Hello. Welcome to the panel. And I'm we're here without Justin this week, so I don't have the polished intro that he always says. But Yeah. You know, I'm Brian Casel.
Brian Casel:I'm the founder of Builder Methods.
Jordan:I'm Jordan Gal, the founder at heyrosy.com, and we have our friend and recurring guest now, Henry Poydar. Welcome.
Hendry Poddar:Thanks for having me. I'm Henry Poydar, founder of Steady at runsteady.com. And I guess I took away some of the hair quotient from the panel this week. Okay. Justin's got a full head.
Jordan:Justin's the one.
Hendry Poddar:He his is very nice.
Jordan:Yeah. He's always been very stylish.
Brian Casel:That's right. Yeah. He's he's got like the weekly haircut going and
Jordan:He dresses nicely. He dresses nicely. I'm always like, wow. Imagine dressing nicely. I used to enjoy dressing nicely, and it's impossible to justify at home.
Brian Casel:It's impossible. I'm I'm just way too comfortable in in the sweats or, you know, now now every other it's day, I'm in either like gym shorts or or sweatpants depending on the weather.
Jordan:You you know what's really inspired me is your friends and neighbors. Yeah. John Hamm looks so good in a blazer. I'm like, I gotta find more excuses to wear blazers.
Brian Casel:I know. I'm sticking out of a conference in June and then another one in in September and I'm like, I gotta go shopping to get some like real clothes. Like, I'm gonna I gotta be out in the world again. This is crazy.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah, I mean, we can talk about this a little bit, but I am the critics for my outfits happen to be my children, right? So,
Jordan:you know. Always.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. Tina Fey had a thing where she talked about, it was on some talk show or something where she talked about how like when you've got a teenager, like it kind of feels like you're dating them, you're trying to like depress them but not show that you're really that you really care and you're interested and all of that. So
Jordan:Yes. My wife sent me that clip. Yeah. Because she has three daughters. Right.
Jordan:So she has that feeling of like, dude, we're we're just gonna have dinner but like, oh, oh, I'm sure you have plans.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan:As like a normal interaction. Right.
Hendry Poddar:We're just
Jordan:gonna we're gonna do everything for you but like you don't have to actually, you know, take part.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. That's extended into my outfits. I'm trying to like just not got a critique the other day that my jeans were too tight. It's like that. Those are that's old school.
Jordan:Well, this is the first time they're encountering wide leg pants as a trend. So they think they
Brian Casel:Yeah, that's like a new trend. I'm like, the nineties, we're back. Here we go.
Hendry Poddar:It's kinda not a new trend. It was like a couple years. We're we're behind.
Jordan:Yeah. Don't know if it helps our case that we're like, we're so old that that that's actually coming back from when we were teenagers.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan:That's how long the cycle has been.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yep. Well, I never I never got into the the tight skinny jeans. I'm just like, I'm I'm gonna stick with the nineties until they come back, you know. I I
Jordan:did that for a while. I'm always I always find myself continuously embarrassed of the previous stage of fashion. I'm like, oh, I like the way these look. What was I thinking?
Hendry Poddar:Yeah.
Jordan:For you know, previously.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. And then it's
Jordan:just that on repeat forever.
Brian Casel:Alright. So so today, should we talk about business or AI or kids? Maybe all of it?
Jordan:Yeah. I think we're gonna get to all this.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. It's all inter interrelated. So
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, why don't we start out with some some updates, business side?
Jordan:Henry, what's what's new? Last time you were on the pod Yep. You talked a lot about really figuring how to dial in the the narrative around your business and how that extends into the sales process and how that looks on the inside of your customers' organizations. Where where has that gone? How has that been, you know, turned into marketing material and the sales process and product updates and all that?
Hendry Poddar:Yeah, lots going on there. Steady is a coordination platform for teams and for organizations and companies. And what we've realized from interacting with our customers, we have of course tons of AI features within Steady LLMs are really good at pattern matching, coordination is about pattern matching and using that to provide guidance and assess risk and things like that. And so that's been obviously been great for our product, but what we are wrestling with is how our customers are using AI. I think, we've realized there's, I think Brian, you might've talked about this a little bit.
Hendry Poddar:There's kind of like two kinds of agents out there. There's what I'll call like the single player agent and the multiplayer agent. Single player in my mind is the personal assistant, like the agent that works for a person. And it's kind of like a one to many relationship, right? Like I have, right now I've got like seven Claude and Codex terminal tabs open.
Hendry Poddar:Those are my agents that are doing things. They're working for me. It's a single player mode. Okay. But I think what we're starting to see and what we start to see our customers is the multiplayer mode, where you have an agent that's not working for a particular person, it's working for a team or it's working for a company.
Hendry Poddar:So something like Charlie or Devin or some of the semi autonomous agents that are doing like infrastructure stuff and things like that. And those deployments of bigger companies are failing really terribly, right, Because they haven't solved the coordination problem. Like how do you keep these things aligned and in sync? And it's not a performance problem with the tech, it's an alignment problem. And so, okay, well we have a coordination platform, what can we do there?
Hendry Poddar:And so we've been thinking really hard about what it looks like to have an agent in the same coordination loop as humans. And that's sort of where we see our business headed is around that. So to get there, we've done a whole bunch of things on the products to sort of build up to that. We've released an MTP server. We just yesterday released another version of our API.
Hendry Poddar:We're standing up a CLI. So all the things where you can use our product, I'll say headlessly as a customer. So you can, a lot of our customers today just use our product through Cloud and Cloud Code and Cowork and things like that, which I find really interesting. Yeah. But we envision a day where it's not it's gonna be just agents autonomously acting with our product too and participating in those same coordination loops.
Hendry Poddar:And so
Brian Casel:Super interesting. We
Hendry Poddar:have an open source method that Steady is based on called continuous coordination. And Adam, our head of product, and I have been working behind the scenes to kind of figure out how that accommodates agents, and I'm doing a couple things around that. One is we changed the the we updated the coordinate continuous coordination website. We have a schema that an open source schema we published. We have an open source continuous coordination server that you can run a docker that we've published.
Hendry Poddar:And I'm doing a talk, which I talked about on the on the last panel, about this whole concept of humans and agents teams. And I'm I'm giving the talk at at at with our cost with a couple of our customers at one of their at some lunch and learns, but the idea is to have this kind of, like, canned thought leadership piece that I can use as a narrative for where we're headed with Steady as a business, but also just my perspective and my team's perspective on where things are headed.
Brian Casel:That's super I I wanna I actually wanna see your your talk on that, especially because, you know, you especially you, Henry, both of you have a lot more experience with how how actual human teams need to coordinate around around AI. In in my case, I'm I'm mostly solo. I I do work with a few people, but it's not it's not as collaborative with AI with the team. But on the continuous coordination model, I've I've been really leaning into this same model for all the things that I'm building these days. So I days, I'm building everything I'm building are, like, internal tools to help me do run builder methods.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and they're all following the same model now where I'm building a tool and an agent with a skill and myself. It's this triangle. Yeah. I did a video on it a couple weeks ago.
Brian Casel:I called it, like, the night shift model, to try to brand it a little bit, but it but, basically, it's like like, yes, I do like the direct, like, in Claude or in Claude code, like, you know, chatting and asking it to do stuff and help me. So that that's more like direct collaboration. But most of the operations happen on in the background, like background tasks that have like agents that have jobs. Right? So, the idea is, like, agents have a skill that they that they follow and run on a recurring basis, maybe a nightly basis, maybe an hourly basis, but every every time they run, they are checking in and then they are interacting with my app, which has like API endpoints.
Brian Casel:Right? So Right. The agent like pulls like, alright, what's the latest batch of content? What do I need to do on it? Write write some drafts, write these revisions.
Brian Casel:Okay. I'm gonna write these revisions and write some comments. And then I check-in later in the day. It's like, alright, these are the drafts, I'm gonna review them, I approve, I I reject, I leave a comment, and then the next time the agent runs, it picks up those comments and it and and then it it pushes the ball even even further. So it's like these, like, little touch points throughout the day and where where we're sort of, like, leaving each other notes, you know, in in in whatever interface it is.
Brian Casel:The interface might be a custom app that I've spin up or it just might be a markdown file that we both write to and read, you know, every time it runs. And, I just really like that model. And and it's so so it's a lot of, like, custom apps that don't have any AI built into them. They just have an API.
Hendry Poddar:Right.
Brian Casel:You know, and then and then all the all the smart creative knowledge stuff gets baked into a skill that I give to whatever agent is is running it, you know.
Jordan:Does that that sound familiar, Henry? My brain is stretching to wrap around the abstract concepts that we're talking about. It would be very helpful to me and maybe to other people listening if you if you give an example of, like, a piece of work or project. So, Brian, you started to get into that where maybe you're writing a piece of content or YouTube. Henry, like, are these the the concepts that Brian's talking about in terms of coordination?
Jordan:It's not real time. It's, like, synced. It's it's it's once a day or or it's recurring. These the type of issues that you're encountering? Like, what's an ex what's an example of a project and what's so difficult about this coordination issue?
Hendry Poddar:Yeah, well, think it comes back to a lot of the problems that human teams have. And when you think about all the things you're talking about, Brian, you're basically talking about like how do you have the human in the loop? And you have a way that you're doing it. Continuous coordination is by the way another way of having the human in a loop, it's a structured way. But what it comes down to is this balance of accountability and autonomy in service of confidence and trust.
Hendry Poddar:So if the three of us are working on a team, how do we build up trust and confidence for us to truly work autonomously on our jobs and trust that the other person is doing their their contributing in some kind of way. Right?
Jordan:Is this work mostly technical in nature? And maybe that's why I have trouble connecting the abstract? Or is this like the three of us are on a team and we're working to push out a, I don't know, a marketing campaign? Well, yeah. And
Hendry Poddar:then write that example.
Jordan:Okay. Like, let's So we have a a new feature is coming out of the company, and we want to announce it. We need to coordinate with the product team, with the engineering team to make sure we understand the features properly. We need to work with design to make sure that we're gonna show it off properly. We're we're we're the marketing team, so we're thinking about how we communicate it, how we highlight it, who who we send it out to, is it all one announcement, who's doing the video.
Jordan:So, like complicated but regular stuff.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. I mean, and Brian jump in wherever, but I, you know, okay. So the three of us are on a team. We've got a marketing campaign. So there's kind of like a big picture loop of coordination that we're we're moving towards.
Hendry Poddar:Right? This goal of this launch of whatever we're marketing. Yeah. And then day to day, we need to work together on things. And so we need to trust one another.
Hendry Poddar:So there's a big picture loop of the big thing we're working on that other teams around us care about too. Right? They they have dependencies on us, and then there's our day to day work. And typically, that is solved today, and forget the agents for a sec. Let's just say it's us three.
Hendry Poddar:Typically, we would solve it every day by syncing up somehow.
Jordan:Yeah, Slack and meetings.
Hendry Poddar:Slack and meetings. Now that's terribly inefficient. So there's a structured way to do it that has been proven over the years and that's to do what's called a standup meeting, right? So we, on a regular basis, on a weekly cadence or on a daily cadence, the three of us would get in a room or in a Zoom call and we go around. And the key thing that we're gonna do in that call is we're not just gonna say what we did, we're gonna say what we're gonna do.
Jordan:It's like trust building along the way. Yes, the video that I'm responsible for is progressing properly. I have the script. I did what I said I was going to do. Now I'm gonna talk about what I'm gonna do next.
Hendry Poddar:That's right. And and it builds and builds and builds because the next day we're going to, well, you know, Jordan, yesterday you said you were going to do this and then you're going to close that loop. You're going to say, I actually got it done or I hit this blocker or whatever, I need Brian's help for X. And so over time, the three of us, because we're constantly matching intentions and accomplishments, we build up trust with each other. And when you build up trust, a couple of things happen.
Hendry Poddar:One is we all get more, a little bit more bought in on what everybody else is doing. Two, we understand each other's contributions so capacity goes up. Like, our output will go up in theory. I mean, this what the agile methodology is all about. And then continuous learning and then, effectiveness overall and impact also goes up because of these compounding attributes of trust that are going up along with capacity.
Hendry Poddar:So that's like the human way of coordinating. Right? We're we're staying in the loop. It may not be efficient,
Jordan:but it works. It That that the that's the problem that you always have to contend with. The current way does work. So we're trying to push things to make it better. You don't agree, Henry?
Jordan:Do feel like people people feel like it doesn't work?
Hendry Poddar:Well, well, I I think what well, I think what we're doing is we're talking about what works with with humans right now.
Jordan:Right?
Hendry Poddar:Mhmm. And I think maybe you're saying like, does it work? And then well, then we'll talk about if we can apply it to agents, but
Brian Casel:Well, I'm actually curious to know what what you to think of this, because I don't know how this plays out on real teams. And I think I struggle with, like, I think a lot of teams are really struggling with this too, but I struggle with, how do I explain this or or teach this in some way. Right? And that and this question of, like, a lot of teams know how to build and deploy products and services the old way, and we have actual team members in these roles. How do we what what do we need to change?
Brian Casel:What do we need to rethink? What do we need to reorganize in our in in our teams and organizations now that AI is in the mix? Right? And and like because my question with that, I don't I don't have a solid answer for this, to be honest. Because if I think, because I the the one trend seems to be the blending and blurring of skill sets and roles.
Brian Casel:Right? Even even within my own solo work, like, it used to be that, like, I would do some design work, and then I would do some front end work, and then I would do some back end work, and then and then I would do some marketing work. And, like, even if it's just me or a few different people, those are separate silos, separate departments. In many teams, they have separate people doing those specialized skills, and even if you keep the same people in those same seats, in those same roles, and you and you give each of them an AI agent to work with, yes, they can get a little bit better at their design work and their writing work and their coding work in individually, but also what I'm finding is that it's it's very inefficient to keep these separate. Like, it's much more efficient for me to build something and do the design and the front end and the back end together in one session with AI.
Brian Casel:Right. And the the the actual optimal workflow, the sequence of things is changing, it's all blending together. So if you if you have a designer on the team or if you have a product manager on the team who's who's been around for years and experienced, right, and and you've got a back end and and and technical lead, how do you coordinate, how do you decide, like, we need to take this feature and ship it, who's gonna do what, we know we wanna use AI, like, because if it's like a single person, they could probably ship that in a few days, or a few hours maybe. If it's a team, where do the meetings happen? Where do the stops and starts happen?
Brian Casel:Who who's working with what agent at which computer? Like, how is this all working,
Hendry Poddar:you know? Well, I think to to a large extent, this, like, this blending of roles thing kinda already got solved in in sort of these in in in the I'll loosely call it the the agile world. Right? Like, the original agile stuff was about developers on a team who absolutely had totally overlapping roles. Right?
Hendry Poddar:They were they happen to be in a single domain like, you know, coding or a software product, but they but all those roles were were overlapping, and so that they needed this coordination on who's doing what and why. And I think that that need doesn't go away as us as humans start to use the tech and change the way what our what our individual roles are on teams.
Brian Casel:My one question, like, does it mean more, like, pair programming? Like, together, like a like a designer and a and a back end developer literally pair programming and interacting with Cloud Code at the same time so that the back end architect can can steer Claude
Hendry Poddar:Yeah.
Brian Casel:To to have the back end worked out while the front end saying, like, let's let's smooth out that UI at at the same time? Or
Hendry Poddar:I think it could be. I think it could be that. I think all those tools are available. I think my point is that we've been here before, right? The roles are changing, the designations on the team are changing, and a good team is gonna be flexible and accommodate that.
Hendry Poddar:The way good teams do that is they have some mechanism of continuously tracking intentions and accomplishments and retrospecting on those to get better. It's like, okay, you know, in a traditional agile team, you might have a retrospective after two weeks and I might look at you Brian and say like, you know, Brian, your capabilities because you're using this other agent here in the background, have totally changed. Like, on the next cycle of our work, on our next marketing campaign, or our next sprint, or whatever, we shouldn't do those things that you were doing before that assume that you only had this narrow role because your role is much bigger. We should actually assume this, you could take on this bit of work in service of this other goal. Does that make sense?
Jordan:It's it's like the foundation of, like, how people work together and what people try to accomplish. A lot of those stayed the same, and then inside of it, a lot of big big changes being forced into these organizations, single person companies. It's kind of a very interesting complicated problem, but you you kinda know what the issues are and what the concepts are. Well So it's like everything got Yeah. Etch A Sketch got, like, restarted, but then you you you almost have to draw the picture in a similar way.
Jordan:Right? At the end of the day, you you're still have people trying to accomplish things.
Hendry Poddar:Yes. But but, again, I think there the the paradigm we're talking about still is single player mode with the agents. I think it gets, like and I you're starting to get to this, Brian. I think it's gonna it's getting more complicated when the personal agents when you and I are sharing Cloud Code session or something like that, there is some autonomous agent that's going through and assigning us PRs or doing some market research and assuming something that we need to change about a marketing campaign or something like that. That's where I think it's that's the unsolved space.
Hendry Poddar:I mean, I I I have a theory on how you solve it, but but but I think that's where it's gonna start to get complicated. I think the changing of teams and how they're structured, I think we've done that as humans before. I think we're gonna do that. We've leveraged tech in different ways before. I think we're gonna do that some more.
Hendry Poddar:So I think there's a path there, I can see.
Brian Casel:It's almost like the question of like how many cooks in the kitchen for each individual project. Right? Like like like the old world is, like, okay, big new feature, let's let's put a high number of heads on this project to work together in meetings and and stand ups, and okay, today I'm gonna I'm gonna work on this front end piece and then then sync up with you, we're gonna merge it all together and and work together on this, but then maybe, you guys correct me if I'm wrong, maybe there is actually more individual ownership of big projects within a team. So instead so, okay, hey, we we we've got a big project we wanna ship in this business, instead of assigning five plus people to that, let's just assign one person to go off for a days with five agents. And then they come back to the table and say, alright, we we've got that.
Brian Casel:And then like the marketing person did the same thing over there and and then maybe that's the way you sync up. I I don't know, like Yeah.
Hendry Poddar:I think it's true. I mean, what you're saying is the shape of the process. I mean, the shape of the team will change, but not necessarily the shape of the process.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Hendry Poddar:But again, I I do think, however, though, when you put an agent into a seat like this and give them as, in your parlance, a job, how does that work? Right? Because that's different than Henry having 10 cloud code terminals open and parallel multitasking and handling a whole project on his own. Like, you know, I think that's just the scope of my work changed and the shape of the team I'm on changed, but it's a paradigm shift to actually have an agent Yeah, owning a job on a team.
Brian Casel:And I've always thought of it as two things that I always that I'm always doing simultaneously, right? There there is always a bunch of work. It's it's literally the the the difference between what is my job in the business and what are we trying to scale, right? Like Right. The the background jobs that are done I traditionally, I would just grow the actual human team to try to scale these jobs.
Brian Casel:Right. In this world, we're we're scaling with agents. Right. And and and and a very similar way, like, literally, I'm I'm building out builder builder methods right now. It's me plus one video editor, and honestly, his role is questionable at this point because agents are coming for that too.
Jordan:Yeah. Like TikTok,
Brian Casel:you know, and like everything else. I'm I'm literally building out a team of strategists and writers and creatives and editors and me. And, like Is it analogous to agents.
Jordan:Yeah. Analogous to, like, individual contributors and managers? And and you're scaling out the number of individual contributors is the easy part to scale up. But the management layer and the strategy layer, is that more complicated piece?
Brian Casel:A lot of the manager roles are just melt away. Right? Like, you just don't need managers. I'm the manager. Because the management becomes automated through programming it into skills and and agentic systems.
Brian Casel:Right? I I feel like managers are for managing people. Yeah. Right? They
Hendry Poddar:Oh. Man.
Jordan:Yes. Plus. Not purely for, you know, moving people around and keeping them on the same page, but there's there's more to that.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. I think I mean another way to another lens here is we might be talking about the problem is not the shape of teams or even the shape of roles. It's how you scale the coordination layer as the execution layer gets easier or the shape of teams changes. And how do you do that?
Jordan:Where's the where's the leverage in this? Where's, like, the arbitrage? Is it shrinking down the size of companies? Is it building up companies from, like, existing companies? Sounds very difficult.
Jordan:Henry, I think that's kind of the opportunity you're going after. Right?
Hendry Poddar:Yep.
Jordan:And then there's the question of, well, what happens when the company organization is native to this approach? What does that look like? Right? A company that gets started three years from today has a very different set of problems than a company that started ten years ago and is moving in this direction.
Brian Casel:I just can't help but think that it's a shrinking overall of number of number of people.
Jordan:Isn't it also an
Brian Casel:Big time.
Jordan:It sounds like an explosion of productivity.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. But that's what I mean. It's like Right. Explosion of productivity, reduction of headcount.
Jordan:I I guess the my question is, are those necessarily linked? The the car and horse analogy.
Brian Casel:Same thing. If there
Hendry Poddar:is a car and horse, there's like cyborg, cyborgs versus robots.
Jordan:Yeah. Internet, no internet. You know, huge productivity gains.
Hendry Poddar:I I I Did
Jordan:that really result in like mass unemployment and it just Well, I changed things.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. And I and I think yes. I I just think there's new opportunities and old ones fall away just like the same with any tech. I think the debate is whether this is different than any other tech. Meaning, and you know, the people who are we want you to buy tokens are saying absolutely this is different.
Hendry Poddar:You know, machine will take over the world. And and and it is magic. It is revolutionary.
Jordan:Right. Right.
Hendry Poddar:It does have the ring
Jordan:of truth because
Hendry Poddar:we're experiencing to do it. Like, replace all this with It is the OpenClient instance. But
Brian Casel:It is really interesting. Like, because, like, they're they're yeah. Is it different from other tech? Right? Like, we in the in the years just before AI came along, there seemed to be, like, an explosion, at least within software, of, like, automation tools.
Brian Casel:Right? Like, workflow automation tool Yeah. Tooling. No code, the Zappiers of the world. Like, that stuff really kinda took off in the couple of years before AI came along.
Brian Casel:There is separation between and this gets back to, like, the architecture of how how we build these systems now. There's deterministic stuff, and there's, like, what it like, non deter like, you know, creative thinking strategic work. Right? And anything that is deterministic, we can we can build into software and we can spin that up much faster because we could we could use Cloud Code. But but now there is a new element where we used to have to rely on people with creative strategic experience and skills to be able to do the nondeterministic work.
Brian Casel:But, like, yes, there's there's I think there still is and there always will be, especially higher level roles for humans to fill, to to be owners and deciders and and strategists and architects. But a lot of the creative work now can be programmed into an agent, you know. Like, the the LLMs are good enough to actually be writers.
Hendry Poddar:But I'd argue that that wasn't necessarily creative in the first place. It just wasn't automated. Like, I I do think that there's gonna be more of the nondeterministic opportunities because so much of the execution layer is getting automated. Yeah. I just think either there's just going to be more demand for generalist thinkers, more demand for creative problem solvers.
Hendry Poddar:That's why the last time we talked on the podcast, think engineers or people who get engineering degrees are in a good spot because engineering is just like that degree for me anyway was, I forget all the syntax, it was about learning how to solve problems in new and novel ways. And I think that's the scale, but I think the jury's out on whether there's like the headcount for that skill is less. My argument is that I don't think so. I just think there's I think everything shifts versus
Jordan:What makes me comfortable is that the role of the entrepreneur sounds a lot like what we're talking about, but that is the inner workings in service to the actual goal, which is identifying problems and desires
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan:And and meeting them. And and that that doesn't That's go not That's just forever, and it's great, and it's endless, and creative, and additive. And then And I think it's that you're talking that's about is like, yeah, like you you can accomplish what you want to accomplish. Meaning, you can get out into the market and into the world, the things you want out there much much more easily, quickly, efficiently.
Brian Casel:I I think it's hard to not notice the the shit, like, just look at the overall sentiment toward AI, at least within our industry. And to be super simplistic about it, it's like the entrepreneurial thinkers are extremely excited about the opportunity that that this that this brings in. And the and and the less I I don't know, like, if if you just don't think the way that that the way that a founder or an entrepreneur thinks, you tend to lean more, like, a little threatened or a little unsure, a little a little nervous about all this. But, like, that can include people who are not actually own business owners or founders. Like, there are very entrepreneurial contributors Yeah.
Brian Casel:With, you know, like, people, like product thinkers. Like, I mean, for me, like, I've always been like a designer, developer, builder, but it was always motivated by, like, so that I can deliver products that solve problems for customers, so that I can build a business. Right? Like, I, like, the the people who who who love the poetry of writing programming syntax, like, I don't know what to tell you, but that's going away, you know.
Hendry Poddar:That'll be, you know, you'll go to the track. Right? Yeah. Take your horse to the track. Right.
Brian Casel:That will happen.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. I heard
Jordan:a great saying yesterday. I'm gonna really try to get this right. LLMs are are based on data and data is historical.
Hendry Poddar:Right.
Jordan:And creativity is about the future.
Hendry Poddar:Right.
Jordan:Which helped clarify for me, like, that that's I think it's a fundamental truth. Right? I I wanna believe that it is. Yes. Predictive data.
Jordan:Sure. One thing. But there there's always wherever we're sitting on top of it, however big the pyramid of knowledge is that we're sitting on top of, there's always up ahead. Mhmm. So I don't know.
Jordan:I I guess I I don't know if the three of us have much pessimism in our DNA. So there's a there's more excitement and intellectual challenge than there is pessimism and fear.
Hendry Poddar:Well, yeah. But but I think but it's a it's a salient point. Like the the these LLMs are you're gonna get the average. It's a probability machine that produces the average. Right?
Hendry Poddar:At any given time. And, you know, I brought this up in the last time I was on this on the on the panel. I'm still fascinated by this band from Montreal.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan:I re I rewatched it yesterday. I don't like it. That's my But honest but as I'm watching, I'm like, oh, this is like a modern art exhibit that I maybe don't like but I'm like, I can I can go further into than that?
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. Well, mean, the the thing that the the thing that sticks with me about it is that I read this this is not my thoughts. I read this from somewhere. But when photography came along in the early in the late in the late half of the eighteen hundreds, the artist the artist community adjusted. Right?
Hendry Poddar:Like, was whole new movements that were created because photography was here and it could recreate imagery. Even that became an art unto itself. Mhmm. Right? So this tech came, in theory, automated a thing that humans were doing.
Hendry Poddar:Right? And then it got it spawned all this creativity and this nondeterministic thinking about these, with these new art movements and then with Angie Boutouille, I'm pronouncing there, My French is terrible. But what they did is they, like because music has been automated too. Like, you and I can go, like, I think probably from a prompt, like spin up a song and put it on Spotify. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Hendry Poddar:So what do they do? They they just like, okay, well, we're just gonna do something totally new. We're doing microtones. We're gonna incorporate this this this weird showmanship thing. We're gonna it's not gonna look like a band does.
Hendry Poddar:The performance isn't gonna feel like anything you've ever seen. And, yeah, you might not like it, but this is this is the kind of like
Jordan:Yeah. Maybe I don't like the music.
Hendry Poddar:Has spawned this awesome But
Jordan:that's not really the
Hendry Poddar:you know?
Jordan:Point in the same way.
Hendry Poddar:What's that?
Jordan:Was saying maybe I don't love the music itself, but that is not the main point. Right. The main point is you you've never seen this. It can't be recreated. It's it's new in a way that you can't stop.
Jordan:Yeah. It's what I want to do with this. Of this. Right. It discards rules.
Jordan:It says f u to whatever guidelines.
Hendry Poddar:Right.
Brian Casel:Just to go on on attention about, like, creativity and music. This is one of those thing and I I would say for art in general, like, is this one of those things where I just don't really agree with the or at least I don't see it. All the musicians feel threatened. All the artists feel threatened with with AI. And and, like, if you if you make your living that way, especially if you're struggling, know, like, to to get your music onto commercials and TV and stuff like that, like, it's it's probably super hard to compete with, like, AI generated music.
Brian Casel:But as a listener and as a creator of music, I I don't I'm not interested in in AI generated music. And and even and even the idea of, like, I don't really seek out I I I personally don't seek out music because it's completely original and new and never heard before, I tend to gravitate toward songs that are just it's just a damn good song. Like, it's you it's using patterns that have been around for decades, but they just put it together, and I feel this person. They've got a story behind it. They've got an experience.
Brian Casel:Like, yeah, you of course, you could use AI to generate something like that, but, like, it's human. Like, that's like, that's what it is. And I think that that's always gonna be that's always gonna be around. And there's always gonna be a need to create it, a need to to seek it out. But I mean, why don't we
Jordan:Tough transition for us. Know. It's tough. You're about to put me on the spot on, like, how how what how I'm doing, like, dealing with churn. This is not nearly
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's exactly the the the segue I was going for. Like, why don't we bring this back back down to earth? Anyway, thanks for
Jordan:the update, Henry.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. I know. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Jordan, what's going on at at Rosie?
Jordan:Let's see. So we've got a bunch of the marketing stuff we talked about underway. We have a team of creators that are about to post completely organic content about Rosie starting on Monday. We have the meta partnership ads thing underway. So I'm I'm, like, filling out those levels in the funnel that we talked about.
Jordan:A lot of what I'm focusing on is I I can describe it as, like, the corporate level. So it feels like the team is in a good place. Everyone knows what they need to do. We kinda have the road map on what's coming out over the next, like, four to six weeks, and I'm very happy about it. And that gives me an opportunity to look away from the day to day and look a bit more at the corporate level.
Jordan:So I'm doing things like establishing access to debt in case we want it. I am talking to our investors and kind of giving an update on where we are and figuring out where they are and seeing what that part of my reality looks like. What are VCs feeling? What are they thinking? What's my where's my lead investor at in their mood?
Jordan:What are the other major investors thinking? You know, I send these updates and they're good. So I've sent, like, eighteen months straight of good updates and I don't want to ignore the corporate and deal making part of the business. And I guess I feel confident enough in the day to day and the growth that I can turn my attention away from that a little bit, pick my head up off the keyboard as I like to say, and go out and explore what's going on in the larger market, talk to some big strategic partners, get their temperature check. So that's what it feels like the last week or so has been for me.
Jordan:Got enough rolling on the day to day that I felt comfortable enough looking at the other level of the business. The money, the market, the deals, the investments, the partnerships, the strategic acquirers, like that whole universe. Yeah. So that that's where a lot of my head has been.
Hendry Poddar:What has has any bit thing been like surprising to you that you learned over this little period?
Jordan:It does it does seem to me that being a VC right now is really challenging
Hendry Poddar:in
Jordan:in multiple ways. But maybe the defining issue for them is that the number of big winners is both shrinking and the actual numbers of the winners are so astronomical that even though we all know and talk about VC being like a power law industry, it is even more extreme now. Right. And what that leads into is, well, does your firm have a few winners? Like real real winners?
Jordan:Gigantic mega winners? If yes, you could probably raise your next fund. If not, you're gonna have a lot a lot of trouble raising your next fund. And so a lot of their universe is based around that. And if I translate if I connect that into our business, we have a good business going.
Jordan:We are not a mega winner. And so getting to the very honest conversation with my investors feels critical. And that reminds me a bit of what you've talked about in the past, Henry, where, you know, we we have this group and we coordinate together, myself and and a few of our investors. And because we've built up trust over the past five years, we can kind of get to a very honest part of the conversation and work with each other that way.
Brian Casel:I I feel like even just a couple like one or two two three years ago, they were like the AI rappers that was like sort of like the big hot, like, you know, that's where you're starting find the winners. But, like, yeah, now lately in 2026, I keep I'm actually struggling to see where are the and I'm I'm always especially focused on, like, the indie bootstrapped crowd. But but across the board, like, where are the pockets of opportunity from an investor standpoint, from a startup entrepreneur standpoint? It's hard like, I I just have a trouble seeing, like, these types of categories of of SaaS or markets. Like, where you
Jordan:know? It's it's it seems to be in the lower levels of of the industry. The foundation models, the observability models, the infrastructure providers, the specialized models, the energy industry around it, the data center industry around it, the components of how the guts actually operate. A a lot of the opportunity seems to be focused on that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Which seems to be, like, a very, very limited pool. Or Yes. And and that that pool is is already full.
Jordan:Right? Yes. It's like who has access to very large amounts of capital and who can attract the teams that can accomplish the actual tasks of building data centers and going through the political process of getting them approved. So it feels like those are gigantic opportunities.
Hendry Poddar:I think the thing is that's really hard for the three of us is we like, you know, this indie kind of entrepreneur mindset. It's a rational thing, like build a business, provide something of value, profit. I mean, the traditional VC model was, yeah, do that, build a great leadership team and then consolidate with other people doing that. From me looking on the outside and I look at some of the things that are attracting a lot of money and then their business model and things like that. Like, great example to me is granola.
Hendry Poddar:Okay. I I use granola a lot. It does this one thing, this one job really, really well.
Brian Casel:Like, the the Zoom recorder transcribe? Yep.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. And and somebody should've owned that a long time ago. Right? Like, Zoom should've owned that in COVID, and they didn't. They screwed it up.
Hendry Poddar:So it left the door open, and then it was filled by, like, the Fireflies and the re dot of the world Yep. Who would do this thing like join a call. Right? And that was sort of like, you know, and and so then the granolas of the world come along. But there's nothing defensible about their model.
Hendry Poddar:There's nothing
Brian Casel:I mean Zoom basically has the feature. Okay.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah, now Zoom has the feature. Like there's nothing to like, and you know, they try and upsell me this like team stuff. I'm like, I don't care. You know, like, and so, but they got this monstrous enormous valuation like there's a lot of talk and a lot of buzz, you know. I don't know.
Hendry Poddar:That's it it just it throws a wrench in the works for
Jordan:It's a different challenge.
Hendry Poddar:In my mind.
Jordan:It's a different challenge. It's a different business. Yeah. It and it's impossible not to compare yourselves Yeah. But you have to realize it is just a different thing entirely.
Jordan:It's like it looks like a tech company and it is a tech company, but it may as well be a restaurant. It's a different business model. It's trying to do a different thing.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. I think I From
Jordan:like a, you know, steakhouse a local steakhouse to a franchise. Like, they're both restaurants, but they're doing completely different things. They need a different capital structure. They need different investors. They need profit in a different way.
Jordan:So I I hear you. The the the problem is that everything gets lumped in or at least over the last few years, it felt like it has been lumped in. You go out and raise money from investors, and then everyone gets into the same problem of, okay, even when we have what looks like a great company that produces amazing growth and revenue, we haven't gotten to the finish line. And and now we now we have to figure out our way to the finish line. And just because you got a billion dollar valuation says nothing about whether or not you can get to the finish line.
Hendry Poddar:It's almost like we've gone back to the, you know, the Silicon Valley episode where the Mark Cuban character comes in says revenue. Don't talk about revenue.
Jordan:Yeah no no no, you don't want revenue. Then people could base your valuation on real numbers. Don't want any part of that.
Hendry Poddar:Erase that. Part of the whiteboard. So yeah, I do think it is hard and like you know, seeds have moved to series a, like it's just that it's the dynamic is.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But yeah, it's hard
Hendry Poddar:to be a VC but it's really hard to be to have a solid business.
Jordan:Well well, you need you need money. Definitely. That's the hard part.
Hendry Poddar:I know.
Jordan:The hard part is it's really really hard to get ahead on profit and make enough money so that you can fund the company without any external money at all. It's just a really really hard thing. We know what we call bootstrapping and we know how hard it is.
Brian Casel:I have all sorts of challenges and stresses that I that I deal with every day all the time. But I still come back like, this is why I I I never really left the indie bootstrapped entrepreneur path. And and it's why I'm more comfortable than ever in it now. You know, like, the the more I I I do the only opportunity that I could possibly figure out, at least just for just speaking for myself, is the smaller I can I can keep my business and my operation, the higher the upside without needing to be huge? Right?
Brian Casel:Like, or or I should say, like, how can I make a life changing business that doesn't have to have to check all the boxes that a typical funded business would need to check for it to still be life life changing for me? And I still think that there that there are opportunities at that at that level, Still, insanely hard to make it work and stay afloat and stay alive, but it's it's not like like, what I mean, honestly, like like, what I'm building with we we all see opportunity we all we're all doing our businesses because we see opportunity there in in whatever lane that we're in, but, like, yeah, it's, it it's still still tough though.
Hendry Poddar:Still tough.
Jordan:It's really tough. That's why I I love that Tiny Seed exists because at least there's some there's something out there that addresses this weird gap of like, you know what would make it a lot easier? A 100 200. That would make it a lot a lot a lot easier than just going off of your own savings or putting in $25 and saying, alright, I gotta make make this work one way or another.
Brian Casel:I think it's also easy to, like, forget that we are still very much in a like, we are in our own bubbles. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. And there's a huge wide world out there of small businesses and individuals who literally have just picked up Claude for the first time, like, last week.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know?
Jordan:Yeah. The the opportunity to build a business, pick up customers, make more revenue than expenses is not the easiest way to do it. It is a really really really hard way to do it. Like, it's almost certainly easier to find a company doing $10,000,000 in revenue and acquire it and cut the expenses knowing what we know. It's almost certainly easier, but that's that's private equity.
Jordan:That that's not entrepreneurship in in the same way. Right. It is entrepreneurship. It's just not building a tech company. Yeah.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah.
Jordan:Yep. Okay. Let's let's talk about vertical SaaS for a sec and people building their own tools. I I follow this guy, Todd Saunders, on on Twitter, and his obsession is SMBs building their own products internally. And his take on it is these are these are the future software founders, product builders.
Jordan:And I had a an experience over the last few, I guess, maybe two months or so that matches with that. And I just wanna describe that and then see if you're seeing something else. So my brother has a friend in the real estate industry. He's been a builder down in Florida. So, you know, they put money together and they build a building and they sell it or rent it or whatever, you know, that that whole universe of how do you take a plot of land and then borrow money to build a building.
Jordan:Great. He comes to me about two months ago and he's like, I got an idea for a product. Who who can I hire? You know, my your your brother told me that you have, like, developers overseas. And what I told him was, well, here's how you do it.
Jordan:Here's x y and z. But also, get into one of these AI tools and start playing around. Because if you could build it yourself, you're gonna be a lot happier. Anyway, fast forward, this week I get in touch with him. My man vibe coded a legit product.
Jordan:And he was like, I can't believe this. I'm addicted. I cannot believe it works. I can't believe how good it is. And he showed me the product, and I was like, this is domain expertise
Brian Casel:Yes. Expressed through software. Yes.
Hendry Poddar:Yep. Yep.
Jordan:And and it matches directly with what this guy Todd does, who's like, look at this guy building a concrete company who built the perfect software for concrete companies. Yes. That no one else can unless you have this incredible level of domain experience and pain and and knowledge and all this other stuff. So I I see like people building the vertical SaaS from the top down and offering it to an industry. And then Brian sounds like what what you're seeing is a lot of people who are going the other way.
Jordan:From why I'm so familiar with the problem. I just need help on figuring out how to build solutions for it.
Brian Casel:We have heard, you know, traditional SaaS founders and especially, like, tech, like, tech strong SaaS companies say for the past two years, oh, non technical people can't build real products. Vibe coders can't build real products. Yep. You know, these are toys. You can't build something real.
Brian Casel:You can't build something that can scale. You can't build or, know, you hear you hear this thing, where are all the real businesses if all these Vibe coders are building something in in a weekend? It's such bullshit. They're they're missing the point. The point is, the folks who have the domain expertise expertise and and or or access to a distribution channel, that both of those give you an unfair advantage.
Brian Casel:And the most important unfair advantage is you you know the product really well, the the market really well, you have a distribution channel. And most new SaaS founders don't have one or both of those things. And and now the the ability to spin up the product. I mean, whatever whatever you think about vibe coding, it is absolutely possible to build something that's pretty damn close to get your first 100 paying customers, and now you've got a a business that you can build on. But, yeah, like the folks who who come into it with a serious need or opportunity.
Brian Casel:It's it like, yeah, you could play around in a weekend and and and make a toy. You can make a game. But if but if you are connected to an industry and you see a gap that is being underserved, you could charge a lot of money for that for that problem to be solved. Like Yeah.
Jordan:Game on. You Very new approach to customer discovery. You don't need to Yeah.
Brian Casel:Launch and then learn. And you know exactly what build. I speak to these people all the time. They these are Builder Methods Pro members. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Literally, yesterday, I had a call with a with a new member. He runs a dental practice in California. He just discovered Claude code for the first time, and they're building a case management system to run their practice.
Jordan:Yeah. Good luck selling him on a $25,000 a year piece of software that isn't quite as good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well, I think,
Hendry Poddar:like, it kind of comes back to like what are you buying? Like you're you know the real estate thing or the dental case thing. You're not, and I think about this like software and unfair advantages and entrepreneurship all the time. Like what's your unfair advantage? Like, you know, that's a typical VC conversation.
Hendry Poddar:But you're not really, you're kind of like buying this domain expertise in a box like what you were saying before, right? You're not necessarily, the software thing is like anybody could vibe code anything and that's true. And even like something like a CRM, like it was kind of always true that like anybody could create a CRM, right? But like why do you buy a certain one? Will the vertical ones succeed because you're not really buying the CRM, you're buying the people who made it and their domain expertise.
Brian Casel:And their opinions about how that type of business should be run.
Hendry Poddar:I think it's like a really good time. I don't know if you call it vertical necessarily, but for opinionated points of view that you're that are manifested in something of value that could be software, it could be courseware, it could be whatever.
Brian Casel:And and also what I find so interesting about this from a product design standpoint is just the idea of building internal tools. Because like, yes, that person who who runs the the real estate company. Yes. They they know that problem space really well. And maybe they're really connected in that industry, and they they could potentially sell Vibe code and build a product and and turn it into a successful SaaS.
Brian Casel:That's one option. Mhmm. I think more likely, more common is every real estate company is just gonna vibe code their own version for a customer base of one for them for themselves. Right? And, you know, every every single person, us included, everyone else, every SaaS that you buy off the shelf, there are paper cuts.
Brian Casel:There are, you know, that alright. There there are all these features that I don't wanna even touch. It it it bloats the interface. Or, okay. They kinda do the thing that I need, but I wish it would just do this, but they're never gonna design it the way that I want it because they've got thousand other customers.
Brian Casel:And lately, I'm designing my own tools for my own business and builder methods. Literally, the last two weeks, I have built and shipped four new Rails applications. I have no intention to release them publicly. They are just for myself to use to run my content development pipeline. And and I'm noticing the way that I go about designing these apps is so fundamentally different from how I would design and build a Clarity Flow or or whatever SaaS tools I've ever worked on before that with the intention of selling to a market, my apps only need to work for me.
Brian Casel:I can make all these UI and UX and product decisions. It doesn't matter how complicated or confusing it might seem to the outside world, I get it and it fits my process, and it fits my business goals, and it it doesn't have to do everything else, it just has to do my business perfectly, and and I believe that it's I'm not just doing that for fun, I'm doing that because it's becoming my competitive advantage. Like, it's allowing me and and I'm describing myself, but but really I think I'm describing every small business in the future. Like, if you have this internal capability to design the perfect tools, the perfect interface, the perfect workflow, it it's a competitive advantage. It lets you create more widgets faster.
Brian Casel:It creates it it helps you create more widgets that solve the problem better than, you know I mean, even better than buying a Basecamp, than buying an Asana, than buying I'm a
Jordan:putting pretty big bet on the fact that the smallest least technically sophisticated companies will still just prefer to be like, I could just give you a $100 a month also and you can do all this stuff for me. But the bar is pretty high.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But all the
Jordan:stuff you do for them and the flexibility required in your product needs to get it much closer to perfect software for them than they molding their process to you.
Brian Casel:I think I think yes to an extent. Right? Like, yes yes, maybe today that calculation is correct. Right? Like, it's it's just easier to pay a $100 a month for for QuickBooks or whatever it might be.
Brian Casel:Right? But I do think that in the near future and maybe today in some cases, it's it's not just a dollars trade off. It's like, ultimately it is. Right? Like, it it's that much more of a competitive advantage to have a a QuickBooks that works a 100 times better for my business than QuickBooks itself.
Hendry Poddar:But I think
Brian Casel:yeah. So then it pays for either the operators to learn the skills or just to hire someone to come in and be the builder in their business.
Hendry Poddar:Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, and we all live in our bubbles, and I live in my bubble too, but like the kind of behavior describing though is a very specific mindset and it does, I think it's not confined, but certainly today it's confined I think to like the small business assumption that you're making. Like when I talk to big companies, right? They are like, it's the the floor is littered with failures of vibe coded stuff that has caused a there's an article in the Wall Street Journal today about, I put this in my newsletter too, about this vibe coded stuff is there's another business that's coming to correct the vibe coded experiments. So along the way, we're learning this stuff and yes, there's these pockets of things where I'm gonna, like, spin up software for myself and use it, but at scale at some of these larger organizations, I think that is a long way off. Like it just, if you are CIO and you're deciding how to invest in, you know, the a specific outcome.
Hendry Poddar:Like, I think we're still a far we're still far away from that CIO saying, you know what? I'm gonna have developer a and b spin it up our own vibe coded version and that's gonna be our thing. Like I I think we're you know, there's so many regulatory in any in fintech, in any of the or in health care, in insurance, like all these places where there's compliance and regulation and legal and all that stuff, the notion of a 100 like just this home home, or or in house software factories. I don't know. Yeah.
Hendry Poddar:Certainly the case for for small bit like my business. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna automate anything I can automate.
Brian Casel:I mean, we talked about like where where are the opportunities? It does seem like there's still a huge opportunity in selling to enterprise. But then but then on the other end, you're almost like competing with the other end of the spectrum, right? Like like, Claude and OpenAI and Google are going into all these and saying like, how can we get you on a Claude everything plan to run your whole organization? Right.
Brian Casel:You know, and they're and and and they're just starting to eat up all these enterprise functions within
Hendry Poddar:Well, again
Brian Casel:Claude's itself. Right?
Hendry Poddar:Yeah. But, you know, Tom, what we talked about before, like, the Claude's and the Googles of the world are coming in and offering single player solutions. Right? They're saying like, okay, here's your Gemini. And by the way, you know, Microsoft with the copilot, there's all sorts of ways that that's not working out.
Hendry Poddar:And that's a single player solution. The multiplayer stuff is really not going well. Like, you know, you're gonna replace, you know, these five QA people with these six agents or something like or these customer service reps. There's all kinds of backlash around that. Now we're gonna because and it's not like these agents can't do that job or the automation can't happen But talking about what we talked about before, the coordination at scale is still a really hard problem.
Hendry Poddar:And I think at the larger company level, again, there's compliance, regulatory issues and all that kind of stuff, it gets really, really thorny fast. It's at odds with the mindset that we have of like finding pockets of things to automate and then automating them and moving on. Like, that's not necessarily the mindset that's happening at these bigger firms, in my opinion.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So how are we doing on time? I mean, we we wrap or you're I think
Jordan:we gotta wrap it up. Anyone have any fun Memorial Day weekend plans?
Brian Casel:We're sending the kids off to grandma's house, so Amy and I have a have a date weekend going on
Jordan:here. Fantastic.
Hendry Poddar:My kids just came home from college, so we're they're here. So we're all under one roof, which is almost kinda nice.
Jordan:Nice. So first year of college behind them. Yes. So they, at this point, know everything. You're a complete idiot.
Jordan:They have a far better understanding of the world than you do, and they just need your car for the for
Hendry Poddar:the podcast and then they need to come and bother me. Like, they're literally asking for my wallet. That's what happened.
Jordan:Straight wallet? I just get the Apple cash requests.
Brian Casel:You know? I still get, like, the the App Store. Can I download this game request? I still get a bunch of those for my 10 and 12 year old. So Yeah.
Jordan:Well, we have a soccer tournament and the weather looks good. So we'll we'll find ways to get out and go check out the beach and to go to my kids outdoor concert for the end of the year. They only have two weeks of school left. Nice. It's a great time
Hendry Poddar:of year.
Jordan:Get get out.
Hendry Poddar:I see everyone. The the empty nester thing, everybody's like, oh, you're have this awesome That's
Brian Casel:what I wanted to ask you about. I feel like that's a whole other podcast,
Hendry Poddar:but It's a whole other podcast, but like like the I've missed like the the kind of filled up weekends of fun stuff. Believe it or not, at the time it felt like a lot of it felt like a giant pain in the ass, but I miss it. Yeah. So enjoy it. I believe that.
Hendry Poddar:Even though they're grandmas.
Brian Casel:Yeah, yeah. I mean, we love it. Every weekend like when they're we're we're going hiking. We're we're going out on on stuff. So, yeah, it's a it's a good time.
Jordan:That's good if you guys have that freedom. We we feel like we don't have much freedom. I think that that's for us Mhmm. What happens on the weekends that feels a bit like a pain is, well, we got a soccer game at two and then a cheerleading thing at four. And then tomorrow morning, we have another game at 8AM.
Jordan:So whatever plans you have have to mold around
Brian Casel:that. Right. Yeah. We we we we play basketball. My my girls played basketball and that that sort of dominates that season.
Brian Casel:But they've stopped doing, like, the softball. And so, like, now, like, we don't that that you're right. Like, having, like, games used to really dominate the weekends. Yes.
Jordan:I I do enjoy it, though. Yeah. I I love a sideline hang. And my, you know, my dad lives nearby now. So it's me and my dad, which I never expected Yeah.
Jordan:You know, would would be our normal day to day. But we're we're sideline buddies and just watch all the games and cheer for the kids. It's awesome.
Brian Casel:That's fun.
Jordan:And try not to think about business the entire time.
Hendry Poddar:That's right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You're trying to think
Jordan:about work and try not to stress out and just be like, hey.
Hendry Poddar:Until the other parent taps you on the shoulder and and tells you their startup idea and what do you think about
Jordan:Maybe where you guys live, but there is not really not a lot of entrepreneurs around here.
Brian Casel:No. Neither.
Jordan:And so so most people are not thinking and talking about work.
Brian Casel:And Very few and far between and yeah. Whenever I'm talking to other people about about my work, it's like I am an alien from another planet. Like
Jordan:try to Literally bring down
Brian Casel:just the fact that, like, I I work at home or or I mean, a lot of people work from home these days. Sure. But the fact that I that I have a company with people and clients and customers that are worldwide, still, now, this year, people are like, like, no way. Yeah. You know?
Brian Casel:A trip
Hendry Poddar:before any AI or agent speak.
Jordan:I try to bring some of that interest into, like, I don't know, pop culture or just the mainstream culture. So I I might bring something up that's AI related, but it's interesting in general. I don't know. Some some new thing comes out or, you know, I had a conversation recently about the Spencer Pratt ads. I don't know if you guys follow the Spencer Pratt Los Angeles Mayor thing.
Jordan:Oh god. I'm I'm too online. Jesus. Anyway, the LA mayor race
Brian Casel:is I'm too deep into the Knicks right now. So
Jordan:I mean, the Knicks are cool. That's actually really fun. The basketball playoffs are amazing.
Brian Casel:I've been looking at the these these tickets and they're just going up in price by the minute around here and I'm like, ugh, how do
Jordan:I get I thought if you recently when they had the insane comeback at like the end of regulation and then over time,
Justin:I was like,
Jordan:I was just happy for you. I what's the experience? Literally
Brian Casel:for like the the six hours before that game, I was like on StubHub. I'm like, what does it cost to get in that building? And I and I didn't pull the trigger.
Jordan:You don't wanna burn $1,200 on a on a few hours?
Brian Casel:To to sit like the rappers So
Jordan:I'll I'll bring it into things like that. So this mayor race in LA, one of the one of the people running, this guy Spencer Pratt, who's like, you know, used to be on a reality star show, but his house burned down. He's got the whole thing. Anyway, he's I don't even think it's him. I think people are just making AI videos, but it's very interesting to see its impact on politics when you can take a message that you want to deliver over a video and hit it with the exact precision.
Jordan:Right? So one of the ads that he came out with was basically aimed directly at, like, the permission structure inside of of a relatively left wing culture in LA. And so to address that, he had, like, people at, like the gym, like just finishing up a pilates class. These two ladies were like, are you know, do you know who you're voting for? And they're both like, no.
Jordan:No. No. And then one says, well, I think I might actually vote for this guy Spencer Pratt. They're like, oh my god. I didn't I didn't think like anyone else, but but I'm voting for him also.
Jordan:And then someone else walks in and is like, did you guys just say you're voting for Spencer Pratt? I I thought we couldn't say that, but so am I. And it's like the exact precise message that you wanna deliver, you can now create a video
Brian Casel:So powerful.
Jordan:Exactly for that. It's not like, well, hopefully this lands properly and hopefully this person performs well on camera and maybe they we try to feed them what we wanna say, but hopefully it gets the message across the way we want to. It's like, no. We we're gonna nail exactly what we want because it's relatively free to just create a new video with that message. That's what I end up talking to people about.
Jordan:And they still think I'm a nailing. But at least I'm not talking about like business and SaaS metrics and
Hendry Poddar:Right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well, the other thing I avoid around here is, like, talking politics. So
Jordan:Yeah. I still can't get over it. I I grew up, you know, in a household of nonstop politics, and I think it is insane for adults not to talk about politics. You know, guys, the the things around us are are happening. I I wish
Brian Casel:I I I honestly wish that the stigma goes away. I feel like that's how you can calm the calm the nerves a little bit. We just get talking again, you know. But Yeah.
Jordan:As soon as you start talking about it, you moderate pretty quickly.
Brian Casel:Least at least I had to realize like
Jordan:I'm pretty hardcore.
Brian Casel:You are pretty cool.
Jordan:On my own. Then I start talking, like, actually, don't wanna say that actually. I'll keep that so as myself.
Hendry Poddar:Well, think also the dynamics are so much different when you're in person. I actually feel much more comfortable talking politics like in person, like on the side of the a rowing regatta or something like that because like you're, you know, you've kind of face to face and as long as it's not devolving into a personal attack, it's it's kind of doable and you know it's again like how you know it's it's easy to yell at somebody inside your car at the other car
Brian Casel:Yep.
Hendry Poddar:On the highway but like if you're actually standing next to each other, it's a little more difficult.
Jordan:Yes. Totally. Agree. Alright. Well, let's let's go test out that theory on Memorial Day weekend.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan:Henry, thank you very much for joining us.
Hendry Poddar:Oh, thanks so much for having me, guys.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Cool. It's a good one. Alright. Talk soon.
Brian Casel:See you.