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You are listening to the You Are Techie podcast,

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episode number 166.

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Welcome to the You Are Techie

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podcast, where it's all about

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growing in your touchiness so you can find

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the tech job of your dreams. And

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now your host technology

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learning coach Ellen Tomi

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.

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Hey moms, are you trying to break

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into tech? Are you wondering what skills

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you really need to get hired and

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how those skills can be worth $45

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an hour instead of the $25 an

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hour you thought when you first started thinking

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about going back to work? If

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so, then the Your Techie membership is for

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you. Our combination of courses,

0:48

coaching and community come with the mentor support

0:50

you need to keep moving forward in

0:52

your tech career. It's like no other

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membership program available. We have the exact

0:57

skills employers are looking for you

0:59

learn how to maximize your income with portfolio

1:01

ready skills that hiring managers are seeking.

1:04

Not to mention the steps you can skip

1:06

so you don't find yourself down that endless

1:08

tech learning rabbit hole. Join me as

1:11

I walk you step by step through the getting hired process

1:13

and tech sign up@uurteche.com.

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That's Y O U A R

1:18

E T E C H y.com.

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I can't wait to see you in our membership.

1:24

Welcome to the show. We are talking

1:26

about how to found a

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tech company and this

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is a special episode because I'm actually letting

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you in on a speech that I gave to

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the Women in tech group out

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of the Atlanta Tech Village And the speech

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is called Your Techie, how to

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Found a Tech Company When You're a Non-Technical

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Founder. And the idea was given

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to me, I mean obviously comes out of

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your Dicky , but also Catherine O'Day

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of Atlanta Venture Partners had

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the idea that more women need

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to hear this message. And so a

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big thanks to Hilton Thompson who runs

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the Women in Tech program at ATV for inviting

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me to speak in March in Women's

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History Month . So I felt very honored to do that and

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it was on March 8th, international Women's

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History Day. So that was super fun. And my

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girls were there. It was very cool. My older two

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, not Gwenny cuz you know, she'd just come running up. But

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I really just had a blast

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talking about one of my favorite topics.

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And I just want you to note how many similarities

2:21

the getting hired process and

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the founding a tech company when you're

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a non-technical founder, how many similarities

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there are to the mindset, to

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the stages and the phases. It's

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just very aligned and we

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see a lot of the same challenges. And so

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I thought this letting you in on this speech would

2:39

be really helpful and

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em empowering to you and to

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my students who are so excited to

2:46

start their own ventures. I hope this gives you

2:48

that push that you need and the

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next steps forward. Enjoy

2:53

<laugh> . Uh , it's nice to meet you guys. My name is Hilton

2:55

Thompson. I am head of events at a startup called Xenia

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, but I've formally Penn events here at Atlanta

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Tech Village. When I left this role , I

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said I'm keeping women tech. I can't

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let her go. So I am , um,

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just holding on to you guys forever

3:09

. Um,

3:11

we're so glad y'all are here. Raise your hand if you've been to

3:13

a Women in Tech meetup before. Yay.

3:16

Welcome back. How

3:18

many of y'all is this new? Yay.

3:21

So many new faces too . I love it. Welcome

3:23

Ron . Applause for getting out of the house. That's kind

3:26

of hard .

3:26

Woo .

3:28

Okay . I know it's hard for me. I'm like, do I have to

3:30

line up my hair washing schedule with an

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event? So obviously I did not today.

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Um , but I'm so glad y'all are here. We

3:37

started this thing in 2017 as

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a way for women to just come together if we

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can't do any better if we're doing it on our own.

3:45

So it's better when you have people

3:47

behind you. So get to know the people at your table. Connect

3:49

intentionally. See how they need support.

3:51

That's my favorite thing to ask. How can I support

3:54

you at the end of these things so we can walk

3:56

away on each other's teams, but

3:58

y'all don't wanna listen to me talk . That's not why you're

4:00

here. Y'all here to listen to Ellen. Ellen

4:03

is so fun. Katherine oday , who's

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sitting back there introduced us and I'm like, your

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energy is my new favorite thing. So y'all

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are in for a treat . She brought trampoline.

4:12

So the energy, might you notice the

4:15

room ? I have no idea what that means

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and I shouldn't afford a dress if I knew that was <laugh>

4:20

. Um , but y'all have a ton of fun

4:22

and I'm gonna bring up Ellen.

4:26

All right . Um, first I just really wanna thank Hilton

4:28

, um, for number

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one inviting me but also just for

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bringing women together on a regular basis

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to talk about tech. Can we get a

4:38

quick round of applause for Hilton Thompson ? And

4:43

then quick shout out to Catherine. She did

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not just introduce us. She actually

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had the idea for this talk. And

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um, I wanna say it's unique, but actually

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other people have also approached me about this concept.

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So I know we need it. I

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know I hear this all the time. We

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are gonna talk about why you are techie

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and why you are the perfect person to

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start a tech company even

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if you don't feel that techie. And

5:11

so I'm gonna walk you through that. We're

5:16

also gonna talk about why believing you

5:18

are techie will help you be a successful founder

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regardless of the industry that

5:23

you're in. So what I mean by that

5:25

is what you don't wanna do is walk

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into your tech company and say, okay, I

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am the expert in this field and I'm

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gonna find someone who knows about tech and

5:34

they're gonna do the tech stuff and I'm not

5:37

techy. And so that

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doesn't mean that you have to write all

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the code. There is a

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wide range between understanding

5:47

and believing that you are techie and

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executing on all the code. There's a whole

5:51

wide gamut and I'm gonna help

5:54

you understand not

5:56

just why you are techy and

5:58

why you're the perfect person to start a tech company, but

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I'm gonna arm you with the information that you

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need so that you can make the

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smart techy decisions

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as you move , move forward growing your tech

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company. Now I understand that

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not all of you are planning

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or have started a tech company today

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yet. But the

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thing is that it really is important for you to

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believe and understand that your expertise

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is something that can be made

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into a tech company, can be a revenue

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stream for your business, can be

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um, if you're in technology that you

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encourage other women to be

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in , um, to start a company or

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to add, add a side hustle. And

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so by believing and understanding these concepts,

6:44

you're gonna be armed with the information that you need

6:46

instead of some of these , um,

6:48

mental hurdles that are, are not

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actually true or not actually impactful

6:54

in your career. So

6:56

what I'm gonna do is show you how to make the ultimate

6:58

shift from struggling to believe

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you're capable of being an expert in technology

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to streamline your decision process so

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you can launch the tech product of your

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dreams. That's what we're gonna talk about. So

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, um, I'm Ellen Toey and I don't know

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why people think my personal life is really interesting. So

7:14

I am a mother of five. We jumped

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on trampolines at home. A couple of my daughters

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are here with me today, <laugh>,

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so they can tell you. Yeah, they're literally are five.

7:25

So the four of them , um, are

7:27

up there. This is Reagan's number one

7:30

and mjs number three, but I try not to number them

7:32

two boys. And then we

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strategically plan an eight year gap , um,

7:37

before we had Gwen, which I'm sure makes

7:39

a lot of sense. So, and she's a little older there,

7:41

so , um, oh , I

7:44

did the whole thing with the mic. People will

7:46

say , um, you know, who will go on

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this journey with you? So that's a picture of my husband Kevin.

7:50

Yeah, he's still standing and we're both,

7:52

we're both founders. We've

7:54

been married , um, 21 years. I had to

7:56

think for a minute. We've been together 25. We

7:59

both grew up in Detroit, Michigan, but

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most recently we lived in North Carolina and

8:04

we only moved to Atlanta about nine months

8:06

ago. And I can tell you that

8:08

we are finding Atlanta to be a fantastic

8:10

home for us. Little

8:13

bit about my professional life

8:15

because this will help you understand

8:18

why I'm a person who can give

8:20

you the information that you need.

8:23

Um, cuz there are a lot of voices out there. There

8:25

, there's a lot of , um,

8:28

information to parse through in technology. And

8:31

so my undergrad is actually in computer

8:33

science. So I started my career as a developer at Accenture

8:36

and then I worked as a teacher , um,

8:38

at the high school level as um,

8:41

a teacher in technology and engineering.

8:43

So ap, computer science, things like that. And

8:46

later , uh, I'm kind of skipping

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ahead through some things, but later I also worked

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as a designer and then I have a community

8:53

and a podcast with the same name. You

8:56

are techie. So I've been talking about this concept for

8:58

a while that helps moms and women gain the

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skills and confidence to get hired in tech. So

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I really like to promote , um, all

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the learning that's involved in technology and

9:07

we'll talk a little bit about the techie mindset next, but

9:10

it is very pervasive in

9:12

women to think that there's

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something tech is just not really for

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us. And I wanna be so

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bold as to say that's actually not an option

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anymore. Any career that you have,

9:23

any company that you start, you are going

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to need a certain amount of te knowledge. And

9:28

so I don't really care if you majored in

9:30

math or science , it's not really important. Understanding

9:34

the technology integration in

9:36

your life is gonna really empower you and

9:38

be , um, important. So , um,

9:41

I am now the managing director of Fugitive

9:43

Lab . So we focus on shipping

9:46

and launching products and I'm

9:48

gonna talk a lot about that today because

9:50

when you wanna start a tech company, one

9:53

of the most important things is to actually get

9:55

your product out into the world. And I

9:57

can tell you as you're talking to a

9:59

lot of founders and potential founders,

10:02

that is no easy

10:04

task, okay? Wanting

10:06

to have something out into the world thinking

10:08

that you can put something out into the world. These

10:10

are great starting points, but actually putting

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it out into the world, shipping and launching

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takes a very specific

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focus and it

10:20

takes a lot of touchiness. So let's talk about

10:22

that, the techy mindset, okay? I

10:24

am more than aware that

10:27

the interwebs are a

10:29

flutter with lots of mindset talk. Okay? I

10:31

know, I know all about if you just have the

10:34

right mindset, right? Well, what

10:36

I'm gonna talk to you about today is much

10:38

more than the mindset, but this is permission

10:40

to play. So if you come into

10:43

starting a tech company thinking, just

10:45

like I was talking about before, and you think,

10:47

okay, I'm the expert in , um,

10:50

health, I'm the expert in finance,

10:52

I'm the expert in , um,

10:54

whatever name , name your industry,

10:57

and then I just need a technical co-founder,

10:59

or I need that someone to do that tech

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thing for me. That's the

11:04

place where you get into trouble. It's not

11:06

that you won't need help as a founder, you will

11:08

need help, but you are

11:10

w going to want to associate

11:13

yourself as being techy even

11:17

if you are the non-technical co-founder.

11:20

And so the techie mindset is

11:23

really about three things. And

11:26

I've kind of seen a lot of this in

11:28

and out and I can tell you this is my definition

11:30

from my own experience, but I can tell you it's

11:32

pretty consistent throughout. So

11:35

if you, you need to first

11:37

believe that you are techie. And that's really

11:40

tricky because you might be

11:42

thinking, I don't have a lot of evidence to show that. So

11:44

then the second thing you need to do is

11:46

to take action around that

11:48

touchiness and that's the next thing that I'm gonna talk

11:50

about. So you say, well how do I take action around that? I write

11:52

a line, line of code. No, that's not necessarily

11:55

true. Okay, I'm gonna go into Figma

11:57

and start doing my designs. Maybe,

11:59

maybe that's one thing you need to do, but there

12:01

are lots of ways you can do it, but you

12:03

need to take action on that belief

12:05

that now we're moving along , uh,

12:08

along the techie mindset line here.

12:11

The third thing you need to do, and

12:13

this is obviously the hardest part,

12:15

is that you need to, you're

12:18

going to come up against what we call in tech roadblocks,

12:20

okay? On the agile, on the and

12:22

agile , um, software development,

12:24

we call them roadblocks, challenges, hurdles, whatever.

12:27

As you come up against those roadblocks, you

12:30

need to go revert

12:32

back to I am techie.

12:35

So your brain might be tempted

12:37

to say things like, I don't know how

12:39

to do this, so I'm stuck. There's nowhere , there's

12:41

someone else has to know the answer. But

12:43

in fact, overcoming that

12:46

hurdle through your own learning

12:48

is the key. And essentially

12:52

you might come up against the same hurdle

12:54

again and again, but

12:57

if you learn what

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you did right and what you did wrong, that's

13:03

what's going to be foundational in

13:05

getting you over that roadblock. So we'll talk a little bit

13:07

more about that. But the techie mindset is,

13:10

I just wanna say one more time, it is

13:12

possible for all of you, even

13:15

if you were an English major, that's okay

13:17

. You still get to be techy. I say so

13:19

and no one can tell me that you are . So it's

13:21

important to really believe that

13:24

and move through with action on

13:26

that. All right ? So just

13:28

take a minute, even if you're not

13:30

starting a company yet, just take a

13:32

minute, maybe even close your eyes. Can

13:35

you imagine what it would be like for

13:37

you to contribute meaningfully, maybe

13:39

even powerfully to your family's

13:42

bank account by breathing life into

13:44

your product vision? Just

13:47

take a minute that

13:49

is possible for all of you here

13:51

today. And I want you to think

13:54

about what that would mean

13:56

for you, for the world, for

13:59

your family. It's really

14:01

important for you to think that you are someone

14:03

who can bring a product into

14:05

the world. So

14:09

how can I be a non-technical

14:11

founder without apologizing? And I find

14:14

this slide really funny because I just told you, you

14:16

are techy, so you're not allowed to say you're non-technical.

14:19

And it's very hard to live my life

14:21

around a lot of women. I mean, when I'm

14:23

here it's great, but all the time people are like,

14:26

I'm not really that techy. Ooh . I'm

14:28

like, I think you said it in front of the wrong person.

14:30

So now I gotta give you a lecture while you are

14:32

techy. But the non-technical

14:34

co-founder doesn't mean you're not techy, it just means

14:37

that you're bringing an expertise outside of the

14:39

technology , um, platform, right? And technology

14:41

is solving a lot of problems in the world. So

14:44

the first thing I wanna tell you is that in

14:47

your own career, in your

14:49

own , um, professional

14:52

or personal life, there

14:54

is a problem that you have

14:56

encountered. I can, I can bet on that

14:59

there's something that bugs

15:01

you, that comes back to you that

15:03

you think, you know what? I

15:05

really don't like the way this is done in the world. I

15:07

really think that I have a unique take on

15:09

it. And so to be clear, most

15:13

software has already been built, most

15:16

software has already been built. You're not gonna come up with a

15:18

completely different idea. That's not really

15:20

the point. The point is that you have a

15:22

unique perspective on that idea that

15:25

it's going to touch people's eyes and be maybe

15:28

more , um, maybe

15:30

it'll feel more comfortable to them . Maybe

15:32

it'll feel more like the way they view the world.

15:35

So it's really about the unique perspective

15:37

that you have. So when you

15:39

come into that, and again, without apologizing,

15:42

you are going to want to have a,

15:46

a certain amount of technical

15:48

knowledge around it. Now

15:51

, um, I'm gonna talk later about

15:53

some very specific technical things,

15:56

but the reality is that the specific

15:58

problem that you're solving is

16:01

going to be, you are going to be

16:03

the expert of that. And the reason is

16:05

not because no one's ever thought of it before, but

16:08

because no one's ever thought of it the way that you have.

16:11

And as you start a company,

16:13

you're gonna be fixating on how

16:15

to solve that problem in a way that really no

16:18

one else is thinking about it. And so

16:20

you become the expert in

16:22

the approach that you have.

16:25

And that approach is going to become what

16:27

we call product vision. So

16:29

that's why I say that I'm very confident

16:32

that you are techie and that you can

16:34

be a non-technical co-founder without

16:36

apology because you're going to know

16:39

the answer to your own

16:41

problem. And make no mistake,

16:43

tech is about getting specific.

16:46

Okay? The other way that you

16:48

are going to be a non-technical co-founder without apologizing

16:52

is I just wanna give you a few examples

16:54

because I love tech. I

16:56

have a lot of energy around it. I think it is super

16:58

fun and interesting, but no one ever

17:00

said it was easy, okay? No one ever said, Hey,

17:03

if you really want an easy life, go start

17:05

a tech company. I know you're gonna love it. No,

17:08

but you are going to make an impact

17:10

and you are going to um

17:12

, make I think 1 billion, right?

17:14

Catherine it's 1 billion. So, or

17:16

more than a billion or more multi-billion

17:19

dollar could be a multi-billion dollar, like

17:21

three or four or 10, 10 billion. So

17:24

this is important, and I know that sounds crazy,

17:26

but let's face it. I mean one of

17:28

the reasons that we start a tech company

17:30

is to have an impact on the world, but it's also to impact

17:33

a lot of people. And so when you have a

17:35

multi-billion dollar company, you

17:37

are impacting a lot of people. And I think that

17:39

this is one of the things that we don't talk enough

17:42

about is that you are , um,

17:44

when you have a technology in the world, the

17:47

scalability is infinite,

17:50

I guess. I don't know. We'll see if we can find

17:52

the end of the internet. But the the

17:54

whole point is that you're going

17:56

to have a large impact and you're going to make be making a

17:58

lot of money, but you are going to work for that and

18:01

it's going to be tricky. And so one of the problems

18:03

that I see happen and oftentimes with

18:05

women is that they don't know the

18:07

answer. They're not exactly sure what

18:10

that's gonna look like. And I can tell you from starting

18:13

more tech projects than I can count,

18:15

you don't know what it looks like at the beginning

18:18

ever. You don't ever know. You don't know what the

18:20

path is gonna look like. So I just wanna tell you a few founder

18:22

horror stories just to kind of make

18:24

you feel better, <laugh>. And so here are

18:27

a couple of founder horror stories, but they're

18:29

not horror stories. They're actually beautiful stories that

18:32

help you to understand that, that

18:34

this is just the way that it is . I've

18:36

known founders who have hired six different tech teams

18:38

before they actually launched their product into

18:40

the world. I've known founders

18:42

who have um, spent four

18:45

years and $400,000

18:47

on a product that doesn't work. And

18:49

you might say ouch. Well that one didn't

18:51

focus very much on learning, okay ? You have to

18:53

learn from your mistakes. I've known founders

18:55

who have paid co-founders to

18:58

go away because they needed to

19:00

start from scratch and to really build something

19:02

even <laugh> better . We got

19:04

, we got some smiles in the audience, okay

19:07

? So if you think

19:09

that you're gonna get it right the first time,

19:11

I hope that you do. But

19:14

if you do not, that is not a

19:16

reason to stop. Okay?

19:18

So I talked a little bit about

19:21

this, but essentially you are the

19:23

expert in the problem that

19:25

you are solving. And even today,

19:28

if you're, if it's just like a

19:30

little baby seed, that's okay. That

19:33

problem, you are going to be

19:35

fixating that in a way that no

19:37

one else is. And so that

19:40

is a very powerful

19:42

thing. I just wanna pause for a minute cuz I took out a

19:44

slide that I still kind of like, but I really wanted to keep it shorter. <laugh>

19:47

. And essentially you're going

19:49

to get a lot of advice, gonna be a

19:51

lot of people out there telling you why

19:53

you're wrong and why you just

19:56

don't quite get it or you're not thinking about it the

19:58

right way or mm , that's cute,

20:00

okay? Or you're adorable. I don't

20:02

know . I get that one. I don't agree, but you know, anyway,

20:04

so the point is that you believing

20:08

that you are the expert and then spending time

20:10

on that and then overcoming hurdles that you didn't

20:12

think you could overcome help you

20:15

to be a better technical,

20:18

even if a non-technical, a better tech

20:20

founder. And the reason is

20:22

because tech is about being specific. That's

20:25

why it's so hard because there's so much out

20:28

there and it's so general and there's so many right answers,

20:30

but you have to know the right answer for

20:32

your own product. And

20:37

in case anyone hasn't

20:39

told you this, I'm here

20:41

to tell you that your product

20:44

needs to be out in the

20:46

world. You deserve

20:48

to put your product out in the world. You don't need

20:50

anyone else's permission. It

20:52

is absolutely possible for

20:55

you to put that out into the world regardless

20:57

of your education, where you come

20:59

from, how much money you

21:01

have, how much money you were raised with, none

21:04

of those are factors. It

21:07

is important. And

21:09

I actually beg you to put more

21:12

products out into the world. I

21:14

don't think it's quite possible to explain

21:16

the impact that you can have when you design

21:18

something from your perspective.

21:21

But I can tell you that it's gonna impact our children,

21:23

especially our girls. So

21:26

let's get techie, okay, who

21:30

are your customers? If you didn't think that was

21:32

gonna be the next slide after, let's get techie, don't

21:34

worry about it. I'm gonna explain exactly what

21:37

I mean by that. So I talked

21:39

about how tech is being specific. You

21:41

need to know who your customers are to start, I

21:44

don't know why I always use Facebook. I hate

21:46

Facebook, but I have a lot of Facebook stories. So Facebook,

21:48

okay, he started with um,

21:51

college students, that is who his

21:54

customers were. That is not who his customers are

21:56

today, I would say his customers now are like

21:58

our moms, our aunts, right? And they share the pictures

22:00

of it , right? That's exactly. So, but

22:02

who are your customers to start with?

22:05

Your customers down the future? That's

22:07

everybody in the whole wide world. That's how we get to

22:09

billions of dollars. But when you start,

22:11

who are your customers? What

22:13

is their pain? Okay, this one I

22:16

spend way more time <laugh> on what is their pain

22:18

than you , uh, than you would like to know. Okay?

22:20

But anyway, so who are this way I do this. Who

22:22

are your customers and what is their pain? And what is the

22:24

intersection of that? And then remembering

22:26

that what is their pain in terms

22:29

of the problem that you're solving? Which

22:31

might sound obvious, but it's not because

22:33

the pain can be adjacent

22:36

or get bigger very, very

22:38

quickly. And so you need to have this narrow

22:40

focus. Why Ellen? Why do I have to have

22:42

this narrow focus? I'm gonna run a billion dollar company. Going

22:45

back to what I said before, because you actually

22:48

have to ship and launch a product

22:50

in order. This is kind of a cyclical

22:52

thing. You gotta launch the product in order to

22:55

scale. And so making sure

22:57

that you actually launch means you have

22:59

to know who a subset of your customers are, what

23:01

their pain is, and then the

23:04

solution that you are going to solve, the

23:06

unique perspective that you are going to solve

23:08

that pain with. So you

23:11

want a brief description of this, but

23:14

you want it to be descriptive, okay?

23:17

And so when you have your solution,

23:21

what you're really doing is creating

23:23

your product vision. So

23:26

this is where you can be as

23:28

involved in the technology development. Let's

23:31

see , this is super involved or you can be high

23:33

level , but your product vision

23:35

is still there because

23:37

you are describing the unique way

23:40

that you approach this problem. And

23:44

then you're also gonna wanna know how you make

23:46

money. Yes, money

23:48

is fun and great and I hope, I

23:50

really believe all of you should be very, very

23:52

wealthy. Um, and that's

23:54

fantastic. But knowing how you

23:57

will make money is also

23:59

part of your product vision. That's

24:01

also how you're going to know the

24:04

right specifics, the

24:07

hypothetical right specifics that you're going to

24:09

launch with and then learn from and then iterate on. So

24:12

unless you are growing an engagement platform

24:14

where you just want as many users as possible and

24:16

then you're gonna run ads to them in

24:18

order for you to keep going as a founder, and

24:21

in order for Catherine to give you a lot of money, which

24:23

I know she wants to give to all of you, you're

24:25

going to have to earn revenue from

24:27

the people that your customers

24:30

that you're serving. And how are you going to earn that

24:32

revenue by giving them something of

24:34

value that they wanna pay you for. But

24:36

I wanna say this again, I'm not talking

24:39

about marketing here. I'm

24:41

talking about product vision and

24:43

understanding what components

24:45

and features of your product people

24:48

are most willing to pay for. And

24:50

my friends, I'm here to tell you, you're

24:52

probably gonna be wrong the first time you do

24:54

this. It's really hard to get it right,

24:57

but you know how you get it right? You

25:00

launch, you see what they like, and

25:02

then you get information and then you iterate on that.

25:05

So that's an important component, but

25:07

you're going to wanna know how you

25:09

think, how you think

25:11

you're going to make money, what your customers are

25:13

going to actually pay you for, because

25:16

that's what you're gonna wanna have in your mvp

25:18

, your minimum viable product, the thing that

25:20

you actually ship and launch. You

25:22

wanna know what key components you're

25:24

gonna be paid for. Okay? So this

25:28

is, this is one of my, this is my feature signature.

25:30

I might have to like trademark this or something.

25:33

I don't want you to go down the tech building

25:35

rabbit hole, that's what this is. Stay

25:38

out of the tech building rabbit hole. How do

25:40

you do that? Let me remind

25:42

you, you know who your customers are, you know what

25:44

their pain is, you know what the problem you're trying to solve and

25:47

you know how you're trying to make money ish.

25:49

And then you ship and launch and then you learn.

25:52

And so the tech building rabbit holes when

25:54

someone's like, Hey, how about if you build it like

25:56

this? I think you should build it like that. I just

25:58

wanna add one more feature that is what is

26:00

going to prevent you from being the successful founder that

26:03

you can be. Now that

26:05

is all tech. I understand

26:08

it maybe doesn't feel like tech except

26:11

for the little ones and zeros around the rabbit, but

26:13

it is because before

26:16

you talk about that stuff, the

26:19

other questions don't really matter. You

26:22

can't just say what's the best way

26:24

to build a tech company? Guess what? Lots of right answers.

26:27

There are lots of right answers

26:29

in that. Okay? I can say I like

26:31

it my way and and you can say you like

26:33

it your way and we can both be right? So

26:36

if you say to me, what technology do I use to

26:39

build my SaaS company, I am going

26:41

to address that even though

26:43

there are lots of great answers, and

26:46

I don't know if this has occurred to anybody, I

26:48

mean just maybe, but <laugh>

26:50

, I get this one every other day. How

26:53

much is this gonna cost me? How

26:55

much is it gonna cost me? It's not free ladies,

26:57

it's not free. I know, but the

27:00

factors, so here's

27:02

the answer. Depends, you're welcome very much, right? But

27:05

I'm gonna walk you through what it depends on

27:08

because a lot, a

27:10

lot of the things that we just talked about are

27:12

going to impact it, but the

27:14

better you define your product, the

27:17

less money you can spend. What,

27:20

how cool is that? So if

27:22

you're like, Ellen, how do

27:24

I actually build the technology?

27:26

What's the best way to do it? Well,

27:29

here are a few different ways that I've seen people do it,

27:31

right? You can do a no code

27:33

solution. I work at a custom development

27:35

shop and I'm here to tell you that's a viable option.

27:38

You can build a no code solution, launch

27:40

into the world's your MVP and

27:43

generate revenue and have your, have your , um,

27:45

you know, your, your product market fit

27:48

identified, and then you

27:50

can build a custom solution. But do understand

27:52

that you will respend

27:54

that money. And I'm not saying that

27:57

that's good or bad. There's,

27:59

there's at a , there's really

28:01

a lot of ways to go about this. And if you

28:03

wanna make sure it's product market, that's great. It's

28:06

still time and energy to

28:08

do a no code solution. And you're

28:10

probably still gonna pay someone to do it. You

28:12

might have a low code solution. You

28:14

might know a college student. My nephew just graduated

28:16

from , um, undergrad. He's,

28:19

he's got a degree in computer engineering.

28:21

It's fantastic. I actually had an impact on him . It's

28:23

so great. If only you're a woman . No, just kidding. But

28:25

anyway, so you might know a friend who's

28:28

learning to code. I mean, I'll

28:30

be honest, that one scares me a little bit. But ma

28:32

I mean they might know, they might, you might have a friend

28:34

who's like, Hey, I'm learning this and you guys wanna go

28:36

through it together. I've heard of, I've

28:39

heard of great stories with that. Okay,

28:41

you might find an offshore team, you

28:44

might have a a tech co-founder, or

28:47

you might have an outsource onshore team. Those

28:49

are just, it's not every single

28:51

option to you. But

28:53

if you're like, where do I even start? It's

28:56

a pretty good list. And remember

28:58

the slide we just talked about? How

29:01

much is it gonna cost me? I think you can

29:04

see this is going

29:06

to vary greatly how much this

29:08

costs you the difference in this. And

29:11

hopefully, hopefully your technical

29:13

co-founder's the most expensive. That's what you want. You

29:16

want your technical co-founder that you give equity to

29:18

be the most expensive option on that. That means you've been really

29:20

successful and you don't really care. But

29:22

it really depends because what you're , what you

29:24

wanna do is, if I haven't mentioned it 12

29:27

times yet, is ship an MVP and

29:29

get information out there. Um,

29:32

so how quickly you

29:34

get it right is important. And

29:37

this also means how few of

29:39

iterations you go through. So

29:41

, um, you can

29:43

say, I wanna be patient and take my time and make all

29:45

the right decisions. But one of the things that

29:47

I think why I'm drawn to tech is

29:50

that , um, it's not surgery. I'm

29:53

not a doctor. If I make a mistake, you're

29:55

not dying. And my husband and I will say that a lot of

29:57

times we have a rough day. It's like, well, you

30:00

know, nobody died. We didn't kill anyone. So

30:02

if you are like in a field where it's

30:05

highly volatile and people can die, if you

30:07

make a mistakes, you make a mistake, you

30:09

need to realize that's not what tech is. Actually

30:11

the biggest problem is not taking action. It's

30:14

actually a very action-oriented thing. And

30:16

you want to , you wanna get it right quickly.

30:19

And, and so the most important

30:22

thing is to make a decision

30:24

and move forward. All right

30:26

? So this is a fun one. Um,

30:28

I wanna share with you that one

30:31

of the biggest reasons I see women

30:33

either not found or

30:35

not scale their tech companies is

30:38

because they failed to do this one thing. And

30:40

I was at lunch last week talking with a friend.

30:42

She's in marketing, it's very easy for us to say,

30:44

right? Um, but the reason is

30:47

they don't invest in themselves or

30:49

their products. And when I say that to

30:51

you, I wanna emphasize

30:54

how painful

30:56

I know this can be. And so let me share a story

30:58

with you. It also has to do with Facebook. Again,

31:00

I don't know why. So when

31:03

I first started running ads for

31:06

my company, I had to , I

31:08

started by spending $10 a day on

31:10

Facebook ads. And that $10, I

31:13

can like, feel it right here in my stomach. Like that was so

31:15

uncomfortable to spend that $10

31:18

a day. It was one of the hardest things I had to do . And

31:21

you might be thinking it's just $10, Ellen

31:23

, but it was really hard because I was just sending it,

31:25

giving it to Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't know what he was gonna do with it,

31:27

right? And what I learned

31:29

is that as

31:32

I went through and I iterated and

31:34

I made my ads better, and then I ran my company

31:37

and I, and I understood my,

31:39

my customers more, and I, I

31:41

got some learning and, and made

31:44

my ads even better. And then

31:46

I felt really good about

31:48

what I was doing and that I was gonna bring the

31:50

right people in. I

31:52

found that spending thousands of dollars was not

31:55

really a problem for me. And

31:57

so what I can tell you is that if it's hard

31:59

for you to invest in yourself or

32:01

in your product, start start

32:03

somewhere and start elevating.

32:05

But I will tell you that

32:08

sometimes trying to save a little bit of money

32:10

is a lot of headache. And it

32:12

might just be worth it to spend

32:15

a little bit more. It's an investment in

32:17

your time, in your time is worth it. I

32:20

tend to see women and if this is not true for you,

32:22

awesome, awesome. But

32:24

most of the women, me included, we

32:27

like to just work harder. We just think that

32:29

working harder, we'll just do

32:31

more. We'll just add more. But

32:33

that actually slows you down. And remember what

32:35

I said, it can feel like a lot of money, but

32:38

the quicker you go go, that's actually

32:40

how you're gonna save money. Okay?

32:42

Well, what if you don't know ? What if you don't know

32:45

what your ads are gonna do? I assure you I

32:47

had no idea if my ads were any good. I

32:49

did not know they weren't. I can tell you no,

32:51

they were not good, but the last ones were good, right? But

32:54

you don't know what to do, right? I I

32:56

, Ellen you say college student or technical

32:58

co-founder, I don't even know if any of these are

33:00

gonna work for me. I understand that. And

33:03

this is where I go back to, we're not, it's not

33:05

surgery, we're not doctors. We need to make a decision.

33:07

You need to make a decision and

33:10

be willing to be wrong. You will probably

33:12

be wrong. And then this

33:14

is the other piece about investing in yourself is

33:16

that you want to

33:19

be willing, you need to be willing to spend

33:21

money to learn. And

33:23

my husband actually gave me a great tip. He's like, but they might buy

33:25

a course because I've been telling him for years that women

33:27

just buy course . They buy another course. So buy another

33:29

course and hey, I bought some courses. There's nothing wrong

33:32

with it. But really you

33:34

should only buy a course if

33:36

you know that it's addressing the

33:39

specific product issue that you have.

33:41

And as soon as you get into

33:43

the weeds, at a certain point, you'll be too

33:45

detailed to do it. And so I want

33:48

you to be willing to learn from

33:50

experience, learn

33:52

from experience, just like I did with my Facebook Edge

33:54

. You have to spend money and learn what

33:57

people pay you for, what they give you money

33:59

for. That's what they care about. All

34:02

right ? And then , um, this

34:04

is so important. Oh my gosh. Learn to ask better

34:06

and better questions. So I'm

34:08

actually gonna help you with that. I'm gonna give you a foundation for

34:11

questions to ask. But, but it's

34:13

just the starting point. Then you're gonna, again,

34:15

with your product, you're gonna learn what

34:17

is a better and better question to ask. Because

34:20

a , but start asking because

34:22

as a beginner, there's nothing you

34:25

need more than iterations.

34:27

You need iterations on what? Everything.

34:30

Customer discovery, building your prototype,

34:32

building your product. You need iterations. And

34:35

when you are not sure what to do, when

34:38

it feels overwhelming or confusing, just

34:41

do the one next right thing. Don't

34:43

worry about the piece of advice from someone. Just

34:46

do the one next right thing

34:48

that is going to move your product closer

34:51

into getting an v MVP out into

34:53

the world. All right , let's

34:55

get specific I would need, I need a quick drink here. So

34:58

when we talk about tech and

35:00

I talk about how you are

35:03

getting really specific and becoming

35:05

an expert on your own product, now

35:08

we need to get specific about the tech. And

35:13

again, knowing that there are a lot of right

35:15

answers, let

35:17

me give you some specific questions

35:19

that you can ask as you go through this

35:22

process. Literally, you

35:24

can ask these questions as

35:26

you're deciding who's gonna build your technology,

35:28

how involved you're going to be. Here's

35:31

a, here's a very technical question. What

35:33

architecture should my product have? And

35:36

again, it's not, not that I, Ellen am here

35:38

to say this is the architecture that

35:40

your product should have, but you should

35:42

talk about that. And you should know and you

35:44

should understand why it's important for your

35:46

product. Even though it might not be as

35:48

helpful for someone else's. Um,

35:51

you should know which hosting service is

35:54

best for your product. A lot

35:56

of them can work. We,

35:58

we view , we use AWS and , and

36:00

, and Google Cloud and, and it's, there

36:03

are a lot of right answers, but

36:05

sometimes the right answer might be okay, my

36:07

tech partner knows this one really well and they know

36:09

how to make it efficient. Okay,

36:12

what does my prototype look like? And who

36:14

is going to design it? So this is an important piece.

36:16

I talked about this earlier. How when

36:18

you know who your customers are and what the pain is and

36:21

your unique perspective for solving it, your

36:23

product vision is in your mvp,

36:26

your product vision is in it, but

36:28

the prototype. So you might wanna design

36:31

your own prototype. Figma is a great tool for that.

36:33

But you might also wanna pay someone if

36:35

you do design your own prototype, I do recommend

36:37

at least getting a little bit of assistance on

36:40

um, UX design or product design. I'm

36:42

a little bit biased here cuz of my background, but it's

36:44

also, it's a little bit helpful to have that. But

36:47

you can design the whole thing. So knowing

36:49

where you wanna fall on that

36:52

spectrum in terms of how it much input you wanna

36:54

give, that's great. But remember that

36:56

your product vision will be in

36:58

that regardless. All right , last

37:02

question on this slide and then I got another one. Do

37:04

I trust my development team? If

37:07

you are feeling like you, whoever

37:09

that is, you may say that's just one person. That's okay.

37:12

If you are feeling like there is a problem, like

37:14

something is just not there, you

37:16

might be tempted to think you're

37:19

not technical, you don't get it,

37:22

there's something wrong. No, it

37:25

needs , it's a trust factor. It's not a

37:27

knowledge factor. Moving

37:29

on to the next question. Do I trust my development

37:31

team? Did you catch that? Not a typo.

37:34

It's the most important thing. And if there's

37:36

a problem as you're building your mvp , I want you

37:38

to think about that and think about why

37:40

you don't trust them . What's going on?

37:42

What other information do you need? And

37:44

it doesn't mean they're lying to you, it just means

37:47

there's gotta be a good fit to

37:49

move you forward. Okay,

37:51

here's a great one. Here's a great one.

37:53

Can my code be easily maintained after I

37:55

built it? So after I build it? So

37:58

you might, someone might say, oh, you

38:00

gotta have elixir. The performance is really fast,

38:02

it's super slick. That's the programming language to

38:04

use. And then you can't find an elixir developer

38:06

for less than $500 an hour. All right ? So

38:09

know who's gonna maintain it down the road, build,

38:11

build for the future. And

38:13

then again, how involved do I wanna be in that process?

38:15

I talked a little bit about that with the prototype, but

38:17

you might wanna learn how to code. I have known

38:20

founders who have learned how

38:22

to code in order to build their technology.

38:24

That's, that's something that boot camps do. They,

38:27

they train that that's a valid option.

38:29

That's a valid option, but it's not the only option.

38:32

Okay, this one I think is really , um,

38:35

helpful. Have I gotten several

38:37

specific quotes on my tech product? Not

38:41

opinions. Not opinions.

38:43

If someone just says, you really should use this,

38:45

no, you really should use that. And they're not willing to

38:47

spend the time to understand your product

38:50

and the way that you're gonna bring it out into the world and

38:52

your unique perspective and to say,

38:54

this is how much, this is how much it's gonna

38:56

cost you. This is the input that we're willing

38:58

to give. If they aren't willing to do that,

39:00

they're just not a voice you should listen to

39:02

because they're just throwing something out there. They

39:05

don't know enough about your product. I'm

39:07

sure they're not ill intended, but it's important

39:09

for you to parse that out. That alone will

39:11

give you so much information and

39:14

really help you with it. So

39:17

I wanna get really specific people are saying

39:19

, you might be thinking, okay, but like what does

39:21

it really look like to build a

39:24

SaaS product? A SaaS technology? So I'm

39:26

gonna give you one example

39:28

and this is what we do at Fugitive for

39:31

most new products. But not all, not

39:33

all just, just most there

39:36

are exceptions. And again,

39:38

there are lots of other ways to do this that

39:40

can work really well for you. But this

39:42

is one way. So we tend to use aws,

39:45

not a hundred percent, but a lot. We know

39:47

some features that our custom architecture

39:49

can, how we can save money

39:51

on it. Um , people will say AWS

39:53

is so expensive, you know , cuz you have to spend money.

39:56

It's like Facebook ads. You really just have to know the strategy.

39:58

And Google Ads, everybody adds . You have to know

40:00

the strategy to know how to reduce costs . We

40:03

use MongoDB, no JS React,

40:06

which is a JavaScript library and

40:08

an html, CSS and js. And so if

40:11

you, if you go out this and you show this to someone,

40:13

I , you'd only have to show like 10

40:15

technical people. And somebody would be like, Mongo

40:17

doesn't scale. Mongo does not

40:19

scale. They're liars. They're liars.

40:21

Well, the thing is, you have to know how

40:23

to use it and it does

40:26

scale. We have had clients on it

40:28

for 6, 7, 8 years and

40:30

only if you have certain other

40:33

requirements outside of , uh,

40:36

and, and there are millions of users on that, on

40:38

that technology. So there are only

40:40

if you have other requirements for

40:42

your product that you wouldn't use Mongo.

40:45

So this is important to

40:47

know, this is why I say people are gonna have a

40:49

lot of opinions about it. Only

40:53

talk , only listen to those who are willing to spend

40:55

time and understand your product and your

40:57

product needs. All right ? So

40:59

lots of right answers. I've said that a

41:01

hundred times. But where

41:04

you feel uneasy when

41:06

you ask a question and you haven't quite gotten the

41:08

information that you want, that's

41:10

where I want you to dig in. That's why I

41:13

say you are techy. You

41:15

have to believe that you have enough technical

41:17

knowledge to ask and answer the questions.

41:19

And if there's something that doesn't feel right to you,

41:22

I am, I guarantee you, I

41:24

guarantee you there's a problem. Maybe

41:27

you haven't communicated something effectively, maybe

41:29

your team hasn't understood it. Maybe they don't have the skills.

41:32

But if you feel, feel uneasy about something,

41:34

it's not because you need to go home and learn

41:36

how to code over the weekend. Just

41:38

dig in where you feel uneasy, that

41:40

is gonna guide you really far in this process. And

41:44

then remember back to this, your product needs

41:46

to be out in the world. So I

41:49

um, I used to talk to, I've

41:52

heard this a lot of times where women will tell

41:54

me I'm not technical, I

41:57

don't even know how to use the remote. Um,

41:59

and that I've heard it multiple times. And

42:01

I can tell you my son knows how to use

42:04

the remote better than I do. I think better

42:06

than my daughters. He uses it more

42:08

than we do. So there's no gift there.

42:10

There's no skill. And also maybe

42:12

it was just designed for the way that he

42:14

thinks. So in your

42:17

life, in your everyday life, not

42:19

even talking about founding or being in

42:21

tech when you use something and it doesn't work

42:24

the way that you think it should work, I

42:26

wanna really encourage you to think maybe

42:28

it just wasn't designed for me instead

42:31

of I'm not good at this. And

42:34

then if I could be so bold is to ask

42:36

you to share this message because

42:39

there are a lot of women who are not in this room

42:41

today who think that all the

42:43

time, I'm just not really that good at this. Instead

42:46

of, it wasn't designed for me. And

42:49

this is why I think it's so important for you to

42:51

put your products out into the

42:53

world so that fewer and fewer

42:55

people think it wasn't designed for me. Now

42:59

we all know about the funding shortage. This is an

43:01

issue. This is a 2021 stat, 2.4%

43:04

of total invested venture capital startup in

43:06

the US goes to solo women founded.

43:10

Not the entire problem, but

43:12

part of the problem is we don't have enough women

43:15

founding companies. So if you came here today and

43:17

you're like, I'm a woman in tech, this sounds really interesting, but

43:19

I'm not really gonna start a company. I

43:21

wanna challenge you. I wanna challenge

43:23

you that maybe it's

43:26

your turn, maybe it's your time to step

43:29

up and start a company. Maybe it's exactly

43:31

the right time for you to build your tech

43:33

company for you to grow to a billion dollars

43:36

and ask Catherine today for some money to fund it. <laugh>

43:41

being techy is really

43:43

just about problem solving, deep

43:46

thinking for

43:48

sure. Empathy, project

43:51

management. These are all things you're doing

43:53

anyway. And I know you know

43:55

a lot of women out there who are doing that. That's

43:58

what it means to be techie. So in

44:00

summary, I know I've talked about

44:02

a lot of things today. <laugh> believing

44:04

in yourself, a tech stack, all

44:07

sorts of things. But this is your playbook. If

44:09

you're like, I'm ready Ellen, you

44:12

have convinced me because you, I have

44:14

never met a person who gets so excited about technology

44:16

as you do. Then I wanna tell

44:18

you, this is your playbook. This is how to get started. So

44:21

before you even go get a

44:23

quote, before you talk to a developer, remember

44:26

to believe you are techie and my

44:28

friends, if you share that message with other people,

44:31

it's pretty funny. You hold yourself

44:33

accountable, right? You're like, I can't say

44:35

that. I can't say I'm not techie cause I'm telling all

44:37

these other people. So you are techie

44:39

and share that and then remember that you're

44:41

the expert. Nobody's fixating on your problem

44:43

with your unique solution the way you are. They're

44:46

not. You are the expert.

44:48

Know your customers, do your customer

44:51

research, know them, know their pain. Believe that

44:53

you can solve a problem that they have and

44:56

define it from your unique perspective. And

44:58

once you've done that, your playbook is

45:01

trust your development team. So

45:04

start building those relationships early. It's

45:07

kind of like a VC relationship. You wanna really know

45:09

them. You really wanna deeply understand

45:12

that there's a communication. Technology

45:15

is a lot about communication and

45:18

then decide how involved you wanna be. But believing

45:21

you are techies first and

45:23

deciding from that perspective. If

45:25

you wanna pay people more money to do more of

45:28

the work so you can focus on your business, that's

45:30

a great strategy. It's

45:32

not the only strategy, but it's a viable strategy.

45:35

Just know that your product vision is

45:37

communicated and defined well. And

45:40

then , um, remember my friends, you've gotta build an

45:42

mvp . So quick tip on this. Confine

45:45

, constrain define you

45:48

are going, as you go through this process, you're gonna wanna do

45:50

everything. You're gonna wanna have so many things in

45:52

it. I like to just say

45:54

keep a Google doc, a version one or

45:57

version 2.0 and just

45:59

write down, just type out save the

46:01

features that are not for today that

46:03

are gonna prevent you from launching. They

46:06

will come out into the world and

46:08

launch with an mvp . You're gonna make a decision

46:10

if it doesn't hurt, if you

46:12

haven't cut out some things like I cut out some slides

46:15

I wanted, if it doesn't hurt a little bit, you

46:17

haven't trimmed enough. And

46:19

then remember to build a product that's maintainable that

46:21

other people, you can find people to maintain it. You

46:23

can find people who can continue to scale

46:25

and grow your technology and finally evaluate

46:29

multiple valid options . Someone who

46:31

has spent time with you to understand you,

46:33

your perspective, your unique approach,

46:36

and has taken the time to

46:38

give you a quote on what effort we'll take from them to

46:40

give you what you want. So

46:43

remember, what does a tech founder look like? She

46:45

looks like you. Thank you so much. You

46:47

are techie . So

46:53

let's do some questions. And

46:55

my daughters here are going to throw or

46:57

bring you a shirt depending on your athletic ability.

47:00

And uh, we do a lot of football at my house so

47:02

it um, I would love to take some questions from you

47:05

and it's totally fine with me. If they're very

47:07

specific I'll do my very best to answer them. Yes,

47:13

I just need a quick drink of water cause I

47:16

Question . Uh , thank you so much. You're welcome. Um

47:18

, my question is, if you do have a desire

47:20

to level up your technical expertise,

47:23

what are some courses or

47:25

some , uh, some curriculum that

47:27

we could review or ,

47:29

Yeah, so I mean that's gonna be a hard question cuz I have curriculum

47:32

on it. So it's, it's hard for me to recommend

47:34

someone else's. But , um, first

47:38

know the problem you are trying to solve

47:40

because you will learn so much

47:42

more if you instead

47:44

of theoretically learn tech, actually

47:47

do the tech on the thing you're

47:49

trying to solve. Does that make sense? So

47:52

, um, even in my courses, the way that I walk it

47:54

through it is that you pick a project regardless of if

47:56

you're founding a company or just learning a skill in development

47:59

or in , um, UX design.

48:01

It's, it's just important that you start with that and

48:04

then applying things to

48:06

that project is a much better way to

48:08

learn. Because otherwise if you say,

48:10

okay, I'm gonna learn , um,

48:13

Ruby on Rails, okay, let

48:16

me just go learn it. No, it's never ending . And

48:18

so the way to know if you have the right

48:20

tech skills is not if you know every line of code

48:23

that's out there, which , um, I've

48:25

found a lot of women wanna do. But instead it's

48:27

have I created something in the

48:30

world? Um, and that's actually how I, I learned

48:32

Ruby on Rails . So , um, I

48:34

start , I, when I was staying at home with my kids, I

48:36

founded a company and I didn't

48:39

know how to, I was, I was a developer, but I didn't know Ruby on

48:41

Rails and I just did it with this one

48:43

project in mind . It's so much better

48:46

because otherwise what you end up with is a

48:48

, is a tic-tac toe event. So

48:50

yeah. Um, I will say

48:53

Khan Academy is fantastic. Khan

48:55

Academy. Yeah.

48:58

Hi, how are you Helen,

49:00

You just wanna us shirt don't you, Karen <laugh>

49:03

ask

49:03

You , um,

49:05

I just wanna ask you, I saw the word

49:07

, um, that your founder of

49:10

techy company Yeah. I just wanna

49:12

know if you help or

49:15

advise founders what

49:17

do you do? How you can help?

49:20

Yeah ,

49:20

This Yeah . Audience. I

49:22

know you do because you help me a lot, <laugh>

49:25

. So I just , I wanna ask you what

49:27

, uh, do you can do to help others

49:31

Yeah . What your services

49:32

Are, right? So, so your techie is

49:34

, um, I have a , a membership where you can

49:36

learn skills of UX design and development. So that's,

49:38

that's what that is. And , um, with,

49:42

and so that's an online presence and I'm,

49:44

I'm happy to, you know, share that with you and you guys can,

49:46

you can go there, you can listen to the podcast, you are techie with

49:49

Ellen Tomi . It's very motivational. Um,

49:51

I think the next one I'm coming out

49:53

is stop yelling at your husband. So if that's interesting to you

49:55

, um, because I talk a lot

49:57

about, I didn't really go into all the techy mindset,

50:00

but it's, it's a really a

50:02

big passion of mine that not enough women quite

50:04

understand exactly how to

50:06

be , um, technical. And

50:09

it's really all about specifics and that's why I

50:11

talk a lot about that. So with

50:13

Fugitive, if you really are

50:15

interested in building a tech product in the world, I'm

50:17

also happy you can, you can send me an email . I'll

50:20

also, I'll be happy to do a free product strategy

50:22

session with you on your product. And

50:25

so , um, I'm happy to, to do that and

50:27

to help you move forward and to understand

50:30

, um, you know, where you are

50:32

in that process and what

50:34

you should be thinking about around your specific

50:37

problem. And so that's another

50:39

way I'll answer that . Yeah .

50:44

Um , thanks for your presentation.

50:45

You're welcome by

50:46

The way . Um , my question is, what

50:48

are some of the barriers of launching

50:51

a web MVP versus a

50:54

an app of like m mvp

50:56

?

50:56

Yeah, that's a great question. Um,

50:59

that's a great question. So

51:04

the barriers are, it's

51:06

a lot about skill. So

51:09

, um, app development is just a

51:12

little bit more nuanced and, and

51:14

quite honest, a little bit trickier. Um,

51:18

but in terms of the actual implementa,

51:20

I have so many thoughts on this, I'm like, I'm not exactly sure how

51:22

to tell you. Okay. So I will

51:24

tell you my opinion that having one

51:27

code base is not really that important

51:29

and in fact can slow you down. So,

51:32

so the barriers for for

51:34

it are understanding

51:37

who your audience is first and

51:39

what's gonna be a better way to launch. And then of course, you know

51:41

the platforms, right? So you do kind of

51:43

need , you have to, you have to be in the, in the IO

51:46

store and the , and the Google Play store. And

51:48

so that's a challenge. But in terms

51:50

of like technology, what

51:52

is harder? It's, it's really a

51:54

, a little bit of one-to-one based on skill.

51:57

And I think the bigger trick

51:59

is that you wanna , you want an MVP that

52:01

you can launch and get out into

52:03

the world with a

52:06

, uh, with a focus on where the customers are gonna

52:08

find you. One

52:11

full code base is not necessary,

52:13

but you don't have to write two full

52:15

code bases, if that makes sense. It's really

52:18

foundationally you're gonna be looking at a similar thing

52:20

and you also are gonna have a

52:22

similar but not exactly the

52:24

same , um, UX presence . So I

52:27

do think that depending on your money,

52:29

your financial , um,

52:31

experience and your financial investment

52:33

that you can make, it can make sense

52:35

to launch both. It doesn't have to be one or

52:38

the other. It just kind of depends on how you wanna

52:40

go out into the world. And, you know, some,

52:42

some products are really only at base , it's

52:44

only gonna work that way. Um, but you are

52:46

going to exclude certain people.

52:48

I would say that's gonna be a barrier if your

52:51

solution is all inclusive and you have

52:53

to, you have to pick one, sometimes

52:55

you have to do that. It , it is a very,

52:58

it is a knowledge and money

53:00

decision basically. Um, anything

53:03

is possible in technology. And so

53:05

that's a great question. I can't wait to hear what

53:07

your idea is .

53:11

Thank you . Um , my question is

53:13

for somebody to start to enter into

53:16

like tech company . So

53:18

you mentioned about investing on yourself and

53:20

spending money on yourself in terms

53:23

of your learning and experiences. Um,

53:26

I think one struggle that I have

53:29

is personally is just validating the

53:31

idea that you have . Cause you don't have one idea

53:33

and you have multiple

53:34

Ideas . Yeah.

53:34

But when you're beginning, you are

53:37

kind of scared to invest that money in yourself.

53:39

So how do you overcome with

53:42

like, on that specific struggle

53:44

that you face in terms of just validating

53:46

thousands of factors you have in Richmond is actually going

53:49

<laugh> ? Well , if you have thousands, that could take a while

53:51

. But , um, I will

53:53

say, I , I , I will

53:55

go a little bit back into making a decision.

53:58

So , um, this is very

54:00

common and I would say that you are

54:02

just at a stage where you're kind of examining

54:05

how you wanna show up in the world. And

54:08

so you are going to, you're

54:10

going to wanna do customer research and

54:13

that's pretty much what everyone's gonna tell you is kind

54:15

of the starting point. And you can do things like, Hey,

54:17

I'm gonna have a freebie and if you sign up for my list,

54:19

I'll see if there's some interest there. Um,

54:23

but you do

54:25

have to pick one. And

54:28

so it's when you invest in yourself

54:30

and you develop your relationship with yourself. I will tell

54:32

you, I think journaling, it's one of the things I teach

54:34

a lot. Journaling is so important. Um

54:36

, my coach Deb told me that like, I

54:39

don't know, a long time ago, like eight years ago,

54:41

I'll never forget, I called her and I was like, just going

54:43

on and on and on and on. And she's

54:45

just so brilliant. And she's like, Ellen, you

54:48

are so smart. You know what I

54:50

think you should do? And I mean, I sounded like a moron on

54:52

the phone, I'm telling you. And she's like, you

54:55

should write this down and

54:57

just journal about your feelings. I mean, Deb

54:59

is the best, I can't even tell you. And she coached, she's

55:01

coached some of the, some of the best founders I know. So

55:04

journaling about what you

55:07

care about and what you believe and what you think is,

55:09

is right in the world is a really important part

55:11

of that. And once you feel

55:13

like you can make a decision to

55:15

run a test, run a test for

55:18

six weeks, what do , what information can

55:20

you get in six weeks that is going

55:22

to be a very important part of your strategy

55:24

to , um, do customer discovery.

55:26

And just one quick plug on that,

55:29

I think customer discovery is best on when

55:31

you write the questions and

55:33

other people ask them, you can be one of

55:35

the people, but if you are the only person,

55:37

you are going to be biased in your own way of doing it.

55:40

And so definitely a friends will

55:42

do it if you have siblings, I have

55:44

an extra one if you need one. Uh , my kids have

55:47

extra ones, but you know, you ask people to

55:49

help you and get that information and

55:51

then if it's a pain point,

55:53

you people won't wanna stop

55:56

talking about it. That's kind of when you

55:58

know you struck a cord . Does

56:00

that help? Cool. Are

56:03

we outta shirts ? We have one more. Okay. Yeah

56:05

.

56:07

Excuse me. Mm-hmm . Um , I'm

56:09

electronic engineer and

56:11

I want to build a product that

56:14

Do it.

56:15

<laugh> ? Yeah . The course . I'm

56:17

a student at Georgia .

56:19

Nice. Great.

56:20

And I want ask you question , is

56:23

it harder to build a product than

56:25

you wanna invest

56:28

your customers to

56:30

bring it out to your

56:33

, um, retailers ?

56:34

So do you mean is it hard to invest in a physical

56:36

product than a tech product? Ask

56:39

, ask me again.

56:40

Like a tech, that technology

56:42

, um,

56:45

is it harder to build a product that

56:49

you wanted to bring out your customers to

56:52

sell it to your retail , to your technology?

56:55

So you wanna sell the product through

56:58

technology Yeah . And through and

57:00

to , to retailers. Yeah . So

57:03

is it harder than what, than what than

57:05

, than if it's not a physical product

57:08

or if you're using the tech . If the technology is

57:10

the product,

57:11

Technology is the product ,

57:14

Is it harder? I mean, I'm

57:18

gonna say yes because I don't have experience

57:20

in the physical product. And

57:22

so, but if that is your

57:24

experience and that is your, there are,

57:27

so there are additional technical complexities

57:29

when you have physical hardware and then you're doing technology

57:31

with it. I would say that's true. So

57:34

it can be a little bit more expensive, but so what if it's

57:36

harder? It says no , it's not a reason not to bring it.

57:38

And it sounds like that's what you're interested in and what you're

57:40

passionate about. Um, but selling

57:43

it through technology, that part

57:45

of what you described doesn't sound harder. To me. That

57:47

sounds like a really smart idea and a great way to

57:49

reach people. Cool. Thank you so much.

57:54

Oh good. Great. Yes.

57:57

Hi. Hi.

57:58

Whoa , that was loud. Hi , um, Helen . Thank

58:00

you. This was amazing.

58:02

<laugh> . Oh good. Uh ,

58:02

I have a question on the

58:05

learning piece. So a question like what

58:07

architecture should I use for my product? Yeah.

58:11

As you're , you know, you're Googling and researching

58:13

<laugh> , how many hours , like, I'm just curious how many

58:15

hours, if you're a founder and you're trying to figure that out,

58:18

how many hours should you expect for that to

58:20

take? Is that like a 10 hour

58:22

project or a 40 hour project, or

58:24

a four hour project?

58:28

I have so many thoughts on architecture.

58:30

It that, that it's a little bit hard. So I

58:33

mean, you shouldn't do that on your own if you're

58:35

not, if you haven't written code, you shouldn't be designing

58:37

your architecture. And I also have this thing where

58:39

people will show me that their development team,

58:42

she has this nice little diagram of how their architecture

58:45

is set up . And then I kind of laugh cuz that's how I

58:47

started at Accenture when I was like 22. They'd

58:49

have me build these architectures and there'd be a little database

58:51

here and there'd be a little database here, whatever. And

58:53

the thing is that architecture is

58:56

complicated because it's, it's a

58:58

vision of how your

59:01

product should , um,

59:04

function at its most basic level. And

59:06

so not everything can be a picture. And so

59:08

I would actually say that if your

59:11

expertise, if you're a non-technical, we

59:13

call them domain experts, you're a domain expert in your world,

59:15

I would not, you are not going to be

59:17

able to just Google and figure out your

59:20

architecture. You're gonna wanna talk to an expert

59:22

who has actually built architecture

59:25

before for

59:27

this is the key for a product

59:30

that is similar to yours in some

59:32

way. So if you

59:34

have hardware components in your product,

59:37

you're gonna want someone who's worked with hardware

59:39

and software connectivity together.

59:42

If you have a

59:45

product that is a FinTech and

59:47

it's gotta work with a lot of different payment processing,

59:50

you , you, you wanna , you wanna talk to someone who's

59:52

done that type of work before. Because

59:55

at its fundamental level, I didn't go into this, but

59:57

that's why people spend so much on hosting is

59:59

because the architecture isn't streamlined. And

1:00:02

there's, I mean you can like research it

1:00:04

and you can be like, oh, containers and Kubernetes

1:00:06

and Oh yeah. And that honestly, like

1:00:09

how the code is put

1:00:11

into those is what matters. How

1:00:13

the algorithms are designed , um,

1:00:16

how the OB objects are designed. And so that's

1:00:18

just a very layered approach. And so I really

1:00:20

would encourage you yes,

1:00:22

to look to Google the words you don't know and to ask

1:00:24

your developers. But I would really encourage you to

1:00:27

understand and talk to pe bring

1:00:29

people into your purview who have done something.

1:00:32

Just try to look at what the similarities,

1:00:34

like what's hard about your product. Find

1:00:37

someone who's done something hard, similarly

1:00:39

hard in that way. Oh

1:00:45

great. Hello. Hi.

1:00:47

Um , thank you. Um, I

1:00:49

have a question about networking. Um,

1:00:52

I just started at school and I'm

1:00:54

a slight introvert. Don't really like talking

1:00:56

to people.

1:00:56

Oh, okay .

1:00:57

I'm here

1:00:58

Though . Okay . Thank you for coming .

1:01:00

Um , yes . So it's like I have , like you said, a

1:01:03

thousand ideas in my head and when I think

1:01:05

of something, I always keep it to myself. I don't

1:01:07

tell nobody until likes come

1:01:09

true. So one of my professors said,

1:01:11

you know that networking is very important when

1:01:14

it comes . I you Yeah. So I

1:01:16

give it to myself. Yeah . I don't tell nobody

1:01:19

anything until it comes true. Yeah . Um , when

1:01:21

you started, did you network before or

1:01:24

did you network after and say, Hey guys,

1:01:26

we gotta come to me , come check me out. Or, you

1:01:28

know, before like, hey, I'm thinking about

1:01:30

starting, you know, so I'm scared of

1:01:32

doing that again. Only when it comes true is

1:01:34

when I'm like, okay , you guys come shop with

1:01:36

me. Okay .

1:01:38

Okay. Thank you for sharing that

1:01:40

and for being an introvert, I'm married to an introvert

1:01:42

and so we have a lot of discussions like this. So

1:01:44

the first thing I would say is don't

1:01:46

do what I do. I'll teach you to do

1:01:48

what you should do. Okay? So I'm

1:01:51

an extrovert. This brings me energy. I love

1:01:53

hanging with people. I can talk all night after

1:01:55

this. Like if I go to an event at night and then

1:01:57

I come home, my introvert husband's like, are you

1:01:59

done yet? Like, I am jazzed baby.

1:02:01

I am jazzed. So it's just not a problem

1:02:03

for me. But that doesn't mean that

1:02:05

networking isn't available to you. What

1:02:08

is available to you is to show up as

1:02:10

your authentic self. And so what I don't want

1:02:12

you to do is to try

1:02:14

to be like me cuz it'll drain you of energy. Instead,

1:02:17

what I want you to do is

1:02:19

to, so you , you've actually asked

1:02:21

me a few different questions in this. Um,

1:02:24

and it's brilliant. You

1:02:26

want to do your customer research so

1:02:29

that you understand that the

1:02:31

thing that you're working on, and when you do customer

1:02:34

research, you're asking about pain. You're not asking

1:02:36

about how someone else would solve the problem that

1:02:38

you're gonna be an expert on. And so

1:02:40

when you do your customer research, you

1:02:43

are going to feel, you are going

1:02:45

to have a knowing inside of you that

1:02:48

there is a real problem that can be solved

1:02:50

in this world. And

1:02:52

that piece is important because what I don't

1:02:54

want you to do is to go onto the world and say, do

1:02:57

you think I should do this? Do you think I should do

1:02:59

that? They'll crush you because everyone will have an idea

1:03:01

on that . So first you wanna do that,

1:03:03

so is customer research networking

1:03:05

a little bit, but you get to talk about what you like,

1:03:08

you're asking people and if they

1:03:10

don't wanna talk to you because they don't think it's a

1:03:12

problem, there are two things. Either it's

1:03:14

not really a problem or there's someone else you should be talking

1:03:16

to. So that's the first thing I would say to

1:03:18

you is to, to start to build that piece

1:03:21

of it so that you can go into networking

1:03:23

events , um, with

1:03:26

a knowing, with a confidence that

1:03:28

you feel good about your problem. And

1:03:30

you don't have to share it with people who maybe will

1:03:32

kind of , um, not be supportive of it.

1:03:34

And there's some evidence of that. I, I, I've

1:03:36

read a book, it's called , um, hell Yes

1:03:38

or No by Derek Silvers. Derek

1:03:41

Silvers , sorry, severs . He was on Tim Ferris. He

1:03:43

also came on my podcast just so you know. So

1:03:46

, uh, I um, I think it's

1:03:48

fantastic. And he's like, you keep that in,

1:03:50

you keep that inside. You don't share it with the

1:03:52

world until you're ready. But there's a balance

1:03:54

there, right? So the next thing that

1:03:56

I would say to you is, so what I , um,

1:03:59

I actually teach networking skills

1:04:01

and I don't call it

1:04:03

networking, I call it building your community. And

1:04:06

um, ATV does a great job of building community and

1:04:08

not everybody does not. It's not really that easy

1:04:10

to build a community. It's actually kind of challenging.

1:04:13

So what I wanna encourage you to do is build

1:04:15

your community of people that are gonna support

1:04:17

you through that. And your community doesn't

1:04:20

have to be my community. We can just have different communities.

1:04:22

I mean, you can be a mine . I'm totally cool with that because

1:04:24

if you're a founder, you're definitely my people. But my point

1:04:26

is that you wanna build it in a way that

1:04:29

works for you. And so while I

1:04:31

don't think , um, that advice

1:04:33

is bad that your professor gave you, I do think

1:04:35

that the nuance is hard. You

1:04:38

wanna get around people and you're in a good place here where

1:04:40

people are gonna support your

1:04:42

idea even if they don't get it. And

1:04:44

so I will tell you that if you tell someone and

1:04:46

they don't get it and they wanna help you , help you,

1:04:49

I would run the other direction. And

1:04:51

I would understand that there's nothing

1:04:53

wrong with you and all of us who've

1:04:56

kind of gone through this. We've had those experiences maybe

1:04:58

once a week, I'd say usually once a week. But

1:05:00

I talk to so many great people, I try not to

1:05:02

worry about those people who just don't quite

1:05:04

get it. It's okay. They're just not, they're just not your

1:05:07

community. Do you know what I'm saying? So

1:05:09

I would, I would do it that way. And then the final thing

1:05:11

from being married to an introvert for 21 years is I would say

1:05:13

do a lot of one-on one-on-ones. Because

1:05:16

big groups are going to drain you.

1:05:19

Save it for when it's really important. Save

1:05:22

it for when it's really important, and instead talk to people

1:05:24

one-on-one. And you'll start to learn

1:05:26

whether those people are in your community or

1:05:28

not in your community. I hope that was helpful. I

1:05:31

love it. Okay, do Hi

1:05:33

, two more . What's up Lisa ? I

1:05:36

love it . Hi. Hi. Hi.

1:05:37

Hi. Good everyone . Um, my

1:05:40

question is, as a female

1:05:43

ceo , female founder, yeah . How

1:05:45

important do you consider it to be

1:05:47

vulnerable?

1:05:49

Oh , to

1:05:49

Ask for help. Cause you

1:05:52

wanna be confident , you need to know also how

1:05:54

to ask for help. That's part one. Part two, the

1:05:57

resources you would recommend , uh,

1:05:59

for technical, if you're a non-technical founder,

1:06:01

would you recommend also Fiber?

1:06:04

Would you recommend Upwork, et cetera . But

1:06:06

right . <crosstalk> the first question. I would love your

1:06:09

talk .

1:06:09

You know , um, okay, so

1:06:12

vulnerability. I , it's so funny. I'm actually

1:06:14

reading Brene Brown Born , uh, what is

1:06:16

it? Born to Lead . I don't know how, I haven't

1:06:18

read her before. Like, I've been quoting her for years and I'm

1:06:20

like, maybe you should read her book . So anyway, a

1:06:22

actually we had it cuz my husband read it, but the point is

1:06:24

I'm reading it. So she talks a lot about vulnerability. Um,

1:06:28

my husband actually works for Pat Lynch . He

1:06:30

has written a lot of books. He's written Five Dysfunctions of a Team,

1:06:32

and they talk a lot about vulnerability. I

1:06:35

think vulnerability , um, you

1:06:37

know, that's a really, like the

1:06:39

workforce should thank women for that. Like

1:06:41

that. We definitely bring that piece to

1:06:43

it. Um, being vulnerable

1:06:45

to ask for help is, I

1:06:48

would just say something that I , I'm

1:06:50

working on. I'm like right there with you that

1:06:52

we think we can do it all. And , um,

1:06:55

but we can't. And it's super important that

1:06:58

not only being vulnerable about what

1:07:01

we , um, what we need help

1:07:03

with, with the level of help

1:07:05

that we need, right? So

1:07:08

I got Megan , she's filming me here, and she's like, what

1:07:10

speakers do you kinda look up to? And I was

1:07:12

like, I wanna give

1:07:14

you someone who's maybe more moderate,

1:07:16

but it's Tony Robbins and Mel

1:07:19

Robbins and I'm going Big baby. You

1:07:21

know, like, so, so I mean, I don't have to say

1:07:23

that that's my vulnerable space is that I want something

1:07:25

big, right? And so being

1:07:28

vulnerable about be believing

1:07:30

that, you know, Catherine , one of the reasons I

1:07:32

met Catherine O. Day, I saw a clip on

1:07:34

her and she's like, I think we need to have 10 women

1:07:37

unicorns. And I defined that as 1

1:07:40

billion. I'm like, I wanna talk to that lady.

1:07:42

Absolutely. And so the

1:07:44

the thing is like being vulnerable

1:07:46

about wanting to, to make it big and

1:07:49

that that's serious. So when someone tells me

1:07:51

like, I'm gonna build a hundred million dollar company, I'm gonna build

1:07:53

a billion dollar company , um, take

1:07:55

that seriously. Like I just got chills that like,

1:07:57

you can do that. You, you, you are

1:07:59

doing that. So like, I mean, I totally, that's

1:08:02

important to, to not only be vulnerable with what we need help

1:08:04

with, but the level of help to make it big. Um,

1:08:07

you know, fiber and Upwork. I mean

1:08:09

that's, that's tricky because one

1:08:12

of the things that I do is I have a lot of trust in my developers

1:08:14

and I know that people have built

1:08:17

companies around finding the right work. Like,

1:08:19

lemme put it to you this way. There's

1:08:21

good and bad on Fiber and Upwork. It's

1:08:24

not like it , it's knowing

1:08:26

your specific problem and

1:08:28

can they solve it? There's good and bad. It's

1:08:31

not really like the platform is inherently going

1:08:33

to serve you up the right thing. And

1:08:36

so even that piece, you

1:08:38

need technical knowledge. And

1:08:40

so that's where trusting your development team, trusting

1:08:43

people in technology, building those relationships and

1:08:45

learning , um, that's gonna be an important

1:08:47

component and that's part of the vulnerability too. More

1:08:51

questions. Okay . These are great you guys. I

1:08:53

love it . Hi Heather. Really

1:08:55

Awesome.

1:08:55

Yeah. Oh good. I'm glad. I'm glad.

1:08:57

So cool . So I have a

1:08:59

question. Some of my questions are answered. Thank

1:09:01

you everyone. <laugh> . Um , and

1:09:04

then I had a couple of thoughts. So I,

1:09:06

I did it for five years. Yeah. Um

1:09:08

, I went into it knowing nothing. Um,

1:09:11

and I , by the end, I had multiple

1:09:13

certifications, Microsoft and, and

1:09:16

plus a plus certification.

1:09:17

Awesome.

1:09:18

But , um, I don't do that anymore. However,

1:09:21

I was just talking recently , uh, over

1:09:23

ice cream with a woman in Florida

1:09:25

who got her doctorate in computer science

1:09:27

around women and technology,

1:09:30

and she's 80, she just turned 80.

1:09:31

Stop it. I love her. I

1:09:34

love it. I love it.

1:09:35

Yeah. And so we were talking about,

1:09:38

you know, women in tech and I worked actually,

1:09:40

like right there in the building is

1:09:42

, uh, capital City Plaza, and

1:09:44

I was an IT person for a company called <inaudible>

1:09:47

Works . Um, and it , which was a killer

1:09:49

website back in the day for tech,

1:09:51

for looking up like tech stuff. Um,

1:09:54

and so I learned everything, but one of the

1:09:56

biggest things that, that , so it's helped me all

1:09:58

throughout my career, right? Everything I do. But

1:10:01

yeah , one of the biggest takeaways from

1:10:03

that is, you know, before that

1:10:05

I would, I would just get intimidated

1:10:07

by the remote control, which by the way, quick

1:10:10

note, generally it's the input

1:10:12

<laugh> , I love it .

1:10:14

Just press input and get to the right

1:10:17

Input. Hundred percent . A

1:10:19

hundred percent endorsement. Yeah .

1:10:21

Um, but <laugh> , but so

1:10:24

the, the , it's, it's , it

1:10:26

is about getting specific mm-hmm . <affirmative> , right ? Like

1:10:29

you're saying, right . Is , and so with tech

1:10:31

, um, instead of looking

1:10:33

at a column saying, I can't do that, it's

1:10:36

about saying, okay , I'm

1:10:38

not gonna just say, okay, I'm afraid of this. This

1:10:40

is not, I don't , this is not me. I can't do this.

1:10:42

Yeah. Because I did that at first and

1:10:45

then I was like, no, I , I'm the IT person here.

1:10:47

I gotta fix this. Right? So it's

1:10:49

about saying, okay, well what's the

1:10:51

problem? Like, so you're simple problem solving

1:10:53

, what's the problem? Identify what the problem is . Okay,

1:10:56

well what, when did the problem start? Like

1:10:58

, what's changed? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what changed causes

1:11:00

problem . Yeah . Yeah. Right . So it's getting really

1:11:03

specific and stepping back and looking

1:11:05

at it kind of holistically. And,

1:11:08

and the , the biggest part of it is saying like,

1:11:10

I can do this. Like I can

1:11:12

fix this. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so

1:11:15

at that, that , that kind of resonated with

1:11:17

your get specific message, right ? Because it's, I

1:11:19

think dual purpose. Yeah . It can be super,

1:11:22

you know, high level when you're concepting.

1:11:24

Right . And then granularly problem solving

1:11:26

, like day-to-day problem solving , jumping

1:11:28

through the hoops for sure. Um, anyway,

1:11:31

and my question is around market

1:11:33

research, so, okay. Um, I think

1:11:36

there's, you know, there's so

1:11:38

many resources when it comes

1:11:39

To market resources

1:11:41

Or market

1:11:41

Research. Yeah.

1:11:42

Do you have a

1:11:43

Recommendation? I do. Okay, cool. I'm

1:11:45

worried I'm gonna say her name wrong. So

1:11:47

she's a Canadian, I'm from Detroit, so I , and my husband has

1:11:50

Canadian relatives. I feel like I'm Canadian. I love Canadians.

1:11:52

Canadian students are so nice. They're so much nicer than us. So

1:11:54

anyway , um, her name is Caitlin

1:11:57

. I think it's Bourge , like B

1:11:59

O U R G O

1:12:01

I N, something like that. And,

1:12:03

and so she , um, but I can get that to

1:12:06

you if you want. Uh, I sh I

1:12:08

think I paid like $80 for

1:12:10

her , um, like her question list

1:12:12

and her course, even though I

1:12:15

, um, have done my own market

1:12:18

research. And so that's an example of something where I

1:12:20

felt really good paying for money to see how I could level

1:12:22

up in my customer discovery

1:12:24

and in my market research. I think it's really good

1:12:26

to , um, have a lot of, and she

1:12:28

was a founder, so I always, you

1:12:31

know, I don't know. I love the founders. I

1:12:33

guess I'm want everyone to be a founder. There's just so many things you

1:12:35

learn about yourself and about life. So that's the one I

1:12:37

would recommend. And I can make sure to get you her name on

1:12:39

that. Um, but definitely she, she would be

1:12:41

the resource that I like. How about , cool.

1:12:44

Yay . Yay .

1:12:49

Thank you . Hey,

1:12:51

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