Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

John Ridd is the Co-Founder and CEO of Greenpixie, which is building solutions to reveal and reduce cloud emissions. Chad and Will talk to John about giving a clearer view of AWS emissions down to the service level, why cloud emissions are a much bigger sustainability issue than most people realize, and how this will be the next big issue of the climate crisis. Greenpixie Follow Greenpixie on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Follow John 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. WILL: And I'm your other host, Will Larry. And with us today is John Ridd, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Greenpixie, which is building solutions to reveal and reduce the emissions of the cloud. CHAD: John, thank you so much for joining us. I have to admit that as a developer, this is something that I've been thinking a lot about recently. We practice test-driven development. We run continuous integration, even the things that we have running in the cloud in terms of the websites that we run and that kind of thing. I'm also just really becoming aware of when I make a new branch in everything that I run, and I'm making a code change and pushing that up to GitHub; it then kicks off a build every single time any team member is doing that. And I can just see the impact that even just a single software product can have potentially on our environment. And I've started to become more and more guilty about that. So I'm excited to talk to you about how [laughs] we might be able to fix that problem. JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the big reasons that we've really seen the opportunity in the cloud emissions space is this disconnect really between how developers are incentivized to think, and rightfully so. They need to build and innovate at all costs; that's what drives the innovation in any tech company or any company. But the sustainability way of thinking and thinking, what am I building? What servers am I using and turning on? Just hasn't been in the conversation with developers. And they're the ones who are making these decisions using cloud providers to build out the products that the company needs. So it's great to hear that you're now aware of this impending issue from development. CHAD: So I'm excited to dig more into the product. But I'm curious, you were doing digital marketing before starting Greenpixie, right? JOHN: Yeah, I ran my own marketing consultancy, worked with a number of companies, big and small. And where I found my knack was sort of demand generation; really, starting off projects from nothing is what I've always done. It's clear now that...so Greenpixie was a bootstrap startup. Really using that ability to at least come up with an idea and take it from zero to one, bring demand to an issue, that's how Greenpixie started. And it actually started with the head of engineering, Chris, who I met at my co-working space, and really we traded ideas through a hackathon on the weekend. And I had this idea when it came to website emissions and just knew that there was a software and a product play there. And what we do is connect into Google Analytics, put it through some carbon algorithms, and give them the ability to see how much digital carbon the website is producing. And from my marketing background, we've developed our own marketing, internal marketing software, which is a combination of we've built our own email servers with a high inbox. And we do semantic web scraping to find relevant prospects in the sustainability space. So we built the MVP and put this idea for Greenpixie out to the world, and the overwhelming response that we got was people being shocked at the idea of digital carbon and how their digital operations do have a sustainability impact. It really gave us the confidence to think there's demand for this idea of emissions. And since then, we've now moved into carbon emissions down the carbon rabbit hole. But my marketing experience explains how it started in the first place. CHAD: So how does...sometimes when faced with, I think, all kinds of climate issues, people can feel overwhelmed or helpless or feeling like what do I do as an individual to have an impact? So what does Greenpixie and Cloud NetZero enable an individual, team, or company, or developer to actually see and do? JOHN: Cloud NetZero connects into the leading cloud providers. So at this stage, we can give a clearer view of your AWS emissions down to the service level. And this is a key first step. So we take a you can't affect what you can't measure philosophy. And that was a big, big step for us. And by cutting into the cost and usage reports and putting it through our carbon algorithms, we can then get visibility to engineers. So everything you're building up in the cloud, we then give a full transparent view of the associated emissions that are being created from that by using our algorithms and methodology to convert the electricity used from the computation and storage and take into account the geographic location of the data centers of which you're using. As you can imagine, there are different carbon intensities in different countries during different times of the day. So we actually hook up into an API that gives us this carbon intensity data down to the hour. So we give a really comprehensive view of your carbon emissions footprint, which is what we consider the gold standard in sustainability. Because what makes the digital vertical so unique within sustainability is we've got data coming out of our ears. [chuckles] The data is there to connect into the software, so we can give this crystal clear picture. Whereas in other branches of sustainability, if you're into supply chains, et cetera, you've got real-world problems that you have to put real-time into. So that's the first step that we do is giving you this clear picture of your emissions. And from that, we then proceed to suggest reduction strategies to reduce those emissions. WILL: John, I'll be honest. Before getting on the podcast with you, I never thought about my cloud emissions as a developer. Now I'm seeing, wow, there is a lot there with that. On your Twitter, I saw this stat: imagine driving 1.3 billion miles all the way to Saturn. The carbon you would release would be about the same as the amount from all of these streams of Netflix's top 10 shows in the month that were released, 6 billion hours of viewing. I'm just mind-blown just thinking about that. For someone who is just now thinking about my cloud emissions, what would you tell me as a developer or any CEO that's listening to the podcast? JOHN: So yeah, you're right. This is a much bigger sustainability issue than most people realize. Currently, it's estimated around 2% of global emissions are from the cloud and data centers use, which puts it near the level of the aviation industry. And because the cloud is so esoteric and it's called the cloud, you think it's light and fluffy, and you're like, okay, it's over there; it's fine. But there's a hard infrastructure that makes up the digital world that we enjoy, and that's thousands of racks of servers. That's so much gallons, like, millions of gallons of water used to cool these data centers. And because of this, there are countries such as Ireland and Singapore that have now begun to ban further construction of data centers. Because in Ireland, over 10% of the grid is taken up by these, well, I believe there was an article in The Telegraph that referred to these data centers as vampires, [laughs] vampires on the grid sucking all this energy up. And the reason that this exists is it comes down to a company level or to a developer level. You're renting these data centers in order to grow your operations. And this aggregate demand goes straight into why these data centers exist and how much electricity they're using. But what you can do for a certain output...because we're a tech company and we love tech. And that makes us different to maybe some sustainability, really hardline sustainability environmental point of view because we actually think you can achieve the same output for 40% less energy use. So there's waste that is pretty rife across the cloud space, and that also comes with the amount of money spent on the cloud. There can be servers that have been left turned on that are no longer used. There can be non-essential computation that could be moved to low carbon intensity hours of the day. And there's so much that can be done and still basically enjoy and build the tech that we all aspire to build. CHAD: I'm going to resist taking a tangent into What We Do in the Shadows and the energy vampire, or we can call them Colin, I guess, instead of vampires. JOHN: Yeah, yeah. [laughter] CHAD: So I used the calculator that you have on the website on our website, thoughtbot.com. I was pleased to see that it produces less carbon than 95% of websites. What goes into that calculation, though? JOHN: So what we do on the estimator, on the webpage, the calculator, so we take into account whether your server being used is green or standard based on requesting that homepage. And then, really, there's a lot of overlap with PageSpeed optimization, rightfully, so the heavier the web pages, the more images. And if it's been coded lazily and it's heavy, which it hasn't been in your case, which I'm sure you're really happy about, that basically does have an effect on the electricity used in order to serve the website. And we also provide a website carbon report, which goes a step further and takes into account your Google Analytics, which goes for all your pageviews and takes into account some other factors too. CHAD: When you're looking at the carbon footprint of a website, am I understanding that you're also taking into account the carbon footprint of the people viewing what it takes to view the website on the client too? JOHN: It's very interesting, and we are going into the client side of emissions. That is definitely something that we're looking into and continue to do so. But now we focus more on the cloud. We stuck with websites as our main priority, that would mean the next step was going into client side, and it can, and that logic does go up. And it shows the ability of measuring sustainability impact when it comes to digital because, of course, you can get device information from Google Analytics, and that can then be used to give an accurate prediction. But that is something that we would definitely consider doing in the future. But you see the potential. It can go in all these different directions. CHAD: A little bit of a meta question, then, so the calculator is running on people's websites. What is the carbon footprint of running the calculator on the site? [laughs] JOHN: Well, that's the thing; we do have transparency of our own operations. So we're a seed-stage startup, and our operations might get a lot bigger. But for now, and given the sustainable approach, we take with how we run our cloud and run these tools, around two tons of CO2 we produce in a month from operations. But looking into other tech companies, you can imagine how AWS can get when it comes to the bigger companies and everything in between. It can really be hundreds or tens of tons. That has been currently unaccounted for and not addressed, which put into perspective, it's acting on your carbon emissions as an individual. And let's say you're a developer who has the power to do this. You can have the effect of like ten times going vegan or not using air travel. So it's just really we really love the idea of combating carbon emissions, and developers, particularly combating carbon emissions is, using your unique skills in order to fight the climate crisis in a way that a non-technical person couldn't. CHAD: So what are some of the things that you're doing as a company to solve that for yourself? Are there particular cloud hosting providers that are actually better than others? JOHN: Yes, it does vary. So there are the big cloud providers, and we are on AWS due to the startup credit scheme, which, as you can imagine, that's very beneficial when you're starting from a bootstrapped model. And within AWS, you can actually...so choosing the geographic location of where you're spinning up the servers is one way you can reduce that. So our servers are in Ireland. So we're part of that issue actually, now that I think about it, because they have a relatively low carbon intensity. And that's one way that we ensure the carbon we're using is minimized. But there's a whole spectrum. So if you wanted to go at all costs and convenience and costs are out the window, there are niche carbon fighters, which actually are off-grid renewable power data centers. If you have the means, that is the optimum you can go in terms of the carbon intensity. But in terms of how we build, so just the typical making sure that we're turning off products, features, and servers that we don't use and being mindful of that, putting non-essential compute to low-carbon intensity periods in the day and just minimizing costs and using computation for a certain output is how we take that philosophy. MID-ROLL 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. WILL: On your website, I see that 127 billion is wasted in idle cloud spend, so obviously, one of your goals is to reduce that amount. What other goals is your company looking forward to solving? JOHN: I would say our main goal is to reduce millions of tons of needless cloud emissions using scalable software. That is our guiding light. But within that, it correlates largely with cost savings for companies. So we could actually save companies millions of pounds as well or millions of dollars. So I'm from the UK; [laughter] I went for pounds. Yeah, that's the big push; that's our guiding light. And we really want to be the torchbearers for digital sustainability as an idea. So having the awareness, we take responsibility for driving awareness for the issue also. As a team, we have a great combination of technical minds but also creative and marketing, getting the message out there and demystifying carbon emissions. So it's a technical issue because there's a technical issue when you dig into it. But we want to put it in a way that a non-technical decision maker in the C-suite would understand the issue in terms of the effects that you can have as a company in a sustainability drive. CHAD: So you mentioned you got started from that original hackathon idea. And how did things progress for you from there? You now have a team of people working. Did you end up taking some investment in order to continue on? JOHN: We did. We actually started it...so we started it as a passion project from that hackathon, saw the potential. I saw a small business opportunity through the website measuring. And we saw there was demand out there, so we started there. Then we saw it as a side project and continued to see potential and made the call to basically...the initial team was three of us. We went full-time and said let's see what we can do with this. Then I came from a marketing consultancy...I self-funded it to the means that I could for the first six months. It's an interesting experience when you get possessed by an idea, and it's just I need to see this through. I see the potential. It's for a great cause. I think there's a big business opportunity here. And then, really, it came to that point, and we did start going down the investment route. We were part of an incubator associated with the University of Cambridge called Carbon13. It's a really interesting program where they put together experts in climate science, the developers. And you come together to try and come up with these big ideas to basically reduce millions of tons of emissions as a startup. And there was plenty. There was, for example, there was offsetting companies, there was carbon credit startups, everything you can imagine. And it was there that we got put on the investment journey because at the end of the program, you get what was an £80,000 investment to then move on and then go down the VC route. Turns out we didn't get the investment despite us being one of the favorites. It didn't work out for various reasons. And then we were in a situation where I was like, okay, we need to get this investment in order to keep going and scaling the team. And we ended up being VC-backed for our pre-seed from a company in London called Ascension. So we did a £250,000 pre-seed round to get things going. And that's why we have a team who is now working on this full-time. And it's been a bit of a journey, but the trials and tribulations of startups is just the game. And now we're looking to get our seed round. We're hoping to be closing by the end of the year. CHAD: Congratulations on the progress so far. Why do you think Ascension was interested in investing in you? JOHN: So, really, at pre-seed stage, I've talked to VCs and said market, founder, co-founders, anything else is just too early to really know with any certainty. So I think they saw that we were committed, enthusiastic about the idea. Will, the other co-founder, and CTO, is a full-stack developer. It's his second startup. And with my demand generation background, we thought we were a good fit. But really, I think a lot of time and thinking, and commitment has gone into (blood, sweat, and tears) has gone into thinking how we can create a product or software company that addresses carbon emissions. And I think investors have a good radar of when people are really committed, and that's what we were. WILL: You've recently done a soft launch of Cloud NetZero. Can you give me more information around that? JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. We did our soft launch, so this is after the pre-seed investment. We got the 250,000. And we built the product that we laid out in that pitch, which was a software that integrates to AWS and gives you this granular breakdown of your emissions by service. And that was what we presented on our soft launch. We did an in-person event, which we just got a small room and managed to...so around 50 people turned up, which we're pretty proud of. And people do seem to be attracted to this idea. We use my marketing background [laughs] to kind of bolster those numbers. But it was a really great experience. So it was actually on the side of our co-working space where we did a hackathon originally. And it was a bit of an experience, quite a heartwarming experience that everyone has come together. I'm just like, oh, it was in that room that it started as an idea, and now 50 people coming from VC backgrounds, from sustainability, from tech are all coming together. And considering we started in COVID times, to have everyone in the room was just great. So it was great. Yeah, thanks for highlighting it. I really have good memories of that soft launch. CHAD: So people can get a demo and sign up now. JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. So the product is up and running. It went from idea to reality which we're very, very proud of the product team for hitting it on time as well. So we did a 100-day push, and on the 100th day, it was ready for us. And we actually got a big update Monday next week, which is going to be the V 1.1. I call it V2, and then my CTO says, "No, it's V 1.1." [laughter] CHAD: Oh, you need to make your CTO understand that for marketing purposes, you need to make your version numbers bigger. JOHN: Yeah, yeah, he's just like, "If you think that's V2, you don't know what you're saying." [laughter] You can contact us, and we can basically show you the onboarding to get you closer to your cloud provider. And you can have a crystal clear picture of your carbon emissions. And the companies we're talking to now so software companies, so pretty well-known brands. We're now in conversation with as well as just your heavy-duty tech companies. And they're really our ideal client we're looking to now because they have a large amount of carbon emissions, and they want to be really measuring them for their sustainability initiatives. They are actually going to be required to...from the beginning of next year, there's regulation creeping in that's going to make companies measure their Scope 3 emissions, and we have the product to do that. And once we go over that first stage of measurement, then the next step is giving you recommendations to reduce it ultimately, and that will be both in cloud emissions and costs. So we actually are a cost-saving software ultimately because we can highlight wasted cloud spend, and there's a lot of it in these tech companies. CHAD: So you've launched. It sounds like you're focused on getting customers and making sales. How does the pricing work for the product? JOHN: At the moment, we are charging 10K a year to use the software. This is for...so it would be your mid-sized tech company is really who that's aimed for. Anything that goes into really heavy-duty cloud emissions analysis would be probably just down the road just because the complication gets considerably...there's a lot more computing that we need to do on our end, which there are costs associated with that. And there's a lot more, as you can imagine, a lot more hand-holding in order to get integrated and that type of thing. So the pricing would be larger for those more developed companies who have huge AWS accounts. CHAD: A lot of companies' pricing is one of the things that they struggle with early on. I assume you'll learn, and your pricing model will change. But is there something that particularly you weren't sure about when it came to the pricing? JOHN: So the pricing it's really what we're seeing from other parallel softwares on the market more towards the cost reduction side of the cloud. They don't focus on emissions. It's...we'll plug the right place for that. And I think given the opportunity cost, especially from the sustainability and measurement perspective, the alternative is companies are spending a lot of money on sustainability consultants to try and figure out these emissions for the reporting means, and our software does the heavy lifting for you, as any good product does. And with the cost savings on top of that, it's about right for now. But as we improve the product and can accommodate these bigger enterprise clients, the price model will evolve and probably get more expensive. But not to overcomplicate; it is the logic at this point. And once we do have the ability to take on these more complex arrangements, the pricing would reflect that. Yeah, so that's the plan. WILL: Well, John, I thank you for coming on the podcast and being a part of it. Is there anything else that you would like our audience to know? JOHN: We're shouting from the rooftops about carbon emissions. This is going to be the next big issue of the climate crisis. So I truly believe that there are estimates that digital emissions will rise past 10% of global emissions by 2030. Our thirst for data isn't going anywhere. And there's a real chance that computing principles such as Moore's Law that have allowed these improvements in hardware to keep up with the demand for data won't necessarily last forever. And from that, we need to really wake up to the fact that the digital world, despite it being, yeah, it seems like it happens by magic, there is real sustainability impact. But the good news is we think that using the scalability of software...because the scalability of software that has seen so much success for companies can be used to have an equally positive impact on the planet and prevent this issue of digital emissions by using the inherent scalability of digital and availability of data. So that's really what I'm preaching at the moment. And we believe the best first step for that would be a product called NetZero because it gives transparency over these emissions. You can see it in front of your eyes, and then decisions can be made in order to reduce them. That's what I chose to be my soapbox moment. [laughter] CHAD: That's great. John, if folks want to find out more, see that demo, get in touch with you; where are all the different places that they can do that? JOHN: greenpixie.com is where you can just contact us, and we'll be straight on the phone with you. Another place to see what we're really up to and get more ideas of digital sustainability the best place is probably our LinkedIn company page. We're quite active on there. If you want to take your first steps into digital sustainability, start there. And if you think your company is ready to act on their carbon emissions or you just want to find out a little bit more, then yeah, just contact us through our website, and we'll have a chat. CHAD: Awesome. Everything that John just mentioned is going to be linked in the show notes, along with a complete transcript for this episode. You can subscribe to the show and find all of that at giantrobots.fm. WILL: If you have any questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. CHAD: You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. WILL: And you can find me on Twitter @will23larry. 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: John Ridd.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

Jade Kearney is the Co-Founder and CEO of She Matters, a digital health platform designed to improve postpartum comorbidities for Black women through community, culturally competent healthcare providers, and culturally relevant resources. Victoria and Will talk to Jade about why postpartum depression is so dangerous for women, her experience as a mother and why she founded She Matters, and what culturally competent care looks like for Black women. SHEMATTERS Follow SHEMATTERS on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube. Follow Jade on [LinkedIn](https-//www.linkedin.com/in/jadekearney/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robot Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Jade Kearney, the Co-Founder, and CEO of She Matters, a digital health platform designed to improve postpartum comorbidities for Black women through community, culturally competent healthcare providers, and culturally relevant resources. WILL: Jade, thank you for joining us. JADE: Thank you for having me. WILL: So I want to start off the podcast and really talk about the issues that you're working to solve because, to be honest, before I was a dad, I had no idea about any of the things that you're trying to solve, but now that I am a dad, I am very well aware of it. So, can you explain to our audience exactly what you're working to solve? JADE: No problem. What we're working to solve is we're trying to decrease the incidence of Black maternal morbidity and what that means is how Black women are treated in the delivery room and postpartum. I'm not sure if anybody is aware, so I always try to give the statistics upfront: Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy and after pregnancy than White counterparts. And here in the state of New York, we're 12 times more likely to die. So what we're doing as a company is we're looking to decrease postpartum comorbidities through culturally relevant resources, community, and culturally competent healthcare providers that we supply through our She Matters app. WILL: Those stats are so devastating to hear. You hear the stats and postpartum and things like that. Why is postpartum so dangerous? JADE: Postpartum is dangerous because postpartum starts the moment you have a child. And when you first have a child as any type of woman, Black, White, Asian, your focus is on the child, and you're not paying attention to the signs of your body. Also, postpartum is not talked about that much. After you have a baby, the focus is on the baby, and a lot of women don't understand what they're experiencing when they're experiencing it. So there may be some very, very alarming signs that are happening that are going off in your body or mind because we're talking about mental health and physical health that a woman doesn't resonate with because no one's talked to her about it. So there's no information. So a woman is experiencing...has an out-of-body experience having postpartum anxiety and depression and doesn't know what's going on because there's been no information given about it. It can be a silent killer, really, when you think about eclampsia, and you think about HELLP syndrome, which is like high blood pressure during and postpartum. These are the top killers of all women. And if you don't know the signs of that, if you don't know what to look for, you may very well think it's a part of postpartum when you're actually in danger. VICTORIA: And that sounds so important to increase awareness in the education and community around these issues. Can you tell me more about what culturally competent care actually looks like for Black women? JADE: So culturally competent care means that you are receiving care from a health provider that understands the stuff that I'm conversing with you guys about. They understand Black maternal morbidity; they understand it is due to systemic racism. They understand that cultural competence is the first step toward communication and trust. So they're meeting Black women where they are. For instance, culturally, a Black person may say, a Black mother, in particular, may say, "God told me this wasn't normal." Some people may see that as psychosis, so the person may be having terrible mental health issues. In our culture, that's something that we may just say. So to be culturally competent, you have to be aware that, oh, that's a colloquialism used in the Black community, and so I really should be focused on how this mom is feeling instead of maybe she needs to go to the psych ward. There are little differences and nuances like that that cultural competency changes the trust barrier, and it changes the communication barrier for both the healthcare provider and the mother. VICTORIA: Right. That makes sense to me. And for myself being from Maryland, I have friends who have gone to doctors who just wouldn't believe them when they brought up that they were in pain. Or if another doctor referred them to get an MRI, the new doctor wouldn't want to provide that service. And so your app is trying to bridge that gap and that systemic racism that's built into the system as well. JADE: Absolutely. That's a common complaint of Black women or Black people, but really Black women, that when we are in distress, when we are in pain, that people just don't believe us because people aren't comfortable with us being in pain, and that goes back to systemic racism. And if you're not culturally competent, you may be unaware of your cultural biases just because you've never had the conversation. And so, 89% of procedures done to Black women are done without their full consent, so Black women are not comfortable. They didn't want to have the procedure. They were coerced into the procedure because people don't listen. Doctors don't listen to us. WILL: Jade, let's take a second because I love your passion behind it. Where does your passion come from for this situation? Tell us about your experience as a mother and why you founded She Matters. JADE: Well, my passion comes from becoming a mother, becoming a Black mother to a Black child when I had my first daughter. The first doctor I went to treated me like a statistic, and she was a Black doctor. I felt so scared all the time that I knew it wasn't the right practice for me, and I switched practices at 27 weeks. And when I got to my next practice, I was able to talk to my doctor, Dr. Garfinkel, in Morristown, New Jersey, who is a Jewish man, but was culturally competent, knew the statistics, understood the system and promised me that he would do everything in his power to make sure I had a healthy birth. I did have preeclampsia. I did have an emergency birth. But my daughter and I made it out of that situation healthy. The issue was during my postpartum period; I had nowhere to go. I didn't understand that the mental illness that I was facing around postpartum OCD, where you have terrible ruminating thoughts about your child or yourself, so harming your child or harming yourself, I didn't understand that that can happen during postpartum and really felt like I was losing my mind. I felt like I was failing as a mom, and I felt a lot of shame. I went to both my family and friends, and because of the stigma around mental health in the Black community, I didn't find any support there. What I did find was shaming. I found disbelief and really just avoidance of the problem. Like, my mom said to me, "We're Black women. We don't have time for this. You have to go back to work. You need your health insurance." When I reached out to my healthcare provider at the time, I was told, "I'm going to send you Zoloft and check in with you in six weeks." That's not what I needed to hear. Because I'm a Black woman, I wasn't comfortable with taking an antidepressant. I also was uncomfortable not speaking to my healthcare provider. And I knew that there was a disconnect right there. I couldn't go to family and friends. And I couldn't go to the healthcare system because I was being completely neglected by psychiatrists, by the emergency room, by doctors. And I created She Matters because I never wanted any other Black woman to feel the way that I felt during my first 12 months of being a mother. I thought we need culturally competent healthcare providers. We need communication with each other, community so we can validate our experiences when we're having these weird things that happen to your mind or body. And we need culturally relevant resources because when I was on the internet, I couldn't find anything where Black women were talking about our problems because of the stigma. I couldn't find a lot of information around the postpartum state of Black women because we're neglected in healthcare. So that's why I founded She Matters. VICTORIA: And you founded it over four years ago. And at the time, I believe you were in the process of one of your master's degrees. And looking at the degrees you have, it almost seemed like you planned on founding a company like this. [laughter] But yeah, can you tell me more about your education and how that feeds into your ability to perform as a founder? JADE: Sure, I did not plan this. [laughter] I was definitely being over-educated, didn't want to leave school; I love to learn. And so I have a degree in diversity and inclusion management and digital media design from NYU. And at the time, I thought I was going to create continuing education platforms or blended learning programs for K through 12. I didn't know that this would be my trajectory. And so everything I did around diversity and around digital media has helped me launch She Matters. It's really allowed me to cultivate who I am as a CEO and not look at the problem only as a Black mother who experiences these things but also as a business person, also as a tech founder, and be able to zoom out and see what adjustments need to be made that aren't personal to my story. VICTORIA: And that probably is why you've been so successful, and congratulations on your most recent round of funding. What are you most excited about to be working on with your new capacity? JADE: I am most excited about working with the thousands of healthcare providers that we're getting ready to work with. It's so important that cultural competency be something that's not a new wave or something popular, but it becomes ingrained in the healthcare system. I love when hospitals are open to making these changes, and they're aware of the problems within hospitals. I'm also really excited about our new symptom tracker that can be connected to wearables. So preeclampsia, eclampsia, and HELLP syndrome are some of the things that I talked about. And we've created a system tracker on our app that can help mothers get to the hospital faster. I'm really excited about unveiling that on our version two of the app. WILL: What causes these issues in the Black community? Why are they so overlooked? JADE: Why are they so overlooked in the Black community, by Black people, or in general? WILL: Just in general. So you said that you were overlooked and your doctor was a Black lady. But then you had a Jewish doctor that said, "I'm going to take care of you." From your understanding and your view, what do you think caused that? JADE: It's systemic racism. So the status quo...systemic racism doesn't change because you're Black. We're all part of the system. And that's why cultural competency is needed. Everyone needs that regardless of your race because when you're part of the system, sometimes you're unaware of your biases. People are doing what's been done, and what's been done is unfair. There's no health equity. People are comfortable with the level of pain Black women experience. People are comfortable with the stats being where they are. Things are just now starting to change. People are just becoming uncomfortable, and that's going to take some years for everyone to become uncomfortable. But it is because this is the system as it is, and people are comfortable with the current system, Black, White, or other. VICTORIA: Right. And you talked about what new features you're excited about for your platform. And how does the app that you've created start to increase that cultural competency? Like, how does it really work within a healthcare system? JADE: The app is for our community of moms, and our learning management system is where healthcare providers go. So that's where you get the experience of the culturally competent certification. And you get the curriculum, and you get the experts in health equity leading the classes and talking about Black maternal morbidity and making connections between systemic racism and health outcomes. Our LMS system is the most important part of our training. And our app is the most important part to communicate with our moms and offer a listserv of these doctors who are taking our certification, the resources that we talked about, and those symptom trackers that we talked about. Without technology, none of this would be happening. VICTORIA: That's great. So you have really two user groups, right? You have your Black women mothers and then also hospitals that you're designing for. JADE: Yes. VICTORIA: And I wonder if you found any interesting design challenges for either group. JADE: And this is my life. The most challenging thing for the mothers is engagement because you have to understand being a mom is full-time. It's like a full-time and a part-time job together. So how do you create programming at an engagement level that's fair for moms? How do you measure a mom's engagement? It's going to be a little bit different because if you have one child or four children, your time on an app is going to be different, not to mention if you have a full-time job. So it's just about creating engaging programming that mothers will take their downtime to utilize. And I feel like we have a little bit of secret sauce there; it's around our ability to connect to our moms and to bring experts in healthcare to our mothers. When it comes to healthcare professionals, I think healthcare professionals are more than willing to take a course. It is explaining to hospitals that Black women are worth the investment because, remember, they've been comfortable with the situation as is. Having to convince people that the demographic that you've ignored is important is a job. I also feel like once a hospital decides to come on board with us, I have this huge sigh of relief because trying to explain to people why Black women deserve to live through birth and after can be taxing. VICTORIA: I can imagine being a mom yourself and having this startup and having to do that difficult work of explaining to people how systemic racism affects their healthcare and why they should care is exhausting. So how do you recharge and find time for yourself and balance your life if it's possible? [laughs] JADE: I have a great support system; I cannot lie to you, like, between the people who helped me with my children, my team here at She Matters, our board. Like, some people talk about their boards...my board is like family in terms of the support that they give to my co-founder and I. They've been committed to helping us change maternal morbidity in the United States and to have their support and to have the support of everyone in my life is most important. And I often say to founders, "You cannot do this without support. I don't care how much money you raise. You will lose your shit no matter what your venture is." Because being a founder, being a CEO is very lonely. It doesn't look like anything that's been done before, and you don't have punch-in and punch-out hours. So support is the way that I keep my mind healthy. I'm able to have downtime for myself, and the way that I'm able to be the best person I can be so I can be the best mom. MID-ROLL 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. WILL: You know, you're from Newark, New Jersey. What is your favorite thing about that area? JADE: I love Newark. In Newark, we say 'nurk.' I know outsiders say 'noo-urk.' But I love being from Newark because I saw kind of the best of both worlds. Newark has such a rich history. And there are so many problems currently around just systemic racism, whether it's education, healthcare, the judicial system, and you kind of see both things play out where you have great private schools, and you have great universities. Shout out to Rutgers; I went to Rutgers, Newark. And then you have all the problems that the country has. So it gave me a different lens. I own where I'm from, but I also saw the greatness of where I'm from. And I believe it's helped propel me to where I am because I have lived both lives firsthand. And I know what it's like to go to a school that's not receiving funding, to go to a hospital that's coined a Black hospital and to be treated unfairly, and then to go right into another town in Essex County and be treated differently because it's quote, unquote, "a White hospital." Newark has given me the duality that I have as a person to experience both lives. WILL: Wow, you speak of systemic racism. And in my opinion, I think there are almost two sides of it. I think you have the side that that's their beliefs and the way that they comprehend it, and that's what they're going to believe. And then you have a different side that's like; I had no idea because I've been in my bubble for so long. And correct me if I'm wrong if I'm missing a category, but in my experience, it's almost the two that I see. And especially with 2020, I think a lot of that slowly started peeling back. And so it seems like you're dealing with that head-on. How have you been received by the doctors and the hospitals in that area? JADE: It just depends on the doctors and the hospitals. Sometimes people say, "This is what we really want, oh my God, because we don't know what to do." And this is such a huge problem speaking to Black maternal morbidity. With the Black Momnibus Act that was passed in November 2021, there's been $3 trillion put into the pipeline to make these changes. So hospitals are paying attention. But paying attention and providing your healthcare professionals with the service are two different things. I've been received in both ways; wow, you guys are the second coming. And yeah, this is great, but we're not really focused on it right now. We want to pretend that we're focused on it, but we're really not. It's difficult. And I do think those two sides of the coin of systemic racism exist where there are people who are proponents of it and who know what they're doing, and there are people who have no idea. Either way, training is necessary so that you can treat people equally. WILL: Yes, I totally agree with that. Totally agree with that. If you had one message you had, you know, however long you want, what would be the one message that you would want the audience to know about She Matters and what you're solving? JADE: She Matters is solving for an American problem. This is an American healthcare problem. And people assume when you say Black maternal morbidity that it is not an American problem. Black people are Americans. And I know that sounds crazy because if you're born here, you're an American. But it's not crazy. People act like this is a separate problem from themselves. No, this is our problem, everyone's problem. When women are dying, that's everyone's problem. When there are health inequities in your hospital, it's everybody's problem. We should all care about Black women dying, period. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think there's a book out this year that calculates the cost of systemic racism, and this area, in particular, the amount of death and the hospital costs related to this is, for no other moral reason, it's very expensive. And addressing it and protecting our community keeps us all healthy, and safe, and good. I love what you're doing with the app. And I think it's so important, and I'm really glad you came on the show to tell us about it. I'm curious, if you could travel back in time to when you first started, what advice would you give yourself? JADE: Prepare for the long haul, prepare for the long journey, prepare for the long road. Pace yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It is going to be harder than you think. I didn't think it was easy at all. But I did think that people would understand the severity of the problem we're solving for, and that's just not the case. [laughs] So the convincing part, like I mentioned earlier, is very taxing. I become exhausted with explaining the value of my life as a Black woman. It's exhausting. WILL: Wow. If you can sum up (This is a two-part question.) your toughest decision or time since you founded She Matters, and let's end it on your best, successful, happy moments since you founded She Matters. JADE: Okay. The toughest was raising our most recent round. There's a lot of systemic racism there as well. Black women get less than half a percentage point of the venture capital given to startups. And knowing that challenge and speaking to investors who claim that they have interest in people of color and women of color, and when you get in front of them, it becomes the same stats that you use for all startup and tech companies when this is different. This is not a chip. This is not something that people are familiar with. So people not understanding that when it comes to something like this, which has not been done before, sometimes you have to use a different metric system. We should present to you in a way that is comfortable in Silicon Valley. So I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything that everybody else does; no, we should. But when we're presenting to you, you have to understand the hurdles and the challenges that it took for us to get in front of you. If Black founders are in front of venture capitalists, we are unicorns. We're the best of the best because for us to get there, we had to go through hell and fire. So that's the one thing. And when it comes to the most positive thing, it would be the amazing feedback we get from mothers and from healthcare professionals. Some people send us donations; some people just volunteer their medical experience, which is expensive. Anytime a healthcare professional says, "I have 10 hours that I can volunteer to a Black mom," that's huge for us. A therapist saying, "I'll offer any She Matters community member 45 minutes free," do you know how much my therapy is? [laughter] I'm like, oh my God, that's so amazing. And those things matter to me. Like, it's not about revenue for me as much as it is about getting the women the help that they need. And so every time what I say lands with a healthcare system or professional, it warms my heart. Every time a mother is helped, it warms my heart. VICTORIA: Well, that's wonderful. It's been amazing to hear more on this issue. And I hope our listeners appreciate getting educated on this topic. Is there anything else you want to promote or take a second to leave our audience walking away with? JADE: Yeah, sure. Just go to shematters.health to learn more about what we're doing. And if you're a Black mother, download the app. If you're a healthcare professional, sign up for our next cohort November 7th. If you just want to learn more, send us an email. Follow us on social media, @shematters.io, on Instagram. We're around, and we love to hear people's feedback. We're here for the volunteering. We're here for it all. We're here if you just want to learn more really. WILL: Jade, thank you so much for, one, being on the podcast, but most importantly, the impact that you are having on our community, the United States, the world because I think you are going to have that impact on the world the longer you're in this, and the more you go. So just thank you. Thank you for everything. JADE: Thank you, guys, for giving us a platform to reach more people, and thank you for caring enough to have me speak for Black mothers and for She Matters. I appreciate it. VICTORIA: Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation today. WILL: You can subscribe to this show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. VICTORIA: If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. WILL: You can find me on Twitter @will23larry. 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. WILL: 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: Jade Kearney.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

Jordyn Bonds is the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot. Jordyn helps companies validate new product opportunities and reach that first key milestone, from validating an early adopter market to creating a pitch deck to building a prototype, proof of concept, or an MVP launch. Chad talks to Jordyn about what a Director of Product Strategy does, how Jordyn's career has evolved (She got to build madonna.com for the Confessions on the Dance Floor release and tour!!), and finding practices that keep you motivated and inspired to be working towards long-term, large goals. Follow Jordyn on Twitter or 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 Jordyn Bonds, the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot. Jordyn helps companies validate new product opportunities and reach that first key milestone, from validating an early adopter market to creating a pitch deck to building a prototype, proof of concept, or an MVP launch. Jordyn, thank you for joining me not only on this podcast but at thoughtbot. JORDYN: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. CHAD: You joined us in September of this year. And it's been really fun to watch...well, let me say it's always fun to watch people come into the company and begin to digest everything that's there, begin to, like, okay, I can see how this is working, and then to start to make your mark on things. And so thank you for everything you've done so far. And I look forward to seeing everything in the future too. JORDYN: I look forward to it too. It's been a super interesting experience. I think thoughtbot has a really unique culture, and it's been really fun to get on-boarded into it. CHAD: Cool. I'd love to talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But you have joined us as the Director of Product Strategy, which is actually a new position for us in the Ignite team, which is the team that focuses on those early-stage ideas, products, companies. Obviously, if we added the position, we thought it was important. We don't take those things lightly. What led you and made you perfect for that position? JORDYN: [laughs] I think taking something from a nascent notion, whatever that is, an idea for a product or newly identified market opportunity to that first concrete thing out in the world is a really special phase of the work of new product launches. And it is, over the course of my career, just the thing I have really zeroed in on professionally over time. That's kind of my wheelhouse. And so I think that's thing number one. But what makes it special is that I like to think of it like it's almost like the first few seconds of the existence of the universe after the Big Bang... CHAD: [laughs] JORDYN: where you are inventing the ground rules of the thing you are building as you are building it. And that is a very...it's just a really special time. And some people love it, and some people despise it. There's a lot of chaos and uncertainty, and you have to move forward despite all of that chaos and uncertainty. And some of us love the; I don't know, there's just this feeling that anything is possible, a sort of sense of newness and really paving the road while you're hacking through the jungle, and I just love that. And I feel like I want to help other companies love that phase too. [laughs] It's like a weird thing to say. I'm almost like an evangelist for that time. But I'm an evangelist for it because I feel like it's really important to make sure that you're tying the mission and vision of the business; you're weaving it into what it is you're doing in the product ASAP. Do it early. Make sure you're thinking about this stuff from the jump. And if I can be an evangelist for that kind of thinking and the processes that make it possible, it's just a really exciting thing for me to be able to do. CHAD: That's really cool. You saying that made me think about this sense that I have that oftentimes when you're faced with that period of time where everything is possible, and you're literally defining what the product and the business is going to be, maybe there are more than two buckets. But I think, generally, people fall into one of two buckets. There are the people who look at that and say, "Okay, here's what we're not going to do." And they're really good at saying no to things and narrowing down from that. Another group of people who maybe even really struggle with all of the possibility, and their reaction is to say "Yes," to everything. JORDYN: Right. Yep. CHAD: And you can probably say judged by the way that I introduced the concept which one I think is better. JORDYN: [laughs] CHAD: But that's the two buckets I see. Do you see that too? JORDYN: Oh, absolutely. And I will say partly why I am so enthusiastic about this phase is that I was a bucket number two person and worked very hard to become a bucket number one person because that's the mindset you have to get in. But it's a real delicate balance. It's not always clear; you have to be open to things changing. But saying no is way more important than saying yes in the sense that, you know, I think the phrase people like to use in startup land is you can't boil the ocean, and that is true. So it's much easier...the path is much easier and clearer if you start small. But if you're an entrepreneur, by nature, that's going to feel really uncomfortable to you because what you see out in the world is possibility and probably endless possibility, right? CHAD: Right. JORDYN: So the notion that you are going to squeeze yourself into the tiniest space to start when you see the giant opportunity. And PS, everyone is asking you to articulate that giant opportunity. You need to be able to tell that story so that you can recruit people to your cause. But at the same time, you need to be ruthlessly focused in the here and now on the small things, like, the constrained things you're going to do, for now, all the things you're going to say no to for now while keeping your eyes on this larger, expansive prize. It is just a really...it's an art; it is a hard thing to do. CHAD: How did you shift your mindset? JORDYN: Through failure. CHAD: [laughs] JORDYN: It was through painfully failing at doing this. [laughs] I made every textbook mistake, some of them fairly recently. [laughs] So there's a lot of folks out there who their first venture, their first foray into this world, was a success, and that's wonderful for them. That's great. But their advice is sort of suspect for me and for a lot of founders because it's like, well, you didn't... [laughs] maybe it was skill, maybe it was luck; it was probably a combination of both. Like, good for you that you did this. But if you've started a business, launched a product one time, and it was wildly successful, how are you in a position to teach me who might be on failure number two, or three, or whatever, how I need to change in order to be successful, what needs to change in order for me to be successful? Like, you're not going to be that useful to me. And so I find I'm in a much better position to help other people not fall into the same potholes that I did because I fell into them. I can look at folks and say, "I know what you're thinking. I know you've got your eyes on this large market opportunity. And you can see the mass market future ten years from now for this thing that you're building, that's great. But you have to start with the narrowest of early adopters." And you have to start with a pain point that is, quote, "hair on fire" is another phrase people like to use, like, just some pain point that people have that is just so painful for people right now that they are willing to pay someone to fix it. You got to focus on that despite this large, open-ended opportunity that's in the future. I can only really give that advice to folks credibly because I have done the opposite so many times that I can both empathize with where they're at in that impulse to boil the ocean, but I can also tell them how one way of disabusing yourself of that mindset. So I think back to actually...so I have an older sister. She was really terrible at math when we were younger. [laughs] And she was the best math teacher for me because it didn't come easy for her. Going to someone who's a math genius to help teach you what greater than or less than is is [laughs] not going to help you because it's self-evident to them. Like, how are they going to break that down for you? My sister was a great math teacher for me because her understanding of math was quite hard-won. So if I came to her and said, "Hey, I don't understand greater than or less than," which, PS, is truly what happened. CHAD: [laughs] JORDYN: I was like, I don't really...however, it was being explained to me did not [laughs] resonate. She was a great person to go to because she would not judge me for not understanding it, first of all, and she would have ways of breaking that down. So I'm that person for new founders, people just starting out trying to come up with a new product or explore a new opportunity. I have learned all the painful lessons on their behalf. So it's not like I'm coming to them with advice; that's just boilerplate advice I have read somewhere, and I'm now repeating to them. No, I have painfully learned these lessons. [laughs] Let me help you avoid that. CHAD: And you said it earlier...you used the phrase like not now or not yet. And I think that's a great way of just slightly...no doesn't mean no forever. [laughs] It just means not right now, not yet. Now's not the right time. JORDYN: Exactly. CHAD: And I think that's a healthy way of reframing it. You're trying to strike that balance between the opportunity and the future and what you're doing today to make the product successful and get it out the door. JORDYN: And you can do a lot of work around those bright, shiny, attractive future possibilities that make it feel...you can basically say, "Not yet, and here's what will have to happen for it to become now." You can kind of nurture those opportunities over time, and what will be the criteria to make them something you want to pursue now. It can kind of sate your desire to pursue them if you nurture the plan over time. So it's not like you just say, "Not yet," you say, "Not yet, and here's the evolving set of things that will tell us it's the right time." And having that shared alignment on the team around what those things are but keeping your eyes on them, actively monitoring the situation to be on the lookout when now is the time can satisfy your urge to be working toward that. I think that's what's really hard for founders who really have their eyes on this big opportunity is you can sometimes feel like you're not making any progress toward it because the progress is so incremental. So finding those practices that feed that thing for you, that keep you motivated and inspired to be working toward that long-term large goal, finding those ways to keep at it, to see the progress, keep refining why it is you're doing what you're doing and how it is you're getting there, can make you feel like you're pursuing and even when you're not [laughs] if that makes any sense. I just acknowledge that people need to do something. Just telling yourself or your team not yet is sometimes not enough because you're in it for that big vision, right? CHAD: Right. Yeah, that's great. One of the things that stood out to me when we first met was the variety of different experiences that you've held, different positions, different roles, different things you've done. You started doing web development. You've done user experience, product management, you've been CTO, you've been CEO of companies. You did product lead and VP of product. That variety of experience, I think is more than I have. [laughs] You have held those different roles. How has that evolved for you in your career? What's been driving that forward for you? JORDYN: I was always this product strategy person inside. I didn't necessarily know it. I didn't really even know. I mean, back in the early days of the web, a product mindset wasn't even really a thing, and advertising got a hold of the internet first. And so it was really about graphic design for a long time and a bunch of other things. But throughout that first decade that I spent as an engineer, as a front-end engineer, I was just constantly that annoying person on the team who was like, "Why are we building this? Who are we building it for? Why are we building this?" Because what I learned is as much as I liked to code, and I liked the puzzle of solving the problem of how to turn a design into a thing people could click on, that was really fun for me, but it was only fun for a while before I started to become really sad, disappointed that we would launch things that would be market failures in the sense of, yeah, we launched a thing, and we checked the box, but no one was using it. And I would come back and say...and I was mostly doing agency work at the time, and so there was not a lot of follow-up. We'd launch something, and then it was, like, move on to the next project. I wanted to know, was this successful? Did people use it? Are people using it? Like, how are they using it? Is it easy to use? And I wanted to answer those questions. And then, when I started to do more of that follow-up work, and then I was finding that most of the things we were launching were failures by my standards. No one cared about them. No one was using them. They were hard to use. And I wanted to make impactful things. And so I kept asking the questions, and I kept asking them earlier and earlier. This is how I ended up in user experience design. I was like, well, can we answer these questions first? Can we make a plan before we ever put pixels to screen, so to speak, [laughs] before we start building? Can we know something so that when we do build...which I had intimate understanding of how much work it is to build software. It's not nothing. It's a big investment of time and energy. And what I wanted increasingly was for that to be time and energy well spent for the entire team and for the universe. [laughs] And so that's how I ended up...I think of it as like swimming upstream in the sense that there's still a lot of waterfall process going on in software. And I was just constantly asking why and for whom earlier and earlier in the process, just so that we could make sure that what we were building was "The Right It," to quote a book title that a lot of folks [laughs] in startup land have read. Like, let's make sure it's "The Right It" before we invest a lot of time and energy, and, frankly, emotion into building something. That was really where this was coming from for me is that I think at heart, secretly or not so secretly, I'm still that engineer, that front-end engineer. And I want cool projects. I want to work on cool projects with cool people that are impactful. And I think that's true of most engineers. [laughs] No one is purely satisfied to just be given an assignment that they're supposed to execute without thinking about it. And getting into UX and then getting into product management was for me almost like a mission to make sure that by the time something got to engineering, it was a good idea. I just wanted to save engineers from terrible projects; that was my whole mission. [laughs] CHAD: Well, at thoughtbot, we have a set of core values, and one of them is fulfillment. And in the writing around that, the phrase we often use is we want to work on products that we believe deserve to exist. JORDYN: Yes. CHAD: And that doesn't just mean that they have a positive impact on the world instead of a negative impact. But we're very intentional about the words we use, so there's a double meaning to that phrase. It's having a positive impact on the world, but it also means that it's the right product. This is what we should be building that it deserves to exist. JORDYN: Yes, because you all know, we know how hard it is to make software. It's actually really hard. I think certainly building new products, you know, what a new product meant in 1920 is a very different thing than what [laughs] it means in 2022. And while it is a lot easier to bring new products into the world, like software products, internet products, it doesn't mean it's just easy. There's a lot of effort and resources that go into doing this, so let's make sure we're spending those things wisely. Is the product idea good? Does it deserve to exist, but also, have we done our homework to validate that people want this, that they're going to use it? And to the extent that you can. There are limits to the ability of any team to forecast that. But when you bring more of this experimental mindset to it as soon as possible, it's like you up the odds that you'll end up building something valuable. And like you were saying about the word deserve, the word valuable to me is very broad, valuable to users, valuable to the business, valuable to the world. Let's create things of value if we're going to go to the trouble of creating things. 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: Have you found any tools, or techniques, or things that work particularly well for doing that? JORDYN: Yeah, and it's probably not going to be all that satisfying. There are no shortcuts, I think, is what's challenging about this. [laughs] The tool and the process that I always start with and come back to is talking to customers and talking to users if those two people are not the same. Talk to people, not about your product idea; talk to them about their lives. Talk to them about what is difficult for them, what is easy for them, what they value, and you will seldom go wrong if you start and return to that process and truly listen. This whole thing of talking to customers and talking to users is an art in and of itself. It's not idle, you know; it's not just a thing you toss off once in a while. [laughs] It's a skill. It's an art. And that is where you begin in it. Now, that is not the whole thing. But if you're starting there or returning there, you can always do this. I talk to teams all the time who have whiffed on this step of the process, and it's fine. Like, people who are builders, especially entrepreneurs, just want to get in there and start making something, like, I get that. CHAD: Well, I think it's the combination of really wanting to move quickly and get to something really, really quickly. But I also think there is an element of fear... JORDYN: [laughs] Yes. CHAD: that causes people so that these two things combined really set people up to not do this... JORDYN: To not do this, yes. CHAD: because they're afraid of what they'll learn. And so it's much easier to just say, "Well, I know what to build. Let's build it. And you don't need to actually talk to people who might tell you something that isn't aligned with what you think the product should be." JORDYN: 100%, 100%. Getting over that fear is hard, and you probably will just have to fail really hard without getting over it. I mean, that was certainly my experience, I mean, like several times. [laughs] I tried to build things without talking to anyone about it. I also was one of these people that built something that...and I can get into the story, but I built something that was successful enough without talking to a single person about it. And it really sent me down a fool's path for a while because I thought that's how it worked. But yeah, that fear is real. But I think the thing that got me around it eventually and gets me around it now is there's the rational side of this which is, well, wouldn't you rather know sooner than later that something is not a good idea or this is not a pain point? Sure. But the more visceral, emotional thing that got me around it is good ideas are actually a dime a dozen. You'll have good ideas. You'll have ten good ideas tomorrow morning. Your one idea that you have decided to explore and build out and build a company around it won't be your only idea. It is not the only good idea. [laughs] You will have more of those. If you had 1, you'll have 10. So talking to users means you'll figure out...you'll have the opportunity to come up with more of those ideas, and one of them will be the winner. All of them are probably good ideas on some level. Having ideas isn't the problem. People are afraid of talking to customers and learning that their idea is not good, but you got to turn that on your head. You talk to customers to learn what they need, and then you'll have 20 ideas about how to solve that for them, solve that need. The real fool's path here is to get attached to your first one idea that you had to solve a problem. It's to get attached to your problem before you have validated it. That's another pitfall here. But then to think that the first thought you had and how to solve it is going to be your only good idea, nah, you have lots of good ideas; we all do. [laughs] You'll have more. So really just focusing on that pain point and listening to people and then really doing the work to generate more and more ideas. Even if you think you have a good solution now, it's always worth thinking about what other solutions might be constantly because your solution that you've come up with might have some feasibility issues. It might have other problems that you haven't seen yet. So it's always good to have more solutions in the hopper in case the one that you're pursuing right now doesn't turn out to be the right one. CHAD: This is something that I don't know the answer to, and that is I do know you didn't originally start out as a developer, and it's not what your education is in. JORDYN: [laughs] No. CHAD: But how did you get into development? JORDYN: [laughs] I was in college. This was just such a lucky, random thing. But I was in college, and I was in a band, a rock band. And this was early '98, maybe even fall '97. We were just at practice one day, and someone in the band was like, "We need a website." And this was when this was like a new thing that people did. [laughs] And everyone in the room just turned and looked at me. And I was like, "Oh, I'm making the website? Okay." CHAD: Why? Were you a tech person in their mind? JORDYN: I don't know, I guess because I seemed scrappy and capable even then. I have no idea. But I was like, all right, I'll see what I can figure out. So I wandered into the computer lab and just went to the person running the computer lab and was like, "Hey, how do I make a website?" [laughs] And this guy whose name I don't remember which is horrible, I really wish I could reach out to this guy and be like, "Hey, I have a career because of you, thank you." CHAD: [laughs] JORDYN: He was like, "Oh, cool. Here's what you do." And he basically opened up Netscape and was like, "Hey, there's like a..." there was like an editor. I don't even remember what it was called now. If you recall, there was an editor in Netscape. He was like, "Here's the basics of this. And here's a website," which was the... [laughs] What was the name of this website? All of the articles on this website were titled something like, so you want to make a webpage? Or so you want to make an interactive image replacement? Or so you want to host a website on a server? Whatever, like, that was all the articles. And that website taught me how to code, and that guy put me on a path, and I just immediately was like, this is the most fun thing ever. I was like, I love this. [laughs] And it wasn't like two months before I had built the websites for a couple of departments on campus. My mom had a recruiting business at the time. She was like, "Can you make my recruiting business website?" It was just like, off to the races, which was great. But I graduated into the dot-com bust, which meant I could not get a job doing this. It's like entry-level folks always see a recession coming first, right? CHAD: Right. JORDYN: And everyone was like, "Oh my God, you can write HTML. You're going to get a six-figure job immediately," whatever. [laughs] And I was like, that is not what's happening here. I would have a job interview at someplace, and then they'd stop calling me. And I would find out that the company went under the day after I interviewed. That was what was happening. So I couldn't get a job, a professional job doing this for a while. But I kept doing it on the side basically for my friends and family and eventually managed to get back into some professional [laughs] aboveboard real roles doing this work, but it was a struggle at first. And it was only just because I just really loved doing it, which, again, to circle back to something we talked about before, was kind of a liability for me for a while. Liking coding makes you really unthoughtful about what you're coding because you're always happy to do it, right? [laughs] CHAD: Oh, I speak from personal experience, yes. [laughs] JORDYN: Yes, right. I just wasn't thinking, is this a good idea? I was thinking great, cool; I get to code more. I love this. That was fine early on because I did get a lot of experience. And the first real job I got doing this work was at a company that was building websites for musicians, and our main client was Warner Brothers music. And so I got to build the My Chemical Romance website. CHAD: Cool. JORDYN: I got to build madonna.com for the Confessions on the Dance Floor release and tour. CHAD: That's really cool. JORDYN: Like, it was really fun. And basically, I got to build a new website every two weeks for three years which was amazing bootcamp for me. The designers there were just fantastic. I learned more than I can ever even probably understand about doing that. But partly what I learned was [laughs] this feeling of this was where that feeling began where I was like, is this the right thing? Are we building the right thing? Or is this successful? That's when I started to ask those questions: is what we're doing what people want? So anyway, it was very fun. I got into it because I was in rock bands, which is strange. I don't think people typically find lucrative careers being in rock bands. [laughs] CHAD: I talk to a lot of people over the years through our apprenticeship program, through different things where there are people out there who connect with programming like you did and like I did. The difference is that, for whatever reason, I had that experience when I was 10. [laughs] And other people just never get the opportunity to be exposed to that until later. But it's remarkable when it happens, and you get that connection where it just connects with you at a level that almost nothing has before. It's like a constant dopamine hit when you're programming. JORDYN: Oh, it is. Yeah, I used to joke that, basically, I felt like I got to play video games for a living because that's what it felt like. It was just one puzzle game after another. It just didn't feel like work. I got to go to work every day and solve what felt like really interesting problems and puzzles. And at the end, there was a thing people used or could look at. It just felt like I'd hit pay dirt. I felt so lucky to have found it. But yeah, I haven't done this since the pandemic. But for several years before that, I was a Girls Who Code instructor, and being able to pay that experience forward and help middle school, high school-aged girls who hadn't necessarily had this experience yet find themselves in coding, that was really the mission me and my co-teacher had decided that was really what we were after. We didn't care if they walked away from doing this with any hard coding skills. What we wanted them to have in their minds was I can be a programmer, and that seems like fun or possible for me. That was all we wanted. And it was so amazing to see that moment where it clicked for them where they were like, "Oh, there's like a pattern here." And yeah, see that dopamine hit thing start to set up, you know, in their brains and know that it was only going to help them. I mean, I often said to them, "Major in whatever you want in college, but get a minor in computer science; that's where your job is. [laughter] Sorry to break this to you, but this is where your job is." [laughs] CHAD: Another thing that you've done is you've advised a lot of companies through a few different organizations: Underscore VC, the Harvard Innovation Lab. What makes a good advisor as opposed to a bad advisor? JORDYN: This is a really hard question, actually, because it's not often entirely clear in the moment whether a given advisor is...if you feel a lot of rapport with someone and they're helping you out in the moment, that's great. But often, one finds that something an advisor told you that did not land at all at the time comes back later to be something that's really useful. So I want to say up front that what makes a good advisor is really idiosyncratic to the founder, and to the advisor, and to the moment they find themselves together in. So with that as a big caveat, I think what I bring to this, what I go out of my way to bring to it, is that I've been in the trenches. I know what that feels like. And I trust founders, like, my job there is to just add some perspective. I've participated in building over 30 products, so I can help them. They might be doing their first product or business, and all I'm there to do is bring a bunch of other experience for them to pick some insights from. It's not actually my job, I don't think, to pre-filter that stuff for them. I'm very practical and hands-on. They bring a problem to me, and I'm like, "Okay, here's three times I've seen that situation before. And here are three things that happened." And I basically multiply their historical experience that they can draw from; that's sort of what I bring to this. There's another thing here when I've had valuable advisors, this thing that's kind of hard to articulate. But it's like, often early on, what you need is just someone to take you seriously, just really take you seriously as a founder and a leader. I go way out of my way to make it clear that I am doing that with them and that it is my assumption 100% that they will rise to that occasion, that they will figure out who they need to be, what resources they need to bring to bear in order to be successful. And doing that, taking them seriously and taking their ideas seriously, taking their experiences seriously, and really demonstrating that I think they have what it takes and I think that they can rise to this occasion, I think is probably the most valuable thing because most people don't do that. They come to your idea looking to tear it down, and I think it's well-meaning. They want to stress test you and your idea. That's all well and good. But, I mean, I'm often advising underrepresented founders and what they need is confidence. They need to be built up, not torn down. That doesn't mean I don't bring skepticism and help them try to think evermore clearly about what it is they're doing and why; I definitely do that. But there's this baseline of I think you are capable of doing this. I think you are a person who gets to do this; that is not in question for me. And that alone I think is probably the most valuable thing you can get from an advisor, [laughs] is just someone to take you seriously. CHAD: That's great. So for folks who have been familiar with thoughtbot for a while, we have a lot of advice out there in the world for how to build products, how to validate things, exercises to run, all that kind of stuff. And we bundle all of that up in what we call our playbook. And now, as we're sort of almost 20 years into this now, that's a big resource. And so we're doing something new, which is extracting the information that we have specifically targeted towards those earliest stages of a new product or a business into a separate playbook. You're taking your wisdom, and you're going to be able to add it to that as well. And it's going to be a little bit more targeted. So we've just launched that. And you can find it at thoughtbot.com/research-strategy-playbook. I would encourage folks to check that out. Jordyn, when it comes to sharing, we're big at that at thoughtbot, and I'm excited to have you as part of that. Is there something that you think our approach from the fact that we're a consulting company or an agency makes it either in good ways or bad ways different than joining a product company and what you might do in a new role, or in sharing, or in working on things that we work on? JORDYN: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when I've been here for a year. Having been here for a month, [laughter] this answer might be suspect. So far, anyway, the way I think about the differences here is that our role in working with product companies is to help them build the muscles to do this work, not to do it for them because they need to be able to do it going forward. We're not going to embed with them for the rest of time. So that's a big difference, and that's both good and bad in the sense that we can maintain a certain amount of perspective because we can bring a kind of insider-outsider, like, we've done this lots and lots of times. We've seen the myriad ways that can go. And so we can bring that experience to bear while also remaining somewhat, I mean, objective is maybe a problematic word here, but some flavor of that while remaining outside of the everyday operational reality of the business. So that can be a really helpful perspective. But I think the sort of risk there that I see is not being able to fully appreciate...that's the wrong word, but it's like, maybe not having the credibility we could have because we aren't going to be around to see this thing through. There's really, especially at early stages with projects, you really need people who are in it to win it, in it for the long haul. And so, I can see this looking like a tough sell for certain founders. But from what I know so far, what I know about myself, what I know about thoughtbot so far is that that couldn't be further from the truth for us. We really are invested in folks' long-term success. And we do want to leverage our ability to focus and stand slightly outside of day-to-day operations to help them gain that perspective. But that is really the give and take, I think, of being a consultant rather than being part of the company. CHAD: Now, it does make us...there are companies out there that that's not the goal, the goal is to make you dependent on them. JORDYN: Yes, right. [laughs] CHAD: That definitely is one of the unique things about thoughtbot is that that is not our goal. Our goal is to teach people to do what we do. But we do sometimes get criticized for, in those early stages, exactly that. It's like, where's your sense of urgency or your passion about this? And actually, we do have it. It's just the analogy I often use is we're like a professional sports team. [laughs] We make it look easy because we're really good at it. And a lot of environments are ones where in order to make things happen, you need to create an environment of stress or those kinds of things. And that's what people are used to. And so when they start working with us, and they don't see that, they think something is wrong. JORDYN: Yes, yes. 100%. And that is a huge cultural challenge with working with startups in general, where there is a real fire-fighting mentality. Like, let's get in there and make some stuff happen. Things are shifting constantly, and you've got to react. And I'm working 80-hour weeks to just make sure everything gets done. And I would hope..., and I've seen this to a certain extent in my month here so far, but the goal is for us to help folks work smarter, not harder, in the sense that more output does not mean more success. We do have the experience of having worked on so many products, each of us individually and then collectively as a company. It is our goal, and it is my personal sincere hope that we can help these companies see how to do this work better and more sustainably without burning yourself out. If you happen to be successful while focused on this kind of work more output, it's only by chance you were successful there. It wasn't because you worked that hard. [laughs] And it's hard to see. There is a lot of like hustle culture stuff out there that makes you feel like unless you are burning your candle at both ends, you're not doing it right. I think thoughtbot has the depth of experience to say," No, we can say otherwise," and to help companies figure out how to do that. I can absolutely see what you mean that people are like; these people don't have the fire in their belly, which couldn't be further from the truth. But it does feel very different from the inside. CHAD: I feel like I could talk to you all day, [laughs] but we have to keep the episode somewhat within our normal constraints. Jordyn, thank you so much. If folks want to follow along with you or get in touch with you, where are the best places for them to do that? JORDYN: So I am @skybondsor S-K-Y-B-O-N-D-S-O-R pretty much everywhere that you might want to... [laughter] A friend of mine gave me that nickname years ago. That's my handle pretty much everywhere. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, so that's probably the best place if you want to follow me or interact with me. But I'm also on LinkedIn and a lot of other places. CHAD: And you can subscribe to the show, 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 at, not as an exciting username as @skybondsor, but @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll 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: Jordyn Bonds.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

Heather Maio-Smith is the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Victoria talks to Heather about why this product needed to exist in the world, supporting human connection and storytelling, and the journey to get funding, expand, and plan what's next for StoryFile. StoryFile Follow StoryFile on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or TikTok. Follow Heather on 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 Heather Maio-Smith, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Heather, thank you for joining us. HEATHER: Thank you for having me, Victoria. I'm excited to have a conversation with you. VICTORIA: Yes, I am really excited to learn about StoryFile and your product Conversa. Tell me a little bit about it. HEATHER: You did a great job on the introduction; thank you. The one thing that I would add is that it's very important that people know that this is video. And this is the differentiator between us and maybe a traditional chatbot, for example. We are video-based. That could mean an actual human being creates the content. The video content is always preferable. [laughs] But you can also do it in some sneaky other ways too [laughs], so it's very interesting. VICTORIA: Right. So as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you can record a video of a conversation and then use Conversa to turn that into an interactive video where a user has the freedom to ask their own questions. HEATHER: Correct. Essentially, what you do is you answer whatever questions that you like. You're in charge of the storyline script. You create all the questions. The interviewee answers all of the questions via video record, and then all of those video clips are put into a database. Anyone can ask you basically any conversation. Most of them are open-ended conversations. If there are shorter, like, let's say you've only [inaudible 02:03] questions, and it's kind of a focus, you have a point, and it's a focused line of questioning, then that's obviously going to be you can't ask anything. But we usually have the individual introduce it and say, "For example, this is my bio. I've answered a few questions about my life and my career and me personally, so feel free to ask me anything about my career or my life." Then the individuals will know what the parameters are for that conversation. And you could just ask anything, learn anything anytime you want. So it's in real-time for you. No going on Google and searching through 20 pages to get an answer anymore. You should be able to talk the ideas. You should be able to talk to someone who's lived that experience or has that knowledge, ask them a question, and find out the information that you want to find out, or get to know somebody that you would never have the opportunity to talk to. VICTORIA: What an interesting idea. And what led you to think that this was a product that needed to exist in the world? HEATHER: Well, they say that necessity is the mother of invention. I happened to be in Holocaust education back in the early 2000s. And one of the main things that the entire field was concerned about is what are we going to do when the Holocaust survivors are no longer alive? They had spent over 60 years in the public telling their story, talking to students, for example the public. They've done documentaries; they've done books; they've done interviews. The Shoah Foundation at USC has 55,000 narrative interviews. So it's very well-documented. But the one thing that we weren't able to replicate yet, and this is what we were worried about, was they couldn't make that personal connection. And how do they make that personal connection? It's through people asking their own questions and actually engaging with those individuals that that's when the real magic happened. I mean, that's when people felt connected to these individuals and that story, that history. That was what I didn't want to lose after they had passed away. And so I thought to myself, there's got to be a way to replicate the Q&A, you know, the question and answer conversation where I can ask my own question, which leads me to learn deeper than if I was passively watching a video or even listening to a lecture. So I went to the Shoah Foundation, and I said, "There's got to be a way to do this." They said after many conversations, "Okay. You might not be crazy. [laughs] or as crazy as we thought you were at the beginning. But we still don't know how you're going to do it. So go away and figure out how you're going to do it, and then come back to us when you've figured it out." That was my challenge. And luckily, I found an amazing team to help us all figure out how to do it. And we got to the part where we had to take these individuals, like, the video recordings, and we had to have people actually ask them questions and have these conversations so that we could populate the database for a more accurate conversation. And so I was in the public for a couple of years all over the world. And the one question I kept getting the most was, "This is amazing. Can I do this myself? And can I do this with my parents? Can I do this with my grandparents? Can I do this with the founder of our company?" And people came to me, and they had so many ideas. "This would be great for this. Oh my gosh, could you imagine doing this?" And after a while, you say to yourself, okay, what would it look like if we did this for everyone? What would it look like if we made it ubiquitous, allow everybody to replace their FAQs? Every leader in this country, every CEO, every influencer, or any individual who's got something to say that we can all learn from, which, by the way, is pretty much everyone on the planet. They can tell their story, and they can talk about their experiences, and we can learn from that. Even saving time on interviewing future candidates in person. You narrow it down to 10 people. You have them do StoryFiles. You actually engage with their StoryFile, and then you just choose two that you want to meet in person, possibly saving you hours and hours of time. It's just about asking questions and getting an answer in the moment when you need it, not waiting for an email, not going through 20 pages of Google. And it's also about connecting with a real person instead of these chatbots that everybody's trying to move away from. And I think they're trying to move towards avatars because they're more visual, but it's still not a human being. So it's still kind of an automated voice, and they're not real. And there's no emotion, and you don't have any body language. So what if you could just ask a person? You probably get asked some of the same questions. And in the next 2 minutes, you could probably think of 10 questions that you get asked almost daily. So what if you did a StoryFile? You answered all those ten questions and maybe more, and then you never had to have that conversation again. Think of all the time that those people now, if they get in front of you, they don't have to waste time asking any of those typical, basic questions. They can just get right into a deeper conversation with you. VICTORIA: I love it. Yeah, I'm already thinking in the back of my mind, like, oh, I could use these for what if you're trying to show what it's like to work at thoughtbot? And you just want to ask someone at thoughtbot a question, and you could play with StoryFile. Yeah, I think it's enormously useful. And I love the story starts with a hugely impactful mission of capturing those stories. And I wonder how that experience of the importance of storytelling has had on your ability to get funding and get this project through as a founder. HEATHER: It's been a journey. [laughter] First of all, let me say that I think it has been slightly more complex than most startups because, from the onset or the get-go, or whatever you want to call it, this technology has been meant for consumers and businesses alike. So you've got a B2C play, and you've got a B2B play, which is very complicated for investors to understand maybe and really get the vision in its totality. So it's been a struggle to communicate it in a way that people really understand this can be done. You're creating a whole new medium. This is not an I'm creating a new rocking chair type of thing that's better than the other chair that you had. I'm creating a chair. It's a new kind of chair. And you have to take these people on a journey to understanding how much better their lives can be and how much time they can save if they just invest a little bit of time, which they kind of have to do anyway. I mean, look at it, you spend so much time writing FAQs for a website and finding all the answers, and then putting them all together and putting them in the website. You could spend the same amount of time actually getting all those questions, recording yourself answering them. In fact, it probably would take less time. Record the answer, and then, bam, you have it. Everybody can actually talk to you, ask you those questions, and you can guide them. And they get the benefit of actually feeling as though they've talked to a human being. They've connected with you emotionally, and everyone's better off for it. The investors have been...they either absolutely get behind you 100% and love what you're doing and want to be on the journey with you, or they are a bit we'll wait and see. There hasn't been one investor, though, that has said, "You're not onto something. I don't believe in what you're doing, and your idea is not going to work," not one. So we know it has legs. And we just have to build the body and get it from the walking stage, walk to run. VICTORIA: Right. And I see you have quite an impressive client list already. And you recently won an award for best software as a service product for education and nonprofits in the learning and CSR category, so that's impressive. And I want to hear more about how that process has been scaling from you had one initial customer who was the Holocaust Museum, and now you've expanded, and what kind of lessons you might have about that experience, getting to the walking stage, and what you have planned coming ahead. HEATHER: I don't know if I have much advice, actually. [laughter] I could probably use more advice than I can give. Every day, you know, you take it one day at a time, and you move forward. We haven't forgotten where we started, which was in enabling audiences through museums and public spaces to enable them to have these conversations with people that they would not normally get to talk to. There's this studio professional services side of this as well. Then you have, all right, we had to have a back end. We had to have a platform in order to run our business. What if we made that platform available to other companies? Okay, what does that mean? And how does one build that? Then is it built intuitively and easily enough for people to actually do what they want to do with it, which is create these interactive conversational video AI modules (We call them StoryFiles.) for a variety of different cases? I mean, think about every kid can talk to one of the best teachers in the world and learn from them. Every possible person that wants to go on a date could actually talk to potential people. And those people don't even know that they're having these first-date conversations with them, so it saves you that first meeting, that awkward first date. But it also allows you to make a better choice for that first date or, like I said, screening or even onboarding and corporate training. All those manuals that people have written everything and all the information that's in there, nobody wants to go to a manual and look up an answer. No, you're going to go to someone that you think knows the answer, and you're going to ask them. So why not just pull out your phone and do that on your phone, you know? Like, Walmart has this amazing thing that they call financial mentor. They did StoryFiles for new store managers. It's all around answering those questions that you would get as a new manager that you would have running the day-to-day of a Walmart store. So they can literally pull out their phone. They've got their own Walmart learning management system on the phone, and they can talk to a financial mentor and ask them questions. So, what do I do if I have a register that's this? Or I forgot what the form is that you use for this. Or what do I do if my endcaps aren't really churning enough buzz and businesses I think it should be? All those questions that you're going to ask in the first couple of years of taking on a new position. So it's basically anywhere that you have questions and people normally give you answers, you can do a StoryFile. VICTORIA: Yeah, it sounds like a real change to the way people do business and how you can automate some of those conversations and provide a more human touch too. HEATHER: Yeah, it's all about that human touch, isn't it? The one reason I think that people now, you know, for the last three years, everybody's been obsessed with these avatar chatbots, but they're not really solving the problem. The problem is the chatbots don't seem real. You don't feel as if you're having a conversation with an actual person, and that's what frustrates you the most because they don't understand. They don't seem like they're being empathetic. They don't seem like you're relatable. And there's also the uncanny valley, and then the automated voices, and the cadence, and all of that. So this solves all that. VICTORIA: 80% of communication is non-verbal, right? HEATHER: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, but nobody really thinks about that. [laughter] We do digital recreations; notice I'm not calling it an avatar because we do an authentic version of an individual. And most of the time, 99% of the time, the person's not alive anymore. But we work with the archives; we work with the foundations; we work with the families. Nothing that we have that digital recreation say is anything that we've made up. It's always based on what they've actually said and the way that they've said it. So we review, like, we did one digital recreation that we reviewed over 1,700 hours of video. The key thing was getting an actor that physically looked like the individual, and it has to be a method actor. The method actor also reviews some of those videos and really gets a sense of who that individual was. Then they form the basis for the digital recreation for the body language, for the facial expressions, for the cadence of the voice. And then, you do the face mapping and other special effects that you might have to do to the body. Then you do the voice cloning so that you get the person's actual voice. So it's a really detailed process. And what you end up with is probably the most authentic version of an individual that can be created. 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. VICTORIA: You mentioned avatars. But that process also sounds different than what I've heard about deepfakes as well. Do you want to -- HEATHER: Yeah. Well, our digital recreations are based on more authentic...they're probably as authentic as you can get to the actual individual. It's not based on, you know, avatars still; even if you do one that's based on 10 minutes of video of yourself, you will still have the uncanny valley. You will still have the broken cadence. You'll still have an automated voice where it sounds automated. They are getting better, and they'll continue to get better. But there's no avatar that you can honestly tell me is going to accurately convey emotion and those non-verbal cues. They can't do it. A computer cannot intuit it. You have to have the individual. You have to have something based from the actual person in order to get the most accurate you can get. An avatar who you're basically treating as a visual chatbot you're just typing in the answers. So there's no emotional connection. There's no body language or cadence that you can connect with in that. VICTORIA: That makes sense. And I can clearly see the...we've talked about the business use cases a little bit. But on the individual consumer side, I'm thinking about making a StoryFile of my grandpa from Pasadena and the value what that would be like to have that family member have a realistic portrayal of them for future generations to interact with. HEATHER: It's priceless. And he's still alive, right? VICTORIA: Yeah. HEATHER: So it's not a realistic portrait. It is him. You could do a StoryFile life. You'd go to StoryFile life. You'd pick out all the questions you wanted to ask him, add your own questions. Every family has got those five stories that individuals always tell at the dinner table during Thanksgiving or something. So you want to make sure you capture all of those. Let's say that he responds to a question that you've asked. And the beauty of it, by the way, is these are questions that you probably would not normally ask somebody in daily conversation. So you really get a sense of who they are from day one, you know, from their childhood all the way through their life today. If they say something that you're like, wait a minute, stop, [laughs] you've got to explain that, you can add a question, add a follow-up question and just say, "Can you tell me more about that?" or "Explain yourself. Like, how did you come to that? How did you make that decision? What went into this move and this shift?" or whatever you want to know more about. "Or how did that affect your family?" you know, so many questions. So it allows you to ask all of those questions. You record your grandfather, which, by the way, is an amazing experience for you; forget him, [laughter], but it's an amazing experience for you. And I guarantee you; you will learn something. To date, I have not had one family say that they haven't learned something or heard a story that they never heard before. So it's a really interesting process. And you feel bonded to that individual after you're done talking and doing this interview in a way that you didn't before. Then you have that recording of this individual that your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren will be able to get a sense of who this individual was, and what their life was like, and who they were to you even. That's priceless to be able to give, you know, we hang on, you go into ancestry.com; you pull up a ship's manifest. And you see your relative's signature. Okay, fine. But what do you really know about that person? Nothing. You know they came over on a ship. [laughs] And you see maybe how their signature looked, but that doesn't really tell you anything. So we want to change all that. We want to flip it all out. We want you to know all of your ancestors. We want your kids to know everybody and learn from them. VICTORIA: I love that. And it's an interesting intersection of this very core human emotion to AI technology or this leading-edge technology. And I wonder, what has surprised you in the technology building side about what ways it easily supports making this human connection and other ways where it's still a challenge to make everything connect? HEATHER: I would have loved to have gotten at least three PhDs [laughs], and then I can think over the last 12 years. Okay, so I started this in 2009. So you got to remember there was no Skype, really. I mean, Skype came into its own...it existed in 2008, but it didn't really come into its own until 2012. Speech recognition wasn't really a thing. We knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't there yet. That was one of the big things that people had to really take a leap of faith with me that we could even get this to work. We didn't know if it would do what we thought it would do. And we were doing this completely...it was a passion play. It was; let's see if we can do this type of thing. We actually did. It did fulfill what I envisioned it being and doing. It did finally fulfill, and I realized that in 2016, so it took that long. And in order to make it ubiquitous for everyone, and you know this because you build software, and you help people with products: to do something for the general public and to make it ubiquitous, and make it scalable, that's a whole nother ballgame. We're taking a process that was incredibly manual...everyone says, "Oh, AI is going to take over the world." No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not even close. It's still so manual. It's based on data. And whatever you manually put in is what you get out. In order to take that and make it automated in whatever ways you can and then keep dreaming about a day where, for example, the follow-up questions that I talked to you about. One day on our roadmap, God willing, next year, you will be able to get that follow-up question actually suggested to you because the computer will know what that individual has said. And the computer will figure out here's a question that you might want to ask, which has never been done before. And there are several things that we have on our roadmap that haven't been done before, but we've been in this zone where you know, other companies have tried. One of our advisors was president of Google Americas. And when she came on board with us, she said, "Google tried to do something similar to this in the early 2000s." But it was just a little too early, and they couldn't figure it out. So they scrapped the whole thing. And with software, timing has a lot to do with it. Your expectations and what you think you can do and when you can do it have to be constantly monitored and constantly re-evaluated. And do the best you can with what is technically available at the moment, and then plan to see how you might make that evolve or improve that or add to that. For example, the field of natural language processing it's at one stage right now, but we have things that we want to do with it and advances that we'd like to see happen. And we're going to have to make those happen if we want to see those happen. VICTORIA: You had both the timing and the need and just enough technology progression to make something happen when you did, and you were able to grow it. It sounds like your family is also involved in helping you along the journey. And I was curious to hear about how that has been for you and -- HEATHER: Okay, so it's not really fair because I grew up in a family-owned business. I'm totally used to it. Everybody asked me, "What's it like working with your husband, and what's it like?" You know, along this journey, we've had various family members working for us, and honestly, that's mostly been a necessity. They happened to be the most skilled and the most talented people to do the job at the moment that I had access to. They got it, you know, it's sort of like the game, okay, tag, you're it. [laughs] Some of them have gone on to do other things; one started her own app called Camber. The other started a PR agency and is doing very well. The other went on to do structural engineering, and the other one is still working for us. And Stephen's my husband's oldest, and I have told her many times even though she does want to go to law school at some point, I said, "No, I'm never letting you leave. [laughter] You're never leaving me." Yeah, it's kind of not fair because we happen to have the ideal situation where Stephen and I are both passionate and have a very clear vision of what we want to do and how to get there, which I think you do need. We respect each other tremendously. I'm in awe of him almost every day. I can see where in a lot of families, it would be problematic but somehow not for us. It worked really well. With investors, it is kind of tricky because you don't want to seem like you're a mom-and-pop shop, either. That's definitely not what we are. We're very focused, and we're very intentional. To some investors, it might seem like we're all over the place because of the B2C and the B2B thing, but it's really not. We explained to them that we're actually building one thing, and that's conversational video. That's what we're doing. It's a big vision, that's all, and it's a massive market. VICTORIA: Yeah, I believe it. I mean, having people in your corner who believe in your vision and you have respect for working for each other, whether they're your blood family or your chosen family, that's what really you need to be successful. And I think it's a common theme we see across people who are able to create these products is that they have a team around them. [laughs] It's never just one person. HEATHER: Yeah, no, it's never just one person. And I've been really, really fortunate. You talk about family that you've chosen. I've been really fortunate to have a lot of the team members who were on this journey with me back in 2010. So that's how far we all go with this and trying to evolve this technology and build this medium and this way of communicating. We're in it. We're all in it for better or worse. VICTORIA: Yeah, I agree. And I assume that that amount of loyalty from your team over that long time is a pro point for investors as well. And I'm curious, so if you could record a StoryFile for yourself now to send back in time to when you were first starting this up, I wonder what questions you would ask yourself [laughs] to be able to give you the advice you needed when you were just starting. HEATHER: To give me advice now? VICTORIA: If you were going to create a StoryFile for when you were starting out if you could be able to ask yourself questions from the future. [laughs] HEATHER: I think it would probably be very interesting to see where I was at, and what I was thinking, what we were dealing with at the time because I think it's some of the things you forget, you know, how you were feeling. We did a lot of video recording back in the early days, especially around different milestones and then different lows and highs. But if I could give myself some advice now, knowing what I know now, it would be your typical don't give up. There are days when you feel like that's it; I can't go any longer. It's not sustainable. You just don't know how it's going to turn out. And you have customers that you're really, really...we're very customer-oriented, so we work really closely with them to make them successful. And there have been times when what they've wanted to do hasn't been something that we were able to achieve entirely. So I would say just keep your head down, keep doing the work every day. Keep moving forward, and just believe in how you're ultimately going to change the world with this. So I think that I believed that 100% ten years ago as well. [laughs] I probably would have said the same thing, actually. There was a woman that had told me she wanted to do a StoryFile with her 10-year-old. And then she wanted to do the same script every five years, but especially do the same thing right before they go to college and then when they come back when they've finished college and do the same interview. I said, "It's a brilliant idea, but why specifically before they go to college and when they get back?" She says, "I want them to see how much they've changed." That makes me cry every time. It's so true. I don't know if you have kids; between Stephen and I, we have five, and they're all 20 to 31. And that time in their lives, from 17 to 22 to 24, you change so radically. I mean, it's almost like you go back, and it's almost like you've got a one-year-old to see how much they changed by the time they're six. It's that radical. I thought that was just a beautiful thing on her part to think of, you know, think of doing. VICTORIA: Yeah, that sounds great. I don't have any kids myself. I do have a two-year-old and a one-year-old niece and nephew. Maybe we'll create one for them when they get a little bit older. HEATHER: Well, then you have to do...is your grandfather their great-grandfather? VICTORIA: No, he's my husband's grandpa, actually. HEATHER: Because when you do your grandfather, then they'll get to know them. You know, there's something about our identity, and it's made up of our parents, you know, our lives, our influences on our lives, and everybody that lived before us. So our point is, why not get to know those people the best way you can? And is that by reading their story? Is it listening to a voicemail that they left you before they passed away in order to get a sense of who they are? Or is it a video of them on a vacation, you know, a video clip? Or is it a story? Or would you want a StoryFile where you can actually have a conversation? You can feel as if you're sitting down at a kitchen table, talking and asking them questions about their life. We want you to do it with everybody, [laughs] even your boss. [laughter] VICTORIA: Right? I think it's a hugely powerful way to connect with people. And if I can get my grandpa to stop watching tennis for long enough to do it, I'll do it. [laughs] HEATHER: I definitely guarantee you can do that. [laughs] VICTORIA: Right? I think we can. I think we can do it. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I will. So I really appreciate you sharing this capability with us. And is there a way you want to shout out how people can connect with the tool? HEATHER: Go to storyfile.com. If it's for your family, for you personally, go to StoryFile Life from that website. And if you're a business, you can go to Conversa also from that website and ask for a free demo. VICTORIA: Excellent. And is there anything you want to give as a final takeaway to our listeners today? HEATHER: It's easy to do. And it's always better to personally connect with someone if you can. Give them the opportunity to really see you, and listen to you, and hear you, the real you. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Everyone has a story to tell or knowledge to impart, experiences to talk about. There's no one on the planet that doesn't, honestly. But you probably doing these podcasts every one you talk to you learn from. It's sharing our knowledge. It's sharing humanity's experiences and knowledge so that we absorb that and we have that. It influences us, hopefully, in a good way. VICTORIA: I think that's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing with us and being with us here today. HEATHER: Thank you for having me. Keep up the great work, you guys. VICTORIA: Oh, thank you. 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 @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: Heather Maio-Smith.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

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