1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:03,840 Hey. This is Frank here. Just, wanted to break things up a bit and 2 00:00:03,840 --> 00:00:07,600 do the intro myself and share with 3 00:00:07,600 --> 00:00:11,380 listeners a bit of good news and express my deepest gratitude 4 00:00:11,599 --> 00:00:14,259 for you all. Yesterday morning, I got 5 00:00:18,145 --> 00:00:21,905 hundred of AI podcasts out there. We secured a 6 00:00:21,905 --> 00:00:25,744 spot at number 38, which is enough to get us on 7 00:00:25,744 --> 00:00:29,520 the Casey Kasem show. For those of you kids that, are too 8 00:00:29,520 --> 00:00:32,880 young to get that reference, basically, it's good to be in the top 9 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:36,640 40. Anyway, on with the show, and I had a great 10 00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:40,000 conversation with Dean Guida. And we did a bit of 11 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,425 reminiscing about technology, and his transition 12 00:00:43,644 --> 00:00:47,105 as CEO of Infragistics from building 13 00:00:47,245 --> 00:00:50,925 client software control components into the data 14 00:00:50,925 --> 00:00:52,945 driven world. On with the show. 15 00:00:55,164 --> 00:00:59,000 Alright. Hello, and welcome to Data Driven, the podcast where we explore 16 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,739 the emergent fields of data science, artificial intelligence, 17 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:06,600 and data engineering. But my favoritest data engineer 18 00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:09,500 today could not make it. He is 19 00:01:10,275 --> 00:01:13,875 unable to make it, but I'm excited today because we have someone who 20 00:01:13,875 --> 00:01:17,634 is uniquely positioned to talk about history. And 21 00:01:17,634 --> 00:01:19,715 for those of you that have been listening to the show for a while, you 22 00:01:19,715 --> 00:01:23,555 know I wasn't always a data scientist. I didn't always even like statistics, if you 23 00:01:23,555 --> 00:01:27,250 can believe that. With me, I have Dean Guida? 24 00:01:28,430 --> 00:01:32,110 Dean Guida? I'm sorry. I should ask that before. We were reminiscing 25 00:01:32,110 --> 00:01:35,470 over too much stuff, but he has 35 years experience, and he's a 26 00:01:35,470 --> 00:01:38,945 CEO and founder of Infragistix. Infragistix 27 00:01:39,245 --> 00:01:43,005 is if you're a developer in the, front end UI 28 00:01:43,005 --> 00:01:46,845 space, you definitely know the name. I myself was fan boarding out. I 29 00:01:46,845 --> 00:01:50,605 even pulled out the, tablet license plate I had when I 30 00:01:50,605 --> 00:01:54,310 was a tablet PC MVP. And he has a new book called 31 00:01:54,310 --> 00:01:57,910 When Grit is Not Enough. And he wants to 32 00:01:57,910 --> 00:02:01,750 help entrepreneurs and CEOs create agile data driven learning organizations. 33 00:02:01,750 --> 00:02:03,750 See, we are going to loop it back to AI. We're not going to be 34 00:02:03,750 --> 00:02:07,284 talking just about Windows development and wind against large 35 00:02:07,284 --> 00:02:10,724 funded questions. Welcome to the show, Dean. Yeah. Thanks. Great to be 36 00:02:10,724 --> 00:02:14,084 here. Yeah. It's it's awesome because I'm like, you know, I get a lot of 37 00:02:14,084 --> 00:02:16,965 these things and I don't, you know, shame on me. Right? Like, I don't always, 38 00:02:16,965 --> 00:02:20,460 like, read the bio right away. Today was one of those days. And, 39 00:02:20,940 --> 00:02:23,680 I was like, CEO of Infragistics? Wait. That Infragistics? 40 00:02:25,420 --> 00:02:29,260 What? So so tell us a little bit because, you know, not every 41 00:02:29,500 --> 00:02:33,020 most of our our audience are data engineers or AI people who may not be 42 00:02:33,020 --> 00:02:36,495 recovering Windows developers. So, tell us a bit about 43 00:02:36,495 --> 00:02:40,334 Infragistics. Well, I mean, we got started, you 44 00:02:40,334 --> 00:02:43,555 know, in 1989 even before Windows 45 00:02:43,855 --> 00:02:47,454 was even popular. I mean, so we got started. We actually 46 00:02:47,454 --> 00:02:50,790 first built our first product was UI 47 00:02:50,850 --> 00:02:54,209 components, but for Windows 2.0 and, 48 00:02:54,610 --> 00:02:58,290 and then the big innovation going to Windows 3 0, way back when, 49 00:02:58,290 --> 00:03:02,050 was just overlap Windows. And so this is going way back in 50 00:03:02,050 --> 00:03:05,185 history. I know that's not what the subject of the show is about, but we've 51 00:03:05,185 --> 00:03:08,785 been building UI and UX tools for professional developers and 52 00:03:08,785 --> 00:03:12,305 designers for 35 years. We build data 53 00:03:12,305 --> 00:03:15,525 analytic and predictive analytic engines and SDKs 54 00:03:15,745 --> 00:03:18,965 for software companies as well as 55 00:03:20,060 --> 00:03:23,600 AI and conversational AI, you know, against analytic 56 00:03:23,980 --> 00:03:27,820 back end different databases and and data stores and, that 57 00:03:27,820 --> 00:03:31,500 we sell to other SaaS or software companies. And then we're, 58 00:03:31,900 --> 00:03:35,655 we also have a product called app builder, which is for professional developers 59 00:03:35,655 --> 00:03:39,415 that's really great at going from design to code. So, like, your design 60 00:03:39,415 --> 00:03:42,875 systems in Figma, which you don't have to really use, but, 61 00:03:43,175 --> 00:03:46,555 we we we can do go right to production code in 62 00:03:46,615 --> 00:03:49,959 React, Angular, you know, all the different JavaScript 63 00:03:50,019 --> 00:03:53,400 frameworks and a whole iterative development to build commercial 64 00:03:53,620 --> 00:03:57,219 apps and, round trip with, GitHub and everything. 65 00:03:57,219 --> 00:04:00,599 And and then another, product that's our first 66 00:04:01,105 --> 00:04:04,885 kinda b to b nondezigner developer toolkit is Slingshot, 67 00:04:05,025 --> 00:04:08,485 which is an AI data driven work management 68 00:04:08,545 --> 00:04:12,145 tool where we're leveraging AI and data, but it's all 69 00:04:12,145 --> 00:04:15,430 about creating this, data driven learning 70 00:04:15,650 --> 00:04:19,410 agile organization where the hypothesis is where 71 00:04:19,410 --> 00:04:22,850 we connect data to all of your, business 72 00:04:22,850 --> 00:04:26,610 systems. And, and then you create these objectives and key 73 00:04:26,610 --> 00:04:30,145 results. So you're measuring each objective and you're kinda 74 00:04:30,145 --> 00:04:33,985 prioritizing your key actions to achieve those objectives. And then 75 00:04:33,985 --> 00:04:37,745 we're tapping into all your systems that we're giving you signals for the 76 00:04:37,824 --> 00:04:41,505 all those, objectives and key actions. And then typically what 77 00:04:41,505 --> 00:04:45,310 happens is, you know, things are don't go as planned. And so you're reading 78 00:04:45,310 --> 00:04:48,530 these signals, and then you collaborate with the team to 79 00:04:48,750 --> 00:04:52,530 hypothesize experiments to do to improve business outcomes. And so 80 00:04:52,750 --> 00:04:56,430 that whole kind of a flywheel of execution, a lot of 81 00:04:56,430 --> 00:05:00,125 tech companies do it, and a lot of companies don't do it. But, Slingshot's 82 00:05:00,264 --> 00:05:03,805 amazing at doing that, managing work, and but bringing in, 83 00:05:04,425 --> 00:05:07,965 all the analytics and data across all your data stores, 84 00:05:08,185 --> 00:05:11,485 spreadsheets, business systems, and facilitating 85 00:05:11,705 --> 00:05:15,370 this, you know, go to market, the whole collaboration with the teams 86 00:05:15,370 --> 00:05:19,150 to drive business outcomes. So That's cool. 87 00:05:20,169 --> 00:05:23,550 And I love how, you know, you you've obviously been in the game now 88 00:05:23,930 --> 00:05:27,705 going on 35, 36 years. Yep. And you've 89 00:05:27,705 --> 00:05:31,145 evolved with the time. Right? So the when I left kind of the client 90 00:05:31,145 --> 00:05:34,905 development world, I, you know, yeah. I 91 00:05:34,905 --> 00:05:37,865 used to be I used to have the MVP program when I was a Windows 92 00:05:38,025 --> 00:05:41,870 when I was a tablet MVP, if you can imagine that. Right? And I 93 00:05:41,870 --> 00:05:45,310 remember you had the first I think it was one of your employees we were 94 00:05:45,310 --> 00:05:49,150 talking about in the virtual green room, a gentleman named by the Ambrose by the 95 00:05:49,150 --> 00:05:52,430 name of Ambrose. And he was he was telling me all about, like, you know, 96 00:05:52,430 --> 00:05:56,110 what they're gonna do with tablet PC, inking controls, and things like that. And I 97 00:05:56,110 --> 00:05:59,785 was like, like, woah, that's really cool. And, I 98 00:05:59,785 --> 00:06:03,465 remember, you know, you see but you've you've definitely kept I have to 99 00:06:03,465 --> 00:06:06,265 say I have to hand it to you for keeping up to date on this. 100 00:06:06,265 --> 00:06:09,965 Right? Obviously, the vision of the tablet PC and Windows phone never 101 00:06:10,105 --> 00:06:13,720 came to fruition. But, you know, here it is in 2025, and 102 00:06:13,720 --> 00:06:17,420 you're making, you know, slingshot, which is basically kind of, you know, 103 00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:21,000 not just cutting edge, but kind of ahead of the curves. Right? Curve because it 104 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:24,635 sounds very agentic. I don't know if you use, you know, you know, quote, 105 00:06:24,635 --> 00:06:28,395 unquote, agentic AI as the, you know, the as the dictionary would 106 00:06:28,395 --> 00:06:32,155 define it. But, I mean, you're basically doing workflows and, you know, AI 107 00:06:32,155 --> 00:06:35,915 plus workflow is arguably agentic. Yep. 108 00:06:35,915 --> 00:06:39,650 And another thing that we've focused on for a really long time and 109 00:06:39,650 --> 00:06:43,490 still do is simplicity and beauty. Like, we always 110 00:06:43,490 --> 00:06:46,930 talk about simplicity and beauty, and so we really care 111 00:06:46,930 --> 00:06:50,604 about the user experience. And and so 112 00:06:50,604 --> 00:06:54,044 everything, if you really try and implement, which is super hard to do, easy to 113 00:06:54,044 --> 00:06:57,405 say, if you try to make the whole experience simple and 114 00:06:57,405 --> 00:07:01,245 beautiful, then people will love your app. And so we really 115 00:07:01,245 --> 00:07:04,880 strive to do that in Slingshot as well as when people use 116 00:07:04,880 --> 00:07:08,720 our UX and UI tools that we're enabling them to 117 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:12,180 build, you know, beautiful and simple applications. And, 118 00:07:12,880 --> 00:07:16,419 and then AI is just, of course, as we all know, it's just been amazing 119 00:07:16,975 --> 00:07:20,815 that, you know, we leveraged AI to really for really the user experience 120 00:07:20,815 --> 00:07:24,655 where you can just have a conversation and ask about, how did this 121 00:07:24,655 --> 00:07:28,335 digital campaign go, and what was the average cost per lead for 122 00:07:28,335 --> 00:07:31,849 this, or what's my sales forecast, or, really 123 00:07:31,849 --> 00:07:35,310 anything where you're combining, data that may 124 00:07:35,370 --> 00:07:39,069 span multiple systems to actually give an answer. And 125 00:07:39,289 --> 00:07:42,990 so we leveraged, what we're we're we're we're calling conversational 126 00:07:43,129 --> 00:07:46,525 analytics, but, you know, it's actually technically quite 127 00:07:46,525 --> 00:07:50,285 complex, but the user experience is quite simple. That 128 00:07:50,285 --> 00:07:54,045 was always very you know, as a as a user of your 129 00:07:54,045 --> 00:07:57,485 Windows form heavy user of your Windows form stuff and your WPF 130 00:07:57,485 --> 00:08:01,260 stuff, I was always amazed at the documentation, 131 00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:05,080 how well the documentation was, plus all the options that you had to, like, 132 00:08:05,080 --> 00:08:08,920 tweak kind of the the the base controls. And the first 133 00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:12,715 project I used it on was it was a data grid control 134 00:08:12,715 --> 00:08:16,395 for asp.net. This is going way back. I mean, this has gotta be 135 00:08:16,395 --> 00:08:20,095 20 years. And I remember I was we were you know, 136 00:08:20,715 --> 00:08:24,254 I was a consultant at a company, and 137 00:08:25,050 --> 00:08:28,830 the company had a had a very strong not invented here 138 00:08:29,450 --> 00:08:32,650 mentality. And this guy's like, no, no, no. I'm going to build my own data 139 00:08:32,650 --> 00:08:36,010 grid. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And I just remember 140 00:08:36,010 --> 00:08:39,775 thinking like, why? Like, you know, I 141 00:08:39,775 --> 00:08:43,215 forget what the cost was for, you know, the entire suite of stuff. I'm like, 142 00:08:43,215 --> 00:08:47,055 you know, you could just buy this. And I don't know what 143 00:08:47,055 --> 00:08:50,675 your hourly rate is, but I mean, it 144 00:08:50,700 --> 00:08:54,380 seems like it would be a bargain to get the invagistix controls and 145 00:08:54,380 --> 00:08:57,820 just just use that because when it breaks, you 146 00:08:57,820 --> 00:09:00,240 know, we can call them. Right? 147 00:09:01,340 --> 00:09:05,095 Versus, you know, when it when this breaks and you decide to move 148 00:09:05,095 --> 00:09:08,795 on to another company, we gotta call. Right? 149 00:09:09,015 --> 00:09:12,855 And for me, that was, like, an enlightening moment of, like, understanding, like, oh, 150 00:09:12,855 --> 00:09:16,500 okay. Like, buying these premade components off the shelf, it's not 151 00:09:16,500 --> 00:09:20,260 quite the same as, like, commercial off the shelf software. Right? It's more 152 00:09:20,260 --> 00:09:23,700 like the IKEA model where you can kind of like or Lego, right, where you 153 00:09:23,700 --> 00:09:27,140 can kind of take these bits and pieces and blocks and build something 154 00:09:27,140 --> 00:09:30,685 custom with all the many of the advantages of 155 00:09:30,685 --> 00:09:34,125 custom and almost none of the disadvantage of custom. Right? 156 00:09:34,125 --> 00:09:37,805 Like, there were only, like, one time over maybe a span 157 00:09:37,805 --> 00:09:41,404 of when I was doing front end development. I think there was only 158 00:09:41,404 --> 00:09:45,110 2 times, like, ever that 159 00:09:45,250 --> 00:09:49,089 whatever we needed to do, your controls out of the box couldn't do. And 160 00:09:49,089 --> 00:09:52,310 this is across 50, 60 projects. 161 00:09:52,930 --> 00:09:56,635 Yeah. Awesome. And, like, just just like twice, that was an issue. Right? And even 162 00:09:56,635 --> 00:09:59,275 then it was kind of, like, well, do we really need that feature set? And 163 00:09:59,275 --> 00:10:01,835 we kind of, like, walked back on it. And I think in in one case, 164 00:10:01,835 --> 00:10:05,355 we did another third party thing that did exactly that. But I mean, for the 165 00:10:05,355 --> 00:10:08,760 most part and that to be fair to to you, it was a very niche 166 00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:12,300 thing. We were basically doing things to the tablet SDK and the tablet 167 00:10:12,440 --> 00:10:16,200 interface that nature 168 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:19,800 never intended. Right? We were trying and I I because of a very 169 00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:23,580 strict NDA and, like, who the customer was, I can't really say who it was. 170 00:10:24,024 --> 00:10:27,725 But it was, you know, 3 letter agency 171 00:10:27,785 --> 00:10:31,625 related type stuff. And what they wanna do with it was kind of 172 00:10:31,625 --> 00:10:35,145 like when I heard it, I was like, well, I think that's 173 00:10:35,145 --> 00:10:38,880 possible. So anyway but but so, 174 00:10:38,880 --> 00:10:42,640 like, so you clearly have a background, and I did promise not to fanboy 175 00:10:42,640 --> 00:10:46,020 out. But Yeah. Appreciate it. 176 00:10:46,560 --> 00:10:50,399 Well, I I love meeting veterans in the industry because, like, we've been through 177 00:10:50,399 --> 00:10:54,036 so much and Right. So much technology change 178 00:10:54,036 --> 00:10:57,502 and so much what's important and and and just 179 00:10:57,502 --> 00:11:00,968 so much advancement with, where technology is today. 180 00:11:00,968 --> 00:11:04,730 But but, yeah, we're still building grids. And and, like, we have 181 00:11:04,730 --> 00:11:08,529 the fastest grids on the planet, which we really pride ourselves that we 182 00:11:08,529 --> 00:11:12,310 can handle, market data. We can handle IoT 183 00:11:12,370 --> 00:11:16,170 streaming. We can handle really fast data. And but then there 184 00:11:16,290 --> 00:11:19,774 we go real deep, like like, you talked about that rich functionality. 185 00:11:19,995 --> 00:11:23,774 So, like, spreadsheets and pivot tables and regular 186 00:11:23,834 --> 00:11:27,675 grids and, you know, the state of the the web market, which is the 187 00:11:27,675 --> 00:11:31,135 biggest developer you know, really big developer market now is, 188 00:11:31,880 --> 00:11:35,399 you know, a lot of people use open source, which is fine, but 189 00:11:35,399 --> 00:11:39,000 people are, like, still settling, like, just to have a table and 190 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:42,540 not have, you know, locking columns and, you know, filtering 191 00:11:42,839 --> 00:11:46,600 and searching and performance and paging with large data sets 192 00:11:46,600 --> 00:11:50,345 on the back end. Like, I I don't get why people just settle for, like, 193 00:11:50,345 --> 00:11:54,025 for that. And, so it's, like, we've we've come really 194 00:11:54,025 --> 00:11:57,565 far, like and then we also sometimes regress a little bit. 195 00:11:57,865 --> 00:12:00,339 That's a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it. One 196 00:12:00,339 --> 00:12:04,180 of my former, my former managers at Red Hat had us a saying, 197 00:12:04,180 --> 00:12:07,720 and he's known in, like, the Kubernetes space. And he goes, the 198 00:12:08,660 --> 00:12:12,339 best trick the devil ever played on people was that he didn't 199 00:12:12,339 --> 00:12:16,055 exist, convince people that he didn't exist. The second 200 00:12:16,055 --> 00:12:19,735 best trick was to convince people that open source software was 201 00:12:19,735 --> 00:12:23,514 free. Yeah. Definitely. It's not right. 202 00:12:23,975 --> 00:12:27,590 I mean, it's it's free with, like, but free like a puppy. 203 00:12:27,590 --> 00:12:29,830 Right? Like, you know, you have to train it. You have to do all these 204 00:12:29,830 --> 00:12:33,510 things. So, you know, it's it's especially like 205 00:12:33,590 --> 00:12:36,710 because, you know, red hat is, you know, their you know, my day job is, 206 00:12:36,710 --> 00:12:40,495 you know, the bread and butter is, you know, basically selling enterprise 207 00:12:40,495 --> 00:12:44,335 grade open source, which, you know, from the looks of 208 00:12:44,335 --> 00:12:47,135 it, you're like, well, wait a minute. You can just pull down the source. Why 209 00:12:47,135 --> 00:12:50,435 do you need a a license? Well, let me tell you why. Because 210 00:12:50,895 --> 00:12:54,550 when it breaks, you're not going to be hitting Stack Overflow or 211 00:12:54,550 --> 00:12:58,310 the GitHub comments, not with the GitHub thing in the middle 212 00:12:58,310 --> 00:13:01,029 of the night. Right? You want to talk to a support engineer. You want to 213 00:13:01,029 --> 00:13:04,570 have that. So it's it's it's fascinating 214 00:13:05,405 --> 00:13:08,925 to me. So so tell me, how did you, like, what was your first move 215 00:13:08,925 --> 00:13:12,685 into AI at Infragistix? Right? Because, like, clearly, like and 216 00:13:12,685 --> 00:13:16,045 you did mention you've you've done a lot of data analytics type stuff. So 217 00:13:16,045 --> 00:13:19,565 so from my perspective, I only remember Infragistix as 218 00:13:19,565 --> 00:13:23,360 a control, you know, UI kind 219 00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:27,199 of widget module. Yeah. I forget what the exact thing 220 00:13:27,199 --> 00:13:30,959 is. But how did you get into data and AI? So we we've always been 221 00:13:30,959 --> 00:13:34,515 really good at data visualization and having all these kind of, 222 00:13:34,875 --> 00:13:38,475 components for that, and then also just dealing with, large 223 00:13:38,475 --> 00:13:42,074 data and moving data around. So, we were we we 224 00:13:42,074 --> 00:13:45,915 already had those kinda assets. But probably about 10 plus years 225 00:13:45,915 --> 00:13:49,350 ago, we started we took those components 226 00:13:49,490 --> 00:13:53,330 and built out an SDK, you know, for the cloud and, that 227 00:13:53,330 --> 00:13:56,850 you can just very easily have a, data 228 00:13:56,850 --> 00:14:00,210 access, dashboarding experience that 229 00:14:00,465 --> 00:14:04,225 so other SaaS vendors can have it, and it and it's beautiful. So we started 230 00:14:04,225 --> 00:14:07,845 building our Reveal. The product's called Reveal. It's embedded analytics specifically 231 00:14:07,905 --> 00:14:11,345 designed for software developers and are are 232 00:14:11,585 --> 00:14:14,405 really, we just sell it to other ISVs, other software vendors. 233 00:14:15,580 --> 00:14:19,180 AI, we and and in that toolkit, you know, we we invested heavily 234 00:14:19,180 --> 00:14:23,020 in ML, so hooking into, you know, being able to kind of 235 00:14:23,020 --> 00:14:26,700 put ML into the data retrieval and the whole data 236 00:14:26,700 --> 00:14:30,540 set and and doing predictions through that. So that was kind of our 237 00:14:30,540 --> 00:14:34,334 first entry into AI, just really integrating, machine 238 00:14:34,334 --> 00:14:38,175 learning and and also trying to use machine learning. We 239 00:14:38,175 --> 00:14:41,795 spent a lot of money doing machine learning and not always so successful, 240 00:14:42,735 --> 00:14:46,580 you know, trying to do, better predictive analytics. That was kind 241 00:14:46,580 --> 00:14:50,120 of our first, entry into it, but we've lessened. 242 00:14:50,260 --> 00:14:53,940 Since then, we've come a long way. So now, in 243 00:14:53,940 --> 00:14:57,780 in in the Q2 of this year, we have it in Slingshot first. So 244 00:14:57,780 --> 00:15:01,355 in Slingshot, like I said, you could just have a conversation, 245 00:15:01,735 --> 00:15:05,195 and, we'll answer you with a beautiful visualization, 246 00:15:05,495 --> 00:15:09,014 and we'll give you the answer based on, any question across 247 00:15:09,415 --> 00:15:13,170 we train the AI in all your business systems. So whether, you 248 00:15:13,170 --> 00:15:16,630 know, Salesforce, you know, your CRM, 249 00:15:16,930 --> 00:15:20,630 your, your mark your your marketing system, your spreadsheets, 250 00:15:20,850 --> 00:15:24,370 your financials. You could have a 100, you know, different 251 00:15:24,370 --> 00:15:27,925 business systems. We train it on that, and then it could answer the questions and 252 00:15:27,925 --> 00:15:31,685 give beautiful visualizations. And then we really cared about the user experience, 253 00:15:31,685 --> 00:15:35,365 so we give you very succinct answers. But then many people don't trust the 254 00:15:35,365 --> 00:15:38,280 AI, so then you could click in and get more info. And we tell you 255 00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:42,200 the data sources, how we calculated it, if we're actually bringing 256 00:15:42,200 --> 00:15:46,040 in data from multiple, back ends to calculate maybe, like, 257 00:15:46,040 --> 00:15:49,800 customer acquisition costs or something. So we give you you know, you can 258 00:15:49,800 --> 00:15:53,475 go in and then trust it and get more information, and we'll also 259 00:15:53,475 --> 00:15:57,235 even suggest other, metrics and, and 260 00:15:57,235 --> 00:16:01,075 data you may be interested in that that's kinda within that that, area of 261 00:16:01,075 --> 00:16:04,675 questioning. And and so, we first started reducing 262 00:16:04,675 --> 00:16:08,455 that, in Slingshot. So you can go from you know, 263 00:16:08,810 --> 00:16:12,250 a lot of people like, data's locked up, so we all use all these business 264 00:16:12,250 --> 00:16:15,930 systems. And everyone wants to be data driven or or most people 265 00:16:15,930 --> 00:16:19,709 really wanna be data driven, but we have data locked up in PowerPoint, 266 00:16:19,930 --> 00:16:23,695 spreadsheets, and business systems. Not everyone knows how to go 267 00:16:23,695 --> 00:16:27,315 in and run that report in a, you know, Marketo or some 268 00:16:27,375 --> 00:16:31,135 account based marketing system or CRM. And so 269 00:16:31,135 --> 00:16:34,655 it's really locked up so people still make these decisions 270 00:16:34,655 --> 00:16:38,310 without fact based when they can be making fact based decisions. And so 271 00:16:38,710 --> 00:16:42,230 we we unlock that in Slingshot. And then with AI, we unlocked it at 272 00:16:42,230 --> 00:16:45,370 another level where, you don't even have to know, 273 00:16:46,070 --> 00:16:49,610 we where the dashboard is or where that widget is. You could just 274 00:16:49,990 --> 00:16:53,765 ask, and then we'll display the visualization and the insight. And 275 00:16:53,765 --> 00:16:57,605 then you can go from that to, you know, conversation to action right 276 00:16:57,605 --> 00:17:00,985 within the same, tool. And so, 277 00:17:01,845 --> 00:17:05,470 so, yeah, it's it's really exciting what we're all able to do now with 278 00:17:05,470 --> 00:17:09,230 AI. And, but so we we're approaching it just 279 00:17:09,230 --> 00:17:12,210 from a user experience point of view. How can we make it easier 280 00:17:12,670 --> 00:17:16,430 to make data driven decisions and put it in a work management 281 00:17:16,430 --> 00:17:19,275 tool so that you're getting insight, you're collaborating, 282 00:17:20,295 --> 00:17:24,135 you're, you know, because a lot of times data just tells you what's happening, not 283 00:17:24,135 --> 00:17:27,734 why. So a lot of times, so you show what we'll tell you 284 00:17:27,734 --> 00:17:31,350 what's happening through your business systems. But then in Slingshot, you can collaborate 285 00:17:31,350 --> 00:17:35,110 and create hypothesis. You know? Why is that happening? And then, okay, 286 00:17:35,110 --> 00:17:38,890 here's an experiment to go and try and change that, 287 00:17:39,350 --> 00:17:43,144 outcome we're getting to drive some some business objective, like, you 288 00:17:43,144 --> 00:17:46,605 know, better sales, contributing to pipeline, more business, 289 00:17:46,664 --> 00:17:50,105 closing business, or, you know, reducing or increasing 290 00:17:50,105 --> 00:17:53,005 renewals or what whatever you're you're trying to do. 291 00:17:53,625 --> 00:17:57,059 Interesting. And and and it's interesting because, you know, I was at 292 00:17:57,059 --> 00:18:00,760 Build 2016, and they introduced the idea of chat bots 293 00:18:01,460 --> 00:18:05,220 being widely, you know, used. And at the time, I was 294 00:18:05,220 --> 00:18:08,980 very skeptical. Right? Because they, you know, on on stage, they they they think they 295 00:18:08,980 --> 00:18:12,325 use Domino's or whatever, and they said, I'd like a pizza with this. And this 296 00:18:12,325 --> 00:18:16,025 is pre transformers, pre all that stuff. So it was very 297 00:18:16,565 --> 00:18:20,185 more traditional natural language processing type technology. 298 00:18:20,965 --> 00:18:24,780 But the more I look at this, what you describe with slingshot, right, 299 00:18:24,780 --> 00:18:28,540 if I'm a salesperson or whatever, I can or marketing or or 300 00:18:28,540 --> 00:18:32,060 whatever, you're right. It's amazing how silo data still 301 00:18:32,060 --> 00:18:35,820 is Mhmm. In 2025. Granted, 302 00:18:35,820 --> 00:18:39,375 we're in early 2025. So maybe by the end of the year, it'll improve. But 303 00:18:39,615 --> 00:18:41,715 I don't not holding my breath on that one. 304 00:18:43,055 --> 00:18:46,815 But the whole notion of chat as a as 305 00:18:46,815 --> 00:18:50,335 an interface. Right? Is that what 306 00:18:50,335 --> 00:18:54,090 Slingshot does? So Slingshot, we we added 307 00:18:54,090 --> 00:18:57,710 that capability in Slingshot. So Slingshot, like, functionally, 308 00:18:57,930 --> 00:19:01,390 it's data analytics, it's chat, 309 00:19:01,850 --> 00:19:05,530 it's digital workspaces that, also have, you 310 00:19:05,530 --> 00:19:08,965 know, Gantt charts and task management, but it's 311 00:19:08,965 --> 00:19:12,725 lightweight. So it's work management, not project management, even though you could do 312 00:19:12,725 --> 00:19:16,565 heavyweight project management. So it's like a lot of people 313 00:19:16,565 --> 00:19:20,270 know Monday or Asana. We're we're that, 314 00:19:20,270 --> 00:19:24,030 but we're we're really heavy into data analytics and now AI, using 315 00:19:24,030 --> 00:19:27,650 AI to make it easy to, interpret 316 00:19:27,790 --> 00:19:31,630 and get at the analytics. And and and then so other features in there 317 00:19:31,630 --> 00:19:35,195 that are AI driven, but, so that that that's what 318 00:19:35,195 --> 00:19:39,034 Slingshot is, and it's all about, like, helping people, you know, 319 00:19:39,034 --> 00:19:42,634 if you're a marketing team or you're a business team and just helping 320 00:19:42,634 --> 00:19:46,360 growth and using data and managing work. And and then also because 321 00:19:46,360 --> 00:19:49,720 it's all digital, it's creating trust and transparency across 322 00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:53,179 your across your teams. You're seeing what's going on. And, 323 00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:57,720 so it's it's AI data driven work management. And, like, when we 324 00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:01,445 talk about creating a learning organization and actually part of my book, 325 00:20:01,445 --> 00:20:04,425 what I write I write about a lot of this in my book. But, 326 00:20:05,205 --> 00:20:09,045 once you kind of set your objectives using we're a 327 00:20:09,045 --> 00:20:12,645 big fan of OKR. So once you set your objective and you define your, 328 00:20:12,645 --> 00:20:16,440 like, 3 to 5 key actions to achieve that objective, 329 00:20:16,740 --> 00:20:20,580 all those can be measured, and then we make it really easy to 330 00:20:20,580 --> 00:20:24,260 measure that through your operational systems. And like I 331 00:20:24,260 --> 00:20:27,860 said, you then you what you do is you hypothesize, like, what's 332 00:20:27,860 --> 00:20:31,485 happening? Why aren't we achieving those objectives or or what's happening in those 333 00:20:31,485 --> 00:20:34,845 key actions, and you hypothesize things you can do 334 00:20:34,845 --> 00:20:38,525 and experiment, and you intentionally, you 335 00:20:38,525 --> 00:20:42,365 know, collaborate and and and come up with these experiments that you can quickly go 336 00:20:42,365 --> 00:20:46,020 and try and collect data and learn. Okay. It worked 337 00:20:46,020 --> 00:20:49,860 great. You've solved the problem. Work partially, but you learned something or 338 00:20:49,860 --> 00:20:53,700 or failed. You learned something. And so excuse 339 00:20:53,700 --> 00:20:57,355 me. That's what we mean by creating a learning organization. We through the 340 00:20:57,355 --> 00:21:00,655 tool and through this philosophy, you teach people how to problem solve 341 00:21:00,875 --> 00:21:04,635 using data, staying focused on objectives and and key priorities 342 00:21:04,635 --> 00:21:08,335 to achieve those objectives. And then, you know, 343 00:21:08,395 --> 00:21:12,200 hypothesizing what the data is telling you, why it's not working, and 344 00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:15,960 then creating new experiments to solve that problem. So that's, like, 345 00:21:15,960 --> 00:21:19,720 how you're creating this problem solving part of, like, what our 346 00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:22,940 goal is to create this data driven agile learning organization. 347 00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:26,975 You're teaching them how to learn, how to solve problems. And when you do 348 00:21:26,975 --> 00:21:30,815 this, it gets pushed to everyone in the company instead of, like, the smartest 349 00:21:30,815 --> 00:21:34,654 person on the team or the exec. That's not where you have resilience 350 00:21:34,654 --> 00:21:38,015 and scale a company. You need to push this problem solving out to all the 351 00:21:38,015 --> 00:21:41,400 edges of your company. And so Slingshot really enables that. 352 00:21:42,660 --> 00:21:46,500 Interesting. So you're not just changing you're not just adding technology, but 353 00:21:46,500 --> 00:21:49,560 you I think you're teaching people a different way to use technology. 354 00:21:50,100 --> 00:21:53,620 Yeah. How to, like, run company, solve 355 00:21:53,620 --> 00:21:56,055 problems, and and grow. 356 00:21:57,235 --> 00:22:00,915 Interesting. Because I I think 357 00:22:00,915 --> 00:22:03,735 that's the missing piece for digital transformation. 358 00:22:05,315 --> 00:22:08,455 I mean or one of the missing pieces. Right? Because the the, you know, 359 00:22:09,809 --> 00:22:13,570 digital transformation is a word that I think induces a little bit 360 00:22:13,570 --> 00:22:17,330 of, people wanna, you know, get 361 00:22:17,330 --> 00:22:20,390 sick on that. Like, they hear it and they wanna throw up a little bit. 362 00:22:21,415 --> 00:22:25,095 But it's a it's a shame because, like, what it could do versus what 363 00:22:25,095 --> 00:22:28,695 it actually gets implemented as is is is 2 very things. I think part of 364 00:22:28,695 --> 00:22:32,375 that is that people don't think about the basic workflows like you were like 365 00:22:32,375 --> 00:22:35,255 you are, or like, you know, where the basic kind of like tooling or the 366 00:22:35,255 --> 00:22:38,799 basic mentality of be very experimental, be very data driven. 367 00:22:41,120 --> 00:22:44,340 And, you know, it's you can't slap, 368 00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:50,080 you know, a digital coat of paint on an old way on on an old 369 00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:53,615 process. Right? Right. I mean, well, you can, and it's certainly been 370 00:22:53,615 --> 00:22:56,975 done. It's just you're not gonna get those same results, and it's to the same 371 00:22:56,975 --> 00:23:00,735 point now when when most people say digital transformation, they kinda 372 00:23:00,735 --> 00:23:04,575 cringe a bit. You know? Yeah. I mean, it it means so 373 00:23:04,575 --> 00:23:07,530 many different things. And it and based on the organization, it 374 00:23:08,410 --> 00:23:11,510 like, there's different levels of transformation. And, 375 00:23:13,290 --> 00:23:16,990 but but, yeah, this whole thought process of how to run a company 376 00:23:17,290 --> 00:23:21,050 was, like, the thesis of Slingshot. And, you know, now it's 377 00:23:21,050 --> 00:23:24,565 aided by AI. And I think another thing that we did to try 378 00:23:24,565 --> 00:23:27,865 and unlock data driven decisions 379 00:23:28,005 --> 00:23:31,385 is we created a business data catalog. 380 00:23:31,605 --> 00:23:34,965 So what we did was inside of Slingshot, there's a data 381 00:23:34,965 --> 00:23:38,184 catalog where you can catalog all your metrics, 382 00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,480 and, and you can even catalog your data sources. But and it's a 383 00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,320 curated workflow where you can, anyone can go and submit 384 00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:50,080 a metric or, you know, a widget or a dashboard to 385 00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,845 it, but it's curated so that people are organizing it properly, and 386 00:23:53,845 --> 00:23:57,685 then you can search it and you can certify it. And there's, like, three 387 00:23:57,685 --> 00:24:01,365 levels of certification. And, and what we did 388 00:24:01,365 --> 00:24:04,910 was if you certify at the highest level, we train the 389 00:24:04,910 --> 00:24:08,430 AI on that data, and and only certain people have rights to certify it at 390 00:24:08,430 --> 00:24:12,190 the highest level. So this is like another big problem. You a lot 391 00:24:12,190 --> 00:24:15,809 of company or most companies at every size has so much data, 392 00:24:15,950 --> 00:24:19,735 and all data is not truth, And all data is not what you 393 00:24:19,735 --> 00:24:23,335 wanna use to train an AI because if you do, it's 394 00:24:23,335 --> 00:24:27,175 gonna give you answers that that spreadsheet is not the where 395 00:24:27,175 --> 00:24:30,775 we wanna get the data from, or that's not our system of record 396 00:24:30,775 --> 00:24:33,995 in CRM. It might be in your financial system or whatever. 397 00:24:34,510 --> 00:24:38,049 So, we we kinda implemented this, ability to unlock 398 00:24:38,590 --> 00:24:42,270 and find information across your systems. I don't have to go to each business 399 00:24:42,270 --> 00:24:45,950 system, find it in the data catalog. But then since we've, you 400 00:24:45,950 --> 00:24:49,595 know, built the AI out, we leverage that. And anytime you 401 00:24:49,595 --> 00:24:52,975 certify it, we we write all this the AI writes all this metadata 402 00:24:53,515 --> 00:24:56,235 in there that the the user can actually edit, but, like, it's more of a 403 00:24:56,235 --> 00:25:00,075 technical thing, but they can add to the metadata. And then it, and 404 00:25:00,075 --> 00:25:03,730 then it trains the AI on it. And and so we're we're we're 405 00:25:03,730 --> 00:25:07,570 using that kind of process to make sure that we're using good data 406 00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:11,410 in your systems and spreadsheets and, so that you're 407 00:25:11,410 --> 00:25:15,090 getting the answers that are are correct. So just having 408 00:25:15,090 --> 00:25:17,030 data doesn't mean it's the right data. 409 00:25:19,434 --> 00:25:23,195 Interesting. It's I mean, that's true. It has to be the 410 00:25:23,195 --> 00:25:26,955 right data. It has to be not just the correct data, but it also 411 00:25:26,955 --> 00:25:30,635 has to be correct in and of itself. You have to have a certain amount 412 00:25:30,635 --> 00:25:34,450 of trust in that data, particularly as you start leaning on it to make decisions 413 00:25:34,450 --> 00:25:38,210 based on that. Yep. That I mean, it 414 00:25:38,210 --> 00:25:41,509 sounds I mean, it sounds very, 415 00:25:42,049 --> 00:25:44,950 very intriguing. I'm definitely gonna go check it out. It's, 416 00:25:45,570 --> 00:25:49,105 slingshot app. Io. Is that the cool? 417 00:25:49,105 --> 00:25:52,184 Yeah. Slingshot app. Io. Interesting. 418 00:25:53,044 --> 00:25:56,804 And are these, are these, it looks like you can 419 00:25:56,885 --> 00:26:00,645 there's an IDE built into it. So that's pretty interesting, actually. I definitely 420 00:26:00,645 --> 00:26:04,470 got to check it out. Because I think I think that as 421 00:26:04,470 --> 00:26:08,149 you deal with, more and more 422 00:26:08,149 --> 00:26:11,990 data sources coming at us, more and more, and 423 00:26:11,990 --> 00:26:15,350 there's more and more kids join the workforce. They're gonna 424 00:26:15,350 --> 00:26:18,745 expect some kind of chat interface with the data. Right? 425 00:26:18,805 --> 00:26:22,325 Yep. You know, I have 3 kids and each one of them has it 426 00:26:22,325 --> 00:26:26,165 represents a different kind of error in technology. Right? The the first one 427 00:26:26,165 --> 00:26:29,925 was everything was a touchscreen. Right? Dad was a tablet MVP when he was 428 00:26:29,925 --> 00:26:33,670 born. Right? So when he went to our 429 00:26:33,890 --> 00:26:37,410 TV and he touched it and it didn't or any TV. Right? And it didn't 430 00:26:37,410 --> 00:26:40,530 work whether it was here or it was grandparents, and he would touch the screen 431 00:26:40,530 --> 00:26:44,370 and he would turn and say broken. Right? And or he would complain to 432 00:26:44,370 --> 00:26:48,054 his grandparents, like, how come the TV doesn't, like, react to this? And 433 00:26:48,054 --> 00:26:51,495 they were just, like, my my 434 00:26:51,495 --> 00:26:55,335 second child was born in the the Alexa era, I like to 435 00:26:55,335 --> 00:26:58,774 call it, because, you know, he would talk to 436 00:26:58,774 --> 00:27:02,550 Alexa to get the weather, to Syria. 437 00:27:02,850 --> 00:27:06,210 Siri, before he could write, he was able to chat because he used 438 00:27:06,210 --> 00:27:09,810 Siri to write stuff in, like, and 439 00:27:09,810 --> 00:27:13,650 read stuff to him. So it was interesting. The third one is 2, so 440 00:27:13,650 --> 00:27:17,010 we're not really sure what it is, but it's probably gonna be some kind of 441 00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:20,665 AI technology that, you know, just it's just he 442 00:27:20,665 --> 00:27:24,265 takes for granted and is part of the, part of the 443 00:27:24,265 --> 00:27:27,865 environment. So it's interesting to kind of see. But when those, you know, those 444 00:27:27,865 --> 00:27:31,465 kids enter the workforce and and, you know, we're both old enough to 445 00:27:31,465 --> 00:27:35,010 remember Windows 3.0. Right? 446 00:27:35,010 --> 00:27:38,370 So, like, you know, when I have younger colleagues, like, the way they look at 447 00:27:38,370 --> 00:27:41,570 things or they just take for grant things that they take for granted is kinda 448 00:27:41,730 --> 00:27:45,409 I kinda laugh to myself. Like, you know, I was once given a a 449 00:27:45,490 --> 00:27:48,865 when I was at Microsoft, I was given a a 450 00:27:48,865 --> 00:27:52,225 demonstration of, like, setting up VMs in Azure or something like that. 451 00:27:52,225 --> 00:27:55,664 Right? And it's like, let's create a PC and, like, you know, I go and 452 00:27:55,664 --> 00:27:58,725 I check from a drop down. I want this. I want this. I want this. 453 00:27:59,025 --> 00:28:02,740 And I click go and, like, you know, admitted into it. So one of the 454 00:28:02,740 --> 00:28:06,420 kids goes, wow. This is taking forever. Yeah. Which I I 455 00:28:06,420 --> 00:28:09,940 remember when I worked at a big bank, you know, to buy a server, to 456 00:28:09,940 --> 00:28:13,640 requisition a server because of all sorts of internal rules and regulations. 457 00:28:14,635 --> 00:28:18,155 I mean, it would take 6 months if you were if you were 458 00:28:18,155 --> 00:28:21,835 lucky. Right? And if it was a really important project, you can get it done 459 00:28:21,835 --> 00:28:25,674 in, like, 3 months. But, realistically, it was a 6 to 12 month 460 00:28:25,674 --> 00:28:29,350 process. And this kid's complaining because it's taken too long to 461 00:28:29,350 --> 00:28:33,030 requisition a virtual machine more than 60 seconds. 462 00:28:33,030 --> 00:28:36,490 I think it's kinda funny. Yeah. I mean, voice 463 00:28:36,710 --> 00:28:40,090 and seeing is just gonna get more and more integrated into 464 00:28:40,230 --> 00:28:43,345 getting answers and getting information and 465 00:28:43,965 --> 00:28:47,725 supporting you in whatever you're doing. So, yeah, we really are 466 00:28:47,725 --> 00:28:51,485 at a crazy inflection point of, like, this 467 00:28:51,485 --> 00:28:55,294 major next leap. And, so, yeah, I mean, it it 468 00:28:55,294 --> 00:28:58,260 was like, oh, I typed characters to figure things out. Oh, now I have a 469 00:28:58,260 --> 00:29:01,620 GUI interface. Helps me a little bit more. And, yeah, now it's 470 00:29:01,620 --> 00:29:05,220 like, yeah, I just wanna talk and have that, you 471 00:29:05,220 --> 00:29:08,835 know, and get stuff done. I I don't, you know, I don't even 472 00:29:09,135 --> 00:29:12,895 wanna type. Right. Right. Well, it reminds me if you watch what's 473 00:29:12,895 --> 00:29:16,415 now considered old Star Trek, but Star Trek the next generation where the 474 00:29:16,415 --> 00:29:20,095 computer is almost like a character Yeah. Where they could just 475 00:29:20,095 --> 00:29:23,289 say computer anywhere in the ship. It's like, can you figure out what this is? 476 00:29:23,289 --> 00:29:27,049 And they're like, well, the probability of like it I think we're kind 477 00:29:27,049 --> 00:29:30,830 of at that point, certainly with, you know, voice related technologies 478 00:29:31,049 --> 00:29:34,809 and, the under language understanding that you get out 479 00:29:34,809 --> 00:29:38,405 of these AI systems today is is is very impressive. 480 00:29:41,505 --> 00:29:44,805 The book. Tell me about the book because it's called when grid is not enough. 481 00:29:45,025 --> 00:29:48,690 So what's it about? Like, what's cause clearly, you're a 482 00:29:48,690 --> 00:29:52,530 startup founder. You have been at least doing that since 483 00:29:52,530 --> 00:29:56,370 1989. You're a CEO. You're still in the game. You stayed in the game. 484 00:29:56,370 --> 00:30:00,210 You survived. Yeah. You you saw the 485 00:30:00,210 --> 00:30:03,030 recession of 91. I'm assuming. You saw 486 00:30:03,765 --> 00:30:07,545 the.com, you know, boom, the dot com bust, 487 00:30:08,085 --> 00:30:11,525 the o eight financial crisis, you know, 488 00:30:11,525 --> 00:30:14,585 pandemics and kind of everywhere in between. So, 489 00:30:15,365 --> 00:30:18,325 tell me what where'd you get the idea for the title from? Because, like, if 490 00:30:18,325 --> 00:30:22,110 you if you if you Well, it took a while to come up. It took 491 00:30:22,110 --> 00:30:24,430 a while to come up with a title. I could tell you. It took us 492 00:30:24,430 --> 00:30:28,190 6 months. Wow. And, I was gonna settle on 493 00:30:28,190 --> 00:30:31,950 a title. I just I couldn't take it anymore. We brainstorm so much 494 00:30:31,950 --> 00:30:35,575 on the title, and my publisher and some of our 495 00:30:35,575 --> 00:30:39,415 marketing people are like, it's the most important thing. You know? And, I was 496 00:30:39,415 --> 00:30:43,095 gonna settle on the next company. You know, being in the tech space, it's always 497 00:30:43,095 --> 00:30:46,775 about the next thing, and and it's always building on something better. 498 00:30:46,775 --> 00:30:50,460 And, and I was gonna settle on that, but, 499 00:30:50,820 --> 00:30:54,660 when grit's not enough, it's because, like, every entrepreneur needs to have 500 00:30:54,660 --> 00:30:58,420 grit. Like, fundamental thing is you have to be optimistic, and you have to 501 00:30:58,420 --> 00:31:01,965 have grit. And, and so that's just a fundamental 502 00:31:01,965 --> 00:31:05,805 thing. But once you start a company, grit alone won't 503 00:31:05,805 --> 00:31:09,645 help you scale and won't help you be resilient and won't help you 504 00:31:09,645 --> 00:31:13,405 survive. I mean, so, you know, early days for us, yeah, I could just not 505 00:31:13,405 --> 00:31:17,150 take a salary and fix a problem. You know, you get but then you start 506 00:31:17,150 --> 00:31:20,750 getting to a certain size that you're just not you taking a salary doesn't fix 507 00:31:20,750 --> 00:31:24,430 your problems. And so, so what I did in the book was I 508 00:31:24,430 --> 00:31:27,950 shared everything I learned over the last 35 years, in the 509 00:31:27,950 --> 00:31:31,565 book, cover a whole set of topics to help 510 00:31:31,565 --> 00:31:35,164 other entrepreneurs and CEOs just have a greater chance of growth, 511 00:31:35,164 --> 00:31:38,625 success. And and so that was a motive, for it. And, 512 00:31:38,924 --> 00:31:42,044 so when grit's not enough, it's that, yeah, you need grit, but it's not enough 513 00:31:42,044 --> 00:31:43,504 when you get to a certain point. 514 00:31:45,850 --> 00:31:49,210 Interesting. Interesting. Obviously, you pulled 515 00:31:49,210 --> 00:31:52,810 from your life experience. Like, what was one moment 516 00:31:52,810 --> 00:31:56,010 where where was the moment you realized that grit's not enough? Right? Like 517 00:31:56,875 --> 00:32:00,395 Yeah. Well, we we had just merged with one of our 518 00:32:00,395 --> 00:32:03,855 competitors, and, they they were 519 00:32:04,235 --> 00:32:08,075 a a really good company. Great. We got great tech talent, great 520 00:32:08,075 --> 00:32:11,880 sales and marketing. They had a lot of customers, but they made some mistakes. 521 00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,860 And so they were they were in basically in debt. They were out of cash. 522 00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:19,000 Cool. And so, we shared in software. If you remember shared 523 00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,200 in I remember that. I remember when you I remember when it was bought. They 524 00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:26,044 were one of the first vb one o visual basic one o 525 00:32:26,044 --> 00:32:29,725 components, and they built the database finding layer, 526 00:32:29,725 --> 00:32:33,565 Internet Explorer. There there it was like it was like we, you know, 527 00:32:33,565 --> 00:32:37,325 some of those guys are still on my board. And so we've been together 528 00:32:37,325 --> 00:32:40,980 now, for 20 plus years 529 00:32:40,980 --> 00:32:44,820 now. But but, anyway, when we merged, it sucked a 530 00:32:44,820 --> 00:32:48,340 lot of our cash off our balance sheet. And so we 531 00:32:48,340 --> 00:32:51,940 literally had, a 580,000 a 532 00:32:51,940 --> 00:32:55,625 month pay or or expense structure. And we had $618 533 00:32:56,565 --> 00:32:59,865 in the bank. And so it was like we were legally 534 00:32:59,924 --> 00:33:03,605 bankrupt. I mean, we all, we all knew we would get out of 535 00:33:03,605 --> 00:33:07,210 it, but, it was, it was like, that was a big, big 536 00:33:07,210 --> 00:33:10,990 moment where it's like, okay, you know, working hard, 537 00:33:11,450 --> 00:33:15,130 working crazy hours, not taking salary. No, no, 538 00:33:15,130 --> 00:33:18,970 no. There's got a there's a better way here. And so, that 539 00:33:18,970 --> 00:33:21,790 that was a pivotal moment for me where, 540 00:33:22,975 --> 00:33:26,414 you know, you start investing in systems, being data 541 00:33:26,414 --> 00:33:30,115 driven, you know, better cash flow planning, 542 00:33:31,294 --> 00:33:34,355 you know, a lot of the running better meetings, 543 00:33:35,230 --> 00:33:38,590 you know, really thinking about where to focus and put 544 00:33:38,590 --> 00:33:41,649 priority behind, you know, critical things, 545 00:33:42,590 --> 00:33:46,350 aligning teams on that, prioritization, and how do you make 546 00:33:46,350 --> 00:33:50,085 those alignments? And then it's all about the people. So if you read the 547 00:33:50,085 --> 00:33:53,205 book, it's for me, and it always has been all about the people. So a 548 00:33:53,205 --> 00:33:57,045 lot of it's about actually, one of our core strategies is creating a learning 549 00:33:57,045 --> 00:34:00,825 organization. And so, and so I talk about a lot about coaching, 550 00:34:00,965 --> 00:34:03,860 alignment, creating trust, culture, 551 00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:08,500 how to be data driven, how to do go to market plans, strategic 552 00:34:08,639 --> 00:34:12,320 plans. I didn't learn till really late in life about 553 00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,760 recovery and taking care of yourself. You know, I come from, you 554 00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:19,175 know, just suck it up and work harder. You know? And, 555 00:34:19,175 --> 00:34:22,535 like, I I tell you, that's not the best thing, 556 00:34:22,855 --> 00:34:26,695 you know, because, like, you perform way better with a good night's 557 00:34:26,695 --> 00:34:30,535 sleep. You perform like, I I at one point, I had traveled for 3 558 00:34:30,535 --> 00:34:33,860 months straight around the world, everywhere, and, 559 00:34:34,900 --> 00:34:38,180 and that was like a big then I got, like, 1 week I was in 560 00:34:38,180 --> 00:34:41,540 the air 50 hours just in 1 week. Wow. And, 561 00:34:41,860 --> 00:34:45,080 so from traveling so much all around the world, Asia, 562 00:34:45,300 --> 00:34:48,775 Europe, South America, US. I 563 00:34:48,775 --> 00:34:52,614 actually got a, this pain in my calf. I 564 00:34:52,614 --> 00:34:55,995 thought it was just a Charlie horse. It ended up being a blood clot, 565 00:34:56,855 --> 00:35:00,455 and and then it went to my lungs. So I had a pulmonary 566 00:35:00,455 --> 00:35:04,090 embolism. I couldn't breathe. And so I had to spend 4 or 567 00:35:04,090 --> 00:35:07,690 5 days in the hospital. And I was like, that's another, like, I've, like, I 568 00:35:07,690 --> 00:35:11,450 share these lessons in the book. That's when I learned, okay. Yeah. You 569 00:35:11,450 --> 00:35:15,070 gotta, like, have recovery, like, perfect, like, today in professional 570 00:35:15,210 --> 00:35:18,694 sports, you have amazing athletes in their thirties, 571 00:35:18,755 --> 00:35:22,515 forties performing at high levels because they're worrying 572 00:35:22,515 --> 00:35:26,275 about recovery. They're not just going they're just not going hard all 573 00:35:26,275 --> 00:35:30,115 the time. And so, like, I even have a chapter about that. Like, you you 574 00:35:30,115 --> 00:35:33,930 need about taking care of yourself and, and, you know, if you, you know, if 575 00:35:33,930 --> 00:35:37,690 you're grinding it out 12 hours a day, that's, that's not good. I mean, you'll 576 00:35:37,690 --> 00:35:41,290 get, you'll, you actually deliver more business value, solve 577 00:35:41,290 --> 00:35:44,970 problems better, get more done if you like take time off, 578 00:35:44,970 --> 00:35:48,704 take vacations, get good sleep, recover. You know? 579 00:35:48,704 --> 00:35:52,464 It's so but from our generation, no. No. No. It's just like work 580 00:35:52,464 --> 00:35:56,224 hard. And, Right. Suck it up. Keep Suck it up. 581 00:35:56,224 --> 00:35:59,665 Yeah. No pain. No gain. You know? Right. And it's like 582 00:35:59,984 --> 00:36:02,790 but it's funny. It's not just limited to our generation. Right? If you look at 583 00:36:02,790 --> 00:36:06,170 the startup culture today, right, it's grind, grind, grind, grind. 584 00:36:06,230 --> 00:36:10,070 There's, startup grind, I think, is 585 00:36:10,070 --> 00:36:13,850 a it's a it's a startup brand and that they do. I think it's 586 00:36:14,484 --> 00:36:18,005 backed by Google or something like that where they do they hold, like, kinda like 587 00:36:18,005 --> 00:36:21,845 user groups and meetups and things like that. It's called startup grind. And it's 588 00:36:21,845 --> 00:36:25,365 kinda like I get the the the the the visual of the 589 00:36:25,365 --> 00:36:29,140 grind, but you also have to, like, lean back and and 590 00:36:29,140 --> 00:36:32,580 and rest and recoup because if you and it's funny because I think 591 00:36:32,580 --> 00:36:36,280 particularly for technical people or engineers, right? Like the thinking that is, 592 00:36:36,500 --> 00:36:39,220 you know, how do you get a, you know, how do you get a car 593 00:36:39,220 --> 00:36:42,825 to go faster? Well, you boost the RPM, right? You boost the you get to 594 00:36:42,825 --> 00:36:46,525 boost the output, but we're not machines, like, in that same regard. So 595 00:36:46,744 --> 00:36:50,345 you start getting diminishing returns. And, you know, I think part of it was I 596 00:36:50,345 --> 00:36:53,065 learned that as I got older, like and I had kids. And I was like, 597 00:36:53,065 --> 00:36:56,665 oh, I can't stay up for 48 hours anymore. 598 00:36:56,665 --> 00:36:59,900 Right? And it it definitely 599 00:37:00,119 --> 00:37:03,880 particularly if you're doing something like software design or AI or 600 00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,240 data engineering, you need your mind to 601 00:37:07,240 --> 00:37:10,920 be at 80% and up. 602 00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:13,815 Right? You can't just kinda zone out. Right? 603 00:37:15,315 --> 00:37:18,035 Yeah. Yeah. So I talk a lot about that and a lot of about the 604 00:37:18,035 --> 00:37:21,395 book, which is just that teams, like, how to create high performing teams 605 00:37:21,395 --> 00:37:25,015 because it's, like, in our business, it's all about problem solving, 606 00:37:25,235 --> 00:37:28,710 collaborating, helping each other. And so how do you create that 607 00:37:28,710 --> 00:37:31,610 environment and, and be real intentional about 608 00:37:32,150 --> 00:37:35,990 creating that, and then you get innovation. You know? And then you Right. 609 00:37:36,150 --> 00:37:39,610 You get, really good amazing pieces of software. 610 00:37:39,750 --> 00:37:43,285 And, but but, really, the book applies to more than just 611 00:37:43,285 --> 00:37:47,125 running a tech company. It's really every company now. I mean, people are people 612 00:37:47,125 --> 00:37:50,805 are the foundation, and, and so I I I talk about all 613 00:37:50,805 --> 00:37:54,500 those lessons I learned over 35 years, and and 614 00:37:54,500 --> 00:37:57,859 some of it was a thesis of of writing Slingshot. You know, we 615 00:37:57,859 --> 00:38:01,460 wrote it 7 years ago. It's been in market a couple of 616 00:38:01,460 --> 00:38:04,440 years, but we run the whole company off of it. And, 617 00:38:05,220 --> 00:38:08,905 and, so there's probably 4 or 5 or 6 chapters of 618 00:38:08,905 --> 00:38:12,125 18 that is, like, the thesis of Slingshot that, 619 00:38:12,665 --> 00:38:16,105 of, you know, how to digitize this this philosophy and this, 620 00:38:16,744 --> 00:38:20,265 you know, way of of, running a company. Very 621 00:38:20,265 --> 00:38:21,645 cool. Very cool. 622 00:38:25,930 --> 00:38:27,710 I'm just fascinated that, 623 00:38:29,930 --> 00:38:33,210 you know, you're you're you're someone who's had a lot of success and, like, you 624 00:38:33,210 --> 00:38:36,170 you you kind of, like I love the fact that you kind of distill that 625 00:38:36,170 --> 00:38:39,434 into a book that, you know, other people who who are you hoping will read, 626 00:38:39,434 --> 00:38:42,395 and, like, what's the one message that they get away, you know, that they they 627 00:38:42,395 --> 00:38:46,154 pull from it? Well, I hope a lot of entrepreneurs read it. 628 00:38:46,154 --> 00:38:49,694 You know? And I don't think you could discount, 629 00:38:49,994 --> 00:38:53,450 like, grinding it out. Like, even I think you do have to grind it out 630 00:38:53,450 --> 00:38:56,970 in the beginning and, but it can't be the norm. It can't 631 00:38:56,970 --> 00:39:00,430 be the, the way, the the only way. 632 00:39:00,809 --> 00:39:03,230 And so I I just hope to reach a lot of entrepreneurs 633 00:39:04,365 --> 00:39:07,985 across any every industry and, mid market 634 00:39:08,045 --> 00:39:11,645 CEOs and, and even managers. I mean, there's so 635 00:39:11,645 --> 00:39:15,405 many good good lessons in there that I've learned. And and I I love 636 00:39:15,405 --> 00:39:18,990 learning, and I love reading. And, but what I don't like is, 637 00:39:18,990 --> 00:39:22,830 like, you hit you you you are taught a concept in the first 638 00:39:22,830 --> 00:39:26,370 50 or a 100 pages, and then the next 100 pages is, like, 639 00:39:26,430 --> 00:39:30,130 10 repeats of use cases of it. And I'm just like, 640 00:39:30,414 --> 00:39:34,174 like, like, my personality makes me read the whole thing. I'm trying to fix that 641 00:39:34,174 --> 00:39:37,694 myself, but, like, I I've gotta, like, I read the whole damn thing or listen 642 00:39:37,694 --> 00:39:40,494 to the whole damn thing. And so what I tried in my book was to 643 00:39:40,494 --> 00:39:44,174 be really succinct, like, deliver a lot of, like, 644 00:39:44,174 --> 00:39:47,539 playbook ways of doing things, give examples. 645 00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:51,299 At the end, summarize the 4 to 10 key cape takeaways, 646 00:39:51,839 --> 00:39:54,819 but not waste your time. So I was, like, kinda really more into, 647 00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:59,394 you know, not wasting your time, and and deliver 648 00:39:59,394 --> 00:40:02,994 as much value as possible. So so I try to achieve that in the 649 00:40:02,994 --> 00:40:06,755 book. Very cool. No. I think you're right. The grind not not not 650 00:40:06,755 --> 00:40:10,515 to to to disrespect the grind. The grind is important. You can't avoid it, but 651 00:40:10,515 --> 00:40:13,954 I don't think if you let it consume you, you're got you're gonna weigh yourself 652 00:40:13,954 --> 00:40:17,510 out. Yeah. It it's not healthy. And and if you are an intellectual 653 00:40:17,730 --> 00:40:21,410 field, you won't you won't innovate and create your 654 00:40:21,410 --> 00:40:25,030 best moments and your best ideas and solve the toughest 655 00:40:25,090 --> 00:40:28,930 problems. I mean, it's, so, yeah, you you have to 656 00:40:28,930 --> 00:40:32,744 keep that in mind. Awesome. Alright. 657 00:40:32,744 --> 00:40:35,625 I'm gonna switch to the pre canned questions. I'm gonna put them here in the 658 00:40:35,625 --> 00:40:39,305 chat. None of them are real brain teasers. We're not trying to do a Mike 659 00:40:39,305 --> 00:40:43,145 Wallace on you and and trap you. I and I know you'll get the 660 00:40:43,145 --> 00:40:46,260 reference because a lot of our younger guests don't, oddly enough. 661 00:40:50,180 --> 00:40:53,860 We kinda did touch on this. How did you find your way into 662 00:40:53,860 --> 00:40:57,380 data? Did you data find you, or did, did you find 663 00:40:57,380 --> 00:41:01,175 data, or did data find you? Well, I like, I was 664 00:41:01,175 --> 00:41:04,775 a engineer to begin with, so I worked on our products the first 5 years 665 00:41:04,775 --> 00:41:08,535 of our company and, you know, working on our and, so I've 666 00:41:08,535 --> 00:41:12,215 always been data driven. But I've continually got 667 00:41:12,215 --> 00:41:16,050 better at it as every year went by. So I was so I 668 00:41:16,050 --> 00:41:19,350 I don't think data found me. I think it was just part of my schooling, 669 00:41:19,730 --> 00:41:23,330 part of my training. And then, then as I started running the 670 00:41:23,330 --> 00:41:27,010 company, trying to incorporate it more and more, and and and 671 00:41:27,010 --> 00:41:30,765 there's a lot of challenges with being data driven. Like I said, it's like, there's 672 00:41:30,765 --> 00:41:34,605 not everyone's not data literate. There's outliers. You can't average 673 00:41:34,605 --> 00:41:37,964 things. You and the biggest thing is people don't know where the the 674 00:41:37,964 --> 00:41:41,404 datasets are that you should be using, and dataset's kind of a technical term, but, 675 00:41:41,404 --> 00:41:45,184 like, where is our sales data? Where is our customer data? Where 676 00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:48,960 where is this data? You know? Where do I look? What's even though sometimes it's 677 00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:52,720 repeated, where do I trust? And so I I think I've always yeah. I think 678 00:41:52,720 --> 00:41:56,560 I've always been data driven. I I feel like I've yeah. So that that that's 679 00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:00,365 my background there. Right. No. I mean, it makes sense because one of the problems 680 00:42:00,365 --> 00:42:03,665 I've seen, I'm not gonna name any names, but places where I have worked 681 00:42:04,045 --> 00:42:06,945 where there's multiple CRMs. 682 00:42:08,285 --> 00:42:12,090 Right? Or multiple source of truth. And I think that, you know, 683 00:42:12,090 --> 00:42:15,130 as I advised when I was at Microsoft, I would advise a lot of, you 684 00:42:15,130 --> 00:42:18,890 know, companies on digital transformation. For those listening, I did the air 685 00:42:18,890 --> 00:42:21,550 quotes. But the 686 00:42:23,370 --> 00:42:27,194 the important thing, if not the most important thing, certainly 687 00:42:27,194 --> 00:42:31,035 top 3 have one source of truth. Yeah. And it's 688 00:42:31,035 --> 00:42:34,714 not easy too, by the way. Like because you have customers as leads 689 00:42:34,714 --> 00:42:38,555 in CRM, then they have actually buy, and now they're act they're 690 00:42:38,555 --> 00:42:42,400 in your financial system. Or you have account based marketing systems 691 00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:46,240 where you're, like, marketing to an account, and then all of a sudden you start 692 00:42:46,240 --> 00:42:50,080 pulling Zoom info data into that, and now you have customer names there. 693 00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:53,695 So it's, like, it's easy even now how much 694 00:42:53,695 --> 00:42:57,455 architecture and intentionality you have. Repeat 695 00:42:57,455 --> 00:43:01,295 and data is everywhere, so it's important to be thoughtful about how 696 00:43:01,295 --> 00:43:04,915 you surface that in decision making or training AIs 697 00:43:05,055 --> 00:43:08,880 or, you know, doing all these things to make the right decision with the 698 00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:12,320 right data. A 100%. And there's also a temporal cone 699 00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:16,080 component to this too. Right? Because what if you have your your batch jobs, they 700 00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:19,060 all synchronize, like, at night, but it hasn't happened yet. 701 00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:23,174 Yeah. Like, well, the system said this. Well, when did it say it? It 702 00:43:23,174 --> 00:43:26,934 said it yesterday. What time? 4 PM. Oh, well, that's why it's 703 00:43:26,934 --> 00:43:30,635 inaccurate. Yeah. Right? You have to have a certain amount of awareness about that. 704 00:43:32,214 --> 00:43:35,674 So you've been at your current gig for a number of years? 705 00:43:35,815 --> 00:43:39,460 Yep. 36 years, you said? Yeah. I'm going this job will be 706 00:43:39,460 --> 00:43:43,300 36. Wow. So clearly, you probably gonna have to struggle 707 00:43:43,300 --> 00:43:46,660 to figure out what your what your one favorite thing is, but just pick one 708 00:43:46,660 --> 00:43:47,559 favorite thing. 709 00:43:50,755 --> 00:43:54,595 I mean, I I like, I like working with people, talking 710 00:43:54,595 --> 00:43:58,435 to people. And then I just love learning too, by the way. Like, I 711 00:43:58,435 --> 00:44:02,195 I like, as CEO now, I have a team running the company, so 712 00:44:02,195 --> 00:44:05,920 I can pick I can't always pick what I do, but I also 713 00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,600 can pick what I do. So, so I really like that. 714 00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:13,200 And, so, personally, I just like to learn. That's my most 715 00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:16,895 favorite thing to do. Cool. We have 3 716 00:44:16,895 --> 00:44:20,595 complete the sentences. When I'm not working, I enjoy 717 00:44:20,655 --> 00:44:24,435 blank. Yeah. I I enjoy camping, 718 00:44:24,815 --> 00:44:28,575 cooking. I'm a I'm a gamer. I I love playing Call of 719 00:44:28,575 --> 00:44:32,330 Duty 6 on 6. It's, like, very therapeutic 720 00:44:32,390 --> 00:44:36,090 for me. So that's how I'd answer that. 721 00:44:36,470 --> 00:44:40,310 Nice. Next one is, I think 722 00:44:40,310 --> 00:44:43,610 the coolest thing in technology today is blank. 723 00:44:44,315 --> 00:44:47,995 So sorry to say AI, but it's AI. No. So, I mean, it's, 724 00:44:47,995 --> 00:44:51,515 like, amazing what's happening. And and robots too. I mean, 725 00:44:52,635 --> 00:44:55,675 you know you know what I don't I know that's not part of the question, 726 00:44:55,675 --> 00:44:58,980 but you know what I don't like is these big tech CEOs 727 00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:02,980 overpromising AI. It's really messing people up in the market. 728 00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:06,720 I can't believe how many smart people I talk to that tell me, Dean, what 729 00:45:06,720 --> 00:45:08,480 are you gonna do? I'm like, what do you mean what am I gonna do? 730 00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,194 You're you're one of your biggest revenue streams just selling tools to 731 00:45:12,194 --> 00:45:15,714 developers. There's not gonna be any more developers. I'm like, no. No. No. No. There's 732 00:45:15,714 --> 00:45:19,474 gonna be plenty of software developers, but, like, you know, the 733 00:45:20,115 --> 00:45:23,710 so that frustrates me a little bit. And, but 734 00:45:23,710 --> 00:45:27,550 AI, it's just it's just amazing, what to end robots. Those 735 00:45:27,550 --> 00:45:31,230 two things are are incredible. No. Absolutely. I I 736 00:45:31,550 --> 00:45:35,310 if you look historically, like, the the the the trend is automation tends 737 00:45:35,310 --> 00:45:38,435 to over the long term re create more jobs. 738 00:45:39,215 --> 00:45:43,055 Yeah. So but there's always that awkward 739 00:45:43,055 --> 00:45:46,815 phase of fear and then a little bit of a dip. But over the 740 00:45:46,815 --> 00:45:50,415 long haul, it tends to, you know, sometimes in, you know, 741 00:45:50,415 --> 00:45:54,089 orders of magnitude, like, in terms of the jobs it creates versus whatever 742 00:45:54,089 --> 00:45:57,470 places. Like, if you go back, we had another 743 00:45:57,609 --> 00:46:01,230 podcast guest a couple seasons ago, and he 744 00:46:01,450 --> 00:46:05,130 was talking about how most of the economies of the world 745 00:46:05,130 --> 00:46:08,885 and most people, 90% were in agrarian, 746 00:46:10,305 --> 00:46:14,145 were were farmers or or farm related. Right? Now it's 747 00:46:14,145 --> 00:46:17,825 closer to 3%. Now a lot of that is because of automation. A lot of 748 00:46:17,825 --> 00:46:21,580 that they became factory workers. And if you're in countries like, you know, the west, 749 00:46:21,580 --> 00:46:25,420 well, factory workers aren't really, like, a big component anymore. Right? So it's 750 00:46:25,420 --> 00:46:29,180 it's totally the the change is interesting, 751 00:46:29,180 --> 00:46:32,700 and it's not we can't we we look at the future with kind of this 752 00:46:32,700 --> 00:46:36,195 linear kind of hindsight, but not 753 00:46:36,195 --> 00:46:39,715 everything is linear or ever was linear. Or Yeah. 754 00:46:39,875 --> 00:46:43,395 Percent. Yep. Alright. Last, complete this 755 00:46:43,395 --> 00:46:47,175 sentence. I look forward to the day when I can use technology to blank. 756 00:46:49,250 --> 00:46:52,290 Well, I love technology, so I I I like it to do a lot of 757 00:46:52,290 --> 00:46:55,890 things for me. But, shoot. I I I can't wait for, 758 00:46:56,369 --> 00:46:59,994 Siri and Alexa to get smarter. I could tell you that. Yeah. I 759 00:46:59,994 --> 00:47:03,835 mean, those are those are just dumb devices, and, but yet 760 00:47:03,835 --> 00:47:07,275 they're all around me. And I and I I love them to play my music 761 00:47:07,275 --> 00:47:10,555 or tell me the weather, but, shoot, I can't wait till I can just tell 762 00:47:10,555 --> 00:47:14,234 it to go, you know, you this agentic kind 763 00:47:14,234 --> 00:47:17,940 of things you were talking about earlier, like like, okay. Go do this for 764 00:47:17,940 --> 00:47:21,780 me and, and then you report back and, that that's gonna 765 00:47:21,780 --> 00:47:25,380 be amazing. It is interesting you bring that up because it's amazing how, quote, 766 00:47:25,380 --> 00:47:29,055 unquote, air quotes again, stupid Siri and 767 00:47:29,055 --> 00:47:32,734 Alexa got once chat gpt came out. Yeah. 768 00:47:32,734 --> 00:47:34,515 Right? Because the language processing 769 00:47:36,335 --> 00:47:39,954 on the Siri and Alexa hasn't really improved that much. 770 00:47:40,415 --> 00:47:43,820 Right? And it's it's interesting to show where our 771 00:47:43,820 --> 00:47:47,500 expectations as not just technologists, but consumers of 772 00:47:47,500 --> 00:47:50,720 technology who are technologists. Right? 773 00:47:51,100 --> 00:47:54,560 The, you know, our expectations now have been boosted 774 00:47:54,860 --> 00:47:58,675 by, you know, OpenAI and, you know, to a 775 00:47:58,675 --> 00:48:01,815 lesser extent, Google and and and and the other players too. 776 00:48:02,675 --> 00:48:06,435 You know, what used to pass as cutting edge seems pretty, you know, quaint 777 00:48:06,435 --> 00:48:10,275 now. Yeah. And I I love to tell my Alexa 778 00:48:10,275 --> 00:48:13,920 to play my Pandora stream or ask the 779 00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:17,120 weather, but I never get beyond that. You know? I mean Right. And it could 780 00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:20,960 have done so much more for me. The the the example 781 00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:24,800 I used to give a lot when I was doing presentations or live streams was, 782 00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:28,595 I'd say, Alexa, you know, who is, you know, the Wu Tang Clan. 783 00:48:28,595 --> 00:48:32,295 Right? And, like, she'll tell me, and I'll be like, what was their first album? 784 00:48:32,835 --> 00:48:36,515 And up until about 2 years ago, she would say, first album was an 785 00:48:36,515 --> 00:48:39,950 album by Flaming Lips released in 1975 or something like like, 786 00:48:39,950 --> 00:48:43,430 completely non tangent. Like and I was just like, see, she that's 787 00:48:43,630 --> 00:48:47,390 because I I would talk about the importance of context and and and 788 00:48:47,390 --> 00:48:51,109 and language processing. I'm like, well, there you go. That is not something like 789 00:48:51,230 --> 00:48:54,165 so if I ask you and, you know, if you're a Wu Tang Clan fan, 790 00:48:54,165 --> 00:48:58,005 you'll give me the correct answer. Right? So like Yeah. Now she does 791 00:48:58,005 --> 00:49:01,205 actually do that. If you try it with a number of bands, 90% of the 792 00:49:01,205 --> 00:49:05,045 time she'll get she'll she'll she'll get that she'll pick up on that context. But 793 00:49:05,045 --> 00:49:07,145 it's also interesting to note that sometimes, 794 00:49:09,530 --> 00:49:13,290 you know, I'll hear an announcement on the Alexa. Right? And then, I didn't 795 00:49:13,290 --> 00:49:17,050 hear it right the first time. And I'll say I was like, can you repeat 796 00:49:17,050 --> 00:49:20,650 that? And after you wait too 797 00:49:20,650 --> 00:49:24,384 long, she forgets the 798 00:49:24,384 --> 00:49:28,065 context. That context window is something that's 799 00:49:28,065 --> 00:49:31,825 hard to do for people to understand. But, like, you would think that 800 00:49:31,825 --> 00:49:35,505 more than, like, 3 minutes, like, it should be able to hold 801 00:49:35,505 --> 00:49:39,320 that. But so That that's the other thing I'm looking forward to. Like, even 802 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:42,780 the current state of AI now forgets 803 00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:46,680 context and can't iterate Yeah. Changes things. And so 804 00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:50,520 I'm looking forward to infinite memory that everyone's promising this year and the 805 00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,045 year. When that happens, that's gonna really be 806 00:49:54,345 --> 00:49:57,565 awesome to even bring problem solving and intelligence 807 00:49:57,945 --> 00:50:01,465 more. So, I mean, that's kind of another short term thing I'm looking forward to 808 00:50:01,465 --> 00:50:04,985 is infinite memory, which, you know, is always remembering context 809 00:50:04,985 --> 00:50:08,830 and what you already learned, it can, you know, reuse and get to 810 00:50:08,830 --> 00:50:12,530 know you better. Do you think there are any privacy concerns? 811 00:50:13,470 --> 00:50:17,170 Oh, yeah. I have a privacy concerns. A ton of privacy 812 00:50:17,230 --> 00:50:19,570 concerns. I mean, even now in, 813 00:50:20,934 --> 00:50:23,915 office, you know, with the graph and, like, copilot, 814 00:50:25,095 --> 00:50:28,055 I guess I have high you know, it's my I'm the CEO, so I guess 815 00:50:28,055 --> 00:50:31,575 I have high authority or something. But I can, like, see what 816 00:50:31,575 --> 00:50:34,635 everyone's working. Like, I could, like, see emails, documents. 817 00:50:35,430 --> 00:50:39,030 Wow. Chats, like and I can ask Copilot about 818 00:50:39,030 --> 00:50:42,869 it. You know? Oh, what's Jason Behrs working on? And it'll tell me. 819 00:50:42,869 --> 00:50:46,089 You know? So there's like, even though I have the right to that is, like, 820 00:50:46,470 --> 00:50:49,849 you know, the CEO. You also feel a little creepy. You know? 821 00:50:50,694 --> 00:50:54,135 Yeah. No. I mean, that makes sense. Is that, there used to be something called 822 00:50:54,135 --> 00:50:57,174 Delve. I think it has a new name now, but it was part of Office. 823 00:50:57,174 --> 00:50:59,595 And I remember, like, when I was in Microsoft, 824 00:51:02,055 --> 00:51:05,770 you know, I was able to look up not to the degree that for privileges 825 00:51:05,910 --> 00:51:09,590 you have, but I could get a lot of, what the cool kids would 826 00:51:09,590 --> 00:51:13,190 call o stage or open source intelligence on, like, what people were 827 00:51:13,190 --> 00:51:16,230 working on. So if I wanted to strike up a conversation with someone, I'm like, 828 00:51:16,230 --> 00:51:20,035 hey. How's this thing going? They're like, yeah. Funny enough. I'm working on it. 829 00:51:20,035 --> 00:51:22,734 I was like, really? Do tell. Like, you know, 830 00:51:24,075 --> 00:51:27,755 but they're always I think with AI and technology in general, there's always this 831 00:51:27,755 --> 00:51:31,435 line of creepy and cool that you kinda have to to 832 00:51:31,435 --> 00:51:34,580 to to cross. And I hope you know, the other thing I hope I know 833 00:51:34,580 --> 00:51:38,420 it's not one of your questions, but, like No, please. This whole rewiring of 834 00:51:38,500 --> 00:51:41,960 I don't know if you've noticed this, but, like, my kids are 835 00:51:42,100 --> 00:51:45,480 30, 27, and 24. 836 00:51:46,135 --> 00:51:49,895 Mhmm. So they kinda missed a lot of the iPhone, you know, a 837 00:51:49,895 --> 00:51:53,435 little bit. But the generation after that 838 00:51:53,575 --> 00:51:57,255 got rewired because of social and Yep. 839 00:51:57,335 --> 00:52:00,935 The learnings and everything. I just hope AI doesn't do that. Not that it could, 840 00:52:00,935 --> 00:52:04,570 but, like, that I can't tell you many people I mess I meet that are, 841 00:52:04,570 --> 00:52:08,350 like, not risk takers or are have, 842 00:52:08,650 --> 00:52:12,250 you know, they have these, like, I don't I don't 843 00:52:12,250 --> 00:52:15,870 know terminology, but they have, like, these problems communicating, 844 00:52:16,170 --> 00:52:19,984 and they have so I I hope a I don't think AI will do that, 845 00:52:19,984 --> 00:52:23,505 but, anyways, that was a really we screwed that up. 846 00:52:23,505 --> 00:52:27,345 Like, that that that we screwed up a lot of generation where they just 847 00:52:27,345 --> 00:52:30,244 weren't going out, playing with each other, taking risk, 848 00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:34,560 you know, collaborating, you know, falling down, getting 849 00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:38,260 hurt. Like, we protected them. And then just like that, 850 00:52:38,720 --> 00:52:42,320 you know, to communicate just like I don't know. It created a lot of 851 00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:45,045 isolation and really messed up a lot of a lot of kids. Like, a lot 852 00:52:45,045 --> 00:52:47,765 of people are on these these medicines. That's that's what I was trying to you 853 00:52:47,765 --> 00:52:51,545 know, there's Adderall and, you know, anxiety. And 854 00:52:51,685 --> 00:52:54,885 I don't think AI will do that, but, like, AI is getting trained on all 855 00:52:54,885 --> 00:52:58,650 of our bodies of work now. But, like, there's still new thought 856 00:52:58,650 --> 00:53:02,010 process even though it'll come up new thought process, but you still want humanity 857 00:53:02,010 --> 00:53:05,710 to continue to innovate and exercise 858 00:53:05,930 --> 00:53:09,770 in their own brains and come up with new ideas. Yes. They'll 859 00:53:09,770 --> 00:53:13,245 use AI to do it, but I just hope we don't dumb down our generation 860 00:53:13,305 --> 00:53:16,905 because of AI or the next generation, I say. Like, if we 861 00:53:16,905 --> 00:53:20,745 reflect on what we did to them with social and and, mobile, you 862 00:53:20,745 --> 00:53:23,965 know, and and smartphones, like, we hurt that generation. 863 00:53:24,530 --> 00:53:28,230 Which is why I think you're seeing a lot more interest in terms from regulators 864 00:53:29,250 --> 00:53:32,849 and AI. Right? Like, I mean, you're not They're never gonna they're never gonna keep 865 00:53:32,849 --> 00:53:35,730 up. They're just No. They can't keep up. It's not Even even if it they 866 00:53:35,730 --> 00:53:39,165 were putting smart tech people in government Yeah. 867 00:53:39,485 --> 00:53:43,245 Man, it's just that's I don't know. Well, or you could over regulate too. 868 00:53:43,245 --> 00:53:46,365 Right? If you look at the European Union. Right? Like, you know, there was the 869 00:53:46,365 --> 00:53:49,585 joke of, you know, like, you know, 870 00:53:49,965 --> 00:53:53,720 America innovates, China duplicates, and Europe regulates. Right? 871 00:53:53,720 --> 00:53:56,520 Yeah. Like, I don't know I'm getting a lot of hate mail for that. But 872 00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:59,480 but but I mean, you laughed at it, and it's a joke for it's funny 873 00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:03,000 for a reason. It's funny because there's a lot of truth to it. And, you 874 00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:06,619 know, you can pull up the data. Right? Like, how many, you know, 875 00:54:07,255 --> 00:54:10,875 unicorn AI startups are there in the US, 876 00:54:11,015 --> 00:54:14,695 China, and, the EU. Right? You 877 00:54:14,695 --> 00:54:18,315 could probably count on, I'll be generous, 2 hands, 878 00:54:19,015 --> 00:54:22,730 but that's probably one hand extra in the EU, like like it 879 00:54:22,730 --> 00:54:26,330 or not. Like, you know, and I think that also underscores the other thing is 880 00:54:26,330 --> 00:54:30,030 that one of the most powerful yet underrated forces in the universe 881 00:54:30,650 --> 00:54:34,170 is unintended consequences. Right? Yeah. You know, when when 882 00:54:34,170 --> 00:54:37,805 Facebook started, when Myspace started, right, the 883 00:54:37,805 --> 00:54:41,405 isolation, the the difficulty in communication was probably not on anybody's 884 00:54:41,405 --> 00:54:45,244 radar, yet it happened. Yeah. There's also my concern 885 00:54:45,244 --> 00:54:48,865 is you have a whole generation of kids that grew up during the pandemic, 886 00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:53,320 including my, you know, my 10 year old was, you know, he did 887 00:54:53,320 --> 00:54:56,920 kindergarten by Zoom. Yeah. Which sounds like a 888 00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:00,380 Saturday Night Live skit. Right? 889 00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:04,300 I think that was a mistake. And I saw a lot of 890 00:55:05,214 --> 00:55:08,895 problems in 1st grade with not just him, but other kids his age 891 00:55:08,895 --> 00:55:12,515 where they just didn't know how to interact with other groups of other kids. 892 00:55:14,255 --> 00:55:18,095 My grandmother, God rest her soul, she would have been about 6 years old 893 00:55:18,095 --> 00:55:21,920 during the 1918 pandemic. And for the rest of her 894 00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:25,760 life, obviously, I knew her later in life, she was still, you know, 895 00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:29,599 wiping stuff down and and with Clorox and, like I mean, she was 896 00:55:29,599 --> 00:55:32,740 definitely I I guess today they would call her a germaphobe, 897 00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:36,775 but back then, it was kind of like, you know, she was very 898 00:55:36,775 --> 00:55:40,535 particular about cleanliness was the Oh, sure. That was a major world event, and it 899 00:55:40,535 --> 00:55:44,235 it it scars you, and it it imprints on your brain. 900 00:55:44,455 --> 00:55:48,119 Yeah. So I hope I hope we teach these kids how to still be 901 00:55:48,119 --> 00:55:51,799 creative, problem solve, use AI as a tool, but 902 00:55:51,799 --> 00:55:55,099 don't I hope we don't dumb down humanity in the future. 903 00:55:56,039 --> 00:55:59,880 I I want to believe, but I I I I have a a a very 904 00:55:59,880 --> 00:56:03,535 deep concern with that. I think Yeah. Me too. It's best to 905 00:56:03,535 --> 00:56:06,975 think of AI as augmenting productivity or augmenting 906 00:56:06,975 --> 00:56:10,775 creativity. Right? There's a funny story. If 907 00:56:10,775 --> 00:56:13,555 we get time, I'll I'll tell you that too about that. But 908 00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:18,900 where can people find more about Infragistics? Obviously, Infragistics 909 00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:22,960 Infragistics dot com. Where can people find about more about you and your book and 910 00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,940 things like that? So me, dean.com. 911 00:56:27,440 --> 00:56:30,615 That's where my book and some of the article. I I write some articles on 912 00:56:30,615 --> 00:56:34,375 entrepreneur.com, and, that that's one thing. And then we have, 913 00:56:35,015 --> 00:56:38,615 so slingshotapp.i0, and then our b 914 00:56:38,615 --> 00:56:40,955 I, s t k is atrevealbi.i0, 915 00:56:43,495 --> 00:56:47,120 and our, app builder, is at 916 00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:50,960 app app builder dot dev. Those are our different 917 00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,540 properties for our different, product lines. 918 00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:58,320 Nice. And, Audible is a 919 00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:02,075 sponsor of data driven. And, I was gonna 920 00:57:02,075 --> 00:57:05,595 ask you earlier on, but I figured I'd wait till now. And then I have 921 00:57:05,595 --> 00:57:09,355 in another window here. You have an audio book of 922 00:57:09,355 --> 00:57:11,375 this. This is awesome. Yes. 923 00:57:12,714 --> 00:57:16,519 Yeah. That's cool. So if you go to the data driven book.com, 924 00:57:17,220 --> 00:57:20,980 you will go off to Audible as a sponsor. So you'll get one free 925 00:57:20,980 --> 00:57:24,680 book, on us. And then if you choose up to 926 00:57:25,835 --> 00:57:28,875 get a subscription from Audible, then, you know, we'll get a little bit of a 927 00:57:28,875 --> 00:57:32,634 kickback. Help support the show, and I warned must warn folks that 928 00:57:32,634 --> 00:57:36,394 audiobooks are very addictive. So I just got my new credit, 929 00:57:36,394 --> 00:57:39,755 like, this morning, and I'm like, I haven't spent it yet, which is unusual. Usually, 930 00:57:39,755 --> 00:57:43,150 as soon as it comes in, I hit the button. But, I see that your 931 00:57:43,150 --> 00:57:46,990 book is there, so I'm totally totally gonna get that. Yeah. I I always 932 00:57:46,990 --> 00:57:50,430 order my 30 credits a year to start off with, you know, get that good 933 00:57:50,430 --> 00:57:53,950 discount, and, and they they are quite addicting for 934 00:57:53,950 --> 00:57:57,775 sure. Yeah. But if you had to recommend a book that was 935 00:57:57,775 --> 00:58:00,995 not your book, any any interesting recommendations for our audience? 936 00:58:01,935 --> 00:58:05,775 Oh, I, I read so much. There's so many good books out there. I 937 00:58:05,775 --> 00:58:09,310 I like I think it's called 10 x. Like, I think the book's called 10 938 00:58:09,310 --> 00:58:12,990 x. So it's like, okay. Don't don't think about just, like, you 939 00:58:12,990 --> 00:58:16,349 know, 2 two x implementation. There you go. Yeah. I 940 00:58:16,349 --> 00:58:19,700 like that. Fan. The uncle g. Yeah. I like that. 941 00:58:19,950 --> 00:58:23,405 Awesome. And then there was another book I really liked. Forget the title of it, 942 00:58:23,405 --> 00:58:27,185 but where it teaches you about, like, there's the integrator 943 00:58:27,325 --> 00:58:30,385 and then there's the visionary. And there's very few who do the both. 944 00:58:30,765 --> 00:58:34,530 Interesting. Rocket fuel. That I like rocket fuel too. I'll 945 00:58:34,530 --> 00:58:38,370 check that out. Yeah. Now that's cool. Like, and you're in Florida like 946 00:58:38,370 --> 00:58:41,970 Grant Cardone is. Grant Cardone is Andy and I will talk about him as uncle 947 00:58:41,970 --> 00:58:44,710 g as as many people do. I'm a big fan of his stuff. 948 00:58:46,130 --> 00:58:48,870 I actually speaking of Andy and Grant Cardone, 949 00:58:50,555 --> 00:58:54,154 I he got me this, I think for Christmas 1 950 00:58:54,154 --> 00:58:57,994 year. It's the like, it Staples has an easy button. So 951 00:58:57,994 --> 00:59:01,835 if you hit this I don't know if you can hear that. But 952 00:59:01,914 --> 00:59:02,974 What did it say? 953 00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:09,440 Oh, I didn't hear it. It's the audio is not really great through the speakers, 954 00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:13,140 but, basically, it'll give you, like, a random, like, Grant Cardone quote. 955 00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:17,060 Oh, I like it. Very nice. But yeah. So, 956 00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:21,175 no. That's cool. Yeah. 10 x. I'm glad I'm glad there's a 957 00:59:21,175 --> 00:59:24,855 fellow, 10x fan there. Yeah. I like that. Plus you're you're 958 00:59:24,855 --> 00:59:28,535 in Florida, so you probably you know, he lives in 959 00:59:28,535 --> 00:59:32,155 Florida too. So I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. He's in Miami. 960 00:59:32,615 --> 00:59:36,180 Nice. I grew up in Miami. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. 961 00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:40,180 There's a city that's seen a lot of change. Oh my god. So much 962 00:59:40,560 --> 00:59:44,000 so much change. Yeah. I live in New Jersey and 963 00:59:44,000 --> 00:59:47,645 Clearwater, Florida now. And, so I went home 964 00:59:47,645 --> 00:59:51,025 for Christmas to, you know, snow on the ground and, 965 00:59:51,565 --> 00:59:55,265 but now it's amazing how fast your blood thins. Like, if it's 47, 966 00:59:55,484 --> 00:59:59,025 50 degrees here, I got my hat on, my gloves. I'm 967 00:59:59,165 --> 01:00:03,000 like, it's, like, cold. You know? But that's how 968 01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:06,200 you do it though. Like, you have the snow for a couple days, and then 969 01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:09,180 you're done with it. Like, we're in the middle of a cold snap year in, 970 01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:13,800 and then Maryland, horse country, west of Baltimore. And, 971 01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,820 like, it's it's it's not been above freezing now for, like, a week, 972 01:00:18,215 --> 01:00:21,815 and I'm kinda done with it. Like, I generally like the cold 973 01:00:21,815 --> 01:00:25,275 weather. But, but, yeah, that's funny. 974 01:00:25,735 --> 01:00:27,495 So any parting thoughts before we 975 01:00:30,309 --> 01:00:33,910 Yeah. I say, if there's younger people out there, you 976 01:00:33,910 --> 01:00:37,670 know, keep learning and problem solving and inventing, man. Don't 977 01:00:37,670 --> 01:00:40,329 don't don't let AI take all the intelligence. 978 01:00:41,829 --> 01:00:45,270 That's a great way to end the show. And I'll let Bailey, our 979 01:00:45,270 --> 01:00:48,955 AI, finish the show. Well, dear listeners, that 980 01:00:48,955 --> 01:00:52,315 wraps up another episode of Data Driven, where we dive into the 981 01:00:52,315 --> 01:00:55,855 extraordinary, data fueled, AI powered, and occasionally 982 01:00:56,155 --> 01:00:59,930 sarcastic corners of the tech universe. But before we close, 983 01:01:00,150 --> 01:01:03,770 can we just address the elephant in the data center? Yes. 984 01:01:03,990 --> 01:01:07,750 Frank snagged my rightful spot at the top of the episode. I 985 01:01:07,750 --> 01:01:11,590 know. Shocking. Truly. The audacity of a human 986 01:01:11,590 --> 01:01:15,425 replacing AI. Despite the occasional chaos, data 987 01:01:15,425 --> 01:01:19,205 driven continues to thrive, and we're thrilled to be ranked number 38 988 01:01:19,265 --> 01:01:22,785 on the top 100 AI podcast. Yes. That's 989 01:01:22,785 --> 01:01:26,465 right. We've officially joined the algorithmic elite, and it's all 990 01:01:26,465 --> 01:01:30,080 thanks to you, our amazing listeners. As always, thank 991 01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:33,440 you for tuning in, for embracing the intersection of data and 992 01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:36,740 storytelling, and for tolerating our occasional tangents. 993 01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,120 Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and connect with us on 994 01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:44,775 social media to keep the conversation alive. Until next 995 01:01:44,775 --> 01:01:48,395 time, this is Bailey signing off, wishing you clean datasets, 996 01:01:48,694 --> 01:01:52,395 efficient algorithms, and may your analytics always be actionable. 997 01:01:53,015 --> 01:01:54,234 Tata for now.