Welcome Back to season three of Rooted in Reaching. I'm your host, Marty McKenberg. Today we talked to John Nunemaker, serial entrepreneur, awesome font of wisdom, and owner of Boxout Fireside, among other ventures. We had a fantastic conversation, and I'm excited to share it with you today. Enjoy the episode. Well, I am thrilled to be here today with John Neunamaker. We were just discussing his title. He is a man who has done many things in his life, but we'll settle with owner of Box Box House Sports.

Yep.

Box House Sports. Right. Which is one of your current endeavors, but not your only one. Yep.

Yeah. And then we also have very good software, which has a couple of SaaS applications in it.

Yep. Right. Yeah. Perfect. So John is here as a. You know, on the show, we interview entrepreneurs and folks who support entrepreneurs with the general overall mission of just enhancing the entrepreneurial landscape and letting people know that South Bend, Elkhart region, Marshall county, these are great places to do business, start business, and all sorts of things can happen here. You bring, actually a very, very specific niche and success story, I think, to the table. That's different than some of the other folks we've talked to so far. I just want to go back real quick, though, and start off with, who is John? Where did you come from? And how do we get to. Let's. Let's go up to, like, 2010. Sure. Yeah. Like, are you a South Bend native? Are you?

Yeah. So 2010, we were. I was in South Bend. I was probably in South Bend at that point. I think I would have. I hadn't moved yet to Granger, so I would have been in Mishawaka, actually.

Right.

By Mary Gibber Park. So we were over there, and I was working at Ordered List, and I had joined that from Notre Dame. So I worked there for a little while. And then I joined my friend who I worked with at Notre Dame. He had left, like, a year before me, and I was like. I saw him out back one day, just. I think he was drinking a beer or something like that, and he was talking about how this was his work spot for the day, and I was like, that sounds nice. And then he was like, this could be your spot. And I was like, were you serious? And then. So then we went back and forth, and so it was ordered list.

So you would work together at Notre Dame. Yep. And then saw him living this lifestyle.

Yeah.

That I wanted to do and thought, hey, I want a piece of that.

Yep. That was exactly it. So we just kind of worked out some details, and I Think it, you know, initially we hand shook. I don't think we signed any paperwork. We probably didn't even know what paperwork was back then. And we pretty much operated on a paper, like on a handshake all the way until, you know, maybe when we started making products, which is a couple of years later. And so when we made the products, we kind of set up a separate LLC for the products. And that way we could have like kind of split ownership. And I think he had a little bit more in the consulting llc, which.

Was the original one. So. Makes sense. Makes sense. So what was Ordered List?

Ordered List was an agency. So it was basically like we did, but we didn't do really very little local work. Most of the work was just like anywhere on the Internet. We, we at that point in time, I don't, I don't know what it's like now, but we found that we could make better, you know, hourly rates and things like that if we were to open to like kind of the whole us instead of really there was, I think even maybe some people from Australia. So it was kind of all over the place. We found we could get paid a little more and we would basically build websites, web applications, things like that for people. And so that's kind of how it started as an agency. But when we were at Notre Dame, we were kind of a part of their agency. They were like public marketing and affairs and stuff like that. And so we helped with that. So we kind of understood that model.

Right.

And so then. But we also built a content management system in there that now hosts 500 to 700 of the Notre Dame's websites. So when we built that, we were like, oh, this is the way we can gain efficiency and scale. Because if we know the CMS really well, we can build the websites faster and all that kind of stuff. And so because of that, when we started order lists, we were like, hey, we did that over here. What if we just did it over here as well? And so Steve didn't want to originally do that by himself, but now that he had me, we're kind of. We always joked we were like fully form and function. So, okay, he made things pretty. I made things work. Kind of a front end, back end type split. So.

So you were able to work all over the United States and even all over the world, it sounds like. Is that because you were offering a specific set of skills that were applicable? I think a lot of a client, it was just who needed a specific thing done.

Yep. And a lot of it was just you know, we actually marketed ourselves, you know, via like writing. Back then it was blogs, like everything a blogger, WordPress was blowing up. So that was the way that you like marketed things. And so we marketed ourselves on that. So everything we did, we talked about how we did it, we put it out there for people to either to learn or to react to or to educate us if we did something wrong. And so we did a lot of open source and things like that. And I think doing those things then that kind of got our names out past just the local region. And so we did some local work. Like I think we did the community. The donation.

Oh, the community foundation of St. Joseph.

Yeah, a long time ago we did their website. So we've done some local work. But like most of it was more just like whoever would see and what like Steve's design or my programming, they'd hire us for one or the other and then sometimes we would do both. And yeah, it was mostly just consulting, but we knew we wanted. What the dream was was to be separated from our hours put in. So that's what we wanted was the whole time was flexibility. So we wanted to be able to build like a SaaS app or some, some kind of product.

Yeah.

So that we could make money while we weren't working and you know, because we're lazy.

So does sound like kind of a dream.

Yeah, exactly. So that was, that was kind of like the thought was like, well, okay, if we want to be lazy, we want to, you know, separate our time from the money that we make and also have the flexibility to like do things during the day that, you know, you might not be able to do it if you're at a 9 to 5.

Right.

That was kind of the thought process. So that's when we started on cms.

So yeah, I want to dig into that a little bit deeper, but let me take one step back from that form and function. I heard you say, you and your partner, where did the, where did the function come from in your life?

Yeah, so I was always was really into like Nintendo and stats and all those kinds of things. I played, you know, techno football and I would play tecmo football and it didn't keep track of stats. So I would pause after every play and I would attempts rushing yards, court, you know, QB attempts, all sacks, everything. Which was really hard with Bo Jackson because he just always had hundreds yards every single time touch the ball. But so I kind of got into like that kind of stuff and then I didn't really do any programming or anything. In high school, went to a small school, like graduating class of 10. So we, I mean we had computers there, but just barely, like some gateways, you know, 95, 96 time period. And then I went to Bethel and Bethel. I was like, I think I'm maybe good at math. And they were like, okay, well why don't you do programming? And I was like, okay. So I did programming and I found out I wasn't good at math, just small school, you know, I was okay at math, but I was not good, you know, But I really liked building stuff. I took a couple of programming classes.

Okay.

And specifically one class where I was just in office hours all the time with the teacher. And he was really patient with me, worked through, taught me how to do all the things. And I remember Steve was in that class too. He would walk in, hand in his homework and leave and I would be there for hours. So I hated him. And now I'm the one that loves programming and he loves design. It's totally flip flop, right? I think it's just a matter of enjoying the process of building.

And kind of when you were in those long office hours. Is that because you were bringing a lot of sort of curiosity to.

It was because I was terrible.

I was just trying to understand.

Yeah, I was just trying to learn. It was like, oh, you have to do whatever, a for loop or something. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. How is it incrementing all the stuff that when you learn how to program becomes a lot easier, but for some reason didn't click with my head right away, or I think I was just slower to learn. But once I learned it, I really learned it and, and it stuck with me.

So what drove the perseverance in that case? Because if you were struggling to learn it, some students might say, this isn't for me and walk away, switch their majors. But for some reason you stuck with it.

I terrified of failure. So. And it was the first, I mean, I had outside of like one class, my entire school career. I had straight A's, and all of a sudden I was in a programming class and I was getting a D. And I was like, I, what am I gonna do if I get a D?

You're like, this cannot happen.

Yeah, this cannot happen. So I was like, I grew up on the farm, so I was like, well, when you don't, you know, when you're failing, you work harder. So I just, I went to every office hours, I did everything I could until I finally understand it, you know, by the time I was maybe two or three years in, I. I would. I would almost ta. Like, I would end up helping the other. Other people because I just put the work in, you know, at first, so. But yeah, it was literally, I'm terrified of failure. So that's. That's.

Well, I mean, we're all motivated by certain things. I mean, certainly that makes sense. Honestly, it's maybe not the healthiest cycle. No, probably not, but. But I can see, you know, it drives a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. So you persevered through this, and you did not fail, correct?

Yeah, I got it up to, I think, a C by the end of the year, and that was the last C that I had. Then after that, I was able to figure it out. But, yeah, it took a lot of effort. That was, I think, my sophomore year, like, the first semester.

So, yeah, I'm assuming that outside of the fear of failure, there was something else about it that kept you going.

Yeah, I love that. As soon as I discovered the Internet, that's what really got me liking it. Like, when I was just writing these programs that only ran on a laptop or not a laptop. We don't really have laptops back then. But yeah, we had, like, an old computer in the computer lab at Bethel, and it was like, I would see, you know, like, this calendar run, and I'm like, this is boring. And then, like, my junior year, I took a web class, and I learned how to, like, move a file in a place. And then I could, like, call my mom and be like, type this in your browser. And she'd see it. And I was like, that's amazing. Like, the fact that I could do something and instantly the. Anywhere in the world, they could see it. Yeah, that's what really got me hooked. And that's when I started putting a lot of time in on my own outside of school. Like, everything my senior year was basically either internships in programming, web programming specifically, or it was like self studies. So, you know, where you get, like, somebody to sponsor you and they're your teacher, and then they. You set a goal and you kind of do it on your own. So I built, like, a bed and breakfast website, and that was one of my things that I learned how to use databases and stuff on. Yeah, I literally went through, like, a Sam's learn databases in 24 hours book that they used to have before we had ChatGPT and all that awesome stuff.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. I have similar memories of that where I remember being in college, and I think it was Yahoo. Actually, Yahoo was like an early platform and being able to find a friend of mine who was going to Michigan State in the directory that had been published, and I was like, holy. Like this. Like there's stuff you can do with this. Different than like you're saying just some loop on a computer. Yep. Like there's a connectivity piece to it that was very compelling, obviously, and seems like you felt that too.

That's 100 what it was that just as soon as I realized I could make something.

Yeah.

Put it out there. Other people could see it. So I started making my own website and redoing it every, like two months just because practice, you know.

Sure.

And then a guy from Skyline rv, like, somehow. I don't know if he Googled or what back then, but somehow stumbled on it. I got like a paid internship and got to do that. And that's. That was just kind of my whole senior year then was going nuts on that.

So.

But yeah, mostly it was. I was scared to fail, put the time in. And then when I saw what I could do with it and I could build. It's just a dopamine hit. It's like playing video games. It's just you're building software instead of playing with the software, so.

Right. Yeah. No, I mean, it does make sense. So. So you. You were doing that. You were at Notre Dame and then you and Steve. Yep. Started your own company. Yep. Was that a scary move for you to go from working at a big institution that had benefits and all the bells and whistles that you expect from a job, and then all of a sudden you have freedom, but also you're on your own.

Yeah, I. I think I would have been scared or probably too scared to do it on my own. I think this is why, like, I always tell people, find a partner, because it's hard and you gotta find the right partner. Cause if you get the wrong partner, you know that that can make things worse, just like marriage and things like that.

Right.

So. But I think, you know, having a partner like Steve is one of those people who's just like, it'll be fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

Like. Yeah.

And so he was like, oh, we've got like 10 grand in the bank. That's a couple months. We're okay. You know? And so that was just enough that it was like, okay. Like, yeah, it seems fine. So I jumped. So it didn't feel scary for me. But I think part of it was Steve had clients, he had regular revenue coming in, so yeah, there was. It wasn't starting for level that you.

Were walking into something that was already working, already existed.

I would hopefully just add to it and like, he was, you know, doing well enough that like, you know, maybe he takes a hit for a little while, but then I'll start bringing clients too. And that's what happened. You know, within probably three to six months, I started bringing some clients as well.

Very good.

So.

So you were bringing clients. He was bringing clients. So I think what's interesting to me now is like, where you went from there, because you could have just been a. You could have been just a web design firm building websites for businesses around the region. Yeah. Or even around the country if you know, your reach was bigger. But. But you took it someplace different and that led to new opportunities for you. Yeah. Am I getting that right?

Yeah, we. So we were building the software, but then we didn't know how to sell, so we were like, well, we'll just do what we did before. We'll just talk about how we built it. So we went to conferences, we went to all that kind of stuff. So we went to a lot Of Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, jQuery, all these different technical conferences. And we would speak and then we would speak about how we build our products and then it'd be like, oh, yeah, and you can use our products. And so that was just what we knew. So that's what we did.

Like the blog post part of that too, like blogging about what you were doing and why you were doing it.

And yep, it's 100% that. Like when we wrote the, the CMS, we literally like, you know, one blog post was like, what features you know, we were going to put in it, how we were going to do pricing. You know, like, you go, we went through like all the bits and then that people get kind of vested and they get interested because once they know a little more behind it, they're not buying software for software. They're buying, you know, some tool to get their job done. But also from like, everybody buys from a person and so if they get to know you a little bit in your thought process and they say, hey, I, you know, know like that thought process, it goes a little easier. So we did all these conferences and then, you know, one of them was in New Orleans. It was a Ruby conference, programming one. And one of the, my friends there from other conferences had started GitHub. And so he was, he was there. We, you know, met up and chatted for a while just about the different things we were working on and didn't really think anything of it, and then went home. Then he was like, what. What if I, like, invested in your company? We're like, well, we're making money. I don't think we really need an investor.

Thinking about yourself that way. Yeah.

We weren't. We're always. We've always been bootstrappers. We just used our. Like, we can build, so it's really just. Can we market and sell? Yeah, that's the hard part. We knew the building part. So we're like, we don't really need money to build it. Maybe we could get money to market or sell it, but we didn't know how to do that, so that wouldn't really help us. And then eventually he was like, well, why don't I just come to South Bend and we'll just talk? And I'm okay. So he flew in. We had baked oatmeal at the place that is no longer there anymore, Main Street Coffee or whatever.

Okay.

As a bank now, I think.

Yeah.

And. And just spent like the whole day, you know, kind of talking. He's like, well, what if we just aqua hired you guys? Because that point we were five people.

Okay.

So Steve and I. And then we had three guys that worked with us who had joined up in the previous, like, maybe 12 months or something like that. So. And. And that's kind of how that went. And this. And then they like the idea of having this, like, strike force course of, like, five people who already work together really well.

Right. That makes sense.

Yep.

Yeah. Yep. So when you. When you were going to the conferences, you. You recognize that as marketing.

Yep.

And you were doing it because it was the only kind of marketing. Yep. That you really knew how to do.

Yep.

Did you just, like, call up the conferences and say, hey, we're really good at what we do. Do you want us to come speak? Or. How did that. How did that piece work out?

Yeah, well, as far as I remember, like, a lot of it was just like, most conferences for tech will do, like, a submission round, and so you can. And so if you're writing a lot, you're learning how to craft headers and titles and things like that, you know, creating, like, a proposal for a conference is very similar thing. How are you going to get eyes on it? How are you going to get them to pick it? It's the same as writing a blog post. So I feel like it went kind of naturally to be like, okay, well, you know, I. So like, one of my talks was like, don't repeat yourself. Repeat others.

Yeah.

And so because, like, a big phrase in programming is like, don't repeat yourself. They're always like, oh, you know, keep your code dry, dry. Don't repeat yourself. And so my big thing was, like, the best way to learn is to copy everybody else. That whole idea of, like, imitation is a sincerest form of flattery. Just there's, you know, great artists, good artists copy, great artists steal, like all those kinds of. Yeah, that was the whole thing.

That philosophy has been out there for a while. Exactly. And I'm like, probably forever.

Yeah. And that is exactly how I got to learn all the things that I did is like, I'd see a popular project. I think maybe, you know, naively I could, or stupidly I could do it better, or I had a different take on it, and so then I would just learn from how they did it and do it a little bit differently. And then maybe it gets popular, maybe it doesn't, and that kind of thing. But I thought that was a valuable way to learn just by copying what other people did, because then you kind of mess with it and you get a little better sense of. Of how things work.

Do you think copying and making your own lowered the barrier for failure in a sense of 100%?

That's. I never thought about that. But yes. I mean, I literally never crossed my mind until you just said that. But I guarantee that's probably what I was doing, because I was like, well, if I start from scratch, what am I going to build? What if people don't like it? But if, you know, it's something that's out there, that's popular, that people like, but you just have a different take on it. Yeah, it definitely does.

I ask partly because I've seen entrepreneurs, like, fall too in love with their idea.

Yeah.

Or it becomes too precious and then failure becomes almost impossible. Whereas it seems like, yeah, if you're. You're iterating. Yep. You're taking something somebody else invested in and you don't feel like, oh, God, if this fails. Yeah, it's on me. Right.

Yeah. So what's hilarious is, like, literally everything we built, if I think back on through that lens, like, we built a CMS when WordPress was really popular. We're like, well, we're just gonna do some things different than them. And we built, you know, gauges, which was analytics, when Google Analytics was popular and free. But we were like, well, we think they do everything. What if we just did this really well, I think people will pay for that, you know, and then there was slideshare and we were like, well, they have ads everywhere. What if we built speaker deck and it didn't, you know, and so like literally everything that I've built is. It's some like, like there's some big player, which means there's a market.

Right.

So you don't have to, you're not.

I don't pre identified. Right. Yeah.

So it's just, can you carve off a small slice of it and make a living?

Yeah. That's actually really fascinating. So did Steve bring that same mindset to projects? Like, you guys would just sit around and be like, hey, we see this company doing X, Y and Z, let's see if we can carve off a piece.

Yeah, for him it was, it was always like a design thing. So it was like he would look at it and be like, well, that's a, like we can make something that's prettier than that, you know, Like.

Yeah.

Or that work. The workflow is better for the person using it, you know, like, there's fewer steps to get their, their deck online or there's, you know, it's faster to get the script installed and start seeing data, you know, in real time instead of waiting like an hour or four hours, whatever it was back then.

Right.

So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, he would bring it more from like that standpoint of like, let's make it look nicer and work better, you know, and then. Yeah, but I think that that's definitely. That's an interesting point because I've not ever backwards correlated that until now. But that's. That was probably a big part of it, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love that you guys were very experimental, it sounds like. And also your marketing technique is fascinating as well. Even though I understand, like the blog post thing was pretty common in those days.

Yeah.

But it's almost like an intellectual form of marketing. Right. You're putting your knowledge out there in the world and people are becoming interested in your. Yep. The way you think.

Yeah.

As much as anything else. And that's what started drawing companies to you or clients to you.

And I think that's why we built a lot of dev tools and why a lot of dev teams hired us as like an extra, you know, like Strike Force or whatever you want to call it on the side. Because they were like, well, we, we already are doing this. What if we added them over here for like a little bit of help and that would like, kind of bolster.

Yeah.

So they get something done a little faster or things like that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it was definitely. I think that is the approach. I don't think we. We were not that smart back then to think that through.

It was just like, good instincts.

Yeah. It was just like, here's a way to do it. Like, what if we just talked a lot, you know, like, and it worked out well.

And I can see how that would be attractive to GitHub too, then. Right. Like, here you were, five people already working together, you know, bringing a kind of creative mindset to the work. Right. Yeah. You're not settling. Right. You're. You're kind of keeping your eyes on what's next, what's new, and GitHub probably like that about you. Yep. And also knew your expertise level was pretty high.

Yeah. Well, that's. If you put everything out there, then people know. Like, I. I mean, it's the. Like, I. It always blows my mind when I, like, I remember when I was at GitHub and I was interviewing people, I'd be like, I don't know this person at all. How am I supposed to know if they're any good or not?

Yeah.

You know, from like, a resume and, like, even asking some questions, like, it's kind of hard to tell, but, like, the people who had a site, a blog, videos, whatever, like, things like that, you can look at it and say, okay, I can see some product.

Pretty hard to fake.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Especially open source. I mean, open source is like, literally the code's there, you can look at and say, like, it was good or not. And, you know, it's attributed to, you know, Marty or whoever.

Yeah.

So you know, exactly the lines they wrote and the lines they didn't and stuff. So it is pretty bare, and you can. You can really tell. And I think that's part of the rise of GitHub is because of that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Yeah.

So.

So what was that transition like for you guys? Was it. Was it an immediate success where you. Did you have to go back and drink a beer and say, like, okay, wait a minute. Like, do we really want to do this, or are we steady as. Steady as she goes.

Yeah.

So, I mean, what basically change for you?

It's a huge change. So we. Because we. It's basically going from complete freedom now to having a boss again. Right. So I was like, I don't want to do it. And everybody else is like, let. No, let's do this. Like, you know, because everyone's looking at bigger salaries and stock Options and all these kinds of things.

Yeah.

And I was like, we're doing fine. Like, we don't need this. Like, and I. I wish there was a world where I could go back and run an A B and see what would have happened, just because I'd be really curious. Yeah, but what was. I think what we did is we went back and forth a bunch and I was like, look, I'm not going to be one on four and like, block this.

Right.

So instead, let's. Let's just negotiate and try and get as much as we can. And so we just went back and forth a couple times, and then we were like, yeah, let's do it. I mean, if there was anywhere we were going to go, it would have been GitHub. We knew the founders really well because they're good people. They're at the conferences. We've hung out with them a lot. There's a strong trust factor. We wouldn't have did it for just any random hire. For them, it was more like, specifically, we believe in that product and that team, and that's why we did it. So it was less about all the other stuff.

Okay. Acquihire is not a term that maybe many of our listeners are familiar with. Can you explain what that is? It means acquisition and hiring. Tell us about it.

Yeah, so it's basically when you've got this, you've got maybe a product or an agency, and you've got a team that already works together, already has all these established patterns. They're, you know, successful, they're shipping, they're making good things. So at least from a software standpoint, I don't know from any other standpoint, but from a software standpoint, that's what it is.

And.

And then a bigger company comes in, you know, and they're like, look, hiring is brutal. It's really hard. You know, the success rate, the number of applications, the effort that your team has to put in, It's a huge drain on a team. So if you can just go in and buy a whole company that already has, you know, in this case, five vetted people or 10 vetted people or bigger, you know, is a very common way in software to just kind of speed up the hiring process.

So is there a component in there where they bought your business.

Yeah.

And then hired each one of you as individuals?

Yep. So it's a acquisition from the standpoint of, like, typically they have to buy the business because you've got a business that's making money. So you're not just going to Shut it down for nothing. And you're not going to run on the side while you're working for them. They don't really want that either.

Right.

So it's an acquisition from the standpoint for us, we were like, hey, how we worked was like, we would put in a bunch of hours on our products, and then we would do a bunch of hours in consulting. So we kind of, like, lumped them and we scheduled it that way. And we were like, we're just finishing up a whole bunch of product stuff. We have to do, like, another three months of consulting or, you know, to pay the bills.

Yeah.

And so you can have us next week or like, in three to six months. And they were like, okay, next week. So we went really fast. The lawyers got really mad because we. None of us had signed again. It was a handshake. Neither side had signed any paperwork. They hired us, gave us positions, everything, and then we worked out the rest of the stuff later. Like three months in, we finally just told them, just agree on everything. It's fine.

Let's just check. Yeah.

And just check the box off. But so they took all five of us. We had two companies, a consulting company. We just shut down, stopped taking new clients. That was really easy. Shut it down, and it was done. The other side was the product company we call Orderless Creations. Okay. So that one had Gauges, Speaker Deck, and Harmony in it, the three products. And so they bought those, they didn't want. They had plans for Speaker Deck.

Okay.

They didn't want Harmony or Gauges. So they. We had friends for both that were interested in buying them. So they sold them, I mean, super, super cheap.

So GitHub bought the whole thing and then sold off those two components to people that you knew.

Yeah. And so then we got some cash up front and then options. So that was what. So it was a big trade of, like, 100% ownership to, like, fractionals. Fractional percentages, you know, in a bigger thing.

Yeah. Yeah. But.

Yeah.

And you were nervous about it, right? You were the one. The one guy out of five that.

Yeah, as far as I remember. Yeah. I don't remember anybody else being nervous, but. Yeah, it's a long time ago. Yeah.

Yeah. So do you remember how it went? Like, yeah, I went. You.

It went good. Honestly, like, it went great. Like, the funny thing is, they bought us as a strike team.

Yeah.

And we all five went completely different ways.

Oh.

So it was like, you know, Steve started working on, like, the Mac app. I started working on building an analytics team for, like, Repository analytics and internal company analytics and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Another guy started working on the support team and the software that made them, you know, handle more requests and things like that.

Okay.

And then, you know, one guy moved kind of into the open source, like, liaison, stuff like that, like working with open source people, getting them to move their repos to GitHub, which is always like a big, big thing for us.

Okay.

Yeah. Just people moved all over the place, so.

So it didn't pan out the way you originally thought it would. Where you did, five of you were kind of a coherent team.

We thought we'd stay together, and they thought we'd stay together, and then we went totally separate. But I think everybody on both sides was perfectly happy with the way it ended up. Like, nobody was upset or bothered or any of that kind of stuff. So we kind of all just like, once you get into a bigger company, there's so many cool different projects, I imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's like, well, certain, you know, some people care more about helping, so they end up in support. You know, I cared more about numbers going back to tech. So I went right into. I was like, okay, we need an analytics team. Like.

Yep.

So, you know, started on.

That does sound very much like you were drawn to the thing that. That you're drawn to. Yep.

And everybody went their way and, you know, one. One of us is still there. So that was 2011. So he's, you know, I think number three, seniority chart at GitHub.

Now, how big was GitHub when they hired you?

45 through 50. So there are 45 people. And they had not taken any funding yet. Um, got it. They were bootstrapped.

Yeah.

You know, in. I think in the millions a month, maybe range. And then every. Every ounce of, you know, money they got, they just hired more people.

Just bring along their staff. Yeah. So you 40. Have 45 through 50, but you were remote, obviously, so you. You still maintain some of that lifestyle of you're sitting out on your back porch or your deck or your lot of flexibility, your. Yeah. Was that built into it? Did you negotiate for that?

Yeah, we. I mean, there's things we.

We.

I negotiated to, like, stay at the strategic layer because, like, I was like, I don't want to go from having control to not having control.

Yeah.

And that didn't pan out. Like, it doesn't work really. It's hard to be strategic remotely. Fifteen years ago, I imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that was the. The difficult part. And we found as soon as we were out of sf. You know, if we'd have stayed, I think we would have stayed in leadership, but as soon as we were out of sf, we just became contributors.

Did you actually go to San Francisco at some point?

Just, just for like, you know, just for paperwork and things like that?

You never there or anything like that?

No, it would be more like, you know, a week here and there or something like that.

So it was.

It was pretty quickly. We just were back here and stayed back here and. And then they were, you know, meeting in person all the time and it's hard to zoom us in. Yeah, Zoom didn't again.

Yeah. If it did exist, it was. Yeah, it was barely a thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. Okay, I want to. I kind of want to hear the rest of the story. So you. You're all five views, right? For us, GitHub. One guy still there. Yep. But the other four of you have moved on to other things. Yep.

So Steve and I are still together.

Yeah.

And so we have box out and then he's a passive investor and. Very good. So he doesn't actively work on any of those things, but he contributed to help us acquire Fireside and stuff like that. Got it. And then we have Hoyt, who's still out there. John Hoyt.

Okay.

Brandon Keepers is on a sailboat somewhere.

Okay.

So he, he has a few different, you know, random things that he works on website, sailboat guide and some stuff like that. He got really into sailboating. So they, they. Yeah, they've been doing that for quite a while. And then Matt Graham is. He was the last one that we hired. He was literally there for like two months, I think when we got acquired. Three months. It was very short. Maybe six months.

Worked out well for him. Yes, it did.

And so he's working at Heroku now, which is a salesforce company.

Okay. Okay.

Doing design.

And why did you leave?

Why did all of us leave or why did I leave?

Why did you leave?

I left because I hate big companies. I have control issues. So, yeah, I just like, I like return on investment. Like, I like impact. I like having the ability to, like, if I get an idea, like to push it forward and stuff like that. I just never felt like I could do it inside of GitHub. I'm just not. I don't know if I'm not a company man or what the. I don't know what the right thing is, but it just didn't.

Yeah.

Didn't work well for me.

You seem very independent minded. Right. And yeah, I imagine. Did GitHub get a little more corporate as time went on. Oh, yeah. Yes.

So about. I mean, 15 or 16, I think it started getting really corporate. Okay. Because by then we had taken, I mean, 200 million in funding.

Right.

Two rounds. So I was like, right.

So there were different pressures being put on GitHub and the way it was organized, the way it was run. Yeah.

I went from. I mean, in four. Four years, we went from 50 people to probably a thousand.

Wow.

And, you know, from being literally, like, working at the same level as the founders to like, seven layers deep, you know, and stuff like that. So, yeah, probably 16, 17. I was just like, I. I'm done. I can't do this anymore. But I had options. Some were invested, some weren't. And, you know, it was like, well, I can tough it out. It's, you know, it's however many years in, at some point they were talking about, like, IPO or sale or something like that. So I thought, it's fine. I'll just show up. I'll. I wanted to do more, but it just that, you know, big companies like that are not necessarily set up to do that, to, like, like, have independence and do more, make decisions unilaterally and stuff like that. That's. That doesn't work that way. Same thing at Notre Dame, you know, like. And so I think for me, it was just like, I wanted to be back in a small company, so I started working on some stuff. Stuff on the side.

Okay.

Because I was like, I need to bring back my indie spirit and stuff like that.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then I just was like, you know what? I'll just show up and I'll do whatever I'm asked. I'll do it as best as I can. And so I did that for a couple years and. And then 2019, that Microsoft bought them, and so then I was like, that was your.

That was your chance to walk out the door.

Microsoft was always like the. The devil. Growing up, they were like, you know, like the Monopoly. All these. Now I love Microsoft. They're awesome.

Yeah.

Because it's cool.

They did. They did go through this phase where they did. They were the bad guy. Right.

And I switched to Mac.

The evil empire.

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm not going with the evil empire. You know, like, so as soon as they. As soon as that was all over, I was like, I'm done. Yeah, I'm good.

There's.

They were still evil empire. But then I realized, you know, a year later, I'm like, oh, actually, such is a really great CEO. They're cool company. Like, it would have been interesting to work there, but.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, you would have become a Microsoft employee technically, right?

Yeah, it's a subsidiary, but yeah, like.

Somewhere in the chain.

All the benefits come from Microsoft and stuff like that. Now, like it's, it's Microsoft company. Like everyone that I've talked to, that's still there.

So. Yeah. So how's it, how's it. How did it feel to get back to your indie roots?

That was awesome.

Like, you're free, you're outside of the corporate umbrella at this point. You had, did you. The side hustles that you started? Are those what you.

So one of them.

Flipper, that Flipper.

So Flipper was an open source project and I have a commercial side of it. And so that was one that I was working on. And then I, what I basically did is I just, after I got out, I was like, okay, what's, what's next? And so I just went right back to Steve. I was like, what you doing? And he was working on Box out with, you know, his partners there. And so I was like, do you guys want another person? And he was like, that'd be awesome.

Yeah.

So he talked to them and they're like, sure. And we kind of all knew each other, you know, from just like.

So Steve had left before you.

Yes.

And was involved in Box out at that point.

Yeah, he.

Box out is what.

So Box out is like sports marketing. So it's like really fast. It's like a. I would say it's like a CMS for like social media graphics. So you type in a few things in a form, hit a button, you get a well designed on brand, you know, really fast, quick graphic. Then you can post it to Twitter. We make, you know, three, four platform sizes all at once with, you know, different arrangements and stuff. So you get to optimize Instagram, optimize, reel all that kind of stuff in, just one click. So that's what it does. So all the way from Notre Dame, they use it to support. So like they'll, they'll design things and then they will give them to us. We'll build them, put them in our system and then their students and interns and employees will use it to actually generate stuff to, you know, high schools, like I think Riley or Washington or both of them. Okay, we'll use it and it could be just anyone. It could be the ad, it could be whoever. Okay, we'll just pop in, make a score, update key player, birthdays so it's scalable.

High school level, college level.

Yeah.

Like across spectrometer.

Started out very college and then moved maybe the last three years. We're probably now like 70% high school because there's more high schools, which makes sense. So that's, that's what Box out is.

And you were able to step, you know, leave GitHub and then step back into a role.

Yep.

At Box out, alongside of your own endeavors, which we're going at.

Yeah, as well. And so, like, my own stuff was really small at that point. Like Flipper, we had built it and it worked, but like, we hadn't even put billing on it or anything. Like, it was just me tinkering with it. Like, the open source side was working really well and it was being used a lot. But that's free, so you don't make any money.

Right, right, right, right.

I mean, it's used Shopify, GitHub, like a whole GitHub might not anymore, I don't know. But like it's used all over on those. So, like that side was really well. So I thought, well, surely there's something commercial there.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's still. Now it's. It's small. We.

We have.

We just keep slowly adding stuff to it and supporting it, making it better. But it's very niche. It's just kind of targeted at one programming language and stuff like that. LaunchDarkly is the huge competitor in there. They're like 500 million in funding or 800 million in funding and big. Everybody uses them.

So. Yeah. What's that one called?

Like, Launch Darkly or something? I think it's like Launch Darkly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned the open source thing. You've mentioned a couple times. Like, it does seem like there's some tension potentially between. You seem drawn to open source and sharing.

Yeah.

And then there's also, oh, we need to make some money so I can keep doing the things I love.

Yes.

Yeah. Like, how did you reconcile that tension? Or how are you reconciling it even today?

Yep. So back in the day, it was all giving. It was all just like, everything's free and we just put it out there. Cause you're just trying to like, make a name for yourself and it's leading to other things. You know, there's the side benefit of people want to hire you and stuff like that.

Sure.

But I think I got two PlayStations out of it. That was like the high. I was like, cool. Like, this guy donated 500 bucks. So Steve and I Went to Best Buy and we each got a PlayStation. PlayStation, because he had helped with that project too. And so, you know, that was back in the past. Now, you know, Flipper, what we do is we're like, well, look, we're not going to retract any of the open source features. We're not going to take them away from people. So that exists. And then what we do is things that are painful to solve going forward get moved into the commercial side. So, you know, it's like analytics again. That's another thing that like the commercial side can show, like, you know, how many people are actually seeing the feature. Because it's a feature flag system that kind of lets it. Like when you go to Facebook, you might see a totally different Facebook than I do. And a lot of that is because they have all these flags that control like, are you in this feature or not? Based on your demographics or based on how you use it or all that kind of stuff. It's a tool that basically lets you kind of do that so you can kind of create segments, let people in slowly and avoid. We had to use it on Words of Friends all the time because every time we roll out a new feature, it would bring the whole site down. So then we started rolling it out like 1%, 2%, 5% and you start getting confident, 10%, you know.

Okay.

So it's that kind of a tool of like a release tool of letting people in into that while the software is already there. You don't have to keep redeploying and doing all this other stuff.

That makes sense. That makes sense.

But yeah, there is a tension of like, well, you want people to have a good experience with the open source version, but you also want to make money on it. So it's, it's tough. But I think for us it was like, look, we just need, you know, a certain number of things people will pay for and they're usually bigger companies. And so that's what we'll do. And then we'll just come in like way below LaunchDarkly's prices because they're kind of crazy. I mean, they last I knew is like 10 times the price of GitHub for like a single person, you know, on launchdarkly versus like GitHub. And GitHub is a tremendous amount of value.

Yeah. So I want to ask you about AI in a minute. But just, you know, you're still open. What. How has the landscape changed from 15 years ago to where you are today? Because you're still doing it Today you still, you still have open source y software that you're developing and that, that you're sharing with the world. Yep. How have things changed, though, in the last 15 years in that space?

Dramatically. I mean, when I started, you know, I hosted the code on my own website, you know, like, there was no. There was, I mean, there was Source Forge, but it was terrible. So like, there was not really a central place to put it, you know, and then I went from that to like GitHub, which is like, it's so easy to just put it there and share it with everybody. Again, that same experience of like, where you put a thing there and like, you're making mom can go see it.

Right?

Like that experience for code. And so that's like, oh, this is cool. I can put it there, I can post one tweet. And all of a sudden I've, you.

Know, people are, people are looking at.

It, making polls, they're making changes, they're help make it better, they're using it and they're telling me stuff like that, which is really neat. And then, you know, now today with AI, it's like, it's kind of wild because AI can, can use those tools, but it can also just generate all of it. And so it's kind of a balance. You have to be like, well, would I rather have AI generate all of it, or would I rather like, bring in something that the community is kind of supporting right now and that, you know, I know we'll get upgrades and like, or do I want to go the AI route and just make sure that I'm doing those upgrades with AI at some point? So it's a little bit different. I don't think it's as easy to, you know, as anything gets kind of like solidified. It's not as easy to like, rise to the top and become well known for something.

Right.

Like open source now, imagine. Yeah, people are like, well, I can just do that in AI in like five minutes. So why would I, you know, use your gem over here and like, you and support you and stuff like that? So it's definitely hard.

Yeah.

But Open source now has also become a regular business model where people have either open source or open core, you know, where like, the code is there, but you can't use it without paying for it, you know, like, so you can get comfortable with it from a security standpoint. So there's a lot more interesting models and businesses built on top of it. So I think that's the fascinating part now. And so I'm just kind of dipping my toes. I'm not like, you know, Hashicorp or some of these big companies that have made their entire, you know, billion dollar exits on this kind of stuff. For me, it's like, again, it's just lifestyle flexibility.

Right, right.

And put stuff out there because that's just like a good thing to do.

Yeah.

But good things out there.

So are you worried about the rise of AI taking that away from you? Hmm.

I actually haven't. Haven't thought about that. I'm not worried. I can say this. I'm not worried about AI at all. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. I use it like crazy. It has made my entire life from a programming standpoint and a business standpoint so much easier. So I don't think I've stopped to say, like, am I worried about it somehow affecting that side of things? Like, I feel like if anything, you know, it just changes now. You're like, well, instead of saying, here's my, you know, my packaged up code that you can use and hopefully you like it. I can be like, yeah, here's like this crazy prompt I used to figure this problem out. And then people are like, oh, I've never thought of doing that. So you can still kind of get like the dopamine hit and the share and the education. There's still some of that there, I guess.

Yeah. So yeah, that's really, actually really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. There's been some stuff in the news recently about like entry level programming jobs.

Yeah.

Or coding jobs. Right. At risk. Because AI can do X, Y or Z. I mean, I'm not trying to. Yeah. I'm not saying oh, we should be scared of AI either. I mean, it's just like, it's just like there used to be switchboard operators and now there aren't anymore. Right. So like, this is just sort of part of the landscape that we're dealing with. But I was wondering about the relationship between the open source coordinating coding and sharing that. And, and then people just saying, well, like you just mentioned, well, I can just make that myself.

Well, one of the really cool things about it though is that you, like, now I can speak multiple languages. Like before I could only like I programmed in Ruby, maybe a little bit of JavaScript, you know, and I've had like a tiny bit of history of Google's go language and like, but now with. But I have 20 years of solid programming fundamentals and it's the same across languages. So yeah, now I know what to ask for to say Like, I have one of the guys that I follow online, he was like, I just contributed to a Go project and I'm a Ruby programmer. And he's like, I don't. I. I totally used AI. I was like, look, I just want to do this, this and this.

Yeah. And.

And I know exactly how to do that. And, you know, Claude did it and then he submitted a pull request, it got merged, and now he contributed to a project that he couldn't have contributed to nearly as easily, you know, three years ago, two years ago.

Yeah.

So from that standpoint, I mean, Boxout's working on a new, like, renderer right now to make the graphics. And we have like, I mean, it's mostly written in like JavaScript and Node. And I haven't written that since I taught at Notre Dame and 2010 or nine, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was able to go in and like completely production, solidify this kind of like prototype.

Nice.

To where now all of our, you know, traffic's being sent over there and it's doing great.

Yeah.

And that's because I knew, I knew solid principles.

Yep.

And I knew how to tell Claude how to do it.

Yeah.

And then I was able to say, no, that's not right. Maybe do this instead. Even though I can't read the. I mean, I can kind of read it. Like, it's just like a language. It's easier to hear a language and kind of have some sense of what someone's saying than to speak it to them.

Yeah. No, it's actually really fascinating. So you. Yeah, I can see the opportunities that opens up. Right. Yep. Because you know the fundamentals. Right. And you've, you've built things many times over so you understand what it takes to build something. And so you can teach Claude. You Claude. For the most part, yes.

I. So I ping pong between. I'm always using everything because I just want to see what's the best. So I use Gemini, like the least. I use Claude for coding the most Claude code, which actually integrates with, with your code base. You can read your files and do all that kind of stuff.

Cool.

And then I have ChatGPT as well. And so, like, a lot of times I'll use ChatGPT to like think. Then I'll copy it or tell it to summarize for Claude, put it in Claude. And then once it's in Claude, it'll write the code and then I'll be like, what about this? And then I'll paste that back into here. So I go back and forth between them. I heard somewhere that, like, pitting them against each other is, like, really good and it does kind of work because they want to beat the other.

It makes sense.

Right.

They're both. They're competing competitors. Right.

And they find different holes and things.

Right, right, right, right, right.

Yeah. So I kind of go back and forth between a lot of them. Claude kind of in the terminal or. And like that. And then, you know, more the web version of like, Chat GPT and stuff like that. And then we have a ton of GitHub integrations with Claude, so we can just. On any pull request, we can be like, at Claude, review this and it'll go crazy and. And do all that, which is really neat, too.

So that's fantastic. Yeah, that's cool. It's a brave new world. Right?

There's lots of new opportunities.

Yep.

It's also scary because you're like, is my business going to exist in like, two years?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

And I don't. But that's, you know, that's.

No, I mean, it's. It's certainly a concern. I mean, graphic design and some fields. And, you know, some fields are more at risk than others, I think. Right. As you go forward. I'm an architect by training, so I've been kind of keeping my eye on, like, how is AI influencing the world of architecture?

Yeah.

Not so much on the design side yet, but certainly on, like, the code analysis side, which is a headache. Could be a huge benefit.

Yeah.

Like, drop this project in, run it past the Indiana building code and flag anything for me. Boom. Hours of work.

That's going to be the next wave. I mean, right now it's like. It's funny because all the coders are like, oh, all our AI stuff that we're doing is going to take everybody's jobs away. And then it's like, actually, it's coming for the coders jobs first because we're making it so much better for ourselves that it's kind of taken away our thing. So. Yeah. But I think once we kind of wipe ourselves out, that's what that'll be next. Is that kind of stuff. It is wild. But again, if you can take away that tedious stuff, it frees you up for more creativity on some of the other stuff, I feel like. So it's like a superpower for people that go for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about some of your other passions. Sure. That are Outside of coding, primarily, the one I'm thinking about is your watch business.

Yeah, sure.

How did that happen? Do we have time? Yeah, we've got time, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, so you're. You're a coder. You're sitting in front of a terminal a lot of the time, but you have now gotten into something that's very physical and hands on.

Yes.

Very old school.

Yeah. And that's basically because I'm a coder. Like, everything I do just sits there and rots and is, like, useless in like, three or four years if you don't, you know, love it and care for it.

Yeah.

So there was something about, like, just. I started liking magazines.

Oh. Like. Cause I was just like, I could like physical magazines.

I could touch them, I could read them. Like, you know, just weird things like that. And then I started getting obsessed with, like, buildings and just things that ran without batteries and just like, all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of how I ended up in watches was just the nature of a mechanical watch and how you wind the crown and it turns a gear and winds a spring, and then the spring releases that energy which then turns other gears and keeps it accurate. And all this kind of stuff. Like, it just got really fascinating to me. So I got into that. And then my friend Chris was like, well, you know, South Bend had a watch company. I was like, I did not. So I went right to ebay that night. And I was just searching, like, I'll get one. And I found one. And it was in Ukraine, and it was probably three years ago, two and a half years ago, something like that. And it was like, just absolutely gorgeous. Like, converted to a wristwatch. I thought it was just. That's how it was. I didn't know it was ever a pocket watch. I didn't know that South Bend didn't even make wrist watches. They only made pocket watches.

Okay.

Yeah.

They were made for the railroad. Railroad industry, right.

Totally for the railroad industry. That's how they, you know, completely. American watches were everything. They were the best in the world. Everything in Switzerland was Swiss fakes, you know, and now that's completely flip flopped. But it was really. It was really interesting from that standpoint of, like, learning about how the watches worked. And then I found it, and I was like, hey, Steve, check this out. And he was like, if you don't buy that, I am. So I bought it right away because I was like, I don't want him to get it.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so then he was like, well, I want One. And I was like, okay, okay, I'll try and find one. So then I ended up finding one for him. And I was like, okay, that's, you know, that's cool. And then, yeah, like a few other people were like, whoa, that's a South Bend. Can I get one? And I was like, I don't know. So I just kind of started researching and I learned that like the case is not the important thing. Like the important thing is the movement, the dial, the hands, and the mechanism that actually makes the watch work. And the case would. You would buy at a jeweler, totally separate, and they would just slap them together in like five minutes. And then you'd walk out, and then you'd walk out. And then they were warrantied for 15 to 25 years. And when they wore through, you'd get a new case. So a lot of the pocket watches don't even have their original cases, you know, like sometimes they do and they'll have, you know, four so and so 1914.

Right, right, right, right.

Ed on.

Great.

So, you know, it's the original case, but most of the time you have no clue if it is or not. And so then I found, managed to find someone ebay that had the same case as some of the other ones I was finding. And so I was like. So I started buying those and then finally this ebay guy just called me and he was like, why are you buying all my cases? And so I told him and he's like older. He's like in his mid-60s, you know, kind of almost done. Yeah, and not, not with life, but with this. And I was, he, I was like, I told him South Bend and all this kind of stuff. And he was like, I love it, you young kids, you know, And I'm like, I'm not young. And he's like, no, you're young compared to me.

You know, younger than him.

Exactly. Yeah. And so that's where it came from. It was just like, this is really cool. Like you can take this 100 year old watch and you can put it on your wrist and wind it up and it'll keep time. You know, within some of them are like within 10 seconds a day. Some are within two minutes, you know, some are five minutes. It just depends on, on the level of when they've been serviced and stuff like that. It's just really cool because it's South Bend.

Yep.

It's old, it's physical, it's lasting. Like, I can give these to my kids someday. I can't give any of My software to my kids. Like, like, I mean, maybe I can give the business, but like, you know, that stuff is all going to go away. It's going to rot. The, and the, the quality and the lasting nature of these is just like. You get kind of. I got kind of. I don't know, but I got kind of obsessed with that.

No, it is. They're fascinating. They're. They're beautiful. Right. And. And just, Just intricate and. Yeah. No. No battery, no solar power. They just.

It's all mechanical and 120 years ago.

Yep. The.

Just to do the machining that they did is just wild.

What magazines do you get?

Oh, now, well, there's a. There's some watch ones now. I don't get very many anymore. I feel like I went through a phase and then once I got into watches, I kind of stopped.

But the reason I ask is I. I've been getting the New Yorker for, oh, like decades now. And one of my favorite New Yorker covers is a robot sitting in some kind of like post apocalyptic future reading a book.

Yeah.

Right. This physical book that. That it has found and is picking up and flipping through. Yeah.

And it's like, how cool is this?

Yeah. And you know, getting books don't last forever either, but. Yeah. You know, you can pass a book down to a child or somebody in the future in a way that's probably a little different than you can pass a website down or a piece of code down.

Exactly. I mean, I have screenshots, but I'm like, will my device with those screenshots even exist? Can someone read it in the future? Like there's all these other things that you're not sure of, you know, but. Like a brick building in South Bend.

Yeah.

Or a watch from the 1920s. Or the 19. I mean, I have one that's 1903. And it's like. Well, yeah, it might be the oldest South Bend that exists. I've never found one.

Okay.

You know, and I'm like, that's cool. Like, that's. It's just really neat.

It's cool.

It doesn't really run because it. It's one of the first ones and they had a lot of quality issues then. But it's just, it's just neat. The craftsmanship of like.

Yeah.

It was made before people flew.

Right.

Like the Wright brothers. End of 1903.

Cars were barely a thing. Yeah.

I mean, the superiors were making wagons at this point, you know, like they weren't making cars.

Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah. It's kind of Wild.

Yeah. So you could have gone anywhere, you know, you could have. You could have gone to San Francisco and you could be some big hotshot at Microsoft at this point. You're here, you're in South Bend, Elkhart, I think you said you live in Granger now. But, like, why?

I just, I like it here. I grew up in a much, you know, smaller town, so a couple hundred people and, you know, to like, come here, like, we would go to like Kalamazoo or Battle Creek for like the big towns, you know.

Okay, you grew up in Michigan?

Yeah, in Michigan. Yep. And then like, we didn't really come down here a lot, but some. And then I went to school here and I was just like, it has everything. What else could I want? You know, like. Like again, maybe you don't have three rose lilies or like eight Cascades or whatever. Sure of restaurant wise, you know, but you have like one of them and you have, you know, like, you know, minor league baseball team. You have like all the things that are in a big city you have here, but you also get rid of a lot of the annoyances, like the skyrocketing of like paying for goods and rent and all those things. And the traffic.

Traffic, yeah.

All the stuff that you wouldn't like. And so for me, it's like South Bend is just enough of everything. And so I. I love it for that reason. The only thing that I felt like was missing was like this big community. And so that's, you know, like momentum and stuff like that. That's what I'm really excited about, building that out.

Yeah, there was. That guy, did a documentary Zach Shrank a few years ago called Big enough, Small Enough, Looking at Nice. And it was that kind of.

I didn't see that.

That kind of. Yeah, it was maybe it was back when Pete was running for president or gearing up to run for president. President. So it's like just that idea, though. It's big enough and small enough at the same time.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's a great way to. That's. That's a much better way than I to put it. Yeah. Because for me, again, it was just like it had a mall, it had like.

Sure.

An Apple store. It's got like all the general things, you know, Like, I definitely would like a few more watch stores. But, you know, other than that, it's got. And it's got Notre Dame, you know.

So you get like Notre Dame, great athletics.

There's a lot of schools. Like, it's just. Yeah. I've just Become a huge fan. Like, I, we have no intentions to ever leave.

We're, we're, we're here for good, obviously. We love hearing that since, you know, part of what we're trying to do with this podcast is sell the region and also sell the idea that you can be a fantastic entrepreneur and live here. And you're literally a living, breathing example of how that can happen.

Thanks.

Speaking of that advice for other entrepreneurs, I mean, you've been on quite the entrepreneurial journey and it seems like it's baked into who you are to a certain degree. Like, you don't like the corporate environment. You want to be your own boss, which is something that drives a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they're a car mechanic or a coder. What do you think you've learned on your journey that would be helpful for any other entrepreneur who's just thinking, you know what, I don't want to work at a company. I want to be my own boss.

Yeah. I thought about this a lot, even just from looking at some questions beforehand. And I was like, the thing that I feel like worked the best for me, I don't know if it'll work for other people, but I was like, I always went for flexibility. I didn't go for making the most money or like the most, you know, any of that kind of stuff or like, biggest name or any of that. Like, all like, what I wanted is I wanted to be able to have like, you know, like my dad worked on the farm. He worked 90 hours. I mean, you know, he. Now he's, he's semi retired and works 40 hours, you know, like, so it's like, so like I, I saw that and I'm like, that's a lot, you know, So I was like, I, I want to not. How can I find that fulcrum point of like, you know, doing well enough.

Yeah.

But having the flexibility to take a seven week camping trip in the summer or things like that, you know, so that was always my thing. So I worked my tail off in my 20s.

Yeah.

And then in my 30s, it like the luck, some of the luck kind of caught up. It's like, that's, that's my thing. I think that I've told like my nephew and people that are, are younger that I talk to is like, work your tail off. Do a lot of stuff. Work for big companies, small companies in your 20s. See how the world works and then figure out what you like, you know, do you like the big company? Do you like the little company? Do you want to have Your own. Yeah, figure that out. And then from there, you know, like, go do that in your, in your 30s or whatever. And then just don't be focused on the money. Because if you focus on the money, like, that's not, I feel like if you do things right, eventually in the end it comes back and you'll wind up with that. Yeah, but focus on, you know, the, the flexibility and doing what you love and things like that.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good advice. That's really good advice. I mean, the flexibility is interesting because, you know, I do think people want to be their own bosses. And one of the driving motivations is I don't want to have to listen to someone else. I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it. If I want to work on a Saturday, that's fine. If I want to take a Wednesday off, I want the flexibility to do that. Yep. Match with hard work.

So, yeah, I think that's probably the key, is you do. If you don't have work ethic, then it can be hard. But yeah, if you do, then I think it's hard.

It is. Like the old saying is like, about luck, right? Yeah. Like now I can't remember the exact words around it, but, you know, basically you make your own luck by, by working really hard and then just, you put yourself in a position where luck could come your way.

Increase your luck surface. That's the thing I've been hearing.

Okay.

Yeah, put yourself in positions where you increase your luck surface. Like, there's just a bigger surface area where lucky things can happen. So that was the conferences, all that stuff. For me, it just, it worked out. I don't know if it would work out now for somebody else, but, like, find more ways, take more meetings, talk to more people.

It's probably still, even with AI, it's still generally accurate. I think getting yourself out there, you know, making those connections, sharing. I, I. What I also love about your entrepreneurial story is that there's a lot of sharing that made it possible, actually. You didn't hold anything as super precious and you kind of put it out there and that led to good things and that led to opportunities.

Yeah, I totally believe that. I think a lot of people get real precious about certain things and algorithms and all this kind of stuff, and I'm just like, I don't know, I just, Again, maybe it's just the period of life where I went through the open source community and stuff, but I'm like, I just Always think more. If you put stuff out there, more stuff comes back. It always does, you know, not immediate. It's a long term thing, and that's hard, but.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep. I was at Global Entrepreneurship Congress down in Indianapolis a few months ago, and Brad Feld, who's a big promoter of entrepreneurial ecosystems, I want to even say he has a new book out, but basically that's what. That's what he said.

You just, oh, cool.

Put it out into the world and it will eventually come back to you. Maybe not on the timeline you want it to or that you hope for, but it will. What you put out will come back. And you just have to trust in that as something that's going to happen to you.

Yeah.

Yep.

And there'll be times where it won't feel like that, you know, like. But a lot of times I feel like it does. You know, it's even just little things. Like I have half court basketball in my house and like all the pen kids use it to play. You know, not pen general, but like the basketball team. They hoop, they practice in the summer and stuff. And I'm like, sometimes it's annoying. There's eight cars out there and I'd like to go out and shoot, but I can't. And I'm like, but that's okay. Like, you know, three or four kids have went and played, you know, college. D one other stuff.

Right, right, right.

They. I gotta say, they played in my gym.

And that's.

That's kind of neat.

Right. And that was probably something they needed.

Yeah, exactly. It was extra practice and extra, you know, work and putting in the effort.

So. Yeah. So before we go real quick, a visitor to South Bend, Granger, Elkhart, Mishawaka, which we not miss.

So I'm a foodie, so I absolutely love Rose, Lily and Cascade. They're both great. There's, you know, we. We're on the north side, north, northeast, so we hit up Rocky River a decent number of times. So those are some of my favorite things. A Notre Dame football game or notan basketball game, men's or women's. Those are phenomenal. It's hard to talk. You know, I've been to, I don't know, 20, 30 football games, maybe more in my life. And they're just. Everyone is special in a different way.

Y.

So those are my favorite things probably. You know, the food and the sports and stuff like that. At least for right now. But yeah, I. I have to think more. I'm curious now. What are some things that I didn't think of live, you know, but. Well.

Right. There's a lot of great stuff. Yeah. No, there is a lot of great stuff. And. Yeah. You can go home and be like, oh, I should have said this.

I should have said this.

Oh, there's this one little hidden gem that. Yeah.

We'll come back and rerecord it.

Yeah. Well, listen, John, thank you for joining us today. This has been great to hear your story. Really, really great. You've. You've had a fascinating life and many more years ahead of you to do more fascinating things, I suspect. So glad you were able to join us.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

D.