Season 4, Ep. 45 – Founder to Founder: with Brian Pontarelli, Founder & CEO of FusionAuth & CleanSpeak

(THE FRONTIER THEME PLAYS)

Bill, via previous recording (00:04):

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 Brian Pontarelli, founder and CEO of FusionAuth, a customer authentication and authorization platform that makes developers’ lives awesome, and CleanSpeak, an on-prem profanity-filter and moderation platform. Okay, here’s Teja. (THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)

Teja (00:40):

What’s up y’all? Today we have Brian Pontarelli, and we are super excited to dig into him and both of his companies and get to know a little bit about how he views the world and the opportunities in front of him. Thanks so much, Brian, for being here.

Brian (00:56):

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Teja (00:58):

I think like, probably the most interesting place to start is like, just getting to know you a little bit. Like, what’s your background? I think you are a software engineer. Maybe you don’t do much of that today, but just curious how you got started.

Brian (01:14):

I actually still code, so (Teja: Okay.) I’ve been coding since I was like, 10, probably something around that started on, you know, Apple 2e and BASIC, and then, you know, my parents bought an IBM 8086, and I started learning how to program that and, you know, took programming in high school, learned how to program in C, in Pascal, and all the way through college. I got a computer engineering degree from CU, and then worked at a bunch of different companies, coding and, you know, building things, including, you know like, BEA, before they got bought by Oracle, so they were building WebLogic, and then I worked at Orbitz, and I ended up being on the architecture team there and helping build some of like, the foundational pieces of their system, and then a smattering of other, you know, startups or local companies in the Denver, Boulder area, and then finally just went out on my own and started building CleanSpeak. At the time, that was our first product that we launched; it was CleanSpeak.

Narrator, via CleanSpeak promotional video (02:17):

(PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO PLAYS) This is Jack. He’s made it his mission to be a profanity-fueled menace to your online community. He knows all the tricks, curse words, fleet speak, misspellings, using innocent words not so innocently, and even foreign languages. Sitting a server away is Jill, a community moderator armed with CleanSpeak, profanity-filtering and moderation software from Inversoft. She can keep close tabs on users like Jack. CleanSpeak uses a combination of technology and human moderation. (PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO FADES OUT)

Teja (02:47):

So did you grow up in Colorado?

Brian (02:49):

I did, yeah. I’m actually a native, and my wife got her PhD at UIC, University of Illinois, Chicago, and so we moved to Chicago for about five years, and so that’s how I ended up working at Orbitz.

Teja (03:01):

Interesting. So, okay. How much of like, growing up in Colorado do you think was like, an important factor in your like, current focus professionally and like, the way your life is going?

Brian (03:13):

Hmm. That’s a good question. I don’t know. I mean, Colorado’s cool in terms of like, you know, we’ve got all the mountains, everybody’s pretty, you know, outdoorsy, athletic, and you know, we’re fit, and like, you know, but overall, I think most of it came from my grandfather on both sides, and then my dad and my mom. So my grandfather owned a machine shop in Chicago. My other grandfather owned a glass shop in Denver. My dad was a dentist and owned, you know, his own dental practice. My mom owns a property management company, and they own, you know, like, a handful of properties. So it’s just kind of been built into my blood, you know. It’s like, my DNA is to be an entrepreneur.

Teja (03:54):

Got you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But like, Colorado is also a very, I mean, at least I would say the Denver area, I’m not sure about the rest of Colorado. Maybe you can disabuse me of my ignorance, but it seems like Denver’s a very tech-centric city, right?

Brian (04:14):

Yeah, (Teja: Right?) a ton of tech, and Denver/Boulder too. I mean like, Boulder’s got a ton of startups, and then Facebook set up shop there, and you know, Twitter had an office up there for a while, and Google has an office up there. So lots of tech in Boulder, and then tons of tech in Denver as well. I actually used to work on Denver Startup Week, so it was like, the largest sort of free entrepreneur event in the world. I don’t know if it still is, but it was very heavy tech.

Teja (04:42):

Yeah, that’s cool. I remember, so a really good friend of mine who I used to work with like, really early in my career, he moved to Boulder, I think from the Bay Area, and I remember like, Boulder and Denver, like, that whole kind of like, area was like, the first city outside of like, the Bay Area in the United States, where like, people went who were also like, working at the frontier of like, let’s say technology or startups or entrepreneurship. That’s where they seemed to go, and then like, New York kind of came up, and then Austin, and other cities, but I seem to, that’s like, back in like, 2011 or something. I dunno. Yeah. By the way, are you a hiker? Like, do you do fourteeners as a Coloradan?

Brian (05:31):

I’m more of a skier. (Teja: I see.) I used to rock climb a lot, and I, you know, I’ve done fourteeners, and I’ve done some hiking, but I always preferred a little more extreme sports.

Teja (05:43):

<Laugh>. That’s true. (Brian: Yeah.) Well, Longs Peak gets pretty extreme, right? Like, that’s probably the scariest. It’s not even a fourteener; I think that’s like, a thirteener, but it’s still pretty scary, right? I dunno.

Brian (05:54):

There’s like, 53 fourteeners, or 52 something. There’s a lot in Colorado.

Teja (06:00):

I like hiking. I’ve done a couple of them, and it’s always an excuse go there. If you’re there for work, you can stop by somewhere and you know, go on a nice hike. It’s sweet. Colorado is one of my favorite states. So it’s interesting. So you decided to kind of start your companies after like, working for others. Was that intentional, or like, it seems like you always wanted to start a business. Why did you first decide to maybe work, you know, under other folks first?

Brian (06:33):

So I started a startup with a couple college friends in college, (Teja: I see. Yeah.) and that did not go very well <laugh>, (Teja: Yeah.) and so I’m like, “Well that was expensive and not very fruitful. I think I’ll just go get a job, make some money,” <laugh>. (Teja: Yep.) It was way easier to get a job than to like, try and start your own thing, and it was actually probably better, ’cause I learned so much more about like, how to actually build software like, in the real world, not just like, you know, in the college world, and so having worked at like, Orbitz and BEA, I definitely learned what I needed to know in order to start the two companies or, you know, it’s actually just one company, but build the two products.

Teja (07:19):

What are the material differences to you in terms of like, let’s say your initial foray into entrepreneurship and like, the software development lifecycle, like, your impression of the software development lifecycle versus like, how you operate today, or even how you operated in the context of your first couple of roles?

Brian (07:41):

Yeah, that’s a good question. So like, when you’re starting your own company, you start from almost zero. (Teja: Right.) I mean, like, there’s a lot of things you can piece together now, and you can get a decent ways through the products, but you have an idea, and you just like, you have to start the first line account, and you have to write everything from basically from scratch, versus going into a company that has processes, and you know, cadences, and all these things, and you know, hierarchies, that’s completely different. So we continue to sort of run the way that we did when we started, although we now have to do, you know, PRs, and we have to review things, and there is more overhead, but we still are like, “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Just go build it and like, get it shipped. Just go, go, go,” you know? (Teja: Yes.) So that’s trying to hold onto that as long as you can, ’cause otherwise you slow down, and everything comes to a screeching halt, and then it’s no fun <laugh>.

Teja (08:38):

Yes. Oh my gosh. I know, I know. I mean, it’s like, you want stuff. Like, you want the staging environment, but then also you want to just be able to be like, “Hey, there’s this business need; please just get it done ASAP, and I know it’s important. Just go.” How have you tried to preserve that culture as your company has scaled? Like, how do you balance things that you know need to be done immediately versus respect the process that I assume that you devised like, yourself to protect, you know, business continuity and make sure you’re executing against the product roadmap, all that stuff?

Brian (09:15):

It really comes down to the people (Teja: Interesting.) that can do that, (Teja: Yeah.) and that aren’t unnerved by it. So, you know, we only sort of hire like, super senior engineers, and we have some more mid tier engineers, but like, for the most part, you wanna like, first stack your deck with like, you know, just top tier people who you could say like, “Build this thing,” give ’em very little direction, and then what comes out the end is pretty decent, almost shippable right? Might need some tweaks, and some polish, and you know, a designer to get in there and make it look pretty, but overall it’s shippable. So that’s a really good way to like, know that at any time you can give something to the team, and they’ll run with it. Or if a customer comes in and they’re like, “Hey, you have to build this,” (Teja: Yep.) they’re paid getting completely derailed going and doing that, and then coming back, (Teja: Yeah.) because they have that senior, you know, they understand that you have to do that sometimes.

Teja (10:08):

Like, do you have basically business logic level conversations with your engineers…or is that some, like, when you think about “senior,” do you consider that able to understand the business logic and the business constraints associated, or do you think about “senior engineer” as like, basically measuring their comfort, you know, against a given stack and their years of experience?

Brian (10:31):

I would say it’s both, right? So they need to be able to like, crank code that’s high quality performance, (Teja: Right.) you know, doesn’t fail in production, (Teja: Right.) but if they’re not tying that to a business need and understanding like, the security risks and the implications of the overall product and like, does this impact other areas or other features? Those things, a senior has to think about those, and it’s specifically an engineer <laugh>, right? That’s an engineering thing. It’s like, “No, you’re an engineer dude. You gotta like, you gotta think about the ramifications of your choices.”

Teja (11:04):

Yeah, totally. What’s your view on product managers then? How do you think…yeah, I’ll, I’ll leave it open-ended, take it where you want.

Brian (11:12):

Former engineers make good product managers, right? (Teja: Yeah, interesting.) Product managers who have never coded before, especially on a very highly technical product, they can struggle, right, because they don’t necessarily understand like, why the devs are gonna be like, “Oh yeah, we can’t do that,” or like, “Yeah, that’s has these security risks.” So the deeper they get into the actual code itself, the better.

Teja (11:39):

Yeah. In your view, what is the golden ratio of product managers to engineers <laugh>?

Brian (11:51):

<Laugh>. That’s a good question. It depends on the team, but it’s gonna be somewhere between like, five on the really low side to like, 20 on the high side.

Teja (12:04):

Interesting. You know, that’s like, totally different than everything that I’ve ever heard in any conversation. That’s like, usually I hear like, the range just being like, one to three to one to five, which I actually tend to agree with your worldview. I think that that’s right, hundred percent. (Brian: Yeah.) Yeah, yeah <laugh>. (Brian: <Laugh>. Yeah.) That’s interesting. Yeah, I’m exposing my bias, but I think that that’s the right view. Yeah. It’s interesting. So how are you balancing running two businesses? Like, is there overlapping resources or are they separate? Like, how do you think about that?

Brian (12:42):

So <laugh> that’s a good question, because like…so CleanSpeak has been sort of on autopilot. (Teja: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.) Like, it’s a good business, it’s a mature product, it’s got great customers, and it just runs, it just does what it does, right? So we have just started to build out a new CleanSpeak team, and they’re getting up and running. Things are going well. I think they’re gonna be really successful, but it’s like, three weeks old, and <laugh> so that’s new. So what I’ve done for the last like, five years is focus almost entirely on FusionAuth.

Narrator, via FusionAuth promotional video (13:17):

(PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO PLAYS) When you build an app, writing a login registration and user management system seems simple, but pretty soon you’re implementing complex standards like OAuth OpenID Connect, and SAML. Plus, you’ll need to build out additional login features, and don’t forget all the acronyms you need to comply with. Secure auth is not optional, but the time that it takes to build it is. Save time and use FusionAuth. (PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO FADES OUT).

Brian (13:45):

That’s been the main focus. There’s only two of us at the company that have overlap, and then we have a, you know, the sales team kind of like, splits time a little bit, but the overhead for CleanSpeak is pretty minimal.

Teja (13:59):

Got you. (Brian: Yeah.) Cool. Do you think about them as separate businesses with like, different trajectories, or are the markets overlapping such that you can have the sales team basically sell into both?

Brian (14:17):

They’re pretty different. The markets do overlap, so like, (Teja: That’s interesting.) yeah. Game companies use FusionAuth for their login, then they also use CleanSpeak for their chat. (Teja: Interesting.) So there is some market alignment, but the buyers are totally different. Like, FusionAuth, the buyer is an engineer, or developer, or CTO, or you know, in that stack, (Teja: Right.) and on the CleanSpeak side, it’s like, trust and safety, compliance, you know, product.(Teja: Right.) So yeah. Very different buyers for sure.

Teja (14:49):

Was FusionAuth like, almost like an emergent opportunity that you sort of stumbled across in the pursuit of building CleanSpeak, or was it something that just like, emerged, I don’t know, like, orthogonally to your pursuit of building CleanSpeak?

Brian (15:08):

It was kind of in a similar progression. So like, we built CleanSpeak, had all these game companies that were using it, wanted to build a forum that CleanSpeak could do filtering for the content in the forum. I see. You were gonna sell the game companies, and every game company we knew of had their own login page, right? You go to Nintendo com, you log in there, and so we’re like, well, let’s build a forum without login, (Teja: Yes.) and we like, use a third party login tool. Well, we ended up having to build our own third party login tool to test the forum, (Teja: Yes.) and then we’re like, “Well, this login tool’s pretty sweet over here, and this forum’s not selling,” <laugh>.

Teja (15:47):

Yes, please, please get FusionAuth into Steam. Many times I was about to blow my brains out trying to reset my password for Steam, because they’re training fricking, you know, robots against your password reset thing, and I can never get the things right. It’s so annoying. So that’s…<laugh>.

Brian (16:11):

Yes. Yeah. I am well versed in the pain and suffering that happens with a lot of these logins tools. They’re horrible.

Teja (16:20):

Yes. Yeah. So are you a gamer, by the way? Is that how you sort of focused on that as like, the initial vertical or no, you’re not a gamer?

Brian (16:29):

I used to be a heavy gamer. (Teja: Got you. Cool.) <Inaudible> a lot, and then after I (Teja: Yeah <laugh>,) when I started this, I’m like, “Man, this gaming has taken up a lot of my time. I should probably stop,” you know <laugh>?

Teja (16:41):

<Laugh>. No doubt. Yes, yeah.

Brian (16:45):

I totally, I went cold turkey, dude. I was just like, okay, no games, nothing. Like, everything that came out, I’m like, “Oh, that looks so cool.” Like, every new Xbox or PlayStation is coming out. I’m like, “Oh, I wanna go buy it, but I can’t!”

Teja (16:57):

Yes, no. I was an avid, I mean addicted for sure, PC Gamer. I mean, so much so that like, I remember like, and this is when I was a kid, I remember like, I came home with like, a report card and my mom, she was like, “You cannot ever play video games again. You’re gonna like, fail out of like, high school,” which is like, hard, and I was like, “Okay, sure.” I started playing, obviously, when parents weren’t looking. (Brian: <Laugh>.) My mom takes like, literally pulls the cable modem out of the wall, and like, you know, she’s like, annoyingly unscrewing the coax cable and throws the modem out of the window, and like, we’re in like, a two story thing, and this breaks, and I’m like, “Wow, okay.” So <laugh> I understand like, those things you just gotta quit, but like, I dunno, I try to like, have two hours in a week, typically Friday nights, that I allow myself to like, timebox and play with like, my old friends. (Brian: Oh, cool.) You know, but if you’re not careful, that can creep into two hours on a Thursday, and two hours on a Wednesday, and then four hours on a Tuesday, you know. I hear you <laugh>.

Brian (18:05):

I started to get back into it with my kiddos. Like, my son and I were playing like, you know, whatever, you know, game was on an iPhone, and we’d, you know, (Teja: Yeah.) play things, and then I did some, you know, playing on Switch with the other kids, and then I started realizing, ’cause then, you know, you start getting into it, you know, like, Clash of Clans and I’m like, “Oh, I’ll buy that,” (Teja: Yeah.) “Oh, I’ll buy that,” and I just like, I started buying everything, and I started playing like, every, like, in between meetings I’d be playing. I was like, “Oh my god. I slid back in here, dude. This is not good,” <laugh>.

Teja (18:34):

No, it happens quick, and like, I mean, one of my buddies, he is like, you know, he’s at like, a really cool company, and he is like an engineering manager there, and I see him on Discord talking about Genshin Impact during work hours, and I’m like, I mean, he’s got three kids. He seems to be managing it well, but I’m just like, how is he able to do this? Like, I dunno how. It’s just funny <laugh>.

Brian (18:59):

I couldn’t do it. It’d be brutal <laugh>

Teja (19:01):

Yeah <laugh>, totally, because you catch yourself thinking about that when you should be thinking about other things. That to me is the most like, insidious part about gaming. It’s not even the time that you spend playing it; it’s like, you’re thinking about like, “Oh, I should be doing this with my character. I need to get this gear,” or what have you. (Brian: <Laugh>.) Yeah, <laugh> yeah. (Brian: <Inaudible>. Yes.) Yeah. You know, so we were at South By like, I guess maybe two weeks ago, and a lot of folks are, I mean, this is like, common, I’m sure you’re seeing this, are trying to integrate like, LLMs and GenAI basically for any type of user input thing that any one of their customers has to do. What’s your view on this? Like, broad scope, what’s your view on like, how GenAI will impact the way SaaS products are built?

Brian (19:53):

I think it’s gonna impact everybody. (Teja: Yeah.) We still have to iron out a lot of the legal issues, ’cause like, when an AI generates something, who owns it?

Teja (20:04):

Totally, and OpenAI got their hand slapped for training against basically other people’s data, right? So yeah, totally.

Brian (20:12):

And then Microsoft last year basically said, “If you get sued for copyright infringement, we’ll protect you.” That was a huge step, right? So they’re taking on liability for what ChatGPT and, you know, OpenAI is creating. So that was interesting, ’cause I’m like, wow, that’s a huge step, especially with like, GitHub Copilot. So GitHub Copilot is gonna generate code for you. Who owns the code? Is it Microsoft’s code or is it your code? (Teja: Yeah.) So there’s a lot of open questions still. I don’t think we’ve sorted all those out, but like, once the AI starts being able to be used anywhere, and the things it generates are gonna be, you know, basically patent free, copyright free, everything free, and anybody can use them, you’re gonna start to see them get smarter, right, ‘cause right now, there’s not huge, I mean there’s pretty wide adoption, but there’s not enough where they can like, start getting the feedback loop of like, oh, that’s junk, right? Once everyone starts using it, they’re gonna get the feedback loop of, oh, that was crappy. It’s gonna get better, and better, and better. Which means it’s gonna, at some point, it’s gonna be generating such high quality code, or such high quality writing, or whatever. It’s gonna be somewhat indistinguishable from, you know, top tier human brains. (Teja: Yeah.) So that’s huge, dude. Like, that’s gonna fundamentally change the way we do business and the way that we do our work.

Teja (21:38):

Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting to think through. Like, depending on how like, my incoming emotional state is that day, it’s like, I’m either very nervous or I’m very excited, but like, what’s…(Brian: <Laugh>.) right? I don’t know if you feel similarly. That’s at least how I feel.

Brian (21:54):

Absolutely. Yeah, because you don’t, I mean, if it does good things, it could be amazing, and you’re like, “Wow, this could really like, increase performance and could really increase like, output and like, make things better,” and at the same time you’re like, “Well what if it generates some crap?” Also it is generating crap, and it’s also generating misinformation, and it’s, you know, being used very maliciously as well, and you’re like, “Oh shit. Well, how do we combat that?” Like, this is not an easy problem to solve.

Teja (22:23):

Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I mean it’s like, it’s interesting. Like, you know, if you have it do some modeling, you know, you feed it synthetic data, and you have it, and like…ChatGPT, if you have it, do some modeling. I’m sure it’s the same like, if you have it built, write some code, you have to fucking actually look through what it makes, ’cause it’s error prone like, (Brian: Wow.) to a significant degree, and I’m not smart enough to understand like, how the thing is being trained, but like, you have to ask like, I don’t know, it’s interesting. It seems to make people…if they’re bad, it will make them worse, and if they’re good, it will make them better, like any technology I guess, at this state.

Brian (23:06):

Yeah. I agree. Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good observation.

Teja (23:09):

I think Llama 2 is the only open source LLM. There’s probably others that I haven’t heard of, but are you, like, do you have a view on like, managing security risk with the use of LLMs? Are you using any in your products or broad scale?

Brian (23:24):

Great question. So we are not. (Teja: Interesting.) We’re not even using Copilot. We’re not using anything yet, ’cause (Teja: Interesting.) I’m still waiting to hear like, eventually it’s gonna bubble up to the Supreme Court, right, and they’re gonna start making some decisions about these things, and the security risks come along with that as well. So we are being overly cautious. I mean, we’re a security product, right? So like, we have to be crazy hardcore about this stuff.

Teja (23:50):

Yeah. How far down does that go? Like, what’s your view on like, auto complete things and like, IDEs? Does it extend that deep?

Brian (24:00):

It does, yeah. (Teja: Wow.) So we don’t allow Enable Copilot currently or anything. Like, you can basically like do IntelliSense, right? Where it’s like, okay, well I know you were talking about one of the three things that looks like, you know, foo, but if it’s like, you know, ’cause you can start typing that, and it’ll just…the LLM will spit out a bunch of code, all that’s disabled.

Teja (24:25):

Will you allow the use of an LLM to generate content, or no?

Brian (24:34):

<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of the same thing, right? So originally we’re like, “Oh yeah, we can start using it to like, give us outlines for blogs or like, articles or whatever,” (Teja: Yeah.) and then last year, around September, August, September, we said like, “Nope. Nobody can do that anymore. Like, lawyers, you know, this hasn’t been decided.” Our lawyers freaked out like, “Okay, turn it all off,” and then Microsoft said, “No, no. We’ll protect you for copyright infringement.” So we’re like, “Hmm, okay, maybe we’ll try this again.” So we’re within like, the last like three weeks, the leadership team has sat down and said, “Okay, maybe we can start trying LLMs again and GenAI.” (Teja: Interesting.) We haven’t decided yet. So we’re like, we’re like, at the cusp. We’re like, right on the fence, and we’re trying to decide, and then if we do decide to go one way or the other, we still have to kind of get the lawyer’s blessing, right? (Teja: Yeah.) So yeah, dude, it’s dicey <laugh>.

Teja (25:31):

It’s hella dicey, and it’s a changing environment, so it’s like, you’ve made the decision with the information you have, but next month it might be entirely different depending on how things go, right? Yeah. (Brian: Exactly, yeah.) Yeah. I’ve oscillated like, on this myself, like, a bunch, where like, I generally feel like if you’re using it for intellectual prompts, that’s fine. If you’re using the output verbatim, that’s not fine, you know, but then it’s never fine in my view. Like, also like, it makes you dumber, I think, if you’re just like, copy and pasting the thing, and like, you wanna be smart, but then to train that into your team and trust them with that judgment is kind of, that’s difficult for me, you know? (Brian: Oh, definitely.) You know, and so it’s like, how do you make a policy that’s that nuanced against that thought? I don’t know. You know…<laugh>.

Brian (26:33):

It’s really tough, dude. I mean, we post in Slack, or we used to post in Slack like, every other Monday. Just say, “Hey, friendly reminder. No, AI.” (Teja: Huh <laugh>.) <Laugh>. Yeah. I mean they’re like, how else do you do it, dude?

Teja (26:50):

Yes. Yeah. Okay, speaking of which, what’s your view on like, remote work, hybrid in-office? Like, how do you think about that? You know, I assume you probably have a hybrid approach if I’m not…yeah. I think that’s the best way, but like, what’s your instantiation of the hybrid approach? Like, what are some…(Brian: Nice.) Yeah.

Brian (27:15):

Yeah, so we, yeah, we have folks all over the country, and we try to get everybody in one location every quarter, although, as we scale, that’s gonna be harder and more expensive. So we’ll see if it continues, but usually they come to Colorado, and we just moved offices, so we got, you know, basically quadrupled our space, ’cause we were running outta space, and we’re really flexible. It’s like, “Hey, you wanna come in? Come in,” you know, “Well, I’m going in on Tuesday,” you know, and like, “Hey, anybody wanna go to lunch?” So we do that kind of setup, and then we allow the teams to like, fly people in as needed, right? So like, the sales team is doing a Q2 kickoff first week in April, and I’m like, “Sure, yeah. Just bring ’em all out,” you know, “Fly everybody out, you know? Use the space, set up conferences, do whatever. Take ’em out to dinner,” and so we approve a lot of that stuff as well.

Teja (28:11):

Yeah, similar. Do you have a point of view on your leadership team? Does that need to be co-located generally? Or are you sort of…

Brian (28:19):

No we have, you know, somebody in the Bay, somebody in Seattle area, somebody in Texas, and then, you know, a bunch of us are local, so whenever we need to do something that’s critical, we just fly the leadership team out, you know, and that’s, it’s pretty rare. I mean, usually we can do everything over Zoom or Meet, but it does happen.

Teja (28:40):

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I used to be like, fully in the remote-only camp, and then as the business has scaled, you sort of are like, “Hey, actually, it’s really cool to like, see somebody face to face and like, sit down and talk through a problem.” It’s just different like, when you’re going through Zoom, you know? It’s totally different. Yeah.

Brian (29:02):

There’s no whiteboards, you know? I mean, like, tactile, drawing things still works.

Teja (29:07):

Yeah, and also like, you build rapport, and at least I think that, for me, it’s easier to build rapport in person than it is over a…you know. If you’re like, I don’t know, talking about something that’s not related to the problem at hand through a Zoom, it can be exhausting, because you’re just like, “Why am I here?” but if you’re doing that over dinner, it feels good. (Brian: Yeah.) It’s productive, you know?

Brian (29:29):

I totally agree. I love going out, you know, just going out to dinner or lunch with everybody, and it’s way better.

Teja (29:36):

How do you like, make sure that like, you have a unifying culture in a hybrid environment?

Brian (29:43):

We do a lot of sort of culture portions of our interview process. We want people that are excited to work, you know, excited to be in a community, you know, with their employees. You know, we say like, “Hey, you know, do you like going out to dinner and like, grabbing a beer? Like, even if you don’t drink, that’s fine, but like, you know, just hanging out with your coworkers, or are you like, a clock puncher? Like, ‘I’m out,’ like, ‘It’s 5:00 PM. I’m done?’” We’ve not hired folks where we’re like, “Ah, I think that person’s a clock puncher.” Nobody will ever say they’re a clock puncher, but you can tell. Like, it comes through. You just like, you ask enough questions, and you’re like, “Hmm, are you a clock puncher? I’m pretty sure you are.”

Teja (30:29):

This might be like, proprietary, but like…I mean, because I feel the same way, one hundred percent. It’s also demotivating for me to be surrounded by people like that for real, (Brian: Oh, totally.) right? You’re just like, “What are we doing?” How do you discern? Like, what’s your best question to discern clock puncher versus not?

Brian (30:51):

It’s pretty hard, right? So like, I’ll ask people like, you know, “What do you do for fun? Like, are you extreme sports? Do you like, you know, go hiking? Like, what do you do outside of work? What do you do with, you know, outside of work with like, people that you work with? Like, do you get to know them?” I ask like, you know, beer, cocktails, wine, like, you know…or not, you know, you’re a teetotaler, which is totally fine. Like, you know, (Teja: Yeah.) I don’t care, but like, people would be like, “Oh man, I’m such a red wine junkie. I have a cellar and the yada yada,” and like, okay, now they have a personality, right? You know, they actually be like, “Oh, I should bring a bottle out,” or like, “Hey, I know this good spot. We’ll go check it out together,” or whatever.

Brian (31:34):

So you can ask enough of those sort of like, “Who are you, and what are you about besides just cranking the work out?” (Teja: Yeah.) It gives you a really good sense for like, you know, who they are, and the other thing is too, is like, depending on the hire, you know, and the level, we’ll fly him out. It’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna fly you out. We’re gonna do an interview. We’re gonna go to dinner. We’re gonna, you know, we’ll cover everything, but like, you know, we want you to meet with people and like, interact,” and that just having dinner with somebody and just chatting with them tells you so much. That’s an expensive way to figure this out, but a bad hire is way more expensive than a flight and a dinner.

Teja (32:15):

Oh my god. Oh my gosh, yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, amen to that. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard psychologically, it’s hard in terms of the change in management, yeah. Bad hires are horrible, for sure. (Brian: Yeah.) That’s interesting. I have to think more about that, because I will say, you know, when you have like, 10 people, it’s easy to figure that out, because you just literally see what everybody’s up to all the time. You get to 20, it’s a little bit…30, it’s like…every increment of scale, it gets more tricky to discern, right? (Brian: Yeah.) It slows you down in hidden ways that you don’t know is happening.

Brian (32:56):

Yeah, you empower your hiring managers to do that as well. So a lot of people don’t realize that that’s a critical part of it, and it’s like, no, no, no, no. You guys gotta interview for culture. Like, you have to figure out if this person is a total creeper or not, you know, or whatever.

Teja (33:17):

<Laugh>. Oh, I’m sure we can swap stories about that. It’s, yeah, it’s crazy.

Brian (33:25):

<Inaudible>. Wow. I have got crazy stories about people. You’re like, “Whaaat?! Is that real?!” <Laugh>.

Teja (33:33):

<Laugh>. Yeah, yeah. No, I’m right there with you, and like, our platform hires people in the…okay, my CMO will say, “Don’t ever say that.” We do both hiring full-time and fractional for people, so not all employment, but I mean, so we’ve seen a lot of people being placed in companies and like, there’s some crazy people in this world. Like, that’s what I’ll say, right? And you just…you know. Anyway, that’s why personally I’m like, get everybody fractionally, let them work, get to know them, and then like, then decide.

Brian (34:09):

Yeah, we do a lot of contract-to-hiring. I love that model, actually. If people are up for it, it’s like, “Hey, let’s try this out for three months. Let’s see what happens.”

Teja (34:17):

Yeah, and I feel like, you know, we frame it to people like, “Hey, you might not even like being here.” (Brian: Yeah.) “Like, do you really want to go through all this stuff and like, read a bunch of onboarding docs and do all this crap if you don’t even like being here? Like, I don’t know,” and so they’re like, “Oh, okay. Interesting.” You know <laugh>?

Brian (34:37):

It’s not a bad setup as long as you can cover everything for them and like, you know, make it so they can have the insurance, and get paid, and like, have all the, you know, have the benefit of like, what a full-time employee would be. (Teja: Yeah.) It’s just simpler, you know?

Teja (34:51):

What on deck for either of your companies that you want to talk about?

Brian (34:56):

So yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, like, CleanSpeak is, you know, we’re kick starting, restarting CleanSpeak and getting that back up and running, which is exciting.

Teja (35:05):

Yeah, from the ground up, like, whole new team?

Brian (35:08):

Whole new team, yeah. (Teja: Wow.) You know, updating the platform, we’re gonna be doing some really cool ML stuff in it that’s gonna be fun. Maybe a new whole go-to-market strategy, and like, an actual like new pricing model. (Teja: Sick.) Everything’s on the table. Like, that’s gonna be super exciting. So that’s fun, and then for FusionAuth, it’s scale time, right? So we’re navigating the, okay, how do you keep doubling every year as the numbers get bigger? Right?

Teja (35:37):

That’s hard. Yeah, that’s hard.

Brian (35:38):

That’s hard, dude, (Teja: <Laugh>.) and eventually you just can’t, like, you know, it’s impossible, but (Teja: Yeah.) we’re trying to navigate that right now, and so a lot of it comes down to marketing, you know, go-to-market sales, same thing. We’re also building some really cool product features that we think are gonna like, knock down some walls. So it’s like, how do we get a developer onto the platform, integrated into their app, and it looks like their brand in five minutes? Like, if I can pull (Teja: That’s cool.) that off, win <laugh>. Like, we win (Teja: Yeah.) the internet, you know? So it’s like, okay.

Teja (36:14):

Yeah. That’s super interesting. Yeah, I mean it’s at least like, it seems like the rate limiter on like, let’s say, second derivatives of your company’s growth, like, the acceleration on the rate of growth is like, basically how good you’re training and onboarding process is in the company, and that’s one thing that I’ve definitely ran into, or like, as we’ve scaled the business, like, the incremental person that we bring on, the ramp, time seems to increase and like, you just catch it, that you’re like, “Oh, like, this is obvious to me and like, a bunch of other people, but it’s not obvious to you. How is that possible? What’s happening?” How have you solved for that? Like, do you guys have like, structured training, onboarding materials, all that stuff? Like, a repeatable process there?

Brian (37:08):

We’re getting there. (Teja: Gotcha, yeah.) It’s sort of our first foray into like, building some of that structure, but like, we had this this one guy, and he’s still, you know, with the team, and he was the first one to say like, I’m gonna figure out exactly how to onboard somebody into Devereux and get them up and running quickly with a ton of knowledge that would normally, like, it would take them weeks and weeks to uncover. So he built this just, you know, this simple thing. It’s like, these seven steps, and it’s like, you know, download this and install this, build this app, you know, make this thing, and within just like a day or two, these people are onboarded, and we’ve had like, people come, you know, the people that we’ve hired come and say like, that this is the best onboarding like, I’ve ever had at a company.

Brian (37:55):

Usually they just like, it’s really dry, and you gotta sit in a classroom, or it’s just like, they don’t give you anything and it’s like, “Figure it out,” you know? So we’ve taken that to heart when we’re trying to implement that for every department, and then we’re trying to like, implement additional training for each department that is like, fun ways to learn everything about the business possible. So that way, like, you are the most intelligent person at the job that you’re doing in the industry. It’s like, how can I build that into the culture and into the, you know, onboarding and training and all of that, ’cause that just sets us ahead of everybody else.

Teja (38:35):

No doubt, yeah. If you have the most sophisticated and the hardest working folks in every role in the industry, then that’s…yeah.

Brian (38:44):

You’re winning <laugh>.

Teja (38:45):

Yeah <laugh>, exactly. That’s what it’s about, yeah. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

Brian (38:52):

So I used to hang out a lot on TwitterX, or whatever we’re calling it now <laugh>. (Teja: Yeah <laigh>.) I dunno. X is, I guess is more accurate, but I don’t do much there anymore, and it’s getting so seedy. I’m like, I might drop it. Like, just, I might be gone, dude. (Teja: <Laugh>.) It’s sketch.

Teja (39:15):

It is. It is.

Brian (39:17):

I’m on LinkedIn pretty regularly. That’s, you know, I’m trying to, you know, post there more frequently and just let people know what’s going on, and what I need, and what we’re doing, and just having fun. Then, you know, these things, right? So I’m like, I’m trying to fill my schedule for the next quarter with like, as many of these podcasts, and interviews, and just talking to people as I can, ’cause they’re fun.

Teja (39:39):

Sick. Do you have one? Do you have a podcast?

Brian (39:42):

No, I’ve been thinking about it. Like, and I always debate. I’m like, I could do it on security, I could do it on identity, I could do it on just coding. I could do it on bootstrapping, right, because I bootstrapped the company for 15 years, (Teja: Yes, yes.) and got to the point where we were high growth, you know, bootstrap profitable. That’s sort of unheard of. So I haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t know. Like, I want to do something at some point, but I haven’t jumped in.

Teja (40:09):

No, I would love to listen to the one on bootstrapping. We were the same thing. Eight years bootstrapped, (Brian: Nice.) Got to profitability, raised a round, then you’re burning huge trenches of money, as intended, but it’s still like, what are we doing here? You know? Well, investors like to say, we’re investing in the future value of the company, but, you know <laugh>.

Brian (40:30):

That’s it <laugh>. Of course.

Teja (40:32):

Yeah <laugh>. Cool. Okay. I highly recommend it. I mean, it’s fun, and it’s excuse to talk to smart people, which I don’t know, is pretty fun. Yeah, yeah.

Brian (40:43):

Was thinking that would be really fun to do like, my like, take and do half a show of like, what I did and then interview somebody who did the exact same thing, and hopefully it’s totally different way to conquer like, a bootstrapping issue, (Teja: Yes.) ’cause that would be really fun, right? Like, every bootstrapper hits just snag after snag and like, issue after…I mean, it’s like, every dollar you make, you have to think about how you’re gonna spend it, and where it’s going, and what it’s doing, and everybody thinks about it differently and has hit different roadblocks and, you know, speed bumps.

Teja (41:19):

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean there’s so much interesting stuff there, and like, you know what’s funny? It’s like, I just thought that that was the way you build a business. Like, why would you go ask other people? Like, also, what are you saying to them? Like, I don’t know what you’re saying, because it’s like, made up. You don’t really know. You dunno how the business is working. You’re just trying to make more revenue. Like that’s it <laugh>.

Brian (41:40):

That’s right. Everything has a different view of like, what the end is, right? So if you bootstrap, (Teja: Yeah.) you want to just get sustainable and like, spin off enough cash to make, you know…it’s so you’re making good money, and you can retire at some point? (Teja: Yeah.) Or you’re looking for the big exit or looking for a medium exit with a bigger exit later? Or you just, like, there’s a lot of bootstrappers who will roll companies. So they’ll basically like, get a company to a million bucks, sell it for three. Get another company to a million bucks, sell it for three. You know, and that’s all they do. They just roll ’em, and roll ’em, and roll ’em, and roll ’em, and I’m like, (Teja: Yeah.) <inaudible> model. I didn’t even think that that was a thing, you know?

Teja (42:12):

Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah, I have a buddy of mine who used to work in M&A, and he is like, a big fan. He calls them “tuck-in plays.” He’s a big fan of the tuck-ins where it’s like, yeah, like, $1 million ARR, boom. Get it out. Then my…(Brian: Yeah, exactly.) Yeah, it’s interesting. I dunno. I have like, emotional attachment to the company. Like, that would be hard for me. It’d be like you’re breaking up with somebody every time that you’re exiting. Like, I dunno <laugh>.

Brian (42:40):

Yeah. I mean, I similarly have that same approach. I’m like, it’s a lot of energy, a lot of work. Like, I’m pushing, and then eventually I’m gonna, you know, get an exit, right, and you know, get out.

Teja (42:53):

Yeah, yeah, but your knowledge compounds. It’s like, you know, then if you look at like, the world’s most impactful people, it’s like, they do one thing, and they do it better than anybody else on the planet, you know? (THE FRONTIER THEME FADES IN) If you’re number two there, that’s okay. You’re still probably really good if the market’s big enough, like…

Brian (43:13):

Really good. Yeah.

Teja (43:14):

Yeah <laugh>. You know? Cool, man, awesome. Well it was a real pleasure to speak to you and looking forward to doing it again on our podcast or maybe on yours.

Brian (43:23):

Oh, sweet. I’m down <laugh>. (Teja: Awesome.) That sounds awesome.

Abbey, via previous recording (43:27):

You’re listening to The Founder to Founder podcast, powered by Gun.io’s Frontier Network. We release a new episode every Thursday morning, so be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you stream your music. Please leave us a review and share with your friends. You can follow us online at the Frontier Pod or drop us a line at [email protected] to get in touch about hiring world class tech talent.

(THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)