#348 Building T-Shaped Teams: Ben Johnson on Startups Bootstrapping and Market Fit

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me, Ben Johnson. Ben, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, tell us a bit more about you and your, you know, your [00:01:00] journey and what you are currently up to. So the floor is yours.

Mehmet: Yeah, my

Ben: name is Ben. Yeah, thank you. Um, my name is Ben Johnson. I'm a serial technical co founder. I've done about five, uh, kind of early stage to exit, uh, businesses. And, uh, now I'm the CEO of Particle 41, a technology services company, uh, that really focuses on, uh, software development, DevOps, and data science.

Ben: And we especially help people with application modernization and cloud migrations.

Mehmet: Great to have you again here, Ben. So my first question to you is, you know, what was the pivotal moment, I would say, uh, in your 20 plus years journey as a developer and leader that significantly influenced you to

Ben: Yeah, you know, uh, my first job was a, uh, was a paper boy. Uh, so, you know, I, I [00:02:00] got, uh, started early, uh, probably in my early teens, uh, delivering papers and I was lucky enough to live on my paper route. So, um, I was delivering the paper every morning by 6 AM to my neighbors. And, And, um, and so, um, my first startup, uh, was, uh, just hand cranking, um, those, um, forms you'd get in your, you'd buy a commercial product or, uh, you know, a piece of tech, like a George Foreman grill or whatever.

Ben: And you would get that, uh, insert from inside, right, that had the product registration form. One of my first jobs, uh, in college was transposing that into HTML, um, and then uploading the data to a, a big, uh, data platform. But, um, You know, just an interest in technology early on. And then, um, you know, you execute a couple of businesses successfully.

Ben: People want to leverage your expertise. And so my partner and I, who've worked together for 20 [00:03:00] years, Sukhdev Gidwani, he's an Indian national. And he and I in 2014 said, you know, let's just keep doing this for people. And so we started Particle 41 as a service company.

Mehmet: That's, uh, you know, I get inspired by these stories, Ben.

Mehmet: Now, tell me one thing, you know, the shift from being, you know, a hardcore, as I say, software developer to a CEO and co founder of a development firm. Like, was it like, I'm sure like there was some challenges. So, So what were like these big challenges and how did you, uh, manage to, to overcome them?

Ben: Yeah, you know, we've been talking a lot.

Ben: We talk a lot about that inside the culture of Particle 41. It's not just about being, uh, technically strong. We actually talk about being T shaped. So if you think of the, the staff of the T as being, you know, your technical skills, and so the more problems you solve, uh, the more you learn about, uh, [00:04:00] not only the software and software fluency of the language that you love to write in, but you start to learn things about the environment, about networking, about, um, maybe, uh, the presentation layer, you start broadening your skill set.

Ben: So you. You have a strong, um, base, but you also need a, uh, the bar across the top. You need the T, which are your soft skills, project management, selling the technology, making sure that the vision of it is clear. And so at Particle 41, we really talk about being T shaped, not just vertically aligned, but horizontally aligned as well.

Ben: And I think that just Naturally happened over the career and in startups, you can't just be technically strong, but not, um, a good, uh, soft skill person. You have to work with investors. You have to work with stakeholders. You have to work with the user to figure out is the software I'm writing going to be used.

Ben: Nothing worse than spending a year, two years on a piece of software that nobody uses. And likewise, there's nothing more [00:05:00] rewarding than building a piece of software that changes people's lives.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know, I would second what you mentioned about the soft skills. And this is, you know, one of the things that pushed me to start the podcast actually is to kind of course, like I'm not saying that people are not aware, but you know, especially for maybe people who are freshers, more younger than me, you know, to focus also on the soft skills.

Mehmet: In addition, you know, of course, to the capabilities of being, you know, a great tech leader, being a great CTO and so on. So a hundred percent, I agree with you on this. Now, when, when you decide, I mean, I'm talking in general to, to have, something that has teams, right? So, so you build a company, um, you need to apply some strategies that would make you to, I like your, your, uh, you said T shape teams, right?

Mehmet: So, so teams that can be empowered. So [00:06:00] what do you think are the main strategies that need to be implemented? And you have implemented at Particle 41 to ensure like your tech teams are efficient. Um, especially, you know, we live today in a world which is kind of remotely distributed. When we talk about the team.

Ben: Yeah. Well, the great thing about software development is we get these Uh, these we kind of get the guidebook, right? We get the scrum agile. We get different methodologies and we inherit those from Um people who invented them. So that's that's great. There are a lot of businesses that have you know manufacturing and they have like lean principles that they can go from but they really have to create the the product development process You Whereas we get to kind of inherent from people who have tried this across the industry.

Ben: So there's in software development, there's a lot of market knowledge. And so, um, creating a high functioning team to us is, uh, really talking about goals, not tasks. [00:07:00] And, uh, we also talk about, you know, the difference between the regular army. Like if you think of a military metaphor, you have the regular army and you have the special forces.

Ben: And there's one distinct difference between those two in the, in, in the regular infantry, in the regular army, those folks understand what the minimum requirement is. Like if they're going to be tested physically, they know that they need to do, uh, you know, certain number of pushups in a, in a. Uh, in a few minutes or they know they need to run a certain mile pace.

Ben: Um, with their, so they understand what those minimum requirements are, but if you're a special operator, you have no idea what the minimum standard is. You only know what the mission is, like, what are we trying to accomplish? And then you're doing whatever it takes. You're figuring out the best solution to get the mission accomplished.

Ben: And so we're trying to shift mindsets from the asset of labor to the asset of skill. And, [00:08:00] um, you know, just watching people within our teams transform between that, uh, whether they're project managers or cloud engineers or software developers and see that shift from the asset of labor, Hey, I just, you know, I just take my tasks and I grind the work and shifting to, Hey, I really understand what we're trying to accomplish and what the mission of the business is.

Ben: And now all my energy is directed towards that. Um, it really helps them focus on being a professional rather than just doing a bunch of tasks and furthermore I think when mistakes are made it's because we focus on what we need to do Rather than who we are and and so that shift from from just doing to being is a is a big Um kind of philosophical shift I see from these high functioning teams.

Mehmet: I think also ben this uh, When you take this approach, it pushes people to be more productive because they now understand that this [00:09:00] is not just, you know, I'm doing this because it's a task or it's like an item on my to do list. It's something that's going to contribute to the bigger vision or mission.

Mehmet: of the organization. So, uh, you know, and I think, you know, the organization, let's say the company that they implemented this. And I think, you know, here comes to my mind, uh, the concept of OKRs, the objective key results, like, you know, align with this because everyone knows, of course, they're working on their thing in their area of expertise, but they know how this is contributing to the, to the company.

Mehmet: So, uh, a great approach, I would say. Now, uh, you also help companies, you know, in, in building, uh, You know, SAS, you know, software as a service. So what do you think are the key factors? Um, you know, people should consider when building a SAS or tech company in general from scratch. Like, what do you think, you know, these are the [00:10:00] must have, you know, before you start?

Ben: Yeah. So I think at the beginning you should think about a tech. There's two business models here. There's a tech enabled service. So, uh, a tech enabled service would be, uh, a task that's been traditionally done manually and in your, um, in your approach to SaaS, you know, eventually becoming a SaaS company.

Ben: I, I like this idea of a tech enabled service. What's the difference there? A tech enabled service is something that you can do for the customer that maybe behind the scenes has some manual steps or some human capital that's pushing it, but you're investing in making that easier and easier to whether eventually it gets automated and then you can offer, um, offer a, uh, a SaaS product.

Ben: So I would just consider that, um, what I see people doing right now is they're choosing between three business models, the, um, the two sided marketplace, like think of an Uber, [00:11:00] the, um, the tech enabled service, uh, or, um, or the SAS product and, um, You just really should be clear on what you're going against here.

Ben: Um, I think that they stagger in the level of effort. So two sided marketplace, you have to serve both sides of those marketplaces. You have to build software for not only the customer, the end customer, that's going to use it. But also you have to build software for the supplier. So you end up kind of building two products, one for the supplier side, one for the buyer side.

Ben: Um, and this is why Uber spent, you know, a huge amount of money to be what it is today. Right. They needed a lot of investment in SAS, at least SAS. You're just focused on the subscriber. Um, but you have to be able to build a critical mass of features and then also fund the exposure to the market. So you're going to need quite a bit of capital there.

Ben: In tech enabled services, as long as you have the ability to [00:12:00] transact online and collect money, you can start to offer the service even if it isn't fully automated. And so I just, I challenge people to, to, to just be really certain what they're going for. And if it is SAS that they're going for, um, I would just be very sure.

Ben: So, um, the four interest rates were so low and the VC market was. Kind of abundant. Um, there was a bunch of great content about bootstrapping. And that content is re emerging now. So bootstrapping is this idea of really being sure about your idea. Am I sure there's not a competitor that's already done it?

Ben: How are people doing the thing that I want to accomplish with my SaaS product today? Um, and is this area, is my idea, As unique as I think it is and then taking the idea and maybe creating some guide or PDF concepts and, and doing some market testing just to be sure that you are able to [00:13:00] build an audience as you're building the platform far too many SAS people kind of build it and then they try to figure out how to expose it.

Ben: And you have to do that in some small measure, but you need to do very bite sized chunks. So the agile mindset helps the SAS, um, business entrepreneur, something small, see if there's users for it, something else, small, see if there's users for it. And then once you have a few users. Then you're just listening to them and you're building into the demand and you're, you're taking their ideas and that what they've expressed that they need and you're, um, you're turning that into product feature.

Ben: So you're not doing one off bespoke, um, you're not doing that as, as much as you possibly can, but you are listening to what they're saying and you're turning that into your product requirements and then just becomes a cycle of listening and executing so that your early adopters are rewarded by being able to help you with your roadmap.

Ben: And I think, I really think that's the key to success, listening to your [00:14:00] users and listening to the market and, um, you know, just continuing to grind it out. Um, but it's not for the faint of heart. It does not happen magically. It only happens through a lot of hard work.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now I have two questions for you, Ben, based on what you just mentioned.

Mehmet: So for the, uh, tech enabled services. So if you want to take an example that you think, you know, was very successful, like which one would come to the mind? Um,

Ben: Um, good example would be like a legal zoom, right? The, the, um, legal zoom. What are they doing? They're filing your LLC. I don't want to go figure out how to file an LLC.

Ben: I might even need to do it in several States. I might need to be registered in several States because I have employees there. I don't want to know how to do that. So legal zoom is a great example in my mind of a tech tech enabled service. And I do think that they have. Now, as they've been around for 20 plus years, they also have, um, subscriptions that you can subscribe to, to say, [00:15:00] keep your company in compliance or, you know, these kinds of things.

Ben: So that's a, that's an example. Um, I built a legal services company as one of my ventures and sold it to Legal Zoom. So, uh, somewhat biased there, but it's a great example of a tech enabled service.

Mehmet: Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of companies that are moving to this. Uh, sometimes if I'm not mistaken, people, they kind of doing it into a product tie service.

Mehmet: So basically, you know, like you said, yeah, so you set the fee, um, you know, and everything's like kind of moving to, to subscription. Like even people talks about like car services. You know, so, so you just, you have to subscribe to the car service, uh, enable to drive it if you don't pay it stops and so on.

Mehmet: Now the other

Ben: Yeah. One of my, one of my buddies is doing, uh, is doing tires. I think that's maybe more of a two sided marketplace, but you can have a subscription that is, uh, that you're paying monthly for. When you need tires, you just say, okay, it's time. And they come and replace your tires on your car [00:16:00] mobily.

Ben: Yeah. So a bunch of cool things like that. Yeah.

Mehmet: Now, I even, you know, to the point, to your point, like, even I've seen at least locally here, I live in Dubai. So for the audience just to know, so, and I'm sure they are doing the same across the globe, but even some of these two sided marketplaces, so they are just adding, you know, some kinds of these services where, hey, like if you.

Mehmet: pay this, we can also, for example, do daily meals for you, right? So, so they, they try, I mean, the Ubers and, you know, their equivalents here. Now, to the point that you mentioned, Ben, about the SaaS founders and the bootstrapping and finding the ideas, there's a lot of information. I mean, there's abundance in information that sometimes people tell me, but we are like little bit kind of.

Mehmet: overwhelmed with this information about, you know, finding the right ideas because everyone want to avoid building something no one would use it. So [00:17:00] from your observations, like where are the best places people really can, uh, have good, I would say, at least, you know, Primarily, you know, understanding of the market that they are planning to go to, is there a need there?

Mehmet: Is it a good niche? Some people say Reddit, some people they say go to X or follow me on Twitter. So what are you seeing from, from that perspective?

Ben: Yeah, I think for me, it's more of some, um, I used to not have the marketing module at all. Like, uh, this was a recent development a few years ago where I picked up a couple of books, a story brand by Don Miller.

Ben: Really any of Don Miller's book is a great place. For any of Donald Miller's books is a great place for a technologist who has been mostly focused on writing product software that was really coming from someone else's ideas. Um, the reason why I like Donald Miller's work is because it [00:18:00] made me more of an entrepreneur.

Ben: I got to think about not only my career, um, how my career fits into a business, but also, um, Um, but just think of my career more holistically and, uh, and then the, um, kind of think it like a business person. Um, and story brand framework is a, is a great way to understand how you should communicate your ideas.

Ben: You're talking to the user. You're not talking about yourself. So when I see on the internet, I see. See, we, or our in the product messaging, I know that they're missing the mark and they're probably struggling to convert. When I see you, you know, you, um, you are this kind of person. You might need these things.

Ben: These are the things that my product, that this product does for you. That's the right voice for your product marketing. Um, and then who are you talking to? So who are you talking to? So marketing techniques like the, the, who's the persona, who's my user. Um, and then who is that, that person within the company, within the [00:19:00] buyer.

Ben: So, um, if you're doing B2B software, you really need to be clear about who is this product for. When we built legal link, we clearly. Knew that we were for paralegals, like paralegals were going to be the user of our software. Um, but we had other people in the business that were probably going to make the purchase decision.

Ben: So we needed to tailor our product messaging. Um, and we even came up with a hashtag legal rockstar. Because that might resonate with the paralegals. They are the legal rock stars of, of the legal firm. Um, and so, um, you, you gotta kind of get a general understanding of those concepts and those concepts are plentiful.

Ben: Um, just cause there's a lot of places to read about them doesn't necessarily mean you should feel overwhelmed. Um, but things like buyer persona and, and that are kind of table stakes for trying to think of how you're going to navigate the product. Because in SAS. It's as big of a marketing problem [00:20:00] as it is the product development problem.

Ben: Um, exposing your ideas like right up there, you're going to spend just as much money in the end. You will spend just as much money on marketing and idea exposure as you will on, on building the product and the, the development costs, um, to get all your features, um, put in place.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know, here, because some people comes to me and, you know, uh, I say also one of the easiest thing you can do is to use, uh, if you like, of course, because it's successful.

Mehmet: I know like many people use it and they were successful use, for example, something like the, uh, lean startup canvas, for example, to make sure that you have like that. Yeah. So, so it gives you some clarity of exactly what you're trying to do and who you should be building for. And the other thing that comes to mind, and you know, because I've watched a lot of his lectures.

Mehmet: So Steve Black, always he gives also his advice, go out of the building and speak to your customers. And people ask me, okay, how are we going to find them? I said, okay, because if you're building [00:21:00] something, you should know someone, you know, that might be interested in this. And this is your starting point.

Mehmet: You don't need to spend a lot of money on, you know, like market research. Of course, you might need it at some stages, but I mean, you should do it by yourself. You should, you know, get your hands dirty, as we say. And then, you know, you start to get the feedback. And then as to your point, once you have a couple of customers who are willing to pay you, Then, you know, this will, will take, uh, will take, you know, the startup to the next phase.

Mehmet: You want to add something to that? Yeah, one approach,

Ben: yeah, one approach that really worked for one of my clients was they, uh, they spent some time on the Figma high fidelity wireframes. Really put a lot of detail in it, made sure it was high fidelity. Like a quality frame, um, in what they were really wanting to build.

Ben: And then they started a sales campaign, like a marketing campaign to their ideal customer. And they just said, I'm not trying to sell you any. In fact, I can't sell you anything right now. We haven't built this yet, but I would love to get your [00:22:00] feedback. Um, and, um, they were able to book a lot of those calls.

Ben: And then with each of those calls, they got such valuable feedback on like, you know, they just asked like five standard questions. Is this something that you would pay for if it, if it would did this? And, um, if not, what is it that would, you know, what, what is it that you would pay for? And they got all kinds of pricing information and then started building that.

Ben: Well, they kept all of those people in the funnel. They got enough validation that when they launched, they got 10, 15 subscribers right off the jump, um, cause they were already building the audience. So that really the takeaway here is like, you got to build your audience as you're building your product.

Ben: You can't put those two things separately from each other.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now, of course, like the journey of building something, being an entrepreneur requires a lot of also. Focus on personal productivity. So what do you think, [00:23:00] maybe from your experience, what were like the productivity hacks, let's say, that you found that they are the most effective, um, in your entrepreneurial journey?

Ben: Yeah, um, the cheeky thing here is make sure your tools are working for you. You're not working for your tools. Um, I call it surfing chaos, so just be careful about like, Oh, I got to keep up with my slack every five minutes. I got to keep up with my email every five minutes. Um, I w I would say scheduling those blocks.

Ben: Like, when am I going to check Slack? When am I going to check email? That is really big for me. And then, um, right now I'm really working with this idea of a 45 minute blitz. So I know my one thing for the week. Um, so that's, uh, that's a whole nother topic. Like know your one thing, like what is your top three goals for the week?

Ben: What's your one thing that you need to get, get accomplished. Um, having that clarity takes some, some planning. So, so do [00:24:00] that. And whether you're a Pomodoro guy or you're a, um, a calendar gal, um, it doesn't really matter. Um, for me, I feel like I really need to turn, you know, turn my desktop on to do not disturb, 45 minute blitz, then I'll get a 15 minute break and just, um, making sure that I'm accomplishing a task, maybe put on a little, um, you know, lo fi music or something.

Ben: And just really use those 45 minute blitzes as focus blocks where you're going to focus on your one thing. And don't check email, don't check slack, don't answer the phone, just, um, and I think the more you do that, at least the more I do it, I'm really finding, um, how much I enjoy those blitzers. And, um, I think if we're really honest with ourselves, we're, we're just not Being productive.

Ben: We're surfing chaos. And so hours worked is not really what matters. It's [00:25:00] focused time to accomplish that one thing.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And I want to add to what you mentioned now for some people, 45 minutes works for other 60 minutes works for other people, 90 minutes works. So just pick what you want. And I would advise people to read this book, which is called deep work by Cal Newport.

Mehmet: It was like Game changing for me when I read it and you know, at first, you know, I wasn't hesitant because I was listening from other people who do the motivational speech and so on about also they, they advise the same thing, like, okay, take rest, put your phone or your, or your laptop on, do not disturb.

Mehmet: And then, but really in that book, you know, actually it comes from personal experience and he did it into a, uh, storytelling way, which, you know, you say, okay, let me try this. And really, when I start to apply this. It really works, you know, like you feel yourself not overwhelmed anymore. You're not urged to open Slack or Teams or whatever it is.

Mehmet: So a hundred [00:26:00] percent, I agree with you on this one, Ben. And you know, it's very important because. As an entrepreneur, you know, you're under stress already, you know, you have multiple things, you are doing multiple, you know, roles, you're wearing multiple hats also as well. So absolutely on this. Now, I want to ask you, Ben, about, you know, innovation in general, and especially because, of course, like, we're both in the technology So some of the things people, you know, always ask me also as well, like, how do you keep, you know, how we can keep track of all what's happening?

Mehmet: There's a lot of cutting edge technology out there. Um, and how we can keep our company, you know, in, in, in, I would say, sync or up to date with everything, especially software development, something very fast. I know, like you mentioned in the introduction, you do works in DevOps and data science. So What is, you know, the way to, to keep, you know, always up to the latest and [00:27:00] greatest when it comes to tech?

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, before I answer your question, I'll definitely second your shout out for Deep Work. That's a great book. Um, and you know, I love the way he talks about multiple strategies for getting into the, you know, getting into the deep work. Um, For keeping up with technology trends, um, you know, what we do, uh, at Particle with some of our clients is we talk about the periodic table of business tools.

Ben: So if you go back to chemistry class and you think of the periodic table and you think of metals, liquids, solids, you know, gases, like all the different, uh, vertical bars on that periodic table, um, What we find is that business needs one of each and needs to be diverse. So oftentimes in technology, we get overly concerned about the tool choices and not just like, Hey, I need a capability within my, my stack.

Ben: And then I [00:28:00] need the expertise to handle that capability. And we don't worry as much about, Oh, I need to know all the ways to do ETL processing, or I need to do all the ways to write web based software. We tend to try to pick one and, and focus on it. And for businesses, I think this is really important. Um, what I see a lot of businesses doing is switching between like solutions.

Ben: And I think that's very costly and there's no perfect solution. There's no perfect data management, uh, system. Like, you know, if you spend all your time deciding, should we do Snowflake or Databricks, I say, pick one and, and learn it and leverage it for its capability and then figure out what other things around it you have left.

Ben: Um, oftentimes I'll do audits, uh, inside of businesses and they have two or three of a similar thing. Um, you know, they have both Google and they have office three 65. [00:29:00] And while that there may be a reason for that. And I, uh, I'm not saying you can only have one or the other, but. Um, I often will also hear like, Hey, we're on Salesforce, but we want to shift our CRM to this other one.

Ben: Like, and I question why. Uh, just shift like for like, um, instead, let's make sure that we've composed our unique molecule from all of the elements. Um, and then we're really focused on the user experience, moving the user through those different IT solutions. Um, so yeah, that's my guidance on, uh, kind of keeping up with the, with the Joneses, if you will, or staying up to date.

Ben: Uh, you know, we're, of course, engaged in, uh, the social conversation through our podcast, uh, the Particle Accelerator, and, uh, keeping up with the latest best practices, uh, in the different cloud environments. Um, but I think that the, like, I've even been in companies where, uh, the, the developers were kind of language nerds.

Ben: And so they wanted to, [00:30:00] Oh, is Ruby better than PHP? Uh, you know, is NET better than Java? And then before you know it, they have five or six different stack types. And it's very difficult for them to hire and, and staff and take care of all that. So I do think some consolidation of choice, uh, helps a business move a little bit quicker.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And just, you know, I remembered, I saw a couple of days back, uh, Regarding, you know, how companies that keep changing the, you know, the programming language, put them into a challenge because they need first to either get every developer, you know, to, to learn this new language, or, you know, they, they have to hire someone.

Mehmet: And this is like another challenge. And, you know, the very famous, uh, Peter Levels, you know, who's very famous on, on Twitter or X, uh, you know, I say, yeah, I've been using PHP for, You know, all from the time I start to build things and, you know, I didn't feel, you know, the urge to really shift because if I can do, I can [00:31:00] achieve what I'm planning to achieve with whatever technology or programming language I have currently, why do I need to do the shift?

Mehmet: Unless maybe I want, here I'm adding from my side, you know, and because I work as a consultant. So the only reason you do this is because you're going to Either save time or you're going to save money and, uh, make your customers more happy. So otherwise I don't really think, you know, there's a, a need really to jump on everything.

Mehmet: Yeah. I agree with you, man.

Ben: Yeah, I totally agree. So, you know, uh, you, you brought up PHP, like the Laravel framework is a nice framework. You can organize your PHP now in their MVC and the whole ecosystem around that. That is not the. You know, the 15 years old PHP framework where people were putting queries in JavaScript and HTML all in the same page, right?

Ben: So it's come a long way and you start to, you start to respect that particular ecosystem and understand its value. Um, but we [00:32:00] often apply these kind of artificial cool factors. Um, to our technology decision, uh, oh, well, we don't really want to be in a PHP shop and that that's not based on anything other than kind of a subjective opinion of what's, uh, you know, what's cool.

Ben: And I think those, um, those situations get in it. In the way, as much as this, um, this compelling building the perfect system, like we want to write software, we want to write technology with quality in mind. So this is not, I'm not throwing quality out the window, but we, we, we start thinking about building the perfect system.

Ben: And if we prioritize that above the business goals, then we're kind of our own worst enemy, right? We're building. Um, was that YAGNI, you ain't going to need it. We start developing things that aren't really in, in play. And, um, we need to focus on stage appropriate decision making so [00:33:00] that we're addressing the problem at hand, uh, and, and still keeping quality in mind, but, but not going overboard with, uh, with perfection.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now we, we spoke about asking people not to jump quickly on new technology and so on, but I'm sure like there is something, um, You know, from the current emerging technologies that you're personally excited about and, you know, you're watching it very closely. Um, so what are like some of the tech, maybe it might be more than one thing as well.

Mehmet: So what are like the current emerging technologies or trends? Yeah, I mean,

Ben: I, I promised myself I would go through a podcast without talking about AI, but, um, but of course we're, we're looking at different practices. We're helping a couple of clients with some AI implementations just to see how it changes.

Ben: customer service workflows, um, even a recommendation system that's conversational or AI [00:34:00] based rather than, um, you know, traditionally indexed, you know, all the sliders and the ranges and the categories we're trying to kind of, um, offer a level of abstraction with an AI, um, above that. And, um, and then, you know, what does AI do to the actual practice of coding with copilot and other tools, um, to help people just.

Ben: Hit the keyboard faster, right to help them get stuff on the page And then even you know, my personal writing practice taking transcripts from meetings putting those in AI doing brainstorming with those so it's definitely changing the way that we work and I think for the better for most part, but we're also cautiously Um, leveraging it like we, we talk a lot internally about once you take it from AI, you own it, like there's no such thing as like, well, that's what the AI did, like, uh, you know, um, but that, [00:35:00] that extreme ownership over the output.

Ben: Um, and I have some very vocal people, like when they see fluffy emails or when they see fluff, fluffy language, they're calling people out. Like, we don't do this. We keep our, uh, our communication, uh, simple and um, resolute. And I think AI has a problem with simple and resolute. It wants to kind of get wordsmithy.

Ben: And I think that is taking, uh, written communication in the wrong direction. We need to be brief and brilliant is, is the key. And I think AI still has a challenge with that. Um, but yeah, so we're watching that. Um, we're also especially interested in, uh, rewriting the world's legacy software. So we're working on, uh, a COBOL converter right now where, um, we've, uh, retooled some legacy monoliths into microservices.

Ben: So we're looking at tools to help us with that. Uh, and then, um, [00:36:00] on the data science and DevOps, we're also just looking at the tool chain and the problems that folks are having. Um, data science is the sexy term, but it usually comes off, um, comes together where the actual science part is just the cherries on top of a big data engineering Sunday and you got to do all that work to collect the data, get it unified into a, uh, A lake house, um, type of architecture, which is what we're, we're, we're kind of like the data lake and the warehouse.

Ben: We're kind of combining those two and doing lake house architectures, um, so that we can get that data available to, uh, the science part of things. The AI models are the machine learning models, the business analytics as quickly as possible. So all of the above, um, we're, we're pressing, pressing the edges on

Mehmet: a lot of exciting ones.

Mehmet: You mentioned, you know, I'm not into that domain. I mean, banking, but I know like banks would benefit from the COBOL converter because, you know, a lot of articles [00:37:00] about like how still they rely. I think also in airlines, if I'm not mistaken, some of the oldest, uh, you know, booking systems or something they use internally, uh, they rely on COBOL and they don't find someone who's, uh, experience in that.

Mehmet: So that's really a game changer. And the other thing you mentioned about AI and, you know, people ask me like, do you use it to generate the content? I said, I played with it at the beginning and yeah, I use sometimes, but when I start to see, you know, the output, I'm not happy myself. So what I do now as someone who's, uh, I would not say, I would say not a native English speaker.

Mehmet: So the only thing I do to, to, to chat GPT or Gemini, if I use them, I say, don't change the tone. Just, just proofread this to me because I, I don't want your, your, your text. I mean, I don't want your output because yeah, as you mentioned, like it's kind of fluffy. And when I see now any email, any, social media posts I can immediately understand was this generated by AI or like [00:38:00] someone really put the time maybe to to change it.

Mehmet: So all that I do is I just give it to to the AI, say proofread it to me. That's it.

Ben: Yeah, no, that's great. Uh, yeah, we constantly talking about the, what are those guidelines and those principles? Um, because we want people to leverage things that make them more productive. Um, but we don't want our teammates to become synthetic.

Ben: Uh, we don't want things to become fake. And so we're, we're hypersensitive about that. Um, because yeah, because it is, it is detectable, you know, people can recognize that, that artificialness.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Uh, Now I want to like a little bit, uh, you know, as we're coming to, to, to an end, uh, man. Um, do you think some tech people, they have some misconception about tech entrepreneurship?

Mehmet: Uh, if so, in your opinion, why and how they [00:39:00] can, I would say, get these, let's call them mythos debunked because, you know, it's easy to be an ATAR country. Of course, I'm not saying easy in the same, like, yeah, it's like, let's go do a new venture as a tech startup. But I mean, What are the misconceptions you think some people they have?

Ben: Um, you know, I, I, I talked to a lot of more service oriented businesses. Um, like maybe you're a plumbing organization that's been around a long time. I often talk to them when they have a great idea, like, Hey, I want to write some custom software because I haven't found this particular piece, uh, in the business.

Ben: There's probably a lot of misconceptions, but the one I run into the most is that a service company can pivot into a product company. And that's not to say like the example that you mentioned earlier to say a service company productizes their services. I think that's great. That's not what I'm talking [00:40:00] about.

Ben: Um, but just that if a service company creates a product, they will take their margin and they will invest it into the product. And then also the exposure of that product into the market. And then. Chances are then they'll need investment or maybe they want to sell their service company. It will just look like a service company that isn't very profitable because they've been spending all of this money.

Ben: And so if you're going to do that as an entrepreneur, you need to think, am I a product company or am I a services company? Probably go ahead and create separate entities and, um, you know, keep the books separate on those so that you can, um, you can, Uh, safely do that without devaluing one, um, one revenue generating source for the exposure of another.

Ben: So, um, the other misconception is that if you build the product, you'll have users, right? If you build it, they will come. Um, this is a, this is a huge problem. This, you know, then I'd spend a lot of time talking about the [00:41:00] need for product and product marketing, um, to make sure you're connecting with the user.

Ben: Um, and, um, I think, you know, that, that product building product is easy. And it's not so much that people would say that out loud, like, Oh, it's easy. Just, you know, do this, do that. It's like Legos, just put the Legos together. Um, but that there's a misconception that I need all of this in order to enter the market.

Ben: Like I need all of this tech. Sometimes the best softwares are softwares that do one thing. You even see this in commerce. How many brands do we love today that started out just selling that one thing, right? Viory is a great clothing brand. They started out with just shorts. That's all they did. Bomba started out with just socks.

Ben: That's all they did. Now, uh, Fresh Clean Tees. Now, now it's called something else. They started out with just the best t shirts. So even in commerce, we're being taught to focus on that one thing that you do really [00:42:00] well and then expand over time. And this is how you have to look at software. Start super lean, just that one need that needs to be met and then grow, grow it over time.

Ben: And then don't get service companies and product companies confused. Um, that'll just make them both look, um, you know, look ugly.

Mehmet: Great advice, I would say, Ben. Um, this is, you know, when I, it comes to an end, I keep it to my guests to add anything that I missed or maybe final thoughts, maybe again, advice to fellow entrepreneurs you want to tell us today, Ben, and of course, where people can find more about Particle 421 and more about you.

Ben: Yeah, so, um, would love to speak with you, um, and anyone interested in learning more about our C2 advisory services or, um, you have, uh, some project in mind or, or some legacy migration in mind. Um, I'm easy to reach. You go to [00:43:00] particle41. com. The call to action on our website is scheduling a meeting with me.

Ben: So my Calendly link is there. You can be on the phone with me in just, you know, as soon as you have time free. Um, so for your convenience, we've made it extremely easy to book time. Um, and I love speaking CEO to CEO or executive to executive, um, uh, about what your problems are. And if I can't solve them, I have a robust network.

Ben: I can direct you to someone who, uh, is probably a right fit for you. So, uh, we'd love to talk to listeners, um, and just, uh, hear about their problems and see if I have any shared experience to go along with it.

Mehmet: Great. Thank you very much, Ben. I will make sure that the website link is in the show notes so you can find it all for for your reference.

Mehmet: And again, thank you very much, Ben, for this really engaging discussion today and all the experience that you shared with us, whether about, you know, your journey or also like, you know, building the proper SaaS company, I would say. So [00:44:00] thank you very much for all your insights. And this is for the audience.

Mehmet: This is how I end my episodes usually. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you very much for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so, please subscribe and, uh, you know, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the, you know, people who keep coming and send me their comments, thank you very much for coming and, you know, sending me your comments.

Mehmet: And thank you very much for tuning in. We'll meet again very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.