Ask Me Anything with Peldi Guilizzoni – MicroConf 2012

0:01[Music] [Music] alright alright so first of all Thank You Robin Mike for putting this together this is awesome for me because it's pretty lonely and I live in Italy there's not much of a you know startup founder owning a multinational software company community I started to try to join that Club so far one member come over anyways I love it here it's so great to be here so thanks a lot umm I just updated my slide I love cuz there's like really bad he's already embarrassed by me so okay so I did this sort of you know the making talks it requires a huge amount of effort for me it's pretty it's pretty

1:06daunting so when Rob asked me to come I didn't you know I almost said no because I didn't have time to do a proper talk and then we thought about this how about we do like a reddit style ask me anything no no you know I can take it don't don't be shy and so we're doing that and then I figure it's like yeah but that's kind of pretentious and so first the obligatory slide which is like this is you know one data point I'm really nervous there's a bunch of people in this room who have much better answers that I didn't possibly have so this is one data point you know what

1:41whatever I answer but also I thought that this could be a useful talk because tonight when you want to break the ice you don't know you know you want to meet people this could be a great icebreaker or you know which one is the most dangerous if implemented you know you can you can sort of mix it up a little bit so yeah huge grain of salt and I have two more slides one is like a list of questions that I could possibly answer in case there were crickets and the first one is one that people ask me all the time which is how much money

2:18that you make so I made that one slide to just get it out of the system and so this is a history we are 11 employees now how do we do that there's little faces down here oh well this is quarter one quarter by quarter since we since I launched as a solo founder in 2008 June 2008 actually this is the launch this is was the founding of the company and so the green is the revenue and and quarterly revenue and the know the blue and the green is that the profits so what's going great it's going really well the one interesting thing two interesting things about this graph are

3:09at this point right here where we got hit with a ton of taxes well it's interest because in Italy when you start a company first of all you have to have 10,000 years to deposit because because otherwise would be too easy and so and then after six months you pay taxes for that six months plus all the taxes for the next year just in case and so we got boom I didn't know that part and so that's the story of that first line if that wasn't enough the second one was we came pretty close to being acquired and we decided to go independent and so sort of I did a

4:00counteroffer to stay independent and part of that offer was you all get half of your salary as a bonus right now if you if you were down with say an independent and so because then we're gonna get a lot of cash if we're sold right like I can't give you that much cash but I can give you some cash right now because we have it in the bank and so that's why that almost went negative for a little bit but then it's fine and first-quarter is always the most profitable because it's less taxes etc so it's gonna go down profitable is me but anyway it's going well so this is

4:37the this is the list of questions - the bottom ones oh well but but before we even get to these this is you know stuff but if you have anything I think Rob is gonna run around with the mic I'm here I mean really but this is a an hour of just chatting so who's first I have a question oh here's Rob first he gets he has the mic already cookie in my mouth sorry I wanted to get him first question is was there a single marketing approach that used early on that you felt really jump started your business and if so what was it and if not it was just you

5:19know a whole bunch of things okay so there's this blog post that I wrote that is very popular called startup marketing advice from Islamic Studios and I know that Patrick McKenzie even still sends people to it and that was sort of like a little bit of in Belmar kidding I was reading a little bit about that their mesh book wasn't out yet so I was sort of gathering stuff about that meaning you know try to give your softer character and so you know with the sketchy line was kind of new nobody knew about it and it was immediately recognizable and people were like oh how did you do this so it was the softer

6:01itself helped sell itself then when I did the on the online version I had a little you can download the image but it adds a little watermark says built with balsamic so you know poor little marketing in the product itself then would I do why I contacted some bloggers I I started answering people's I looked on Twitter and RSS for people who had the same problem and I added I said injected myself into the conversation which you got a thread really carefully because you don't want to spam right and now I see my competitors doing it and it looks kind of sad but you know you're desperate for

6:42attention nobody knows you if you think that what you're offering is exactly what they're looking for right now why not tell them right and then there's a few other other systems it wasn't a very you know I was trying things out but I think that part of the reason it was successful is you know first of all the software was focused pretty good even at the beginning you know it was pretty rough but I think one part you know then I had the best about page ever of course [Laughter] but you know it really de honesty and the fact that you know the diversion one was crappy and I knew it and everybody

7:29knew it but I needed people's feedback right so I gave it away for free in in exchange for feedback as much as I could I gave it to bloggers because they liked to write and and then I gave him give them another copy to give away to their readers so that they look good right and so we got a ton of blogs post about that and in fact I was telling somebody on the on the by page at the beginning you went through by page and it says hold on don't buy it you probably can get it for free if you blog about it if you demo it

8:01to 15 people if you're a do-gooder if you're non-profit blah blah and then you had to scroll down to see actually I want to buy it myself because at the beginning feedback is much more important so by building that feedback I built that community I also started getting more attention so that sort of all I think happened but I think overall the product his the vast majority you know it was useful and save people time money so I think that's the most important thing all right you had a question somebody sure in the early days how did you know when you were ready to make the

8:41leap and and how did you I guess find the courage to to scrape by on savings and through the hard times in there in the beginning okay so I my previous career I was a micro media then we became Adobe and at some point I was there so I graduated in Italy and I moved there after maybe two three years I was getting something like my head was getting big because like I wrote like I call Thor the O'Reilly book on this I was really hold myself so I was like oh maybe maybe I could do this intrapreneurs thing and so I got this book called you have to be a little

9:17crazy the truth about starting your company it's a tiny little book I mean it to page 16 and I'm like no no this is nuts I this is not for me and that was really really important because I had I jumped there at that point I would have failed immediately so that bought me four more years out of the OB of trying to learn as much as possible until I reached a point where I was teaching more than I was learning and so that's one sign another sign is I started reading all these business books and and whatever you know all the Spolsky books all day

9:55you know the Bob Walsh and Eric sink and this is before Eric Ries you know he was doing school I guess but so I read all this stuff and all of a sudden I started realizing that Guy Kawasaki I start realizing that I was getting conflicting advice from these experts and there was also a bell because of my weight so which one is it and how am I gonna find out these are the experts right so I I realized one day that was like this is as much as I'm gonna learn from the books and this is about after maybe 30 40 bucks so I thought after

10:33years right so that happened and then I was like maybe it's time to jump and a lot of there were a lot of things that just happen all at the same time that told me it's now or never but when I decided to make the move I said okay I'm gonna finish this project that I'm working on Adobe which is gonna launch this was September 2007 this was gonna launch in April 2008 it's like okay between now and April I knew it was gonna be late because they're always late so I thought but you know in May or June to to get something ready cuz I

11:12wanted to quit you know ship that thing that I loved that I worked on and be proud of that and then I could leave and so I started working nights and weekends every night 8:00 p.m. to midnight and even if you're fried there it's amazing how much you can do it and then I would work Sunday mornings so in a way Adobe funded my company right and it's you have to be careful with that but but you know one of my please just release this phone is first the iPhone little app so I'm really proud of that so so during that time I sold all my stocks I stopped

11:51putting money 401 K I started amassing all the cash that I could possibly imagine then we moved back to Italy which was cheaper for us to live and and so I had a year worth of savings when I launched and that made made it easier for me and I never burned any bridges I mean I was pretty much sure I had to move back or do consulting or you know to pay the bills but then I was lucky enough that I shot that

12:22so a two-part question one is when and kind of how did you know when it's time to make your first hire and secondly I guess from a compensation point of view how do you compete as a bootstrap company with you know startups that are venture funded have a ton of cash and have that possibility but exit do you do prop sharing do used to offer equity in your company even though there's less likelihood of acquisition or IPO okay okay so the first part was when did you know went to hire the first person so I launched in June and I got and it started going well and it was great

12:59until it wasn't great anymore because it was too much I got to about 3,000 customers on my own and at that time that was maybe six months later and at that time I was doing sales support and tech support a week and then coding in the weekend and I did because that was the only quiet time that I had and I did that for six weeks or more actually and that took a toll on me and my family you know it's not fun until one day I woke up sweating thinking if I don't hire somebody today I'm gonna die I'm seriously wasn't about going bankrupt it

13:35was about physical flatline and it was my body what a first day was my body telling me not my brain and I've learned to listen to that because you know it's dangerous you know and so luckily I had already sort of met who be the guy at Marco who became my first employee and you know I did the Indecent Proposal he had to quit his job which is a big deal because in Italy in Italy once you have a job that's for life nobody can move you and so yeah he had a stable job he had to do a lot of explaining to his family to you know quit his job and go

14:09for follow this crazy guy and I said I have one year's salary in the bank of your salary so I can promise you that I'm gonna pay you for a year and then we'll see and then he said okay but what if it doesn't work and that's what I realized that I was crazy because I was like it cannot not work I was like what do you mean it doesn't work it's gonna work and so but but so so that's first part second part competing with VC funded startups excited what one one ways to go to Italy what there is no you know I am the most exciting thing that I've ever

14:46seen so that's that helps but I guess we have do we have these policies yes here we're covering some ground we have a salary policy that says we're going you're gonna get paid more than your same job in your geographical area so I want to make sure that you're not looking around for another the same job in your area you know you and so so that's just the base so so basically remove the salary out of the picture because it's good it's better than what anything else that I can find nearby and so we you know we pay well in short the second thing is I've never given equity

15:29yow because I haven't gotten around to it it's a complicated subject but we do profit sharing and so when I hired Marko I said I'm gonna give you two percent of profits every quarter and then once we started hiring more and more people that was going to become like 30% of the company of the profits and that was kind of reckless so now we have a policy that says there's a 10% of profits and they get split up against between the employees based on on seniority so how long they've been in the company not based on their job or their base salary it's you know because everybody is

16:08helping the same way you know different different levels but and so we have profit sharing and and and that so the other thing is I don't really compete with the VC thing with this VC funded startups because we're different beast all together right when I when I hire someone I always tell them listen this is a company where you arrive it's not really a starting point I mean you're gonna learn a lot I'm gonna do my best to make you learn as much as possible but first of all we're all distributed so you need to be independent so you need to be senior before you even

16:47consider joining so and then we're never gonna get sold you know well that's not the plan so equity is really not worth much we'll give you cash every quarter instead and for some of the employees this is like as much as their base salary so it's a big deal and so I guess it weeds out the the the people it's it's we're really upfront with it about it and so far it's worked out okay so I see hands while we while we do that can I can i there's a couple of things I want to tell you because they're fun yeah can I pick - hold on Justin just a second this dagger

17:33sure one is PCI compliance so there's this big myth that is so hard and painful it's like security theater right you go on there's this website you you say yes on all the questions even if they're ridiculous and and so we're like really do I have to say yeah and they said yes because it doesn't apply to you now but if you say yes it means that you understand that should it apply in the future you have read the paragraph so it's like don't be scared of bizarre compliance it's a total ridiculous thing and it thirty dollars a year you go online 20 minutes you're welcome

18:17I wanted to ask you you've been radically transparent from the word go and people have been copying you and doing exactly what you're doing from the word go how have you negotiated that and has it ever worried you that people do exactly what you do you mean the transparency thing or the actual software the fact that they've copied your software they've copied your marketing techniques they've pretty much copied everything that you do and has it ever affected your business does it ever hurt your revenue it did affect the business but it made it better there's this quote from Jason Calacanis about welcoming your competitors to the race because no

18:53one wants to watch a one horse race right so the minute they showed up my revenue went up because this cemented us as the leader it was obvious that they were doing it for money we're doing it for passion it's clear now we have somebody to to come to people can can compare every time they get a review it gets compared to us right it's a it's not it's not a big deal I mean it was but it's pretty funny I mean one one company in our in you know in the data grid if people are familiar with markets I can tell the story and the data great

19:29it has some prefilled end data which is my name my age blah blah blah so this company shipped the data grids where Jack of a bullets are in it if that's the competition I'm not so worried or another guy it was funny cuz like we moved the the release from Saturday to Tuesday the release day of the week because I had employees I didn't want to ask them to work on Saturdays and so we're moving it to two weeks later does that accompany oh we moved the release to Tuesday really so it's flattering really it's flattering it shouldn't worry about it just like for the the serial number generators the

20:14cracks and for seriously do not worry about that stuff in fact that they go they go hand in hand if I put them on a line I get I recessed like Google Alerts for boss I'm right and so half of them are like crap download and why first of all you download like one gig of stuff like that's that can't be good my stuff is like two megabytes like really you should stay away from that and then I noticed that like the more we get these the more debris goes up so if they start slowing down I'm gonna start worrying they have to go together all right

20:56oh can you tell me about sixteen so how your job became became more staff support and the shit's an umbrella yeah I don't remember what I saw just a couple of weeks ago so and this is a nice article off of Iker news that my job is umbrella right so this is a recent thing my job has changed dramatically every three months so now when I say forever it really means the next three months I can't plan further than that because it's been so a completely different world every time first it was like wet master and then it was programmer and then it was marketing guy and then SEO guy and then this and

21:34that so so right now this is my job right now I have eleven employees tenant please push me and my job has shifted I can no longer do customer support which I'm sad I miss it but we have two people doing sales support and two people doing tech support and we have 80,000 plus customers so we're pretty lean it's fine but with the ten employees I've noticed that my time has to be dedicated to them and that fills up my time Spolsky told me a couple years ago that the way he sees the CEO is at the bottom of the inverted pyramid right and he says your

22:18job as the CEO is to go in every morning and say to the team what do you need that's it what do you need and I love that I love that I've been doing that you know I remove blocks i I can't possibly try to control what happens I can sort of set the strategy or say you know maybe this is less important than that why don't you postpone that but really I you know take out the trash work and and support the team and support you so I know and I do the umbrella because the shitty stuff goes I'm like okay give it to me don't spend too much time on it

22:55I'll handle the because in the time that it takes me to handle they can deal with another 50 customer sports right so that's my job right now I'm I'm liking it I'm learning it I don't know how much longer it can scale with you know I think I'm about at the threshold where if I had one more two more people it would be too much because with that with ten people if I even dedicate one hour a week to reach employee that's already ten hours which is 1/4 of my of my working time so now I'm reading up on actually maybe if you have ideas about

23:33this I'm reading up on how to keep a flat structure even at scale I read the valve employee handbook that came out I read I'm reading about Gore attacks because they have 200 people and no managers so I'm starting to read a bit of documentation on that maybe if you have any tips did I answer I hope

24:04hi you've been very transparent on lots of things your revenues and and you had an outage a little while ago and you're very transparent about that is there anything that you wouldn't be transparent about or where do you draw the line there well there's some things where you're contracted Li you have to do you cannot talk about like the acquisition I already told more than I've ever told and I can't talk more about that because I signed another one is you know there is a sort of a bias where you you tend to want to share the good news and not the bad news right that's the and and some people are

24:44better than other that I I do have that bias I you know I don't like to air my my problems in public it's by I should probably do more what we do say is like we never talk about competition about our competitors directly you know maybe these jokes here and there but I didn't say who they were or whatever because it's better if our if somebody else talks about it I don't know I don't know it's it's a judgment call you don't have to be transparent just because the reason I was so transparent at the beginning was because it was just me and I needed to sell to large corporations

25:29and so would you whatever Apple Cisco whatever would you buy from a single guy who's probably like it's a hobby right I wouldn't be crazy right and so that's why I put in the about page like okay listen it is me but I have these advisers and I'm making money it seems like I'm gonna stick around right so that's why I started sharing it and then it became this big big deal yeah totally totally the the one thing we do is we develop mock-ups in public this as soon as we have an idea for a feature well first of all 90% of that come from our customers anyways

26:12but we we mock it up and we put it online the forum's saying this is how we're thinking of building it what do you think and that does two things first of all it buys you time because you're like oh yeah I'm working on it and so you have like three or four months where you can it's in discussion if you don't have time this is secret a little trick oh yeah we're working on it look it I've made a mock-up so yeah give me your feedback and but actually it's great we've done it for a few the big features and it's great because you know there

26:47are customers use mock-ups a lot more than we do we don't have time we're busy making it and supporting it right and so of course your feedback is more important than them even my own sometimes because you live in it and then if you put it out there's all these people who have different use cases they come from different industries or what have you and so they help you shape the future in a way that's gonna be really a lot more useful to to everybody and I made that I make always make this joke which is like competing on features is very 90s don't compete on features I

27:16mean software is maturing really really rapidly right soon there's gonna be for every problem there's gonna be two three software solutions that pretty much have the same features right one person gets there first but everybody in the end has the same cause because that's the nature of you know the problem solving and so once that happens oh and one of these is gonna be free and open source right once that happens what's your what's your solution how do you why why should you be stay in business once that happens and you have to start asking yourself that immediately before you even start because it's gonna happen right unless

27:52you pick a niche that nobody cares about well then you have other problems because nobody cares about it right and so like are they on the website we said from day one we compete on usability and customer service which are things that are hard to do and usability for us is a big word it's not just how easily the software is to use but also how good the website is at the documentation and you know we understand you that's what that means better than anyone else like we give dinner recipes for crying out loud did you know about this I'll tell you later maybe but anyways

28:28that's one and that customer service because it's hard to do the bar is pretty low first of all but it's hard to do and that's gonna be hard to do even if everybody else has the same features and now the last one we're doing I added a third one now that we have a web app which is I want us to be known for reliability and we have a long way to go about that but I think that if we delivered these three things we're in we're in business if somebody comes out with a mock up up that has better usability customer service and reliability they deserve to

29:01win well hold on have the mic back here oh hi can you talk about number 46 people who want to partner oh yeah yes so if you're successful well I don't know if you notice but these are kind of about growth the growth phase it's not really mostly about starting up so I get these emails all the time about hey I saw you did plug in for a class Ian or Fall Creek or Google how about doing a plugin for my thing I haven't even launched yet and I get like five of these a week and so you gotta have some sort of policy because well first of all

29:48you have to make it if you had an API that would help but but it's tricky right cuz if I just open the doors to anybody they make a crappy integration my brand hurts gets hurt right so like I spent a week trying to draft this legal document integration that sort of protected us you know made it more open and protected a brand or more like I had to approve the integration so we're heading that direction but for now I have this policy that says you know you have to be you know growing there has to be some other commercial plug-in to your system that is successful we don't want

30:29to be the first and this is sort of cheeky but I would say you have to be somebody that we - and so that cuts out a lot of people but so it's it's a problem it's a mirror that I don't have figured out yet but I I wanted to mention it because if you're successful you're gonna get different kinds even you know also vultures who dislike oh you don't want to be acquired how about we partner and maybe there's much bigger than you and it's tough to say no but if you say yes that could derail you completely right there was this big company were like we want a

31:09customized version just for our community I can't do that I can't branch that's ridiculous I can't we have four people at times like well with the money you're gonna make from this you can hire two more people like yeah but I got to manage them down and like I don't that's not what I wanted to do and so so I guess think about the partnering ecosystem because having partners is good you know we get a lot of traffic from all the different integrations that we do and they're they're good they're good customers because they pay more so it it's good to have them but it could

31:45it could also drown you so thank you we have time for two more questions well that's it we have time for four more wait I have won the awards did you know about software Awards so there's one where you're pretty much guaranteed to get the award if you apply because the application is $5,000 so that's one so when you see that one it starts with a B and with our old another one they give you an award without telling you anything but then they call you to discuss the licensing of their gift for your website so yeah that was one of them I wanted to talk about that so are you still having

32:36as much fun now as you did in year one yes yes because two things one is the main reason I'm doing this and I think it's helped a lot is because this is all a learning experiment this is me continuing to read the books in a sense I want to learn what it takes to build a software business that's why I started by myself I wanted to see all that it took right I didn't want to be able to pass the buck about anything and so that's why you know because I did it for learning and I always had a plan B to go back and be a program or a big company

33:17which is a great job I loved it it's a great job you get to be surrounded by smart people and you just do coding without having to deal with crap and you're free to fail and learn I don't know why people this the big company so much it's just awesome anyways so that's why I was able to do some like some sort of crazy stores the decisions like I'm just gonna be upfront about everything you know cuz they know that I have a back-up plan right so that was good the other thing is that so yes I am having fun in in the sense that I still

33:51don't know what I'm doing most of the time and it's a crazy awesome feeling to because I'm like I don't know we're gonna figure it out and it's it's always been it's been like that for 40 years I've never learned so much like a last four years it's awesome I'm sure you understand and the other thing is that I have an ability to make myself like stuff which because somebody's gonna do it and so like okay let's let's see if I can make myself like it by I don't know finding an angle that I don't know I'm sure I'm sure you guys do that too to an

34:30extent hi guys but then if I really if I see that I neglect something that is crap and I'm gonna a job with something that's a good sign to find somebody to hire even part-time was a contract or whatever that loves that stuff that that's what they love about right and they're gonna do a better job I always say hire people smarter than you they're not gonna be smarter and everything you're the generalist but they're gonna be better than you at the thing you hired them to do and then you can just watch them run and ask them what do you need every day that's fine you said that

35:04um you said that earlier you're a lot of your wardrobe consists of shirts and things like that so you've gotten to conferences you you basically where all that stuff all the time if I give you something now will you wear it of course now I mean oh yes I've been what everyone in one of these I love the mail Japan [Laughter]

35:37what's the next question before I can't hear I'm curious about the process of developing your web app how you guys came to that decision I think it did take a little bit longer maybe than you did and then also how was it option going with that alright so when I started I lived in San Francisco Bay Area I was web this web that it's gotta be the web of course it's gonna be the web so when I started I said I am going to build justo a plug-in for confluence the ecclesia wiki because that's a hosted you know either hosted or your host of yourself so it's a web app right

36:21I never thought I would make a desktop app cuz who uses desktop applications anymore nobody right of course during my friends and family beta people are like well actually you know I don't use conference but I still wanna so that's when my business plan didn't survive the first impact we're customers I had to give in after two weeks it was like it's just me I can't have a lot of customers I can't support you I want few big customers right they work on the web which is the future I have to give it I have to give in and now that's the I'm a shared word guy in 2012 right

36:53ridiculous but you know this big so it still is still away it seems like Microsoft was right about this one which is not necessarily software as a service its software plus service right I feel like in the future the Apple is doing the same thing right you have the desktop software with all the stuff and it syncs to the cloud and you have a cloud editor that maybe is a little limited and then you have a mobile editor that sort of it seems like that's what everybody has to do right now and we're working towards that I totally forgot the question oh yes so so immediately people were

37:29like oh but I want to I want a web app and I'm like dude it's me I can barely keep up with what I had the desktop app which is at one time installed take it see you later I can't possibly think of hosting managing web I want to be able to go on vacation okay and so so I said no no web app no weather nothing then a year later - a year and a half later it became the big the big thing that people wanted most of more people more people and I saw some competition actually started to gain ground just on that angle and and so

38:06we're like you know let's try it and so I hired this guy part-time and I thought it would something that we could do on the side then it would take three months right that was so wrong so we wrote it and rewrote it and this and that and then I so six months of that then we started to get serious so I hired a guy full-time releases phase of Paris and so and then even after that it took about a year until it was good the problem was that this was not it was a little bit of a second product syndrome where we couldn't do an MVP Rick it

38:44could not be crappy because we already had thousands of customers that told their friends are good way we're right and so I thought - Jason Cohen about that while we were building and he was like don't ship it wait until it's good what's the pressure you're getting money you have time there's no competition that's stealing you're so take your time and and so and so great that took another year after that so but we did one thing right which is we went gamma this is a term I'm trying to I'm trying to push so it's after the beta right so this is good actually because I'm

39:24getting fired so gamma is a paid beta gamma is a launch you launch everything except for the signup page the signup page you keep a secret and and you send people to the secret signup page and you decide how quickly we had a mailing list on the other thing if you want to be notified you know put your email here it took us so long that we ended up having eight thousand names in there and so we're like okay let's try to invite a hundred of those and then how to test and they're paying they're paying so it helps you tells you if it's worth paying

40:02it's these these people who are totally eager will actually pay that helps you scale up your documentation scale up your support your your service and so we did a gamma for about six months before it was good enough and we felt like we were ready and a launch date we were able to say hey there's already 250 people who have been paying for this for six months which four new new customers is a great story to her of course it wasn't it was still too early the this was November there at least we did now polishes off the biggest rough edge that we had but we still have some

40:38a lot of work to do it's pretty good the traction is good it's making last month we made $25,000 and it's growing about 5,000 dollars a month right now even in a scrappy state so I and we haven't pushed we haven't done very much marketing at all because it was too crappy I wasn't proud of it but now that it's getting better we'll push a little bit on that and we'll see how it goes it's fun we use it already we use it for our internal team so it's a favorite way to collaborate so try to help all right we're gonna do two more what are your criteria for the services

41:20that you pay for and to use Virtual Assistants to augment your your staff time okay the second question is do you have virtual assistants no but I am totally fascinated by Rob and and Ruben they have just I don't know how to do it I'm gonna ask him yeah it's something that is scares me cuz I'm like how did I know that there you know this isn't gonna take me longer to train them then to actually job but like I know that they do it incredibly well like they they do nothing all day really and spend no money so so so no I don't buy it I

42:03can't wait to see the movie this the first question is how do you know what to pay for what to pay for it it's pretty obvious I mean this the the tools that stick and we rely on of course I want to pay for them I was so mad that I couldn't pay for pivotal tracker for so long because if it's free it's probably not gonna last so I kept tweeting about that hey could you could I pay now and so they still got acquired but it just seems like so far it's gonna stick around we don't pay for Yammer but I know they make their money another way

42:40so I'm so it's pretty clear the value proposition is clear that the desk comm used to be called assistly we love that stuff it cut down our emails like a 2,000 emails less every month just by having that system so it's it's pretty obvious I don't know if that it's gotta be made by people that we like also that's important to me like I always look at the about page wherever I go and there's this this quote that says I like to do business with businesses my size and whenever whenever that is possible I I do prefer that because it's like you reuse wpengine because Jason I'm like if the goes down I

43:29can call Jason right and that's very important try to call you know Google you can still reach it some of them you just post on I can use and then they reply that's their support Channel okay last one I'm gonna be around so any question later how do you deal with global teams to clean the the friction of not having everybody in the same box around a table okay so it's tricky but it's not impossible this was one of the things that I irrationally started saying I'm not gonna worry about where people are I just want the best that I can find and they can work from wherever they are

44:18this was one of the things that was like I'm gonna do this no I'm not gonna worry about how painful it is and that was a good thing that I did that same thing for moving through Italy and having a multinational right because I have a company in the US I started there and then I moved to Italy and I had to start a company there to hire people locally biloba and so and that was a huge ridiculous pain in the butt cuz you go to accountants and they're like wait you have customers in 78 countries and it's just you and you have a multinational they're like you don't exist they the

44:55laws have to catch up here so that was painful but yeah there were a couple of the things where I was like I don't want a hero bad it's gonna be I'm just gonna do it I don't know why cuz I I think I like the idea but so so far the the global team has worked out we use Skype for for instant messaging and that's nice because it can quickly escalate to audio video screen sharing without having to call back we use Yammer that's our office really its internal Twitter and and that's where we share every thing that happens sometimes their jokes sometimes it's what I'm working on and

45:39we have this these couple of strategies we can't possibly have a stand-up meeting every morning because the concept of morning doesn't really exist and so what happens is that as soon as when everybody wakes up they start thinking what am I going to do today and they put that on Yammer and with the hashtag agenda and so first I see the German guy he wakes up early so as I go to work I see that is what he's gonna work on and then you know the Italians and then New York wakes up at about my lunchtime and then California wakes up as I'm about to leave

46:17but it's so that's our stand-up meeting basically I can tell what everybody's working on every day and everybody else knows that too and now we just started doing a weekly agenda every Monday you say here it's a wiki page that everybody has and it says what I'm gonna what I'm planning on doing this week what I did last week and then it shifts them every week and that's a good one because I can then see why are you working on that this week you know move that to next week and there's also like a on deck list on everybody so like projects that might come in the future and that's

46:49really nimble and simple and and it works it's a but you have to get the senior people that can run on their own right and I've noticed that there are advantages of having a developer and a tester that work together being not nine hours apart for sure the feedback loop has to be tighter so I'm trying to maybe shift jobs around a little bit so that that happens more but but like for sales support admin and even tech support it's good to have people spread around cuz we never sleep so it's not it's not impossible right now it's uh maybe we'll go faster if we were all together but

47:37also we want to have people we don't want to ever shut down I you know Jason says you know be honest say that we are all in Texas so we're gonna be awakened Texas time some mornings I'm like come on Jason wake up right so so as a web app especially I want us to be able to be global cuz people they're everywhere and on that bombshell thanks a lot [Applause] you