Introducing - Building Stacklist

Transcript

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I think it could be good every now and then for you and I just to record like candid thoughts.

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Everybody has opinion and sometimes it gets to our heads.

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so I guess, for anybody listening, this might be what this podcast is about, if you want to listen, it might not be.

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Hi, hey, good morning, good morning.

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Good morning, we gotta start with the coffee.

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Yeah, I bet, you and I usually meet around this time About 5am.

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I still don't know how you can do it yeah, well, 8am bedtime helps 8am, see, I'm even I'm broken.

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8pm, so building stack list.

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Oh, I'm gonna yawn during this one you need to cut the line.

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No, I'm not gonna leave in the yawns.

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This episode says yawns and all.

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Yeah, it's funny.

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I interviewed for the Zero to Um podcast.

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I interviewed Danny, the CEO of Jam, last night.

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I have to look up when that was.

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It was maybe 2010, 2012,.

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But early in the sort of podcasting era there was a podcast called Startup and it literally was somebody who left their job and was like I'm going to start a podcast and he has a voice recorder and he takes it home and he's sort of like has it near his wife.

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He's like okay, I'm going to start a podcast.

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And she's like what, what are you?

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going to do.

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Like it was just very early but it was so raw and authentic and I remember that sticking with me a lot.

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And then he ended up building that podcast, became highly, highly successful and then he spun it off and basically set up a podcast media company and then started other podcasts under it.

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But it's so good to go back and hear that first one.

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But that one has always stuck with me and it did it stuck with Danny too of just that idea of just sort of the super unpolished, like transparent look at starting something from scratch and trying to figure out along the way what the heck is this thing?

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What am I doing?

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yeah, so I think that's.

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I think that's one.

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One view that I'd love to have for this, for this podcast is sort of the unpolished behind the scenes.

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Look at taking something that you know was an idea and then starting to build it out, and even when it becomes a bit of a formed thing and there are some people using it, it's still like it's still so early and so we have no idea where this is going to go.

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I don't know what would you want to get out of recording a podcast about the journey of doing a startup well, you know behind the scenes what you mentioned, um, how, at one point you are all excited and okay, yeah, uh, we released three times a week and it's amazing.

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The next week is like I don't know, we hit the roadblock.

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Uh, we are downsizing, we don't have that many team members, then how we manage that, how we keep up the pace?

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Do we keep up the pace?

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Do we slow down?

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Do we explore some other stuff?

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just around, why we should release six times a week, why we should push on Friday two times per day.

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Two times per day, it should be the goal totally, why we should push on Friday two times per day.

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Two times per day, totally, totally.

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No, you're right, we've gone through some of those like the flexing up and the down.

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You know we had, we had more, and then we sort of constricted down to a bit of a tighter team and then we kind of flexed back up again a little bit in certain areas.

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But who knows, week to week, you know what it's going to look like.

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But, there's still something like what is your, what do you see in your mind?

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Excuse me, what do you see in your mind as, like the?

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What does it look like?

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like, what does zach list look like three years from now?

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I'm visiting you in new york almost every month, so you know we are doing great.

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Yeah, exactly, uh.

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Now I would say you know, we, we are polished, uh, we have revenue, we have users, tons of users.

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We are getting better each week.

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Still, you know we are still keeping the pace, but with a much higher team, much more people around us, much more.

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You know how it gets when you grow a company, but to still keep that startup mindset and you know, not let being able to make revenue to get into our head and okay, now we are going to do something else.

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No, this mindset of a startup is really something that needs to be cherished and this time when we spend thinking about, okay, how we can make it better for our users, we should keep that forever no forever is the key.

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I remember doing a project for a large scale hotel company and it was a transformation where basically at the highest levels, they had sort of asked me and my team to figure out what the, the future of staying at this, this chain, looked like.

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And it was funny early in the in the project I remember going being at the sort of headquarters and interviewing so many executives um in the company and everybody talked about what their division's goals were and what their division's targets were.

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But it was all so insular like not one person sort of mentioned the guest and what the guest, how the guest would be feeling or how the guest would be interacting with the company in a much better way, or how the guest, how they were sort of hyper-focused on the guest and how to make it better.

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It was all sort of inside this building of inside this building.

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I have agreed upon this amount of money and we have put these goals on a PowerPoint chart and so we're going to go do these goals which we're all talking about internally, but everybody's so insular and the company that nobody was really focused on on the guest.

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And then I had that moment where I was also hyper aware of how Airbnb sort of came along, you know, and totally like forced their way in and said, hey, here's a totally new thing that nobody's thinking about is you can rent some space on a couch in a person's house, you know, and, and at that time that was crazy, right.

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That was sort of like.

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You know, I know the early, the early lore of you hear about people turning down investment of Airbnb because they're like, oh, this is so dangerous, people are going to get hurt and and you don't even know who these people are and why would they want guests and strangers in their house.

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And now I would say, 50% of the time when I travel, I stay in an Airbnb and I don't stay at hotels.

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I stay at hotels way less than I used to, and I think that it's so key to keep in mind where one is, how hard it is sometimes to create something new that people aren't sort of used to, and how you have to sort of force your way into the zeitgeist of social and of apps, but also how, if you get complacent and you're just focused on internal culture, internal goals, the sort of matrix that you can create in a company where you're just focused on the corporate playbook or whatever, that you completely lose sight of the end user and what they need and what they want and how that's shifting and changing all the time.

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And so, yeah, I love that thought about just forever trying to keep the end user in mind.

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And that means, but that also means that our company has to stay so fluid that we can't ever get attached to how we know it's going to be or how it is, or that the corporate play or the the company playbook has been set in stone and we probably don't want to like mess that up, so we just like keep going the way that we're going because it's safe yeah, no, I agree.

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I mean, people are always resilient on something new and they don't want to try it and you just have to force it.

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You know, at one point, like, okay, this is really awesome, start using it.

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The same, you know when, early days in Facebook or Meta, when they did some huge UI UX updates, everyone was hating, like, oh my God, where did that button go?

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Where was this, where is now that?

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And then in a couple of days, everyone were okay, it's awesome, I can use this Totally.

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You know the new thing like forcing something more, creating something new.

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I remember when the iPad came out and there were all these memes of like oh, it's just a big iPhone.

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And there's like people sort of like holding up iPads to their heads, like talking into the iPad, being like, see, it's just a big iPhone.

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You know it's just an excuse for people to spend $1,000 on a big iPhone, but it's interesting once you get past that period of the initial people's reactions and then it sort of moves into into everyday use.

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You think about now how, how we use iPads in totally different ways, whether it's like taking notes or or watching movies on the go.

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Who would have thought that basically like watching movies and watching TVs?

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You would just be.

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You would just be at an airport with headphones on, watching this extremely flat television surface that you just hold in your hand.

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And kids too.

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My son does Duolingo now on his iPad and he basically challenges other kids from all over the world and learning French on his iPad.

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And you know, and I always, I always think back to those early periods where it's like we're making fun of iPads when they first come out and then, once that settles, people start to see how, how you actually use it.

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And now it's like imagine just getting rid of all the iPads.

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Yeah, you can't do it now.

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So I love that.

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I love that.

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What, um, you know, one of the interesting things I think that I'd love to explore is we sort of I've thought about a few things, but I'd love your.

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Your take on this, too is sort of how we do.

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By the way, we're recording this first episode, but I was thinking it would be interesting to not only for us to have some sort of candid conversations about building the business, but also like interviewing our team internally, maybe about what it's like being in a super early stage company, and then also maybe find some customers, like some early customers, who are willing to come on and kind of talk about what it's like finding Stacklist and then and then using it and and what their thought process is, and then maybe some partners, some like people that we work with, that sort of help of help keep things moving and keep the engine going.

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I don't know, what do you think?

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Yeah, I think from those people we would get some juicy stuff.

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To be honest, I think people usually have a lot of things to say and the way they use and what would they like to see and how would they like to improve the product, but they don't often get the chance to speak up, so I think, it would be really interesting to see how actually people are using and what are they using the most, you know, yeah, is it sharing?

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Is it creating?

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Is it social aspect?

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What would they like to see that we have more of those?

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Yeah, I think our team too.

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I'd be really interesting to hear, especially, you know, from duchan and lazar and others who have, who've been with us for a couple of months and sort of not just I mean obviously, what we're building and the and the like specific areas that they're focused on what they're building, but also just what they think day to day.

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Like is it kind of crazy working for the early six months startup with no funding?

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You know, it's like I don't know just those sort of or what someone working on the team, what their aspirations would be if we, you know funding and and we and we grow into a bigger team and you know and things change a bit, I don't know what they would want from that journey yeah, definitely.

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I mean, working in a startup is always thrilling, at least for me.

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Uh, the pace is awesome.

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You know, you don't have to have five to ten approvals.

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Okay, you can do that, you can, you just do it and that's it you literally don't have to have any approvals.

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I found something on production on the live site the other day and I had no idea that that was going out.

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I was like I I, all of a sudden I sent a screenshot to Martina.

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I'm like what is this?

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I just found this on the site.

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Yes, I love that.

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I love that part of it too.

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I don't know, and I think maybe it could be good every now and then for you and I just to record candid thoughts, I don't know just when we're about to discuss where things should go.

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You know what I mean Like and recording that in those moments where we're trying to figure things out, Because hopefully that could be useful to someone else who's thinking about starting something up.

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And I've started doing a lot more recording myself.

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So I bought the DJI Osmo 3, and it's one of the best.

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I mean, obviously, you can turn your iPhone at yourself and just start recording, but there's something about this little mini handheld selfie stick that it feels like a little bit of a what was on, like road rules and the real world, like the confessional booths, you know where you sort of go in and you're like I think Sally is just trying to

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stab me in the back or whatever and everybody's just being real with this like confessional booth, but like there's something about the setup of this thing and I leave an event or I'm I wake up in the morning and I'm, I'm having.

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I've never had, I've never had doubts about Stacklist.

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But you do have these sort of like confusing gray periods where you're sort of like I don't know what the next step is, or like should I change something, or should I kind of bend a little bit for this investment money or whatever, and you're sort of like going through all these heads is in between events.

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I was doing this in San Francisco is like turning that thing on myself while I'm walking and just talking, for a bit and being like I don't know, and so I feel like we could do that here, but together and just in terms of asking those questions and trying to figure out what the heck, where the heck this thing's going that does great, as came with a lot of inputs from a lot of people yeah everybody has opinion and sometimes it gets to our head.

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So it's, it's normal.

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It's hard to not take it personally, especially when it's something that you're building and it's your idea.

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So yeah, it's tricky.

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It's a fine balance between taking advice from people who've been down similar roads, you know, and then also not wavering from whatever your your first, like you know vision of something was, and then, as it starts getting uncovered, there are instances where you definitely have to adapt and there are other instances where it's like you just stay the course and hold your breath and hope that was, that's, like that's the right, that's the right way to go.

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So I don't know, I think that's, I think that's it.

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I think more than I think, more than sort of introducing how all this is definitely going to go on the podcast.

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I think it's more sort of like introducing how it might go on the podcast.

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So yeah, I guess for anybody listening, this might be what this podcast is about.

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If you want to listen.

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It might not be so if you're interested in what we were just talking about, maybe tune in.

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Otherwise, you might also want to tune in, I don't know.

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Cool, well, yeah, I'm excited.

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I think there's a lot of different topics and a lot of different.

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A lot of different topics and a lot of different areas to hit, and I'm excited to hear also the first episode first real episode, because this is a fake intro episode the first real episode with you interviewing Denzel on on what it's like to be a woman in tech, in leadership, because there are definitely historical roots in it being a male-dominated industry and so really interesting to hear, especially as the CTO of Stacklist, interviewing the CEO of an AI startup that's been trying this for a couple of years, and I'm really interested to hear you know what you guys talk about.

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Yeah, I already have prepared some juicy questions.

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Can't wait to hear the answers.

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Nice, nice, totally nice, nice, totally, um, yeah, and then I was thinking one of the other ones that we could do is I'm really interested to hear what um, what um, juan has to say from.

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So juan just joined.

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He's only really been with us for a week and a half, but as a ui ux designer who's helping redesign the whole platform and, and it's really interesting coming, he was coming off of a full-time position, as I, as I understand it, and sort of coming into the startup world where where, as he jumps in and joins, we're all like, hey, I need a button, I need a menu, I need a thing, you know.

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And it's like wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

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We got to, we got to get some, we got to get some structure here.

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I got to also figure out what the heck where all the Figma boards are.

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So I think interesting to sort of learn right in those, in those moments, from team members who, who still have not sort of been in the stackless world for too long, and what early, fresh thoughts are of not only the platform and what we're building, but also just from the outside, in kind of how we seem could be interesting well with our entire setup, like also with some suggestions, if we can do something better to ease the person in much smoother and to have him or her start, you know, seamless.

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That's the point.

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Okay, here it is, here is everything, and let me know what you need.

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That's how I envision it.

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I think it's hard, though, because I think that that sometimes, like in the place that we're at, to have someone come on seamlessly, also means that we need to.

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We need to sort of spend time setting up all the processes and have all the boards clean and have sort of a bit of instruction manual and have an onboarding you know what I mean which also, at times, can feel like those are all the things that we have to get set like an established company, Because I know I've been, I go into companies, I've been onboarded into companies before where they have it all set right and there's like there's an HR person who brings you in and they're like I'm setting up a number of meetings and you're going to meet all these different people, and we have this notion workspace and you can take a couple of days and you can sort of like read through it and read of all of our company processes and you know and all those sorts of things.

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And what's interesting is that, from a startup perspective, we you know and all those sort of things.

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And what's interesting is that, from a startup perspective, we you know, burn and overhead is a very specific, real thing every week, and so the more we've got people sort of working sometimes on processes and documentation and those sort of things.

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Are also times that we're not spending either making the product better or getting a client, and so there are times where we have to find people who are sort of okay jumping in and rummaging through our trash pile of Figma boards and saying, like I can figure it out, like no big deal, or whatever, and that's interesting.

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I think it's an interesting moment also where you know, yeah, we try and make it as easy as possible, but also you're kind of vetting people's personality too in those processes.

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Like, do they come in and sort of need everything to be a certain way, or do they come in and they're like, look, I got it.

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Just let me, let me dig through all this and what I will do is come up and out with an organized process, which is what one did, by the way.

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It's like, basically, we've got these.

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We totally started a new project away from all of our other boards and started this very clean, like here's the colors, here's the fonts, here's the like, and started from scratch, which is amazing.

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So I don't know, It'll be really interesting to hear from somebody who has come into us really fresh.

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No, definitely the point in startup is that you try to do that, you try to have it organized, you try to have it at least to somewhat documentation and onboarding and everything.

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But then it's a startup and you get pulled away on the different stuff and like, okay, I don't have time for this anymore, let's go do something else.

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Yeah, exactly, cool, well I'm excited.

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Yeah, I'm excited and we should figure out how to and you got to keep me honest with this too Like I think what would be really interesting is that you and I do these from time to time away from interviewing other people, but we just do these sort of maybe this is our real world road rules, confessional episodes.

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But we should just do these really impromptu, like we should find times where you and I both are like no, no, no, wait, hold on, let's don't do it in zoom, let's do it in riverside, like let's hop in and just start recording and then and just talk and, I don't know, maybe forget sometimes that we're even like recording anything and just digging into the guts of of what we're trying to build At least, if nothing else, it'll be super interesting for us to listen to years from now.

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To my future self.

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To my future self.

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Yeah, this is what it was like when we were trying to figure things out.

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So fun, alright.

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Well, a very long, unstructured intro to a podcast.

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This has no structure and we're not sure what it's going to be listener, so come along for the ride.

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Why is my Siri talking to me?

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It's on.

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Well, yeah, she's like it's 528.

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What are you doing, all right?

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Well, let's see where.

00:27:01.224 --> 00:27:02.911
Well, yeah, she's like it's 528.

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What are you doing, all right?

00:27:04.035 --> 00:27:05.497
Well, let's see where this thing goes.

00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:09.244
Yeah, definitely Can't wait to see.

00:27:09.265 --> 00:27:11.328
All right, that's it.

00:27:11.328 --> 00:27:13.742
I'm going to do the proverbial mic drop.

00:27:13.742 --> 00:27:16.122
See you on the next episode.

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