In this episode, the focus is on RubyConf, the upcoming conference dedicated to the Ruby programming language. They start by talking about the origin and evolution of RubyConf, highlighting its growth in attendance and its impact on the Ruby community. Chelsea details how the conference has adapted to the digital format due to the COVID-19 pandemic but points out the value of in-person connections. They are looking forward to the Community Day event, which will feature various activities to encourage community interaction and an acknowledgment of scholarships that would help more people attend. The event will offer various programming options, workshops, and talks to cater to newcomers and seasoned professionals. There will also be some level of hands-on learning through hacking activities. The conference aims to be inclusive, offering opportunities for mentorship and growth, regardless of one's career stage. Towards the end, the discussion shifts to Ruby Central, the organizing body behind RubyConf and RailsConf. Chelsea and Allison describe multiple avenues for community engagement, ranging from board membership to open-source contributions. They also encourage donations and corporate sponsorships. Don't miss your chance to register for RubyConf and engage with the fantastic Ruby community! RubyConf Follow RubyConf on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, or Mastodon. Learn Academy Follow Learn Academy on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Follow Chelsea Kaufman on LinkedIn or X. Follow Allison McMillan on LinkedIn or X. Visit her website at daydreamsinruby.com. Follow thoughtbot on X 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 me today is Allison McMillan and Chelsea Kaufman, Board Directors, and RubyConf '23 Co-chairs. Thank you for joining me. ALLISON: Hi, thanks for having us. CHELSEA: Thanks for having us. VICTORIA: Yes, I'm glad that you were able to make time to come on the show today. I understand, Allison, that you've been having very full weeks with family over the last month. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? ALLISON: Yeah, it's...we have just ended what I call the gauntlet of Jewish holidays. But, basically, there are four Jewish holidays starting with Rosh Hashanah, which many folks know that's the Jewish New Year. But what a lot of folks don't know is that there are actually four holidays that are all in a row, each about a week apart. And you do different celebratory things for each of them. And so, it's been really amazing and fun, and lots of, like, sharing our home with others and meals and seeing lots of people. But it is also exhausting. And they basically all fell on weekends this year, which was nice from sort of a scheduling perspective but was exhausting in the fact that I basically have not had a weekend in over a month. So, it was wonderful and tiring. And I am, I guess, both happy and sad that they're over now. VICTORIA: Yeah, that does sound like a lot of quality family time, which has its pros and cons [laughs], right? So, after going through that, do you feel more rested? Or what do you feel like you need to do in order to recuperate and return to your normal energy levels after having every weekend full after that? ALLISON: Oh, that's a great question. I've been looking at my calendar to be like, I should take a day off. I should take a break. I'm working for myself and [inaudible 02:02] entrepreneur consultant. So, I do have the flexibility to do so, but it is hard to look at my calendar and be like, yes, I will take this day off because I deserve it. But, ideally, I would take a day or multiple days off. VICTORIA: Yes. And some of us are lucky enough to have a reason to travel for work purposes and to sneak in a little vacation and be productive [laughs] in our companies. So, I'm curious, Chelsea, if you can tell me a little bit about the option for people to come to San Diego in November and take a restful vacation by the beach and learn a little bit more about Ruby. CHELSEA: Yeah, so RubyConf will be in San Diego this year. As a native San-dieagan, I am a bit biased, but November is a beautiful time to be in San Diego. And we're going to be at the Town and Country, which feels a little bit like we're going to be in a, like, Palm Springs resort. They just went through a major renovation. And there's these really awesome, like, lounge areas with fire pits and just places for people to gather, which really kind of aligns itself with some of the stuff that we're planning because we're really trying to focus in on just connecting Rubyists together. So, to me, it feels like the perfect place because I think San Diego is, one, we're a little bit more low key, a little chill. And it's a great place to just gather and connect and share with people that have, you know, similar interests. VICTORIA: Yes, I live in San Diego now, but I was from Washington, D.C., And I would come and visit my family in San Diego once a year. And they would always go on about how great it is and how beautiful, and everyone is so happy and chill. And I was like, sure, whatever. And then we [chuckles] had the opportunity to move here, and now I'm one of those people who says that [laughs]. Like, it's great, especially in November. Everywhere else is getting a little cold and fall. And San Diego has a little bit of fall, but it's still 75 degrees out. I forget what that is in Celsius. But yes, I'm also super excited. CHELSEA: We have, like, fake fall activities that you can go do. Like, Allison, when you're talking about doing all the family activities and things like that, you know, this is when we start thinking about, oh, we need to go to, like, the pumpkin patch and apple picking and do all these things, but it's not cold or, like, fall weather at all. So, you want to get all, like, bundled up in your cute fall clothes or, like, put my kids and bundle them up in cute things. But then they're, like, sweating and trying to do [laughs] all these funny activities. But I think that there's so many beautiful things to do here that we, like, try and do these, like, fall activities. But then we just end up at the beach and play in the sand [laughs]. VICTORIA: Yeah, I will go out in, like, shorts and a T-shirt because it's that kind of weather. And my neighbors will be wearing full puffy jackets and [laughs], like, long pants and a hat. And they're like, "You're not from around here, are you?" [laughs]. It's like, you guys are silly. But it's fun. Yeah, there's seasons, I think, you know, in November...I made a list of suggested activities for my team members since thoughtbot is sponsoring RubyConf this year. And we're going to have a couple of speakers at the event. And we'll have other thoughtboters available at our booth for people to come up and chat with us. So, I'm really thrilled to be hosting everyone. And I made a list of, like, activities, and most of them were about where to see cool animals [laughs]. I was like, of course, there's the zoo, which is the obvious one, but then there's baby leopard sharks, and there's a season for them. I think they will still be around in November; I'm curious if you know, Chelsea, actually. And then there's, like, the safari parks, and whale watching, and the sea lions at La Jolla and, like, just a bunch of cool animals to see that I think it makes San Diego really special. CHELSEA: I agree. The zoo, the safari park are great places to just hang out and see some really cool exhibits. Balboa Park, the museums there are amazing. Liberty Station is one of my favorite places to go; that it's an old historic naval training center that's been converted into an arts and culture area. So, they have, like, little shops. They have...there's museums. There's brew pubs. There's coffee shops. And then there's beautiful, like, grassy areas, and right by the water, it's one of my favorite places to just go and hang out. ALLISON: This is great. I've done zero research on San Diego so far. So, just, like, I'm writing notes of what things to do and see while I'm there. CHELSEA: Yeah, I know the San Diego Ruby group is trying to put together some, like, local events and things that people can gather and do together. I know that there was a talk about doing a taco crawl. I think if I say that on the podcast, it might actually push them to do it because there are some amazing tacos in San Diego to be had. VICTORIA: Yes, I love that taco crawl. I'll reach out to them because I'll help put something like that together. I'm writing a blog post right now about all of these things and about all the other kind of events that are coming up in San Diego this fall. Great location, great time of year to be here. Tell me a little bit more about RubyConf specifically. And what are you all trying to do different this year than in past events? ALLISON: There are a bunch of things that we're doing differently. Our goal this year with this RubyConf is really to sort of focus on more ways to bring the community together. I think in the last little bit so much excitement around Ruby and Ruby Central and just sort of the community in general. It's a hard time in tech. I think people need to be sort of choosier about sort of what they attend and why they're attending something. And so, we really wanted to help folks connect with each other, help folks get to know other people, help folks sort of reconnect to ways that they love Ruby and the Ruby community and being a Ruby programmer. So, one of the things that we're doing differently is we have a three-day conference. And the way that that sort of broken down is the first day is a Community Day. And the first day is comprised of the workshops, as well as sort of this Hack Day, where people can bring their own projects. We're going to have people there that folks can hack with, sort of open-source projects that folks can work on, all sorts of different stuff. So that people can really sort of get to know one another, work with one another, work with people that they might, you know, admire or have followed in the community for a while, and have that sort of really special experience that doesn't feel as conference-y, right? It feels a little bit more sort of organic in terms of the way that the day will flow and, the options that people have, and sort of what that day looks like. And then following that, we have two days of sort of RubConf with talks and speakers, et cetera. And I'll let Chelsea add anything to Community Day and then also jump into some of the sort of new and different things we're doing at RubyConf. CHELSEA: I agree with Allison in that we've really wanted to focus in on the connection side of things. But I think coming out of the last few years, out of even the last year that's been tough in the industry, just finding ways for people to connect, support, lift up each other, I think that that was something we really wanted to do. And we didn't want it to just be about going and seeing speakers. We wanted to find more ways for people to learn from each other, to connect. And so we added in quite a few of these community connection points. So, on that first day, there's a lot of community aspects to it. We have a lot of learning happening with our workshops and also working on projects, hacking together, showing off what you're working on, connecting with people in the community. It's going to be really focused in on everyone's own skills and talents and coming together and supporting each other in where we're at in our careers, in our learning. And then, the next couple of days will look a little bit familiar in the way that it is structured with some new aspects kind of woven in. We'll have our Community Room, where we're bringing different community groups together so that people can learn more about what is going on in the community, how they can support, how they can connect. And in addition to seeing and learning about some of the new things happening in the Ruby community, we'll also have our Career Pathways room again, which will be a place for people to support their own careers. And that room was really set up so that it wasn't just about early career, but also about folks in their mid and senior careers, and finding the advice, finding the resources, finding the mentorship that they might need in whatever stage of their career that they're at, and figuring out how we can together as a community grow as a whole. VICTORIA: I really appreciate the focus on community. And, for me, as managing director at thoughtbot, in deciding to invest in which conferences we want to attend and sponsor, we find more value in groups that are trying to bring people together around a common passion and purpose versus a particular product. But I'd like to hear from each of you if you can tell me, what does the community mean to you? And I'm looking for, like, a personal story on how you've benefited or how you've engaged with the Ruby community in the past. And what makes you motivated as CEOs and founders of your own companies [laughs] to spend all this time organizing a conference? ALLISON: Many, many, many years ago, I did a Rails Girls workshop. It was actually my first introduction into the tech community, into programming in general. And, for me, really, I did Rails Girls. I did not actually expect to like programming. But I was sort of launching a startup, and I wanted to learn more about tech and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, I was, like, so energized and so excited about what I had built and what I had done. The Ruby community in D.C., who I always think is just a group of really special individuals, was so supportive, was so wonderful, was so, like, "Here's where we co-work on Wednesdays. Come to this coffee shop. Here's how you can keep learning," just was so encouraging. You know, I went to the local Ruby meetup sort of really not knowing anything. And they were excited about, you know, newbies being there and asking questions and, you know, really sort of getting to know folks who are just starting out in their programming journey. And really, through that, I mean, I went to my first RubyConf as a scholar. Was strongly encouraged to do a lightning talk, did a lightning talk. That's how I, you know, sort of ended up having a whole bunch of informational interviews and having conversations with folks. And really, that's how I got my first real job in tech. And so, you know, I want people that are coming into the industry now to have that same support, to have those same opportunities, to have that same encouragement. And, for me, sort of planning RubyConf, planning these conferences, being a part of Ruby Central is really me giving back to the community that has gotten me to where I am today, right? And it's amazing, also, to just...I'm still in touch with the people that were at my table, sort of guiding and mentoring at that first Rails Girls session or the people who I met at the first-ever Ruby meetup that I went to. I still talk to them. I'm still in touch with them. We still get together. I still ask them for, you know, advice and guidance sometimes. And sometimes, they ask me, at this point, for advice and guidance, which is fun. But yeah, it just means so much to me that I have really been able to get to where I'm at because of the support and encouragement of the community. CHELSEA: I have a similar story. I guess over, gosh, over a decade ago, I also went to my first RailsBridge and got introduced to the community there at RailsBridge. And, you know, at the time, I wasn't in tech. I was in the theater. I come from the performing arts. I had spent a very long time executive leadership in the theater. And I got introduced to this community that was so warm and welcoming to people wanting to learn and grow. And I was so interested in how communities are built and how people connect together that I started getting more and more involved in the Ruby community here in San Diego. And just like Allison was saying about the welcoming and warmth that she felt from the D.C. community, I felt the same way here in San Diego. Before that, you know, I had spent so many years being the only woman in a room. I had been in an industry that made me feel like my voice was not always heard. And when I walked into this room, I felt like I mattered. I felt like people wanted to hear what I had to say. And they wanted to learn from my experiences. And in 2014, San Diego hosted RubyConf here. And at that point, my business partner and I launched our business, LEARN Academy, and it's still running strong today. But it was about creating that on-ramp for people and a launchpad into this industry where they could make a difference and they could have their voice heard. And they could be a part of a conversation, even if they hadn't been a part of that community for many, many years, that their background mattered, that their growth mattered. And helping people find their voice at a table is something that is so important to me that I love being able to bring that into the planning of this conference, into a lot of the work that I've done with Ruby Central, with LEARN academy. And really just helping people understand that just because you don't have the traditional background, maybe you didn't start programming at the age of two, you can have a different background and a different path and still provide so much value. And I think that that is the thing that I wanted to continue to be a part of and to make sure was a part of the conversation, that we need so many different types of people at the table. And I want to make sure that our community is responsive to that, that it's inclusive to that, that it's equitable as best we can, and just allows people to share their own experiences. And so, you know, I feel like, for me, we're, you know, almost at our 10-year mark at LEARN academy and that we were launching the company at RubyConf in 2014. To have it here again this year is so special to me. I remember being at the conference many years ago; you know, we spend a lot of time helping companies figure out how to work with early-career developers and to create those pipelines for them so that there's career growth for them. And, you know, I remember sitting around the table and just saying, "Hey, who wants an internship? Who wants to, you know, help these early-career developers?" And everyone raised their hand, and we found some of our very first partners at that conference. And it's always been such a warm and welcoming community that has allowed me to feel like I have a voice and then allows me to help other people find theirs. VICTORIA: Wow, thank you both for sharing that. I totally relate to that feeling of a welcoming community and just getting the sense that, like, wow, everyone who does Ruby is really nice [laughs]. And I think that you know, for me, same as Allison, starting in D.C., there were quite a few people who were involved in Women Who Code who were running Ruby meetups. And that's where I met Valerie Woolard, who I think is also coming to San Diego for RubyConf. I'm excited to see her again. And it's interesting for me coming from that perspective and hearing that from both of you because I've also heard a viewpoint on Ruby community as being highly opinionated and causing certain amounts of consternation. So, I'm curious if you have any comments on that. If not, otherwise, I'm grateful that there are people working to bring that better community in the community that I'm more familiar with more to the forefront and making it more inclusive and open for everyone. So, to, like, bring the question all the way back, it's like [chuckles], do you have any comments on, like, if there's a tendency for Rubyists to be really highly opinionated? Or what else can we do to make it more open and inclusive for people to join the community? CHELSEA: I mean, I think that people are going to be opinionated about something that they care a lot about. And I think that the thing that I've noticed in the Ruby community is people love this language. They love programming in this language, and I think that there's something very powerful about that. And it does, you know, lend itself to people [laughs] having very strong opinions about what they think needs to be out there. And, to me, it's not a matter of, like, whether we have strong opinions or not. It has more to do with whether we're listening or not. But I think it's really important for those of us who are leading to be the listeners, and that we should be there to make sure that there is space for people to be heard, whether their opinion is loud or not. And I think that there are people that are going to be louder than others; that is going to be true no matter where we go. But I think that as long as there is intention around making sure that we are listening to even the quietest voices and that we are creating space for the quietest voices, that's where we're going to find more collaboration. But if we're only going out there and saying, "This is the way it needs to be," and we're not willing to listen to anything else, then I think that growth will stop happening because we need to listen to everyone. We need to be able to create some kind of place for people to come together and share ideas; you know, you don't get the perspectives of all these amazing people in the industry. So, that's why I feel like, you know, I've been on the board at Ruby Central for about a year now, and the biggest thing that I feel like I can contribute is to simply listen. If I can help in any way of filtering ideas or creating connections with people because I've been putting my ear to the ground and saying, "Okay, these people are talking about this, and we're expanding here." And we just want to make sure that we're doing the best we can at being open to all different kinds of ideas and not closing anyone off. Maybe your opinion is really strong. It doesn't mean that we should shut you down. It just means that we need to make sure that there's space for other people, too. And I think that that's the part that, you know, as someone who has always been a bit of an introvert, a bit of a wallflower, I understand how hard it is to get my voice out there. And so, I often fight for the quiet people. I think in every language and any space where it's a craft, it's something that we're creating, people get really passionate about it. And that's going to happen. And I think there's something powerful in that because there's going to be change that happens from that. But if we're not doing our part in the listening and making sure that there isn't just one voice, that there's a collective voice, that's the part that I felt so powerful when I joined the community so many years ago was that, even though I had, you know, months of experience, my questions mattered. And as long as we hold on to that, the community will continue to grow. But those of us at Ruby Central and some of the other organizations, if we're creating space to allow people to question, allow people to speak their opinions and listen, then I think that the industry, the community will just continue to thrive because of that. But we have to be open, and we have to be compassionate when we're doing our listening. ALLISON: Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I would just add in safe places, in a way that we're creating sort of safe structures and safe places for folks to communicate. 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. VICTORIA: What, if you could tell me, what does Ruby really have going for it? Like what makes Ruby a good choice for tech founders or for new companies would make someone decide they want to build with Ruby? ALLISON: First, it's a little bit about just sort of the ease of the language to jump into and to understand, right? There's a lot that you can get done very quickly with Ruby and Rails. And in addition to sort of individuals being able to work in it, there's a whole community of resources, and support, and podcasts, and tutorials, and all sorts of stuff. I know that as an engineering leader at any company, when engineers are coming to me with, like, the desire to use a new language or try something new, part of what I look at is, if I'm going to hire, like, what would hiring look like? What does it look like for engineers to have to ramp up in this area? How long does that take? What resources are available? What sort of community am I pulling from and looking at? And that's both community in terms of sort of technical experience, expertise, years, et cetera, but also non-technical skills, right? What does the community look like in terms of some of those ideals around communication, collaboration, just sort of general pieces like that? And so, I think that, given sort of the strength of open source, strength of community, community contributions, ways to contribute, etcetera, I think that's one of the reasons that it still makes Ruby a really strong choice for folks to build in and to work with. VICTORIA: What type of people, what personas do you think will be the most interested in attending RubyConf? Is it all just going to be, like, senior or super Ruby developers, or what? CHELSEA: Oh, I don't think so. I mean, this RubyConf, in particular, is great for anyone on a learning journey. We've worked really hard to make sure there's a good breadth of programming for different folks in different stages of their careers. I think that, you know, those of you that are maybe earlier on there, this is a great opportunity to meet people who are maybe even a step or two ahead of you. I think that the best mentorship that you can find is someone who is only maybe a year ahead of you because they're going to recognize where you're at and help you along the way. And I think that there's a lot of opportunities here for that. I think that with our Community Day, the hacking that's going to be involved, like, maybe, as a new developer, you wouldn't be able to come in and, like, get your hands really dirty. But you'll get to sit next to somebody who has been through all the different stages and get to watch, and explore, and learn. I think that making those connections could be really great for anyone's career. I think that our mid-level developers, folks that are our management, there's great resources for them to connect with other developers in similar stages. There's great workshops. Because of our focus on the community, I think that it's going to be a place where you can really connect with other Rubyists. And so, if you are at a stage in your career that you want to figure out what that next spring is, where that next ladder step is, this is a good place to see all the different options because you're going to be surrounded by people in all different stages of their careers. And what we've, I think, said now quite a few times is so many people there are just so excited to help people continue that growth. And so, I think that no matter what stage you're in, you're going to find people there that are excited to help you along the way. That being said, I think for our more senior, more advanced, our executive leadership, this is going to be a great place to, one, meet some really great talent, and, two, I think, learn from other folks in the industry of, like, where people are at, what we're struggling with, and how we're changing and doing things differently. So, I really do think there's going to be a little bit of everything for people. And what I love about that is really that it gets to the core and heart of the Ruby community because we're so excited about new folks coming in that that growth continues, that you have folks like Allison who started out as a scholar and want to give back. And then because we have folks at all those different stages, you can find people that are, you know, maybe a step or two ahead of you that are going to be able to help bring you up to that next level. So, I think it's an exciting opportunity for people to really meet new people, learn some new things, maybe find a little bit of encouragement, empowerment on where you're going to go next on your career. VICTORIA: Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me of an article I read while I was at RailsConf earlier this year about why we do conferences and what's the whole point. And, you know, for me, all of those things are true, like, all those values. As an executive, I'm going to meet a lot of great talent. I'm going to connect with other companies. I'm just going to get to show up and say hi to people and ask them questions in a way that's very informal. And that's so valuable to have that. I think where I was going to go next with this was with Ruby Central, which I believe organizes both RailsConf and RubyConf. (And you can correct me if I'm wrong on that.) I'm curious if there are anything else you want to talk about with, like how the community can engage in support and how other companies could get involved with the community and show their support. CHELSEA: I think that there's quite a few different ways for folks to get involved. We are currently recruiting board members. We just finished a round just now. But I know that in our planning, that we're likely going to bring on at least one, maybe two more, in the next six months. So, I definitely...for folks in the community that want to get involved, that is a really great place to really get involved with Ruby Central. We also have a really strong open-source community. And we're working, oh gosh, with quite a few different companies now that are really helping to support our open-source efforts. And those are also good ways to get involved. You know, we do plan both RailsConf and RubyConf. RailsConf will be in the spring again. And, you know, it takes a village to put on a conference like this and that, you know, we also look for programming committee members to help us shape the program of the conferences. So, if you are interested in any of that, that's also another great way to get involved in the community. We have an amazing programming committee that's helped us with RubyConf. And I'm excited to see what we do next with RailsConf. And I think that you know if you're one that's going to the conference and are saying, "Man, I wish that they would do this," or "I wish I could see that," come and talk to us because that's the best way for us to learn, that we want to hear all of those pieces. But don't be surprised if we then send you an email and say, "Hey, you want to be on our programming committee with us?" ALLISON: I'll add that we also, through our website, we take donations. So, if you want to help monetarily, there's the option to do that on the website. And if you're a company, I mean, we're always looking for conference sponsorships. But if your company also is interested in getting involved in sort of more of a corporate sense of sponsoring or supporting Ruby Central, we are always open to those conversations. You can send an email to contact@rubycentral.org. VICTORIA: That's great. I have a fun question about the conference because I'm leading the event with thoughtbot since I live here. And I'm thinking about some fun swag to give away. Rank your preferences on what kind of swag you'd like to see at the thoughtbot sponsor booth: a thoughtbot-branded surfboard or, a boogie board, a bucket hat, or a pickleball paddle. Any of those interesting for you? ALLISON: Wait, when you say surfboard, like, how am I going to get a surfboard back to D.C.? [laughter] VICTORIA: Okay. I think it's, like, kind of funny because if you win it, it's like, well, what do you do? [laughter] You got to shake it back. That sounds like maybe a boogie board. CHELSEA: Yeah, I'm down for a boogie board. VICTORIA: Thank you so [laughs] much for entertaining me on that one. Is there anything else that you would like to promote today? ALLISON: We would love to see everybody at RubyConf. You can register. Check out the program speakers, et cetera, at rubyconf.org. You can learn more about Ruby Central at rubycentral.org. Those are, I think, the two things that we'd love to make sure everybody knows about. CHELSEA: And if you're here in San Diego, come say hello. VICTORIA: Yes, I have met up with a few random people from the internet [laughs] who have said like, "I'm in San Diego. Who should I say hi [inaudible 34:02]?" I was like, "Me, me, me," [laughter]. So, yes, I'm very happy to meet up for drinks. Chelsea, you and I will have to get together sometime soon before the conference. And I'm super excited for RubyConf. And thank you both so much for being here today. ALLISON: Thanks for having us. CHELSEA: Thank 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@giantsrobots.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. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Allison McMillan and Chelsea Kaufman.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. 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Dawn Delatte, Vendela Colavecchio, and Jordyn Bonds interview Ashley Sheble, the Founder of AvidFirst, about her experiences and progress in thoughtbot's Incubator Program, which aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. The discussion covers various aspects of the program, including the evolution of the product idea, insights gained from industry conferences, the importance of listening to customers, and the ongoing development of the go-to-market strategy. Everyone emphasizes the value of the Incubator Program in helping founders connect with their market and refine their strategy. Just catching up? Listen to Part I, Part 2, and Part 3 of the Mini Incubator Series! Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: DAWN: Hello, everyone. So, since we have a bigger crew here today, slightly bigger crew, we should just jump right in, right? If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a design and development consultancy who create and build products from the very earliest stages. We are currently in our second incubator session. This is actually our final week. We're wrapping up this week our second program with Ashley at AvidFirst. And I'll let everybody go around and say hi and give a little intro. Today, we're going to be chatting about how the program has been going, any new recent activity, and things that we've learned and done, and, you know, what's going to happen here after the session ends. I'm Dawn. I am a Managing Director here at thoughtbot. And I will shoot it over to you, Ashley. ASHLEY: Thanks, Dawn. And my name is Ashley Sheble. I'm the CEO and Founder of AvidFirst. AvidFirst is really focused on helping people save and spend for college in a modern way. We're simplifying the process, modernizing the experience, and really, with the end goal of helping families avoid student debt. So, I've been working with the thoughtbot team for the past eight weeks, really refining our strategy, and we'll talk about this here in a minute. But pivoting a little bit on the strategy just based on what we learn from the market from talking to users, from talking to experts, from talking to people with just insight around what's needed in the space. And so I'm excited to share more about the past eight weeks. DAWN: Awesome. Thank you. Jordyn, do you want to hop in? JORDYN: Sure. I'm Jordyn Bonds. And I'm the Director of Product Strategy on the Ignite team. And I am a two-time former co-founder of tech startups, so whence I come to this work. Vendela, I'll let you go. VENDELA: I'm Vendela Colavecchio. I'm the Design Director on our team here running the incubators at thoughtbot. And yeah, should I talk about my role on the incubator [chuckles] more? I guess the incubator is sort of funny because, you know, as a designer, typically, my tasks fall under more of a traditional design category. But I think with the incubator, we're, like, all hands on deck, just trying to get lots of things done and help out in any way that we can. So, definitely some design things, but also just a bunch of participating in discussions and getting all sorts of tasks done. DAWN: I'm sure we'll dive more into that. As usual, though, we're going to let Ashley kick us off, kick our discussion off with a little bit of an update on what's been going on in these past two weeks since we last chatted and, you know, where we are now. ASHLEY: Yeah. So, the past couple of weeks have been pretty exciting. I went to an industry conference. It was a 529 and ABLE conference. So, 529s are tax-advantaged savings accounts specific for education expenses. ABLE accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts, specifically for people who have a disability. And so, spent a week learning from experts in both spaces, hearing from all the different stakeholders, so state agencies, program distributors, you name it, every sort of stakeholder in the whole industry was there. And it was amazing to just be able to go in and learn and meet people and hear their perspectives around what's going well, what's not going well. It could not have been more well timed because I think had the conference been earlier, I might not have been ready to ask the right questions from the different stakeholders. And had the conference been later, well, we couldn't have used any of that insight and learning to continue working on refining or pivoting the project. So, it was a great experience. People were so collaborative, so helpful. I think it's interesting that my perspective going in was, oh, people aren't going to want to talk to me. They're not going to want to share their insight. But it was quite the opposite. People were really happy to talk about what they thought could be improved or what they thought seemed to be going well. But it's only from one perspective. So, if you start asking questions around what you've learned from other people's perspectives, you kind of see this, like, aha moment. Like, oh, I hadn't thought about that before. Maybe that's something to consider. So, it was an amazing experience. So, as a result of that particular event last week, have really been synthesizing what we learned, filling in any gaps. And then just using that to think about a different strategy based on kind of the signals in the room, what people were really excited about, and what people really thought needed some work versus what we went into the conference thinking was the right answer, if that makes sense. DAWN: That's so exciting. Can you tell us more about this pivot? You mentioned a pivot. ASHLEY: Yeah. And I wouldn't call it maybe a full pivot. I would say it's more an expansion on the work we've already done, which is good. So, we're not just throwing away all the work we've done for the past seven weeks and saying, "Forget it." There are a lot of parallels in the 529 space and the ABLE space. A lot of the stakeholders are the same, and it's just a different target market with a little bit different need set. And so, really trying to understand what the differences are, and what the similarities are, and how we can replicate the work that we've already done for one space in the other space, and then build upon that a lot more rapidly than it took us to build the initial work for the 529. So, there's definitely some advantages that the two industries are really intertwined. But at the same time, there are some differences that we need to be keenly aware of and making sure that we're solving a problem meaningfully. DAWN: Jordyn and Vendela, how has this, not pivot, but new expansion or new strategy, how has this affected your work? VENDELA: What I'm thinking about on sort of a meta-level is how it's exciting to see that this new angle doesn't really change how we would approach the problem in terms of just running the incubator. So, it's almost, not in a discouraging way, but it's almost just like starting back from week one and kind of going through, what do we know? What do we need to find out? What kind of questions do we need to ask stakeholders, et cetera? And just seeing how having done that already together it makes it pretty clear what the path forward would be in terms of the process. In terms of information, who knows what we'll find out? But I think that's been exciting. The pivot doesn't feel so scary as it might sound [laughs]. JORDYN: Yeah, I would just build on that to say that it's giving us this really awesome opportunity to immediately run the same process that we just ran but, like, to see how much we've learned from doing it the first time. It's like you're starting over, but you're starting over from a better place, right? With more skills, way more understanding of sort of what's important and what's not important. And, you know, once you've run the process at least once, no part of it feels daunting, right? It just feels like work you know how to do, so it's like, okay, this is a really interesting additional sort of adjacent opportunity. We need to very quickly itemize all the things we don't know about it, and then figure out how to learn about it. Is it research? Is it interviewing? Is it testing? But none of those things feels unknown, right? It just feels like you get to do it faster and better. This is, like, a thing, you kind of can't convince someone without them having done it. And a lot of folks come to us, come to thoughtbot with a product idea. And we tell them like, "Okay, let's get in there and validate and invalidate things." And they're, like, "Invalidate? [vocalization] I don't want to invalidate my awesome, precious product idea [laughs]." And what we know that they don't know is that there are pieces that we're going to validate and pieces we're going to invalidate, but always you uncover new opportunities in that process. And you're just better and better at ascertaining what's promising about those things. So, it's only upside, but it feels like we're asking them to let go of something or to lose something, right? There's a feeling of like, it's like a scary...it's a feeling of like, I've built something, a tiny thing of value here, and you're asking me to risk that. And that couldn't be further from the truth. But it's, like, a really hard thing to convince someone until you've done it once. So, it's very fun, anyway, that we're getting to do this within one incubator cycle. Usually, it's, you know, it doesn't happen that quickly. ASHLEY: I like how you qualified that as fun. I will say...and Vendela and I were talking yesterday, and we were going through the sprints around, not starting over but beginning at the beginning with this new angle. And I was having the emotional rollercoaster of, like, what are we doing? Oh my gosh. And then, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. And then, oh my gosh, what are we doing? I feel very equipped now, having gone through this process once, to have the tools, the skills, the mindset to know, okay, it's part of the process. Here's what's going to happen. Here's what we'll probably learn. And just have a very structured way of approaching a new idea or a new angle, versus feeling like just thrown into the deep end and trying to figure out how to swim or which way is up. So, that's been pretty encouraging and eye-opening, too, that I developed all these skills that I didn't realize I had developed till we started redoing this, which is exciting. DAWN: I love that. It's kind of a testament to how valuable time spent is and how important it is to become really, like, more efficient with this process and the value of sort of rapidly being able to validate or invalidate different assumptions. I imagine that this might be a little bit different than what you expected. As Jordyn was saying, [laughs] most founders don't, you know, expect to have to loosen the grip on specific ideas. So, now that you're at week eight, how has this experience been overall for you? ASHLEY: It's been incredible. First of all, just the talented team that has been working on this project with me, I cannot say enough good, nice, positive things about that. I've heard horror stories about people working with teams that there's just a lot of dissension. There's lack of trust, all those things. And we had none of that, which is incredible. So, I feel very fortunate to have been with the team that I was with. I will also say that everybody had different strengths. And so, we're looking at an opportunity or a problem from a different lens in four ways, which is amazing because then you can cover so much more ground so much more quickly. I will also say, too, just the process: the thoughtbot program has for the eight-week structure is so intentional because sometimes I would think, well, wouldn't it make sense to do this thing before this thing? But just trusted the process, and the process was right. So, I would just say anybody that's thinking about going through the incubator or goes through the incubator next, just trust the process because you guys have a portfolio of success. You know what you're doing. I'm a testament to just really endorse the fact that each step is necessary in getting to the next step in a successful way. So, you're not taking two steps forward, one step back. You're constantly making forward progress. DAWN: That's awesome. What about you, Vendela, and Jordyn, how has this program and this session been this time around? VENDELA: I can talk about my experience as the first time going through the incubator, and then maybe, Jordyn, you have some insight on comparing the two or how you think it went in general. But I think one thing that has been really fun to do and participate in, and to Ashley's point about kind of having this environment of trust and just counting on each other that we're all distilling the information that we're hearing, I guess, accurately or in a way that aligns with how the rest of the team would perceive these things, is that we've had these really cool moments of not feeling like we 100% with complete certainty know exactly how something looks, but being creative about how we might get closer to that point. So, hearing a few tidbits here and there, thinking of ways that we're reading between the lines and interpreting that, and thinking about how we can narrow who we're talking to or approach the conversation slightly differently, so adjusting our script, or running some kind of other experiment, or structure things differently. And then, we might find that that angle wasn't exactly right, but by pursuing that angle, we learned something new that actually did get us closer in some way. And I think a lot of that was subtle throughout the process. But now, just thinking about this new kind of topic or pivot, whatever you want to call it [laughs], that we're pursuing, I think that lesson is going to be really valuable for Ashley moving forward, too, and just thinking, okay, I feel like what we're trying now isn't getting any closer. What have I heard that I could just grab, like, a small piece of string and pull on it, and see where that goes, and unravel something, and hopefully learn something new? So that there's just consistent kind of learning and not feeling like you're just totally blocked at any point. JORDYN: Yeah, to build on that a little bit, there's a real quality with this early work of just starting with what you have, where you are. And, you know, you don't have everything you need, like, you just don't, not in life and certainly not in [laughs] startup land. But the question is, like, figuring out what you need and figuring out how to get that from where you are. And that might be validation of a hypothesis you have, or it might be resources that you need that you don't have yet. And so, a lot of the work that we did together is to identify those things and to figure out ways to get them. And it's a real creative process because every problem is different. It's why it's really hard to talk about the programming in a specific way. It's like, you know, broadly, we're driving at the same outcomes every time. But every problem space, every industry requires a kind of different set of approaches, and, to me, that's really fun. It's like, okay, imagine as a metaphor, you know, that you are dropped from a helicopter into a jungle in Central America versus into Mongolia. Like, what you're going to need to survive in those two [laughs] environments is probably going to be pretty different, right? But that doesn't mean that your strategy for figuring those things out is going, like, the tactics you employ will be different. Yeah, I'm glad to hear, Vendela; that was a fun aspect of this. And sort of jumping off from that point, what was different this time? It's always different running this program. And every time, there's something new and different. But this was the first time we've run it with a FinTech product, and just learning about that ecosystem, the players, and the complex landscape of incentives and motivations, et cetera, was just, like, there was a steep learning curve for us at the beginning. And it was just super interesting and helpful to sift through that. It was like being, you know, dropped from a helicopter into a new sort of ecosystem. And we were like, all right, like, which berries are poisonous here? I don't know. But I also know that I need to eat something to survive [laughs]. So, it's like those kinds of questions, which is just super interesting. And then, what it always causes me to do is look at my own network anew. So, often, we find ourselves talking about, like, this question of starting with where you are with what you have. That includes with the network you have and the people you know. And it really depends on the problem you're solving, who you tap for what questions, right? And, suddenly, like, every one of these that we run, I get to turn to my own network. And I find new reasons to talk to different people about different things in my own network, which is really fun. It's like it allows me to get to know people in my own life in a new way. Like, every time this happens like, one of the first things we do is we turn to our own networks. Like, who do we know that has this problem or works in this industry, whatever? But having never worked on a FinTech product before, I didn't really need to do that with this lens. And it's like a whole new set of people lit up for me, and I got to have really interesting conversations with them. So, that was one thing that was different and really kind of fun. ASHLEY: It's funny to hear your take on the FinTech complexity because I feel like every time Vendela, or Jordyn, or Dave, who's not here, would ask me a question, it was, well, here's the answer, but if this, then that, or if this other thing, then that. It was never just a straightforward answer. And I was like, oh my gosh, they're just going to throw their hands up in the air at some point, but never did. They were just like, cool, that's fine. We'll figure out these different pathways, and if this, then we'll do that, and if this other thing, then we'll do this other thing. And I was just blown away by how nimble the team was and willing to just embrace the complexity. So, that, for me, was a huge positive. I don't know if you'll ever want to work in a FinTech product again; maybe yes, maybe no. DAWN: I would argue that we're more prepared now. You know, we've done a lot of FinTech work in the past, but applying this framework to understanding it as quickly as the team needed to, I'm sure, sort of pushed everybody farther, faster. So, Dave -- JORDYN: Yeah, I should say that was specific to me. thoughtbot has done plenty of FinTech work, Jordyn has not. But also, to your point, Ashley, like, I would love to actually. Now I'm like, oh okay, I kind of understand where the opportunities are here. I feel more prepared now rather than, like, more daunted. ASHLEY: Well, and you have a huge network in the FinTech space. So, that was something that was hugely helpful to me was talking with other founders who have been successful in the FinTech space, or people who have exited and had a great experience, or maybe people who have exited for, you know, reasons they didn't choose. But it was so important to hear from all those different perspectives and say, okay, here's what I would want to replicate, what I would definitely want to avoid. And so, anyways, just the network that Jordyn and others had and were willing to share with me was so valuable. DAWN: I was going to quickly shout out to Dave, who was sick this morning and wasn't able to make it. We were going to have him join. He was the senior developer in this sort of product pod that you've been working with. And I'm sure he has some interesting, more technical perspective to share. He did write a blog post, I think, maybe after week four, that I'm sure has some of those insights in it for folks who might be interested in reading from a developer's perspective. Yes, this is all wonderful to hear. I am curious to know what's next for AvidFirst. ASHLEY: Yeah, continuing on. There are a couple of things to pilot. And so, that's really the next step, pilot MVP as we think about this new angle. Because we want to make sure that the solution in mind is actually the solution that's needed. And so, those are the next steps, and then capital raise and then off to the races. So, if there's anybody listening that is interested in teaming up or wants to talk or contribute, would love to have a chat. DAWN: Is there anything that we can help with, anything on your mind, more network connections? [laughs] ASHLEY: Oh, gosh, offhand, I feel like I would be over-asking at this point because you guys have been beyond helpful. I really think the framework that I have to work with going forward—the team helped build a plan for here's what to do next, here's what to do after that, and here's what to do after that—is really setting me up for success as I think about continuing this journey without the amazing team day in, day out. JORDYN: Well, you have us as a team for life now, sorry. So, anytime you need something, [laughs] you can call. VENDELA: I was going to say I hope that you stick around in our Slack channel and update us on what's going on because now we're super invested, and we definitely want to hear how you're doing. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. DAWN: Vendela and Jordyn, we've got another application window happening right now about to close for the next incubator session. Who should apply? What should they expect? JORDYN: Anybody with a business idea that involves software. The earlier, the better. And a lot of people, you know, come to us and are like, "Well, I have this idea that I'm kicking around for years in my head, but I haven't done anything yet. You know, what do I have to do to apply?" And we're like, "Sounds good. Apply." And then, other folks who are a little later, you know, and they feel like maybe they've hit some doldrums with an idea that they've explored a little bit. But they need a little bit of sort of reinvigorating and, you know, like a spark to get going on it. That's also a good time. We're really sort of excited to hear everybody's ideas. And the only, you know, downside is that we get more applications than folks we can work with. And there's always, like, a lot of great stuff in there. But everyone is encouraged to apply. You know, we used to have somewhat of a, like, non-technical founder. And when we first started, that was kind of the premise was, like, if you're a non-technical founder, we'll be your technical founding team. But I think we're finding that we kind of round out any skill sets in a way. If you bring a technical background, we can help you with the sales, and the marketing, and the business strategy. And if you come with those things, we can help you with the product and the technology strategy. It's the early-stage work, and the early-stage work is the early-stage work, regardless of your background. We can help fill in those gaps. ASHLEY: Yeah, I'll just add, too, I came in with this pitch check. I'm like, I'm ready to go, you know, we just need to build this thing. And, wow, the idea has changed so much since eight weeks ago. And so, I would just say, too, like, be open to feedback, be open to where the experience takes you. Even if you do have a really well-researched idea, there's always opportunity for improvement based on what the market says. And the market is constantly changing. And customer needs are constantly changing. And so, if you're not evolving with that experience, then you're going to get left behind or build a product for no one or, you know, a product for everyone is really a product for no one also. So, being open to the team's input and process is just invaluable no matter what stage somebody is coming into this with. JORDYN: That makes me just so happy to hear. And I will add that, like, I cannot stress enough that mostly what this program is for is to help folks connect with their market. Like, we actually don't want you to listen to us. We want you to listen to your customer all day, every day. How can you make sure you're moving with those folks, evolving with them, speaking their language, addressing the pain points that they have? Because that's why you're doing this, not because of what you think alone or what we think as your product pod. It's really what the market is doing and what your customer base is doing, and thinking, and feeling. And really, the programming is sort of geared toward helping people understand how to do that work. Like, you might conceptually understand that you need to do that. As a first-time founder, I certainly, you know, I had read the blogs, man. I knew I needed to be, like, customer-centric or whatever. But, like, I didn't really actually know how to do that. And once I did talk to some folks, it was a whole other new skill set to figure out how to listen for the things that mattered in what they were saying to me, right? Translating, you know, what folks are telling you and how they talk about their life and their work into product opportunities and innovation, it's a whole skill set that I, even coming into this work, you know, as a first-time founder with the background I had, I didn't have that skill set. You know, most people sitting out there would not argue, like, of course, you need to listen to your customer and move with the market, et cetera. But the question of, like, how to operationalize that [laughs], you know, is a completely opaque thing sometimes. Even for folks who have, like, done it before somewhat, it can still remain challenging. ASHLEY: Yeah, I feel in a better position now to continue keeping pace with the market. Because if you look at FinTech, historically, there were major innovations every ten years, and then that pace changed to every couple of years, and then it changed to every one year. And now you're seeing FinTech innovation accelerated to every few months; the landscape is different. And so, the solution today may need to be different in six months, or three months, something like that. But I feel like I have the tools now to keep up with that pace of change, whereas before, I would have been left behind. So, I feel really grateful for that. Thank you. DAWN: That warms my heart. We do have a question. So, does thoughtbot help with go-to-market strategy, or is the incubator more focused on zero to MVP? JORDYN: You know, I'm full of very spicy takes. Spicy take here: you're always going to market. Zero to MVP is different than go-to-market? I'm sorry, how? So, the answer is, like, absolutely. And really, what you're doing is perennially going to the market [laughs]. You're making a go-to-market strategy. You're keeping that fresh. You're keeping it new in the same way that you're keeping your products and technology strategy fresh and new, given what you're learning and what you're hearing. So, absolutely, I would say that's actually primarily what the incubator is for [laughs], and then making sure that those strategies are aligned. So, like, one of the things that I've seen in my own work at multiple startups, not just my own, is that those things can become disconnected as your team grows because people have different backgrounds and different...they just have a different focus, right? Your head of marketing has a different focus than your head of product and has a different focus than your head of technology. And keeping all of those strategically aligned and focused on the same customer and the same problem set is a lot of the work of an early-stage startup. And that's, like, a lot of the work that we kind of help founders figure out how to do. How do you tie your go-to-market to your MVP? Like, how do those two things fit in together, right? And how do you keep them in sync? It's not merely like you do this one time and then everyone goes their separate ways [laughs], and in 18 months, you meet back again and have a conversation about it, like, [laughs] not how this works. So, I mean, absolutely. VENDELA: I would add to that, too; I think something that we talk about with all these types of projects is just...and, internally, we talk about this a lot, too, like, we kind of hate the term MVP because it's so ambiguous really. Like, what does that mean for any given product? And so, I think, to your point, Jordyn, like, the going to market and the MVP are so tied together because the whole point of an MVP is to learn something so that you can then bring it from a minimum viable product to something more than that. And we talk a lot with founders about different approaches to MVP. I think some people have maybe a narrow view of what they can be. It's this, you know, maybe slightly lower fidelity but coded custom thing. And there's lots of ways to approach it that don't fit that definition and maybe would work better as a way to experiment and learn something, and then create a new version later on. So, you know, with that first version, you can still go to market, but you're learning something, and then you're maybe building a new MVP after that. And so, making sure that that's not too precious or hard to throw away is something, I think, we tell everybody, too. DAWN: Yes, that's great. Cool. Well, I think it's about time for us to wrap up. Thank you so much, Ashley. It's always an honor to kind of watch the team work with different founders and see them sort of learning as they go and seeing the product and the opportunities evolve. And it's been really great to be able to participate a little bit more this time and chatting with you and hearing about how things are going. I'm happy to hear that there was a lot of opportunity for you to continue exploring with AvidFirst. And we'll be here, so please [laughs] come to us as much as possible. Everybody is really excited to see, you know, you and this thing be successful. So, thank you, Vendela and Jordyn, as always, for being a wonderful team. If you're interested in applying to the incubator, do it. Don't hesitate. You can always visit thoughtbot.com/incubator for more information. And thanks for tuning in. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Ashley Sheble, Dawn Delatte, Jordyn Bonds, and Vendela Colavecchio.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Dawn Delatte and Jordyn Bonds interview Ashley Sheble, the Founder of AvidFirst, about her experiences and progress in thoughtbot's Incubator Program, which aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. In the third part of the Mini Incubator Series, they talk about user interviews, data analysis, and prototyping to validate ideas. They emphasize the importance of being open to user signals and adjusting their approach accordingly. They also discuss the upcoming weeks of the program and the goal of refining their story and business strategy. Just catching up? Listen to Part I and Part 2 of the Mini Incubator Series! Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: DAWN: Thanks, everybody, for joining. We're glad that you're here. If you've tuned in before, great, welcome back. You're probably familiar with thoughtbot; if you're not, we're a product design and development consultancy that helps make you, and your team, and your product successful. We are currently running the second session of our incubator program, which is an eight-week program that takes you through a lot of different activities and exercises to help you identify market and product opportunities, experiment with them, and ideally come up with a solution that you can move forward with. I'm Dawn. I'm a Managing Director here at thoughtbot. And I lead a team that works with very early-stage products, and founders, and companies. And I'll hand it over to Jordyn. JORDYN: I'm Jordyn Bonds, and I'm the Director of Product Strategy on Dawn's team. And I'm kind of the...I don't know what, founder in residence for the incubator trying to bring my experience as a former founder to bear for our participants, in this case, Ashley. ASHLEY: Okay, my name is Ashley Sheble. I'm the CEO and founder of AvidFirst and have been working with Jordyn and a great team in the second incubator session. So, removing all bias from the statement I'm about to say, but if anybody's thinking about applying to the next incubator, just do it. It's an amazing experience. You're going to learn so much. There are so many smart, helpful people who really care about building cool products that make a difference. And so, do it. DAWN: I love it. Thanks for the impromptu promo. JORDYN: Yeah, thank you [laughs]. It's good to hear. DAWN: Yeah, I'm excited. Cool. Well, Ashley, why don't you maybe kick us off with a little bit of a recap of these past two weeks? What have y'all been working on? ASHLEY: Yeah, so, just for a little background, in case anybody hasn't been following along, AvidFirst is a technology company aimed at simplifying college saving and spending. Our goal is really to make 529 accounts more usable broadly and then, more specifically, attractive to next-gen consumers. And for those who aren't familiar with 529 plans, that's okay because neither are about 70% of Americans. But essentially, they are college savings vehicles. They're investment accounts that allow people to contribute money. The money grows tax-free and then can be withdrawn tax-free when used for qualified education expenses. And over the past few years, the term qualified education expense has really expanded from beyond just tuition and fees to room and board on and off campus, computers, technology, supplies, apprenticeships, K through 12, like, the list is getting longer and longer. And so, our goal is just to really help simplify a really complex system and savings vehicle to make them more appealing and attractive to people. So, the past few weeks, specifically, we have been aggregating all the data from our user interviews. We've done a lot of user interviews with different stakeholders and have been taking the information and saying, okay, what do we do next? How do we validate the way we're thinking about solving this problem will actually solve the problem in the way that we think it will? And so, through lots of process mapping, brainstorming different pilot initiatives, and then now working through some of the nuances of the industry. The 529 industry, specifically, is a complex animal. I don't really know how else to explain it. It's very complex. And so, we are just navigating these complexities and looking for solutions that will truly simplify the complexity. JORDYN: I will just dig in a little bit to that analysis of the interviews that we've been conducting. That analysis kind of, like, stepped up a notch in the last week in a really fun way where we, the team, really kind of dug into the dynamics of each interview, sort of the things that we're most curious about, and have been asking and really, like, scored each interview. And then did sort of a cohort analysis, like, where are the trends with which personas? We had already had some intuitions, and we just wanted to confirm with the data that we weren't deluding ourselves about what the direction was. So, that was a really, like, I think it was a really useful exercise and kind of fun to see. And what doing that helps with is our own conviction, but then it also helps us make sure that we are honing who we're talking to going forward. Talking to folks is, like, so critical and is so not scalable. It is so time-consuming [laughs]. So, you want to make sure that you're doing it really strategically. So, it's sort of, like, every wave of interviews we do, we do a little more analysis. And it's, like, we finally got to a critical number where we felt like doing this data pass was going to be statistically significant. We had enough interviews to really focus the interviews we're going to do going forward. So, just to give a little, like, lens into how that's worked and how we've been thinking about it. DAWN: I think we ask this question often, maybe every time, but I'm interested to see how it continues to evolve. But what was something that you learned these past two weeks that really surprised you or maybe even confirmed your hunches? JORDYN: So, as often happens, when you start talking to a focus group of people who share a lot of pain points in their lives or their work, you end up with, like, a lot of trends. Like, there might be a thing you're asking them about that you're particularly focused on or curious about, and you want to focus your questions on that. But invariably, you're talking to a human being, and they're going to talk about a lot of different things. And so, early on, and when we started interviewing people at the very beginning of this project in August, you know, we were very focused on college savings and spending. But an interesting thing, like, sort of trend that came up was also how much parents care about imparting, you know, some sense of financial responsibility in their young adults [laughs]. And we were like, well, that's interesting. Okay, let's, like, keep an eye on that. Maybe that's interesting to us. And what has kind of surprised me in the last couple of weeks is how much of that has sort of solidified. This is not, like, a news flash, by the way, like I think [laughs]. This is, like, a thing. Anyone who has teenagers out there is like, duh, like, why is this shocking to you? But the way that it ties into college savings and spending, I think we found some really interesting connections and threads there that have only gotten stronger with the specific cohorts that we've been talking to. So, I think that we, at first, had started as just this sort of, like, well, that's interesting, but we'll see where it goes kind of thing. And now it's, like, become a little bit more core to how we're thinking about just broadly what folks are facing, who we're addressing. So, I guess it wasn't, like, a surprise, but, like, the deepening of that signal, you know, in the sense of signal and noise, has been, like, really interesting to us, I think. ASHLEY: There's a system thinking expert that talks about how changes in a field are rarely made by the experts in the field but rather outsiders looking in. And so, for me, that's amazing because I don't have experience as a technology founder. I'm working with others who are founders in the technology space, which is great. But it does leave some question marks for us as it relates to building some processes and doing some pilot mapping, which completely overcomable because we're able to draw on resources from within the thoughtbot organization. And then, also, just network, people within our network. Jordyn seems to know everybody. I'll be like, "Do you know somebody in North Dakota?" And she's like, "Actually, yes, my third cousin's sister lives there, and I can get her on the phone." And it's just -- JORDYN: It's my first cousin. I will tell you, it's my straight-up first cousin. ASHLEY: Well, there's always someone that Jordyn knows no matter where, it seems like, which is extremely helpful when we're trying to find experts to help us answer some questions. So, it's great to be able to work through problems in a very systematic way, using some of the strategies that thoughtbot has employed, I guess, over and over and can be applied to different industries. But it does help us find, what are the questions we still need answered? And then, who are the people that can help us answer these questions? And be very strategic about that. JORDYN: I would add to that on the networking score. I think this is one of those things that first-time founders often struggle with. They struggle with recognizing who in their network is a valuable person to talk to in the first place. And then, they struggle with making those connections because it feels like you're asking people to do stuff for you, and that doesn't always feel great. But really, your network, and where you come from, and the people you know and who care about you are one of your biggest assets going into this work. And it's important to take stock of those folks as early as you can and think about how to involve them. And often, they want to be involved. They're excited to have a way to support you and contribute their expertise or whatever else. It's actually really transformed some of my relationships, like family relationships that I didn't necessarily have as...people I just discovered in my own sort of extended family who were doing related things to me. And we're much deeper friends now because we get to talk about that stuff all the time. And before I was a founder, we just didn't really talk [laughs]. So, just think through who you know and how they might be able to help you, and chances are they really want to. It's a very useful exercise. And it doesn't have to be super transactional. It can be a real bond builder. ASHLEY: Yeah, I would say that's completely true, especially from my own experience. I don't like to ask people for help, generally. And so, asking people for their time and for their advice, I'm like, oh my gosh, why are they going to give this to me? What can I do for them? But it's really been amazing how generous people are with their knowledge, and insight, and their time. I'm attending a conference next week for the 529 industry. And there have been so many helpful, kind people who are just experts in their field, leaders in their companies and are willing to talk to me about their experiences about what challenges they see. Because ultimately, you know, when a company succeeds and helps the industry grow, everybody grows and benefits from that. So, I hadn't really looked at it that way until Jordyn really encouraged me to just be, like, just call that person or just, you know, reach out. And sure enough, they were more than willing to be helpful. DAWN: I imagine there is a sort of a bit of human factor here in that, you know, what you're giving to them is an opportunity for them to share, like, something that's, like, deeply important to them and that probably not a lot of people ask them about, even their day-to-day work. So, I imagine that can feel good, too, and maybe even sort of help them better understand [laughs], like, what it is they're doing. So, you've definitely sunk into who to talk to. What about the how? Like, what are y'all doing now to try to continue validating that this is the right opportunity and that there's a product opportunity there? ASHLEY: Yeah, so, really drilling down on those two cohorts that we mentioned a little earlier, specifically one of them, making sure that we are asking questions now related to this solution that we are thinking about, and more around their experience with similar type of products or similar type of solutions to make sure that we are thinking about building features or building process flows in a way that will integrate into the way they're used to doing things today so it doesn't seem like a new learning curve to, you know, think about adopting our product. And then, also, just making sure that we are providing value, ultimately, because we don't want to just build something just to build something that we think will work for this group of people who told us that something is hard. We want to make sure that we're actually making something that's hard much easier than it already is. JORDYN: Yeah. We've really, I mean, to build on that, we've gotten a little bit further into testing messaging, which is we think that we understand folks' problems and how they are talking about them, but we really need to validate that. And, you know, we have created some landing pages and are showing them to folks and getting their reactions. But we've also started doing a little bit of prototyping, which we hope to start showing folks soon. And this is all just...a prototype, in this case, meaning this isn't, like, a clickable app. This is just, like, sort of a static design that appears clickable [laughs], think of it like a PDF with some links in it, and just showing that to folks and saying, you know, "What would you do here? How would you respond to this?" And it's just a really great way to...it's fast. It's easy to spin one of those up and then get them in front of folks and make sure that how we're thinking about this is sort of broadly in the right direction. It's so much cheaper to find out that we're thinking about this wrongly with something like that than with an app that we spent six months building and launching, ha-ha. Now, who's done that before? Not me, no, never [laughs]. I've never wasted a year building a thing. So, it's a really fun thing to do. And sometimes you can even...it's not even, like, let's validate what we're thinking. Sometimes, it's really helpful to actually throw some curveballs in there on purpose to make sure we're invalidating the right things. So, it's really fun to be moving into that phase with what we know to be true and really getting closer to testing things out in, like, a real-world situation. ASHLEY: It's somewhat surprising, too, what people are reacting to or not reacting to. The things that we thought people would be really excited about, they're like, "Eh." And the things that we thought are just kind of, like, filler on the page, they're like, "That's awesome." So, it's really crazy to see that juxtaposition. And then, you've got some people who will be like, "Huh, that's cool." And then, you've got some people who are like, "Can I sign up right now?" And you have to say, "We'll let you know when you can, but not right now." Just the differences are pretty surprising. JORDYN: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, Ashley, about, like, the stuff that you just kind of put on the page to make it look like a real page, and then people really zero in on it. There's just so much serendipity involved in this work. And part of the skill in making products is being open to the right things at the right time, right? You want to stay focused on your mission and what it is you're trying to accomplish. But you don't want to ignore, you know, if people are reacting really strongly to something that you thought was sort of ancillary, it's important to, like, take a beat and think about that. How does that fit in? Can we use that? What you want to do is find lightning that you can bottle, and if people are not feeling lightning [laughs] about the primary thing you are working on but they are about something else, that's totally okay. I mean, the recent past of successful applications in software products is littered with stories like that, where people thought they were building one thing, and they just consistently heard about this related thing from their users. And they were like, well, why don't we just invest in that? It takes a lot of courage to stare in the face of that signal, the data that you're getting from people, and let go of the things that are not working and really embrace the things that are. DAWN: This reminds me a little bit of the conversation we were having when we were together in New York last week around the focus on validating or invalidating. The conversation we were having was kind of trying to shift that away from ideas to assumptions. But this is making me think that it focuses too much on one single thing that you're trying to get an answer for, as opposed to, like you're saying, being open to sort of receiving signals about completely tangential things or things that you may have not been paying attention to before. So, that makes a lot of sense. ASHLEY: Yeah. Now I'm thinking, like, should we put even more crazy things on the page and just see what happens? Who knows? JORDYN: I think there's another aspect of this first-time founders often struggle with, which is that feeling that you shouldn't put anything on the page that you're testing that you couldn't actually do. And it's tough. It can feel a little bit like you're misleading people. But there's absolutely ethical ways to do this, where you tell people, "Hey, this is just an idea. We're just trying to get people's gut reactions to this. We have not even put pixel-to-paper here. We don't even know. We just want to get your reaction." As long as you're transparent with folks about where you're at and about not promising them things you can't actually do, I mean, obviously, if it were as easy as just promising stuff to people of what they want, we could just make a landing page that said, like, "Free bag of money. Who wants free bag of money," right? [laughs] And people would be like, "Why is the bag of money free?" [laughs] Right? And so, you really want to be careful and not necessarily do anything that is misleading. But on the other hand, there's no better way to get folks' emotional reaction than to put something together and just see how they respond to it. So, there's a lot of, like, sort of nuance to doing this. And, Dawn, to your point, the balancing act between being open and being scattered, right? That's a fine line. I've definitely been on teams before that are just, like, the new hotness every week. "Hey, there's this cool app out. Let's just immediately redesign everything to look just like that." And you're like, "Maybe? [laughs] I don't know if that's, like, the best idea." So, it's a real balancing act, but it always comes back to who you're building for and what they want and need. And if you're staying very focused on that and measuring, you know, comparing every idea anything that comes your way against those, showing it to them and getting their reaction, you can't fail. Keeping no daylight between yourself and your customer that is the surest path. DAWN: Yeah, it kind of carries through to the core thing that we're saying, which is don't focus on one thing to validate or invalidate. Be open to receiving signals from other, you know, opportunities. But that's not validating or invalidating something. That's showing you where to focus your time. And then the product experiments and feasibility research and all of that is designed to help you to get closer to validation. But, in some cases, there's a point at which you have to take a risk, right? And your customers are ultimately going to tell you over time whether or not the solution was the right one. But you get more confidence. You get closer to the right solution the more strategic you are about that process, so...oh, go ahead. ASHLEY: I think the great thing about technology, too, is it's not set in stone. You can change it. If you learn something new, you can modify what you're doing to fit what you're hearing, and I think that's so incredible. We live in a time where there are so many tools and resources out there to really be nimble. And just to Jordyn's point earlier, I think the hardest part is being willing to take in some of these signals and be like, okay, this is what they want, and being willing to move in that direction versus the path you have already designed in your head. DAWN: Yeah, we've only got a couple of weeks left in this incubator [laughs]. How are y'all feeling? What are you planning? What are you looking forward to over the next couple of weeks? ASHLEY: I can't believe that time went by so fast. I thought eight weeks felt like two years when we first started. I was like, oh, we've got so much time. We're going to do so much. We have done a lot. But the time has really flown by. So, I'm just kind of, like, now thinking about how do I make the most of the last few weeks? And just make sure that we check all the boxes that we set out to check in the beginning, and then have a plan from there in terms of continuing the work in a productive and, you know, exciting way. JORDYN: Yeah, one of the, like, sort of Northstar outcome for us in the incubator is to give the founder confidence in what they're doing and their path, the confidence in that vision, and then enough confidence to articulate it consistently to the folks they need to sort of bring along with them. So, what I'm, like, really looking forward to in the next couple of weeks is honing that story for Ashley. Like, what's your story? What's your why? What's your how? What's your when? And how to make sure that story is just easy to communicate. I mean, already, Ashley, like, up top of this exact livestream where you articulated sort of, like, what AvidFirst is doing, I think I feel better and better about that articulation given what we know. It feels really good. It feels solid. And as we're going, we're just as skeptical as anyone else, right? But we're trying to anticipate what folks...external stakeholders broadly define what their misgivings are going to be. And we're compiling a kind of list of frequently asked questions about what AvidFirst is doing, like, why 529s? Why next-gen consumers? Et cetera. Just so that that story is so internalized that, like, you can't really be taken off guard necessarily. I mean, you want to be open to new questions and new ideas. That's not what I'm saying. But just basically, like, being able to thoroughly and deeply, at the drop of a hat, to sort of pitch this to your dentist while they're cleaning your teeth, you know, like that kind of conviction and, like, the solidity of the narrative is really what we're going for in the next few weeks. And I think we're well on our way there. We have all the pieces. It's about putting it together coherently, I think, at this point. It's really exciting, though. I do feel like we're really zeroing in on a valuable lens on college saving and spending that I think the market is really ripe for, so it's exciting. DAWN: Yeah, it's been great to see all the progress. We have a comment that I just noticed. ASHLEY: Oh. DAWN: Not a question, but I wanted to call it out because it was related to what you were talking about a few minutes ago, Jordyn. Kiran said they totally agree. "We had the same epiphany/pivot this summer. We went from direct-to-consumer to an enterprise model. Try to zoom out with a systems thinking lens, and it will help with a clearer path and tell your story." JORDYN: Yeah, that's awesome. DAWN: There are no other questions from the audience. And it seems like maybe there's still a little bit of a lag. So [laughs], we can wrap up. If anybody has questions after this, feel free to comment. We'll be, you know, checking out the posts on LinkedIn and YouTube. And we can follow up there. You can always, like I said, come and follow along. Check out our thoughtbot.com incubator site. You can both apply to the next incubator session and sign up to hear from us in our weekly newsletter. We write about progress on our blog as well, so thoughtbot.com/blog. There's all kinds of ways to find us and actually talking about the work that we're doing. So, please follow along. JORDYN: Anyone out there who's wondering, am I right for the incubator? Just apply. It's really, like, nothing is too early if it's just an idea you've been kicking around that's born of your industry experience or your personal experience. The application process is really lightweight. This is not going to take you days to fill out this application. We've heard from folks that even filling out the application is the first thing they ever did with regard to the idea, helped solidify it, and solidify their thinking for them. So, just go apply. You got something? You got an idea for an app? You see a growing market out there, and you feel like it's underserved with software? Just holler at us. We'd love to hear it. Apply. It's fun [laughs]. DAWN: Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Thanks, Jordyn and Ashley, for participating. See you again in a couple of weeks, yeah? JORDYN: Yes. It'll be the last week, so we'll have things to say, no doubt. DAWN: Yes, tune in. It'll be a good time. All right. Thanks, everybody. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or a development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Ashley Sheble, Dawn Delatte, and Jordyn Bonds.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

In this second conversation in this Mini Incubator Series, Dawn Delatte and Jordyn Bonds interview Ashley Sheble, the Founder of AvidFirst, about her experiences and progress in thoughtbot's Incubator Program, which aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. The trio talks about Ashley's experiences and progress in the program. She emphasizes the significance of user research and interviews in shaping product strategy and understanding customer needs. She also highlights the need to narrow their focus to specific customer segments to build a product that resonates with a particular group. Additionally, they discuss the complexities of the FinTech industry and how regulatory considerations are an integral part of their product development process. As they gain more insights, they are transitioning into the prototyping and testing phase to validate their product concepts and messaging. Just catching up? Listen to Part I of the Mini Incubator Series. Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: DAWN: Hello, everyone. I'm Dawn Delatte. I am a Managing Director here at thoughtbot. And I'm filling in for Lindsey. And I'm super excited to be here and chat with Ashley and Jordyn about how the incubator is going so far. If you are tuning in, you're probably familiar with thoughtbot, but just in case you're not, we are a product design and development consultancy who works with people and products across the entire product lifecycle to make your team and product a success. We are currently running our second incubator session. If you're not familiar with it, we've got a ton of content from our first session that you can check out, or you can follow along in this one. But our incubator program is an eight-week program that we take a founder through to validate or invalidate their new product ideas through lots of market research, customer discovery, interviews, and such. And then, we come out with a product plan that helps set them on the right path forward. In the last update, we introduced our incubator founder, who's with us again today. In this session, we'll be talking with Ashley and Jordyn about digging deep into research and plenty of interviews and, you know, what they're learning and what the process is like so far. So, I'm excited to get started. How about y'all kick us off with some introductions? Jordyn? JORDYN: I'm Jordyn Bonds. I'm the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot on Dawn's team, the Ignite team at thoughtbot. I'm a two-time startup founder myself. I've worked with a couple of other early-stage startups, so all about the zero-to-one startup journey over here. ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Sheble. I am the Founder of AvidFirst, and I am the second incubator founder. And working with Jordyn and team and thoughtbot to really accelerate the mission of our company, which is focused on simplifying college saving and spending. DAWN: Ashley, why don't you recap a little bit for us what's happened since the last time? ASHLEY: Yeah, I'd love to. So, the past three weeks have been really just getting into the weeds on user interviews, talking with different stakeholders as it relates to the problem we're looking to solve. And what we're finding are some key themes. And so, really trying to aggregate the data, focus in on those key themes, and find out where we can really pull at some of those strings to start creating some solutions that are meaningful and specific. One of the primary trends that we're seeing is just lack of awareness around some of the resources and tools available to people as it relates to saving for college; 529s, for example, are a really great tool. And most people, 70%, aren't aware of them. And so, if you've never heard of them, you're in great company. So, just really looking at high-level trends, getting more specific on even more granular trends, and trying to pull everything together and create a product that's meaningful. And again, it circles back to our overarching mission of simplifying college saving and spending. DAWN: Nice. Is there something that has come up either in the process or, you know, from interviews that has been your big sort of aha or eureka moment? ASHLEY: I feel like there's an aha moment pretty much every day. And sometimes the aha moments are like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. We're really on to something. And then, sometimes the aha moments are like, wow, we're really off course, and we have no idea what this means and what do we do with it. And so, it's kind of this up-and-down experience, like we talked about last time we chatted. But it is exciting at the same time because no matter what aha moment, all of it means something. And it helps us make forward progress in the right direction versus making forward progress and then hitting a roadblock and realizing, okay, that's as far as we can go, and now we have to start all over. The team has been really good about helping me make sense of some of these findings that we are uncovering and piecing together some solutions that really address some of these aha moments, both shocking and positive. DAWN: It's really great to hear you articulate that from a founder perspective and someone who, you know, isn't doing this sort of day-to-day product and development thing because, you know, that's a really common experience for us is hearing what's going well and what's not going well and sort of pivoting. But yeah, it's good to hear that directly from you. So, y'all have been doing a ton of research and a ton of talking to people. Jordyn, tell us how you feel about user research. I know that term, in particular, has some interesting [chuckles] connotations, but dig into that. JORDYN: Yeah. Well, we kind of talked about this a little bit this week, and I think research is really broad and vague. And so, just talking about research often doesn't feel super sort of actionable to people. User research is really about once you have a product and market and you have users, how they're using your product or not using it, right? So that's user research. But I find that people often talk about this sort of higher-level strategic research that we're engaged in right now using the same term. And it leads people astray because they think that you need a prototype or you need an app to be able to do user research, which you do. But that's not really the kind of research that we're engaged in yet. Right now, we're doing customer discovery. And that involves researching and interviewing a ton of different personas, some of whom might end up being our customers, some of whom are interested stakeholders or partners. It's a really wide-ranging kind of cast of characters. And the truth is, we don't know who these people are to us yet, right? So, it's really just sort of interviewing [laughs]. It's a hard thing to kind of characterize. I would love to hear, Ashley, like, how you're finding it. But, like, from where I sit, it really isn't about walking people through an interface yet. It's way more just asking folks about their life and their work and how they're doing things now, I think, is a really critical component. Like what you're trying to do with these interviews is find out what are the true pain points that people have, not what they think you want to hear, but what the pain points are that they already have and that they are already trying to solve in certain ways and how they're solving them. And it requires a lot of just high-level questions and then closing your mouth and listening. But it's a very different thing, I think, than user research. But often, in product land, we kind of just use user research as this blanket term, but it really is a bunch of different kinds of things. ASHLEY: Yeah, I would add to what Jordyn is saying, and the use of research, it's really interesting to just hear people's experience and their own background. And we always try to preface, like, there is no right or wrong answer. We just want to hear about the way you're thinking about something or the way you're currently doing something, not how you hypothetically would do something. Because, I don't know, think about your own life, and you think about the way you would do something. It's probably about ten times better than the way you actually do something. When I get asked like, "Well, how many times a day do you set time to just decompress?" In my mind, I'm like, "Oh, probably, like, five times a day." When in reality, that's never. It's a never. So, if somebody were, like, you know, asking me for user research, you know, "Would you use this thing to decompress?" I'd be like, "Sure." But I wouldn't. I would not use it because I just don't make the time for something like that. So, the point is, is not asking people hypothetically how they would do something but how they're actually doing something now and then using that insight to build around. And then, beyond just that customer journey, the stakeholder journey. And when you think about building a solution, there are more people involved than just the end user. There are so many different parties that play into a certain product, especially as you think about FinTech or you think about a large segment like the education segment. There are a lot of players, and you have to look at the way each player is looking at a problem and understand how those all tie together. And sometimes that's super obvious, and sometimes it's not obvious at all. And so, thankfully, having a team that has a different lens in the way we're interpreting data allows us to get to a solution faster. DAWN: Yeah, I like that. Again, it's great to hear you articulating that. And I think we have this old article about not using terms like user research. I think it focuses a little bit more on user testing because that implies the idea of testing a user. But we're not testing people; we're testing our concepts. I think that we use the word usability test as a way to sort of delineate a little bit better. Here's the purpose of this test. We're actually testing the product versus, you know, having a conversation. When you throw in words like interview or even customer, customer could be presumptive in some ways. But it's difficult to sort of tell people what you're doing when you're like, I'm just having a lot of conversations this week [laughs], just meeting, meeting a lot of people and listening. Meeting and listening, I guess, is the activity [laughs]. So, why is that stuff important? And can there be too much of it? What is this process like, and why are y'all doing it? JORDYN: It's so funny to have internalized the sort of value of doing this kind of work so thoroughly that sometimes I even have...I'm like, how else do you know what's going on out there? I mean, that's ultimately the purpose of it is that you really don't know how people are living and working until you ask them or, even better, watch them live and work if you can. And what's really critical is that that changes over time. We're all constantly changing our behavior in response to new trends, new tools we might adopt, right? And the research at this level, this high level of, like, how are you living and working, really can never end for that reason, right? Like, the classic example in sort of software product land is when Netflix really started to invest in online streaming and gradually sunset its DVD-by-mail service. And they did it right at the peak of that service. And so, people were like, this is really wild. Why are they doing this? This is so successful. Why would they, like, stop doing this thing that's really successful? But they had been talking to their customers, their end users. They had been, as you said, Dawn, more than talking to them, listening to them. And they were looking at the trends. And they were like, there's no future in this. There's a future in online streaming, and we need to get ahead of that future. And we need to dominate that opportunity because we're in a position to do so. And it takes a lot of listening, synthesizing, and then risk-taking. But it doesn't feel like a risk when you've been listening to your customers, I guess, is, like, why this research is so important. When you know something about the market because there is no daylight between you and how folks are living and what they're doing out there, it doesn't feel very risky. You have, like, complete certainty about what's happening out there because you know. Because you're talking to people. You have relationships with them. It's not merely about some...and when we say research, I don't want it to sound, like, sort of cold and, like, purely numbers-driven. This is, like, we're having warm, engaging, you know, human conversations with human beings, like, all day, every day. But because of that, we have a really good sense of what's going on out there. And the decisions we make, they feel inevitable or something. You start to see an opportunity out there that just feels obvious. And it's a funny thing to watch that kind of once everybody on the team is aligned around that reality that we're hearing and the sort of inevitability of, like, what you need. You start to get kind of panicked because you're like, who else is seeing this? This is so obvious to us. And you start to kind of be like, who else is it obvious to? But, you know, sadly, I don't know what the right word is here, but, like, it's hard work. This work of listening it is not very scalable work. You can do some things to operationalize it for sure, but it takes time to engage with humans, to synthesize what you've heard, to share it with your team, to stay on the same page about it. It's not super scalable work, straight up. But it is the most valuable work that you could possibly be doing. So, it's okay that it's not scalable. But yeah, you start to identify these real market insights. And then you kind of have this minute of, like, who else is seeing this? Because this looks really clear to us, right? [laughs] ASHLEY: And it's interesting because the last time we chatted here a couple of weeks ago, Lindsey was like, "I'm sure you'll be in a different spot next week. And, you know, you'll be thinking about something different than you are right now." And, in my head, I was like, probably not. I've done a lot of research. It'll probably be the same. And she was right. It's very different from where we were a couple of weeks ago, and the way we're thinking about taking a certain path and circling back to having these conversations that are so critical and really shape the way you're thinking about problems from so many different directions. And so, I thought that was funny that she was right. DAWN: Lindsey is always right. JORDYN: Another ingredient here that I think is really important that becomes clear when you start doing this work but is a hard thing to describe...and I would kind of love to hear how Ashley has been thinking about this. But if you're not hearing a pattern, if you're out there doing the interviewing and it's just a million different descriptions of reality, that is the surest sign that you are not focused on a small enough addressable group of people. You haven't narrowed into a group of people who are the same. And that's really the only way to build a product is to find a group of people who are the same. Make something for them that they love, and then think about where you can go from there. You can't please all of the people all of the time, but you can't please all the people at once, right? You're not going to be able to build a product that does that. And I would say, like, even later, you're not, you know, there's like...it just...it totally dilutes your focus. So, if you are out there doing a bunch of interviewing, a bunch of research, and you're just hearing a bunch of different voices, and it sounds like there's no signal there, it's just that you haven't sufficiently narrowed. So, one of the things we've been doing over the last couple of weeks is really trying to figure out who exactly has the pain point the most that is addressable, in the sense that it's a group of people who are similar, similar enough that we can build a product for them, that is going to work for all of them, and we can speak about it in a way that resonates for them? And it feels kind of impossible. And it also kind of feels, I don't know, a little bit like cheating. Like, it feels opposite of how I think founders think about making products. It's like, you want to build a thing that appeals to a lot of people. That's the drive, and that is absolutely the correct long-term drive, right? And it feels a little bit about sort of throw the game by choosing the people. It feels a little bit like you're like, well, of course, we can make something for a group of people if we've already pre-selected who they are, but it's like, yeah, exactly, that's a lot easier [laughs]. So, anyway, I didn't want to move on without sort of mentioning that that focus on a persona is really, really critical. Yes, we're doing a ton of research, or we're talking to a ton of different people. But in each of those categories, we're really trying to figure out who are addressable niches to start? ASHLEY: Yeah, and I think just getting as specific as possible, like Jordyn has said, has been...in my mind, I was thinking, we don't want to do that because then that really limits the amount of people we can help or the amount of people who could really benefit from a solution. But the good news is that once you solve a problem for a group of people, you can expand upon that and use the learnings from that solution and build something that can help more and more people. Because initially, I was like, "No, we don't want to do that. That's crazy." And she was right. DAWN: Jordyn is another one of those people that's always right [laughs]. Mostly right. Okay, so you're using what you're finding and hearing in these conversations to help guide, you know, your focus, but especially the space that y'all are operating in, FinTech, in particular, is a very complex space. And so, there's all sorts of other dynamics that have to come into your strategy and direction for the product. So, how are y'all navigating which dynamics to focus on outside of what you're discovering in these conversations, you know, whether that be infrastructure, regulatory things, like, you know, all of those complexities? ASHLEY: Yeah, I would say, right now, we're focusing on infrastructure. And that will inform the regulatory piece because there are so many nuances in the space as it relates to what type of product you're building for whom and where. And so, once that is more crystallized, the regulatory pieces can be plugged in. And you're right; it's super complex. And we want to make sure that we're being extremely compliant in every possible way. And so, that is highest priority. But I think, too, to try to boil the ocean with all the different nuances when maybe we're not as crystal clear on the infrastructure would be, I don't know, waste of time is the wrong phrase, but I think it would not be the most efficient use of time. I think getting that infrastructure and then nailing down the regulatory piece around the infrastructure is the best path that we're thinking. JORDYN: Yeah, I would just add here that this space is really complex. And the image that's kind of emerged most recently is of a giant puzzle we're putting together. There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. It's not a thousand-piece puzzle, but it feels close [laughs]. But where we're starting out is where you start with any puzzle, which is the corner pieces. Like, what are the cornerstones of what we're doing? And figuring out what those are, always centered in what the value proposition is to customers, right? We need to know what their incentives are, what they need and want. That's the cornerstone. And then the feasibility and the infrastructure and, you know, regulatory are the blanks we fill in sort of from there. But without demand, none of that stuff would matter, right? It's a really hard thing because you start to think about...and we talk about this stuff all the time; I want to call out. It's not, like, we're strictly disciplined about we're not talking about that right now. Like, it comes up all the time. And we're sharing what we're learning and what we're seeing out there. We're looking at other products that have, you know, come onto the market recently, like, long-time players in the FinTech space. We're looking at all of that stuff, what they've done, what they've built, and how. We're thinking and talking about those things, but those decisions are not as important as making sure that we're as close to the customer as we can. That's the cornerstone pieces. Our customers and our partners, what are their motivations? What do they need? And then, once we have those corner pieces, then we fill in the puzzle. It's a big, complex puzzle, but you always have to start with something of value. If you're not bringing something of value to those folks, none of this other stuff really matters. DAWN: This is making me wonder if there are people out there who start their puzzles in the middle [laughs]. JORDYN: Guilty as charged [laughs]. DAWN: I meant more [inaudible 18:57]. I didn't mean metaphorically. We know that happens [laughter], unfortunately. JORDYN: Yes, no, I have absolutely been that person personally, you know, and it can be really distracting. The feasibility puzzle is very interesting, and it feels inevitable. Like, you're going to have to solve those problems. The problem is that you don't know which of them is going to matter right now. So, solving those problems now, like Ashley said, it's sort of a waste of time. You might end up solving them eventually, right? But you need to figure out the strategic path forward. And so, yeah, it's tough. I have an engineering background. I love solving complex puzzles. It's very tempting to go do that right now, and it feels much more tangible. Like, okay, we can go read the regulations. We can, like, look at what the infrastructure can do right now. Let's go solve that problem. But it would be just a colossal waste of time to go off in that direction right now. And we don't yet know fully what the value proposition is for whom. Like, that is the gem at the heart of this. I want to acknowledge that there are software efforts out there where the core value really is in a technical innovation. But I would still argue that the timing of bringing that technical innovation to market has as much to do with the market. We can see this over and over again with tons of technologies that were developed years or decades ago, but the market was not at a place where it needed that thing yet. And I really say needed; wanted is a different thing, right? You need to get to a place where the need is red hot. So, it's tough. The puzzle is fascinating. It's very distracting. We end up talking about it a lot, but we have to, like, bring ourselves back to the stakeholders. DAWN: To wrap things up, now that y'all have sort of deepened your understanding of things, what can you expect from the process going forward? What should we expect to sort of hear about next time we meet? JORDYN: We're actually already edging into this, and it's fun to watch how this process happens. When you start to hear something repeatable, you inevitably move into prototyping because you start to have a real shared understanding of what it is you need to put in front of people. We're just now, I would say, like, today, getting to the place where we're confident that we need to be testing messaging in particular. We've heard enough things that we need to start testing. Like, are we talking about the problems in the way that, you know, customers and our partners are talking about them? And we need to start trying that language out and then seeing how it resonates. That's the first piece of testing. We're already starting to conceive of workflows, like a prototype concept. It's so fascinating how, again, it's just always is a consequence of alignment and insight. You don't have to plan it. It emerges. As soon as you've started to put the pieces together a little bit, it's just very natural that, as a group, you start talking about how you might address this problem. You can tell when we've gotten there because we are aligned. In the same way that you're hearing the same thing from the customer, you start to see the same solution because it's clear what is needed. So, we're really moving into that. I want to make it clear, like, we don't stop interviewing. We don't stop talking to folks. But the sort of how specific we are with what we're asking and what we're showing people changes a little bit. That's really just starting to happen now. And I'm sure we'll have a lot more to say about that next time [laughs]. ASHLEY: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I'll say the value of the team is incredible. I can't stress that enough. Just this morning, I came to our morning sync and was like, "Listen, I learned this thing. I think it's over. We're done." And Jordyn and team were like, "No, this is actually a really great thing." And, you know, I'm just like, they're going to give up. They're going to shut it down. They're going to say, "No, we don't want to work with you." And they're like, "This is great news." And so, just the diversity of perspective is so different, and it's really great to have that. Because sometimes you can get focused on something in such a linear way that you're like, there's no way out of this thing. And you kind of miss the forest for the trees, so... JORDYN: I'm glad you brought that moment up. I was hoping we would talk about it during this live session because it was one of those moments where you were like, "I have some really bad news. I learned something. This is very sad." And you kind of talked about it a minute. I had a sort of unbridled glee [laughs]. I was like, oh, awesome, because we knew enough to know there was, like, we were missing something. There are a bunch of solutions in the market that look very different than what we were considering. And we were like, why? There's got to be a good reason. These people are not dumb. The market they're seeing is not different from the market we're seeing. So, like, why have they made a different call? And this piece of information, you know, Ashley showed up and was like, "Hey, I learned something, here it is." And I was like, "That's the piece of information. Great." So, now we actually can make a plan. We are still sort of convinced of the value that we were driving toward. And now we just have an added understanding of what it will take to get there. Good. Now we know what it'll take. It's really terrible to have an idea of the value prop that you want to pursue and not have any idea of how would it get there. But now we actually really did feel like a piece of a puzzle falling into place. And it was hilarious because Ashely was, like, very grim, and then I was like, "Oh," I was like, "Great." [laughs] ASHLEY: I was like -- JORDYN: Ashley was like, "Wait, what?" [laughs] It was very funny. ASHLEY: Yeah, it was great. I was like, I hope the rest of my day is this good, so... [laughter] DAWN: Well, I'm sorry to say, Ashley, but you can't get rid of us that easily [laughter]. Thank you both for chatting with me today. If y'all want to stay updated, you can follow along on LinkedIn or YouTube. We do these live streams every two weeks. We also share incubator news and updates on our blog, so thoughtbot.com/blog. You can always go to the incubator site to understand a little bit more about the program. That's thoughtbot.com/incubator. Send us your questions if you have them. And you can always attend the lives, comment on the threads, send us an email. We love to hear from y'all. Thank you for tuning in AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Ashley Sheble, Dawn Delatte, and Jordyn Bonds.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Lindsey Christensen is back as the Marketing Lead at thoughtbot! She's joined by guests Jordyn Bonds, the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot, and Ashley Sheble, a founder currently participating in thoughtbot's eight-week startup incubator, to discuss the multifaceted journey of entrepreneurship. thoughtbot's Incubator Program aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. They're currently at the stage of validating assumptions about the problem space and target market. Jordyn introduces a new concept: a project roadmap visualization that includes an "emotions workstream." This is designed to help founders anticipate and navigate the emotional rollercoaster often associated with the early stages of startup development. Ashley finds the roadmap valuable, especially as it challenges her to examine her ideas from multiple perspectives. She appreciates the one-on-one support from the Incubator team, which complements her own expertise. She also speaks to the liberating aspect of acknowledging emotions in the startup journey, which is especially pertinent for female founders who often face additional challenges like lack of funding. Jordyn emphasizes the importance of early and continuous customer engagement for product validation and innovation. She encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to talk to potential customers as soon as possible to iterate and learn from these interactions. Jordan and Ashley stress that embracing the logical and emotional aspects of entrepreneurship leads to more effective and grounded decision-making. Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: LINDSEY: All right, we are live. So, thank you for joining us today. So, we've got a new founder that's going through thoughtbot's startup incubator. And we're going to be checking in with her as she goes through the program, learning what she learns, learning about the process. Quick reminder: thoughtbot is a development and design company. We help founders and existing companies create, launch, and improve amazing products and their teams. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. The incubator is an eight-week program. And our second session just kicked off, which we're going to be talking about a whole lot today. So, I'm excited to introduce you to the founder that's going through that process, as well as our fearless leader of the incubator program, Jordyn, I myself, Lindsey Christensen. I'm the Marketing Lead here at thoughtbot. I'll be asking lots of questions. But if you also have questions, please enter them in the chat, and we'll get to those as well. Before we get to Ashley, I'm going to start off with Jordyn. For those who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what you're doing? JORDYN: I am Jordyn Bonds. And I am the Director of Product Strategy on thoughtbot's, Ignite team, which is the team that is kind of experimenting with this incubator, shall we say. And I am a two-time startup founder myself. I've worked at other early-stage startups as initial head of product. Long ago, I spent ten years as a software engineer. So, that's my distant background. And I live in Boston. LINDSEY: Oh, we got our first comment. Someone says, "Thanks for sharing your experience." Thank you. Welcome. Love that. Keep the comments and questions coming. Okay. And now for our latest guest of honor. Ashley, can you introduce yourself to the audience? A little bit about you and maybe even about your journey to bring you here today. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, everybody. My name is Ashley Sheble. I'm currently based in Houston, Texas. I have about 15 years of experience in sales and operations roles. And I have two kids. I've got one who started third grade yesterday and one who started her senior year of high school yesterday, which is crazy. Time really flies by. But the reason why that's relevant for this conversation is because I have attended so many college tours over the past few years and started learning about just how expensive higher education has become. I had no idea that a public four-year in-state school could cost $100,000 plus for just four years. And then, you start looking at out-of-state and private schools, and that number doubles, which is crazy to me. So, after I got through that initial sticker shock, I was like, how is this possible? Like, now I understand why the student debt crisis is happening. And became really passionate about learning more about it and trying to figure out ways that I could help. Because obviously, the solutions and tools we have today to help people prepare for the education they or their children or family members need or want just aren't working. So, became really excited about that and working with thoughtbot as their second founder to explore this further. LINDSEY: Amazing. So, Ashley, fighting the good fight. Student debt, I know, a topic near and dear to many people who are dealing with this. You mentioned your kid's journey to college is what started the idea. Let's dig into that a little bit more. How are you approaching the challenge, the problems that you see? Or maybe, like, how long it's been that you've been kind of playing around with this idea. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm in a graduate school program and have used this as an opportunity to really explore different ways to attack problems. I became really interested in innovation and entrepreneurship at grad school and began just doing research, learning about ways to solve really big, complex problems, and found that technology could really be an interesting way to approach the student debt problem differently than what's been done before. It's an industry that has largely lacked innovation, and have been working with professors and experts just to think about ways to apply technology to this really complicated problem to provide a more simple solution for people who just want to pay for school. LINDSEY: And this is your first time being a founder. Is that right? ASHLEY: It is. So, thank goodness for thoughtbot being my partner here because I'm not a technical person, meaning I don't develop software. I'm not a software designer, and knew that that was going to be a critical piece of developing a solution. And so, I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with Jordyn and her team. LINDSEY: Have you, like, always thought you would, at some point, start your own thing? You know, have you always been entrepreneurial? ASHLEY: Yeah, I think so. I can tell you my first business started in third grade. I launched my babysitting venture and marketed my services all over the neighborhood and church, and wherever would allow me to hang up a flyer, and had a pretty steady book of business, if you will. And in hindsight, I really cannot believe that parents allowed a 10-year-old to babysit their kids. You know, maybe in the '90s there were fewer questions–definitely less legal restrictions around age. LINDSEY: The '90s were wild. ASHLEY: The '90s were wild, yeah. Maybe I just seemed mature and responsible. I don't know. I don't know. LINDSEY: Amazing. All right. Jordyn, so Ashley submitted for the thoughtbot incubator. What stood out to you in that application? And why did she seem like, you know, the right fit to go through the program? JORDYN: Yeah, Ashley's application was just totally...it had that combination of prepared, done her homework, done the work to present the story well, but also clearly had a passion and a connection to the problem space. It wasn't just, like, a purely academic exercise for her, and just came prepared–really gave thoughtful answers in the application. There's a number of interviews that happened during the application process. She showed up with bells on and asked really good questions, which is something we always look for from founders as well. And she just knocked it out of the park. ASHLEY: Thank you. LINDSEY: And why was maybe where she is in her business or product journey a good fit for the incubator? JORDYN: Great question. So, we sit at a really special moment, which is usually founders are coming to us, well, hopefully, founders are coming to us pre-product. So, they have not built a thing yet. They're basically at that moment where they've identified an opportunity. They've given it lots of thought, done a ton of research, maybe started talking to people about it. But they're not sure how to take an idea, an opportunity, and what happens between that moment and innovation, actually a plan for a product, a strategic plan for product, and the ability to execute on that. There's a big gap there in understanding, especially for first-time founders. It certainly was a gap for me as a [laughs] first-time founder. That's the ideal candidate for us. That said, we do have folks coming to the incubator who are interested in executing, like, a strategic pivot. Maybe they've found that the first thing they did was just, like, a market flop, and they basically want to do the programming. They're sort of starting over. Maybe they have a little bit...they're basically like, "Hey, we disqualified one idea. [laughs] We would like to come up with some other options." Those folks are also a good fit. And that is exactly the moment that Ashley is at. She's done a lot of great research so far–has a really interesting idea, interesting take on an interesting problem, but could really benefit from the programming of turning that into technical innovation. LINDSEY: Which leads me back to you, Ashley. Can you tell us a little bit about your pre-thoughtbot research, like, both, like, how you approached it and maybe even some things that you learned that have helped you with your early direction? ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, initially, just did a lot of industry research, just general population research, and then became a little bit more focused on solving problems for families in the U.S. right now. So, narrowing down that market scope. And then, our focus right now is drilling into: how can we serve parents, students at each phase of their journey as parents or students, making sure that we are adding value as we're creating a service to help attack saving for college in a really effective way that is easy to do and is also going to help somebody be financially prepared to pay for a really expensive price tag without having to rely on student loans? And so, we're doing a lot of focused research right now, building on what I did in grad school with professors and mentors and experts there, but being more focused and intentional around understanding each phase of the customer journey. So, whether you're a new parent, maybe a parent of kids that are a little older, or a parent of kids that are about to go to college or in college, how are we providing value at each stage of that journey? And so, we're really focusing in with customer interviews, understanding the pain points, and understanding what value is lacking as we think about building something that people want and like to use. LINDSEY: In that early research, is there anything you learned or, like, positive signals you got as you were talking to people where it gave you a motivation to keep going, like, there is a good idea here to follow? ASHLEY: Yeah, there have been some ideas that we're finding are just absolutely terrible, and they're just not going to work, which is good to know now before we spend a lot of time chasing something that's not going to be helpful. And also really finding some interesting patterns among conversations. We're digging in a little more where, initially, we thought, oh, nobody cares about that, or, oh, that's not a big deal. That's not a pain point, but actually, it is. So, Jordyn, with her experience as a founder in prior experiences she's been able to use what she learned that maybe went well or didn't go as well as she had hoped and apply that learning to what we're doing together on this particular project. And so, that's super valuable, helps me avoid some rookie mistakes, and definitely prevents us from wasting a lot of time and resources that probably would have been wasted otherwise. LINDSEY: Jordyn, can you tell me a little bit more about the kickoff, where we are? Because this is early, early days, where, you know, maybe a week in. You know, what does that initial kickoff with the founder look like? What are you doing? JORDYN: Yeah. So, the first few days are really spent...we as a team on the thoughtbot side need to get to the place where we know everything the founder knows to date. So, it's very intense, a lot of, like, resource sharing, research sharing, conversations, a lot of elliptical conversations where Ashley will tell us something, we'll all go off and do some digging and some research, and come back and be like, ask her some questions, where she's like, [laughs] "If you recall, I said that to you," you know. But, basically, it's one of those sort of processes where you don't know what you don't know. You start to understand. You come back, you ask questions, you dig. And the process is really about figuring out: where are the holes? So, Ashley has done a ton of really great work. She is but one person who has had divided attention. So, there are some places where we have some assumptions, all of us as individuals, and Ashley, specifically as a founder, has some assumptions about this problem space that we haven't validated yet. We haven't validated or invalidated. That's really what we're looking for. It's like, is this hunch correct, incorrect? How do we know? So, we're really in those first few days are listening for those assumptions, for those untested assumptions. There's a ton of stuff in there where she's just like, I know the answer to this already. Here's what I know, and here's how I know it. Great, cool, validated, got it. But there's this other set of things that really then becomes the focus of the subsequent weeks of work. And often, we find what those assumptions center around are early adopter market characteristics. There's the big vision, right? Which we don't doubt. Basically like, we do not disagree that paying for college is a huge problem. The student debt crisis is huge. There's a million ways to go about addressing that problem. How are we going to, from where we are right now, lay a pathway where we build value upon value? We find something valuable to give the market where it is right now, where we are right now, and then we build from that. And so, you know, there's assumptions about who needs this, who wants this, who's struggling to pay for college, who's having no problem at all paying for college. But what we're trying to do is sort of zoom in on that group of folks, very tiny, specific group of folks who are having this problem the most acutely in a way that we are best situated to address. That's the magic we're trying to do. So, it's really those early days are about listening to what Ashley knows, going out into the market, doing some research, follow-up research, but then really trying to come up with an early adopter hypothesis. And then immediately, as quickly as possible, interviewing as many of those people as we can so that we can validate or invalidate the assumptions we have about them. So, that's really the phase that we just started. Like, today and yesterday, we just started interviewing. We have our first sort of hypothesis about...Ashley mentioned the journey of, like, beginning of child's life. Maybe, as a parent, I have aspirations for this child to go to college. Where do I start saving? You know, that end of the journey all the way to I am actively paying for a college education right now. Where in that journey are the pain points? And can we focus specifically on a particular group of people at a particular moment in that journey in order to provide maximum value right now and then expand from there? So, we're doing a bunch of interviewing. I had a customer persona interview right before coming to this. You immediately start learning. There's just no substitute for it. The thing I tell founders constantly and I just sound like an absolute broken record, but you got to talk to people. You got to start talking to them now. You got to keep talking to them. You got to think hard and creatively about what you're hearing and who they are. And that's really the work that we're doing together right now. LINDSEY: Exciting. [crosstalk 15:04] Ashley, I was going to say how is this kickoff then for you? ASHLEY: Really good. One thing Lindsey and team have brought to the table, especially thinking about me working as a solo founder, is just around the fact that everybody has different perspectives. And we all have different expertise and different experiences that we're bringing to the table. So, the way that I've been thinking about a problem could be 180 from the way Jordyn's thinking about it or some other folks on our team. And it's really interesting to have to really test a lot of these assumptions. I'm like, oh yeah, everybody thinks this way. Oh yeah, everybody does this. And it turns out I'm the only one, or maybe only a couple of us in the group are aligning with that perspective. And so, it has been so valuable as a solo founder to have a team of people researching the same problem from a different perspective. So, I just wanted to add that. LINDSEY: No, that's a great one. And that is sometimes challenging, I think, for the founders. I don't know if you're finding this when you're just getting started. But as you go through the process, things that you have maybe held to be true or facts you end up finding out are assumptions, or maybe assumptions that are false. Which also reminds me of Jordyn: you were telling me something very interesting that you're doing during this incubator, which is founder emotions mapping. JORDYN: [laughs] Yeah. LINDSEY: What is this? JORDYN: Yeah, we've got this project roadmap visualization. It's a Gantt chart. Y'all, it is a Gantt chart. And it basically just lays out, broadly speaking, what we're going to do together on what timeline. It helps us, together, visualize where we're going, where we are, and what we need to do in between so that we don't lose sight of that. And this time, it was the first time that we added...we had this sort of insight that we should add an emotions workstream [laughs] because so much of the early stage is just an emotional rollercoaster because you are learning so much so fast. And if you're lucky and you immediately go into innovation, delivery, learning more, scaling, right? It's this very fast loop. And it's not just that you're learning stuff about your market really quickly. You're learning stuff about yourself and about the work. The learning curve is just really steep. And we had realized that you end up going through this cycle of emotions that's pretty predictable [chuckles], and that's great, right? We want founders to know that their emotions...not only are their emotions, like, totally valid, we wanted to welcome them in a little bit more than we have in the past. So, we added this little emotions work stream that was basically just like, hey, first week, first few days of kickoff, you're going to feel like a million bucks. You're like, yes, I know some stuff. I finally got a team working on this with me. To the moon, right? Like, you got this, like, very optimistic, exuberant kind [laughs] of attitude. Immediately, you start hearing perspectives you hadn't heard before in your problem space. You start uncovering contrary evidence. We start talking to people. Immediately, you start to learn things that you didn't know you didn't know, right? So, up until this moment, you've just had some blinders on, and you're like, the path is clear, and it is amazing. I'm just going to motor my way to success. And our process is about really taking those blinders off and figuring out what is actually around me on this road? Are there words of attackers coming at me from the sides? Like, I need to know those things, right? But what happens is you start to know what you don't know. And so, there's this dip. You start off very optimistic, and then you have a week or two of declining mood where you're mortified. You learn that you had some assumptions that are not valid. There's some other risks and things lying out there in the market. It's truly mortifying. Maybe you learn about a competitor you didn't know about because you just weren't searching the right words, or whatever it is, right? That moment a lot of founders are just like, the moment I discovered my first real competitor, and I had, like, a panic attack, right? That happened to me. But then you start to make a plan around those things, okay, cool. Like, maybe we need to differentiate ourselves. Maybe there is some more information we need to figure out about how to go after this, et cetera. And you start that slow climb of dealing with the new information that you have, right? And filling in those gaps [inaudible 19:22]. Then you start to climb out of the hole, right? You're like, okay, we got a plan. I got a team. We're doing the work. Awesome. You learn new, really exciting things. And then you end up back on that, like, high where you're like, this is so awesome. We have the best idea. And now we know everything there is to know. But no, no, you've just reached a new plateau [laughs]. And there are more things to be learned and more things...So, it's this really predictable cycle, and that's fine. That's good. You wouldn't be here if you didn't care about the problem space, right? If you weren't passionate about it. And so, we really wanted to actually call that out this time and make space for it and put it on the map. Hey, we might be feeling this way right now, just heads up. That's okay. We're going to be feeling really great in a week. And then, the week after that, we're going to be feeling [laughs] like garbage again. It's okay. Because knowing that really makes you feel. And it took me a long time as a first-time founder to realize that, like, my moment-to-moment emotional experience is...I need to make space for it. It is what it is. But it is not the story of my business. And it's a thing you just kind of have to learn after going through a bunch of those cycles. But, like, part of what we're trying to do with the incubator is help founders not fall in those potholes, not make the rookie mistakes, as Ashley put it. And one of those rookie mistakes is thinking that the first time you identify a direct competitor, everything that you've been working toward for the last year is useless, and you should quit, and everyone thinks you're a fool, and, like, whatever crazy narrative you [laughs] have going on in your mind [laughs]. We're kind of here to be like, it's okay. This is to be expected: onward and upward. The hard work continues. So yeah, it's very fun. At some point, we will publish a little version of this visualization with our little cycle of feelings on the bottom. But it reminds us to make space for them in the conversation when we are doing those check-ins. Like, here we are on this roadmap, and here's where our feelings may or may not be. ASHLEY: Her recap for day one is spot on. I left that conversation; I walked out of my office and told my husband, I said, "Listen, we're going to solve the student debt crisis. We're going to." And he was like, "Really? Okay." And I was like, "Yeah, we are." And then, like, two days later, I was like, "No, we are not going to be effective at this." And then, the next day, I was like, "No, I fixed it. We fixed it. It's fine." So, being able to reference that chart is really helpful and validating for me as a person to be like: I should be feeling like this; yes, I do. Perfect, you know, I'm right on track. And I think, too, as a founder, and especially as a female founder, you are expected to just keep it together. Maybe that's a self-imposed belief. But when you think about the fact that female CEOs only have about 2% of the venture capital funding, it's like, you know, why would I ever raise a red flag for myself by letting my emotions be part of the conversation or letting my emotions even have a place in the business I'm building? And so, for her to say, "Listen, no, that's a really important part of this journey; we need to talk about it and make space for it," is really liberating. And I think, too, just when you think about what has happened with the pandemic and all the awareness around mental health and behavioral health, and making sure that we're making time for managing emotions has been more important than ever. We see the research that if you don't manage those emotions, they're going to manage you. So, find a productive way to do it. Work with your team and find support in a way that works for you or a productive way to just kind of get some stress out without having to just internalize everything because that never works out. So, it's been really great to have her be able to bring that as part of our conversation and our project plan and make sure that it's a relevant piece. LINDSEY: Very well said. And I'm so glad you did bring up that point about being women founders, and, you know, having more of a, you know, an uphill battle and feeling that emotions are a sign of weakness or a sign that you don't know what you're doing. We have more impostor syndrome because of these outside factors like lack of funding, you know, lack of support. So, it's really great for you to share that and hopefully inspire others. In fact, we got a comment: "Ashley, your drive and ambition to solve a huge issue in our country is so inspiring." Thank you -- ASHLEY: Oh, thank you. LINDSEY: For adding that comment, folks who are following along. So, it sounds like, for you, the emotion mapping is a positive experience, where it's helping you kind of ground yourself as, even these early days, some assumptions are being challenged, or you're seeing some challenges in the business idea. ASHLEY: Oh yeah, absolutely. Circling back to the thoughtbot team, couldn't do this without them in a really tactical and effective way. Because they have the experience and the skills that I don't have, and us working together on this same problem has been incredible. LINDSEY: How did you come to get connected with the incubator and thoughtbot and submitting that application? ASHLEY: Yeah. So, I'm part of the Harvard Innovation Lab, which is the innovation program at Harvard for all the students. And somebody was talking about this incubator program, and there are a lot of incubator programs out there. And so, initially, I thought, oh okay, well, this will be just, like, all the others and probably not what I'm looking for. But I did some research and looked at the website and read more about the program and thought, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've been looking for and didn't know existed because it is that one-on-one support, and most incubator or accelerator programs you're one of many companies going through the process. And so, the feedback I have from others who have gone through similar paths is it's great, and it's nice to have a cohort. But at the same time, you're largely figuring things out for yourself, which I was doing anyway. So, I was like, well, what value is that going to bring? This is a one-on-one experience. There's a team dedicated to working on this solution, problem, et cetera with me. And I'm just so thankful that there are software developers and designers that are interested in helping me tackle this challenge also. So, that was really exciting to have other people also excited about the same problem but able to bring different skill sets to the table to actually bring this to life. LINDSEY: Oh, that's great. Thanks for sharing. All right, so nearing the end of our chat here. Jordyn, what is next? I think we're going to check back in in a couple of weeks. What might those weeks include? JORDYN: Well, as I mentioned, we really began customer interviewing...I say customer, and this is really...often, it means a lot of things. It means interviewing people who might be users, people who might be customers, people who might be partners in what we're building. And we are just going to learn so much so quickly. We're going to invalidate a lot of things. We're going to come up with new ideas. So like, we will be different humans with a different perspective on the world in two weeks, which is really exciting. But really, so this effort is really about learning how to have your audience lead you. And it isn't about just listening to your audience. So, when they say like, "Make the button blue," you're like, "Okay, blue button, you got it." It's like actually hearing about their lives and their pain points and then innovating. They're not software developers, your audience typically, so they aren't solving this problem themselves. It's up to you to translate what you're hearing into something innovative. I think a standard metaphor here or example–I guess it's more like a case study—is, like, the famous Ford quote that, like, if he had pulled people and asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, not a car, right? So, it's like, you got to look at the landscape, look at what's possible, maybe new things are possible technically, right? And so, we can solve this problem better, a problem that we know humans have, which is paying for college, or, in Ford's case, getting from point A to point B quickly. So, it's really our job to listen and let what we're hearing from the audience be our guide, but not just, like, sort of take dictation, right? And that's where the skill and having done this lots of times comes in. So, that's what we're going to be doing in the next two weeks. We're going to be listening very closely, iterating on the questions that we're asking and who we're asking them to. And out of that will emerge the strategically sound innovation path, and it never fails to work. I cannot stress enough that if you talk to [laughs] people and you listen to them, opportunities become very clear. So, if any of you out there are nursing an idea that you've been nursing for a while, and you're like, I'm not ready to talk to people about it; I need to think about it longer, nope. Talk to people about it today, please. Will you screw that conversation up? Yep. But the sooner you have it, the sooner you'll screw it up and learn from it. The longer you wait, the more your assumptions build, and then it gets very tense and very wrong. And you could really think yourself off into, like, a very weird place. So, I encourage you all to do your research; talk to people about what you're thinking, what you're working on, the people for whom it matters. And that is what we are going to be doing for the next two weeks, and then is what Ashley is going to be doing for the rest of the life of this company because you never stop. It's not a thing. You don't do, like, a customer research sprint, and then you stop. If you stop doing that, you stop innovating, and then other people in the market overtake you. Sorry, I feel passionate about this issue [laughs]. LINDSEY: No, that's good. That's a quick pitch at the end here for everyone to apply to the next session incubator. Start getting the idea and the research you've been doing together. This could be you. So, hope you'll join us again in two weeks as we catch up. And yeah, as Jordyn said, things are going to be...there'll be so many insights in that amount of time. I almost started laughing after I asked, like, what will happen in two weeks? Because I know it's going to be so different, you know, day to day you all are doing so much work, learning so much. So, I'm really excited to learn about that. So, stay tuned with us here in two weeks. We'll also be posting updates to the thoughtbot blog: thoughtbot.com/blog. And just really looking forward to following along with your journey, Ashley. Thank you so much for joining and sharing today. ASHLEY: Yeah, thank you for having me. LINDSEY: Jordyn, thank you as always. JORDYN: Of course. LINDSEY: And thank you, audience. Everyone have a fantastic day. Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Ashley Sheble and Jordyn Bonds.Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Victoria is joined by guest co-host Joe Ferris, CTO at thoughtbot, and Seif Lotfy, the CTO and Co-Founder of Axiom. Seif discusses the journey, challenges, and strategies behind his data analytics and observability platform. Seif, who has a background in robotics and was a 2008 Sony AIBO robotic soccer world champion, shares that Axiom pivoted from being a Datadog competitor to focusing on logs and event data. The company even built its own logs database to provide a cost-effective solution for large-scale analytics. Seif is driven by his passion for his team and the invaluable feedback from the community, emphasizing that sales validate the effectiveness of a product. The conversation also delves into Axiom's shift in focus towards developers to address their need for better and more affordable observability tools. On the business front, Seif reveals the company's challenges in scaling across multiple domains without compromising its core offerings. He discusses the importance of internal values like moving with urgency and high velocity to guide the company's future. Furthermore, he touches on the challenges and strategies of open-sourcing projects and advises avoiding platforms like Reddit and Hacker News to maintain focus. Axiom Follow Axiom on LinkedIn, X, GitHub, or Discord. Follow Seif Lotfy on LinkedIn or X. Visit his website at seif.codes. Follow thoughtbot on X 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 me today is Seif Lotfy, CTO and Co-Founder of Axiom, the best home for your event data. Seif, thank you for joining me. SEIF: Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. I love the name of the podcast, given that I used to compete in robotics. VICTORIA: What? All right, we're going to have to talk about that. And I also want to introduce a guest co-host today. Since we're talking about cloud, and observability, and data, I invited Joe Ferris, thoughtbot CTO and Director of Development of our platform engineering team, Mission Control. Welcome, Joe. How are you? JOE: Good, thanks. Good to be back again. VICTORIA: Okay. I am excited to talk to you all about observability. But I need to go back to Seif's comment on competing with robots. Can you tell me a little bit more about what robots you've built in the past? SEIF: I didn't build robots; I used to program them. Remember the Sony AIBOs, where Sony made these dog robots? And we would make them compete. There was an international competition where we made them play soccer, and they had to be completely autonomous. They only communicate via Bluetooth or via wireless protocols. And you only have the camera as your sensor as well as...a chest sensor throws the ball near you, and then yeah, you make them play football against each other, four versus four with a goalkeeper and everything. Just look it up: RoboCup AIBO. Look it up on YouTube. And I...2008 world champion with the German team. VICTORIA: That sounds incredible. What kind of crowds are you drawing out for a robot soccer match? Is that a lot of people involved with that? SEIF: You would be surprised how big the RoboCup competition is. It's ridiculous. VICTORIA: I want to go. I'm ready. I want to, like, I'll look it up and find out when the next one is. SEIF: No more Sony robots but other robots. Now, there's two-legged robots. So, they make them play as two-legged robots, much slower than four-legged robots, but works. VICTORIA: Wait. So, the robots you were playing soccer with had four legs they were running around on? SEIF: Yeah, they were dogs [laughter]. VICTORIA: That's awesome. SEIF: We all get the same robot. It's just a competition on software, right? On a software level. And some other competitions within the RoboCup actually use...you build your own robot and stuff like that. But this one was...it's called the Standard League, where we all have a robot, and we have to program it. JOE: And the standard robot was a dog. SEIF: Yeah, I think back then...we're talking...it's been a long time. I think it started in 2001 or something. I think the competition started in 2001 or 2002. And I compete from 2006 to 2008. Robots back then were just, you know, simple. VICTORIA: Robots today are way too complicated [laughs]. SEIF: Even AI is more complicated. VICTORIA: That's right. Yeah, everything has gotten a lot more complicated [laughs]. I'm so curious how you went from being a world-champion robot dog soccer player [laughs] programmer [laughs] to where you are today with Axiom. Can you tell me a little bit more about your journey? SEIF: The journey is interesting because it came from open source. I used to do open source on the side a lot–part of the GNOME Project. That's where I met Neil and the rest of my team, Mikkel Kamstrup, the whole crowd, basically. We worked on GNOME. We worked on Ubuntu. Like, most of them were working professionally on it. I was working for another company, but we worked on the same project. We ended up at Xamarin, which was bought by Microsoft. And then we ended up doing Axiom. But we've been around each other professionally since 2009, most of us. It's like a little family. But how we ended up exactly in observability, I think it's just trying to fix pain points in my life. VICTORIA: Yeah, I was reading through the docs on Axiom. And there's an interesting point you make about organizations having to choose between how much data they have and how much they want to spend on it. So, maybe you can tell me a little bit more about that pain point and what you really found in the early stages that you wanted to solve. SEIF: So, the early stages of what we wanted to solve we were mainly dealing with...so, the early, early stage, we were actually trying to be a Datadog competitor, where we were going to be self-hosted. Eventually, we focused on logs because we found out that's what was a big problem for most people, just event data, not just metric but generally event data, so logs, traces, et cetera. We built out our own logs database completely from scratch. And one of the things we stumbled upon was; basically, you have three things when it comes to logging, which is low cost, low latency, and large scale. That's what everybody wants. But you can't get all three of them; you can only get two of them. And we opted...like, we chose large scale and low cost. And when it comes to latency, we say it should be just fast enough, right? And that's where we focused on, and this is how we started building it. And with that, this is how we managed to stand out by just having way lower cost than anybody else in the industry and dealing with large scale. VICTORIA: That's really interesting. And how did you approach making the ingestion pipeline for masses amount of data more efficient? SEIF: Just make it coordination-free as possible, right? And get rid of Kafka because Kafka just, you know, drains your...it's where you throw in money. Like maintaining Kafka...it's like back then Elasticsearch, right? Elasticsearch was the biggest part of your infrastructure that would cost money. Now, it's also Kafka. So, we found a way to have our own internal way of queueing things without having to rely on Kafka. As I said, we wrote everything from scratch to make it work. Like, every now and then, I think that we can spin this out of the company and make it a new product. But now, eyes on the prize, right? JOE: It's interesting to hear that somebody who spent so much time in the open-source community ended up rolling their own solution to so many problems. Do you feel like you had some lessons learned from open source that led you to reject solutions like Kafka, or how did that journey go? SEIF: I don't think I'm rejecting Kafka. The problem is how Kafka is built, right? Kafka is still...you have to set up all these servers. They have to communicate, et cetera, etcetera. They didn't build it in a way where it's stateless, and that's what we're trying to go to. We're trying to make things as stateless as possible. So, Kafka was never built for the cloud-native era. And you can't really rely on SQS or something like that because it won't deal with this high throughput. So, that's why I said, like, we will sacrifice some latency, but at least the cost is low. So, if messages show after half a second or a second, I'm good. It doesn't have to be real-time for me. So, I had to write a couple of these things. But also, it doesn't mean that we reject open source. Like, we actually do like open source. We open-source a couple of libraries. We contribute back to open source, right? We needed a solution back then for that problem, and we couldn't find any. And maybe one day, open source will have, right? JOE: Yeah. I was going to ask if you considered open-sourcing any of your high latency, high throughput solutions. SEIF: Not high latency. You make it sound bad. JOE: [laughs] SEIF: You make it sound bad. It's, like, fast enough, right? I'm not going to compete on milliseconds because, also, I'm competing with ClickHouse. I don't want to compete with ClickHouse. ClickHouse is low latency and large scale, right? But then the cost is, you know, off the charts a bit sometimes. I'm going the other route. Like, you know, it's fast enough. Like, how, you know, if it's under two, three seconds, everybody's happy, right? If the results come within two, three seconds, everybody is happy. If you're going to build a real-time trading system on top of it, I'll strongly advise against that. But if you're building, you know, you're looking at dashboards, you're more in the observability field, yeah, we're good. VICTORIA: Yeah, I'm curious what you found, like, which customer personas that market really resonated with. Like, is there a particular, like, industry type where you're noticing they really want to lower their cost, and they're okay with this just fast enough latency? SEIF: Honestly, with the current recession, everybody is okay with giving up some of the speed to reduce the money because I think it's not linear reduction. It's more exponential reduction at this point, right? You give up a second, and you're saving 30%. You give up two seconds, all of a sudden, you're saving 80%. So, I'd say in the beginning, everybody thought they need everything to be very, very fast. And now they're realizing, you know, with limitations you have around your budget and spending, you're like, okay, I'm okay with the speed. And, again, we're not slow. I'm just saying people realize they don't need everything under a second. They're okay with waiting for two seconds. VICTORIA: That totally resonates with me. And I'm curious if you can add maybe a non-technical or a real-life example of, like, how this impacts the operations of a company or organization, like, if you can give us, like, a business-y example of how this impacts how people work. SEIF: I don't know how, like, how do people work on that? Nothing changed, really. They're still doing the, like...really nothing because...and that aspect is you run a query, and, again, as I said, you're not getting the result in a second. You're just waiting two seconds or three seconds, and it's there. So, nothing really changed. I think people can wait three seconds. And we're still like–when I say this, we're still faster than most others. We're just not as fast as people who are trying to compete on a millisecond level. VICTORIA: Yeah, that's okay. Maybe I'll take it back even, like, a step further, right? Like, our audience is really sometimes just founders who almost have no formal technical training or background. So, when we talk about observability, sometimes people who work in DevOps and operations all understand it and kind of know why it's important [laughs] and what we're talking about. So, maybe you could, like, go back to -- SEIF: Oh, if you're asking about new types of people who've been using it -- VICTORIA: Yeah. Like, if you're going to explain to, like, a non-technical founder, like, why your product is important, or, like, how people in their organization might use it, what would you say? SEIF: Oh, okay, if you put it like that. It's more of if you have data, timestamp data, and you want to run analytics on top of it, so that could be transactions, that could be web vitals, rather than count every time somebody visits, you have a timestamp. So, you can count, like, how many visitors visited the website and what, you know, all these kinds of things. That's where you want to use something like Axiom. That's outside the DevOps space, of course. And in DevOps space, there's so many other things you use Axiom for, but that's outside the DevOps space. And we actually...we implemented as zero-config integration with Vercel that kind of went viral. And we were, for a while, the number one enterprise for self-integration because so many people were using it. So, Vercel users are usually not necessarily writing the most complex backends, but a lot of things are happening on the front-end side of things. And we would be giving them dashboards, automated dashboards about, you know, latencies, and how long a request took, and how long the response took, and the content type, and the status codes, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a huge user base around that. VICTORIA: I like that. And it's something, for me, you know, as a managing director of our platform engineering team, I want to talk more to founders about. It's great that you put this product and this app out into the world. But how do you know that people are actually using it? How do you know that people, like, maybe, are they all quitting after the first day and not coming back to your app? Or maybe, like, the page isn't loading or, like, it's not working as they expected it to. And, like, if you don't have anything observing what users are doing in your app, then it's going to be hard to show that you're getting any traction and know where you need to go in and make corrections and adjust. SEIF: We have two ways of doing this. Right now, internally, we use our own tools to see, like, who is sending us data. We have a deployment that's monitoring production deployment. And we're just, you know, seeing how people are using it, how much data they're sending every day, who stopped sending data, who spiked in sending data sets, et cetera. But we're using Mixpanel, and Dominic, our Head of Product, implemented a couple of key metrics to that for that specifically. So, we know, like, what's the average time until somebody starts going from building its own queries with the builder to writing APL, or how long it takes them from, you know, running two queries to five queries. And, you know, we just start measuring these things now. And it's been going...we've been growing healthy around that. So, we tend to measure user interaction, but also, we tend to measure how much data is being sent. Because let's keep in mind, usually, people go in and check for things if there's a problem. So, if there's no problem, the user won't interact with us much unless there's a notification that kicks off. We also just check, like, how much data is being sent to us the whole time. VICTORIA: That makes sense. Like, you can't just rely on, like, well, if it was broken, they would write a [chuckles], like, a question or something. So, how do you get those metrics and that data around their interactions? So, that's really interesting. So, I wonder if we can go back and talk about, you know, we already mentioned a little bit about, like, the early days of Axiom and how you got started. Was there anything that you found in the early discovery process that was surprising and made you pivot strategy? SEIF: A couple of things. Basically, people don't really care about the tech as much as they care [inaudible 12:51] and the packaging, so that's something that we had to learn. And number two, continuous feedback. Continuous feedback changed the way we worked completely, right? And, you know, after that, we had a Slack channel, then we opened a Discord channel. And, like, this continuous feedback coming in just helps with iterating, helps us with prioritizing, et cetera. And that changed the way we actually developed product. VICTORIA: You use Slack and Discord? SEIF: No. No Slack anymore. We had a community Slack. We had a community [inaudible 13:19] Slack. Now, there's no community Slack. We only have a community Discord. And the community Slack is...sorry, internally, we use Slack, but there's a community Discord for the community. JOE: But how do you keep that staffed? Is it, like, everybody is in the Discord during working hours? Is it somebody's job to watch out for community questions? SEIF: I think everybody gets involved now just...and you can see it. If you go on our Discord, you will just see it. Just everyone just gets involved. I think just people are passionate about what they're doing. At least most people are involved on Discord, right? Because there's, like, Discord the help sections, and people are just asking questions and other people answering. And now, we reached a point where people in the community start answering the questions for other people in the community. So, that's how we see it's starting to become a healthy community, et cetera. But that is one of my favorite things: when I see somebody from the community answering somebody else, that's a highlight for me. Actually, we hired somebody from that community because they were so active. JOE: Yeah, I think one of the biggest signs that a product is healthy is when there's a healthy ecosystem building up around it. SEIF: Yeah, and Discord reminds me of the old days of open sources like IRC, just with memes now. But because all of us come from the old IRC days, being on Discord and chatting around, et cetera, et cetera, just gives us this momentum back, gave us this momentum back, whereas Slack always felt a bit too businessy to me. JOE: Slack is like IRC with emoji. Discord is IRC with memes. SEIF: I would say Slack reminds me somehow of MSN Messenger, right? JOE: I feel like there's a huge slam on MSN Messenger here. SEIF: [laughs] What do you guys use internally, Slack or? I think you're using Slack, right? Or Teams. Don't tell me you're using Teams. JOE: No, we're using Slack. SEIF: Okay, good, because I shit talk. Like, there is this, I’ll sh*t talk here–when I start talking about Teams, so...I remember that one thing Google did once, and that failed miserably. JOE: Google still has, like, seven active chat products. SEIF: Like, I think every department or every, like, group of engineers just uses one of them internally. I'm not sure. Never got to that point. But hey, who am I to judge? VICTORIA: I just feel like I end up using all of them, and then I'm just rotating between different tabs all day long. You maybe talked me into using Discord. I feel like I've been resisting it, but you got me with the memes. SEIF: Yeah, it's definitely worth it. It's more entertaining. More noise, but more entertaining. You feel it's alive, whereas Slack is...also because there's no, like, history is forever. So, you always go back, and you're like, oh my God, what the hell is this? VICTORIA: Yeah, I have, like, all of them. I'll do anything. SEIF: They should be using Axiom in the background. Just send data to Axiom; we can keep your chat history. VICTORIA: Yeah, maybe. I'm so curious because, you know, you mentioned something about how you realized that it didn't matter really how cool the tech was if the product packaging wasn't also appealing to people. Because you seem really excited about what you've built. So, I'm curious, so just tell us a little bit more about how you went about trying to, like, promote this thing you built. Or was, like, the continuous feedback really early on, or how did that all kind of come together? SEIF: The continuous feedback helped us with performance, but actually getting people to sign up and pay money it started early on. But with Vercel, it kind of skyrocketed, right? And that's mostly because we went with the whole zero-config approach where it's just literally two clicks. And all of a sudden, Vercel is sending your data to Axiom, and that's it. We will create [inaudible 16:33]. And we worked very closely with Vercel to do this, to make this happen, which was awesome. Like, yeah, hats off to them. They were fantastic. And just two clicks, three clicks away, and all of a sudden, we created Axiom organization for you, the data set for you. And then we're sending it...and the data from Vercel is being forwarded to it. I think that packaging was so simple that it made people try it out quickly. And then, the experience of actually using Axiom was sticky, so they continued using it. And then the price was so low because we give 500 gigs for free, right? You send us 500 gigs a month of logs for free, and we don't care. And you can start off here with one terabyte for 25 bucks. So, people just start signing up. Now, before that, it was five terabytes a month for $99, and then we changed the plan. But yeah, it was cheap enough, so people just start sending us more and more and more data eventually. They weren't thinking...we changed the way people start thinking of “what am I going to send to Axiom” or “what am I going to send to my logs provider or log storage?” To how much more can I send? And I think that's what we wanted to reach. We wanted people to think, how much more can I send? JOE: You mentioned latency and cost. I'm curious about...the other big challenge we've seen with observability platforms, including logs, is cardinality of labels. Was there anything you had to sacrifice upfront in terms of cardinality to manage either cost or volume? SEIF: No, not really. Because the way we designed it was that we should be able to deal with high cardinality from scratch, right? I mean, there's open-source ways of doing, like, if you look at how, like, a column store, if you look at a column store and every dimension is its own column, it's just that becomes, like, you can limit on the amount of columns you're creating, but you should never limit on the amount of different values in a column could be. So, if you're having something like stat tags, right? Let's say hosting, like, hostname should be a column, but then the different hostnames you have, we never limit that. So, the cardinality on a value is something that is unlimited for us, and we don't really see it in cost. It doesn't really hit us on cost. It reflects a bit on compression if you get into technical details of that because, you know, high cardinality means a lot of different data. So, compression is harder, but it's not repetitive. But then if you look at, you know, oh, I want to send a lot of different types of fields, not values with fields, so you have hostname, and latency, and whatnot, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, that's where limitation starts because then they have...it's like you're going to a wide range of...and a wider dimension. But even that, we, yeah, we can deal with thousands at this point. And we realize, like, most people will not need more than three or four. It's like a Postgres table. You don't need more than 3,000 to 4000 columns; else, you know, you're doing a lot. JOE: I think it's actually pretty compelling in terms of cost, though. Like, that's one of the things we've had to be most careful about in terms of containing cost for metrics and logs is, a lot of providers will...they'll either charge you based on the number of unique metric combinations or the performance suffers greatly. Like, we've used a lot of Prometheus-based solutions. And so, when we're working with developers, even though they don't need more than, you know, a few dozen metric combinations most of the time, it's hard for people to think of what they need upfront. It's much easier after you deploy it to be able to query your data and slice it retroactively based on what you're seeing. SEIF: That's the detail. When you say we're using Prometheus, a lot of the metrics tools out there are using, just like Prometheus, are using the Gorilla data structure. And the real data structure was never designed to deal with high cardinality labels. So, basically, to put it in a simple way, every combination of tags you send for metrics is its own file on disk. That's, like, the very simple way of explaining this. And then, when you're trying to search through everything, right? And you have a lot of these combinations. I actually have to get all these files from this conversion back together, you know, and then they're chunked, et cetera. So, it's a problem. Generally, how metrics are doing it...most metrics products are using it, even VictoriaMetrics, et cetera. What they're doing is they're using either the Prometheus TSDB data structure, which is based on Gorilla. Influx was doing the same thing. They pivoted to using more and more like the ones we use, and Honeycomb uses, right? So, we might not be as fast on metrics side as these highly optimized. But then when it comes to high [inaudible 20:49], once we start dealing with high cardinality, we will be faster than those solutions. And that's on a very technical level. JOE: That's pretty cool. I realize we're getting pretty technical here. Maybe it's worth defining cardinality for the audience. SEIF: Defining cardinality to the...I mean, we just did that, right? JOE: What do you think, Victoria? Do you know what cardinality is now? [laughs] VICTORIA: All right. Now I'm like, do I know? I was like, I think I know what it means. Cardinality is, like, let's say you have a piece of data like an event or a transaction. SEIF: It's like the distinct count on a property that gives you the cardinality of a property. VICTORIA: Right. It's like how many pieces of information you have about that one event, basically, yeah. JOE: But with some traditional metrics stores, it's easy to make mistakes. For example, you could have unbounded cardinality by including response time as one of the labels -- SEIF: Tags. JOE: And then it's just going to -- SEIF: Oh, no, no. Let me give you a better one. I put in timestamp at some point in my life. JOE: Yeah, I feel like everybody has done that one. [laughter] SEIF: I've put a system timestamp at some point in my life. There was the actual timestamp, and there was a system timestamp that I would put because I wanted to know when the...because I couldn't control the timestamp, and the only timestamp I had was a system timestamp. I would always add the actual timestamp of when that event actually happened into a metric, and yeah, that did not scale. 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: Yeah. I wonder if you could maybe share, like, a story about when it's gone wrong, and you've suddenly charged a lot of money [laughs] just to get information about what's happening in the system. Any, like, personal experiences with observability that kind of informed what you did with Axiom? SEIF: Oof, I have a very bad one, like, a very, very bad one. I used to work for a company. We had to deploy Elasticsearch on Windows Servers, and it was US-East-1. So, just a combination of Elasticsearch back in 2013, 2014 together with Azure and Windows Server was not a good idea. So, you see where this is going, right? JOE: I see where it's going. SEIF: Eventually, we had, like, we get all these problems because we used Elasticsearch and Kibana as our, you know, observability platform to measure everything around the product we were building. And funny enough, it cost us more than actually maintaining the infrastructure of the product. But not just that, it also kept me up longer because most of the downtimes I would get were not because of the product going down. It's because my Elasticsearch cluster started going down, and there's reasons for that. Because back then, Microsoft Azure thought that it's okay for any VM to lose connection with the rest of the VMs for 30 seconds per day. And then, all of a sudden, you have Elasticsearch with a split-brain problem. And there was a phase where I started getting alerted so much that back then, my partner threatened to leave me. So I bought a...what I think was a shock bracelet or a shock collar via Bluetooth, and I connected it to phone for any notification. And I bought that off Alibaba, by the way. And I would charge it at night, put it on my wrist, and go to sleep. And then, when alert happens, it will fully discharge the battery on me every time. JOE: Okay, I have to admit, I did not see where that was going. SEIF: Yeah, did that for a while; definitely did not save my relationship either. But eventually, that was the point where, you know, we started looking into other observability tools like Datadog, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where the actual journey began, where we moved away from Elasticsearch and Kibana to look for something, okay, that we don't have to maintain ourselves and we can use, et cetera. So, it's not about the costs as much; it was just pain. VICTORIA: Yeah, pain is a real pain point, actual physical [chuckles] and emotional pain point [laughter]. What, like, motivates you to keep going with Axiom and to keep, like, the wind in your sails to keep working on it? SEIF: There's a couple of things. I love working with my team. So, honestly, I just wake up, and I compliment my team. I just love working with them. They're a lot of fun to work with. And they challenge me, and I challenge them back. And I upset them a lot. And they can't upset me, but I upset them. But I love working with them, and I love working with that team. And the other thing is getting, like, having this constant feedback from customers just makes you want to do more and, you know, close sales, et cetera. It's interesting, like, how I'm a very technical person, and I'm more interested in sales because sales means your product works, the product, the technical parts, et cetera. Because if technically it's not working, you can't build a product on top of it. And if you're not selling it, then what's the point? You only sell when the product is good, more or less, unless you're Oracle. VICTORIA: I had someone ask me about Oracle recently, actually. They're like, "Are you considering going back to it?" And I'm maybe a little allergic to it from having a federal consulting background [laughs]. But maybe they'll come back around. I don't know. We'll see. SEIF: Did you sell your soul back then? VICTORIA: You know, I feel like I just grew up in a place where that's what everyone did was all. SEIF: It was Oracle, IBM, or HP back in the day. VICTORIA: Yeah. Well, basically, when you're working on applications that were built in, like, the '80s, Oracle was, like, this hot, new database technology [laughs] that they just got five years ago. So, that's just, yeah, interesting. SEIF: Although, from a database perspective, they did a lot of the innovations. A lot of first innovations could have come from Oracle. From a technical perspective, they're ridiculous. I'm not sure from a product perspective how good they are. But I know their sales team is so big, so huge. They don't care about the product anymore. They can still sell. VICTORIA: I think, you know, everything in tech is cyclical. So, you know, if they have the right strategy and they're making some interesting changes over there, there's always a chance [laughs]. Certain use cases, I mean, I think that's the interesting point about working in technology is that you know, every company is a tech company. And so, there's just a lot of different types of people, personas, and use cases for different types of products. So, I wonder, you know, you kind of mentioned earlier that, like, everyone is interested in Axiom. But, you know, I don't know, are you narrowing the market? Or, like, how are you trying to kind of focus your messaging and your sales for Axiom? SEIF: I'm trying to focus on developers. So, we're really trying to focus on developers because the experience around observability is crap. It's stupid expensive. Sorry for being straightforward, right? And that's what we're trying to change. And we're targeting developers mainly. We want developers to like us. And we'll find all these different types of developers who are using it, and that's the interesting thing. And because of them, we start adding more and more features, like, you know, we added tracing, and now that enables, like, billions of events pushed through for, you know, again, for almost no money, again, $25 a month for a terabyte of data. And we're doing this with metrics next. And that's just to address the developers who have been giving us feedback and the market demand. I will sum it up, again, like, the experience is crap, and it's stupid expensive. I think that's the [inaudible 28:07] of observability is just that's how I would sum it up. VICTORIA: If you could go back in time and talk to yourself when you were still a developer, now that you're CTO, what advice would you give yourself? JOE: Besides avoiding shock collars. VICTORIA: [laughs] Yes. SEIF: Get people's feedback quickly so you know you're on the right track. I think that's very, very, very, very important. Don't just work in the dark, or don't go too long into stealth mode because, eventually, people catch up. Also, ship when you're 80% ready because 100% is too late. I think it's the same thing here. JOE: Ship often and early. SEIF: Yeah, even if it's not fully ready, it's still feedback. VICTORIA: Ship often and early and talk to people [laughs]. Just, do you feel like, as a developer, did you have the skills you needed to be able to get the most out of those feedback and out of those conversations you were having with people around your product? SEIF: I still don't think I'm good enough. You're just constantly learning, right? I just accepted I'm part of a team, and I have my contributions. But as an individual, I still don't think I know enough. I think there's more I need to learn at this point. VICTORIA: I wonder, what questions do you have for me or Joe? SEIF: How did you start your podcast, and why the name? VICTORIA: Oh, man, I hope I can answer. So, the podcast was started...I think it's, like, we're actually about to be at our 500th Episode. So, I've only been a host for the last year. Maybe Joe even knows more than I do. But what I recall is that one person at thoughtbot thought it would be a great idea to start a podcast, and then they did it. And it seems like the whole company is obsessed with robots. I'm not really sure where that came from. There used to be a tiny robot in the office, is what I remember. And people started using that as, like, the mascot. And then, yeah, that's it, that's the whole thing. SEIF: Was the robot doing anything useful or just being cute? JOE: It was just cute, and it's hard to make a robot cute. SEIF: Was it a real robot, or was it like a -- JOE: No, there was, at one point, a toy robot. The name...I actually forget the origin–origin of the name, but the name Giant Robots comes from our blog. So, we named the podcast the same as the blog: Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots. SEIF: Yes, it's called transformers. VICTORIA: Yeah, I like it. It's, I mean, now I feel like -- SEIF: [laughs] VICTORIA: We got to get more, like, robot dogs involved [laughs] in the podcast. SEIF: Like, I wanted to add one thing when we talked about, you know, what gets me going. And I want to mention that I have a six-month-old son now. He definitely adds a lot of motivation for me to wake up in the morning and work. But he also makes me wake up regardless if I want to or not. VICTORIA: Yeah, you said you had invented an alarm clock that never turns off. Never snoozes [laughs]. SEIF: Yes, absolutely. VICTORIA: I have the same thing, but it's my dog. But he does snooze, actually. He'll just, like, get tired and go back to sleep [laughs]. SEIF: Oh, I have a question. Do dogs have a Tamagotchi phase? Because, like, my son, the first three months was like a Tamagotchi. It was easy to read him. VICTORIA: Oh yeah, uh-huh. SEIF: Noisy but easy. VICTORIA: Yes, yes. SEIF: Now, it's just like, yeah, I don't know, like, the last month he has opinions at six months. I think it's because I raised him in Europe. I should take him back to the Middle East [laughs]. No opinions. VICTORIA: No, dogs totally have, like, a communication style, you know, I pretty much know what he, I mean, I can read his mind, obviously [laughs]. SEIF: Sure, but that's when they grow a bit. But what when they were very...when the dog was very young? VICTORIA: Yeah, they, I mean, they also learn, like, your stuff, too. So, they, like, learn how to get you to do stuff or, like, I know she'll feed me if I'm sitting here [laughs]. SEIF: And how much is one dog year, seven years? VICTORIA: Seven years. SEIF: Seven years? VICTORIA: Yeah, seven years? SEIF: Yeah. So, basically, in one year, like, three months, he's already...in one month, he's, you know, seven months old. He's like, yeah. VICTORIA: Yeah. In a year, they're, like, teenagers. And then, in two years, they're, like, full adults. SEIF: Yeah. So, the first month is basically going through the first six months of a human being. So yeah, you pass...the first two days or three days are the Tamagotchi phase that I'm talking about. VICTORIA: [chuckles] I read this book, and it was, like, to understand dogs, it's like, they're just like humans that are trying to, like, maximize the number of positive experiences that they have. So, like, if you think about that framing around all your interactions about, like, maybe you're trying to get your son to do something, you can be like, okay, how do I, like, I don't know, train him that good things happen when he does the things I want him to do? [laughs] That's kind of maybe manipulative but effective. So, you're not learning baby sign language? You're just, like, going off facial expressions? SEIF: I started. I know how Mama looks like. I know how Dada looks like. I know how more looks like, slowly. And he already does this thing that I know that when he's uncomfortable, he starts opening and closing his hands. And when he's completely uncomfortable and basically that he needs to go sleep, he starts pulling his own hair. VICTORIA: [laughs] I do the same thing [laughs]. SEIF: You pull your own hair when you go to sleep? I don't have that. I don't have hair. VICTORIA: I think I do start, like, touching my head though, yeah [inaudible 33:04]. SEIF: Azure took the last bit of hair I had! Went away with Azure, Elasticsearch, and the shock collar. VICTORIA: [laughs] SEIF: I have none of them left. Absolutely nothing. I should sue Elasticsearch for this shit. VICTORIA: [laughs] Let me know how that goes. Maybe there's more people who could join your lawsuit, you know, with a class action. SEIF: [laughs] Yeah. Well, one thing I wanted to also just highlight is, right now, one of the things that also makes the company move forward is we realized that in a single domain, we proved ourselves very valuable to specific companies, right? So, that was a big, big thing, milestone for us. And now we're trying to move into a handful of domains and see which one of those work out the best for us. Does that make sense? VICTORIA: Yeah. And I'm curious: what are the biggest challenges or hurdles that you associate with that? SEIF: At this point, you don't want just feedback. You want constructive criticism. Like, you want to work with people who will criticize the applic...and you iterate with them based on this criticism, right? They're just not happy about you and trying to create design partners. So, for us, it was very important to have these small design partners who can work with us to actually prove ourselves as valuable in a single domain. Right now, we need to find a way to scale this across several domains. And how do you do that without sacrificing? Like, how do you open into other domains without sacrificing the original domain you came from? So, there's a lot of things [inaudible 34:28]. And we are in the middle of this. Honestly, I Forrest Gumped my way through half of this, right? Like, I didn't know what I was doing. I had ideas. I think it's more of luck at this point. And I had luck. No, we did work. We did work a lot. We did sleepless nights and everything. But I think, in the last three years, we became more mature and started thinking more about product. And as I said, like, our CEO, Neil, and Dominic, our head of product, are putting everything behind being a product-led organization, not just a tech-led organization. VICTORIA: That's super interesting. I love to hear that that's the way you're thinking about it. JOE: I was just curious what other domains you're looking at pushing into if you can say. SEIF: So, we are going to start moving into ETL a bit more. We're trying to see how we can fit in specific ML scenarios. I can't say more about the other, though. JOE: Do you think you'll take the same approaches in terms of value proposition, like, low cost, good enough latency? SEIF: Yes, that's definitely one thing. But there's also...so, this is the values we're bringing to the customer. But also, now, our internal values are different. Now it's more of move with urgency and high velocity, as we said before, right? Think big, work small. The values in terms of values we're going to take to the customers it's the same ones. And maybe we'll add some more, but it's still going to be low-cost and large-scale. And, internally, we're just becoming more, excuse my French, agile. I hate that word so much. Should be good with Scrum. VICTORIA: It's painful, but everyone knows what you're talking about [laughs], you know, like -- SEIF: See, I have opinions here about Scrum. I think Scrum should be only used in terms of iceScrum [inaudible 36:04], or something like that. VICTORIA: Oh no [laughter]. Well, it's a Rugby term, right? Like, that's where it should probably stay. SEIF: I did not know it's a rugby term. VICTORIA: Yeah, so it should stay there, but -- SEIF: Yes [laughs]. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think it's interesting. Yeah, I like the being flexible. I like the just, like, continuous feedback and how you all have set up to, like, talk with your customers. Because you mentioned earlier that, like, you might open source some of your projects. And I'm just curious, like, what goes into that decision for you when you're going to do that? Like, what makes you think this project would be good for open source or when you think, actually, we need to, like, keep it? SEIF: So, we open source libraries, right? We actually do that already. And some other big organizations use our libraries; even our competitors use our libraries, that we do. The whole product itself or at least a big part of the product, like database, I'm not sure we're going to open source that, at least not anytime soon. And if we open source, it's going to be at a point where the value-add it brings is nothing compared to how well our product is, right? So, if we can replace whatever's at the back with...the storage engine we have in the back with something else and the product doesn't get affected, that's when we open source it. VICTORIA: That's interesting. That makes sense to me. But yeah, thank you for clarifying that. I just wanted to make sure to circle back. Since you have this big history in open source, yeah, I'm curious if you see... SEIF: Burning me out? VICTORIA: Burning you out, yeah [laughter]. Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, like, because, you know, we're about to be in October here. Do you have any advice or strategies as a maintainer for not getting burned out during the next couple of weeks besides, like, hide in a cave and without internet access [laughs]? SEIF: Stay away from Reddit and Hacker News. That's my goal for October now because I'm always afraid of getting too attached to an idea, or too motivated, or excited by an idea that I drift away from what I am actually supposed to be doing. VICTORIA: Last question is, is there anything else you would like to promote? SEIF: Yeah, check out our website; I think it's at axiom.co. Check it out. Sign up. And comment on Discord and talk to me. I don't bite, sometimes grumpy, but that's just because of lack of sleep in the morning. But, you know, around midday, I'm good. And if you're ever in Berlin and you want to hang out, I'm more than willing to hang out. VICTORIA: Whoo, that's awesome. Yeah, Berlin is great. I was there a couple of years ago but no plans to go back anytime soon, but maybe I'll keep that in mind. 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 could find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. And this podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guests: Joe Ferris and Seif Lotfy.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? 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Hosts Will Larry and Victoria Guido talk with Lonni Kieffer, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at SmartCert. SmartCert's mission is to digitize and streamline the certificate transfer process in supply chains, mainly focusing on the aerospace industry. Lonni shares insights into the challenges of managing change within traditional industries, the importance of building a solid foundation of leadership and core values, and SmartCert's strategies for customer success and self-service. Lonni also shares the history of the company's growth and its focus on vendor accountability and internal processes to increase supply chain efficiency. SmartCert's platform offers features like document verification and digital signatures to facilitate accessible communication among teams. She discusses the role of their partner company, TechFabric, in building their MVP and how they've grown their internal team. She also highlights 2024 as a pivotal year for SmartCert, aiming for a global impact within the next five years. Regarding advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, Lonni emphasizes the importance of grit, flexibility, and a strong belief in one's mission. She also talks about the value of relationships in business growth and the critical role of sleep for effective functioning and decision-making. SmartCert TechFabric Follow SmartCert on LinkedIn or X. Follow Lonni Kieffer on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: 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, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Lonni Kieffer, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at SmartCert, a universal cloud-based platform that simplifies every aspect of cert transfer. Lonni, thank you for joining me. LONNI: Thanks so much for having me. I love what you guys do. And I'm excited to contribute to the conversation. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Well, we like to warm up a little bit first before we dive into business topics. Anything exciting going on in your world, Will or Lonni? LONNI: I'll let Will start. WILL: It's funny because, with three small kids, I think we're finally starting to find our rhythm and our routine, so that's kind of exciting. I know it sounds boring, but when you have three small kids, routine, I feel like, is everything. We're starting to find that because a couple of weeks ago, my son had surgery. So, it threw all of our routines off and everything, and trying to help him get better and heal and everything. But now he's doing good. He's back running around, having fun. So yeah, getting back to that normal life it's exciting, and we're looking forward to it. LONNI: That makes so much sense. And I'm glad you mentioned kids because [laughs] I was also going to talk about my three kids and the fact that I am headed down to a family weekend tomorrow to join two-thirds of my daughters for a fun activity. It usually involves some fun meals, grocery shopping to fill [laughs] small college dorm refrigerators. But the challenge that I have then...Will, you have the young ones, and I have the older ones that are definitely going to keep me on my toes. I don't know that I can keep up with college life so much. So, usually, this is really fun but also really exhausting [laughs]. WILL: I promise you, they're looking forward to it, so don't underestimate what you're doing [laughs]. LONNI: [chuckles] Yes, for sure. VICTORIA: I'm going to feel bad with my update [laughs]. It's like, oh, I'm surfing. I think I was in a surf film yesterday on accident, which was pretty funny. And then I'm going to surf this afternoon and climb. Which you're talking about being on a routine and I just...I can't seem to get my routine of when I'm surfing or when I'm climbing figured out to the point where I just keep, like, exhausting myself trying to do both [laughs]. But that's what's going on in my world. But I am not quite on the kids and baby train yet. But it does sound fun. It sounds...it encompasses a lot. And then you get to just experience a different time of their life compared to what you're going through. WILL: Yeah, don't feel bad talking about something else, and fun. Like, today, I signed up for a kickball league in my area. So, I'm looking forward to it. So, I have those activities also. That's a must, I feel. LONNI: That's so true, any kind of outdoor time. Even just reading about all the statistics now about direct sunlight, I think it's so incredibly important to weave that into the day. So, Victoria, I give you mad props for having a full agenda of those [laughs] activities. VICTORIA: That's good. I'm glad to hear you're having some fun, too, Will and Lonni, getting out there, getting outside in the sunshine while it's still here. Yeah, I appreciate that. So, I'm curious...you know, that's what humans do best, right? Like humans, we're supposed to be outside. We're supposed to be, like, enjoying the sunshine. We're not supposed to be managing paperwork every day [laughs]. So, could you tell me a little bit more about SmartCert and the mission behind the company? LONNI: For sure. The paperwork side is truly sad. I was having a discussion with a customer yesterday, and they still receive 90% of the product certs as paper from their vendors. And if you imagine not only the time that it takes to use paper these days [laughs] but the cost associated with that, I think there's some painful statistics around the fact that companies spend on average almost $500 a day on paper and toner. And, you know, our goal started three years ago when the founder, Lyndon Lattie, who had spent 20 years in manufacturing and distribution in aerospace, finally decided to quit his perfectly good job and really work on alleviating a lot of the bottlenecks and hurdles that's really prevalent in supply chains. Every little nut and bolt that goes into an aircraft requires a lot of documentation that provides traceability to acknowledge that these parts meet the standards that the industry holds that we all have confidence in. So, when there isn't a paper trail or documents go missing, things get very expensive and chaotic. And what we're trying to do is really remove paper [laughs], the physical part of it, from the equation and use the cloud to not only receive documents from suppliers but store them and send them on to customers. So, we're not only speeding things up, but we're also checking the box on sustainability and helping a fairly antiquated industry move forward with innovation and technology. WILL: I love that idea because I'm the type of person that I don't use journals or things like that or paper to-do lists because I lose them all. And I like to think I'm a fairly responsible person, and I still lose them all. I love having it on my phone because I know exactly where it's at. 9.9 times out of 10, I have my phone with me. So, when I think of an idea, I have it; I can do something on it. In your experience, I don't know if you have this number or if you can estimate how often does paper certifications go missing, do you think? LONNI: We're talking to some big, big aerospace companies these days, and they have estimated on a daily basis that 80 to 100 shipments have paperwork problems. So, when you think about the sheer volume on a daily basis and the time that it requires to really enable teams to track down paperwork, sometimes you go to your vendor and ask for the documentation, and they have to go back in time because they don't have it. Those delays can halt manufacturing and certainly make a big impact on profitability and just the ability to do business. VICTORIA: Right. And from my background working in the federal government space for a while, I have a sense of just how many rules and regulations a particular product might have applied to it. And thinking about, like, the aerospace where, like, down to the individual bolts and nuts have to have all the specifications and the documentation of, like, the size, and where it came from, and the materials. And if you lose that, then you can't...it's, like, you can't work, or you have to go back to a manufacturer. So, how does SmartCert start to solve that issue? LONNI: One of the big things that we're focused on this year is making it easier to receive documents from suppliers. It's the one place that a lot of companies don't have control over. You could have a strong internal process. You could have a strong process for sending these documents to your customers, but you're still at the mercy of what your suppliers choose to do. Our big focus this year is starting with vendor accountability and starting to be able to compile data around vendor performance with documents but also start to create a more standard receiving process. So, next month, we are launching a new feature where you could take an email or a digital document, even if you do have to scan it in from a supplier and add that all to your shared dashboard. And the idea here is to create a strong internal process instead of being at the mercy of your vendors but also make things work faster once documents are received. Usually, that effort is pretty siloed, where there's one receiving team, the processing and review team. The quality team is waiting for the documents. When you start to give everyone access to documents as they're received, you certainly can see cutting down on the steps and fostering stronger communication among internal teams. So, because you now have a good repository and time and date-stamped information, you can start to see the vendors that are costing you money, have the conversations ahead of contracts. There's a big focus on vendor scorecards and continuous improvement in the industry. So, our goal is to be able to provide that centralized repository where the data comes to life instead of multiple people receiving certs and processing certs. That's one big focus on the receiving side. And then, from an internal perspective, we've built the tools in SmartCert that enable the teams, once the documents are received, to quickly search in the document, make sure that the information is included and accurate. If it is, they can digitally sign and approve it, which is a common next step. If there is information missing, they can reject those certs and kind of maintain the communication within the same platform instead of going into an email and waiting on when to provide updated documents. We're focused on, again, keeping the conversation within one platform. And then, on the customer side, it's the same thing: the traceability, the visibility of sending documents. So many companies are at the mercy of customers losing paperwork or asking them to resend it. And those are the things that we've eliminated by providing dashboard-to-dashboard delivery and that centralized access. So, even if the buyer you work with is on vacation, your certs aren't sitting in an email inbox for the next five days, not being accessible to the rest of the team. So, those kinds of, I think, focuses on efficiency all the way through the process are where we really feel will make a big impact for every company, large and small. WILL: So, I know in the past you started multiple companies, and then about four years ago, you started SmartCert. So, how was the beginning getting traction for SmartCert? And were there any benefits to being a founder in the past that helped you with SmartCert? LONNI: I love that question. My efforts at entrepreneurship certainly help. You know, you recognize that the ball's in your court in every facet of the business, the hats that you have to wear across everything you do and want to accomplish. It helped provide a good foundation. SmartCert certainly is more daunting and bigger than my past experiences. But having a good understanding of the requirements around flexibility, a willingness to figure things out on the fly, and a real confidence in what we're doing and believing in is so important. You know, we are working to convince hundreds of thousands of companies to finally move away from super manual processes. And I think you have to have a lot of confidence and belief in not only what you're doing but the impact that you can make in order for you to keep going. And recognize if you are a new product in a new category, the path to building growth is usually pretty difficult. WILL: If there is someone who is thinking about starting a company, what advice would you give them? Because I know it's not easy to start a company. It's hard, let's just be honest, it's very hard. If you can give someone advice on, "Hey, take that next step, start it," what advice would you give them? LONNI: Well, I think you have to have the grit to get through the bad days. It is an insane roller coaster. But, for me, I think there are so many books and advice, and formulas out there for starting a business. You know, we've read every single book out there. And I think intuition is such a big piece of the potential and success for a business. While formulas and successful companies and what they share and how they did it is really helpful, I think at the end of the day, there may be moments that give you pause because it doesn't align with your intuition. And I think you really have to pay attention to those. So, we spent all of 2022 really working on the SaaS formula. We aligned our website and our conversations to fit those kinds of meetings and conversations. And it turns out because of the people we were talking to and the challenge with change management in this level of transition, the SaaS formula was not successful for us. We made a decision at the end of 2022 to move towards product-led growth, having about 1,000 companies. I hope that'll be next week—our big magic, fun, new milestone. We're really looking to empower the companies who are already participating on the network to drive growth. Many of them are receiving certs from our paying customers and just starting to get familiar with a new way of doing business. But things last year didn't feel right. It was incredibly frustrating to go through those motions and not have the success and metrics that were expected. The piece about intuition and being bold enough and confident enough in why you're doing what you're doing to be able to pivot is crucial. VICTORIA: So, you've talked to...or have over 1,000 customers. I wonder what was anything really surprising to you that you discovered in that process. LONNI: I think for us...and it kind of lends itself to the conversations we were having last year. To us and to our early adopters, SmartCert was a no-brainer. People that were spending eight hours a day were now spending an hour a day on the same work but just doing it much faster, reducing a lot of human error and automating so much of it. So, when we did have the conversations and make, you know, the introductions to the industry and work to build awareness, it was very obvious that change management is a paralyzing [laughs] aspect. And when technology is rearing its ugly head in the requirements for your business, the future of your business, I think for manufacturing and distribution, the timeline for a lot of that movement towards digital documents and working in the cloud was accelerated with COVID, with inflation. And all of a sudden, now there's companies who are leaping ahead and some that are falling behind. And it's now a requirement to prioritize more efficient processes simply because there's less people to do the work. And the companies who are taking advantage of innovation are really maximizing the opportunities to build their business, get more customers, and have more success. WILL: I was looking at your team, and it looks like you brought on the head of technology, I think, in 2022. And so, I think it was you and your co-founder in the very early days. How was it as a founder to build a technical app and going through that process? How was that process for you? LONNI: We were so lucky to partner with a local company in building out the MVP of SmartCert. They had an amazing team. They helped us bring to life a lot of Lyndon's ideas and also had a good background in supply chain. So, I always give props to TechFabric in Gilbert, Arizona, for giving us the opportunity to prove out the model. And that was then enabling us to get the funding and higher Mark who, I will say, every day I don't know how we became so lucky. I think startup life is challenging in and of itself. But he really embraced the mission and the opportunity to rebuild SmartCert from the ground up for the scalability it requires but to also embrace the security aspects that are coming to the industry, those compliance requirements, and working alongside us. He's one of the few, I think, heads of technology that are involved in a lot of conversations with customers. And we are absolutely so lucky to be able to add him to our team and continue to evolve the platform in all the ways it needs to to accommodate what we're trying to achieve. VICTORIA: Thank you for sharing that. I wonder, what does success really look like for you now, or six months from now, maybe even five years from now? LONNI: It'll be three years that we have launched SmartCert in March. And when we think about, you know, what's the first thing to prove when you're a new product in a new market, and it's to prove that people are willing to pay to alleviate the pain. And I think we've done a good job doing that. It's building virality now, you know. As the industry is now expanding its use of SmartCert, more companies are participating. So, we've built a good foundation, which has allowed us to start working with some of the global aerospace companies, distributors, and contract manufacturers, and pilots. We're defining those opportunities now. And I think 2024 will be a really big year for us to expand the features and the usage and adoption not only with additional supply chains but much more fast-paced growth with participating companies so that in five years, we could really look back and say, "We have really supported supply chains all over the world in working smarter, approaching sustainability with the right goals and processes to cut down on paper, and also be able to combat the challenges with labor shortages, apply technology in ways that are going to certainly make sense for them and for the future." VICTORIA: I like that you tie in business goals with, like, big, dreamy goals, like, really reducing our impact on the planet and things like that. Because I think that's...you need to have something to come back to at the end of the day when you're working really hard in a startup like this. LONNI: We had a really fun exercise, an internal exercise. So, our lead investor, TitletownTech, obviously has entrepreneurs in residence that we had the advantage of working with. We went through an exercise of really trying to articulate what is, like, the big, hairy goal? What is our mission? And our tagline is now taking the paper and the work out of paperwork so humans can do what they do best. 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. 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LONNI: When you do have a product-led growth initiative, it means you need to provide as much self-service onboarding, and training tools, and resources as you can to make it easy for companies to move from their free account to a paid account and take advantage of all of the features and the functionality. So, our goals right now are to eliminate hurdles that companies may feel in making the transition. Because we've had so many conversations over the past, I guess, almost three years, we're pretty articulate on being able to help with process changes. What are you doing now? Here's how SmartCert fits in. Are your goals on the supplier side or your internal organization? Is it with customers? And just help walk them down the path of making a transition so it doesn't feel like it's going to require months or years or tons of man-hours that just aren't available as people just try and get through the day. So, from a foundational perspective, customer success is really now sales, marketing support. And those are the tools that I think will help companies have a clear path. We've learned that they really want to make very clear decisions. If I do this, what are the steps? So, we're providing clarity and a lot of good guidance that doesn't require a lot of man-hours on our side to be able to help turn free accounts into paid accounts and continue their expanded use of the platform. VICTORIA: That's very cool. Do you have any questions for me or Will? LONNI: So, you guys have a lot of conversations. I would love to hear what's really stood out in the last month or so. What's kind of resonated with you? Or what did you hear and apply in your life? VICTORIA: I have a couple of answers. I mean, I've had a lot of really amazing guests on the show. It's hard to pick out any few that were really important or had some meaningful takeaways. I really liked Charity Majors when I asked her how the company is doing, and she's like, "Well, we haven't failed yet." [laughs] And just an interesting mentality of very humble and very just open to change and open to seeing, like, what's going to happen next. And also, I think that Irina Nazarova talked about managing products versus managing open-source projects, and how that is different, and how it might influence your business differently, especially as a consulting company. So, I thought that was really interesting. I always love having guests on the show and hearing about why they started what they're doing. And it's just really inspiring to hear people take a chance on an idea that they have, that they feel passionate about, and really put everything behind it. And, you know, most of the time, we're talking to people who have succeeded [chuckles]. A few guests we've had are just getting started in their journey, and it is still kind of unclear. And I really enjoy those conversations as well, where they're just still not really sure if it's going to work. So, that's been a little bit about my experience as a host on the show. WILL: Yeah, I think I was going to go in a similar direction because I love talking to founders because it's just a different...almost like what you said, like, it's okay; go out there. Take that next step. It may hurt. It may be hard. It's not an easy path but go out there. You can do it. And it's not just for starting a company; for me, it's almost everyday life, like the hard things that come my way in life. Like, it's okay; I can do it. So, I think it's very encouraging to hear founders and their mindset when they started companies and after, like, multiple years of where they're at. And, like, yeah, it was hard. It was not easy, but hey, I made it. Like, I'm on the other side of it. And we're doing great, or we're still in there just hanging out. So, I think, for me, it's being resilient. I think that's the big thing. LONNI: I think you nailed it because real talk is survival. And if you aren't honest with yourself, it's not likely you're going to be able to survive. So, I think when you take stock of what you're trying to achieve, the road is super hard, or, like, everyone says, "Everyone would be doing it." But there's a reason, and there's intention there. And there are so many entrepreneurs who have failed over time only to have more intelligence, experience to get it right at some point. So, I don't know that anything is linear these days. We get smarter and certainly savvier around topics that interest us. And if it drives you towards entrepreneurship, I salute you. It makes having three daughters feel like a spa treatment. But I also know that I get excited about the other side of this. But our board reminds me that there's so much of this that feeds my soul. And it's hard to give that up when you do sell the company or move on because you're used to just being involved in all the things and being able to take advantage of the highs and come together during the lows. And that roller coaster is actually what everyone tells me I'm going to miss the most. I don't believe them yet. But [laughs] I think that they're probably right. VICTORIA: I think maybe you'll have a nostalgia for it. But you'll enjoy your peacefulness as well. LONNI: Yeah [laughs]. VICTORIA: Hopefully. [laughs] You have to hope. Yeah, I wonder, you know, speaking about, like, having investors and going around trying to raise money for a product, did you receive any advice or suggestions that, looking back on, you were like, "Actually, that was completely not helpful; I'm glad I didn't take it"? LONNI: There were many companies who declined to participate in conversations because we were not building SmartCert on blockchain. And some of them have come back around and asked, "Are your plans to include it?" And we've always felt not only does that require a huge leap...We're taking an industry from paper to digital, so if you want to layer blockchain on that, you're probably going to go nowhere really fast. Because I don't think there's anyone on this planet who can explain it well or really articulate the benefits when, in fact, you're sending paper in boxes. And, sure, there's the security element to that, but it's not really aligned with what blockchain is meant to do. So, we kind of have a laugh now about those that pushed so hard for we will only fund if this is blockchain-enabled. And we're so glad we didn't do that [laughs]. VICTORIA: Yeah, I mean, my understanding for, like, a blockchain, one good use case might be for, like, unique identities or something. Taking the more practical approach, sometimes I think people forget in technology that we're just...the future is here, but it's not evenly distributed. And there is paper being sent in boxes. And sometimes we can make a big impact, which is very simple solutions. But even simple solutions aren't simple to implement and make change happen. So, I'm wondering if you have any advice for founders who are facing a big change management that they're trying to push through. What advice would you give them to kind of start making inroads into that? LONNI: There are companies who make hundreds of millions of dollars helping [laughs] other companies through change management, and it's not lost on me that it's its own business. What we have really come to understand is you need to meet everyone where they're at. The tools that we've built are simple. You learn SmartCert in five minutes. It is how processes change that have been in place since the beginning of time for this company. And I think when it comes down to it, there are plenty of business owners and C-suite executives that can say, "Yes, this makes sense. We're going to do it." But being voluntold as the user who needs to not only learn something new but move out of their comfort zone figure out how to learn while doing your job every day, those are the people that I really think is important to support. They're going to mean the success of the adoption. And they are the ones that deserve the cheerleading. So, with change management, my advice would be is to think about every single person that this affects in the company, understand who is able to realize immediate benefits, whose are maybe more short-term once this is launched or as your customers adopt it. And then who benefits, and how do they benefit for the long-term? Because you sort of need to help them keep their eye on the prize to get through the steps, it's going to require to change the way they show up every day. WILL: So, Victoria asked you about advice that you're glad that you didn't take. Was there any advice that you're like, "Wow, that was the best advice, and I am so glad that we did follow it"? LONNI: Towards the end of last year when, we sort of accepted our fate that standard sales, SaaS sales, was not going to work for us. Lyndon, the founder and one of the members of our board, had a really great conversation around relationships, especially with these antiquated industries. And if you are new technology, the real key to winning business, sort of earning that street cred, being accepted as a thought leader, is to make relationships with people. It is still a person-to-person decision that helped us prioritize attending regional conferences and industry conferences to meet people face to face as often as possible to build the trust and to be able to build the relationships that will help create the confidence in every company we talk to about moving forward but making sure that there's still a human element involved. WILL: I love that advice. Yeah, it's interesting how many companies, I feel like, forget that, is that the people is the reason that your company exists. I don't know where I got it from, but someone told me it's three Ps that, like, what is kind of the foundation for your company. I think it's people, processes, and products. If you can nail those three things, like you will be successful majority of the time. And I thought that was very interesting. LONNI: It's so true. Empowering people and accepting the challenges that they face, being real about what change means for them, being able to, you know, speak their language, and acknowledge what taking on new commitments and new processes means for them is going to be the way to be successful. VICTORIA: And how does your balance feel between your life and your family, that you've mentioned, and working for this company trying to get it off the ground? LONNI: There are times where I'm proud being able to show my daughters that you can do it all, but it's hard to do it all. I'm grateful to work from home because it does enable me to not only work in yoga pants all day but to have time for self-care. So, the endorphins at the gym are survival for me. Being able to find your people...I was so lucky to be a part of StartupAZ, which is a cohort here in Arizona of just about a dozen companies. And we got together on a monthly basis to talk through what's working, what's not working, sort of setting goals for ourselves but also commiserating. Because I feel like being an entrepreneur can feel really isolating. I don't think there's many people that understand what this means on a daily basis. There's certainly a whole new language beyond that with tech founders. And it helped me feel seen in a way that I can't articulate or get from my friends. So, that was really important for me. What I try and be really sensitive to is this is a grind, but I'm doing it on behalf of my family. So, prioritizing time, even if it's, well, you know what? I'm going to drive you to school because that means I get 10 minutes in the car one one-on-one with you. Those are the things that I think if you're going to have less time, find ways to make it more meaningful without screens and phones, and just connect to your people. That's been important to me. There are days that I'm better at it. This week has not been great simply because we have some big deadlines. And I do still try and prioritize things like the gym simply because my brain works so much better with [chuckles] endorphins than without. So, you'll have parental guilt. But if you really remind yourself that you're showing up for the greater good and you're doing it for your people, then your people will still always be in the forefront. WILL: Do you have any foreseeable hurdles coming up with SmartCert? LONNI: This is a big year for us. We, as many tech companies, have worked really hard to extend our runway. The funding [chuckles] world, the milestones, and markers required for a Series A round have all changed a lot since we were funded. And I think the hurdles we face is to demonstrate enough of momentum, great outcomes with our pilots, with these larger companies, to be able to go back to our investors and expand the future with the funding we'll need to continue to scale. So, that's probably a consistent point of view for a lot of tech companies. It's sort of that make-or-break year. But we feel pretty good about it certainly because of the changes we've made to the way we go to market, but also the features we released this year in support of these larger conversations and being able to bring on someone who's going to then have 2,400 of their suppliers join the network. So, there's a lot of potential, but there's also a lot at risk. VICTORIA: Yeah. So, I'm curious how that process was when you decided to pivot and you decided to create some new features to meet what your customers were telling you. How did you go about getting the support you needed to build those features? LONNI: One thing that I think we did okay at, but if I had to look back, I'd say we should have done more of, is talking to the companies represented on SmartCert, certainly our paid customers. But those conversations helped us prioritize the features that would enable them to work smarter, to reduce risk, to be more efficient, to grow in a way that's going to support and embrace technology as it's introduced to the industry. So, when you think back to what can you learn, it should always be the people that are using your product. We have, in this year, created a lot of internal tools so that once you do receive documents, or if you're a manufacturer and you're generating documents, centralizing those for access among teams, and creating a really automated process to send those to customers was the focus. And the conversation now has moved, as I mentioned, to the supplier side. And that's one area where I think we have the greatest opportunity for growth simply because it is the one area of the business you have the least control over. So, we've kind of come full circle with building the tools that make sense for those that are using it now and building a new path to participate on a network or create efficiencies by making standard processes. Even if your suppliers aren't participating on SmartCert, we are going to be launching the ability to take the documents, as I mentioned, and turn them into SmartCerts. That, to me, I think presents the greatest opportunity for us to really build a lot of momentum. VICTORIA: I love that. And so, you have your own team of developers working on this. Are you working with, like, an outsourced team? Or how did you structure the type of technical skills you needed to bring into the team? LONNI: Our partner company that built our MVP, TechFabric, is still connected with us. So, if we have integrations, their team usually assists us with those SmartCert integrations into things like ERPs and just legacy systems that our customers are using. What they helped us with is to kind of provide the ideal candidate framework based on their knowledge of not only where the platform needs to go but the requirements and capabilities it requires, and participated in interviews to help us build our internal team. So, without having leadership in technology, that was a huge win for us to have an advisor and a supporter to be able to have the conversations we weren't qualified to have in order to hire the right people. VICTORIA: Gotcha. That makes sense. And maybe I missed this point earlier. But how did you meet them, or how did you find them? LONNI: Well, the story is a good one. We're based in Gilbert, Arizona. And as we were exploring what the options were, obviously trying to prioritize local relationships and partnerships, we did a Google search and ended up just having great conversations and feeling very fortunate that they were in our backyard and still are a really strong partner. VICTORIA: Oh, that makes sense. And having someone nearby, too, probably helps to just make it all feel a little cozier, so I love that. I love hearing about it and that they've helped you get to a place you want to be with the app. I'm so grateful to hear your story and hear more about what y'all are working on. Is there anything else that you would like to promote? LONNI: It's always fun having these conversations because sometimes you forget, you know, you're stuck in the minutiae of the day-to-day. And I just appreciate being able to tell the story and be reminded of how far we've come. And certainly celebrate and challenge anyone else who's considering a [inaudible 41:24] at this to take it. And if there's any advice that I would want to leave everyone with is to prioritize sleep [laughs] because it's the secret weapon. And I can tell that the days that I don't get enough, I don't think the way that I should. And it's almost like sleep is the new drug. And find any way possible, whether it's white noise, CBD, black-out shades, find your peace because sleep is your friend. WILL: I totally agree with that. [chuckles] VICTORIA: Thank you so much for your time and for being here with us today. 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. WILL: And you could find me on Twitter @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.Special Guest: Lonni Kieffer.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

We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! Quincy Larson is the founder of freeCodeCamp.org, which helps people learn to code for free by creating thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons–all freely available to the public. Quincy shares his journey from transitioning from teaching into software development, how freeCodeCamp was born out of his desire to make educational systems more efficient through coding, and discusses the early challenges of bootstrapping the platform, and how it has now grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Quincy and hosts Victoria and Will, discuss the platform's technical architecture, especially their global server distribution and decision to rely on volunteer-led translation efforts rather than machines to ensure both the quality and human touch of their educational content. He also talks about the state of free and low-cost degree programs, the student loan crisis, and the ongoing debate between traditional computer science degrees and coding bootcamps. Free Code Campi Follow Free Code Camp on LinkedIn or X. Follow Quincy Larson on LinkedIn or X. Follow thoughtbot on X 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 me today is Quincy Larson, Host of the freeCodeCamp Podcast, Teacher, and Founder of freecodecamp.org, a community of people around the world who are learning to code together. Quincy, thank you for joining us. QUINCY: Yeah, thanks for having me, Will and Victoria. VICTORIA: Yeah, thank you for being here. So, I understand that you made a big shift personally for yourself from California to Texas. How has that been for your family and for, you know, as a founder who is running a nonprofit? QUINCY: Yeah, things are going great. It was a big move. We had some kids, and it was difficult to find, like, a good place to live in California that didn't cost, like, millions of dollars [laughter]. And so, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were living in East Bay. I grew up here in Texas and Oklahoma. And I was like, well, maybe we could go back to the southwest, and so we did that. And we were able to come back and comfortably purchase a home here in Plano, Texas. We were able to find one that was, like, really close to a really good public school system. And so, every morning, I'm able to walk my kids to school. And I'd say that Texas has been a great change from California, where I lived for seven or eight years over there. And I love California. Texas has a lot of great things about it, too. It is a little bit hotter than California. It doesn't quite have California's Mediterranean climate, but it's been great here. I like it. And I would say if people are thinking about moving to Texas from California, there are definitely some really good spots of Texas that I think they'll feel really comfortable in. WILL: That's awesome, yeah. I'm originally from Louisiana. So, you're bringing back, like, memories of me growing up, always going to Texas and stuff. And I know exactly where Plano is, so that's amazing. How has it been with your kids? Because we were talking, and you said your kid recently started school. How's that been? QUINCY: Yeah, so my daughter started school a couple of years ago, and she just turned eight. And my son he's turning six this weekend. He just started kindergarten. We were having him take classes at the YMCA some pre-school. And he went from doing that for the first few hours of the day, and then we'd pick him up and bring him home and eat lunch with him and everything. And now he's got to go to school from, like, 7:00 a.m. to, like, 3:00 p.m. And he's been freaking out, like, "Why is school so long? Oh my goodness, I'm so tired all the time," [laughs]. So, he didn't realize that school would be as involved a process. He was all excited. But now he's complaining about, like, just the sheer length of school. But meanwhile, my wife and I we're just, like, celebrating because we actually have some time around the house where we can get work done without having kids running around causing chaos [laughs]. So yeah, I think he's adapting. He's making friends. We're doing playdates and stuff, and he's having fun. It's just a transition, you know. But it is nice because before, I would walk my daughter to school, and that was a very quick, 10-minute round trip, and then I'd walk my son to school. And that was, like, an hour round trip because we walked all the way to the YMCA. And I would do that to kind of toughen him up and get him walking a lot. It was a huge chunk of time. And now I can just grab both, one [inaudible 4:04] hand in each hand, and walk them to school, and drop them off, and be done with it and get back to work. So, it's definitely nice having both at the same school. VICTORIA: I love the work-life balance and that you were able to find and live somewhere that's affordable and has enough space for your family. And I wonder if we can draw a connection there between achieving that kind of lifestyle and learning to code, and what the mission of freeCodeCamp is for you, and what that means to people and changing careers. QUINCY: Absolutely. So, my background is in teaching. And I was a teacher and a school director at schools here in the U.S. and over in China. And that involved me being on campus, like working directly with my admin staff, with my instructional staff, and working directly with students. So, working remotely was kind of, like, a foreign concept way back in, like, 2010 or so 2011 when I started my transition into working as a software developer. But being able to work remotely has been a real game changer for me. And also, you can imagine, like, being a developer, you can command much larger compensation, and you have a lot more career options than being a teacher or a school director. So, it's given me a lot of agency in what I wanted to do. Even before, you know, starting freeCodeCamp, when I was working as a software developer and doing freelance work and stuff, I was able to do everything remotely. And that just gave me a ton of flexibility. So, the way that I learned to code personally was I wanted to help our school be more efficient. A lot of our teachers, a lot of our admin they were spending all day kind of chained to their desk entering information into computers for compliance reasons, to be able to produce great reports, to be able to produce attendance reports, immigration documents, all those things. And I just thought, like, is there a way that maybe I could automate some of this? And I didn't know anything about programming. I was about 31 years old. I was just sitting at my desk, and I just started kind of, like, Googling around and learning some very basic programming. And with that, over the course of a few months, I was really able to transform how the school ran. And we, like, won an award. And, like, a whole bunch of the students were, like, having a great time because they were spending so much more time with their teachers. And they were like, "Hey..." like, telling all their friends and family to transfer into the school. So, it was a massive success. And I thought, wow, if one person who doesn't even really know that much about programming can effect such a change with just a little bit of programming skills, imagine what I could do if I actually learned to code properly, so [chuckles] I did that. I spent about nine months going to hackathons every weekend, and reading a lot of books, and using a lot of open courses online, like from MIT, from Stanford, and I kind of taught myself to code for free. And then, I was able to get a job as a developer at a mid-size tech startup in California. And from there, I just learned more and more, and it was amazing. And it was an amazing transformation for me personally. And I thought, well, I want to help other people be able to do this because I know so many people out there would like to be working in a field where they have more conversation, a higher degree of control. They get to do creative work instead of, you know, tedious work. As a developer, you're constantly doing new stuff because code is infinitely reproducible. So, you could always just go back to code you've previously written if you needed to solve the same problem again. So, you're always in this kind of learning mindset. You're always in this problem-solving mindset. And it's really thrilling. It's just great, impactful work. So, I wanted to help more people be able to do that, hence starting a bunch of different projects that people didn't care about and then eventually starting a project that people did care about, which is freeCodeCamp. And since then, just kind of leading this project in trying to help as many people as possible learn to code. WILL: So, I was looking at your website. And I didn't even realize this until I was doing more research for the podcast, but you have over 10,000 tutorials, and they're in different categories. I saw you just recently released one on finance, which I actually bookmarked it because I'm going to go through it and look at it. You help more than a million people every day. So, how was it when you first started out? Like, how was, I guess, you could say, the grind? How was it in those early days? QUINCY: I'm a big advocate of, you know, for work-life balance, but, like, I kind of, like, exclude founders from that. I really do think that if you're trying to get something started, you're going to have to work really hard and probably way beyond what would be reasonable for a person who's getting a salary or working at an existing company if you're trying to get things started. So, I mean, it was, like, 100-hour weeks, maybe 120 some weeks [laughs]. I would sleep and just wake up and get to my desk and try to, like, put out fires, fix the server, improve the codebase, respond to learners in the community who had feedback, deal with support issues. Like, I was basically doing everything myself. And gradually, we were able to, like, build out the team over a long period of time. But really, the first few years was me self-financing everything with just my teacher savings. I spent, like, $150,000 of my own money just trying to keep freeCodeCamp going. For the first couple of years, we got tax-exempt status from the IRS. When that finally happened, I was like, great, like, let's go out and see if we can get some people to donate. So, we started asking people who were using freeCodeCamp if they'd be willing to donate $3 a month and eventually $5 a month, and we were able to support the organization through that. Really, it's just like a grassroots donor-supported effort. And then, we've been able to get some grants from Linux Foundation, and From Google, from Microsoft, from a whole lot of other big tech companies, and from some other nonprofits in the space. But mostly, it's just been, like, individual donors donating $5. And if you get enough people doing that, you get, like, a budget where you can actually pay for, you know, we have more than 100 servers around the world serving freeCodeCamp in, like, six different languages. We have, you know, all these other, like, initiatives. Like, we've got Code Radio, where you can go listen to Lo-fi while you're coding. And there are servers all over the world. And you can change the bit rate to suit whatever data you have and everything. Like, we wanted to just offer a whole lot of different services. We have mobile apps now. We've got an iOS and an Android app for freeCodeCamp. And then, of course, we've got the podcasts. We've got four podcasts: one in English, which I host, and then we've got one in Spanish, one in Portuguese, and one in Chinese. VICTORIA: Yeah, I absolutely want to ask you more about your podcasts. But first, I wanted to hear–can you tell me a little more about the decision to be 501(c)(3) or a nonprofit status? And were you always firm in that decision? Do people question it? And what was the real reasoning and commitment to that formation? QUINCY: I guess I would consider myself an idealist. Like, I genuinely believe that most educational endeavors should be, you know, nonprofit. They should be driven by either governments or by charities. I'm always kind of skeptical when there's, like, some late-night TV commercial, like, "Viewer, we'll help you get our degree," and it's from, like, a private for-profit university, something like that. So, I was like, in education...and I don't think everything in society needs to be that way, but I do think, like, education and, to an extent, healthcare these should be led by charities. Like, you know, the Red Cross, or, like, Doctors Without Borders, or churches, you know, own many of the universities, many of the hospital systems in the United States. I think that's a good thing. I think it's a very good thing that it's not just, you know, private profit-maximizing, market incentive-bound organizations that are doing all the stuff in education and in healthcare. I wanted to try to create something that, like, a lot of other people would see and say, "Oh wow, this charity can actually survive. It can sustain itself without raising a bunch of VC, without going public," or any of those things that a for-profit entity would do. And, again, I just want to emphasize, like, I don't think that iPhones should be made [chuckles] by nonprofits or anything like that. I'm just saying, like, for the purpose of actually educating people, the incentives are not necessarily aligned when you're trying to get money from...especially when you're talking about people that 60% of people on earth live off less than $10 a day. Those people should be spending their money on food. They should be spending their money on shelter. They should be spending their money on family. They should not be spending money on online courses, in my humble opinion. Like, online courses should be freely available to those people. So, to some extent, freeCodeCamp, we want to make sure that everybody everywhere in the world has access to first-rate learning resources on math, programming, computer science, regardless of their ability to pay. So, that's kind of, like, the ideal logical [inaudible 12:19], I guess, of freeCodeCamp. We kind of live that. Like, we're really serious. We will never pay, well, anything on freeCodeCamp. We won't account email gate anything. We are, I guess, absolutist in the sense that we want all of freeCodeCamp's learning resources to be free for everyone. Because of that, it made sense to like, incorporate as a 501 (c)(3) public charity. And so, we're tax-exempt. And people who donate to freeCodeCamp they can, you know, deduct it from their U.S. taxes. If a large company or even a small startup...we've had lots of startups like New Relic, like Retool, we've had Postman, Hostinger, a whole lot of different startups and mid-sized tech companies, Pulumi, Appsmith, they've all given us these grants that we can use to develop courses. So, we can often develop courses incorporating those resources. But that's tax-exempt, right? They can deduct that from their U.S. taxes. So, it's a big incentive for other people to partner with us and for people to donate funds to us. And it allows us to have the interests aligned in the sense that only people who have, you know, free cash flow or who have disposable income those are the people that are supporting freeCodeCamp. For the people that are, you know, single parents or that are taking care of their aging relatives, or are already working two jobs, or are completely unemployed and don't have any funds to speak of that are using the public library computer to access freeCodeCamp, right? Or using freeCodeCamp on a $50 prepaid phone from Walmart or something like that, right? Like those people can still use freeCodeCamp, and we can have the people who do have resources subsidize everyone else. WILL: Wow. I absolutely love that because...and I wish freeCodeCamp was around whenever I was in, like, high school and, you know, the early 2000s because we just didn't have the resources because I grew up in a small town in Louisiana. And this could have been so beneficial to that community because, like you said, we didn't have the resources–someone to teach coding there. There was no developers around that town that I was in. So, I really appreciate that you're doing this for everyone. And I know for me even...so, when I reached out to you, I did it because I was excited because I've used freeCodeCamp so many times, so many times to learn just in my journey to become a senior developer. Like, freeCodeCamp was one of the resources that I used because, one, it was free. But it wasn't...I think sometimes you can get free resources, and it's not great quality almost. Like, it's almost like you're more confused than before. But with freeCodeCamp, it was very, very amazing quality. And it was very clear on what I was learning. Honestly, thank you for helping me grow as a developer, just, honestly, thank you for that. QUINCY: Absolutely, Will. I feel honored to have helped you. And, yes, we want to help all the kids who are growing up in rural Louisiana or...I'm from, you know, Oklahoma City, not, like, the biggest, most prosperous city in the United States. Like, I want to help all of my friends who growing up who were eating meals provided by the state school system or my older friends who are on disability. Like, I want to make sure that they have resources, too. And in the process of doing that, it's a privilege to also serve all the working software engineers like you out there who just need, like, a reference resource or, like, oh, I've heard about Bun JS or Tailwind CSS. Or something like, I'm going to watch this three-hour course where I'm going to learn how to do Flutter. Like, freeCodeCamp has a 37-hour Flutter course. So, we've got, like, all these courses on using OpenAI APIs and things like that, too, right? So, it's not just for beginners, but we definitely want to, like, first and foremost, we want to serve people who we're kind of, like, the resource of last resort for, if you want to think of it that way. Like, only freeCodeCamp can help these people. Sure, they can probably use some other free courses on YouTube. And there are lots of other blogs that publish good tutorials and stuff. But freeCodeCamp is like an organized effort, specifically to help those people in need. And just kind of a side benefit of it is that you know, more established, experienced devs like you also get kind of, like, some benefit out of it as well. WILL: Whenever you were a developer, and you decided to start freeCodeCamp, how many years of experience did you have? And how did you overcome impostor syndrome, not only as a developer but as a founder? Because I feel like just overcoming it as a developer is hard, but you were also, you know, like you said, you know, handling everything for freeCodeCamp. So, how did you do that? And kind of tell us about that experience. QUINCY: Yeah. So, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think most founders probably don't know what they're doing. And I think that's totally fine because you can learn while you're doing. And we live in the United States, which is a country that kind of rewards experimentation and does not punish failure as much as a lot of other cultures does. Even if you try really hard, you're going to learn a tremendous amount, and you're going to try your next project. And that's what I did. I tried...I launched several educational, like, open learning resource-type projects, and none of them made any dent at all [laughs] in the proverbial universe. Like, nobody cared. Like, I would go and, like, I'd be talking to people. And I'd be explaining, like, "Oh, this solves this problem that you have." And you could kind of tell, like, people would sign in one time just to be polite, but then they'd never sign in again. So, it was very tricky to get traction. And I read a bunch of books. And I went to a lot of founder-focused meetups in San Francisco Bay Area. I had, like, moved out to San Francisco, specifically to try to, like, kind of make up for my deficit, the fact that I didn't know anybody because I was from Oklahoma City. I didn't know anybody in tech. And I didn't have, like, a fancy, you know, pedigree from, like, Harvard, or Wharton, or something like that, right? Like, I went to, like, a state university, and I studied English, right? And [chuckles] so, I didn't even have, like, a CS degree or anything like that. So, I definitely felt like an impostor. I just had to kind of, like, power through that and be okay with that. And it's something a little bit easier for me to do because, you know, I'm a White guy with glasses and a beard. And, like, nobody's walking up saying, "Are you sure you're a developer?" Or like, "Are you in marketing?" You know, like, the typical kind of, like, slight that they may say to somebody who doesn't necessarily look like me. And so I didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, but there was still a lot of just self-doubt that I had to power through. And I think that was a big advantage for me. It was just, like, I was kind of, like, at war with myself and my own confidence. In fact, I found the software development community, and especially the open-source community, to be incredibly uplifting and empowering. And, like, they want to see you win. They want you to sit down and build a really cool project over the weekend and in the hackathon and present it. And, you know, they want you to learn. They know that you know, everybody is going to learn at a different rate and that a lot of people are going to get discouraged and leave tech and just go back to working in whatever field they were working in before. And that's totally cool. But I do feel that they're there to support you and to encourage you. And there are lots of different events. There are lots of different communities. I recently listened to the founder of Women Who Code, who was on this very podcast [laughs], Giant Robots Smashing Into Giant Robots, the greatest podcast name of all time. And, you know, there are people out there that are working very hard to make it easier for folks to get into tech. I think that that has been a huge part. Even before freeCodeCamp, you know, there were Harvard professors–Stanford professors putting their entire coursework for free online. You could go to, like, different tech events around California, for example, where I was when I was learning to code. And there'd just be tons of people that were eager to, like, learn more about you and to welcome you. And there would be, you know, recruiters that would talk to you and say, "Well, you may not be ready yet, but, like, let's talk in six months," right? And so, there was kind of, like, that spirit of you're going to get there. It's just going to take a lot of time. Nobody was telling me, "Oh, learning to code is easy," [chuckles] because it's not easy. There were lots of people that were, like, "Learning to code is hard. But you've got this. Just stick with it. If I could be of help, let me know," people who would pair program with me to help me, like, improve my chops, people who would volunteer to, like, look at my projects and give design feedback, all those kinds of things. And I think you're going to find all those things on the web. You're going to find those things in the open-source community. freeCodeCamp has a forum where people volunteer their time and energy to help build one another up and help one another get unstuck on whatever projects they're working on, give feedback on projects. And so, I think, to a large extent, the very giving nature, I almost want to say, like, selfless nature, of the global software developer community that is what saved me. And that's what enabled me to transition into this field, even as a teacher in his 30s. VICTORIA: It's interesting you say that. Because I feel as someone who hires engineers and developers, I love people who have teaching backgrounds because it means they're five-star communicators [laughs]. And I think that you know, in your job, when you're pairing with other developers, or you're talking to clients, in our case, that communicating what you're working on and how you're thinking about something is, like, 50% of the job [laughs]. For freeCodeCamp, I saw you have 40,000 people have found jobs after completing courses on there. I hope you feel like you've really, like, established some success here already. But what's on the horizon? What are you looking forward to in the next six months or six years with freeCodeCamp? QUINCY: Yeah, I'll be happy to answer that. But I want to emphasize what you just said: communication is, like, half the job. That's something that thoughtbot has gotten really early on. And I'll tell you that thoughtbot Playbook was incredibly helpful for me as a software developer and also early on for freeCodeCamp's team. And I think a lot of teams make use of that open resource. So, thank you for continuing to maintain that and kind of drive home that communication really is...like, meetings are essential [chuckles]. And it's not always just, like, leave me alone and let me go back to my cubicle and code. You know, I like to quote the old joke that, you know, weeks of coding can save you hours of meetings because I really do believe that communication is core. So, to answer your question about where freeCodeCamp is headed in terms of what kind of impact we'd like to have, I feel like we're just getting started. I feel like pretty much every Fortune 500 company wants to become a tech company in some way or another. Everybody is pushing things to the software layer because software is infinitely reproducible. It's so much easier to maintain software or fix things in production. Like, you realize, oh, there's a big problem. Like, we don't have to recall all the cars back to the dealerships to go and open up the hood and fix this, you know, mechanical defect. If we're controlling all these things at the software layer, right? We can potentially just deploy a fix and tell people like, "Hey, version update [chuckles], you know, download this security patch," or whatever, right? So, there are so many different things that you can do with software. I feel like the potential growth of the field of software and the number of software developers that the world will ultimately need...currently, we've got maybe 30 or 40 million developers on earth that are professional paid-to-code people. But I think that number is going to increase dramatically over the next 50 years or so. And I'll go ahead and address the elephant in the room [laughs] because pretty much everybody asks me this question like, "Don't you think that, like, tools like large language models like GPT-4 and things are going to obviate the need for so many developers?" And I think they're going to make individual developers more productive. But if you think about what code is, it's really extremely explicit directions for how to do something, whether you're using, you know, machine code, or you're using a scripting language like Python, or you're using English, and you're talking directly to the computer like you would on Star Trek. Essentially, you have to have a really deep understanding of the problem. And you need to know exactly what needs to be done in exactly what sequence. You may not need to manipulate bytecode like you would back in the '70s. But you are going to need to understand the fundamental problems, and you're going to need to be able to address it. So, I'm optimistic that the number of developers is going to continue to grow. The developers are going to continue to command more and more, I guess, respect in society. And they're going to continue to have more and more agency in what they want to do with their careers and have more and more options and, ultimately, be able to command higher compensation, be able to work remotely if they'd like. Developers will continue to be able to ascend through corporate hierarchies and become, you know, vice presidents or even executives like the CEO, right? If you look at a lot of the big tech companies, the CEO is a developer. And I think that that will continue. And the computer science degrees will continue to be extremely valuable. So, what is freeCodeCamp working on now that we think will further help people? Well, we're working on a free four-year computer science degree, a Bachelor in computer science, and there's also an associate in mathematics that we're developing. And those are going to be a progression of 40 university-level courses that have labs and have a substantial block of lectures that you'll watch. And then, we'll also have final examinations and everything. And we're developing that curriculum. We've got one of the courses live, and we're developing the second one, and eventually, we'll have all 40. It'll take till the 2030s. But we're going to have those. And then, once we have some longitudinal data about graduates and their success rates and everything, we are going to apply for the accreditation process, and we're going to get accredited as a university, right? Like, you can go through that process. Not a lot of organizations do that; not a lot of new universities are coming about in the 2020s. But it is something that can be done. And we've done a great deal of research, talked to a bunch of accreditors, talked to a bunch of university admins who go through the accreditation process. We think we can do it. So, again, very long-term goal. But when you're a 501(c)(3) public charity, you don't have to worry about freeCodeCamp getting acquired or all the things that would traditionally happen with, like, a for-profit company. You have a lot more leeway to plan really far. And you've got, like, this really broad mandate in terms of what you want to accomplish. And even if, you know, creating a university degree program in the 2030s would not be a profitable endeavor that, like, a rational shareholder value-maximizing corporation would embark upon, it is the sort of project that, you know, a charity like freeCodeCamp could do. So, we're going to do it. 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. VICTORIA: I think that's great. And, actually, you know, I got my master's in information technology and project management online way back when. So, I really like the availability of modern computer science bachelor's and master's being available at that low price point. And you're able to pursue that with the business structure you put in place. I'm curious to kind of go back to something you said earlier on how widely available it is and how you spread out across all these multiple countries. Were there any technical architecture decisions that you had to make along the way? And how did those decisions end up turning out? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, one of the things we did was we located servers all around the world. We're multi-cloud, and we've got servers in different data centers in, like, Singapore, Europe, Latin America, and we're trying to reduce latency for everybody. Another thing that we've done is, you know, we don't use, like, Google Translate to just translate all our different pages into however many languages are currently available on Google Translate; I think it's, like, more than 100. We actually have a big localization effort that's led primarily by volunteers. We have some staff that oversee some of the translation. And essentially, we have a whole bunch of people working at translate.freecodecamp.org and translating the curriculum, translating the tutorials into major world languages. Most prominently would be Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Ukrainian. Like, all these different world languages, there's, like, a freeCodeCamp version for those, and you can go into the menu, and you can choose it. And it's actually, like, hand-translated by native speakers of that language who are developers. So, that's been another extremely, you know, time-intensive effort by the community. But we believe that, you know, the quality of the translations is really important. And we want that kind of human touch. We don't want kind of weird artifacts and typos that would be associated with machine translation. And we want to make sure that each of the challenges...because they're extremely tersely worded, again, communication is so important. If you go through the freeCodeCamp curriculum, we try to use as few words as absolutely necessary to effectively communicate what the task the learner needs to accomplish is, and we try to, just in time, teach them concepts. We don't want to present them with a big wall of text. Read this 20-page PDF to understand how, you know, CSS, you know, borders work or something like that. No, we're teaching, like, kind of, like, just in time, like, okay, let's write this line of code. Okay, great, the test passed. Let's go to this next one. This test isn't passing. Here is some contextual-specific hints as to why your code is not passing, why you're not able to advance, right? And we do projects [inaudible 30:30] to learn where we break everything down into steps. So, that's a lot of instructions that need to be very carefully translated into these different world languages to truly make freeCodeCamp accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to be fortunate enough to grow up speaking English at a native level, right? I would say that's our main consideration is, like, the localization effort but also just having servers everywhere and doing everything we can to comply with, like, all the different data rules and privacy rules and everything of all these different countries. It's a lot of work, but in my humble opinion, it's worth it. WILL: I had, like, a two-part question because I wanted to loop back around. When you're talking about the free bachelor's program, one, does anything like that exist where you can get a bachelor-level program, and it's free? And then the second part is, how many countries are you in? QUINCY: Yeah, so currently, lots of governments in Europe, for example, will offer free degrees that are kind of subsidized by the state. There may be some other kind of degree equivalent programs that are offered that are subsidized by corporations. For example, if you work at Starbucks, I think you can get a degree from Arizona State University. And that's a great benefit that Starbucks offers to people. Arizona State University, of course, being one of the biggest public universities in the United States in terms of enrollment. As far as free degrees, though, in the United States, there's nothing like that where, like, literally anyone can just go and get a degree for free without needing to enroll, without needing to pay any sort of fees. There are tuition-free programs, but they still charge you fees for, like, taking exams and things like that. What I like to call ultra-low-cost degree providers–there's Western Governors University, and there's University of the People. And both of these are accredited institutions that you can go, and you can get a degree for, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. And it's a full-blown four-year degree. Now, that is amazing. I applaud those efforts. I've enjoyed talking to the folks at those different schools. I think the next step is to go truly free. There's nothing blocking you at all. You don't have to be banked. You don't have to have a credit card. You don't have to have any money. You can still get this degree. That's what we're chasing. And I think we'll get there, but it's just a lot of work. WILL: So, it's blowing my mind. It's just blowing me away because, like, you know, we talk about the student loan crisis, I would say. The impact if...when—I'm not going to say if—when you do this, the impact that can have on there, have you thought about that? And kind of, if you have, what has been your thoughts around that? QUINCY: Yeah, so there are $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans in the United States. That's money that individual people, most of whom don't make a ton of money, right? Like, many of those people didn't actually finish the degree that they incurred the debt to pursue. Many of them had to drop out for a variety of different reasons or defer. Maybe they'll eventually finish those degrees. But as you can see from, like, the macroeconomic, educational, like, labor market data, like, having a partial degree doesn't make a big difference in terms of your earning power. You really need to finish the degree to be able to realize the benefits of having spent all that time studying, and a lot of people haven't. So, yes, there are, like, a lot of people out there that went to medical school, for example, and they're working as physicians. And they are going to eventually be able to pay that off because they're doctors, and they're commanding a great compensation, right? And they've got tons of career options. But if you studied English like I did and you incurred a whole lot of student debt, it could take a very long time for you to make enough money as a teacher, or as, like, a grant writer, or working at a newspaper, or something like that. Like, it can take you years to pay it off. And, in the meantime, it's just continuing to accumulate interest in your, you know, you might be a very diligent person who pays their student loan bill every single month, and yet, you could see that amount, the total amount that you owe continuing to grow despite this. That's just the nature of the time value of money and the nature of debt. And I thank my lucky stars that I went to school back in, like, 2000. Like, my tuition was $1,000 a semester, right? I mean, it's incredible. But that was, like, at a state school, like, a public university in the middle of Oklahoma. And it's not, like, a university you've heard of. It's basically, like, the cheapest possible option. I think community colleges can make a huge dent. I always implore people to think more about community colleges. I've talked with so many people on the freeCodeCamp podcast who were able to leverage community colleges and then transition into a, you know, research university, like a state school, and finish up their degree there. But they saved, like, basically half their money because they were paying almost nothing to attend the community college. And in California especially, the community colleges are just ridiculously worth it. Like, you're paying a few hundred dollars a course. I mean, it's just incredible value. So, I think the community college system is going to play a big role. But my hope is that, you know, freeCodeCamp can thrive. And it'll take us years for people to realize because if you go on, like, Google Ads and you try to run a Google Ad for, like, any sort of educational-related topic, anything related to higher education, it's, like, hundreds of dollars per click because there are all these for-profit universities that make a tremendous amount of money from getting people who just came back from serving in the military and getting, like, huge chunks of their GI Bill, or getting, like, all these federal subsidies, any number of things. Or basically just tricking families into paying huge amounts of money when they could have attended a much more sensible public university, you know, a private nonprofit university that doesn't charge an arm and a leg. So, I think that we are going to have an impact. I just want to say that I don't think that this is a panacea. It's going to take many years for freeCodeCamp to be adopted by a whole lot of people. It will take a long time for employers to look at the freeCodeCamp degree and say, "Oh, this is comparable to a computer science degree from..." say, Ohio State, or UT Austin, or something like that, right? Like, it's going to be a long time before we can get that level of buy-in. I don't want anybody listening to say, "Oh, I'd love to get a computer science degree. I'm just going to hold out and get the degree from freeCodeCamp." Like, my humble advice would be: go to a community college, then go to a state school. Get that four-year computer science degree. It is worth its weight in gold. But you don't want to accumulate a lot of debt. Just try to like, minimize your debt in the meantime. And, hopefully, over time, you know, the free model will prove out, and it'll just be a whole bunch of alumni supporting freeCodeCamp. And that's the dream is that, like, you know, Michael Bloomberg gave a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins University, a billion dollars. Like, Johns Hopkins never needs to charge tuition again with a billion dollars. They can just basically operate their institution off the interest from that, right? And lots of institutions...like, Harvard has, I don't know, like, 60-plus billion dollars in their endowment, right? So, the idea would be freeCodeCamp continues to get this, you know, huge alumni network of people who are doing great and who went to freeCodeCamp and who basically donate back in. And then, we can essentially have the deep pockets subsidizing everybody else who's just at the beginning of their careers who don't have a lot of earning power. You know, when I was a teenager, when I was in my 20s, I worked at convenience stores. I worked at Taco Bell. I did all kinds of, like, literally showing up at 6:00 a.m. to mop the grocery store-type jobs, right? And that is not a path to being able to afford an education in 2023. University tuition is out of control. It's, like, ridiculously high. It's grown way faster than inflation for decades. So, what can we do to alleviate that pressure? In my humble opinion, we just need to come up with free options and support ultra-low-cost options that are already out there. VICTORIA: I was going to ask, but you might have already answered this question somewhat. But I get this question a lot for people who are interested in getting into tech, whether they should get a computer science degree or go to a bootcamp. And I think you've mentioned all the positive things about getting a degree. I'm curious if, in your degree program, you would also tailor it more to what people might expect in a modern tech market and industry in their first job. QUINCY: Yeah. So, the way that we're developing our degree program is we essentially did, like, an analysis of the top 20 computer science programs in the United States: Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, all those schools that you would think of as being, like, really good computer science programs. And we basically drew a best-fit line through all their course offerings and looked at all their textbooks and everything that they cover. And, essentially, we're teaching a composite of those top 20 programs. Now, there are some things that, surprisingly, those programs don't offer, such as a course on ethics. It's something like 13% of those degree programs require an ethics course. And I think every developer should take a developer ethics course, or at least some sort of philosophy course to, like, understand what does it mean to be a good person? [laughs] Like, what is, you know, an anti-pattern? What is Blackhat user experiences? [laughs] I'm like, when should I, like, raise my hand during a meeting to say like, "Hey, should we really be doing this?" You know. So, ethics–security courses–I was surprised that not very many of those degree programs offer a course in information security, which I believe should be required. So, I'm kind of editorializing a little bit on top of what the composite says. But I feel very strongly that, you know, our degree program needs to have those courses. But in general, it's just everything that everybody else is teaching. And yes, like, a coding bootcamp...I've written a lot about coding bootcamps. I wrote, like, a Coding Bootcamp Handbook, which you can just Google, like, "Coding bootcamp book" or something like that, probably then you can find it. But, essentially like, those programs are usually private. Even if it's at a big, public university, it's often run by a big, private for-profit bootcamp chain. I don't want to say, like, all bootcamps are a bad deal, but buyer beware [laughs]. Frankly, I don't think that you can learn everything you need to know to be a software engineer within the compressed timelines that a lot of those bootcamps are operating under. There's a reason it takes four years to get a computer science degree because: there's a tremendous amount of math, programming, computer science, engineering knowledge that you need to cultivate. And you can absolutely get a developer job without a computer science degree. I don't have a computer science degree [chuckles], and I worked as a software engineer, right? And I know plenty of people who are doing that that didn't even go to college, right? People who were truckers or people who were doing construction work who just sat down and hit the books really hard and came out the other side being able to work as a software developer. But it is going to be vastly easier for you if you do have a computer science degree. Now, if you're in your 30s, if you've got kids, if you've got a whole lot of other obligations, should you go back to school? Maybe not. And so, it's not cut and dry, like, oh, just drop whatever you're doing and go back to...The situation is going to be nuanced. If you've already got a job working as a developer, should you go back and get a CS degree? Probably not. Maybe you can get your employer to pay for you to go to, like, a CS master's program, for example. There are a lot of really good online master's degree programs. Like, Georgia Tech has a master's in computer science that is very affordable, and it's very good. Georgia Tech is one of the best computer science programs in the United States. So, definitely, like, everybody's situation is going to be different. And there's no blanket advice. I would just be very wary of, like, anybody who's talking to you who wants your money [laughs]. freeCodeCamp will never want your money for anything. Like, we would love to have your donation long after you're a successful developer. You turn around and, like, send the elevator back down by donating to freeCodeCamp. But just be skeptical and, like, do your research and don't buy into, like, the marketing speak about, like, being able to get a job immediately. "Oh, it's easy. Anybody can learn to code." Like, I do believe any sufficiently motivated person can learn to code. But I also believe that it's a process that can take years, especially if you're doing the safe thing and continuing to work your day job while you learn these skills over a much longer period of time. I don't believe learning in a compressed kind of bootcamp...like, if you think about, you know, bootcamp in the military, like, this is, like, you're getting shipped away, and you're doing nothing but, like, learning these skills and everything like that. And I don't think that that's right for programming, personally [laughs]. I think there's a reason why many of these programs have gone from 9 weeks to 12 weeks to 6 months. Some of them might be, like, an entire year now. It's because it's them kind of admitting that, like, oh, there's quite a bit to learn here, and it's going to take some time. And there's diminishing returns to learning a whole bunch of hours in a day. I think you'll make much better gains studying programming 1 hour a day for 365 days than you'll make studying, you know, 8 hours a day for, like, two months or something like that if that makes sense. I'm not sure if the math works out there. But my point is, it's totally fine, and it's actually quite optimal to just work your day job, take care of your kids, spend time with your parents, you know, do all those things, hang out with friends and have a social life, all those things in addition to just having programming be one of those things you're working on in the background with your mornings or your evenings. WILL: Tell us a little bit about your podcast. Yeah, tell us kind of what's the purpose of it and just the history of it. QUINCY: Yeah. Well, I learned from the best. So, I'm a longtime listener of this podcast, of course. My friend, Saron Yitbarek, hosts CodeNewbie, which is an excellent podcast, the Changelog, which is an open-source podcast. I've had a great time interviewing the Changelog hosts and being on their show several times. So, I basically just learned as much as I could, and then I just went out and started interviewing people. And so, I've interviewed a lot of devs. I've interviewed people that are, like, learning to code driving Uber. I've interviewed the founder of Stack Overflow [chuckles], Jeff Atwood. I'm going to interview the founder of Trello in a few weeks when I'm back out in New York City. And I do my interviews in person. I just have my mobile studio. When I'm in San Francisco–when I'm in New York, I just go around and do a bunch of interviews and kind of bank them, and then I edit them myself and publish them. And the goal is just to give people exposure to developers. What are developers thinking? What are developers talking about? What do developers care about? And I try to hit, like, a very broad range of developers, try to talk to as many women as possible and, you know, striving for, like, 50% representation or better on the podcast. And I talk to a lot of people from different countries, although that's a little harder to do when you're recording in person. I may break down and do some over Zencastr, which is a tool we used in the past. I just like the spontaneity and the fun of meeting with people in person. But yeah, it's just like, if you are looking for, like, long-form, some of these are, like, two-and-a-half-hour long discussions, where we really delve into people's backstory and, like, what inspired them to become a developer, what they're learning along the way, how they feel about different aspects of software development. Like, for example, earlier, Will, you mentioned impostor syndrome, which is something I think virtually everybody struggles with in some capacity, you know, the freeCodeCamp podcast, tune in [chuckles] and subscribe. And if you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it. I'm still learning. I'm doing my best as a podcast host. And I'm constantly learning about tech as it evolves, as new tools come out, as new practices are pioneered. There's entire new technologies, like large language models, that actually work. And, I mean, we've had those since, like, the '60s, like, language models and stuff, but, like, only recently have they become incredibly impressive, exploring these tools and exploring a lot of the people behind them. VICTORIA: Okay, great. Do you have any questions for me or Will? QUINCY: Yeah. What inspired you all to get involved in tech, in...I don't know if somebody...did somebody at thoughtbot actually approach you and say, "Hey, we want you to run this"? Or was it something where like, "I'd love to run this"? Like, because podcasting is not easy. You're putting yourself out there. You're saying things that are recorded forever [laughs]. And so, if you say something really naive or silly or something like that, that's kind of always there, right? It takes a certain amount of bravery to do this. What got you into hosting this podcast? VICTORIA: For me, I mean, if I go way back before getting into tech, my mom she got her undergraduate degree in horticulture to become a florist, and then realized she couldn't make any money off that and went back to school for computer science. And so, she taught me how to use a computer really early on. And when I was in school, I had started in architecture, and then I wanted to change into business intelligence. But I didn't want to apply to the business school, so I got a degree in economics and a job at the IT help desk. And then from there, I was able to kind of transition into tech as a teacher, which was oddly enough...my first job in tech was training a 400-person program how to do, like, version management, and peer reviews [laughs], and timekeeping. And the reason I got the job is a friend from rock climbing introduced me, and he's like, they're like, "Oh, well, you train people how to rock climb. You can train people how to, like, do this stuff." [laughs] I'm like, oh, okay, that sounds great. But anyways, I worked my way up into project management and ended up getting my masters in IT. And when I came to thoughtbot, I had just moved to California, and I wanted to rebuild my network. I had a big network in D.C., organizing meetups and DevOps D.C., Women Who Code, teaching people, and communicating. And I ran a very small podcast there with a friend. So, when I joined thoughtbot, a podcast was a great way to just meet different people, expand my network, give people something to talk to me about when I go to events [laughs] that's not just, like, let me sell you some DevOps work. For me, it's been really fun to just reach out to people that we admire in the community and hear their story, and a little bit about them, and what advice they have for themselves or for other people. And, usually, that ends up benefiting me as well. So, it's been very fun for me. QUINCY: So, your less conventional path into tech combined with your own experience doing podcasting, it sounds like you were a natural choice for hosting a podcast. VICTORIA: Right. And I think I said before we started the show I didn't realize that it was such a well-loved and long-running podcast [laughs] [inaudible 49:01]. But I think we've really come into our own a little bit with hosting, and it's been super fun to work with Will and Chad on it as well. QUINCY: Awesome. And, Will, what's your story, man? How did you get onto the coveted Giant Robots Smashing into Giant Robots podcast? WILL: I actually went to college for sports medicine, and I was on track to go to med school, but my senior year...which I wish I would have had this conversation with myself a lot earlier, didn't have to do the hard work that I did at undergraduate. But my senior year, I was like, why am I really going to med school? And, honestly, it was more for the money, for the...yeah, more for the money. I just wanted to get paid a lot of money. I was like, yeah, that's not going to sustain me. I need to just pivot. So, I pivoted–started working at some nonprofits. And I ended up losing my job and got another job at Buckle, the clothing store, which was not a great fit for me. It helped me provide, but that's just not who I am. I'm not a fashion icon [laughs]. And then I changed to a travel agency insurance company, which it paid the bills. I wasn't passionate about it at all, and it paid the bills. And I was still struggling from losing my job. It was the first time that I lost my job. And my spouse came to me one day and is like, "All right, we're going to have the serious talk." And we almost flipped roles because that's usually who I am. I'm like, "All right, let's have a real talk. Let's get down to it." But I was just in a bad place. And she was like, "All right, we have to change because we can't keep going down this path." So, she was like, "If you had a choice to do anything, what would you want to do?" And I was like, "Well, probably something with computers and coding because I never had that opportunity when I was growing up because of the small town." And she looked at me, and she's like, "Go sign up right now." And I was like, okay, I'm going to sign up. When you mentioned that you made a transition in your 30s, I was around my 30s when I made the transition into coding. And so, it was a big transition. It was a big pivot for me because I'm having to learn, almost like I'm in college again, which was eight years ago. And so, it was just tough, and it wasn't new. So, that's how I got into coding. How I got on the podcast: I think I was talking to Chad and my direct report. I was just talking to them about challenging myself, and so it was multiple things. But, like, writing blog posts that was actually very challenging to me. I still don't like to write. It's not my favorite thing. Give me math or something like that or science; that's where I feel at home. But whenever, you know, you talk about writing and stuff, I can do it, and I'm decent at it. But it's not something that I feel comfortable in. The same thing with the podcast. The reason why I got on here is because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and I wanted to grow. And I also wanted to get a chance to talk to people who's making a difference–who's impacting the world. So, like, this conversation today is like, yes, this is why I wanted to be a part of this podcast. So yeah, that's how I got started in tech and on the podcast. QUINCY: Awesome, Will. I'm thrilled that you went ahead and persevered and got into tech. It doesn't sound like it was a straight line, and it rarely is for people. But I'm always excited to meet somebody who learned to code in their 30s who stuck with it and is prospering as a result. So, congratulations to you. WILL: Thank you. VICTORIA: I'm still learning. I haven't quite got [inaudible 52:42] "Hello, worlds," multiple times [laughs]. But I don't really code every day for my job. I just kind of need to know what stuff is to be able to talk to people and in that way as a managing director. So, I appreciate Will bringing that backstory to this episode in particular. What else? Any other final takeaway that you'd like to leave our listeners with? QUINCY: I just want to thank you all for continuing to host this podcast, thoughtbot for operating the excellent Playbook, which, for anybody listening who is unfamiliar with, you should check it out. Again, it's just chock full of institutional wisdom accumulated over the years. And I hope everybody out there who's thinking about taking the plunge and learning coding or software development, or even, like, a semi-technical area of being in the software development process of learning visual design, learning how to do user experience research, any number of the different roles in tech, I hope you'll go for it. And I hope you will be as undaunted as you can. And just know that freeCodeCamp and the freeCodeCamp community we are in your corner. If you need to learn something, there's a very good chance that we have some tutorials written by thoughtful teachers who want people like you to come forward and like, read these resources and use it. There's a saying: like, the thing that programmers want the most is to have their code running in production somewhere. And, as a teacher, the thing you want the most is for you to have students, for you to have learning resources out there that are making a positive difference. So, again, I just count my blessings every day that I'm able to be involved in this community. I hope anyone listening who wants to transition into tech or to become even more technical gets involved in the freeCodeCamp community as well. We welcome you. WILL: Are there any opportunities? I know we talked about donations. So, for one, where can they go if they want to donate? And then also, like, you know, if developers want to get to be a part of the open-source network you have, is that possible? And how can they do that? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, if you want to donate to freeCodeCamp, just go to donate.freecodecamp.org. And you can become, like, a $5 a month donor, if you'd like. If you want to give a larger amount, I've got this article; just Google "How to Donate to freeCodeCamp." And I've written this detailed guide to, like, all the different ways like mailing checks. We had a gentleman who passed away and left a whole lot of money for freeCodeCamp in his will. So, those kinds of legacy gifts are definitely something. We've had people donate stock, like, any number of different things. I will bend over backwards to make sure that we can receive your donation, and we can give you a tax receipt so you can deduct it from your taxes as well if you'd like. And then, for contributing to freeCodeCamp, of course, we're an open-source project, and we welcome your code contributions. We have spent a great deal of time trying to make freeCodeCamp as hospitable as possible for both new developers who want to get involved and more senior developers who just want to do some, like, 20%-time type contributing to open-source projects: contribute.freecodecamp.org. So, again, donate.freecodecamp.org and contribute.freecodecamp.org. Those will take you where you need to go. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Thank you so much again, Quincy, for joining us. And 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. WILL: And you could find me on Twitter @will23larry. 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 is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com.Special Guest: Quincy Larson.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

We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! Peter Voss is the CEO and Chief Scientist of Aigo.ai, a groundbreaking alternative to conventional chatbots and generative models like ChatGPT. Aigo's chatbot is powered by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), enabling it to think, learn, and reason much like a human being. It boasts short-term and long-term memory, setting it apart in terms of personalized service and context-awareness. Along with host Chad Pytel, Peter talks about how most chatbots and AI systems today are basic. They can answer questions but can't understand or remember the context. Aigo.ai is different because it's built to think and learn more like humans. It can adapt and get better the more you use it. He also highlights the challenges Aigo.ai faces in securing venture capital, given that its innovative approach doesn't align with current investment models heavily focused on generative or deep learning AI. Peter and Chad agree that while generative AI serves certain functions well, the quest for a system that can think, learn, and reason like a human demands a fundamentally different approach. Aigo.ai Follow Aigo.ai on LinkedIn or YouTube. Follow Peter Voss on LinkedIn. Visit his website: optimal.org/voss.html Follow thoughtbot on X 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 Peter Voss, CEO and Chief Scientist at Aigo.ai. Peter, thanks so much for joining me. PETER: Yes, thank you. CHAD: So, tell us a little bit about what Aigo.ai does. You've been working in AI for a long time. And it seems like Aigo is sort of the current culmination of a lot of your 15 years of work, so... PETER: Yes, exactly. So, the quick way to describe our current product is a chatbot with a brain, and the important part is the brain. That basically, for the last 15-plus years, I've been working on the core technology for what's called AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, a system that can think, learn, reason similar to the way humans do. Now, we're not yet at human level with this technology. But it's a lot smarter and a lot more usable than traditional chatbots that don't have a brain. CHAD: I want to dig into this idea a little bit. I think, like a lot of people, I've used just traditional chatbots, particularly like ChatGPT is the latest. I've built some things on top of it. What is the brain that makes it different? Especially if you've used one, what is using Aigo going to be different? PETER: Right. I can give a concrete example of one of our customers then I can talk about the technology. So, one of our big customers is the 1-800-Flowers group of companies, which is Harry & David Popcorn Factory and several others. And wanted to provide a hyper-personalized concierge service for their customers where, you know, the system learns who you buy gifts for, for what occasions, you know, what your relationship is to them, and to basically remember who you are and what you want for each of their 20 million customers. And they tried different technologies out there, you know, all the top brands and so on, and they just couldn't get it off the ground. And the reason is because they really don't learn. And we now have 89% self-service on the things that we've implemented, which is pretty much unheard of for complex conversations. So, why can we do that? The reason is that our system has deep understanding. So, we have deep pausing, deep understanding, but more importantly, that the system remembers. It has short-term memory. It has long-term memory. And it uses that as context. So, you know, when you call back a second time, it'll remember what your previous call was, you know, what your preferences are, and so on. And it can basically use that information, the short and long-term memory, and reason about it. And that is really a step forward. Now, until ChatGPT, which is really very different technology from chatbot technology, I mean, chatbot technology, you're assuming...the kind of thing we're talking about is really augmenting call center, you know, automatic call center calls. There, you need deep integration into the customers' back-end system. You obviously need to know what the latest product availability is, what the customers' outstanding orders are, you know, all sorts of things like, you know, delivery schedules. And we probably have, like, two dozen APIs that connect our system to their various corporate databases and so on. Now, traditional chatbots obviously can do that. You hook up the APIs and do things, and it's, you know, it's a lot of work. But traditional chatbot technology really hasn't really changed much in 30 years. You basically have a categorizer; how can I help you? Basically, try to...what is the intent, intent categorizer? And then once your intent has been identified, you basically have a flowchart-type program that, you know, forces you down a flowchart. And that's what makes them so horrible because it doesn't use context. It doesn't have short-term memory. CHAD: And I just wanted to clarify the product and where you mentioned call center. So, this isn't just...or only text-based chat. This is voice. PETER: Yes. We started off with chat, and we now also have voice, so omnichannel. And the beauty of the system having the brain as well is you can jump from text messaging to a chat on the website to Apple ABC to voice, you know. So, you can basically move from one channel to another seamlessly. You know, so that's against traditional chatbot technology, which is really what everybody is still using. Now, ChatGPT, of course, the fact that it's called ChatGPT sort of makes it a bit confusing. And, I mean, it's phenomenal. The technology is absolutely phenomenal in terms of what it can do, you know, write poems and give you ideas. And the amount of information it's amazing. However, it's really not suited for commercial-grade applications because it hallucinates and it doesn't have memory. CHAD: You can give it some context, but it's basically faking it. You're providing it information every time you start to use it. PETER: Correct. The next time you connect, that memory is gone, you know [crosstalk 05:58] CHAD: Unless you build an application that saves it and then feeds it in again. PETER: Right. Then you basically run out of context we know very quickly. In fact, I just published a white paper about how we can get to human-level AI. And one of the things we did and go over in the paper is we did a benchmark our technology where we fed the system about 300 or 400 facts, simple facts. You know, it might be my sister likes chocolate or, you know, it could be other things like I don't park my car in the garage or [chuckles], you know. It could be just simple facts, a few hundred of those. And then we asked questions about that. Now, ChatGPT scored less than 1% on that because, you know, with an 8K window, it basically just couldn't remember any of this stuff. So, we use -- CHAD: It also doesn't, in my experience...it's basically answering the way it thinks the answer should sound or look. And so, it doesn't actually understand the facts that you give it. PETER: Exactly. CHAD: And so, if you feed it a bunch of things which are similar, it gets really confused because it doesn't actually understand the things. It might answer correctly, but it will, in my experience, just as likely answer incorrectly. PETER: Yeah. So, it's extremely powerful technology for helping search as well if a company has all the documents and they...but the human always has to be in the loop. It just makes way too many mistakes. But it's very useful if it gives you information 8 out of 10 times and saves you a lot of time. And it's relatively easy to detect the other two times where it gives you wrong information. Now, I know in programming, sometimes, it's given me wrong information and ended up taking longer to debug the misinformation it gave me than it would have taken me. But overall, it's still a very, very powerful tool. But it really isn't suitable for, you know, serious chatbot applications that are integrated into back-end system because these need to be signed off by...legal department needs to be happy that it's not going to get the company into trouble. Marketing department needs to sign off on it and customer experience, you know. And a generative system like that, you really can't rely on what it's going to say, and that's apart from security concerns and, you know, the lack of memory and deep understanding. CHAD: Yeah. So, you mentioned generative AI, which is sort of one of the underlying pieces of ChatGPT. In your solutions, are you using any generative solutions? PETER: No, not at all. Well, I can give one example. You know, what 1-800-Flowers do is they have an option to write a poem for your mother's birthday or Mother's Day or something like it. And for that, we will use ChatGPT, or they use ChatGPT for that because that's what it's good at. But, you know, that's really just any other app that you might call up to do something for you, you know, like calling up FedEx to find out where your goods are. Apart from that, our technology...it's a good question you ask because, you know, statistical systems and generative AI now have really dominated the AI scene for the last about 12 years, really sort of since DeepMind started. Because it's been incredibly successful to take masses amounts of data and masses amounts of computing power and, you know, number crunch them and then be able to categorize and identify images and, you know, do all sorts of magical things. But, the approach we use is cognitive AI as opposed to generative. It's a relatively unknown approach, but that's what we've been working on for 15 years. And it starts with the question of what does intelligence require to build a system so that it doesn't use masses amounts of data? It's not the quantity of data that counts. It's the quality of data. And it's important that it can learn incrementally as you go along like humans do and that it can validate what it learns. It can reason about, you know, new information. Does this make sense? Do I need to ask a follow-up question? You know, that kind of thing. So, it's cognitive AI. That's the approach we're using. CHAD: And, obviously, you have a product, and you've productized it. But you said, you know, we've been working on this, or you've been working on this model for a long time. How has it progressed? PETER: Yes, we are now on, depending on how you count, but on the third major version of it that we've started. And really, the progress has been determined by resources really than any technology. You know, it's not that we sort of have a big R&D requirement. It's really more development. But we are a relatively small company. And because we're using such different technology, it's actually been pretty hard to raise VC money. You know, they look at it and, you know, ask you, "What's your training data? How big is your model?" You know, and that kind of thing. CHAD: Oh, so the questions investors or people know to ask aren't relevant. PETER: Correct. And, you know, they bring in the AI experts, and then they say, "Well, what kind of deep learning, machine learning, or generative, or what transformer model are using?" And we say, "Well, we don't." And typically, that's kind of, "Oh okay, well, then it can't possibly work, you know, we don't understand it." So, we just recently launched. You know, with all the excitement of generative AI now recently, with so much money flowing into it, we actually launched a major development effort. Now we want to hire an additional a hundred people to basically crank up the IQ. So, over the years, you know, we're working on two aspects of it: one is to continually crank up the IQ of the system, that it can understand more and more complex situations; it can reason better and be able to handle bigger amounts of data. So, that's sort of the technical part that we've been working on. But then the other side, of course, running a business, a lot of our effort over the last 15 years has gone into making it industrial strength, you know, security, scalability, robustness of the system. Our current technology, our first version, was actually a SaaS model that we deployed behind a customer's firewall. CHAD: Yeah, I noticed that you're targeting more enterprise deployments. PETER: Yeah, that's at the moment because, financially, it makes more sense for us to kind of get off the ground to work with, you know, larger companies where we supply the technology, and it's deployed usually in the cloud but in their own cloud behind their firewall. So, they're very happy with that. You know, they have complete control over their data and reliability, and so on. But we provide the technology and then just licensing it. CHAD: Now, a lot of people are familiar with generative AI, you know, it runs on GPUs and that kind of thing. Does the hardware profile for where you're hosting it look the same as that, or is it different? PETER: No, no, no, it requires much less horsepower. So, I mean, we can run an agent on a five-year-old laptop, you know, and it doesn't...instead of it costing $100 million to train the model, it's like pennies [laughter] to train the model. I mean, we train it during our regression testing, and that we train it several times a day. 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: So, you mentioned ramping up the IQ is a goal of yours. With a cognitive model, does that mean just teaching it more things? What does it entail? PETER: Yes, there's a little bit of tension between commercial requirements and what you ultimately want for intelligence because a truly intelligent system, you want it to be very autonomous and adaptive and have a wide range of knowledge. Now, for current commercial applications we're doing, you actually don't want the system to learn things by itself or to make up stuff, you know, you want it to be predictable. So, they develop and to ultimately get to full human-level or AGI capability requires a system to be more adaptive–be able to learn things more. So, the one big change we are making to the system right now is natural language understanding or English understanding. And our current commercial version was actually developed through our—we call them AI psychologists, our linguists, and cognitive psychologists—by basically teaching it the rules of English grammar. And we've always known that that's suboptimal. So, with the current version, we are now actually teaching it English from the ground up the way a child might learn a language, so the language itself. So, it can learn any language. So, for commercial applications, that wasn't really a need. But to ultimately get to human level, it needs to be more adaptive, more autonomous, and have a wider range of knowledge than the commercial version. That's basically where our focus is. And, you know, we know what needs to be done, but, you know, it's quite a bit of work. That's why we need to hire about 100 people to deal with all of the different training things. It's largely training the system, you know, but there are also some architectural improvements we need to make on performance and the way the system reasons. CHAD: Well, you used the term Artificial General Intelligence. I understand you're one of the people who coined that term [chuckles] or the person. PETER: Yes. In 2002, I got together with two other people who felt that the time was ripe to get back to the original dream of AI, you know, from 60 years ago, to build thinking machines basically. So, we decided to write a book on the topic to put our ideas out there. And we were looking for a title for the book, and three of us—myself, Ben Goertzel, and Shane Legg, who's actually one of the founders of DeepMind; he was working for me at the time. And we were brainstorming it, and that's what we came up with was AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. CHAD: So, for people who aren't familiar, it's what you were sort of alluding to. You're basically trying to replicate the human brain, the way humans learn, right? That's the basic idea is -- PETER: Yeah, the human cognition really, yeah, human mind, human cognition. That's exactly right. I mean, we want an AI that can think, learn, and reason the way humans do, you know, that it can hit the box and learn a new topic, you know, you can have any kind of conversation. And we really believe we have the technology to do that. We've built quite a number of different prototypes that already show this kind of capability where it can, you know, read Wikipedia, integrate that with existing knowledge, and then have a conversation about it. And if it's not sure about something, it'll ask for clarification and things like that. We really just need to scale it up. And, of course, it's a huge deal for us to eventually get to human-level AI. CHAD: Yeah. How much sort of studying of the brain or cognition do you do in your work, where, you know, sort of going back and saying, "Okay, we want to tackle this thing"? Do you do research into cognition? PETER: Yeah, that's a very interesting question. It really gets to the heart of why I think we haven't made more progress in developing AGI. In fact, another white paper I published recently is "Why Don't We Have AGI Yet?" And, you know, one of the big problems is that statistical AI has been so incredibly successful over the last decade or so that it sucked all of the oxygen out of the air. But to your question, before I started on this project, I actually took off five years to study intelligence because, to me, that's really what cognitive AI approach is all about is you start off by saying, what is intelligence? What does it require? And I studied it from the perspective of philosophy, epistemology, theory of knowledge. You know, what's reality? How do we know anything? CHAD: [laughs] PETER: How can we be sure? You know, really those most fundamental questions. Then how do children learn? What do IQ tests measure? How does our intelligence differ to animal intelligence? What is that magic difference between, you know, evolution? Suddenly, we have this high-level cognition. And the short answer of that is being able to form abstract concepts or concept formation is sort of key, and to have metacognition, to be able to think about your own thinking. So, those are kind of the things I discovered during the five years of study. Obviously, I also looked at what had already been done in the field of AI, as in good old-fashioned AI, and neural networks, and so on. So, this is what brought me together. So, absolutely, as a starting point to say, what is intelligence? Or what are the aspects of intelligence that are really important and core? Now, as far as studying the brain is concerned, I certainly looked at that, but I pretty quickly decided that that wasn't that relevant. It's, you know, you certainly get some ideas. I mean, neural networks, ours is kind of a neural network or knowledge graph, so there's some similarity with that. But the analogy one often gives, which I think is not bad, is, you know, we've had flying machines for 100 years. We are still nowhere near reverse engineering a bird. CHAD: Right. PETER: So, you know, evolution and biology are just very different from designing things and using the materials that we need to use in computers. So, definitely, understanding intelligence, I think, is key to being able to build it. CHAD: Well, in some ways, that is part of the reason why statistical AI has gotten so much attention with that sort of airplane analogy because it's like, maybe we need to not try to replicate human cognition [chuckles]. Maybe we need to just embrace what computers are good at and try to find a different way. PETER: Right, right. But that argument really falls down when you say you are ignoring intelligence, you know, or you're ignoring the kind of intelligence. And we can see how ridiculous the sort of the current...well, I mean, first of all, let me say Sam Altman, and everybody says...well, they say two things: one, we have no idea how these things work, which is not a good thing if you're [chuckles] trying to build something and improve it. And the second thing they say...Demis Hassabis and, you know, everybody says it, "This is not going to get us to human-level AI, to human-level intelligence." They realize that this is the wrong approach. But they also haven't come up with what the right approach is because they are stuck within the statistical big data approach, you know, we need another 100 billion dollars to build even bigger computers with bigger models, you know, but that's really -- CHAD: Right. It might be creating a tool, which has some uses, but it is not actual; I mean, it's not really even actual artificial intelligence -- PETER: Correct. And, I mean, you can sort of see this very easily if...imagine you hired a personal assistant for yourself, a human. And, you know, they come to you, and they know how to use Excel and do QuickBooks or whatever, and a lot of things, so great. They start working with you. But, you know, every now and again, they say something that's completely wrong with full confidence, so that's a problem. Then the second thing is you tell them, "Well, we've just introduced a new product. We shut down this branch here. And, you know, I've got a new partner in the business and a new board member." And the next day, they come in, and they remember nothing of that, you know, [chuckles] that's not very intelligent. CHAD: Right. No, no, it's not. It's possible that there's a way for these two things to use each other, like generating intelligent-sounding, understanding what someone is saying and finding like things to it, and being able to generate meaningful, intelligent language might be useful in a cognitive model. PETER: We obviously thought long and hard about this, especially when, you know, generative AI became so powerful. I mean, it does some amazing things. So, can we combine the technology? And the answer is quite simply no. As I mentioned earlier, we can use generative AI kind of as an API or as a tool or something. You know, so if our system needs to write a poem or something, then yes, you know, these systems can do a good job of it. But the reason you can't really just combine them and kind of build a Frankensteinian kind of [laughs] thing is you really need to have context that you currently have fully integrated. So you can't have two brains, you know, the one brain, which is a read-only brain, and then our brain, our cognitive brain, which basically constantly adapts and uses the context of what it's heard using short-term memory, long-term memory, reasoning, and so on. So, all of those mental mechanisms of deep understanding of context, short-term and long-term memory, reasoning, language generation–they all have to be tightly integrated and work together. And that's basically the approach that we have. Now, like a human to...if you write, you know, "Generate an essay," and you want to have it come up with maybe some ideas, changing the style, for example, you know, it would make sense for our system to use a generative AI system like a tool because humans are good tool users. You know, I wouldn't expect our system to be the world chess champion or Go champion. It can use a chess-playing AI or a Go-playing AI to do that job. CHAD: That's really cool. You mentioned the short-term, long-term memory. If I am using or working on a deployment for Aigo, is that something that I specify, like, oh, this thing where we've collected goes in short term versus long term, or does the system actually do that automatically? PETER: That's the beauty of the system that: it automatically has short and long-term memory. So, really, the only thing that needs to be sort of externally specified is things you don't want to keep in long-term memory, you know, that for some reason, security reasons, or a company gives you a password or whatever. So, then, they need to be tagged. So, we have, like, an ontology that describes all of the different kinds of knowledge that you have. And in the ontology, you can tag certain branches of the ontology or certain nodes in the ontology to say, this should not be remembered, or this should be encrypted or, you know, whatever. But by default, everything that comes into short-term memory is remembered. So, you know, a computer can have photographic memory. CHAD: You know, that is part of why...someone critical of what they've heard might say, "Well, you're just replicating a human brain. How is this going to be better?" And I think that that's where you're just...what you said, like, when we do artificial general intelligence with computers, they all have photographic memory. PETER: Right. Well, in my presentations, when I give talks on this, I have the one slide that actually talks about how AI is superior to humans in as far as getting work done in cognition, and there's actually quite a number of things. So, let me first kind of give one example here. So, imagine you train up one AI to be a PhD-level cancer researcher, you know, it goes through whatever training, and reading, and coaching, and so on. So, you now have this PhD-level cancer researcher. You now make a million copies of that, and you have a million PhD-level cancer researchers chipping away at the problem. Now, I'm sure we would make a lot more progress, and you can now replicate that idea, that same thinking, you know, in energy, pollution, poverty, whatever, I mean, any disease, that kind of approach. So, I mean, that already is one major difference that you make copies of an AI, which you can't of humans. But there are other things. First of all, they are significantly less expensive than humans. Humans are very expensive. So much lower cost. They work 24/7 without breaks, without getting tired. I don't know the best human on how many hours they can concentrate without needing a break, maybe a few hours a day, or six, maybe four hours a day. So, 24/7. Then, they can communicate with each other much better than humans do because they could share information sort of by transferring blocks of data across from one to the other without the ego getting in the way. I mean, you take humans, not very good at sharing information and discoveries. Then they don't have certain distractions that we have like romantic things and kids in schools and, you know. CHAD: Although if you actually do get a full [laughs] AGI, then it might start to have those things [laughs]. PETER: Well, yeah, that's a whole nother topic. But our AIs, we basically build them not to want to have children [laughs] so, you know. And then, of course, things we spoke about, photographic memory. It has instantaneous access to all the information in the world, all the databases, you know, much better than we have, like, if we had a direct connection to the internet and brain, you know, but at a much higher bandwidth than we could ever achieve with our wetware. And then, lastly, they are much better at reasoning than humans are. I mean, our ability to reason is what I call an evolutionary afterthought. We are not actually that good at logical thinking, and AIs can be, you know. CHAD: We like to think we are, though. PETER: [chuckles] Well, you know, compared to animals, yes, definitely. We are significantly better. But realistically, humans are not that good at rational, logical thinking. CHAD: You know, I read something that a lot of decisions are made at a different level than the logical part. And then, the logical part justifies the decision. PETER: Yeah, absolutely. And, in fact, this is why smart people are actually worse at that because they're really good at rationalizations. You know, they can rationalize their weird beliefs and/or their weird behavior or something. That's true. CHAD: You mentioned that your primary customers are enterprises. Who makes up your ideal customer? And if someone was listening who matched that profile and wanted to get in touch with you, what would they look like? PETER: The simplest and most obvious way is if they have call centers of 100 people or more—hundreds, or thousands, tens of thousands even. But the economics from about 100 people in the call center, where we might be able to save them 50% of that, you know, depending on the kind of business. CHAD: And are your solutions typically employed before the actual people, and then they fall back to people in certain circumstances? PETER: Correct. That's exactly right. And, you know, the advantage there is, whatever Aigo already gathers, we then summarize it and pop that to the human operator so that, you know, that the customer -- CHAD: That's great because that's super annoying. PETER: It is. CHAD: [laughs] PETER: It is super annoying and -- CHAD: When you finally get to a person, and it's like, I just spent five minutes providing all this information that you apparently don't have. PETER: Right. Yeah, no, absolutely, that's kind of one of the key things that the AI has that information. It can summarize it and provide it to the live operator. So that would be, you know, the sort of the most obvious use case. But we also have use cases on the go with student assistant, for example, where it's sort of more on an individual basis. You know, imagine your kid just starts at university. It's just overwhelming. It can have a personal personal assistant, you know, that knows all about you in particular. But then also knows about the university, knows its way around, where you get your books, your meals, and, you know, different societies and curriculum and so on. Or diabetes coach, you know, where it can help people with diabetes manage their meals and activities, where it can learn whether you love broccoli, or you're vegetarian, or whatever, and help guide you through that. Internal help desks are another application, of course. CHAD: Yeah. I was going to say even the same thing as at a university when people join a big company, you know, there's an onboarding process. PETER: Exactly. Yeah. CHAD: And there could be things that you're not aware of or don't know where to find. PETER: Internal HR and IT, absolutely, as you say, on onboarding. Those are other applications where our technology is well-suited. And one other category is what we call a co-pilot. So, think of it as Clippy on steroids, you know, where basically you have complex software like, you know, SAP, or Salesforce, or something like that. And you can basically just have Aigo as a front end to it, and you can just talk to it. And it will know where to navigate, what to get, and basically do things, complex things in the software. And software vendors like that idea because people utilize more features of the software than they would otherwise, you know. It can accelerate your learning curve and make it much easier to use the product. So, you know, really, the technology that we have is industry and application-agnostic to a large extent. We're just currently not yet at human level. CHAD: Right. I hope you get there eventually. It'll be certainly exciting when you do. PETER: Yes. Well, we do expect to get there. We just, you know, as I said, we've just launched a project now to raise the additional money we need to hire the people that we need. And we actually believe we are only a few years away from full human-level intelligence or AGI. CHAD: Wow, that's exciting. So, if the solution that you currently have and people want to go along for the journey with you, how can they get in touch with Aigo? PETER: They could contact me directly: peter@aigo.ai. I'm also active on Twitter, LinkedIn. CHAD: Cool. We'll include all of those links in the show notes, which people can find at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions for me, email me at hosts@giantrobots.fm. Find me on Mastodon @cpytel@thoughtbot.social. You can find a complete transcript for this episode as well at giantrobots.fm. Peter, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it and all of the wisdom that you've shared with us today. PETER: Well, thank you. They were good questions. Thank you. CHAD: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com.Special Guest: Peter Voss.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

We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! __ Co-host Will Larry interviews Stephen Hanson, the Director of Mobile Development at thoughtbot. The two explore the complexities of mobile app development, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of React Native and Flutter. Stephen, who initially started as a full-stack web developer specializing in Enterprise Java, discusses React Native's cost-effectiveness and the convenience of having a unified codebase for iOS and Android platforms. However, he notes that Flutter might be a more suitable choice for high-performance needs. Both hosts emphasize the nuances of the mobile ecosystem, covering topics like in-app purchases, push notifications, and the strict guidelines set by app stores like Apple's. They agree that a comprehensive understanding of these aspects is crucial for an entire development team, including designers and project managers. Additionally, Stephen shares that the driving force behind his career is the opportunity to create apps that enhance people's lives. Stephen wraps up the discussion by detailing thoughtbot's goals of improving mobile development practices within the company and the broader developer community. __ React Native Flutter Follow Stephen Hanson on LinkedIn. Visit his website: shanson.co. Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: 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, Will Larry. And with me today is Stephen Hanson, Director of Mobile Development here at thoughtbot. Stephen, thank you for joining me. STEPHEN: Hi, Will. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. WILL: Yeah. I'm excited to talk about mobile development. But before we get started, tell us a little bit about who Stephen Hanson is: your personal life. STEPHEN: You know this because we often talk about our families when we get together. But I have two young kids, two and four years old. When you say personal life to anybody who has young kids, that's what we're talking about. [laughter] WILL: Yes. STEPHEN: So, they're keeping me busy but in the best way. WILL: Yeah, definitely. And I totally understand that. So, I know we talk about this often, but you like to woodwork. You like to work with your hands like most of us in tech. Like, we think so much with our head and mental that we try to find something to do physically, and yours is woodworking. Tell me a little bit about that. STEPHEN: Yeah. I think it's exactly what you said. I think working on a computer all day, you know, many years ago, I was like, what's something I can do with my hands, right? Something a little more physical. So yeah, fine woodworking has been a hobby of mine for quite a few years. And we were even chatting the other day about, you know, I'm trying to take time during the day to sneak out to the garage for 15 minutes, you know, during my lunch break or whatever to just get that mental reset and just work on something. WILL: Yeah. I know that you built your office that you work out of. I've been wanting to ask you, one, how did you do it? Two, how did you have the confidence to do it [laughter] to make sure that it was going to...how can I say this? I would be afraid that would it still be standing [laughter] after a little bit? [laughs] STEPHEN: Yeah, to be honest, that was definitely a fear. Yeah, I built my office in 2020, you know, COVID hit. All of a sudden, I was working fully remote. And we had another kid on the way. You know, we didn't have space in the house. So, I was like, what am I going to do? [laughs] I was already doing woodworking, but I didn't have any construction or carpentry experience. So, yeah, I definitely had the confidence issue. And I think, you know, I was just like, I don't know, let's just give it a try. [laughter] That's really all I can say. I didn't have the skills yet. But I watched a lot of YouTube and read a lot of [laughs] forums or, you know, just found info wherever I could, so...[laughs] WILL: Yep. And it's still standing today, correct? [laughs] STEPHEN: Correct. Yeah. [laughs] No, I'm just sitting in, like, a pile of rubble right now. [laughter] WILL: That's awesome, yeah. It's kind of like development sometimes for me. Like, you just got to take that leap sometimes, so... STEPHEN: You do, right? It's like, you know, fake it till you make it. [laughter] WILL: Yep. That's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So, tell us a little bit about how did you get started in development in general? And then, how did you get started in React Native? STEPHEN: Yeah. So, I started out as a full-stack web developer. So, I didn't initially set out and say, "I'm going to build mobile apps," right? And I started out in 2011. I was working in Enterprise Java. I worked for American Airlines for a couple of years, and then I did enterprise consulting. I eventually made my way to, like, Rails and front-end development. And around 2016, 2017, I was freelancing. And eventually, clients started asking me to build mobile apps. [chuckles] WILL: [inaudible 04:16] STEPHEN: And I didn't know how to build mobile apps. So, I did what any web developer would do who doesn't build apps, and I used web technology. So, those first couple of apps that I built were hybrid apps. I used Ionic. And those are, you know, web apps that you package in a Native Wrapper. So, developing these apps, I literally developed them in a browser, right? And they're web apps. [laughs] And that was my first experience building apps. Even if they were web-based, I still had to work with the native app stores and learn, you know, app review guidelines and implement some native functionality, even though it was through, like, the Ionic wrappers. You know, people kind of trash on hybrid apps, and sometimes for good reason. But that wasn't a bad first experience for me or outcome, honestly. The clients were happy. They had apps in the app stores that were working for a pretty reasonable development cost. So yeah, that was my first experience in mobile. The end result isn't something I'd be necessarily proud of today. [laughs] WILL: I think that's all devs. [laughs] STEPHEN: Yeah, you know, [laughter] yeah, I -- WILL: Looking back at their work, yeah. [laughs] STEPHEN: I was talking about that. I could look back to something I built a month ago. [laughs] WILL: Yes. [laughter] STEPHEN: You don't have to go back far. [laughter] WILL: Yeah, so true [laughs]. You started working with the client when you were freelancing. So, how did you go from the hybrid web apps to actually saying, okay, I want to change, and I want to go all in on React Native? STEPHEN: React Native came out around that same time I was building those hybrid apps. So, the hybrid apps were 2016, 2017. React Native came out in 2015. So it was out, but it was still pretty new. And I was really interested in React Native right from the beginning, but I was also a little intimidated by it [chuckles]. So, when those first clients came to me for mobile apps, I didn't feel confident enough to say, "Yes, I can build you a React Native app." But a year or two later, I was working for another client on their Rails app. And I was building an API for their new React Native app. You know, I was really interested in React Native. So I said, "Hey, [chuckles] why don't I help out on the app side, too?" And they were like, "Sure, that sounds great." So that was kind of where I got my foot in the door with React Native. And then more opportunities like that just kept popping up over the next year. So, I got to work on a couple of other React Native apps. And like we talked about, I just started calling myself a React Native developer [laughs]. The rest is history. WILL: Yep. So true. We'll touch more on that later. But what would you say to a client who is trying to figure out if they should build native versus React Native? STEPHEN: There's a few things to consider when making that decision. But I think, usually, what I've seen is it comes down to budget and user experience. The bottom line is React Native is going to be a lot cheaper. You're basically building one app instead of two, right? Most of your code in a React Native app is going to be in JavaScript, and you can reuse all of that code across Android and iOS. If you're building a native app, you're just building two completely separate apps. So, it's just going to be cheaper to build that React Native app, and a lot of times, that's what it comes down to. For most companies, it can be really hard to justify that extra cost of building a completely native app for each platform. But then the question is when we talk about how can you justify the cost? Well, what would justify the cost, right? [laughs] I think probably the biggest trade-off when you build a React Native app versus a purely native app is there is a little bit of a performance penalty by building in React Native versus native. So, I think apps that will need to have a very flashy cutting-edge experience with lots of user-driven animation and effects, you know, when you get into that domain, I think that's where we see pure native starting to make more sense. But most apps and users would never feel that performance penalty of React Native. So, for most apps, that's not really something that enters into the equation. WILL: I want to dig into something you said. You were talking about if you do go native, you usually have to build an iOS and an Android separately. But with React Native, you could do it together. So, for someone who's maybe never done either one of them, can you kind of dig into, like, what does that look like? So, when you say I have to build an iOS and an Android portion versus I can do one codebase for React Native, can you walk us through kind of what that looks like, just a sample feature? STEPHEN: When I say React Native is a single codebase and, you know, native apps, you're building two apps, the way React Native works is you're basically building a React app. So, all of your business logic is going to be in React. And when your React code renders some UI, that gets translated into native UI. But your business logic is still going to be living in that JavaScript React app. So, one, when I say performance penalty, that's what I'm talking about is: there's a little bit of a performance penalty communicating back and forth between your JavaScript thread and the native system thread. But when we talk about one codebase versus two, that's what a React Native app looks like. You basically are working on a React app. It's one codebase with one set of business logic. And when you say, "Show a modal on the screen," that gets translated into a native Android modal or a native iOS modal, but in your code, you're just saying, "Show a modal." [laughs] So, you're just writing that one time. So yeah, a React Native project is just one codebase. Now, one thing that we haven't really touched on is in a React Native app, you do have the ability to drop down into native code. So, you have access to the native Android project and the native iOS project in your React Native app. So, you can write completely native code if you want to. But the appeal of React Native is you don't have to, you know, unless you get into one of those situations where you need to do something native that isn't supported out of the box with React Native or by an existing third-party library, or you want to have a very performant, very interactive part of your app. Maybe there's a reason you want to do that in native. You know, you do have that option in a React Native app of dropping down into that native code level. But to contrast that with a purely native project, you will have two completely separate codebases, one for Android and one for iOS. You'll have a development team for Android and a development team for iOS, you know, typically with different skill sets. The Android project will be Java, Kotlin. And your iOS project is swift. So, just in every sense, you really have two different projects when you're working on a purely native app. WILL: Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So like, for React Native, that show modal is just however many lines to show that one modal, and it does it for iOS and Android. But when you talk about native, you're saying that; however, iOS says to show that modal, you have to do it that way. But then Android, you also have to do it the Android way. And one developer, unless they know both of them, may not be able to handle both for those cases, correct? STEPHEN: Yeah, exactly. React Native abstracts away those underlying platforms. So, you really just need to know React Native for most cases. Though, there's definitely a benefit of knowing the underlying platforms. WILL: Definitely. Especially, like you touched on if you wanted to go into that native portion to add in a feature. You know, for example, I know we both worked on a project where we had a scanning app. And we had to tap into that native portion and React Native in order to get the scanning app to work, correct? STEPHEN: Yeah, that's right. We had to support some barcode scanning devices and hook into those barcode scanning frameworks that were proprietary [chuckles] to those devices. So yeah, we had to build native modules for Android and iOS to support those. WILL: Gotcha. Okay. I want to touch back on something you said earlier about the flashy experiences. You said sometimes you may not see it or whatever, but sometimes, if you want that flashy experience, it's better to go the native route. Can you explain that a little bit more? STEPHEN: So yeah, it's kind of what I was touching on a second ago. You know, in a React Native app, you have the JavaScript thread that is always running and coordinating UI changes with business logic. So, you've got your business logic in JavaScript. You've got the UI in native. And those need to be coordinated to interact. So, that's kind of where that performance penalty can happen. You know, again, most apps and users would never feel this penalty. I've never been, like, using my phone and been like, oh, this is a React Native app; I can feel it, you know. [laughs] It's not something that typically enters the picture for most apps that we work on. But there are certain types of apps that might be more important, you know, highly interactive games or things that just need to have that extra flashiness and interactive flashiness specifically, where it could make sense to build that natively. Another interesting thing in the React Native space is React Native recently re-architected their rendering engine to be written in C++ and be more efficient. So, this performance overhead might be a little bit less of a trade-off. They've re-architected the way that React Native JavaScript talks to the native layer, which might make this even less of an issue going forward. WILL: I looked it up for the podcast. But do you know some of the companies that we probably are familiar with, like they built apps on React Native? Can you name a couple? STEPHEN: Yeah, I was recently looking at this, too. And, you know, the big one is Facebook, right? Facebook built React Native. So, they're the sponsor of that project. So, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, I believe those apps are built with React Native. I don't know if the entire apps are or not [chuckles]. Do you know by chance? [laughs] WILL: React Native on their website says, "Hey, we're going to showcase these apps that they're built in React Native." So, I'm guessing a huge portion of it was built in React Native, so... STEPHEN: Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, you're right. They're showcasing it there. So yeah, you know, other ones, you know, lots of brands, Shopify, looks like PlayStation. I'm looking at the list now on the React Native website: Pinterest, Flipkart, Discord, Walmart, Tesla, Coinbase, Mercari. Yeah, I mean, it's just a lot of big-name apps built in React Native, including quite a few that we've [laughs] that we've built. [laughter] 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. WILL: If I'm absolutely sold on getting that flashy experience, is native the only route to go? STEPHEN: I think until pretty recently, that would have been your option [laughs]. But Flutter has been picking up a little bit of momentum. So, Flutter is developed by Google. And it's kind of a challenger in that React Native space. It kind of has the same write once, run anywhere, you know, philosophy as React Native. You have one codebase. But they tout kind of being a more performant option than React Native. So, it compiles down to native ARM or Intel code, which can give better performance without, you know, not needing that JavaScript bridge kind of handling that communication between the UI and the business logic. WILL: So, when would you use Flutter versus React Native? STEPHEN: I kind of keep going back to, like, you know, we talk about the performance overhead of a React Native app. I don't think that's even on the map for the vast majority of apps. Like, this isn't a performance penalty that you can typically feel. So, looking at Flutter versus React Native, React Native has several advantages. I think the biggest one is it's React. So, every team has React developers already on the team, pretty much nowadays. So, you know, if you've got an organization that says, "Oh, we need to build a mobile app," they probably already have a team of React developers somewhere working on their web app [laughs]. So, there's a big benefit of kind of centralizing their team around that technology. You know, you can have a little bit of cross-pollination between web and mobile, which can be really nice. I think, similarly, it's a lot easier to find and hire React or React Native developers right now than it is to find and hire Flutter developers. So, Flutter is written in Dart, and it has its own front-end framework. So, this isn't necessarily a technology that you're going to have on your existing team. Like, I've never worked with Dart, personally. It's not nearly as common as React developers. You know, that, to me, is going to be a big downside. You know, the talent pool is a lot smaller for Flutter/Dart developers. Also, the ecosystem with Flutter being newer, it's not as established. It doesn't have as large of an ecosystem as React Native. So, for those reasons, I think React Native is still, at least for us, like, it's usually where we would steer a client over Flutter, unless they're in that category of, like, they're really going for something, you know, groundbreaking. And, you know, the choice is either, you know, they've ruled out React Native. They need to get that native performance, and maybe they could achieve that with Flutter, and maybe Flutter would be a good option then. WILL: Okay. You mentioned that—and I agree with you—like, you probably have some React devs on your team somewhere. Most companies does. So, say if I am bought in, I'm going all in on React Native, and I have React web developers on my team. Is that an easy transition for those developers, or what does that transition look like? STEPHEN: Yeah, this is something...I think you and I have talked about this a lot because we both transitioned from React Web to React Native. And, you know, it wasn't all that easy, right? [laughs] WILL: No, it was not [laughter] at all. [laughter] STEPHEN: So yeah, you know, it is a fallacy to say, "Hey, we've got a React team, you know, let's just start tomorrow on building an app, and it'll be smooth sailing. And, you know, no one needs to learn anything, and we'll be good to go," right? [laughs] So, you know, what I always say is a React web developer can successfully work on a React Native app. But I don't think they have the skills yet to lead that initiative because there's just so much to the mobile ecosystem that needs to be learned. And really, you know, my first couple of React Native apps, I wasn't the lead developer. There was somebody on those projects who really knew that space better than I did. And that was really helpful for me to have. How about you? What about your first, like, React Native project? What did that look like? WILL: It was at another company, and the exact words paraphrasing was, "You know React, so you can easily work on React Native." And so, I got on the project. And I really struggled, to be honest with you, because there's a lot of things that I didn't know: in-app purchases, push notifications, how to deal with Apple store, Android store, deploying to those stores. Like all of those things, navigation is totally different than React navigations and routes. It was a lot. It was a lot more than they led on to what it was. Eventually, I caught on. It took me a while. I needed to work with some more senior React Native developers, and I was able to really pick it up. But yeah, it was tough. I'll be honest: I struggled for a while because I went in feeling like I should have known all those things because that's the way it was conveyed to me. Now that I look back on it I was like, there's no way I could have known those things. It's just a different language. So, I had to get in there and learn it. And I even...I'm trying to think I've learned a couple of new languages. But it's almost like learning a new language just with, you know, the, like I mentioned, the in-app purchases, push notifications. It's just totally different. STEPHEN: Yeah, that's been my experience also. I think the challenges weren't, like, coding [laughs] because, you know, building a React Native app is coding in React. The challenges that I faced were, like you said, it's just the mobile ecosystem and learning all the intricacies, the functionality that users have come to expect in mobile apps, you know, like password manager, integration, and background execution modes, and deep linking strategies, all that kind of stuff. You know, if you don't know what questions to ask or what features to be thinking of, it's just really hard. And [laughs] I think it's more than just the developer needing to know that too. I think anytime it comes, you know, down to building an app, the whole team needs to have that mobile background. It's just a completely different platform than building for the web, right? So like, product owners, project managers, designers, developers all need that context so we can be prioritizing the right features and building a UI that matches the patterns that people have come to expect in a mobile app. And then, of course, developing those apps using the, you know, the proper native modules. WILL: Yeah, definitely. And I [chuckles]...you mentioned that it's mostly on, like, the mobile side. I don't know the best way to say that. But, like, I can tell you, when I first got onto the React Native project, there were numerous features that I could implement, and to a certain point to where I had to go that mobile. So, like, I was like, oh yeah, I can learn these new components that's in React Native. Okay, I got it to work. It's finished. You know, my PM would be like, "Well, it's not completely finished because you have to deploy it." And I was like, oh, I have no idea what I'm doing now. Like, I just know [laughs]...I know up to this point. STEPHEN: [laughs] WILL: But anything over that, I'm like, yeah, I have no idea. STEPHEN: Especially with consulting, right? With consulting, you need even more expertise, right? The clients are counting on you to build their app. And that's where, you know, having that deep, deep familiarity where you can say to a client, "This is how we're going to do the deployment process, you know, and I need, you know, X, Y, and Z to help set it up. And here are the deliverables, and here's when we'll have it," that kind of thing. Like, it really takes it up a whole nother notch what you need to know. WILL: Definitely, yeah. Because I think compared to mobile, I feel like web development can almost be like the Wild Wild West. And what I mean by that is, like, there's no rules for you to push out a website in web. Like, you know, you build it. You push it out. It can be out there, you know. Whoever is hosting it, unless you go against their rules, maybe, but their rules are very relaxed and stuff like that. Mobile, there's a totally different set of rules. Because, like, I was laughing not too long ago. There was rumors that Elon Musk was going to remove the blocking feature on Twitter [chuckles]. And it was funny because all the mobile devs they came out. And if you're a mobile dev, you know this. Apple is very strict. STEPHEN: [laughs] WILL: If this is a social media app that you're building, you have to have that blocking feature, which I agree it needs to be there. But it's funny, like, all the mobile devs was like, yeah, that's not going to work. Good luck [chuckles]. Good luck being an app again. STEPHEN: Yeah, [laughs] good luck. WILL: Like, they're going to kick it off. And yeah, they're very big on kicking it off if it doesn't follow those rules and things like that. So yeah, for React Native, you have to learn those rules, or, like I said, they won't approve it. They won't push it out to their store. STEPHEN: Yep, exactly. Yeah. I feel like the new one at every client project; I have to say, "We have to offer a way to delete your account in the app," because [laughs] that's a new one that launched last year, and I think has just started being enforced more recently. Like, all those little gotcha rules, you know, like, if you don't know about that, then you're going to go to submit your app to the stores, and you're going to get rejected every single time. [laughs]. WILL: And they're not shy about rejecting you [laughs]. STEPHEN: Yeah. But I would say, like, a lot of the rules, I'm like, yes, this is amazing that we have these rules, you know. It does help keep the community safer like things like blocking. But then there's the other rules of, like, Apple's like, hey, you've got to use our payment system and pay us 30% of every sale. WILL: Yes [laughs]. STEPHEN: I was, like, you know, there's some evil stuff happening there, too. WILL: I totally agree. And we ran into that issue. We had an app that used Stripe. And we actually had to remove it in order to use in-app purchases because...I forgot the rules around it, but it was essentially for digital content. I think it's what it was. And so, we had to use Apple's in-app purchases. So yeah, I totally agree with you on that. STEPHEN: Yeah. I feel like I've been a part of so many apps where we're, like, reading those rules. And we're like, okay, you know, it's like, we're watching a live stream of birds. WILL: [laughs] STEPHEN: You know, like, the birds aren't digital [laughter], you know. It's like, [laughs] where does this fall in the rule? [laughs] WILL: Yes [laughs]. I've done that, too [laughter]. Yep. It's almost like, you know, I feel like lawyers, okay, like, is this what this rule is, or the law what is written, or does this fall underneath that? So yeah, totally, totally agree. STEPHEN: Yep [laughs]. WILL: So, you've been here a couple of years at thoughtbot. What has been your experience building React Natives here for clients at thoughtbot? STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah. I've been at thoughtbot for about five years now. And I have been building React Native apps that whole time. And, I mean, I started at thoughtbot a little more in the full-stack space, web development, and have transitioned to where I'm mostly only building React Native mobile apps now. It's been a great experience. I think that React Native is really a sweet spot of; we're able to build these apps really efficiently and much less expensively than when we're doing pure native. And the end product is a really good app. So, it's been a great experience, you know, React Native is really...it has a really nice development experience. You know, it's the JavaScript React ecosystem. And we use TypeScript, and we have a really good developer experience with it. And then we're building apps that clients are really happy with and with a good budget. So, I think it's kind of that, you know, like, win-win-win kind of scenario where everybody is happy. And yeah, I don't see it going anywhere. And I think we're going to be building React Native apps for quite a while to come. WILL: Yeah, I totally agree with that. Where do you see React Native and mobile dev going here at thoughtbot in the next six months or even the next year? What are your goals for the mobile team? STEPHEN: We've got a couple of goals. One of them is around kind of what we've talked about with the mobile space in general. This isn't really specific to React Native, but it can be. But, consulting in the mobile space is challenging because there's a lot of mobile-specific domain knowledge that a team really needs to have. So, that's something that we've started looking into is, like, how do we build up our resources internally and then, hopefully, externally as well to help guide us on our projects and ensure that we have, like, you know, we are developing apps consistently and efficiently every time? So, that's something we're looking into is, like resources to help our teams—not just developers, but project managers, designers, and developers—help us navigate the mobile space. Okay, you're going to do push notifications. Here's the library we use. Here's things to think about, and interactions to think about, and iOS-specific functionality that we could support, and Android-specific functionality that we can support. You know, you're going to do deep linking; do you want to use universal links, or do you want to use a different strategy, a scheme-based link? So, basically, building up that set of resources so that our teams are all able to consult and build efficiently and consistently across the board. So, that's kind of goal number one. And then, goal number two is to kind of bring some of that out into the community a little bit more. So, thoughtbot is very well known in the Rails space for all of the open-source content we've put out and blog posts, and courses, and books. I mean, there's just so much on the Rails side that thoughtbot has done. And we're just a little bit less mature on the React Native side in terms of what we've put out there. So, that's kind of the second goal is giving back, helping others kind of do that same thing. I feel like we have developed our practices internally, and we're building some great apps. And it's kind of time to contribute back a little bit more. WILL: Awesome. I'm looking forward to reaching those goals. If you can go back and give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself? STEPHEN: I would maybe say, read the documentation [laughs]. I don't know when I got into mobile; I think I just jumped in. And, you know, we've talked about some of the mobile-specific domain, and not knowing what you don't know, and app review guidelines. I feel like early on, I just responded to challenges as they came up, as opposed to just digging into, you know, Apple's documentation and Android's documentation and just really understanding the underlying operating systems in stores. That's probably a piece of advice. If I could go back, I would just start at the documentation, you know, go to developer.apple.com and read about all of the underlying APIs of StoreKit and, you know, associated domains and all of these sorts of things. Just learn 'em, and then you know 'em. [laughs]. So, maybe that could have saved me some heartache if I just was a little more intentional about, okay, I'm getting into app development. I'm going to set aside some time and just really learn this stuff, as opposed to kind of where I had one foot in the door, one foot out of the door for a while. And I think that kept me from just sitting down and really going deep. WILL: That's really good advice. Just read the documentation. And that's not just Apple. STEPHEN: [laughs] WILL: That's a lot of departments, sections of my life. So, yes, I like that. [laughter] STEPHEN: I actually...that's something I did early in my career. So, I started as an Enterprise Java developer in 2011, and I was using the Spring framework. I downloaded the entire PDF. It was, like, 250 pages, the documentation [laughs]. And I remember just being on, like, airplane flights, and I just read the documentation, just cover to cover. That served me so well. I was, like, the expert, you know [laughs]. I don't always do it, but when I do, I'm like, oh yeah, why didn't I do that sooner? [laughs] WILL: Yeah, totally agree. I like that. What is the wind in your sails? What motivates Stephen? STEPHEN: Like, I think what attracted me to software development is just being able to build stuff, you know, probably the same thing that attracted me to woodworking. So, I think what motivates me is that prospect of, hey, I'm building an app that people are going to use, and it's going to make their life better. So, that's really what gets me up and gets me motivated. It's less so the actual coding, to be honest. It's really the prospect of, like, hey, I'm building something. WILL: Awesome. Yeah. Is there anything that you would like to promote? STEPHEN: If you're interested in building a mobile app, come talk to us. We'd love to build your mobile app. Go to thoughtbot.com/hire-us; I believe hire-us. We would love to talk to you about your mobile project. So, don't hesitate to reach out. We'd love to hear about what you're interested in building. WILL: Awesome. Well, Stephen, it was great to chat with you. It's always great to chat with you about mobile development and just personal life things. So, I really appreciate you being on the podcast today. STEPHEN: Thanks for having me, Will. It was a lot of fun. Always good talking with you. WILL: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have any questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @will23larry. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com.Special Guest: Stephen Hanson.Sponsored By:thoughtbot: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? 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