SDI 090 - Robert Reeves === [00:00:00] So Cota, you've been in tech a long time. Yeah. Yes. And you've used to live in Austin, so you got your start in tech in Austin. [00:00:10] Yes. Do you think, do you think the part about being in Austin matters? That's one question. And in general, do you think it's important to be, like, in a tech [00:00:20] city to be able to be, uh, influential in tech? Uh, well, I think the answer to the both of those is yes. And, and I think, I think the, the reason, [00:00:30] and I'll try not to be, I, I like to use words like this. Lucious Lucious, is that how you say it? Long-winded. Uh, and, uh, you know, I [00:00:40] actually got into, into Tech one because my dad worked at IBM in Austin. Right, okay. We manufactured stuff and so we always had computers around and he was, he, you know, he, he would [00:00:50] spend the like 1980 $4 of $3,000 to get a IBM machine 'cause. Huge. He worked at ibm. I, he was always like, what if my boss comes over and we need to have a [00:01:00] an i BM computer? Good. Good old. How many times did that come in handy? Yeah. I don't think his boss ever came over. Uh, but [00:01:10] so, you know, I was always surrounded by computers because of that. There would, like, I would read PC magazines, uh, PC Magazine when, when, uh, I slept in, in, in his office, uh, on the weekends [00:01:20] I would go there anyways. But then in high school, uh, we got donated. Um, I. I think it was an AS 400, uh, that, that, and, and we had a T one [00:01:30] connection that Al had also been donated. And, and my science teacher was asked like, who are some people who know computers? And I was this group of [00:01:40] people who did that. And so what I did was I was in charge of writing the HTML pages that was kind of documenting the whole process. Ah, and then, [00:01:50] uh, and then um, uh, in like 95, uh, uh, this guy who was the dad of a student was doing a, a, an internet startup. 'cause of course you were [00:02:00] at that time. And he went, he went to that science teacher and said, do you know anyone who knows computers? Uhhuh? And me and like four other people were sent off to go do that because we would [00:02:10] work. I think it's been long enough basically under the table for like $7 an hour, right? Like this is this and, and this to your point of Austin. [00:02:20] Yeah. I, there's people like this in Silicon Valley. But I think that is, is the perfect mixture of like a Texas CEO who's like, Hey, hey, I need some of those, uh, those [00:02:30] kids over there, they're gonna be real cheap. Who can do the programming? I'm gonna give 'em about $7 an hour. And, uh, they, they went to school with my son, uh, and, and like it was [00:02:40] great. We, we did, uh, we, we did a, a, a VR RML Virtual Reality Mall for earful of books, Uhhuh, Uhhuh Allen's Boots, Uhhuh, and uh, wow. And then [00:02:50] City National Bank of Taylor Uhhuh. And then what, uh, what the, I'm, I'm being long-winded here. I'll wrap it up. But then what the, uh, what the CEO found is the only people who paid their bills were the bank, the [00:03:00] banks that we had. Ah, and then, so we went and do, we did, uh, online banking software, uh, called Funds Express. So I think that role and all this is like a high school job. Yeah. Yeah. And then, [00:03:10] yeah, that, that was from like 94 to 2000. And I think Uhhuh. That whole chain of events happened because I was in Austin and because it was a, uh, a, a [00:03:20] tech city. Right. Whereas I think, I feel like now, you know, great, uh, industry analyst, Ben Thompson is from Madison, Wisconsin, I think. Mm-hmm. But I don't [00:03:30] think he would've had an experience like that. He had to leave Madison, uh, to, to do anything. So I, I think of Austin as like being a tech city now, but I don't think of it as being a tech [00:03:40] city back then as much. Yeah. Well, in, in the early, I forget, I, I think IBM moved there in the late seventies or early eighties. And there was Uhhuh, there was, it was a hardware city back then, and there [00:03:50] was a lot of, ah, what do you call it? Local development and stuff like, you know, you have, you have the university there, and they had this. There was this joint venture, it might still be there, our guests [00:04:00] might know, called uh, MCC. And it was basically like an academic VC sort of thing. And so that kind of evolved. And then you had Tivoli as a company and [00:04:10] trilogy as a company. And then eventually it went software and all the hardware. There's probably some hardware, but it's basically gone. I'm gonna ask you one more question and then we'll ask, then we'll bring the guests on. [00:04:20] Mm-hmm. But that is, do you now that like, uh, since the pandemic, so many places are work remote only, do you think it's still [00:04:30] important to be in a tech city? Mm. Like it used to be when you were young? I'm gonna give the answer that I think I believe. Yeah, I, I should hope you always do that. [00:04:40] Is that an exception right now? I, I wouldn't be able to talk so much if I only gave answers, I believe. Uh, but I, I, I think the [00:04:50] notion around work from home that if you're an established person, it's irrelevant where you work more or less. Mm-hmm. But if you're just starting off it pro, [00:05:00] unless you're, you've gotta, let me put it this way, you have to somehow just like be around people and you could just be around people online that's totally feasible [00:05:10] to do that. Mm-hmm. I think, I think that's something these old executives who want everyone to go back to the office. I don't realize is you can hang, everyone could just play Minecraft instead online. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could uhhuh you can [00:05:20] hang out with people sometimes even better if you're not in the same location of them. Mm-hmm. So you somehow need that effect of hanging out with people in order to kind of like, [00:05:30] um, pinball around, you know, like move around and, and find things accidentally. And then once you stop doing things accidentally, then you can be more deliberate and it doesn't really [00:05:40] matter. But I think it's good to have, getting started is hard thing, whatever, whatever that cluster is, whether it's virtual or physical. So let's bring, let's get our guest opinion. Our guest is Robert [00:05:50] Reeves, who also lives in Austin, Texas. Will you tell us a little bit about yourself? And also, I wanna know, does it matter that you are in Austin? Is Austin the reason you're in tech right now? [00:06:00] Well, um, thank you for having me. Um, so yeah, I, I, I was smiling when, when Cote was going through his, you know, [00:06:10] his history 'cause it lines up with. Mine as well. Yeah. So, uh, you know, and, and, and funny thing mentioning MCC, you know, I, I know the [00:06:20] Inmans because I'm in Austin. Uh, you know, it, it's, it's Admiral Bobby Inman was the one who started that back in the day. And, um, they chose [00:06:30] Austin to build this, um, you know, uh, uh, consortium, um, to, uh, compete against other countries that were kind of whipping our butt at the [00:06:40] time with, uh, computers. Uh, and they put it in Austin because of the proximity to IBM Texas [00:06:50] Instruments and University of Texas. It was about getting talent out of the university. Uh, that's why it, they made it work. And, and I think MCC is probably one of the, [00:07:00] uh, three pillars of Austin Tech. The other two being Austin Ventures. 'cause you need two inputs for a company. You need capital. And people, [00:07:10] um, but also, uh, Dell. Yeah. You know, having left them out happen. Yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. And so, uh, which, which they all supported each other. [00:07:20] Um, and, and it's just great. Um, you know, look, um, I actually got into tech because I back, you know, I [00:07:30] stumbled upon Unix and Pearl, uh, during my undergrad, uh, I was hanging out at the econ building. We had this wonderful lab on [00:07:40] the top floor with a bunch of old spark station pizza boxes, 21 inch CRT. Amazing. The button had three mouses. Crazy. [00:07:50] Um, and I loved it. And, um, grad student came up to me and said, why are you here? And I was taking, uh, an econometrics class doing linear regression, [00:08:00] and it's like, I'm, I'm waiting for my job to get done. And he said, you know, you can have it email you when it's done. And I said, show me this black magic. Show [00:08:10] it to me. Year later, buddy of mine who was in the Valley, um, he said, Hey, you know Unix, you know Pearl, uh, do you know how [00:08:20] much they're paying people out here? And I said, you know, we talked about it. I was like, there's no way I'm moving. Uh, I was very much enjoying the Austin nineties [00:08:30] lifestyle, um, and decided to stay. Um, and, and I was just very fortunate because I caught it when, uh, when the tide was rising. [00:08:40] Uh, it worked out. Doesn't matter where you are, uh, I think, you know, prior to Covid, absolutely. But now, [00:08:50] um, if you are starting out, it is very helpful to be physically located because you get to build those relationships. Mm-hmm. [00:09:00] Um, and, and it's really about going and having interactions with people outside of your job. Um, you know, going to a local meetup, those sorts of things that are super [00:09:10] valuable, but you can do that elsewhere. And so if you're bouncing around your digital nomad, well, you know, you can go to a lot of different places and I would argue [00:09:20] that you probably have an advantage over me who's just been in Austin. That's true. So how did, so once you got started in tech, how long was it [00:09:30] before you're like, Hey, you know, what I wanna do is found a startup? Um, well it's, uh, so I was at Trilogy Uhhuh, you know, one of the companies that Cote [00:09:40] mentioned. I was one of the industry hires. Oh, did you get a BMW? No, actually, I think I was driving old beat up, uh, [00:09:50] land Cruiser. But there, there, like, there, there, there was, uh, uh, I think it was Trilogy, there was lore that they, they were hiring people and had so much money I. That they would give people BMWs [00:10:00] to, to, to hire on as like a, a signing bonus. Yes, that is all true. Um, it was a wild and wacky time. Um, they would go and recruit the best and brightest out [00:10:10] of Stanford, MIT Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo in Canada, and just throw money at them. They would move to Austin, go through what they called Trilogy [00:10:20] University Tu, and uh, learn the ways of of trilogy. Uh, they would learn how, you know, internal processes and how to [00:10:30] write. Some of 'em didn't know job at the time. Okay, great. You'll learn that. Um, but they had legendary Friday afternoon parties party on the patio pop they [00:10:40] called it, um, over on uh, 360 and, um, you know, by the Penny Backer Bridge. Uh, bucolic, you know, [00:10:50] it was wonderful. Vegas trips, all that stuff, but I was one of the industry hires, I was one that was brought in, said like, okay, let's make sure we get the software out correctly. And, oh, [00:11:00] help the, you know, the, the TU members get there. You were like the, the mid-range adult, right. Making things happen. That's, um, and uh, what had happened [00:11:10] was the, I got wound up getting laid off, uh, a month after nine 11, so nobody's buying software and, and, and the, you know, dot com was [00:11:20] kind of trending down. Um, and so I decided that I was gonna join the circus and so I [00:11:30] went, and then I had a lot of friends that were, you know, is this the literal circus or is this a slang for something in tech that I don't know about? No, no. It was the Warp tour. So, [00:11:40] um, okay. Okay. Yeah, I, I joined the war tour Uhhuh, um, and, uh, I, I was a production assistant for catering, so traveled all over [00:11:50] because, you know, that was a rough road, you know. Mm-hmm. I'd gone through an IPO in.com, uh, moving over to Trilogy. It was a grind. Mm-hmm. And so needed a [00:12:00] little, little, take a step back because I was kind of over software. Mm-hmm. Little, little. Um, it was not as great, [00:12:10] you know, once the things start getting a little rougher. Um, it, it, it was challenging and so with, you know, no more parties on the patio and stuff like [00:12:20] that, but through that experience, it was great. Um, you know, I actually wrote some software for 'em, uh, barcode Scanner to help with people [00:12:30] coming through the catering line. Uh, that, that was a lot of fun. But, um, then wound up being a tour manager for flogging Molly and even more fun, [00:12:40] uh, traveled the world. But I realized at that point that I wasn't disappointed in software. I wasn't running away from it. I was [00:12:50] actually trying to figure out how can I stay in software but do it my way. Mm-hmm. And that's why, that's what led me to starting my first company [00:13:00] Furnace, which was a early DevOps tool installer for WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss. You know Right. Once run anywhere with Java Enterprise. Sure. But getting it [00:13:10] installed in the app servers, we sold that company to BMC, thank God before containers. 'cause that destroyed that market. Uhhuh. But I did it [00:13:20] 'cause I had to, I, I was emotionally compelled to do it. Uh, it wasn't about making money, but it was really about, um, [00:13:30] I don't want to regret not doing it. And so I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to start a company. But luckily there's lots of venture capitalists that'll help you. Well, so, you [00:13:40] know, I don't think we discussed this at the time, if, but how did you decide on the, the, the product that you had at furnace? Because like, I, I was, I was [00:13:50] excited about it and, and, but you know, it's a pretty boring category. Oh yeah. What were you gonna say, Whitney? Oh, it's a similar question, but it's slightly different, which is, um, [00:14:00] do you decide the product first or, or just that you're going to have a startup first and then find the product? Well, the first was, um, I was gonna [00:14:10] start a company. I don't know what it is. Okay. Um, and you don't, you don't quit your job and start working on it. You, you, you've got to figure out what is the problem that you're gonna [00:14:20] solve. And my recommendation for anybody trying to start a company is find the pain. Look, don't, [00:14:30] don't get enamored with, you know, the, the science experiment and, and the tech really focus on what is the pain that you're [00:14:40] trying to address or find the pain. There's a dis connect for me because I'm imagining you doing catering at Foggy Molly. Conferences, [00:14:50] conferences, uh, concerts, which already is convoluted what you said, but, so how are you finding anybody's tech pain when you're touring in a band and doing catering things? [00:15:00] Well, I went back, uh, okay, so after a year, uh, it was a wonderful year and I said, okay, it's time. Um, okay, you know, it, it's, the market is [00:15:10] coming back. I'm gonna go and do this uhhuh. And so went back to early DevOps software configuration management. Uh, okay. That's what we called it back then. And, um, [00:15:20] so real, you know, started working with a lot of companies that were adopting Java app servers. Whether they were ISVs or large companies. [00:15:30] And I started seeing this pain that it was really easy to release the application. We, we'd finally kind of cracked the code on CI and [00:15:40] cd, uh, well CI at least, um, and moving towards, you know, getting the, that that application on the app [00:15:50] server was such a nightmare. I was working for an ISV that had a transportation app and it was Java Enterprise and we allowed our customers to run on [00:16:00] WebSphere and WebLogic and I had to maintain a separate set of scripts for each platform. Um, and I was like, dude, this [00:16:10] sucks. And working with, you know, my colleagues and and other people in the industry, I realized that I'm not the only person struggling with this. And [00:16:20] in my interactions with customers of that company, I would ask them, are you struggling with this, with your other applications, internal apps, ones that are provided for you? [00:16:30] And that's where I found the pain. Uh, it, it certainly wasn't hanging out at, at a venue in Kansas City, Missouri, just, just like talking about [00:16:40] like, uh, app servers at 2:00 AM in the morning. Yeah. Just hanging out. You know what, what you do normally on the tour bus, you know, no big deal. Lots, lots of X ml people are doing XML [00:16:50] straight to the head there. Yeah. It's just a nightmare. But it's, it's really, if you can find a big enough market pain and you throw, um, smart people at it, [00:17:00] um, and you get a really good team, you're gonna solve that. And all you've got to do is once you find that market paying. You [00:17:10] have to make yourself a little bit better than that. So a little bit less paint. You don't have to totally eliminate it. Uh, one of my favorite jokes is about two [00:17:20] hunters coming across a bear in the woods. And, uh, one of, one of the, the hunters just stops, sits down, [00:17:30] recognizes that, just gives up. I'm gonna die. And the other, while the bear is charging, uh, and the other hunter sits down and, and starts putting on running [00:17:40] shoes, the other hunter's like, what are you doing? You're not gonna outrun the bear. Said, I don't have to, I just have to outrun you. Um, you know, when we're talking about market pain and addressing that [00:17:50] when starting a company, you don't have to solve it a hundred percent. You just have to be slightly better alternative. I, I'm. [00:18:00] Oh sure. With because of, and I'm, I'm happy to be wrong 'cause I'm, you're talking from experience and I'm talking purely the theoretically, but what I [00:18:10] see is like a huge amount of tool fatigue. And so if you're asking me to get another product and another tool to make something slightly less uncomfortable, like I think I might [00:18:20] prefer something to be a little harder, but more simple. Yeah. I, I agree. Adding, added yet another piece of complexity. Yeah. I, I, I agree with that from an engineering [00:18:30] perspective. Uh, and certainly from procurement. Do we wanna add another vendor, you know? Yeah. Is this really? And so that's why you have to find a very intense pain [00:18:40] to get past those initial sales objections of like, ugh. Is this another tool? Is this, so is this a one-off? Um, you know, Alton [00:18:50] Brown, big fan of his, of his shows, uh, he, he does no single purpose tools in his kitchen. Yes, exactly. Uhhuh. And, and so I'm the same way with software. It, it, it's, [00:19:00] uh, why do we have to have a so's gotta be very specific. Um, you know, on the second company, uh, Liquibase, um, I question this as well, where, [00:19:10] where, you know, you're like, are we gonna have another tool here? Yeah. And the reason why we did Liquibase was because that Liquibase open source already existed. [00:19:20] It already had people that were solving this problem with liquid base DevOps or the database. Um, the only problem was it only supported like [00:19:30] eight databases and there was a coming explosion of more. So our logic was, okay, it's, we don't have to worry about bringing [00:19:40] liquid base in because it's already there. What we're doing is showing them a paid version that provides more value. They're already sold on it. Yeah. So let's, that makes more [00:19:50] sense to me. Yeah. Yes. And, and I certainly learned that from the first company furnace. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and every single, uh, startup you have, you, [00:20:00] you learn, you get better. Um, and, and for, for the pivot on, well, not pivot, but personal pivot, I should say, for liquid based, was [00:20:10] really leaning in on open source and taking advantage of an existing community, not taking advantage, leveraging, I should say, um, it's, it sounded bad, [00:20:20] uh, but really saying, okay, these folks are committed. They're providing commits, uh, they're sharing, uh, issues on GitHub. [00:20:30] Um, what can we offer them? What are the problems here that are preventing a large enterprise rolling this out as a standard? [00:20:40] And so what did you get more explicitly? What did you get wrong the first time that you improved for Liquibase? Well, I don't think, um, [00:20:50] you know, the reason why Furnace was acquired was not because of the technology or anything special that [00:21:00] we were doing. Uh, we just kept beating a lot of large software companies at, uh, at sales. Okay. [00:21:10] We, we were just kicking their butt because we were highly targeted, good product market fit. Um, and so for the next company, I really [00:21:20] wanted something that was not gonna be starting from zero. And that's why using an existing open source project and inviting that [00:21:30] founder of that project to be a founder of the company. Uh, and say, Hey, let's, you know, we're, we're bringing expertise, we're bringing capital. You're bringing elector for [00:21:40] property. Let's do this. And so for us it was really about trying to get, uh, uh, you know, we didn't have to build up and explain [00:21:50] this problem to the market. It was already being solved, just not well enough for large enterprises to adopt. While you were selling your DevOps [00:22:00] configuration management, uh, right once Run Anywhere tool, how were you able to also identify a problem with databases for your second company? You [00:22:10] listen to your customer 'cause they said, Hey, thanks for solving this part of the problem. What are you doing about databases? Oh, [00:22:20] I, I'm not a genius far from it. Oh, I know. No kidding. It's evident, Robert. Thank you. I'm kidding. But [00:22:30] No, no, you're absolutely right. Uh, but what I'm, I am good at is understanding, uh, that process that the customer goes through, [00:22:40] that prospect uhhuh and seeking input from them. Um, like every time I've done go to market, uh, on a product, [00:22:50] it is all about asking the customers first, the ones that are hanging around. Why do you use this? Why don't you just throw this out? What value are you [00:23:00] getting out of this? And then taking that and repeating it back to the market. Mm-hmm. And so if you listen to your customers, you listen to your prospects, [00:23:10] and, and you have to certainly be careful of this, you in the sense that you don't wanna listen just to the loudest voices. Uh, and, and it, it always seems to be [00:23:20] on the far extremes of the normal distribution curve. So you gotta work hard to get to that. You know where that mean is and listen to them. But if you listen to your [00:23:30] customers and you focus on their pain uhhuh, not what they think will solve it, but the pain and you're able to address that, you will have a successful company. I hear you [00:23:40] and I agree, but I, I still can't wrap my head around like how you're in there doing sales for something related to CI and you're having a conversation [00:23:50] about databases. It just feels so far away. Oh, it is. Um, and, uh, you have to find the pain inside the company. So one of the things that we focus [00:24:00] on, um, at Liquibase is really identifying who's experiencing the slowdown. When we've got a disconnect between how [00:24:10] quickly it takes to roll out an app on Kubernetes. But we can't because we have to wait till somebody updates the database. We're, we're still doing it the [00:24:20] old way. Ah, okay. So who, who cares about that? Is it development Because mm-hmm. Probably not because they're able to update their databases and dev [00:24:30] and test. No problem. Is it testing? Nah. No, because I, I, I, I think our folks over there are quite good with automation. It [00:24:40] is the product owners. Uh, it is the person that sees value when the application is in production, as we all do, okay? Mm-hmm. Uh, as [00:24:50] Dr. Forsgren tells us, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but it is, um, also the DBA team. Are you getting crushed? And in the early days of [00:25:00] Liquibase, I was sitting down with, uh, uh, senior DBA at a very large bank, and I asked him, [00:25:10] I said, why did you become a DBA? Mm-hmm. What, why, what, what was your career path here? And it turns out he was a [00:25:20] car person. He was a tuner. He really liked figuring out, um, you know, okay, can I get a few more horsepower outta this engine? And he [00:25:30] likes doing that. Liked doing that with databases. One of his big, you know, he, he got so much self-actualization out of saying, eh, you know, I don't think we need any more of these [00:25:40] database licenses. I think I can eke out, uh, some more performance out of this. And it made him feel really good. And I asked him, I said, well, [00:25:50] aren't these application updates or updates to database schema causing problems for you, stopping you from doing the stuff that you wanna do? And he said, absolutely. [00:26:00] And so for them, they wanted to get, this person wanted to get out of the business of, you know, handling tickets and really. Work on the stuff they gave [00:26:10] them that, that, that good feeling fulfillment. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so, um, when we're talking about like, how do we connect those different types of the organization, you [00:26:20] gotta build a coalition of the willing and align around something that you can all agree on. And everybody wants to [00:26:30] do the stuff they wanna do, and that's, that's an easy alignment point. So Liquid Base is still independent. They, they weren't acquired by anyone. That is [00:26:40] correct. They're doing very well. So I, I'm, I'm, I'm curious to hear you talk about, uh, I don't think I can make a question out of it. So, so, you know what, what, [00:26:50] what you think of this is, it seems like there is a type of startup, a a tech startup that's basically like a single product kind of startup. Mm-hmm. And [00:27:00] I wonder if when you're on like the executive team of that, what you're thinking about. The future of that company is like, are you always looking [00:27:10] for an acquisition? Are you thinking like, we need to add five more products so we can, I guess, I don't know what the it is nowadays you have to have like 500 million or a billion dollars to IPO, [00:27:20] but like, we've gotta have the amount of money so we can IPO or you know, or we're going to always be happy being a $30 [00:27:30] million company. Mm-hmm. Perpetuity. Like, like what, like, uh, I, I don't know, like what's that long-term planning that, that the executive team and the [00:27:40] board does, uh, to, to think through that stuff? Well, the, the, the strategy with liquid base has always been acquisition. [00:27:50] Um, you know, you have to go in, when you get that first dollar in, in, whether it's Angel Round, seed round Series A, you have a [00:28:00] thesis that these investors come in and they agree to. Um, and early on we realized at Liquibase that this was not a [00:28:10] platform company. It was a technology that is crucial, absolutely necessary and fits in well with whatever previous, you [00:28:20] know, whatever wave of technology comes. So certainly early CICD, certainly. Um, cloud and containers. Yeah, no brainer. [00:28:30] Uh, certainly, uh, applications with AI and making certain that the data that's being fed in is properly structured. Okay. These are all [00:28:40] good things. So one, if you're playing for an acquisition, you have to make certain that you are not kind of cut out from that next wave of technology. Yeah. [00:28:50] Yeah. You have to be current. Like you, you don't really wanna acquire a company that's. Old technology stack wise, you know, with some exceptions here and there, but you want, you wanna be [00:29:00] acquiring something new technology, otherwise you would've just done it on your own. Well, exactly. You're, it's, it's gotta be forward thinking, uh, or forward looking, I should say. And so, uh, [00:29:10] for our calculus, it was very much focused on acquisition and so we raised money accordingly. If [00:29:20] you're building a platform, you're gonna raise a lot more money. Yeah. Um, and, but the expectations are a lot higher, uh, for growth and those sorts [00:29:30] of things. And, and it's, that is like cliff diving. You're either world champion or you're stuff on a rock. Uh, for us, we wanted to focus on a very specific [00:29:40] problem that was encountered across a lot of different verticals and a lot of different tech stacks. So that's what we wanted to focus on. And, and [00:29:50] do you think as, as an outsider. Okay, so let's say you've got your, uh, I'm gonna call it the acquisition strategy versus the whatever IPO [00:30:00] strategy. Mm-hmm. Like, like, and can you, as an outsider, are there signals that get thrown off when you can see a company is moving to another way of doing something? Like for example, I would [00:30:10] think if you have a small company and they keep buying these other little small companies that might be indicative of them. Like they're gonna go the IPO route, right? Like, 'cause they're [00:30:20] trying to build out mm-hmm. And build their portfolio out. Like I was thinking, well, I guess, I guess they did, but it's interesting to think of like the monitoring companies, like, you know, I think was [00:30:30] AppDynamics public when Cisco acquired them, but then Datadog is independent now, and PagerDuty, so like these monitoring companies. At some point, [00:30:40] like they just like paged you. Right. But then, but then their portfolio grew and grew and grew and like Puppet and Chef went through the same stuff. Yeah. Maybe not Chef, but like Puppet bought a [00:30:50] bunch of little companies. Mm-hmm. So, I don't know, like, I, I wonder if there's some strategic moves you can see as an outsider where you're like, ah, now they wanna be acquired or now they, they they want to go public.[00:31:00] Well, I will, I will tell you this. Um, on the inside it is not really IPO or acquisition that is discussed regularly. What [00:31:10] is discussed is revenue, right? How are we getting to that next infl? Are we hitting the quarter? Uh, how are things looking now? Uh, there's certainly [00:31:20] strategy, uh, where you think about, okay, we could purchase revenue by acquiring a company. We could acquihire perhaps, [00:31:30] uh, fill a gap. Um, and, you know, small startups do that all the time. But, you know, I don't think there's any [00:31:40] real indication. It's a company is attempting to build themselves up to get to an an IPO. Yeah. [00:31:50] Their CEO's gonna be talking about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And, and so they'll have like, like public company language where there's like a huge total [00:32:00] addressable market, a tam. But like the way, the way that, uh, on the other podcast we like to make fun of the public cloud companies where they're like, whoa, we're just in the first inning of a 5 million mile [00:32:10] marathon, right? Mm-hmm. Like, you wanna portray yourself as just infinite growth, uh, yes. That you have ahead of you. And so that's, maybe that's the kind of language you can pick up on. If they're talking about market sizes, [00:32:20] then, uh, obviously they're angling for that. Well, sure. But there is, um, you know, there are two, if you're looking at acquisitions by revenue, [00:32:30] I. Um, you are gonna see, um, a little, you know, if we had a chart with number of acquisitions, um, on the Y [00:32:40] axis and X is just revenue, you would see a significant bump. Um, on the left side of where people are doing the tech tuck [00:32:50] thing. Lot of acquisitions, um, crazy multiples because the, the revenue is so low. Um, then you, it's [00:33:00] bimodal. Then you'll see another bump further down where people are purchasing revenue. Yeah. And that's where you start seeing, uh, [00:33:10] companies like, you know, you, you, um, large acquisitions where a company is throwing off, uh, you know, 25 mil. They got a 10 x [00:33:20] multiple. Okay. So it's gonna be two 50. That's great. Or you'll see even more than that where it's a hundred million and it'll be a billion dollar acquisition. But at that [00:33:30] point, the company is deciding, well, what is the time value of money to get from that a hundred million to whatever threshold of revenue we gotta get to go [00:33:40] IPO? There's so much risk there. Market could turn you might not get there. Um, and also their, at that point, investors, venture capitalists [00:33:50] have been in there a while. They have gotta return money to their limited partners, their investors. Yeah. Yeah. The ones that gave them money. So there's a lot of moving parts. [00:34:00] Um, acquisition is just a lot easier. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, would love to be in a position where, uh, you can actually discuss that. But [00:34:10] frankly, I've never been, um, you know, it, it's, um, high speed, low drag, small companies. I there, can I ask you something? I've always wondered about [00:34:20] startups. I see all the startups around a cube con or whatever, and I wonder how, how does that startup get their first customer? Like, you have [00:34:30] zero customers who's gonna trust you Yeah. To do stuff in their operations. That's, that's right. I, um, [00:34:40] the, I, I love this question. Um, because if you, you know, simple answer is if you have a difficult, [00:34:50] uh, or, or, or intense enough pain, finding a customer who wants to alleviate that customer or alleviate that pain, [00:35:00] uhhuh is going to be easier. It's not easy. Makes sense. It's hard. Yeah. And also there is an appetite from companies, [00:35:10] larger companies to take risks. On these smaller companies because they want to be able to be exposed to that positive black [00:35:20] swan. They might get something early. So our first customer at furnace was IBM. Mm-hmm. Oh. Uh, it was, that's a big [00:35:30] fish. I, I know. Yeah. It was a small deal. It was 500. There you go. Okay. So, and this is part of being in, you know, [00:35:40] locally being, you know, being able to have meetings and so went over to the, the offices off of Burnett Road. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, I worked there. Yeah. It [00:35:50] is a great campus. Great campus. Mm-hmm. Um, but this was a, uh, division of IBM that was building a telco app that ran on WebSphere, [00:36:00] and they were having a tough time updating the application for their customers on WebSphere. And you could wrap furnace in, install [00:36:10] anywhere, install shield, whatever, and. Click, click, great. Installs is awesome. And so we had a, uh, the technical leader, uh, [00:36:20] uh, of that division, of that group that had this, this product. Uh, we put together a proposal for $5,000 that was gonna be our [00:36:30] first deal, Uhhuh. And this manager, she said, oh, this is great. This is a wonderful deal. I'll let you know when I get approval for it. Immediately [00:36:40] flashing red lights, sirens, warning, warning, warning deal, time kills deals, uhhuh. So, uh, I said, well, uh, what do you mean [00:36:50] approval? I thought you could, you know what, what's your approval level? I said, oh, I can only approve, uh, for $500. And I said, well, congratulations. Today is your lucky day. [00:37:00] Now the reason why. And, and, and she did it and it was great. She was like, oh, awesome. Great. Now the reason why I didn't care left [00:37:10] $4,500 on the table is because I wanted to be able to say, oh, the people that made WebSphere, yeah, yeah. They use, they use our stuff. Yeah, [00:37:20] yeah, yeah. Um, and so that's how we got second, third, fourth, fifth, all the way up to 10. Every single sales call, we targeted WebSphere at that [00:37:30] point. And we told them, uh, you know, didn't put it on the website or anything, but we shared that information and, and, uh, to earn that trust. Uh, but to get that first [00:37:40] deal, you just gotta get the deal. Uhhuh. Uh, it is hard. It is, you will spend more time on that deal than anything else. Um, [00:37:50] but the next one will be easier and then easier, but it is, requires, um, just, uh, a lot of intestinal fortitude [00:38:00] at, at what point does the strategy start to change? Well, you, when you start looking at scaling Uhhuh, uh, you, you can't [00:38:10] scale that. And so I, so around customer three, uh, when we got our first large enterprise six figure deal [00:38:20] at Liquibase, um, I contacted that team and said, why are you using this product? Why are you using Liquid Base? [00:38:30] And they gave us the usual answers. Um, you know, uh, uh, just being able to get updates out quickly. Um, there was also a [00:38:40] couple of things that they mentioned that we had no idea about, about the number of people that had permission to a database. Uh, but, but basically parroting back what we thought was there. [00:38:50] But they did it in a way that was unique. And what we did was we took those answers. Obviously anonymized, and we're not [00:39:00] gonna say they said this, but if this customer is betting on us, a large bank six figure deal mm-hmm. Is purchasing this, well then why don't we tell the [00:39:10] world these are our value props. Again, not a smart person, but listen to the customer and we'll say, okay, let's repeat this [00:39:20] back to the market and see if we get a response. And that's how we started when we shifted from kind of man demand defense to zone coverage. Mm-hmm. And that's [00:39:30] where you start getting the scale. Uh, then of course you have different messaging for each vertical. Uh, perhaps each database, uh, tech stack, but [00:39:40] it's all around the same stuff that if you can listen to the customer and you start pivoting to blasting out that message, uh, in a way that they're [00:39:50] gonna receive it well, that is when you know you're onto something, you added marketing. There it is. Uh, it, [00:40:00] it's really about, but it, it has to start from listening to the customer. Too often, people, startup founders will say, well, they, [00:40:10] they'll, they will project onto the customer their thoughts and beliefs, and that's not a good way of doing it. Now that we're back around to Liquibase, I wanna ask about something that you [00:40:20] kind of brought up before, which is with Liquibase, you were starting to leverage open source. Mm-hmm. What did that mean at the start of Liquibase and what does that mean to you [00:40:30] now? Well, open source is a force multiplier. I will say this, um, that this, this is my thesis that, um, [00:40:40] open source is best. Used, uh, and I'm talking about companies here. I'm not talking about individuals and those sorts of things. I'm talking companies, whether it is [00:40:50] people creating solutions and selling them or building solutions in-house for their customers, right? So think end user versus software vendor. [00:41:00] Um, you wanna use open source for non-differentiated technology. You wanna use open source for things that don't make [00:41:10] you money. Mm-hmm. These are things like underlying infrastructure, because if you are able to standardize on that and you're able to share the [00:41:20] burden, um, you're gonna have a far better outcome. So that's, that's the same, that's exactly what happened with Borg and Kubernetes. Why Google? How do you Oh, go. [00:41:30] Oh, how do you know when it's worth the effort to like train and pay engineers to like implement and run, [00:41:40] maintain open source at your business versus when you wanna get a managed solution for open source, maybe or not? Well, that, [00:41:50] so, so let me repeat the question, make sure I've got this right. So you're, you're a large enterprise and you're debating, I didn't say you're a large enterprise. Okay. Uh, you're a company. [00:42:00] Your company, yes. Uhhuh. Okay. So you're a company and you're saying, alright, are we gonna use a managed and, and let's just pick Kubernetes, make life easier, right? Sure. [00:42:10] Okay. Uh, so you, you could run Kubernetes in your data center or you could run Uhhuh as a managed solution. And what is the, uh, kind of tipping point where you make the [00:42:20] decision between them? Right, because what you just said is kind of like, you want to run open source for non-differentiating things. Mm-hmm. And I think maybe as like [00:42:30] open source does have like a, it can have a high overhead for training and running it. Yeah, absolutely it does. So you have to have a pretty high [00:42:40] bar to bring that in-house uhhuh and to run it. Exactly. And so the good news is, and we're, we're still talking about Kubernetes, but anything really fits in here. [00:42:50] Okay. Yes. Um, and so the good news is you're picking, uh, an open source solution, uh, a tech stack that you've [00:43:00] got a large number of people that are experts on it. You got a lot of companies that are supporting it. Uh, you from the biggest of the big sis to local, [00:43:10] uh, small, uh, regional sis or consultancies. Um, so there's a lot of surface area there. And, and that, that's, that's really good. And now you're [00:43:20] deciding, okay, am I going to self-host this or am I going to use, um, hyper scaling? Okay, great. Mm-hmm. So the good news is you're making that decision because you've already [00:43:30] picked the tech stack and that that's positive. Um, but how you make the decision is based on really, um, what is, you know, are you [00:43:40] concerned about noisy neighbor? Are you concerned about data providence? Are you concerned about, uh, is there really a cultural blocker? Do [00:43:50] you, do you have cloud antibodies inside your company mm-hmm. That are, are gonna prevent this site kind of move? Um, the other question is, do we [00:44:00] really need to use Kubernetes for everything? Can we use some cloud providers container service? I. Uh, that might be able to solve the problem. And I would [00:44:10] argue that you could, but you certainly need to make the decision on when are we gonna switch to a non-proprietary solution [00:44:20] or a away from the proprietary to something open standard. Um, so there's a lot of moving parts here, and there's no [00:44:30] just, you know, okay, well here it is here. Here's an integer that I can give you for the answer, but I will say this, that not a lot of people are asking this question. Not a [00:44:40] lot of people are saying, well, wait a minute. What is the thing that's gonna make us move from one place to the next Uhhuh? They're not asking questions about how big [00:44:50] does this bill have to get before we move this open standard to another provider? People aren't asking that, and when they're not asking those [00:45:00] questions, they're likely to be using a managed solution beyond. When it makes sense too, right? What? Okay. And, and so [00:45:10] sometimes you are going to get to the point of scale. Um, I think that if you're running maybe a, a trillion dollars in [00:45:20] transactions, uh, through your application a day, you might wanna self-host because that's worth building up that expertise. Uh, you don't, you [00:45:30] don't want, you, you do not want any barrier between you and the platform if you've got that kind of scale. And then once you do decide, okay, I, maybe I should [00:45:40] self-host, I should at least look into it. What's your first step into that world? It's overwhelming place. Oh, it is. And, and, and the key is you have [00:45:50] got to bring in experts. Um, you know, uh, Kelsey Hightower always says if you want to do open source, right. You know, hire a maintainer. [00:46:00] Do not put them in a, you know, they're not doing daily standups, you're not gonna sign Jira tickets to them. They are gonna serve as, look, if you're betting your [00:46:10] business on this technology stack, you better have somebody with a seat at the table. Two, you need to also position them to win and be successful [00:46:20] so that they are evangelizing internally. And three, they are your last stop on, um, uh, [00:46:30] on support. They also keep your vendor on us. So if you're doing this and the vendor say, oh, we're gonna have this out in second quarter of next year, and blah, blah, blah, and, and the maintainer is [00:46:40] like, huh, that's news to me. Uh, so that's very valuable. I think the first step with that is to bring [00:46:50] in a maintainer, somebody who has that expertise, and you can also trade with your friends. If you have a, uh, you, you know, you can [00:47:00] work and build kind of an ad hoc consortium where maybe you have hired your company has hired a maintainer for one project. Mm-hmm. And another company [00:47:10] has a maintainer for another project, and you're working together and you both care about that project. Maybe you're in a different industries, that's ideal. You can just share that burden, that load. [00:47:20] What is, so you recently worked at Linux Foundation. Mm-hmm. Is this relevant to your job there? Were you, were you helping [00:47:30] people utilize open source? Well, a, absolutely. So, um, you know, I led strategic partnerships and business development over at [00:47:40] CNCF and so it was really helping people understand, uh, and are really focused on end users. Uh, these are, uh, banks, insurance companies, manufacturers [00:47:50] that are taking advantage of Cloud Native Tech. And helping them understand that they can be truly the, the [00:48:00] masters of their own destiny. Mm-hmm. They don't have to rely on a vendor to take them down the path mm-hmm. That they can, they can figure this out [00:48:10] themselves. There is things, you know, structures in place in this community and not just through CNCF, not just through lf. There's ways of engaging with this community [00:48:20] where you can accelerate your adoption of this stuff. And when you do, you save money. Like, like that. For me, the biggest thing about open [00:48:30] source is that it's open standards and it's really about vendor management at that large company scale. Uhhuh, if we're, if we're able to use, [00:48:40] um, you know, we have all of our apps using Oel Open Telemetry, um, we are able to pick the best deal for an observability platform.[00:48:50] It really helps us out instead of using something proprietary. Yeah. You know, a custom agent, uh, we're able to go, that's, you know, the, the, the power of Kubernetes as well. [00:49:00] You know, Uhhuh, we can, we can move this. Uh, and if some vendor rate jacks their prices, you're like, that's cool. I'll just, I'll just switch. Yeah. No biggie. I don't think that's the [00:49:10] dream. I know, I know. I, I know. Especially if you had some sort of software that could extract the configuration from one system and then convert it and put it in another system. Well, if we're using [00:49:20] GI ops, then it, it, it's super easy. Right. No problem. That's right. No problem. You just change a YAML file somewhere. We're done. Now. Sometimes the threat and, and a [00:49:30] credible threat that's right, of being able to change is good enough to get a 20% haircut, and that's always a good thing. Yeah. But you, yeah, I, I like, I like that. Uh, this is, well, [00:49:40] one. This is some good advice for negotiating a price. You might be able to get it to $500 if you're the first customer. Absolutely. I, I, I I like this. Now, [00:49:50] now, you know, you mentioned earlier doing catering management, right? Yeah. And, and like, I think it should be obvious to anyone listening that you probably have analyzed something [00:50:00] like the following is like, so how do you like optimize the catering so that like you're not just serving like soft, gross lasagna every night, but that you're [00:50:10] like making money, but that it's like food that you would want to eat that, that like, you're not ashamed of serving. Right? Because catering can go like terribly, [00:50:20] right? Yes. But, but it could be cheaper. We've all had bad catering. Yeah. So, so how, like, how do you, how do you balance that out? Like what do you, how do you run that, that kind of business? [00:50:30] Well, one thing that I noticed, and this is uh, the company that was the catering company is TDA Catering. La Great name. Nice. And uh, uh, Shelly Lynn Brandler. [00:50:40] She, she is amazing. Um, and, um, so she now does, um, the, the artist catering for [00:50:50] Coachella LA Forum, uh, Hollywood Bowl, all that stuff. And so when I noticed that her and her team and, and Mike Cordell is, is [00:51:00] her chef, uh, what I noticed is that the stuff that can stick around, they get, uh, they get done. Like, like for example, [00:51:10] uh, the salad bar, you, you can prep all the salad bar stuff, but the thing about the food, like, oh, and so by, by by stick around, you mean you can like [00:51:20] make it 10 hours ahead of time and it's fine. Right? Keep it in, keep it in the fridge. And then if we need to replenish the salad bar, we take it from the refrigerator over there. So those are the prep things, but [00:51:30] lasagna, uh, grilled chicken breast. Those sorts of things. You actually want to start grilling those. You don't make all the grilled chicken [00:51:40] breasts two hours before lunch. Yeah. You set up your grill station and when chicken breasts are starting to get down, we're like, okay, last, you know, [00:51:50] hotel pan goes out great. Now we're gonna grill this up six, eight minutes because those commercial stuff is really hot. And then you take out a fresh [00:52:00] batch and you've got somebody slicing chicken breasts as they come off the grill and so you're making the mains and those sorts of things. While service is going on. [00:52:10] And, and have you, have you done like some, um, I don't know, is there like gold rat theory of constraints that gets applied to catering where you're figuring out the throughput and [00:52:20] identifying the bottlenecks and like, how, how do you know how much chicken breast to make based on like the number of people? Do you build that up intuitively or there, is there an Excel sheet? Like [00:52:30] what, what goes on with all that? No chefs chef, the chefs know this. They know exactly how many ounces and there's always a push pull between, you know, the [00:52:40] kitchen and front of house on portion control. Hmm. Uh, that's always a challenge because if you're, you know, said, okay, everybody's getting six ounce of chicken [00:52:50] breasts, uh, and then everybody starts getting eight, well, guess what, uh, you're, you're gonna, you know, a third of your people aren't gonna eat. It's gonna eat it up. [00:53:00] How do you, how did you bring these lessons into your startups? Well, it, it was really about finding, finding pain. So when I [00:53:10] joined Warp Tour, they had a process for seeing who could come through the catering line. And it was a laminate that had all the tour dates on it, and you would [00:53:20] punch it out with a little, you know, one of those hole punchers. Oh, right. But somebody, you would, people had a tendency to lose these things. I'm like, oh, I lost my food laminate. And they'd get [00:53:30] fined, you know, 50 bucks. Okay, great. Here's 50 bucks. Well, guess what? Somebody's, you know, boyfriend would find the laminate that's traveling along with them and they'd [00:53:40] start eating. Mm-hmm. So they were supposed to only feed 350 people a meal. It was ballooning up to like 700 plus. Whoa. Whoa. People are getting like two ounces of [00:53:50] chicken breast at the tail end of the tour. And so what I did was I built a, um, barcode scanner. It was an access because I needed [00:54:00] something that could move from a laptop, uh, without internet. And this was also, you know, early two thousands. Okay, we're just gonna knock it out and put a unique [00:54:10] barcode sticker on every single person's laminate and we would scan 'em, boop. Um, and what that wound up doing was turning it [00:54:20] into, you know, from a call center to a profit center. And, and I guess it was my first company, um, you know, being able to solve a problem.[00:54:30] Uh, this feels like tech lessons that you brought to catering. I was hoping for the other way around. Ah, uh, well, um, you know, we [00:54:40] had a focus on feeding everyone. So Uhhuh, vegan, vegetarian, uh, Rastafarian, uh, no pork, [00:54:50] you know, the, we had to make certain that everybody ate. This, this, this is kind of good 'cause it's the opposite of, of startup focus. You're like mm-hmm. [00:55:00] Everyone is our customer. Right? Not just one, the one narrow thing. So what I, I noticed that catering is that at breakfast mm-hmm. Everybody could eat breakfast. [00:55:10] Not, you know, it, it's, it's like, yeah, there's, you know, eggs there and, and some other stuff. But we also had, you know, some tofu, scramble, those sorts of things. Uh, it wasn't [00:55:20] until lunch and dinner that you really start breaking down, like, okay, this is vegan, this is vegetarian, this is chicken. And it was [00:55:30] like, okay, based on, you know, your, your dietary restrictions you can eat. And so I, I think one of the things that really has always stuck with [00:55:40] me is one, Shelly Lynn and Mike from were just really hyper-focused on the customer who was eating. What did they want? And then [00:55:50] two, figuring out an easy way to deliver that without breaking the bank and killing your staff. Mm-hmm. So it's possible. And, and what you have to do is [00:56:00] you have to focus down on your offering. I think believe strongly that scarcity brings clarity. That if you raise a lot of capital, [00:56:10] uh, you're gonna make some decisions that are not optimal. And because it's kind of like that, you know, you get a new bottle of shampoo, you know, [00:56:20] first, first part of it, like, oh, I'm using a lot of shampoo. And as it starts to go down, you're like, okay. Uh, it's like anything, uh, you know, when you have limited resources, you have a tendency to [00:56:30] make decisions that are more optimized than not. So, I, I wanna, I'm gonna bring back a, a, a question we had a long ago, you'll probably remember, Whitney is [00:56:40] So in your ideal kitchen cabinet, do you have only one type of Tupperware. One brand, one type that you have? [00:56:50] Or are you just like, I need the right Tupperware for the job? Like what, you know, you can tell us what you actually have now, but like, if you were setting it up, which, which route would you go?[00:57:00] And this is question for me. Yes. Yes. Okay. Um, so, um, we have one, uh, we use standard deli containers, [00:57:10] 32 16 8 outs. Oh, you deli person? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. And, um, we save all of the, um, you know, other [00:57:20] containers for the garage, uh, for keeping track of hardware and those sorts of things. So like empty. I see. Pasta, you know, uh, uh, tomato sauce [00:57:30] cans, like the glass ones. So, so let me try to, let me try to understand how this, this, uh, this works out. So use like deli containers, which, you know, stuff you would get with takeout. Mm-hmm. And there [00:57:40] might be a variety of manufacturers that do it, but because there's, I don't know if it's an actual like, ISO standard, but there's some kind of defacto industry standard that all these [00:57:50] things are more or less compatible, right? Like they, they'll sack with each other. They kind of look the same or, or, or not. So do you buy like the same thing so they're compatible? Yes. Or is it just [00:58:00] like, so, so like you just go to Costco and buy the thing or wherever you get it from? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you've optimized single, single vendor for, for your [00:58:10] Tupperware. Right. And uh, but the cool thing thing about the single vendor, single standard, right? And the cool thing about this is they get stained, they wear out, you put 'em in the recycling bin. Okay. Yeah. That's [00:58:20] great. So you're able to, uh, choose another vendor at some point. You're going to get rid of these, so they get stained with food and, and you start to go. And [00:58:30] in fact, you, I yesterday had to go and get some more 32 ounce, uh, one liter size for our international, uh, you know, non-US This I, you've introduced [00:58:40] an interesting theory is you have a natural, you can introduce natural rural migration points. Like, like, like, you know, as, as you're getting rid of them, you could say [00:58:50] like, all right, we've got five more of these shitty ones left. Mm-hmm. We'll, we'll get rid of them and then we're gonna get the new type. Right. We're, we're, whenever we buy something new, we're not going to, uh, [00:59:00] buy the legacy containers. And so Right. We we're, we're going to either change to get a, uh, you know, thicker plastic or whatever, or another vendor that [00:59:10] lasts longer. Okay. I, or something cheaper. Yeah. Maybe you're optimizing for cost. I've never considered the, uh, the, the, the deli thing. That's, that's interesting. You know, you know that, that that famous [00:59:20] cook, uh, Kenji, he uses deli containers. Mm-hmm. Maybe 'cause he has a chef background, but mm-hmm. I don't know. I feel like there might be something to this deli container thing. I, I, the only problem I have is that they're [00:59:30] round and, uh, although that's an optimal shape, um, for packing the most amount of stuff. Yeah. They, they [00:59:40] leave a lot of space when you're stacking 'em next to each other. Right. And what if you have something square like that? Uh, like if you want, and then you wanted to serve something square that's gonna be hard [00:59:50] to preserve the squareness, like the lasagna. Um, you, we put the lasagna in the deli container, you know, you've got a, you could, the, the 16 ounce, [01:00:00] um, size, pint size, you know, half liter is going to be perfect size for one single serving of las, even though it's round. Right. So you're [01:00:10] don't use Right. But you don't use the whole space. But that's fine. Well, right. Yeah. And, and, but you, you put it in there. And so, you know, we, we make lasagna. We'll make, uh, enchiladas something like that and we'll make [01:00:20] certain that, um. They fit in that container. And so each one is single serve, right? For, for re for heating up. Okay. [01:00:30] Okay. I'm gonna ask one more question. You've been talking a lot about startups and how to do them well and find the pain and, and all the advice you've given. [01:00:40] Not that anyone would wanna do this, but what action would you take to fail a startup? What should you do? Oh, um, you know, the [01:00:50] things that I have seen, I'll talk about where we did fail, uh, and we love it really. We really screwed [01:01:00] up. Um, and where we, we self-corrected and got it fixed. Um, so one of our, at the early days of [01:01:10] Liquibase, it was eight databases we supported. And at the same time, there was an explosion of different databases. And [01:01:20] we were having to handcraft bespoke artisanal extensions for each database. And [01:01:30] so, um, we did the math, okay, it takes one engineer six weeks to build an extension. We have to build 50 extensions. We're [01:01:40] gonna be here a while. And so, um, we figured, we, we decided that we were gonna make a commitment to change and we needed to [01:01:50] change two things. Now, if we had continued down this path, um, it would've been really bad and we would've been stuck, and that would've caused the company to fail.[01:02:00] But we actually invested in two things. One, changing the API to make it easier to write extensions. And then two, [01:02:10] building a, what we call a test harness to make it easy to validate a new extension. And so we really focused on reaching [01:02:20] out of the company to the database vendors and hyperscalers to be able to say, look, you know, we've got a customer of yours that wants [01:02:30] us to support this. If we support this, they'll use more of your database. Let's partner and get some help from you. And so if [01:02:40] we had, if we had focused and just gone down the route of old business manually starting this stuff, instead we made it push [01:02:50] button effectively, um, you know, uh, um, you know, clone repo. Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, there, there was [01:03:00] ways that we could make this easier, but it took time and energy away from adding new features to the product. But we said, no, we are adding features to the product. We're [01:03:10] gonna make this easier for other people to add extensions and our partners are gonna be doing this. If we had not done that, um, it would've been really bad. And I don't [01:03:20] think we did it soon enough. And I think it cost us a lot of things in the early days, and that's my fault. I I was prioritizing features to get larger deals [01:03:30] and not expanding the uh, uh, the reach of the deals you already do have. Yeah, exactly. That, that was mm-hmm. That was very much shortsighted on my part and I learned [01:03:40] a lot from that. And startups, what's something that seems like a good idea but is not actually a good idea?[01:03:50] Um, chasing buzz. Uh, you know, we're, we're in Austin, you know, there, there's this wave of do we go to South by, or not Uhhuh, do we send [01:04:00] our company there? Um, I don't think it's worthwhile to, um. You know, okay. You know, thi this new [01:04:10] technology is super hot right now. Mm-hmm. We need to make sure that we literate all over our, our website. Mm-hmm. Um, I think there is something more impactful, [01:04:20] which is to show how, um, you know, for example, you know, AI right? There is, you, you don't have to totally pivot the company [01:04:30] to be an AI company. Yeah. But you certainly can show how you're helping companies, your customers that are, uh, adopting AI into their business [01:04:40] processes and how you can help. So if you rapidly chase and pivot the company, employees get nervous, they get confused, your [01:04:50] customers get nervous and confused. Um, and I think it's really about reaching out to those customers, uh, employees, partners. And [01:05:00] really understanding, okay, when we say AI in this context, what do we mean? And so avoiding chasing buzz, you can't have just your [01:05:10] marketing, you know, marcom team do this. It needs to have buy-in from, you know, customer success is bringing the voice of the customer product. When I think of [01:05:20] startups chasing buzz, I think of them doing it more for the sake of VCs than for customers. Is that an [01:05:30] accurate, it depends on their life. Life cycle. Okay. But, uh, luckily I'm seeing more and more startups that are chasing customers in [01:05:40] revenue to get venture capital. Mm-hmm. And I like that. Okay. Yeah, it, it is, uh, I, I, that, that's, for me, that's actual, it's tangible. I can uhhuh, I can help them with [01:05:50] that. Uh, but it's like, well, what does this venture capitalist need? Um, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be revenue based. You know, I [01:06:00] don't, other things will tip them over Uhhuh. But at the end of the day, if you're growing and you're doubling revenue, um, you know, from super tiny amount, [01:06:10] you know, month over month, quarter over quarter, whatever your metric is, um, you know, whatever your, your period is, uh, great. Uh, do that, keep doing that and, [01:06:20] and show increasing revenue at an increasing rate. That's far better than buzz. Well, you know, all we have on this episode and this podcast is buzz, [01:06:30] no revenue. But you know, that, that means our growth rates, the first, do we have either the first $500 that we get is gonna be infinite growth that, that we'll have [01:06:40] achieved, which would be great. So we can track that. But, uh, you know, so thanks for being on that, that, that was fun. Now, if, uh, if people wanted to track down some more thoughts on Tupperware [01:06:50] growth rates, liquid based flocking, Molly Furnace and, and, and catering, do, do you have, do you have some home on the worldwide web or some social network you would send them to? [01:07:00] Um, sure thing. Robert reeves.org, um, I is a good way to find me. And that just drives you to LinkedIn. Um, and, uh, that's, [01:07:10] that's a, a, a fine place to find me, uh, R two R number2@robertreeves.org. Just email me. Keep the convers conversation going as they like [01:07:20] to say in more Yeah, absolutely. Professional. Yeah, it's places. Yeah, I absolutely, I'd love to hear from people and I'd love to get some feedback on my thoughts [01:07:30] on revenue and certainly how open source supports that. Um, because I don't have all the answers. I, I think we all together have all the answers and I [01:07:40] absolutely would love to get feedback from folks and, and tell me where I was wrong. Uh, you know, put me on blast on LinkedIn. Uh, you know, that's right. Lemme knows [01:07:50] li LinkedIn stick fight feedback is the gift in the future. We'll have to find, find, uh, some little animated gif. Of, uh, of, of people fighting about open source [01:08:00] business models. I don't know. We'll go to the AI and see what that would look like. Well, as always, uh, speaking of things, you can go to the AI to get a picture of. This has been another episode of Software Defined [01:08:10] Interviews and type that in and see what comes up. Uh, thanks for listening to it. If you don't subscribe to it already, you can go to software defined interviews.com or search in your podcast listener.[01:08:20] It's kind of weird you would be listening this long without already subscribing, but I guess it has to start somewhere, right? Someone has to listen to it today, today without having subscribed, and then go and subscribe. So you [01:08:30] can do it there. There's also a Slack channel you can join for the broader software defined podcast area. And, uh, you can talk about tech stuff and other things there. I [01:08:40] think there's a food channel. We'll have to run this. Uh, I'll ask them what they do with their, their, their Tupperware stuff. Uh, but with that, thanks for listening. We'll see everyone next time. Bye-bye. [01:08:50] Goodbye.