrying passengers, the passengers would have been safe because it disembarked when it detected its own problem. So when you anticipate these kinds of problems and you apply them to the local small business person, you can help them forecast and predict better like what weather prediction has done. And we're always improving that collectively for weather prediction, especially with climate change, so that it can get to near real-time as soon as possible or close a window versus two weeks out versus two days out as an example. VICTORIA: Right. Those examples of what you call a narrow economic prediction. LEONARD: Correct. It is intriguing when you say narrow economic because it wouldn't be narrow AI. But it would actually get into AGI if you added more variables, which we would. The more variables you added in tenancies...so if you're looking at events, the system events discretion so discrete event system specification you would specify what they really, really need to do to have those variables. But at some point, you're working on a system, what I would call AGI. But AGI, in my mind, the circles I run in at least or at least most of the scientists I talk to it's not artificial superintelligence. And so the general public thinks AGI...and I've said this to Stephen Ibaraki, who's the founder of AI for Good at Global Summit at the United Nations, and one of his interviews as well. It's just Artificial General Intelligence, I think, has been put out a lot by Hollywood and entertainment and so forth, and some scientists say certain things. We won't be at artificial superintelligence. We might get to Artificial General Intelligence by 2030 easily, in my opinion. But that will be narrow AI, but it will cover what we look at it in the field as cross-domain, teaching a system to look at different variables because right now, it's really narrow. Like natural language processing, it's just going to look at language and infer from there, and then you've got backward propagation that's credit assignment and fraud and detection. Those are narrow data points. But when you start looking at something cross-domain...who am I thinking of? Pedro Domingos who wrote the Master Algorithm, which actually, Xi Jinping has a copy of, the President of China, on his bookshelf in his office because they've talked about that, and these great minds because Stephen Ibaraki has interviewed these...and the founder of Google Brain and all of these guys. And so there's always this debate in the scientific community of what is narrow AI what it's not. But at the end of the day, I just like Pedro's definition of it because he says the master algorithm will be combining all five, so you're really crossing domains, which AI hasn't done that. And to me, that will be AGI, but that's not artificial superintelligence. And artificial superintelligence is when it becomes very, you know, like some of the movies could say, if we as humanity just let it run wild, it could be crazy. VICTORIA: One of my questions is the future of AI more like iRobot or Bicentennial Man? LEONARD: Well, you know, interesting. That's a great question, Victoria. I see most of AI literally as iRobot, as a tool more than anything, except at the end when it implied...so it kind of did two things in that movie, but a wonderful movie to bring up. And I like Will Smith perfectly. Well, I liked him a lot more before -- VICTORIA: I think iRobot is really the better movie. LEONARD: Yeah, so if people haven't seen iRobot, I liked Will Smith, the actor. But iRobot showed you two things, and it showed you, one, it showed hope. Literally, the robot...because a lot of people put AI and robots. And AI by itself is the brain or the mind; I should say hardware are the robots or the brain. Software...AI in and of itself is software. It's the mind itself. That's why we have M.I.N.D Machine Intelligence NeuralNetwork Database. We literally have that. That's our acronym and our slogan and everything. And it's part of our patents. But its machine intelligence is M.I.N.D, and we own that, you know; the company owns it. And so M.I.N.D...we always say AI powered by M.I.N.D. We're talking about that software side of, like, what your mind does; it iterates and thinks, the ability to think itself. Now it's enclosed within a structure called, you know, for the human, it's called a brain, the physical part of it, and that brain is enclosed within the body. So when you look at robots...and my chairman was the key person for robotics for the International Space Station. So when you look at robotics, you are putting that software into hardware, just like your cell phone. You have the physical, and then you have the actual iOS, which is the operating system. So when you think about that, yeah, iRobot was good because it showed how these can be tools, and they were very, in the beginning of the movie, very helpful, very beneficial to humanity. But then it went to a darker side and showed where V.I.K.I, which was an acronym as well, I think was Virtual Interactive Kinetic technology of something. Yeah, I believe it was Virtual Interactive Kinetic inference or technology or something like that, V.I.K.I; I forgot the last I. But that's what it stood for. It was an acronym to say...and then V.I.K.I just became all aware and started killing everyone with robots and just wanted to say, you know, this is futile. But then, at the very, very end, V.I.K.I learned from itself and says, "Okay, I guess this isn't right." Or the other robot who could think differently argued with V.I.K.I, and they destroyed her. And it made V.I.K.I a woman in the movie, and then the robot was the guy. But that shows that it can get out of hand. But it was intriguing to me that they had her contained within one building. This wouldn't be artificial superintelligence. And I think sometimes Hollywood says, "Just take over everything from one building," no. It wouldn't be on earth if it could. But that is something we always have to think about. We have to think about the worst-case scenarios. I think every prudent scientist or business person or anyone should do that, even investors, I mean, if you're investing something for the future. But you also don't focus on it. You don't think about the best-case scenario, either. But there's a lot of dwelling on the worst-case scenario versus the good that we can do given we're looking at where humanity is today. I mean, we're in 2022, and we're still fighting wars that we fought in 1914. VICTORIA: Right. Which brings me to my next question, which is both, what are the most exciting opportunities to innovate in the AI space currently? And conversely, what are the biggest challenges that are facing innovation in that field? LEONARD: Ooh, that's a good question. I think, in my opinion, it's almost the same answer; one is...but I'm in a special field. And I'm surprised there's not a lot of competition for our company. I mean, it's very good for me and the company's sense. It's like when Mark Zuckerberg did Facebook, there was Friendster, and there was Myspace, but they were different. They were different verticals. And I think Mark figured out how to do it horizontally, good or bad. I'm talking about the beginning of when he started Facebook, now called Meta. But I'm saying utilizing AI in economics because a lot of times AI is used in FinTech and consumerism, but not economic growth where we're really talking about growing something organically, or it's called endogenous growth. Because I studied Paul Romer's work, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for economic science. And he talked about the nature of ideas. And we were working on something like that in Stanford. And I put out a book in 2017 of January talking about cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence but about the utilization of it, but not the speculation. I never talked about speculation. I don't own any crypto; I would not. It's only once it's utilized in its PureTech form will it create something that it was envisioned to do by the protocol that Satoshi Nakamoto sort of created. And it still fascinates me that people follow Bitcoin protocol, even for the tech and the non-tech, but they don't know who Satoshi is. But yeah, it's a white paper. You're just following a white paper because I think logically, the world is going towards that iteration of evolution. And that's how AI could be utilized for good in an area to focus on it with economics and solving current problems. And then going forward to build a new economy where it's not debt-based driven or consumer purchase only because that leaves a natural imbalance in the current world structure. The western countries are great. We do okay, and we go up and down. But the emerging and developing countries just get stuck, and they seem to go into a circular loop. And then there are wars as a result of these things and territory fights and so forth. So that's an area I think where it could be more advanced is AI in the economic realm, not so much the consumer FinTech room, which is fine. But consumer FinTech, in my mind, is you're using AI to process PayPal. That's where I think Elon just iterated later because PayPal is using it for finance. You're just moving things back and forth, and you're just authenticating everything. But then he starts going on to SpaceX next because he's like, well, let me use technology in a different way. And I do think he's using AI on all of his projects now. VICTORIA: Right. So how can that tech solve real problems today? Do you see anything even particular about Southern California, where we're both at right now, where you think AI could help predict some outcomes for small businesses or that community? LEONARD: I'm looking to do it regionally then globally. So I'm part of this Southern Cal Innovation Hub, which is just AI. It's an artificial intelligence coordination between literally San Diego County, Orange County, and Los Angeles County. And so there's a SoCal Innovation Hub that's kind of bringing it together. But there are all three groups, like; I think the CEO in Orange County is the CEO of Leadership Alliance. And then in San Diego, there's another group I can't remember their name off the top of my head, and I'm talking about the county itself. So each one's representing a county because, you know. And then there's one in Northern California that I'm also associated with where if you look at California as its own economy in the U.S., it's still pretty significant as an economic cycle in the United States, period. That's why so many politicians like California because they can sway the votes. So yeah, we're looking to do that once, you know, we are raising capital. We're crowdfunding currently. Our total raise is about 6 million. And so we're talking to venture capitalists, private, high net worth investors as well. Our federal funding is smaller. It's just like several hundred thousand because most people can only invest a few thousand. But I always like to try to give back. If you tell people...if you're Steve Jobs, like, okay, I've got this Apple company. In several years, you'll see the potential. And people are like, ah, whatever, but then they kick themselves 15 years later. [laughs] Like, oh, I wish I thought about that Apple stock for $15 when I could. But you give people a chance, and you get the word out, and you see what happens. Once you build a system, you share it. There are some open-source projects. But I think the open source, like OpenAI, as an example, Elon Musk funds that as well as Microsoft. They both put a billion dollars into it. It is an open-source project. OpenAI claims...but some of the research does go back to Microsoft to be able to see it. And DeepMind is another research for AI, but they're owned by Google. And so, I'm also very focused on democratizing artificial intelligence for the benefit of everyone. I really believe that needs to be democratized in a sense of tying it to economics and making it utilized for everyone that may need it for the benefit of humanity where it's profitable and makes money, but it's not just usurping. MID-ROLL AD: As life moves online, brick-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what’s important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: With that democratizing it, is there also a need to increase the understanding of the ethics around it and when there are certain known use cases for AI where it actually is discriminatory and plays to systemic problems in our society? Are you familiar with that as well? LEONARD: Yes, absolutely. Well, that's my whole point. And, Victoria, you just hit the nail on the head. Truly democratizing AI in my mind and in my brain the way it works is it has opened up for everyone. Because if you really roll it back, okay, companies now we're learning...we used to call it several years ago UGC, User Generated Content. And now a lot of people are like, okay, if you're on Facebook, you're the product, right? Or if you're on Instagram, you're the product. And they're using you, and you're using your data to sell, et cetera, et cetera. But user-generated content it's always been that. It's just a matter of the sharing of the economic. That's why I keep going back to economics. So if people were, you know, you wouldn't have to necessarily do advertising if you had stakeholders with advertising, the users and the company, as an example. If it's a social media company, just throwing it out there, so let's say you have a social media...and this has been talked about, but I'm not the first to introduce this. This has been talked about for over ten years, at least over 15 years. And it's you share as a triangle in three ways. So you have the user and everything else. So take your current social media, and I won't pick on Facebook, but I'll just use them, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Twitter's having issues recently because Elon is trying to buy them or get out of buying them. But you just looked at that data, and then you share with the user base. What's the revenue model? And there needs to be one; let me be very clear. There has to be incentive, and there has to be profitability for people that joined you earlier, you know, joined the corporation, or become shareholders, or investors, or become users, or become customers. They have to be able to have some benefit, not extreme greater than everyone else but a great benefit from coming in earlier by what they contributed at the time. And that is what makes this system holistic in my opinion, like Reddit or any of these bloggers. But you make it where they use their time and the users, and you share it with the company and then the data and so forth, and whatever revenue economic model you have, and it's a sort of a three-way split. It's just not always equal. And that's something that I think in economics, we're still on a zero-sum game, I win, you lose sort of economic model globally. That's why there's a winner of a war and a loser of a war. But in reality, as you know, Victoria, there are no winners of any war. So it's funny, [laughs] I was just saying, well, you know, because of the economic mode, but Von Neumann, who talked about that, also talked about something called a non-zero-sum game when he talked about it in mathematics that you can win, and I can win; we just don't win equally because they never will match that. So if I win, I may win 60; you win 40. Or you may win 60, I win 40, and we agree to settle on that. It's an agreement versus I'm just going to be 99, and you'll be 1%, or I'm just going to be 100, and you're at 0. And I think that our economic model tends to be a lot of that, like, when you push forth and there needs to be more of that. When you talk about the core of economics...and I go way back, you know, prior to the Federal Reserve even being started. I just look at the world, and it's always sort of been this land territorial issue of what goods are under the country. But we've got technology where we can mitigate a lot of things and do the collective of help the earth, and then let's go off to space, all of space. That's where my brain is focused on. VICTORIA: Hmm. Oh yeah, that makes sense to me. I think that we're all going to have to evolve our economic models here in the future. I wonder, too, as you're building your startup and you're building your company, what are some of the technology trade-offs you're having to make in the stack of the AI software that you're building? LEONARD: Hmm. Good question. But clarify, this may be a lot deeper dive because that's a general question. And I don't want to...yeah, go ahead. VICTORIA: Because when you're building AI, and you're going to be processing a lot of data, I know many data scientists that are familiar with tools like Jupyter Notebooks, and R, and Python. And one issue that I'm aware of is keeping the environments the same, so everything that goes into building your app and having those infrastructure as code for your data science applications, being able to afford to process all that data. [laughs] And there are just so many factors that go into building an AI app versus building something that's more easy, like a web-based user form. So just curious if you've encountered those types of trade-offs or questions about, okay, how are we going to actually build an app that we can put out on everybody's phone and that works responsibly? LEONARD: Oh, okay. So let me be very clear, but I won't give too much of the secret sauce away. But I can define this technically because this is a technical audience. This is not...so what you're really talking about is two things, and I'm clear about this, though. So the app maker won't really read and write a lot of data. It'll just be the app where people could just get on board digitalization simple, you know, process payments, maybe connect with someone like American Express square, MasterCard, whatever. And so that's just letting them function. That's sort of small FinTech in my mind, you know, just transaction A to B, B to A, et cetera. And it doesn't need to be peer-to-peer and all of the crypto. It doesn't even need to go that level yet. That's just level one. Then they will sign up for a service, which is because we're really focused on artificial intelligence as a service. And that, to me, is the next iteration for AI. I've been talking about this for about three or four years now, literally, in different conferences and so forth for people who haven't hit it. But that we will get to that point where AI will become AI as a service, just like SaaS is. We're still at the, you know, most of the world on the legacy systems are still software as a service. We're about to hit AI as a service because the world is evolving. And this is true; they did shut it down. But you did have okay, so there are two case points which I can bring up. So JP Morgan did create something called a Coin, and it was using AI. And it was a coin like crypto, coin like a token, but they called it a coin. But it could process, I think, something like...I may be off on this, so to the sticklers that will be listening, please, I'm telling you I may be off on the exact quote, but I think it was about...it was something crazy to me, like 200,000 of legal hours and seconds that it could process because it was basically taking the corporate legal structure of JP Morgan, one of the biggest banks. I think they are the biggest bank in the U.S. JPMorgan Chase. And they were explaining in 2017 how we created this, and it's going to alleviate this many hours of legal work for the bank. And I think politically; something happened because they just pulled away. I still have the original press release when they put it out, and it was in the media. And then it went away. I mean, no implementation [laughs] because I think there was going to be a big loss of jobs for it. And they basically would have been white-collar legal jobs, most specifically lawyers literally that were working for the bank. And when they were talking towards investment, it was a committee. I was at a conference. And I was like, I was fascinated by that. And they were basically using Bitcoin protocol as the tokenization protocol, but they were using AI to process it. And it was basically looking at...because legal contracts are basically...you can teach it with natural language processing and be able to encode and almost output it itself and then be able to speak with each other. Another case point was Facebook. They had...what was it? Two AI systems. They began to create their own language. I don't know if you remember that story or heard about it, and Facebook shut it down. And this was more like two years ago, I think, when they were saying Facebook was talking, you know, when they were Facebook, not Meta, so maybe it was three years ago. And they were talking, and they were like, "Oh, Facebook has a language. It's talking to each other." And it created its own little site language because it was two AI bots going back and forth. And then the engineers at Facebook said, "We got to shut this down because this is kind of getting out of the box." So when you talk about AI as a service, yes, the good and the bad, and what you take away is AWS, Oracle, Google Cloud they do have services where it doesn't need to cost you as much anymore as it used to in the beginning if you know what you're doing ahead of time. And you're not just running iterations or data processing because you're doing guesswork versus, in my opinion, versus actually knowing exactly specifically what you're looking for and the data set you're looking to get out of it. And then you're talking about just basically putting in containers and clustering it because it gets different operations. And so what you're really looking at is something called an N-scale graph data that can process data in maybe sub seconds at that level, excuse me. And one of my advisors is the head of that anyway at AGI laboratory. So he's got an N graph database that can process...when we implement it, we'll be able to process data at the petabyte level at sub-seconds, and it can run on platforms like Azure or AWS, and so forth. VICTORIA: Oh, that's interesting. So it sounds like cloud providers are making compute services more affordable. You've got data, the N-scale graph data, that can run more transactions more quickly. And I'm curious if you see any future trends since I know you're a futurist around quantum computing and how that could affect capacity for -- LEONARD: Oh [laughs] We haven't even gotten there yet. Yes. Well, if you look at N-scale, if you know what you're doing and you know what to look for, then the quantum just starts going across different domains as well but at a higher hit rate. So there's been some quantum computers online. There's been several...well, Google has their quantum computer coming online, and they've been working on it, and Google has enough data, of course, to process. So yeah, they've got that data, lots of data. And quantum needs, you know, if it's going to do something, it needs lots of data. But then the inference will still be, I think, quantum is very good at processing large, large, large amounts of data. We can just keep going if you really have a good quantum computer. But it's really narrow. You have to tell it exactly what it wants, and it will do it in what we call...which is great like in P or NP square or P over NP which is you want to do it in polynomial time, not non-polynomial, polynomial time which is...now speaking too fast. Okay, my brain is going faster than my lips. Let me slow it down. So when you start thinking about processing, if we as humans, let's say if I was going to process A to Z, and I'm like, okay, here is this equation, if I tell you it takes 1000 years, it's of no use to us, to me and you Victoria because we're living now. Now, the earth may benefit in 1000 years, but it's still of no use. But if I could take this large amount of data and have it process within minutes, you know, worst case hours...but then I'll even go down to seconds or sub-seconds, then that's really a benefit to humanity now, today in present term. And so, as a futurist, yes, as the world, we will continue to add data. We're doing it every day, and we already knew this was coming ten years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, even actually in the '50s when we were in the AI winter. We're now in AI summer. In my words, I call it the AI summer. So as you're doing this, that data is going to continue to increase, and quantum will be needed for that. But then the specific need...quantum is very good at looking at a specific issue, specifically for that very narrow. Like if you were going to do the trajectory to Jupiter or if we wanted to send a probe to Jupiter or something, I think we're sending something out there now from NASA, and so forth, then you need to process all the variables, but it's got one trajectory. It's going one place only. VICTORIA: Gotcha. Well, that's so interesting. I'm glad I asked you that question. And speaking of rockets going off to space, have you ever seen a SpaceX launch from LA? LEONARD: Actually, I saw one land but not a launch. I need to go over there. It's not too far from me. But you got to give credit where credit's due and Elon has a reusable rocket. See, that's where technology is solving real-world problems. Because NASA and I have, you know, my chairman, his name is Alexander Nawrocki, you know, he's Ph.D., but I call him Rocki. He goes by Rocki like I go by LS. But it's just we talk about this like NASA's budget. [laughs] How can you reduce this? And Elon says they will come up with a reusable rocket that won't cost this much and be able to...and that's the key. That was the kind of Holy Grail where you can reuse the same rocket itself and then add some little variables on top of it. But the core, you wouldn't constantly be paying for it. And so I think where the world is going...and let me be clear, Elon pushes a lot out there. He's just very good at it. But I'm also that kind of guy that I know that Tesla itself was started by two Stanford engineers. Elon came on later, like six months, and then he invested, and he became CEO, which was a great investment for Elon Musk. And then CEO I just think it just fit his personality because it was something he loved. But I also have studied for years Nikola Tesla, and I understand what his contributions created where we are today with all the patents that he had. And so he's basically the father of WiFi and why we're able to communicate in a lot of this. We've perfected it or improved it, but it was created by him in the 1800s. VICTORIA: Right. And I don't think he came from as fortunate a background as Elon Musk, either. Sometimes I wonder what I could have done born in similar circumstances. [laughter] And you certainly have made quite a name for yourself. LEONARD: Well, I'm just saying, yeah, he came from very...he did come from a poor area of Russia which is called the Russian territory, to be very honest, Eastern Europe, definitely Eastern Europe. But yeah, I don't know once you start thinking about that [laughs]. You're making me laugh, Victoria. You're making me laugh. VICTORIA: No, I actually went camping, a backpacking trip to the Catalina Island, and there happened to be a SpaceX launch that night, and we thought it was aliens because it looked wild. I didn't realize what it was. But then we figured it was a launch, so it was really great. I love being here and being close to some of this technology and the advancements that are going on. I'm curious if you have some thoughts about...I hear a lot about or you used to hear about Silicon Valley Tech like very Northern California, San Francisco focus. But what is the difference in SoCal? What do you find in those two communities that makes SoCal special? [laughs] LEONARD: Well, I think it's actually...so democratizing AI. I've been in a moment like that because, in 2015, I was in Dubai, and they were talking about creating silicon oasis. And so there's always been this model of, you know, because they were always, you know, the whole Palo Alto thing is people would say it and it is true. I mean, I experienced it. Because I was in a two-year program, post-graduate program executive, but we would go up there...I wasn't living up there. I had to go there maybe once every month for like three weeks, every other month or something. But when you're up there, it is the air in the water. It's just like, people just breathe certain things. Because around the world, and I would travel to Japan, and China, and other different parts of Asia, Vietnam, et cetera and in Africa of course, and let's say you see this and people are like, so what is it about Silicon Valley? And of course, the show, there is the Hollywood show about it, which is pretty a lot accurate, which is interesting, the HBO show. But you would see that, and you would think, how are they able to just replicate this? And a lot of it is a convergence. By default, they hear about these companies' access because the key is access, and that's what we're...like this podcast. I love the concept around it because giving awareness, knowledge, and access allows other people to spread it and democratize it. So it's just not one physical location, or you have to be in that particular area only to benefit. I mean, you could benefit in that area, or you could benefit from any part of the world. But since they started, people would go there; engineers would go there. They built company PCs, et cetera. Now that's starting to spread in other areas like Southern Cal are creating their own innovation hubs to be able to bring all three together. And those three are the engineers and founders, and idea makers and startups. And you then need the expertise. I'm older than 42; I'm not 22. [laughs] So I'm just keeping it 100, keeping it real. So I'm not coming out at 19. I mean, my son's 18. And I'm not coming out, okay, this my new startup, bam, give me a billion dollars, I'm good. And let me just write off the next half. But when you look at that, there's that experience because even if you look at Mark Zuckerberg, I always tell people that give credit where credit is due. He brought a senior team with him when he was younger, and he didn't have the experience. And his only job has been Facebook out of college. He's had no other job. And now he's been CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation; that's a fact. Sometimes it hurts people's feelings. Like, you know what? He's had no other job. Now that can be good and bad, [laughs] but he's had no other jobs. And so that's just a credit, like, if you can surround yourself with the right people and be focused on something, it can work to the good or the bad for your own personal success but then having that open architecture. And I think he's been trying to learn and others versus like an Elon Musk, who embraces everything. He's just very open in that sense. But then you have to come from these different backgrounds. But let's say Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, let's take a guy like myself or whatever who didn't grow up with all of that who had to make these two ends meet, figure out how to do the next day, not just get to the next year, but get to the next day, get to the next week, get to the next month, then get to the next year. It just gives a different perspective as well. Humanity's always dealing with that. Because we had a lot of great engineers back in the early 1900s. They're good or bad, you know, you did have Nikola Tesla. You had Edison. I'm talking about circa around 1907 or 1909, prior to World War I. America had a lot of industries. They were the innovators then, even though there were innovations happening in Europe, and Africa, and China, as well and Asia. But the innovation hub kind of created as the America, quote, unquote, "industrial revolution." And I think we're about to begin a new revolution sort of tech and an industrial revolution that's going to take us to maybe from 20...we're 2022 now, but I'll say it takes us from 2020 to 2040 in my head. VICTORIA: So now that communities can really communicate across time zones and locations, maybe the hubs are more about solving specific problems. There are regional issues. That makes a lot more sense. LEONARD: Yes. And collaborating together, working together, because scientists, you know, COVID taught us that. People thought you had to be in a certain place, but then a lot of collaboration came out of COVID; even though it was bad globally, even though we're still bad, if people were at home, they start collaborating, and scientists will talk to scientists, you know, businesses, entrepreneurs, and so forth. But if Orange County is bringing together the mentors, the venture capital, or at least Southern California innovation and any other place, I want to say that's not just Silicon Valley because Silicon Valley already has it; we know that. And that's that region. It's San Jose all the way up to...I forgot how far north it's past San Francisco, actually. But it's that region of area where they encompass the real valley of Silicon Valley if you're really there. And you talk about these regions. Yes, I think we're going to get to a more regional growth area, and then it'll go more micro to actually cities later in the future. But regional growth, I think it's going to be extremely important globally in the very near term. I'm literally saying from tomorrow to the next, maybe ten years, regional will really matter. And then whatever you have can scale globally anyway, like this podcast we're doing. This can be distributed to anyone in the world, and they can listen at ease when they have time. VICTORIA: Yeah, I love it. It's both exciting and also intimidating. [laughs] And you mentioned your son a little bit earlier. And I'm curious, as a founder and someone who spent a good amount of time in graduate and Ph.D. programs, if you feel like it's easy to connect with your son and maintain that balance and focusing on your family while you're building a company and investing in yourself very heavily. LEONARD: Well, I'm older, [laughs] so it's okay. I mean, I've mentored him, you know. And me and his mom have a relationship that works. I would say we have a better relationship now than when we were together. It is what it is. But we have a communication level. And I think she was just a great person because I never knew my real father, ever. I supposedly met him when I was two or one; I don't know. But I have no memories, no photos, nothing. And that was just the environment I grew up in. But with my son, he knows the truth of everything about that. He's actually in college. I don't like to name the school because it's on the East Coast, and it's some Ivy League school; that's what I will say. And he didn't want to stay on the West Coast because I'm in Orange County and his mom's in Orange County. He's like, "I want to get away from both of you people." [laughter] And that's a joke, but he's very independent. He's doing well. When he graduated high school, he graduated with 4.8 honors. He made the valedictorian. He was at a STEM school. VICTORIA: Wow. LEONARD: And he has a high GPA. He's studying computer science and economics as well at an Ivy League, and he's already made two or three apps at college. And I said, "You're not Mark, so calm down." [laughter] But anyway, that was a recent conversation. I won't go there. But then some people say, "LS, you should be so happy." What is it? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But this was something he chose around 10 or 11. I'm like, whatever you want to do, you do; I'll support you no matter what. And his mom says, "Oh no, I think you programmed him to be like you." [laughs] I'm like, no, I can't do that. I just told him the truth about life. And he's pretty tall. VICTORIA: You must have -- LEONARD: He played basketball in high school a lot. I'm sorry? VICTORIA: I was going to say you must have inspired him. LEONARD: Yeah. Well, he's tall. He did emulate me in a lot of ways. I don't know why. I told him just be yourself. But yes, he does tell me I'm an inspiration to that; I think because of all the struggles I've gone through when I was younger. And you're always going through struggles. I mean, it's just who you are. I tell people, you know, you're building a company. You have success. You can see the future, but sometimes people can't see it, [laughs] which I shouldn't really say, but I'm saying anyway because I do that. I said this the other night to some friends. I said, "Oh, Jeff Bezo's rocket blew up," going, you know, Blue Origin rocket or something. And then I said Elon will tell Jeff, "Well, you only have one rocket blow up. I had three, [laughter] SpaceX had three." So these are billionaires talking to billionaires about, you know, most people don't even care. You're worth X hundred billion dollars. I mean, they're worth 100 billion-plus, right? VICTORIA: Right. LEONARD: I think Elon is around 260 billion, and Jeff is 160 or something. Who cares about your rocket blowing up? But it's funny because the issues are still always going to be there. I've learned that. I'm still learning. It doesn't matter how much wealth you have. You just want to create wealth for other people and better their lives. The more you search on bettering lives, you're just going to have to wake up every day, be humble with it, and treat it as a new day and go forward and solve the next crisis or problem because there will be one. There is not where there are no problems, is what I'm trying to say, this panacea or a utopia where you personally, like, oh yeah, I have all this wealth and health, and I'm just great. Because Elon has had divorce issues, so did Jeff Bezos. So I told my son a lot about this, like, you never get to this world where it's perfect in your head. You're always going to be doing things. VICTORIA: That sounds like an accurate future prediction if I ever heard one. [laughs] Like, there will be problems. No matter where you end up or what you choose to do, you'll still have problems. They'll just be different. [laughs] LEONARD: Yeah, and then this is for women and men. It means you don't give up. You just keep hope alive, and you keep going. And I believe personally in God, and I'm a scientist who actually does. But I look at it more in a Godly aspect. But yeah, I just think you just keep going, and you keep building because that's what we do as humanity. It's what we've done. It's why we're here. And we're standing on the shoulders of giants, and I just always considered that from physicists and everyone. VICTORIA: Great. And if people are interested in building something with you, you have that opportunity right now to invest via the crowdfunding app, correct? LEONARD: Yes, yes, yes. They can do that because the company is still the same company because eventually, we're going to branch out. My complete vision for AIEDC is using artificial intelligence for economic development, and that will spread horizontally, not just vertically. Vertically right now, just focus on just a mobile app maker digitization and get...because there are so many businesses even globally, and I'm not talking only e-commerce. So when I say small to midsize business, it can be a service business, car insurance, health insurance, anything. It doesn't have to be selling a particular widget or project, you know, product. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that, you know, interest rates and consumerism. But I'm not thinking about Shopify, and that's fine, but I'm talking about small businesses. And there's the back office which is there are a lot of tools for back offices for small businesses. But I'm talking about they create their own mobile app more as a way to communicate with their customers, update them with their customers, and that's key, especially if there are disruptions. So let's say that there have been fires in California. In Mississippi or something, they're out of water. In Texas, last year, they had a winter storm, electricity went out. So all of these things are disruptions. This is just in the U.S., And of course, I won't even talk about Pakistan, what's going on there and the flooding and just all these devastating things, or even in China where there's drought where there are these disruptions, and that's not counting COVID disrupts, the cycle of business. It literally does. And it doesn't bubble up until later when maybe the central banks and governments pay attention to it, just like in Japan when that nuclear, unfortunately, that nuclear meltdown happened because of the earthquake; I think it was 2011. And that affected that economy for five years, which is why the government has lower interest rates, negative interest rates, because they have to try to get it back up. But if there are tools and everyone's using more mobile apps and wearables...and we're going to go to the metaverse and all of that. So the internet of things can help communicate that. So when these types of disruptions happen, the flow of business can continue, at least at a smaller level, for an affordable cost for the business. I'm not talking about absorbing costs because that's meaningless to me. VICTORIA: Yeah, well, that sounds like a really exciting project. And I'm so grateful to have this time to chat with you today. Is there anything else you want to leave for our listeners? LEONARD: If they want to get involved, maybe they can go to our crowdfunding page, or if they've got questions, ask about it and spread the word. Because I think sometimes, you know, they talk about the success of all these companies, but a lot of it starts with the founder...but not a founder. If you're talking about a startup, it starts with the founder. But it also stops with the innovators that are around that founder, male or female, whoever they are. And it also starts with their community, building a collective community together. And that's why Silicon Valley is always looked at around the world as this sort of test case of this is how you create something from nothing and make it worth great value in the future. And I think that's starting to really spread around the world, and more people are opening up to this. It's like the crowdfunding concept. I think it's a great idea, like more podcasts. I think this is a wonderful idea, podcasts in and of themselves, so people can learn from people versus where in the past you would only see an interview on the business news network, or NBC, or Fortune, or something like that, and that's all you would understand. But this is a way where organically things can grow. I think the growth will continue, and I think the future's bright. We just have to know that it takes work to get there. VICTORIA: That's great. Thank you so much for saying that and for sharing your time with us today. I learned a lot myself, and I think our listeners will enjoy it as well. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobot.fm. You can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Leonard S. Johnson.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. 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Neil Macqueen is a leading industrial designer with 78 patents to his name, having previously spent ten years at Dyson and is now the Head of Design at Gembah, the world's first global marketplace for product development. Chad talks to Neil about being focused on industrial design or actual physical products as opposed to interfaces and digital products, working designers and developers, and design to manufacture as a process. Gembah Follow Gembah on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube. Follow Neil on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Neil Macqueen, a leading industrial designer with 78 patents to his name, having previously spent ten years at Dyson and who is now the Head of Design at Gembah, the world's first global marketplace for product development. Neil, thank you so much for joining me. NEIL: Oh, it's great to be here with you today, Chad. Thank you for having me. CHAD: One distinction I feel like we always need to make, and this is one of the things we struggle with at thoughtbot; people want to put themselves out in the community and say, "Here's what I do," and people use the word product design. And there's actually a pretty big, you know, some designers are, or product developers are industrial design physical products and others are digital. What do you do at Gembah? NEIL: For me, myself, what I do at Gembah explicitly is far more focused around industrial design or actual physical products as opposed to interfaces and digital products. CHAD: And as the world's, you know, the self-described first global marketplace for product development, what does that actually mean? NEIL: What it means is that Gembah provides a platform in which anybody with an idea or an aspiration to even have an idea has a single source by which you can tap into all the resources you need to get your product to market. So I think a good metaphor for it would be that it's very easy for myself, yourself, any of the listeners today to become a seller. Like, I can set myself up with an eBay or an Amazon account this afternoon and start selling a product. There are very low barriers to doing that. Whereas if you want to become a product creator, that is a very disjointed process. And what you'll see from large companies like my experience at Dyson and other companies is that they have a vertically integrated business. They own each part of that product creation, development, engineering, production, logistics. It is all very integrated. And what we try and do and provide to creators is that single integrated structure by which you can have an idea, work with a designer, develop that in conjunction with a manufacturer, and then very seamlessly move over into your production and logistics. CHAD: You mentioned Dyson, and you spent ten years there and moved through various design roles. I definitely want to touch on that in a little bit. But what attracted you to Gembah? NEIL: I think, as with all people who are interested in ideas, whether digital or physical, it's the process of creating something that really attracted me, has attracted me to all my roles in the past, and certainly to Gembah. In as much as what I just described previously, it is a world first, like, it is a category-defining company. So I think what really attracted me to Gembah was the fact that what we're doing here is not only building lots of very interesting products and helping entrepreneurs, and product creators, and businesses, but what we're doing is developing a platform which is entirely unique and one of its kind. CHAD: I have to admit, I did a little bit of research on you, as I always do. And I looked at your Twitter, and I saw that a lot of your tweets were, I think, back from 2016, where you yourself designed...how would you describe it? A coffee press stand? NEIL: Exactly. And AeroPress stand. CHAD: Having been through that process and launching it on Kickstarter, is that part of what...you said I want to help other people do this. NEIL: Absolutely. And it is probably a very congregating experience in terms of people who go through crowdfunding campaigns and then try and do it yourself. And certainly, my experience, you know, Kickstarter is a wonderful platform. But everything thereafter for me as a creator doing something in my spare time and my evenings outside of my normal nine to five was incredibly challenging, you know, dealing with factories who had very broken English or really struggled to communicate both my idea and their complications accurately. And just how that unfolded into trying to get a product to market without somebody to help and guide me through that process, doing it entirely by yourself. So I think that was certainly a very challenging experience in terms of getting that coffee stand to market. And I think the same is true for lots of first-time creators and even businesses in trying to reduce costs, up efficiency of getting to market quickly. Like, who are the partners and people that you can work with and businesses you can partner with to help provide you with those benefits? And that's really what we try and provide at Gembah. And I think, as you mentioned at the start, certainly my past experiences make me think that what we're building here today certainly does bring a lot of benefit. CHAD: I've had quite a few people on the show who launched physical products themselves on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms. And often, the conversation turns to how difficult it actually was from a supply chain perspective from a manufacturing perspective. One of the things that struck me about Gembah is that it is not a small operation. It has headquarters in the U.S, but team members live and work all over the world. Their website says there are 150-plus team members globally, so given that reach, it seems like it probably can be really helpful to people solving those challenges. I'm curious who the ideal customers of Gembah are. What is the profile of someone who works with Gembah? NEIL: For our ideal client at the moment, I think that's one topic, and we can go into that. But what we're really trying to do in terms of the company vision is to democratize the design process and creating a product that gets to market. So as much as for us as a company, you know, having gone through a series A funding round and heading towards a series B, yes, we have got a fairly focused view of who is our ideal client profile and persona. However, what we're really aiming towards is providing this vertically integrated system of design and marketplace resources to absolutely everybody. That is the vision, the vision that anybody can become a product creator for the first time. In as much as, like my metaphor said earlier, you can become a seller on eBay, you should be able to have as easy access to the resources that enable that product creation. CHAD: So there's an example I always like to use; it has legs a little bit, which is thoughtbot is a well-respected design and development company. And there's an opportunity, you know, we're working designers and developers. And as people who do this work, we often either buy products and see how they could be improved or have ideas for our own, whether it be notepads, or pens, or even mechanical keyboards are a really interesting thing. If we wanted to pursue something like that, how might we do that? NEIL: In the context of Gembah? CHAD: Yeah, or beyond. But yes. NEIL: So I think the first thing for anybody with an idea is to really have some very clear goals at the outset in terms of...and for anybody who is interested in user-centered design, three of the guiding principles for that are three things I always really lean on which is feasibility, viability, and desirability. So within all of those things, what are your ambitions for your product? In terms of ideally, every product should be desirable; people should want to buy it. Have you got the means by which to get it to market? And once you've got it there, will it provide you enough of a margin to have a sustainable business? So the viability of the product. And can you actually make it? You know, it's not made out of unobtainium, or it [laughter] might be. So I think a very easy starting point for absolutely everybody is to really go via those three guiding principles in terms of the desirability, viability, and feasibility of your idea. Where do you think you score on that matrix? And then if you think you really have got something in terms of an idea that really has merit and that you have the wherewithal that you want to see it through to fruition, certainly just picking up the phone and calling Gembah, that's a great second step. CHAD: Okay. So at Gembah, if someone picks up the phone before going through those three steps and is talking to you, do you help them take a step back and answer those three questions? NEIL: Absolutely. So I think what we really try and do is not only facilitate your product development journey. We're not a service provider; we're a service facilitator. We want to connect you with all of the resources within our platform and marketplace. And what we really try and steer towards is what is the product development journey that best suits your needs. And I think, typically speaking, if we were to use a broad brush, it falls into three camps which is, do you want to speed to market? And the fact you want to sell an idea very quickly. So, could you potentially white-label your product? So we provide these options to people. So there's a white labeling route. There's then a customized route which is to say, is there something fairly similar already commercially available in the market and that factories provide, and that you could adjust the feature set for your idea by perhaps 10%? That would actually then mean that you could get your idea customized in the factory and into market. So that's the customized route. Versus then an entirely unique product which is to say that you need to both develop the design and tooling for the product from the ground up. Intuitively, I would hope from white labeling all the way through to unique product development; you have a fairly matched scale of time and cost. The more involved, the more detail, the more unique, the more time, and the more cost proportionally increases. CHAD: How would you say that designing within a company like Dyson is different than being outside? NEIL: The thing that working for a company like Dyson and others like it really affords you is the freedom to research without the means of having to really focus on what is my next launch in a year's time. And what I mean by that is Dyson and other large, successful companies have exclusive product development innovation hubs and idea teams who, for every 100 products they develop, potentially only get one through to market and into the global markets. So I think as a designer, what you're really afforded there is the space and creativity to explore lots of ideas without the pressure of I have to have something out in this next six-month period into the market. I think that's very different to a small to medium-sized enterprise who have a set product line, and this may be your only product line. Like, you really need to be laser-focused in what is my incremental product development here so that I can maintain the attention of the public? As well as then trying to work concurrently on how do I evolve my product line to then broaden out my audience? So I think that's quite different in terms you have to be very focused. MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you’re tight on time and investment, which is why we’ve created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product’s next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. CHAD: You started at Dyson as a design engineer, and you moved through up into a senior design engineer, then concept lead, to design manager of new product innovation. What was the journey from design engineer to eventually design manager? And what are the differences between those roles? NEIL: I think the key thing that changes within those roles is the level of autonomy and responsibility. And I think what scales up through each of those rungs is essentially how you can demonstrate competency for your core responsibility set. So as a design engineer, you're responsible for part-level designs like, here is, you know, you mentioned the mechanical keyboard earlier in the conversation. In that scenario, you would have a team of potentially four design engineers seeing that through to fruition. You would have a subset of those parts which you're exclusively responsible for. CHAD: So you might just be responsible for designing the best keycaps. NEIL: Exactly, exactly. So one chap will be just looking at the springs, and the tension, and how do they feel. Another one will be looking at the structural integrity; another one will be looking at the ergonomics. So I think you have the individual part and function. And what then levels up from that is as you go then into an advanced design engineer or a senior engineer is that you begin being responsible for the full assembly. So instead of having your keycap, you're now responsible for leading the whole team doing the whole keyboard. And then as you then progress through that, having demonstrated competency and reliability of delivering things, you then become a concept lead, which is to say that you have multiple projects on at the same time. You're leading the teams to do that. And then as you progress through that into design and management role, you then level that up again in terms of you're typically managing portfolios of projects within different market sectors. So I think if that answers your question directly enough, what it really builds on is for anyone aspiring, is you really need to focus on the basics first, like making sure that you are fundamentally a good designer and a good engineer who can demonstrate and communicate your logic and your thought process. And I think if you already underpin yourself with those sorts of fundamental competencies, that serves you really well as you move up through the ranks. CHAD: Some people I talk with, as they move up through those ranks, they feel like they are getting further and further away from what they actually love to do, which was design products. Is that something that you felt, or how did you not feel that? NEIL: I think as you move up through the management hierarchy, at the same time, typically the people that do that, I find and who are successful at it have a fairly focused view of what are their goals, what are they trying to achieve, and what is almost their trademark that they're known for. So for myself, how I've avoided that is...you asked me why I'm interested in Gembah, and that's because what I have very instinctively done both at Dyson and here is make sure that I've positioned myself to solve real problems. Probably everybody in a senior management position sometimes still misses getting on CAD or coding and just having the afternoon with no meetings. [laughs] CHAD: Yeah. NEIL: I think there's an element of that that you can't get away from. However, what really enthuses and keeps me really engaged and motivated in what I am doing now is to say I'm still solving problems, which is the fundamental heart of everything. So instead of designing the best keyboard for somebody who has carpal syndrome or hand problems, what we're now designing and developing is a platform that solves problems for a whole very broad user base. As long as you are always focused in your role in terms of how can I best serve and provide solutions to problems, I think what people will find is that you're actually always very fulfilled as a creator, maybe not as a mechanical engineer or electrical engineer, depending on your background, or a coder. But if you're fundamentally interested in solving problems and bringing solutions, you can still hold on to that very tightly. CHAD: Yeah. As head of design now, what does your day-to-day look like? NEIL: The majority of what it looks like is what I almost just mentioned with regards to how are we both developing and sustaining a business that provides and develops better solutions for our clientele as well as then dipping in and out of projects which require support and a little bit of extra attention? As I mentioned, as a design manager at Dyson, looking across portfolios of projects. My role now is really around making sure that all of our category leads, who are people looking after multiple projects that they, all have the support and tools that they need and require, as well as, as I mentioned, in particular cases, giving attention to some design projects that need help. And then roadmapping out, like, what is the future? What are the next incremental steps of functionality and platform features that we want to develop as a company and facilitate and bring to market for our customers? CHAD: What are some of those things that you're seeing across the portfolio that are needs that you're hoping to meet? NEIL: I think a very interesting new thing that we're bringing to market at the moment is what we call design to manufacture as a process. And what we really try and do there is we see in the market at the moment that people have a real sensitivity around cost-effectiveness with the global economies where they're at and supply chain. Like, how do I, number one, potentially diversify my supply chain? Or number two, how do I actually launch a new product with as little cost to myself as a business as possible? And what we do there is a report, a product opportunity report that profiles you as a business and a brand, and then overlaps that almost in a Venn diagram of where's the sweet spot in terms of available products in the markets that you could customize that would really suit your brand and that we could really effectively customize, and develop with a manufacturer and with a design team and get to market really quick, really cheap, but is still uniquely your own and has your special touch to it? CHAD: Obviously, a thing that has happened in this market or this industry over the last decade or so is crowdfunding and Kickstarter specifically. How have you seen that change things for people? NEIL: I think what it's meant is people get access to funds in a way that would have taken a very long time previously. And I think the other thing is people get feedback on ideas quite quickly as well, which maybe isn't the case across the broad spectrum. But for people who have an idea and want to very quickly test it with the markets in terms of does, this resonate with my user groups that I'm interested in? Like, is this a real set of user problems which I believe I've solved? Is that actually true? I think what it's provided product, you know, industrial design is typically, or any other type of product creator is this very quick access to people with capital who can invest and seeing their products through to fruition, which otherwise was actually a really hard and arduous task, not only getting feedback but then trying to raise capital separately. CHAD: In your opinion, what's the ideal point that something actually goes to crowdfunding? NEIL: The ideal timing for your crowdfunding campaign is where you have the first iterations of a working and demonstrated functional prototype where it's not just all idea but that you can demonstrate the fact that you're committed to this, that you can demonstrate the functionality of it, and show that you've considered how it's going to be made and that it's not actually going to change massively. Because I think what you can sometimes see is people can go to Kickstarter prematurely. And then when they're actually getting into the manufacturer of the product, there are some fairly large compromises that need to be made or the fact that the idea isn't feasible and they can't make it. The ideal time to go to a Kickstarter is where you've already thought through all your user scenarios. You've got a very clear perspective on what the problem set is that you're solving and that you can then demonstrate that with a working prototype. And that doesn't need to be pretty or visually pleasing because you can have your beautiful render next to your functional prototype. I think that's a great time. CHAD: And concrete information on the feasibility of manufacturing it. NEIL: Absolutely. So I think in part of informing your working prototype, I think you need to have early what you'd call DFM, design for manufacture feedback which is where you've spoken to a manufacturer or a tooling engineer and said, "What are the key considerations I should take into building this assembly?" And often is, the case for people who perhaps haven't gone down that road very, very far is that there are some fairly significant adjustments that you need to make to either the visuals or the functionality of your design. At least having a few initial conversations with those factories very clearly integrated into your product considerations is really, really critical. CHAD: So I have to ask, is there something that you're personally pursuing now and working on? NEIL: At the moment, not via Kickstarter. I think the thing actually I'm doing in my spare time is a bit of a passion project with regards to furniture. I think certainly, from my perspective, every designer can pay homage to architecture as the mother of all design. What more is an in-depth user experience and journey than the spaces we're all sitting in every day? And a big part of that is furniture. So I'm designing an armchair in my spare time. This is a way to, [laughs] as you mentioned earlier, with my current role as how it is just making sure I keep sharp my sketching skills and design skills, even if it's just for myself. CHAD: What does that look like for you? Is it sketching on paper now? And how far do you think you'll take it? NEIL: At the moment, it's just sketching on paper and asking my kids which ones they like, they dislike. [laughter] And I think, thankfully, with the abilities I've developed and some of the resources I have access to, we'll probably build a functioning prototype just so I can have a nice new armchair in the kitchen. CHAD: Does that mean creating it yourself, or what does that look like? NEIL: Again, I can only speak for myself. But being a creator and having come from my past, as we mentioned at Dyson, I think my true passion is creation, so keeping my hands very familiar with materials and screwing things together. So I think what that will look like for me is actually just getting all the raw materials myself within the woodwork, the metalwork, and doing all that work myself. I haven't got much of a passion yet for upholstery, so I'll probably outsource that part. There's something really rewarding in physically making something with your hands which I've never let go of, and I think I'll always enjoy. CHAD: That's great. I want to come back, as we wrap up, to those three pillars that you outlined, which I thought were really great. What does someone do who's really passionate about the idea that they have, but they hit roadblocks on one or more of those pillars? NEIL: Hmm, if somebody wants to start just themselves and you have an idea, and you don't want to necessarily engage with a company or service providers yet, I think what you can really do and start with is engaging with groups and doing research yourself so around desirability and feasibility. There is a world of products and reviews out there. There are a lot of resources there. So what I would encourage if somebody has said...you know, let's use your keyboard example again. CHAD: Yep. NEIL: What are the best-selling keyboards out there? And is there a silver lining in between all of them in terms of what makes them sell so well? Is it their functionality? Is it their design? Is it the ergonomics? So I think people can really do a lot of research around what develops and constitutes a really desirable product. As well as then in terms of the feasibility, like, are the things you're putting together can you find them freely on, say, a website like Alibaba? Or can you fundamentally make a keyboard out of wood at scale? Again, there are a lot of resources online that you can do for yourself. And then around viability in terms of, like, what would your margins have to be? Again, I think there's quite a lot you can do there with yourself with regards to what is available on the market today? What are their unique selling points? What are their suggested selling prices? And where do you think you could competitively position yourself? Typically, how I find that works out is a matrix of ideas. And I think people really need to not be precious about the one idea they have but really be adventurous around, like, what are all the ways that I could potentially solve for this problem set? And then just market against that matrix of desirability, feasibility, and viability and see which one is enough of all of those that actually gives you your best shot at success? I think, typically, you see a lot of creators who are very precious about an idea. And actually, maybe, again, it's entirely machined out of aluminum. Well, you know, you're really going to struggle to make that at a competitive price. CHAD: Right. You're not necessarily Apple. [laughs] NEIL: Exactly. You haven't got that economy of scale available to you. [laughs] So I think having a very clear goal in terms of, like, where do I think I can position this in the market? Do I think people will like it? And could I make it for that much? CHAD: Yeah, I think that that's true across the entire spectrum of digital and physical product design and development. We work with a lot of founders who have an idea. And compromise problem-solving through the many challenges that you face is critical. And if you're not able to do that, it's very difficult to actually get a product to market in any reasonable time frame or financial sustainability. NEIL: I completely agree. CHAD: Well, I really appreciate you stopping by the show and sharing with us, Neil. NEIL: Thank you so much for having me today. It's been a great conversation, and I've really enjoyed it. CHAD: If folks want to get in touch with you, or follow along, or learn more about Gembah or anything else, where are all the different places that they can do that? NEIL: So you can certainly find and connect with me on LinkedIn if anyone would like to follow up with me personally. And if you're really serious about getting a product to market and engaging around that process, you can just look us up at gembah.com. CHAD: And I can also personally say if you like looking at pretty things for inspiration, Neil's Instagram is also pretty good for that. [laughter] You can subscribe to the show and find notes for everything that we just mentioned, along with links and a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Neil Macqueen.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you’re tight on time and investment, which is why we’ve created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product’s next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneursSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Chloe Sweden is the Founder and CEO of Plants and Perks, a service for rewarding employees with sustainable perks. Chad talks to Chloe about supporting employees on plant-based sustainability journies by gifting free samples and high-value prizes, choosing a co-founder, and being strategic with the types of businesses they've approached. Plants and Perks Follow Plants and Perks on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Chloe on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Chloe Sweden, the Founder, and CEO of Plants and Perks, a service for rewarding employees with sustainable perks. Chloe, thank you so much for joining me. CHLOE: Thank you for having me. CHAD: So you officially started Plants and Perks, at least according to your LinkedIn, in July of 2020. But I'm sure, like many entrepreneurs, you incubated the idea. The idea was in your head for longer than that. So, where does the idea from Plants and Perks come from? And when did you start to noodle it? CHLOE: It's a really, really good question. I also think that the LinkedIn algorithm isn't 100% correct. CHAD: [laughs] CHLOE: And it always seems to add time. I always get this sort of like, "Oh my God, you've been doing this for like two years?" I'm like, "No, I'm sure it can't be. It must be shorter than that." So Plants and Perks, Plants and Perks originally started out life as the Green Shoot Institute, which, I think, if you Google us, still there's remnants of the Green Shoot Institute that exists. That is still our company holding name. And that was kind of, I guess, the first thought of the idea. I was at the time heading up commercial relationships at a large parenting platform in the UK. And we had started to go on our own plant-based journey, so thinking about cutting back on meat and dairy consumption. I guess that was sort of my own personal journey that started to make me, as a parent, and as a consumer, and as a senior leader within business to, start to think about things outside of myself, and my family, and my business. And really, that was kind of the spark of thinking about how we, as employers, don't really do much to support employees on the plant-based sustainability journey. That was the sort of the embryo of the idea. And that came from the fact that I had spent 20 years of my life in advertising, marketing, and then ten years within that in talent as a former head of talent and culture really thinking about how we embed talent and how we help employees, and how culture is so important to businesses, and how we get employees really to be the face of our brands. But we don't really do much to invest in people beyond the kind of traditional benefits that exist but also in terms of training and things like that. That was kind of where things were coming together, sort of thinking about the future of work and thinking about how people go through these huge life moments and how the businesses really support them. So that was kind of the start. I won't give the whole game away, but that was, I guess, the beginning of a kind of, hmm, there's something there. And I didn't really know what it was at the time. But yeah, I guess it wasn't so much before I actually incorporated the company. I incorporated in September 2020. That's what it says on my Company's House printout that I have on the wall just to remind me of when that momentous day happened. But pretty quickly, from coming up with an idea, I incorporated the business and just went, this is something I have to do. CHAD: Yeah, the feeling of this is something I have to do is something that I've felt myself and that I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs and guests of the show. You were working at Mumsnet at the time. How did you start while also having another job? CHLOE: Not just having another job, running a large sales team, and homeschooling two children during a pandemic. CHAD: Oh, homeschooling. Okay, yeah. CHLOE: And my son was definitely diagnosed with having additional needs at the time as well. I guess it was all of those things that kind of came together that made me realize, I mean, I had joined Mumsnet actually to head up Mumsnet's talent function, which was all about creating a flexible working product platform for parents and those looking for flexible jobs to bring them together in a marketplace. But Mumsnet wasn't going to actually continue to invest in that product, and I moved to a more commercial role. But I moved there to build a product. And that's what really triggered it for me. I realized in that moment when I'm homeschooling, and I'm running a large sales team, and I'm doing all of these things, that wasn't why I moved to this role. I actually moved because I'm at the point in my career where I want to build something, that I have it in me to create something, and build, and connect people, and do something bigger than myself and bigger than a day-to-day job. And so that itch was there. I was also, as part of that role, going out and speaking to heads of HR in large enterprise organizations and talking to them about what was troubling them. And funny enough, looking after their working parents was not troubling them, but sustainability came up a lot, and general well-being came up a lot. And so that was kind of, I guess, it started the percolation. But really, I guess with most things, the idea came about in its most embryonic stage, and then I took it to market really quickly. I basically gave it a name and then just reached out on LinkedIn to anybody I knew and people I didn't know as well just literally reached out to those people. And I spoke to one person who I won't name her or the company but probably one of the largest global companies in the world and at a very senior level. And she was actually working out of the States. And she said to me, you know, "This is new. [laughs] You need to do this. Nobody is doing this. We need this in our lives. And I haven't heard of anybody doing this in the States. You need to go and build this." And that was, I guess, the impetus to do it. And so I worked weekends. I actually was working four days a week at Mumsnet. But my fifth day, I was working full time for Mumsnet but not being paid. And so I clawed back my fifth day where I wasn't being paid, and I worked all weekends, and I worked all evenings. And I just worked and worked, and I haven't stopped until this conversation. [laughs] CHAD: To actually work on it, did you start to gather a team, a group of people? Who were the first people that you brought on to help you? CHLOE: So my co-founder, Ellen, we were on the senior leadership team of a creative agency. I was the head of talent and culture. She was the head of operation. So we had worked side by side in this organization. So we kept in touch. And she had contacted me about some health issues. And we were talking about cutting back on meat and dairy as one of the things that she could look at, given my own experiences with it. And that really bonded us. And because I am marketing, sales, creative, and she is digital, tech, product, it kind of made sense, in the beginning, to bring her on. And I just said to her like, "I'd really like you on this journey with me." And she resisted it for quite some time. [laughs] We are very different personality-wise, very, very different. I'm yes, she's no, and so in that way, we're very much yin and yang. CHAD: Oh, but I think that that can be the perfect combination for a co-founder team. I know that I've needed that in the past for myself. Someone who balances the risk-taking with reality can be very helpful. CHLOE: Yeah, absolutely. And I think I'm actually not a risk taker, but I am a natural optimist. And so I'll have a meeting, and I'll be like, "It's amazing. It's solved all of our problems." And she'll be just like, "No, it hasn't. What's changed? Nothing's changed. There's no contract, nothing signed," [laughs] which I think in the moment is really not helpful. [laughs] But it's really helpful as we grow the business. It really is a good balance. I bring all of that energy and drive to get us very quickly to the next level. And she brings all of the understanding, all of the pauses, all of the rigor, all of the data, all the things that are just the complete opposite of me. So I brought her on pretty quickly. And then we had a bit of a false start around getting a CTO on board. But we knew we needed to build the product quickly. And in the end, we built the product ourselves on a no-code/low-code platform, just the two of us. And I recommend any entrepreneur to do that because you learn a lot. [laughs] CHAD: Is that the reason...so you learning...because I think that that is super important, whether it be someone like yourself actually building the product or just being very close to it. When I've seen entrepreneurs get too far away from the product too soon, they end up regretting it later on. CHLOE: Yeah, I think -- CHAD: Or building the wrong thing. CHLOE: Or building the wrong thing. I do really believe in you've got to do every job in order to then understand who you need to hire and to then have an appreciation of that role. So obviously the product evolved very much and very quickly. We were very lucky that one of our first clients was Lacoste, who we launched to here in the UK with our MVP. But we also did some other paid consultancy work with Uber and with other clients as well. And then PopSockets came on in the States as well. We weren't ready to launch in the States, but they really wanted us to. So we're like, you know, let's do it. [laughs] CHAD: I noticed those three names on your website. And I do think that social...being able to have those testimonials there with names people recognize lends a lot of credibility to the product. CHLOE: And they were my first three clients, [laughs] genuinely my first three clients. CHAD: So, did you seek that out, or did it just happen? How did that work out? CHLOE: Obviously, my background is commercial sales, so it's not something that I shy away from. It was connections; it was talking to people. And we were recommended to PopSockets, which was amazing. They came on as an early investor as well, which was phenomenal. Again, having clients who love what you do so much they want to invest is brilliant because you get to have some really interesting conversations and backers in your corner. But yeah, of course, we've been quite strategic with the types of businesses that we've approached, but we are very lucky that we are attracting the right type of businesses as well, which is lovely. I mean, talk a little bit more about what Plants and Perks does, but the way in which we have evolved the product and evolved the types of clients that we're talking to is not an accident. And I think it goes back to the conversation we were just having about building the product yourself. Really being in the weeds, I think, is really important. Now, it's going to be a challenge to me as a founder moving forward to make sure I'm extricating myself from the weeds as time goes on, although I'm pretty happy to step away when needed. [laughs] But knowing that and being able to talk to your clients and being really clear, well, this is what this client likes; this is what's happening here; this is what's working well here, I think is really important. You've got to know your product. You've got to know your audience. We've got two...actually, we have three clients, technically. We have clients; we have employees; we have client employers; we have employees; and we also have Perks' partners. We have sustainable...we promote sustainable products and services on our platform. So we also have partners as well as our clients. And I think you've got to know them all really well. Now, I was a head of talent and culture, so I know the employee piece quite well because I was always advocating for the employee. I spent 20 years downsizing, so I ran client accounts. So I know how to look after clients, I guess, from that perspective and work in large organizations. I also used to literally do the marketing for PepsiCo and Wrigley's and big brands. So I can do the partner piece quite well. And I think it's really important that you've done that and you've lived through it. And I've never built a tech product, but I did literally roll my sleeves up and get stuck in to build the MVP, which was kind of the bit that I was missing. Now, I haven't built the app; that is beyond me. [laughs] But luckily, we've got a brilliant team around us now, which we've built up since our last raise that's enabled us to get that talent in. And yeah, and it's just been an amazing team effort to get us to where we are now. CHAD: That's great. I want to dig into more about what the product actually is. But you've already alluded a couple of times -- CHLOE: No, let's keep it mysterious. [laughter] CHAD: You've alluded a few times to the evolution. And one thing that's stuck out to me as you were talking about that is that going to the website now; it's not specifically about eating less meat and dairy. You're talking more about sustainability. CHLOE: Yes. CHAD: I'm sure that's still a component of it. CHLOE: 100%. CHAD: But what drove that change? CHLOE: Oh my God, [laughs] about a two-week period where we had an existential crisis. I think this is really interesting, I think, for our journey, and I think us as founders as well. So we ideologically always believed in the reduction of meat and dairy as the number one thing you can do for personal and planetary health. That's it. Like, that was it. We were all about eat plants, get perks. We encourage employees to cut back on their meat and dairy consumption, and we reward them with plant-based perks. That was the product. That was the concept. Tested really well. People really bought into it. People liked that they were being rewarded with perks. They absolutely understood that it is unsustainable to consume meat and dairy in the way that we are moving forward for the planet and also for personal health. So when we're having these conversations, everyone was like, thumbs up, get it, love it, buy into it, it's all great. And then what was happening is that I kind of got to a point where I was like, we've had all these really positive conversations, but no one's biting. Everyone's sort of saying yes to me and then nothing. I'm actually really proud of us as a team for very, very quickly going and identifying the problem and fixing it because we could have stuck to our ideological guns and gone, no, no, no, but we are all about the reduction of meat and dairy consumption as the number one thing. But no one was telling us that it was that that was the problem. What we had to do was read between the lines because nobody would ever tell us that. But what they would say was, "Well, how would it land with a 58-year-old man working in our distribution center?" And we're like, "Really well, why?" [laughter] But I had to understand what was coming behind that question. And what was coming behind the question was I don't want to launch a benefit where I feel like we're judging somebody's life choices. Like, that's not going to wash. So the people we were talking to were super keen on it, then when they took it up the line, they were essentially saying, "Well, this is a plant-based benefit, Plants and Perks." And I think that's where the sort of record scratched, and it didn't go any further. But no one was feeding this back to us. This we had to discover ourselves. And so we had this kind of existential crisis where we're like, well, we've always been about sustainability, like, absolutely the reduction in meat and dairy is all because it's unsustainable for us to consume meat and dairy and fish in the way that we are. So why don't we broaden ourselves out to more? We already held sustainable products and services on our platform anyway. It was just the language; it really was. It wasn't actually as big a pivot as it sounded. It really was just softening the language. So we don't talk about plant-based; we talk about planet-friendly. And we just kind of expanded out some of the articles and content that we contained anyway. And that unblocked everything, like genuinely overnight unblocked everything. So it became something that what we were hearing was that companies wanted to introduce a new green benefit, and now they felt that they could because there wasn't the kind of...and we always said that this is non-judgmental. This is completely supportive. These are very small changes that you could make. You don't have to sort of introduce me to it. But now it makes sense to everybody. And I think we as a business just needed to go through that moment where we were like, is this the type of business that we want to be running? Is this the business that we want to be owning? And we were like, absolutely, because this is still...our mission actually didn't change at all. Our mission is to help a million employees live healthier, more sustainable lives. That has not changed. And so the fact that our mission hadn't changed, it was just some of the language needed to change to make it more palatable to a wider audience, that's fine. We could live with that. CHAD: Yeah, that's great. So now, what does that actually mean in terms of what the product is? Companies sign up. CHLOE: Yep. CHAD: And what do employees do? CHLOE: Yeah, so it's a really good question. So the other sort of big moment, I guess, inflection point that we had is that we introduced a freemium model. And that, from a product perspective, was quite a big thing because I started realizing in conversations as well we were giving too much value away. And actually, some of the value that we were giving away clients didn't necessarily want. Some clients really wanted it, and some clients didn't need it. And so we introduced three different products. So we introduced free, so we now have a completely free Plants and Perks app that any employer can take on for their employee base. And it will give them discounts of sustainable products and services. It will give them article content on how to live more sustainably, embrace more sustainable living. And it will give them planet-friendly recipes on essentially more sustainable, healthy ways to eat. And that's the core free product that we've created. CHAD: And are you still making revenue on that through partner relationship? CHLOE: Yeah, absolutely. So, although, you know, we're not about excess consumption. What we are about is...I think what we really realized is with Plants and Perks; we are bang smack in the middle of a cost of living crisis. And actually, what we can do is level the playing field when it comes to green and sustainable products. There's kind of like this green tax that gets applied. And what we're trying to do is very much look at price parity. So what we talk about is it's harder than ever to make the most sensible choices when costs are spiraling all around us. And so what the reductions of planet-friendly products does is enables you to just try things that you might not have tried before because of cost, and it mitigates against that. So we do go into relationship with partners, and they can promote their products through the platform. But there are also chances for employees to put their reviews and tell them what they think. So it isn't just set up for advertisers in that way at all. But what we found is there's an amazing thing which is that brands need to connect with a new, wider audience. They don't just want to talk to early adopters within the sustainability or plant-based space. And we are talking to every man and every woman in large-scale organizations. So it's actually quite difficult to access those people if you're these niche brands who may not even have listings necessarily in large retailers yet. Or if you do have distribution, it's really difficult to get a sell-through. So we enable those partners to offer sampling, to offer freebies, to offer significant discounts, and to offer in-store redemptions as well. So we are offering quite a significant route to market for sustainable and plant-based products and services. CHAD: That's great. Okay, and so what is the second tier up? CHLOE: The second tier is plus and what that gives you is we start to give employees plant points, and you collect plant points. It's incredibly gamified. You can collect badges. Every action you do basically has a reaction. So when you read an article, you basically can answer some questions on the article, and you'll be rewarded with points. You can rate a recipe; you can like a recipe, try a recipe. You can buy a product or a service. You can also get a free...in the UK, at the moment, you'll be able to get a free meal once a week, like a free lunch through one of our partners, and loads of freebies as well. So the value is much more significant in the plus model. That's kind of our core offering. And we talk about rewarding employees with sustainable perks. And during the time at the moment, employers are really looking for ways in which they can support their employees through the cost of living crisis. How can we give our employees free stuff, interesting stuff, whilst also helping them on the sustainability journey? And so therefore, this is something that genuinely really works for both employers and employees. So that's the plus model. CHAD: One thing I noticed as you lay out the benefits that you get under this model, I'm surprised then by the per-employee cost. It seemed very low to me [laughs] when I saw it. Can you talk more about that? CHLOE: Yeah, so that is a from price. And I do think I need to make it; I mean, I do say it's from, and I think I do say there's a bit of an asterisk. I do think I need to potentially change it as well. So it's good [laughs] feedback because I think quite a few people say that. So that is for large-scale employers. So we are talking to large retailers with 20,000, 30,000 40,000 employees. So that is the cost that they would pay. It is a sliding scale back from that cost. But, I mean, we've purposely priced ourselves to be reasonable. We are a mission-led company, and for any investors listening, don't worry; we are also revenue-generating. CHAD: [laughs] CHLOE: But for us, it's really important that we are an affordable benefit. We're very aware of the costs on everyone. So, for sure, that price is pretty low. But we think that it represents quite good value, incredible value for the client. But it's something that makes sense for them to bring on. It should be a no-brainer; that's basically what we say. Like, it's a no-brainer. In terms of the amount of freebies that you're getting for your employee, it's certainly a no-brainer in terms of the return on investment. On the pro version, by the way, the added value on the pro version is that it's fully ring-fenced for that organization. So it's fully branded. They get full account management. It looks like their platform, essentially. And employees can talk and access the information together. So it might be that Bob in IT in Denver has uploaded a photo of himself cycling to work, and somebody else can comment on it. Somebody else has uploaded a curry recipe in Scotland, and someone else has gone, "Well, I tried that recipe." "But, you know, how was it? How much chili did you put in it?" So people are kind of joining together and really creating that space to talk about sustainability in a much more accessible way. So that's the pro version. And also we're then building on sustainability metrics and also sustainability reporting. So we'll be able to talk about employees' own carbon footprint and also how that scales up to the overall company's sustainability goals. CHAD: You mentioned that the mission is to help one million employees on their sustainability journey. Can you tell me where you are [laughs] along that metric? CHLOE: Yeah. So, look, the app launch is tomorrow, so [laughs] ask me in a couple of months. And we're really...actually; we're genuinely new. CHAD: You've been in private beta, I guess, is the way to describe it. CHLOE: Yeah. We're basically with the MVP. We've been helping a couple of thousand employees up until this point. We got around 25,000. About 30-plus companies join our waiting list, which was then around 25,000-30,000 employees that represented. We've just confirmed that we're going to be launching with a very large retailer in the UK as well, so that will then -- CHAD: Congratulations. CHLOE: Thank you. That will then double, so it will be about 50,000 employees that we'll be hitting this year. And then we are in quite far down the line talks with quite a few other companies that would take us to potentially just under our target, which, by the way, the million employees is not like it's a target for 2022. It's like a...it's our ongoing mission. [laughs] CHAD: Right, a long-term vision. CHLOE: It's a long-term vision. So we're significantly further ahead than I thought we would be on that. I mean, look, what we've said from the start is the million is a sort of fairly arbitrary number but what it is is it's scale. So we're not here just to look after, you know, we're not here just to help very, very small companies; we can now with our free product, which is great, but it gives us that scale. And it shows that we, as a business, want to be global, want to be talking to enterprise clients and then helping them live healthier, more sustainable lives. For us, it's both of those things. You can't just live a healthy life, and you can't just live a sustainable life. It needs to be a life of purpose. And so the mission really keeps us true to those things. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it’s time to design, build and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Lift Off brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we’ll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today’s new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow, today. Get in touch at: thoughtbot.com/liftoff. CHAD: You mentioned you have essentially three client bases: you have the employers, the employees, and the partners, which essentially means you have a multi-sided marketplace. CHLOE: Yes. CHAD: And one of the challenges of building any marketplace, especially the more sides you have, is bootstrapping it, you know, creating a momentum. The partners want to know, hey, how many people are on the platform that we're going to be bringing into? And in the early days, you don't have much to offer there. So how have you made that work? CHLOE: Well, so firstly, we don't see ourselves as a marketplace, which we should. [laughter] We should see ourselves as a marketplace. Secondly, I learned all about building a marketplace because, in 2010, I launched a dating app before there were apps. Actually, it was a dating website...and completely on my own. It was complete madness. And I totally did not understand the power of a network. I didn't understand the marketplace dynamic. I didn't understand that you needed buyers and you needed sellers. You needed, in this case, men seeking women and women seeking men. [laughs] You needed both sides of the equation. And you needed volume on both sides straight out of the gate. I just didn't get that. I was like, build it, and they will come. [laughs] And so I was fully burnt from that experience. So that was still ringing in my head. So I think what was important was building up, firstly, building up our partners. So it was really, really important to build up the number of partners that we have on the platform. And for them, it's a completely low-risk strategy. It's like, come on the platform and offer discounts and people who are interested in sustainability. Like, that's really easy. We can do that. And then for the companies, we've got everything...beyond the partners, we still have loads and loads of value. We still have value in the articles. We still have value in the gamification. We have value in the recipe. So there's still value even if there wasn't value in the perks. But what we've done is we've been able to build up both sides. So actually, we've got over 200 brands, which represents about 45,000-plus individual discounts on the platform. And now we're building up the number of employees. Now we're able to revenue generate more off the partners because we've got the volume on the other side. CHAD: You mentioned that you are primarily focused on the UK now. But you've had interest from the U.S. and demand that you've not rejected. What does that look like for you now? And how do you balance that going forward? CHLOE: Yeah, I have got quite a lot of interest from the States. And it's really hard not to be pulled over there. And we see a lot of interest from there. We have to -- CHAD: Why are you holding back? CHLOE: Because we just don't have the team size at the moment, and we need to get the...there's two things really. Well, there are a number of things. There are about 22 things. [laughter] I know I said there are two things; there are like a million reasons. We need to make sure that we've got the best product possible; that's number one. We need to test in our home market. We need to make sure that we've got the robust mechanic with the Perk's partners and with the employees. We need to get all of that working really well because the States is a completely different market because of the nature of the products and services. We're not on the ground there. So it's easier for us to have really good relationships with partners now. There's going to be a conference on Wednesday in London, so I'm going to be meeting a lot of our partners there; super easy. It's like 20 minutes on the train for me. Harder to go to the States and make sure that we have really robust relationships with partners there; not impossible, just it would be time and effort to be able to build it in the States. I think we'd be able to find the clients actually more easily or, I guess, quicker if that makes sense because I think there's a need in the States. And then there are just cultural nuances. So we just need to make sure that all of our content is really relevant culturally. So PopSockets, we are with PopSockets in the States, and I think they're quite fairly near you in Boulder. So we are already aware of some of those cultural nuances. And our editorial teams are quite good at making sure that we're representing that. So, yeah, so I think it's just about making sure that we do a good job of it. The hard thing, I think, is actually launching across Europe because of the language barrier and because of the very different cultural nuances when it comes to sustainability, local government policy. CHAD: Also, expectations around employee benefits and how they work. CHLOE: Exactly. Expectations around employee benefits and also attitudes to food as well because obviously food is still a part of what we do, and so all of those things actually make Europe slightly harder. So I think, for us, it would be a launch to the U.S. before we would go to continental Europe, but, again, not impossible. Interestingly, our clients massively want us to be global quickly because they are all looking for global benefits. They want to be able to homogenize their benefits offerings globally. They do not want to have one thing being offered in the UK, something being offered in the States, especially when it comes to benefits. Things like pensions, things like healthcare are so different in those countries, and they won't change. Just in terms of how many holiday days you guys have versus us, they can't make it a level playing field on many things. So if they could have a level playing field when it comes to sustainable benefits, they would love to do that. So there is a real need driving us to go global very quickly. And, look, going right back to the conversation we had at the beginning, I'd do it tomorrow. I'd move my family to the U.S. and just start building it. But my very kind advisors are like, slow down. [laughs] Get it right in the UK. CHAD: Well, I think that is a good indicator that you do have a marketplace business because all of the pressures around scaling are the same ones that marketplaces have. CHLOE: Yeah. [laughs] CHAD: And marketplace businesses very often benefit from in the early days focusing on specific markets. CHLOE: No, you're 100% right. I think I've had an epiphany on this podcast [laughter] that I'm running a marketplace. CHAD: I want to come back to the actual tech of the product as we wrap up here. I'm super impressed that you used a low-code platform to build the MVP yourself, and that has taken you through today. So how did you go about moving beyond that? CHLOE: [laughs] So we always knew we'd have to ditch it, so we were very aware. And that's the beauty of doing an MVP which is you don't fall in love with it. So that was great because we knew we were going to ditch it. We didn't fall in love with it. So how did we go about it? So we've got ourselves...we got a CTO on board that Ellen had worked with before. And we've got an amazing UX-UI designer. And we've got some devs. And we just ran at it. We just said, right, what are we taking from the MVP that we want to put into...and we knew it had to be an app really quickly. We actually weren't going to develop the app this year, but then it was sort of, you know, the demand there was all for the app. So we've gone app first. So we just said, "What's important from the MVP that we want to be taking here?" We knew that perks was going to be the first thing that we wanted to launch with because of the cost of living crisis. And we wanted to make it really about perks, which is why I know it sounds silly when it's obvious to you that we're a marketplace. It actually isn't that obvious to us because before perks, none of those things are marketplace. All of the other products and services that we offer aren't marketplace. CHAD: You mean the content and that kind of thing. CHLOE: The content, the gamification. We've got a whole thing coming down the line all about how to calculate your carbon footprint. Like, none of that is marketplace. But because we've really leant heavily on the perks because we know that there's a massive need for that, I guess that's why it's a surprise to me [laughs] that we're a marketplace. But yeah, so we knew we wanted to get perks out first. So then we built a product with perks at the heart because that was testing really well. And then yeah, and then we've just kind of literally just gone hell for leather head down. The team has been in build mode. We've been in sell mode and creation mode. And, yeah, we've just gone really, really fast. It's not in our natures to sort of go slow on these things. And we just need to be out there. People love what we're doing. And now it's the real test. Now it's literally employees now getting access to it, and that's the scary time. CHAD: Has it been what you expected actually, you know, building custom software in terms of time, and cost, and that kind of thing? Or has it been different than what you expected? CHLOE: Yeah, that's a good question. So I guess over the years, I've had the opportunity to build products internally in companies. You're always in a waiting list for other people that need other stuff. So in a way, it's been quicker because it's my team, and they've got nothing else to concentrate on except this. I'm really open with what I don't know. So I'm like, okay, could I do, just out of interest, how easy is it for us to switch off that function and launch this? Is it a week? Is it a month? Is it like a year? Like, I just have no idea on timings and scale on that. So I try to work that out quite quickly. But I think it's been quicker than I thought it might be. And if you've got an internal team, then it's cheaper. As soon as we started to look at external teams, it was prohibitively expensive and no control. And I think we knew quite early on that we wanted to build it internally. CHAD: How has it compared to the process of using the low-code tool to get started? CHLOE: [laughs] In a way, if I had an idea, it was up and live an hour later...[laughs] and, you know, I guess there's much more pushback now. It's like, "Do you really need that feature?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you know, just do it. What's so difficult?" So I guess I've had to put more rigor and thinking behind some of the features and functions that we now have versus just sticking it up there. I mean, look, we were really, really frustrated with low-code. We were really frustrated with what it could do. It is so limited really in what we were trying to do, but it got us to a certain point. I'll always be forever grateful to it. [laughs] And my partner and I were able to completely tag team on it. So I would do all of the front end, and she'd do all the back end. It worked really well from that perspective. But we've got a great team now who are really engaged in what we're trying to do and trying to achieve. I guess I want everything yesterday. So as with most things, I'm getting updates going, "This is broken, and I'm having to turn this off for the launch." And I'm like, "No, I want it there. I want it in there." CHAD: So, on that note, why do you have a specific launch date? CHLOE: We've got a client we're launching to next week. [laughter] So we're launching -- CHAD: So you've made a commitment to launch for a particular client, and so you need to hit that date. CHLOE: Yeah. We are. We're launching it to...yeah, we've got quite a lot of clients, actually. We've got launches almost every day from next week. So this week is friends and family launch. So we need to get it out and get it tested. And then it goes into the hands of real-life users, which is scary and interesting. CHAD: I wish you all the best with that. I really appreciate you taking the time. CHLOE: Any advice? CHAD: Well, what I was going to say is a question I often like to ask. And I'm curious, before launch, is there something that you wish you could have done differently or realized sooner? I'm sure this question might be different post-launch. The answer to this question might be different post-launch. But from where you sit today, is there something that you wish you would have done differently? CHLOE: Oh my God. I almost want to say everything and nothing. I don't want to go, no, I don't regret anything; everything's been a learning experience, [laughs] so there's nothing I would have done differently because it's all led me to this point. But then, on the other hand, I think we've made the right decisions with the data that we've had. I think we need to...there's stuff that we need to be doing much more rigorously now moving forwards, which is making sure that we are very, very data-driven with what's coming back. Now we're in the hands of real users in a meaningful way with the app. We need to be taking all of that feedback on and not just relying on the gut instinct with a lot of things. It needs to be much more data-driven now that we've got the data coming in. So I don't think that's a regret necessarily because I think you've got to kind of go with your gut to get a product out the door because you could be completely hamstrung by research. And that would have taken us into a whole nother territory. So I think...does that make sense? So whilst I'm not regretting but like -- CHAD: It does make sense. And you asked me for any advice that I have. And this is a very small piece of advice, but it's one thing that I've made the mistake of myself and seen many other teams do. If you want to seek metrics on something and you don't instrument it, you don't set up those metrics; then you don't have them. CHLOE: So true. CHAD: And you realize, oh, we should have been tracking this click, or that click, or this flow. And then you put it in place once you realize that it's not there, and you have to wait 30-60 days in order to get the data. And that time feels terrible while you're waiting for that data to accrue. And so my general advice is to instrument basically everything. Instrument as much as possible, even if you think you're not going to need it. Track as many clicks as possible in the app so that you can really then say, oh, we didn't know we wanted to track this flow. And you already have the data where you can piece it together instead of waiting. CHLOE: Yeah, 100%. So we were challenged by...so we're backed by sustainable ventures on the accelerator program. And we were challenged by them to make sure that we've got all of our KPI metrics in place for the product. Of course, we've just been head down building it. And actually, it was a great moment where it's kind of like, but how many points do you want your users to collect in a day? Maybe there's an upper limit that you want, which we hadn't really thought about. Well, I don't know; we just want them to collect points. Like, you know, we want them to live their best life. And so in setting the KPIs, we've also had to set what we're measuring, but it was like two pages long. [laughs] There are so many things that we're trying to...what our KPIs are. And I think we can also...I think a learning is that maybe we need to be a little bit more focused with also what we're trying to measure and also what we were trying to see because we, again, can't focus on everything. We can't update and upgrade and iterate absolutely everything as a priority. What's going to shift the dial the most? What's going to have the biggest impact? Yes, we can change the color of that, or we can make that button bigger. But actually, if that's not going to lead to the KPI that we're trying to measure, then actually, there's no point. So yeah, so I think that's been a learning as well. I mean, there are so many thousands, billion learnings on this whole journey. [laughs] I could write a book. I don't think anyone will read it, but I could definitely write a book. [laughter] And I don't have time to write it. If I had time to write it and if anyone wants to read it, I'll do it. [laughs] CHAD: Okay. Well, maybe a few years from now, you can write that book. CHLOE: Yeah. CHAD: And, Chloe, thank you so much for joining the show and for telling us all about your journey. I really wish you and Plants and Perks the best over these important next couple of months. CHLOE: Thank you. We're raising, by the way. We're just about to go into our seed round, so yeah. CHAD: Seed round. CHLOE: Yeah. CHAD: Perfect. CHLOE: I know, perfect for Plants and Perks. That's the next inflection point whilst obviously also launching an app. And we don't do things by halves, so that will be the next learning journey. CHAD: If folks want to find out more, to follow along with you, to get in touch with the company, where are all the different places that they can do that? CHLOE: Don't look at the website because we're in the process of updating that. [laughter] And, frankly, now I'm going to change the pricing after this conversation. [laughs] But yeah, no, don't do that. Just email me; it's the easiest way. Or find me on LinkedIn; LinkedIn is probably the number one way. Or email chloe@plantsandperks.com. I love; literally, I love hearing feedback: negative, positive, anything. I love having conversations. I love doing partnerships. I love helping people on their journeys; just reach out. CHAD: Wonderful. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode along with a complete transcript at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks so much for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Chloe Sweden.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Now that you have funding, it’s time to design, build and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Lift Off brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we’ll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today’s new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow, today. Get in touch at: thoughtbot.com/liftoffSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Shawn Young is the CEO and Co-Founder of Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Victoria talks to Shawn about edtech, behavior intervention, and the challenges he's faced with going from a homegrown tool to something big and out there in the world. Classcraft Follow Classcraft on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Shawn on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Shawn Young, the CEO, and Co-Founder at Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Shawn, thank you for joining us. SHAWN: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Victoria. I'm happy to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful, yes. So just tell me a little bit about yourself and maybe what brought you to start out as a teacher initially. SHAWN: [laughs] I have an interesting journey. I was originally a physicist, a physics major. Although I loved physics because it really gives you a deep understanding of the world, I realized that physics research in a basement with machines just on your own [laughs] wasn't for me, so that's when I started substitute teaching. I really wasn't going to go into education at all. It was just there was availability, lack of teachers. And it's kind of ironic. I really did not enjoy school. High school, in particular, was just a really challenging time for me, mostly because I just didn't see the point of it. I didn't have any problems in school. I had great grades, but I just was bored out of my mind. And so, as a teacher, I became really, really obsessed with making school meaningful for the students that were there, and because so many kids, so many learners just don't see the point. And so I did a lot of really cool project-based learning type of stuff. So that's where instead of lecturing the kids, you get them doing things and learning by doing. And so I was teaching physics, obviously. And so we were building hot air balloons and cannons and all kinds of stuff to study Newtonian physics. And kids were super happy to come to the class because we were doing some cool stuff. But I realized as that was happening that another part of meaning generation for kids and learners is the community and the social aspects. And so, I started thinking about how I can build community in the classroom, make the social experience of school relevant for them? And that's how Classcraft was born, really. I kind of put together my interest in motivating and building community with kids. I was a developer at the time as well, so I was able to develop a platform. And, of course, I'm a gamer, so I kind of put all those things together and built this platform in my classroom. VICTORIA: That's great. I was going to ask what skills or experiences from your teaching background translated to being a founder. SHAWN: That's interesting because clearly in the product...Classcraft was never meant to be a company. I already had a company. [laughs] I was freelancing as a developer for pretty large clients in New York. I was working with my brother, who's a creative director there. And we worked for Chanel for three years building apps and websites, and that was probably our biggest client. I wasn't looking to make a company. I just built it for me. It was my quest to make school meaningful and relevant. And after three years of just tinkering around with it with my students, I realized it was having a massive impact on their outlook, on the way they collaborated together, on their motivation. And because Classcraft is a platform that basically gamifies education, so kids level up and they earn points. They're on teams. They have a character class. All the things you would see in an RPG are translating to how teachers are running a school. And so I made a website just to talk about it after three years of this garage project I had going on. And the day that website went online, 130,000 people came to the website. It just started trending on Reddit gaming. And overnight, a lot of people were asking, "How do I download this?" I'm like, "You can't. There's no company." [laughter] So that's how the company started. Teaching is an interesting profession. I think that teaching is a job that requires you to, A, motivate and manage a whole bunch of people, so there's a lot similarility there to management. It's a group of humans that you want to work together to get to their full potential, just like your team should be. But then there's also independent planning. As a teacher, you have a set amount of time to get through X amount of curriculum. So you're always, you know, project management basically, 101 is the same thing as running a curriculum through the year. So there are a lot of those types of soft skills that translate really easily to entrepreneurship. And ultimately, as a teacher, you're responsible on your own for your own successes and failures, which is the type of attitude you need to have if you're going to be a successful entrepreneur is to be responsible, you know, [laughs] take control of your destiny a little bit. VICTORIA: Right. I hadn't thought about it from that angle. It makes a lot of sense. You're really an independent owner of that classroom, right? [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And trying to get humans to collaborate and do stuff sounds a lot like running a company. [laughs] VICTORIA: Right. I saw the tagline on Classcraft: relationships are everything. And I was like, that's a perfect DevOps kind of statement. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, that's funny. [laughs] We're thinking more like human relationships, but that's so funny [laughs] from the DevOps side for sure. VICTORIA: In and outside of the classroom, you need...it doesn't matter how great your technology is or your strategy. If the people aren't talking to each other and you don't have the right relationships, you're not going to be successful. SHAWN: Correct. And ultimately, that's the value proposition of Classcraft. Schools that don't build good relationships between students that don't do it between teachers and students, that don't do it between teachers and administration are dysfunctional. And what we're seeing in education today is one of the fundamental breakdowns that's happening and, you know, that's proxy for what's happening at large, and society is relationships are quite strange right now in schools, and that's making it really hard for them to be effective. VICTORIA: Right. It sounds like this app was built out of your direct experience and your direct experience working with these students. What do you find is unique in working with students, and how do you appeal to them as a user base? SHAWN: What's really special about edtech is that your buyer or the user that makes the decision to use the product is not the end user, and that's true in all B2B, SaaS. The decision maker who purchases the software isn't necessarily the employee who's going to use it. But in education, there are multiple levels. Like, if we sell to a district, they're the ones buying, but ultimately, they need to get the teachers to use it. And then, at the end of the day, the actual real users are the students. And so, there are a lot of design considerations when you think of UX. And even when you think of user permissions, there's a lot of complexity there in education because our goal is to build as much motivation and engagement mechanics as we can for kids. And so that means leveling up, and random loot drops, and all these things you see in video games but applying that to school. But then you need to build all this plumbing [laughs] basically to make it usable by a user who's the teacher who doesn't really know much about games, and that's changing as the teacher...average age of teachers is going down, a lot of retirements, et cetera, so that's changing. But at the base of it, the kids are really well versed in games, game mechanics, game culture, but the teacher who's running it is not. So we have to speak two languages, one of pedagogy, and classroom tools, and data, and saving time. These are the things that educators care about. And incidentally, they care about motivation and motivating the kids, and all of those things. But for kids, we're talking about avatars, and pets, and gear, and leveling up, and all this whole other set of language. And so when you think of design considerations, we always have to be thinking about how do I make this as motivating and engaging as possible for the kids, but how do I make it as easy to use and not complicated for teachers? Because if the teachers don't use it, then these kids aren't going to see the value anyways. So it's pretty complex because we don't have one single end user. VICTORIA: And so you have the challenge of making it fun for kids and then also providing useful and understandable data for teachers and probably parents and other people, right? SHAWN: Yeah, yeah, exactly. There are lots of stakeholders. [laughter] VICTORIA: So I want to ask more about how you make it fun, and then I also want to know more about the teacher's perspective, so whichever one you want to start with first. SHAWN: Perfect. I mean, those two questions are literally the placement of what Classcraft is. Classcraft is the Venn diagram between what in education is behavior intervention, so managing kids' behavior and motivation. And so, from a motivation angle, how do we make it engaging for kids? In essence, kids are earning points in Classcraft for things that they're doing in school that we want them to do. And by we, schools can configure whatever it is, but it'll be things like handing in homework, being respectful, being inclusive, participating, being on time, these behaviors that they want to see in kids to make them better learners. When those behaviors occur, teachers can give them points. And the points allow them to level up. As they level up, they each have a character. They have an avatar, and they can be warriors, healers, or mages. And based on that character class, they have a different role in the team. So they're playing in teams just like in an MMORPG or on a football team. And everybody has a different role within the team. And you win as a team. And so school is quite competitive. Kids are always compared to the class average and their grades. And there's a lot of competition happening in schools. What we've built is a way for kids to be motivated by collaboration. And so they're playing on teams. If they do good things, they get these points, and they level up. And there are millions of combinations of gear that they could buy for their avatar, but they're also unlocking real-life powers. And so these powers are things like, you know, in a video game, power could be like you could shoot a fireball. In Classcraft, shoot a fireball is the equivalent of you can skip a question on an exam, or you can go to the bathroom, or you can hand in homework a day late, or you can listen to music while you're doing your classwork, so giving them real-life privileges as they level up. And these aren't one-offs; they're skills that they have that they can trigger whenever they want, just like in a game. And some of those skills are things like being able to heal up your teammate because kids can also lose lives if they do negative things. So if you're late or you're rude, or whatever it is, just like in Mario, what's failing in Mario is falling in a hole, and what's failing as a student, it's not doing what you're supposed to do, or being a bully to other kids. And so, as that happens, they can lose lives. But then they can come in to help each other out. There are boss battles where they can fight monsters by answering quiz questions, et cetera. So all these motions that are ultimately the things that are happening anyways in school, what we're saying is instead of punishing kids or forcing them to do this stuff, make it feel like a game. Speak their language, use the same mechanics that we know are super effective at motivating players. Nobody is forcing people to play video games. Everybody's doing that of their own volition. It's the most popular cultural medium that exists today, well surpassing film, movies, music. And so, why are games so good at doing that? It's because they fulfill fundamental needs: being in control, feeling like we're progressing, social relatedness. That's what we're bringing to school. So that's the student side of it. The other side of it, behavior intervention, is...well, one of the biggest challenges for teachers is managing kids. It's not like showing you how to do a math problem; it's getting you to care about it, listen to it, stop disturbing other people. And so, a lot of time and energy is spent on classroom management for teachers. And so what we do is we use best practices there. For example, there's a lot of research out there in education that says that praising kids for good behavior is a lot more effective than punishing them. And so games are really good at praising you. You level up, and you gain points. It tells you your score. What we're doing here is giving them that framework but applying that to classroom management. And so instead of saying, "Hey, Victoria, stop goofing off," or "You're not dressed well, go to the principal," or whatever it is that's happening in schools, what we're telling teachers to do instead is say, "Hey if Victoria does something good, recognize her. Give her a high five." And in Classcraft, a high five is gaining points. And so we're shifting and applying this pedagogy, shifting towards a positive reinforcement mindset. And at the same time, because these high fives are digital, then you get all the data so you can know which behaviors did Victoria do at which time with which teacher? Hey, she didn't get a lot of points this week. What's going on with her? Maybe we should talk to her and see what's going on before her behavior escalates. And so there's a lot of value from a behavior intervention standpoint. But ultimately, it's super effective because the kids really care about it in a way that they don't normally care about classroom management. VICTORIA: Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm hearing something I've studied before when looking at technology organizations which is that growth mindset I think you're describing, the positive reinforcement, praising the effort for something versus their intrinsic skills. And that's something I love about teaching. I think that really, really translates to running a technology organization. SHAWN: Yeah, totally. Ultimately, what we're doing is giving schools and teachers a platform for really effective culture building. And what you're talking about is culture within a company, in essence, and it's really the same thing. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about managing a group of kids [laughs], and managing employees is super similar. It's all about what type of positive culture you are building. VICTORIA: I think there's something really universal about that. It's actually even true with dog training. I have a dog, and it's the same kind of motivational theory that works for them too. [laughs] SHAWN: Yep, yep. VICTORIA: I love it. And you mentioned that you built this tool yourself, and then suddenly, it became very popular, and now it's really, I'm sure, scaling. So what challenges have you faced with going from this homegrown tool to something big and out there in the world? SHAWN: Lots of challenges. [laughs] I would say working in education itself is a challenge. It's a pretty challenging vertical to work in. It's ripe for disruption at the same time, pretty conservative. There are a lot of forces working in education systemically not have it move forward. Working with schools and districts is challenging. They have a lot of requirements. And, of course, they're custodians of kids, so that's legitimate, but it does make it more challenging. One of the things that we had to evolve was we were very much a teacher-only tool when we started. I had built it as a teacher. Our user in mind was a teacher. Even our business model initially was selling to teachers basically. There was a free version, and they could upgrade to a paid version. And as we got more and more scale, you know, we have ten million-plus kids in the platform now. As we got more and more scale, what ended up happening was we were working more and more with schools and districts. And so we went from a B2C go-to-market and product vision to a B2B/enterprise where we have to roster 10,000 or 100,000 kids in one shot, so all the user provisioning, connecting to information systems that these districts have, et cetera, all of this ginormous plumbing that needs to happen in order for it to continue to be easy to use for every single teacher. And alongside with that, the other challenge is we were super appealing to teachers that were interested in games. [laughs] And so when you think of some teacher who's in their 60s and has never really played any games and just thinks that they're a silly waste of time, there's a different sales pitch that needs to happen there to get them on board and a different onboarding. One of the things we had to completely overhaul was the onboarding to make it really progressive. Classcraft, now when you start it, there's no avatar. It starts super lean on the feature side so that these teachers that are, you know, we're basically educating them as they're using the platform, educating them on all this game stuff. There are a lot of learnings in terms of what's our actual target audience. And if our target audience starts to be enterprise customers, how do we evolve our platform to appeal to a much more diverse type of persona from a teacher standpoint? VICTORIA: I was thinking, actually, a good friend of mine who is a teacher and has been running Dungeons & Dragons campaigns for us for several years. [laughter] SHAWN: There you go. VICTORIA: And, like, you'll love it. [laughs] SHAWN: Exactly. [laughter] VICTORIA: But I could see that being a challenge now that you're shifting your target business model, really, and how do you adapt to that? Mid-Roll Ad: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what’s important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at: url tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: What else are you looking ahead with Classcraft? What's on the horizon? SHAWN: There's a lot. Like I said, we have 10 million kids in the platform plus. But we have teachers in every single country you could imagine, and there's a universality to what we're proposing. We're not saying here's the best tool for fifth-grade math in the U.S. We're saying, solve this universal human problem that's prevalent in education. And so we have teachers in, you name it, Taiwan, and Australia, and Singapore, and all over Europe using Classcraft. And so there's definitely opportunity for us to look at the international landscape and identify opportunities. Another frontier beyond going out of North America is going beyond the brick-and-mortar experience of the classroom. A lot of what's happening in and around your software is actually not happening 18 inches from the screen. It's happening in this context where there are 30 other kids, and there are all these interactions going on. For example, if you made a reading app, you can imagine the kids sitting in a quiet space on their sofa at home reading this thing, but the reality that's happening is they're in a really loud classroom [laughs] with lots of other kids around them, et cetera. And so the design context for designing for edtech is really interesting. We have some views that are meant to be only on a projector in front of the class. And when that happens, the font size needs to be 80 point because a kid in the back needs to be able to see it. So the screen real estate you're playing with is pretty unique scenarios. Like, what does this look like at 120 feet, let's say, because people are using it in the gym? So interesting design challenges, but they have been really ensconced in the idea that a lot of how people are using Classcraft is with real-life physical situations. But Classcraft, in essence, we have an API. So you can also imagine behaviors that are not brick and mortar behaviors, like, if I'm being participative, that's something that a teacher would see and observe and give you points for. But there are 3,000 edtech platforms, and all of them have digital behaviors that teachers want to see. They want to see kids handing in homework in these platforms. They want to go see them complete assignments. They want to go see them participating in digital communities. These are all basically the new frontier for digital behaviors that are a part now post-pandemic of the ecosystem of education. And so we're really interested in connecting to other platforms. I don't need kids to be in Classcraft; I just need them every day. I need them to be earning points. And I'm happy if they're doing that in other platforms and that those interactions are rewarding them experience points and points in Classcraft. And ideally, automatically, that way, the teachers don't have to do anything. VICTORIA: And so you're integrating with all these different platforms, and you're working with all these different school districts. So you've had to make some difficult technology choices in your stack. Do you have any examples of those? SHAWN: Yeah, absolutely. When I started the company, I'd come out of programming in...I started building cool websites in ActionScript, [laughs] so that dates me a little bit. But I'd just come out of a decade of ActionScript and PHP. And I'm like, PHP does not scale, and it doesn't afford the same type of real-time interactions that you'd expect from a game. When I decided what the tech stack would be, right at the outset, it was, okay, we're going to do this all JavaScript. It's going to be Node. And at that time...now that's a pretty, like, anybody would make that decision. But this was nine years ago, and it wasn't as mature as it is now. And so that was a pretty ballsy move and one that we never looked back on. But we had a lot of things that we had to build ourselves because the libraries didn't exist yet. And we were really pushing the edge of what was possible in a browser, especially in a browser in school with a crappy internet connection. And often, they are on older browsers. Although it was the right decision to lean into the leading edge on the tech stack, it did afford us with a lot of specific challenges that we might not have had if we'd said, oh, let's just keep this super old school. Some other things that we've been challenged with over the years is just scaling the number of concurrent users is always a thing. When we started, we had a single database, one server, and I was doing all the DevOps. And a lot of what we've done since that is just move everything to services. So we've got, you know, MongoDB database-as-a-service. [laughs] We're all on Google Cloud now. From an IT standpoint, we think a lot about what stack we're going to be using. And to me, what really matters is build the product as fast as you can and as well as you can. So outsourcing all of the DevOps pieces to cloud providers is, in my opinion, [laughs] a really good use of funds versus maintaining it yourself and spending tons of money on sys engineers and architects. The reality is that for most products today, what exists as a service in the cloud already bundled is, you know, and we've got auto-scaling. When there are too many concurrent users, it automatically spins up new Docker servers, et cetera. So we've really evolved from this monolithic single-server approach to this imminently highly scalable solution that is all virtualized, but in doing that, moved all of it to services. And I think that's the right move because we're not, you know, if I was really, really core, if was, I don't know, [chuckles] an online video game, then the speed of connections and all these things become super important. But in our case, reliability, scalability is more important than the fine-tuning to a precise degree of specific tech infrastructure. And I'm seeing more and more founders now, Victoria, as well go-to codeless solutions as well. I think we're kind of abstracting a lot of what was core to product development from a tech side. You know, first, it was the DevOps, then it was the cloud, and even now, code, I think, is moving in the direction where we're systematizing, bundling, and having other services generate code more and more. I think we're moving towards that just in software in general. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think that is becoming prevalent. I do think low-code automation has also been coming around every 5 or 10 years or so. [laughs] I have the belief that technology never disappears; it just keeps building, and new tech gets created, and the user base shifts around a little bit. And, of course, for you as a technical founder, putting it all in Docker and setting up the auto scaling on Google is probably within your reach, whereas a lot of founders, that might be something more challenging, and you might need to have some support for. But that's essentially what we work on for Mission Control as well is helping teams set up their platform so that it will scale automatically that if there's an issue, you know about it in advance. [laughs] You can take care of it before it falls over, and that way, your users just see a reliable, happy system. SHAWN: I'm so grateful that I am a technical founder. [laughs] I know a lot of founders, and the ones that don't know how to code really are at the mercy of so many unknown variables. I'm not coding anymore, but I'm very aware of what's going on in the platform. And I think that helps me make better business decisions every day. So I have a lot of gratitude when I compare myself in that regard. VICTORIA: And I think it's really about communication then too. Like, having a good understanding of your system is helpful but being able to understand it well enough to then communicate it to other people, and what the value is, and how you want to invest money in different parts of the system. I think those are two things that having maybe a little bit more of experience in technology and then also having a teacher experience, I think, sets you up to be successful. But we also, of course, at thoughtbot, we offer a lot of that technical expertise to help founders navigate some of that. So there's a little pitch just for us. [laughs] But let's see, let me go through...I think I've gone through a good amount of questions. Here's one that I like to ask everybody. But if you could travel back in time to when you first started Classcraft, what would be the main piece of advice you would give yourself? SHAWN: If I could go back, there are some big lessons that have been learned. I've been for almost a decade now as a founder and CEO. One of the things we didn't do early enough was user testing. If I split the life of Classcraft into three eras, there's the first third we didn't need to because we had all of my own experience. But once we started moving past what was the initial product that I had built in my own classroom, we continued to make assumptions. And we, of course, always listen to our users, but now we're super systematic about it, and any new feature has research behind it and a really solid UX practice that we should have implemented much earlier. I think we're making much better roadmap decisions today than we were three years ago. A lot of companies hire UX people super late, and I would do that early or at least develop the chops to do it myself as early as possible. So I think that's one thing. I think as well...and maybe this is tied to that. I think we should have and could have iterated faster as well. A lot of startups in the tech scene talk about iteration, but there's a difference between incrementally iterating and just adding on, adding on, adding on, and actually making the kind of iterative decisions that, for example, pulling part of the product and discontinuing it for example. And we've done some of those moves, but I think we could have done them faster. And we should have done them faster if we'd had that UX research data to help us make decisions faster. So it's more than, like, common truism is like, oh, listen to your users and listen to their feedback. Like, yes, that's true, and we were doing that. But I'd say go further and create robust structures to get that data faster, not just wait for it to come in but actually go out and get it and digest it in a way that's actually usable. Because you have a whole bunch of testimonials and feedback, but if it's not organized, it's not somebody's job to make sense of it. It's just kind of sitting there. So there's a lot of value from that perspective that you can quickly generate for your users and, therefore, for your business. VICTORIA: Right. Save you some time and some money, probably in validating your ideas, right? SHAWN: Yeah. And the problem with education is that it's a yearly cycle, right? VICTORIA: Mmm-hmm. SHAWN: We're not looking at monthly scales; we're looking at the whole school year. So back to school happens once a year, and that's when you get a ton of data because that's when there's the most activity. Like, right now, August, September, October, these are the moments where we're getting the most data. And then when you make changes, you got to wait all the way back to the next back to school. So, in particular, in education, I think the cycles are long versus, let's say, more B2C-type consumer verticals where the test length is like a week. [laughs] So if it's coming once a year, you better make sure you're organized, I guess, is what I'm saying. [laughs] VICTORIA: Because we only have one shot. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, exactly. VICTORIA: That makes sense. Well, thank you so much for sharing all those insights. And I want to give you a chance to promote anything else you'd like to share with our listeners. SHAWN: Thank you so much for the conversation, Victoria. I appreciate it. I think if anybody wants to find out about Classcraft, classcraft.com, tons of content and resources that we're generating about these topics of building meaningful relationships in school but in general with human beings. Classcraft is a B Corp, and so for people who don't know what that is, it's a certification around impact. And so we have built-in commitment to generate good in the world. And it's a pretty hard certification to get, so we're pretty proud about it. But I think that this commitment that we have of generating meaningful relationships both with kids but also with our employees, with our community, with our different stakeholders, has been really core to a lot of the decisions we make and how we make them, and how we approach different problems. And so I think that as a tech founder, sometimes we can lose sight of what are we actually generating in the world. And so I would encourage people to think about, you know, if you're thinking about starting a company or thinking about your own company and the impact its having to look up that certification. But also, just look up triple bottom line, these types of concepts that are becoming more and more prevalent that really give meaning to the endeavor. Starting a company and running it is a lot of work. You need to believe in what you're doing. [laughs] And I think having a mission that generates impact in that way is a good way to motivate yourself and your team to go the extra mile and deliver. VICTORIA: I love that. And did we really cover the full impact this app has had on kids that are using it in schools? SHAWN: There's a ton of research about Classcraft; actually, that's been done by pedagogy professors in colleges. Literally, thousands of papers have been written on Classcraft because there just aren't a lot of...everybody's interested in student motivation. There aren't a lot of scalable systems for doing that other than Classcraft. And so a lot of research that's been done about that topic incidentally happens to be using Classcraft. And a recent meta-study about Classcraft was conducted, and they saw a significant statistical impact on student motivation and learner outcomes. And so it's hard in education to really understand impact easily because it's social sciences. So you need a lot of big data samples, and you need the control groups. It's complicated. So we're pretty proud about that because a lot of companies that work in education don't have that kind of hard data. It's like, okay, it seems to be having an impact. We've got pretty hard proof; literally hundreds of millions of positive behaviors that kids have done that are being reinforced every single year. And when you think about that, most kids don't get any positive feedback. The kids that get the most attention are the ones that are acting out and being the worst. So 90% of teacher energy is being directed at 10% of the kids, and so most kids go through school without ever feeling a sense of belonging, or accomplishment, or praise. And we've had kids write us saying, "I was suicidal. Classcraft changed my life," like these types of user testimonies where the impact, the human impact of the approach, is really, really real. And for teachers as well, like, "I was so demotivated with teaching. I found the spark again thanks to Classcraft because school is fun again." [laughs] So there's a lot to be proud of there, for sure. VICTORIA: That's wonderful and really powerful that you've had that impact and have been able to see it both from a scientific perspective and from those user testimonies. So I think that's wonderful. And I think it's an inspiring story. And that's probably why you're also so involved; it seems, in leadership groups in edtech and in other communities in Quebec. Is that right? SHAWN: Yeah, totally. I mean the reality...so I'm the president of the Edtech Association here in Quebec, which I helped co-found. We've got 100-plus organizations working in edtech that are part of the association. I'm also Co-chair for The Global Collective for Social Emotional Learning, Digital Learning for UNESCO. And I have been involved in numerous different systemic endeavors in education throughout the years. The truth is changing education is hard, and the way we're going to succeed is...it's fundamentally something I believe that we should really be focusing on as a society is improving education, education outcomes. All the positive changes we need to see to tackle the incredible challenges that are upcoming for us as a species are going to happen through education. But for that to happen, we need to make education evolve, and for education to evolve, we need to all work together. So the association is interesting because it's like a coopetition [laughs] in a sense. All these entrepreneurs we're all competing for the same budget dollars, but we're looking at education problems in different ways. And if we're more successful as an industry, individually, everybody's going to be more successful, and more kids are going to be impacted. So I just believe that and this is true specifically for education, but I do believe this for any vertical. If businesses are collaborating to elevate, if the water rises, everybody's boat goes up. I really believe that that's true in business in general and in education in particular. VICTORIA: It reminds me when I was at Pluribus Digital in my last position. We were a part of the Digital Services Coalition, which is another coopetition group of federal contractors who are going after the same money. But we are all trying to see the government be better, part of that collaboration which sounds like what Classcraft is all about too. We're all in it together. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah. And if that's not the case, especially for incumbents, then what happens is status quo. And for startups, for tech companies, usually the status quo [laughs] is bad. That's where you're trying to generate opportunity from. But sometimes the systems that are there, government systems in particular...we've seen a lot in health as well over the last few years in clean tech. All of these impact tech sectors part of what they're fighting against are market forces of status quo. And so it's only by all working together that we can really move that. VICTORIA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure we could keep talking about that for a long time. [laughs] But unless you have anything else you'd like to share, I'll go ahead and wrap up. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Shawn Young.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what’s important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at: url tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Hello UK Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both Founders and Investors on all things Fundraising. The event will be 1 part panel discussion and 1 part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it! Register today at: tbot.io/fundraising-uk Daniëlle Keeven is VP of Finance at Paddle, the only complete payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies. Victoria talks to Daniëlle about helping companies with taxes while assuming the liability and risks associated with global tax compliance, financial literacy, and taking proactive measures and steps to manage cost effectively before it is required. Paddle Follow Paddle on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Daniëlle on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: Hello, United Kingdom Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both founders and investors on all things fundraising. The event will be one part panel discussion and one-part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it. Register today at tbot.io/fundraising-uk. VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Daniëlle Keeven, VP of Finance at Paddle, the only complete payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies. Daniëlle, thank you for joining us. DANIËLLE: Hi, Victoria. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Yes, I'm excited to have you here and to hear a little bit about your background. I was curious how it was different going from a finance role in a large corporation like Marriott to the startup world and to Paddle. DANIËLLE: Well, Victoria, I was actually quite fortunate because even in the Marriotts and the Hyatts that I've been in in hospitality, I've been exposed to a lot of in the trench type of accounting and finance. Being in the Caribbean and just a Latam market, you learn to look at situations differently and make sure you work towards compliance. So I think that's really groomed me for stepping into the tech space as well, where I think following the money is the first directive of any finance professional walking into a scale-up or startup. So I think it's groomed me for the move. Booking was a little bit easier because it was also a little bit of leisure and travel. When I stepped into a telecom for MessageBird and then Paddle as a payments end-to-end provider of infrastructure, there was a little bit of a challenge there. But I love being part of a company now that's completely a finance product which has really given finance roles a partnership with product and engineering to partner in the way forward and design of the product. VICTORIA: Yes, that's exciting for us as well. And tell us a little bit about Paddle, actually. DANIËLLE: So Paddle is an end-to-end platform. We strive not to just help software companies; we strive to do the work for them to be able to roll out globally. So basically, Paddle is the only end-to-end infrastructure that will enable you to invoice your customers and get payments support, offering different payment methods, as well as make sure you're globally compliant and file your taxes so that you don't have to. I think what sets Paddle apart from a lot of other companies that are helping companies with tax is that we actually do it for you. In addition to that, we assume the full liability and risks associated to global tax compliance. VICTORIA: Right. Yes. And I saw a product that you all have or information that you shared called the Sales Tax Agony Index. Can you tell me a little bit about that? DANIËLLE: Well, I think, in general, tax is painful. [laughs] I think personal tax is painful. Anything that has to do with business tax is amplified significantly. And I think for software companies, often, you build a great product, and you want to bring it up to market. But then you're limited and slowed down from really expanding globally. I mean, that is where we come in to really take up the tax burden for software creators to be able to look at it as a stepping stone instead of a roadblock if that makes sense. VICTORIA: I think that makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting where we are right now with the current climate and economics that companies may be focusing on their finances to reduce cost but also to identify new areas to invest in, right? DANIËLLE: Yeah, right. And I think that's super interesting to me, which I keep saying I'm not sure why not all of the software world is on Paddle. Because I think if you look out there in the market, there's such a piecemeal solution to everything. So you have to, for example, if you're going to not build your own billing, you have to outsource buying software for your billing. You have to go find a payment provider that's compatible and then the resources to get them into your platform to make sure checkout is seamless. Then you have to get an accountant to reconcile your payment. You have to get customer support to support your customer payments. You have to get more additional headcount to make sure your chargebacks and your fraud rates stay down. And all of this, Paddle just does it for you, which I think especially in this climate where cost is becoming a subject, I think Paddle is a great business partner to enable software companies to grow at a reasonable cost and pricing, and really explore all of the global market out there versus having to do it yourself. VICTORIA: Right. And Paddle could maybe help you identify where your spend also has a high return on investment. Is that right? DANIËLLE: We do put you in direct contact with your customer, so your customers are not masked or anything like that. So you do have access to all of your customer data. And in addition to that, we've recently made an additional acquisition to grow the Paddle family by adding ProfitWell, which is really an expert in anything that has to do with retention and pricing. And we are working to integrate this product and make it available to our Paddle customers as well. So that is not something that is there today but soon will be. VICTORIA: Oh, interesting. And I read a recent interview that you did, and I liked how you connected retaining your customer base to your billing and invoicing process because that might be an afterthought for a lot of startups and founders. But it is really key in keeping your customers happy is having that easy billing and invoice process. Is that your perspective? DANIËLLE: Yeah. I definitely think that with any SaaS company, there's definitely something known as well as an abandoned cart like somebody that will, you know, maybe we do it ourselves as well when we go out shopping online. We drop stuff in our cart, and we never make it to checkout. And I think to make sure you optimize your checkout, and your revenue is to make sure that the process is as seamless as possible, that your customers can just flow through this process and not have any challenges during that journey to make sure that your conversion rates stay high. VICTORIA: Right. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have other insights about customer retention that may relate to the Paddle platform? DANIËLLE: I think what's unique for me as a finance professional looking at the Paddle product...given I am by little biased because I do work here, and I'm a big fan of our product. But I think, and I've talked about this often, there are so many software solutions or tools that finance folks are trying to be sold. We get them sold to us, like, oh, this will automate 100%, and this will reduce this, or this will reduce that. I think what Paddle does well and how we are uniquely positioned is that what should be automated is automated and what needs a human touch has a human touch. And what I mean with that as well is in the sense of your customers making a payment and having a challenge we actually offer customer support with real people. And we do support your customers to make sure that they have a pleasant journey in the checkout process or resolve any payment issues that they have. So I think we balance the two out. And it's similar to, for example, taxes as well. We automate what we can, but we have a team of tax analysts really looking at the data and making sure everything is running correctly and is exactly compliant as it should be. So I think we bring together the best of both worlds in saying we automate a portion of the journey and where we can use and should use the human touch and intellect we do so. So we're not promising 100% percent automation. We just promise that we will do it for you by combining the best of both worlds. VICTORIA: That makes sense, right? Because, at some point, the automation can become more effective than hiring. But how can you scale your business without having to double your finance reporting and your tax teams, right? DANIËLLE: And I fully agree. And I think you bring up a very interesting point. I think from my past; I had been at Booking where you were in a situation where you have an endless means of cash flow that you can really build your dream automation tools. I think a lot of the big automation that Booking has achieved in finance is really admirable, and a majority of it has been done in-house. So I think they've done a really great job with that. But then, when you step out of an organization like that into a smaller startup scale-up, you do not have infinite funds. You are talking mostly about cash burn and then your cash runway. And you do have to optimize between a decision of should I invest in tooling to automate? Or does it make sense for me to hire a person because hiring a person is more cost-effective than automating? I think in a cash-tight environment, you do have to evaluate what makes more sense; sometimes, it is hiring a person. Sometimes hiring one person will get you scaled for two years. And other times, if you looked at you will have to hire one or five people per year to do a certain task, then it makes sense definitely to invest in automation because the cost will be upfront, but the benefits will be scalable, and you'll have definitely benefits from that point. VICTORIA: And there's a mix of you need people to do the work, but you also need to give them the tools to be able to do their job, right? DANIËLLE: Yes, I think most of us in finance still find that Excel is our best friend. [laughs] VICTORIA: Well, I won't complain about Excel myself. I have a background in economics, an undergraduate, so I'm an Excel pro. DANIËLLE: Yeah, I think definitely Excel has brought us all a very long way. [laughs] VICTORIA: So what's different about your customers that you're targeting with Paddle? What's unique about them? DANIËLLE: I think what is unique about them is that we want to really bring the creator of softwares their dreams to life, which means it's almost like we want to dream with them if that makes sense. We want to make sure that whatever they build becomes available to the world, whether they are a small startup or a small company or if they are a giant in the industry and very good at their skills. So we want to target the entire market for software. And I think what makes them unique is that our customers are usually a fan of our product, but we are a fan of theirs. So I think, typically, that works both ways really well. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And do you find that your customers are facing a different set of challenges today than they might have a year ago? DANIËLLE: I think the SaaS industry has changed. I think it's no secret that definitely the economic landscape has shifted. I think we were very fortunate to close our Series D in very favorable circumstances before the climate changed. I do think it will change back, and I don't think this is all doom and gloom. But I also do think that we are all facing the situation where we should be taking proactive measures and steps to manage our cost effectively before it is actually required. For some of the SaaS industries, it may already be required, and for others, I think even those doing well should be mindful to take steps where possible. Cutting costs does not necessarily mean cutting quality or immediately reducing staff. I think it just is more taking a step back and critically looking at your spend to see, do I have opportunity to renegotiate existing contracts? Are there, especially in my cost of goods sold, can I get this reduced somehow without reducing the quality of my product and what we're delivering as a business? And I think these are very good and big opportunities that we can definitely seize in addition to our operational spend. Just taking a critical look at this can really go a long way. VICTORIA: That makes sense. It sounds like, as a VP of finance, those are things that you might be able to bring to the table. Or tell me more about how the role of a finance person plays in a startup in making some of those decisions. DANIËLLE: I think the role of a finance person is super critical in the sense of you're looking back to see what the spend was and where we've been and to look forward to what the trends will be. You're also trying to inspire vision and strategy and work together with the sales team to both have realistic forecasts on what we will do, can do, and what we'll actually deliver. And I think as a finance leader, more than ever, it is so needed for us to partner with the business instead of being chucked away in a corner somewhere processing financial reports or looking at them. So I think the finance literacy is definitely something that we can add to our organizations. I'll give you an example, as we rolled out our budget, it wasn't just to deliver it to the board or to our executive committee, but it was also to talk about it with our senior leadership. I think the senior leadership is also so critical to any organization to say, "Hey, we are going to commit together with our own leaders to make sure that we're executing the plan and that we will also get all of our teams to partner and create that buy-in as a company." So I think as a finance leader, it's not just my job to go out there and say, "Hey, we have to cut costs," but also to explain what is happening to the economic climate, why we have to cut costs, and what are the benefits of doing it before it is needed. And definitely paving the road to say, "Hey, this is beneficial for all of us because these are our financial goals that we can achieve, but we can only achieve them together." So I think creating that buy-in and building that team across the organization that is committed to the correct finance management is super critical in this day and age. It used to be that it was just finance's role to watch the finances; I think now it's a collaborative effort of the entire company. VICTORIA: I really like that I have a background in DevOps, and that's breaking down silos between different parts of the organization. And so I love to hear that finance is getting really involved and be a part of the overall decisions that everyone's making in the company, right? DANIËLLE: Yeah, definitely. VICTORIA: How does Paddle build stakeholder buy-in within the company? What does that process look like for you all? DANIËLLE: I think very early on, we identified that, obviously, our executive team is key. I think this is the tip of the arrow really leading the organization in giving vision and direction. I find that we've been very fortunate, in my humble opinion, because we have a great CEO and a great COO. And I really enjoy working with the entire executive team. They're just a wonderful group of people. Besides being amazing professionals, they're just generally nice, [chuckles] which is always great. But we've identified early on that actually your senior leadership right underneath that is so critical to your company's culture, how you hire, how you buy, how you move, how you invest, but also how would your future be like. Because while the executive team definitely is key in giving the direction, the vision, and mission, I think the team right underneath that, the senior leadership team, is really the one that is going to go out there and materialize that dream and vision, and really live that dream, and really get the right people and to get the job done. So I think what we've identified early on is to make everybody an active stakeholder, do the planning together. Like, before the executive team rolls out a mission and vision, it's not going to be a total surprise to the senior leadership. We've all taken part of it, and we've all supported it, and we've discussed it, and we've fine-tuned it. So I think definitely taking people along in the journey goes a long way. The other thing I think that is very critical is just being transparent and being honest. At the end of the day, we're people. We want to know what's happening, why it's happening, and what we're working towards. And I think that is something that Paddle has done very well as well internally as a team. We have great values and great focus on what we want to deliver, where we want to go, and we definitely are focused on doing so together. VICTORIA: That sounds great. You all have a shared vision of where you're going and where you are currently. And that probably helps get everyone on board with what we're working on in the future. It gets everyone motivated a little bit more, right? DANIËLLE: Correct. Exactly. VICTORIA: So, is there anything particularly exciting coming up with Paddle that you are looking forward to? DANIËLLE: I think I'm super excited to see what ProfitWell, how it will integrate, and the product that it will offer, and the opportunities that it will offer to our Paddle customers. I'm super excited to see that materialize and seeing all of this come together. We've been waiting, and we've been working towards this deal for a very long time, so seeing it materialize is quite exciting. And I'm definitely looking forward to that. VICTORIA: And do you think that that cultural strength you mentioned with Paddle and having that transparency and quality of support from the leadership does that help translate when you're doing big deals like that and closing deals with other companies? DANIËLLE: Yeah, it definitely does. I think, in general, the finance team has had quite an exciting first half of the year. I want to say, you know, being in Series D, having due diligence done, ProfitWell, at the same time preparing for an audit, having your financial team build out your reporting. I think we've had so many things run at the same time, and the pressures are quite high. So I think just having that positive culture together as a team gives you strength as well together to be your best self under pressure instead of really crumbling or not getting along and struggling with it. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes total sense. If you feel like you're supported by other humans in your company, [laughs] then when you're stressed, it makes it easier to get along. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have any other advice for finance leaders or startups who are navigating the economic downturn at this time? DANIËLLE: I would say keep an eye open. Do not stop investing. Do be critical about your ROI. Make sure that where you're spending your money is where it makes the most sense for the business, and just keep an eye out for opportunity. Because just because the climate has turned does not mean that it will not turn back, and it does mean that there are loads of opportunities out there that we can still seize as a business. VICTORIA: Right. It means that different markets are more active, right? [laughs] DANIËLLE: Usually. Correct. VICTORIA: Do you have any questions for me or for thoughtbot? DANIËLLE: I'm just curious, for you as well, what's your favorite subject that you discuss on thoughtbot? VICTORIA: Ooh, a favorite subject. That's tough because I love hearing from our designers and our developers. We have many developers who are some core contributors to Rails, and so they are very knowledgeable about things like we have random meetups that happen at thoughtbot. So you can sign up and just randomly pair up with somebody else in the company. And the first random meetup I had, I met up with someone who is like the expert on security [laughs] and dotfiles and helped me finish setting up my developer environment. And so I love that at thoughtbot, you can start a random conversation with someone, and they'll end up having this wealth of knowledge around a particular subject that you might have been struggling with and can just immediately solve your problem. I also like the fun parts. There's actually a blog that just captures all of our jokes from Slack [laughter] just… So it's a part of like making it fun and being human at work and kind of showing up with your whole self. I think that adds a cultural strength for those moments like you describe when things are difficult, or you have a hard project. You feel bonded to your teammates and feel like you're all working together, and that positivity stays throughout. DANIËLLE: Yes, definitely. VICTORIA: So, are you currently in Amsterdam? Is that right? DANIËLLE: I am based in the Netherlands. I'm actually based in Alkmaar, which is 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam, but I typically say Amsterdam because that's the city that most people know where it's at. [laughs] VICTORIA: Same for me. I go with San Diego, but I'm actually in Encinitas. It's a little bit further north. So is there a difference, or what is the startup environment or community like in Europe then? DANIËLLE: I think I'm quite impressed because before moving to the Netherlands, I wasn't aware there was so much happening, but there are actually some channels called Silicon Canals, so the canals for the boats, so it's a bit of a play on words. And there's such a vibrant startup and scale-up community in the Netherlands, which was quite surprising for me to run into. So I do think by nature...I was born in the Netherlands, and I moved to Aruba when I was five. So I wasn't raised here. But I think if I look at the Dutch culture, it is quite innovative. And they do tend to find different ways of doing things when it comes to water or building dams. And I think that curiosity and innovation has moved over to the tech space. So I think that Amsterdam is definitely a city to watch in terms of scale-ups that pop up and the progress that they make. VICTORIA: I've heard a lot about new technologies and new solutions coming out of the Netherlands with agriculture specifically, but I am not surprised that there's a burgeoning startup community there. [laughs] That's wonderful. DANIËLLE: Yeah, it's quite exciting. VICTORIA: That's very cool. All right, is there anything that you expected me to ask that I did not ask? DANIËLLE: No, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I think we covered quite a bit. VICTORIA: Yes. I'm watching the time and making sure that I'm giving you enough time. DANIËLLE: [laughs] VICTORIA: I liked this quote from your blog, actually, so I'll repeat it here, "Bad companies are destroyed by crises, good companies survive them, and great companies are improved by them." DANIËLLE: Yes, that is definitely one of my favorites. VICTORIA: Do you have an example of a company where they went through a crisis, and they came out great afterwards? DANIËLLE: I have a friend of mine, actually, that started a company called Limelights. And I think when he started this, he was so focused on marketing and development and so on. When the COVID crisis hit...and he's actually the one that shared that quote with me, we're close friends. He was sharing with me that quote and how he has completely revamped his company from a marketing company, which is basically the first thing that most companies...the expense they started cutting, to an online learning platform, and events, and team development program. So I think he's done this so successfully that his business started thriving during the COVID period. And still now, after when things are relatively normalized in the tech space and just the overall spend, he is doing better than he did before this happened. His story of his company was so inspirational to me. And we were talking about that quote, and I'm just like, that's it. That's exactly that innovative culture that you want to see in times of crisis. You don't want people to back down and say, "Oh, times are hard. Let's just ride this out." You want people to start looking around, like, how can we do this differently? And how can we navigate these new waters that we're in? And proactively be engaged with your environment to really find alternatives to what is happening. VICTORIA: I would guess that having a clear picture on your finances and your customer information would help you be able to make those pivots. Is that right? And how Paddle can help you get out of those [inaudible 23:21] DANIËLLE: Yes, that is definitely correct. [laughs] Like I said, we're an end-to-end platform. So you can literally have all of your data at the tip of your fingers to make sure that you make the right financial decisions in addition to us taking off some of the financial tasks off of your plate. Like I said, we want to do it for our customers, make sure that everything is running smoothly. So I think this is a massive opportunity for companies to have additional support in their processes because we take them over to a degree as well as indeed have clarity and transparency into their financial reporting and how their revenue streams are doing. VICTORIA: Right. Because I imagine that task that work to put all that together would take up a lot of founder's time. DANIËLLE: Yes. VICTORIA: So freeing up that time and giving you a chance to understand where you're at now, and where you can go, and be able to pivot in those times of crisis. DANIËLLE: Exactly. VICTORIA: That makes a lot of sense. Has Paddle found that offering free information or these tools like the Sales Tax Agony Index does that help you bring customers into your platform? DANIËLLE: Yes, definitely. I think there's a bit of humor here as well. Obviously, this was not put together by a finance person. [laughs] But I do love that our sales and marketing team is super creative in bringing the finance story and the tax story to life. I think as soon as people hear tax, if you can tune out, you do. So I think they've done a great job at pointing out the Sales Tax Agony Index, and they are not exaggerating. [laughs] In many of the jurisdictions, it is quite challenging. And I think one thing that makes it challenging as well...so while software is not new to most of us as users, software is still quite new to most governments, and most countries are not certain when or how to tax this. So I think everybody is trying to figure this out globally, which is where we can step into the space, as well as we do monitor the global landscape for taxes. The changes happen fast. They happen continuously. And implementation of taxes is not always logical because taxes are not always logical. So I think looking at the tax agony that our sales and marketing team has put together is definitely not an over-exaggeration. I think the risks are real for misunderstanding or misreading the tax laws that are in place, and so that's where we come in to really bring our experts and really dissect some of the meanings of these. We have partners globally to ensure compliance. I think that the tax that is charged on software can be so variable that, as a business by yourself, it's going to be super tricky to monitor. Like in some countries, the software is taxed locally only if you sell to a local customer. It is not taxed locally if it's sold internationally. So there are so many little hooks and needles. In some countries, you don't have to pay tax unless you exceed X amount of sales on your software. So all of these rules and regulations can be quite obstacles and blockers to rolling out your business globally. VICTORIA: Right. I hadn't even thought about a lot of that complexity. One of the things I'm excited about most with thoughtbot is that it's an international company. And so I'm out of my DC bubble, and we have customers in England and team members all over the world. So I think it's exciting that there's a product out there that can help you navigate things like taxes across all different countries, which I wouldn't have even thought would be that big of a problem, but apparently, it is. [laughs] DANIËLLE: And I think especially when you talk about the tax agony panel, you can also see what the challenges are, and worst penalties, and fines, and prison. VICTORIA: [laughs] Yeah, right? It's like, it's very difficult, and the agony is high, and the penalty is high. [laughter] So that's...you don't want to go to prison for accidentally misunderstanding the tax code. That's a real serious risk that you'd face. DANIËLLE: Yes, it is. [laughs] VICTORIA: Awesome. Do you want to do any final takeaways for our listeners today? DANIËLLE: I would say chin up. The economic downturn is not going to last forever. While it's good to look for opportunity to save costs, it's also a great opportunity and moment to look for the right investments to make to grow your company. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Daniëlle. I really enjoyed our conversation. DANIËLLE: Thank you, Victoria. It was great meeting you. VICTORIA: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Daniëlle Keeven.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Hello UK Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both Founders and Investors on all things Fundraising. The event will be 1 part panel discussion and 1 part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it! Register today at: tbot.io/fundraising-uk Göran Sandahl is Director of Growth at Airbrake LogicMonitor, frictionless error monitoring and performance insights for your entire app stack. Victoria talks to Göran about having a product-led growth engine, how Airbrake can help developers identify and solve errors and bugs in applications, and developing a product geared towards a specific segment of the market. Airbrake Follow Airbrake on Twitter, GitHub, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Göran on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Göran Sandahl, Director of Growth at Airbrake LogicMonitor, frictionless error monitoring and performance insights for your entire app stack. Göran, thank you for joining us. GÖRAN: Thanks for having me. VICTORIA: Wonderful. So just tell me a little bit more about Airbrake and how it all got started. GÖRAN: So Airbrake is, as you said, an error and performance monitoring tool. It was actually, funnily enough, started as a side-project within thoughtbot. So it's a little bit full circle here joining this podcast here. But I'm a recent addition to Airbrake, so I don't know the details of the time when they started over ten years ago. So talking about Airbrake and the journey since then, lots of things have happened with Airbrake. It has gone through multiple acquisitions since then, both from industry players on the infrastructure side to various venture capital investors buying the company. And now Airbrake is owned by LogicMonitor, who bought Airbrake somewhat like a year ago. And it focuses exclusively on the developer audience for LogicMonitor. And I lead growth, so I work with our growth team. We have a product-led growth engine. So we don't do a lot of traditional sales or anything like that, so a lot of it is word of mouth. And this is something that drew me to Airbrake was its strong kind of grassroots movement in Ruby and other web and application languages. So that's what I know about Airbrake's early days, which isn't a lot. VICTORIA: Right. It was the very first exception monitoring service in the world. And we grew it to have three people working full time on it. And then, like what you said, it was sold to someone else who went on to continue to grow it. And it has been through several acquisitions. And from your perspective today, where is this service originally called Hoptoad [laughs], and then now it's Airbrake? And what kind of scale are you seeing? What are your customers like today? GÖRAN: Obviously, I don't know exactly how the product looked like back then. But a lot of it, I think, has stayed the same. It focuses on simple error monitoring, simple performance monitoring, and simple deployment tracking. So it's pretty much the same focus I believe in the product. This is what makes it stand out still today. We can talk about observability, and happy to do that. This is my third company that I've been working for as a monitoring company, so I know fairly a bit about it. Airbrake today is heavily focused on...we focus on what we call lean dev teams. We focus on the teams that try to move a little bit quicker, maybe than what they may, doesn't necessarily have the backup of an ops team or a DevOps team. So we really focus on building a product that is fully self-service that you can get started within a minute on your own. So that implies good UX, good documentation, and also that we can meet our users where they are. So we're focusing today on things like community building and those things for supporting our users. So we have lots of customers, really good brand names. First and foremost, super interesting stories from many of our customers who navigate that art of building product quickly. VICTORIA: That's great. I like that you phrased it as your user experience, which is your development teams, right? And do you have more of a perspective around the developer experience and how to capture that and really create something that's useful when you're delivering in those high-velocity environments? GÖRAN: As I said, I've been working for three monitoring companies. The first one I founded was 12 years ago. We built a product that we tried to coin the market called algorithmic monitoring, that later turned into something called AIOps. Yeah, there are a lot of buzzwords around that, applying AI to identifying problems in software. We were really early on that. One thing that we learned from that journey...we ended up selling that company to LogicMonitor, which is why I'm eventually here. What we learned then is that you can have a really good monitoring product, but ultimately, the people that fix the problem that gets discovered is the most important person for a monitoring tool to get into true effectiveness. So when I came across Airbrake, when they were acquired by LogicMonitor, and I had the opportunity to join, that's what drove me to decide to join. It's really that simplicity in terms of I think there are two schools, right? Either you promote a tool that all your software engineers should use, and you try to build centralized, structured processes around that. You make the template thing and things like that so that everybody can get up and running really quickly with monitoring. Or you take the approach of something like Airbrake, where it's built to be easy. If you know the language, if you know the code, then you know how to basically instrument it. And these features are simple enough to get going on your own. So that's the path that Airbrake is on. So it's built to be simple from the gate, so to speak. Now, Airbrake and monitoring and observability is a complicated problem when you have software issues. They're not always easy to diagnose or get to the root cause of. So there's a lot of struggle for users to unwind the bugs and actually fix them. But we try to do the best to provide enough context so they can take the next step. VICTORIA: And maybe you have an example or something to illustrate how that tool can help developers identify and solve those errors and bugs in the application. GÖRAN: All software has issues, right? There are bugs in all kinds of software. I've always been fascinated with something called latent bugs, or dark death is another framing of it, which is essentially the bugs that are hidden in your code. And when we have an outage, something triggers that bug to happen, but that bug was there. So if we think about it like that, that all of our software, all the code we run, all the commits we do is probably adding a lot of value, but they're also adding fragility or potential for problems, then you need to be really good at identifying when those bugs get activated. And sometimes, actually in, the majority of times...so that's why you need error monitoring, right? Just the ability to see that there is an error, there's a new error in production or in our staging environment, or wherever it might be. So that's error monitoring. It turns out about 80% of outages are self-inflicted in a way. They're caused by the changes when we build software or when we reconfigure things. And 80% that means that you need to be able to track changes really well. So you need to understand how and when changes happen so you can understand if what you did worked or didn't, so that's why we have deployment tracking, to be able to correlate those errors with the release, the commit, the line of code you added to the codebase. And then, of course, performance monitoring which is the ability to see where you have bottlenecks, which is not maybe bugs but where you have poor performance or poor experience for users. And it could be in a shopping cart checkout job. It could also be a scheduled cron job that's supposed to clean up stuff that is late. It could be just a rendering time of something that is longer than usual, and you just want to be aware of it. So that is kind of performance monitoring. So those are the three main focuses for us as a product. We like to believe that it is easy to get going within a couple of minutes. And that's what we're kind of focusing on providing. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And your tool is able to just spin up quickly, be able to quickly get that insight into what's happening as you're deploying code and as you're pushing changes to production. Do you call that all observability? Or, in your mind, what is observability? And what are the really key things that you think that all developers should be watching? GÖRAN: That is a good question. Part of what fascinates me about the Airbrake userbase and what I've got to learn about Ruby and some of those languages which were a little bit foreign to me as a backend engineer, like an algorithm junkie, so to speak...so what fascinates me is how little monitoring is typically done by many teams that's working on web applications. So coming from the infrastructure monitoring side, that's where this term observability grew. And you have these metrics, logs, and traces kind of triad. And every web application, every web browser has had tracing built in the developer console or the web browser. So some of these tools that are available now to infrastructure monitoring teams in the form of observability have been available to web developers for quite some time, so I don't necessarily think observability is a term that explains a lot for applications and web developers. But for infrastructure, more infrastructure-oriented teams where you have lots of microservices and things like that, we needed a term to explain the full range of capabilities we needed. But I'm not so sure we need the similar amount of complexity because there is a lot of complexity in those tools and lots of data. But I'm not so sure we need the same complexity when speaking about monitoring on slightly more lightweight applications and web apps. That said, we're starting to mimic a lot of the architectural paradigms of the infrastructure, such as microservices, in terms of micro frontends. So a lot of that complexity is entering into the web as well. So, who knows? [laughs] MIDROLL AD: Are your engineers spending too much time on DevOps and maintenance issues when you need them on new features? We know maintaining your own servers can be costly and that it’s easy for spending creep to sneak in when your team isn’t looking. By delegating server management, maintenance, and security to thoughtbot and our network of service partners, you can get 24x7 support from our team of experts, all for less than the cost of one in-house engineer. Save time and money with our DevOps and Maintenance service. Find out more at: tbot.io/devops. VICTORIA: So the customer or clients for Airbrake are developers who are doing web applications and need that kind of just the information they need [chuckles] to be able to make sure their changes to code is not affecting the production and that your product is trending towards observability practices that might be a little overmatch to what you will need. GÖRAN: Yeah, that is what we're focusing on. But when you have a lot of customers and a lot of users, there's always this exotic, for us, exotic use cases. So I'm 100% sure there are really large customers that are using us in a more traditional DevOps fashion and not on web apps. I mean, we have support for most of the languages from Go to Python to .NET to Ruby. So there's nothing keeping Go developers from adopting something like Airbrake. But we do know that we're particularly strong within JavaScript and Ruby, and I think that speaks for the experience that it's easy to get going, et cetera, rather than something like Grafana or another more traditional observability tool that's a little bit out of reach maybe for the web or application developer. VICTORIA: So when you're developing your product towards this specific segment of the market, what other differences do you notice between who you're targeting or who you're expecting your customer to be versus the wider range of people you could be marketing this towards? GÖRAN: So I think everybody wants to go after the developer and the needs of the developer. This is, so to speak, trendy nowadays. And it's obvious because so much of the value and innovation happening is done [chuckles] in the editor. So it's natural that a lot of the focus is being placed there. We're focusing on where we're strong, and I think that's the best way to do it unless the market is small. And I see application development growing for the foreseeable future. I think we're seeing trends of things like no-code, or low-code, or whatever we choose to call it. The infrastructure is being abstracted more and more. So from that perspective, I think we have a good strategy for providing that simplicity that users come to expect when building modern apps today. We're pairing with other kinds of innovations on how you build code, basically from things like Vercel to Webflow to whatever it might be, right? VICTORIA: Right. And do you find that collaborative approach is more effective in business-to-business sales for this type of client? GÖRAN: We're very focused on this just try it kind of approach, so that's how we do most of our direct communications with our users. So we want to let the app speak for itself. And we believe that once usage happens, then additional needs will happen or will arise that we can maybe serve in other ways. So we do have a free tier, free forever free tier, so you can use Airbrake pretty much forever but in a small scale. And then, like normal, when you start adding colleagues or lots of errors and lots of projects, then you need to upgrade to a paid plan. And we're also launching some new tiers here in the foreseeable future as well. VICTORIA: Oh, tell me more about that. GÖRAN: As teams mature...I don't know if that's the right word, but at some point, a lot of these teams may want a little bit more structure when they do monitoring. So I mentioned that we're pretty much self-service, completely self-service. But at some point, when you start using a product a lot, you start to integrate it into your core processes. So new things start to matter, things like who did that change? Who reconfigured that? Who logged in the last time? Has anybody seen that thing? But also to things like payment things. The different issues that can arise change, right? VICTORIA: Mm-hmm. GÖRAN: So we're launching a pro tier in the future that will cater to a little bit more of the needs of the team that has grown into maybe having a manager that asks questions about how things are set up, et cetera, but also, where you can control teams and people a little bit better, where you can also control your costs a little bit. So one of the features is on-demand billing. So the more errors you pay on your tier...you can produce up to a certain set of errors and performance events, and if you go above that, you pay an on-demand fee. And there are some protections built in for that if you're on the pro plan and things like that. So it's about catering to growing needs of a little bit larger teams but still the team that wants to move fast. VICTORIA: Right. And I believe you said that you have plans to communicate and engage with the community, and that probably helps you understand some of those needs. And so what kind of plans do you have coming up that you'd like to share? GÖRAN: So one of the things we know is with all the Airbrake use, we probably have a lot of fans out there, but we might not have been the best to actually tap into that and serve that community. So we want to really invest in understanding, getting to know that community, and serving that in the best way we can. So we will see exactly which form that will take. But it starts with the basics, opening up a Slack community that we can allow users to join and ask questions or maybe hopefully get value out of their peers without talking to us maybe. But we can also serve them in various ways with support, et cetera. So it will start pretty basic, but I think it's a pretty standard playbook nowadays. But for us, it's really about we're genuinely...we think our users are awesome, and we would love to be able to share their stories and connect them with other peers. So I think that's the driving motivation. And then, of course, we have some data that also shows that it is a good investment in itself, that the stories our customers tell are much better than the stories we tell. So yeah, we're excited about that for sure. And it's connected to this bottoms up motion from where Airbrake grew from, that it grew as a solution that served the community really well. And we want to go back to those roots and be the best tool for that kind of user. VICTORIA: Oh, I love that. It sounds like a really great, full-circle journey for the product. And is there anything else you want to share about entrepreneurship and starting up products like this? What advice would you give to someone who had developed this type of product that served the community well and wanted to turn it into a product and a business? GÖRAN: So I think the community building is relatively new for us, so I'm not sure the advice there is so valuable. But in terms of entrepreneurship, I think this is one of the more important decisions you make as an entrepreneur or founder is how will you grow demand for your product and how will you distribute the product? And how will you ultimately monetize the product? And there are so many different ways. And depending on what your growth expectations are, you might be asked to go in one direction or another one. And my advice would be to really find product-market fit and that I think happens best by staying close to the end users, and then you can look at strategies for monetization, including direct sales or channel or, as Airbrake does, product-led freemium basically. But reach product-market fit first so you can decide with knowing how your product dynamics and adoption dynamics works, and let that influence the kind of strategy for the business strategy basically rather than the other way around. VICTORIA: Right. That makes sense. And then, if your product is geared towards developers, they're just like any other users. And you have to reach them and get their feedback and understand how the product fits into the market. GÖRAN: Yeah, exactly. VICTORIA: Yeah. Great. All right. Do you have any questions for me at this time? GÖRAN: Not really. It was a pleasure being on the podcast. I'm a fan so hope you can cover up my errors there. [laughter] VICTORIA: I think that if you want to go back and remove, we totally can. But are there any other major takeaways you want people to walk away with about Airbrake or, in general, about entrepreneurship? GÖRAN: That's about it, I think. VICTORIA: All right. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Göran Sandahl.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Are your engineers spending too much time on DevOps and maintenance issues when you need them on new features? We know maintaining your own servers can be costly and that it’s easy for spending creep to sneak in when your team isn’t looking. By delegating server management, maintenance, and security to thoughtbot and our network of service partners, you can get 24x7 support from our team of experts, all for less than the cost of one in-house engineer. Save time and money with our DevOps and Maintenance service. Find out more at: tbot.io/devopsSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Guillaume Kendall is the Founder of Zedosh and Attention Exchange, which is working to build a safe place for advertisers, publishers, and consumers to all benefit from fair access to human attention. Chad talks with Guillaume about open banking, changing up who the beneficiaries of consumer attention and data are, and giving companies opportunities to advertise without interrupting consumers with ads. Zedosh The Attention Exchange Follow The Attention Exchange on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow Guillaume on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Guillaume Kendall, the Founder of Zedosh and the Attention Exchange, which is working to build a safe place for advertisers, publishers, and consumers to all benefit from fair access to human attention. Guillaume, thank you for joining me. GUILLAUME: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real privilege. CHAD: If I'm not mistaken, you and I first met in person for lunch one time in London when I was visiting London in; I think it was...I went back and looked at my calendar. It was March 10th, 2020, if I'm not mistaken, either that or it was that Friday of that week. GUILLAUME: It must have been one of the last weeks pre-pandemic. CHAD: It was. I literally woke up on Saturday morning for my flight to come back to the U.S. to the headlines that all flights from Europe were being shut down. [laughs] And I almost dropped my phone until I realized, oh, that's the headline, but the real detail is I can get back. It's all the rest of Europe, not the UK, yet. That was the following week. I made it home, and then the world changed. GUILLAUME: I sure did, didn't it? [laughs] It's funny, isn't it? Because the two-year period in between seems to have flown by. It feels like just yesterday. I remember I think, even what I ate. CHAD: [laughs] And at the time, you were working on a new application, and we were talking about that. But I want to fast forward a little bit to today. Tell me more about Attention Exchange, and then we're going to rewind a bit to how you've arrived. GUILLAUME: So the Attention Exchange...by way of background, I come from the fintech space rather than adtech. And it really, ultimately, the Attention Exchange is a matching engine, using financial terms, that matches the right video content to the right consumer based on their spending data rather than their browsing data. So it's a matching engine. And it looks at rules that ultimately we're able to derive, or actually, I better use the phrase, we can bridge the gap between attention and intention based on our audience's spending patterns. And the reason we can access those is because they give us explicit permission. We have something called open banking here in the UK. It's actually across most of Europe now. But it enables the consumer to own their data and share it outside the bank if they so wish to with other regulated third parties. So we're such a regulated third party, and they share that data with us, as I said, to be matched with video content from brands that are relevant to their spending instead of their browsing. What it ultimately means is we're very well-positioned in this apparent post-cookie world that seems to be heading our way eventually because we don't rely on any other tracking technology to spy on our audience. They voluntarily give it to us. And I guess the kicker which is...people are probably asking themselves, why would they do that? That's because they get paid. So we put cash directly into the bank account or one of the bank accounts they've connected to our platform in exchange for their immutably valuable attention to that content. CHAD: So correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like open banking has had a significant impact not only on the data sharing that you're describing but just on the banking ecosystem in general in the United Kingdom and now Europe. GUILLAUME: So I think if you were to speak to the purveyors of open banking, it hasn't had as big an impact as they felt it would have had. I think we reached earlier this year only to fact-check this, but about 6 million people in the UK now utilize open banking in one form or another. But I think what was very interesting is that the ecosystem that sprung up around it was mostly around changing the user experience for the end consumer to have a better handle on their financial health, which is a really important topic. And the reason that is is that before, it wasn't really in the bank's interests to tell you if you're about to hit your overdraft or go over your overdraft because they'd charge you an extra 20 pounds for an unplanned loan, and then you'd have to pay it. Your balances (This is going back a little. I'm showing my age. ) was always two or three days out of date, which was weird. So open banking; the first thing that sprung up around it is we'll connect your bank accounts. We'll give you this holistic view of your mortgages, your credit, your debit, your net worth really across various assets. And we've moved progressively towards more of open finance rather than just open banking. You can connect via APIs a lot of your financial identity to these open banking providers. But having said that, no one has looked at it in the way that we have, which is actually this is an advertising play, and it could be potentially a real change maker in the way that consumers benefit from this $400 billion industry which is advertising rather than all the fintech stuff that's been happening around open banking. But yes, so it's not to be sniffed at, you know, several million people are using open banking. But most people, I don't even think, realize they're using open banking. They open the Revolut app, and it says, "Do you want to see your Monzo balance inside our app?" You say, "Well, yeah, okay, that means I don't have to open Monzo." And lo and behold, you share that data. CHAD: Right. Yeah, that's a really good perspective. I think from my perspective; I was thinking it's sort of made it...there's a separation between the banking backends and the user experience, and I think that in part has given rise to these challenger banks and made it more possible for them to do that. GUILLAUME: Yeah, that's a very fair point. I think, certainly, if nothing else, it certainly forced the incumbent players, those that have been around for a few hundred years, to really buckle up their ideas and think about how to react to this new threat. At first, they thought, geez, open banking is going to cause us all sorts of problems, but I think as it's gone full circle. You find that, actually, most people are looking for that user experience, and the banks have been forced to provide it within their existing ecosystem. So now, most banking apps provide really super UI or UX, meaning that you don't have to go use third-party tools to get such a lens. And in fact, the most interesting one I've seen of late, which I think is definitely worth a mention, is a company called Cogo; and Cogo used open banking to carbon score your spending and let you offset it. So if you spent four pounds at McDonald's, it would guess that that's X kilos of carbon and give you several options to offset it. And actually, in the end, NatWest formed a partnership with them. This is a classic use case where actually, now the carbons offseter is available within that NatWest app, and you don't really have any idea it's Cogo. That's what you're seeing is ironically, those who have had success in innovative, exciting use cases have been pulled back into the ecosystem being offered because they still want the scale overnight. They had access to 8 million NatWest customers or whatever the number is. So, yes, I think; certainly, all banking apps have had to, even the banks themselves, have had to reorganize and rethink how they deliver technology to retail consumers who probably had had very little churn in the past because the options were very limited. CHAD: That's great. So tell me about the genesis for this idea and realizing that you could use open banking to view people's financial information and to develop a profile that could be used to opt into advertising. Where's the genesis of that idea for you? GUILLAUME: Sure. So actually, several threads came together very neatly in quite a tight timescale, the first of which is I spent a lot of money, relatively speaking, on a company called Patch Plants. And Patch Plants deliver plants to your house, [laughter] and they have quite a nice way to go about it. All the plants have got human names, and they come with little booklets about how to look after them. And I felt very positive about the relationship I felt I had with Patch Plants until for the three, maybe four months following that purchase, there wasn't a website, or a social feed that I was on that didn't have Patch Plants all over it. And I really took note of my sentiment towards them [laughs] where I thought, go away, Patch Plants. I'm a customer. Why don't you know better? With the amount of data that we provide to the web, you just assume...and maybe this is where it all starts to click into place that actually, it's not that smart. CHAD: The interesting thing is I think it is possible for companies to on target you once they decide to do it, but it seems like nobody does that. [laughs] And it's like, I've just bought a stove. Why am I seeing stoves all over the place? [laughs] I'm not going to buy another one. GUILLAUME: Yeah, again, I think it comes from the underlying infrastructure, which is basically this concept of cookies, which we accept on every single website before we can do anything with it. And you've probably got a number of unchecked-out stoves across the web. And it's not locking on to the fact you've got one checked-out stove. But of course, we're connected to the bank account. And so when we see that transaction, we see the counterparties. We know for a fact that that person has made that transaction with that vendor, and therefore, you probably need to change the message. And that goes from daily purchases right through to the massive, heavy items we can see when people started a car leasing agreement. Well, if you want to get them to think about considering your brand of vehicle in two or three years or three or four years, there's probably a journey that you should take that person on. But then again, once they've made the purchase, don't keep hassling them. So that's the first thing. If you saw my bank account...so I worked with open banking innovation [laughs]. I guess that's pretty important. CHAD: [laughs] GUILLAUME: So I was acutely aware of how the data could be shared and analyzed, so that's the first point. And then, pretty much at the same time, Netflix brought out this documentary, The Social Dilemma, really putting across that these social media applications were basically designed, maybe it's not a surprise, but pretty much as gambling apps. They're exceptionally addictive. And the reason they're addictive is because the longer you spend on them, the more advertising they can slide into; now, I think one in every four posts. And now that we've moved on to short-form video content, there's infinite scroll. We're all on these apps for hours a day. But the only way they generate revenues is through advertising, and the only way they get advertising is by you spending more time. And it sort of didn't sit too well with me, especially after we had the Euro Championship in football or soccer here. And there was a ton of racist abuse that went out to players across social media. Lots of brands and advertisers started pulling away from it for a very short period of time to express their protest. But I realized then that, actually, there is no alternative. If you want to attract attention, you have to fund social media or Google, and that's kind of it. Those are your options as a brand or an advertiser. And the former being social media is really not a very healthy place to spend time. Sure, some good comes out of it. But I would argue that the bad that comes out of it far outweighs any of the good that's come from social media, certainly in the last five years or so, I believe. It's at the center of some major divisions in our communities. But it's all funded through advertising revenue. So that was the second point is that there really is no alternative. And why should Mark Zuckerberg be the beneficiary of my attention, my data, my value whilst putting absolutely no effort in changing or being an arbiter of the content? They're keeping their hands up saying, hey, we're not a publisher. If that content is there, it's there. And it becomes a very complicated argument very quickly around free speech and all of this sort of stuff. But ultimately, there's a ton of really nasty stuff. And then we had a family friend, specifically, who really put herself in a lot of danger, a young girl. And that was a very real impact on human life close to us that was all driven from what she was able to access with alarming ease via Instagram. So those sorts of threads all came together. And then the more sort of...it's one of those things, right? Once you see a yellow car, you're looking out for a yellow car. You keep seeing them. But I don't think I was proactively looking out for it too much. But it seemed that every day almost, there was a new-new story in the front pages of the papers where Facebook was in some sort of trouble, and that obviously materialized last year with the Facebook leaks. And everything we've been just discussing now they've known about. They know about it. They're choosing not to make a difference. So we had a really powerful motivation to try and bring about a different mechanism for this $400 billion industry to operate. And rather than exploit our data, exploit our mental well-being, exploit our communities and everything else in order to drive advertising revenue, maybe the advertiser could have a more direct relationship, a fair and more transparent relationship with the consumer with whom they want a dialogue. And I think it's been the biggest learning curve for us is that brands and advertisers feel weird about paying consumers to pay attention. But we're saying we think it is weirder that you pay Google and Facebook to track these people all over the web and interrupt them everywhere they don't want to be spoken to. Why not just pay them to have a fair, transparent dialogue? I know you have money. I know you spend it with my competitors who are in my market. I want your attention, and this is what I have to tell you. There we go. So that was the sort of the kernel, the genesis. CHAD: I can totally see why advertisers are...scared is not the right word. Just, you know, it's just they've never had a relationship where they're paying the consumer directly for any kind of advertising that they do [chuckles] whether it be TV historically. There's always an intermediary. And the idea of paying people directly is not only different, but in some ways, I can imagine people view it as crude. Like, it's one thing if it's going through an intermediary and you're paying them, and advertising is being run, but it's another to just pay someone to pay attention to you. GUILLAUME: Yeah, but I think this is the point about the open banking. I completely agree with you; if you're paying somebody based on their cookies or any of the other data, the first-party data or third-party data, that's abstracted several layers from that pair of eyeballs that you know has a tendency to buy X on Y time horizon. That's never been possible before. And so through your television, it's scale. You're paying the broadcaster because they've got 3 million people watching Coronation Street on, I don't know, whatever. But it's always based on these tiny, tiny fractions of engagement, and that's always been the way it is. So you need the intermediary for scale. But I think what I'm hoping, what I've literally bet my house on [laughter], that's one thing that's going to change. I sold my house since we started to do this. All those marketplaces are completely saturated, and they are not getting less busy; they're getting more busy. And so okay, TikToks appeared, but the medium through which video content is provided to the consumer, you're lucky to get a quarter of a second or half a second with that person. And so you're right, but what is now the alternative to actually getting a minute, a minute and a half, two minutes with somebody where they're not skipping; they're not going past? You know they're a real person. You know they're human. All of our consumers have to have a bank account. They have to have transactions, and they have to have an income in order to be valuable and receive any adverts into their feed. So it's just never been possible before. The scale play, the intermediary, was always sort of, I think, accepted, and it still is today. There's going to be a bunch of fraud. I think there's like 15 cents in every dollar spent online digitally for advertising is lost. I think it's a $100 billion problem by next year. So I guess the point I'm making is the intermediaries historically and to today have existed because you need to reach millions of eyeballs in order to get a very low interaction rate. With our model, we're able to target thousands of people and achieve a 19.6% average click-through rate even after a minute and a half worth of content because they're engaged and you're not interrupting them. So we think it's a relatively elegant model for what is a saturated, noisy world where eventually also the very mechanism by which they do track and target you is going to be replaced at some stage by Google and Chrome. Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don’t have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot’s Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We’ll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. CHAD: You have this idea. It's really challenging the status quo. You're working in open banking innovation at the time. What did you start to do then, to try to bring your idea to life? GUILLAUME: So the first thing was actually my background is in sales and business development but within the fintech and open banking space. So I've worked with a lot of very smart people. And the first thing I really needed to do was quickly validate whether or not this is something. So a guy that we brought on...he's not so much a co-founder, but the other director of the business is a guy called Matt McBride, who's this global head of UX at a company I used to work for. And that was really the first thing is to try and rapidly prototype what the experience would look like and ultimately go out to our target audience, which was Gen Z here in the UK, and ask them whether or not this is the sort of thing they'd engage with. And the responses were actually really very positive. "Hang on; you're going to pay me to watch ads that are relevant to me? No-brainer, please do." And then, we were able to raise 100 grand, 150 grand, which enabled us to take that prototype and build it into something that, after a few obstacles with Apple in the App Store, we were able to get live. So that was really the first thing, I guess is, figuring out the way and the people that I needed to help me out to take this idea into something tangible and then tested it before I went much further with it. I was very fortunate, or I am very fortunate, that my partner is a corporate lawyer; my wife, sorry, now; we've been married since we started. [laughs] And so, actually, the mechanism through which we were able to raise the really earliest funds meant that we didn't have to give very much of the business away at such an early stage, which I think was a key learning point that I certainly share with other founders is you don't have to go give away 25% of your business for a little bit of money just to get it off PowerPoint. There are other ways. CHAD: So I think I remember what I told you when we met and talked. Do you remember what it was? GUILLAUME: You shared lots of very valuable insights with me. CHAD: My memory is that at the time, it was only advertisements in the app. And I think I said, "I get that people are going to want to be paid to look at these things." GUILLAUME: Oh yes, right. CHAD: "But if there's nothing else here, it's going to be really hard to bring people back to do that." And we had seen that in another client of ours that was paying people to browse. And what they'd do is they do it for a while, and they'd hit whatever monthly cap of return that they could get, an amount that they thought made sense. And then, they would switch back to their other browser because it was a better browsing experience. So they were only using it because they were getting paid. And as soon as that incentive went away, they would stop using it. GUILLAUME: Yeah, so I remember that. And you were right. And I guess there are a few things that came about from that, so the first thing is that Apple agreed. So we couldn't get the app onto the App Store if it was just a feed of adverts that remunerated the user to watch them, incentivized the user. So we put quite a lot of additional features, I guess more traditional fintech features, open banking features within the application in order to give the user insights into their spending, week-on-week analysis, and categorization of spend. And we also built this what we call the level up section where every week, you get refreshed pieces of content around, you know, very Gen Z-focused again, but what's the difference between a credit card and a loan? Is buy now, pay later a good idea? What's open banking? So we generate all this content, which they don't get paid to consume but is there, and they do. But more importantly, I think what we realized is that actually what we've got...this is the difference, I guess, between the Attention Exchange and Zedosh being the app; it's the plumbing and the matching that is the real value here. It is the models we're building that understand people's behavior and propensity or intent to buy something based on the data they're sharing with us. And so, actually, what we've built is a solution where you should be able to log in to any publisher that has the additional content, and experience, and value that you're speaking about there, places you ordinarily already browse and frequent. But if you want to, there's a separate tab where there are ads waiting for you that remunerate you, but you go into that tab. So we're trying to remove the interruption, you know, the pop-up even having to accept cookies from your user experience with the publisher moving into a separate, dedicated tab. And the reason the consumer is still going to go click on that tab is because they know that there's some content that's relevant and pays them, but they're still able to enjoy all the other benefits that the publisher provides. So it's kind of weirdly trying to flip this premium subscription model where you pay not to have ads. Actually, you're the first recipient of the ad income, and you share that with the publisher. CHAD: I think this is really cool, and yet I think it also rubs up against or hits up against something that is just so different than the status quo. The idea that companies would not interrupt you with advertising is probably so foreign [laughs] to people that I imagine you get reluctance to that. GUILLAUME: The last two years have been a steeper learning curve for us and all the advertisers and agencies, and players we've been speaking to. But what I'm grateful for is the fact that what we term the ad-pocalypse is coming. And so I was just at an event called MAD//Fest last week, which is basically all the advertising industry got together in London, the UK advertising industry. And every single panel discussion talk was about the post-cookie era. And all that most people are speaking about is how do we gather more data in other ways from the consumer in order to keep doing more of the same? And all of a sudden, when we're talking about the fact that our users give us their banking transactions, we see how much they earn and where they spend it and, therefore, can also attribute without the use of cookies, which is the holy grail of advertising. We started generating an awful lot of interest from really big players. So I think you're right; the status quo is having the rug pulled from underneath them, right? Look at Meta's share price this year. I haven't checked it this week, but last time I checked, it was down 52%. And that's because iOS app tracking transparency is stopping the ability to track and monitor and, increasingly, ultimately, the ability for the user to remain more private. And they all are doing it. Why would they want to be less private in order to benefit Meta? In our platform, they're opting into their most intimate data being shared because they stand to be rewarded fairly for it. So I completely agree; up to this point, "What? No way." This is how it works. And certainly, the thing that will probably remain true is to do more with less isn't of interest because agencies get paid a percentage of the budget. They don't want to do [laughs] the same with less budget. But my point remains that with iOS app tracking transparency...apparently, Android is going the same way, and Chrome is replacing third-party cookies. The status quo simply cannot continue. Something has to change. And so I think with this identity solution often is what we're building. The consumer stands a chance of being the first in line to receive a reward for their attention. And I'm very pleased actually we've got some competition as well since we last spoke, which is new. But this concept of rewarding consumers for attention, I think, will just...how else are you going to get their time? They're not listening to you on TikTok. [laughs] CHAD: I'm happy to hear that you're viewing competition as a positive thing. And I agree competition raises awareness that this is a thing and a potential, and most people will shop around or research it further. And that's a chance for them to discover you. GUILLAUME: I hope so. This company has done a big advertising campaign all over. It's on TV, radio, and the underground in London. And the amount of people who've reached out to me... "Is this company doing what you're doing?" And ultimately, they're paying users in a way for their attention to advertising. But they don't use open banking, and they don't have the data that we have. CHAD: That's an important distinction. One of the things that I've seen our clients worry about...and I saw it happen to one. Even though lots of people worry about it, I've only ever seen it happen one time, but it's still a risk, and that is when competitors come along. And unbeknownst to you, they dramatically over raise and therefore are just able to flood the market, saturate the attention, and build way bigger and faster at a loss than you are willing to do. GUILLAUME: Yeah, or able to do. [laughs] CHAD: Or able to do, right? Because they've raised 500 million [chuckles] or something like that. That's what happened with our client, who was in the group buying space at the same time as Groupon and LivingSocial. And so that's the only time I've ever seen it happen, but it's something that people are worried about. How are you...is that something on your mind? GUILLAUME: It's interesting. So they've raised 15 million Series A, and they've been around since 2012. So they've been around a long time. And it almost feels like they... [laughs] I'm not saying they did, but it almost feels like they landed on my LinkedIn. And we're very anti-social media. The message is really strong on anti-social media. But ultimately, they built an app. And so I think we've already matured past the point that in terms of our scaling and our ability to integrate with any platform, our strategy already goes beyond competing on a direct basis of an app that serves ads. In fact, if anything, at some stage, I'm hoping that they could plug into our engine and our pipes and add an extra layer of data and personalization to the adverts that they serve. So ultimately, when they came, and it was during the Champions League final that they had their first big launch because one of the backers is a football player, my phone just went berserk. Because it was like, wait, what? And at first, I was a bit worried but ultimately, no. I only really, really see it as a positive at this stage. But obviously, yes, they can advertise. They can speak to brands. They've got much more market presence. Everywhere you go on the underground, there are those posters. But we have a very clear, distinct proposition that is quite different. As I said, really, this pulling apart what Zedosh is and what the Attention Exchange is; the Attention Exchange is really potentially the plumbing, the rails for this post-cookie advertising model. CHAD: So that being said, you are doing some fundraising now. That's right? GUILLAUME: Yes. In fact, I don't think I've stopped fundraising [laughter] since this started. And certainly, that wasn't something I was anticipating despite the fact that...I mentioned I'm married to a corporate lawyer. She told me, "Your role as a CEO, as a founder, you're just going to be fundraising." I thought, yeah, well, I'll get some money in, and then we can focus on doing the stuff. But every time money comes in, most often you sort of have already spent it. It's allocated; it's gone. You need to look for the next lot. But yes, we are fundraising. Currently, we're still focused majoritively on angels. We're looking to prove our scalability model with this existing raise, at which point I think we’ll be ready and looking for institutional funds. But we use something called EIS funding which is UK-specific but is so, so rewarding for UK taxpayers. Basically, they get 30% back off the tax amount of their tax return, which is a great incentive, and all the gains from the equity is free of capital gains tax as well. So it almost becomes a no-brainer for people who have money that they're looking to invest in early-stage risky businesses. They're already really risking. The capital risk is under 50% of what they put in because there's also an insurance element; if the company goes bust that you've invested, there's something called loss relief. CHAD: So it's really attractive to angel-level investors. GUILLAUME: Correct. So you have to be a UK taxpayer as an individual to benefit from this specific relief. Of course, I mean, we have had some non-UK people still invest through the same sort of advanced subscription agreement. But yes, it's very attractive for UK taxpayers. CHAD: And do you think...[laughs] you've already answered this question. But I guess when do you think you'll stop fundraising? GUILLAUME: We're looking to change the way the internet works. [laughter] CHAD: Right. GUILLAUME: And so if we're mildly successful even redistributing the 100 billion of ad fraud which is currently being lost out there, we're entering a very cash-rich market looking for solutions at this moment in time. So if we're to raise some cash that enables us to put in place the plumbing and the pipes that we're looking to connect to, then actually, we should be relatively profitable relatively quickly, at which point, I guess we'd no longer need to fundraise. But at which point we'd probably say, "Well, actually, the U.S. is now ready for this. Let's go." CHAD: [laughs] GUILLAUME: I don't think we're particularly a cash-thirsty business. It's all built on AWS. CHAD: And you're right. That's why I asked the question because if your model is working, if you're having the impact you want, there's a lot of money in advertising. And so you should get to the point where you're able to do that profitably. GUILLAUME: Absolutely. CHAD: And start being as big as Google, right? [laughs] GUILLAUME: Yeah. I read a book called Life After Google. I don't know if I shared that with you the last time we met. But it's weird. It was written five or six years ago, but it's coming true. I think this whole premise of Web3, and this decentralization of data, and the ownership of data, the profiting of data at the individual level, is coming to the fore. And I can think of no better way to bridge your value and identity online than having it connected to your real-world assets, income, and spending behavior. CHAD: I was wondering whether you are going to mention Web3. [laughs] GUILLAUME: Huh. CHAD: Because this decentralization of the advertising money directly to users is a very Web3 idea. GUILLAUME: I agree. CHAD: [laughs] So how much do you talk about Web3 in your pitch or when you're talking about it? It hasn't come up until now in this conversation, so maybe not so much. GUILLAUME: It's a double-edged sword, I feel, because I think most people think Web3. They think crypto. CHAD: Yes. GUILLAUME: And we're paying cash in fiat, and although there's every possibility we could have a token-based solution, we're not looking at that because the core immutable value of your attention is linked in your spending behavior on earth and online, but through real transactions with real merchants. 99.999% of transactions, I imagine, aren't crypto yet and don't live on a blockchain, so until that point, I think we steer clear of it. Whether we could have raised more money more quickly if we [laughs] had mentioned it more, I don't know. But for me, there are quite a few steps to go in our journey as I see it having matured from the app to the plumbing, the plumbing now going to more publishers, more publishers meaning more audience, more audience meaning more attention, more advertising. At which point, as I said, the U.S. will probably be there with open banking. There are a lot of things in Web 2.0 that could be resolved. And yeah, if we make it that far, I think we'll be in an awesome position to have an identity solution for Web3 or Web5. [laughs] CHAD: Well, I wish you all the best in that journey. And I really appreciate you stopping by and sharing with us. GUILLAUME: My pleasure. It's been real great and nice to hear from you again. And I hope our paths cross in the real world soon enough. CHAD: Yeah. If folks want to get in touch or learn more or get in touch with you, where are all the different places that they can do that? GUILLAUME: We have two websites, so zedosh.com is the consumer app, attentionexchange.co.uk is our other website. Otherwise, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. And on Twitter, I'm @G_Zedosh. I'm not massive on Twitter. There are a lot of bots on that. CHAD: [laughs] I guess I'm not that surprised. So you can subscribe to the show, find links to everything that was just mentioned along with notes and a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. I'm also not very active these days. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks so much for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Guillaume Kendall.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment, but that you don’t have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot’s Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We’ll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprintSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Alice Loy is a Founding Partner at DaVinci Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Startups, the leading global startup accelerator and company builder for design, food, immersive, and creative companies. Victoria and Chad talk with Alice about what she means by creative companies, how much judgment she must pass as an investor with a love for the "weird and wonderful," and some of the challenges faced in bringing diversity to the rest of the accelerator world. DaVinci Ventures Creative Startups Follow Creative Startups on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Substack, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Alice on Twitter or LinkedIn. Alice's Blog Etkie Embodied Labs Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Alice Loy, Founding Partner at DaVinci Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Startups, the leading global startup accelerator and company builder for design, food, immersive, and creative companies. CHAD: Alice, thank you so much for joining us. ALICE: Thanks for having me. CHAD: Can you tell us a little bit more about Creative Startups in general but also what you mean by creative companies specifically? Like, isn't every company creative? [laughs] ALICE: Yeah, it's so funny. That's often the first question. And sometimes people I can feel their sense of indignation in thinking maybe I think they're not creative. CHAD: [laughs] ALICE: First of all, the creative industries are pretty well defined globally by the World Bank and entities like that. I'll come back to that. Yes, all human beings are creative. I like to joke that that's what got us out of caves in the first place. But more importantly, all entrepreneurs are very creative regardless of what sector you're operating in. So when we're talking about creative, we're just referencing the set of industries that are measured as the quote, "creative industries." They include film, our museums, design certainly is a core element of that. Increasingly, we're seeing more and more people move toward the creative industries as mechanized labor takes over things like building cars or even running data analysis. CHAD: Has getting support and funding and that kind of thing traditionally been easy in the creative space or hard? ALICE: No. I know you know the answer to that question because you're a designer. [laughs] CHAD: I usually don't ask questions that I don't know the answers to, so... [laughs] ALICE: But it's a great question because actually what it uncovers, you guys, is that it has changed dramatically for people who I call creatives or creators in the last two or three years. It's a little tough to measure with the pandemic, but we know at least $2 billion have gone into platforms that support creators, businesses led by creators. The creative industry has really turned a corner. So when we started this work 15-16 years ago, I co-founded the organization with a gentleman named Tom, who is now in his 80s. But he had come out of what's called the cultural economy, which was the precursor to the creative economy. And, of course, now we're all living in the creator economy. So like every other industry, it evolves. And one turn in this evolution is that creatives are now understood as economic drivers, not just people who add nice flourishes to things at the end. When you're building new products, people think about engineers, but it's really a creative process. And people increasingly bring in creatives from the outset to think about how the design process can be more humanized, can be more effective to solve people's problems so that your products really delight customers instead of just get the job done. CHAD: Is there something you can point to that triggered or pushed along that turning point? ALICE: Well, not to be overly philosophical, but I would say the general sense in the U.S. and increasingly in other countries where we work is that human beings don't want to be cogs in a wheel. They don't want to just be bit parts in a system. When you talk to Gen Zers, they understand that they are complete human beings. And somehow, I think older generations bought into the idea that you have the same job for 40 years. You go to work at 8:00; you come home at 5:00. You repeat the next day. I think the sense in the economy is that people want to be fulfilled. If they're going to give that much time to a job, they want it to be meaningful and valuable. And they want it to solve some of the big problems. Frankly, big tech is not approaching the world in that way these days. And so I think younger people are looking for values-aligned opportunities. And the creative economy is a space where values tend to align with really reaching the full potential of each human being instead of just extracting their physical and occasionally mental labor toward building a capitalist system. And so I think that zeitgeist has helped open the door. I also then think when you look at the kinds of technologies that are being utilized, they're still fundamentally about communicating ideas, and art, and inspiration. That's what Facebook is. That's what TikTok is. That's what even news channels are. And as more people come into the world of saying, "Oh, I can share my ideas, my art, my jokes, my music, my whatever," they see themselves as creatives, and they go, "I wonder how I could get paid for that?" I mean, there are a multitude of factors weaving together to shift. I also think, quite frankly, the SaaS investment area has become so saturated. I mean, if you walk down the street in San Francisco, if you don't bump into three venture capitalists who are SaaS investors, it's like, what are you doing? And so I think other types of investors with a different background maybe are saying, hmm, what about this area over here? How could we make money? So that would be another thread I would say is helping drive. CHAD: It strikes me that what you've shared sort of creates a self-fulfilling cycle too. ALICE: Yes. CHAD: Because once creatives have examples of other creatives that have done this, it becomes an aspirational thing that they understand that they, too, could do themselves. ALICE: Yeah, 100%. So our goal when we started the startup accelerator...we launched the first accelerator for creative founders in 2013 in the world. And we said to ourselves, if we get one company that becomes the poster child for this creative movement and demonstrating that you can be, as we like to say, weird and wonderful and build a company, then we will unleash a flood of people who now see themselves in that light. We were very fortunate in that we got that one poster child, and that has really helped us paint a picture that's clear for a lot of people where they see themselves as entrepreneurs, even though they're a tattoo artist or they're a hard rock Navajo metal band from the reservation or whatever their background is. Now they look and go, "Oh yeah, I could do that," and they certainly could. Being an entrepreneur is really hard but not intellectually challenging; it's more heart-challenging. CHAD: Oh, that's really interesting, more heart challenging. ALICE: Yeah. I mean, you're an entrepreneur. You guys have built a business, so you know that being an entrepreneur is more about being able to just sort of stay calm in the waves than it is about building the world's best boat and being able to steer toward that destination no matter how the winds blow. CHAD: Yeah, I've often referred to it almost as grit, like the ability to, no matter what happened yesterday, get up and do it again. ALICE: Get up, yeah. And unfortunately, I think there's a myth, maybe at least in the U.S., that what drives most people to get up and go, again, is money. And I don't think that's true at all. I think what drives people to get up and go again is their love of customers or end users. And their feeling they're just irrefutable despite there being no evidence feeling that this is going to work. This is going to make a difference in people's lives. And that's why the sort of slog. And there are days when...one of the things we always start a Creative Startup's program with is find your tribe. Cling to the people who believe in you. Ignore the naysayers. The naysayers are ten to one. Blow them off and cling to the people who say, "Wow, dude, that sounds cool. I bet you could do that." Yes, do another coffee meeting with that person. [laughs] Because sometimes you just need people who can say, "You got this. You got this. Just do another day, man." What do you guys do? Let me ask, what do you guys do when things get really rocky for you? How do you guys collect that internal okay, I'm going to get back in the saddle. CHAD: I've talked about this with people before, and I actually think that this is going to be a non-answer, but I'll do my best. I actually don't know exactly what does this for me. But I do know a side effect is I also don't celebrate the wins as much as other people wish that I did. And I think it's because I just move on very quickly from things. I don't dwell on the downs as much. I also don't dwell on the highs as much. And so I don't know if it's just something about me that does it or I just trained myself to do that. But it does have some downsides to it. ALICE: That was a real answer. That wasn't a non-answer at all. CHAD: [laughs] ALICE: Victoria, what about you? VICTORIA: I think to add on to what Chad said is kind of that thoughtbot mentality of viewing things as an experiment. And so if you come in with that mentality, like, this is the experiment. We'll see if it works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't work, there are some lessons to be learned, and we can grow from that and do better next time. And if it does work, great; [chuckles] this is cool. And I actually like to celebrate the wins a lot. I like to really dwell in those moments and feel like we did something right. We should remember this and learn from that as well and then try to repeat it, right? ALICE: Yeah. Oh, I love that. CHAD: You mentioned that when you were first starting Creative Startups, you hoped to get one win, and you did. Which one was it? ALICE: To be clear, as a mom, we don't have favorite children, okay? [laughter] And there are different companies that have had enormous impact in different ways, so let me tick some off. Let me name first Etkie. It's a design company built by a woman named Sydney, who grew up in rural New Mexico with a passion for working with indigenous communities. Her design company makes spectacular handmade bracelets, average price point around 250 bucks. And she sells in about 100 different high-end galleries around the world. She creates 40 jobs for Navajo women on the reservation at twice the annual pay that they would receive if they worked any other job there. Pretty astounding, pretty astounding. Those women have gone on to reinvest their money in things like rebuilding the school, putting in wells for family. The Navajo Nation lacks drinking water all over the place. So really fundamentally shifting the economic and social trajectory of that community. She designs every single bracelet with a woman, and you'll see they're named after the women. And they just do a recollection process where the woman recalls something from her childhood, and they weave a story around that. And then, they create the bracelet design. They're beautiful, Etkie, E-T-K-I-E. The next one I would say that has really inspired me is founded by another woman who does...now she's doing more XR AR, But they started as a virtual reality company doing films for medical providers who needed to better understand the disease experience of their patients in order to come up with not just solutions to their lived experience but actual medical procedures, and technologies, and pharmaceuticals that could shape the outcomes of that patient. So that company is called Embodied Labs, founded by a woman named Carrie and her team out of LA. And they're now selling to hospital systems across California and increasingly in the Midwest, et cetera, changing thousands of lives. And then the one that most people do point to us and say, "Hey, good job," is a company called Meow Wolf. We were their first investor back in 2014. They've gone on to raise upwards of $250 million. They're kind of a competitor now to Disney. So they're in the immersive art and experience realm. They had a million visitors in their Denver spot. So far this year, they've had about a million visitors in their Las Vegas spot. They were founded here in Santa Fe, our hometown. And we didn't even know they existed. They didn't know we existed. [chuckles] The night before our application was to close, somebody wandered into a meeting they were having where they were talking about dissolving the art collective. And somebody said, "Oh before you guys make a decision, you should check out this thing." [laughs] So in some ways, it was angels on our shoulders in that it's a homegrown company, and Santa Fe is a small city. We needed a shift here around our creative economy. And they needed somebody to believe in them. They had gone to every business support organization they could find and had been told, "Well, you're probably trying to start an arts nonprofit." And they thought, "That's not really our vision. That's not...we want to build a company. We think art is something people will pay for if it's put forward in a way that blows your mind," and Meow certainly blows your mind. CHAD: That's really interesting. I mean, I totally get why people would say that just because...but that's like saying...when Disney was getting started [chuckles] people saying "It sounds like you're trying to create an arts nonprofit." ALICE: Yes. And I'm guessing a lot of people did. The future happens when we're all looking backwards, and very few people are looking forwards. And so I think it's important for entrepreneurs to keep in mind you're probably just statistically talking to somebody who's looking backwards because human beings tend to do that more than they look forward. And so better to find people early on who say, "You know, I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about because you're the expert in your startup, and I'm not. But let me ask you this, how could I be helpful?" That's the right question. If they give you an answer and they don't even know what you're talking about, you probably don't need their help. And that's hard for entrepreneurs because there are so many doubters out there that you have to kind of keep plucking through to find the one or two people who say, "That's really interesting. That seems like it might work. How could I help?" Did you guys have somebody at thoughtbot early on who you can remember sort of said, "Huh, that's interesting. How could I help?" CHAD: I think it was our early clients who most did that. ALICE: Oooh, yeah. CHAD: Because we're a consulting company, because we're an agency, finding clients who believed in us and wanted to work with us in part because they liked us was an important aspect to that. If it wasn't for those early clients, no amount of passion would have kept us going because we needed to support ourselves. ALICE: What a great insight, honestly. I think the sort of rhetoric around passion is really abused. Because there's now this sense that, well, if you have passion, you can build a business, and that's just not true. That's not true. I hate to say it, and people are always stunned when I say it because they think that I lead Creative Startups; I must be the core passion champion. But here's what I would say is if you have a passion for solving your client or your customers' problems, then you might have a business. [laughs] There's a huge difference there. There's a difference between well; this is what I want to make. This is what I love doing. That is not necessarily going to answer the question is anybody paying you to do that? And I like to encourage people to think about if you have passion for doing something, you probably have a hobby. If you do stuff that people want to pay you to do, you might have a business. And crossing that bridge is an analytical and a heart-wrenching process. Because usually, what you end up with is I mostly get to do what I love to do. But I do a lot of stuff I don't want to do because that's what building a business is, just like being a parent or any other really amazing, wonderful thing in life. Running a business is not just about doing what you love doing all day; it's mostly about doing what people want to pay you to do. And if you're doing what people want to pay you to do and you love it, that is beautiful. That is a blessed position to be in. It's rare. And you have to ask yourself very real questions and be brutally honest with yourself, or you could waste your retirement savings. You could spend a year or two away from your family before you figure that out, not to be depressing. [laughs] But we always say from our programs we look...not from our more advanced accelerator programs, but we also provide programs that are more; how do you figure out this idea? You have this idea, or you have what we call lucky revenue. A lot of creatives get lucky revenue where their friend sees them doing something, and they go, "Man, would you do one for me?" And then somebody else wants one, and now they have lucky revenue. And they're ready to say, "I think this might be a business." And those people we say you have three outcomes from our programs. One, you realize this is not a business. It's just not going to make any money. The business model does not pan out. Two, this might be a business if I do it differently, and now I need to figure out if I want to do it differently. And three is, yeah, I'm on track. Now I got to go grow it. And all three are valid outcomes. Because we've worked with people who came to us late, took out a loan. And we said, "Well, what's your plan for paying it back?" "Well, we don't know." That's bad. That's really dangerous. That can ruin families' economic futures. And so we're much happier to catch people before that happens so they can ask those critical questions about is this really a market opportunity? Is this a business I want to build? Is this, therefore, a business opportunity for me? And those questions are deceptively simple. In our more advanced programs, we focus on, okay, you've got revenue, you've got traction. You're ready to start maybe thinking about what's the next three years? Where are your cash flow gaps? Where's your, as people like to call it, the valley of death that you have to cross as you grow? What kind of financing can you go raise to help cross that valley? How do you get to 10 million in revenue, 50 million in revenue? People are at different stages of growing a business. MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you’re tight on time and investment, which is why we’ve created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product’s next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. CHAD: How much judgment do you pass as an investor as people who are reading applications about who gets into the accelerator program? How much judgment do you pass, and how do you strike that balance? ALICE: That's kind of a peek behind the curtain; how do people really pick companies? Different people do it differently. For us, we really hue toward weird and wonderful. We actually prefer...and this goes against what people say you should do, [laughs] but we kind of go against the grain in general. And it's worked out. We prefer to look at things that we don't totally understand partly because often creatives don't speak business speak. So I'm pretty turned off by (I'm going to make something up.) the Harvard Business School grad who has a music-sharing platform and doesn't play music. I'm like, how would you know about a music-sharing platform? Whereas a musician who comes with their garage band and they happen to have a computer science degree from the college down the road and they've invented this thing and all of a sudden, it's taking off, and they're not even sure why. I'm listening, and I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. A lot of creatives tend to pick up on opportunities in the market, and they don't frame it so much as a business opportunity because that's just not the language that they've learned to speak yet. But they have an insight into a particular sector or a need that people who are not really in that space... It feels like a lot of the startup world has been overtaken by people who want to be startup founders but don't necessarily have their hands dirty in a particular sector where they know how to really solve a problem that either a lot of people have, or that very few people have but that a lot of people have in the future if you build the market. And that's where you make a lot of money is if you build a market. So we look for things like that. So what does that mean when we're reading applications? We don't ask for financial statements. We ask, how much money did you make last year, and where do you think most of that money came from? We're more interested in are they interested in analyzing their business so they understand where growth could come from next? Instead of, what is your financial statements? Most of the entrepreneurs who come through our programs don't have financial statements. They might not even have a cash flow projection, which is really exciting. We have entrepreneurs who come to us who...I'll tell you a story. We had an entrepreneur come to us who ran underground music clubs in old houses in Denver. And he was like, "I think this is a business, but I don't know anything about business. I just started hosting these a few years ago." And I said, "Well, how many people...like, if you took an average year..." and I said, "You don't charge anything?" And he said, "No, people just hear about it." And I'm thinking, okay, so you get a couple thousand. "How many people in an average year come to your basement music club thing?" "50,000." [laughs] Yeah, I think you might have a business. I mean, those are the kinds of things that you think, wow, why did that take off? What is going on there? That's really interesting. Let's talk. And he had a mohawk. He played in a metal band. Business was not his deal. And so that wasn't the lens he was applying. I think a lot of designers and a lot of people who invent products and solutions start with; I'm doing this for myself, wouldn't this be rad? Without even knowing that, they touched a nerve in the market that now is kind of catching on fire. Those are really exciting entrepreneurs for us to work with. They do have to turn a corner on I'm building a business now. I'm not just doing something that's cool with my friends. And that can be a difficult place because it means you have to cross a bridge into the world of finance, and you're probably going to have to hire product managers. And now you go hire that Harvard Business School grad and they work for you. And a lot of people frankly don't want to turn that corner. And I get it because when you come back to that topic of, is this values-aligned? A lot of that world is not yet totally values-aligned. That's shifting, more impact investors, more investors who want to see more different types of people starting companies, but we're not there yet. And so there's this cultural clash. When creatives walk toward that space, they go, ew, I've been fighting against the man my whole life. And now you want me to get in the car and go on a long road trip with them? No thanks. [laughs] And I'm sitting there with the Doritos going, yeah, man, but I got all the good munchies, let's go. It often does work out. But I also understand why people say, "You know, that's just not my deal now." VICTORIA: Yeah. And you have a tremendous amount of diversity in your alumni. ALICE: We do, yeah. VICTORIA: And so do you find that there are some challenges in bringing in that group to the rest of the accelerator world? ALICE: Yeah, you know, funny, I was thinking about that yesterday. So about 70% of our alumni, and this has been true across the board from day one, are people of color or women. At one point, it was around 30% were women of color. I haven't looked at that number in a while. We've worked with about 550 companies worldwide. In the Middle East, half of our alumni are women-led companies. In the U.S., we are fortunate to be able to work with a lot of indigenous communities. New Mexico is home to a large indigenous population. And it's a lot of the reason our culture is so dynamic and beautiful. So for us, that was always a no-brainer that that was where a lot of the interesting creativity would come from and that that was where the rising markets were. We, for example, accelerated and were the first investor in a company called Native Realities, which is a comic book. And they founded the first indigenous Comic Con, which is now called Indigenous Pop X worldwide. And they saw obviously before even Black Panther, and it became kind of like people said, "Oh yeah, superheroes come from all communities." They saw that that market was rising. There are 300 million indigenous people worldwide. There are two comic book companies. Let that sink in. [laughs] It's like, oh my God, what is the possibility then not just around comic books, but gaming, animation, all kinds of creative tools, film, music? That's a huge market that has not been served at all. And we understood early on that that was an area where people want to tell their own stories. People want to understand the stories of other people. And then people want to build new stories together across those cultural or geographic boundaries. And the technology had shifted such that that was possible. In 1980, that wasn't really possible. The distribution channels of film were such that you had to raise money in Hollywood and have Tom Hanks and whatever. That's just not true anymore. So we saw that early on, and that has helped attract a lot of entrepreneurs who share our passion for really telling those stories. However, I would say for people who want to support rising entrepreneurs out of what I'm going to call distressed communities or communities that have been literally discouraged from becoming their own economic leaders is that the burden that most of the people bear who are building businesses, for example, from Black communities, or native communities, or women in the Middle East, those people tend to bear a larger burden than someone from a more privileged background like myself. They're often the person in their family and for their community who is helping to ensure that people get the health care they need, that that kid was able to visit the college that they wanted to apply to. They become that sort of anchor of support for more people than in situations where we have more support and more what I call margin. They have really little margin. And so to ask them to, for example, join an accelerator full-time for 12 weeks that just doesn't work. Because the decision that they're making, you know, from a very privileged position, we can say, "Well, either you're dedicated to your business, or you're not." But really, what we're saying to them is, well, either you do your business, or you love your family and your culture. That's the question we're asking them, and that's a totally unfair question. That's a ridiculous question. Every single one of us would say, "I love my family. Thanks, see ya." CHAD: So how do you balance that? ALICE: Well, it's tough. I mean, first of all, we have adopted in the programs where it's more for early-stage entrepreneurs, and we're opening doors to entrepreneurship. And we are being first and foremost patient, patient with they're crossing that threshold. We understand that our core outcome is that people come always saying, "I'm an entrepreneur. I'm ready for the journey." That means we do things like, first of all, we do all online. If possible, we do a meeting upfront, so everybody meets each other in person because that kind of sets a tone of just it's a lot of fun. We have food and drink, and we have a good time. And then we do 6 to 12 weeks online, and then we do a gathering at the end. And we build a community first and foremost of people who are understanding how they can help one another. So Creative Startups is a little different in how we do accelerators. We do not ever have people stand at the front of the room and tell people what they should do with their business partly because we're educators first and foremost, and we understand...I have a Ph.D. in entrepreneurship. I understand that entrepreneurs tend to be experiential learners, not all but many. And we're not going to be there in a year building their business. They're going to be building their business. We have to build their self-confidence. We have to build their ability to say, "I know how to row the boat. You're along for the ride." I'm just along for the ride. [laughs] That requires us to do things like, okay, so let's work on your business model and really carefully chunk out here's one piece of that. Let's go deeply into understanding that. Let's tackle the vocabulary. Let's look at how people talk about it online. Let's open that door culturally so that you can take that into your experiences and say, "Oh, I already kind of do that. I just use a different language," which is what a lot of designers do. A lot of designers, whatever your background, already do entrepreneurial processes. They use different language, and it's just a translation. It's literally just vocabulary. So we help people understand that the best way to figure out your client's needs are by listening; all people know that. If you want to understand someone else, listen, and unpacking that into then business speak a little bit, and then giving them opportunities to go do that in the real world. And being patient with how they might do that or why they couldn't get it done this week. Or maybe they want to come back with a different way of describing it than maybe a White person like me might describe what they experienced. And just giving a lot of latitude to people to have that own experience themselves. That honestly...I know that sounds very philosophical. But it breaks down into tactical things that we do in an accelerator that opens the door to a lot more entrepreneurs. And our Net Promoter Score is 9. Over 90% of people would recommend our program. People love our programs. And 70% of our alumni are still in business. So I think it's working. We have a lot of learning to do. We're doing an indigenous accelerator right now, and it's a lot of learning for me. It's very eye-opening. CHAD: As an accelerator specific to indigenous peoples, what made you decide to do that? Some people I know, thoughtbot included, sometimes hesitate to do things like that because we don't want...there's some hesitation around doing something like that. ALICE: So we share all of those hesitations, and we think they're spot on. We are doing this in partnership with a group called Creative Nations out of Colorado. They are all indigenous people. They're a new group. And we envision Creative Startups moving more toward a place of being kind of like the intel, you know, the old intel inside. We are inside, and we're an engine within another organization. So here in Santa Fe, we partnered with Vital Spaces, which serves Black and Brown creative entrepreneurs and artists. And our goal is to help build their capacity to be able to keep doing programs as they see fit for entrepreneurs. And we're standing by as they would like us to help. So we took that same approach with working with Creative Nations. It's been a fantastic partnership. The lead working with us is a woman named Kelly Holmes. She is Lakota Sioux. She's from the Cheyenne River Reservation. And she founded Native Max Media, which publishes Native Max Magazine, the world's first fashion magazine for indigenous entrepreneurs. She is a brilliant, creative entrepreneur. She is self-taught. She eked it out. She has been around ten years now. It's astounding. And you see the magazine, and it's spectacular. It is high glamour, beautiful. And it is reshaping the way not only indigenous people see themselves but how White people see indigenous people. And those reframed stories are so important to building a more equitable society. So I was over the moon to partner with her. Then I learned her mom is one of the few Lakota language teachers. So Lakota is her first language. Her mother teaches Lakota and teaches teachers how to teach Lakota. So she grew up with an educator. So she has taken to building this, again, patient, very exploratory online environment for indigenous entrepreneurs. And then I bring sometimes the more technical like, oh, you're asking a specific question about how to do structured interviews with customers. Sure, let me talk a little bit about that. But as we started out this conversation, you guys, entrepreneurship is not an intellectual challenge usually; it's a heart challenge. I don't mean that in a way to disparage how important it is to be really strategic and smart about your business. But I think at the outset especially, you just have to be able to hang in there and keep doing it. And then, as you grow into that opportunity, you start to see that the intellectual challenges unfold because your opportunities become more complex. But at this outset with Kelly, it's been a conversation with people who are frankly reframing themselves as business leaders, people who own businesses and have employees based on their creative output. And that's a really exciting space to work in. We wouldn't work in this space if we didn't have a partner who shared our vision and who wanted to be that native leader of a program like this. It just wouldn't really feel exciting. CHAD: I think that that's great advice and a framing that helps me think about the things that we've tried to do in the past and the things that we hope to do in the future and realizing that really genuinely partnering with someone in the actual community that we're trying to serve or to have an impact with is sometimes an important missing component that we need to incorporate. That'll help solve a lot of the hesitations that we might have around doing something. ALICE: Yeah, yeah. VICTORIA: Right. And we've all heard before that culture eats strategy for breakfast, which I think -- [laughs] ALICE: That's my favorite line, Victoria. You nailed it. VICTORIA: It makes sense that the more connected you are to your culture and to your community, that's where you'll be the most successful when your heart is in it. ALICE: Yeah. And I want to give sort of a plug for stepping outside of the zone of the way...I went to business school. I have an MBA. I'm really well-versed in that whole world. I'm married to a venture capitalist. He teaches how to do venture capital at Stanford. That whole world is very familiar to me. And it seems to not be helping us solve the problems that we have now as a society. And so one of the reasons I encourage people to go to those partners, go to those places where you're like, I don't fit in here; I don't understand what's going on here; these people speak a different cultural language, form, way of doing things, I encourage that because I think that for people who want to build a different world, we have to stop looking to the world that we already have. And we have to say, "Well, who does things differently? What could we learn?" One of the most beautiful things about working with the entrepreneurs in the cohort right now, the indigenous cohort, is they first talk about taking care of their people, that's first. And it's like, wow, if that's your entire frame, you start to make really different decisions in business. If you're talking about well, I want to take care of the people in my community; I want people to be healthy and happy and be able to pursue their own dreams; that's a really different frame of mind for a baseline for decision making. The other thing that Kelly talks about that I love (I'm stealing it from her.) is she talks about fighting for her business, fighting for her business. And that, to me, is such a great way to feel like, okay, if I'm fighting for my business, I know how much Creative Startups has achieved. I'm not fighting for myself. It's not my ego. It's none of that. It's fighting for my business so my business can keep having the impact. Everything that I think about now in terms of working with indigenous entrepreneurs is this has nothing to do with me. Their frame is very much my community, my people, my business, which is over there. And it's a humble way of understanding one's place. And that is a really exciting reframe for me to think about how we can solve problems like the climate crisis, like the disparity between rich and poor, like the disintegration of our democracy. What if we had a different frame? How could we solve problems differently, maybe better? So for us, these partnerships unlock a whole vast area of new thinking, new ways of doing business, new ways of taking care of other people. And at the end of the day, that's what gets me back in the rowboat [laughs] is this idea of, wow, we are having an impact on other people. And doing it with people who have a different starting point has really shaped a lot of the work that we do. CHAD: Well, I'm sorry that we have to wrap up. Otherwise, we could keep on going and solve the climate crisis and unraveling of our democracy, but -- [laughs] ALICE: Yeah, I have an appointment at 2:00 where I'm doing climate crisis. So I'll let you know how it goes. CHAD: Okay, wonderful. ALICE: [laughs] CHAD: Alice, thank you so much for joining the show and sharing everything with us. We really appreciate it. ALICE: Yeah, I was delighted to be with you guys and hope to continue the conversation. CHAD: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. VICTORIA: And if you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. CHAD: You can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. VICTORIA: And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHAD: Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Alice Loy.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you’re tight on time and investment, which is why we’ve created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product’s next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneursSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Joe Barb is Executive Director and Founder of LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center. They have a mission to strengthen and empower all youth, however they identify, to overcome obstacles by providing housing, supportive counseling, community education, and advocacy. Victoria and Chad talk with Joe about identifying needs for the center, his own lived experience and connection to the LGBTQ+ community, and deciding what services to provide and evaluating which are most impactful. LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center Follow the LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Joe on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Joe Barb, Executive Director and Founder of LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center, with a mission to strengthen and empower all youth however they identify to overcome obstacles by providing housing, supportive counseling, community education, and advocacy. Joe, thank you for joining us. JOE: Thank you. I appreciate it. VICTORIA: Wonderful. So you started the center over two years ago. If you could go back in time and give yourself advice to when you were first starting out, what would you tell yourself? JOE: Wow, very similar to for-profit companies, having the tenacity to keep knocking on doors, never accepting no for an answer, and understanding that tenacity is everything. Nothing happens without continuing the fight every day. VICTORIA: Great. And how did you first identify that need for the center? JOE: A million years ago, when I was a late teenager, my parents had a pastor in their church suggest to them that in order to bring me back to God and back to their church, that they should cut me off financially, you know, I was a young freshman in college prod me in that direction. So my parents took the advice, and I found myself in my second semester of college with no funding. The check for the second semester had been canceled from my family, and I didn't know what to do. So I called a friend in South Dakota that we had met on vacation. And she said, "You know what? I have an apartment building here. I just had an apartment become vacant. Why don't you move to South Dakota, and then we'll work on everything else?" So that lived experience kind of proded the whole thing. And then meeting the youth who had been displaced from home for being a trans youth caused the rest. CHAD: Well, I'm really sorry for that personal experience that you had. But it's pretty powerful and that you've gone on to help others in similar situations is really admirable. JOE: Yeah, it's been quite a journey. And my lived experience, honestly, I was with stability within 24 hours. The more I became comfortable and complacent in my life and then met somebody who wasn't; it brought me back to that. And then just looking at statistics, looking at how youth end up in a houseless situation created something in me that I had to address. VICTORIA: So you had your own lived experience and that connection to your community which helped you identify that need and start out on the center. Did you find there were a lot of resources for building nonprofits? JOE: There isn't. And it's really something that when you go into it, you believe that when you create a nonprofit and you finish that application, you send it into the IRS, and you get approval, that you put a great idea out there and that the community will respond and that everyone will immediately jump on it and say, "You know what? You're right. This is needed. We need housing. We need to make sure that youth are safe." And that's not the way it works. It doesn't work that way at all. It's a lot of connections and community and getting involved and putting the statistics and the numbers out there so that people are aware of it. But it's mostly connecting the stories. The more youth that I've met and worked with and connected them to a story and told their story, the more people respond. VICTORIA: Right. And so, what have you found to be the most impactful in sharing that story and in managing that content to get to the right people who can help you with this need? JOE: The most impactful part is people just aren't aware. We all know that there's a homeless population. No matter where you live, there's a homeless population, and it impacts communities. But what we aren't aware of is we all typically believe that the government is funding these things and it's being taken care of and that maybe those people just chose homelessness and don't realize that the resources are very limited. Until those resources are able to show a data of need, that person may not be counted that you saw on the corner. CHAD: You're pretty active socially online. I think where I first saw you was through a mutual connection on LinkedIn, and your posts started to be in my feed, and I liked and subscribed, I guess. How much of the awareness that you're putting out there is coming from social networks and online versus in-person and local communities? JOE: I'd say it's probably a good mixture of both. Locally, obviously, I'm deeply involved with other service providers, and I'm involved with local government. I'm on any kind of board that you can think of that impacts youth homelessness. So there's that within my community but having those LinkedIn...just this weekend, we had our pride, and at our pride, someone walked over to me, started talking at our booth. And he said, "Well, I know you from LinkedIn. CHAD: [chuckles] JOE: I noticed your picture with Sylvan Lake behind you from your LinkedIn, and I just had to come over to meet you and say hi." And I thought, how impactful is social media that someone who lives in Florida happened to be in South Dakota came to pride and recognized me from a picture? VICTORIA: Wow. Yeah, it makes our world feel a little smaller sometimes, doesn't it? JOE: Absolutely. VICTORIA: And the problem of youth homelessness and LGBTQ+ homelessness is very complex. And I think other nonprofit founders might be interested in how you decide what services you're going to provide and how you evaluate to see which ones are the most impactful. JOE: We did things kind of backwards. So I formed the board of directors, and typically what happens with the board of directors is they want to become your advisors. And I thought these people have great professional experience. We have doctors; we have PhDs, we have scientists literally on our board. And those people don't have the lived experience. So I thought, who do we go to to develop programming and support for people that are in need? And the answer was glaringly clear; it had to be the people who were in need. So I formed a Youth Action Board with the State Continuum of Care. And it comprises of youth ages 13 to 24 who have lived experience. We keep it at 66% have to have lived experience. And technically, most of them have even much more than that. But we connect with them through service providers who assist youth. And those were the people that we used to formulate what they needed, decide what was most beneficial to help them during vulnerable points, and then help them get out of situations. VICTORIA: Right. And I think that user experience, that experience bringing that into the products and services that you're creating, just makes a lot of sense for us, and that's what we bring into our design as well. JOE: Yeah, I mean, we do it in almost every industry. Whatever you create, whatever product you create, whether it's something tangible that you hold or whether it's a service, you bring in a test group. And that test group typically is people that you're seeking to utilize or buy your service or your product. And in doing that, we end up developing a better product. It's the same thing with a nonprofit. We had to get the voice of those who we would be serving in order to make sure that we were doing what they needed, not what we thought as professional people or personal opinions was the way forward. CHAD: Was there something as you were talking to people and learning that surprised you? JOE: Probably the same thing that everyone develops is an opinion of homelessness. We all think that people that experience homelessness it's typically through some self-inflicted issue; typically, drugs and alcohol come to mind and some type of cause that brought you there that you had influence on. And I've learned that most of the kids that we serve had no influence on their homelessness other than to be born where they were or to who they were born. A lot of our youth are coming from, oh, they've lived in shelters, or foster care, or aged out of foster care. It just changed my dichotomy of thinking that we would be serving people that had addiction problems or alcohol problems when in case of the youth...currently we're at, I think 68 youth served. I've only met one youth that had a previous addiction. CHAD: It's really just that lack of a safety net. And all it takes is your family not supporting you and not having a safety net. JOE: Absolutely. And that's just it. You said it very well. Most of us, when we have an incident in our life that we need some help because there's a vulnerability, we have people around us that we go back to. We have either family or close friends that we can say, "You know what? I lost my job. I need a little bit of help here," or "This medical incident happened, and could you assist us?" And we get a response from our family or friends that typically is supportive and helps us find a way. A lot of youth, especially youth that experience homelessness, don't have that connection to family. So that's where we need to bring in community to support them. VICTORIA: Right. And do you find there are unique challenges to supporting youth experiencing homelessness in the Midwest in South Dakota where you are versus in more urban areas? JOE: Absolutely. Carl Siciliano is my TA advisor. He created the Ali Forney Center in New York, which is the largest housing support for homeless youth for...they specifically only target LGBTQ youth in the United States. And in talking to him and in looking at our demographics, it was very different. For them, people in larger cities will just seek out their services. They learn about it word of mouth. They find out that there's a shelter in place. Here, our homeless population is much more hidden. And typically, what happens here is youth will gather together. And it'll be six or eight of them who will become friendly, and they will try to support each other by one of them will get a hotel, and then six or eight of them will live together. Or they're doubled up in one person's apartment, six or eight people live in somebody else's apartment, which truly isn't housed because it's not their place. And they try to support each other. So they're very hidden in our communities. CHAD: It's unfortunate there's a lot of stuff happening in the U.S. and worldwide with legislation being passed now anti-transgender. I think South Dakota was the first state in the country to pass an anti-transgender bill this year. Are there particular challenges to doing the work that you do in today's climate? JOE: Accessing mental health services, we had to overcome that obstacle by forming relationships with counseling services so that we could make sure that any youth, whether they were insured or underinsured, or uninsured, could immediately access mental health. And that took quite a bit of work on our part in order to make that happen. It should be easy. It should be easy to access mental health. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges because I can stabilize anyone tomorrow with either a hotel, or a house, or an apartment. But if you don't have mental health to help with what got you there, you're still living in trauma. If you're living in trauma, how can you focus on things like going back to school or having a career or what even tomorrow means for you? Because you're living in trauma today. So, absolutely, to answer your question, mental health. CHAD: And is that a matter of providers not wanting to provide services or not being able to pay for it? JOE: Not being able to pay for it. There are things that you can access if you're uninsured or underinsured if you meet the guidelines to get into mental health access. The problem with that is if you need to help today, that's a process. We wanted to skip the process. We wanted to make sure that if you walked into our drop-in center today that this afternoon I can have you with a therapist of your choice. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it's time to design, build, and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now, and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Liftoff brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we'll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today's new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow today. Get in touch at thoughtbot.com/liftoff. CHAD: You have a website. You collect donations online. And we definitely want to link all of that stuff in the show notes. It will be there, and I hope people contribute. But when it comes to the tactical stuff on the product and business side, are there particular tools or resources you were able to draw upon to put together online donations, the website, that kind of thing? JOE: As far as platforms, is that what you're asking? CHAD: Yeah. JOE: There are some great platforms that have been built specifically for nonprofits in order to help get the word out and help fundraise. That for us hasn't been the primary. In this type of nonprofit, typically, most of our donations are not donations or grants. They're things that we...like, I just spent two years on a grant that is quite substantial. But it was two years of work, literally 40 hours a week for two years. So there are those tools, there's the GoFundMe, and there are all kinds of tools for sharing on social media in order to get people to donate. They're great, but you have to have a large circle in order to utilize those. And you have to have people that are willing to do that as well. So I don't think we have the tool that's the best tool yet socially. CHAD: What would something that was better look like for you? JOE: It's more getting corporations and businesses and private companies involved in what a lot of companies are already doing. They will seek from their employees giving initiatives. And they will seek information to what does the company want to support as a community? Because that's what their employees care about. I think those things have a more sustainable development and a more sustainable footprint for nonprofits that when organizations get involved that are private and then offer to their employees a way to donate, that works best. CHAD: Yeah. For thoughtbot, to honor Pride Month, we collected a series of donations that we were going to make. And there was team suggestion...because we have teams all over the place, we wanted to have a local impact. And then when it came to actually doing those donations, I think we had 10 to 20 organizations that we wanted to donate, not a huge amount of money to each one but hopefully, it makes a difference. And the way that we needed to do that a person at thoughtbot needed to go and either find the donate link, the place to do it, and some of them didn't even have it. And we wanted to, you know, maybe it's a place in Brazil or something, and we need to get them the money somehow, wiring it or something. And so that was a fair amount of manual work to figure that out and then to make the payments. JOE: And I think because it goes along with we're learning as organizations that we have to take care of the social and emotional part of employees just as well as we do the work environment. It's part of the work environment. So I think that that kind of goes back to HR, which is my background. HR should look at those things in advance and find local nonprofits to support local ideas and then maybe some national ones as well. We all know of The Trevor Project and some of the great broader campaigns that do a lot of really good work. And have that ready so that when somebody joins your company you can show them and say, "Hey, by the way, these are some local organizations that we can do a payroll deduction for if you like, or we can buy annual contributions," and let the employees see that the company cares about the local area and also cares about things on a national platform that impact employees. VICTORIA: I love that. I think that's a great way to involve corporations in giving back and connecting employees to their local communities and the local groups that need support. Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners in order to support the LGBTQ+ Center or in general? JOE: The majority of our youth are LGBTQ+. And that's because statistically, across the United States, the majority of youth seeking housing services unaccompanied are LGBTQ+, up to 40%. But we don't turn away any youth. It doesn't matter how they identify. It doesn't matter what their circumstances are. The only thing that we ask is if you're telling us you're homeless, then we're going to assist in that. We do have age criteria of 16 to 24 because that matches the federal guidelines for the programming that we're in through federal dollars. So other than that, I mean, we still would help anyone of any age, but that's the big thing to know is that we help any youth however they identify. And what could listeners do? Obviously, on our website or look into your community as well and see what is a support in your area and find something that you can contribute to. VICTORIA: That sounds great. Thank you so much. Do you have any questions for me or Chad? JOE: I think that what you're doing is great. I like that you are thinking of nonprofits as a company as well because a lot of people view it differently when it's actually a company. You have to figure out a way to sustain funding and bring money in just like any other organization in order to do the work. CHAD: Yeah, I think that's a common misconception that people have. And I'm sure it's not the case with you and your organization. But I like to remind people that nonprofit really just means that it can't show a profit. So there are lots of nonprofits out there that just end up spending all of the money that they have. That is really also technically what it means sometimes. JOE: And you bring up a great point. There's an IRS website to look up any nonprofit organization, and you can look at how they spend their money. I do that all the time before I make a donation. Because we've all heard those stories of CEOs, who make 30 million a year or whatever crazy number. You can always look up any organization and see how they spend their money. CHAD: Yeah, that's a really good tip for people to do before you get involved with an organization with donations or your time and really making sure it matches your values and that kind of thing. VICTORIA: Great. All right. I think we're about at time. So with that, I will wrap us up and let everyone know you can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. CHAD: If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. VICTORIA: And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHAD: Thanks for listening and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.Special Guest: Joe Barb.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Now that you have funding, it’s time to design, build and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Lift Off brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we’ll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today’s new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow, today. Get in touch at: thoughtbot.com/liftoffSupport Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots