Season 4, Ep. 35 – Founder to Founder: with Brandon Bayer, Co-Founder & CEO of Flightcontrol

(THE FRONTIER THEME PLAYS)

Bill, via previous recording (00:03):

Welcome to another “Founder to Founder” interview from Gun.io, your source for hiring world-class tech talent. Today, Gun.io’s CEO and co-founder, Teja Yenamandra, sits down with Brandon Bayer of Flightcontrol, a platform designed for teams that want the benefits of AWS infrastructure without having to hire DevOps. Okay. Here’s Teja. (THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)

Teja (00:34):

Alright, so are you in Ohio or based in the Bay?

Brandon (00:39):

In Dayton, Ohio. Birthplace of the Wright brothers.

Teja (00:42):

Okay, cool. Yeah, and you went to Wright, right, for school.

Brandon (00:48):

Wright State, yes.

Teja (00:49):

Okay, cool. Have you always been, I mean, I guess you kind of grew up, given that it is the birthplace of the Wright brothers, interested in aviation or is that like a <inaudible>?

Brandon (01:02):

Yeah, I mean like, I think I literally flew out of the womb. (Teja: <Laugh>. Like, aviation has been like, in my like, cells, every cell in my body’s just like <inaudible>.

Teja (01:14):

That’s cool. Do you, like, do you fly like, (Brandon: I do.) as a hobby? Okay.

Brandon (01:19):

Yes. I have my pilot’s license since…I got it when I was 17. Started training when I was 15 and bought my first airplane earlier this year.

Teja (01:29):

Wow, okay. That’s sick. What’d you end up buying?

Brandon (01:31):

Called a Harmon Rocket. (Teja: Okay.) It’s a two-seat taildragger, so it like, sits back kinda like the old fashioned planes. It looks like a stunt plane. In fact, it kind of is. It used to be a race plane. It is aerobatic, and it’ll cruise about 230 miles per hour.

Teja (01:48):

Damn. This looks sick. That’s pretty dope. (Brandon: Yeah.) That’s cool. So I’ve taken like, a couple of lessons in like, a Cessna. (Brandon: Oh, yeah.) You know, that’s it, and it’s always like, I mean, at least for me, it was like, crazy that the instructor’s like, “Alright, dude. Here you go,” and you’re like, “What?” (Brandon: <Laugh>.)  “Like, this my first hour like, in a plane,” and you’re like, “Okay, cool.” But it’s, yeah. That’s really sweet. So how many…okay, so I think it takes a hundred hours to get your license or something like that?

Brandon (02:21):

You need a minimum of 40. (Teja: Fourty, okay.) The average is more like 70 to 80.

Teja (02:25):

When did you feel fully comfortable like, flying by yourself?

Brandon (02:30):

Like, the first time I got on a plane <laugh>.

Teja (02:32):

No, shit. Okay. That’s how you know that it’s like, that you’re meant to do it, right?

Brandon (02:38):

Yeah, I mean, I was like, eight years old, reading aircraft manuals from the library, spent like, tons of time on a flight simulator as a kid, (Teja: Gotcha.) and so by the time I got in the real thing I was like, “Oh, this is…like, I know what I’m doing,” <laugh>.

Teja (02:49):

Gotcha. Did you do it when you were like, eight? Like, when’s the earliest you can get like, a pilot’s license?

Brandon (02:55):

So you can train, take flying lessons at any age. To be a glider pilot, you can be a glider pilot at 14, (Teja: Oh, wow.) and you have to be like, a fully certified pilot for an airplane with an engine, you need to be 17.

Teja (03:09):

Okay, got it. As far as like, your company culture, do you make people like, get interested in aviation? (Brandon: <Laugh>.) Like, I’m just curious.

Brandon (03:17):

No, I would love to <laugh>. (Teja: <Laugh>.) Maybe someday it’ll be like, a perk of like, we’ll pay for your pilot’s license or something.

Teja (03:25):

Yeah, I know. I always have to like, thread the needle carefully. Like, how much am I imposing like, my own interests and hobbies on like, the team? Because I’m like, I like these things. They make me feel awesome, and like, they’re cool, so you should do that, but, you know. I don’t know. It’s like, thematic to your company though. (Brandon: Yeah.) So maybe like, there’s an argument, you know? (Brandon: Yeah.) Did you, in your head, did you have like, an idea like, “If I want to start a company, it’s going to have like, an aviation theme to it?” Like, did you have this name ready or it just kind of emerged organically? (Brandon: No.) <Inaudible>, okay.

Brandon (03:58):

I mean, I always like, I like to have fun, and so like, (Teja: Yeah. I feel that.) I wanted a business that, you know, would be fun and like, have a theme or whatever. So we, this was back in 2021, we were getting ready to do our pre-launch. So we like, put up a landing page. We didn’t have the product, nothing. It’s just gonna be a landing page sort of outlining the vision and collecting emails for people who are interested, and also pre-selling like, early access for $20, and so we were gonna do this launch on Monday. We were like, fundraising. We were like, “We gotta do this,” and Saturday night…and we still didn’t have a name. Like, we’re having all these ideas that are just dumb, and like, Saturday night, I was driving down the highway, and I saw a billboard that said “flight” on it. Like, I think it was about beer, (Teja: Yeah, yeah.) like, a flight of beer. (Teja: <Laugh>.)

Brandon (04:45):

I was like, “flight,” I was like, “Flightcontrol.” I was like, “Wait, like, that’s actually like, pretty awesome, because we’re not like an, we’re not a hosting provider. Like, we don’t run servers. (Teja: Yeah.) We’re like air traffic control for all your servers and your infrastructure,” and I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty cool,” and like, there was a domain available, and like, there wasn’t any other companies like, really named that, and I was like, “Okay, here we go.”

Teja (05:11):

Like, what I love about it, is it’s like, it’s a really unique metaphor for like, the problem that you guys are solving, and I always feel like, those are like, the dopest, like, most resonant like, brands, you know? It’s like, a new cut into the way, like, the problem is being solved. That’s what makes it, you know, that’s, yeah. That’s really cool, and that’s like, a nice segue into like, the actual company. So like, tell us about the company, like, how you kind of got started, you went through YC. How was that experience? Like, give us like, the full run, because there’s a ton of devs in the network that are  gonna listen, probably wanna start their own company, you know what I mean? Like, big PG fans, like, all that shit. So they’d love to hear all that.

Brandon (05:51):

Cool. Yeah. I first read…how I first got interested in like, running my own business, was I read a book called Getting Real by the Base Camp folks. This was like, (Teja: Oh, yeah, yeah.) I dunno, 10 or 15 years ago.

Teja (06:01):

Back in the day..

Brandon (06:02):

Yeah, and I was like, you know, I was in a boring corporate environment, whatever, and I read this book, and my mind was like, blown of like, whoa. Like, you can like, have a software company with a small amount of people that like building a product that is, you can build a lot of care, and intentionality and like, have fun doing it, and not have all this bureaucracy and stuff. And I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna have my own company someday.” (Teja: Sick.) I didn’t know how or what, and so I had some side projects along the way. I had an iOS app that got up to like, 4 or $5,000 per month in revenue. Ended up selling it off for like, $30K to someone else.

Teja (06:42):

That’s sick.

Brandon (06:43):

Did some consulting and was like, hacking on various stuff, but I never felt like I had a really great idea, and then I was in the…so I learned web programming through Ruby on Rails, but then I fell in love with JavaScript and React, and I really missed that Ruby on Rails developer experience. And so one day, I was like, I realized that like, I was, I’d been wanting a Rails for JavaScript and React, and one day, I realized that Next.js and Prisma, this was back in 2020, beginning of 2020, I realized that these two could kind of fit together in like, this sort of experience that I wanted, (Teja: Hmm <affirmative>.) and so this was the first of Blitz.js, which is a massive open source project, and I like, had the idea and wrote a few hundred lines of prototype code, and one week later, launched it on Twitter, and the tweet went viral for a product that didn’t even exist <laugh>. But I did that on purpose. You’ll kind of see a pattern here, because I wanted to make sure that people would actually want this before I invested a lot of time in it. So like, the worst thing you can do is spend six months or a year building something, and then launch it, and nobody cares.

Teja (07:53):

Like, did you do anything to make the tweet go viral? Like, were you strategic about that, or did you just say, “I’m gonna put it out there?”

Brandon (08:00):

Yeah, I got on the dark net and just like, no, I’m kidding <laugh>. (Teja: <Laugh>.) So what I did, was I used marketing skills, which devs, most devs don’t have a lot of <laugh>, but it is super important, like, whether you’re trying to get a job or like, market your own ideas inside a company, like, marketing is super important, and really it just means, knowing what other people care about and communicating to that thing that they care about. And so I just clearly like, communicated the value that this thing was gonna provide and like, the change, how it was gonna improve their daily life, and it just really tapped into a bunch of pent up demand for more simplicity, this like, faster dev experience, and so I didn’t create the demand. I noticed it, and I tapped into it.

Teja (08:48):

So how did Flightcontrol emerge from Blitz.js?

Brandon (08:54):

So Blitz was like, a detour, because it’s not a business, it’s an open source project. (Teja: Right, right.) I got a couple thousand of dollars a month in sponsorships, but like, that’s, you know, not that much for…in the western world <laugh>.

Teja (09:08):

That’s the thing. Yeah, but you say that, but like, a lot of people are like, “Holy shit. Like, this man just made like, money using his mind, not at a job.” Like, that’s actually really fucking cool. (Brandon: Yeah?) That, to me, going from zero to like, a couple hundred per month is sometimes even cooler than like, scaling 1 million to two or (Brandon: Yeah.) 10 million to 20. Like, it’s like, you just do the same shit better. That’s it. You know?

Brandon (09:31):

Yes. So yeah. So it was a detour, but I knew that I would probably build some kind of service around it, some kind of company around it, but like, the thing that was like, I did not expect, was how much I loved building this developer tool and like, how much people liked what I built. Like, I realized I had a good knack for building good developer experience and also marketing it. And so I was like, “Okay, I guess I’m building developer tools now. Like, this is who I am.” And the other big problem I had, was I care a tremendous amount about good developer experience and ease of use, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and so I’m like, using Vercel or these sort of platforms of service, but I kept running into too many limitations, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and I was like, “Why can’t…I need to use some AWS services? I want the power of AWS, the control.” (Teja: Yeah.) “Why can’t I have the good developer experience on my own AWS account?” (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) And that is really what created this. And so like, we are like, fundamentally changing companies’ relationship with infrastructure. Like, in the past, AWS has been too intimidating and complex for like, devs to really manage, right?

Teja (10:39):

Oh, totally.

Brandon (10:40):

So then that pushes you to settle for a crippled platform to service abstraction or hire DevOps, (Teja: Right.) and so we are building developer-first AWS infrastructure that is designed for developers to easily use AWS. In fact, we’re like, we’re aiming to make AWS delightful.

Teja (11:00):

That’s cool, and it’s a noble mission. I know this, because we shifted from Heroku to AWS, and it’s a whole thing I can tell you about (Brandon: Yes.) offline. (Brandon: Yes.) You know, and you know this problem intimately, (Brandon: Yes.) so maybe I need to connect you with our CTO <laugh>.

Brandon (11:15):

Yes. Heroku. Like, it’s wild, but Heroku has an incident every six days on average, according to their public status page over the past year.

Teja (11:25):

Yeah <laugh>, and <inaudible>. Yeah. That and many other things. It’s like, yeah. I checked out like, your LinkedIn profile, and you have the most positive recommendations from people that have worked for you, and in some cases, I think, not have worked for you, but like, just like, you as a dude, and so I think this is actually like, a lot of engineers talk about wanting to skill up, maybe in the people management dimension or in the like, leadership soft skills dimension. Like, how did you maybe develop that? Is that something that you sort of were naturally gifted at? Maybe just some comments about that would be super interesting.

Brandon (12:11):

Honestly, I think most of it stems from my Christian faith, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and like, that has like, number one, like, I’ve…like, God of the Bible is like, so good, and so loving, and so kind, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and it just like, overwhelms me constantly, and so that just becomes a part of who I am and how I treat other people. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) And so I think like, the core thing, whether you like, have a Christian faith or not, is just genuinely care about other people. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) Like, I find that so often companies can be like, some of the most hyped companies can be like, “Oh yeah. We’re like, the best. We’re the most elite,” whatever, and they kind of give the idea that they care about you, but at the end of the day, they really don’t care about you. All they care about is themselves, (Brandon: Right.) and like, that’s gonna come through every time. Like, maybe you get along with them for a while, but eventually, you’re gonna see through it.

Teja (13:03):

You hear some crazy stories about these high growth companies, and like, how they operate, and you just kind of wonder like, how they came to those sets of decisions. So, I mean, I assume that your parents are Christian, and like, they imbued you sort of as a child?

Brandon (13:20):

Like, I was aware of that, but like, I did not like, follow the Christian faith until I was like, 19 or something. Like, I was just doing whatever, right? (Teja: Interesting.) But I came to a moment where like, I realized that like, I needed God. Like, I just like, knew I could just feel this way of like, I am not okay. Like, (Teja: Yeah.) I need something better. I need more life, I need more love, more whatever, that relationship. And that is, yeah. That is really like, the core of who I am and what makes me how I am.

Teja (13:55):

That’s cool. How did you come to that conclusion?

Brandon (14:00):

I mean, so I think, then like, I had the teaching, I had the knowledge, right? But then, I had this experience, this personal experience that like, I can’t necessarily explain, but I just like, knew that like, I needed, I was like, dead inside, and I needed to be alive, and so, you know, since then, like, my faith has varied over the years, and sometimes you’re just like, you think about it logically and it’s like, “Does this really make sense? Like, is this just dumb or whatever?” But the experiences that I have is like, no one can tell me that God is not real. Like, it is just so real to me. You know, if it’s not real to someone else, okay, that’s fine, but for me, it’s just like, my life is so much better.

Teja (14:45):

Cool, man. Yeah, one of our key team members, actually like, I would call him like, my co-founder at this stage, he’s been with us for so long. He is quite religious, and like, I’m pretty profane. Like, I grew up in New York, and like, I’m not very religious, and so I’ll always like, feel bad if I swear around him. I mean, he is obviously very cool about it, but it’s like, “Dude, you’re so good.” He never swears ever. So like, we’re in the same room, and I’m saying all this shit, and, you know, he is maintaining composure. I’m like, “Okay, that makes me feel bad.”

Brandon (15:19):

Like, I don’t care, like, how other people act. Like, if someone else’s behavior is affecting me, like, that’s my problem, not theirs. Like, (Teja: That’s true.) I don’t care what you say or how you act, like, whatever, I don’t care.

Teja (15:30):

That’s true, but that’s compassion, which is probably taught by your framework and worldview, right? So, (Brandon: Yeah.) That’s cool. That’s awesome, man. So how big is your team now, and like, what’s the composition of Flightcontrol?

Brandon (15:46):

So, I have a co-founder and CTO, (Teja: Cool, cool.) Mina. He’s the most amazing person in the world. Like, two years in, we are like, best friends. We actually didn’t meet in person until six months after we formed the company. Like, I met him online. It’s crazy. That’s kind a whole nother story, but then we have three other full-time engineers, and an intern engineer, and then a developer advocate.

Teja (16:12):

That’s cool. Okay…

Brandon (16:13):

So, we’re seven total, including the intern.

Teja (16:16):

Cool. Small and mighty. That’s the way to be. I mean, that’s a 37signals play. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Minimal bureaucracy, minimal process to align things, just lean. Obviously, you should share this story of how you met your co-founder.

Brandon (16:30):

Yeah. So we knew of each other through an online entrepreneur community called MegaMaker, (Teja: Okay, cool.) focused on like, bootstrappers, and so we kind of knew of each other in there, and then when I created Blitz.js, he came in and helped just a little bit at the beginning of that, because I got a bunch of people all over the world to help build that thing. And then I’d kind of been tweeting some vague thoughts about this Flightcontrol idea, but like, not that direct, and this was in 2021, early 2021. I was like, one day I was deciding what is the actual business I’m gonna build now out of a couple different options, (Teja: Yep.) and I decided Flightcontrol is gonna be this one, and the very next day, he DMs me on Twitter out of the blue.

Brandon (17:12):

Like, we’d never really had a one-on-one conversation, and he’s like, “Hey, I’m thinking about this deploy to AWS thing,” and like, kind of described exactly what I was gonna build, (Teja: <Laugh>.) and he’s like, “Do you want a partner on it” <laugh>. I’m like, “What the heck? Like, who are you?” Like, I don’t even know. Like I treat a co-foundership like a marriage. Like, it’s a very serious…(Teja: Right.) I need to make sure that you are like, we have very aligned core values, like, all this stuff. But I was like, “We have to talk,” and we just really hit it off. Like, we’re just super aligned on personal core values and also company and product vision.

Teja (17:50):

That’s pretty rad. That’s cool. What are some of the personal core values you guys are aligned on, and like, how did you determine that you guys were aligned?

Brandon (17:58):

One, we both have a Christian faith, (Teja: Cool.) and so like, that already kind of like, aligns a lot of the worldview.

Teja (18:05):

There’s a lot of alignment nested within that one thing. Yep. For sure.

Brandon (18:09):

Yep. Secondly, we both like, wanted to build a legacy. Like, we both have felt like, this just tremendous amount of potential that we have in us that we hadn’t really been [able] to realize in the world, and now we’re like, we’re getting to do that together, and we both had like, just that same vision for the product that we wanted to solve, and I came more at it from the platform as a service side. He came at it more from the AWS side, and so it’s like, a crazy cool match. Like, don’t get me wrong, there’s been tough times. We’ve had some really tough (Teja: For sure.) conversations, whatever, but like, we worked through those and now like, we have just such a strong mutual understanding that we hardly ever have any hard conversations anymore. And so often like, I’ll like, one or the other will bring up something like, “Hey, like, I need to talk about this thing,” and the other one’s like, “Yeah, I was already thinking about that.”

Teja (19:02):

Dude, you know, that happens with me and Tyler, and the funny thing is sometimes I have to go to him and be like, “Dude, are we like, suffering from groupthink? ‘Cause this feels too easy.” Like, I almost have to go and seek out like, a contrary opinion, because we’re too aligned. Like, I don’t know if you ever feel like that. I’m like, “Wait, are we both like…we both have the same priors, and so we’re both arriving at the same idea. Like, we need to get some contrary opinion here.” That’s at least, I don’t know, that’s like, it’s interesting, ’cause, yeah, in the early days you’re like, having conflict about things, and you’re trying to find the right way forward, ’cause there’s good arguments on both sides of the issue, but then over time, you’re like, we actually just agree on everything. (Brandon: Yes.) Like, okay, fair enough. Yeah.

Brandon (19:45):

So we have a team that provides that for us <laugh>.

Teja (19:49):

Yeah, <laugh>. I hear that. I hear that. Yes, yes. No, totally. I know. I know, and God bless ’em for it, ’cause that takes a lot of courage.

Brandon (19:57):

I think it’s…there’s a lot of tension there, like, from like, engineering wanting quality and us like, wanting to move fast, or like, (Teja: Yep.) you know, things like this, (Teja: Yep.) and it’s not necessarily comfortable, but I think it’s so important, and as long as you are respectful and like, you know, operate in a way that’s very kind and like, whatever, then like, that can be very healthy and really result in a much better product at the end of the day.

Teja (20:27):

So zooming out like, a little bit, you know, so you sort of got into entrepreneurship through 37signals. They have like, a world view around bootstrapping and like, you know, owning your own business and not pursuing the venture capital route, which I may be mistaken, maybe YC has changed their like, strategy on this, but like, the sort of Silicon Valley, YC ecosystem seems to be very much about like, get financing, build this huge business, take over the world. Like, how do you fold like, those two, maybe, ecosystems, frameworks, like, in your head that like, kind of chart the right way forward?

Brandon (21:02):

It was super intentional for us to go raise funding. Our default was like, to bootstrap, (Teja: Yeah.) but this idea is so big and so massive, like, the only way we can realize it and like, give it its full, like, let us see its full potential is to get funding. (Teja: Right.) Secondly, we both had full-time jobs or, I mean, we needed full-time jobs. We didn’t have like, lots of money that we could just quit our jobs and like, go work on it. Thirdly, I was already spending a ton of time maintaining Blitz.js, and so I needed someone, to hire someone to maintain that while I started working on the new thing, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and so that was really the basis there. Y Combinator do9esn’t really, like, they push you to build a big company, but they don’t push you to raise lots of funding. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) Yeah, so there’s like, I highly recommend, even if you’re just funding the bootstrap, go through YC. You don’t have to raise any more money after that. It gives you $500K to get started, and then you can like, do what you want after that. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) But we definitely raised more, and we’ll continue to raise as it makes sense.

Teja (22:06):

That makes sense, yeah. That’s helpful. That’s cool. I like that they’re able to thread the needle there, between pushing folks to build a big business and realize the full potential, without having to necessitate like, the raising of future capital.

Brandon (22:21):

Yeah, and they can do that, because they bring so many companies in each batch. Like, a hundred plus companies, right? (Teja: Right.) And so they have a super wide net, and so they don’t have to like, push every single one to like, “Oh, you gotta go raise all this money and gotta grow,” and like, whatever. They really like, I was actually kind of surprised. So when we come in, they’re basically like, what do you wanna do? So in three months into this batch, demo day, where do you want to be? Like, your numbers, your revenue, whatever, and you tell ’em what you want, and they’re like, “Okay,” and they help hold you accountable to that. They never, like, at least for us, we’re like, “Oh, that’s not good enough. You need to have a higher goal.” We already had a high enough goal ourselves, you know <laugh>?

Teja (23:07):

Yeah, that’s what they’re, well that’s probably what like, they’re looking for is like, those are the best you wanna work with, like, who have high personal standards. So like, you actually don’t have to impose any. Like, their standards are already probably higher than the ones you would put. (Brandon: Yes.) So like, how are you navigating the fact that you’re in…so your team’s remote, right? I assume. Okay. (Brandon: Yes.) How are you navigating the building of remote business with your capital maybe located, you know, on the west coast, presumably, and your team sort of distributed geographically? Like, what norms, what rituals have you kind of instituted in the course of building the company?

Brandon (23:45):

Well, it’s super important to get everyone together in person, because there’s just, there’s no replacement for that, especially when you’re getting to know someone, and so twice a year, we fly everyone somewhere in the world for a week-long retreat. So the first one was Canada, second one was Italy, third one was Thailand, and last one was Canada again.

Teja (24:07):

Wow. Twice a year. (Brandon: Yes.) Okay. Any specific times of year, or is that kind of TBD?

Brandon (24:15):

It doesn’t really, doesn’t really matter. It’s been like, February, March, and like, August, September.

Teja (24:27):

How do you think about the capital trade off and the productivity trade off of having everybody together in a week versus like, shipping like, that week’s worth of code, doing that week’s worth of tasks, what have you?

Brandon (24:41):

So you’re either going to pay for an office all the time, or you can basically, like, you’re either gonna be doing that or, if you’re remote, then you should be spending some of that money to actually flying together and getting that in-person, that shared context. We always have a huge productivity boost after those in-person retreats.

Teja (25:04):

Oh, I bet. Yeah. (Brandon: Yeah.) That’s interesting. Okay, that’s fair. Yeah, yeah. So it’s probably like, spike and then kind of like, yeah, yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool. It’s hard for, I mean, I think psychologically, it’s been hard for me to justify. I’m also kind of an introvert. Like, I like to be alone, you know? So it’s like, I have to get over that as the team scales and like, get everybody together, but that’s been a challenge for me, personally. Oh, man, I gotta spend five days being fully dialed-in and on, you know? Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you enjoy being out?

Brandon (25:32):

I’m more extroverted. (Teja: Okay.) I absolutely love it. The rest of the team, some of them will get worn out. They’re like, “I’m spending the evening alone.” Like, okay, that’s fine <laugh>.

Teja (25:41):

<Laugh>. That’s funny. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I think I enjoy being in low pressure situations, but for me, I don’t know, maybe I internalize a lot of pressure. I feel like there’s an expectation to have to be some sort of way as like, the founder of a company, like, around people, you know? That’s, that can be some sort of pressure for me, but it’s all self-imposed limiting things.

Brandon (26:06):

Yeah, I mean, so there is some there. For me, it’s like, I’m just being authentic, right? (Teja: Yeah.) I’m not like trying to be something else, so I’m being me, (Teja: That’s fair.) but there is extra pressure to make sure like, you know, I’m like, extra in-tune to each person on the team. Like, how are they doing, this dynamic. Like, (Teja: Yes.) what am I like, trying to facilitate and like, (Teja: Yes.) are we trying to like, bring more alignment and like, you know, these sort of things. So it takes a lot of energy as a leader.

Teja (26:34):

What are some of like, your go-to resources for continuing education, professional development, like, for you as a founder?

Brandon (26:42):

Number one, I have a founder coach, a really awesome founder coach, and I started working with her like, right after we raised funding, before we had the product built, because I was like, I just like, my goal is to be at my absolute peak performance and just like, an athlete has a coach to like, push them to be their very best, I need a coach who, from the outside, can see the potential, and reflect things back to me, and help me process that, and maybe sometimes it’s more like a therapy role. Like, there’s like, some issue, you know, but that has to like…me and this company is so, so much better because of Angela Parker.

Teja (27:25):

That’s cool. How did you guys meet, and then what, like, what were your heuristics to determine that you guys were a good fit?

Brandon (27:33):

So I met her at an entrepreneur conference in Mexico City, very end of the conference, last day, walking to dinner. Her and I started chatting on the way to dinner, and just like, she’s just super calm and like, curious about other people, and so I just like, dumped my whole life story to her on the way to dinner <laugh>. (Teja: <Laugh>.) Like, wait, now I have to pay her so she doesn’t tell anyone else <laugh>.

Teja (28:03):

<Laugh>. “Send me the NDA with the contract,” yep. Oh my gosh.

Brandon (28:08):

But no, I just like, felt super connected to her and her, likewise.

Teja (28:13):

What do you wish I asked you that I haven’t yet? What do you actually want to talk about?

Brandon (28:19):

Pretty much covered all the things that are important to me, starting with the number one: flying <laugh>.

Teja (28:25):

Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. Well, where can people find you on the interwebs?

Brandon (28:30):

Twitter, I’m mostly active on Twitter @FlyBayer, my last name is B-A-Y-E-R. I’m also on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I’m trying to learn it. It’s really weird, because I’m learning like, being more like, CEO, like, sales marketing stuff, like, trying to figure this out.

Teja (28:45):

It’s a whole thing, yeah.

Brandon (28:46):

We are getting ready to do a V2 launch. I’m not sure when this is coming out, but we’re doing a V2 launch of Flightcontrol the week of November 6th, and this is like, an entirely new version of our product. I talked about liking to have fun, but this might be the first B2B SaaS product that you’ve seen that has miniature spaceships in the UI.

Teja (29:08):

Sick. That’s amazing.

Brandon (29:09):

So it’s really, really incredible. It’s definitely like, the feedback we’re getting is that is the best like, CICD deployment UI dashboard that they’ve ever seen, by far, (THE FRONTIER THEME FADES IN) just because of the organization of things. And so, yeah, if anyone’s listening to this is even a little bit frustrated with Vercel, Heroku, Render, Railway, Fly, or Heroku, or your custom AWS setup, then I definitely invite you to take Flightcontrol for a test flight, and I would love to hear your feedback.

Teja (29:41):

Cool man. Well, thank you, Brandon for your time. The community I think will love this one, and it’s always nice to chat with other founders that are doing cool shit.

Brandon (29:50):

Yeah, this has been great. Thank you.

Abbey, via previous recording (29:50):

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