2023-08-24. Against Solutions

Hey, Rich.

Hi, Paul.

How you doing?

Doing well.

So look, I'm going to throw a word at you.

Mm hmm.

Solutions.

Okay.

So,

As in, chemistry?

exactly. What, what I've noticed, so we're building a software tool, you and me, and we talk to people a lot about software. And when I go in and talk to people about software, When you and I talk about software, this is what we talk about. You gotta let us in there. You gotta get in there, man. Somebody's gotta go in and just figure out what you guys are actually doing. Because nobody knows. And it's, it's clearly, you're in a lot of pain. And your stuff is all over the place.

It's not very

We basically hold up a mirror and say, It looks like a mess. So, you know, let's, let's start there. That's what most people do. Most people walk into the organization, they go... I got something for you. I got a solution.

I've got a solution.

you know what, that feels a lot better than somebody like you and me going in there and going like, Yeah, it looks pretty bad. Cause we're like the doctors, we're like, Well, that leg's gonna take a while to heal.

Yeah and people want pain relief. So when they hear a solution they

gonna have you play a basketball in no time.

Exactly, exactly. That's what people want to hear. Um, and uh,

I will point out our only buyer was someone who'd been burned about 500 times before.

look I think most of the serious buyers of things don't know a hell of a lot about The inside of the thing if somebody sat me down and said you made an excellent choice on This roofing material. Let me tell you why I Kind of don't know what they're talking

Actually, hold on. We could take this back to a direct experience that you had. How did you choose your neurosurgeon, and how did he tell you he was going to do a good job?

My neurologist said We've got really good surgeons here, and I think you could do this

had a highly treatable brain condition. We've talked about this before. You had a neurologist. So a professional who really understood the discipline, is well credentialed, looked at you and said, You should do this thing.

You seem low risk in the grand scheme of brain surgery.

So you had, it's like my, my endocrinologist saying there's never been a better time to be obese, right? Uh, so, so this guy looks at you, a consultant, I said, literally a consulting doctor says, Hey, uh, you, I know what you need. Let me give you a plan.

Yes, yes. And, and, you know, to hear someone take that leap in, as a doctor is very, very unusual. He's probably my eighth neurologist in my life,

yeah, sure, sure.

And most don't want the liability or the responsibility of making such a suggestion.

want to get you in for 20 minutes, make sure you're not falling down the stairs and get you out of there.

That's right, and I gotta tell you something it was like the 10th visit and then he kind of sheepishly said it he was like I Gotta tell you you may want to just deal with this and I think you

We can get you off these beds, but you have to do surgery.

If to surgery and he he was not gung ho it took this guy metabolizing my case for weeks and

This is the most perfect, perfect metaphor for software delivery in large organizations.

he, he, this was not a matter of like, Oh my god, your appendix is infected, we gotta get it out. This is very complicated. It needed time to really understand all the dimensions of it.

Well, risk, right? You aren't going to die. You're not, there's no, you could hold on and keep taking the meds for an indeterminate amount of time.

Yes, that's right, but what he saw was that the debt I was in like the debt I was paying for being on the meds was like kind of eating away at my quality of life every

you were much less healthy. It was out of your control and you were much less

mean for those that don't know anti seizure medicine is very toxic like it's it's essentially It's strong chemicals to mess with your brainwaves like that's what it is

wobble walking down the hall. Like

was bad as till they were trying to get the meds right and all that and he's like, you know what? You're gonna be dealing with this for a while but I gotta tell you, the real answer might be invasive surgery because you, you happen to be a very lucky case, the actual issue is right on the surface, we don't have to dig deep, we don't have to, this doesn't have to be about my brain surgery. But, you're highlighting

but he didn't say, I have a solution for you.

No, no, he really... He, it was about, I'm going to say three months into a dozen visits for him to finally say what he thought was the right

Then you went and talked to the head of engineering.

Then we'll,

the CTO of the brain, the neuro, the neuroscientist. The neuro, yeah, neurosurgeon,

in place. The recommended next steps were in place.

So now the engineering team's coming in.

Engineering team's coming in, right? And it's throwing me off because they all have gamer chairs. And the mouse they use isn't like mine. It has 12 buttons on it. So it's throwing me off, the whole thing.

Right. This is real, like, it's a very software driven thing. Where they cut into your brain meat.

actually is. Yeah. So I meet the surgeon and he's like, No biggie, we got this. This is not the one that keeps me up at night.

That's a good feeling.

That's a good feeling, right? And I knew that all the work to get to that decision was probably just as hard as the Procedure I was about to have

Yeah, I mean, there's literally years getting up to this point, right? Okay.

right. And so

And now we have this huge body of knowledge. We have a file on you that's like as long as a phone book.

it's very long. There's a I found this out by the way. There's a board meeting not a board meeting It's like a committee or whatever where they look at each case and it's all the surgeons in the hospital Talk about its viability

know, we had that, my wife, I have twins. We had that because our pregnancy was very high risk as a result.

they meet and they consult and they want not and then my my neurologist Did something else interesting? He said I have a friend who is a neurosurgeon in Columbia, Presbyterian. I was not, I was in Northwell, uh, uh, Lenox Hill.

so bizarre to live in New York City where like,

It's a concentration of the best surgeons in the world.

medical care is like two subway

And, and my neurologist asked the surgeon that was going to do the procedure if he could sit in.

Whoa,

asked if the other surgeon, do you mind if he sits in on this? Which was, I appreciate it because that, that other surgeon specialized in some aspect of it that this guy didn't.

Right.

And so, okay,

they're assembling a team to solve your problem.

they're assembling a team to solve the problem. And you know what? I felt at that point was, these are people who. And you know, we live, this is one of the positives of, of it, we live, living in a very litigious society, is nobody wants to get it wrong. I, the, the malpractice insurance for a neurosurgeon is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, like it's a ridiculous number because it's so high risk.

There's another thing here, which is your insurance has approved it, right? Like, they've looked at it and been like, yeah, this will make his

In like, they were, I remember the, the, the administrator who got, who called me with the approvals, like, usually takes a couple of weeks, and it took two days.

a lot of these systems are not set up in a way that, like, makes life easier for people, but in this case, all the systems are confirming your path of operation.

Exactly. And so, so much thinking and planning. And so why are we talking about all of this?

Well, did anyone ever say, I got this for you, it's done, we're gonna solve it?

Mmm... I got this for you in terms of...

yeah, man, don't worry, it's brain surgery, all done, you're gonna be good. What I remember hearing, you might not remember this because you had brain surgery, is that your neurologist, everything is potentiality, everything is, is sort of likelihoods, and there's no promise.

Yes. Yes. That's right. That's right. There is a bravado that comes from the surgeon for some, I, I think it's his own coping mechanism. He's like, yeah, it's a piece of cake. I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna go get an omelet. Like, it's all good. And, and, uh,

I'm going to bet neurosurgeons don't have the most successful dating lives.

most successful

Dating

I think it's like, uh, you know how I, uh, I compare them to, um, like war correspondence? Yeah. it's,

off of the incredible thing, but you know what, but, but they're really bad at getting little gifts for anniversaries, like it's not,

oh, yeah, yeah, it's high octane stuff right and he's addicted I Distinctly remember the visit afterwards. He was done with me.

oh, he's not baking you zucchini bread,

Afterwards he came in he checked a couple of things make sure the stitches look good and he was like, all right, I gotta

Your relationship is over at

Our relationship is over at that point. And so Why are we talking about this on Ziade and Ford podcast where we often talk about software? Yeah, and whatnot a lot of software product is sold in the

It's sold like this. Hey, Rich,

like this. Hey, Rich. Have I got a solution.

got this screwdriver. I'm gonna jam it in your

mean, you're never

and you're never gonna have another bad day. No more seizures, nothing. Go off the

real quick.

And you go like, well, let me see the screwdriver. They're like, hold on a minute. First of all, you got to fill out all this paperwork.

Yeah. And then

then, you know, you're kind of, they get you into it.

get you in

And then you're like, all right, and then they're like, okay, actually a screwdriver. Here's what they really do. Here's the one two move. You're like, all right, I guess I got to go with the screwdriver. And then they get you in there. You fill out the paperwork. And then they go, actually, hold on a minute. This isn't the right screwdriver. We got, we got to actually, it's going to be like a team of 60. And we got to like really get you, we're going to have some other tools.

Almost every software effort is walking into history, politics, legacy, interdependencies of the strangest kind.

is a document the size of the full book. You might not find it. It might never have been compiled, but yeah,

So when, when a buyer shows up is like, I, I can't take it anymore. Like I just can't take it

my life to get better

want my life to get better. The thing that most people do with software, right, is they say, this will make your life better. We're gonna migrate everything over. It's gonna be a clean slate, and it's gonna get better. And then what ends up happening is,

In the first meeting.

In the first meeting, we've got the solution for

would be like your neurologist. You walk in, you sit down, and he goes, before you say anything, I know what you need.

Yes. Exactly. And, and, what ends up happening is that team of 30 lives with you for the rest of your life.

Yes, you're never done. The surgery is never done.

It's

You are on the table for the rest

It's never done. It's never

They never, ever sew your brain back up.

That's a dumb analogy to shift away from my brain for a second, even though it is quite

Yeah, what a brain. let me take us down a different path really fast, Rich. You and I have built a software tool.

We have.

called Aboard. It's the sponsor of this podcast. It's really good. I think you'll

It's a solution.

That's the thing. Here we are. We're playing at this game. So tell me why our solution is better than the other solutions or how we're gonna, because what we believe, what you and I truly believe, is that you don't solve cultural problems by just spackling software.

Correct.

So why is this product, and I'm not asking you, like we have not had this conversation before ever, why is this not a solution? Like, why is this something that, like, we could go in? Because we've just told the world that we don't believe in instant solutions that you can turn on to fix everything.

There is no instant solution. Like anyone who tells you there's an instant solution. I mean,

so what the hell, what the hell did we build?

I, I think we built a platform that has the malleability to be a solution.

If anything, look, if we're gonna, what do we do? We built something where it makes it possible for people to kind of build their own.

Yeah, I mean look, and this has been a promise for the last 10 15 years around low code and no code and all that. But I, I think that... Dream is sort of fizzled out a bit, mainly because um, the idea of point and clicking your, pointing and clicking your way out of a problem, it doesn't

Well, it just ends up being code, but it's point and click code. Like,

point and click code.

problems are hard.

Problems are hard. And, and if, if you have a, I think a better way to look at it is look, the business stakeholder just wants to parachute something new in and make all the pain go away and it doesn't work that way. Instead what you should look at is A, study the landscape, visit the doctor a dozen times, first of all. Second of all, you look at where you can stem pain and reduce friction at different points in the whole picture, in the whole environment.

You know, I hurt my back in my 30s, and I got painkillers, and they were great. I had my back kind of healed. I was younger. Uh, I've had the same injury. It's sciatica. It's normal. And, I was at a different doctor, not a painkiller type of doctor. He's like, you're going to physical therapy.

ol

And, Physical therapy solved it and it sucked. It hurt. It took a long time. I had to go back. I was on a cane. I had to go and like, you know, a guy named Kyle would tell me about how he just moved into a new apartment with his girlfriend while he tortured

hours of

now when I feel the twinge in my back, I reflexively do this little exercise. I do it a lot. I try to do it in the

the

hurt. You know, not very much. That is, it's still a solution. But it's not like, the opiates felt like a solution at the moment. But about two weeks in, they're no longer a solution. You've just gotten some relief, and now you gotta, you gotta taper off the opiates. Now you have kind of two problems. And now you've trained yourself like, I just need more drugs when I'm hurting. And like all the horrible politics in America about opiates aside, that's a bad scene.

And then you treat yourself. Like all the physical stuff. You know, if somebody sells anything to solve people's problems is kind of hard to hear. It's not very, like, this is pretty anti marketing. Like, this is not the sizzle that closes the deal. But this is the reality. Then we've seen it time and time

I'll tell you where you and I come in. Is that you and I tend to come in with everything we do well after everybody else went home. So I've, you know, why did the agency work? Well, everybody bought the same product five or ten times. It was like, I can't do that anymore. I gotta do something else. And we'd show up. We were older, we were expensive, and we had a good track record. We said, I'll fix it for you. It'll look exactly like this. You know, you would, in particular, go sit in a room

At first we'd spend time.

Yeah, always.

spend a lot of time understanding what the situation was.

a contract, nothing. Just let's go, let's figure this out.

yep.

I think also people realize that that's motivating to us. We like to look inside and see how it works. I feel that we're doing that with this software as well. This is the, we are not trying to create this radical new AI wonderful machine.

Yeah, even though we use AI. Yeah.

we do. Yeah, you know,

No, we use it thoughtfully. Yeah.

have solved the world's problems. Instead we're saying... We have seen the same problems 50 billion

We do... That is the dirty little secret. It's the same problems over and

I call this, it's a Goldilocks product, right? It's not too hot, it's not too cold. You know, we're a family of bears.

Yeah.

And we just would like people to use it and see what they make of it.

What is this product you speak

Well, we mentioned before, it's called Abort, abort. com, check it out. It's great. If it wasn't so congested, I'd be more excited.

I think I want to... Add an asterisk to everything you're saying here. They're going to go to Aboard. com. It looks like a personal, like, lifestyle tool.

Well, until next week.

until next week. And, and, and, but even then, it still looks like kind of fun. Uh, but there's a lot of power underneath

Oh, we've, we've built a generalized data platform that we're committed to for quite a while. But, it looks like fun bookmarking. You know why?

It is!

because I love fun

Why

Yeah,

It's also very visual, which is cool.

So thank you for listening. At Ziade Ford on Twitter. Hello at ZiadeFord. com if you need us. Anything else, Richard?

No, but I think the next podcast or the one after it is, uh, is, is dedicated to the launch of a board. We're that

yeah, here we go. All right.

a lovely

Bye